Meadowland

by Alison Giles

  It occurred to me, lying there ruminating, that for the first time in as long as I could remember, the shadow of guilt had lifted. Like a curtain going up, I thought, and behind it there, there, was my anger.

  Knowing where precisely to direct it, and why, was another matter.

  CHAPTER 10

  I sneaked past Elspeth’s huddled form next morning, brewed myself a coffee, and retreated to my room. What, under the glow of shaded lamps, had seemed like some sort of cathartic revelation, now, in the harsh light of day – a spot-on description if ever there was one – appeared no more than embarrassingly self-indulgent nonsense. I felt decidedly foolish.

  But Elspeth, when I forced myself to emerge and join her for an ad hoc breakfast, wasn’t having it.

  ‘Come off it,’ she announced through a mouthful of muesli when I apologised for my idiocy. ‘In vino veritas,’ she quoted. ‘And if whoever said that was drunk at the time, it only proves the point. Anyway, you weren’t.’

  ‘Mother seemed to think I was,’ I recalled.

  ‘Only because you gave as good as you got for a change. She’s not used to that.’

  I felt myself relaxing. Perhaps I hadn’t done or said anything too shameful last night. And Elspeth had already known about Flora.

  ‘The only person I ever told,’ I said, following my train of thought, ‘was Mark.’

  ‘That stockbroker boyfriend? I heard about him. Part of your perfect cousin image!’

  ‘Disaster. We had the most terrible row. That’s what led to the bust-up.’ I explained – loyalty to my mother reassuringly reinstating itself – how he had totally misunderstood; had taken Father’s side; been scathing of Mother for not giving him a divorce. ‘As though it was all her fault. I couldn’t believe he could be so insensitive. I just hit the roof.’

  Elspeth scraped up the last spoonful of oats and sultanas, then took her dish across to the sink and rinsed it. ‘Actually, I’ve never understood why they didn’t split up.’

  I pondered, coolly now. ‘Funny isn’t it, it never really crossed my mind it was a possibility. Sounds crazy, but in some way it was as though the arrangement actually suited them both. I mean … if it hadn’t … surely one of them would have provoked a row? Instead they went out of their way to avoid any sort of upset. Egg-shell carpets.’ I looked up. ‘Yeah, that’s how it was.’ I thought about it. ‘Mind your feet, Charissa,’ I mimicked. It was my mother’s voice.

  Elspeth assumed an always-keen-to-help expression. ‘Shall I scatter some around now so you can jump up and down on them?’

  I couldn’t help but laugh. ‘Think of the mess.’

  ‘Umm. Nice.’ She stuck a finger into the marmalade pot, scooped up a blob of jelly and sucked on it. ‘You know, I can’t imagine Mum putting up with it. But then she doesn’t have to. Had the foresight to marry someone who was quite content to sublimate his sex urges in the vegetable patch.’

  ‘Elspeth! That’s a bit …’

  ‘Come on. Dad’s lovely. But he’s hardly the most urgent stud in the field. Probably why I went for Perry – he’s certainly got what it takes in bed.’ She narrowed her eyes and rolled her hips. ‘Ooh, don’t remind me, or I’ll be back there like a shot.’

  ‘You wouldn’t?’

  Elspeth tilted her head down, wide eyes teasing me from behind her eyebrows. They were deep brown, smooth, and precisely matched. This morning I found their perfection irritating.

  ‘You wouldn’t! You need a job. Take your mind off it.’

  ‘Quite right. First thing on Monday morning. I’ll do the rounds of the agencies. See who’s crying out to offer me thirty grand!’

  ‘You do that.’ I got up from the table. ‘Come on,’ I said, suddenly restless, ‘let’s go somewhere.’

  We settled on a walk by the river and drove the mile or so to Putney, parking on the south side in front of the boathouses. The tide was up and lapping close to the top of the slipways.

  Elspeth swung along the towpath, seemingly unhampered by her breeze-blown light cotton skirt catching against her knees and ankles, while I strolled in practical jeans and T-shirt. Her dulled patchwork jacket contrasted with the designer sweatshirt I’d flung across my shoulders and tied loosely in front.

