He had left his office at the college in London that morning, abandoning his students, with no precise idea of where he was heading. He had woken early out of a dream of childhood, confused and tangled. What had made him come through the woods rather than walking down the lane? What was he doing here, skulking at the bottom of his mother’s garden? The vegetable patch, which had provided the potatoes, cabbage, carrots, broad beans and peas in those early years after the war, was gone and, in its place, a small lawn had been planted, surrounded by neat flower beds. Tiny yellow roses climbed a trellis, which had been raised against the next-door garden. A wisteria twined over the top of the back door. From where he was standing, the pendulous flowers looked like water that had been arrested in its fall. It must have been there when he was a child, its scent waving through the curtains of his opened bedroom window on a day like this.
But it was no use thinking about that now, as he could no longer avoid the solitary figure, resting on the bench with the sun on her face. Under the bench, in the paving cracks, tiny purple flowers struggled. He had been standing there, not watching her, for quite some time and the sun had moved one notch, so that her feet were now in shade – her sensible shoes, the suede scuffed on the toes. She wore navy slacks in a cotton fabric and a mauve cardigan was draped over her shoulders. Her hands were spread on her knees, as if she was just about to stand up. But she wasn’t; the hands were limp and unattended. The flesh of her face, under the greying perm, looked thinner than he remembered, as if it was slowly drying into bones. Her eyes were closed and she might have been asleep.
Gabriel shifted on his feet so that a small animal stirred in the undergrowth. Have we all grown older, quite suddenly? he wondered. Those of us who are still alive. He realised that he had been expecting some kind of prelude, like the beginning of autumn, which is softly scarved against the chill of winter.
‘Hello? Is there somebody there?’ Her voice was the same, only softer – it belonged to a much younger woman.
He hesitated and felt suddenly ridiculous, knowing that he would have to push through the shrubs to meet her – which he did, stepping into the light.
‘Mother … it’s me. Hello, Mum.’
The look of alarm on her face was quickly replaced by surprise and something else, which he could not quite read, but which might have been fear.
‘Gabriel?’ She stood up at last and he realised that she was about to embrace him. He had not been prepared for that, and yet he was the one advancing towards her out of the shrubbery, so that their bodies met – it could not be avoided – there, in full sun. He could not tell who decided to let go first but, when they stood apart, he swayed. He swayed and had to stand with his legs apart to steady himself. Mother was studying him carefully. He met her eyes and saw that she was blushing.
‘If I had known you were coming,’ she was saying, ‘I would have been better prepared. I look a fright. What you must think …’ She talked on, but he couldn’t take it all in. He was dizzy with a surge of muddled emotions, which he couldn’t express.
‘Come –’ her hand on his arm – ‘let’s sit down. I’ll put the kettle on. Or would you like something stronger? Some sherry, perhaps?’
‘Tea is fine, thank you.’
She stood back to look at him, almost shyly. ‘You have grown since I saw you last. When was it? Five years ago? Six? Look at you. Aren’t you handsome!’
There was an awkward silence.
He sat down on the bench with his hands spread over his knees, just as she had done a moment earlier, only his hands were gripping harder, trying to hold on to a solid part of himself. He breathed in deeply the sweetness of the wisteria and felt becalmed, like a ship after a storm, or was it before? Some tiny flies were moving about his head, but he let them be.
‘Well, I’ll just go inside to put the kettle on …’
He dared to look at her then, as she moved towards the pantry door. For a moment, he watched and listened for those movements and sounds her body used to make: the bounce and pace, sometimes a terrible sharpness, which age had so abruptly transported into something frail and yellow – or perhaps, at best, into a dry kind of grace. Had she been alone all this time? Had she ever taken a lover? Dr Lennon, perhaps? She had been pretty once, he seemed to remember, if a bit too strict – and always very well turned out.
She returned with the tea tray, her lips noticeably pinker.
‘How uncanny.’ She laughed, shaking her head. ‘I was thinking of you only a moment ago … of how, when we first moved here from Oakstone, you used to follow me around the garden as I planted the seeds. You were only a toddler then … You would try to pick the seeds out to put them in your mouth, so that I had to do it all over again. I would get so frustrated.’ She stopped abruptly and looked around, still holding the tray. ‘Could you fetch that little table over there, please?’
He followed her gaze and saw a small pine table by the wall. Lifting it and setting it down again in front of the bench, he was struck by the apparent everydayness of their gestures. He took the tray out of her hands and put it on the table.
‘Thanks.’
They sat down next to each other on the bench, and the wearied day settled around them with a sigh. She poured the tea into the blue and white china teacups, but hesitated with the milk jug. A brief look of confusion skimmed across her face, as if something precious and dear had been misplaced. ‘I have forgotten … Do you take milk?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Yes … yes, of course you do.’
He smiled.
‘Where was I? Oh, yes – planting the seeds. I’d get so cross with you destroying everything. But you were just a little boy, starting to explore the world.’
He took a sip of his tea, not sure what else to do.
