The Frances Garrood Collection

by Frances Garrood

  When I came home at Easter, Octavia was crawling and pulling herself up on pieces of furniture. I gathered that she was well ahead of the usual milestones, but then as Greta kept pointing out, she was an exceptional child. She was also amazingly self-sufficient for one so small, and would spend happy hours examining picture books (as often as not upside down) or trying to balance one brightly coloured brick on top of another. She rarely cried, and communicated by small kittenish mewings to express happiness or displeasure. Mum maintained that she was musical, and she certainly appeared to enjoy the ironing-board recitals.

  ‘I think she really will play the piano,’ Mum said, in a rare if oblique reference to my own brief but failed piano-playing career. ‘Someone in this family ought to,’ she added wistfully.

  Poor Mum. The least ambitious of parents, she had always allowed us simply to be ourselves and to develop in our own ways, but she had nonetheless made no secret of the fact that she would have loved one of us to be a musician. Over the years, she had become convinced that she herself could have been a fine pianist if she had had lessons, and that her life would then have turned out very differently.

  I returned to school for the summer term and O levels. That June was baking hot, and we sat our exams in the new sports hall (discreetly positioned behind trees so as not to interfere with all that Victorian gloom), whose glass walls and polished floors encased us in a stifling atmosphere, compounded by the blistering heat and the collective anxiety of the hapless candidates inside. We sat at our carefully spaced desks, fanning ourselves with our question papers, exchanging despairing glances under the stern gaze of the invigilator. Would this summer never end?

  The last day of the exams was marked by torrential thunderstorms, and I can still picture us all as we ran from the sports hall, whooping with joy and relief. Once outside, we dropped our pens and pencils in the mud and danced in the rain, stretching out our arms, lifting up our faces, running our ink-stained fingers through our dripping hair, revelling in the coolness and the wet and the wonderful fresh smell of damp earth and grass. No one tried to stop us as we whirled and pranced and shouted. One girl even threw off her school frock and tore across the lawn half-naked, finishing with a victory roll down a grassy bank into the bushes. The exams were over; the long summer holidays beckoned.

  The very next day I was summoned to Miss Armitage’s office. I went along, carefree and unsuspecting. I had done nothing wrong, so I had nothing to fear. Perhaps I was to be awarded a prize at the forthcoming speech day, and had been summoned to give her my choice of books. I had already made my decision in anticipation of just such an eventuality; I had recently discovered Elizabeth Gaskell, and would choose as many of her works as the prize money would allow. I was already anticipating weeks of joyous summer reading.

  The moment I was admitted to the office, I knew something was wrong. Miss Armitage wasn’t sitting in her usual chair, but was pacing in front of her desk, her expression serious.

  ‘I think you’d better sit down, Cassandra.’ She pointed to a chair. ‘Please, Cassandra. Please sit.’

  Wordlessly I sat down. All at once my throat was dry, my heart thumping in my chest, my stomach churning. No girl was ever invited to sit down in Miss Armitage’s office. Something truly dreadful must have happened. I felt sick and empty and very afraid, and yet totally aware of everything that was going on around me; of the ticking of the clock in the corner, of the distant calling of a wood pigeon and the laughter of a group of girls passing beneath the window. I noticed that the calendar on the desk still bore yesterday’s date and that the sky outside the window had darkened. Perhaps we were due for another storm.

  Miss Armitage looked nervous and ill at ease, and for once, she didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands. I watched as she laced and unlaced her fingers, fiddling for a moment with the buttons on her blouse, finally folding her hands firmly together as though to prevent them from escaping. She took a couple of steps towards the window, and then turned to face me again. I waited.

  At last she spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid I have some bad news,’ she said. ‘You’re going to have to be very brave, Cassandra.’

  Obediently, I continued to wait, sitting on my own hands and tucking my feet behind the legs of the chair to stop them from shaking. In spite of my fear, enough of my brain was still functioning for me to know that if I ever had the misfortune to break bad news to anyone, I would tell them straight away. No preamble, no build-up. However bad it was, I would give it to them straight. For nothing could be worse than this waiting.

