I sleep in until after eleven, blaming teenage hormones while I still have the chance. Margot and Mum chat downstairs as I drift in and out of indulgent Sunday-morning sleep, dreaming strange, BBC2-afternoon-movie black-and-white dreams of Reg and Bess and young Margot. Then Gregory Peck turned up and it all got very confusing.
As I stir properly, everything I read last night feels like fiction. It’s just so … outlandish! Murder, well, not murder, but … paedophilia, I guess … and Margot somehow saving a man from death row. Except we never called it death row in this country, but still. How is it I’ve gone nearly sixteen years without ever hearing about this remarkable Atticus Finch moment? Neither Mum or Margot have mentioned it once.
I mean, how many times have I heard this story – valiant white saviour gallops in and rescues the downtrodden black guy, and everyone cheers for Kevin Costner or whatever. But then I think, this isn’t a story, it’s Margot’s life … Margot’s words, and I guess I’ll never get to hear Reg’s side of it, which is a shame, but what choice do I have? I can’t exactly hop in the TARDIS to speak to him, and I can’t ask Margot either without letting on I’ve nicked her diary.
It was a different time. I suppose, in 1941, Reg didn’t have too many people – let alone white people – speaking up on his behalf, and I’m proud Margot did. I like to think I’d have done the same.
I hear Margot’s Land Rover crunch away down the dirt track and take that as my cue to get up. Mum has fed Peanut, saving me the job. ‘All done,’ she says. ‘Do you want brekkie? It’s almost lunchtime, Fliss.’
‘I’ll just have this.’ I take a banana out of the fruit bowl. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘Ooh, yes, please!’ She eases herself onto the sofa.
‘Where did Margot go?’
‘She’s taking the generator over to one of the houses in the hills – they didn’t get their electric back or something. She’ll be back in a while.’
I pour the tea and stir sugar into mine. ‘Good. Let’s make the most of it while she’s gone.’
‘Fliss,’ Mum says wearily, putting her bookmark back into the latest Martina Cole, ‘you promised me you’d give it a fair go.’
I carry the tea over and plonk it onto the coffee table. ‘I am trying. It’s her that’s being a megabit—’
‘Felicity …’
‘She’s a bully, Mum. She does it on purpose. She did it to you before you were sick.’ I remember, on more than one occasion, Mum telling Margot to butt out of her work and stuff.
Mum sighs. ‘Margot is old. She’s set in stone. You’re young and flexible. We might have to bend to fit around her a little.’
‘There is no Pilates in the world that’d make us that flexible.’ Mum smiles and it lights up her face. She is starting to look better. I wonder if the last of the chemicals they pumped into her system are gone. Before long she’ll be able to go back to work … and that means going back to London, unless she intends to make documentaries about sheep and hills.
I think about the triumphant Reg saga. ‘What was Margot like when you were little?’
Mum shrugs. ‘Not very mumsy. Dad did most of the parent stuff. You have to bear in mind Margot was already this famous award-winning journalist when I was born and those were the days before childminders and any concept of work–life balance. She was busy, I suppose. I didn’t mind though; I was always very proud of her. She was right at the heart of the women’s lib movement – not that she needed liberating from Dad, but even when I was little I thought that was a wonderful thing.’
I try to remember Grandad, but I was so young and he died so suddenly. I do recall him being kind, fuzzy and warm, always ready to swing me around their Hampstead garden. I had a choice of ‘arms’ (being swung by the arms), ‘legs’ or ‘aeroplane’ (which was one arm and one leg). That garden was something else: foxgloves and willows and the pond with the koi carp. He lived to defend those bloody fish from a dastardly heron. ‘Was Margot alive during the war?’ I ask innocently, not wanting to reveal I’m ransacking her private diary.
‘Of course! She’d have been … a teenager. In fact …’ Mum stands and walks to the sideboard. She slides it open and runs her finger along the spines of some dusty old volumes. She pulls one out and I see that they’re photo albums. ‘Let’s see. This one is from … 1939, so just before the war.’
She sits alongside me on the settee and we leaf through gorgeous sepia images of Margot’s life in London. In most of them she’s pictured with her father, the admiral, and her mother. It’s easy to see where Margot gets her looks from: she’s got her father’s statuesque height and, luckily for her, her mother’s beautiful cheekbones and lips. My great-grandparents: perfect strangers to me, both long dead before I was born. We get to the end of the album and there’s nothing from during the evacuation. ‘Does she ever talk about the war?’
‘Not really, actually,’ Mum admits. ‘Why don’t you ask her yourself? Maybe that’s what you need: to get to know each other better.’
I say nothing and Mum returns to Sexy Mob Wives or whatever it is she’s reading. That’s the problem … I am getting to know Margot, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.
