by Liz Byrski
Will took a deep breath. ‘Look, Bonnie, Sylvia didn’t do anything to me. I fell in love, she didn’t, and I was, still am, shattered. At the time I was hurt and angry, a bit mad, but you can’t make someone love you if they don’t feel it.’
Bonnie got up shaking her head. Why was he doing this? Sylvia didn’t deserve his generosity. ‘No,’ she said, ‘of course she has to go. She … she …’ She paused, hardly liking to say it. So far everyone had avoided talking about what had happened. They were all being polite, skirting around it, but it had to come out in the end. Will would need counselling. She hadn’t mentioned it yet but she’d made some calls and found the right person – she just needed to pick the right time to suggest it.
‘She drove you to attempt suicide, Will, you almost died. Of course she has to go.’
Will’s mouth dropped open. He stared at her with a look of complete amazement on his face. Then, slowly, he began to laugh, shaking his head, bending forward to put the laptop on the side table. ‘So that’s what you think, that’s what all this has been about.’ He smiled and held out his hand to her. ‘Come over here, Bon, come and sit here with me and let me explain. I wasn’t up on that bridge trying to kill myself.’
She walked over to him and he took her hand, drawing her down beside him on the sofa.
‘But you were, you were so upset about Sylvia that you threw yourself off the bridge.’
Will patted her hand and smiled at her. ‘Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid. I was very angry and upset and very drunk, but I certainly wasn’t suicidal.’ He laughed. ‘I’m sorry, Bonnie, I thought you knew, I thought Sylvia would have told you.’
She tossed her head a little. ‘Oh she keeps trying to talk to me, but I know what happened, Will. I’m not listening to her excuses.’
‘Bonnie, listen to me,’ he said, his voice low now, and serious. He sounded so much like his brother it could have been Jeff talking to her. ‘That night I drove out of here and went to a bar in town. I had quite a few drinks and met up with a bloke I knew years ago at uni. I cried on his shoulder for a couple of hours and he was just as pissed as me. Then he starts baiting me, and we got in this argument about some Prosh stunt years ago and he’s insisting I chickened out of jumping off the bridge. So I’m right off my brain and I say, okay, mate, c’mon then, let’s go and do it now. So off we stagger. Christ knows what happened to him, he must have passed out on the way, because I end up on the bridge on my own. So I think I’ll just climb up there anyway – well, I’m not sure if I slipped or fell asleep or what, because the next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital. I wasn’t going to top myself, Bon.’
‘But you were devastated … you said so.’
‘Sure I was, still am, but I’m a survivor, Bonnie, just like you. We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start all over again, just like the song says. Just like you did when Jeff died, coming back here, catching up with your friends, starting the Boathouse …’
But Bonnie didn’t hear the rest of it. Shaking off his hand, she ran out of the room and up the stairs into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Lila sat in the big armchair in the corner of Fran’s living room. She’d always loved Christmas, even when she was a struggling single mother and could barely get together enough to buy Fran a simple gift. She had always clung to the magic, loved the festivities, and this year she felt they’d all turned a corner. Lila didn’t know much about how the Boatshed was run but she could see that Fran was happier, and then there was Rebekah, here on her knee, gazing wide-eyed at the sparkling tree, the decorations, the piles of paper and ribbon. Lila felt quite proud that she was the oldest person there. She thought she might be a matriarch at last, and she liked that. It didn’t really matter that she couldn’t quite keep track of everyone.
There was Fran, of course; Caro and Caro’s husband, although she couldn’t remember his name; and David, who was looking very happy. He had a young woman with him who insisted that she often saw Lila, came to her house, even. Lila didn’t know where the girl had got that idea, but she seemed a very nice friend for David. Sylvia was there and Irene, and her gentleman friend had called by earlier. There had been another couple who’d dropped in; they’d insisted they’d known her for years, a little Japanese woman and a man who said his name was Tony and that he used to be married to her – or was it Fran that he was married to? Lila thought he must have been drunk. Anyway, it didn’t seem worth worrying about, they were all very friendly. Lila could feel the goodwill and that was really all that mattered. Rebekah lurched forward a little and clapped her hands together.
