by Alison Giles
‘Time for a drink, don’t you think?’ said Flora.
I peered into the box. Two beady eyes stared up at me reproachfully. ‘Will it mend?’ I asked.
‘Can but hope.’ Flora was all matter-of-factness again.
She opened a bottle of wine. We sat down and sipped from generously filled glasses.
‘I suppose I’d better start thinking about supper,’ said Flora.
‘Would you like me to do it?’
Flora looked at me with just a hint of a quizzical expression. ‘If you like.’
I decided I did like.
She directed me to the fridge and a pair of man-sized chops. I discovered mushrooms; and located elderly jars of herbs in the corner cupboard. I guessed Flora might have fresh ones in the garden and was relieved she said nothing – I wouldn’t have known how to use them.
I had my back to her as I prepared vegetables and set pans on the Aga.
‘I see,’ she said, and I realised she must have picked up the thin volume through which I’d been browsing earlier, ‘you’ve been reading the War Poets.’
‘Only glancing really.’ I’d picked it off the shelf for something to look at. It was one my father had had me bring down. I topped and tailed a leek and rinsed out the remnants of soil lurking among the layers. ‘I only read a couple.’ I sliced the leek. ‘They’re very moving.’
As I ran the tap again, I said, ‘Andrew told me about your brother. Well, not much. Just that he was … wounded; that you visit him. He thought that was probably where you were last weekend.’
‘Yes.’
I was about to say I was sorry, but Flora, surprisingly without prompting, went on. ‘One of life’s unfairnesses. He was so young.’
I kept my eyes turned to the sink.
‘It was Malaya, of course. He could have deferred National Service until after his degree. Had a place at Cambridge to read law. But being Don … so full of energy – couldn’t resist the physical excitement…’
Turning off the tap as unobtrusively as I could, I heard Flora’s voice swing back to pragmatism. ‘Pity,’ she pronounced. The cushions in the chesterfield sighed as she rose. ‘Does your glass need topping up?’
‘I think I’m OK,’ I said.
I made the sauce and left it simmering alongside the vegetables while I attended to the meat. ‘Wasn’t it,’ I said, ‘because of your brother that you and my father met?’ The chops sizzled as I flipped them over.
‘That’s right.’ The familiar neutral tone.
I put down the spatula and turned to face her. ‘I gather he drove you over; understandable enough in the circumstances, I suppose; but what happened after that?’ As calmly as I could, I said, ‘I’d like to know.’
Flora met my gaze appraisingly. Not for an instant did she attempt to avoid it. I waited.
‘Did you know,’ she said at last, ‘that your father had a close friend who was killed in Malaya?’
I shook my head, uncertain whether or not she was dodging my question.
‘Simon, his name was. They’d gone right through school together. Like Don, Simon decided to do his National Service straightaway; your father was persuaded to qualify first.’
‘He did his afterwards, though,’ I said. ‘I remember him mentioning it. In Cyprus.’
‘That’s right. He’d expected – wanted – to go to Kenya but ended up in a desk job in Nicosia. Hardly saw a shot fired. Even missed the worst of the riots.’
‘That was lucky,’ I said.
‘He didn’t see it that way. Felt guilty at getting off so lightly.’
I was beginning to make the connections – Simon, Don … ‘But by the time he met you,’ I said, ‘he must have put all that behind him.’
‘Oh, he had. To all intents and purposes anyway.’
‘So?’
‘So I think to start with he just wanted to do what he could to help.’
‘Struck a chord, you mean?’
Flora nodded. ‘He called in next time he was down to ask after Don. Then …’ she paused, calculating ‘… it must have been a couple of months before I saw him again. Quite by chance. I was in the village when he drove through.’
‘And he stopped to say hello.’ I felt cynicism rising.
‘It was just before lunch. He invited me for a drink. We talked.’
‘About how his wife didn’t understand him, I suppose!’
Flora met my glare calmly. ‘No. About fishing mostly. And his childhood.’
I decided not to bother apologising.
