A Place for Us (14 page)

Cat interrupted. “You’re writing an article about my . . . mum?” It was one of the peculiarities of having seen your mother just four times in your life that Cat never knew how she should refer to Daisy. “Mother” was too Victorian, “Mum” too . . . too like someone who was your actual mum, which she definitely wasn’t.

“Well, I offered to do something on Southpaw at work for this exhibition of his, and then they heard about Daisy and they got all interested in that. The whole Daisy and Wilbur thing and where she’s gone. And . . . look, I thought I should ask you what you think before I go any further. If you’d talk about it . . . what it was like, having her as your mother.”

Cat had been told many times by well-meaning teachers and family friends that she was a lucky girl to be living in this beautiful house with her grandparents, surrounded by people who loved her. But she didn’t have a mum. And it was little things that reminded her of it. It was rubbish, that saying: “You can’t miss what you don’t have”—because she did miss it, all the time, in loads of tiny different ways. Like when she saw
Tamsin Wallis being kissed by her mum after Sports Day. On the field below the church that the vicar let them use every year. She remembered it clearly: Tamsin and Cat together, hand in hand, running over to her mum. Shouting “Red Team won! We won!” And Tamsin’s mother, smiling so hard, her spiky blond hair sticking up, her green earrings bobbing, her arms stretched so wide she could have caught fifteen Tamsins up. But she didn’t, just one. Cat was left standing to the side, panting, while Julie Wallis gave her daughter a big hug, and then pushed her hair aside, kissed the dome of Tamsin’s tanned forehead as if she was the most precious thing in the world to her, which she was.

Now Cat could see it. Now she understood it. Then, it only bewildered her, when she went over and asked for the same from Julie Wallis, who stared at her sadly, then gave her a little kiss. “Of course, Cat.” A tight small hug, a quick little lip brush, a pat on the back.

“What do you think?”

Cat realized the phone was slipping out of her hand as she gazed unseeingly out into the night. She heard the sound of a door opening, then clicking shut: dread sound.

“What do I think about what?”

“Don’t you wonder where she is?” Lucy’s voice was loud down the crackling line. “And how weird it is she never comes back?”

Cat could hear Madame Poulain coming up the stairs.

“What a stupid question,” she said, sounding much harsher than she meant. “She was my mother.” She corrected herself. “She
is
my mother, I
can’t change that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think about it. Or that
I want to talk about it to you so you can put it in some newspaper.”

“Oh, Cat. Listen, I only wanted to know—”

Cat held up her hand as if her cousin could see her. Rage bubbled through her. “You’re a real little gannet, aren’t you? Grubbing around in stuff that’s not your business. You never get in touch, never ask me how I am; now you pop up, all friendly, because you want something from me.”

“That’s rubbish, Cat! You never e-mail. This—I was glad to have an excuse to ring you.” Lucy’s voice throbbed. “You’ve cut us all off, just like your mum, so don’t make out I’m the one who’s betraying the family in some way.”

“There’s a reason I don’t come back. You don’t understand—”

And the door opened with a bang; Madame Poulain flung her ancient
purple umbrella on the floor. “
Les idiots
!
”

Cat realized she was shaking. “Grow up, Lucy,” she said, not caring how mean she sounded. “Just grow up. I think I’d better go now. Bye.”

She slammed the phone back in its cradle, instantly regretting the words, and turned away, trying to stop the painful tears squeezing the corners of her tired eyes.

“Can I have a tea, please, Catherine?” Madame Poulain dropped her coat on the floor and flopped onto her chair. “Don’t use those glasses, I’m worried you’ll break them. A tea? Thank you so much.”

Cat set her shoulders, rubbed her eyes briefly. “Of course, Madame,” she said. “I hope you had a good evening?” She looked at her watch. Ten more minutes of fake conversation, then she could go upstairs, go to bed, lie down next to Luke and watch his warm, soft body on the cot next to hers, rising and falling with each breath. Wait for sleep to wash over her, until gray morning slid into the tiny room and the whole thing began again.

As Cat made the tea, she prayed she wouldn’t dream about her mother. She used to have those dreams: Daisy running toward her on the beach in Dorset, hair flying behind her. She’d hold Cat tightly and whisper into her ear, “I’m sorry. I’m back now and I’m never going away again. You’re my little girl, no one else’s.” She even knew where they’d live too—the tiny old schoolmistress’s cottage next to the church, a gingerbread house with a thatched roof and roses round the door. Big enough for two, no one else.

