Home Fires (13 page)

Max had already started opening the camera box, taking out leads and flashes and batteries and setting them all out on the carpet in front of him. He paused to look up at his father. ‘What is?’

Elsa looked at him too and Andrew realised, not for the first time, how similar they were: their faces upturned at precisely the same angle, their profiles so pronounced against the warm light cast by the fire.

‘Well,’ said Andrew again, hopelessly. ‘Your mother and I got you exactly the same thing.’

He forced himself to laugh and then Max, after a worried glance at his mother, started to chuckle too.

‘Oh dear,’ Max said. ‘That’s all my fault. I’ve obviously been banging on about it for so long . . .’ He let the sentence hang in the air. Caroline, her face immobile, didn’t laugh.

‘I’m terribly sorry, Caroline,’ said Elsa, instantly aware of the discomfort in the room. ‘I should have spoken to you and Andrew about it. How silly of me.’

‘Nonsense,’ Andrew replied. ‘No harm done. Max can take one of them back to the shop and spend the money on something else. What about a camera bag or one of those huge flashes that look so professional?’

Max nodded vigorously. ‘Yeah, great idea, Dad. I’d actually really like a bag. You need it with a piece of kit like this.’

Everyone was looking at Caroline, waiting for her to say something, waiting for the inevitable denouement of this delicate dance of social politesse. Eventually, she stood up, brushed down her skirt and shook herself free from Andrew’s grip. She smiled shakily and said, almost casually: ‘I’m just going to see to something in the kitchen – if you’ll all excuse me for a minute.’ She slipped out of the door and Andrew knew, without even having to look at her face, that she would be crying. He felt a pang of frustration. Why did she take things so much to heart? Why couldn’t she have made the effort to gloss over it like everyone else? He supposed he would have to go to her. But then, just as he was making his way to the door, Max touched his arm.

‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll go.’ The two of them exchanged a look. They both knew Caroline would rather see him.

Andrew walked back into the sitting room, headed straight for the drinks cabinet and poured himself a generous tumbler of whisky. His mother was still there, looking at him wryly.

‘I think you need that,’ she smiled, still seated elegantly on the sofa, her legs pressed together and angled at
45
degrees from the ground. ‘Cheers,’ she said, raising her sherry glass.

‘Cheers,’ Andrew replied, echoing the gesture.

After twenty minutes, Caroline and Max had re-emerged from the kitchen and peace had been restored, or so Andrew now recalls.

Odd, really, the things his mind is dwelling on now that Max has gone.

He walks out of the gents towards the coffee bar. As he joins the end of the queue, he hears someone calling his name. He does not immediately react because it is a girlish voice that he doesn’t recognise and he cannot imagine why anyone would be trying to get his attention. But the voice is persistent and after a few seconds, he feels a tap on his shoulder.

‘Andrew, I thought it was you.’

He turns around and finds himself face-to-face with a small, blonde woman enveloped in an oversized parka. Her hands are tucked into two pockets, set close to her chest like an old-fashioned muff. She is smiling broadly, her lips glossed with balm that smells of chemical strawberries. She is very pretty, in that artless, natural way seen in the fresh-faced girls in clothing catalogues, the girls who are picked because they are deliberately unintimidating, because the average female shopper will relate to them rather than feel threatened. He cannot place her straight away and is perplexed as to why she knows his name.

She laughs and a strand of hair escapes from her messy ponytail. ‘It’s Kate. From the office.’

‘Of course it is,’ Andrew says, flustered at his forgetfulness. Kate has been working at Weston & Barwell for the last few months, helping out with the increasing number of corporate accounts. She was a recent graduate and he remembers vaguely that there was some reason for her coming to Malvern, a sick relative or something, rather than heading off to the bright lights of a big city.

‘I’m so sorry, Kate, my mind was somewhere else entirely.’

‘Don’t worry. It’s probably the first time you’ve seen me in non-work clothes.’

‘Yes,’ he says and he has a clear image of her in a black two-piece suit with a pale pink striped shirt looking rather uptight and professional. ‘And I suppose this isn’t the most obvious place to run into one’s work colleagues.’

