The Lost Child (12 page)

He was looking at her intently, hanging on her every word. ‘I’m sorry for your loss Elaine. Do you have other family?’

She shook her head. ‘Nope, just me. I’m little orphan Annie.’ She said it with a hollow little laugh.

Alex offered her a wistful smile. ‘I know that feeling; I lost both my parents when I was a child. I barely remember them. I think it came as quite a shock to poor old Ada when she realized the only thing that her sister had left her was me. She did her best, and Esther was a godsend. That woman is the nearest thing to a mother I’ve ever had, fortunately for me she adored me and spoiled me rotten.’ He paused and drained his glass. ‘What a childhood eh? Running around that great big house with no one to rein me in except a huddle of spinsters and a mad old uncle.’

‘I thought your uncle was rather sweet.’

Alex frowned, as if the applying the word sweet to Albert was an alien concept. ‘Yes, I suppose people might see him that way. To me he was just a funny old man who didn’t understand children. He’s harmless enough, just not quite on the same planet as the rest of us.’

Elaine thought about the eccentric old man and envied him his ability to exist on a different plane. ‘I suppose a lot of people would have loved your childhood, all that freedom and that wonderful house. I’m sure having your parents there would have been preferable though.’

An expression flickered over Alex’s face, which for a moment looked like confusion to Elaine. Within a second it was gone and was replaced by his usual suave confidence. ‘I suppose I didn’t miss what I never had. As for the house, wonderful yes, but hideously expensive to run and maintain. I keep trying to talk Uncle into selling up but he’ll have none of it, even though I think they would both be better off in something smaller and easier to live in. Neither of them are getting any younger, and if I’m honest I don’t fancy having to face the inheritance tax.’ He paused and pulled a wry face. ‘Much as I love the old pile I’m a city boy at heart. All this country air is somewhat soporific, don’t you think?’

‘But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? A place where you can relax and unwind.’ Elaine had finished her own drink by then.

‘Who needs to relax when there’s life to live? Another drink?’

He was already rising from the table. Elaine glanced at her watch, ‘Actually I ought to be getting back, I’m cooking supper for a friend.’

Alex sighed, ‘Ah well, another time then. Perhaps I could take you out to dinner next time I’m down?’

Elaine was a little confused; surely he knew she was only here for a week or so? ‘I imagine I will be long gone by then, but thank you for asking.’

‘Oh I don’t know Elaine, you never know when I might turn up. Would you like me to drive you back to the cottage?’

Having been strangely disconcerted by the whole encounter Elaine politely declined and said she would walk. ‘Besides, it looks like someone is waiting to talk to you.’ She pointed to a woman who had been sitting at a table behind Alex for the last five minutes, giving him looks that could kill.

At her words Alex turned. ‘Maria! How lovely to see you.’

By the look on the woman’s face Elaine doubted whether their meeting was going to be lovely at all. She thanked Alex for the drink and the flowers and said goodbye. As she walked away she could hear him explaining that ‘she was just a guest’ and that ‘the bloody flowers were just a thank you’. She was almost out of earshot when the last words reached her – ‘for Christ’s sake Maria, what’s your bloody problem?’ Elaine was quite glad she hadn’t had to stay to find out.

*

When Brodie arrived she seemed tense and preoccupied and claimed it was worry about her mother. Elaine offered to drive her to Woodlawn the next day so that she could visit but Brodie was reluctant, saying that she had phoned the hospital and that Shirley wasn’t up to seeing anyone. Eventually Elaine had to let it go, whatever was bothering the girl she wasn’t going to give it up easily. Several times she had thought to mention the strange events that had moulded her own day, but something about Brodie’s mood put her off. In the end Elaine decided that feeding the strangeness was probably not a good idea and that what they needed was some stark normality, some fun. ‘Hey, why don’t we go into town tomorrow and see a film, or go bowling?’

Brodie prodded at her food. ‘If you like. Might as well.’

Elaine decided to have one more stab at getting to the bottom of what was wrong. ‘Brodie, has something happened? You don’t seem yourself today. I know you’re worried about your mum but it feels like there is something more on your mind. You can talk to me you know.’

Brodie had moved on to shredding up lumps of garlic bread and rolling the dough into little pellets, which littered her plate. ‘Just stuff, that’s all. Anyway, what were you doing in the pub this afternoon? I saw you with that Alex bloke.’