Martha

M
ARTHA ALWAYS ENJOYED
planning for Halloween, even though now there was no one really to celebrate it with; very few trick-or-treaters these days, what with the children having grown up and the village increasingly full of second homes. When the children were small, they’d had a famous party; Halloween was a novelty then, an American import, but now it was ubiquitous. She’d had a Chamber of Horrors, where the children had to put on blindfolds and be escorted round by her. They were made to feel various ghoulish treasures: a slice of lemon stuck over a bottle, which, when the guest inserted a cautious finger into the neck of the bottle, felt exactly like a dead man’s eye socket; ghostly noises, rustling sounds made with newspaper; and a real skeleton David had acquired for life drawing—one dangled it in front of the blind victims, letting them feel the bones.

The children always screamed, always got hysterical, and then always ate huge amounts of chili con carne served with a golden cornmeal top, and baked potatoes and cheese. For months the anticipation was rife in the village: what new horror would Mrs. Winter have for them? Eight-year-olds would cluster around her when she walked into Winter Stoke. “Mrs. Winter, is it true you found a head on a spike?” “Is it true you got a dead wolf and you’re going to stuff it?” “Is it true you captured a ghost, and you’ve got it upstairs in a room?”

“Yes,” she’d always answer gravely, and they’d shriek with wriggling delight and rush away. “Oh, it’s even worse this year!”

She’d carried on doing the party with Cat and Lucy: Lucy loved it, but Cat got genuinely scared, the only one of all of them who did. Years
before that, Daisy had loved it, of course. Halloween was her favorite time of year.

It wasn’t the same today, but Martha still kept an old plastic cauldron filled with sweets from the petrol station by the door in case anyone came, and this year she was rewarded: Poppy and Zach, the vicar’s children, came around about six, she dressed up as Hermione Granger, he as some kind of amorphous zombie, his metallic silver and red face paint striped flesh-colored by the rain. Martha was vaguely amused: the austere, Victorian-era vicar who’d been here when they had first moved in hadn’t allowed his grandchildren to celebrate Halloween—it was pagan, not suitable in this quiet, traditional village that had changed so little over the years. Kathy’s children were delightful, well brought up and hopping with sugar and excitement. They said thank you very nicely for her sweets, as well they might; Martha never undercatered.

The rain was just starting again as she closed the door on them, smiling at their hoarse-with-excitement howls. As they ran away toward their waiting father, Martha shivered. She went into the empty drawing room and bent down, stiffly thrusting another log onto the fire. Resin crackled; something spluttered, and a ball of golden sparks leaped up, scattering over the great hearth. She stumbled back in shock, nearly catching her foot on the guard, and stood still for a moment, listening to the faint screams of the children echoing down the twisting dark lane, the eerie strength of the crackling wood, the sound of the wind at the windows. The clocks had gone back the previous Sunday, and now they were properly into winter. It had been a nasty autumn: wet, wild, sharp with sudden cold. Hurtful, as if to say,
Season of mists? What kind of sentimental idiot are you?

Her old tutor at art college, Mr. McIntyre, had always made them sketch in winter, saying the bleakness was good for their artistic souls. He liked poetry and had made them read various poets, and often quoted John Donne: “Whither, as to the bed’s-feet, life is shrunk
.
”
Life had shrunk. Well, if it was to come, let it come. She had nothing to fear now, she kept telling herself. This thing she had been dragging around for so long would be gone soon.

She tried to concentrate only on the positive: her family would be
together, everyone here once again. Florence was coming back, Karen and Bill and Lucy all together again, and of course, her darling Cat—nearly four years away.

It was that falsely jovial, strange lunch with Cat the previous year in Paris that had made Martha realize that she had to change something. Cat needed her; so did Bill, and Florence, and Lucy, and—oh, all of them. Once they had been close, because of her. She’d kept them all together, like an invisible silk thread, binding herself to them, around them. But these last few years they weren’t really a family anymore, and once they had been. Years had passed and changed them, and she knew she was the only one who could make it right again, and this was what the lunch would do. Beyond November 24 she saw nothing. She had no idea what the future after this might hold.

She didn’t realize that she had fallen into a reverie, staring into the heart of the fire, but a sound across the hallway made her jump. A cry of pain.

“David?” Martha went into the study.

“It’s nothing.” Her husband was leaning heavily on his desk, one fist pressing down on a mass of crumpled papers, standing in a curious position. He was facing the blank wall, away from the window.

“What’s up?” Martha said in the doorway, unsure whether he wanted her to enter or not.

“Damn it,” David said. In profile he looked terrible: lines of pain deep as hatching etched around his mouth, across his sunken brow. As he stood in this strange spot, turned toward the wall, she saw him clearly for the first time in a long while and, with a dart of fear, noticed how thin, how gray he was. “It’s nothing. Just the damn hands again—I get so tired, darling. I’m sorry.”

