Meadowland

by Alison Giles

  But the thought nagged at me from time to time.

  Now I found myself staring through the open door to the sitting room, my gaze held by Father’s painting on the wall opposite, where Elspeth had talked me into hanging it. My fist, seemingly of its own accord, was, I realised, thumping the pine surface in front of me; and to my amazement I heard myself, a moment or two later, silently drumming out the words ‘I … want … my … father’. Jerking up, I rubbed the tingling edge of my hand. Then I smoothed both palms across the wood, eking out some sort of comfort from its evenness. Eventually I rose and switched on the kettle.

  By the time my mother rang, ten minutes later, I was composed. ‘No,’ I told her in a voice that surprised me with its firmness, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t come down this weekend.’ I stared at the painting again before offering an explanation. ‘I’m visiting friends in the West Country’

  It was irritating that I couldn’t contact Flora direct. I hesitated a moment then dialled Directory Enquiries. Two minutes later I was speaking to Ginny.

  ‘It’s a bit of an imposition,’ I apologised, ‘but I wondered whether you or Andrew could check with Flora whether it would be convenient …’ I suggested I ring the following evening to get her reply.

  ‘No, no. Give me your number. We’ll call you back.’

  It was Andrew who did so. The degree of pleasure I felt on hearing his voice disconcerted me at first, but then I decided it wasn’t unreasonable to feel warm towards a proxy family member.

  ‘Flora says she’d be delighted.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ I risked.

  I sensed him grinning at the other end of the line. ‘Ah, you’re beginning to know her. All she actually said was “Fine”, but I thought my version—’

  ‘Thanks.’

  He chuckled. ‘And bring some sensible footwear this time.’

  ‘Her instruction or yours?’ I was beginning to enjoy myself.

  ‘Ginny’s. The boys may need their boots themselves!’

  His tone remained lighthearted but I suddenly panicked that I was assuming too much. I backed off into formal thanks for his trouble.

  ‘No problem. See you on Saturday. Supper here.’

  ‘Great.’

  I stifled doubts, once I’d replaced the receiver. I’d committed myself now.

  Flora’s greeting, when I arrived mid-afternoon, was as to-the-point as ever. ‘Oh good, you’re here. I need to go into town. Your car or mine?’

  I looked doubtfully at the Citroën.

  ‘We’ll take mine,’ she decided, and had squeezed into the driving seat before I had time to form, let alone offer, an opinion. I climbed in beside her as she started the engine. Columbus, who had been standing, tail erect, by the back door, skittered to safety as she slammed the car through a three-point turn on the gravel.

  Behind the wheel, an almost boyish alter ego of Flora’s peeked its head out. That same one, I thought later, that had had her clambering up trees as a child. The road we took, straight on past the Dower House, was even narrower than the one I was becoming accustomed to travel. Clinging on as she plunged round bends and over blind rises in the road, I eventually could bear it no longer. ‘Are we in that much of a hurry?’ I begged.

  She eased off the accelerator. ‘My driving alarmed your father, too,’ she observed. ‘Usually he insisted we take his car.’

  Strange, I thought. I’d never visualised them together anywhere but at Wood Edge or wandering through the village. Even though, I remembered now, she’d mentioned them visiting my grandmother.

  Flora glanced sideways at me as she jolted the car over a hump back, an amused glint in her eye. ‘I’m quite safe, you know.’ I decided to believe her.

  We swung to a halt in the market square. I followed in her wake round a series of small shops, my growing, albeit still somewhat grudging, respect for her reinforced by other people’s obvious liking. I stood by as the baker chose to reject a slightly burnt loaf and picked out for her instead one that was perfectly browned, and while the proprietor of the hardware store insisted on digging down among endless boxes to find just the right half-dozen nails she needed to secure some loose boarding on the shed.

  Our final visit was to the feed merchant to stock up on chicken supplies. ‘And how is your wife?’ Flora asked the old man as he hoisted the bag into the boot of the Citroën. It was all the invitation he needed. We listened patiently to a seemingly endless account of medical tests and treatment. Eventually he limped back towards his shop, whistling.

  ‘Did him good to get that lot off his chest,’ I commented as Flora shut the boot.