  Miss Armitage cleared her throat.

  ‘It’s your sister, Cassandra.’

  ‘Octavia.’ My voice seemed to come from a long way away. Oh, please please, not Octavia!

  Nineteen

  ‘Cass?’ Mum’s awake again, and I reach for her hand.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘The pond. I should have had it filled in. It was all my fault.’

  Not the pond again. It’s years since Mum has mentioned the pond, and while I know she can’t have forgotten it — how could any of us ever forget it? — I hoped that at least it had ceased to preoccupy her; that it had left the forefront of her mind and been filed away somewhere where it had come to cause her less pain.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault, Mum,’ I say now. ‘How could it have been your fault? And Octavia was so young. She wasn’t even walking. How could you have known that she would be able to get to it on her own?’

  ‘I should have known. I should have. It was my job to keep her safe.’ A tear forms in the corner of her eye and leaks into the starched cotton of the pillowcase, and I ache for her.

  ‘Oh Mum. It was such a long time ago. Years ago.’ I hesitate. There is no point in saying that it doesn’t matter; that the passage of years has lessened the significance of Octavia’s death, yet I can’t bear to see Mum suffer yet again for something for which she has already paid so dearly. ‘And her life wasn’t in vain, was it? She gave us all so much pleasure.’

  ‘And we loved her.’

  ‘Oh yes. We loved her.’ For no one could have had more love in such a short lifetime than my little sister.

  ‘But the pond —’

  ‘Mum, darling mum, you have to forgive yourself for the pond, even though there’s nothing to forgive. You have to let it go.’

  Of course, in a way, we were all responsible.

  Mum had said just after Octavia was born that we should fill in the pond; that it wasn’t safe. But we managed to persuade her to leave it, at least until Octavia was walking.

  That pond held so many memories for Lucas and me. Frogspawn in the spring (descendants of that first jam jar of tadpoles which Mum had used in her bewildering introduction to the facts of life) and the joy of fishing for newts with a worm tied to a piece of cotton (not forgetting the excitement when they all escaped from the tank in my bedroom in the middle of the night). Best of all, Prissy Deirdre from next door had fallen into that pond not once, but twice, and had emerged drenched and stinking and completely unrecognizable. The second occasion had confirmed all her mother’s worst fears about our family, and that was the last we saw of Prissy Deirdre.

  So the tragedy wasn’t just Mum’s fault. Lucas and I had wanted to keep the pond; even Greta had put in a good word for it (‘Iss pretty, no?’ No. Not really. But we knew what she meant). Besides, who could have anticipated that Octavia would manage to crawl down the back steps and across the lawn and get as far as the bottom of the garden in the time it took for Mum to answer the phone?

  I have no idea how I got home that afternoon. I believe someone took me in a car — I have a vague memory of being wrapped in a blanket and of the unfamiliar smell of leather seats — but everything else about that dreadful journey passed in a blur.

  The house seemed to be full of people. I remember Dr Mackenzie and some neighbours and Richard, and the gay Lodger making tea, and Call Me Bill ushering people in and out, and Greta (inevitably) weeping. I rememb
er the pale controlled face of poor Lucas, who was being heartbreakingly brave as the Man of the House, and the whimpering of The Dog, who had a sixth sense where disaster was concerned.

  And Mum.

  Mum was sitting on the floor when I went into her bedroom, her arms locked round her knees, rocking to and fro. Just rocking.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.’ Rock, rock, rock. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  Her face, when she lifted it, was completely drowned in tears, so swollen that I couldn’t see her eyes, her hair and clothes were soaked in tears. I had never in my life seen anyone weep the way Mum wept.

  ‘Cass.’ She held out her arms to me. ‘Oh, Cass! What am I going to do? Whatever am I going to do?’

