Hilary slipped out of bed to fetch another jersey, shivering as the cold night air lunged between her legs. Perhaps she ought to sleep in thick wool trousers – add a winter coat as well, a scarf and fur-lined gloves. She had already pulled a sweater over her flimsy nylon nightie, doubled all the thin and scratchy blankets. The room was dank, as well as cold, one wall darkened by a damp and mouldy stain. Joe had brought her oil heaters, but she didn’t like to leave them on all night, and, anyway, they stank – their sickly nauseous odour still clinging to the room. She trailed to the window, lifted the curtain, which was really an old car-rug rigged up on two nails; peered out at the mean and narrow street. A drunken lamppost reeled towards its neighbour, the abandoned Ford beneath it slewed half across the kerb. Most of the other windows were boarded up or smashed; shop signs missing letters, so they lisped a strange starved language of their own.
She turned her back, checked her watch, still the Mickey Mouse one she had never yet replaced. Four a. m. The last hour had really dragged, despite her tot of whisky. She’d better watch her drinking. Joe kept bringing liquor, perhaps in lieu of decent furniture, or out of simple guilt. What furniture she had was an uneasy mix of Craddock, Liz and junk shop.
She gazed around the room, half-shadowed now in the grudging light of the bedside lamp, itself a Craddock offering, and still lacking any shade. The Piccadilly Raindrops lamp took pride of place in the centre of the room, on a low and battered coffee table, which was all they had to eat off at the moment. The kitchen was too small for any table, Luke had bagged the only decent bedroom, so this one main room combined several different functions – dining room, sitting room, Luke’s playroom (toys still littered on the floor, rocking horse stabled in one corner), and was transformed into her sleeping quarters after ten o’ clock at night. The second tiny bedroom was crammed with rolls of lino, off cuts of old carpet, a huge dismembered wardrobe, and boxes full of cracked pink bathroom tiles. She hadn’t found the strength to clear it out yet, preferred sleeping on the sofa bed. That black and bulky monster was the best of Joe’s bequests, so far – not new, of course, but versatile, though she still found it rather tricky to set up and fold away, had to fight its heavy legs and faulty hinges; also fight her longing for a permanent bed, ready-made and waiting, which she could collapse exhausted into, after a long day like today.
Except today was now tomorrow, first day of term for Luke, and one of the chief reasons why she was lying wide awake at four o’ clock. Pre-school nerves – hers, not Luke’s. Luke seemed merely numb, too miserable for nerves. He had also caught her cold. She had dosed him late last night with aspirin, malt, hot lemon, and a dash of Johnnie Walker, which at least had made him sleep. She’d crept into his bedroom every hour or so, to make sure he was all right. He’d seemed resdess, apprehensive, even in his sleep; muttering garbled words, hands twitching on the duvet. She had left him half her giant-sized box of Kleenex, the other half mere damp and crumpled balls now. She’d been using them all night, mopping, blowing, sneezing. Luke’s cold was far less heavy than her own, and though it was unsociable and selfish to take even a snuffly child to school, she knew it was imperative that he was there on the first day. Hard enough for him to start in January, rather than September, without turning up three or four days late.
She’d been sly – or was it sensible? – bought him cold-suppressants from the chemists, to feed him with his breakfast. He must start school like the others, a normal law-abiding boy, neither late, nor ill, nor special; and he must also be in uniform – another source of worry. He had refused to wear his blazer, loathed it on first sight. She’d done everything she could to coax him round, put Mars bars in the pockets, bought him a school case with new and shiny pencils, even planned an offbeat breakfast of both his favourite foods: Heinz spaghetti hoops and pink ice cream.
She trailed out to the kitchen to check everything again: bowls and saucepan ready, school case stuffed behind a cushion in the highest of the cupboards. She was keeping it well hidden, to produce as a surprise, hoped it would distract him while she somehow slipped his blazer on; told him only if he kept it on, could he keep or eat the Mars bars.