  She looked at me and smiled. I smiled back.

  A thought occurred to me. I nodded towards a small tearoom opposite. ‘How about …?’ I suggested. ‘My treat, of course.’

  ‘Nice of you, but I’d honestly prefer a large mug at home. Wouldn’t you?’

  In the kitchen, I thought. With the windows flung wide. I nodded.

  Flora was lowering herself into the car. I moved round to get in beside her, then paused. ‘Just a minute.’ I ran back to the bakery. ‘Cake,’ I explained as I rejoined her with my package.

  ‘Aren’t you wondering why I invited myself down this weekend?’

  Flora was pouring tea. She didn’t look up. ‘I expect you’re going to tell me.’

  I laughed. ‘You’re impossible. I can’t win with you.’

  ‘Are you trying to?’

  ‘No. Yes. That is to say I think I was, but no, not any more.’

  ‘Good.’

  I shook my head in amusement. Flora seated herself and looked across. ‘So then, tell me; why have you come?’

  Faced with the question, I was suddenly unsure. ‘Maybe I just like being here,’ I said.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘And maybe I needed someone to talk to.’ I ruminated. ‘Someone who would understand.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I raised my eyes to meet hers. They were warm and straight.

  ‘Though why I think you should I don’t know.’

  I pulled the cake I’d bought towards me and picked up the knife placed ready beside it. ‘Shall I?’

  Flora nodded.

  I cut into it. It was soft and spongy and reminded me of birthdays long gone. Cream oozed from the sides. I made two more incisions, then eased one of the pieces free. I swivelled the plate and pushed it towards Flora. She helped herself. I turned it back and took the other. Floury crumbs powdered my lips as I bit into it. The cream was smooth on my tongue.

  ‘My cousin’s been staying with me,’ I said as I dusted off my fingers.

  ‘That would be Elspeth?’

  I looked across at Flora, surprised yet not surprised. ‘Strange,’ I said, ‘how you know so much about … us.’ I rotated the mug standing on the table so that its handle pointed away from me, and cupped it in both hands. ‘And Elspeth knew about you. That feels even odder.’ I took a mouthful of tea and held it for a while before swallowing. ‘All those years … pretending …’

  Flora waited. Then: ‘Was that the hardest thing?’

  I wondered. ‘Maybe. I mean, I don’t know. It was like a grey shadow. A fog, sort of. Talking to Elspeth has lifted that. It doesn’t all feel so shameful somehow.’

  ‘You felt ashamed?’

  ‘I suppose I must have done.’ I forced a laugh. ‘Sins of the fathers and all that.’ I took another mouthful of tea. ‘Or maybe I thought it was my fault. Funny, really.’ One of those seemingly trivial bits of information one picks up crowded into my mind. ‘Don’t they say children always blame themselves when parents divorce? Or even just row?’ I considered the point. ‘But mine didn’t do either.’

  I looked up. ‘Was Dad ashamed of his relationship with you?’

  ‘I hope not.’

  I considered. ‘I can’t imagine he was. Well, not in regard to you anyway. Maybe he felt bad about Mum though.’

  Again I looked straight across at Flora –
it was still amazing me how easy it was to talk openly with her like this. ‘If, say, Mum weren’t there – if she’d died or something – would you two have married?’

  I knew, suddenly, the answer I was hoping for; and I got it. ‘I expect so,’ she said. ‘Certainly we’d have wanted to live together.’

  Ridiculously, incomprehensibly, I experienced an urge to leap up and hug her. Mentally, I pulled myself together. With my finger I traced the pattern – a series of wavy lines – on the mug I was still holding.

  ‘Mind you,’ I suggested, ‘wouldn’t that have meant you leaving Cotterly? Would you have minded?’

  ‘I think it’s more likely your father would have moved down here.’

  ‘But his job …?’

  ‘He’d have been more than happy to resign his partnership and look for something different locally.’

  ‘Like what?’ I was intrigued.

  ‘Anything that kept him out of an office, I imagine.’

  ‘You mean he didn’t enjoy being an accountant?’

