Home Fires (35 page)
Authors: Elizabeth Day
Before she can go any further, there is a shout from further down the corridor. It fades out, replaced by the sound of murmured, pacifying voices.
At the noise, Elsa seems to wake. She turns to Caroline and stares at her with such concentration that her pupils shrivel to small black dots.
‘Elsa?’
Elsa grunts and her eyes are wild.
‘I’m sorry.’
Does she understand? Caroline has no way of knowing. She watches as Elsa slips back on to the slanted pillows, her hands flailing against the bedsheets. Her pupils dilate and then her face is clouded by an expression of panic. Her hands uncurl, the fingers scratching helplessly at the air. There is a sound coming from her, not a word exactly, but a disjointed series of noises like a baby’s gurgle. She starts to twist her face from side to side, slowly at first and then more quickly so that Caroline can see she is shaking her head with as much force as she can muster.
And all at once, Caroline realises that she is saying no; that her response is refusal rather than forgiveness.
She is saying no.
She is shaking her head.
Caroline withdraws her hand. She has no idea what to do. Some part of her, some naive, arrogant part, had cautiously expected Elsa’s understanding. Stupid, really.
And now, looking at this frail, grey old woman, all she wants to do is to get out of the room as quickly as possible.
She pushes the chair away and crosses the floor without looking back. She opens the door and motions to Ashleigh, who is sitting at a desk halfway down the corridor. She is still aware, even in the grip of her agitation, that she must appear calm and in control.
Strains of classical music are coming from a room nearby. Caroline does not recognise the tune. It is something mournful and insistent, with throbbing strings. Elsa would know, she thinks automatically. Elsa would pride herself on knowing.
Caroline stays by the door, with her back against the wall, while Ashleigh goes to check on Elsa, stroking her hair gently, putting the bars back up around the bed and speaking to her in a lilting sing-song. ‘You’re grand, aren’t you, pet? You’re just grand.’
Elsa’s face becomes peaceful. Her shoulders relax.
Ashleigh turns to Caroline with a kind smile. ‘She’s tired out with the excitement of your visit, so she is.’ The string music is still audible, the orchestra swelling to a gradual crescendo.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like that cup of tea?’ Ashleigh asks.
‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’
The music stops, abruptly.
‘Goodbye, Elsa,’ she says. There is no movement from the bed. Elsa has closed her eyes again. In the dusky sunlight, her skin appears bled of colour.
Caroline slips into the corridor without another word. She walks quickly, tracing her way back across the beige carpets, until she reaches the entrance hallway. Andrew is sitting on a sofa, waiting for her. He is not aware of her presence and for a few seconds, she pauses, unobserved, to look at him. He is reading a newspaper, folded back on itself so that it is easier to hold. His fingernails are neatly cut, square and clean. His hair is almost entirely grey. He is thinner than he used to be and his jacket hangs loosely around his shoulders. He is concentrating on the paper, eyes moving across the printed words, brows pressing down, causing the corner of his eyes to crinkle. Just as he begins to turn the page, he looks up and sees her. Without thinking, he smiles and his face is suffused with the simple pleasure of her presence.
Inside, she feels a great wash of calm. She goes to him. He stands and puts his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. She leans into his chest, pressing into him so that she can feel his warmth. Tears prick against her eyes.
‘Let’s go home,’ he says.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Let’s.’
She knows the water is closing in.
She senses the shadow of it creeping towards her, waves of it lapping over her skin, covering first her ankles, then her knees, her thighs, the small of her back, her neck, until her head is the only part of her that is not submerged.
She gasps, spitting and coughing, but with each inhalation, she takes in more liquid than air, so that her throat seems to become clogged with salt and bits of seaweed. She flicks her tongue from side to side, trying to unblock the airway, but it does no good. She can hear herself wheezing, the sound of it magnified by the echoing sea.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a shoal of fish.
They are coming for her: slippery, encroaching. There are thousands of them, each one a twisting sliver of black fin and tail.
She kicks her legs and splashes her arms hopelessly against the tide but the water is too strong, the tug of it too powerful, and after a while she realises she cannot fight it any more. Her arms slacken. Her legs turn woollen and waterlogged. She bows her head, the muscles in her neck loosening.
And then she goes: slowly at first, spiralling gently through the whirls and eddies, her hair untwisting in great clouds behind her. She feels herself filling up with liquid, taking the sea in through her nostrils, her throat, her lungs.
There is nothing more she can do. She surrenders herself to the tide. The panic recedes. The fish swim past. The shadow clears.
She hears voices, someone calling her name. ‘Elsa, Elsa. Can you hear me, Elsa?’ And then there is movement and a buzzing alarm and arms around her, poking and prodding and trying to wrest her free of the waves but they cannot get to her and still she falls, quicker now, weighed down by the saturated mass of her body. Falling, falling, falling.
She opens her eyes. She sees a shaft of sunlight turned turquoise by the refractions of the water. She feels the warmth of it on her face.
