by Adele Geras
‘That’s quite enough, Efe!’ Gwen turned to face him. The satisfaction she’d felt a moment ago on seeing that her lilies were coming into flower in a mass of white and pink at precisely the right moment vanished at his words. ‘You think of no one but yourself. I don’t know what’s so important to you about this arrangement, but it doesn’t give you the right to …’ She cast about for the right word ‘… belittle my whole life. This is what I do, Efe. It’s what I’ve always done: look after Willow Court and my mother and the paintings, and that’s a lot of work I can promise you, and I never complain because I love it. I love Willow Court and even though she’s difficult at times, I admit, I love my mother. I never noticed you wanting me to travel and avail myself of this freedom when you were living here. It was fine, then, for me to be dancing attendance on you children.’
‘I wouldn’t have minded if you’d had a job away from home. I wouldn’t have minded not living at Willow Court.’ Efe sounded uncertain, and the moment the words were out of his mouth, he shook his head. ‘No, Mum, that didn’t come out right. I’m sorry. Of course I loved living here and I’d probably have minded dreadfully if you hadn’t been taking care of us. I know how amazingly lucky we were, all of us, to have a childhood like that, but still, it’s over now and we’ve all left home and you’ve got years and years when you could do all sorts of wonderfully exciting things instead of …’
‘Boring things like seeing which flowers go with which and how many there are and whether this or that combination will look good in the drawing room and will we need the crystal vases or the ceramic ones? Is that what you mean?’ Gwen was angry now, and felt the blood rising to her face. ‘Making sure that the meals are all organized for my family? Playing hide-and-seek with Douggie because Fiona is exhausted with her pregnancy and you’re still on the phone or the email to your work even though you’re supposed to be enjoying yourself in the country?’
‘Okay, okay. I’m sorry, Mum, I didn’t mean it like that. I do know what you do for us, and I do appreciate it, and so does Fiona and Douggie loves it here. You’re right. It’s just that this deal means a hell of a lot to me.’
Gwen resumed her walk along the path, trying to pay attention to the condition of the dahlias, and checking how many of the roses still had blooms that merited a place in one of the vases. Quarrels with her children always distressed her and it took some moments before her heart was beating normally again. Efe walked beside her silently. She’d never quite worked out exactly what it was her elder son did for a living. He worked for a public relations firm but his role in the company wasn’t clear to her. His working day seemed to involve a great many meals in restaurants and much speaking on a mobile phone. She said, ‘I meant to ask you, actually. What’s in this deal for you? Why are you suddenly so interested in the fate of the paintings?’
Efe frowned. ‘I stand to make money, that’s all. And I need it at the moment, I can tell you. We’ve got ourselves into a bit of financial hot water in the firm, and this would see us safely out of any trouble. Don’t look like that, Mum. It’s too boring to explain, trust me, and it’s nothing for you to worry about. I’m not going to have my face splashed across the tabloids or anything but a bit of cash right now would be bloody useful. To say nothing of the fact that Reuben Stronsky would probably hire us to do the publicity if there were to be such a thing as an Ethan Walsh Museum.’
‘I think it’s a vain hope, darling,’ Gwen said. ‘I do really. You know how obstinate Leonora can be. And on this occasion I actually agree with her. You’d be better off approaching your father. From what he said to me last night, which wasn’t a great deal, he’s quite keen. I think he rather fancies the idea of jetting across the Atlantic every few months. You know what he’s like.’
Efe smiled. ‘Leonora’s never going to listen to Dad, though, is she?’
‘No,’ Gwen said. ‘She isn’t. And she wouldn’t listen to anyone about this, I promise you.’
‘I shan’t stop nagging her,’ Efe said.
Gwen tucked her arm into his as they made their way back to the house. ‘No, darling,’ she said. ‘I never for a moment thought you would.’
