Absent Light (20 page)

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

H
ELEN GOT UP
,
BATHED
, dressed, wandered downstairs and downed some fruit juice. It was too early to intrude on other people's lives so she watched the light purging the last shrouds of darkness. Eventually she made some coffee. She drank it, standing up, catching morning television. With its heavy reliance on confessions and exposures, she soon felt as if her nerve-endings had been put into a pencil sharpener. After ten minutes of some miserable woman slagging off some miserable man, she switched it off, picked up her keys and stepped outside.

The cold gnawed at her limbs like a hungry rat. She shivered, and turned up the collar of her jacket, surrounded by rolling hills and trees and a crushing, cold silence. Her attention was briefly caught by a bird of prey sitting on top of a telegraph pole. It was too small for a buzzard, too big for a kestrel. She reckoned it was a sparrow-hawk. It sat quite still, watching and listening, waiting for the right moment to swoop on its quarry and crunch its bones.

Helen took the main road into Kidderminster, windscreen wipers thumping with the sudden onset of gusty rain. She hadn't noticed on the drive down but there were several locations where bouquets of flowers were tied to lamp posts or railings, or just left by the side of a hedge. This is how we honour our dead, she thought, with roadside tributes, with public reminders for private grief. At the secondary school she had attended there were several benches left in memory of pupils. She could remember their histories even though she'd long forgotten what they looked like. A couple of lads were killed on the road walking from school. One girl died from a long illness, another lad from an undiagnosed heart defect that only displayed itself in the middle of a game of football. As usual, the boys outweighed the girls. She'd taken these things in her stride, she remembered. She was younger and more resilient. There was no counselling on offer then. No public outpouring of grief for losses keenly felt.

She drove around the centre of Kidderminster, negotiating the ring road, and turned off as if she were heading for Stourbridge and Wolverhampton. The traffic funnelled into a narrow, dishevelled-looking street with a sex-shop called Taboo on one side, a used-car dealership on the other. She turned left at the lights and followed the road round. It was the kind of place where the pub landlord's idea of refurbishment was to put new metal grilles up at the windows. Eventually, she came to a row of terraced houses. Her gran's house looked very run down, she thought, as she parked the car and got out. The curtains were thick with dust, the windows dirty, the step to the front door blackened. For an instant, she wondered if she'd come to the wrong dwelling. Then she looked at the house next door, recognised the cactus in the window, the bright yellow curtains and realised that she'd come to the right place after all. Mr and Mrs Wellings lived there, both long-standing friends of her gran, though Helen hadn't spoken to them in years.

Taking her courage in her hands, she banged the knocker on the green painted door and waited. They'd both be in their eighties, she thought. It was quite possible that one of them was dead.

The door was opened by an elderly man with a marked stoop. He was wearing baggy fawn-coloured corduroy trousers and a sloppy sweater with leather patches on the elbows. His face was heavily lined and, because of the stoop, the skin hung down like a blood-hound's.

“Mr Wellings,” Helen said with a smile.

“Yes,” he said cautiously.

“I don't suppose you remember me. I'm Mrs Painter's granddaughter. We met ages ago when I was a girl.”

“Mrs Painter,” he said slowly as if Helen were speaking a foreign language.

“Doris, your next-door neighbour. She moved, went to live in a home.”

“I remember,” a woman's voice travelled from inside. “Let her in, Reg, for Heaven's sake. You'll both catch your death standing on the doorstep.”

The old man shrugged and let Helen pass. She followed him through an icy cold room to another where a coal fire was burning. Mrs Wellings sat in a corner near the fire. The window behind her looked out onto a walled, brick-paved yard with a dark brown painted door. Helen guessed that the door led out to a shared access.

The voice was a lot stronger than the occupant. Mrs Wellings, Violet, as she insisted Helen called her, was extremely frail in appearance. She wore several layers of clothing from which her thin wrists and hands protruded like pipe-cleaners. Although her hands were gnarled with arthritis, Helen noticed that the old woman's nails were beautifully manicured and painted a soft pale peach. She wondered if the old man did them for her or whether she had a kind friend or neighbour.

