The Scrapbook (17 page)

When we dock I go below to fetch the car, negotiating my way around an amble of holidaymakers and day-trippers. The stench of diesel tips the balance of my queasiness just enough to make me gag and I drop my bag as I fumble my hands over my mouth. The spilled contents slither between blurred ankles and I have to scramble to retrieve everything safely. Nobody stops to help me.

I follow the signs to the town centre and then wind my way up a hill to the nursing home. It's in a beautiful spot, perched above the town and facing over the spill of rooftops to the sea. Before I go inside, I sit for a moment and stare out at the water. This is the island my granny grew up on, though I have no memories of her ever returning to visit. And now I know why. It's only an hour's ferry ride away and yet for her, with her self-imposed banishment, it could have been on the other side of the world. She'd loved it, according to her letters, had missed it like it was an animate thing, and had spent year after year standing on
our
island, gazing at it, imagining its streets and its fields, building it up in her memories and her fantasies until it became too great to ever be able to compete with reality. Like mum, she placed herself in a position where absence would lie at the heart of her life, and then she cradled it close. What is it about the women in our family that we do yearning so well?

I've brought the letters with me, though I'm not sure yet whether to show them to the great-aunt. If Granny Ivy had wanted her to have them then surely she would have posted them years ago, when they could have done some good for the pair of them?

I give my name to the uniformed lady at reception and wait while she speaks briefly into a phone. Then she waves me over and points down the corridor. ‘Room five. It's just down there on the left. She's a bit,' lowered voice, ‘tetchy
today. She had a bad night. Enjoy your visit.'

When I knock there's no answer, so I hover for a moment and then knock again. Still nothing. I push the door open and step inside. The great-aunt is sat in one of those customised high armchairs, which seem specially designed to make old people look even older and smaller than they need to. Her feet dangle a few inches above the carpet and she stabs a button on the control pad resting in her lap with angry repetition.

‘It's broken again. Look at this. Can you do anything with it?'

I take a look at the controls and press the downward arrow. The chair eases itself back to floor level. Embarrassed, she glares at me. ‘Well, I could have done that.'

I bend to kiss her cheek and then sit beside her. I'm not sure how to start the conversation. Some jolly remark about the passing years or how little she's changed would just feel false, and probably sound false too. I try not to stare at her. She looks so much like Granny Ivy now, as Granny Ivy had looked in the last couple of years before she died. I realise with a guilty twitch that she, my granny, must have been so much frailer than my self-absorbed younger self had ever noticed. My memories of her are all gigantic and pulsing with energy.

The great-aunt stares back at me with less discretion. ‘God, you look just like your mother. Do you remember, at Ivy's funeral, having to drag her off the sofa and up to bed? Drunk. Disgraceful.'

I nod and try to smile. ‘Yes, like it was yesterday.'

She narrows her eyes. ‘Still stings, does it? You've got to learn to let things go.'

The cheek of it, coming from her, jolts a snort from me. I try to turn it into a cough but she's sharper than I gave her credit for.

‘Come on, out with it,' she barks. ‘You're not here to be nice, you've obviously got something to say, so spit it out.'

‘Why did you help me then, if you were so disgusted by mum's behaviour?' I ask. ‘You could have walked away and left me to deal with her by myself.'

‘I was going to,' she says. ‘It wasn't my mess to clear up. But there was something disarming about you and your panic. For just a second there was a flash of him, your grandfather. I tried to find it again afterwards but it was gone, or maybe it was never there in the first place. That's probably nearer the truth. You're your grandmother through and through. Now, stop making small talk and get to the point.'

I'm relieved by her rudeness. From the moment I walked in here and saw her I knew I was angry with her. For abandoning me when I was young and grief stricken, and for excising her sister from her life as if she'd never been. I'd half believed what I'd said to mum about the importance of family and making amends while you still had the chance, but that was until I saw for myself just how prepared the great-aunt was to hang onto her bitterness.

At least this way we don't have to waste time and we don't have to pretend. I pull the wad of envelopes out of my bag and hold them out to her. ‘I found these at mum's house. Granny Ivy wrote to you for years, letter after letter, but she didn't ever post any of them. I thought you might want to have them.'

She makes no move to take them. ‘If she'd wanted me to have them then she would have sent them, wouldn't she? Don't interfere.'

I thrust the letters at her but she stays completely still with her hands resting in her lap, even when I lean over and place them on her knees. She doesn't break eye contact with me. ‘I said I don't want them. Is that all you came for?'

‘There was another letter, one you sent her. Saying you'd help her with something.'

She shifts her legs slightly, just enough to dislodge the envelopes and spill them to the floor. ‘So?'

I sigh and try to warm my voice. ‘So you must have written to each other at some point. I want to find my dad, that's all. Mum's not well and we want to know what happened to him. Granny Ivy might have mentioned something about him to you. She made a point of finding things out about people, digging down below the surface.' I wave a hand over the pile of envelopes on the carpet. ‘These letters were full of him. She knew he was married even before my mum did.'

The great-aunt blinks for possibly the first time since I entered the room. ‘So you've read the letters? You know what she did to me?'

‘Yes, I know about her falling in love with my grandfather and running off with him. I know she was sorry.'

She laughs then. ‘Not sorry enough to give him back. Not sorry enough to keep her hands to herself. I never loved anyone like I loved Edgar. Not even my poor husband. He tried his best but I was like ice. I think I froze him to death. Did you know she used magic to steal him from me? And she was good at it, your lovely granny. He didn't stand a chance.'

