The Sea House (29 page)
41
Dear Max,
Thankyou so much for forwarding your address. I expect you will be interested to know that Elsa gave birth to twins! A little premature, but safely, on the 22nd May. Elsa has recovered quite incredibly and in order that she can get the help she needs (with no surviving family) she has come to live with me at Marsh End. The babies are thriving. She has called them Albert L. and Robert L., and they really are a delight. I would have written before but, with one thing and another, I haven’t been able to find the time. Please do keep in touch with us and let us know about your new life.
With kind thoughts, Gertrude Jilks.
PS Alf is like a brother to both.
42
Lily was up early, adding the finishing touches to her first painting of the sky, when the postman knocked on the door.
‘Good morning.’ He handed her a parcel, and she thanked him with such feeling that he flushed and turned away.
My God, she thought, I must be lonely, and for a moment she stood shocked in the hall.
The parcel was from Nick.
Dear Lily
… Paint from her hands made thumb prints on the letter as she tipped the parcel’s contents out on to the table. There were two packages, both wrapped round with thick layers of tissue, and Lily held them in her hand, feeling their irregular shapes as she continued to read.
Please, Lily, don’t come and get your things. I’ve been thinking about what you said, and you’re right, why shouldn’t you make plans? Let’s start with Christmas. We could go somewhere special with the profit from this job, or I could come to Suffolk. Anywhere, I mean it, as long as the sofa isn’t brown. But before then I need to hear your voice. Open your present (it’s already been charged), get in the car, and drive up the A12. When you find a signal, press 1, hold down for three seconds, listen, and then, please, call me back.
Lily could feel her heart thumping as very slowly she unwrapped a mobile phone. It was small and silver. Very carefully she carried it to the car, laid it on the seat beside her, glancing at it almost constantly to see when the signal bars would appear. She stopped by the field of pigs. They had had babies again, or were they different pigs? But they lay outside their houses, squelched into the mud, while the tiny, sausage-pink animals squealed round them in a throng. Her fingers were trembling as she pressed the 1. She held it down as she put it to her ear.
‘You have one new message,’ she was informed and then Nick was on the line. ‘Lily it’s me. There’s something I’ve been wanting to say.’ His voice went low and she felt cold, then hot. ‘I love you, Lily. Did you hear that? I love you.’ Nick started to laugh. ‘It’s not so hard, you’re right. I love you, I love you. I’ve been wanting to say that since the first night we met.’
‘You have no new messages.’ The woman’s voice cut in, but Lily kept the phone pressed to her ear.
For a long time she sat and looked at the pigs. They were smiling, she was sure of it, even when twelve small piglets all pushed and butted at their sides.
‘Nick?’ Her heart was thumping. ‘I got your message. Thankyou. Thankyou so much. Ahh…’ No, she couldn’t say it to an answerphone. ‘Let’s meet up. I’ll be expecting you at the Sea House, on Saturday night. Please come. It’s my first night there. So… I’ll make a special supper, and if it’s high tide, park up by The Ship and I’ll row over and get you in the boat.’ She lowered her voice. She could see this was addictive. ‘And Nick, thankyou. I can’t say it now… But…’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll see you then.’
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Otto Samson and A.W. Freud for sending me their memoirs, ‘Moorfred,’ and ‘Before the Anticlimax,’ which proved to be a great help. I would also like to thank Sandra Heidecker and Katharina Bielenberg for translating so many of my grandfather Ernst Freud’s letters. Many thanks are due to Wally Webb for telling me about the scroll, and to Richard Scott for showing it to me and alerting me to the correspondence between John Doman Turner and his mentor Spencer Gore. I am extremely grateful to Frederick Gore for letting me sit and read these letters, making it possible to create the ‘great artist’ Cuthbert Henry, and also to Karl Kolwitz, who, with no warning of my arrival, welcomed me to the island of Hiddensee and caught an eel for my lunch. Many thanks to Shawn Slovo for providing me with a silent room in which to work, and as always to David Morrissey for encouragement and support.