Facing the Light

by Adele Geras

  Sean didn’t say a word. He’s waiting, Rilla thought, for me to say something else. To explain. She opened her handbag, looking for another cigarette. She said, ‘D’you mind if I have another? Only it’s so firmly banned indoors that I feel I have to puff away like a chimney the minute I step over the threshold.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘I only ever smoke about twice a year, but I’ll have one now, if you can spare one.’

  Rilla shook two cigarettes out of the packet and held one out to Sean. She struck a match and he took hold of her wrist as the flame came close. He breathed in, then released her hand, which he’d held on to for a heartbeat longer than was strictly necessary. She lit her own cigarette, thinking, how many years has it been since I felt that small thrill? And am I entitled to be feeling any sort of thrill? It’s the night, and the roses and the moonlight and all the bloody clichés are getting to me, that’s all. She said, ‘I ought to explain, oughtn’t I? Why I don’t usually come here?’

  ‘You mustn’t feel you have to.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind.’ She looked at him again. ‘You’re easy to talk to. You listen.’ She paused and looked at her shoes.

  ‘My son, Mark, drowned in the lake down there. Twenty years ago. He’d be about Alex’s age if he’d lived. He was five when he died. So little. It was an accident, of course, but it’s hard to live with, still. I manage to put it to the back of my mind when I’m in London. Most of the time, anyway, but when I’m here … well. The place is haunted, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s difficult to know what to say, Rilla,’ Sean said quietly. ‘Thank you for telling me, and I’m so sorry. I think you’re very brave to come back for an occasion like this. Very brave.’

  ‘Not really,’ Rilla said, grateful that he hadn’t moved, hadn’t tried to comfort her by putting his arm around her or (and other men had done this on a couple of occasions) kissing her, as though their attentions would somehow make her feel better about everything, including Mark. As though a quick screw with them would be so fabulous that all thoughts of the death of her child would simply fly out of her head. She blinked back the tears that had suddenly filled her eyes. Oh, God, no, she thought. Surely I must be all cried out by now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, fumbling in her bag for a tissue. ‘I can’t help it. You’d think that after all these years, I’d have found some self-control somewhere …’

  Sean interrupted. ‘You’ve nothing to reproach yourself with, Rilla.’

  Rilla smiled and dabbed at her eyes. ‘I think it’s your doing really. I’m not used to having such a sympathetic listener. I’m all right now. Honestly.’

  ‘Any time. Even if it might mean you bursting into tears.’

  Rilla laughed. ‘Thank you. It’s been lovely talking to you, but I think I should go in now.’

  ‘I suppose you’re right. It’s a little late and there’s certainly going to be a lot going on tomorrow.’

  Rilla stood up. ‘Fireworks from dawn onwards, I shouldn’t wonder, while Leonora hits Efe about the head with his own proposal. But please don’t feel you have to come in if you want to stay out here.’

  ‘No, that’s all right. I’ll call it a night as well.’

  They walked together to the door of the drawing room and went in. This is the second time he’s come into the house with me, Rilla thought. She was surprised to realize that she found his presence at her elbow comforting; that she wanted him to be there. They walked into the hall, and made their way upstairs, just like an elderly married couple going slowly up to bed together. Oh, grow up, Rilla Frederick, she said to herself. What planet are you on?

  *

  He should have done as Rilla suggested and stayed outside. Here he was in his bedroom and it wasn’t even midnight yet. Sean sat on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through his hair and sighed. He’d never felt less like sleep in his life, and wondered why Rilla should have had this effect on him. In his job, beautiful women were part of the landscape. But Rilla was different. Rilla’s warm, he said to himself. Her flesh would be warm and yielding and comforting and she’d find it easy to laugh, too, even though there was something sad behind her eyes, which was not at all surprising.

  Sean hadn’t been flattering her when he’d told her of his admiration for her work. She was rather a good actor, with a screen presence that was both sexy and unthreatening, almost cosy. He wondered why she hadn’t been doing so much lately. He knew that for women no longer in their first youth, there were fewer and fewer parts on screen and in the live theatre, but still. Rilla was not like other people. She had something.

