Hero (14 page)

“It's all right, Isabelle,” I say at last. “She's welcome to join us regardless of Mr. Jenson's presence.”

The extended silence and the open door behind me make me suddenly too cautious to commit to Simon's appearance at dinner, and I'm eager now to end the conversation in case his entry into the house were to prove as wildly inappropriate as his driving. But the slam of the car door reverberates through the hallway. It's loud enough to render any such discretion on my part not only pointless but rather absurd. Isabelle visibly cringes now and makes a face like a child forced to lick a lemon. I hear the car chugging into motion and the rubber tires skidding against gravel, scattering stones far and wide. With an animal moan the vehicle seems to come closer and louder. Then, after another mighty roar, it fades slowly until it becomes obvious Simon has rejoined the road and is driving away. The sound of the engine is indistinguishable from Simon's own voice; it is the conduit through which his true feelings are conveyed.

“That will be all, Isabelle.” My own gaze is now averted from hers, my lips pinched. “I'll speak to my mother.” Shame is hardly necessary as at the moment I'm quite beyond caring. I wonder from which interior cavern the instinct to play-act the long-suffering wife has emerged, and it occurs to me it's more for Isabelle's sake than mine, an attempt to place marital strife in a preordained category that might be less threatening for her. A furious husband is easier to accept than an irrational one. A man on fire through jealousy, obsession, or a gambling habit—whichever Isabelle chooses—is far less dangerous than one whose mood has no explanation at all. I don't usually address her in a manner quite so indicative of formal hierarchy, and this could be to help her too, an attempt to bring predicable order to chaos. In any case, it seems to work, as she shuffles off gratefully like a fly unexpectedly freed from a spider's web. I turn towards the still-open front door.

The deepening colours of early evening envelop me easily as I wander the shortcut between my marital and child–hood homes. Green and copper beeches jangle their leaves overhead, and high nettles block my path, causing me to meander like a rower on a twisting river. Emerging within the boundaries of my mother's back garden, I'm greeted by the stump of the oak tree that was felled by the 1911 storm. The boulder and the pond—landscape of the adventures and fairy tales Charles and I inhabited—are so overrun with nettles and dock leaves that at first they are hardly visible. I glimpse the boulder peeking through layers of vegetation, its surface brick-red under the influence of the bloating evening sun. The pond merely shows as the dark hint of a clearing, little more than a shadow, hovering beneath the army of uplifted leaves.

I hear a buzz, and a dragonfly passes in front of my eyes, its elongated body black against the fiery horizon, its whirring wings scattering colours—blue, violet, and indigo—like powdered paint into the air. These hues seem to settle like stars on the nettles around me and just for an instant, I see them: my brother and myself. Charles is swinging a stick this way and that against the “bush” as he tries to make the sacred water hole, his fair hair tufted, his face flushed pink in the effort. His rather diffident sister, a year older than he, is following in his wake, distracted perhaps by visions of the dark-haired Simon, who she sees only in tantalizing glimpses around the grounds of his own house, or dark-suited like an adult on the way home from the nearby grammar school to which Charles will transfer next year. The young man—for so I think him—smiles shyly when he sees us, a beautiful white smile with a touch of bashfulness. When we invite him to join us he retreats.

Something swells inside my chest and dies away, and I have the curious sensation that time itself has pulled a trick on us, slipping the years from beneath us while we weren't looking. It seems not only unfair, but also faintly absurd, that we cannot step back into that era. I imagine the calendar as some petty-minded official given to obeying instructions, however illogical, to the letter. There simply has to be some higher authority to which I can appeal.

I let the feeling hang for a moment, then my eyes focus on a cluster of circling gadflies that have appeared in the wake of the dragonfly. A cloud swells in the eastern sky like a vast cow's udder inflated and sent aloft. Sensing a sudden heaviness in the atmosphere, and the premonition of an evening chill, I hurry on to the house.

