Meadowland Page 10

  ‘You said –’ I polished the blade of a knife with unnecessary care – ‘you understood why I …’ I watched her hand as she held a plate under the running tap and then transferred it to the draining board.

  ‘That you feel alone, with all the cares of the world on you?’

  ‘I didn’t say that exactly.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘What I meant was … What I think I meant was …’ I sighed. ‘I don’t know what I meant.’

  ‘How frustrating.’

  There was a mixture of amusement and concern in her voice that made me look up.

  ‘I certainly haven’t got … what was it you said? … all the cares of the world on me. On the contrary,’ I gave a short laugh, ‘maybe the problem is that apart from my mother – and she seems to be managing fine – I haven’t anyone to care about.’

  ‘Or anyone to care about you?’

  I paused in the middle of drying the last dinner plate. The cornflower pattern around the rim merged to a haze.

  Flora removed the plate gently from my hands. ‘We really shouldn’t be having this conversation while you’re handling my good china,’ she observed matter-of-factly. ‘Come and sit down.’

  ‘You make me feel like a small child,’ I said, once safely ensconced on the chesterfield beside the silently snoozing Columbus.

  ‘Good. It’s about time you stopped being so determinedly grown-up.’

  I stroked the cat’s fur, considering the statement. Images of myself in the company office in London, where I knew I was heading upwards fast, flashed across my mind; and I saw myself in my flat – mortgage statements, household bills, insurances, all neatly filed, under control.

  ‘But I am grown-up,’ I pleaded.

  ‘Well bully for you.’

  I opened my mouth, and shut it again. The clock in the hall ticked its regular rhythm, a slower and steadier echo of my own pulse. ‘I wish I were,’ I said finally.

  ‘Ah well, we’re all striving towards that.’

  To my amazement, I realised her eyes were twinkling. Abruptly she rose to her feet, moved across to the dresser, and pulled open a drawer. ‘When did you last play tiddlywinks?’

  ‘Tiddlywinks! I’ve no idea.’

  She rummaged around and produced counters and a large, shallow dice shaker. ‘This’ll do.’ Sweeping papers from the kitchen table on to a chair, she sorted the counters into piles. ‘Which colour would you like?’

  Neither of us was too sure of the rules. ‘We’ll make up our own as we go along,’ announced Flora. Counters, flicked with more enthusiasm than skill, skidded and leapt around the table. Competitiveness yielded to hilarity; and reverted as each of us concentrated on homing our final counter. When Flora’s red one plopped into the bowl, I raised my arms in mock surrender. ‘OK, you win.’ I flipped my last, lone, blue one high into the air. Flora extended a hand, caught it, and dropped it neatly in with the others. I inclined my head in exaggerated acknowledgement.

  ‘Cocoa?’ enquired Flora.

  In my dreams that night the counters were dual coloured – blue on one side, red on the other – and Flora was adept at flipping hers over so that in the end they all lay on the table red side up. ‘I’ve won,’ she chortled. And suddenly she wasn’t Flora any more, but the Queen of Hearts screeching, ‘Off with her head.’ Waking from the nightmare, I stumbled across the dark landing to the loo, and discovered I had started my period.

  A disturbed night, a mild hangover, and the dull ache in my abdomen did nothing, when I emerged from my room next morning, to restore the frivolity of the previous evening’s mood.

  Over breakfast, I conjured up excuses as to why I needed to get back to London by early afternoon, and clung to them even more determinedly when Andrew drove over to suggest midday drinks at the Dower House.

  Leaving him and Flora chatting in the kitchen, I went upstairs to pack. I stripped the bed and folded the sheets, relieved that they weren’t marked. Good thing I woke when I did, I reflected ruefully. I remembered the fuss Mother had made when once, as a teenager, nature had caught me out. ‘It’s not your fault,’ she’d insisted as she abandoned her toast mid-bite to whisk up stain remover in a bath of cold water and immerse the offending linen in it. While I hovered, her rubber-gloved hands rubbed and dubbed. ‘You mustn’t feel guilty about it,’ she’d said, scrubbing ever more furiously.

