The Wildflowers

by Harriet Evans

  ‘Oh—’ Althea looked over towards the open door. ‘You’re not supposed to eat mayo these days. Or crabs. Bad for the –’ she whispered it – ‘baby.’

  ‘But there is no baby,’ Cord said, stupidly.

  Althea looked at her sadly. ‘No, darling.’

  Cord hugged herself. ‘Poor Mads. Have you asked them about it?’

  ‘A little. If you ask me, I think she’s rather too obsessed with it though. Can’t see the wood for the trees.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She’s got Ben and he’s doing so well – he’s just signed on to direct the robot thingy sequel . . . She doesn’t need that job she hates in London any more . . . you know, that girl really has come so far when you think about her childhood. I don’t think we know how bad it really was for her, poor darling – she never talks about it—’

  Cord remembered waking up and seeing Mads’s rigid little body, quivering with fear, stiff as a broom in the bed next to Cord those long-ago summers. Her small mouth chewing on great clumps of her moon-coloured hair. ‘I’m just lying in bed thinking about things, it helps me go to sleep,’ she’d told Cord, as Cord lay back down with her, stroked her trembling shoulders, singing softly. ‘Just going to sleep, honest. I sleep really well here.’

  ‘Poor Mads,’ said Cord, sadly. ‘She wants to make a new family, a sort of separate one from the one she came from. One day,’ she said, vaguely.

  Her mother wasn’t really listening. ‘Oh, darling, don’t be down in the dumps about it. You’ll find someone.’

  Cord shook her head and smiled to herself. She thought of Jay and tried to imagine him here, amongst the old willow-pattern dishes and the worn chintz sofa, restlessly rocking backwards on the cane chairs that looked out to sea. He would love Althea, and Ben would love him – he’d be fine here, fit right in.

  What’s wrong with me? she’d started to wonder, in the last couple of days, away from the flat and able to see the emptiness of the rest of her life. Why don’t I want to be with anyone? There must be something wrong with me.

  She leaned on the tea towel, looking down at the worn printed image of Corfe Castle, wondering how many dishes after family lunches this towel had dried. All these things in the house that they forgot about when they went away, then reclaimed again the following year. The board games, the old Georgette Heyers and green Penguins on the bookcase, the salad bowl in the shape of a lettuce leaf, the chopping block where once Mrs Gage had sliced off a little of her finger . . . dear Mrs Gage, dead for three years now and Cord had missed her funeral because she was in Leipzig, performing at the Bach Festival.

  Like the black-and-white photographs, the house seemed to her now part of the past. And as she looked at her mother’s carefully made-up face, the heavy eyeliner that ringed her once-sparkling eyes, the restless hands that tapped on the counter, Cord thought then rather sadly that her mother had completed a transformational stage, like the life cycle of a butterfly. She had become the person she most feared, and Cord was afraid the same was happening to her, too.

  The following day, she got up early and walked along the beach, a scarf wrapped tightly around her neck, then they all had a late breakfast, and Tony and Althea rehearsed again, even though Althea wasn’t in Tony’s directorial debut, a daring new production of Hamlet. She was about to go into rehearsals for The Glass Menagerie instead, and clearly thought Tony’s production ideas were terrible. Mads wrote in her notebook-cum-diary that she kept with her all the time – what, Cord wasn’t certain – and Ben shut himself away again, talking to important people on the phone. Then it was lunch, and afterwards everyone dozed, and then in the early evening Mads and Tony went out to scatter Aunt Julia’s ashes. They were gone a while.

  ‘We walked up to Bill’s Point, chucked most of them off and a funny little cupping wind carried them up and over into the sea – it was the strangest thing,’ said Mads happily. ‘And there were peregrine falcons nesting there. She’d have loved that.’

  ‘She loved it up there,’ said Daddy, and he glanced around at them all. Cord thought it was as though he wasn’t sure where he was. ‘Who’s here?’ he said. ‘Right, let’s drink.’

  He opened a bottle of champagne he’d put in an ice cooler beforehand and poured out five glasses, holding the bottle with one hand at the base in that way he always did that the children had found so impressive. They all toasted. ‘Julia.’ He and Mads clinked glasses first, smiling at each other. Then they all clinked, and Althea rolled her eyes, but said nothing.