  He looked into the mirror. What conceit made him think that someone like Rilla would be at all interested in him? His figure hadn’t changed much since he was eighteen or so, and from behind, in a good light, he looked like a tall, thin young man, but there was the pepper-and-salt hair and the thin features and the skin which had seen more sun than was good for it. Weather-beaten if you were being generous and wrinkled if you weren’t. He looked like a poor man’s version of Jeremy Irons.

  It had been so long since he’d made a play for anyone. Tanya, his ex-wife, once accused him of being emotionally illiterate, though how she managed to find out anything at all about him when she was busy in so many extramarital beds, he had no idea. But all that was in the distant past, and if anyone had asked him, Sean would have said his life was full and rewarding. Now he realized how lonely he’d been, and for how long.

  He lay back on the bed and chided himself for being a fool. You’re here to do a job. Fancying one of the daughters of the house isn’t part of your brief. Apart from anything else, he thought, time is so short. You’ll be away from here on Monday. Sean was uncomfortably aware that he’d never been a fast worker where women were concerned. He sighed. Do some work, he told himself. That’ll get your mind off her.

  He went to the table that Leonora had kindly provided for him. She’d smiled and said, ‘So much more use to you than a dressing-table. There’s a mirror in the wardrobe door after all.’

  And she was right, of course. He’d spread his papers all over the surface and now went to find the shooting schedule for tomorrow. Above the table, there was a very small Walsh, which pleased him whenever he looked at it, a pastel drawing of Leonora aged about five, he supposed. She was facing directly out of the frame, peeping from behind the skirts of … who could it be? Nanny Mouse? No, Nanny Mouse would never have worn a skirt in such a delicate fabric. You couldn’t tell much, really, from seeing only the lower half of the body. Perhaps it was her mother, Maude Walsh.

  Sean sat down and stared at the picture. Something occurred to him and he shuffled the papers on his desk till he found what he was looking for – an inventory of all the pictures hanging at Willow Court. He’d spent hours subdividing the list into categories such as landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and so forth. He turned to the list of portraits and ran his finger down the column of titles. It couldn’t be true, but it was. Amongst the fifteen portraits there were only two depicting Maude, and she was hidden in both. He knew all the paintings so well, had studied them for so long, that merely seeing their titles typed on a page brought them into his mind complete in every detail. One was a domestic interior in which Maude’s figure was bent over some kind of needlework, her face turned away. The lamp on the table was the focus of the artist’s attention.

  In the other, she was walking down a path bordered with lavender bushes, which echoed the colour of her parasol. This gorgeous accessory made a most beautiful composition, like another flower growing near the centre of the canvas, but it hid the face from view completely. All the artist’s skill had been devoted to depicting the lace of the glove on Maude’s one visible hand and the silky texture of her skirt. How could that be? What sort of relationship did the artist have with his wife which prevented him from ever attempting a likeness? Ethan’s portraits of his child and of Nanny Mouse were delicate and skilful and his self-portraits astonishing. There were several of t
hese, in which Ethan could be seen glaring out of the picture, his eyes full of something Sean couldn’t quite put his finger on. Was it unkindness? Cruelty? Why would someone paint himself so unflatteringly? Maybe it’s me, he thought. Maybe everyone else sees a prosperous, handsome man with a firm character. Sean thought there was something chilly about the eyes; something off-putting. Young Efe had inherited the same look, and both he and Leonora had Ethan Walsh’s green-blue eyes.

  Maude, Sean supposed, was the one who’d passed down to Rilla her creamy skin, reddish hair and those hazel eyes with flecks of gold in them. I’ll ask Leonora about her mother’s looks tomorrow, he decided. He went over to the window and looked out at the black lawns. Someone slipped around the side of the house just too quickly for Sean to see more than a shadow, moving. He shivered. There was nothing to be afraid of at all, but still, who was it creeping round at dead of night? Drawing the curtains closed, he turned away from the window and started to undress.