  Like a toddler who’d shamed the family by ‘having an accident’ in front of some austere maiden aunt, I’d crept back to my room, and for the next few years – in fact, as long as I lived at home – always kept my knickers on at night ‘just in case’. As I piled the pillowcases and towels neatly on top of the sheets, I wondered how Flora would have reacted. At least I didn’t have to undergo the embarrassment of finding out.

  I checked the room to make sure I’d left nothing behind, then paused at the head of the stairs. I could hear murmurs from below, a man and woman laughing together. Across the landing, Flora’s bedroom door stood ajar. Sunlight, streaming in through the window ahead and to my right, shone across the passageway and through on to the heavy woven bedspread flung tidily but softly across the high double bed. It slanted across the corner of a tall old-fashioned chest of drawers, lighting a sprinkling of dust on the mellowed wood surface; and it fell in a gentle cascade down on to the well-worn Indian patterned wool carpet.

  Maybe it was a cloud passing across the sun which caused a sudden movement of shadow. But the sense created of a presence in the room – my father’s – was disturbingly real. I grasped the banister rail and closed my eyes for a moment. When I looked again, all was as it had been; and Andrew was calling to ask whether I needed a hand with my bag.

  CHAPTER 9

  Less than a week later – the following Friday evening – I stood in the doorway of another bedroom; the one my father had shared with my mother.

  After half an hour of chit-chat during which she gave me what seemed like a minute-by-minute account of her tour the previous weekend, she had shooed me upstairs. ‘You’ll want to freshen up,’ she’d urged.

  To reach my room, I had to cross the length of the landing and pass the door, standing slightly open, through which the smell of Chanel No. 9 always wafted. I knew with certainty as I climbed the stairs that I was not going to be able to walk straight past. Almost hypnotically when I reached it I paused and, with my holdall in one hand, pushed the door wider. Although what sun there was – uninterrupted blue skies having given way to cooler, showery weather – had now moved round to the other side of the house, the still strong light beamed in through the embroidered nets and between the looped rose-patterned curtains. It illuminated the gilt detailing on the expensive floor-to-ceiling fitted units, the two identically framed flower prints on the walls, and the matching bedside tables with their matching bedside lamps; and it fell on the twin divans over which squared-off fitted counterpanes had been smoothed with military precision.

  I stared at them, long and hard, and then dragged my gaze away to scan the minutiae of the room. Apart from the fact that my father’s bedside table was bare but for the lamp, and that his bits and pieces – an ebony-backed clothes brush, the enamelled box for his cufflinks, a tortoiseshell shoe-horn – which used to stand on the top of one chest of drawers, had been replaced by a vase of dried peonies, everything was exactly as I’d always known it. It took no more than a quick glance to check. A small carriage clock and a book – one by a popular romantic novelist, I noted, screwing my head sideways to identify it – lay beside Mother’s bed; evenly spaced along the window sill squatted half a dozen daily-dusted ornaments; and on the dressing table, a line of cosmetic jars and the large Chanel bottle stood guard over hairbrush, comb and hand mirror. Beneath the Lloyd Loom chair, Mother’s backless slippers snuggled daintily, and – as I knew it would when I peered round – her dressing gown, a pale oriental silk, hung in careful folds behind the door.

  Mother, I thought wryly, was resistant to change; once she’d organised things as she wan
ted them. And this – I startled myself with the thought – had always been her room, the second bed – even the original double one which the two singles had replaced – no more than a concession to her married state; and now no doubt, by some sort of convoluted thought process, to her widowhood. I cast around the clutterless room again, aware that within the cupboards and drawers, every item of clothing was hung or stowed in disciplined tidiness.

  I hugged my knitted jacket round me.

  A click of heels sounded in the hall below. ‘Well? What do you think?’

  I turned and peered over the banister. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your room. What do you think?’

  ‘I … My room? I haven’t been in there yet.’ I muttered something about the bathroom.

  ‘Oh.’ She was disappointed. ‘Well, do go and have a look.’

  Guiltily, I crossed the landing and threw open the door. A Laura Ashley-esque blaze hit me. The room had been redecorated in co-ordinating forget-me-not designs, sprigged on the wallpaper and clustered tightly on the curtains. The bed was swathed in a cover of the same material. On the carpet, between the end of the bed and the wall, a rug in the same tone of blue hid the patch – scarcely discernible anyway following Mother’s repeated ministrations with a variety of cleaners – where I’d once had a disaster with a bottle of ink. My sun-faded bookcase had been painted white to match the kidney-shaped dressing table and fitted wardrobe. On the top shelf, above the rows of children’s books now arranged in size order, sat my china-headed doll, her old-fashioned dress newly washed and pressed.