*
You could get out of practice, Leonora reflected, and forget just how to talk to very small children. Douggie didn’t come to Willow Court often enough to make him completely familiar to her, and she was, she found, somewhat at a loss when it came to dealing with him. He was a strange child, with passionate demands. Efe had been like that, wanting everything now, this minute and making a great fuss and to-do if he was thwarted. But Efe had been a chatterbox and Douggie was the opposite. There wasn’t a word for someone who kept silent for most of the time. Alex had always been quiet, but thoughtful, and he’d been the least demanding child in the whole world. Now she found herself keeping up an almost constant stream of talk to lighten the silence a little, and she had to make a great effort to keep from using the same tone she adopted when addressing her cats.
‘Here we are, darling,’ she said, as they reached the closed door of the nursery. ‘Let’s go in.’
The curtains had been partly drawn across the window and the afternoon sunshine was no more than a dim glow falling on the dust sheets that lay over every piece of furniture, making particularly black shadows among the folds of white. The dolls’ house loomed against one wall and for a second Leonora thought she saw someone standing near it, leaning over it, touching the place where the roof lay hidden under its protective covering. A woman, wearing something long and white like a nightdress.
Leonora blinked and looked again and there was nothing there. Her heart was beating rather fast and she closed her eyes and took two deep breaths to calm herself. A shadow, that’s all. There’s nothing there at all. I’m getting old and my eyes are not what they were.
Douggie was pulling at her. ‘Doll house? Where’s it? Where?’
‘Here.’ Leonora was surprised to find her voice trembling. ‘We’ll draw the curtains. Isn’t it dark in here? Like night time, nearly. Then we’ll take the cloth off and see if the dolls are at home.’
As she spoke she pulled the curtains back and light spread to every corner of the room. Then she went over to the dolls’ house and lifted the sheet right off it, laying it carefully down on one of the shrouded armchairs. Douggie knelt down on the floor and put his face right up close to the miniature rooms.
‘This is the mother doll,’ said Leonora, bending down to show him, wondering whether she dared risk kneeling next to him. Better not, she thought. All I need is to damage something just before the party. ‘And that’s father, and those are the children. Play gently with them now.’
Douggie hardly played with the peg dolls at all, not in the way that Gwen and Rilla had done. Leonora could remember how they’d discussed the dolls’ actions and feelings and how they’d forever been desperately sick and being nursed back to health or else dressing up to go to parties. Rilla and Gwen had talked and talked about their goings-on. They hadn’t even been able to agree what to call them. Efe and Alex and Chloë had kidnapped them, hung them by their feet from the roof and generally been much rougher than Leonora had liked. She’d had to keep her eyes on the house to make sure nothing was damaged. Beth was the only grandchild who’d played with the dolls in what Leonora considered a proper manner. She respected them and their history and was always asking Leonora to tell her the story of how her father had made the house for her, and how her mother had decorated it and made the very first dolls; the ones that she wasn’t ever allowed to touch but which Leonora sometimes brought out to show her as a special treat.
Douggie just stared. From time to time, his plump little hand would snake into one of the rooms and he’d move a chair or stroke the face of one of the dolls.
‘We should go now, Douggie,’ Leonora said gently, preparing herself for an argument and wondering whether she could tempt him out of the nursery if she promised that they would go and find Bertie the cat. ‘It’s nearly time for your supp
er.’
To her surprise, Douggie nodded and stood up. He leaned over the dolls’ house roof and said, ‘Woof.’
‘That’s right, it’s the roof. Clever boy!’
He ran his hand over the paper painted to look like tiles. ‘Paper woof,’ he said, and smiled up at Leonora. In that instant, she saw Efe in him, in his eyes and the way he looked at her. He had Efe’s enchanting smile. How strange it was, this passing down of pieces of oneself, through the years. The smile wasn’t only Efe’s. It had been her father’s as well and here it was now, on this small child’s face. Just the same. Leonora picked up the sheet and arranged it over the dolls’ house again.
‘I’m covering it all up so that it stays nice and clean,’ she explained as Douggie watched her without saying a word.
‘Night-night, house,’ she heard him whisper as the white cloth fell over the roof. ‘Night-night.’