‘He was brought up in the country,’ I volunteered. ‘In Gloucestershire somewhere. I remember visiting there when I was small. The cottage … a beautiful thatched one … was up a lane and backed on to fields.’ That of course – my mind flashed back – was where the memory of bats came from. ‘Then, when Grandpa retired, they moved to Devon. Ended up in a very dull little bungalow. But it was practical.’
Mother, I recalled, had considered it a vast improvement, and not only because it was within half an hour’s drive of Plymouth’s shopping centre. She never could abide, she’d said, all those crawly things. As a house-warming present, she’d given my grandparents an electric fly-catcher – one of those which glowed blue and hummed quietly and incessantly. ‘It simply wasn’t worth bothering in that dreadful old place,’ she’d commented to my father. He hadn’t said anything, I recalled now; just gone across to the sideboard and helped himself to a whisky. I remembered because neither of my parents normally drank except when we had visitors; occasions which had always been very formal, with Mother polishing and baking for days beforehand. Strange really – except of course that Mother enjoyed showing off her culinary skills – that even after Father’s … defection she had continued, though considerably less often, to do her duty as hostess. Or was it Father doing his? All part, for both of them, of the social pretence?
‘Come to think of it,’ I said, ‘it must have been soon after they moved that Father took up fishing.’ I thought about it. ‘Actually, no. It must have been after Grandpa died. But then that was only two or three years later. A day or so before my ninth birthday,’ I recalled. I grinned sheepishly. ‘I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to have my party.’
‘And did you?’
‘Oh, yes. But Father couldn’t be there, of course. He’d had to go down to support Gran.’ I’d been decidedly put out about it, I remembered.
I mused on. ‘She – Gran – went into a nursing home eventually. Mother and I visited her once or twice when we were down there on holiday.’ I inspected my toes. ‘It was all a bit uncomfortable; making excuses for Father not being with us. She was a lovely old lady.’
‘She was indeed.’
I looked up and stared.
‘I met her many times.’
‘You mean Father took you to meet his mother? That she knew? How could he …?’
‘She was a very down-to-earth, practical woman.’
‘But she never said anything to us.’
‘Would you have expected her to?’
I have an idea I must have been standing there with my mouth open. Flora unexpectedly shifted her gaze and nodded past me. ‘Do you think those chops are done?’
‘Oh, my God.’ I snatched up the pan and wished I’d had the thought to grab the ovencloth first. I deposited it on a cooler surface and sucked my fingers.
CHAPTER 7
The meal I served up was hardly of the standard I would have wished. If I was hoping that, if only for politeness’s sake, Flora would be generous about it, I was to be disappointed.
‘Not one of your better efforts, I take it,’ she observed wryly as she cut into the meat. ‘Still –’ there was a hint of a crease at the corners of her eyes – ‘it’s only burnt on one side.’ She took a mouthful. ‘Umm. The sauce is good though.’ From Flora, that, I decided, was approaching high praise. In any case, now that I was becoming accustomed to it, I wasn’t sure I didn’t prefer her directness to the conventional courtesies. In an
odd way, it was reassuring.
The fridge yielded up home-made yoghurt to follow. As we settled down with our coffee, I challenged her. ‘How did you know I’d come this weekend?’
Flora looked up. ‘I didn’t.’ Said simply; factually.
‘You appear to have been catering for two,’ I persisted.
She shrugged. ‘I could always have eaten the second chop tomorrow.’
I smiled acknowledgement to myself, capitulating. I had to hand it to her: she had an answer to everything. When, it occurred to me, she chose to. She hadn’t, I realised, curiosity reasserting itself, answered my original question. I pointed this out. ‘So you had a drink together in the Horse and Dragon,’ I prompted.
For a moment there was just a hint of exasperation in her voice. ‘What do you think happened? We found we enjoyed each other’s company. He started to pop in whenever he was down. We talked.’
‘He didn’t talk much at home.’
‘No.’