She smiles. She remembers a sunlit day from long ago.
She falls.
Not much longer now until she reaches the seabed.
Not much longer.
My agent, Jessica Woollard, for believing in what I write and for telling me so at precisely the right moment, even when on a different continent.
My editor, Helen Garnons-Williams, for her superlative insights and her uncanny ability to see what needs to be done.
The whole team at Bloomsbury, including Erica Jarnes, Laura Brooke, Audrey Cotterell, Anya Rosenberg and Cormac Kinsella – friends as well as colleagues. Also Lea Beresford and Kathy Belden at Bloomsbury USA.
Three books I found extremely helpful for background research: Juliet Nicolson’s
The Great Silence:
1918
–
1920
Living in the Shadow of the Great War
,
Testament of Youth
by Vera Brittain and Paul Fussell’s
The Great War and Modern Memory
.
My early – and most trusted – readers: my mother, Christine Day, Olivia Laing, Rebecca Spero, Edie Reilly, Melissa Boyes and Elaine Sturman.
Simon Oldfield and Tim Julian, kind and generous friends who allowed me to hole up in St Ives when I was struggling with the second draft.
Emma Reed Turrell and Kirrily de Polnay Jacobs for seeing me through.
My father, Tom, sister, Catherine, and niece, Tabitha.
Special thanks to Sean Rayment who helped me with key military details. Any faults are, of course, my own.
Finally, to Kamal Ahmed, who reads everything I write with honesty, love and unshakeable faith. I trust your judgement – even if you’ll always be wrong about
Star Wars
.
These discussion questions are designed to enhance your group’s conversation about
Home Fires
.
About this book
Max Weston, twenty-one and a newly commissioned lance corporal, leaves home for his first posting in central Africa. Fiercely patriotic and completely at home in the army, he is eager to make a difference. He never comes back.
His parents, Caroline and Andrew, are devastated by the death of their only child. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her son is now matched by the intensity of her loss, and as she is borne away on a private ocean of grief the moorings of their marriage begin to come loose.
The silence is broken by the arrival of Andrew’s mother, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. Caroline has never felt good enough for this elegant, cuttingly courteous woman and has lived for years in fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. Now, suddenly, Caroline has the upper hand.
As Elsa lies, marooned and disorientated, in the spare room, the past unspools in her mind, loosening fragments of her anxious childhood in 1920s Richmond—under the shadow of her father, a soldier who came back from the Great War a different man.
A stunning, delicate portrait of a family bookended by war,
Home Fires
explores the legacy of loss, the strictures of class, and the long road to redemption.
For discussion
1. Why do you think the novel is set in the present tense? Amongst all of the flashbacks, what effect does the present tense have on the emotional state of the characters and the action that takes place in the novel?
2. What dimension do the constant flashbacks add to the characters and relationships? Do they reinforce or change your perception of individual characters and relationships?
3. How do you feel about Caroline’s behavior towards Max in the time that he is alive? What effect does it have on the other characters and on you, the reader?
4. What is the significance of Elsa’s relationship with her father? Why do you think it is this, of all things, that the ninety-eight-year-old Elsa remembers in her flashbacks throughout the novel?
5. There is only one short chapter titled “Max,” which you assume to be his point of view in South Sudan, until it becomes clear that this is just another speculation and reconstruction of Caroline’s. What do you make of this chapter? Why do you think the author included it and titled it “Max,” so that it becomes at once convincing as Max’s genuine perspective?
6. What do you think of Andrew’s affair with Kate? Do you resent Andrew for it, or do you understand his difficult position?
7. Considering Elsa’s abusive father, Horace, and “how the war had scarred him—if not physically, then mentally,” Andrew suggests to Caroline, “sometimes it might be better to die a hero rather than coming back a broken man,” to which Caroline replies, “I’d do anything—
anything—
to have Max back . . . I wouldn’t care what state he was in”. What is your stance on this argument?
8. If Caroline’s final apology and confession was written from Elsa’s point of view, what do you think Elsa might have been thinking? How do you think Caroline’s words might have been interpreted?
9. In the novel Caroline reinvents herself. How do you think class is represented in the novel? Is it something that you are born into or can you change your status?
10. Why do you think Day chose to title her novel
Home Fires
? What might this represent or to what may it refer?
Elizabeth Day is the author of
Scissors, Paper, Stone
, which won a Betty Trask Award
. She is an award-winning journalist who has worked for the
Evening Standard
, the
Sunday Telegraph
and the
Mail on Sunday
, and who is now a feature writer for the
Observer
. She grew up in Northern Ireland, and lives in Putney, London, with her husband.
Scissors, Paper, Stone
Copyright © 2013 by Elizabeth Day
All rights reserved.
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information, write to Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, New York, 10018.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA HAS BEEN APPLIED FOR
eISBN: 978-1-62040-355-6
First U.S. Edition 2013
This electronic edition published in November 2013
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