The Hidden Years (32 page)

'Where exactly has your mother gone?' she questioned
Camilla.

'I don't know. I've told you, Ma and Gran took off like
this one day a month for ages. Ask Jenny, she might know…'

Sage was still frowning when Jenny came in carrying their
breakfast. Breakfast for two, Sage noticed.

Yes, Jenny confirmed willingly when Sage questioned her.
Liz and Faye always left early on the first Tuesday in the month,
generally not returning until early evening, but no, she had no idea
where they went.

Plainly these Tuesdays, wherever they were spent, were
such an accepted part of life at Cottingdean as to provoke no
curiosity. But Sage
was
curious, and her
curiosity was like a tiny piece of grit rubbing against a tender place.
It seemed so out of character that Faye, who was so obviously devoted
to Liz, should disappear for a whole day without leaving any indication
of where she had gone, or how she might be contacted in case of an
emergency.

Not that she was going to have much time to worry about
Faye's whereabouts, Sage acknowledged. The local paper had arrived with
the post, and there was a write-up in it about the planned motorway.
The paper was printed in Siddington, five miles away, where it was
obvious that opinion as to the effects of the new motorway was divided.

There were those who believed it would bring new
prosperity to the small market town, who claimed that in the wake of
the motorway would come new industry, bringing in its turn much needed
jobs for the school leavers, who at present often had to leave home for
the large cities in order to get work.

Others, like Liz, were concerned about the effects of such
a motorway on their environment and lifestyle.

Protest groups had sprung up in each small village
affected by the road; as she read the list of them and how to contact
their organisers, Sage gnawed at her bottom lip, wondering cynically if
Daniel would attend each and every one of the meetings or only those
where Ms Ordman was representing the Ministry. She suspected she
already knew the answer. Although why blame Daniel? He was no hunting,
aggressive male in the mould of Alexi, despite his obvious sexuality.
Rather, she suspected, in this case it was Ms Ordman who was doing the
hunting. Telling herself that she was allowing herself to be distracted
down avenues which were as unprofitable as they were idiotic, Sage
gathered up her post, poured herself a second cup of coffee, told
Camilla that she would drive her to school… and acknowledged
mentally to herself that she was likely to have to spend the rest of
the day in her mother's study, not, as she would have liked, avidly
reading the diaries to which she had become almost compulsively
addicted, almost as though she was searching for something, or someone,
from them, but instead trying as conscientiously as she could to stand
in her mother's shoes and protect Cottingdean from the onslaught of Daniel Cavanagh's
bulldozers.

Faye reached the outskirts of the town at nine o'clock.
She always arrived far too early, something which Liz good-humouredly
accepted. Generally they would spend the time before visiting time
drinking cups of tea in one of the many old-fashioned seaside cafes.

Fellingham was a town that catered well to the needs of
its inhabitants. Not for them the brash modernity of hamburger bars and
pubs; Ye Olde Tea Shoppes and Copper Kettle Cafes were the order of the
day, all of them boasting Earl Grey tea and home-made confectionery.

Earl Grey or not, Faye decided that tea was the last thing
she wanted. Her stomach was already churning nauseously. Driving had at
least given her something to do, something on which to fasten her mind.

She had automatically parked on the sea-front facing out
to sea. Today the Channel was calm, reflecting the clear sharp blue of
the sky. Already Fellingham's residents were filling the neat pathways
running alongside the immaculately maintained flower-beds between the
road and the sea-front. Why was it that so much order, cleanliness and
neatness should have such a depressing effect? she wondered idly as she
tried not to focus on the car's clock, silently marking the passage of
time.

Why did she always do this—arrive so early? It
wasn't as though she was anxious to see… She could restart
the car now, turn around and go home. No one would know. Just for a
moment the temptation overwhelmed her, and then she checked it. She was
a grown woman, not a child. She was here now… here, yes, but
the ordeal still lay ahead of her. Five to ten. Time now surely to go.
If she walked slowly…

She got out of her car, a small, slender woman whose
comparative youth was glaringly out of place among Fellingham's
residents. Several of them stared at her with envy and a touch of
resentment, until they saw where she was going.

The house was one of the largest in the quiet road. Once a
private home, now it was discreetly protected from the outside world
with iron railings which were not merely decorative, and a security
system which meant that Faye had to wait a dozen or more agonising
moments before the gate opened to let her in.

This was one of the worst moments… this
awareness that once she stepped inside she was a prisoner,
trapped… and yet the immaculate orderliness of the gardens
was surely anything but threatening. She remembered when she had first
come here with Liz, how she had gently pointed out to her the
pleasantness of their surroundings.

She walked up to the front door. The woman who opened it
to her might have been any well-built, slightly reserved middle-aged
housewife, and yet to Faye there was something immediately
self-betraying about her. Or was it just that she, with her guilt and
her fears, could too easily sense the purposefulness, the steely-eyed
determination that no one who should not do so should pass through
those doors? That knowledge should have comforted her, but instead she
shrank from it like a child shrinking from an unacceptable fact of life.

The woman greeted Faye by name, smiling warmly at her. 'I
think you'll find that we're having one of our better days today. It's
the weather, I think. Always seems to cheer them up.'

She was looking over Faye's shoulder as she spoke, and,
sensing that she was looking for Liz, Faye said quickly, 'I'm on my own
today. My mother-in-law has had an accident.'

She heard the few quick words of professional sympathy and
knew she must have responded to them, but already it was
beginning… the panic, the sickness, the fear… and
most of all the anger. The sheer weight of it pressed down on her,
suffocating her… threatening her. She could feel her knees
buckling under the pressure of it. She could feel it building up inside
her like a scream…the kind of scream she had learned to
suppress.

'Would you like someone to go up with you, then?'