  Away from the confining airlessness of the flat, I would have liked to pick up on our breakfast-time conversation, but couldn’t decide how best to reintroduce it. I stared out across the water. In the centre of the river, an eight in bright red strip was thrusting towards Hammersmith, the spray from their oars flicking up and catching on the misty, cloud-diffused light – like so many ever-changing, ever-moving, dew-spangled cobwebs, I thought. Twenty yards ahead of us, close in to the shore, a flotilla of ducks drifted peacefully. I shifted my gaze from one to the other, wondering at the contrast.

  As the rowers disappeared round the bend, I nodded in the direction of the ducks. ‘Maybe families can be too cosy,’ I said.

  As though in response to my thoughts, one of them suddenly flayed his wings and, assisted by furious splashing, lurched out of the water to flap upstream. We watched as the turning current began slowly to drift him back.

  ‘I wonder if I would have put up with it,’ I heard myself say.

  Elspeth, pausing to unwrap a bar of chocolate she’d disinterred from the depths of her pockets, looked enquiringly at me.

  ‘My father’s weekend disappearing acts.’

  Elspeth broke off a slab and offered it. ‘You did. In your own way’

  ‘Oh, come on. What could I have done about it?’

  ‘Trampled a few egg shells, I suppose.’ Her eyes glittered mischievously. ‘When I think, I practically had to go out and lay my own …’

  I took a playful swing at her, and she dodged sideways, laughing. ‘Well then,’ I challenged. ‘What would you have done?’

  Serious once more, she considered. ‘Not sure. But I couldn’t have stood not being confided in. One way or another I’d have had to make them talk to me about what was going on.’

  I wandered over to the edge of the water. It rippled gently against the sides. Every now and again a gust, or the tail end of an already distant boat’s wake, swirled it against the concrete. Further along, a toddler on reins was valiantly thrusting his arm out to throw handfuls of bread which as often as not landed short. Frustrated birds hovered close to the edge, daringly swooping elongated necks to snatch at the crumbs.

  I stuck my hands in my pockets and traced a doodle in the loose gravel with my toe. I tried to imagine myself at home, demanding information from my parents. What then? Why, then they would have banged the door, their bedroom door, shut in my face. It was no business of mine. And quite right too. But later – the fantasy seemed to be acquiring a direction of its own – Father would have come up behind me in the kitchen and put his hands on my shoulders and said that yes, I was old enough now, I should have it explained to me … and I would have turned and buried my head in his shoulder as I did when I was little and smelled the tweed and felt the roughness of it against my face and cried because what I wanted more than anything else was to be held tight …

  My foot, of its own accord, had scuffed out the pattern it had been drawing. I looked up. Elspeth had retired to lean against a nearby tree. The bar of chocolate in her hand was considerably depleted. She held out what remained as I re-joined her. I shook my head. ‘No thanks.’

  ‘You must miss your father.’

  I was taken aback by the observation, as though she’d somehow intruded into my own private world. ‘What is there to miss?’ Underlining the point, I gave full rein to a cynical snigger. ‘I couldn’t give a damn about him.’

  Elspeth licked her fingers, scrumpled the chocolate paper and stuffed it in her pocket. ‘God, I thought I was supposed to be the mixed-up one.’ She turned to face me. ‘You’re as bad as your parents – no, probably worse. About avoiding issues, I mean.’

  I stared back at her, ignoring passers-by who were looking curiously in our direction. This was Mark
all over again. Not understanding. Attacking me. ‘But that is how I feel.’

  ‘Come off it.’

  There was no urge to cry, no anger bubbling up. Just numbness. I was in Flora’s kitchen. She was standing by the Aga, Columbus prowling round her ankles. A teatowel slid from the rail and drifted with eerie slowness to the floor. The pattern on it was faded and, in its crumpled heap, totally indistinguishable. I heard her voice: ‘Do you always run away from the truth?’

  ‘That’s more or less what Flora said.’ I could hear the resignation in my voice.

  ‘Flora?’ Elspeth’s voice rose in astonishment. She stared at me. In the stillness, a rowing coach’s megaphoned instructions echoed across the water. ‘You’ve met her then?’