  I knelt down beside her, and we wept and rocked together, holding each other and sobbing into each other’s shoulders. There was something primitive and strangely soothing about that rocking. Maybe it was to do with the automatic way mothers rock their babies, or perhaps we both felt that the swaying rhythmic movement would in some way help us to keep ourselves — and each other — alive. For at the time, I felt that if I were to let go of Mum she might simply lie down and never get up again.

  Eventually, I persuaded her to sit on the bed, and we stayed there together for some time, holding each other, as dusk dimmed the sky outside and the busy comings and goings downstairs continued. People tiptoed in and out of the room, murmuring and bringing us cups of tea, and Dr Mackenzie returned to check on Mum.

  ‘There there, my lass.’ He joined us on the bed. ‘My poor poor lass.’ He held her hand and stroked it. Then he took a bottle of tablets from his pocket and shook two of them into his palm, offering them to her with a glass of water. ‘You take these and try to get some rest.’

  Mum took the tablets and pushed her sodden hair out of her eyes.

  ‘Did she suffer, doctor?’ Her voice was so low that he had to bend down so that his head was touching hers.

  ‘Only for a wee while,’ he said. ‘Maybe a minute or two at most.’

  I was grateful to him for being truthful; for not trying to patronize Mum with any of that stuff about not suffering at all; words which fool no one, and offer less comfort than the truth.

  Mum nodded.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Dr Mackenzie got up from the bed.

  ‘Well, I’ll be on my way,’ he said, ‘but I’ll be back tomorrow.’ He paused in the doorway. ‘There’s nothing I can say that will comfort you,’ he added. ‘Nothing at all. But you will get through this. Somehow, you’ll get through it.’

  He indicated for me to follow him out of the room, and after he had closed the door, he put his hands on my shoulders.

  ‘Now you take care of yourself, Cassandra. Don’t take too much responsibility. This is your loss, too, and you need to grieve as well as your mum. Give me a ring if you’re worried about anything, or if you just want to talk.’

  Yet again, Dr Mackenzie reminded me of the father I never had; his steady masculine presence brought home how much we needed a man — a proper man — in the family, especially at a time like this. I gave a brief thought to that other bereaved parent, Octavia’s father, who didn’t even know he’d been a father, and just for that moment, I hated him. He might have missed out on knowing his little daughter, but he had also been spared this agony, and I found that hard to forgive.

  Downstairs, I found the Lodger making yet more tea, while Greta tried to concoct something for our supper (why? I couldn’t imagine any of us ever wanting to eat again). Call Me Bill had had to go back to work to sort out some problem, and Richard had disappeared. Lucas was out walking The Dog. The house seemed to be full of flowers, but otherwise it felt almost normal.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked Greta. ‘Where — where is Octavia?’

  ‘I think at hospital.’ Greta struggled to open a tin of corned beef, cutting her finger.

  ‘Did you see her?’

  Greta paused, a tea towel wrapped round her hand.

  ‘Yes. I see her.’

  ‘What — what did she look like?’

  ‘She look like sleeping,’ Greta said. ‘Just sleeping.’

  ‘The ambulance men were brilliant.’ The Lodger handed me a cup of tea. ‘But there was nothing they could do. Oh, Cass. I’m so sorry.’ He gave me a hug, and as I clung to him, I heard the sob in his own throat. ‘I’m so very, very sorry. She was a very special little human being.’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked round the kitchen. Some of Octavia’s clothes were still drying on the clothes horse, and a woolly dog with three legs and a well-chewed tail lay where she had left it on the floor.

  How were we ever going to get over this?

  Twenty

  During the week between Octavia’s death and her funeral, life in our house seemed to stand still. Cards and letters and flowers continued to arrive, together with a succession of visitors. Food was prepared (although little was eaten) and gallons of tea were consumed. Laundry and shopping were done and The Dog was taken for walks, but otherwise nothing happened. We said little to each other — what was there to say? — and moved around each other carefully, politely, like awkward strangers, although of course it was tragedy that was the real stranger in the house.