  *

  Mark was calling her. Rilla felt herself coming up and up through fathoms of darkness, waking suddenly with everything in the room around her misty and her body cold with terror. I’m dreaming, she thought. It’s a ghastly dream brought on by too much cheese at dinner. He still filled her dreams but silently, moving through the landscapes of her mind as she slept like a ghost, which, Rilla thought, was exactly what he was now. A beloved little ghost. She clung to her sleep whenever Mark appeared, knowing somehow even as the dream was unfolding that it was a dream and would vanish the moment she opened her eyes. Sometimes, afterwards, long after she was properly awake, she would lie very still in bed, willing the dream to come back as though it were a video in her head that could somehow be switched on again through the force of her love, her longing.

  She sat up in bed, suddenly fearful. There it was again, that crying and a voice calling Mummy, Mummy. She hadn’t imagined it. She pushed back the bedclothes and ran to the door and opened it. The blood-red carpet of the corridor stretched out silently in front of her. She blinked. She’d forgotten, totally forgotten about little Douggie. Of course, it was him crying for Fiona. Not Mark. Not even the ghost of Mark. Rilla closed the door and sat on the edge of her bed. Don’t dare cry, she said to herself. Your eyes will hurt tomorrow and you’ll look like death warmed up. She reached over to her handbag and scrabbled around for the chocolate she knew was there somewhere. Thank God for small comforts, she thought, closing her eyes and leaning back against the pillows. Would she sleep again? Two tears slipped out from under her eyelids and she brushed them away.

  Friday, August 23rd, 2002

  Voices woke Beth. Men’s voices calling, shouting out. Some big vehicle turning on the gravel of the drive. Hammering. She couldn’t think what the noise was about and then she remembered hearing Gwen telling Efe that the lighting for the marquee was being delivered this morning and she realized that that was what they must be doing: working away inside the enormous greenish space, getting all the electrical stuff in and fixed up before the flowers and decorations arrived.

  She got out of bed and went to the window to see what was happening. It was going to be another hot day, and she was now wide awake. It wasn’t worth going back to sleep again, so she put on her dressing-gown and went to have a shower.

  When she returned to her bedroom, she dressed in blue jeans, a white T-shirt and white trainers. There was a photograph on the wall showing her and Efe and Alex as children and she peered at it as she brushed her hair and pulled it into a pony tail. Why had Leonora or Gwen or whoever it was decided that this photo was worth mounting and framing? It looked rather dull to her – Efe and Alex in shorts, with their eyes crinkled against the sun, and a Beth she could hardly recognize, also in shorts but with a puffy-sleeved blouse and her hair in bunches. Where, she wondered, were we standing? She looked for clues and saw the corner of the gazebo, and the poppies hiding her shoes from view. We must have been in the wild bit of the garden. Probably on our way to play jungles, or explorers or something. Efe, she thought, could make whole worlds appear as if by magic. He just had to tell us, me and Alex, and we believed him. We believed every word he said. She went up to the glass and traced her finger over the small pale circle of his face. The young Beth was staring up at him and the older Beth smiled. Nothing had changed.

  Breakfast at Willow Court used to be a formal meal. Almost Beth’s first memory of the house, of her life with Rilla as her new mother, was Leonora, who didn’t like being called Gran or Granny, telling her where she must sit, and how to slice the top neatly off her boiled egg. She even remembered the egg-cup, which was made of china and had a pair of feet in red and white spotted shoes to balance it on the plate. Beth was fascinated by it. It was one of a set of children’s crockery in which all the cups had been given feet and different sorts of shoe. Efe’s were brown and laced-up and Alex had green boots on his.

  Nowadays, when the house was full of visitors, everyone came downstairs when they felt like it and helped themselves in the kitchen to whatever they wanted and took it through to the dining room. Leonora herself was the only fixed point. She was always there in her usual place, at eight o’clock sharp every single day, eating her usual meal of a grapefruit, peeled and chopped into small pieces and sprinkled with a little sugar, followed by two small slices of wholewheat toast spread with butter and marmalade. Margarine reminded her of the war, she told Beth once, and though Gwen and James listened to the advertisements promising them lower cholesterol and a multitude of health benefits and went in for modern spreads and pastes, she wouldn’t let the tasteless greasy stuff pass her lips. She always drank Earl Grey tea from a translucent china cup and saucer decorated with pale pink and blue flowers.

