Garden of Stars (38 page)

“Obrigada. Obrigada, menina.”

Her voice was faint. Her hand, cold. Her skin paper-thin and delicate like the seed heads of the Honesty plant after a long winter. She tightened her grip on Sarah's fingers and said again, “Obrigada. Thank you.”

Sarah sat with Inês for a long while, mesmerised by the ticking clock on the mantelpiece and the rise and fall of Inês's shallow breaths. She had expected questions, a conversation about how she had found Isabel, a desire for a description of the grave or its position, a request to see the photos. But Inês said nothing more and seemed to be only half present.

Now Sarah understood why Inês had not written a reply to her postcard. She simply wasn't up to it any more.

She wandered around the room and out onto the landing from where she could see into the garden once more. Billy was by the flowerbed now, cutting back the shrubs ready for winter. Everything had an autumnal tinge of sludgy brown, of death and decay. As she watched him, he pulled a tall, brittle stalk of dead foxglove out of the heavy soil and threw it onto his pile of debris. Then she saw him fumble in his pocket and take out the iPod that he sometimes used to make his recordings. It had started to rain and he seemed to be capturing the sound of the spattering drops as they plunked onto his pile of heaped up leaves. Sarah could imagine exactly how the noise would be; the dull, flat splash partially absorbed by the rotting vegetation, the whole sodden mess steadily decomposing into damp sludge.

She went back to sit by her great-aunt's side. There might not be many more opportunities to do so. She thought through Inês's story, that had gradually unpeeled over the last few weeks like the multiple layers of an onion skin. Inês had faced the worst tragedy possible and survived and gone on to live a good life in which she had given so much to others, not least Sarah. How had she done it? The scrapbook was still there, where Sarah had left it what seemed an age ago but was only a few days, on the table beside Inês's chair, underneath the tortoiseshell lamp. The thick board cover groaned with age as she opened it.

London, late 1970s

It was twenty-five years before I went back to Coram's Fields. The nineteen-fifties came and went, and the sixties, and then a new decade began, and brought with it, on New Year's Day, something truly special. That something was the baby, Sarah.

When I held my great-niece tight, the very first time I saw her, I prayed that tragedy would not strike the same family twice. And also that I would be allowed a share of this infant, to love and to care for as I would have done my own daughter. I knew that I must not expect too much; Sarah is not even my grandchild, after all. That privilege belongs to John's brother Rupert and his wife Diana - but they live in Derbyshire now, where Diana is from, not fifteen minutes away as I do.

I waited until the spring after Sarah's birth, when she was four months old, and then I took a big spade, and the special parcel with the Portuguese postmark that had recently arrived, into the rambling garden of my draughty house in Grove Terrace. I planted the cork tree in the centre of the lawn; for Sarah and for Sarah's children, whenever they might be born. But the cork oak grows and thrives on the poor, baked soil of the Iberian peninsula, not on North London's wet, cold, heavy clay. The tree didn't take and neither did any of my later attempts.

And as it turned out, growing a tree became of much lesser importance than growing a child, which soon preoccupied the majority of my free time. Sarah's mother Natalie was only too glad of my assistance, as babysitter, childminder and anything else that was on offer. Sarah had come along unexpectedly, just as Natalie's business, which she had invested so much of her time, energy and money in, had begun to take off. She ran – still runs - an employment agency specialising in accounting and bookkeeping jobs and had made sure her business plan took account of every possible eventuality, except for the sudden arrival of a baby. Sarah's father had always worked long hours in the construction industry, and was often abroad making tax-free dollars in countries such as Saudi Arabia.

I cut down my hours at the young mothers' charity so that I could be available whenever I was needed. I cannot put into words the pleasure and joy I felt whenever I put the little platinum blonde Sarah, with her unusual china-blue eyes, into her pram. It had a blue and white polka dot sunshade, and a plastic cover for when it rained. I took her up to Hampstead Heath, wheeling her along the paths and tracks I knew so well from all my years of solitary rambling. I showed her the kite flyers on Parliament Hill, how their kites swoop and soar on the wind that always seems to blow up there.

