Drowning Rose (10 page)

‘I’ll go.’

I walked off into the little back office where we hung our coats and made our coffee and where Beatrice did her paperwork. I filled the kettle and while I waited for it to boil I poked my head round the door. ‘You know, no one’s asked me if I
want
to be forgiven, have they.’

‘It’s not about you, though, Eliza, is it?’

‘No. No, it isn’t.’

I put two teaspoonfuls of instant coffee in each mug and added a spoonful of sugar to mine before pouring the water. As I stirred the coffee I looked around me. I loved these shabby rooms with their peeling paint and engine room pipes running along the ceilings. I loved the fact that within such unprepossessing walls, work was carried out that brought what had been broken or neglected, forgotten and misused, back to life and usefulness by us, the conservators. All the tools needed for the transformation were to be found cleaned and neatly put away, each in its own place, or placed on the tables and desks ready for work in their overalls of paint and putty, pigment and wax. I liked the way the rooms felt safe even when I was working late on my own and the way they were peaceful even when all four of us were working there together. Just as I was thinking all this, as I waited for the paint to dry, my phone went ping, announcing that a text message had arrived. It was from my mother. It read:
I hope you have accepted your godfather’s offer. Remember your father saved his life once
.

Years ago, when I was staying at the clinic, another thing they had taught me to practise was how to control and interrupt destructive thought patterns. When the repetitive thoughts come into your mind you should fend them off, telling yourself that they would all be dealt with at a set time and for a set amount of time, say ten minutes. That would be their lot. It had sounded too simple, too mechanical but I had come to realise that the human brain responded very well to simple repetitive commands. Of course it didn’t always work, but when it did it was wonderful, like divesting yourself of layers of thick scratchy clothing, putting them all away in a wardrobe and emerging, light as a ballerina, to pirouette off into the light. I was scared that accepting the house would be like taking up residence in the wardrobe with no escape from that dark heavy clothing.

I texted back.
I should think that, after what happened to Rose, we’re more than even, wouldn’t you?

My mother replied,
Remember Stalin
.

Years ago when my mother had first suggested that I see someone, a therapist someone, I had been very much against the idea.

‘Therapists are paid to make people feel good about themselves,’ I said to her. ‘They would tell Stalin he wasn’t to feel bad about himself.’

My mother had put her hand under my chin and raised my face so that our eyes met. ‘Eliza, you’re not Stalin.’

There was no doubt that, through the years, those words had proved strangely comforting.

The conservators in Sculpture had music playing all the time but on the whole here at the ceramics studio we kept it off, although we did have some iPod speakers on a shelf at the back. As it was just the two of us in today I asked Beatrice if she’d mind if I played something. She said she wouldn’t so I put on some Celtic folk music, or as I liked to call it, Easy Throat-slitting.

‘That’s supposed to lift your mood?’ Beatrice asked.

‘I’m trying to bottom out.’

‘Not here you don’t. What else have you got?’

‘Best of Mozart?’

‘You can’t take someone’s money if they’re potty,’ I said after a while.

‘Are you referring to your godfather?’

I nodded. ‘I told you about the visits from,’ I lowered my voice, looking around me, ‘. . . the dead.’

‘You don’t need to whisper. They can’t,’ she did a mock looking around the room, ‘hear you.’

‘Well, according to Uncle Ian it looks as if they can.’ I straightened up and resumed my normal voice. ‘Surely that makes one question his ability to make rational decisions?’

‘Not necessarily. One of my great-aunts claimed to have had regular visits from her guardian angel. That apart she was as practical and down to earth as . . . as you or me, I was going to say, but let’s just leave it at me.’

I raised an eyebrow to show I was not amused. Then I turned back to my pot and applied the bronze pigment to the trunk of the tree. It worked perfectly.

‘Let’s play the millionaire’s game,’ Beatrice said. ‘If you could pick anywhere, where would you live?’