  I stood there dumbly.

  Elspeth’s expression changed to a purposeful one. ‘Cup of something,’ she decided. ‘Come on.’ She jollied me back towards the High Street. ‘Hey, look at that,’ as a bare torso above crotch-clinging Lycra hurtled past; ‘Whoops, catch us on the way back,’ as she sidestepped a bicycling child seemingly in training for the Tour de France.

  We hesitated outside a pizza house but chose instead an unassuming coffee shop which, surprisingly for a Saturday morning, was comparatively empty. We seated ourselves at a round, cloth-covered table beneath a Monet print. The window nearby provided a comforting barrier between us and the world.

  Elspeth ordered. As the black-skirted waitress busied herself whipping up the cappuccino, Elspeth leaned across. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  Elspeth cocked her head on one side, considered, and then apparently decided to accept my reassurance. ‘Well, then? Flora …? You know I’m bursting with curiosity.’

  ‘My father asked me to return some things to her. When he died. Some books.’

  ‘So you did?’

  I nodded.

  We leaned back to allow our coffee to be delivered.

  ‘Well, go on,’ urged Elspeth as soon as privacy was restored.

  Once I’d started, I wondered why I’d held back the previous evening. It didn’t seem such a disloyal tale after all. Maybe because Elspeth was both intrigued and approving. Her eyes widened with incredulity as I described Flora.

  ‘So she’s certainly not some bimbo?’

  ‘Hardly. I’ve never met anyone … I still don’t know quite what to make of her.’

  ‘But you like her?’

  I thought about it. ‘I suppose so. Yes and no. That’s to say, I’m beginning to get used to her.’

  Elspeth stretched out a hand and nudged my cup closer to me. ‘You’re letting it go cold.’

  Obediently I took a sip. ‘I think, though, I’m starting to understand what attracted my father.’ I unwrapped the complimentary biscuit lying in my saucer.

  ‘What, you mean other than her Renaissance curves?’

  I glared at her. ‘Don’t you think of anything but the basics?’

  Elspeth seemed about to make some further witticism, then to change her mind. ‘Sorry.’

  I carried on with my story. ‘She’s so totally different from my mother: so laid-back, so relaxing –’ yes, it was true – ‘to be with.’ I did my best to describe her robustness, that extraordinary calm of hers that allowed me to explore, and even articulate, what I was feeling at any given moment, that strange sense of an awareness on her part which was at once both disconcerting and, in some way I couldn’t quite define, reassuring; trying to justify perhaps my having allowed a relationship – of sorts – to develop. And by implication, it occurred to me, my father having done so too.

  ‘I wouldn’t have gone to see her a second time,’ I said, ‘if it hadn’t been for Andrew.’ I explained about our encounter on the valley road in May, and what followed that afternoon. But even as I recounted how his subsequent intervention had prompted Flora to invite me to go down again, honesty forced me to acknowledge – to myself – that it had been I who accepted the opportunity she offered. Because I was cross with my mother for letting me down. Strange really; ironic even.

  ‘So what made you decide to go?’

  I shrugged, pushing aside my private thoughts. ‘Andrew seemed to think I ought to talk to her.’ Well, yes, I supposed that was the reason, too. Indeed, maybe Mother’s selfi—well, thoughtlessness anyway, had merely provided the excuse I needed.

  ‘And did it help?’

  ‘We played tiddlywinks,’ I said.

  ‘You what?’

  ‘And then I dreamed she was the Queen of Hearts. Lewis Carroll’s,’ I clarified.

  ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’ Elspeth widened her eyes in mock amazement.

  I laughed. Then sobered. ‘A bit of a looking-glass world, I suppose.’

  ‘And I’m the Mad Hatter. Have some more tea, well, coffee, Alice.’ Elspeth summoned replenishments.

  I stared through the window at the people passing to and fro in the street outside. An elderly couple paused, exchanged comments, then pushed open the door. The draught of air brushed over me. I watched them hesitate, decide on a table, then move across and settle in their seats.

  Elspeth brought my attention back by snapping her fingers under my nose. ‘Hey, where have you gone to?’