  Mother, eager for my reaction, had followed me upstairs and now stood at my elbow. ‘So?’

  I spun round. ‘It’s lovely!’ Full of remorse, I gave her a hug.

  Mother smoothed her dress back into place. ‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

  More seemed called for. ‘It’s absolutely gorgeous. You’ll have me coming down every weekend just to enjoy it.’ But I hoped she wouldn’t take me too literally; and when I suggested celebrating with a bottle of wine, what I really meant was that I felt in sudden need of a drink. For a brief moment, it occurred to me to wonder whether Father had ever similarly had an urge to reach for the whisky bottle.

  Back in the flat late on Sunday, I sought out the old bedspread, the removal of which, Mother had explained, prompted the redecoration, and sat down with it. It had been a pleasant enough weekend; and if there had been further flashes of comparison with that other place, Father’s other world, I’d hurriedly banished them.

  With a glass or two of wine inside her, Mother – or was it me? – had relaxed. To my amazement, she even agreed next day to let me stick a Marks and Spencer’s pie in the oven ‘to save trouble’. We’d chatted companionably. Not – agreed – about anything of great moment; but about things like the WI summer schedule and her part in it, and the possibility of her visiting an old schoolfriend now living somewhere in Yorkshire – ‘Such pretty countryside round there. If I can be spared from my various engagements of course,’ she added. She regaled me with an anecdote about the man who had come into the charity shop where once in a while she helped out, bearing – in addition to a council rubbish bag stuffed with torn shirts and trousers ‘not fit even for a jumble sale’ – a bird cage complete with budgerigar. ‘What did he think we are, an animal sanctuary?’ She was more affronted than amused.

  ‘I miss your father dreadfully, of course,’ she said at one point, as I held a gardening basket while she dead-headed the roses.

  Dampness, clinging to the wilted blooms after the overnight rain, steamed gently in sunlight breaking intermittently through the high cloud. I sniffed appreciatively. The scent seemed stronger than that from those which were still vibrant. Or maybe it was just their proximity, lying discarded on the wickerwork in my hands.

  ‘You’re being very brave about it,’ I ventured.

  Mother snipped; then straightened and turned. ‘Do you think so, dear? Well, one does try. And of course,’ her face assumed an appropriate expression, ‘I have my memories.’ She snapped shut the secateurs and pulled off her gloves. ‘Time for a cup of tea, I think.’ It was a change of subject, not an invitation to confidences.

  Now I stuck a finger through a hole in the crochet and waggled it at myself. What memories? And how much did she miss him? I grimaced at the disloyal thought. But there had been moments – as when Mrs Webb from next door popped in to say that Jack, Mr Webb, would be round later that afternoon to fix the window catch – when it seemed Mother almost glowed with widowhood. When Mr Webb appeared with his tools, she had dispensed tea and apple cake and charm; and, did I imagine it, or did she really look smug when he turned to inform me in scarcely concealed reprimand: ‘We all have to look after your mother now.’ All a far cry, I thought sceptically, from the days when, refusing to acknowledge her situation, she would have sent me to the DIY shop round the corner for a packet of nails. Little did Mr Webb know. And why was I calling him ‘Mr Webb’ as though I were still a teenager?

  Restless, I got up and fetched my sewing basket. Somewhere I had a wool needle. Delving among the reels and thimbles, I found one at last and, pulling the blanket on to my lap, located and threaded a loose end. There were, I discovered on inspection, a lot of them. Still, I could at least make a start. But my resolution faltered by the time I’d darned in three or four. I pushed the mending to one side and switched on the television.

