by Adele Geras
I’m broken-hearted, Alex. Have I told you?
No, but you can, Beth. You know you can tell me anything.
I do know that. Yes, I do. But I can’t speak about this. It’s secret.
Even from me?
From everyone. It’s secret and it’s hopeless and I’m going to grow up and forget all about him.
Alex had wanted to ask every sort of question. Who is this person and why can’t he love you and are you quite sure he doesn’t, but in the end, as usual, he’d said nothing. Later he decided that Beth’s secret love was probably married. Nothing more secret and terrible than that. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Married and not going to leave his wife. One day, he thought, I’ll ask her about it again.
He changed gear, and turned his mind to Willow Court. It’d be great to see Efe again. They didn’t meet nearly enough in London. This morning there had been a brief text message on his mobile that mentioned needing to discuss something. Urgently. That was typical of Efe. Everything for him was urgent. Top priority, etc. etc. Alex had always idolized his elder brother. There was only a two-year difference in their ages, but when they were kids, he’d followed Efe around and Efe put up with it because a brother who didn’t say much and never told tales was quite useful. Alex remembered a game of cowboys when he’d been tied to one of the willow trees down by the lake for hours and hours after having been captured by Efe’s cattle rustlers, which was basically just Efe and Beth. They’d threatened to come back and shoot him and then they’d gone up to the house for tea and totally forgotten him in some other excitement. According to Beth, it wasn’t till bathtime that Gwen suddenly noticed he wasn’t there and Efe was sent to untie him. Efe’s version was that they’d been prevented by the adults from getting back to the lake again, but Alex never even listened to his brother’s excuses. He’d just rubbed his wrists where they’d been bound and trudged up through the wild garden to the house.
It never occurred to him to complain about it to anyone and probably it wasn’t hours and hours that he’d been tied up for anyway. His love for Efe was so great and unquestioning that, in those days anyway, he’d have put up with anything just to be allowed to be a part of the bigger boy’s world. He’d been about six years old when that happened, but he’d always had a hazy idea of the passage of time and that hadn’t changed at all.
Another thing that hadn’t changed was his inability to speak. Ridiculous to find yourself tongue-tied at his age, but words often struck him as being like a lot of little black insects, flying around in the air when people spoke them; wriggling about in lines of print and causing nothing but trouble and misunderstanding. It was Leonora who’d told him about the things that could never be called back, the sped arrow, the spoken word, and all his life Alex had watched words humming through the air and doing damage. He saw how his mother flinched when Chloë was being particularly nasty to her; he noticed how Leonora never managed to speak properly to Rilla, as though her love had somehow got bottled up on the journey between her heart and her mouth; he knew his father thought it was a joke, calling his mother silly, or a fool, or some such, but it wasn’t really. It was meant. Words were always meant in some way, and Alex wasn’t going to risk saying too many in case they hurt someone when he spoke them.
He was looking forward to seeing his grandmother. Efe always said he was Leonora’s favourite, but Alex sometimes wondered whether that was quite true. There was something, some special relationship between her and Efe, which you couldn’t quite put your finger on, but yes, she did love him too, in a different way. She was not the same person with Alex that she was with other people. With him, ever since he was a tiny baby, she’d been girlish. She’d played games for hours at a time. She’d played puppets and put on silly voices when they were alone. She’d read to him every night, and Alex never discovered whether this worried his mother or not. She never said. Even now that everyone was grown-up, he was the one Leonora wanted sitting next to her, and when he was at Willow Court he was generally the person chosen to find things for her, or carry them about for her as she moved around the house.
‘Don’t worry, dear,’ she’d say to Mum. ‘I’ve got my Alex here now.’
She occasionally called him that. ‘My Alex.’ He smiled. The others would bring her expensive presents for her birthday and she’d like his best of all, an album of photos of every single thing – corners of the house, animals, flowers in the garden, individual portraits, groups – the whole of Willow Court life between leather covers. On her actual birthday, the album would be empty, but as soon as she opened it, he’d tell her about his surprise. A history of the whole celebration in pictures. She’d love it. She loved anything that showed Willow Court and the paintings in a good light.