  ‘Nowhere. I was thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s just –’ I gave myself a mental shake – ‘it’s as though … it’s like two different worlds. And I’m not quite sure which is the real one.’

  ‘Now you’re being dramatic.’

  ‘Am I?’ I was surprised.

  Elspeth grinned. ‘You’re trying to pigeonhole everything. It doesn’t work.’

  I thought about it. ‘You mean all of it’s real.’ I recalled Flora’s comment about my father being the same person wherever he was. And I had a sudden image of my mother, stacking jars into cupboards and closing the doors. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I said. I lifted my cup. I hadn’t really wanted this second one. ‘Come on, drink up,’ I urged. ‘Let’s go.’

  On the way back in the car, Elspeth said, ‘So what about Andrew? He sounds quite a hunk.’

  ‘A very much married hunk, in case I forgot to mention it. With two young boys. His wife’s sweet.’

  ‘So what were you doing having a cosy little tea party with him all afternoon?’ I glanced sideways and caught her raising an eyebrow in pretended reproof.

  I turned my attention back to the traffic. ‘Being grateful he wasn’t making a fuss about the dent in his car.’

  ‘And how much more grateful are you hoping he’s wanting you to be?’

  ‘I’m not! And he’s not looking for it. It’s totally platonic. Anyway, I hardly know him.’ I considered. ‘But there is a sort of affinity.’ I thought some more. ‘Something to do with my father.’

  ‘You said they got on well together?’

  ‘So Flora says. And, yes, from the way he talks about him, they must have done.’ Though, come to think of it, he and I hadn’t mentioned him much.

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  I braked sharply to avoid a car elbowing in from the left. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘Well, it sounds a bit like a father and son relationship.’

  ‘But I’m still his daughter!’

  I sensed Elspeth grinning as I changed gear and pulled forward into a gap. ‘With a dream of a big brother. Is that it?’

  It was, I realised. And suddenly the jigsaw pieces slotted into place, offering a warm picture: one in which it would be OK to tease and be teased; where, if need be, there was a shoulder to cry on. In some way he belonged to me. There was no need to have even a sneaking conscience about Ginny. Ours – my imagination let rip – was a different relationship.

  I smiled. ‘I guess so.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ Later – many weeks later – I recollected the slight sideways look I was aware she gave me, the slight rise of her intonation, and wondered whether there had been more than a touch of irony in her comment. But at the time I took
it – gratefully, smugly even – at face value.

  ‘Yes I am, aren’t I?’

  Although my scenario didn’t explain where Flora fitted in – despite her being somehow at the hub of it all.

  CHAPTER 11

  Elspeth departed as abruptly as she’d arrived – a scrawled note propped against the coffee jar explaining she hadn’t waited or I might have talked her out of it. Yes, she’d gone back to Perry. Stupid, but there it was. Some guff about the heart being stronger than the head. But a million thanks. She’d added a PS under her flamboyant signature: ‘Re. Andrew et al – go for it! And keep me posted.’

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was Wednesday evening and I’d returned from work hoping to be able to congratulate her on the success of a job interview she’d been due to attend that morning. Had she even gone for it, I wondered.

  The flat seemed suddenly devoid of colour. I wandered from room to room, my movements seeming to echo in the emptiness. On impulse, I went into the hall and flung open the cupboard there. A neat row of hangers dangled above the space where her clothes had hung. I bent and picked up a gilt button, triangular shaped, difficult to replace. Returning to the kitchen, I threw it into an ornamental bowl on the window sill and slumped down at the table.

  It had been fun having her around. And such a relief to be able to talk about Flora. She had cropped up ever more naturally in our conversations since our outing last Saturday. In the course of them, the guilt about my visits to Cotterly had waned and been replaced by more than a touch of resentment that I’d been prevented from going there in the past. I could see my mother’s point of view, of course. Or I supposed I could. She’d been protecting me.

  Elspeth’s expression had been somewhat cynical when I pointed this out.

  ‘What’s that look meant to mean?’ I’d demanded.

  She hesitated.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Could be … it was herself she was protecting.’ She refused to elaborate.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ I said eventually.