‘Clap, darling, that’s it,’ Lila said. ‘You clap your hands.’
‘Look, Mike, look,’ Caro said. ‘She’s clapping!’ And it seemed as though the whole room turned to look in delight at the baby on Lila’s lap, and in that moment she experienced sheer joy that everyone in her whole family was together in one room, and she couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.
Fran brought her a glass of champagne and perched precariously on the arm of the chair.
‘Here you are, Mum. D’you want me to hold her so you can have your drink?’
Lila handed Rebekah up to her and took the glass. ‘Thank you, dear. Good as gold, isn’t she? Just like you were, you were such a good little baby, Fran.’ She looked around, her eyes settling on Caro. ‘I wish I’d been to see Caro while she was in the hospital. You could have told me sooner, Fran, I could gone up there on my scooter.’
Fran, bouncing Rebekah on her knee, gave Lila a very strange look. ‘Caro wasn’t in the hospital, Mum, remember? Rebekah was born at home.’
‘Nobody told me that!’ Lila said, swinging round sharply to look up at her.
‘But you were there,’ Fran said. ‘You and Irene, it was my birthday party, remember? We were all there, in Caro’s house, and she went into labour.’ Rebekah leaned towards Lila, hands outstretched in front of her, and Lila put her hands on the baby’s cheeks and kissed her.
‘Go on with you,’ Lila said, laughing partly at the baby but also at Fran. ‘You’re having me on. My memory might be a bit rusty but I’m sure I’d remember that, wouldn’t I, Bekky.’ And she took the little hands and rubbed them between her own.
‘You delivered her, Mum,’ Fran said, looking hard at her. ‘You and Irene delivered Rebekah in Caro’s living room.’
Lila hated it when Fran got irritable with her. ‘All right, all right, no need to get stroppy with me,’ she said. ‘But you’re wrong. I can’t understand how you could get in such a muddle. I’d certainly remember something like that.’ She reached up to take the baby back onto her knee. Fran was at it again now, insisting, saying it all over again. Lila couldn’t comprehend what was the matter with her.
‘Go on with you,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so silly, you’re spoiling a lovely day.’
David’s friend broke away from him and came over to Fran. ‘C’mon, Fran,’ she said. ‘You promised to show me the pots of lavender Lenore sent you.’ She slipped a hand under Fran’s elbow, drawing her away.
Lila was quite glad. Something had obviously gotten in to Fran – maybe she’d had too much champagne. A bit of fresh air out in the courtyard might do her good. ‘That’s right, dear,’ Lila said, ‘you get a bit of air and have a look at the plants. I can look after Caro, can’t I, darling?’ and she patted the baby’s cheek.
‘That’s Rebekah, Mum,’ Fran said, turning back .
‘Oh Fran, for goodness sake,’ Lila said. ‘You always have to have the last word, don’t you?’
‘It’s no good arguing with her, Fran,’ Jodie said as they stood in the sunshine beside the two huge terracotta pots of Spanish lavender that had been a surprise delivery on Christmas Eve. ‘All the facts and logic in the world aren’t going to make any difference to what she believes.’
‘I know, you keep telling me, the doctor keeps telling me, but it’s so hard, Jodie. She keeps taking me by surp
rise. She’ll go along making perfect sense for a while and I start to think I’ve imagined it all, and then something like this happens and it really rocks me.’
‘It must be awful, but the only thing that upsets Lila is when you argue with her. You’re not going to convince her, just try to go along with it.’
Fran nodded, annoyed with herself for handling it so badly. Recently she seemed to ricochet between thinking Lila was fine and maybe she herself was the one who’d lost it, then Lila’s extraordinary unreality would swoop on her with chilling force. It was a difficult time in many ways. Aside from the worry about her mother, Bonnie, seriously depressed since Will left, had shut herself away, not coming near the Boatshed for several days. Fran had invited her along with Irene and Hamish for Christmas dinner, but Bonnie had refused. Irene and Hamish had called around earlier for a drink, but had decided to have a low-key Christmas at home, in the hope that Bonnie might be persuaded to join them.
‘What are you two plotting?’ David asked, coming out into the yard.
