On Miriam’s last night Anya insisted on cooking a meal and eating it together, just as they had on that first night.
“I’ll do my very best you know.” Anya said as they sat with the remnants of their second bottle of wine watching the whites of the waves reflecting the light of the moon.
“I know you will.”
“And you haven’t had second thoughts?” Anya asked hopefully.
“No. It’s time to go. I should have gone when Gary died. I wanted to go then.”
“And I stopped you.”
“Yes. You stopped me then, but now you won’t. I’m going back to Yorkshire.”
“I won’t say anything more, other than to wish you all the luck in the world and thank you again for all you have done to help me. I’m just so sorry I didn’t realise at the time how much.”
“Don’t you want to know more about Vincent Cave?” Miriam asked when she realised Anya was not going to bring up the subject.
“Is there more to tell?”
“I thought you might ask some questions? Be curious? Want to know more about him?”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because he’s your family.”
“He’s never been part of my family. He left England before I was born. He means nothing to me at all so why would I want to know anything about him?”
“Can I give you some advice?” Miriam asked in such a tone that told Anya she was going to give it whatever the reply. Anya said nothing and Miriam continued with barely a break. “Stop thinking that the world revolves around Anya Cave. You should look around you at all the wonderful people you never see because you focus on yourself all the time.”
Anya thought that was a bit unfair in the light of her having dropped everything to look after the children but she had enough sense not to interrupt. She still hoped that, after a winter in England, Miriam would want to come back so she bit her lip.
“Anya Cave doesn’t keep her eyes open. She only sees what she wants to see.”
“I haven’t been Anya Cave for a long time.”
“You have always been Anya Cave.” Miriam paused, perhaps waiting for Anya to say something in her defence. After a minute of silence broken only by the roar of the surf Miriam continued. “Look up Anya Cave. What do you see?”
Anya looked into the darkness of the sky. There was no light other than the candles flickering in their glass tubes on the table and the sky was alive with millions upon millions of white dots.
“Stars.”
“So you are looking and you see stars.”
“Yes. Of course I do.” Anya struggled to hide her impatience, she wondered where Miriam was heading with this train of thought.
“Now tomorrow, you look up to the sky and what will you see?”
“Sky. Clouds.”
“Where do you think the stars have gone?”
“They’re still there. They haven’t gone anywhere.”
“You just don’t see them because the light of the sun hides them.”
“So?” Anya still didn’t understand what Miriam was trying to say.
“Are the stars beautiful? Are they thought-provoking? Do they hint at untold worlds, life, civilisations far beyond what we can experience or imagine? Of course they do. We’ve sat out here many nights looking at the sky, made aware of the Earth’s insignificance in the universe and our insignificance in our world’s scheme of things. But then the sun comes out and we don’t see the stars. We forget them, we forget they exist. For the hours of daylight we imagine we are the centre of the universe because there is nothing to remind us we are not.”
“So?”
“Think what I am saying. You are the sun in your universe, you do not see the stars that are other people because of the brightness of your ego. Now imagine you are not so self-centred as to have this great sun of light preventing you from seeing what is really around you. You might even be a better person for it.”
Anya felt hurt. She had given her life for the last six years to the children, she she had done everything she could for the children. She could take criticism but not when it was so unfair. “You are being so unfair Miriam, so very unfair. I have loved the children. I have done what I had to do for them. There is not one single grain of truth in what you say.”
Miriam gave up arguing. “I’ve got a lot of packing to do and a long day tomorrow. Remember Anya, look for the stars that are the people who share this world with you, especially those that are nearest to you, your family. Don’t just see them as they are in relation to you, they are themselves, and that may well be something you really don’t allow them to be.”
Anya stayed on the terrace after Miriam had left her. She didn’t want to go to bed, she didn’t want the next day to come. She tried to understand what it was that Miriam had been trying to say. Miriam couldn’t really think she was that selfish. Perhaps it was just the wine talking on a starry night when both their lives were about to change.
Sunday 13th January 2002
Miriam left today and I’m on my own. The place is dark and quite eerie. Every creak of wood makes me think something dreadful is about to happen. I‘m not going to sleep very well tonight, or for a while really…
I’ve been wondering about the children. Rosy and Jamey are at Uni but where is Geoffrey? He’ll be somewhere in the world, growing more and more like his father every day. But what is he really doing? What is he really like? Do I really know him? And what about Rose, independent, determined to stand on her own two feet, determined to try things and make her own mistakes, what do I really know about my step-adopted-daughter that I hadn’t guessed in those first few minutes of meeting her. Was she happy, had she ever been happy? Was Rose the kind of person to sit alone underneath the stars with a glass of wine? I don’t know. And I really, really should. Then there’s Jimbo. Has he been my favourite? I’ve tried not to have one but he was always the most sensitive, the most dependent of the three, and the most determined not to show it.