She filled the kettle, lit the gas. She knew she’d never sleep now, so she’d treat herself to breakfast – a simple pre-dawn breakfast before her second one with Luke. She needed to keep busy, to calm the skein of worries in her mind, all tangled round that wretched stripy blazer. Would the convent do him any good, or had she only sent him there to suit herself, secure her precious freedom? Now she’d lost that freedom anyway, she kept questioning her motives, wondering whether uniform and chapels were really right for him; whether nuns with names like Sister Magdalena could gain his trust or only make him jeer. Would he even last there, or would Sister Anne decide he wasn’t suitable and must be moved to a remedial school, so they’d be back to where they’d started, after just one short trial term?
She watched the slow and lazy gas flicker in a draught. There was no permanence in anything, at present. When she folded down her sofa bed each morning, she was surprised the house itself still stood, hadn’t collapsed exhausted in the night. This row of shops was structurally unsound and officially condemned, several of them vandalised, only Charlie’s functioning, and even that to close by next October. Rita’s health was similarly precarious. She was still in hospital, and no one knew how long she might be there. Although weak, depressed and listless, she might suddenly make progress, or be sent home anyway because they were desperate for her bed – go home not to Maureen, but to Wandsworth; resume her former role as wife and mother. Which meant she’d lose her own role, as she’d already lost her job at Claremont College. Andy had been fiercely coldly angry. She had hardly recognised the urbane and friendly fellow who had shown her around two months ago, as he lashed her with his tongue, called her selfish, irresponsible and totally ungrateful. Liz had called her wonderful – and crazy.
She made the tea, poured herself a bowl of Luke’s Oat Krunchies, removed the plastic Rambo from her bowl. There was also a coupon on the packet for a free real linen tea towel. Two pre-birthday gifts. It was her fortieth birthday in just four days’ time – that at least was certain – the official start of official middle age. In the convent, age had been irrelevant, except that the older you grew, the closer you approached to the afterlife – and God. Old nuns were respected, often held high office. If she’d stayed herself, kept her faith and fortitude, she might well have become assistant to the Abbess. She was nothing in the world – a spinster, out of work – and with each successive birthday, she’d lose a little more, grow plainer, tireder, creakier; depreciate in value like a car. Perhaps better not to recognise her birthday, just totally ignore it, tell nobody at all.
She carried bowl and cup into the sitting room, switched on the television, the most luxurious object in the flat. Joe had somehow found her a twenty-six-inch colour set, with remote control and a video recorder. The videos themselves he’d bought cheap as a job lot, an extraordinary assortment of sex and violence, blood and thunder, and a few old classic movies of the sentimental kind. Luke had refused to watch Lassie, preferring Son of Werewolf, so she put it on herself now, lolled back on the sofa. What luxury! Breakfast in bed, in-room movies, bathroom en suite (well, a shower which leaked and a toilet minus seat), and full bar service day and night.
She removed her whisky from the bedside table (an upturned wooden crate), to make room for the tea, drained the last half-inch of liquor in the glass. It was an expensive malt, which had aged so long, Joe claimed it was getting on for near as old as he was and had cost an arm and a leg. Poor Joe. He was trying quite pathetically hard to keep her happy, keep her there, control at least one section of his life. He seemed stunned by Rita’s second operation, totally confused at living in his house alone, with no noise but the passing trains, after more than thirty years of wife and kids, racket and commotion. He kept dropping in to bring her things, or was it more for company, or even reassurance? Her former anger with him had totally subsided. In some strange way, he had become her own father – complaining, grumbling, never really happy, uneasy in a world he no longer seemed to fit. She had longed to have her father back, so she could say those things she’d never dared express, explain her guilt and sorrow at being absent from his funeral, somehow forge a bond with him. Her shy and stilted relationship with Joe could hardly compensate, yet, nonetheless, even in these few short days, it had helped her come to terms with her own parents; their inadequacies, their failure, the fact they, too, had been fashioned by bad parents in their turn, which somehow lessened her resentment, made it easier not to blame.