*
Rilla woke up late on Friday morning, after a night disturbed by dreams, and then spent a full half-hour trying on one garment after another in front of the mirror, tossing the rejects on to the bed in disgust like any teenager getting ready for a first date.
The pink blouse was too pink and looked tarty. The black was unnecessarily funereal for a warm summer morning. Should she wear a skirt? Or trousers? The main thing was to look stunning while giving the impression that she hadn’t taken the least little bit of trouble with her outfit, that this was the way she looked naturally, every single day.
Rilla peered at herself, feeling fat and hot. Who are you kidding, she told herself. Who says Sean’s even going to notice you? He’s probably filming something somewhere, and middle-aged women with red faces from making too much effort are the last thing on his mind.
Everything was going too fast. I’m not used to it, Rilla thought. I’m surely too old for this love-at-first-sight nonsense that I used to go in for. I’m supposed to think and consider and turn things over in my mind, weigh the pros and cons and boring stuff like that. It occurred to her that perhaps she’d had a bit too much wine last night and that what she’d felt out on the terrace was nothing but an illusion. It wasn’t, though. Thinking about Sean, about seeing him again, was definitely producing all kinds of suspiciously love-at-first-sightish feelings and fretting about clothes was part of it.
Also, she was getting hungrier and hungrier and every bit of breakfast would have been cleared away if she didn’t get a move on. She flung on the very first thing she’d tried, a loose brown crêpe blouse with a lovely swing to the fabric and floppy-legged trousers in a fabric patterned with an abstract print of autumn colours. Amber earrings. Hair down. Rilla decided that this was probably as good as it was going to get and made her way downstairs in search of food.
After she’d eaten, she quite unashamedly went in search of Sean. The idea was to come across him as though by accident, and at first Rilla thought it wasn’t going to work, but then she heard the crew talking in the drawing room. She left the house by the front door and walked nonchalantly round to the terrace. There, she looked through the windows at the cameraman and at Sean overseeing the filming of some of Ethan Walsh’s pictures, and pretended to be surprised. She didn’t have to pretend to look delighted, because her heart gave a little jump when he signalled to her to come in and watch the filming.
‘I won’t be long,’ he said, as she sat down on a chair that had been pushed out of the way.
‘I don’t mind waiting,’ Rilla said, and prepared to enjoy gazing at Sean as he directed operations. She marvelled at the fact that it wasn’t just the young who could suddenly develop a passionate interest in whatever it was their boyfriends were involved in.
She looked at the Walsh paintings on the wall opposite her chair and all at once they became the most absorbing pictures she’d ever seen. She’d lived in his house for years and years, and now realized she hadn’t properly appreciated them before, perhaps because she’d never really looked. She tried to avert her eyes from pictures of the lake, but this room was full of them.
They’re only pictures, she told herself, staring down at her hands. It’s not the real lake. You can look at the swans. Just raise your eyes and look at the swans. Rilla took a deep breath and concentrated on the painting directly in front of her. Two swans, half-hidden by willow leaves, and in the foreground the path that wound round the edge of the water, twisted into an s-shape and fading up into the top right-hand corner. Shimmering green and shadows and white wings and long necks appeared as though from behind a curtain of leaves. It’s beautiful, Rilla thought, and I hate it. I can’t look at it.
She searched the wall for something else to concentrate on. I’m not going to be driven out by a picture. I want to stay. She found herself looking at a small canvas, which showed someone – it must be Nanny Mouse – with her back to the artist, darning something by the light of a lamp. You had to hand it to Ethan Walsh, she thought. No one she’d ever seen painted light in quite the same way. It was so golden and comforting, this lamplight, that you could practically warm your hands at it. It seemed to be shining out of the picture, and the shadows in the background became filled with a sort of hushed menace, as though the tranquillity of the scene were about to be broken at any minute.
I’m letting my imagination run away with me, she said to herself. That’ll teach me to try and be serious. She turned her mind to Sean. It was all very well sitting about here, but how long could she decently wait for him to be finished? She was just considering what to do when he came over to her chair and knelt down beside her.
‘It’s good of you to wait,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ask you whether you’d come with me to Nanny Mouse’s this afternoon? Are you busy?’
