Daughters (15 page)

A long time ago.

On the way out of the gallery, they stopped to look at poor desiccated Anne Boleyn. A group of students was clustered around the painting and a guide was at full pelt.

Anne’s dark, knowing eyes challenged Maudie from the canvas. ‘Please note the elaborate dress. This was in the style of French Court fashion, something of which she was proud. And, by all the contemporary accounts, she was considered sophisticated and elegant. In the bottom left-hand corner, there is a sprig of rosemary.’ The guide fixed on Lara and Maudie, the interlopers at the back. ‘This is intriguing, for it was added later. As many of you will know, rosemary is for remembrance. In France, which Anne so loved, it was the custom to put a branch of it in the hands of the dead, and there are some stories
of coffins being opened and the rosemary discovered to have grown over the corpse. Here, it is more associated with weddings and a sprig used to be tied to the arms of the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Traditionally, a bride also wore a garland of it to symbolize the loving memories she
carried to her new home of the old one. The poet Robert Herrick wrote: “Grow for two ends – it matters not at all/Be’t for bridall, or my buriall.”’

Wed or dead, rosemary, the portmanteau herb, did for both.

Was it of her remembrance – the slow beats of grief and regret in her king’s breast – that pretty, witty Anne had thought as she was led out to die?

The guide paused. ‘Whoever added this to the painting was probably aware of both uses for the plant. He or she is saying, “If no one else does
we
remember you.”’

Round about lunchtime, Robin came into their consulting room.

Recently he had cut his hair shorter, which made him look younger. ‘I know,’ he said, as her gaze lingered on the white stripe at his neck a second too long. ‘The schoolboy cut.’

Was she blushing? ‘It’s good.’ Conscious that her own hair was tied back with an elastic band, and her skirt was longer than she liked, she slotted her knees further under the desk.

‘Disturbing you?’ She shook her head and watched him move, quietly and economically, around the office, stacking and filing reports and clearing the desk. Did the habits of a soldier die hard, or was he naturally tidy? She couldn’t decide. In contrast, her desk was a minefield of biros, tissues, books and paper-clips. One day, she would clear it. She would.

‘How did the visit to the house go?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’ She was cautious. ‘The house is lovely, so is the garden. Neglected, though, but there’s a witch hazel, and a myrtle tree that was, apparently, planted by a connection of Jane Austen.’

‘And?’

‘First time I went it was a frozen landscape. Second
time, there were crocuses and blossom. Sleeping Beauty had been kissed awake.’ Her gaze drifted to the window. ‘Funny. I found myself in love with it.’

‘Is that so odd?’

‘City girl, me.’

‘Do you know the old Arab tradition? When Adam and Eve were turfed out of Eden, Adam took with him a grain of wheat, a date stone and a sprig of myrtle.’

She liked the image.

Clutching the remnants of his short stay in Paradise, stepping into the darkness where, save the slither of the serpent, the slightest noise was unknown? He and Eve both hugging their tainted knowledge?

‘And did the angels look after them?’

‘Must have done.’ He swung a satchel made of the softest leather on to the desk.

Good leather was irresistible. Think of butter and cashmere, of luxury’s seductive whisper. She regarded the satchel covetously. ‘Who’ve you got?’

‘Wesley-from-Chelsea. Who is in big trouble and neglected. Father’s never there. He phones in from China occasionally but lives in one flat, the mother occupies another, and Wesley’s in his own place between the two. What option does Wesley have except to be angry? Or to play two sides to the middle?’

‘Making any progress?’

‘I march him into the park and make him puff. Sit him on a bench and discuss whatever we’ve agreed is the day’s issue. Then I march him back and we try to talk it through.’

As always, the idea of a distressed child caught her by
the throat – it was so life-threatening, so deeply wrong. She busied herself with adjusting the venetian blind, which did hopeless service concealing how dirty the window was. Send memo – no,
talk
to Daniella about it. Actual speech achieved better results.

Robin propped himself against his desk. ‘But if I drop Wesley stories of boil-in-a-bag meals, plus firing and manoeuvres late at night in a dark wood, a few descriptions of rain and mud, a screaming sergeant, I get through to him, even if it’s only for a couple of minutes.’

