The Whole World (10 page)

“She didn’t write me letters. We talked on the phone. Her will was handled by solicitors. We can call our solicitor and look at the signature on the will.” She was talking too fast. I needed to bring her down.

“It’s all right, Gretchen. It doesn’t matter.” By that I meant that not having an extra handwriting sample didn’t matter, as we would figure things out another way. She thought I meant something else—that it didn’t cosmically matter, I would guess. She stomped out. I thought it best not to follow.

She came back from her study with a folder. “These are my school reports. Mother had to sign them. And here, these are her cookbooks. She wrote notes in the margins.”

I compared the writing. Unsurprisingly, it matched the writing in the books signed to Gretchen at graduation, and on the teenager photos, and “Jim.”

“Does it really matter why Ginny signed a book for your mother? Perhaps she promised to get a signed copy for a friend, and found it easier to make a fake than to go through the mail.”

Gretchen flexed and unflexed her fingers, kneading a memory out of the air. “I had kept asking to see Aunt Ginny. You know how children can be—I just wouldn’t take no. I wanted her to come for my seventh birthday. It was going to be just a usual child’s party: cake and balloons. I wanted her to come, but Mother told me she was travelling. And then, the day after the party, she told me the truth—that Ginny had died. She hadn’t wanted to spoil my day, so she’d waited. It had been a good little party, with my best schoolfriends. But after that I couldn’t bear that I’d been happy while my aunt was dead. I threw the presents away in a desperate ceremony. I buried them beside the house. A snow globe and a cuddly toy cat and new jacks. I was good at jacks, which surprised people. I always won.”

She didn’t stop. “It was our first year in the new house. Later I buried my pets there. By the side of the house. What was the date on the poem? Was there a date?” She asked this suddenly, and I felt for a flash that she wasn’t blind and had read it there on the back of the clipping. I hadn’t mentioned the discrepancy because I didn’t want to add more to argue about. Now, knowing that the seventh birthday was a fixed marker for Ginny’s death, the poem date was vital.

I told her the truth: September or November or December. 1963.

“No,” she said, and then waited for me to give a better answer.

“That’s what it says,” I insisted.

She took my arm, hard, which was not in character. “It wasn’t Ginny, was it? The person who copied the poem and impersonated my mother signing the book.”

“Maybe there was another sibling. Whoever she—or he—was, they were the child of the couple in the older photos. That’s all I know.” What if Ginny hadn’t died? Could Linda have just been saying that to shut seven-year-old Gretchen up about her? Or perhaps the couple weren’t Gretchen’s grandparents. “Where did these pictures all come from anyway?” I asked. The old address on the box had a CB postcode for greater Cambridge. Perhaps Gretchen had lived there once. Or perhaps they’d used borrowed boxes in a move. “Did you used to live in Haslingfield?” I asked. “On Cantelupe Road?”

“What are you talking about? Cantaloupes?” Gretchen was angry again. “Wait here,” she commanded.

A few minutes later she returned from upstairs with a heavy frame. It held an eight-by-ten photo of the dark-haired sisters in younger days, days before Brussels and before Gretchen. Gretchen turned it over and felt the fastenings, working at them. “I want to know if there’s writing here.”

She lifted the backing out, and there it was: “Me and Ginny, 1950.” So, Linda must have written it.

The writing style matched the poem transcriptions, and the grandparents’ photos, and the autograph. But it didn’t match the teenaged photos, or the inscriptions for Gretchen’s graduation.

So the one who’d labelled the framed photo couldn’t be Linda.

I could have lied to Gretchen. But I didn’t really think about the options or implications. I pounced on the paradox with a detached fascination.

“Maybe your mother didn’t really write those books. Maybe she was someone with just the same name as the author—”

She smacked my face. I hadn’t been hit since I was six years old. Our cleaner had hit me and been fired.

Gretchen’s face was rigid in a passive mould but tears gushed out as if through cracks in a dam. They slid into the paths of the thousand wrinkles that suddenly scored her skin. She was old now. She was wretched.

“Gretchen,” I said, trying to be kind.

“You don’t understand,” she whispered. And I didn’t understand. I didn’t.