The woman's voice was carefully neutral. God knew how many
times a day she must ask the same questions… how many other
tortured souls came here with the same reluctance and guilt that
brought her…

She gave her a too-bright smile and shook her head. 'No,
that won't be necessary…'

After all, she wasn't violent, wasn't
dangerous… wasn't likely to hurt her. Not like some of the
women here. She heard them sometimes, screaming and crying, the noise
like so many darts of fire in her flesh.

They couldn't help it, poor souls, one of the nurses had
once said to her. They didn't know what they were doing…
thank God in his mercy for that at least…

She had been an Irish girl, young and raw, unaware that,
for so many of the visitors who came here, the thought that their
relatives were free of the knowledge of what was happening to them was
the smallest particle of comfort in a vast sea of anguish and misery.

Call it what you liked, explain it away how you
wished… madness was what it was, plain and simple. A madness
that attacked and destroyed, the madness sometimes of old age,
sometimes not… and no one could witness it without
suffering, without asking why it was that the human race should be
punished in this way… asking what it had ever done to merit
this unholy destruction of all that was in humankind that made it what
it was.

Faye went up to the top floor, ignoring the lift, wanting
to delay the moment of confrontation as long as she could.

Outside the door stood a nurse. She smiled warmly and
approvingly at Faye.

This visitor was one of the better ones. She hadn't just
stuck the woman away in here, ignoring her existence. She was one of
their most regular visitors, always insisting on seeing her, no matter
how bad a day she was having. Still, she wasn't the worst of their
patients…not violent, not like some of them…
pathetic it was to see her sometimes, crouching in a corner like a
baby, gibbering away to herself, screaming and crying when they tried
to get her to her feet, to clean her up… Hard it had been,
at first, to realise what could happen to the human mind and with it
the human body. Old people with strength you'd never expect, behaving
like helpless babies. And some of them… violent and
foul-mouthed like you'd never believe, and when you tried to help
them… She had scratches the like of which you'd never
imagined.

She'd stuck it out, though. The pay was good. This wasn't
one of your run-down NHS homes. This one was private—and
expensive… Each patient had her own room, and bathroom. Not
that most of them bothered to use it.

When it had first opened all the bedrooms had had carpet,
she'd been told by one of the other nurses, but that hadn't lasted
long. Replaced the lot now, they had, with washable floors and rugs.
Some of them even had to have disposable sheets on their beds.

Still, it wasn't their fault. They didn't know what they
were doing most of the time. And when they did…

'Like me to come in with you?' she asked Faye, shrugging
when she shook her head. Hated coming here, this one did. You could see
it in her eyes. Pretty woman, too. Didn't know how she could stomach
it. In her shoes…

As she unlocked the door, Faye hesitated, and then,
summoning all her strength, she walked in and said brightly, 'Hello,
Mother. How are you today?'

As she heard the door close behind her, heard it being
locked, she tried not to acknowledge the sound but instead to
concentrate on the small, frail figure sitting in the window. Her head
turned. She focused on her, but Faye knew that she hadn't recognised
her. She never did. That was what made it all so stupid…
This woman whom she called Mother… this woman who had given
her birth… this woman for whom she felt such a huge burden
of responsibility, and such an enormity of guilt and hatred, no longer
knew her.

She smiled up at Faye, a timid, hesitant smile, her eyes
watchful and frightened, and as Faye went towards her she flinched back
in her chair, tiny mewling noises of frantic fear bubbling in her
throat.

Instantly Faye was gripped by the familiar mixture of
anger and anguish, rendered at once helpless by her inability to do
anything to reach out and reassure whatever awareness still lived
within the blanked-off emptiness of her mother's mind, and seized by a
fierce, overwhelming surge of angry resentment that this
woman—her mother—should be able to escape from
their shared past when she herself could not.

And yet nothing of what she was feeling showed in her
face. She had schooled herself long ago not to allow it to do so. Those
interminable, awful, painful sessions with the psychiatrist who had
counselled her had taught her the impossibility of confronting the
reality of what her mother had become with the agony of her own past.

To grow strong and guilt-free for herself, for David and
for Camilla—that had been her aim. Some strength she had
found… but to rid herself of the guilt the psychiatrist had
told her she had no need to feel—that was different, and
entwined with all that guilt, a living, breathing serpent twined with
it, was her anger, her resentment and, yes, her hatred… And
yet what had her mother ever done? Wasn't she as much a victim as she
herself had been? But, even while she tried to analyse, while the dull
questions she might have addressed to a stranger, any stranger, fell
automatically and unanswered from her lips, she was remembering,
resenting… filled with anger and bitterness.

In her mother's shoes, would she…? But no, she
had told herself long ago that she would have maimed,
killed… fought with every part of her mind and flesh to
prevent anyone from hurting Camilla. However, she and her mother were
two different creatures. She had never had to contend with the life
that had been her mother's. It was unfair of her to blame, to make
comparisons. And besides, what good did it do? There was no going
back… no altering the past. She had lived through
it… She had found David. She had had Camilla. She had found
a goodly measure of peace and contentment… And in these
visits she had the means to ensure that her daughter, her precious
child, would never, ever know the torment that she had known. If the
price of that knowledge, that security was these monthly visits to this
place, the monthly reality of facing the woman who had given her birth
and who had also betrayed her, then so be it.

She stayed for four hours, talking quietly to her mother
of this and that, using her voice to soothe her fear enough for her to
relax and watch her timidly, but never once was there any sign in her
mother's eyes that she knew who she was… that she recognised
her.

Before Faye left there was the ritual of lunch, watching
her mother toy with her food, crumbling it into small pieces. Unlike
many of the people here, her mother was physically able to take care of
herself. She had not degenerated, as so many of them had, into an
appalling second childhood that was a grotesque parody of all that a
childhood should be.