She spooned in Krunchies, washed them down with tea, lined up her Kleenex to cope with the next sneeze, or perhaps a tragic end to Lassie. She hoped it was a long film, to fill the gap till Breakfast Two, distract her from her worries. She drained her cup, settled back, kept her mind firmly on MGM’s Welsh collie, to prevent it darting up to Claremont, or, worse still, running through her pieces for Grade 8.
Three hours later, she was woken by the postman, groped up in confusion, still half-drugged with sleep. A pool of sodden Krunchies was congealing on the carpet, and the television talking to itself – no longer Lassie, but a hearty-sounding weatherman precacting gale-force winds, persistent rain. She took the narrow stairs as quickly as she could, throwing on a coat above the nightie and the sweaters.
‘Mornin’!’
‘Good morning.’
‘Rain again.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I suppose we’re lucky it ain’t snow.’
‘Mm.’
‘The parcel’s for old Charlie, but I thought I ought to ring. Anything you leave outside gets nicked.’
‘Yes, thank you. That was kind.’
‘And a letter for you. Postmark says Madras.’
‘Madras?’ She took it from him, tried to close the door. The rain was blowing in.
‘Yeah. Been in those parts, have you?’
‘No, I …’ Her voice trailed off as she suddenly saw the writing on the envelope – three sets of writing, actually, and two of them she knew. She dashed upstairs, dread and wonder clashing in her mind. The first writing was Aunt Eva’s, dead and lost Aunt Eva, whom she’d hunted down for months – chased, pursued, and chivvied – then finally abandoned, deliberately uprooted from her mind, so she wouldn’t waste more time on fruitless visits, unanswered futile letters; wouldn’t have to mourn. Yet here was Eva addressing her from India, and addressing her as Sister Mary Hilary at the Convent of Notre Dame de Bourges, as she had done every Christmas since 1966 – every year except the last. She’d know that writing anywhere: a large lopsided scrawl with generous leaping upstrokes, i’s dotted only randomly, j’s with fancy loops. Reverend Mother’s writing was far more neat and cramped, still produced a ripple of unease. The Abbess had forwarded the letter to Cranleigh Gardens, where it had been sent on in its turn by Mrs Philpot; caught up with her, at last, at her new Tooting Bec address. It now looked tired and tattered, despite its bulky size scarred with postmarks, smudged with rain, even a grubby thumbprint on the back.
She ripped it open, a hundred questions racing through her mind. Had Eva emigrated, or was she just on holiday? And why India, for heaven’s sake, when she’d always been on walking tours to quiet and temperate places like the Dales? How could she afford long-distance air fares on her meagre nurse’s pension? Why had she not written a whole year ago? Had she been in Madras all that time, or fallen ill, or …?
She sank down on a chair as she tried to take the letter in, still hardly daring to believe that it was, in fact, from Eva; that her Aunt was still alive, not coffined or cremated.
‘Yes, shoot me, darling! I deserve it. I’ve always been a lousy correspondent – well, you know that, don’t you, pet – just my one scrawled letter every Christmas, and even that went by the board last year. I know I promised you I’d write, on that tiny mingy card I sent, and you must have been wondering all this time how my round-the-world cruise went off, or where the heck I’d landed up, or even imagined I had drowned or something, or run off with the Captain. No such luck!’
Hilary laughed aloud, not so much at the thought of spinster Eva eloping with a Captain, but in sheer stupefied relief that her Aunt had turned up from the dead, was writing in her usual lively style. Drowning hadn’t crossed her mind, but several other forms of death had seemed all too sadly likely – cancer, or a stroke, a smash-up in a car, even a fatal mugging in the dark streets of North London. Yet she was still completely mystified. How could modest Eva afford round-the-world cruises when she’d never saved enough to fly to Benidorm? And what ‘tiny mingy card’ was she referring to? She’d received no card at all, no single word from Eva since Christmas two whole years ago.