  ‘Not overmuch.’ Flora’s tone was dry. It warmed as she elaborated. ‘He’d have been much happier involved with art or history, or with nature preservation perhaps. Hands-on work with the National Trust would have suited him down to the ground.’

  It hadn’t ever occurred to me. After all, he’d never given any indication he wasn’t quite content donning his dark grey suit or his pinstripe each weekday morning. Not to me; and not, I imagined, to Mother either.

  ‘Then why …?’ But I guessed I knew the answer. I had only to think of Mother and her chequebook. ‘And a divorce would hardly have resolved that problem,’ I acknowledged, confident that Flora knew I’d grasped the point. ‘So he was stuck?’

  ‘In his profession, yes.’

  My mind moved on. ‘But not necessarily in his marriage?’ I checked. ‘After all, you could have moved up to some little Surrey village. Or maybe he could have transferred to a firm here and still been able to afford to provide for Mother?’

  I took Flora’s silence as acknowledgement.

  ‘Didn’t he ever … didn’t you both ever … think about that possibility?’

  ‘He certainly thought about it.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he …?’

  But how could he? I tried to imagine him suggesting to Mother that they part openly. Had he ever done so, I wondered. And if so, how must she have responded? Refused to discuss it, presumably. Being a divorced, or even separated, woman simply wouldn’t come into Mother’s scheme of things. Even if technically, legally, it had been forced on her, she’d never have acknowledged it. Just as she’d never acknowledged Flora’s existence – other than on that one brief occasion to me and, presumably in a moment of weakness, to her sister.

  I felt an overwhelming surge of anger – more frustration than anything else. And not only to do with Father and Flora. Mother created her world. And that was how it was. No amount of huffing and puffing would stir it. I had an image of the three little pigs; only in my scenario, for some reason, they were the ones outside the house with their cheeks blown out. Well now she was a respectable, and respected, widow. That should satisfy her. Everything neatly resolved. For her.

  Flora had risen and was moving around the kitchen, collecting up mugs and plates, putting the remains of the cake in the fridge. I imagined my father here with her. Comfortable. Relaxed. How it should be.

  ‘Was it very hard for you when he died?’ I heard myself asking.

  ‘It’s always hard when someone dies.’ She paused in the act of reaching up to close a cupboard door and looked at me over her shoulder. ‘You’re not alone, you know.’ It was said gently. She turned and leaned against the work surface. ‘Though you’ve more to grieve for than I have.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘All those lost years.’

  I met her eyes; then lowered my own. There was dust on my shoes, I noticed. I bent and brushed at it.

  ‘I’m not sure I want to be reminded.’ My voice was scarcely above a whisper. For a moment I thought she might come and put an arm round me. But she just stood there.

  ‘I really enjoyed seeing Elspeth again,’ I said eventually. ‘Of course she couldn’t have stayed at the flat for ever. Too cramped. I suppose I was hoping she’d find somewhere close by.’ We’d have been able to meet often. Talk.

  ‘I’d never really got to know her before. We used to visit as children, of course, but that was different. We’re such a small family. Father an only child. Mother with only one sister. Elspeth and I are all each of us has got. Of our generation, I mean.’ I hadn’t thought of it like that before, but it was true. ‘And now she’s gone back to this boyfriend of hers.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Flora.

  ‘What do you mean – “Ah”?’

  ‘Another desertion?’

  Did she mean Father? ‘It’s hardly the same.’

  ‘True.’

  ‘Yeah, but maybe it touched a nerve or something.’ I stared at my feet again, stretching my legs out to align the toes of my shoes. ‘Actually it was she who encouraged me to come down. Made it sound OK somehow.’ I tucked my feet back out of sight. ‘Mind you, she seems to think –’ I laughed uncertainly – ‘that I’ve got a thing for Andrew.’

  ‘And have you?’

  ‘Do I like him? Yes. But only as a friend, of course.’

  ‘Just as a friend?’

  What was she suggesting? I was tempted, defensively, to point out I wasn’t in the business of stealing other people’s husbands, but resisted the barb. Let her work out, if she wanted to, the reason for my silence. In any case, I was feeling ever more confused about the rights and wrongs of it all where Flora was concerned.