Can I really do what I want to do ignoring what might be best for them? They may be grown up but they may still need me to be part of their lives even if I can no longer influence theirs. Could I really leave England and start my own life in Barbados just because it suits me?
I wish I could ask them what I should do, what they want me to do. They’d say I should do what I want to do, what I think is best for me. They would say it but a) would they mean it and b) who knows what the fuck is best anyway?
That evening Anya spent a long time holding a full glass of wine listening to the waves crashing against the rocks. She had thought of Miriam’s Gary, he had been so desperate at the failure of this place that he had thrown himself from the roof to a painful and probably not instantaneous death on those rocks. What would she do if she sank all the money she had left into the hotel and it still failed? She looked to the stars and asked them, but they gave her no answer.
She didn’t go to bed that night, she knew she wouldn’t sleep, and she counted the hours through in bottles of wine.
She did not let herself think of Vincent Cave.
Chapter 17: Enlightenments
Barbados, March 2002
As the sun came up Anya walked down the steps into the pool trying not to see how much it needed repainting. She swum up and down several times, remembering the days when she had done the same, but when everything had been different. She lay on a lounger until the sun became too hot when she moved to the cool of the office to look through some papers. Not feeling she could face any of it she went back to the pool and swam two more lengths before settling under the shade of an umbrella. She remembered so many lazy days when she had lain down on the sun lounger after breakfast and not moved until Miriam rang the gong that told her, and their guests, that lunch was ready to be served. How could she have been so blind to what she should have been doing?
She should have been busy meeting people, drawing up schedules, raising finance, planning her future, but every day she found a
reason not to do anything. All she achieved that first week was to arrange for the car hire company to take away her moke, she had the hotel’s pick up now. She had no need to shop as there was sufficient food in the larder and the freezers and wine in the cellar to last some considerable time. She reasoned that she had paid for it so she could consume it. It would go to waste if she didn’t eat it as no one else would be allowed to eat or drink at Fishermen Rock until the licences were renewed. If the licences were renewed.
Friday 18th January 2002
Miriam wanted to go home to England and start a new life after Gary killed himself, but I wanted her to stay so she stayed. Peter didn’t want to carry on with March and March but I wandered in and made him stay in the business he hated. It was my fault he carried on with it. Do I really make people do what they don’t want to do? How many other people’s lives have I fucked up? Well starting with Mum, probably quite a few.
The only person she saw after Miriam left was the post lady who arrived every afternoon on her motorbike leaving Anya with a sheaf of envelopes which she forced herself to open. They usually turned out to be bills or reminders, occasionally there were confirmations of bookings to which she wrote carefully worded replies of explanation. But she did little else.
On the Sunday after Miriam had left Anya was lying by the pool when she opened her eyes to find a man staring down at her.
“Good morning Dexter.” She said recognising Miriam’s deputy and the head barman. She sat up and drew her towel around her. “What can I do to help?”
“We need to know what your plans are.” He said without preamble, his habitual respectful demeanour not in evidence. “We need to know what you going to do.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know yet.” It was all the answer she could give.
“We haven’t been paid.”
She agreed to pay all the staff the month’s money Dexter said they were owed and a further month in lieu of notice. He went with her into the office and they spent half an hour drawing up a list of people and how much each should have. “Tell me Dexter,” She said as the list grew longer and longer, “why does such a small hotel need more than thirty staff?”
“I’m the main man, in charge of the restaurant and bar and Miss Miriam’s deputy when she’s not around, then we have chef and three under him, three shifts of table waiters and waitresses, two shifts of chamber maids, the kitchen staff, the gardeners, the pool team…’
“That’s a lot of people.”
“If you cut staff service suffers and we have always offered the highest standard of service.”
Anya watched Dexter as he placed the carefully labelled brown envelopes full of cash in a plastic supermarket carrier bag. It was almost all the cash she had.
“Mrs Miriam said that the hotel will be closing.”
“I don’t know yet.”
“If you do need staff you call on us first.”
“I have no idea when or if I will be hiring again but I’ve everyone’s address and of course I’ll be in touch with you as soon as I know what’s happening.” She was determined to be business-like even though she was wearing a bikini with only a towel inadequately wrapped around her.
“You will call on me as soon as you know.” Dexter was not to be fobbed off.
“Surely all the staff will find other jobs, they can’t be dependent on me.”
“There are no jobs this side.” He had replied sadly. “We’d have to travel over to the west or the south. It’ll cost in petrol. We all live local. Working on the west adds two hours to the day too. Women won’t be home when schools out. Children will be left alone when they get into all sorts of trouble.”
“Of course I’ll let you know as soon as my decision has been made.” As she watched him walk back up the road the knowledge of how her failure was affecting the lives of so many people depressed her still further.
