by Eve Chase
‘I mustn’t return to duty drunk.’
‘Don’t see why not. We’ll walk back. That’ll sober you up.’
‘Good idea,’ she says weakly, not wanting to sober up. Wanting, in fact, to get gloriously plastered and never leave.
The surrounding forest feels like it’s been grown just for them, the trees sculpted like bonsai, teased into shape to let in the perfect amount of light – dreamy, underwatery – and the densest shadows against which the flames can flicker and lick.
She strokes the dog’s hard silky head because her hand suddenly needs to touch something. When she looks up at Robbie, his eyes are fixed on her. She smiles. She peels off her pink cardigan, midday hot all of a sudden, and wonders if there’s been some hiccup in the universe. How come she hasn’t realized Robbie was this attractive before tonight? When she had a chance. When he actually wanted to kiss her. Now she’s a mess of feelings that have nowhere to go. A weight is pressing down on her pelvis.
‘So, Rita?’ he teases.
‘So?’ She leans closer, stretching out one leg from under the folds of her skirt, not minding its length for once. Is she flirting? Is this what flirting feels like? She likes it.
The evening has been studded with these taut moments, before loosening again, and turning into something else. Sparks from the fire flutter up in the wind and blow about. The dog closes his watchful eye and falls asleep.
‘We never did dance that time.’ He has a smile in his voice. The hint of something else too, and it lodges inside her body, sweetly.
‘I’m too tall to dance,’ she says, even though she couldn’t care less how tall she is tonight, and neither, it seems, can he. He pulls her up by the hand, easily, as if she were a wisp of a thing.
‘You are magnificent, Rita.’
She throws back her head and laughs, so her cow’s lick bounces free of the hair grip.
When he kicks off his shoes Rita hesitates, then decides she doesn’t hate her feet any more and follows his example. The ground is soft underfoot. She wants to lift his shirt and sniff his skin. The trees move and sway around them as they dance. The dog slopes away when they roll to the ground, the grass and bracken in their hair, their clothes peeling off, all breath and bodies, until she’s there, stark naked in front of a man for the first time in her life, stripped of everything she’s spent her entire life trying to hide, exposed, horrified, flying with joy.
But then he sees them. His expression instantly sobers. He traces the zip-like scar across her stomach with a fingertip. She can’t speak. She’ll die of embarrassment and desire. The scars are a turn-off. Fred couldn’t even look at them.
‘What happened to you?’ he asks.
Because there’s nowhere to hide now, she tells him. Not just the actual accident: the flash of red deer leaping out; the car swerving and hitting the tree; her own escape, the first to be pulled out of the fireball – and the last. But what happened afterwards. How she was in hospital for six months and spent most of the time looking at the strip-lit ceiling, metal-pinned legs cantilevered up, reversing events, making time go backwards, the smashed car and the broken bodies fling back together. The flames extinguish. Returning the three of them to the safety of the campfire, the hands on her father’s wristwatch stuck for ever at five past one.
‘I’m so sorry, Rita.’ Robbie presses his forehead against hers, as if to pour the pain from her head into his.
‘There’s something else. Something very few people know. My … my secret.’ Since she’s nothing to lose any more, she tells him about the day a doctor stood next to her bed and said to her nan, ‘It’s not good news, I’m afraid,’ and Nan had sucked hard on her teeth, then said, ‘At least her face is fine.’
Nan only explained once she came out of hospital. She lowered her voice in case the neighbours could hear and said, ‘Never tell a man straight away, or you’ll never pass Go. Wait until the time is right, when they love you for you, Rita, and then you might stand a chance.’
She explains how the time was never ‘right’ enough to tell Fred. After he proposed, she didn’t want to ruin things, not when they saw each other so infrequently anyway, her being in London with the Harringtons, him in Torquay. But he kept going on and on about children, how he needed a son to take on the family business, and how their son would be big and strong, just like Rita, with his father’s eye for the meatiest cut of shin and brisket, the juiciest slice of tongue.
What could she do? Once married, she could hardly pretend, month after month, they’d just been unlucky. And didn’t he say he loved her to bits? So she called him from the phone box on the corner of the Harringtons’ crescent: ‘I got damaged, Fred. Down there. I won’t have kids.’ The shocked pause went on for ever.
