Tread Softly (27 page)

‘
I
can do that.'

‘I'm not completely incapable, Lorna! And once I'm dead I'll have plenty of time to sit around and do nothing.'

Lorna couldn't help smiling. If there
were
an afterlife, she was sure Agnes would be bustling about, instructing the angels to sit up straight or set to and polish their haloes.

She took her case upstairs and unpacked, putting her presents for Agnes on the bed – a box of chocolate truffles, when her aunt could eat only slops; Radox herbal bath salts, when she could no longer get in or out of a bath; a Treasures of the National Gallery calendar (meant to have been posted in December), when she had less than six months to live. As well as inappropriate, the presents seemed rather stingy. After a life of financial struggle, didn't her aunt deserve a king's ransom? Yet she had never spoken of the struggle, nor had she cast the slightest aspersion on her brother-in-law before. How tragic that her adored sister Margaret should marry a man who would kill his bride within five years. Agnes had every right to be bitter.

Except she never was.

Having changed her clothes, Lorna went down to the sitting-room. On the table lay a pile of folders, each clearly marked: ‘Lorna's Drawings', ‘Lorna's School Reports', ‘Lorna's Letters from Grange Park', ‘Lorna's Baby Teeth' …

Teeth! Had Agnes kept even those? She opened the folder and drew out a series of small envelopes, inscribed in her aunt's neat hand: ‘Lorna's left front tooth, November 2nd, 1969', ‘Lorna's bottom right tooth, February 23rd, 1972', and so on and so on – all her milk teeth, chronicled and dated. She slit open the first of the envelopes: the tooth inside was still white and pearly, and scarcely bigger than a grain of rice. She had been rewarded for each one with a silver sixpence under her pillow, left by the Tooth Fairy. Tooth Fairy Agnes; Father Christmas Agnes – so many roles her aunt had played. She leafed through the certificates for piano and recorder, swimming and cycling. It was Agnes who had made her practise, walked with her to lessons, bought her the bike, taught her how to ride it, supervised her sessions in the pool. A life's work; a labour of love.

In the folder marked ‘Lorna's Cards', she found a sheaf of homemade creations coloured in garish crayons or decorated with pressed leaves and flowers: Birthday, Christmas, Mother's Day – all made for Aunt Agnes. ‘Thank you for being my Mumy' was written on one of the Mother's Day cards in a smudged and childish script. ‘I hope you will never leve me.'

Agnes never had.

Next she read the letters. Letters to her parents, begging them to come back; a letter to Father Christmas asking for a paintbox (which, she recalled, had duly appeared). And countless notes to Agnes, all stressing the same theme. ‘I love you more than anywon else', ‘I will love you for ever and ever', ‘I love you as much as this' – with a picture of a tree so tall its topmost branches soared right off the page. Had it been genuine love or simple insecurity, a child clinging to the only adult left?

There was also a drawing of a fairy queen with silver crown and wand, surrounded by a retinue of elves. Underneath was written, ‘Daer Fairis, please please please bring my Mumy and Dady back please.'

She sat looking at it for a few moments, then returned everything to the folders, fetched a tray from the kitchen and started clearing away the tea things. Better to keep busy than indulge in pointless self-pity. As Agnes would say, the devil finds work for idle hands.

Her slice of cake lay untouched. Every year Agnes would make her a birthday cake, with candles on the top and icing-sugar animals. Yet in spite of such devotion, and her own protestations of love, she had come to regard her aunt as a harridan. Why, she wondered now, had she turned hostile in her teens? To cast herself as a victim? To idealize her parents? Or was it just adolescent spleen (another burden poor Agnes had to bear)?

Without bothering to sit down, she ate the slice of cake – raven-ously, feverishly, devouring every crumb. Then she cut a second piece and stuffed it into her mouth, scooping up the last stray fragments and licking the icing from her fingers.

‘
Manners
, child! You're not a monkey. Monkeys cram their food in like that. Little girls eat nicely.'

Agnes's voice had been sounding in her head for thirty-five years. Would it be silenced when her aunt was dead? Ironically, she suspected she might miss it.

In the annexe off the kitchen she found the table laid for supper: embroidered cloth and napkins, best rose-printed china, ivory-handled butter-knife. ‘Use the proper knife for the butter, Lorna, not your greasy one. And a napkin isn't a plaything. Put it back on your lap.'

She drew out a chair and seated herself at the table. There was chutney in a cut-glass dish, fruit in a porcelain bowl. Glass and china contrasted sadly with the dire state of the walls. Tendrils of grey mould sprouted upward from the skirting-boards, imprinting an alien pattern on the wallpaper. Damp was bad enough; worse was the dry rot, eating like an unseen cancer into the fabric of the house. Which would crumble first – Agnes or her cottage? Clearly there was no money for repairs.

She closed her eyes, remembering childhood meals. Thousands of times she and her aunt had eaten together: she learning the weighty business of manners and the necessity of clearing your plate. Disgusting things like ox-liver and swede had to be completely finished before you were allowed syrup sponge or red jelly in a rabbit mould. Strange how she'd forgotten Agnes's food: fat, floured, comforting rissoles; knobbly bacon joints served with pickled beetroot and pease pudding; home-baked soda-bread with a tough crust and a soft heart.