Ethan Walsh’s paintings. They all talked about them a lot, and spent ages setting up visits for this or that art expert to come and look at them. Every summer, people came trooping past them dutifully but Alex wondered whether anyone apart from him and Leonora actually looked at them. That was another bond between them. They understood what was going on in the pictures. They realized that there was more, much more, to them than just paint on canvas, or pastels on thick paper, or watercolours.
For one thing, they were uncharacteristically modern. Most of them had been painted in the early years of the twentieth century, and you could see the influences on them of Impressionism and Surrealism, but there were tricks of perspective there that were very much more modern than that. Some of them, also, harked back to the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. They had that sense of drama, of things being arranged for effect. And then there was the matter of light. Certain of the paintings (the portrait of Leonora herself as a girl, for instance) seemed actually to shed light outside the frame. Night scenes showing imaginary landscapes (mountains, seashores, forests) had moonlight spilling out of them, skimming surfaces, touching the edges of things, making shadows that contained more than you first thought. Walsh hid things in the pictures. Did anyone else realize this? Did they see the eyes in the reeds behind the swans? The clawing fingers at the ends of tree branches? A suspicion of darker things underneath the smooth surface of the world he was depicting? And did anyone notice that the colours were always strangely luminous? There were unexpected combinations in the still lifes that couldn’t possibly be exactly true. The painting of a blue teapot, for example, was one of Alex’s favourites. The real thing was still used by Mary, the housekeeper at Willow Court, and his mother, and there was just no comparison. The blue paint sang and vibrated and flooded your heart with something like joy. The real thing was okay. Nothing to write home about. Just a teapot. That was Ethan Walsh’s real gift, Alex thought. He made things more than they were in life. Better. Brighter and filled with light. And that’s what I want as well. That’s what my photos do, or what I want them to do. Be like life, but more than that. Have the same luminescence about them that the Walsh Collection has.
‘Wake up, Beth,’ he said. ‘We’re here.’
He looked down at her. She opened her eyes and smiled at him.
‘I’d like to take a photo of you looking like that,’ he found himself saying.
‘You’re mad, you are!’ Beth answered. ‘I must look ghastly, all crumpled and sleepy. You should have woken me earlier, Alex. I could have driven for a bit.’
‘No, that’s okay. I love your car.’ He smiled at Beth. ‘And what’s more, you can’t be a backseat driver if you’re sound asleep, can you?’
*
Beth stood in the corridor. She could hear Fiona and Douggie giggling in their room. They must have just got here too, she thought. She listened for a while, but couldn’t hear Efe’s voice. I should go and say hello at least, she thought, and sighed. She’d already unpacked and arranged everything in the drawers. She was in her old room, the one she always had when she came to Willow Court, with windows overlooking the drive and the wide sweep of lawn at the front of the house. She’d looked out of them as soon as she arrived and seen that the marque
e for the party was already being put up. Men were swarming all over the lawn carrying slender steel tubes and hammering together a silver skeleton to hold up the vast greenish folds of the tent, still lying on the grass. Leonora was in the room next door on one side and Chloë on the other. I can’t face them, she thought. Not Fiona and Douggie, not just yet, but they’ll know where Efe is. She stood listening to Douggie’s childish words, gathering herself as though for a battle or some kind of confrontation, and then knocked lightly on the door.
‘It’s me, Fiona,’ she said. ‘Hello.’
‘Oh, Beth, how lovely! Douggie and I were just having a little game of Lego before lunch. Come and play with us.’
Fiona was perfectly dressed in designer jeans and a white blouse that practically had the words please do not mistake me for an ordinary white shirt. I am more expensive than anything you’ve owned in your whole life printed all over it. She was tall and her hair always looked as though she’d that moment stepped out of the salon. How did she do it? Beth’s gaze was drawn, as it always was when she was with Fiona, to her wedding ring. A mist of rage clouded her eyes for a moment and she blinked. It isn’t Fiona’s fault, part of her said. She doesn’t know how I feel about her husband. It’s nothing to do with her. It’s his fault, he’s the one who should know what I feel. Not her. She made an effort to smile.
‘I can’t really,’ she said, and crouched down to kiss the little boy, who looked so much like his father. ‘I’ve got to go and find my mother and say hello to Chloë. Is she here yet?’
‘Oh, yes, we’re all here now, I think. It’s going to be a wonderful party, don’t you think? And I’m dying to meet the television director, aren’t you? Efe says he’s really, really famous.’
