Her voice was brittle from lack of use and she cleared her throat before saying, ‘At the cinema. A screening of The Holly and the Ivy. You know that.’
A silence.
‘What I mean is, how did you meet? Did you see him? Did he see you? Who spoke first?’
‘Oh, Edie, I can’t remember. Him; no, me. I forget.’ She moved the fingers of one hand a little, like a puppeteer dangling stars on strings. ‘We were the only two there. Imagine that.’
A look had come upon Mum’s face as we spoke, a distance, but a fond one, a release almost from the discombobulating present, where her husband was clinging to life in a nearby room. ‘Was he handsome?’ I prodded gently. ‘Was it love at first sight?’
‘Hardly. I mistook him for a murderer at first.’
‘What? Dad?’
I don’t think she even heard me, so lost was she in her own memory. ‘It’s spooky being in a cinema by yourself. All those rows of empty seats, the darkened room, the enormous screen. It’s designed to be a communal experience and the effect when it’s not is uncannily detaching. Anything could happen when it’s dark.’
‘Did he sit right by you?’
‘Oh no. He kept a polite distance – he’s a gentleman, your father – but we started talking afterwards, in the foyer. He’d been expecting someone to meet him—’
‘A woman?’
She paid undue attention to the fabric of her skirt and said, with gentle reproach, ‘Oh, Edie.’
‘I’m only asking.’
‘I believe it was a woman, but she didn’t show. And that – ’ Mum pressed her hands against her knees, lifted her head with a delicate sniff – ‘was that. He asked me out to tea and I accepted. We went to the Lyons Corner House in the Strand. I had a slice of pear cake and I remember thinking it was very fancy.’
I smiled. ‘And he was your first boyfriend?’
Did I imagine the hesitation? ‘Yes.’
‘You stole another woman’s boyfriend.’ I was teasing, trying to keep things light, but the moment I said it I thought of Juniper Blythe and Thomas Cavill and my cheeks burned. I was too flustered by my own faux pas to pay much attention to Mum’s reaction, hurrying on before she had time to reply: ‘How old were you then?’
‘Twenty-five. It was 1952 and I’d just turned twenty-five.’
I nodded like I was doing the maths in my head, when really I was listening to the little voice that whispered: Might this not be a good time, seeing as we’re on the subject, to ask a little more about Thomas Cavill? Wicked little voice and shameful of me to pay it any heed; while I’m not proud of it, the opportunity was just too tempting. I told myself I was taking my mum’s mind off Dad’s condition, and with barely a pause, I said, ‘Twenty-five. That’s sort of late for a first boyfriend, isn’t it?’
‘Not really.’ She said it quickly. ‘It was a different time. I had been busy with other things.’
‘But then you met Dad.’
‘Yes.’
‘And you fell in love.’
Her voice was so soft I read her lips rather than heard her when she said, ‘Yes.’
‘Was he your first love, Mum?’
She inhaled a sharp little breath and her face looked as if I’d slapped her. ‘Edie – don’t!’
So. Auntie Rita had been right, he wasn’t.
‘Don’t talk about him in the past tense like that.’ Tears were brimming over the folds around her eyes. And I felt as bad as if I had slapped her, especially when she started to weep quietly against my shoulder, leaking more than crying, because crying isn’t something she does. And although my arm was pressed hard against the plastic edge of the chair, I didn’t move a muscle.
Outside, the distant tide of traffic continued to drift, in and out, punctuated occasionally by sirens. There’s something about hospital walls; though only made of bricks and plaster, when you’re inside them the noise, the reality of the teeming city beyond, disappears; it’s just outside the door, but it might as well be a magical land, far, far away. Like Milderhurst, it occurred to me; I’d experienced the same dislocation there, an overwhelming sense of envelopment as I passed through the front door, as if the world without had turned to grains of sand and fallen away. I wondered vaguely what the Sisters Blythe were doing, how they’d filled their days in the weeks since I’d left them, the three of them together in that great, dark castle. My imaginings came one after the other, a series of snapshots: Juniper drifting the corridors in her grubbied silk dress; Saffy appearing from nowhere to lead her gently back; Percy frowning by the attic window, surveying her estate like a ship’s captain keeping watch . . .