Lara winced, and he said, ‘The Wesleys bother you, don’t they?’

With Robin there was no need to be evasive, or dishonest, partly because their association was a professional one but also because he had only to level his sharp, ambiguous gaze on her for it to seem stupid to duck the truth. Their conversations were often short, their meetings infrequent, but they ran through her life like a seam of sanity. So, she said, ‘They do.’

‘Me too.’

His answer hinted at disturbance. ‘Do you think about the war much?’ she asked.

‘I think about all wars.’

Lara put her scattered biros into a jar. ‘I mean the one you were in.’

‘Did you know your grandparents?’

Startled, she looked up. ‘Yes.’

‘Did they ever talk about the war?’

‘No, they didn’t like to.’

‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘One doesn’t.’

She felt reproved. ‘Shouldn’t we ask? I should have asked my grandparents and I’m ashamed I didn’t. We accept that men are sent away with guns. They’re told to use them. They do, and they come back unable to reconcile themselves with they saw and did. Shouldn’t we question the silence?’

‘But, more often than not, they
are
reconciled to what they do. They … I … become addicted to it.’

She shook herself mentally. She hadn’t been thinking
clearly
enough. What was more, so ran her logic, if violence becomes addictive so, too, can sadness and guilt. With
those
she was intimate.

‘OK. You want to know what it’s like out there?’ He was tracing patterns with his finger on the desk. ‘Acute relief mixed with guilt at being alive. Envy for the buggers who made it home with not too debilitating a wound. Rage at the stupidity of it. Then … then that creeping devil which tells you,
You’re enjoying this
.’

A tale told with a soldier’s brevity.

‘And did it affect you? Unacceptably?’

‘There are things.’

‘What things?’

‘One day something happens. A trigger sets off a pattern of post-traumatic stress. You’ve probably read about it.’

She felt her way. ‘I have.’

He stared at Lara. Long. Reflective. ‘Let’s say I dealt with it by going away and trying hard to think about anything but …’ He dropped his gaze. ‘You can’t empty the mind.’

Two per cent of the men serving in Iraq and Afghanistan came back with mental problems. She had read the statistic recently. It probably hid a lot of others.

This was a man whose shame or disturbance had driven him away, and she wished she could peel off the layers and understand better. ‘You went to Syria?’

He suspended the pattern-drawing. ‘To the basalt towns, the red dawns and the nothingness …

‘I pass by these walls, the walls of Layla,

And I kiss this wall and that wall.

It’s not Love of the house that has taken my heart

But of the One who dwells in those houses …’

‘And?’

‘It’s the story of Layla and Majnun by an early poet. They were star-crossed lovers and forbidden to marry. He went mad from love. Traditionally, the poets call it “virgin” love for it was never consummated.’ He touched his injured arm. ‘I read a lot of the poetry there. If you’re going to have a breakdown, it’s as good a place as any.’

‘Did you … break down?’

Robin began to pack papers into the bag. ‘I was looking for a place of safety. All soldiers do. Anyone does, who’s had that kind of experience. But I was … am a different person.’ He zipped up the bag. ‘But my time for running amok has gone, thank God.’

Anyone does, who’s had that kind of experience …

Suddenly she had to ask him, ‘Did you, do you, feel whole again?’

The atmosphere in the room was electric – a crackling static of unanswered questions.

‘Do
you
feel whole, Lara?’

The old question, which she considered so quietly and matter-of-factly. So often. She took her time. ‘Yes … No. No. But I will be one day. When Bill went …’ She stopped. ‘These things take years.’

‘Has Bill really left you? I’m not sure Carey’s left me … or me her.’ He allowed a pause to elapse. ‘For that matter.’

‘Yes, oh, yes, he’s left me. And I’ve left him.’ Again the sharp, ambiguous scrutiny. ‘I can see you don’t think I have, but I’ve worked at it.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what I tell my patients to do. To deserve better of themselves.’

‘People don’t leave us, Lara.’ He turned away and the strip of white flesh at his neckline glowed whiter. ‘Do they?’

‘No.’

‘You know – and I know – that we encounter their non-leaving every day in our work, whether they’re alive or dead. In Wesley’s case, it’s complicated because he’s haunted by the parents he should have, and his own are still alive. The big question is: how do you live with your ghosts? The Chinese have one answer. They think every family has its complement of troublesome, antsy ghosts and they appease them from the word go. In the old days, the women used to cry in the streets calling the spirits of their dead and dying babies.’

