Facing the Light (7 page)

‘It's me, Fiona,' she said. ‘Hello.'

‘Oh, Beth, how lovely! Douggie and I were just having a little game of Lego before lunch. Come and play with us.'

Fiona was perfectly dressed in designer jeans and a white blouse that practically had the words
please do not
mistake me for an ordinary white shirt. I am more expensive than anything you've owned in your whole life
printed all over it. She was tall and her hair always looked as though she'd that moment stepped out of the salon. How did she do it? Beth's gaze was drawn, as it always was when she was with Fiona, to her wedding ring. A mist of rage clouded her eyes for a moment and she blinked. It isn't Fiona's fault, part of her said. She doesn't know how I feel about her husband. It's nothing to do with her. It's his fault, he's the one who should know what I feel. Not her. She made an effort to smile.

‘I can't really,' she said, and crouched down to kiss the little boy, who looked so much like his father. ‘I've got to go and find my mother and say hello to Chloë. Is she here yet?'

‘Oh, yes, we're all here now, I think. It's going to be a wonderful party, don't you think? And I'm dying to meet the television director, aren't you? Efe says he's really, really famous.'

‘Where is Efe, by the way?'

‘He's gone out with James. To the village, I think. You know what he's like when he gets here …'

Beth nodded. She did know. He liked to walk around everywhere to make sure that all was as he remembered it, that nothing had changed. She knew how he felt, because she, too, liked everything to be as it always was.

‘I'll see you later, Fiona,' she said, edging towards the door. ‘I'll just go and say hi to Chloë.'

‘Right,' said Fiona. ‘Super to see you.'

Beth hadn't really meant to go and find Chloë. That was just the first thing she'd thought of to say to Fiona, but now that she was safely out of there, she might as well just say hello. She walked back to Chloë's room and knocked at the door.

‘Come!' said her voice, an unmistakable mixture of the
brash and the girlish. Beth stepped into a room that was already so Chloë-esque that she had to laugh.

‘Chloë, honestly! This room's a tip!'

‘Fuck off if you're going to be like my mum, Beth!' Chloë said, but she was grinning. She didn't stir from her place on the bed, which didn't look like a Willow Court bed at all, but more the sort of thing you'd find in a doss-house. The duvet had vanished under piles of grubby underwear and crumpled bits of paper, and it looked as though Chloë had turned her make-up bag upside down on the pillow. Lipsticks with their tops missing, eyeliners sticky with age, powderpuffs that were so revoltingly grubby you wondered whether they were capable of putting more than dirt on any cheek or nose, lay about all over the place. And her clothes were scattered on the floor, together with the clumpy-looking shoes she always wore. Her lips were outlined with a colour as near to black as it was possible to get. Her white skin and fair hair cut into spikes were supposed, Beth knew, to make her look dangerous, but only succeeded in making her look vulnerable. She was wearing a floral dress, with a rugby shirt over the top.

‘I'm an art student,' Chloë said, lighting a cigarette. ‘This is what art students do, didn't you know? This isn't a mess. It's an installation, so there.'

‘Leonora will have a fit if she catches you smoking. You know what she's like about that.'

‘I don't care, if you want to know. I'll spray some of my perfume about. Or I could lean out of the window. I'm using this tin as an ashtray. She ought to be grateful I'm not stubbing my fags out in her waste-paper basket or something.'

The tin she mentioned contained, Beth noticed, a little hillock of stubs that had built up, like an arrangement of small yellow rocks. Chloë continued.

‘I've considered making an artwork out of this tin. Stub
City, I'd call it. Have you seen Efe and Fiona? They're about somewhere. Oh God, it's going to be gruesome, this party. Days and days of Fiona. I can't bear it, Beth. She's the sort of person who doesn't sweat. Know what I mean? And she comes round to my flat and looks as though she's trodden in something nasty.'

‘Knowing your flat, she probably has. Your floor has so many sticky things on it that most people don't make it across the room.'

‘What rubbish! A bit of lemonade that I spilled once and didn't clear up properly. You're like an elephant, you are. Never forget anything. Or forgive.'

Beth went over to the open window and leaned out. Behind her, she could hear Chloë, still chattering away.