I tried to imagine my father in deep conversation. It wasn’t that he was given to flippancy; just that it was my mother who prattled on. Nothing consequential was ever said in our house. I strained the reaches of my memory. Trivial information was what he imparted – if he was ever asked for it: an amusing incident at work; a frustrating one when a client simply would not accept that the Inland Revenue couldn’t be persuaded round to his point of view all of the time; the state of his colleagues’ wives’ health – a subject Mother enjoyed speculating on at length; once in a while the odd reminiscence prompted by something on the television. ‘I remember…’ he’d say; or, turning to Mother: ‘Do you remember …?’ Most of my gleanings about my parents’ lives before I was born, or old enough to remember, were picked up that way. Sometimes I’d probe and he’d expand; but more often than not, Mother, after a few minutes of heavy tolerance, had – it dawned on me now – interrupted with some current parochial titbit.
It had been different when, during my childhood, we went to stay with Gran and Grandpa. That is to say with Father’s parents – my other grandfather had died when Mother was a baby. ‘And even Leah barely out of nappies,’ so Nan, as she insisted on being called, constantly pointed out. ‘Don’t you forget,’ she’d say, wagging a bony finger, ‘I brought them up singlehanded – and never a spare penny by the end of the week.’
Mother would frown impatience over Nan’s head. ‘Never mind, things are different now,’ she’d reprove her – and sigh with relief once we’d deposited her back at the sheltered housing in north London where, even then, she’d already taken up residence. She must, by now, be one of their longest incumbents.
Mother had given the same impression of enduring a trying but necessary duty when Father’s parents visited. But when Father took a long weekend and we went to stay with them, the atmosphere was less laden. There, if I came in with grubby hands and knees from playing in the garden with Ben, the fox terrier, Gran’s eyes would widen. ‘My goodness, you have been having fun,’ she’d approve; and Mother’s instructions to go and wash would mute to no more than a background drumbeat. Sometimes, too, Gran – deliberately, I felt sure – kept my mother chatting in the kitchen while I crept into the book-lined sitting room where the two men would be sunk in leather-covered armchairs, Grandpa’s gammy leg stretched out stiffly, his stick resting against his knee.
Yes, I remembered, Father could talk. Companionably, easily; at times seriously, at others laughing; sometimes arguing a point vehemently … I would seat myself on the little cane stool that stood to one side of the fireplace, listening not so much to the content of their discussions as to tones of voice; watching their faces.
They seemed to know I was content doing so. Occasionally Grandpa would glance across at me. ‘And what do you think, pet?’ I’d shrug and grin; and both of them would smile and return comfortably to their conversation.
‘I was thinking about when we used to visit my grandparents,’ I said. ‘When Grandpa was still alive.’
Flora put down her coffee cup. ‘Oh yes?’
‘Nothing really.’
I reached for a cigarette – my third since supper, I registered, noting the contents of the ashtray at my elbow. I hesitated. Then, ‘What the hell?’, I thought, and lit up. Flora observed the small pantomime, but made no comment.
‘How long was it,’ I asked, ‘before you …?’ I wasn’t at all sure I should be asking, still less that I actually wanted to know; but something was driving me.
Flora looked at me consideringly. ‘Being charitable,’ she said, ‘I assume what you’re really wondering is how easily your father – how shall we put it – abandoned his marriage vows?’
The curious, old-fashioned expression which somehow didn’t fit on Flora made me smile. But I was grateful to her for protecting me with it.
‘Not too quickly, nor easily,’ she went on. She hesitated. This time I was the one who waited. ‘To start with, it was rather like having Don back. They were the same sort of age; not dissimilar in looks. Don and I were inseparable as children – probably because there weren’t many others around; and in any case there was less than eighteen months between us. He’s the younger one, but that worked very well. By the time he was six, he climbed trees better than I did.’
I struggled to imagine Flora as a small girl shinning along branches. It wasn’t easy. She was so solid. One felt she could never have been other than as she was now.
‘About a year after war broke out we were sent to live with an aunt in Bristol.’ Flora’s eyes creased in ironic amusement. ‘Other children had been evacuated from the cities, and Don and I … Anyway, I think that drew us even closer.’ She leaned back and stared, softly, towards the window. ‘It was a tall, narrow house with only a square of garden. Different certainly from what we’d been used to. Aunt Celia was a real character – my father’s senior by twelve years. She seemed ancient to us. She had a passion for opera. Until ‘39 she’d taken herself off to Milan for a couple of months every year – hat boxes, trunks, the lot. Regarded the war as an exasperating inconvenience.