I find my mother inside the sitting room, where a door hangs open, allowing the oppressive
tock, tock
of the hallway's grandfather clock to echo around the walls. I can hear my mother's maid, Jenny, who I hired when my mother insisted on giving me Isabelle. Jenny is clattering pots deep inside the kitchen and I assume that, in the absence of any reassurance Simon will not be there, Mother has decided she is not coming to supper after all.

Mother raises her eyes from a small dark-covered book when she sees me and smiles in the kind, pained manner that has become her habit in the last few years.

“Isabelle gave me your message,” I say, allowing a measure of scorn, “although I have to say it was somewhat nonsensical.”

She gives me an innocent, questioning look.

“You didn't want to disturb us if Simon was at home.”

“Oh,” she begins mildly, turning her book so that it is spine-up on her lap. “Isabelle must have got the message wrong.” She shakes her head in soft confusion. “I was afraid Simon might be working this weekend and merely wanted to know if I could keep you company.”

Her pale eyes, enlarged behind her spectacle lenses, hold my gaze. I realize I have come to challenge my mother, to expose her in the act of forming some strategy, maybe not malign but certainly underhanded. I expected this part of the conversation to conclude with a checkmate, an admission, and that from here we might go on to discuss our effective orbits as neighbours, as mother, as daughter, as wife, pinpointing the coordinates at which we can usefully converge and the times at which we might remain respectfully separate. But the checkmate has reversed itself. She has disarmed me before I can make a move, and in doing so, has made me feel like a child. Suddenly, I'm not so sure of myself. Feeling my shoulders sag, watching my mother's calmly enquiring face, I begin to wonder whether I came here not to lay down a boundary, but to ask for help. Although I hardly need to warn myself of the dangers were I to take such a route. If I spill everything that troubles me, the information I impart cannot be unspilled. It all remains my mother's rightful property, and she can claim it, analyze it, or bring it up in private conversation whenever she wishes. And I know from experience I cannot pick and choose what to spill. Once it comes, it comes flooding.

“Simon has gone out for a bit,” I tell her, playing for time. “He may not be back for dinner.”

“May not?”

I cock my head slightly. She is rooting for information now, and I have surely caught her red-handed.

“He needs to clear his head after work,” I say. “It's been a hard day.”

“I'm sorry to hear that, dear,” she says kindly. “Do sit down.”

The hint of a smile has come over her face. The silliness of my answer, the fact that I foolishly believed I had to give one, has given her the upper hand again. I sit, but on the stool upon which I used to perch while playing the cello, a carved mahogany piece of unknown era that has been retained in the room as its only possible antique.

“How is everything? How is Lucy?”

“Very well, Mother. You should come and see her, if not tonight, then perhaps tomorrow. We are planning a picnic.”

An unexpected litheness sweeps across her expression, some vital, swift question that belies both the age of my mother's face and the avowed serenity of her mood. I watch closely for a second to be sure of my suspicions.

“No, Simon won't be with us, Mother,” I say, finally. “He'll be going back to work, so you can come.” She blinks twice and her parchment-like skin seems to gain some colour far beneath the surface. “It's very clear you want to avoid him,” I conclude. This might sound like an accusation, but I'm actually trying to save her the trouble and embarrassment of denying it. Seeming to realize this, she gives a defeated sigh.

“It's just,” she falters, arthritic fingers sliding over the upturned book cover, “it's only that he seems so unhappy, so guilt-ridden, with me around.”

We've turned an unexpected corner, and it's my turn to blush now. I've been putting myself at the centre of everything. If my mother was wary of the two of us together, I thought, it must be because she's critical of our marriage, and therefore critical of me. Now, it seems suddenly, it's all about Simon and her. And it makes sense. Simon was, after all, the comrade who laid her dear Charlie to rest. Why shouldn't she be extra sensitive to his moods?

I think of the ghost-children playing outside, Charles with his stick, me following obediently, only slightly bored at the games my younger brother wants to play. I see again the young neighbour, Simon Jenson, in the formal suit, with the dark, wavy hair and the shy smile laced deliciously with the promise of mischievous humour. My mind wanders in circles around the boulder, the pond, cleared of nettles, to this house, to Simon's house, and back again, settling reluctantly upon the two of us, upon the grey, mild, and slightly bewildered mother, upon her daughter now rather dowdy, I suspect, though still in her twenties. What dreadful spider has spread its petrifying influence over the once vibrant life that used to reign over the landscape?

