Facing the Light

by Adele Geras

  ‘Maude, my dear,’ he said in a voice that was icy and soft at the same time, ‘what paper is this? Have you shown it to me?’

  ‘No, dear,’ her mother answered. ‘I painted some paper to decorate the dolls’ house roof. It’s of no consequence, really.’

  ‘A waste of your time, I’d have thought. You could have used some off-cuts from old wallpaper rolls, couldn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, but this was a special treat for Leonora’s birthday. I enjoyed painting the tiles.’

  ‘They’re beautiful, Daddy, really,’ Leonora cried, hoping that she could divert the force of her father’s displeasure away from Mummy. ‘I love them. The dolls’ house looks so much nicer now. Thank you, Mummy!’

  She left her place and ran round the table to her mother’s chair. She flung both arms round her neck and hugged her. Mummy’s body, she thought, is stiff and trembly at the same time.

  ‘Nanny, please take Leonora away now,’ Daddy stood up. ‘This scene has gone on long enough.’

  He left the room, and Leonora could hear the sound of his footsteps on the marble floor of the hall and then going up the stairs.

  ‘I love you, Mummy!’ Leonora cried, not sure what was happening, not knowing what anyone had done wrong, nor why everything felt so horrible this morning.

  ‘And I love you, my baby,’ said Maude and burst into tears. Leonora didn’t know what to do, or what to say.

  ‘Go to your room, Leonora,’ Nanny Mouse said. ‘And wait for me. Your mummy will be quite all right. I shall look after her. Don’t worry, dear.’

  *

  Leonora made her way slowly to the nursery, wanting to scream with rage and weep with anguish, both at the same time. Stupid, stupid Nanny Mouse, she thought, kicking with the toe of her foot against every step of the staircase. How can she tell me not to worry? My mummy’s sad and I don’t know why. They won’t tell me. She slammed the nursery door behind her and flung herself on to the bed to wait for Nanny Mouse. Why, she wondered, does Daddy want me to be out of the house? What is he going to do?

  *

  Leonora came in from outside, and stood in the hall. Nanny Mouse had stopped in the drive to talk to Mrs Page, who was on her way to the village, and she’d told Leonora to run on ahead. Daddy and Mummy were quarrelling. She could hear loud, angry voices and stood quite still to listen, even though she knew she wasn’t supposed to. Mummy was screaming. She usually spoke quietly, and to think she could shriek like that made Leonora feel sick and frightened. She knew at once that Daddy and Mummy wouldn’t want her to hear what they were saying, so she shrank against the wall, but she didn’t run away. In spite of herself, a longing to know, a desire to understand for the very first time exactly what it was that was troubling her mother, kept her standing there, trembling, with her mouth half-open and her eyes wide. They were in the drawing room, and she could hear almost every word.

  ‘No more. I utterly refuse. And if you lay one more finger on me, I swear I’ll tell. And then what would your fine friends in London think of the wonderful Ethan Walsh? Will they still come here and drink your gin and admire your pictures …’

  Then there came a laugh from Maude that chilled Leonora’s blood: shrill, horrible, not really laughter at all, but a sound that set her teeth on edge and made her wince. ‘… well, I’ve had enough, that’s all. The worm is turning, and that’s what I am. A worm, and I’ve been in the dark long enough, and now everything will change. I’m warning you, Ethan. I’m tired of being the one you take everything out on. Tired of it.’

  Her mother’s voice faded to a whisper and Leonora didn’t catch the next murmured remarks. She could hear her father’s voice, too, but not what he was saying. Could it be that he was calming Mummy down? Making her feel better? Leonora was just beginning to feel more normal, when she heard her father say, ‘I don’t want to hear any of this again, d’you understand? If I ever discover that you’ve told anyone, anyone at all, then you’ll be very sorry. Very sorry indeed. And remember. I, too, can speak. I can have Doctor Mannering up here in twenty minutes and tell him that my poor dear wife has gone insane. It’s well known all over the country that your health is what they call “delicate”. You’d be in the asylum within the hour. And I shan’t hesitate. D’you understand? Hesitation is not in my nature. Are we agreed?’