I told her I didn’t want to play. She told me to indulge her. ‘All right. There is this house up the road from my flat, in one of the tiny squares. It’s like a Georgian doll’s house. Small but perfectly formed with a front garden and a mulberry tree standing guard. It’s up for sale for the first time in for ever.’

‘Well, off you go. Make an offer.’

‘No, absolutely not.’

‘And what about your poor old dying godfather who only wants to make you happy?’

‘I said no. It’s not right. It’s not right and it doesn’t make sense. Any of it.’

‘You know what doesn’t make any sense?’ Beatrice asked. ‘That.’ She pointed at Daisy’s bowl. ‘All those bloody fairies and elves and whatever else. Your godfather, on the other hand, makes perfect sense.’

I went past my stop right the way up to Hampstead Village to check out the estate agent’s window. The house on the hill was still there and there was no sticker saying
Sold
or
Under Offer
plastered across the picture. The dark sky hung low, pregnant with snow, but I decided to walk home rather than take the bus. As I crossed over to the High Street I heard carols. A Salvation Army band had gathered round the Christmas tree. They were playing ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ and as the sky darkened the lights brightened to a heavenly blue. I stayed where I was, listening to the music, and as the last of the day was sucked into night a Salvation Army officer picked up his collection box and started his round.

I had my ten-pound note ready when I paused, and bringing out my wallet again, pulled out the cash I had drawn a little earlier: one hundred pounds minus the ten.

‘It was easier when you had that cauldron thing,’ I told the officer as I rolled up banknote after banknote and shoved each one through the narrow slit of the collection box.

‘But not as secure,’ the officer said. ‘Thank you and happy Christmas.’

I didn’t show it, of course, but secretly I was disappointed. I had expected a little more. An ‘Hallelujah, thank the Lord,’ or at least a ‘Bless you, my child.’ But ‘Thank you and Happy Christmas’ was exactly what he had said to the kid with the coin. Of course I knew that it was the thought that counted and most likely that coin represented the boy’s entire week’s income whereas I had just been offered a house as a gift. Seen in that light the level of gratitude had been absolutely right. Still, I was pleased when the officer returned and asked if I had a favourite as they wanted to play something just for me as a special thank you. He had not asked the kid.

‘ “Silent Night”, please,’ I said without hesitation. There was simply no limit to how many times I could hear that particular carol.

Eleven

Sandra/Cassandra

My bloody parents! They’d only gone and booked themselves a holiday over half-term. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, they never went anywhere.

‘We thought that now you were away at school . . .’

‘But what about me?’ I wasn’t going to admit it but I had actually been looking forward to coming home.

They said they hadn’t realised it was half-term when Des and Janet suggested the trip. Well, they should have; the calendar was right there over the phone, pinned to the corkboard. ‘I’m sure Eliza, or one of the other girls you’re such friends with, Portia is it, and Rose, will ask you to go home with them,’ my mum said.

‘I’d rather be here. I’m old enough to stay on my own.’

‘No dear,’ my mother said and she had that steely note in her voice that meant that nothing or no one was going to shift her. Apparently she had already spoken to Miss Philips, who had assured her their being away wasn’t a problem. ‘She said they haven’t yet had a girl having to stay at school for half-term.’

So I would be the first, great.

‘I might not get an invitation,’ I said. ‘You have to be really good friends with someone before they invite you home and I’m not.’ I shut my eyes, waiting for the sky to fall in.

‘Nonsense.’ I opened my eyes to see my mother look at me, a mulish set to her face. ‘You’re always telling us what fun you’re having, you and Eliza and your other friends.’

‘I . . . I exaggerated,’ I said. I couldn’t bring myself to say out loud that even Eliza seemed to tolerate me rather than actually like me.

My mum turned to my dad. ‘Have you heard such a thing. “I exaggerated”?’ She shook her head laughing. ‘Now I expect you’ve had a tiff, don’t you think so, Daddy?’ She turned to him.