She knew she would have to pull herself together and make the decision before too much more time passed. She sat on the terrace and watched the way the waves crashed, each one different, against the rocks. She knew she had to leave but she didn’t know how to. As long as there was food in the fridge and wine in the cellar she could put off doing anything.
In the last week of January Anya sent postcards to Rose and James telling them she was still in Barbados and wasn’t sure when she would get home, it certainly wouldn’t be by Easter. It seemed a long time before she received a reply from Rose but it was probably only two weeks. The two page letter was chatty and Anya could find no hint that she was being missed. Two days later she received a letter from James telling her not to worry about him, he was fine. The feeling of not being needed overwhelmed her and she spent the evening drinking the last of the good wine left in stock. She looked to the stars, as she did every night, remembering what Miriam had said and trying to think how she could change herself for the better.
“Mrs Philips? Anya Philips?”
The polite, almost diffident, voice disturbed her as she leafed through the post. She looked up and saw a young man, perhaps in his late 20s, standing looking at her with what could only be interpreted as surprise.
“Yes?” She asked, implicitly asking the man for an introduction.
“My name is Kenneth Cave.”
“Ah.”
She looked at the young man trying to determine whether he would be her half-brother or her cousin, perhaps her nephew. Incestuous families, she decided, were very complicated.
“Look I realise this is difficult but I think we both know we’re related don’t we? My father asked me to come round to see if he could call on you.”
The voice had the slight island twang but the accent was unmistakably that of a well-educated Englishman. It reminded her of the way Geoffrey spoke when he was trying to be extraordinarily polite to a stranger.
“He didn’t want to come himself?”
The young man seemed uncertain. “He didn’t want to be shown the door.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Well you’ve been to the island many times and never made any effort to get in touch with us.”
“True. But then I didn’t know for certain he still lived here and besides, well, I’ve never met him and I didn’t know what sort, well what sort of relationship, well, you know what I mean.” Anya finished lamely. She could not find any of the right words and she knew she sounded feeble.
“Could he come round to see you?”
“Six? Tonight?” She didn’t add the words she wanted to add ‘let’s get this over with’. Kenneth nodded and walked away without saying anything. She decided he must have felt as awkward as she did. She sat back in her chair feeling suddenly nervous. She was to meet Vincent Albert Cave in three hours’ time, after all those years of wondering.
The first moments were easy, she welcomed him with an outstretched hand which he shook formally, she ushered him onto the patio and asked if he would like a glass of wine or prefer beer. He indicated wine would be fine so she opened a bottle and poured two glasses. It was when they sat down, on either side of the small table, that the silence began to be oppressive. She didn’t want to look at him because she knew he was looking at her. Eventually he spoke.
“Is my sister, is Melanie still…” He broke off, apparently unable to finish the sentence.
“… alive?” Anya spoke with a confidence she did not feel. “No. She died a long time ago. 1970, August 1970.”
“So young.” It was a statement not a question but Anya answered anyway. He sounded very sad.
“She was 36.”
“What…?”
“She had cancer.” It seemed safer than saying she had committed suicide. She didn’t know this man well enough to give up all her mother’s secrets.
“That must have been difficult.”
“It was.”
“You were still very young.”
“20. I was at University.”
“That must have been difficult.” He repeated. Perhaps he too was nervo
us.
Again there was a period of silence as they sipped their wine and tried to avoid each other’s gaze.
“I wish I could have been there to help.”
“Mum wasn’t the sort to want help.”
“No, she wasn’t was she?”
Neither seemed to want to say anything in case it frightened the other away, they were like dogs, circling around each other, waiting to see if they were friends or foes.
It was Anya who blinked first. “Can I ask something and you will promise to answer truthfully?”
“You want to know who your father is.”
“How did you know?”
“It would only be natural.” He waited for Anya’s response but when none came he continued. “How much do you know?”
“I know my mother was not married, that I am illegitimate.”
“Did she ever marry?”
“No.”
“Do you know anything about your father?”
Why wasn’t he telling her straight out? Anya didn’t understand why he was being so unhelpful.
“I know whoever he was he shouldn’t have been with Mum.”
“How long have you known that?”
“Since Mum died. I found out about you and the ring and the fact that my father was related to her and that, whoever he was, he had raped her.”
“You think I’m your father?”
“You might be.” She said guardedly.
“I am not.” He was very definite.
“Then it was her dad?” Their conversation was low key, understated and punctuated by long gaps between questions and answers. Anya had avoided looking at Vincent until now. She was shocked to see suspicion and dislike in his eyes. She looked away before continuing. “I’ve lived with the knowledge it was either you or him for years. She never said anything. I thought it must have been you because of the letters she got from you and the ones she wrote to you and never posted, and the ring.”
“Ah, the ring, it was that ring that made me know who you are.”
Highly Unsuitable Girl Page 34
