Runaway Wife (23 page)

John leant his head back on the chair and simply nodded.

“There’s only one toilet,” he said, gesturing behind him. “You’ll find it upstairs. It used to be outside. I was quite happy with it where it was, but then Frasier made me move it—something about my age, no doubt. Whole load of fuss and nonsense, if you ask me. People in and out for days, messing the place up. But everyone seemed to think it was important.”

“Everyone? I thought you didn’t talk to other people, let alone worried about what they thought,” Rose said, shutting the pantry door behind her.

“I don’t. But what I have learnt over the years is that sometimes
giving in is the only way to get a quiet life,” John said. He drew his closed fist from his pocket and opened it, revealing four or five twenty-pound notes unfurling in his palm. “I didn’t want to say this in front of Maddie, but I thought, what with things being the way they are, you might need some money, for the B and B.”

“No, thank you,” Rose said, feeling a little uncomfortable at the gesture. “I have enough for now. I had a savings account. I emptied it on my way up here, so I’m OK. I really don’t want to take your money. It doesn’t feel right.”

John said nothing, but he looked a little hurt, as if he felt rejected. His offer of money was his only demonstrable way of trying to show her that he cared for her.

“Well, then,” he said, stuffing the notes back into his pocket. “I’ll put the kettle on.”

•  •  •

Upstairs, Storm Cottage was much smaller than its large, long ground-floor footprint. The first floor was probably an afterthought, added much later to the original cottage. There was a small square hallway with three doors leading from it. The first door, left slightly ajar, was obviously her father’s bedroom, consisting of nothing more than a bed, with stacks of books and piles of magazines all around it and a single naked bulb hanging from the ceiling. The only other ornament was an assortment of amber plastic pill bottles lined up along the thick windowsill, probably collected over the years, another relic of his life, carefully cataloged.

The second door was the boxroom, barely more than two meters square, and filled with clutter, so much so that she could open the door only enough to be able to glimpse its hoard of hidden treasures. Rose peered through the gap, intrigued by the things that John kept, longing to be able to climb into the tiny space and explore it, like a genuine Egyptian
tomb, filled to the brim with relics that meant something only to him. God only knew what was in there, what oddities he had collected on his haphazard journey through life. What if she found something, some small thing saved from his life with her and Mum, a photograph or object, some small pointless token to sum up an entire life? Or worse, what if she found nothing at all to show that Rose and her mother had ever been a part of John Jacobs’s life? Suddenly overcome by a confusion of motives, Rose drew the door firmly closed, afraid of what demons might lurk in the tiny room. John was right, they couldn’t just be close again. If they were to achieve any kind of affection for each other at all, it would be a long process, full of pain, blame, and recrimination, and one that either one of them might not be willing or able to complete.

The bathroom was basic although modern. Rose was shocked to see an old man’s seat, positioned above the toilet, to save her father from having to bend his knees too much when he sat on it. He was only sixty-four, which seemed very young to have to have a handle screwed into the side of the wall to help his knees. Perhaps it was the same mysterious “everyone” who’d influenced him to get the bathroom moved inside at all, who was also future-proofing him against his advancing years. Was Frasier really the only person in his life? Rose wasn’t so sure. Despite being ramshackle and full of clutter, Storm Cottage was very clean and well stocked. Rose couldn’t imagine that John either cleaned or went to the supermarket for his weekly shop. She certainly couldn’t picture Frasier in a pair of rubber gloves, on his hands and knees scrubbing out the loo. So who was it, then? Rose wasn’t entirely sure she wanted to know.

Coming down the stairs, Rose found her father sitting with his mug of tea in hand, another waiting for her on a small, hand-carved table in front of the cold grate of the fireplace,
a plate of roughly cut sandwiches balanced on the arm of his chair.

“What are you doing?” Rose asked him. He was sitting with his legs outstretched, staring at the rough stone wall opposite.

“Looking,” John said, adding after a moment, “Seeing. Trying to think of a way to make you see why I did what I did.”

“I don’t think I will ever understand,” Rose replied.

“I don’t think you have to,” John said. “You just have to see.”

He paused for a moment, his body contracting as if he were physically fighting to get the words out of his mouth. Glancing in the direction of the barn, where Maddie was all alone, Rose hesitated, and sensing a now-or-never moment, sat down opposite him.

“Soon after I . . . soon after I left . . . Broadstairs, I felt disconnected from not only what I had left behind but also from myself.” John spoke haltingly, as if the sound of his own voice was uncomfortable to listen to. “The vodka made me numb inside and out. I started drinking to kill the pain in my gut, but in the end I killed everything that was there. I couldn’t remember anything—how to feel, how to love, how to miss you, how to care. Not even for Tilda, who must have woken up one day kilometers from anywhere or anyone she’d ever known, and wondered what on earth she’d got herself into. The worst of it was I couldn’t even paint. I didn’t feel enough of anything to work. So I began to drink even more. There would be weeks when I was never sober.”

His tone was so matter-of-fact, so flat almost, that it made it all the harder for Rose to hear him admit that he didn’t, couldn’t care. That the drink had chipped away at every nerve ending until there was nothing left, only his passion for painting and collection of other people’s defunct hopes and dreams.

“And now?” Rose asked him carefully. “Now you’re sober, do you feel again?”

John sat back in his chair, staring into the cold grate, so still and silent that Rose wondered if he’d simply shut off from her question. But then, after a moment, he spoke.

“I think I have forgotten how to feel,” he said, turning his gray eyes on her. “Perhaps it’s too late now to do any more than acknowledge the people I have hurt and admit responsibility. There is very little else I can do.”

A flood of words flew into Rose’s mouth, but she kept her lips very firmly shut. This was the most meaningful, important thing that he’d said to her since she’d found him.

“The work that you do, the paintings for Frasier, I mean—they aren’t inspired by what you’ve done, what you’ve been through. I don’t see the connection.”

“Because there is no connection,” John said, sitting suddenly forward in his chair. “Those . . . those
posters
are nothing more than a lifetime of not giving a damn, which now I find compelled to pay interest on.” He paused, twisting his fingers into a knot. “I could help you and Maddie, financially, I mean. Give you something for a fresh start. Find you a new home. Help you with the rent, or a car until you get on your feet. I could do that, I have enough.”

“So we would leave Millthwaite, you mean?” Rose asked him quietly, without anger, because she could see he was trying to be something that he understood very little about. He was trying to be kind. “Buy back your solitude?”

John shook his head. “No, no, not at all. If you want to stay in Millthwaite, stay. I’m getting reasonably used to it and Madeline is a tolerable child, as far as children go.”

Rose took in a sharp breath, deciding that now it was her turn to be frank.

“Can I be honest?” she said. “I didn’t come here to find
you. You were just
here
. When I came to Millthwaite it was because there was nowhere else for me to go. After a life of staying in one place, it was the only other place I’d ever thought about going. And I had some silly notion that this was one way of finding something that would make me understand my life, make me happy. When I found out that you lived here, I almost didn’t come to see you, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. That’s a terrible feeling, to not know if you even want to see your own father. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t come for a reunion, or a final scene. I came because I had to, and you happened to be here, but now that I am here I realize that knowing you, in any way at all, is better than the alternative. Perhaps we might even be friends one day.”

John said nothing for a while and then eventually, “You could stay here. There is a small room. It’s full of junk, it would need clearing out, but if you wanted to . . .”

Rose held her breath, listening to the house creak and breathe around her as he waited for the answer.

“I . . . I don’t think that is quite the right thing to do yet, do you? You need your space, not me under your feet and Maddie constantly questioning you.”

“You’re right,” John said, his expression hidden as he turned his face away from her. “Of course. I . . . I was trying too hard again. I admire you for not being taken in by it. Let me ask you something now.” Rose waited. “What happened to make you run away to a place on the front of a postcard?”

Rose’s face crumpled, and she turned away from him. “It’s too soon, it’s too soon to talk about that too,” she said. “Just that I had a line that I promised myself I would not let be crossed again. And it was.”