‘But I’d never have asked you to marry me if you’d told me,’ he’d said eventually. And she’d realized she’d known that all along.
There. It’s out. Rita stares up at the sky. The moonlight falls on her bare skin like rain.
‘Lucky,’ he says.
‘Lucky?’ she repeats, with a hollow laugh. Her heart is one big bruise.
‘You found out Fred’s true character before you walked down the aisle.’ Robbie rolls on top of her, pinning her down, weighting his body’s length against hers. She doesn’t register she’s crying until he wipes her tears away with his thumb. ‘And I’m a lucky bugger too. Because you’re not married to that idiot and this means I can kiss you from your head to your toes.’
And every crevice besides. God. She had no idea such sensations existed. Lying back on the ground afterwards, her body quivering, trying to catch her racing breath, she feels … reborn. Robbie reaches for her hand and brings it to his mouth, skimming her knuckles with his lips, and she smiles, so lost in him, the warm summer’s night, she doesn’t hear the distant gunshots, muted by the trees.
38
Hera
I didn’t want to kill anything. And I wouldn’t have gone shooting at all if Don hadn’t kicked the terrarium, and the baby hadn’t started screaming at the top of her lungs and Teddy hadn’t run in, followed by Mother, bewildered in a flowing black dress embroidered with teeny sequiny chips of mirror. I roared at her, ‘He’s an animal! LOOK what he’s done!’ But she just stood there, refusing to look at the shattered glass case – or who Don really was.
‘Obviously, it was an accident,’ Don said, rubbing the side of his nose.
Mother said, ‘Get the dustpan and brush, Hera.’ She walked towards the sofa and picked up the screaming baby. Baby Forest had never cried like that before. She looked terrified, all bulging and rigid. ‘There, there,’ Mother said, cuddling her tight. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, sweetpea.’ But it wasn’t all right. And the baby knew it. She kept on crying, like an alarm going off, arching her back, and I knew, and probably Mother knew, the only person who was able to calm her down was Big Rita. But Big Rita wasn’t there. And we had no idea when she might be back.
‘So are we going shooting?’ Teddy said, hopping from foot to foot, agitated.
I mouthed, ‘No.’
‘I don’t think …’ Don drew a hand along his cheek. He suddenly looked exhausted. ‘Not tonight, Teddy.’
Mother, dancing and jigging in little circles with the baby, trying to soothe her, said sharply, ‘Go, Don. Really. Then I can get things under control here. Ssh, baby.’
Don shook his head. He looked shocked by himself. In a daze.
‘Go!’ Mother shouted, panicked by the baby’s screams, the red ribbon of noise. ‘I can’t settle the baby with you here. Just go.’ She suddenly sounded like she hated him too. She turned to me. ‘Would you go too? Please, Hera.’ I couldn’t say no. I knew she wanted me to go to keep an eye on Teddy. I think Don knew too.
‘Jeannie, I really don’t think that’s a very good idea,’ he said, with a small laugh.
‘I’ll go,’ I said. There was no way Teddy was going out with him alone.
A couple of minutes later, like he was trying to
prove something, Don pressed a gun into my hand. ‘Do your worst.’
*
We soon lost Don, tracking something or other. I held Teddy’s hand, so he couldn’t follow him. Once Don was out of sight, no danger to us any more, I roared and turned in a circle and beat my chest, like the stupid silverback gorilla Don thought he was, and we both started giggling. In the hush, the sound grew around us, coming from all directions, as if there were dozens of madly giggling children hidden in the trees. By then we were in the thick copse of pines, where the ground is dry and crunchy, skiddy with needles, and the air is completely still, like the inside of a wardrobe. When we stopped laughing, Teddy got spooked. I led him away from the pines until we could see the sky again, the lights of a plane arching across it, like a spaceship. My arm was aching from carrying the gun. And I wanted to curl up in the soft, powdery hollow of a tree and sleep, arms around Teddy, rather than go back to Foxcote. Or see the broken glass on the floor. Thinking about the terrarium made an urgent anger hiss through me. And that’s all I remember, the sudden fume of fury, and my heart, like a big bass drum, then Teddy pointing at a moving, far-off shape and hissing, ‘Deer! Deer! Shoot!’
