On a sunny afternoon in the second week of June, in a small terraced house in Shepherds Bush which she is house-sitting, Flora checks her email – again. She’s been doing this with increasing frequency since she got back to London, but day after day Connie’s silence seems to grow in significance. It’s almost two weeks since they parted in the foyer of the Bloomsbury hotel the morning Connie left.
‘We’ll email, won’t we?’ Connie had asked, appearing suddenly anxious and uncertain after her rigid stance of the last few days.
‘Of course we will,’ Flora had said. ‘We’ll work this out somehow, Connie. We can’t let one disagreement ruin things after all these years.’
Connie had nodded, smiling a tense smile. ‘No, no we won’t let that happen. I’ll let you know when I’m back.’
And they had hugged each other, not speaking but holding on tightly, willing each other not to cry. And then Connie had turned away and walked quickly across the lobby to the taxi where the driver was lifting her suitcase into the boot, and Flora stood and watched as it drove away, and then made her way slowly back to her room.
Two days after she should have got home Connie hadn’t emailed, so Flora had sent a brief message asking if she was home safely, hoping the flight wasn’t too awful. ‘Let me know how you are,’ she had said at the end, but Connie hadn’t replied to that nor to the message she’d sent from France and another when she moved into this house. So what next? she wonders. Does Connie intend to ignore her completely?
The elderly corgi who lives in the house waddles over to her, leans against her legs and gazes up pleadingly. Flora scratches between her ears and the dog takes this as a signal that a walk is imminent. She grabs Flora’s sleeve, chewing at it in anticipation, and Flora pushes her gently away and goes out to the hall to collect the lead. The house and dog belong to a friend of Bea’s who is visiting her daughter in America, and had been desperate for someone to take care of both in her absence.
‘C’mon then, Tinkerbelle,’ Flora says, and the dog yelps with excitement as she opens the front door. ‘Tinkerbelle,’ she says aloud, shaking her head. ‘What sort of person names a barrel-shaped corgi Tinkerbelle? Even if she wasn’t always barrel-shaped it’s still a pretty nauseating name for a dog.’ Tinkerbelle wags her tail furiously as if in agreement and skips nimbly down the front steps.
The house is delightful, a nineteenth century terrace immaculately cared for and with a glassed extension that makes the most of the sunny walled garden with its patch of lawn surrounded by big pots of red and white geraniums. She has it for four more weeks, by which time she hopes to have found somewhere similar to rent or perhaps buy, if Gerald’s bequest will stretch to that. London feels like home again.
It seems strange now that just a few months ago she had felt close to despair at the lack of choices open to her, and then, suddenly, everything changed. The only fly in Flora’s ointment is Connie’s silence, and the longer it continues, the more anxious she becomes.
*
Connie stands silently in the kitchen listening, waiting for them all to be gone. First Farah, dropping the girls at a friend’s house, and then on to visit patients; then Andrew, following in her car, off to meet an old friend from university days for breakfast. Then silence. She takes a deep breath; how can she have made such a stupid mistake? She has to talk to Brooke while Andrew’s out of the house, and she heads up the main stairs and then the narrow flight to Gerald’s study where Brooke is packing Gerald’s books into boxes, and listening to music on her iPod.
Connie stops in the doorway, looking around the room. ‘Goodness, you’ve made such a difference already. Where’s all the other stuff?’
Brooke grins, and turns off the music. ‘Great, isn’t it? Some of the papers took a long time, we did that on Monday. Dad took all of that and the small stuff and the rubbish down to the garage yesterday. Those boxes over there are full of files. Dad says he’ll go through them some other time. He just wants us to get it all out so that he can move the furniture.’
Connie nods, thinking how much lighter it looks up here now, how, without all the clutter, you can see the charm of the room, the way the light falls, and of course the dust. ‘I haven’t been up here for ages,’ she says, sitting down on the chaise. ‘It needs a good clean. I’ll come and help you with that when the boxes are gone, and you’ll need new curtains.’