“They’re awfully swollen.” She looked at him. “Worse than ever. Oh, my sweet.”

“I can’t do it.” It came out as a sob. “They need something by Friday. Said I’d post it to them tomorrow.”

“It doesn’t matter. They’ll understand.”

“They won’t.” He closed his eyes slowly. “It’s over, Em. That article they want Lucy to write—it’s a stab in the back. They’re looking for any reason to get rid of me.”

“Darling, she’s not writing it anymore. I asked her not to. She rang me yesterday. Said she’s spoken to Cat and she doesn’t think it’s
a very tactful piece to write. You mustn’t worry about that. You really mustn’t.”

“Oh, but that’s not fair. Poor Luce, she deserves a break.”

Martha couldn’t help but laugh. “Oh, my love. You’re too kind. Forget about those vultures at the newspaper too. It doesn’t matter, does it?” She stared at the scratchy sketch on the paper in front of him, and glanced at his kind, dark eyes, so full of pain, so sad. “It’s been a good long run at it. You can’t keep killing yourself trying to get them two cartoons a week. It’s not fair. It’s not—”

“Please, Em,” he said. “Just once more. Just this once.”

It was something in his voice, and in the hypnotic sound of the rain thrumming outside, enclosing them alone together around the green lamp under which lay a piece of creamy-white paper, glowing in the dark of the study.

Martha swallowed. “This is the last time, darling. It’s gone on too long. It’s not fair on you, anyway. It’s killing you. You’re ill because you push yourself like this and, David, you really don’t need to.”

“I’m dying anyway,” David said harshly.

“You’re not. Not until I say you are.”

He smiled. “Maybe working keeps me sane. Stops me thinking.”

Martha bowed her head and sat down at the desk, picked up the steel-nib fountain pen, and began to draw. She didn’t need to ask him what he had in mind; after more than fifty years of marriage, she didn’t need to be told.

David lowered himself into the chair opposite, looking over her shoulder as she carried on, sketching out swift, certain strokes.

“Thank you,” he said. “My dear. What would I have done without you all these years?”

“You too, David.” She looked up and reached out her hand. “Look what you’ve done for me.”

“If people knew . . .”

“I think that’s true of most families,” she said. “Everyone has their secrets. We’ve had this place. We’ve had each other, and the children. . . .”

“But, Em, don’t you think that’s the trouble with it all?” She looked up, startled. “We’ve spent so long saying it has to be worth it, and I’m—I’m not sure whether it was.” With great effort, David pulled
himself out of the low chair and walked over to the window, looking out into the darkness, the silver rain dripping like a curtain over the bare branches of overhanging wisteria. “You do everything. You’ve kept us all together these years, my darling, and I’ve done nothing. Nothing except—”

“Stop that.” Her voice rang out, louder than she meant it to. “Stop talking like that, David. Of course it was worth it. You dragged yourself out of that life, you saved yourself, and Cassie—you brought me back here again. You brought in money. You gave me our babies. You made me grateful, every day of my life.”

“Cassie . . .” He was still staring out the window. “She doesn’t want to see me. Any of us.”

“What?”

He ignored her. “Look what happened. Look how it turned out. All these lies we’ve told along the way. Look at us, we’re miserable.”

“We’re not.” She slammed her hand on the desk. “We’re old and tired, and it’s winter, and we have had some sadnesses to deal with. It’ll be Christmas soon and all of this will be forgotten. You’ll be happy again. I promise.”

“I don’t know.” He looked so defeated, suddenly old, and she could feel her heart aching as she looked at him.

“David. You’ve made me so happy. You’ve made millions of people happy. I didn’t do that.” She laid down the pen, pinched the bridge of her nose, breathed in. “I’m no good at being spontaneous and carefree and making a mess and not caring what happens. You are. You always were. That’s why people love you.”

They were very still in the study, the only sounds the water outside and the moan in the chimney behind her.

“You had other things to do,” David said. His face was gray. “You’ve done everything else.” The final word sounded like a sob. “Darling, darling girl. I don’t know what I’d do without you. Oh, Em.”

She stretched across the desk to take his hand. His rigid, swollen fingers were immobile in her small, warm hand. She pressed his palm with the pad of her thumb. They stared at each other, David looking down, his breathing labored, and after a few moments Martha picked up the pen again and began drawing. He watched her.

“You’re going to tell them about Daisy, aren’t you?”

The figures were coming to life on the paper: a little girl dancing, a crazed, happy dog, and still she did not stop.

“Martha?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “I’ll tell them then.”

“That she’s dead? Everything?”

She started, and the pen snagged on an invisible bump; the paper tore just a little, the ink bleeding out, black on white.

“Not everything,” she said after a pause, and resumed her work.