  ‘She’d have liked it all, Tony,’ said Mads, and she kissed his cheek, and then Ben’s. ‘She’d be very happy if she could see us now.’

  But Cord’s father was staring out to sea and didn’t seem to have heard her.

  Dinner was fish pie, and more wine. Althea drank and didn’t say much, and Tony was virtually silent, frequently refilling his own glass, the actions of the afternoon sitting heavily on him. Mads was sad and subdued. It was Cord and Ben who kept things going, Ben telling them about the famous people he’d seen in Hollywood, the action-hero actor he’d had a drink with who had worn a wig throughout which had slipped to one side about which no one had commented. Ben hugged himself when he laughed, sometimes rubbing his face in the sweet way he always had. He made Cord laugh too, and she told them in exchange stories of her travels, not that they were as good, but Ben wanted to know, even if Mumma started looking bored early on. We’re OK, Mumma, she wanted to say. Look at your children, we’re doing well. Really well.

  Later that night she lay on her side in bed, very still, listening to the rasp of her eyelashes against the pillow when she blinked, and the beating of her heart pounding against the mattress. She wondered what Jay would say if he could see them all. If someone, an outsider, could assess it, for she found she couldn’t any more. In the silence of her thinking she realised she could hear Mads and Ben in the next room, as she had done the night before, the rhythmic shunting and creaking of the bed, the groan of release from her brother, Mads’s urgent murmuring afterwards. Then silence.

  She tried to sleep, but couldn’t, not for a long time.

  By the third night she was feeling slightly mad. Her mother was still patiently rehearsing Hamlet with her father but Tony didn’t seem to want to remember that Althea wasn’t in the play with him. When she said, as she did often, ‘You’ll have to get Delia to do that in rehearsal,’ he’d ignore her, and simply say, ‘Can we try that scene again?’ And Cord saw for the first time that she’d given up trying. That she was just going along with him for an easy life.

  ‘Well, that’s it for today, I think, my Prince,’ Althea said as teatime came, and she stared into the little mirror hanging on one of the wooden slats. There were, Cord had noticed, mirrors everywhere in the house now. ‘I’ve been Ophelia and Gertrude today and that’s enough for any woman. Let’s get a drink.’

  ‘I really must go for a walk while it’s still light,’ her father said, putting down his copy of the play and rubbing the back of his head. He had had his hair cut quite recently, she saw; it stuck out at the back where he rubbed it, almost comical, like a grey and brown duck’s tail.

  ‘Darling, it’ll be dark any moment. And Ben and Mads will be back from their walk soon – we can eat when they’re here,’ said Althea. Cord knew what she meant was that she could drink freely then. ‘Don’t go now.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Althea!’ her father said, flaring up. ‘I know! I was out there yesterday with Julia, it was fine. Please. Leave me alone. If you want a drink have a bloody drink. I must walk for a while, clear my head a bit.’ His voice softened. ‘Sorry, old girl. Have a drink if you want. See you – soon.’

  He strode into the gathering gloom down the path towards the sea, and Cord saw Althea sigh and glance into the mirror. Cord watched him go, her heart aching. How she would love to run after him as she would have done once. To catch up with him. ‘Daddy, can I walk with you?’

  And his face would have lit up, b
ecause she was his world. ‘Cordy, of course.’

  ‘It’s the anniversary,’ her mother said quietly behind her. ‘It’s always bad, today. But he might, just this once – oh, damn him.’

  Cord turned to her. ‘What anniversary?’

  ‘The day his aunt went off. August the seventeenth.’

  ‘Aunt Dinah?’

  ‘He told me once he almost died the night his mother was killed but Dinah brought him back to life, and then she left and part of him died for ever . . .’

  Cord frowned. ‘But, Mumma, what happened?’

  ‘She went away.’ Her mother shrugged, as if this was a frivolous detail. ‘Oh, it’s old news now. Years ago when I started coming here with him, someone in the village told me she brought it on herself. But Daddy simply wouldn’t talk about her.’

  ‘Did he never see her again?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if he did or not.’

  Cord scratched her cheek. A muscle under her eye was ticking. ‘She just disappeared into thin air? Never contacted him again? Didn’t she . . . I mean, didn’t she love him?’