‘Don’t,’ she said quietly. ‘I live with one. You can’t control them, however hard you call out to them.’

Flashback.

She kneels down in her London garden. The noises and smells are very evident here. There are no skylarks swooping over a crop. No peaceful vista of flowers and shrubs. Only scrubby London earth and the lingering traces of urban fox. She runs her hands over her shaky thighs, jelly stomach, uselessly full breasts, and aches to feel her baby’s body against her own empty one.

She folds her arms, and the quiet, sensible inner voice explains that unhappiness and grief must be endured – especially if the unhappiness and grief are her own fault.

The city noises grind on and, for once, she longs for silence, broken only by a whirr of wings and the sound of leaves. She longs for the tang of damp, sane, clean earth and the touch of the sun on her back. She longs for grief to climb to its zenith and to begin the journey back to earth.

But she doesn’t deserve any of those kindnesses.

‘Lara … I’m sorry.’ Robin’s hand on her shoulder, his breath just hitting her cheek. ‘You should have stopped me.’

Head bent, she searched for her voice. ‘I’m fine. It was a long time ago.’

He took his hand away.

Confession was never easy for Lara. But she thought of the things she had smothered, which had turned black and festered. ‘I did something to Bill I shouldn’t have done. It seemed so simple at the time. I thought it was a solution. I thought I could get away with it, but I didn’t. Guilt is a funny thing. It has periods of dormancy, then wakes up and the struggle to deal with it begins all over again.’ Her fingers took on a life of their own and twisted together. ‘I didn’t get away with what I did, in the cruellest way
possible. Of course, rationally, I didn’t … I don’t believe Fate was getting back at me. But a little bit of me does.’

He didn’t ask her for explanation – for which she was grateful. Thus, she offered a partial one in return. ‘It wasn’t the obvious. It wasn’t infidelity.’

‘Infidelity may be obvious,’ he said. ‘But never easy.’

Lara caught an echo of what had gone on between him and Carey.
He away. She alone and angry
. She looked up at him. ‘It’s much better now.’ But he didn’t look as though he believed her, which was not surprising for, in some respects, she did not believe herself. To bridge the slightly awkward silence that had fallen, she said, ‘I
love
the bag. Can I touch it? I have a thing about leather. Can’t resist. Ask the bank manager.’

He held it out to her, and it
was
butter in her hands. He watched her run a finger along a seam and said, ‘I could take you to where I bought it.’ She raised a questioning eyebrow and he added, ‘Damascus.’

‘Why not?’ She spoke lightly, as if the idea might actually be a possibility and handed him the bag.

‘Will you think about it?’

Instinctively she folded her hands across her stomach. ‘Yes, I will. Thank you.’

He smiled. ‘Other worlds, Lara.’ He picked up the bag. ‘They help … for me anyway. But don’t leave it too long for the Krak des Chevaliers. Things change. One thing I’ve learned, the bits of the world you imagine are available are, suddenly, no longer.’

‘Sorry about the questions,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to pry.’

He zipped up the bag. ‘It’s not the questions. It’s the having to take account of oneself that’s harsh. But …’ he gestured, and she was drawn into the circle of just him and her, ‘you and I know it’s the only thing.’

Bill and Sarah got married quietly on a Friday afternoon of spring sunshine and soaking showers.

Lara spent the day going over her business plan and seeing patients – she had a particularly distressing case of depression that demanded her utmost care and skill. Once, she looked up to hope that Sarah’s finery did not get wet. Other than that, to her satisfaction, she felt nothing much.

Later that evening, Maudie arrived home from the wedding. ‘It was OK,’ Maudie admitted, when Lara pressed her. ‘Bit …’

‘A bit …?’

‘Stuffy.’ Maudie glanced at her phone. ‘I took a pic.’ She flicked it on to the screen – and there were Bill and Sarah at the restaurant table, surrounded by wine glasses, both exhibiting a bad case of camera red-eye and, in Bill’s case, a surprising suggestion of a double chin.

‘Don’t send them that one,’ Lara advised.