The bullet rang out before I decided to fire. The gun punched my shoulder. The evening shattered into a zillion fragments.
We stood there a moment, not saying anything, our ears ringing, like church bells. I imagined the deer bleeding out. Suffering. But I wasn’t sure I’d be brave enough to give the animal another shot to save it from further pain. So I threw the gun down and we ran back to Foxcote.
That was almost an hour ago. I clean my teeth with a trembling hand.
A knock on the bathroom door. ‘Hera? You in there?’
I startle at the sound of Big Rita’s voice and drop my toothbrush into the plastic beaker.
‘So how was your evening?’ She pushes open the door slightly. Through the gap I can see she’s grinning madly. Her hair is all messed up, like a herd of cows have licked it. She smells of bonfire and happiness. This tells me one thing: she hasn’t seen her precious terrarium. Yet.
I don’t answer. She follows me into my bedroom and bounces on the side of my bed, making it creak. Her smile fades. ‘Teddy’s in a flump too. Anyone going to tell me what’s the matter?’
It’s like someone’s died. All the happiness drains from Rita’s whitening face. ‘Smashed?’ she repeats, unable to believe it.
‘Kicked in.’ My voice sounds watery. ‘By Don.’
‘Don?’ she repeats blankly. The clock ticks on the wall. Her eyes start to blaze. Like I’ve never seen them. Dagger gold not brown. And she seems to grow bigger, more powerful, as if she could crush Don’s skull in her hand, like a ripe peach. ‘I’ll stand up to him this time, Hera.’ A new Big Rita is talking. She strides to the door. ‘I’ll make the bugger leave. Right.’ She frowns. She hesitates. ‘Hang on a minute, where is he?’
39
Sylvie
‘My advice, as your older and much wiser sister, is to venture no further than the range of the television remote control,’ says Caroline, on the phone. There’s a steely strain in her voice: she’s not joking. I feel disloyal: I’ve not told her everything. Self-doubt begins to creep in. ‘Stop it, you,’ she shouts, and it takes me a beat to realize she’s addressing one of her children, stage left in her American life. ‘Spike! Alfie’s digging up the lawn with a spoon. Sorry, Sylvie, what was I saying?’
‘I shouldn’t go back to the forest,’ I say sheepishly, feeling like I’ve been caught rashly digging up my life too.
‘Christ, no. You’ve done it once. You’ve got the woodland noises for Mum.’ She doesn’t say they’ve not had any impact other than to cheer up the nurses. But I know she’s thinking it. ‘Don’t be a nutter and go back! Not when you’re in such a tizz, Sylv.’
‘I’m not in a tizz,’ I huff. I am in a tizz.
‘It’s that bloody woman again. Elliot’s mother and her terrariums. She’s thrown you,’ Caroline says. My pulse quickens at the mention of Helen and the eerie sight of the terrarium collection in her conservatory. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’
I don’t answer.
‘Knew it. It’s a coincidence, I’ll give you that. But these things are fashionable, aren’t they? Terrariums, I mean. Not coincidences. Did you mention someone gave one to Mum?’
‘No.’ A reluctance to share the private pain of Mum’s situation stopped me. A fear of Helen’s indifference. Or, worse, sympathy. The possibility I might break down. ‘We were there to talk Annie-and-Elliot business.’
‘Bet that was fun.’
‘Indeed.’
Caroline laughs. After that, an easier silence stretches between us, the comforting kind when you simply listen to the person you love, thousands of miles away, breathing. ‘Please don’t go back to the forest,’ she says, breaking it. ‘Sisters’ proper promise you won’t?’
The mobile feels very hot against my ear. I feel really bad. ‘Too late. I’m sorry, Caro.’
‘Sylvie. Where the hell are you?’
‘Casey’s Café in Hawkswell.’ I lower my voice. ‘And that old lady, the one I told you about – bit mad with a stick, remember? Marge. Here she comes. Caroline, I’ve got to go.’
I hang up on my sister’s protestations. I flick the phone to silent. Needs must.