‘No, of course not. I’d love to. It’s ages since I’ve seen her and I meant to go myself.’
‘Terrific.’ He stood up and pushed his hair back from his forehead in a gesture that made him look much younger. He smiled at Rilla. ‘I’ve got some outdoor stuff to do now, but I’ll see you later, I’m sure.’
‘Yes,’ said Rilla. She watched him follow his crew out of the drawing room, which suddenly seemed to be filled with an almost echoing silence. She went to the window and saw the men disappearing down into the wild garden. They were on their way to the lake and Rilla turned abruptly away from the window. She found herself all at once on the edge of tears, and feeling much colder than she should have done considering how warm it was. I won’t think about the lake. I won’t think about the past at all, she told herself. I refuse. I’m going to be happy. She went into the hall and wondered how to kill the time between now and tea-time.
*
The armchairs in Nanny Mouse’s cottage seemed small even though they weren’t really, Rilla decided. She wasn’t at all keen on the sage-green Dralon pretending to be velvet and the button-backs, which looked very pretty but weren’t a bit comfortable. The refreshments provided by Miss Lardner for Sean and herself were more suited to a dolls’ tea-party or a teddy-bears’ picnic or something: fondant fancies in pastel colours and Earl Grey tea, which should have been called Pale Grey, for that was its colour. The cups were pretty, but they, too, had something of the miniature about them, with their delicate handles and faded pattern of pale pink roses.
I don’t care, Rilla thought, biting into an achingly sweet square of iced sponge. She was happy simply to sit here in Sean’s company, happy that he’d asked her to join him, happy that what Chloë had whispered to her at lunchtime (he really fancies you, Rilla. I can tell …) might actually be true. She was reluctant at this stage to admit, even to herself, how attracted she was to him, but all the evidence was there and she considered it now, while Sean was gently speaking to Nanny Mouse.
When he stood within touching distance, she found herself short of breath. When he wasn’t anywhere to be seen, she looked for him. When she was alone, she indulged in fantasies she’d thought were the exclusive province of the under-twenties. When she was with other people, her mind wandered. When she was near him, s
he felt as though parts of her were at melting point, and when she walked beside him she forgot all about her feet and could have walked for hours and hours and followed wherever he wanted her to go.
Oh, guilty as charged, m’lud, Rilla thought. I’ve got it bad. I’ve got it dreadful and what if nothing comes of it? Can I take the hurt? This was a sobering thought that made her put down the teacup she was holding. She helped herself to another fondant fancy, a mauve one, while she considered the ghastly possibility that Chloë was wrong and that the signals she’d been reading since last night were just … nothing. Only Sean being charming and nothing to do with liking her in particular. What if he was like that to every woman he met? The truth is, she told herself, you hardly know him and you’re behaving like a teenager. And besides, she thought, what about Ivan? Thinking of him, trying to imagine him back in London, was like peering at something very far away. In her present state she could hardly remember what it was about him that she’d liked, and the moment he came into her mind, he slipped out again as though he was of no consequence whatsoever. I’ll deal with all that stuff, she thought, when I have to, and I may never have to.
Rilla looked round at all Nanny Mouse’s photographs. Christening ceremonies were well represented on her mantelpiece. There I am, she thought, in Leonora’s arms, and that must be Leonora herself with Maude and Ethan Walsh. One image, framed and hanging on the wall, caught her attention. It’s Daddy, she thought, with Gwen in his arms at her christening. She was a vision cocooned in white lace. Daddy looked so handsome. Rilla had never seen her father, but from the photos that she’d been looking at for most of her life, he did have a certain foxlike charm. It was a black-and-white photograph, of course, so that you couldn’t see his hair, but she knew it had been reddish because hers was, and everyone had told her from her earliest days that she resembled him. She’d always envied Gwen her dark hair and uncomplicated colouring. Most people she knew thought that being a redhead was something of a mixed blessing, and although Rilla was used to her own auburn curls by now, it had caused her some problems when she was younger. Everyone expected her to be short-tempered.