Sarah always loved me to point out the London landmarks of St Paul's, Battersea Power Station and the Post Office Tower; she learnt them all and would recite them back to me. When the weather was too cold or wet to go out, I took her to the library and read books to her, sometimes the same one over and over again if that was what she demanded. I taught her nursery rhymes in Portuguese, because I don't know any English ones.

And then one day, when Sarah was two or three years old, and surely all danger of her dying suddenly in the night had passed, we went to Coram's Fields. The brass plaque to all the abandoned children had gained an extra patina of age since I first laid eyes on it. The playground had been augmented by a petting zoo; goats and sheep, rabbits and guinea pigs of various dispositions kept in wooden pens and forced to undergo daily loving from London's animal-deprived children.

I marvelled to see the way Sarah's reaction to the animals changed and developed as she grew up – from puzzled and anxious at first, to curious but too scared to touch, right through to her first tentative pats. By the time she was four she was so bold that she marched straight up to the pens and demanded to be let in, and happily wandered around amongst goats twice her size, not even minding when one snatched her woolly hat off her head and ate it, pom-pom first.

A trip to Coram's Fields became one of our special treats, and I would load up the buggy, and then, when Sarah could walk all the way from the bus stop by herself, various plastic bags full of sand toys, balls and snacks. We would build enormous constructions, much more elaborate than a mere castle, in the sandpit before trying out every piece of playground equipment. Sarah always sought out other children to play with and I suspected that she was sometimes lonely, with two busy parents and no siblings. I did my best to make up for it.

Sometimes at the weekends, if John had the time, the three of us would drive down to Chalk Farm in his Rover car with the wide leather seats and enormous steering wheel that Sarah liked to turn back and forth, pretending to drive, making engine and hooting noises as she did so. We went to Marine Ices, one of North London's original Italian ice-cream parlours, and ate wildly foreign foods such as spaghetti vongole or lasagne al forno, all served with chips so as not to put off the British clientele.

“You spoil that child,” John said to me one day, watching Sarah tuck into a huge ice cream sundae in a tall glass that came up higher than the top of her head as she sat in her formica chair.

“But she's worth spoiling, isn't she?” I replied. “And I haven't got anyone else to dote on.”

John nodded in agreement but said nothing.

As Sarah grew older, I took it upon myself to teach her to do something I have always loved; to swim. We went to the swimming baths at Kentish Town and I showed Sarah how to doggy paddle and then front crawl, and how to float on her back with her arms and legs spread out like a star. As well as three swimming pools, the building incorporated an immense public laundry. It hummed to the roll and thud of gigantic washing machines that tumbled and turned and then let out an enormous whoosh as the water emptied away. The smell was of washing powder and starch, of steam and hot linen, delicious, homely and comforting. There were huge ironing presses, and rows of ironing boards where the women pressed and folded, their snippets of gossip wafting over the two of us imposters like lines from a soap opera. “They was drunk as, all three of them, and when they get back, they've been robbed blind”; “The barmaid from the Peels, that's right, six months gone already and who the father is, she won't say”; “Don't get a moment's peace from them all, except when I'm here…”

I could never help but notice that the majority of the stories told in that laundry seemed to centre around sex - who was having it with someone (sometimes more than one) they shouldn't be having it with; the general uselessness of men, who were usually rendered incapable due to excess alcohol intake; and babies, the impending arrival of which could be roughly divided into cause for celebration or scandal, occasionally both.

London, 1988

I put this book away one day, and didn't think of it for a while. Every so often I would remind myself to find it again and add to it, but then I would forget. And now here we are, with Sarah eighteen years old and about to finish secondary school. We are still very close but of course she spends less time with me these days; she has her own life, her friends, her hobbies. Her mother Natalie has been rather ill with breast cancer. Sadly this coincided with a bitter and acrimonious break-up from Sarah's father in which neither party seemed to spare a thought for Sarah, and Natalie has severed all contact with our side of the family. The negotiations and legal proceedings are on-going and seem that they will take some time to be resolved.