‘Fiona's got a cheek! She comes round to my flat and she's, like, picking at her food and saying nothing, until at last she can't bear it any longer and murmurs something like,
Why don't you get a cleaner?
Can you believe it, Beth?'

‘What did you say?'

‘Well, nothing actually. I didn't want a massive row to break out, but I was thinking of all sorts of stuff I could have said, like, because I'm not a spoiled brat like you. Because I wouldn't allow anyone else into my space, and most of all because I don't want to be the kind of tosser who says
oh, my cleaner is an absolute godsend
at dinner parties. Also, because I can't afford it, and anyway why don't you fuck off out of my life, which is how
I
like it and not all plastic and magaziney like yours with my plastic and magaziney brother!'

Just in time, Beth stopped herself objecting to the remarks about Efe. ‘Never mind, Chloë. I'm sure one day you'll get the chance to tell Fiona exactly how you feel about her.'

‘Better not, if I want to remain on speaking terms with Efe.'

Beth looked down into the garden at the front of the house, and there he was, as though Chloë talking about him had made him materialize. She waved, but he was too far away. He was walking with James, coming nearer and nearer. Even at this distance, Beth thought, you can tell how elegant he is. She swallowed hard and began talking to Chloë to stop her mind from turning to thoughts of Efe's long legs. She said, ‘What present have you got for Leonora?'

Chloë leapt off the bed.

‘I'll show you. It's brilliant! I'm so pleased with myself.'

She rummaged around in one of the suitcases that was lying on the floor, its contents spilling out of it. ‘Here,' she said. ‘Look at that. Isn't it lovely? Though I say so myself. I found it tossed into a skip, looking like nothing on earth. Horrible pink glossy paint all over it.'

Beth looked at the little chest of drawers. It was about eighteen inches high and must have been a toy of some kind, long ago. Every trace of pink had gone and it was repainted in a shade somewhere between blue and green. Chloë had distressed the paint so that it looked as though the wood was beautifully weathered. There were seven drawers in all, four little ones at the top and three longer ones below those.

‘I've put something in each drawer – there's one for each decade of Leonora's life – look!'

Beth looked. There were dried flowers, a locket, a wedding ring in a lace hankie, a miniature flower-pot, little pictures of Bertie and Gus, the cats, done in needlepoint; something beautiful and tiny in every single drawer. It was exquisite.

‘It's amazing, Chloë. You're brilliant and she'll be thrilled to bits.' Beth smiled. ‘I must go and find Rilla,' she said. ‘And where, by the way, is Philip?'

‘Gone to the village for something or other. He'll be back later.'

She almost ran down the stairs to the hall. Efe was walking about outside. She would see him very soon. She was going to ignore Fiona and just concentrate on Efe. Days and days of being with him. A triangle-shaped wedge of sunshine lay across the bottom step, flooding it with light.

*

It seemed to be true, what they all said. The elderly – Leonora refused to think of herself as ‘old' – needed less and less sleep as time went on. Nowadays, she often found herself wide awake as soon as it was light, which meant that she needed an afternoon nap almost every day. She didn't know exactly what time it was, but she'd been asleep for a while. Lunch had been rather tiring, with Douggie needing attention and Efe's wife … Fiona … making a fuss about everything. It was time to get up. Mr Everard … Sean … would be here soon, and she'd promised to talk to him. And before that, she had to go and visit Nanny Mouse.

The sky outside her window looked like four o'clock. Leonora pushed away the sheet that covered her, put her feet to the floor and felt around for her slippers. Slowly she stood up. Every time she lay down, she checked herself as she got up, moved her arms above her head, did a sort of bend of the knees, just to make sure her limbs hadn't seized up while she wasn't paying attention. She smiled, satisfied that everything was in working order for yet another evening. It had been a very busy day already. Gwen – darling, reliable, kind Gwen – had been rushing about for weeks, organizing everything.