‘We’re just talking about Gran,’ Fran said. ‘I can’t seem to stop myself arguing with her and upsetting both of us in the process.’
David rolled his eyes. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it? It feels patronising when I let her go on with the fantasies, but at least it keeps her happy.’
Fran sighed. ‘I must try to remember that that’s the most important thing.’
‘I’m so excited about working at the Boatshed,’ Caro said, watching Rebekah on Lila’s knee. She’d barely been able to believe her luck since Sylvia had called her three days earlier.
‘I’m delighted. You’ve been doing such a good job there since we opened,’ Sylvia said. ‘You’re sure it’s okay for you to start the day after Boxing Day?’
‘Perfect, can’t wait. I’ve loved helping out.’
‘You and I can sort out a roster between us next week,’ Sylvia said. ‘We’ll make you assistant manager, and it will be great to have your help with the suppliers as well as just dealing with customers. We might also need another casual person.’
Caro nodded. ‘It feels like my dream job. I’d made up my mind I wasn’t going back to Desmond Records, but never thought I’d do something like this. By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask – who’s working in that long narrow room at the back? I was poking my nose up there the other day – looks like some designer’s rented it.’
‘It’s mine,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’m using it as a studio, hoping I’ll get some time to make up some more of my designs, maybe try to sell them.’
‘You mean that’s your stuff?’ Caro said. ‘I thought Bonnie must’ve discovered some cool new designer … well, I suppose she has … I mean, you are … you know what I mean.’
Sylvia laughed. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘What do Mum and Bonnie think?’
‘They haven’t seen it yet. Irene’s seen it, but otherwise we’ve all been so busy, and then Bonnie … well, you know what happened. I just unpacked all my things and I’ve hardly had time to look at it since. I’m dying to show it all to someone else.’
‘You can show it to me,’ Caro said, sipping her champagne. ‘I’d love to have a proper look at what you’re doing.’
‘What are you doing tomorrow? Oh no, it’s Boxing Day,’ Sylvia said.
‘Boxing Day’s fine for me,’ Caro said. ‘Mike’s working seven till four. I’m not doing anything at all.’
‘Well, come down to the Boatshed if you like. I’ll show you my stuff and we can have a chat about the gallery – that is, if you’d like to. I mean, it is a public holiday.’
‘I’d love it,’ Caro said, ‘I’ll be there.’
Bonnie lay curled up on her bed under the quilt. Despite the fact that it was a warm day, she felt quite chilly – or was it just that she felt shivery, nothing to do with the temperature? These days she woke in the mornings dragging herself out of a heavy sleep, as exhausted as if she had been awake all night. The whole business of getting up, taking a shower and getting dressed seemed to take ages, and the prospect of the Boatshed was a nightmare. Her overwhelming desire was to stay in her room, go nowhere, talk to no one. Her bed was a cocoon; her friends and the staff had assumed the proportions of fast moving, fast talking, noisy, threatening robots who might at any time flick her with their harsh fingers and cause her to crumble.
‘I don’t know … the world seems all wrong, frightening,’ had been the best she could manage when Irene asked her if she could explain how she felt. She would have liked to talk about the loneliness, the grief and hopelessness that greeted her when she opened her eyes in the morning, but it was so vast and nebulous it seemed to defy description. At the hospital and during the time that Will had been at the house, she had been driven by anger and resentment, but that had burned out to be replaced by this leaden feeling that allowed her no relief.
‘I feel as though I’m walking round and round the rim of a big black hole,’ she’d said to Jeff in the night, ‘as though any minute now I might slip down into it.’
‘Black holes aren’t just empty spaces, you know, Bon,’ he’d told her. And she could hear a familiar edge to his voice, an edge that trimmed his words when he was trying to be supportive but was running out of patience. ‘They’re not just neutral empty spaces, they’re great voids, vacuums that suck you in and swallow you. Don’t let yourself get too close to the edge.’