‘Well,’ Brooke begins cautiously, ‘Dad said that if you were okay with it I could have a Venetian blind, one of those with the wide wooden slats.’
‘Of course I don’t mind, that would look lovely. I want you to make it your own, Brooke, and I can see now why you chose it. I’d got so used to resenting it that I had forgotten what a nice room it is.’
‘You resented it?’
Connie nods. ‘Yes, silly, I suppose. How can you resent a room? But I did. Granddad spent so much time here. He used to shut himself away for hours pretending he was working when he didn’t want to spend time with me or the children. He did work some of the time, of course, but a lot of it he’d be reading those . . .’ she points to the shelf of paperback crime novels, just where Brooke is standing, ‘or listening to the radio or sleeping.’ She shrugs. ‘Anyway, this’ll be a lovely room and, fortunately for you, escaping up here will not be seen as dereliction of duty. Well, probably not anyway.’
Brooke smiles. ‘I can’t wait to get it done, but then it’ll be time to go home and back to school.’
‘The long holidays will roll around soon,’ Connie says. ‘Perhaps we’ll all have Christmas here again this year.’ She pauses – ‘I think there’s an aerial socket in that corner, behind the desk. We could get you a TV, then we won’t have to fight over what to watch.’
‘Wow, that would be brilliant,’ Brooke says. ‘Thanks, Nan. Are Farah and the twins staying on?’
‘For a while at least. I asked her to move in permanently, but she thinks we both need time to see how it might work – all of us living here – before we decide. I suppose she’s right. Brooke, there’s something I wanted to ask you. The photographs I sent you while I was away, do you still have them?’
‘Yes, of course, they’re on my iPad.’
‘Do you mind?’
‘Of course not, as long as you don’t delete any.’
They look steadily at each other and Connie, flushing, looks away. ‘Ah, well, I was hoping to get rid of some,’ she says with an awkward laugh, thinking she must look like a guilty child.
‘No, Nan,’ Brooke says firmly, withdrawing the proffered iPad and putting it on the windowsill behind her. ‘They’re my photos now, you sent them to me.’
Connie’s face is burning now. ‘Well, I don’t know about that,’ she begins. ‘It’s just that . . . that . . .’
‘That you deleted some of your own, and then remembered that I must still have copies?’
‘Well, okay, yes, that’s right, and I just wanted to see them.’
‘Oh! Okay,’ Brooke says, ‘I’ll email them to you.’
Connie feels ridiculous. She gets to her feet and walks around looking at the books still on the shelves, looking at anything to avoid looking at Brooke. ‘I’d really prefer it if you . . .’
‘Why did you lie to Dad about the photographs?’
‘Lie?’
‘Oh, come on, Nan, you know you did. You wouldn’t show us the day you got back and when you finally got round to it a whole lot of them, the ones with Granddad’s friends, were missing.’
‘Really, Brooke,’ Connie says, ‘this is not . . . this is . . . for goodness sake, I feel as though I’ve been dragged up in front of the headmistress.’
‘Why did you delete them, Nan?’
Connie sinks back down onto the chaise, shaking her head, putting her hands over her face.
‘Oh, Nan, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you. I just want to know what’s going on. You really liked those people at first, now you’ve wiped them out, haven’t even mentioned them. And Auntie Flora – you were so excited about her coming to live here and now you don’t even want to talk about her.’ She crosses the room and pulls up a chair facing Connie. ‘Please don’t cry.’
Connie looks up at her. ‘I’m not crying. It’s not your fault, Brooke, you’re right. But I can’t tell you why. I just can’t.’
‘Something happened, didn’t it, in England?’ Brooke says. ‘Something that involves Auntie Flora, and those people?’
Connie nods.
‘So tell me, it can’t be that bad.’
‘It is,’ Connie says, fighting the urge to talk about it, to let Brooke know exactly how awful it is. ‘It’s really bad and if I told you . . . if I told you . . .’