  Over the next couple of weeks, I threw myself into mind-occupying activity. I rang friends, some of whom I’d hardly seen since moving into my solitary flat a year ago, filling my diary with arrangements to meet for drinks in favourite West End or King’s Road pubs and accepting invitations to a couple of parties. I persuaded the amenable into joint outings to the theatre – the latest musical on one occasion, some revival at the Barbican on another – and into sharing the fun of late-night shopping sprees. On the first of these Thursday evening excursions, urged on by one of my ex-flatmates who took vicarious pleasure in encouraging other people’s extravagance, I impulsively treated myself to a top-of-the-range hi-fi system as a replacement for my temperamental basic version; which in turn gave me an excuse to pick out, during spare lunch hours, all the newest CD releases. What with that, several additions to my wardrobe, and a variety of frippery for the flat – including a ludicrously expensive ceramic planter – my credit card statements next month were going to resemble railway timetables. But what the hell, I thought. My salary justified a splurge once in a while.

  And in case that wasn’t enough, I fitted in at least one extra session a week at the gym. During one of my work-outs, as I rested, panting, on the rowing machine before moving on to the stair-master, the trainer sauntered over. ‘Are you sure you’re not overdoing it?’ he commented.

  ‘Probably.’ Between breaths I summoned up a grimace of acknowledgement. ‘But it certainly distracts the mind.’

  ‘Feeling pressurised?’ he interpreted. ‘How about signing up for one of our new aromatherapy treatments?’ He smiled helpfully. ‘Similar result. Just a less exhausting way of achieving it!’

  Dismissing cynical thoughts about salesmanship, I booked one on the spot.

  It was bliss lying there, surrounded by the smell of jasmine and lavender and frankincense, the hands of the therapist – a tall girl with long fair hair loosely tied back – smoothing essential oils into my skin and gently massaging away the tensions.

  ‘Stressful job?’ she enquired as her thumbs discovered and pressed down on painful spots on my shoulders.

  ‘You could say so.’ Not strictly true, of course. Demanding, yes. But then that was what I liked about it, what I wanted, found reassuring.

  ‘Other things too, perhaps?’ Her hands had moved to my lower back.

  ‘No, nothing.’ Then, not wanting to appear unresponsive, ‘Well, my father died recently.’ That covered a whole range.

  I had the sense, as I stared horizontally at the wall, that she was nodding sagely. ‘Fresh air,’ she recommended.<
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  Perhaps it was that which prompted me, in a fit of devil-may-care, to take up, only days later, a long-standing invitation to sail with Clare and her boyfriend.

  It would be stretching a point to say I enjoyed it. I sat on the bunk with my stomach churning as the thirty-two-footer ploughed round the North Foreland. Leo, revoltingly cheerful, poked his tanned face down through the hatch. ‘You’d feel a lot better up top,’ he suggested.

  Obediently, I struggled up on deck.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take the helm while Clare and I fix the sails.’ Uneasily, I did my best to follow instructions and maintain a course.

  ‘You’re doing fine,’ encouraged Clare, as they returned and flopped down in the cockpit. ‘Nothing like being in control to stop the queasiness.’

  ‘I don’t feel in control,’ I moaned as the boat heeled and I put out a hand to steady myself.

  They laughed, and suddenly I was more aware of the sun on my face than the cold spray splashing on to my arms and shoulders. Even so, I was very happy to leap ashore and do my inexperienced bit with ropes when at last we returned to the mooring.

  Wandering back along the quay, Clare put a pally arm round my shoulders. ‘Coming again next Sunday?’ She was half-teasing, half-serious. Leo, swinging a holdall, caught up with us. ‘The thing about the sea,’ he declared, ‘is you can’t fight it. You have to go with it.’

  ‘Just listen to the philosopher!’ Clare gave him a playful punch.

  I turned to them as we parted. ‘Thanks,’ I said. We exchanged kisses. Clare’s exuded the warmth of long friendship. ‘See you again soon,’ she promised. Leo’s made me long for the solidity of an older brother. That evening, and for no apparent reason, I wept gently.

  Just as dawn was breaking next day, I woke, startled, convinced that both Andrew and my mother were standing at the end of my bed. Mother was saying I couldn’t let Andrew in with me; it wouldn’t be right. Andrew just stood there, un-moving, his expression blank. Then he faded away. I shook myself to full consciousness and peered at the clock. Time for another two hours’ sleep. I lay back, irritated by the image still etched on my mind. Eventually, and despite a cacophony from London’s stirring sparrows, I drifted off into some illogical and unrecallable argument with my mother.