The Kindness (35 page)

Dolly skipped along with the dog trotting beside her and Mira followed them on a magical mystery tour beyond Horseman’s gate, through long seedy grasses of pale gold and rutted stubble and on into the dip by the barns where the figs grew – places Mira knew only from his book. Then down through a field of cows. At least Mira hoped they were cows, especially as they drew closer and she saw they didn’t have udders.

‘Don’t run away from them,’ Dolly told her authoritatively. ‘Just flap your arms at them and say “No”. That’s what my daddy does. Look, like this.’

Within moments the two girls were doing what you should never do in a field of young bullocks. Down at the river they could hear the stampede. Mira flew into view grasping Dolly by the hand; Dolly’s straw hat flew away, creating a diversion before being eaten.

For Julian it happened in broken flashes, like a flickbook or strobe lighting. His knees were already tensing to follow as Jenna left the bank in a perfect arc. Dolly’s scream cut through the air and he turned. Dolly bawling, ‘Daddy!’ Katie with firewood, dropping it, running, blonde hair flying, William shouting, Michael staring, the dog barking, and at the crest of the field, partly obscured by a patch of white angelica, a girl. He tried to stop himself mid-leap but was already falling as he shouted her name.

Except it wasn’t her name, it was Julia’s. He exploded into the cold water, cursing and coughing from the mouthfuls of river he’d swallowed. He knew it was Mira he’d seen, not Julia. The current was strong, sweeping him along, and he had no option but to swim the mile to Swan Bank; there was no way out through the blackthorns and nettles. He powered through the water, leaving Jenna far behind to battle her imaginary snakes alone.

With each stroke he feared she might be gone. He became breathless and scraped both of his shins scrambling out, but still he managed to bellow her name. The right name: ‘Mira!’ He ran through the hay fields, his legs bleeding, the stubble painful on his bare feet. ‘Mira!’

She was waiting beneath the shade of an oak, sitting with her back to its trunk, chewing skin from her thumb, her satchel beside her. Her eyes were prominent in her face and though she looked up at him boldly, he was afraid that she might take flight. He stopped before he reached her. ‘Mira?’

She nodded. In one movement she straightened and lifted the layers of clothing from her left side, revealing the triangular jut of bone above her denim skirt and above that the scar at her waist like a thread of pink silk. She let the clothing drop but kept her face turned away from him and he wondered if she was crying. His arms and chest ached to hold her and he took a step closer. She turned, stopped him in his tracks. ‘I don’t remember you,’ she said, and her eyes were defiant, not tearful. He reached for her hands, suddenly aware that he must look ridiculous in the middle of a field wearing nothing but his bathing trunks. He looked down at her fingers. He was too scared to squeeze them. Her arms had no more weight or shape to them than bone.

Back at the house Mira folded herself into the window seat, while he drew up a chair and tried not to stare at her. Katie came in and clasped her to her bosom and Mira mouthed sideways to him that she
didn’t
smell of hyacinths as he’d said in his book. He winked and cocked his head to William: ‘Scent gives her husband a headache.’ Jenna kept looking from Mira to Michael as though for reassurance, holding out her arms and withdrawing them several times, before finally sweeping her up. ‘But darling girl, you are too thin,’ she said, and started weeping. Dolly stared wide-eyed and miscomprehending, as William took her on to his knee and told her that Mira was his goddaughter. ‘So Daddy, does that make us godsisters?’ she wanted to know, and William laughed. Eventually they all drifted off, following Jenna to the kitchen. Mira’s knees were drawn to her chin.

He leant towards her. ‘Why now, Mira?’

She tugged at a cord around her neck and he saw that she wore the little brass key to the heart-shaped lock Julia had given him in Paris.

‘It was my eighteenth in February . . .’

‘Oh, I know,’ he said, and again her eyes were challenging.

‘And obviously you know what this is the key to?’ she said, and he nodded for her to go on.

She tucked the key away; her voice had a crack to it, just as it had as a child. ‘I already had a key to the house, so I suppose it wasn’t that weird. We never had any secrets. The pretty brass lock was on the box in my mum’s wardrobe for as long as I can remember.’

She laughed ruefully, adding: ‘And actually that isn’t very long at all.’ And this puzzled him.

She described for him the contents of the box: the photographs, the keepsakes and cards that she had no memory of creating but which made him chuckle with recognition, wavy pencil lines of writing following the dots.
I love my Dadoo
. She looked up at him and stuck out her lip before carrying on. There were photographs that the nurses had taken of her at Great Ormond Street. A hollow-eyed, sickly child she couldn’t recognise as herself, festooned with plasters and wires. And beside her bed a man she had no memory of meeting until this moment.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, picking at the baggy sleeves of her sweater. ‘But I don’t remember you at all. Is it bad of me to say so?’

He was overcome with sadness as she turned her head away. ‘Oh Mira. I’m sorry. I thought I was doing the best thing . . .’

He was making excuses: ‘I assumed you were all living in Connecticut . . . I had meningitis . . . I wasn’t even conscious . . . I thought I was doing the right thing for you. A clean break.’ He bowed his head: ‘Forgive me,’ he said as Katie came crashing through from the kitchen chasing Dolly with a squirty bottle of water. Katie’s sprigged dress had a broad wet strip where Dolly had surprised her at the sink. Katie skidded to a halt, noticed Julian rapt on the edge of the chair, Mira’s eyes huge and anxious. ‘Goodness,’ she said. ‘I think you two need a cup of tea.’ She returned to the kitchen to put the kettle on, ushering Dolly through with her.

‘All your books were in Mum’s box too. I read the dog ones first. They’re funny.’ Mira shifted her position, her legs tucked up beneath her, barely denting the cushions. Her fingers toyed at the stained centre of the seat. The nap was rough there, the mark from her long-ago ice-cream showed up more since Julia’s papal velvet had faded to the palest of mauves.