Midnight passed, the duty nurses shuffled, new faces brought with them the same old banter. Laughing and bustling around the illuminated medical station: an irresistible beacon of normality, an island across an unpassable sea. I tried to doze, using my bag as a pillow, but it was no use. My mum, beside me, was so small and alone, and older somehow than the last time I’d seen her, and I couldn’t stop my mind from racing ahead to paint detailed scenes of her life without Dad. I saw it so clearly: his empty armchair, the quiet meals, the cessation of all DIY hammering. How lonely the house would be, how still, how swamped by echoes.
It would be just the two of us if we lost my dad. Two is not a large number; it leaves no reserves. It’s a quiet number that makes for neat and simple conversations where interruption is not required; is not really possible. Or necessary, for that matter. Was that our future, I wondered? The two of us passing sentences back and forth, speaking around our opinions, making polite noises and telling half-truths and keeping up appearances? The notion was unbearable and I felt, suddenly, very, very alone.
It’s when I’m at my loneliest that I miss my brother most of all. He would be a man by now, with an easy manner and a kind smile and a knack for cheering our mother up. The Daniel in my mind always knows exactly what to say; not remotely like his unfortunate sister who suffers terribly with being tongue-tied. I glanced at Mum and wondered whether she was thinking of him, too; whether being in the hospital brought back memories of her little boy. I couldn’t ask, though, because we didn’t talk about Daniel, just as we didn’t talk about her evacuation, her past, her regrets. We never had.
Perhaps it was my sadness that secrets had simmered for so long beneath our family’s surface; perhaps it was a type of penance for upsetting her with my earlier probing; perhaps there was even a tiny part of me that wanted to provoke a reaction, to punish her for keeping memories from me and robbing me of the real Daniel: whatever the case, the next thing I knew I’d drawn breath and said, ‘Mum?’
She rubbed her eyes and blinked at her wristwatch.
‘Jamie and I broke up.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yes.’
‘Today?’
‘Well, no. Not exactly. Around Christmastime.’
A tiny utterance of surprise, ‘Oh,’ and then she frowned, confused, calculating the months that had passed. ‘But you didn’t mention—’
‘No.’
This fact and its implications brought a sag to her face. She nodded slowly, remembering, no doubt, the fifty small and smaller enquiries she’d made after Jamie in that time; the answers I’d given, all lies.
‘I’ve had to let the flat go,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘I’m looking for a bedsit. A little place of my own.’
‘That’s why I couldn’t reach you; after your father – I tried all the numbers I could think of, even Rita’s, until I got on to Herbert. I didn’t know what else to do.’
‘Well,’ I said, a strange artificial brightness in my tone, ‘as it happens that was the perfect thing to do. I’ve been staying with Herbert.’
She looked baffled. ‘He has a spare room?’
‘A sofa.’
‘I see.’ Mum’s hands were clasped in her lap, held together as if she sheltered a little bird inside, a precious bird she was determined not to lose. ‘I must post Herbert a note,’ she said, her voice th
readbare. ‘He sent some of his blackberry jam at Easter and I can’t think that I remembered to write.’
And like that it was over, the conversation I’d been dreading for months. Relatively painless, which was good, but also somehow soulless, which wasn’t.
Mum stood then, and my first thought was that I’d been wrong, it wasn’t over and there was going to be a scene after all; but when I followed the direction of her eyes I saw that a doctor was coming towards us. I stood too, trying to read his face, to guess which way the penny was about to drop, but it was impossible. His expression was the sort that could be read to fit each scenario. I think they learn how to do that at medical school.
‘Mrs Burchill?’ His voice was clipped, faintly foreign.
‘Yes.’
‘Your husband’s condition is stable.’
Mum let out a noise, like air being pushed from a small balloon.
‘It’s a good thing the ambulance got there so soon. You did well to call it in time.’
I was aware of soft hiccuping noises next to me and I realized Mum’s eyes were leaking again.