‘Trying to be a single mother, proudly independent and all that, back in those days …’ She looked suddenly tired, as if the memory itself had exhausted her. ‘But you were just a small boy; you couldn’t understand why I was always vexed … always so drained.’
His mind snatched at the end of another memory: walking, hand in hand with Mother on grass, bells ringing nearby – not just ding-dong but a proper tune. It was a bright, blustery day and he was carrying a bunch of crocuses. It was a happy memory, he realised, and suddenly he felt a great tenderness. It must have been inside him all these years, this warmth at the heart, which had suddenly made itself known to him now, like a revelation. It must have been there all along, keeping the embers alive. He had loved her, he realised – of course he had – even when he didn’t like her. Even when he hated her. But then, he had never been a helpful child, only bothersome.
‘If only … If only I had been made in a different way, things might have been all right,’ he suggested now, as the sun protected them both.
She looked up, perplexed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
He said lightly, ‘Mr Bradley … I mean, my father and you might have stayed together, if it hadn’t been for my … you know, the way I turned out.’
‘But it had nothing to do with you. Your father leaving me had nothing to do with you.’
He was uncovered, almost naked. He closed his eyes.
‘He fell in love with another woman. It was that simple, really, only I was young and could not accept it. It was in the middle of the war – those were fraught times. Gabriel, look at me … Your father didn’t leave because of you – he left … He left because of me. Do you hear me?’
He looked away, nodding. How terrifyingly opaque and incomprehensible his world had seemed back then. How misled he had been. Why had no one talked to him? If only somebody had talked to him, he might have been able to tell them about the horror he had witnessed that day and about the blackness that lived inside him. He might have been able to ask for help – for Michael, and for himself.
‘And I suppose I loved him. I was terribly hurt. Terribly.’
‘I heard you talk to Mrs Bradley, in the kitchen at Oakstone, after Mr Bradley’
s funeral.’
She considered him again. Her eyes looked sad; they were paler than his – light brown with specks of saffron. His own eyes were the colour of newly cut peat – the same as Michael’s and Mr Bradley’s.
‘I’m sorry; you boys should never had been drawn into our mess. I wanted to keep you for myself. I thought I deserved to.’
‘Michael is dead, mother. He killed himself.’
‘Yes,’ she nodded. ‘Yes, I heard. I never knew him, of course. Gerry told me about him. He seemed such a lovely boy, but unfortunate … Such a frail mind, I was told.’
If only Uncle Gerry … But Uncle Gerry was long gone. He poured her some more tea; the pot felt surprisingly heavy.
‘They say something bad happened to him when he was still quite young. That he was never right after it. Do you know what it was?’
A couple of swifts chirped high above them, feeding on the flies. The garden teemed with tiny noises. It felt like thunder in the air. No, it was too late … No use splitting himself open to tell her now. Yes, too late, at last. Best left forgotten.
‘I have a job,’ he said instead, ‘at the university. I’m not a student any more. A proper job … A big international project about freaks.’
She nodded vaguely.
‘The professor was so pleased with my dissertation that he offered me a studentship to work with him and to do a doctorate.’
‘Oh?’ She smiled mildly, the way one might smile at a young child bringing a new drawing.
‘Mum, I’m sorry I have stayed away. There were things I had to work out on my own …’
How he hated his inner demons – that freak that still lived inside him, threatening to rip open the scar above his lip. But this job was useful. He was learning to control this need he had to project the demons on to others. The stillness of this sunny patch and the scent of the wisteria keep my mind from falling apart. Yes, I’m still here. Come, find me – bring me home.
She nodded, as if she had heard his thoughts and understood. He shifted a little on the seat so that his arm brushed against her side.
‘By the way, I saw Jim of Blackaton in London a few years back. Remember him?’ He couldn’t think why he’d mentioned this to Mother.
The name made her flinch. He could feel her tense, deliberating some new thought – sharper, this time, not brought back from the velvet folds of memory. This was part of the present.
‘He’s a bad one, Gabriel. Stay away from Jim Ludgate, you hear me?’
‘Why? What do you know?’
‘It was criminal, the way he treated Mrs Bradley, her own son barely dead in the ground.’ She shook her head.
He froze. ‘What do you mean?’
‘He ought to be behind bars, that one. And his poor wife, trying to raise a kid on her own, up on the moor … A lovely girl.’
Jim of Blackaton – married with a child? The thought had never occurred to him. Nor did it alter his resolve, now that he knew. Jim had never taken such considerations into account.
‘Go on …’
‘Well, after Michael’s death, Amélie came back to Oakstone. I went to see her once, to offer my condolences. I felt ashamed of how I had behaved …’
He studied her with admiration. This was not the mother he remembered.
‘When I arrived, that man, Jim Ludgate, was there, talking to her. She was terribly upset.’
‘Really?’
‘He was saying that he was a close friend of her son’s and that Michael had given him Oakstone before he died.’
Gabriel made a sound like a snort.
‘Well, luckily I heard all this as I arrived – the French windows were open, so I entered that way. At first, they didn’t notice me …’
It made him shiver in the heat to think that Jim of Blackaton had been inside Oakstone, talking to Mrs Bradley.