‘And I read your other book, that was in there too. The one you dedicated to me.’ Again her eyes flashed and he bowed his head.

‘I’m glad she got it. Freda’s was the best address I could think of.’

‘It was freaky, reading it,’ she said. ‘And when I went to talk about it Mum told me she’d never read it.’

He felt the blood rush to his head. Julia hadn’t read his book? He’d done her the kindness of being generous in his portrayal of her treachery, so sure had he been that she would read it.

‘At first I didn’t believe her. But she swore she was telling the truth. She said she was too frightened to face even a page of it,’ Mira said.

‘Is that so?’ He was leaning right out of his chair.

Mira started to giggle. ‘She’s probably reading it right now though,’ she said. ‘Ruth’s gone with Dad and Sofie and our brothers to Marrakesh, so she’ll be able to give it her full attention.’ Mira was giving him a cheeky look, sideways through her lashes; he remembered that look and it made his heart swell.

He was attempting to stay calm, to piece these bits of information together.

‘What brothers? How many?’ he said.

‘Dad and Sofie have three boys. Little devils: ten, eight and six, Max, Sam and Lucien. Not bad going for a couple who met researching male contraception, huh?’ she said, and his head started to spin a little. He had a sudden urge to waltz her around the room.

He gulped to find himself asking: ‘And is she OK? Your mum?’

‘Well, she was fine last time I saw her, but that was before I persuaded her to read your book. God knows what state she’s in now.’ That look was unmistakable mischief. ‘Maybe you should go and see her and find out for yourself.’

He motioned at Mira to move over, and mirrored her position in the window seat, close enough that their shoulders touched.

‘So she never read my book. You’re sure of that?’

Mira shook her head. ‘Not until now,’ she said. Again the puckish grin. From the kitchen door came delicious wafts of the lamb that Jenna was taking from the Rayburn. It had been cooking slowly in the bottom oven all night. Their stomachs rumbled in noisy unison. ‘Man, I’m hungry,’ Mira said, and laughed to hear herself say it. He reached out an arm and pulled her head to his chest, where she laid her cheek flat and closed her eyes. ‘You smell the same,’ she mumbled. ‘Cigarettes, chewing gum, something like dry bread.’ She raised her head to look up at him – ‘And vanilla ice-cream’ – and pointed to the stain on the seat. ‘You were here in the window and I was trying to climb to you with it in my hand. The cushions were dark purple then.’

Jenna poked her head through from the kitchen to say they’d eat the lamb outside at sunset. The evening light was already turning them golden.

‘Come,’ he said, leading Mira by the hand. ‘There’s something I want to show you.’

The room became amber. At the window, jasmine wreathed across the leaded glass, vines reaching and twisting in double helixes, throwing patterns across the surface of his desk. The little shoe was red leather, scuffed to pink across the toes. She sat on his chair and pulled the strap back and forth through the silver buckle, fixed it at its usual hole, looked up at him and smiled.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been lucky to have Cressida Connolly as my first reader and Damian Barr as my first editor. I am hugely grateful to them both, as I am to David Gilmour for unwavering support and insight.

Thank you Claire Singers, Louise Allen-Jones, Justine Picardie and Charlie Gilmour for reading and commenting on early versions, and thank you Clare Conville for making invaluable textual suggestions. Thank you Gabriel Gilmour for saving me from an Air anachronism.

I am grateful to Tony Wolff for sharing medical knowledge and ideas. Thank you Ghislaine Stephenson, Emma Sturgess, Renate Tulloh, Charlotte Jenkins and all the amazing staff at Great Ormond Street Hospital. Professor Kathy Pritchard-Jones made me feel that Mira was in the best possible hands and she, together with the generous recollections of Brian and Susan Hickey, helped me to build and shape the hospital chapters.

Grateful thanks to all the Blooms – it is such a joy to be published by Bloomsbury. Alexandra Pringle is as great an editor as she is a friend. Thanks to Robin Jack for the Milton tutorials and to Hugh Lillingston for the beautiful ratios. Thank you Esther Samson, Romany Gilmour, Joe Gilmour, Cassandra Jardine, Mike Moran, Gala Wright, Adam Phillips, Victoria Angell and Jaz Rowland. Thanks to Amanda and Chris Dennis of the Citrus Centre, Pulborough for the lessons in grafting.

I am grateful to Lisa Allardice at the
Guardian
for commissioning the story
The Man Who Fell
which laid the bones for this book. Thanks to Joe Winnington who sent me the little shoe from East Berlin that set the pulse and to my father, Lance Samson, who gave me the two stories that lie at its heart.

A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

Polly Samson is the author of two highly acclaimed story collections and a novel,
Out of the Picture
, which was shortlisted for the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award. Her most recent linked story collection,
Perfect Lives
, was a
Sunday Times
Fiction Choice of the Year and was read on BBC Radio 4. She has been shortlisted for the V.S. Pritchett Award and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She recently wrote the introduction to Daphne du Maurier’s
The Doll: Short Stories
. She has written lyrics for three bestselling albums and was a Costa Book Awards judge in 2007. Polly Samson lives in Brighton.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Lying in Bed

Out of the Picture

Perfect Lives

First published in Great Britain 2015

This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Copyright © 2015 by Polly Samson

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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 unauthorised act in relation to this publication

may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages

Crazy For You
. Words and Music by John Bettis and Jon Lind © 1985 Warner-Olive Music LLC (ASCAP) and Werner-Barham Music LLC (BMI). All Rights Jointly Administered by Universal Music Group (ASCAP) and Songs of Universal, INC. (BMI). Exclusive Worldwide Print Rights Administered by Alfred Music. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission.