Home Fires (17 page)

Because there is nothing she can attach herself to, no furniture to jog her memory, no solid shapes to channel the wateriness of her thoughts, Elsa feels her grip on herself begin to slip. The tight knot of terror in her stomach is unravelling and she knows that if she gives into it, if she lets the shadow darken, there will be no return. She must be on guard, alert, cautious. Patience, she tells herself. She has to be patient. This is what happens when you get old. Your faculties need more time to click into place than they used to. Calm, she says. Calm.

And slowly, slowly, her mind comes back to her, each glimpse of an explanation shooting forward like an iron filing to a magnet until there are enough of them collected together to make sense.

The first thing she remembers is that she has been taken away from home.

Then: this is because I can no longer look after myself.

Her son drove her to his house, she thinks, and it was a long, long journey.

She is thirsty and too hot.

She has been here for what feels like years but might only be minutes.

Mrs Carswell packed her a . . . a what do you call it? Leather. Square. A thing. A watch? No, that wasn’t it, not quite. A newspaper? No, no, it’s something you use to put clothes in, to transport them. A
suitcase
. That was it.

The word slots into place and she feels triumphant. But now she wonders: what is her son’s name? She can visualise him as a tall man with greying hair but she cannot put her finger on what he is called. She is frustrated with her stupidity. Why can she remember Mrs Carswell’s name and not that of her own child? Stupid old woman, she thinks to herself. Pathetic, ancient old biddy making a nuisance of herself, not even able to go to the lavatory on her own.

She shifts against the sheets, attempting to prop herself up against the pillow so that she can further examine her surroundings. She notices that her bed is surrounded by a metal bar and the mattress feels crackly underneath. She wonders why this should be and then realises someone has put on a waterproof undersheet in case Elsa has an accident. The humiliation of this is unbearable.

She can see her suitcase, still buckled up, on top of a trunk at the end of her bed. She wishes she could open it herself. Elsa never liked to delay unpacking. It had always been the first thing she did on holiday, almost as soon as she walked into the hotel. The sterility of an unlived-in room had unsettled her. She had wanted, as soon as possible, to make it recognisably hers, to hang her dresses and prop up her toothbrush in the bathroom water glass. Until she had done this, it had always felt as though someone were about to ask her to leave.

To her left in this new room, there is a bay window that is letting in a stream of sunlight so strong it is making her head hurt. She lifts up her hand to shade her face but it is too tiring to keep it there and, after a while, she drops it back down on to her lap, defeated. She stares at her hand on the blanket, its flesh pitted and wrinkled like a packet of limp, wilting carrots past their sell-by date. Her fingers are furling into her palm. There is a smattering of liver spots just below her knuckles, fenced in by a stringy protrusion of veins.

No one expects this when they are young, she thinks to herself. No one understands how magical it is to have two, fully functioning hands until it is too late. No one appreciates the beauty and cleverness of the design, those four fingers and a thumb, working so easily in tandem to do the most complicated things: unscrewing jam jar lids, dialling a telephone number, wiping the sweat from a brow. She would do anything to have her slim, elegant hands back as they were – her fingers rapid and precise, her white-pink palm soft and smooth, her newly cut nails shiny with two coats of clear varnish.

Until recently, Elsa had worn a small gold watch on her left wrist, given to her by her husband Oliver for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. The watch had become looser over the years as the flesh on her arms had shrivelled and sagged. Now, she noticed, the watch was not there any more. Mrs Carswell had stopped putting it on a few weeks ago, telling Elsa in a loud, forceful voice that she didn’t want to risk losing it and wouldn’t it be safer on the bedside cabinet?

Perhaps, now that she was so old, they thought she didn’t care about time any longer. But Elsa can’t help hoping that Mrs Carswell had remembered to pack the watch in her belongings. She did not like to think of it abandoned in her bedroom back home, dust settling on its strap, the ticking by of the days gradually dimming its sheen.

Outside, a bird is making a shrill sound like a ringing telephone. She wishes someone would open the window so she could feel the breeze on her face. Upstairs, a door slams. Elsa jumps. Andrew. That’s it. That’s what her son is called. Her thoughts align themselves with perfect clarity as though the suddenness of the noise has unblocked a mental dam. Andrew lives in a house in Malvern. This is where he has taken her. She feels cheered by the fact she has remembered something so concrete. And then it goes on: Andrew is married. Andrew has a wife and her name is . . . is . . . Carla, no, that’s not it, Catherine? No. No it’s . . . it’s . . . that’s right, her name is Caroline. Elsa smiles, relieved. Still life in the old bat yet, she thinks to herself. Yes, she remembers now that she had seen Caroline when Andrew brought her into the house. It must have been only yesterday even though it felt like a decade ago. They had met in the hallway. Caroline had mouthed her usual pleasantries but something about her had changed. She looked as though she had fallen in on herself, Elsa thought, standing there wearing a lumpy dressing gown, the white of it dulled by too many washes. She had never been of the opinion that her daughter-in-law was a great beauty – attractive, perhaps, if viewed in a certain light. Still, she could see what Andrew found titillating about her – Caroline had always possessed creamy skin and a womanly figure, curvy and soft. It was the kind of thing certain men liked and Andrew had always been a rather needy child, constantly in search of comfort and hugs and the kind of tactile reassurance Elsa found it difficult to give. It was not that she had not loved him. It was more that she had found it almost impossible to express that love, as if to put it into words or gestures would be to diminish its power. Looking back, she wonders if she should have tried harder.