‘I don’t think I even told you how Edward and myself happened to be cruising the high seas at all …’
Edward? Had her Aunt got married, or, even more unlikely, found a sugar daddy? She fought an irrational surge of jealousy, raced on through the letter, discovered Mr Edward Unsworth Taylor was a man of nearly eighty, who already had a heart condition, but was determined to see the world before he met its Maker, as Eva quaintly put it. He had advertised in London for a private nurse who would also act as chaperone, companion, on a ninety-day world cruise. Eva, hating both retirement and her move from friendly Gloucestershire to a vast impersonal city, had answered the advertisement, been finally selected in preference to a host of younger girls. They had set off on the P&O, called at Gibraltar, Malta, Port Said and Suez; then on to Madras, via Mahé and Colombo, with at least one day ashore at every port and still twenty-odd more ports to go.
‘Alas, my love, we never got to see them, never made it past Madras. Edward collapsed right in the middle of a bustling Madrasi market, which sold everything from curry to dead bats – collapsed not just with heatstroke, but with a full-blown heart attack. Our three-month cruise was cut to just three weeks.’
Eva’s writing, always hard to read, had now become illegible, as if it were suffering from the shock of Edward’s coronary. Hilary jumped two crippled lines, picked the story up again, with Edward in St Thomas’s, an expensive private nursing home, where he survived nearly a whole month, Eva at his side. When he finally expired, she was genuinely upset, had come to like the spirited old gentleman, with his eccentric ways, his little fads and fancies. She was equally sad at the thought of leaving India, which she had also grown to love; the nurses at the hospital who had accepted her as one of them, permitted her to nurse her charge, administer his drugs.
‘Why not stay on here and get a job?’ one of them had asked her, almost casually.
‘Why not indeed!’ Eva wrote, the ink smudging on the letter here, as if her hand were sweating in the heat. At least half a dozen reasons why she couldn’t think of staying. She was past retirement age, had never lived abroad in all her life, and had a house in London which was standing empty, only checked on once a week by a rather vague acquaintance who lived in the next street. There were also endless rules and regulations about getting jobs in India, problems over visas, red tape by the mile. Yet the wild idea was somehow most appealing, and once it had rooted in her mind, she couldn’t seem to dig it out again.
‘It’s not actually impossible, I allowed myself to think.’ (More smudges and the writing getting wilder.) ‘I’d nothing to return for, after all – no single living relative save you, my darling girl, and you were cut off anyway by those high walls and your vows. I’d no job and no real home, except a tiny terraced house in the most unfriendly street in London. I don’t like London, Gloria, and I’d never found my feet there. India’s a crazy place – chaotic, over-crowded and too damned hot for a paleface like Yours Truly, but the Indians are darlings (most of them!) and so wonderfully attentive. I mean, I find I’m now respected – revered out here as old and wise, rather than slung out on the rubbish heap, as I would be back in England. And anyway, I rather liked the feeling of landing up five thousand miles from home, with a circle of real friends already, and not actually starving, because my dear old generous Edward left me a few bob and …’
Hilary paused a moment, felt out of breath from the tidal wave of Eva’s words. Eleven sides she’d read so far, with at least another dozen still to go. She dithered, checked her watch. The postman had come, early, but even so, she was pressed for time, had a child to get to school, maybe a battle to be fought over a blue and gold striped blazer. She ought to wake Luke up, give him time to eat his breakfast with no sense of rush or hassle, take things really calmly. Yet she burned to know what happened next in Eva’s Indian saga, and once he was awake she’d have no chance of finding out. He’d probably be rebellious; would need her full attention, all her ‘mother’s’ skills. She stuffed the pages back into their envelope. Best continue with it later, once she’d delivered him to school. Easier then to concentrate. She could spin the letter out, relish every word, free from all distractions.
She moved into the kitchen, lit the rusty oil stove, switched the kettle on, so she could wake Luke with a cup of tea; picked him out the Batman mug, the last two custard creams. She started pouring juice into the milk jug, cursed, and tipped it back. Her mind was miles away – cruising from Gibraltar to Madras. Would Luke really need so long to eat his breakfast? Too much time to hang around could be just as bad as rushing him; might only build his nerves. She was wasting time right now. No point watching kettles, especially sluggish ones.