  Tears started from Leonora’s eyes, and she tiptoed as quietly as she could to hide behind the curtain near the hall window before her parents came out of the drawing room and caught her. Too late! There was Daddy, striding across the marble tiles, and he’d seen her. She knew he had. She closed her eyes, sure that something dreadful was going to happen. She didn’t understand everything she’d heard but she knew this – Daddy made Mummy cry by hitting her, and he was going to call the doctor and pretend that she was mad if she didn’t do exactly what he said. That was cruel, and terrible. Surely Daddy, who could sometimes be so kind and amusing and friendly, wouldn’t behave like a monster in a fairy tale? Surely he wouldn’t.

  ‘Come here at once, Leonora,’ he said to her. She went to him and he gripped her arms. ‘What are you doing? How long have you been in the hall?’

  ‘I’ve only just come in, really. We’ve been in the village, and then we went for ever such a nice walk …’ Leonora knew that she had to keep talking, as though she’d really just come in and hadn’t overheard anything. He’d be so angry if he thought she’d listened to him and Mummy having an argument. She went on babbling, the words spilling out of her mouth and, gradually, her father’s hold on her arms relaxed.

  ‘Go to the nursery, Leonora. I have work to do now.’

  He went up the stairs two at a time. Leonora listened hard and heard the door of the Studio slam shut. She let out a breath that she felt she’d been holding for ages. Now that he’d gone, she wanted to run to Mummy and make sure she was all right, but Nanny Mouse came into the hall just then and she couldn’t. Nanny Mouse said, ‘What’s the matter, child? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’

  ‘Mummy and Daddy were quarrelling. It was horrid. He was saying terrible things. He said …’

  Nanny Mouse interrupted her. ‘Don’t say a word, dear. Don’t you remember what I told you? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. All this grown-up arguing is none of our business.’

  ‘When did you tell me? When did you say that what I don’t know can’t hurt me?’

  They were walking up the stairs. Nanny Mouse answered, ‘Why, the night you came and woke me with stories of blood on your poor mother’s face.’

  ‘But you said it was a dream! You did, you did.’

  Nanny Mouse sighed, and took her hat off and turned it round and round in her hand. She was looking down at the carpet outside the nursery and blushed.

  ‘Yes, I’m so sorry, dear. I did say that, and it was very naughty of me, but I was only trying to make you feel less frightened, that’s all. I shouldn’t have done it, I know, but it’s difficult to know what to do for the best sometimes. There are so many secrets in this house. It’s very difficult. Never mind, you just stay in the nursery for now, till bedtime. I’ll bring your supper up for you tonight. You just keep out of the way for now. It’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

  Nanny Mouse made her way downstairs again. Leonora listened for a while, and there was nothing but total silence hanging over the whole of Willow Court. She went into the nursery and stood by the window for a long time, not moving. Yes, she thought. That’s right. The house is full of secrets, but what I don’t know can’t hurt me. It isn’t time for bed yet. Everyone is busy doing something somewhere else. I do know some things, but I must pretend I don’t. I must pretend that my daddy is a good daddy who loves my mummy and not someone who shouts at her and makes her cry and makes her cheek bleed and tells her she’s mad. I must pretend that what I saw was only a dream, but I know it wasn’t. I want to be far away, out of the front door and away from Willow Court, where all these secrets live that I don’t want to know. The lake. I’ll go down to the l
ake.

  Leonora looked out of the window. The shadows of trees were black on the lawn and every rose was edged with gold. What I don’t know can’t hurt me. She said it over and over again, as though it were a magic spell that would keep her safe. What I don’t know can’t hurt me.

  ———

  Gwen’s tea had gone cold and she didn’t have the energy to get up and make more. Rilla was busy whipping cream for the strawberry shortcakes. Mary wasn’t due back in the kitchen for another couple of hours and had reacted rather better than Gwen had expected to the news that Rilla wanted to be in charge of dessert for tonight. The plan had been for a fresh fruit salad and cream, but when Rilla said, ‘This’ll save you all that cutting and chopping, won’t it?’ there wasn’t much Mary could do but agree.

  Gwen had hulled the strawberries and cut them into neater slices than Rilla herself would have done. She was, in Gwen’s opinion, an inspired rather than a careful cook, and she did go in for rather a lot of tasting of anything she happened to be mixing in bowls, but still, Gwen felt herself relaxing more than she had for a long time in the kitchen, warm from the sun coming in at the window. The back door was open; she could hear Douggie and Fiona in the Peter Rabbit garden and hoped, selfishly, that they’d stay away for a while and let her enjoy these few minutes, which took her back to when she and Rilla were little girls allowed to help make cakes as a special treat.