‘You make friends wherever you go,’ my father said.

‘I didn’t at Lord Hanbury’s.’

‘You told us yourself that those girls were just jealous.’ My mother had put on her patient voice. ‘That’s one of the reasons we sent you to The Academy, to get away from that kind of thing.’ She pronounced Academy as if each letter was coated in honey. I wanted to tell her that the whole thing, me going off to LAGs, was a mistake, that actually I wasn’t cut out for a place like that and that I wanted to come home. I wouldn’t even complain about going back to my old school. At least it was a day school and I could go home at the end of the afternoon.

‘Mum, Dad . . .’

‘That nice Miss Philips told us herself that you had settled in very well. I’m sure she wouldn’t make that up.’ My mother turned to my father with a little laugh at the absurdity of the suggestion. ‘I expect they’ve got lovely homes, those girls. We must buy some nice chocolates or soaps for you to bring. You can’t come empty-handed.’

‘Soaps would be best, I think,’ Dad said. ‘So many ladies are on a diet these days.’

‘You might be right. Then again . . .’

Why had I lied to them? Why had I written those stupid letters home all about how I was hanging out with the princesses and how great everything was? Actually, it was their fault. I wouldn’t have had to make things up if my parents hadn’t been so needy, waiting like great big puppy dogs for the latest morsel of what they deludedly thought of as their daughter’s glittering social life. My mother imagining that we were gliding around the corridors of LAGs with perfect posture and white gloves; a bunch of wannabe Grace Kellys. Mum was obsessed with Princess Grace, as she insisted on calling her. I would tell her, ‘She’s dead, Mum. Get over it.’ But she still banged on about it. ‘Princess Grace truly was this and Princess Grace truly was that . . . Grace by name and Grace by nature. A person like that never really dies. Did you know she always, without exception, wore white gloves to her auditions?’

As usual she had got all her information from the celebrity magazines. She’d always loved them ever since she was a little girl and they were just about her only indulgence now that every penny went on the fees for LAGs. I hadn’t bothered to think about that side of things when I had first told them I wanted to go there. I suppose I’d been too busy just making sure I got my way.

‘I think it’s too much money,’ I said to my parents now.

‘What is?’

‘Sending me to LAGs. It’s too big a sacrifice.’

‘You let me worry about that,’ my dad said, giving me a pat on the head. ‘And you’re the clever young lady who got yourself a bursary.’

‘That’s like a tenth of the fees, and you had to pay for all that private tutoring first.’

‘It’s only a sacrifice if you don’t make the most of it,’ my mum said.

Then I asked if maybe I could spend half-term with Auntie Gina. You would never believe my mum and she were sisters, let alone twins. I always imagined that while they were still waiting to be born the foetus that became Gina took for herself all the fun and the get-up and go that was meant for two, leaving my mother this sad humble thing wobbling along in her sister’s fizzing wake.

‘I haven’t seen her for ages,’ I said. ‘It’s a really good opportunity to spend some time. You’re always saying she’s lonely.’

My mum said Auntie Gina was away on a cruise and wouldn’t be back in time. ‘Anyway, she’s the last person who would want you to miss out just because of her.’

After that I gave up.

Gillian had told me that all three of the princesses had been called in to Miss Philips’s soon after the incident with the dress. The door had been left ajar and Gillian had heard the whole thing. How they had been told to make a bigger effort with me. Miss Philips had noticed that ‘poor little Sandra’ was spending a lot of time by herself and that it was obvious I was finding it hard to settle in. She had finished off by saying that she would be extremely disappointed if she thought there was something as ugly as snobbism at work. So once I was back at school after the Sunday out I decided to use that to get an invitation. The princesses were going to Portia’s family’s holiday cottage in Cornwall for the half-term and some of her brother’s friends from the boys’ school were coming too. I imagined how excited my mum and dad would be if I were going. So I told them I was.