“None of this is what I expected,” I find myself saying out loud.

“No,” replies my mother, a touch of whimsy making her disappointment softer, though perhaps no less sad.

CHAPTER 19

Elsa

A
s I lift her over the rim, Lucy wriggles so fiercely inside the large pink towel I'm afraid of dropping her. Only when her kicking feet touch down upon the mat does it seem safe to set about her with the towel.

“Be still like a good girl.”

“Am I?” she asks, right leg stepping off the mat in what is only one of many non-co-operative reflexes in the frantic dance that accompanies bath-time.

“Are you what?”

“A good girl.”

“Of course you are!” Frowning, as though in concentration, I rub fast, then, realizing this strange child will likely see through any attempt at fogging, I pause. “Why would you doubt it?”

Her eyes fix me. “I don't know. Daddy almost crashed his car. You jumped in front of a train. People do funny things around me.”

I hold her shoulders through the towel. One arm still manages to struggle free like an albino eel. “It's not about you, Lucy, even if people do odd things. It was silly of me to run in front of the train. The man on the platform was very angry at me. You must never do anything like that.”

The staggering inadequacy of my answer and her unblinking eyes make me wince. Do I really have to explain war, bereavement, and the whole spectrum of adult emotion to satisfy her justifiable bewilderment with the world? It would be impossible, and I should deserve to lose my position if I tried. But offering her nothing at all seems somehow worse.

“I couldn't bear the idea of Tommy being run over,” I began, having very little idea about how I would continue, “partly because he was yours, partly because I have known people who have died who should still be alive.” Her gaze flits around my face, and she seems to be taking it in calmly. “It doesn't excuse what I did, but I'm sorry it upset you.”

“What about Daddy and the car?”

“I don't think we were ever in danger.” Each word that escapes my lips feels like the reach of a cat's paw, simultaneously tentative and reckless. I'm an animal exploring a new and possibly dangerous territory. “I think your father is an expert driver. If he felt the need to let off steam, his reasons might be similar to mine.”

“He's supposed to have laid my uncle Charles to the ground when he was killed in the war. They loved each other. Grandma told me that. I'm supposed to take after Uncle Charles in looks.”

Lost between words of comfort and an attempt to smile, I find myself sinking into an entirely new emotion, one that stings my eyes and doesn't feel quite safe in front of the child. “Stay there for a second,” I say, pulling the towel tighter around her and breaking away to lean over into the tub. “I left the soap at the bottom.” When I re-emerge, dropping the soap in the dish, I feel like a tenderized version of myself.

I knew about Mrs. Jenson's brother. I may have even known that they served together. But I had never heard the story of the one laying the other to rest in a scene of such simple but exquisite poignancy. The sudden intelligence immediately dissolves every minor grudge arising from Mr. Jenson's poor manners. My employer, even with his early morning whisky, his dangerous driving, his effect upon his wife, is ennobled beyond measure, and my arms, which periodically ache to encompass and heal the world are, for the first time, yearning to include the man I have until now viewed only with wariness and suspicion. Of course he is pained by the sight of the beautiful daughter who looks so much like his lost comrade. Of course he is tortured by the love of the family that should bring him only strength and hope. How could I, of all people, have been so blind?
How dare you judge!
a fierce inner voice, part preacher, part headmistress, yells in my ear, and I make an immediate pact with myself: Never again will I let one who might be suffering stay beyond the circle of my compassion. The vanity of this vow is instantly obvious. No doubt Mr. Jenson and Mr. Smith, as well as every other wounded creature that comes to my attention, are quite oblivious to my philanthropic energy. Yet this is the only tool for healing I possess, this constant soft hum of concern that I turn mutely to the world. Otherwise I am merely a governess who attempts to rescue her charge's toys from beneath the wheels of a train.