‘You’d have to kill me,’ Brooke jokes.
Connie smiles. ‘Well, not exactly, but I’d have to make you promise not to tell anyone else, not Andrew or Kerry, no one.’
‘Then don’t tell me,’ Brooke says, angry now, standing up again. ‘Don’t tell me because I’m sick of things that can’t be talked about. I’m sick of whispered arguments that I’m not supposed to hear. I’m sick of Dad telling me stuff that I can’t tell you or Mum, and Mum telling me stuff I can’t tell Dad, and Dad and Auntie Kerry telling each other stuff that no one else is supposed to know. I’m sick of all those things we couldn’t say in front of Granddad in case he could still possibly hear and understand, and sick of Granddad’s secrets, whatever they are. Why couldn’t we have known about Auntie Flora years ago? How cruel was that, sending her away from her family, letting everyone believe that she’d done something terrible? And, Nan, don’t think that I don’t know that you used me to tell Dad and Auntie Kerry about that so you didn’t have to tell them yourself. Well, thanks very much for that – I really walked into it, and it turned out okay, but you really shouldn’t have done it.’
Connie sits upright on the couch, frozen. She feels weak and nauseous, but daren’t relax in case she falls apart. She sees Brooke bite her lip, and she comes over to sit beside Connie on the chaise.
‘I’m sorry, I probably shouldn’t have said all that but it’s true, and I’m sick of it, sick of adults telling me how important it is to be open and honest, and that if you are everything can be sorted out sensibly, but doing exactly the opposite. I’ve had a horrible time – Mum and Dad arguing or not speaking then splitting up, and Mum having an affair, and having to live with that toad for weeks, then moving house, and then finding out he was a pervert and not daring to say anything and him trashing the house, and the accident. It’s been awful, Nan, and I wasn’t even allowed to tell you about Dad nearly breaking his neck. And while all that was going on I was expected to do my exams and behave as though nothing had happened.’
Connie manages to reach out an arm and put it around her shoulders, silent still, not knowing where to start. ‘I’m so sorry, darling,’ she says eventually. ‘You’re quite right, it’s not the way to do things. It’s Granddad’s way. I think it made him feel in control of things, but it’s divisive. I suppose I learned it from him, but it’s not how I want to do things now. I’m really sorry about my part in that, particularly in what you said about my telling you about Flora. It was a very wrong thing to do. I’ve been having a bad time myself, but that doesn’t change anything. You’re so mature and sensible, Brooke . . .’
‘No,’ Brooke cuts in, ‘don’t say that. I’m sick of being told that, too. I’m still a kid . . . sometimes I just need to be a teenager. I’m sick of having to be a grown-up for adults who are behaving like children.’
Brooke lets out an enormous sigh and leans against Connie and they sit there in silence. Then Brooke gives a stifled little snort of laughter.
‘What is it?’ Connie asks.
‘I was just going to say, please don’t tell Dad how rude I was to you, but that doesn’t really work with what I was saying before, does it?’
Connie laughs. ‘No it doesn’t, but you weren’t rude. You were honest, so there’s nothing to tell. But there is a lot for me to think about, more than you could possibly realise.’
Brooke brushes strands of hair back from her face. ‘I won’t delete those photographs, Nan, because I think whatever it is that happened probably affects all of us, otherwise you wouldn’t want to hide them. And you might get over it, and then you’ll wish you had them.’
Connie relaxes with a sigh, and leans back, shifting her position on the chaise and encountering the broken spring. ‘Shit!’ she says, moving again. ‘Shit, that hurt.’
Brooke laughs. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear before.’
‘Oh, I can do much better than that,’ Connie says, ‘as you’ll soon discover now you’re going to be here more. You’re right about the photographs, about everything, really.’ She gets up and heads for the door, then pauses. ‘This morning I was going to do something I should have done before I went away, reply to all those lovely messages people sent me about Gerald, but I don’t feel I can start on it now. D’you fancy coming for a walk with me and Scooter, going for coffee somewhere and eating something that’s really bad for us?’