‘We’ll see how his recovery progresses, but at this stage angioplasty is unlikely. He’ll need to stay in for a few days longer so we can monitor him, but his recovery after that can be done at home. You’ll have to watch him for moods: cardiac patients often struggle with feelings of depression. The nurses will be able to help you further with that.’
Mum was nodding with grateful fervour. ‘Of course, of course,’ and scrabbling, as was I, for the right words to convey our gratitude and relief. In the end she went with plain old, ‘Thank you, doctor,’ but he’d already withdrawn behind the untouchable screen of his white coat. He merely bobbed his head in a disconnected way, as if he had another place to be, another life to save, both of which he no doubt did, and had already forgotten quite who we were and to which patient we belonged.
I was about to suggest that we go in and see Dad when she began to cry – my mother, who never cries – and not just a few tears wiped away against the back of her hand; great big racking sobs that reminded me of the time in my childhood when I was upset about one trifling thing or another and Mum told me that while some girls were fortunate to look pretty when they cried – their eyes widened, their cheeks flushed, their pouts plumped – neither she nor I were among them.
She was right: we’re ugly criers, both of us. Too blotchy, too snarly, too loud. But seeing her standing there, so small, so impeccably dressed, so distressed, I wanted to wrap her in my arms and hold on until she couldn’t help but stop. I didn’t though. I dug inside my bag and found her a tissue.
She took it but she didn’t stop crying, not right away, and after a moment’s hesitation, I reached out to touch her shoulder, turned it into a sort of pat, then rubbed the back of her cashmere cardigan. We stood like that, until her body yielded a little, leaning in to me like a child seeking comfort.
Finally, she blew her nose. ‘I was so worried, Edie,’ she said, wiping beneath her eyes, one after the other, checking the tissue for mascara.
‘I know, Mum.’
‘I just don’t think that I could . . . If anything were to happen . . . If I lost him—’
‘It’s OK,’ I said firmly. ‘He’s OK. Everything’s going to be all right.’
She blinked at me like a small animal for whom the light is too bright. ‘Yes.’
I obtained his room number from a nurse and we negotiated the fluorescent corridors until we found it. As we drew close, Mum stopped.
‘What is it?’ I said.
‘I don’t want your father upset, Edie.’
I said nothing, wondering how on earth she thought I might be planning to do such a thing.
‘He’d be horrified to learn that you were sleeping on a sofa. You know how he worries about your posture.’
‘It won’t be for long.’ I glanced towards the door. ‘Really, Mum, I’m working on it. I’ve been checking the rentals but there’s nothing suitable—’
‘Nonsense.’ She straightened her skirt and drew a deep breath. Didn’t quite meet my eyes as she said, ‘You’ve a perfectly suitable bed at home.’
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig
Which is how, at the age of thirty, I came to be a single woman living with my parents in the house in which I’d grown up. In my very own childhood bedroom, in my very own five-foot bed, beneath the window that overlooked Singer & Sons Funeral Home. An improvement, one might add, on my most recent situation: I adore Herbert and I’ve a lot of time for dear old Jess, but Lord spare me from ever having to share her sofa again.
The move itself was relatively painless; I didn’t take much with me. It was a temporary arrangement, as I told anyone who’d listen, so it made far more sense to leave my boxes at Herbert’s. I packed myself a single suitcase and arrived back home to find everything pretty much as I’d left it a decade before.
Our family house in Barnes was built in the sixties, purchased brand new by my parents when Mum was pregnant with me. What makes it particularly striking is that it’s a house with no clutter. Really, none at all. There’s a system for everything in the Burchill household: multiple baskets in the laundry; colour-coded cloths in the kitchen; a notepad by the telephone with a pen that never seems to wander, and not one envelope lying around with doodles and addresses and the half-scribbled names of people whose calls have been forgotten. Neat as a pin. Little wonder I’d suspected adoption when I was growing up.
