Shadow Baby (49 page)

‘I don’t know why you stick up for her,1 he would say. ‘She can look after herself, she always does, she’s so selfish.”

‘She was an only child,’ Hazel said, mildly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, when you’re an only child you do have everything your own way and it’s hard to learn how to share properly.’

‘But she’s grown up, she’s not a child, Mum.’

‘Doesn’t make any difference, she goes on learning, she still feels an outsider in groups.’

‘She is.’

‘Just because you’ve had a quarrel, Philip …’

‘It isn’t just because of any row. She is an outsider. She doesn’t fit in.’

‘She’s fitted in very well these last two years, amazingly well, considering she had to take on three brothers.’

‘Halfbrothers.’

‘That’s mean.’

‘What is?’

‘Stressing the half bit. You didn’t used to be so mean. You used to hate it when Shona first came if anyone called her less than your sister.’

‘I hardly knew what it meant.’

‘Oh, Philip, you did, of course you did.’

‘I knew the facts, but I was too young, I didn’t really think about what they meant.’

‘And now, that you’re so grown up, you do.’

‘Yeah, I do. I do. I’ve thought about it a lot and it’s weird, her

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turning up, coming here like that and then just latching herself on to us.’

‘Not weird at all, quite understandable really.’

‘I wouldn’t do it. If you’d given me away and I’d been adopted, I wouldn’t have done it. If I’d only found out when I was eighteen, like she did, and if I’d had lovely parents, like she says she has, I wouldn’t have done it. I wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with you, ever.’

‘You can’t know what you would have done, and anyway, you are you, Shona is Shona, and you can’t judge other people by yourself.’

‘Shona does. She wants us so we are supposed to want her.’

‘You have wanted her, up to now, and you still do really, you’re only fighting with her the way I fought with my brothers, it’s all to do with age, it’ll pass.’

‘You’re always saying that, about everything. Dad loves her anyway, she’s his favourite. He always wanted a daughter, didn’t he?’

‘Yes, but …’

‘So we were all disappointments.’

‘No, don’t be silly, you weren’t anything of the sort. And I only wanted boys, every time.’

‘That’s because you’d had a girl already.’

‘No, it isn’t. I hadn’t “had” her in any real way, I’d given her away. I just didn’t want daughters.’

‘Why?’

‘They’re too difficult for a woman.’

‘Mum, that doesn’t make sense.’

He laughed and that was how that particular session ended. Philip called them that, ‘sessions’, and it amused her. More and more he wanted sessions in which he was looking for an argument or trying out some theory, and he would follow her round the house, whatever she was doing, haranguing her and pleading for a response. Witnessing this, Shona’s envy was obvious and yet Hazel was not quite sure what exactly was being envied - Philip’s confidence that his mother would want to hear him, or her own clearly happy involvement with him. Once, when he had had her pinned against the airing cupboard door, with her arms full of clean towels, while he ranted on for all of twenty minutes about the injustice of his not being allowed to go to the cinema on his own and had only been

stopped by Shona yelling that there was a phone call for him, Hazel had tried to draw Shona into mocking him.

‘My God,’ Hazel had said, ‘if he is like this before he’s actually a teenager, what are we in for?’

‘You like it,’ Shona said, her face dark, brows furrowed. ‘You love him like that.’

‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Hazel, carefully, towels at last deposited, but the bathroom door now blocked by Shona leaning against the frame. ‘But I can still see he’s going to be a pain.’

‘I was a pain.’

‘Were you? Yes, I can see you might have been like Philip at his age.’

‘I wasn’t like Philip. He’s got you. He’s a pain and you know he is and you don’t care. I was a pain and my mother was terrified of me.’

‘I expect she did her best and who …’

‘Of course she did her best. God, sometimes …’ And she went off, downstairs, to Hazel’s relief. She knew she mustn’t let this go and yet if Shona had chosen to go upstairs, to her rooms, it would have been so much more difficult to follow her.

As it was, she ran downstairs too and into the kitchen where Shona was taking something from the fridge. ‘Shona,’ she said, and went to her and, greatly daring, touched her on the shoulder, a light touch she hoped would be interpreted as affectionate. ‘Shona, I take your point, I do see what you mean, about your mother being afraid because she didn’t know who was in you, that’s it, isn’t it, that’s what you meant? That she was always afraid because of your being adopted and so she couldn’t ever know what you were made of?’

‘Something like that,’ Shona said, offhand now, but grudgingly willing to continue.