‘The whole of the top floor had been turned into a music room and reference library. Heaven knows how they got the piano up there – just as well it was only a baby grand. The walls were covered in posters and photographs of the famous, some of them signed, and there were shelf-fuls of old programmes and sheet music as well as endless books. As often as not she’d be up there when we came in from school, singing away to her own accompaniment.
‘She had a huge record collection too, and one of those old wind-up gramophones which she kept in the drawing room downstairs. On Sunday afternoons we had to sit round while she played a selection and quizzed us – not just which opera, which aria, but which performer. Whichever of us, Don or I,’ Flora smiled at the memory, ‘scored least had to get supper. Not,’ she laughed, turning her attention back to me, ‘that that was such an arduous task. The maid had always left everything prepared.’
I must have raised an eyebrow.
‘Sunday was her day off.’
‘Lucky her!’ What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I just keep my mouth shut?
Flora regarded me mildly. ‘It wasn’t so unusual in those days to have help. And Annie had been with Aunt Celia since the year dot. She was too old for any sort of war work and it was a living for her.’
Reproved, I lowered my eyes.
When I looked up again, I said, ‘You must have learned all there is to know on the subject?’
‘I imagine I could make a fair attempt at humming any aria you cared to name,’ she said drily. ‘Except Wagner. Don and I came across a whole set of The Ring – a fair pile of old 78s – gathering dust in the attic. Aunt Celia said she’d put them there so that if we were bombed they’d take the initial impact. It was a joke of course – she had an air of invulnerability about her. As though no harm could possibly come to any of us, even though a pair of houses further along the road had taken a stray hit. And, of course, it didn’t. Not during th
e war anyway.’
I stayed silent, acknowledging the reference to Don.
After a while, I said, ‘What happened after the war?’
Flora interpreted my question in the context I’d intended. ‘Oh, we stayed on there.’ Almost imperceptibly the creases at the corners of her eyes hardened. ‘It was easier,’ she said. There was a finality in her voice, prohibiting further enquiry. I accepted it. It was, after all, none of my business. But it did tell me I’d touched a soft spot; that Flora was human too. I found the knowledge reassuring.
She’d reached for the lamp switch and the sudden brightness startled me – I’d hardly noticed the light fading. Columbus, who had been curled up on her lap, stirred, stretched his back into an arch and shook himself. Then carefully, putting one foot in front of the other, he lowered himself to the floor, sauntered to the back door, and stood there expectantly.
‘Try the window,’ suggested Flora; but when the cat didn’t move, she indulgently pulled herself to her feet and went to let him out. I rose too. The sudden light in the lobby disturbed Arabella who struggled in the box and flapped her wings against its sides. Flora made soothing noises and the bird settled down. ‘I’d better go and shut up the rest of them,’ she said.
‘Can I do that?’
‘All right.’ She gave instructions.
I followed Columbus out into the twilight. He was sniffing the air. As I ambled along the path, he lolloped up behind me, then slowed to match his pace to mine. His fur brushed my leg with each step.
Inside the run all was still, the roller a grey, deserted silhouette. I dropped the wooden shutter to the accompaniment of a faint rustle from within. The bolt slid into place smoothly.
Columbus had, by now, prowled off. I closed the gate behind me and stood staring towards the house and beyond. The evening was comfortably warm, and a cloudless sky suggested we were in for high temperatures again tomorrow. Without buildings to hem in the staleness of the day’s heat, the garden scents floated free. The nearly-full moon was clear if not yet shining. I found myself wondering what it looked like in Malaya, or Cyprus, or Italy. Odd to think that the world was turning under my feet. I took a step to my left, to what I judged to be the west. Am I back where I was micro-seconds ago, I wondered. If one kept running westwards fast enough, would time stand still – or even go backwards? Logically, I argued to myself, knowing I wasn’t too certain of the strength of that logic, it should.