There’s only one thing for it. After I’ve showered and gone way dizzy from hanging my head upside-down to blow-dry my hair, I dress in sensible shoes – some old violet Kickers – and finally venture into the forest. Eerie voices, mari-morgans, whatever, I have to know. If the cave behind the waterfall exists, I suppose that would go some way towards corroborating the diary. In history, the teachers are always telling us to question secondary sources, especially diaries, because of bias. Maybe Margot was so bored during her time at the farm she concocted a story about herself.
Outside, it’s what Mum would call ‘muggy’, so I select a Miss Selfridge purple denim jacket and slip it over my Lipsy blouse. The ensemble vaguely matches, but who’s going to see it? I tell Mum that I’m going for a walk and exit through the rose garden.
I stand in the shade of the trees and remember Margot’s warning to stay out of the woods and Bronwyn’s ominous stories. I refuse to be deterred. A watery, diluted sun is trying to pierce the cloud, and chirping birds are in fine voice; it’s really not scary.
But you can never be too careful. I find a flat piece of slate and every hundred metres or so I scratch an X into the bark of a tree so I can find my way back to the farm. If it’s good enough for Hansel and Gretel, it’s good enough for me.
I’m reminded of Center Parcs, the last time I was in a forest. It was BC – Before Cancer – and Mum took me and Tiggy for a long weekend. But the forest there felt very safe – the paths all clearly marked and signposted. It was like being in a forest theme park – artificial and sterile somehow, like every blue tit and squirrel had been hired to perform. This … this feels wild … wild and gnarly and angry and ancient. The branches overhead creak like old bones, as if the trees have stories to tell.
The paths wind and split with no logic, more like veins than anything man-made. After the rain last night, the air is rich with that soily, almost electric smell. Soon enough I hear the ‘whisper’ of the stream, and today she’s not saying my name, because that’s crazy.
The ground drops away without warning, splitting into a gorge. I almost career right over the edge and grab a branch to steady myself. A fast-flowing stream carves the forest, a fallen tree bridging the gap. Tempting though it is, I’m not so stupid as to try cross it in this outfit. Upstream, a rocky outcrop looms from which the water gushes, spills and tumbles. The waterfall is jagged, like a lightning scar on the hillside. There are glimmers of gold as weak sun bounces off the water.
I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s honestly so beautiful I forget to breathe for a second, hand to my chest. This is way existential, but for a second I feel tiny, dwarfed by the power of the natural world. Or something … I know what I mean.
Getting down to the water’s edge is more of an effort. If there is a safe and easy way, I can’t see it. The slope is sheer and covered in brambles and weeds. All I can do is cling on to overhanging branches and sort of lower myself down the incline.
The rocks lining the stream are slick with moss and I continue to use branches to steady myself as I take them as stepping stones. If I fall and hit my head, no one is going to find my body for a long time.
I think about the corpse in the cave and shudder. Well, if he ever really existed.
I head upstream, and it’s hard work. It’s slow progress and my arms ache. A couple of times my foot slips into the stream and I’m soaked all the way through my socks to the skin. My Kickers squelch with every step.
I rest at the bottom of the waterfall. Water surges through a narrow gap between two mighty boulders at the top and then cascades down the cliff-face. Cool mist hits my face and I wonder just how frizzy my hair is gonna get. I scan the rocks, looking for the legendary cave. There’s nothing obvious, but I do spot a crevice where two layers of rock don’t quite sit together. That has to be it.
My feet are, I think, in very real danger of frostbite, but I’ve come this far. I set off over the rocks. This part is less treacherous than the mossy stepping stones – there are more footholds, and it’s not too slippery if I avoid the splash zones.
Even so, I’m knackered by the time I get to the opening. Wow, I’m really out of shape. I vow to do Mum’s old Rosemary Conley: Legs, Bums and Tums workout video as soon as I get home. Or tomorrow maybe.
Unless Margot neglected to mention it, the entrance to the ‘cave’ has since been covered in graffiti and there are a fair few crushed beer cans scattered around. This’d be prime real estate for winos and junkies, so I’d better be careful. Once a Girl Guide, always a Girl Guide, I pull the torch from my little Baby Spice backpack and shine it inside. I can’t see anything much, but remember Margot’s description of how the tight entrance opened out further in.
I dump the rucksack on the ledge. Carefully, and accepting I’m gonna make a total mess of the denim jacket, I lie on my front and wriggle through the gap like a snake. The torch beam is pretty weak – the batteries must be going – but I can see just ahead of myself. The dank cavern smells of wee and stale cigarette smoke. With my free hand, I feel for the drop Margot described. The tips of my fingers find a ledge and I pull myself along.
I’m in!
And I’m not alone.
There’s a curse and a gasp and a scuffling of feet. My light clearly illuminates two pale, naked bums; two guys frantically pulling their pants up. And between them, on her knees, is Megan Jones.
Great. That’s perfect.