Even Dad’s attic clear-out had generated a polite minimum of mess; two dozen or so boxes with their lists of contents Sellotaped on the lids, and thirty years’ worth of superseded electronic appliances, still housed in their original packaging. They couldn’t live in the hallway forever, though, and with Dad recuperating and my weekends tumbleweed clear, I was a natural to take over the job. I worked like a soldier, falling prey to distraction only once, when I stumbled upon the box marked Edie’s Things and couldn’t resist ripping it open. Inside lay a host of forgotten items: macaroni jewellery with flaking paint, a porcelain trinket box with fairies on the side, and, deep down, amongst assorted bits and bobs and books – I gasped – my illicitly obtained, utterly cherished, hitherto misplaced copy of the Mud Man.
Holding that small, time-worn book in my grown-up hands, I was awash with shimmering memories; the image of my ten-year-old self, propped up on the lounge sofa, was so lucent I could almost reach across the years to poke ripples in it with my finger. I could feel the pleasant stillness of the glass-filtered sunlight and smell the reassuring warm air: tissues and lemon barley and lovely doses of parental pity. I saw Mum, then, coming through the doorway with her coat on and her string bag filled with groceries. Fishing something from within the bag, holding it out to me, a book that would change my world. A novel written by the very gentleman to whom she’d been evacuated during the Second World War . . .
I rubbed my thumb thoughtfully across the embossed type on the cover: Raymond Blythe. Perhaps this will cheer you up, Mum had said. It’s for slightly older readers, I think, but you’re a clever girl; with a bit of effort I’m sure you’ll be fine. My entire life, I’d credited the librarian Miss Perry with setting me on my proper path, but as I sat there on the wooden floor of the attic, the Mud Man in my hands, another thought began to coalesce in a thin streak of light. I wondered whether it was possible that I’d been wrong all this time; whether perhaps Miss Perry had done little more than locate and lend the title and it had been my mother who’d known to give me the perfect book at the perfect time. Whether I dared ask.
The book had been old when it came to me, and passionately well loved since, so its state of déshabillé was to be expected. Within its crumbling binding were stuck the very pages I’d turned when the world they described was new: when I didn’t know how things might end for Jane and her brother and the poor, sad man in the mud.
I’d been longing to read it again, ever since I returned from my visit to Milderhurst, and with a swift intake of
breath, I opened the book randomly, letting my eyes alight in the middle of a lovely, foxed page: The carriage that took them to live with the uncle they’d never met set off from London in the evening and travelled through the night, arriving at last at the foot of a neglected drive while dawn was breaking. I read on, bumping in the back of that carriage beside Jane and Peter. Through the weary, whiney gates we went, up the long and winding path, until finally, at the top of the hill, cold in the melancholy morning light, it appeared. Bealehurst Castle. I shivered with anticipation at what I might find inside. The tower broke through the roofline, windows dark against the creamy stone, and I leaned out with Jane, laid my hand beside hers on the carriage window. Heavy clouds fleeted across the pale sky, and when the carriage finally stopped with a clunk we clambered out to find ourselves standing by the rim of an ink-black moat. A breeze then, from nowhere, rippling the water’s surface, and the driver gestured towards a wooden drawbridge. Slowly, silently, we walked across it. Just as we reached the heavy door, a bell rang, a real one, and I almost dropped the book.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned the bell yet. While I was returning boxes to the attic, Dad had been set up to convalesce in the spare room, a pile of Accountancy Today journals on the bedside table, a cassette player loaded with Henry Mancini, and a little butler’s bell for summoning attention. The bell had been his idea, a distant memory from a bout of fever as a boy and, after a fortnight during which he’d done little more than sleep, Mum had been so pleased to see a return of spirit that she’d happily gone along with the suggestion. It made good sense, she’d said, failing to anticipate for a moment that the small, decorative bell might be commandeered for such nefarious use. In Dad’s bored and grumpy hands, it became a fearful weapon, a talisman in his reversion to boyhood. Bell in fist, my mild-mannered, number-crunching father became a spoiled and imperious child, full of impatient questions as to whether the postman had been, what Mum was doing with her day, what time he might expect his next cup of tea to be served.