She put her hands into the box and pulled up dozens of photos. They spilled from her fists. She pushed them into my chest, grinding them in. “Tell me again what she looked like. Tell me again.”

This was awful. She wanted me to be a conduit for something that was more electric than I could bear.

“Tell me again,” she demanded. She pushed me and lurched, suddenly disoriented. “Tell me again.”

“Gretchen, please.”

She stopped and got her bearings. “Take them,” she said, kicking at the photos, which were now a mess on the floor around us. “Take them away.”

I knelt on the floor to pick them up, like when Alexandra as a child used to throw cards on the floor and call it a game.

“Thank you,” she said, while I crawled under the table where some had fluttered or slid. When I passed her by she put her hand on my head, like a matron with a hunting dog in an old portrait.

I refilled the box in a jumble, and hefted it into my arms. I considered ripping the framed photo out of its place to take that as well. But there was a momentum leading toward my escape that I didn’t want to disturb. I headed toward the door without it.

Gretchen remembered. She pursued me into the lounge. The corner of the frame scraped my ear. She piled it, frame and all, on top of the box in my arms.

I promised her that I would take them all away.

She said, “Utterly, please. Utterly.”

If I’d been less rattled I would have stored the box somewhere, assuming that she would eventually change her mind. At this time, however, it seemed very important to take things literally. It seemed important to back away from making my own judgements about things. I hadn’t made good decisions lately.

So I did what Gretchen asked.

Harry’s car was just turning the corner, and I crossed the road quickly to avoid him. I didn’t want to chat, but was relieved to see him. His presence would keep Gretchen from doing something drastic.

I took the box back home. Home-home, not the Chanders’. Mum would be out. Dad was away on business. We have a pond behind the house. Not a garden pond; this was a real jungle, a wildlife zone, hopping and buzzing and splashing with life. It was deep.

My arms tingled from carrying the heavy box so far. I dropped it at the water’s edge and shook out my limbs to revive their circulation.

I considered sprinkling the photographs, like confetti, but that was too delicate a gesture. I hefted the box up and dumped it out.

I’d forgotten that they’d float. Photo faces dotted the water surface. Ginny and her side part stood out to me. I hadn’t noticed before that Liv’s hair is parted in the same way, but after last night, looking down at the top of her head, I wouldn’t forget. It’s a side part, to my left, and it had moved back and forth in front of me, my back up against the wall of her room.

The box itself bobbed, and I wondered if it had ever held something simple. I wondered if it had ever delivered a toy, or a lamp, or a book by someone who wasn’t Linda Paul.

I looked back at our house. I still had a key. My old room was still there, with my bed in it, even if Mum had her computer set up in there now too.

Gretchen didn’t like the idea of a nanny getting between her and her mother. I’d noticed that in one of the photos the nanny wore a pin from some society on her jumper. I tried to decipher it but Gretchen scoffed. She hadn’t cared. “She’s just the nanny.” Still, the photos told a different story. In the photos, she and the nanny seemed close. I’d had nannies. They were nice. Anna from Germany, and Marie from France. Anna taught me how to crack an egg, and how to cook on an Aga. Marie was retired from competitive tennis, and I spent most Marie days outside. Mum brought us lemonade and made me wear a hat. My mum was still my mum.

Briefly, I considered unlocking home and going back in time.

A car pulled up. I heard Alexandra and a friend pop out of it, spilling bright conversation. They didn’t see me, around the back of the house.

It was enough to shake me out of my sentimental mood. Going into the house wouldn’t undo being an adult.

Gretchen’s photos still floated. The framed picture glowed gold in the early winter sunset, and looked for all the world like a raft. It had drifted too far to reach with a stick, even with this long branch that had come down in the last storm. So I threw a stone at it, which smashed the glass. That bull’s-eye gave me confidence and I threw a larger one, which missed, and another, which pushed the frame perpendicular for a moment. Then it righted itself.

Something rustled in the bushes next door. Our neighbour, Mrs. Cowley, wouldn’t like me stirring things up down here. She didn’t like people around. Usually I tiptoed around her sensitivities, but now I picked up the branch. No, it couldn’t reach. But I hefted it up onto my shoulder and ran forward, releasing it like a javelin. It plunged into the water at least a metre from its target, the framed portrait. Scuttling noises retreated away toward the next house.