  ‘Oh, she was an absolute disaster, darling. Shouldn’t ever have been in charge of a child if you ask me. Sounds very charming but she was hopeless. Mess everywhere, odd people turning up, very shady past . . . She bunged him in a school and took off, best thing she could have done. But he was very fond of her. Always been a hard day for him.’

  ‘I never knew she did a runner.’

  The idea of Daddy now walking alone on the beach like that, no way of telling anyone how he felt, locked in this prison of his own making, moved Cord’s soft heart. She stood up, slipped on her flip-flops. ‘I’ll catch up and walk with him for a bit.’

  ‘Oh, what a nice idea. I say, get him to come back quickly, will you? I’ll lay the table.’ Her mother began humming.

  Cord tripped down the steps and through the first row of beach huts. She could see a solitary figure down on the beach, walking south-west towards Bill’s Point, towards the sunset. She felt as though she were chasing the past, running to catch hold of the person he had been.

  She walked for several minutes, following the lone figure, squinting to see if it was him or someone else altogether – it was too far away to be certain. As she walked she hugged herself, thinking over the last few days, the strangeness of being here again. And with every passing minute dusk seemed to enshroud her.

  Did he feel like this every year, or was it with him all the time? What had happened to his great-aunt? Cord screwed up her eyes, trying to remember what it was about mysterious Aunt Dinah that tasted so funny in her mouth, like Proust’s madeleines; madeleines of Worth Bay. What did she know, what had she forgotten?

  Then she realised she’d lost sight of the figure; it had vanished in the gathering gloom and the shadow of the bay. She stopped, unsure whether to follow him or not. She was quite far now from the house, so she turned back and retraced her steps. The sun was about to slip behind Bill’s Point, the horizon amber gold and gunmetal grey. When eventually she reached the beach hut Cord looked up, more out of habit than anything else. Flowers and Stones, she thought. I’ll go in there, get the old rules down. We can have a game tomorrow. It’ll be fun. Silly . . . something old . . .

  But the light was on and the door ajar, which was odd. Cord walked up the steps, before she’d thought about whether she should or not. Her mind was full of stories: her father as a child, Aunt Dinah, the haunting familiarity of her, the cold feeling in the pit of Cord’s stomach that assailed her when Mumma had described her. She walked towards the lit interior of the hut, not really wanting to go back to the house. Perhaps her brother—

  There was someone inside. As she opened her mouth to speak she heard noises, and she gripped the door handle. It had already pushed open a little – the old, swinging door that moved freely – and so she saw it before she could stop herself.

  At first what she saw through the two-inch-wide crack made sense, though she recoiled at the sight. Oh, she thought, stepping back as she saw the figures on the daybed, her sister-in-law’s shoes on the scuffed wooden floor. Ben and Mads are here. It was where they’d first kissed, where they’d come all those illicit evenings without her. For a brief, surging second or two she was overwhelmed with memories, sensation of those summers past. She could hear them, and this time Mads’s voice rose above his. She was talking, talking urgently.

  Then Cord looked inside again and saw the back of his head, and the hair. Short hair, grey and brown. Sticking out like a duck’s tail.

  ‘More like that . . . like that . . .’ Mads’s voice was low, urgent, frantic. ‘Don’t stop . . . More . . . more like that . . .’

  Cord frowned, not understanding. She was stupid. She saw them move on the daybed, and then she understood.

  It wasn’t Ben.

  It wasn’t Ben.

  Her father was there with Madeleine, her father’s head, seen from the back, like those other times, a kaleidoscope of images jumbling in her mind . . . his shoulders curving over Madeleine underneath him, her own silvery hair spilling over the worn old cushions on the daybed, thin knees drawn up, clutching him between her legs and that was all she could see in the crack through the door. She heard her father mutter something, groan, a desperate exhalation. This all happened in a few split seconds and Cord felt a force in her chest that made her stagger slightly backwards. She steadied her hand on the railing, then ran down the steps again on to the sand. Their sounds rose a little, carried out to her on the still evening air.

  ‘Oh, Tony . . .’

  She saw it was night-time now, the stars pricking the pure, periwinkle sky. Cord tried to run, but the sand held her back.