‘Where is Efe, by the way?’
‘He’s gone out with James. To the village, I think. You know what he’s like when he gets here …’
Beth nodded. She did know. He liked to walk around everywhere to make sure that all was as he remembered it, that nothing had changed. She knew how he felt, because she, too, liked everything to be as it always was.
‘I’ll see you later, Fiona,’ she said, edging towards the door. ‘I’ll just go and say hi to Chloë.’
‘Right,’ said Fiona. ‘Super to see you.’
Beth hadn’t really meant to go and find Chloë. That was just the first thing she’d thought of to say to Fiona, but now that she was safely out of there, she might as well just say hello. She walked back to Chloë’s room and knocked at the door.
‘Come!’ said her voice, an unmistakable mixture of the brash and the girlish. Beth stepped into a room that was already so Chloë-esque that she had to laugh.
‘Chloë, honestly! This room’s a tip!’
‘Fuck off if you’re going to be like my mum, Beth!’ Chloë said, but she was grinning. She didn’t stir from her place on the bed, which didn’t look like a Willow Court bed at all, but more the sort of thing you’d find in a doss-house. The duvet had vanished under piles of grubby underwear and crumpled bits of paper, and it looked as though Chloë had turned her make-up bag upside down on the pillow. Lipsticks with their tops missing, eyeliners sticky with age, powderpuffs that were so revoltingly grubby you wondered whether they were capable of putting more than dirt on any cheek or nose, lay about all over the place. And her clothes were scattered on the floor, together with the clumpy-looking shoes she always wore. Her lips were outlined with a colour as near to black as it was possible to get. Her white skin and fair hair cut into spikes were supposed, Beth knew, to make her look dangerous, but only succeeded in making her look vulnerable. She was wearing a floral dress, with a rugby shirt over the top.
‘I’m an art student,’ Chloë said, lighting a cigarette. ‘This is what art students do, didn’t you know? This isn’t a mess. It’s an installation, so there.’
‘Leonora will have a fit if she catches you smoking. You know what she’s like about that.’
‘I don’t care, if you want to know. I’ll spray some of my perfume about. Or I could lean out of the window. I’m using this tin as an ashtray. She ought to be grateful I’m not stubbing my fags out in her waste-paper basket or something.’
The tin she mentioned contained, Beth noticed, a little hillock of stubs that had built up, like an arrangement of small yellow rocks. Chloë continued.
‘I’ve considered making an artwork out of this tin. Stub City, I’d call it. Have you seen Efe and Fiona? They’re about somewhere. Oh God, it’s going to be gruesome, this party. Days and days of Fiona. I can’t bear it, Beth. She’s the sort of person who doesn’t sweat. Know what I mean? And she comes round to my flat and looks as though she’s trodden in something nasty.’
‘Knowing your flat, she probably has. Your floor has so many sticky things on it that most people don’t make it across the room.’
‘What rubbish! A bit of lemonade that I spilled once and didn’t clear up properly. You’re like an elephant, you are. Never forget anything. Or forgive.’
Beth went over to the open window and leaned out. Behind her, she could hear Chloë, still chattering away.
‘Fiona’s got a cheek! She comes round to my flat and she’s, like, picking at her food and saying nothing, until at last she can’t bear it any longer and murmurs something like, Why don’t you get a cleaner? Can you believe it, Beth?’
‘What did you say?’
‘Well, nothing actually. I didn’t want a massive row to break out, but I was thinking of all sorts of stuff I could have said, like, because I’m not a spoiled brat like you. Because I wouldn’t allow anyone else into my space, and most of all because I don’t want to be the kind of tosser who says oh, my cleaner is an absolute godsend at dinner parties. Also, because I can’t afford it, and anyway why don’t you fuck off out of my life, which is how I like it and not all plastic and magaziney like yours with my plastic and magaziney brother!’
Just in time, Beth stopped herself objecting to the remarks about Efe. ‘Never mind, Chloë. I’m sure one day you’ll get the chance to tell Fiona exactly how you feel about her.’
‘Better not, if I want to remain on speaking terms with Efe.’
Beth looked down into the garden at the front of the house, and there he was, as though Chloë talking about him had made him materialize. She waved, but he was too far away. He was walking with James, coming nearer and nearer. Even at this distance, Beth thought, you can tell how elegant he is. She swallowed hard and began talking to Chloë to stop her mind from turning to thoughts of Efe’s long legs. She said, ‘What present have you got for Leonora?’