She smiles and for a moment Andrew stares at her and then looks away. He feels embarrassed without knowing why. ‘What are you doing in this part of the country?’ he asks, to fill the awkwardness.

‘Oh, me and a couple of mates are driving to Cambridge for the weekend. It’s the first time we’ve gone back there since graduation, so we’re going to try and recapture our youth.’

‘I shouldn’t think that will be too hard,’ he replies. He hadn’t known she’d gone to Cambridge. For some reason, this surprises him and he can feel himself beginning to take her more seriously. He’d always imagined she would be fairly unexceptional company. Why had he been so dismissive?

‘Oh I don’t know,’ says Kate, looking directly at him. ‘Sometimes I feel much older and wiser than my twenty-one years.’ Her face is serious as she says this, her lips parted so that he can see the tip of her teeth as she breathes. After a few beats, she says, ‘I’m really sorry, Andrew.’ There is a pause. ‘You know, about your son.’ He does not respond because he doesn’t know how. ‘I never got a chance to say anything at the time but . . . well, now seemed a good opportunity.’ She smiles, heartfelt, and then she does something strange: she reaches out with her right hand and touches him on his upper arm, her fingers grazing against the cotton of his fleece and the curve of his bicep. Kate lets her hand rest there and Andrew does not move away. ‘If you ever want to talk,’ she says, pressing down gently so that he can feel the weight of her touch on his skin.

He is mystified by what she is doing and yet he finds it pleasurable in spite of himself. He cannot imagine that this young, attractive woman is apparently trying to flirt with him but this is what seems to be happening. She has never before spoken more than three words to him. Had he simply never noticed her before today? Perhaps they had talked but he had been so distracted with Max and Caroline and everything that was happening at home that it had not made any impact. In his mind, it has been so long since he has been touched by a woman with any hint of affection or kindness or concern that Kate’s small, simple gesture courses through him.

His thoughts are interrupted by a tinny rendition of Barber’s
Adagio
. ‘Sorry,’ Kate says, removing her hand and taking a sleek-looking mobile phone out of her pocket. She swipes the screen with her index finger to answer. ‘Yeah?’ he hears her saying. ‘I know, I’m just here . . . No, by the Costa Coffee . . . do you see me? OK, come over.’ She giggles at something the person on the other end of the line is saying and Andrew feels oddly exposed, discomfited. He makes a sign to indicate he is going and it has been nice to see her but she holds out her other hand to motion for him to stay. ‘See you in a sec.’ She touches the screen again to hang up. ‘Sorry about that,’ she says, chewing on her bottom lip in a way that Andrew finds distracting.

‘Well, Kate, it was nice to see you,’ he says, deliberately brisk and authoritative. ‘I’m sure we’ll bump into each other on Monday.’

‘Yes,’ she answers, looking straight at him in that disarming way. ‘I’d like that.’

Andrew walks quickly out of the service station and back to the car, turning the key in the ignition before he has even put on his seatbelt. He drives for several miles before he remembers that he forgot to get his coffee.

When he sees his mother, he is taken aback by her appearance. Elsa is sitting in the hallway waiting for him when Mrs Carswell opens the front door and beckons him inside.

‘Come on in, Mr Weston,’ she says, cheerily. ‘No need to stand on ceremony for us, now is there?’ Mrs Carswell addresses the question to Elsa, who doesn’t respond. Andrew, brushing the rain from his coat, walks in, remembering at the last minute to bend down so that he doesn’t hit his head on the doorframe.

There are no lights on even though the day is gloomy and at first he doesn’t see his mother, who is sitting to one side, by the table with the telephone, her features overcast by shadow. But then, when he sees her properly, he has to stop himself from exclaiming at the change in her over the last month. She seems to have shrunk, as though her bones are collapsing in on themselves. Her shoulders are hunched forwards, leaving a deep valley of skin on each side of her collarbone. Her face is pinched and sallow, her eyes hooded by the protrusion of her forehead.