So she’d thought about it a lot, thought about what he’d want her to do, and she’d made him a promise. She couldn’t cope with Christmas Day, that was just too much, but on Boxing Day, when the Boatshed was closed, she’d venture down there. Let herself in, have a look at the figures, get the feel of it again, stay for an hour. Then the following day she would go there for a minimum of one hour while it was open, and the day after that, two hours. She’d written the promise on the back of one of her favourite photographs of Jeff, one she’d taken herself on a boat on Lake Geneva, with the shadowy outline of mountains in the background. She’d been adjusting the camera and he had turned to ask her something, and she had captured that characteristic quizzical expression. It was the picture she always carried with her.
‘I’ll keep you to it,’ Jeff had told her on Christmas Eve, when she explained about the promise, and she knew he would.
But here it was, ten o’clock on Boxing Day and she had managed to get up, shower, dress, eat a piece of toast, drink some coffee, and then, instead of heading out the door, she had crept up here again and crawled back under the quilt.
‘Didn’t you say you were going out, Bonnie?’ Irene asked, tapping gently on her door. Ever since Irene and Hamish had got back from Singapore, Bonnie had sensed her mother’s concern. She dragged herself upright and reached for the photo. Just one hour, that was all she had to do.
‘Yes, Mum,’ she said, ‘I’m going. I’m going right now.’ And inhaling deeply she pushed back the quilt, got off the bed and opened the bedroom door.
‘I love this one,’ Caro said, picking up a sleeveless dress in aubergine wool with the skirt cut at a slant.
‘This jacket goes with it,’ Sylvia said, lifting out another hanger. ‘You see, it’s cut on the reverse angle.’ They had been at the Boatshed for a couple of hours, going through the stock for the gallery and then making their way up to Sylvia’s studio.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Caro said, holding it up against her in front of the mirror. ‘What are you going to do with all this, Sylvia? It seems a shame you can’t spend more time on designing.’
Sylvia shrugged. ‘I guess I will eventually, especially now that you’ll be here at the gallery. I thought I’d make up some more pieces, then maybe talk to Bonnie about trying them in the gallery, or take them somewhere else. It’s just that I don’t know if anyone would take me seriously.’
‘I think they would,’ said a voice behind her. Bonnie, in a pair of jeans and a white linen shirt, was leaning against the doorjamb. ‘Happy Boxing Day! I came in here a couple of weeks ago, Sylvia. You’re very t
alented.’
Sylvia flushed deeply at the sight of Bonnie and her throat constricted with an irrational fear. It was the first time since Will’s fall that Bonnie had spoken to her in a tone that wasn’t overloaded with hurt, anger and disapproval.
‘Bonnie,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you …’
‘It’s a flying visit,’ Bonnie said, and Sylvia could see the lines of tension across her forehead and around her mouth, and that her hands were trembling. ‘Reacclimatisation.’ She smiled weakly. ‘Hello, Caro.’
‘Hi, Bonnie,’ Caro said. ‘Look, I should get out of your way …’
Bonnie held up a hand to stop her. ‘No, don’t stop, please. I just came to have a look at the paperwork and try to get the feel of the place. You two carry on – looks as though we’ll have to think about developing a Boatshed fashion label.’ She turned to leave and then stopped.
‘Sylvia, I … I can’t talk about it yet,’ she began, ‘but I was wrong … I’m really sorry …’
Sylvia moved towards her and then paused, sensing that Bonnie wasn’t yet ready for physical contact.
‘I’m sorry too, Bon,’ she said. ‘I was very wrong.’ They faced each other, both awkward but savouring the shift of energy between them.
‘I’ll get on then,’ Bonnie said.
And as she turned to leave, Rebekah, tucked into a corner behind the door in her buggy, let out a sudden cry of pleasure and dropped her plastic teething ring on the wooden floor.
Bonnie jumped in shock and poked her head around the door. ‘The baby!’ she said, and the colour drained from her face. ‘The baby’s here. Er … yes. I’ll go, then.’ And without a second glance she turned on her heel and ran down the steps, and they heard her office door slam behind her.
Sylvia and Caro stared at each other in surprise. ‘That was a bit weird,’ Caro said. ‘She seemed okay and then …’
‘Yes,’ Sylvia said, ‘yes, she did. Fragile, but better than I’ve seen her for weeks.’