‘To cut a long story short, I told him to bugger off or I’d call the police, because he was on my son’s property.’
She looked furious, even now, and Gabriel remembered how frightened he used to be of her at times.
‘You know what he did? He laughed at me … that insolent peasant! Said I was wrong and showed me a paper where Michael had signed over the property to Mr Ludgate.’
‘You actually saw the documents?’
‘I said, “I’ll show you papers …” and told him that Oakstone wasn’t Michael’s to give away – that half of it still belonged to you.’ She laughed coldly. ‘I’ve never seen a man so furious. He stormed out, cursing us like the Devil himself.’
Which one could well believe he was, Gabriel thought to himself. So Blackaton didn’t know he owned half the house. Michael had never told him this. He wondered if Michael had been clever enough to know what he was doing, or whether he had just temporarily forgotten about it.
‘Those deeds …’ Gabriel said. ‘The will and all that – do you still have them?’
‘Of course … but why—?’
‘I want to take them to a lawyer – to get Michael’s share back so that Mrs Bradley can stay on in the house.’
‘Ah …’ she said, quietly, averting her eyes. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘No!’
‘I’m sorry, Gabriel … I think it was the grief.’
‘When?’
‘Oh, she didn’t die … but she will never be the same. Can’t look after herself. I got her a place at the NHS nursing home, down the road.’
He stood up, abruptly, and paced the small patio.
‘Not a very nice place … Local council’s running it. Shame, really, that she should end up there … but there’s no money for anything else.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll sort that out. I’ll get money … somehow.’ To think that Mother had been looking after Mrs Bradley when it should have been him!
‘I’m sorry, Gabriel. I know you liked her very much.’
How was he going to find the money to get her out of there?
‘Well, I’ve warned you about Ludgate … He might be coming after my cottage soon, for all we know,’ she said, angrily. ‘Mrs Bradley isn’t the only widow he has turned out of a home, lately.’
He stared at her. ‘Do you have any evidence of this?’
‘I’m sure you could find it, if you talk to the local lawyers. All one needs to do is put two and two together …’
Something inside froze and hardened. He shivered, although it was still very warm.
‘I’ve got to go, Mum.’
‘Will you not stay for supper?’
He shook his head; he needed to get on with things. ‘I have to get back to London. I’m teaching tomorrow morning.’
She nodded. They stood up and he felt suddenly very tall next to her.
‘I’ll come back soon,’ he added, but without confidence, as he followed her through the pantry into the kitchen. Nothing had changed here. If anything, it looked uglier – more diminished – than he remembered it. His eyes fell on an almanac hanging on the wall above the table; it showed a picture of Dartmoor ponies grazing above the dates of the month of July. It was Sunday and tomorrow he would set the ball rolling that would finally knock down Jim of Blackaton and get enough money to find a better home for Mrs Bradley.
By the door, she put her hand to his face. It was an odd gesture, not quite complete, but he liked it. ‘Come back soon,’ she said. He smiled and kissed her cheek.
Just as she was closing the door after him, she saw him stop and turn round:
‘Mother … ?’
‘Mm?’
‘I’m very happy … that we got to know each other, at last.’
She looked at him. For a long time, she stood on the porch, looking at her son’s back as he walked up the lane looking at the tall young man as a breeze streamed gently off the moor and rinsed his dark hair in liquid bronze. He had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt and his jacket was swinging lightly from his hand, rousing vapours of tiny, tiny flies. Her boy, and once, in the beginning, her joy.
14
The lights were turned down most agreeably in Mrs Chandler’s drawing room. A couple of porcelain jar table lamps spread a warm apricot glow that contrasted with the year’s first dark sparkling of frost outside. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. Mr Chandler had moved some of the furniture – his easy chair and the oak coffee table – into the study before leaving for the pub, so that now, as they stood around, awkwardly, the ladies of the Mortford WI did not risk banging their shins or getting their skirts caught. A couple of wispy young girls were circling with tinfoil trays of canapés. A buffet of drinks had been put out on the sideboard; Mrs Chandler had been careful to dress the teak in an old tablecloth, so as not to mark it. Gin stains, especially, were so difficult to get out. Not to mention the stickiness of sherry.
‘They are the Briggs-Beaufort girls,’ Mrs Chandler explained to some of the ladies, ‘setting themselves up as a catering firm. Isn’t it wonderful! So right for a WI evening, wouldn’t you say? I’m paying them a small wage out of the petty-cash fund.’ The ladies nodded enthusiastically and cooed over the deliciously miniature toad-in-the-holes and figs wrapped in Parma ham. The members were all in their bests this evening – some in cashmere, because it was that time of the year. The less confident wore their pearls for safety and comfort. One of the women, called Maureen, wore blue eye shadow behind her turquoise-rimmed specs, in the hope that she might be perceived as slightly more risqué. In her mind she repeated, as she would on any social occasion, the mantra her mother had instilled in her from an early age: I must assert myself. I must assert myself.
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