Love and Devotion (3 page)

With unspoken sympathy quivering in the air, Harriet hustled her niece and nephew outside. In all the years she had known Edna Gannet, she had never seen her act so out of character. Not a word about Felicity’s death had passed her lips in Harriet’s presence, even though everyone in the neighbourhood was talking about little else, but here she was giving sweets to two children she hardly knew. She took a deep, steadying breath to fight back a wave of tearful panic. With Joel on her hip and Carrie running to keep up, she headed for home. Only when they’d turned the corner into Maple Drive did she slow down.

Maple Drive was the archetypal suburban cul-de-sac, flanked either side with tidy gardens and rows of fascia-boarded houses. Harriet’s parents had bought number twenty in 1969 when they had been expecting Felicity - Harriet had followed on only a year later. They’d paid three thousand pounds for it then and it was now, according to her father, who kept his eye on such things, worth two hundred and fifty thousand pounds. ‘The best investment we ever made,’ he used to joke. Harriet suspected he’d dispute this now. Compared to having Felicity, it was worthless.

The only people who had lived in the neighbourhood as long as the Swifts were the McKendricks: Dr Harvey McKendrick and his wife, Freda. They lived at number fourteen and Harriet knew their house as well as her parents’. She and her sister had been more or less the same age as the McKendrick boys, Dominic and Miles, and they had all grown up together. Passing the recently decorated house with its integral garage, where ten-year-old Harriet had slapped Dominic’s face for trying to look at her knickers one rainy Sunday afternoon, she kept her gaze firmly on the pavement. Freda never went out but she was sure to be watching the world go by. Freda was agoraphobic, but everyone pretended she wasn’t. It maddened Harriet that they all carried on as though it was the most natural thing in the world that Freda was too terrified to set foot outside her own front door. ‘Why doesn’t Harvey do something about it?’ Harriet had often asked her mother. ‘He’s a doctor, after all.’

‘These things aren’t so cut and dried,’ Eileen would say.

‘Yes they are,’ she’d argue. ‘If there’s something wrong with you, you get it sorted. It’s as easy as that.’

Several years ago, at the McKendricks’ New Year’s Day drinks party, after one too many glasses of mulled wine, Harriet had said as much to Dominic and Miles. Dominic, who lived in Cambridge and rarely honoured his parents with his presence, had agreed with her. But Miles, who lived in nearby Maywood, had disagreed and suggested that maybe his brother should spend more time with their mother before he offered an opinion.

Both Miles and his father had attended Felicity and Jeff’s funeral; Freda, not surprisingly, had made her apologies. Dominic hadn’t even bothered to send flowers or a card. Harriet didn’t think she would ever forgive him for that.

Walking up the drive of number twenty, Harriet could hear her father mowing the lawn in the back garden. It was a comforting sound. The sound of a normal family going about its normal everyday business.

If only.

 

 

 

 

Bob Swift switched off the mower and, walking stiffly - his arthritic knee was playing up - he carried the grass box down to the compost heap behind the greenhouse. The garden had always been a place of refuge for him, somewhere he could be alone to work through whatever was troubling him. But he knew he could potter about here for the rest of his days and never work through the pain of losing Felicity.

For the first ten years of their marriage, he and Eileen had been desperate for a baby, but they’d had to endure a string of heartbreaking miscarriages before Felicity had finally arrived. He could still remember that moment when he’d first held her, when he’d cradled her tiny, perfect body in his large, clumsy hands and had been overwhelmed at the fragility of the life for which he was now responsible.

It had been love at first sight, for both him and Eileen. They had doted on their precious child and ignored anyone who said she would be the ruin of them. How could that possibly be? Felicity was the absolute making of them. Her presence in their lives made them feel complete. Maybe even more so for Bob.

After waiting so long for a baby, they doubted they could be so lucky again, but miraculously, a year later — sooner than they might have liked - he was standing in the same hospital cradling a second daughter: Harriet. ‘Look, Felicity,’ he’d said, ‘what do you think of your little sister?’