  She said, ‘Chloë’s tree’s worked out rather better than I thought. I was a bit worried that it would all be hideously modern and not look right in the hall, but it’ll be lovely, won’t it?’

  Rilla nodded absently. She wasn’t really listening, being absorbed in spreading the shortbread with cream, arranging strawberry slices in concentric circles on the lustrous white and admiring her own handiwork. She said, ‘Mmm. Lovely.’

  ‘You’re miles away. Honestly, I don’t know how you do it.’

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Be so relaxed about everything. I can see you’ve not even given a thought to what Philip and Chloë might be uncovering up there in the nursery.’

  ‘That’s not true, actually. I have thought about it, but I’ve decided that it might be nothing at all. A shopping list or something,’ Rilla said.

  ‘It didn’t look remotely like any list I’ve ever seen. You don’t seem to be in the least worried.’

  ‘I’ve stopped worrying because I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be worried about. Your problem is, Gwen, that you go searching out the difficulties instead of waiting for them actually to happen.’ She was now eating leftover slices of strawberry.

  ‘Well, one of us has to be prepared,’ said Gwen. ‘And you seem to be in a sort of private cloud-cuckoo land.’

  Rilla smiled enigmatically. ‘I’d forget all about it, you know, until you have to deal with it. And in any case, it would have to be quite something to ruin the party, surely?’

  Gwen frowned. ‘I give up, I do really. You don’t even admit to the possibility of a catastrophe.’

  Rilla looked at her sister. ‘My idea of what constitutes a catastrophe is a bit different from yours. The cancellation of a party doesn’t come anywhere near it, I promise you.’

  ‘Oh, God, Rilla, I’m sorry!’ Gwen was near tears. ‘I don’t know what I’m saying any more. Of course I didn’t mean. Don’t think I …’

  ‘It’s okay, Gwen. Don’t start crying, please. That’s all we need.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Really I am. And I know it’s nothing like your feelings, but we haven’t forgotten Mark’s death either. You don’t ever get over something like that, do you? I feel guilty, too, for not talking to you about it enough. I know you said at the time you didn’t want to discuss it, but I should have persisted, shouldn’t I? I couldn’t believe it when you said it wasn’t our fault, mine and Mother’s. You’d left Mark in our care after all. If I’d been in your position, I’d never have spoken to us again.’

  ‘I didn’t think it was your fault, Gwen. I still don’t. Either of you. I should never have left him. My fault, the whole thing. And how could I not have spoken to you? You and Mother and Beth were all I had in the world. I couldn’t have managed without you.’

  Gwen was silent, remembering the funeral. A grey March day and the wind like a knife and she and Leonora holding Rilla up, one on each side of her, their arms linked through hers as the tiny white coffin was lowered into the hard earth and Rilla, pale and breathless with grief, dazed and full of pills. If you were close enough to her, and Gwen was, you could feel her whole body trembling. The trees were just beginning to come into leaf, and yet that day Gwen felt that spring, proper spring, with warmth and sunshine and new flowers, was a complete impossibility. She wiped a tear away while Rilla was moving the plates into the larder.

  ‘Did you notice’, Rilla said as she came back into the kitchen, ‘how great that tree of Chloë’s is? She’s really talented, you know.’

  ‘That’s what I was saying before,’ Gwen laughed. ‘That’s precisely what I was saying while you were doing the strawberries, only you weren’t listening. I thought it would be a disaster, and I was wrong.’

  ‘You ought to tell her. She’d love it if you admired it.’

  ‘Would she? I find it so hard to talk to her, Rilla. You’ve no idea how envious I am of the way you and Beth seem to just, you know, chat like real friends. Chloë hates me.’

  ‘What rubbish! You shouldn’t think that, Gwen, honestly. She’s young, that’s all. You ought to try pretending that she’s not your daughter but some stranger who’s just wandered into your house. A guest.’