Chloë leapt off the bed.
‘I’ll show you. It’s brilliant! I’m so pleased with myself.’
She rummaged around in one of the suitcases that was lying on the floor, its contents spilling out of it. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Look at that. Isn’t it lovely? Though I say so myself. I found it tossed into a skip, looking like nothing on earth. Horrible pink glossy paint all over it.’
Beth looked at the little chest of drawers. It was about eighteen inches high and must have been a toy of some kind, long ago. Every trace of pink had gone and it was repainted in a shade somewhere between blue and green. Chloë had distressed the paint so that it looked as though the wood was beautifully weathered. There were seven drawers in all, four little ones at the top and three longer ones below those.
‘I’ve put something in each drawer – there’s one for each decade of Leonora’s life – look!’
Beth looked. There were dried flowers, a locket, a wedding ring in a lace hankie, a miniature flower-pot, little pictures of Bertie and Gus, the cats, done in needlepoint; something beautiful and tiny in every single drawer. It was exquisite.
‘It’s amazing, Chloë. You’re brilliant and she’ll be thrilled to bits.’ Beth smiled. ‘I must go and find Rilla,’ she said. ‘And where, by the way, is Philip?’
‘Gone to the village for something or other. He’ll be back later.’
She almost ran
down the stairs to the hall. Efe was walking about outside. She would see him very soon. She was going to ignore Fiona and just concentrate on Efe. Days and days of being with him. A triangle-shaped wedge of sunshine lay across the bottom step, flooding it with light.
*
It seemed to be true, what they all said. The elderly – Leonora refused to think of herself as ‘old’ – needed less and less sleep as time went on. Nowadays, she often found herself wide awake as soon as it was light, which meant that she needed an afternoon nap almost every day. She didn’t know exactly what time it was, but she’d been asleep for a while. Lunch had been rather tiring, with Douggie needing attention and Efe’s wife … Fiona … making a fuss about everything. It was time to get up. Mr Everard … Sean … would be here soon, and she’d promised to talk to him. And before that, she had to go and visit Nanny Mouse.
The sky outside her window looked like four o’clock. Leonora pushed away the sheet that covered her, put her feet to the floor and felt around for her slippers. Slowly she stood up. Every time she lay down, she checked herself as she got up, moved her arms above her head, did a sort of bend of the knees, just to make sure her limbs hadn’t seized up while she wasn’t paying attention. She smiled, satisfied that everything was in working order for yet another evening. It had been a very busy day already. Gwen – darling, reliable, kind Gwen – had been rushing about for weeks, organizing everything.
The party would, she told herself, be wonderful. An occasion for rejoicing. And like a reflex, she felt the pain that was always there, somewhere inside her, whenever she was really happy. It was a mixture of regret that Peter couldn’t be with her, sharing the pleasure and the ache she could still feel when she remembered him. She’d often heard others say that one of the worst things about losing someone you loved was the way they faded from your mind; the way memories of their physical presence disappeared in the end. In her case, it was exactly the opposite. She could still summon up Peter’s smile, the touch of his hands, his mouth on hers. She sighed. Also, somewhere in a place she couldn’t exactly reach with her mind, there was something like a shadow. Why was that? A kind of sick dread? True, when the girls were together, there were quite often fireworks, always had been. From their earliest childhood, they had been at odds, in spite of her best efforts, but surely at the ages of fifty and forty-eight they were old enough to keep their feelings under control? She knew that they loved one another, but there was always some kind of competition going on between them. They were both, she knew, seeking her love and approval, and she tried, she really and truly did try, just as she had ever since they’d been tiny, to be even-handed and fair in her dealings with them. She recognized, though, if she were honest with herself, that Rilla just sometimes rubbed her up the wrong way, irritated her in ways that Gwen never did. How hard it was to be a mother! How difficult to admit, particularly when your children were adults, that they were only people, after all, and naturally you got on better with some than with others. Which, of course, made no difference whatsoever to the love you felt. Nothing could alter that, but how much easier everything would be if love were enough. It wasn’t. She knew that very well. Better than anyone. Still, everything had gone well last night, which was a blessing.