She dived back to the sitting room, snatched the letter up again, skipped the next few pages – endless snags and setbacks in Eva’s bid to get a visa, land herself a job. By page fifteen, she’d wangled both – a visa for a year, and a nursing job not at chic St Thomas’s, but at a smaller shabby mission hospital run by nuns. Nuns! She gasped, couldn’t quite imagine Eva’s strident tones and scarlet-painted fingernails ringing out against the soft-voiced pallor of the Mission Sisters. Yet she appeared to have enjoyed her work enormously; admired the nuns: their gentleness and patience; the endless hours they toiled – she, too! – with no real rest or recreation. She’d been meaning to write for months, she said, kept starting letters, but never finishing them, on account of the pressure of the job, the constant stream of patients, the fact that overtime was just a normal unpaid part of every day.
She also apologised – again – for sending just a card last Christmas, and that three weeks too early. She and Mr Taylor had departed on the first day of December, so she’d posted all her Christmas cards that morning, adding a brief and scribbled promise to her niece’s that she’d write again more fully on the ship – a promise she had broken. Even on a so-called leisure cruise, every day seemed hectic, from early morning tea to late night cocktails. Then, once Edward had his heart attack, she was swamped with correspondence to his family, arrangements for transporting back his ashes, queries over the changes in his will. There followed her long battle for a visa and a job, and when she’d won both those, she’d been forced to sell her London house. She was running short of money, had no other source of capital. Her legacy was almost gone, and the nuns were offering little above basic room and board. She was also very anxious about leaving the house empty for a year, at risk from vandals, squatters, even fire. More prudent to dispose of it, release some ready cash, remove one source of worry from her mind. She’d had to arrange the sale long-distance, re-contact the solicitor she’d used to buy the house.
Hilary glanced up at the window, the dark still pressing close; one tattered rag of light from the crippled lamppost opposite, patching the old curtain. She recalled her lonely visits to Hurst Road, N14; those hoping hopeless odysseys to a deaf and empty house. While she’d trailed along that dark north London cul-de-sac, fearing Eva cold and dead, her aunt had been a world away, working like a beaver, or romping in the sun. Typical of Eva to buy a house, then sell it; survive all that aggravation, and still keep bouncing back. She grinned at the drawing scribbled on page twenty – a rickety ‘For Sale’ board, tied to a huge boulder, with a screaming, squint-eyed woman half-crushed beneath the rock, but doing her wild best to push it off.
‘You’ll probably think I was out of my small mind, getting involved in all that hassle, with letters firing back and forth, and a whole tangle of new problems, but that house was like a millstone round my neck, seemed to tie me to a life I didn’t want. Anyway, I’m sure you’ll understand, my love, why your own letter got put off, especially once I’d actually started work. And now blow me down if it isn’t almost Christmas once again, and in just a month or two, my wretched precious visa will expire, so I’ll have to come back home, like it or no.’ Several lines were crossed out here, a brownish stain splashed across the writing. Had Eva stopped for tea, spilt it on her letter?
Tea! Hilary sprang up. She could hear the kettle whistling from the kitchen, calling her, reproaching. She rushed to turn it off, ignored the pool of boiling water which had spewed across the worktop; cursed the officious kitchen clock striking the half-hour. Luke really should be up by now. Disastrous to be late this first and vital morning. She turned the clock face round, spooned out the spaghetti hoops, put them on to warm. The boy could dress in minutes, when she made it worth his while, and if she invented some new eating game, she could speed breakfast up, as well. She just had to read those few remaining pages, find out if her crazy aunt were truly coming home. She skipped the messy brown patch, continued at the bottom of the page.