The lights in the ground floor of our house came on in a flash. The windows made a bright stripe across the whole building. I hadn’t noticed before that the lights hadn’t gone on as soon as Alexandra had entered.

My noise must have disturbed her. The back door banged open. “You!” she called bravely.

I waved and emerged from the trees. “Alex, it’s me.”

I expected her to be relieved. But she tensed up.

“Alex, it’s all right. It’s Nick.” My voice sounded forced. I didn’t sound like myself. She went back in without answering; the door slapped shut behind her.

As I got closer to the house, the angle of my view changed and I could see the whole of the lounge. Her companion wasn’t one of her usual girlfriends. It was a boy. He was taller than she was, so he had to be older. Most of the boys her age have yet to catch up with her. They argued. She buttoned up her blouse.

That’s what had looked so odd at the back door. Her shirt had been untucked and overlapped tightly around her, underneath her crossed arms.

I strode in. “Alexandra, won’t you introduce me to your friend?” I folded my arms across my chest.

She popped the last button in through its slit. “Gordon gave me a ride,” she said. Meaning a car. I know she meant his car.

His shirt was untucked too. He held his blazer in front of himself, draped awkwardly over his arm.

“You can go now,” I said to him.

He tried to get a cue from Alexandra. She shook her head and lifted her shoulders. I stepped between them. “Now!” I said.

When Alexandra turned to watch him drive away, I saw that her shirt had two lumps at the back where the ends of her bra were undone and poked up.

I took her blazer from the couch and handed it to her.

“Is there a problem?” she demanded, putting her arms into the sleeves.

“How old is he?”

“None of your business!”

“You’re fourteen!”

She feigned shock. “Oh my God, you’re right! Better change my nappy and put me down for an afternoon sleep!”

She ran upstairs. The stair railing rattled.

I sat down on the bottom step. After a few minutes I was calm. I went up and tapped lightly on her door. She didn’t answer. I opened it anyway.

She sat cross-legged on her bed. Her teddies were lined up behind her against the headboard. The duvet was neat underneath her. Mum must make her bed up; I know Alex wouldn’t be bothered.

“I’m sorry that I embarrassed you,” I said.

She looked at me with red eyes. “I don’t forgive you.”

I nodded. I didn’t expect her to.

“It’s only that—”

“No! Don’t tell me! I’m too young, right? And boys only want one thing? It’s not like we came up to my room. We were just messing about.”

She still slept with bears and plush ponies. A boy didn’t belong on this bed.

“Don’t tell Mum,” she begged.

I promised.

“And get out of my room.”

I did. I shut the door so that it clicked.

The house phone rang. She snatched up her extension.

“Hello … Oh, I’m sorry,” she said loudly enough to be clear to me. “He’s not allowed to talk to
girls!”
She hung up with an angry beep and threw the handset at the door.

“Who was it?” I demanded through the door.

“Some slag for you. Don’t you know they want only one thing?”

Had the caller been Liv? Why would she call this number? Maybe it was Polly?

Polly wouldn’t know this number either. Or think that I was here. Or want to speak to me.

She’d literally recoiled from me. Not just from me going too far, but then from me trying to help, trying to apologise, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. She’d run away from me.

And soon Liv would tell her where I’d ended up from there.

I leaned against Alexandra’s door.

The phone rang again. Alexandra let it ring. I dashed downstairs to the extension in the lounge. “Polly?”

It was Mum. “Oh, Nick! Are you staying for dinner?”

I said no. Mum was disappointed. But if I stayed Alexandra would refuse to join us, or she’d sit with us but not eat. She’d find a way to protest my presence, silently daring me to tell on her, and promising hate forever if I did. It wasn’t worth it. Not tonight.

Mum said she’d be home soon, so I left Alexandra by herself. On the way out, I picked up a thick fallen branch and sent it sailing toward the neighbours’ fence. The wooden slats rattled when it hit. I was tired of looking after people. I was tired of working ’round everyone’s delicate feelings. Our neighbour, Mrs. Cowley, was frightened by sudden noises, by any token of our existence, really; but what if I
wanted
to throw something? What about
my
feelings?