She’d smiled and stroked one of Harriet’s tiny hands, then reached out to hold her as though she were a doll. Friends had warned them that they would have terrible sibling rivalry to cope with, that because they’d given Felicity so much love and attention, had made her the centre of their world, she would inevitably be jealous. How wrong those doom-mongers had been. Felicity, an easy-going, good-natured child, never showed any jealousy. She would play happily while her mother rested or nursed Harriet, and was quick to show off her sister to anyone who visited the house. She was protective, too, and got upset with the doctor when he gave Harriet her immunisation jabs. Eileen often told the story that when Harriet had cried, more with indignation than actual pain, Felicity had told the doctor off for hurting her sister. And if Felicity was always there to look out for Harriet, Harriet in turn worshipped her older sister and hated to be separated from her. They each had their own bedroom but preferred to sleep together in the same bed. They spent hours playing together, devising complicated games that no adult was allowed to participate in.

The years passed, and unlike so many of their friends who dipped in and out of phases of hating their siblings, their close relationship survived the strains of puberty and adolescence.

‘We’re such a lucky family,’ Eileen used to say. She said it the last time they saw Felicity alive. They were driving home after spending a couple of days with her and Jeff and the grandchildren in their new home in Newcastle, where Jeff had just secured a post as a senior lecturer at the university. It was the third move in as many years for the young family and Bob suspected that Felicity longed for a time when Jeff would be happy to settle and put down roots, if only for the children’s sake. That was something Bob had always been proud of - that he’d never uprooted his daughters while they were growing up. He’d always put their happiness before his own, always wanted to keep them safe.

But he hadn‘t, had he? He’d failed to keep Felicity safe. It used to amuse him that not so long ago Felicity started to end her phone calls by telling him to take care. ‘Take care, Dad,’ she’d say, the child now looking out for the parent.

Had that been the trouble? Had he been in dereliction of his duty? If he’d been a better father would Felicity still be alive? If he had never let her out of his sight, he’d always wake knowing there was still a chance of hearing her carefree laughter again, of basking in her happiness that life had been so good to her.

Suddenly fearful that his legs would give way, Bob dropped the grass box and reached out to one of the wooden sides of the compost heap. He put a hand to his face and felt wetness on his cheeks. He hunted through his trouser pockets for a tissue, scoured his eyes with it and blew his nose. The sun was high and sweat was pooling between his shoulderblades, yet he felt icy cold. It was always the same when he thought of his darling girl. Every time he thought of her and how much he missed her, thirty-three years’ worth of memories gripped at his insides and made it hard to breathe.

On an irrational impulse, he glanced back up to the house and, making sure no one was watching him, he crossed the lawn to the Wendy house. He turned the handle on the door and slipped inside. It was stuffy from having the sun on it and was cast in a gloomy darkness - the faded curtains Eileen had made for it were drawn. There wasn’t room for him to stand, so he pulled out one of the Early Learning Centre red plastic chairs - Eileen had bought them for Carrie and Joel, along with the table and all the other playthings a doting grandmother takes pleasure in providing - and sat down cautiously, checking the chair would take his weight.

Stuffing the tissue back into his pocket, he told himself there would be no more tears. Tears would help no one, least of all himself. He had to focus his thoughts on how they were going to get through this mess. He had to be strong, for Eileen and for the children. Whatever else, he mustn’t let Carrie and Joel see him cry. Or Harriet. He didn’t want her to think he couldn’t cope.

But thank God for Harriet. Thank God she had accepted that he and Eileen couldn’t do this alone. Eileen was concerned that Harriet had made such an enormous sacrifice in coming back home, that perhaps they should have stopped her, but as he’d told his wife, ‘What choice do we have?’

There were no relatives on Jeff’s side of the family who could take on the children — Jeff had been an only child; his mother had died when he was twelve and his father had passed away when he was nineteen - so it was down to them: there was no one else.