‘You won’t believe this, darling, but P&O have agreed to fly me back – yes, after all this time. Mind you, I’m not that keen to come back, and I don’t intend to stay, but I must sort out my things, and tick off that solicitor. I’m pretty sure he diddled me, and his bills were astronomical. (Can’t spell that!) Then I’m off again – I don’t know where exactly, but now I’ve seen half the world, I’m determined to see the other half. I’ve heard they’re short of nurses in the States and are even recruiting oldies like myself. Or I may find another Edward, land up in Timbuktu next time. Who knows? I’ve got my health and strength, thank God, and the last thing I intend is to sit around on my backside, turning into a professional old age pensioner. But before I set off anywhere, I promise you one thing, my love – I’m going to come and visit you – yes, brave those nuns at last. You know how scared I’ve always been of setting foot within a mile of Brignor, and your Mother made it worse by harping on about the grilles and things, and how she couldn’t say a word without some black-robed figure listening in, and your Father half-suspected there were even hidden microphones … Well, I’m far more used to nuns now. In fact, I was almost shocked, at first, by how free and easy those Mission Sisters were – I mean, the way they rode bicycles and didn’t turn a hair at the sight of naked men …’
Hilary grinned in disbelief, zipped through the last few pages to the end, then made straight for Luke’s bedroom, forgetting tea and biscuits, only pausing at the door. She longed to share her news with him, share it with the world, but would he really care a fig about some fuddy-duddy aunt he’d never even heard of? Unless she made it sound exciting, used it as a lure to get him up. She pushed the door, sat down on his bed.
‘Wakey-wakey, Luke, my love.’ That was Eva’s voice, lively, loving, cheerful. The letter was awash with ‘loves’ and ‘darlings’, had made her feel cosseted and cherished. She hugged it to her in the half-light of the room. Eva – coming home; her next of kin face to face with her, without even grilles or chaperones. ‘Luke, are you awake?’
He didn’t answer, just squinted up at her, still groggy from his Scotch-and-aspirin cocktail.
‘Luke, we’ve got a new relation.’
‘What you on about?’
‘Aunt Eva. She’s coming to see us. She’ll be your Aunt, as well as mine. She’ll have lots and lots of stories. She’s been in India a year. There are elephants in India and great fierce tigers, and alligators which bite your head off and …’
‘Shove off, can’t you, Hilary, it’s the middle of the night.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s late. I’ve given you twenty minutes extra.’
‘I don’t want to go to school. My nose is sore.’
‘We’ll put some Vaseline on. And don’t forget we’ve got ice cream for breakfast. Guess what Auntie Eva eats for breakfast?’
He shrugged, turned the other way.
‘Mangos and papayas and chocolate-covered ants.’
‘Ants?’
‘Yes, two dozen every morning, twelve milk and twelve plain.’
He sat up very slowly, wiped his runny nose on his pyjama sleeve. ‘How do they put the chocolate on – when the ants are still alive?’
‘Yes, I think so. You have to gulp them down very very quickly, or they fly out of your mouth.’
‘Ugh! I’d hate to go to India.’
‘No, you wouldn’t. You could ride on an elephant, right high up, on a sort of wooden throne, and the elephants have gorgeous coloured rugs on, and medals round their necks and … Want to see a picture?’ He was watching her intently now, as she fumbled for the photograph. ‘There! That’s our Auntie Eva, holding her umbrella up, for shade. It’s very hot on elephants, because you’re closer to the sun. And see that little boy sitting on its head? He’s the driver and he’s not much older than you are.’
Luke grabbed the photograph, studied it close up. ‘When’s she coming?’
‘Oh, it’ll be quite a little while yet. We’ll have to get the place nice first, so we can invite her here to stay. Would you like her to come and stay, Luke?’
‘Don’t mind.’
‘Right, up you get. 50p for the one who gets dressed first.’
‘That’s not fair. You’re dressed already.’
‘No, I’m not. I’ve got my nightie underneath this coat. In fact, you’re bound to win, because I’ve got layers and layers of clothes to take off first. Okay, starting now!’ She dashed back to the sitting room, trying to generate excitement. It wasn’t hard. Her whole body seemed lighter and less weary. Even her cold was less oppressive, as if Eva’s thirty pages had acted like an instant cure. Her mind kept darting back and forth, reflecting on the letter, filling in the gaps, solving any puzzles like last year’s Christmas card. No real mystery there. It would have arrived in the first week of December – already Advent, when no letters were allowed; would have been kept by Reverend Mother for Christmas afternoon. Except Sister Mary Hilary had disappeared by then, run away on impulse with no forwarding address. And why should Reverend Mother forward letters anyway, when the nun in question belonged back in the convent, had taken formal solemn vows never to leave it in her life?