Elaine pointed to the flowers, now inelegantly displayed in a teapot. The only vase she had found had been a rather valuable Minton effort, rather than risk damaging it she had plumped for the teapot. ‘He brought those for me and took me for a drink as a thank you.’ She went on to tell the tale of her brush with the elder Gardiner-Hallows.

Brodie pulled a face. ‘They sound so posh. That Alex bloke was at our place the other night, I didn’t like him, he’s smarmy. The old bids love him though.’

‘Yes they do, I noticed that when I was there. From what I can gather they had quite a hand in bringing him up, he was orphaned and apparently Esther was a kind of surrogate mother to him. I must admit Ada didn’t strike me as the motherly type.’ Elaine stood and started to clear the plates.

Brodie snorted. ‘What? And Esther does? Is it those Tasmanian Devil things that eat their own young? She’d be like that I reckon.’

Elaine laughed. ‘David Attenborough has a lot to answer for!’

‘It’s true though, they do. I reckon Esther could eat a baby.’ Brodie said it without thinking and the image in her mind shocked her. Was she really that callous?

‘What, with some fava beans and a nice chianti?’

‘Eh?’

Elaine considered explaining the reference, but figured encouraging a conversation on cannibalism wasn’t the best move. ‘Anyway, from what I saw she absolutely worships Alex, so I think he’s safe don’t you?’

‘Huh! He might be safe from her, but he’s not too popular in the village. I’ve overheard a few things about him.’

‘Like what?’ Elaine was curious, having heard a few things herself in the pub that day.

‘Well Miriam said that when the GHs sold off the land, they couldn’t sell it with sitting tenants so some of the farmers got kicked out of their homes. Some of them had farmed there for centuries. One bloke actually shot himself over it and everyone in the village blamed that Alex dude. Said it was his fault they’d sold the land, and his fault the farmer had killed himself. Miriam says that people don’t understand and that times change, she says that people round here are stuck in a time warp.’

That would explain what the two men in the pub had been talking about, Elaine thought. ‘Well, there are always two sides to a story and it’s easy to see both. Very few people can afford to run big estates these days, and no one wants to be forced out of their home. It’s very sad, but no one’s fault.’ she said sagely.

Brodie pondered it for a moment. ‘Yeah, but if someone shot themselves so some bloke could swan about in an expensive car being flash, you’d be a bit pissed off too wouldn’t you?’

‘I might not be very happy, but I’d refrain from swearing about it Brodie.’

Brodie blushed. ‘Sorry “Mum”’ she poked her tongue out. ‘Anyway I heard something else too, in the shop. They reckon he got some local girl pregnant and paid her family off to keep them quiet. Apparently she swears blind the kid isn’t his and won’t say who the father is, but this kid is the spitting image of him and the mum seems a bit well off for a single parent. That’s what they were saying in the shop anyway.’

Elaine recalled the argument between Alex and Ada and wondered if this was the thing Alex thought he might never be forgiven for. ‘You really shouldn’t repeat gossip Brodie, it doesn’t help anyone and for all we know the child isn’t his and the mother won the lottery or something.’

Brodie looked at her as if she had suddenly sprouted two heads. ‘You’re kidding right? Honestly Elaine, you’re such a goodie-two-shoes.’

Elaine felt herself bristle at this critique. ‘I just believe in showing people a little respect and giving them the benefit of the doubt. Alex seems pleasant enough to me, he’s just had a very different upbringing from most people. It’s bound to make him see things differently. I suppose the people around here see him as over-privileged and dislike him for it. It’s hardly a fair assessment in my opinion.’

Brodie shook her head in disbelief. ‘You’re too nice Elaine, you want to wise up and get a bit street smart. Most people are selfish pigs.’

There were times when Elaine wanted to get hold of Brodie and flush the kidulthood out of her and make her start all over again. No child of fifteen should think like that, or be so cynical about the world. No one should be so disaffected before they had even begun. ‘Well I’d rather be nice than horrible and miserable, it leads to a better night’s sleep in the end. Are you going to help me wash up or what?’