‘And you, without knowing why, felt alien to her, and then when you found you were adopted you thought that was why, didn’t you? That you’d been a cuckoo in a nest and if you could find the right nest - Oh my God, nests and cuckoos …’ and she began to laugh. For an awful moment she thought Shona was going to do the opposite, to cry, but she smiled too, and then began to giggle and they both collapsed. ‘Not that funny,’ Hazel said weakly after a while. ‘I was just trying so hard.’

‘You do try hard.’

‘Is it that obvious?’

‘Yes.’

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‘Oh dear.’

‘No, it was a compliment, I meant it as a compliment. I know you try. I try too. It’s stupid, really.’

‘What, two people trying hard to understand and love each other?’

‘Well, not the understanding, that’s not stupid, but to try to love is, isn’t it? It should be natural, it isn’t worth anything, it doesn’t work otherwise.’

‘I do love you,’ Hazel lied. ‘I don’t have to try any more.’

‘But I don’t love you,’ Shona said, ‘that’s the point. I always wanted to and expected to, but I don’t. I admire you, but that’s no good, and I envy you, and that’s terrible, to envy your own mother for what she’s got.’

‘I’ve got nothing you can’t also have one day.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Shona, ‘but it won’t be your fault, I won’t blame you.’

‘That’s good. I’ve done a lot of blaming myself and it isn’t good, it isn’t a good idea at all. I blamed my mother and it was wrong.’

‘I don’t know her. She doesn’t want anything to do with me, does she? That’s why she never comes if she knows I’ll be around, and she gets all embarrassed if I catch her here. She hates me, she thinks I’m a threat to you.’

‘She doesn’t hate you, she just goes on wanting to pretend what happened all those years ago never happened, that’s all.’ Hazel paused. It felt odd to want to defend her mother. ‘She’s getting old now and she’s stubborn, it’s hard to change her. But she’ll come round eventually, she’ll have to. Everyone is so used to you now, you’re so accepted, the shock value has worn off. Well, for everyone else. There’s only her left and she doesn’t really matter, her attitude needn’t hurt you.’

‘But it does. I’ve done nothing wrong, but she acts as if I had. I suppose she thinks it wrong to have come here at all. Does she call it “raking up the past”? I bet she does.’

‘I expect she does too, but to herself, not to me. She knows how I feel.’ Hazel hesitated. It seemed a terrible betrayal to want to go on to tell Shona how much she had always disliked her mother. It was not something it seemed right to do. ‘She’s quite an interesting person really, your grandmother,’ she finally said. ‘She had a hard life when she was a child, but she hardly ever talks about it. Her father was killed in the war, the First World War, and her mother was widowed before she was born. It wasn’t really till she met my

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father, your grandfather, that she had any life of her own. Her mother clung to her, she was the centre of her universe, literally, and it made her want me to feel free of that kind of thing. But I wasn’t free, of course.’ Hazel paused again, trying to gauge Shona’s reaction. Was she bored with this potted maternal history? Did she think it superfluous to the circumstances now? Did she see it as an attempt to make her grandmother a more sympathetic character? It was so hard to know. ‘Anyway,’ she finished, lamely, ‘she’s not such a bad woman. She still thinks what she did was for the best.’

‘For you.’

‘Yes, I suppose so, but then I was real, I existed, I was her daughter. You were unreal, at the time.’

‘And now I’m real. Definitely.’

‘And she’s afraid of you.’

‘Well, she doesn’t need to be. I’m not staying. The moment I’ve graduated, I’m off. I’ve decided. And I might never come back, so she needn’t worry.’

‘You’re free to do what you like,’ Hazel said. ‘You can leave, you can come back.’

Neither of them could think what to say after that.

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THEY WERE sitting in the drawing-room. Leah had offered tea, her offer prefaced with further apologies for the absence of the maid. Tea had been declined, but Leah wished it had been accepted. Making tea, even if it meant leaving her visitor alone for a few minutes, would have helped ease the awkwardness she felt. Her visitor was in some way distressed. The distress was controlled, but since she had often been in such a state herself Leah spotted the signs. She could not think how this woman’s nervousness might relate to herself but waited with growing curiosity for the reason to emerge. The woman was in mourning so someone had died, which could account for her unhappiness but not for her visit.

Leah was glad her drawing-room was looking attractive. She had chosen what she thought a daring colour for the new carpet, a strangely green blue which had made Henry raise his eyebrows at the impossibility of matching anything else with it. But Leah had not tried to match it. The carpet had a cream diagonal stripe in it and it was this cream she had matched, in curtains and chair covers, except for cushions which were turquoise. The whole effect was fresh and cool, quite unlike the overheated tones of the parlour they had left behind in Etterby Street. The room had hardly been used. It was a room in which to receive company and they had received none. Everything was pristine and Leah was proud of it. She saw that her visitor was impressed and was evaluating her accordingly, before she spoke.