  Cord would relive this moment in a dream every other week or so for the rest of her life. Their rising, peaking sounds of sex, hoarse and furtive. The sight of her bare feet, blue-grey in the light of the moon. Trying to run away, but stuck, trapped in the heavy, sinking sand.

  She left the next day: an urgent rehearsal had come up, she said, and she had to leave. She went after breakfast, waved off only by her brother. Mumma and Daddy were continuing to eat muesli in mutinous silence. Mads was, Ben said, still asleep.

  ‘So sorry you have to go,’ he said, but there was a hardness in his eyes and a tone to his soft voice she hadn’t heard before. ‘We’ve hardly seen you.’

  ‘Sorry, Ben,’ she’d said, climbing into her battered old Golf. ‘I – I have to go.’

  ‘You’re always leaving, Cordy. Forget the rehearsal for once. I’ve given up stuff to be here. I should be at a script conference in LA, but I’m not, because I wanted to come. For us all to be together.’

  She’d pulled the car door shut and wound down the window, stared at him, unblinking. Her big brother, who was the one she had to love and protect, whose hand she had held when he was scared.

  She just said, ‘I’m sorry, Ben. I’m so sorry. For all of it.’

  The car lurched up the bumpy track, clouds of dust rising behind her so that they obscured the view of her brother in the rear window. When they cleared, as she reached the main road, she saw he had gone.

  Cord drove almost to London without a break. But, going through Richmond Park where the grasses were bleached almost yellow-white in the late-summer sun, with screaming, delighted children randomly popping up between rolling swathes of bracken, she suddenly pulled the car over in an open lay-by and was sick once again, her stomach reflexively heaving for a long time afterwards until it was entirely empty. The heavy scent of straw, bracken and petrol hung in the dusty air. She would think she was finished, and then would start to gag and be sick again, only there was nothing left. Fluorescent-yellow acid burned her throat; it was sore for days. The following evening, at the Wigmore Hall for a concert of Handel arias, it hurt to sing and she received the only bad reviews she’d had to date.

  Though she told herself she wasn’t to blame, a part of her knew that wasn’t true. And she kept thinking of the postcard in
the lavatory at the Bosky, of the cartoon of the old man visiting a dying friend, obviously a fellow actor. She’d never understood it as a child, then barely noticed it for all the years afterwards, until that night when, returning from the beach hut, vomiting silently into the toilet bowl, her throat burning, she had raised her spinning head and seen it once more, for the first time in years, and now she understood it.

  For on that night she’d gazed at the black-and-white, roughly sketched men, one sitting by the other’s bed. ‘It’s jolly hard, dying, old chap,’ the ill man was saying, gazing up at his Garrick Club-tie-wearing pal. ‘But it’s not as hard as farce.’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  April 1991

  It was a glorious spring that year. She would sit for hours on the porch in the daytime in her ancient fleecy blue sweater whose cuffs were chewed and loose, wrapped in a blanket like a whale beached on the shore, her long thick hair covering her: yet another layer. She’d eat endless toasted cheese-and-tuna sandwiches Ben made her and read murder mysteries, while Ben worked on his script. The spring wild flowers at the Bosky were totally different, the house was totally different from the dry heat of summer. Buttery primroses and glossy celandines around the house and on the sloping grassy verges before the grass gave way to sand, the lanes edged with bobbing, pretty, baby-blue forget-me-nots and hot-pink campions. Blackbirds sang in the hedgerows beyond the house; she could hear them in the morning and at night, when she lay shivering and uncomfortable in bed.

  The old wooden house was no good at retaining heat and Mads suffered. For it was still bitterly cold come evening, the stars glittering and hard over the bay. A waxing moon rose early over the sea towards the end of their stay and hung, shining ice-white light, towards the Bosky in a jagged path across the waves. By day it was peaceful but when she got up in the night as she did frequently she could always hear up above her the strong spring tides lashing the beach with violent force. They could not go on the sand except at low tide. It was for the best: the two babies inside her might come at any time, they said. They could not accurately measure them and so weren’t sure when they were due. In any case, she should not be scrambling over the dunes. And so she stayed in the house, waiting for the building work in London to finish, waiting for these children, so looked-for, to come.