The sun is getting hotter and Elsa turns her head to face away from the window, so that a welcome coolness bathes her cheek. There is a rectangular frame hanging on the wall and within it are three photographs, set side by side and mounted against a pale green background. The central image is a group of three figures. She cannot at first make out who they are, but the more she stares at the frame, the clearer the faces become. There is Andrew, smiling gently, wearing a brown corduroy jacket. And there, on the other side, is Caroline, laughing with her mouth wide open, wearing too much make-up, her hair parted to one side and flicked out at the ends. In between the two of them is a man in a uniform. For a second, Elsa notices the brass buttons and the stiff khaki collar and she thinks it is her father. The man has the same blue eyes as Horace, the same slanted cheeks, but he stands taller, more assured. He does not have Horace’s stooped-over shoulders or his tense, downturned mouth or the livid red scar. This man, the one in the photograph, is happy. This man, she thinks, would not hurt her. And then, she remembers.

This man is Max, her grandson. He was a soldier too. But unlike her father, Max had never come home from the war. He had been killed. It comes to her now in a flurry of memories: the phone call from Andrew, almost too distressed to speak, and then the black-edged card that had arrived on her doormat and she remembers that she had gone to find all the photographs of Max she had ever taken, all the letters he had ever sent her, all the messy crayon pictures he had ever drawn her as a child, and she had asked Mrs Carswell to burn them in a fire in the garden because she didn’t want to think about him any more. She couldn’t. The sadness was too much to bear.

Max had been her only grandchild and she had adored him. The vociferousness of her love had taken her by surprise when he was born because she had always been such a cautious mother, but it was different with a grandchild, she discovered. You didn’t have to worry about discipline or putting them to bed or feeding them the right food or any of the agonising stuff that made you feel, as a parent, you were always doing something slightly wrong. With Max, she could simply shower him with attention and presents and home-baked cakes and then send him home, comfortable in the knowledge that her fondness for him was requited, that no one was judging her or accusing her, silently, of not being good enough.

She remembers one of the last times he came up to Grantchester. His school had wanted Max to apply for Oxbridge and encouraged him to go to various open days at Cambridge colleges. Elsa had put him up in the box room that used to be Oliver’s study, overlooking the willow tree in the front driveway.

He arrived late on a Friday, having found his way from Malvern on public transport despite her insisting that he should have taken a taxi from the station and that she would reimburse him.

‘But where’s the fun in that, Granny?’ he had said. ‘You don’t meet as many interesting people that way.’

And over a supper of fish pie and green beans, he had regaled her with his encounters with strangers on various trains and buses.

‘One guy on the train from King’s Cross was coming to meet his birth mother,’ Max said, draining his glass of Rioja. Elsa had always thought it ridiculous not to allow young people to drink alcohol in moderation.

‘His what?’ asked Elsa.

‘His birth mother. He’d been adopted as a baby and his parents only just told him.’

‘Gracious,’ she said, picking at an overcooked bit of potato crust from the pie. ‘What an awful thing.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if I’m adopted.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘No, I’m only joking, obviously, but it’s just . . .’

She stayed quiet, waiting for him to continue.

‘Mum and Dad sometimes seem so different from me, you know?’

She cocked her head to one side. ‘How so?’ she asked gently, starting to clear away the plates. She was always very careful with Max not to let her real feelings about Caroline show. It was the right thing to do, she thought, and she was quite scrupulous about it.

Max sighed and scratched his head. His hair was too long, Elsa noted. Caroline really should tell him to get it cut. She filled the sink with warm water, squirting in Fairy Liquid and then put on a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves. She liked to take care of her hands. You could always tell a woman’s age by her hands.

‘I don’t even know if I want to go to university,’ he said after a long pause.

Elsa turned to look at him. He was twisting his empty wine glass round and round by the stem, sending shifting prisms of candlelight across the linen tablecloth. She examined his face: the long straight nose, the angularity of his cheek, like slate. He was so handsome, she thought. He got that from his father.

‘Oh Max, what’s brought this on?’

They had a long talk then, about what he wanted to do with his life, how he wanted to make a difference, to do something that counted. Elsa was inclined to dismiss most of it as youthful naivety. She teased him about it and he took it in good humour. By the next morning, she felt that he seemed lighter, less preoccupied.

When she drove him back to the station after breakfast two days later, he gave her a hug on the concourse. ‘Thanks, Granny,’ he said. ‘For putting me up. And for the chat.’

‘It’s been a pleasure, Max,’ she said, not meeting his eye, embarrassed all of a sudden at how emotional she felt. Silly really, how he had the power to affect her.

‘No, I mean it. It really helped talking things through.’

And she said, almost without thinking: ‘There’s nothing worse than wasting years of your life being forced to do something you don’t want to do.’ She scanned the departure board to find his platform while she spoke, avoiding looking at him. ‘It can ruin you. It can make you into someone you don’t want to be.’

Max squeezed her shoulder. She had not realised until later that she was talking from experience but, of course, she had been. She had been talking about Horace. And also, in a way, she had been talking about herself.

She waited to wave Max off, watching him stride towards the train with his battered leather satchel slung across his chest. He seemed so unaware of the effect he had on other people: the admiring glances from girls as he passed, the physical space he commanded just by being in it. She felt so proud of him, in a way she never had with Andrew.

Was that a terrible admission?

He grinned at her, waved and then disappeared into the carriage. She waited for the train to pull out and stood on the platform, staring silently for a moment at the empty tracks. She did not want to miss him but still she felt his absence.

After a while, Elsa made her way to the car park. She concentrated more than she needed to on the drive back home. When she got back, she put the
Goldberg Variations
on the record player and turned the music up as loud as she dared. She poured herself a whisky, sat back on the sofa, and for a few, solitary minutes, closed her eyes and allowed herself to feel depressed.

‘Right, that’s that,’ she said, after the harpsichord had stopped. ‘Onwards and upwards.’

Elsa smoothed down her skirt and, with her hands clenched in downward fists on either side of her, managed to propel herself upwards, feeling a muscular twinge in her back as she did so.