His memory of the night of the accident had already become blurred around the edges. He could remember some bits with painful clarity, but others, such as the journey up to Newcastle, were very hazy. He could remember thinking that before he broke the news to Eileen — she’d just popped across the road to see Dora when the telephone had rung with the news — he ought to call Harriet. He’d stupidly imagined that he’d be able to say the words without breaking down, but hearing the shocking truth out loud, his voice had cracked and the tears had flowed unbidden. Worse was to follow when he heard Harriet crying at the other end of the line. He’d felt so helpless. It was a while before either of them could speak, and when finally they could it was Harriet who took control. ‘I’ll drive up straight away,’ she’d said. ‘Who’s looking after the children? And do they know? It would be best if they were kept in the dark until we can be with them.’

It was another of those moments when he’d felt that his role as a parent had been usurped, that he was the child and Harriet was the grown-up in charge. Perhaps that was how things had been ever since. In the following weeks it seemed as if Harriet was the one making all the decisions. But it couldn’t go on. He had to pull himself together. He had days when he alternated between relief that Harriet was so capable and shame that he wasn’t doing more. Other times it seemed his grief was like a volcano, that one day soon it would erupt and spew out molten anger that would destroy him and anyone around him. He felt this now as he reflected how, thirty-three years ago, Felicity’s birth had wiped his slate clean. Had made a new man of him.

 

 

 

 

A week later Bob was cutting the grass again.

Eileen stood at the open window in their bedroom and watched him. He’d almost finished; just one more meticulous stripe to add to the lawn.

Grief changes a person for ever, she thought. And no one knew this better than she did. With each baby she had lost and grieved for, a little bit of her had changed and slowly died. Without meaning to she had grown anxious and fearful of the future. Before Felicity’s birth she had lived in constant dread that if she and Bob had to resign themselves to being a childless couple, then the darkness that had been edging in would eventually eclipse their love for each other. It stood to reason that Bob’s love would only stretch so far. His need for a child was as great as her own, and always at the back of his mind must have been the thought that with a different woman his wish would be granted. They’d contemplated adoption, but because hope had always been around the corner - that this latest pregnancy would be the one — they’d never got as far as approaching an agency. Eileen always thought of that period in their lives as the Wilderness Years.

But then Felicity had been born, a miracle baby in all ways. At once the world was a brighter place. No more anxiety. No more worries that Bob would stop loving her and seek permanent solace in the arms of another. To this day Eileen had kept to herself her knowledge about his two affairs during the Wilderness Years. She had never wanted to confront Bob because as hurtful as it was, and as dark a shadow on their marriage as his behaviour had cast, she’d understood why he’d done it. It was nothing more than an antidote to the anguish they were going through. It was survival.

Still staring down at her husband - he’d put the mower away and was now calling to the children, who were playing in the Wendy house - Eileen tried to shake off the fear that the shadowy darkness might return. Retirement earlier in the year had been a big enough adjustment for Bob, but now there was this catastrophe to live with. Felicity had meant the world to him. He loved Harriet too, of course, but from the moment she was born, Felicity had been the centre of his universe; there was nothing he wouldn’t have done for her.

Tears filled Eileen’s eyes. She turned away from the window, blinking. She had work to do. She was supposed to be helping Harriet pack up the last of Felicity’s clothes for the charity shop. It was only now, four months since the accident, that Bob had allowed them to do the job. The more practical side of things he’d gone along with, such as selling the house in Newcastle along with most of its furniture. He’d also been instrumental in putting the bulk of the money into a trust fund for the children, just as Jeff and Felicity would have wanted, while also leaving an amount to go towards their upbringing. However, he couldn’t deal with the personal possessions that had marked out his daughter from all the other daughters in the world. It was no easy task for Eileen either. It was taking all her strength to resist the urge to hang on to everything in the hope that Felicity would seem closer.

When Bob had realised what she and Harriet would be doing today he had told them that he’d cut the grass and then take the children out. ‘It’s not right for them to see their mother’s things being shoved into bin liners.’