Brooke gets up, puts her arms around her, and hugs her. ‘Sounds like heaven,’ she says. ‘Let’s do it.’ And she follows Connie down the stairs.
*
It’s later that afternoon when Connie remembers the book and at first pushes away the thought. But she doesn’t like the way she left things with Phillip, and can’t stop worrying about what he must think of her. Perhaps it’s a legacy of her life with Gerald, the need to please a man and have him think well of her, but she is uneasy with the way she behaved toward him that last evening. He was, after all, there at her urging, and was trying to help, even if his basic loyalties lay elsewhere. She should at least send him an email to thank him for the book, but she’ll have to read it first – she doesn’t even know the title and can’t remember whether he had told her who the author was.
Upstairs she retrieves the package from the drawer and removes the gift-wrapping. It’s a paperback, the cover background a blurry black and white photograph of some trees and a hedge and superimposed over it the back view of a woman in a dusty rose tinted coat and matching broad brimmed hat. Very 1930s. All Passion Spent it’s called, and Connie tries to remember what she knows about Vita Sackville West, which is not much at all. She sits down on the edge of the bed and sighs. Maybe she could send the email without reading it, but then he’d made such a thing of it she can hardly mention the book without reference to its contents.
Connie kicks off her shoes and swings her legs up onto the bed, leans back against the pillows and begins to read. Lady Slane’s husband, an eminent statesman, has died and her adult children are arguing bossily about how she should spend the last years of life. Connie’s mouth twitches in a smile, and she settles herself more comfortably against the pillows. But Lady Slane, who long ago sacrificed her dreams of an artistic life to marry and have children, has plans of her own. She takes a lease on a small house in Hampstead that she has admired since her youth and ignores the disapproval of her family. Connie scrunches her toes in delight as this unlikely eighty-eight-year-old heroine moves in with her maid, sets up her easel in the garden, and variously takes afternoon tea with her landlord, a builder and another tradesman, each in his own way devoted to the practical and visual arts.
At this point, Connie reluctantly puts the book aside. Time has flown without her noticing and she goes downstairs wondering where everyone is and then remembers that Brooke and Andrew have gone to buy blinds and other bits and pieces, and Farah is meeting the girls from school and taking them on to dancing class. She sighs with pleasure at the stillness, the lack of need to hurry, the sudden delight of having the house to herself, something she has, until now, wanted to avoid. And she fills the kettle and stands by the window waiting for it to boil, thinking of Lady Slane freed in her old age to do whatever she wants.
Connie makes herself some tea and carries it back upstairs, trying to remember what it was that Phillip had actually said about the book – something about a tree, wasn’t it? She picks up the book and begins to read again and then she remembers. A man from the past turns up, a man Lady Slane had met only a couple of times during her life as a diplomatic wife in India, a man who has admired her greatly. Lady Slane takes tea with Mr FitzGeorge, a friendship starts to grow, they talk of many things, they walk together on Hampstead Heath. They talk of the past, the occasions on which they met, they speak of her husband and family and how she abandoned her desire to become a painter in order to marry. ‘I remember looking at you and thinking, that is a woman whose heart is broken,’ he tells her.
Shocked, Lady Slane assures Mr FitzGeorge that she has had everything that women want: a husband, children and a comfortable position in life. ‘Except that you were defrauded of the one thing that mattered,’ he says. ‘Nothing matters to an artist except the fulfilment of his gift . . . he grows crooked like a tree twisted into an unnatural shape . . . life becomes existence – makeshift.’
Connie puts down the book and stares at her reflection in the mirrored door of the wardrobe facing her. Makeshift? A tree twisted into an unnatural shape? Is that who she is? Is that what she has let herself become? And, just like Lady Slane, she puts her hands over her eyes, to shield herself.