‘Only if I can wash, I hate drying up.’ Brodie said, slipping back into her teenage self as if her sceptical twin self didn’t exist

The visit ended on a better note than it had started and as Elaine stood in the doorway, watching Brodie walk back to Hallow’s cottage, she wondered why the girl’s happiness was so important to her. The thought came as she was leaning against the shelf where until that morning Jean’s ashes had rested. A gritty residue transferred itself to her sleeve, unnoticed, as she turned to shut the door.

Brodie had brushed past the shelf too and carried a few grains of Jean back to Hallow’s Cottage on the shoulder of her hoodie.

Esther had looked up, hopeful and expectant as the door had opened but resumed her brooding scowl once she realised that it was the interloper, and not her beloved boy. She eyed the girl as Miriam fussed over her, ‘What’s all this you’ve got on your clothes?’ and watched as her sister tutted and patted at the girl with an affection Esther found hard to fathom. The little black clad cuckoo was nothing but an inconvenience, had Esther still had her voice she would have used it to make sure the child had gone elsewhere. She wasn’t wanted here and Esther let her know it every time their eyes met.

She might not have her voice, or the use of her limbs, but she still had her wits. Not that anyone else seemed to realise it, even the doctor spoke to her as if she were deaf, or stupid, or both. What had she ever done to deserve this? Caged inside a useless body in nature’s version of death row. She had been a good woman, a forthright woman, a moral being with a clear picture of right and wrong. Why had God failed her like this? If only Alex would come…

Esther had discovered that the small comfort of her state was the ability to revisit the past in lucid detail. It was if she could, at will, step back across the years and into the life she had once had. If she pictured Alex as the small, golden haired boy he had once been the image became so real to her that it felt as if she could reach out and touch him again. The child had been her life’s joy, a gift from God sent to redeem her spirit and give her purpose. A parentless angel, in need of the love that only Esther could give. Ada didn’t know how to love him; if the child had leaped up and bit her in the neck she wouldn’t have known what to do. But that was Ada all over, she never had known what to do about anything, and as for that gormless fool Albert…well, the less said about him the better. She, Esther, had protected the boy from both of them, willing him not to inherit their feckless, insipid ways. She had always felt some bitterness towards the inequity of life. That she, Esther, had been born to poverty and want, and that they, those fools, born to wealth and privilege was a travesty. Had God proclaimed a joke? From necessity she had served them, waited on them, subordinated herself to them, loathed them and needed them in equal measure. Never noticed, never thanked, taken for granted and made invisible by their superiority until God had seen fit to make her value clear and send the boy. When God gives with one hand, he takes with the other, and Alex had to lose his parents to gain Esther. That Alicia, Alex’s mother, and her husband, Max, were killed in order for Esther to gain was a simple balancing of the scales of justice as far as Esther was concerned. She had given her youth to the family and had been paid a pittance for it. Max and Alicia had given their son to her and paid with their lives. She had not planted the IRA bomb that killed his parents, and she had not prayed for their demise. She had worn black, and mourned with the family. She had covered the mirrors and silenced the clocks. She had served tea at their funeral and laid flowers on their graves. She had loved their son. In Esther’s mind the score was even. There was nothing she wouldn’t do for the boy. Nothing.

She worried for him all the time. His fast cars, his women, his laissez faire attitude, his politics. His father’s politics had got him killed. He had taken his wife’s name for the cachet it held and used it as a banner to wave atop his opinions. Those opinions had made a man put a bomb under his car and blow his ideals and his wife to smithereens. Now her beloved Alex wanted to follow in Max’s wake. Would they bomb him too? She used to think the world had changed, but now, with the TV bombarding her with bad news, she worried. It was not the Irish that hated now, but heathens who would hug you with a jacket full of dynamite and take you to hell while holding your hand. If Esther had her voice she would plead with her boy and beg him to come with her, back in time, over the bridge of years and into his childhood where she could keep him safe, just like she always had.

Miriam was fussing again, pulling her back to the fettered and frustrating present with the endless drone of her chatter. Esther didn’t want to leave her reverie and sip tea from the baby cup, or have her chin wiped with a tissue. She didn’t want to eat the salty mush that she couldn’t chew, or endure the scowls of the black clad cuckoo. But she had no choice. She was Miriam’s creature now. Inside, Esther was screaming, ‘leave me be, leave me be, I want to go back’ but all her sister heard were the grunts and groans of a stroke garrotted throat. She mistook the noises for expressions of hunger and silenced them with kindly smiles and spoons full of mashed potato.