She is wearing a checked blouse, like a lumberjack shirt, done up in haste so that the buttons are not in the right holes and give her a lopsided look. There is an indistinct red-brown stain on the collar, the edges of which are fraying. Her hair has clearly not been set for several weeks and has grown into a straggly grey, the brittle texture of candyfloss. Her mouth, pale and thin and puckered, is set in a downward curve that makes her look mournful and lost. He thinks to himself: I should not be surprised; this is what happens when you are
98
years old. And yet he is shocked because Elsa had always taken such punctilious care of her appearance. Age did not seem to have worn her down in the same way that it had his father. She remained a good-looking woman well into her eighties and the force of her personality, her strength of character, had always shone through. The stroke earlier this year had taken away much of her ability to express herself, but even then, she had still looked recognisably the same.

He feels guilty that he has not seen her enough, that he has not been here to look after her better. He starts to say this to Mrs Carswell, but before he can get the words out, she pats him on the arm and shushes him. ‘Don’t you be so hard on yourself, Mr Weston,’ Mrs Carswell says. ‘You’ve had enough on your plate lately.’ There is an uneasy pause and then she adds, quietly. ‘I was ever so sorry to hear about Max, Mr Weston. Ever so sorry.’

He thanks her and then asks for a glass of water so that she leaves him alone. He feels crowded but does not wish to be rude.

When she has gone, he leans across and kisses Elsa on the cheek. ‘Hello, Mummy.’ She doesn’t recognise him, so he says ‘It’s Andrew,’ before adding pointlessly, ‘your son.’

Her eyes swivel towards him and she murmurs something, the sound of it slurring and imprecise. He wants to believe she is saying ‘Of course I know who it is, you bloody fool’ and he smiles, thinking that although her appearance might have altered, perhaps a glimmer of the old Elsa remains; perhaps, inside her head, everything is as it was.

Elsa

Elsa is being taken to her new home. She is in the passenger seat of Andrew’s car and the seatbelt is rubbing uncomfortably against her neck but she has no strength to move it. She watches the motorway signs scudding by: bright blue squares with white lettering that she feels too dizzy to make out.

Mrs Carswell has quite deliberately made it seem as though Elsa is simply going on an extended visit to Andrew’s house, but she is shrewd enough to know this is a lie. She has noticed her own sharp disintegration over the last few weeks: buttons she was unable to undo; light-switches she could no longer press; words she had forgotten the meaning of. She could not even get out of bed on her own.

She is baffled and upset by the way her body and her mind are letting her down and by the fact that she is now entirely reliant on other people for any kind of existence. It is as though her decrepitude has diminished her personality to a tiny pinprick, so that it is no longer big enough to take up the requisite space. She cannot fill a house any more; is not deemed worthy of it. And Elsa had always so cherished her independence.

After her husband Oliver had died, Andrew tried to persuade her to move out of their Grantchester home to somewhere more manageable but she had refused. She had loved that house, despite its ludicrous pink-painted exterior. It was the only place she had ever felt truly comfortable, safe in the knowledge that she could do exactly what she liked within its walls and that visitors had to abide by her rules.

Elsa remembers her first morning there, just after they moved up from London. She had woken in the upstairs bedroom and got dressed with Oliver still sleeping, the rhythm of his breath rising and falling softly beside her. She noticed the birds first of all: the tinkle and chirrup of their song and the muted yellow of warm sunshine pushing through the unlined curtains. Intrigued by the unfamiliar clarity of light, Elsa walked across to the window and lifted the corner of one curtain. She saw the dense, dark green grass of a meadow stretching into the distance, lush with the previous day’s rainfall. She could just make out the river, dotted with the freshly laundered white of swan feathers. She gasped with happiness at the sight. It was so much more beautiful than she had anticipated. At last, she had found a home for a family of her own.

And now, she was leaving it behind and there was nothing she could do about it. She could not even put her sadness into words. When she tried, her tongue would loll uselessly to one side and she would fail to convey whatever it was she wanted to say and this would make everything so much worse that, in the end, she simply gave up trying. She became, to all intents and purposes, mute: a sentence rubbed out; a pause at the end of a line; a space where once there had been a person.