“Sit yourself down,” Violet said, indicating the settee. “Aren't you going to say hello, Reg?”

“How do,” Mr Wellings said in a bluff, typically Midlands fashion.

“I remember you,” Violet said, turning to Helen with a spry smile. “You used to come round for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Talking of which,” she said, looking pointedly at her husband, “get the kettle on, Reg.”

Reg muttered something and sloped into the kitchen to do his wife's bidding.

“That's better,” Violet said, looking delighted to have a visitor. Close-up, Helen noticed that the pale, milk-white skin on Violet's face was broken up by what looked like bruises but were in fact burst blood vessels where the veins were simply too fragile to contain the supply. Her eyes were red-rimmed and the blue irises tinged with yellow.

“This is very good of you,” Helen said.

“Get away,” Violet beamed. “Now we can have a real good chat. How's Doris getting on then?”

“Physically she's quite well. Her memory's not so good, of course.”

“Got worse, has she?” Violet narrowed her eyes.

“She was never going to improve,” Helen said simply.

“No,” Violet sighed. “I always say if that happens to me, shoot me.” Her mouth screwed into a frown. “Can't abide the thought of being gaga.”

“Who's to say you're not?” Mr Wellings called from the kitchen in a tone that Helen wasn't entirely certain was humorous.

“Thought you were deaf,” Violet called back, winking at Helen. “And what about your mother, dear?”

Helen cleared her throat. She'd been prepared for the question but still found herself fluffing the answer. “She's…erm. She died. Heart-attack.”

Violet's red-rimmed eyes widened. “Did you hear that, Reg. Our Joanie's passed on.”

“Get away,” Reg exclaimed, appearing at the doorway, wiping a teacup decorated with flowers the colour of dried blood.

Violet stretched out her hand and took Helen's. “Sorry to hear that, chick. Had a difficult life, your mother. All came right in the end, marrying your dad, and that, but she had a rotten start.”

“Yes, I…”

“Here we are,” Reg said, balancing a tray and putting it on the dining table. “Custard Creams or Rich Tea?”

“Custard Creams, of course. We've got guests,” Violet said proudly. The old man moved with surprising speed and returned seconds later.

Helen smiled shyly. “You were saying about my mum, Violet.”

“Sugar?” Reg said

“No thanks,” Helen replied.

“Ah yes, your mother,” Violet said, drawing her hand away, her eyes rheumy with recollection.

“Custard Cream, anyone?” Reg said, handing round the packet.

Violet looked at him with irritation.

“Thanks,” Helen said, deciding it would be diplomatic to take one even though she didn't fancy it.

“One shouldn't speak about the dead,” Reg said, a warning note in his voice. “It's not right.”

“Only if you've got something bad to say,” Violet countered.

A prickly silence seemed to invade the room. Helen didn't mistake it for integrity. The old man was trying to shut his wife up. She decided to give it another go. Everybody talks. Eventually. “I know Mum had a tough time looking after Gran when she was ill.”

“Ill?” Violet snorted, “nothing wrong with her.”

“Vi,” Reg warned, a threatening look on his face. But Vi was not to be silenced.

“It's true. She led that girl a dog's life, fetch me this, do that, and all because she craved the attention. I didn't hold with it then and I'm not going to pretend otherwise just because Doris has gone round the bend. It will end in tears, I said, and I was right.” Violet took a strong sip of tea, clearly glad to get the strength of her feelings off her shallow chest. Reg helped himself to another biscuit and nibbled on it nervously.

“How did my grandfather cope?” Helen asked.

Violet sniffed. Helen noticed Reg's eyes drilling into his wife's. Helen leant forward just a fraction to break his line of vision.

“He was hardly ever there,” Reg said, his eyes still on Violet. “Anyway, it was all a very long time ago. You don't remember things that well when you're our age.” Reg lowered his gaze. Violet sipped her tea. Helen followed suit.

“Think we could do with a top-up,” Violet said spryly. “Any more water in the kettle?”

“I'll have to boil some up,” Reg said grudgingly.