On time, Marge crumples down at the adjacent table, like a brown-paper bag. An egg sandwich and a pot of tea duly appear, courtesy of Casey. Neither seems to recognize me without my flame-haired daughter. Although I’m not sure I quite carry off looking like a local either.
I wait for the right moment. Striking up a conversation isn’t difficult – an observation about the weather, followed by a compliment on her excellent choice of sandwich, and she’s mine. She invites me to her table. Up close, Marge’s face is creased with an extraordinary cross-hatching of lines, all going in different directions, deeply carved, like a dried-up riverbed. Never worn sunblock, clearly. It’s the thing my private clients most fear: the marks of a long life lived. But she fits this place perfectly, and the lines bring with them a certain respect.
After a few minutes, she warms up. Pleased to have a bit of company. I wonder if the old woman’s on her own a lot, shuffling between doctor’s appointments and bus stops, sitting in the café to keep heating costs down at home, like Mum and her nan used to do. I feel for her. She tells me Casey’s windows need a clean: newspaper and vinegar would do the job, and she’d do it herself if her arthritis wasn’t playing up. When she blames her arthritis on a lifetime of working as a housekeeper – ‘a hard life and a thankless one’ – my ears prick up. Before I can ask if she knew of a house called Foxcote Manor, she’s on to the husband who drowned (‘drunk as a newt’) in the river Severn a year after they married, and left her with nothing, just a mistress knocking at the door, asking for the money he owed her, a son Marge didn’t know about, all told with the rhythmic patter of an anecdote relayed before, honed for an audience. She doesn’t really listen to me, rather pounces on pauses in the conversation to talk about herself. Lonely, the poor thing, I think. Never had her own family, she says, with a performative sigh, but collected people around her, ‘the leftovers, like me’. I’m soon so swept along by her tale – an unsung story of female working-class hardship, I’m thinking – I’m completely unprepared for the confrontational clink of her teacup on the saucer and the hissed question, ‘Why are you being bloody nice? What do you want?’
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see the café owner, Casey, hovering warily, sensing the change in tempo too. I wonder if she was expecting it. Something tells me Marge won’t be fobbed off either.
‘Look, you probably don’t remember but I was here last week, sitting just over there, at that table, that’s right, over there, and you seemed quite startled by my teenage daughter. A redhead? You grabbed her hand and you said she was the spit of someone.’
‘Of course I remember. I may be old but I’m not doolally.’
The
café owner moves towards us and smiles quizzically. ‘Everything all right, Marge?’
Marge glances between me and the teapot, sniffing an opportunity. ‘This lady’s going to treat me to a cream tea.’
‘Of course. Anything you like, Marge.’ As soon as Casey’s gone, I press her again about the ‘spit’. But Marge is more reluctant now, tapping a foot beneath her, staring at me so hard, it’s like being poked with a knitting needle. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Just curious.’ I smile too brightly, sure she’s going to tell me to sod off.
‘A girl. Jo. Same red hair. Used to live not too far from here.’ Her gaze fixes on the middle-distance, gone somewhere I can’t follow. It feels like a hand is reaching out of a dim dirty alley and yanking me in. ‘Big slanty eyes,’ she adds. ‘Colour of sycamore leaves.’
‘What happened to Jo?’ My heart has started banging. Looping in my head, she walked away.
‘Oh, she was one of those girls.’ She makes a tsk noise between her teeth. ‘Got into a spot of bother.’
Was that me? The trouble. The mistake.
‘Silly girl. No one but herself to blame.’
‘Does she live here still?’ The words come out strangled with anxiety.
‘Oh, no. Left donkey’s years ago. Moved to Canada, I believe.’
A weight lifts. The thought that I could walk out of this café and bump into someone who could be my birth-mother makes me feel fractured.
‘That’s why your girl gave me such a turn, you see. Looked just like her, as she was back then.’ Marge sips her tea, her lips crumpling over the lip of the cup. ‘Worked on the cruise ships.’ She shakes her head. ‘Anything went on in the cruise ships. Let alone the ports. Didn’t even know the father’s name. Tsk.’
My brain scrambles to make sense of this. I know I’m being ridiculous. What are the chances? And yet. It’s a tiny village and Annie’s red hair doesn’t come from Steve’s side. We’ve always wondered about it.