She must dash off a reply, maybe even send a telegram, tell her Aunt not to visit Brignor, but to come and stay in Tooting – and to come immediately, before she’d moved herself, lost the only fragile home they had between the two of them. Eva would be absolutely stunned to find her niece not a virgin Sister, but the ‘mother’ of a seven-year-old, and no longer living in an eighteenth-century mansion, but in a condemned flat above a shop. She laughed out loud, sharing Eva’s shock and sheer astoundment. She’d have to work really fast, clear that second bedroom, get it painted, furnished – may be refurbish the whole flat. And Joe would have to help. She’d take a tougher line with him, insist she got her wages the day that they were due, instead of always late, so she could buy material for curtains, make a bedspread for Aunt Eva, cushions for this sitting room, perhaps a …
A silent mocking voice cut through her plans. ‘Look, your precious Aunt will probably only stay for just a month or less – if she comes at all. Nothing’s certain, is it? She said herself she’s only passing through, before she flies off somewhere else, hates the thought of London, is agog to see the world. Why go to all that trouble for …?’
For who? Hilary flung back the car-rug curtain, glanced around the room. Why not for herself? She’d made no plans at all to improve this tatty flat. It had seemed hardly worth the effort, when both her tenure and her role were equally provisional. Yet she had one whole term, at least. Even if Rita were discharged from hospital, she was unlikely to be strong enough to take on Luke immediately, was bound to convalesce first. And, anyway, she didn’t have to move. Joe had promised she could remain here in the flat, even after Luke was off her hands – which gave her till October; maybe longer, if Charlie wangled extra-time, or the developers delayed in pulling down the place. It was nine months till October, plenty long enough to transform it into something of her own, stamp it with her taste, not Joe’s or Liz’s. She’d never had a home before, never had the chance to do things as she wanted, choose a colour scheme, hunt down odds and ends in secondhand shops, things she’d picked out for herself, instead of making do with other people’s cast-offs.
It might actually be fun – a challenge, an achievement, and who cared if it were temporary? Everything was temporary, in one sense, especially Eva’s own jobs. Yet that didn’t seem to stop her aunt from trying to grab at life, relish her small crumbs of it. And Charlie wasn’t moping in his shop downstairs; still kept it open, kept it fully stocked, still hoped for a reprieve. Both he and Eva were already in their sixties, had far less time than she did – time to simply live. Her aunt had less in every way: no home, no wage, no job, no friends in London, no supportive Sister Anne; was returning home to complete. uncertainty. At least she’d find a roof, a pied-à-terre, a resurrected niece to meet her at the airport.
She rifled through the photographs again – Eva grinning with the nuns, her brilliant crimson sundress hogging all the limelight; Eva with a bald and bearded Indian, who looked less than half her size; Eva in her swimsuit, challenging the waves. Her aunt was officially a spinster, officially retired, alone in the world – as she was – yet she had refused to wilt or wither, wallow in self-pity, view her birthdays as simply signposts to the grave. Instead, she made things happen, lived life for herself, made that self important – and enough in its own right. She could do the same; create a home right here, even plant a garden, transform the cluttered junkyard into a splash of scent and colour. She needed colour everywhere, inside as well as out; could paint these dreary khaki walls a deep dramatic shade; buy a few bright posters perhaps a Botticelli, like the one in Sister Anne’s room.
She closed her eyes, suddenly uneasy, could see not grinning Eva, but the pale and shocked Madonna; recalled that strange and blinding light, the fierce wind on her face. She had never understood that extraordinary experience. When she’d been to see Sister Anne next morning, the nun divulged that she and all the Sisters had spent that night awake, praying for herself and Luke, imploring God to make it clear what He wanted for the boy. Had that been His answer – the rushing wind, the light – or were they just the side effects of the feverish cold which started that same evening, or simply the result of too much stress? She would probably never know, would have to accept the whole improbable phenomenon as one of Robert’s mysteries. And one which smacked of blasphemy. Why should she be granted an annunciation, when she was no longer even a virgin, let alone a Blessed one, and she and Luke (and Joseph) comprised no Holy Family?