  ‘By the way,’ she reminded me, ‘you do know Ginny’s invited us for supper, don’t you?’

  The sun, that late June evening, was still some way above the horizon as we strolled through the village. It was a twenty-minute walk, but I’d agreed with Flora’s suggestion that we leave the cars behind. She was sure Andrew would give us a lift home.

  Although she had informed me it wasn’t necessary to dress up, I changed into the light linen trousers and cream shirt I’d brought with me in anticipation. A football bounced across the grass as we skirted the green. Flora skittered it back, raising a hand in acknowledgement of the shouted thanks. Pop music blared incongruously from one of the cottages. Further along the lane, only our footsteps added to the natural rustles and sighs. Flora obviously wasn’t concerned to make conversation, and I was more than content to walk in companionable silence.

  It was Andrew, looking up from under the bonnet of his car as we turned in at the gate, who broke it. ‘Hi.’ He waved grease-streaked hands. ‘Sorry about this. Come on round.’

  We were, we discovered as we followed him, to eat in the garden. Flora looked dubiously at the sky. ‘Hope the rain holds off.’

  ‘Bound to,’ decreed Andrew. ‘Can’t have mere weather spoiling Ginny’s spread.’

  She had by this time emerged from the house to greet us. ‘I certainly hope so,’ she contributed. ‘The boys are camping in a friend’s garden.’

  ‘Toughen ‘em up if it pours,’ said Andrew. ‘I remember …’

  Ginny grinned. ‘Now, don’t you start …’

  The banter between them set the tone for an informal evening. In some ways I was sorry the boys weren’t there. Life seemed to be full of new experiences just at the moment and taking part in a family evening – such a long time since I had done, and never from an adult perspective – would have been another. On the other hand, no doubt Tom – and certainly Justin – were too young to be expected to sit through what turned out to be a leisurely meal. It made sense that they had been found an alternative occupation. Just as, I recalled, I had been at their age, and indeed later; except that in my case alternative occupation had meant banishment upstairs with homework or a book and instructions to put the light out at the decreed hour.

  ‘What do you think, Charissa?’
<
br />   I hedged, my attention having wandered.

  Andrew, if he realised, rescued me. ‘About …’

  The conversation was general, and relaxed. It ranged widely but lacked – I recognised with a start – the self-conscious intensity so often experienced among my younger, London friends, and to which I, no doubt, contributed as much as any of them. No-one, this evening, was concerned to set the world to rights; there was none of the anxious checking of pecking order on some overall career ladder; no scarcely concealed bragging about who’d been where, done what, and knew – intimately of course – whom. If there was any competitiveness, it was light-hearted and short-lived, as when Andrew teased Ginny about her ignorance of some well-known historical date.

  ‘OK,’ she countered. ‘So who won Wimbledon the year before last? That’s at least more recent.’

  Andrew made a stab at a likely name.

  ‘Wrong!’ Ginny sing-songed her triumph.

  ‘Do you know?’ Flora turned to me.

  I supplied the correct answer.

  ‘You follow the tennis then?’ And we were off, discussing this year’s tournament.

  In due course, Flora’s pessimism about the weather proved justified. We pulled on jumpers and hugged jackets closer round us as the meal progressed; and just managed to spoon up the last of the raspberry soufflé before the first heavy drops plopped into our laps. Amid a hilarious scramble back into the house, I found myself jammed in the doorway with Andrew. Flora was ahead of us, Ginny a few steps behind caught in the downpour.

  ‘Come on, you two. Don’t just stand there,’ she urged.

  Andrew grinned and squeezed out backwards, easing the tray he was carrying so as not to tip it.

  We deposited everything on the kitchen table and stood there, shaking off the wet.

  ‘It seemed a good idea at the time,’ laughed Ginny. ‘Here –’ she handed plates and a cheese-board to Andrew – ‘take those through and I’ll make the coffee.’ Flora picked up the biscuits and followed him.

  ‘Can I give you a hand?’ I asked Ginny.

  ‘Thanks.’ She showed me where to find the coffee cups and I started laying up a tray. Ginny stacked the dishwasher while we waited for the coffee to brew. I passed plates and dishes to her. It was the first time we’d been alone together.