‘You do not know me,’ she said. Leah inclined her head, apologetically. ‘My name is Evelyn Fletcher, but that will mean nothing to you either. Fletcher is my married name.’ She paused, but there was no reaction from Leah. ‘It is all a long time ago,’ she

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sighed, ‘and I have no wish to upset you. I could have written, once I discovered your whereabouts - that has taken time and it felt wrong to delay further.’ She stopped and a small sob escaped her.

‘Please,’ said Leah, ‘please, do not upset yourself on my behalf. I had much rather have a visitor than a letter.’ It was graciously said, and the woman, Mrs Fletcher, managed to smile slightly.

‘You are very kind, very understanding, but then we should have known that.’ Another sigh, and then the straightening of her back. ‘My maiden name was Todhunter. I am Evelyn Todhunter.’ She observed Leah carefully. ‘Now you begin to see?’

Leah said nothing. Her lips felt dry and she delicately ran her tongue round them. She could only nod. Her sudden lack of composure was not equal to any other response.

‘It is a sad tale,’ Mrs Fletcher said, ‘and it has been sad for you, too, for many years, I know.’ She looked round the room and gestured at the framed photographs of the family and added, ‘But you found happiness after the sorrow.’ Leah flushed, a little spark of resentment starting to ignite inside her. ‘I am not excusing my brother,’ Mrs Fletcher said, ‘never think that. What he -did, how he behaved to you, to us, was inexcusable, and he knew it. At the end he begged forgiveness and that is why I am here.’ A great rush of relief overwhelmed Leah, but Mrs Fletcher mistook her cry for anguish and rose out of her chair and came towards her, holding out her arms, and saying in a curiously affected and high-pitched singsong voice which grated on Leah’s nerves, ‘My dear, I am sorry, I am sorry, it is a dreadful shock, shocking, I know, and after so long, when you did not expect it. I will stop if you cannot bear to hear more, only say the word and I will go and never bother you again, you have every right to tell me to go!’

It took a while for both of them to regain their equilibrium. Leah recovered first, but needed badly to escape from this woman’s suddenly cloying presence. ‘You must excuse me, Mrs Fletcher,’ she said, abruptly. ‘I need some tea.’ She went into her kitchen and set a tray with two of her best cups and saucers, and the silver teapot and water jug and sugar bowl and milk jug, and a plate of shortbread biscuits, but at the last moment before carrying the tray through, she removed the biscuits. Without asking Mrs Fletcher if she would not after all now change her mind, she poured two cups. Her own she drank in a moment, not caring how this might seem, and refilled her cup immediately. Mrs Fletcher sipped from hers hesitantly and eyed

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Leah anxiously from over the rim of the cup. ‘Do you want to hear?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ Leah said, ‘if you can bear to tell me.’ She wanted to add ‘and tell me quietly and sensibly’, but did not.

‘I do not know where to begin. He, Hugo, I can hardly say his name, it was banned for so long in our house, it is unfamiliar on my tongue, he died six weeks ago. He came home and died within a month. He knew he was dying, you see, and he came back, to Moorhouse, not knowing our father had died long ago and only my mother was left, ill herself. My father had forbidden her to reply when Hugo at last wrote, years after he had disappeared in Canada, he had said he would not even acknowledge Hugo as his son and she was to cut him out of her heart. But my father was dead and he came back and, of course, my mother took him in, though in no fit state to nurse anyone and needing a nurse herself. And I was sent for. I could not go immediately and nor did I wish to. I had suffered. I was at home during that dreadful time, dreadful, and I saw my mother weep and heard my father curse, and I suffered too. But I could not leave my poor mother to manage him on her own, so eventually I went. I wish I had not.’ Here, there was a break in Mrs Fletcher’s account, all of which had been delivered in a new low and monotonous voice, much preferable to the previous tone, but Leah had difficulty catching every word. She gave her no direct encouragement to continue beyond showing she was concentrating. ‘Oh, he was a terrible sight, quite wasted away with disease, thin beyond belief and lined beyond his years and altogether a wreck of a man. Everything he touched went wrong, all his life. I cannot accurately recall the sequence of evils which befell him, and to tell the truth I do not want to. He was feverish with pain much of the time and rambling, and many things he came out with made no sense. But he spoke of you quite sensibly. He wept for shame at how he had treated you and begged me over and over to find you and beg you to forgive him, or he could never rest in peace. And he spoke of his child whom …’