The party would, she told herself, be wonderful. An occasion for rejoicing. And like a reflex, she felt the pain that was always there, somewhere inside her, whenever she was really happy. It was a mixture of regret that Peter couldn't be with her, sharing the pleasure and the ache she could still feel when she remembered him. She'd often
heard others say that one of the worst things about losing someone you loved was the way they faded from your mind; the way memories of their physical presence disappeared in the end. In her case, it was exactly the opposite. She could still summon up Peter's smile, the touch of his hands, his mouth on hers. She sighed. Also, somewhere in a place she couldn't exactly reach with her mind, there was something like a shadow. Why was that? A kind of sick dread? True, when the girls were together, there were quite often fireworks, always had been. From their earliest childhood, they had been at odds, in spite of her best efforts, but surely at the ages of fifty and forty-eight they were old enough to keep their feelings under control? She knew that they loved one another, but there was always some kind of competition going on between them. They were both, she knew, seeking her love and approval, and she tried, she really and truly
did
try, just as she had ever since they'd been tiny, to be even-handed and fair in her dealings with them. She recognized, though, if she were honest with herself, that Rilla just sometimes rubbed her up the wrong way, irritated her in ways that Gwen never did. How hard it was to be a mother! How difficult to admit, particularly when your children were adults, that they were only people, after all, and naturally you got on better with some than with others. Which, of course, made no difference whatsoever to the love you felt. Nothing could alter that, but how much easier everything would be if love were enough. It wasn't. She knew that very well. Better than anyone. Still, everything had gone well last night, which was a blessing.

And, of course, it wasn't just Gwen and Rilla on their own, as it had been in the old days. The grandchildren were all here too, with their – what was the modern phrase? – partners. How silly that sounded! What was wrong with ‘sweetheart'? She hadn't had a chance to talk
to Efe properly yet. He'd gone off with James to walk around the garden and she'd only managed to greet him briefly. Leonora knew that what she felt for her eldest grandchild was out of the ordinary. Love, certainly, but something else too. A particular kinship, because they were alike in so many ways and because Efe reminded her of his namesake, her father. She knew more about him than anyone, though sometimes she wished she didn't. She pressed her lips together and decided this was not the moment to think about all that. She pushed it to the very back of her mind and opened a drawer in her dressing-table.

Without thinking about why she was doing so, she took out from under a neatly folded pile of scarves a square purse made from some kind of thick cotton. The letters roughly and clumsily embroidered there (
MUMMY
) made her eyes fill with tears. Rilla had stitched the purse at school, and though she was never the best needlewoman in the world, she'd loved her enough then to make this present for her. Leonora kept her precious dolls in it. No one else knew where they were hidden. She opened the purse now and took out the little doll that looked as she herself had once looked: pretty, very young, in a lovely dress. Oh, how I wish I could be her again, Leonora thought. Not an old woman with too many sorrows.

She felt her head swimming, and hastily replaced the dolls. Calm down, Leonora, she said to herself. She closed her eyes, breathed deeply, and felt a little better. Sometimes, she imagined her head divided into compartments, rather like her jewellery box, each lined with scarlet velvet and tightly shut for most of the time. That's how it must stay, she thought. I will close that drawer and go back to thinking about the days ahead. She would, she knew, have her work cut out trying to foresee and head off any trouble arising between members of her family. She was still
capable, surely, of seeing that everyone behaved themselves. That couldn't really be troubling her, could it? So what was it?

She sat at her dressing-table and picked up the silver-backed brushes that had belonged to her mother. Poor Maude, Leonora thought. What would she think of the fact that she was now known to most people simply as the wife of Ethan Walsh? A shadow, there one second and gone the next, crossed the glass in front of her eyes and she turned to see what it could have been, her heart beating rather too fast in her chest. Nothing. A trick of the light. Possibly even the reflected image of the painting that hung on the wall above her bed. That must have been it, the white of the swans on the water, seeming to move. Not really moving at all.

Leonora soothed herself by looking at the photograph that stood on her dressing-table. Alex had taken it a couple of years ago. She smiled to think of her younger grandson and how, from the very first time he'd held a camera when he was no more than six years old, he'd almost never put it down. Whatever the occasion, there he'd be, snapping away quietly instead of talking to people. She would never have admitted to having a favourite grandchild, but there was, she felt, a special bond between herself and the rather quiet little boy who had always seemed to enjoy her company and never required anything from her that she couldn't give. Even as an adult, he was still her darling, and she didn't think anyone quite appreciated how talented he was.