I suppose the piece of information that I have not included, that perhaps should have been foremost in my mind, is that John died, quite a few years ago now. A massive heart attack. He led a full life and died doing what he loved, playing golf. Not a bad way to go. I miss him terribly but I am learning to live with it. Billy still does the garden; it was what John wanted. I must say that he is extremely competent and green-fingered, coaxing everything into life and encouraging the kind of repeat flowering in my roses that I never thought possible. I have so much to enjoy, and be grateful for.

Now for the real reason for this entry after so long. Sarah has given me the news that she is taking a year out – a gap year, I believe they call it – before taking up her place at Bristol. Young people have so many opportunities these days. And next year, once she's saved some money, she's going to Lisbon! She will be teaching English there, but she'll have time to travel around and see a bit of the country; it's not a big place, after all. I do so hope that after all my stories my country lives up to her expectations.

I want nothing but the best for her; she is, and always has been, everything to me.

London, 2010

In the school playground, Honor and Ruby greeted Sarah with beaming smiles, hugs and kisses, jumping up and down with excitement, chattering endlessly about everything that had happened while she had been away. She couldn't believe how long she had been without them, wanted to scoop them up and take their love, innocence and beauty deep inside herself. Reading about herself in Inês's book had had a strangely discombobulating effect; to realise how much she had been loved, nurtured and cherished by her, exactly the same way she herself loved, nurtured and cherished her girls. As for Inês's hopes for her experience in Portugal – little could she have imagined how the consequences of that visit would ripple on for years afterwards.

Holding Honor's miniature hand in hers, Sarah rubbed her daughter's soft skin between her thumb and forefinger and felt guilt and horror at her own behaviour sweep over her in an overwhelming torrent. She freed herself from Honor's grasp, as if she were tainting the child's spotless innocence with her adulterer's touch.

Hugo sent a text:

Welcome home. We've missed you so much. We tidied up – the girls helped. X

PS. I won't be home late. I'll make dinner.

What had changed while she had been away?

And then straightaway, another text.

We've won a really big job! Snatched it from under the noses of the big boys. No more money worries for at least a year.

It seemed that everything had.

That evening, Hugo arrived home at 6pm with flowers and champagne. He was charged with an energy and enthusiasm Sarah hadn't seen in him for years. They all ate the cake that the girls had made with grandma to celebrate mummy's homecoming and Hugo cooked, as promised, and it wasn't spaghetti Bolognese but something delicious involving aubergine and mozzarella.

Sarah felt as if she had returned from another planet.

She went to see Carrie to tell her the news.

“Look, Sarah, I'm really sorry I was so critical that time we met in the summer,” Carrie said, looking contrite.

“It's fine, you've already apologised. You're entitled to your opinion.”

“No, I need to say it. I was harsh and judgemental for a reason. It's true that I didn't want you to mess up the good life you have for something with no foundation. But as well as that – what you were saying – it made me have to confront things I'd rather leave well alone.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows questioningly. “Such as?”

Carrie ate a piece of chocolate from the bar she had on the table, letting it dissolve in her mouth before continuing.

“Dan's affair, for one. The baby – I mean, I really, really wanted another try for a girl – but I guess it was conceived as an attempt to put things right between us.”

“Gosh.” Sarah was floored; this confession was totally unexpected. Another example of how little you know about what is going on in someone else's marriage. “I'm so sorry I didn't know.”

“I didn't tell you. Or anyone else for that matter. It's over now, it was just a stupid thing.” Carrie fiddled with the chocolate wrapper. “That's what he said, anyway.”

“How did you find out?”

“A text on his phone. Something like, ‘I can't help how I feel about you physically.'”