John’s expression was immobile as he processed the information.

“Well, whatever I can do,” he said, “even if it might be very small, I will try to do it. I shall try to be some kind of father to you while I can.”

“Oh, here you are, hello!” Maddie pushed open the kitchen door, completely unaware of the tension and emotion that washed through the room, flooding out into the August sunshine. “I finished that canvas—what else is there to paint? Those sandwiches haven’t got butter in them, have they?”

•  •  •

When Rose returned to the B & B, it was on her own. Feeling that there really wasn’t very much else she and John could talk about for now, she’d tried to get Maddie to leave with her for lunch. But Maddie had not wanted to. Her particular style of persistence, which Rose had often felt was based on Chinese water torture, meant that John had abandoned his painting to make her her own canvas, which was exactly her height squared, with the specific instruction that she was to paint something that would take at least a week. Maddie had been fascinated as she watched John measure her against a length of wood, sawing it into mitered corners, quickly assembling the basic frame, questioning him constantly about what he was doing next and how long it would take. For someone who didn’t much like conversation, John was remarkably tolerant of Maddie’s relentless curiosity, even her habit of repeating questions a few minutes apart. He liked this, Rose had realized slowly, he liked talking about what he knew, and he particularly liked the fact that he had a granddaughter to impart his knowledge to. Perhaps it was a primeval thing: after all these years in the wilderness, John now had someone to keep his memory, his existence alive a little longer, just as he kept the relics of others who would
otherwise now be long forgotten. As he stood the completed canvas against the back wall of the barn, next to Maddie’s other prolific offerings, Rose suggested that now might be a good time to leave.

“But look!” Maddie said, her face wrought with anxiety as she pointed at the tantalizingly blank canvas. “Look!”

“You can’t paint on it yet,” John said. “I have to prime it. It will take an afternoon to dry.”

“I don’t want to wait an afternoon, I want to do it now!” Maddie demanded furiously. Rose sighed; it was these outbursts that other people found so hard to understand, seeing her daughter as a spoilt brat. The truth was that Maddie really did need to paint
now
, at least in her world.

“Maddie . . .” Rose began, feeling that familiar sense of awkwardness and ineffectuality creep up her spine.

“You need to draw first, anyway,” John told Maddie with a shrug. “All the great artists draw and draw for weeks before they start to paint. You haven’t drawn a stroke so far, very amateurish.”

“Drawing is boring. I don’t draw, I paint,” Maddie told him emphatically. John did not know that Maddie was not one to be swayed by reverse psychology if it conflicted with her idea about how things should be, either.

“Here.” John opened a drawing chest, pulled out a large sketchbook, and waved it at his work in progress. “These are my drawings for this painting. This is what you do if you are a real artist. Just painting splodges of color, as lovely as they are, is actually very childish, but then again I suppose you are a child.”

Rose’s eyebrows shot skywards as she expected Maddie to be infuriated by what her daughter would certainly see as an insult, but instead Maddie seemed to consider what he said.

“I’m not like other children,” she said after a moment, with something like a touch of sadness.

“Good,” John said emphatically. “I don’t like other children.”

“What should I draw, then?” Maddie asked him, climbing down from her position with unusual grace and ease.

“Well, if your mother would let you, you could come out and do some drawing with me now. We’ll find a nice spot on the hillside and pick a view. You will be amazed how much movement, depth, and texture you can get with one of these.” John held up a pencil. “As long as you explain yourself to my wretched agent why I’ve wasted most of today on a demanding little girl, that is.”

“Can I?” Maddie asked Rose, who looked uncertain.

“I’m not sure I should just leave you here . . .” she said.

“She’ll be perfectly safe,” John said, a little affronted.

“No, it’s not that, it’s just . . . do you really want to do this?” She stared at John pointedly, giving him time to consider exactly what he’d just proposed.

“I find that I do,” John said. “It puts me in mind of late afternoons on the beach with you as a child. We would make drawings in the wet sand and then wait and watch as the tide washed them away.”