I sit back in my chair and try to think of something to say which isn't reflexively defensive. Silence squats between us as I look around the room and she looks at me. I can't find inspiration in the biscuit coloured carpet or the white walls stretching blankly from corner to corner like faces turned away, expressionless. There are no books in here, no photographs, no ornaments. Nothing to take the chill off. I'd always imagined nursing homes as cosy places, room after room stuffed full of sentimental keepsakes and a lifetime of memories.

She knows what I'm thinking. ‘What's the point of memories if they're all bad ones. I'm as content here as anywhere else.' And she does look content, almost cheerful as she stares me out and dares me to say anything to rock her from her moral high ground. She's just like the rest of them. The rest of us. Hanging tight to the absences in her life and using them to define her.

‘At least she was happy with him,' I say. ‘They lived their lives together and loved each other until he died. Whatever it was that brought them together in the first place, it lasted. And they had a child, and that child had a child.' I gesture to myself, as if it needed pointing out. ‘And this child is having a child. Their love created so much.'

Her eyes almost close, then snap open again. ‘How lovely for you all. And congratulations. But excuse me if I don't feel any joy for you. I loved Edgar as much as she did. I loved him more than I should have done.' She stresses the last words meaningfully. ‘And when he left me, two weeks before our wedding, not only did he break my heart, he broke apart the baby I didn't even know I was carrying. His betrayal,
her
betrayal, ripped that baby clean from my womb. So there.'

Her triumph shocks me as much as what she's just said. Any pity I could feel withers before her jutted chin and clasped hands. I get up to leave, bend to scoop the letters from the carpet.

‘Don't you want to know what we wrote to each other?' she asks. ‘What we could possibly have to say? That's what you came for, after all. She asked me for a favour, one favour, and I granted it. Not for her, but for the names. For our family name, which still means something to me even if she was happy to drag it through the mud, and for his name,
your
name, because I loved him. I've still got the letter; you can have it if you like.'

I watch as she edges herself upright and walks with tiny, measured steps to a sideboard. So frail and old. Surely so lonely? But I'm guessing her bitterness keeps her warmer at night than any lover or friend ever could.

‘Here.' She gives me a large padded envelope. ‘It's in there. It should answer some questions for you, though don't come crying to me if you don't like what you read.'

I think about kissing her cheek again but can't bring myself to get that close. I nod instead, and float a hand in the air between us by way of goodbye. She's turned away before I open the door.

Back in the car I stroke the bulk of the envelope, pick at the seal. But I feel too shaky right now to open it. I'll wait until I get home.

Home. The thought lifts me. I want to see mum, spend a nice evening with her, play cards and bicker over the rules of rummy. She's got her faults, god knows she's got plenty of them, but at least she can still take some joy from life. Well, from gin and from squabbling with me anyway, and that's better than nothing.

There's a couple of hours wait for the next ferry home and I spend the time sat inside my car, heading the queue to board. When we're floating away from Sorel I release myself from its muggy confines and go up on deck. Stick figures line the dock, tiny Tonka Toy cars, and behind them all the faded mauve of heather on hillside. I stay leant against the rail for a while, watching the land slide away from me until it becomes just a smudge of charcoal beneath the clouds. My granny must have stood like this once, her hand clasped in my grandfather's, staring until her home shrank to nothing in front of her eyes. Was she laughing with the joy of having won over my grandfather, or was she crying at the necessary exchange of one love for another?

I turn away and totter to a bench, probably the very same bench that I sat on this morning, to endure the remainder of the journey. The sea is choppier now, throwing up handfuls of spray, and nobody joins me. I can see my island rising from the horizon and it anchors me.

Car alarms wail when I go below deck, electronic babies screaming their urgency until they're soothed by a return of attention. Everything has spilled from the parcel shelf of my car, map books in a jumble on the floor. I get in and start the engine, try to edge my way past the vehicles on either side so that I can be first off the ferry. I'm suddenly panicky, desperate to get home. I can't remember whether I told mum I'd put her lunch on a plate in the fridge. What if she tried to cook herself something one-handed or hunt down the gin while I was gone? I imagine her lying broken on the kitchen floor, calling out for help, and the image bullies me every inch of my ascent through the boat's belly.

Then I'm back outside and onto land again, past the shabby steel warehouses and through the gates. Tarmac fills the space in my rear view mirror, as if the day and the trip had only ever been an illusion. Nearly home now, and hopefully mum will have missed me a little as well, will be pleased to see me.

There's a strange car parked in my space by the garden gate, forcing me to move further up the narrow lane and deeper into the ditch where it's muddier. I'd be more irritated if I weren't so surprised. Mum's never had a visitor since I've been here. Through the net curtain, as I near the house, I can just make out two forms sitting close together in the lounge, framed by lamplight. Voices reach me as I open the front door and let myself in. Even though I recognise them both my brain won't assign a name to the visitor, and I'm still curious when I walk into the lounge.

Mum beams up at me and stretches out her hand. ‘I thought I heard a noise. Look who's here.'

She's flushed with pleasure, giggling and smoothing at her hair. I turn slowly from her. My brain has finally caught up with my senses and I know who I'll see standing by the fireplace. Please god, may she not have told him.

Rick, when he steps forward and puts his arms around me, is shaking slightly. I only get a quick look at his face before mine is against his chest, but it's enough. He knows. She's told him.

A Tarnished
Silver Chain

Tiny fish like dropped stitches of silver thread. It made us dizzy to look down at them, to look past our feet warm and poised on the stepping-stones, and so we'd throw out our arms and teeter and laugh, the three of us. You leading the way with fishing nets and buckets, our child safely sandwiched between us as she leapt from stone to stone and pointed everywhere. I carried our sandals and kept one hand stretched out to catch her should she fall, though she would only have splashed to the thighs in this river, scattered the silver fish and drenched her summer frock.