  Call Me Bill took the week off work to help, although there was little he could do, and the Lodger, who was currently between jobs, was a tower of strength. Poor Greta did her best to stem her weeping, aware that to outdo Mum in the weeping stakes would be inappropriate (if not impossible), and Lucas continued to be stoical.

  ‘It’s OK to cry, you know,’ I said to him one evening, watching his pale still face. ‘After all, everyone else seems to be doing it, and she was your sister.’

  ‘I can’t, Cass. I just can’t.’ He turned to me with a hopeless shrug. ‘I’ve even tried sticking pins into myself, but it’s as though I’ve lost all feeling.’

  ‘Oh, Lucas.’ I put my arms round him. ‘What are we going to do?’ I found myself echoing Mum’s words.

  ‘I don’t know. Nothing seems real any more, does it?’ He allowed my embrace but didn’t return it. ‘It’s odd to think that a short time ago she didn’t exist. Not at all. Not even as a tiny speck. No one wanted her or expected her. We were all quite happy without her. She just — arrived, and then she died. And now look at us all.’ He paused. ‘We only had her for a year.’

  I had assumed that Mum’s reaction would be similar to her behaviour after the death of our grandmother, but being new to the business of bereavement I hadn’t realized that death has its own hierarchy, and that for Mum, Octavia’s death far outweighed that of her own mother.

  Almost overnight, Mum’s room became a shrine to Octavia. There were photographs of her on every surface, together with her toys and books, and her small garments had all been carefully laid out on the bed, as though they were waiting for her to wear them again. In the midst of all this sat Mum, grubby and dishevelled, clutching Octavia’s comfort blanket and favourite teddy, still rocking and weeping.

  ‘What can we do?’ I asked Dr Mackenzie when he called in on the third morning. I had expected him to approach Mum in the kindly but firm manner as he had last time, but he seemed to be treating her with the same kid gloves as the rest of us.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do, Cassandra. Not really. I can only keep an eye on her and give her something to help her sleep. That’s all.’

  ‘But you helped her when Grandma died. She took notice of you then.’

  He sighed.

  ‘This is different, my dear. The loss of a child is the worst thing that can happen to anyone. You lose your parents and — well, that’s sad, but it happens. But not your child. No one expects to outlive their own child.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’

  ‘You’re doing all you can, but strange as it may seem, your mum knows what’s best for her. What she’s doing may look a bit weird, but she’s deali
ng with it in her own way. It won’t always be like this. One day, she’ll let go of Octavia’s things, and one day — one day — she’ll let go of Octavia. But not yet. Not for a long time. The poor lass has quite a journey ahead of her.’

  ‘And — us? What about us?’

  For I missed Mum. I missed having her around for me. This was the worst thing that had happened to me as well as to Mum, and yet although she responded when I spoke to her, I knew she was a long way away; that I couldn’t really reach her. Ever since that first evening when we had clung together, she no longer seemed to need me. She didn’t appear to need anyone. She was alone with her pain and her guilt and the ghost of her dead baby.

  ‘Ah, poor Cassandra.’ He put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I know it must be so hard for you too, but there are people in this house who’d be glad to have you lean on them. Greta, for instance. She’s not a strong woman, but so kind. She’s longing to comfort you, but doesn’t like to say so. And she needs some comfort, too. That little baby seems to have belonged to all of you. You must all help each other.’

  That night, I joined Greta on the sofa, and we held each other and wept together. She wasn’t the same as Mum, but I think we were able to offer each other something, and Greta had loved Octavia at least as much as I had. Octavia was probably the nearest she’d ever come to having a child of her own, and having no other family, her loss must have been all the worse for that.

  Octavia’s funeral was held on a perfect June day in our little parish church. We had never been churchgoers, but Mum said she wanted the best for Octavia, and none of us was going to argue with that.