‘I won, I won! You haven’t even started.’ Luke burst in, shirt unbuttoned, shorts unzipped, one sock on, one off. ‘Where’s my 50p? I need it now, this minute. I want to go and buy a glider. There’s this really cheapo one I saw in …’
‘Breakfast first, then gliders. We’ll get it on the way to school, but only if you hurry.’
‘You’re not hurrying.’
‘No, I’m not, you’re right. Go and start your ice cream and I’ll be washed and dressed by then. Did you wash, by the way’
‘Yeah.’
They both grinned at the lie. ‘Well, I’ll let you off today, but only because it’s my fault that we’re late – or Auntie Eva’s fault.’ Hilary was tugging off her sweaters as she talked, rifling through her suitcase for clean clothes. ‘D’you know, I think we ought to celebrate this Saturday, have a treat or something, first because my Aunt’s not dead, and …’
‘Dead?’
‘Yes – I thought she was – and second, it’s my birthday.’
‘You’re fibbing.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Why didn’t you say before, then?’
‘It felt too old, I suppose. I’ll be forty in four days.’
‘My Mum’s nearly fifty-one.’
‘Well, forty’s still important. It’s rather like you reaching double figures. What would you like to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Oh, come on, Luke, we must do something.’
‘Okay, chocolate-covered ants for breakfast.’
‘You can’t get those in Tooting.’
‘A ride on an elephant with me sitting on its head.’
‘I’m not sure we’ll get that either, unless we … Oh, yes, we can! We’ll go to London Zoo – ride on an elephant and see all Eva’s animals. Would that be fun?’
‘Dunno.’
‘It’s meant to be a marvellous zoo. I’ve never been. Have you?’
‘Nope.’
‘Well, let’s try it, shall we – go early, spend all day there? We could even have a camel-ride, as well as just the elephant. Now, shoo, Luke! I’ll see you in the kitchen in two ticks.’
‘Hilary …?’
‘Mm.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Well, gee up with it. Or we’ll be eating our spaghetti on the bus.’ He didn’t answer for a moment, seemed embarrassed, almost diffident, scuffing one socked foot against the lino.
‘You know that letter thing they gave you?’
‘Who gave me?’
‘That lady. Sister – you know …’
‘Sister Anne?’
‘Yup.’
‘What about it?’
‘Well, it had my name on, didn’t it?’
‘Did it?’
‘Yeah.’ He paused. ‘Luke Craddock.’ He stood, restless, scowling, pulling at a button on his shirt. ‘Craddock’s not your surname.’
‘No.’
‘Well, I don’t want them to know.’
‘What d’you mean? Know what?’
‘That my Mum walked out. They’ll only laugh, or …’
‘They won’t, Luke, not at this school. Anyway, your Mother’s ill. All you have to say is she’s had an operation and is still in hospital.’
‘They won’t believe me. We said that about my Dad when he’d really gone to prison, and Gary Eaves found out and bent my arm up right behind my back, held it there five minutes. Will you say you’re Mrs Craddock, so your name’s the same as mine? Just at school. Not here.’
‘But what about the nuns? They know I’m …’
‘I don’t mind them. It’s the others in my class.’
‘But how can …?’
‘Please. I’ll give you back the 50p.’
‘I don’t want that.’
‘But will you?’
‘All right, I suppose so, if it really …
‘Say you promise.’
‘Okay, I promise, Luke.’
He dashed out, slammed the door, as if frightened she might change her mind. She checked her watch, hadn’t time to wash. She was picking up Luke’s bad habits now, as well as Craddock Senior’s. She doused herself with talc, instead, then tossed aside the neat grey skirt she’d selected from her case; the sober navy sweater she’d chosen for its convent-plain restraint. She replaced it with a frilled red blouse – Eva’s singing red – a swirly patterned skirt. She must celebrate this morning, not wait until the 10th, celebrate her two new close relations – Aunt Eva and a son.