  ‘Would that work? Worth trying, I suppose. She’s so prickly, though. And all sorts of things she does irritate me, like the way she dresses, for instance. You don’t know how lucky you are. Beth’s so elegant and together. Chloë’s all over the place.’

  ‘Speaking as someone who’s often just as all over the place as she is, it doesn’t matter a bit, Gwen. There’s all sorts of other things that are more important, and if you let stuff like that get you down you’ll never be happy. Never. Now come on, enough of all this. Let’s go and find James and see how the marquee’s coming on. It’s going to be the best party, whatever they’re in the process of finding up in the nursery.’

  Gwen followed Rilla out of the back door, and shut it carefully behind her. I wish, she thought, that I shared her optimism. There were altogether too many unknowns in the situation for Gwen to feel easy in her mind.

  *

  ‘There was a time,’ Leonora said, addressing Sean’s profile as he drove, ‘and not so very long ago either, when I would have scorned the idea of going down to Lodge Cottage in a car. I used to run up and down the drive as a girl and think nothing of it, and it’s really only in the last couple of years I’ve become lazy.’

  ‘I was born lazy,’ said Sean, ‘so it suits me to take the car for even the shortest of distances. The crew have gone down already, so we should be all set to film when we get there.’

  ‘Miss Lardner will want to give us a cup of tea,’ Leonora said. She hoped that she was sounding normal. She felt as though an earthquake had taken place inside her, and it surprised her that Sean couldn’t see it. She felt confused, mystified, and uncertain of what she remembered. Something – she was not sure what it was – hovered at the edge of her memory, just out of reach. She had dressed most carefully for the filming in a silk dress of a particularly deep raspberry pink that flattered her skin, with pearl studs in her ears and her pearl necklace. It was becoming harder and harder to disguise things with make-up and she hoped that her eyes did not give away the fact that she had shed tears earlier.

  ‘Are you all right, Leonora?’ asked Sean. ‘Has something happened?’

  ‘No … no, nothing at all. Thank you for asking. I’m feeling a little tired, that’s all.’

  For a wild moment, she considered telling Sean everything. He was such a sympathetic listener. But then there they were, at Lodge Cottage, and the so
und man was standing outside the open front door waving at them and the moment passed. A good thing, too, Leonora said to herself as she got out of the car.

  ‘We’re all set, Sean,’ the sound man said, and they went into the house. Miss Lardner had set tea in the front room, on a table that had been polished to such a dazzling shine that the lighting man had asked for a cloth to cover it up a little.

  ‘Nanny Mouse, how lovely you look!’ said Sean, going up to the old lady as though she were his own grandmother and kissing her on the cheek. Nanny Mouse smiled, and Leonora thought she was blushing. Certainly, she looked as well as she had for a long time, and she sounded firm in her own mind today, as she greeted them all and told them to sit down.

  ‘Leonora,’ Sean said to her, ‘if you could sit down there … that’s right, by the window. Then if you don’t mind pouring the tea, we can just talk naturally. I’ll be out of shot, but of course the whole thing will be edited as you know. I’ll get the ball rolling by asking a question, and we’ll see where we go from there, shall we?’

  Leonora nodded. She picked up the rose-patterned teapot and said, ‘No sugar for you, Sean, is that right?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Now, Nanny Mouse, shall we get started? Do you remember whether Ethan Walsh ever came into the nursery when Leonora was a little girl?’

  Nanny Mouse was silent for a while, and Leonora wondered whether perhaps it would be necessary to prompt her, but then, like a bottle suddenly uncorked, she started talking, ‘The Master loved the nursery. That’s what he told me. No nonsense in here, Nanny Mouse, he’d say and he’d laugh heartily. And he liked to read to Miss Leonora at bedtime. Little Women was her favourite book. I remember that. Of course she could read perfectly well herself, but it’s not the same, is it? Not the same as having your daddy reading to you.’

  ‘What about her mother?’ Sean asked. ‘What about Maude?’

  ‘Oh, no, she never read to her. She wasn’t that sort of mother really. She was always very shy, was Miss Maude. She had one layer of skin missing, that’s what I told her. Thin-skinned. She wasn’t very strong, you know and she bruised very easily. I knew about the bruises of course, though she thought I didn’t see them. I did. I saw everything. It was my job really, to see things. I had Miss Leonora to think about and the Master was most particular that she shouldn’t know.’