Violet looked at Helen with a conspiratorial smile. “I
do
enjoy a cup of tea.”

Reg got up, picked up the tray, chucked his wife a look as if he were spitting tacks.

“And shut the door after you,” Violet said. “I get a draught on my neck when you leave it open.”

“Perhaps you'd like me to stick a broom up my bum so I can sweep the floor while I'm at it,” he said caustically.

“That won't be necessary,” Violet said, giving Helen another watery wink.

As soon as Reg was out of earshot, Violet leant towards Helen. “We don't get many visitors nowadays,” she confided. “Just the odd health visitor, the man to read the meter. The last time someone came it was a fella.”

“Right,” Helen said with a smile, disappointed that Violet was not more forthcoming.

“A fella asking questions.” Violet sat back in the chair, looking satisfied.

Helen felt the smile slip from her face. “Asking questions?”

“Just like you.” Violet patted Helen's hand. Her expression trembled with girlish excitement. Her eyes were pinpoints of feverish bright light.

“When?”

“Exactly this time of year, funnily enough. One of those cold dark days we keep getting. Your gran had just moved out.”

“But that was about four years ago,” Helen said, feeling her stomach churn.

“I daresay,” Violet said. “Seemed a nice enough lad, bit rough round the edges, if you know what I mean. I felt sorry for him, to tell the truth. So he never got in contact with you?”

“With me?”

“Said he was going to look you up and speak to both of you.”

“Both? I'm sorry, I really don't understand.”

Violet leant in towards Helen, took her hand again. This time the grip was tight. “There are some things it's best not to know, but I reckon you have the right, especially with your mother gone. It can't hurt anyone any more. I told you it would end in tears and it did. Your mum was a good girl. She did everything for your gran, washed her, got her dressed, went off to school. Lord knows how she did all the shopping and cleaning – we helped out when we could, of course,” Violet sniffed, “ but it was no life for a young girl. At heart she was just a kid, a child with too much on her shoulders. It was inevitable, really.”

Helen stared at her, mystified. “What was?”

Violet's voice dropped to a whisper. “She got in the family way.”

Helen felt as if she'd been hit with a sledgehammer. Everything she'd come to believe about her mother turned to dust and blew away. Even though they'd never been close, she felt, at least, that she understood her, knew her nature, appreciated that she was private, aloof, was at odds with life. But this? She couldn't grasp it. Her mind teemed with questions. “How old was she?”

“Fifteen.”

Christ. “Do you have any idea who the father was?”

Helen watched the hesitation. Violet glanced at the door. Helen saw her decide to lie. “We don't know, dear.”

“So what happened to the child?”

“She tried to keep it, spitting image of her, it was, but eventually it was put up for adoption. Sadly, the boy spent most of his time in care.”

The boy
, Helen thought, her pulse racing. Then she remembered the guy at the funeral, the one wearing the wraparound sunglasses, the one with the fair hair.

“Where? Which care home?”

“Not sure if I remember. Somewhere in the West Midlands, I think.”

“And was this the man who came back four years ago?”

Violet nodded. “Wanted to trace his birth mother. They can now, you know. Not sure if it's a good idea. It can cause a lot of heartache.”

“Did you help him?”

“He never got in touch?” There was a wheedling note in Violet's voice. Helen caught a glimpse of mischief in the old woman's eyes. She wasn't above mixing it, she thought. Suddenly she didn't seem like such a sweet old lady any more.

“No.”

“Probably decided it was for the best.”

“His name,” Helen murmured, already suspecting the answer.

“Lee,” Violet replied. “Lee Painter.”

She drove back to the cottage in a daze. Lee was her half-brother, her mother's son. As far as she was aware, her dad knew nothing about him. She wondered how he'd react to such a revelation. How it would spoil his opinion of his wife. Not that she was planning on telling him. Like Violet said, there were some things best concealed.

She tried to imagine her mother as a frightened, pregnant teenager. No wonder there was so much discord between her and Helen's gran. No wonder she'd put so much distance between them. Her grandmother was the keeper of her daughter's secret. Strange how senility let it out.