  Beth took her mug of coffee and a banana into the dining room. It was a quarter past eight and there was no sign of anyone else. Gus, the laziest cat in the world, was in his usual place on the window-seat and she stroked him on her way to the table. He looked up briefly, made a purring noise deep in his throat and closed his eyes again. Beth sat down and peeled the fruit and ate it slowly. Where was Leonora? Was it possible that she’d finished already? Had her breakfast and gone out somewhere? Gwen had probably got up hours ago and started on one of the thousand things she claimed to have to do before the party. James, she knew, was out in the garden overseeing the electricians.

  She sat by herself in the dining room and stared at the banana skin on her plate, feeling something like a small whisper of worry in the back of her mind. Efe’s announcement last night had obviously shocked Leonora. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she was … no, of course not, Beth, don’t be so bloody alarmist. She shook her head to rid it of even the smallest vestige of the possibility that Leonora might have suffered a fatal heart attack.

  She picked up her dishes, took them through to the kitchen and washed them up. I’ll go into the garden, she decided, and see what they’re doing in the marquee. And maybe see Efe, go on, admit it. Maybe he’ll be there. Surely Leonora’s all right.

  She’d almost stepped over the threshold into the warm sunlight that was beginning to filter through early mist, when her footsteps took her to the stairs instead and she found herself halfway up them before she knew it. I’ll just go and check on her, she thought, and then I’ll go out. She’s never late for breakfast. Never ever.

  At the top of the stairs, she paused. Douggie, still in his pyjamas, was outside the nursery with his hand on the doorknob. Neither Fiona nor Efe were anywhere to be seen, and Leonora, Beth knew, would have a fit if a toddler were to go into the nursery all by himself. He probably wanted to play with the dolls’ house, but someone should have made it clear to him that it wasn’t allowed.

  Beth hesitated. She wasn’t quite sure how she felt about Douggie. On the one hand she loved him because he was a part of Efe, but he was also a constant reminder of Efe’s marriage, his relationship with his wife. Now that Fiona was pregnant again, Beth found herself thinking more than usual about the two of them together and had to make an
effort to turn her thoughts to something else. Little Douggie didn’t resemble Efe in the slightest, but seemed a quiet, grave sort of child, not given to wildness or much noise. As she approached him, he smiled tentatively and said, ‘Going in now.’

  Beth went up to him and knelt at his side. She removed his hand from the doorknob.

  ‘No, darling,’ she said as gently as she could. ‘Not in there. It’s not allowed. Come with me and I’ll take you back to your mummy.’

  ‘Don’t want Mummy,’ he said firmly and looked as though he might be going to cry. ‘Want dolly house.’

  ‘No one’s allowed in there without Leonora,’ Beth explained, wondering briefly whether Douggie knew who she meant. Perhaps Fiona had given the child’s great-grandmother another name altogether. Leonora was a bit of a mouthful for such a baby, she thought, before remembering that she and Efe and Alex and Chloë had all managed it perfectly well.

  Just as she was hesitating about whether or not to knock on the door of Efe and Fiona’s bedroom, it opened and Fiona herself came out, looking for her son.

  ‘There you are, Douggie!’ she said. ‘Naughty boy. I’ve said, haven’t I, that you mustn’t go wandering all over the house without me. I’m sorry, Beth. He hasn’t been worrying you, has he?’

  ‘Not at all,’ Beth said. ‘It’s fine. I was just going to bring him back.’

  ‘Thanks so much.’ Fiona made an effort to smile, but Beth was surprised at how washed-out and bedraggled she looked. She took Douggie’s hand and pulled him to her. ‘Come on now, lovey. Breakfast time soon, isn’t it?’

  Douggie could be heard complaining; whining that he wanted to see the dolls’ house, but then Fiona closed the door behind them, and silence spread through the corridor. She was looking, in Beth’s opinion, distinctly queasy. It must be early morning sickness. Whenever she thought about the new baby, it felt to Beth as though heavy weights had been attached to her heart. At one time it had been possible to imagine Efe leaving Fiona but every single thing that had happened to him lately (the engagement, the wedding, Douggie’s birth, now this pregnancy) was like another steel ribbon thrown around him and Fiona, binding them together. I won’t even think about this now, Beth decided, and made her way to Leonora’s bedroom.