These days her meals were solitary. Ralph would be slumped in front of the television with a plate on his lap and a whisky at his elbow, while she nibbled bits and pieces in the kitchen.

She heard Agnes coming down the stairs, not at her usual brisk pace but laboriously, taking the steps one at a time, like a child. In the old days her aunt would never have dreamed of having an afternoon nap. Honest toil was the norm, from dawn to dusk.

‘Lorna? Where are you?'

Quickly she got up from the table and started rinsing teacups in the sink. ‘Here, in the kitchen.'

‘What
are
you doing washing up? You ought to be resting that foot of yours.'

‘Listen, Aunt –'

‘No, you listen to me – this is important. Before I die I want to know I'm forgiven.'

‘Forgiven?'

‘Yes. For upsetting you just now. And for getting so much wrong when you were small. I don't believe in excuses, but I think it's true to say that I wasn't cut out to be a mother. I never intended to have children myself, nor even to get married, despite what you said about my being jealous of Margaret.'

Agnes was never jealous. ‘I … I'm sorry, Aunt.'

‘That's all right. It was a misunderstanding on both sides, like others in the past. When Margaret died I didn't know how to deal with my grief. Or yours. You used to have nightmares and wake up screaming, and sometimes you'd sleepwalk, which was a dreadful worry for me. And another thing – if ever you found a dead bird you'd pick it up and put it in a bush or tree, as if that would restore it to life. You even did it with dead leaves – you'd try to stick them back on the branches and cry when they fell off.'

She remembered almost nothing of this. Had she blanked it out on purpose in order to survive? Yet what a trial it must have been for Agnes.

‘And I'd often find you talking out loud to your parents, or writing them letters. Before their death you'd been an adventurous child, but you began to develop all sorts of fears. You were frightened of the dark, and ghosts, and dogs, and even feathers. And when I took you swimming you wouldn't put your head under water even for a second. I wasn't sure how to handle it. What I did know was that
one
of us had to be strong. So I tried to establish order and regularity, and provide boundaries, to make you more secure. I probably went too far and overdid the discipline, but you see I feared you might inherit your father's … wildness. In your teens you did show signs of it.'

‘Did I?' She recalled only surly disobedience and private sulks in her room. Although when she'd left home there had of course been the long succession of men (before Tom appeared on the scene) – mostly older and married and mannerless, sometimes even cruel. Why had she let them near her? Perhaps she did take after her father. The new unreliable father could well have had affairs.

‘Yes, and I reacted badly. I hope you understand.'

Lorna nodded. She did understand. At last. She had been wrong about so many things: criticizing Agnes as parsimonious when she had been saddled with a legacy of debt; blaming her unfairly for the horrors of Grange Park; resenting her brusque manner, which, like Ralph, she adopted purely as a defence weapon. And, again like Ralph, she never gave way to self-pity, nor expected gratitude. Yet her strength had held the home together, provided continuity.

She went over and clasped Agnes in her arms. She was shocked by the feel of the scrawny body, the lack of flesh to cover the sharp bones. She said nothing. There was too much to say.

‘Ralph, I wish you'd listen!'

‘I am listening.'

‘No you're not.' Lorna kicked off her slipper and massaged her toes. ‘I've been away the whole weekend. Surely we can talk for five minutes.'

‘You've been talking non-stop since you got in.'

‘That isn't true.' She had been too tired to talk after the journey: hours and dismal hours on cold, late, crowded trains. Only now, after a hot bath and a hot toddy, was she reviving. ‘And I doubt if you've heard a single word. What did I say last?'

‘That Agnes was mending a sock –'

‘A stocking. Oh, I know it sounds trivial, but it was so pathetic, Ralph – all that effort darning a thing she might only wear a few more times. It reminded me of when she used to mend the sheets, turn them sides to middle to give them an extra lease of life. I kept wishing I could do that for
her
.'

‘I can't understand why you're so fond of her all of a sudden. I thought she treated you so badly.'

‘No, she actually treated me well. It's just that I didn't see it. Admittedly she was strict – she still is. But she's strict with herself too. I mean, she must be in a lot of pain, but she didn't mention it once.'

She watched Ralph prowl around the room, focused, as usual, on his pipe. Was he listening even now? The time she'd spent with Agnes, talking, sharing confidences, had made her realize how long it was since she and Ralph had communicated in any sort of depth.

‘You don't seem interested in anything I've said. I might as well have saved my breath.'

‘I
am
interested, but what do you expect me to do? I can't work miracles or change the past.'

Lorna pulled off the other slipper. Her feet were sore and throbbing. ‘Actually, there
is
a way we can help.'

‘Mm?' Ralph was staring morosely out of the dark uncurtained window. It was still raining half-heartedly, occasional spits and gusts spattering the glass.

‘Draw the curtains, will you, and sit down. Then I'll tell you.'

‘I'll just get a drink.'

‘You're drinking an awful lot these days.'

‘Not quite in your father's league,' he grunted.

‘Ralph, that's …
vile
!' Surely he knew how devastated she was. Now that she'd read the pathologist's report, there was no denying the facts: 320 milligrams of alcohol per hundred millilitres of blood. Criminally high. And the injuries were unspeakable: her father's skull smashed to pieces and gaping lacerations on both legs; her mother's thigh and pelvis fractured, along with seven ribs. Yet Ralph could use it as a way of scoring cheap points.

Eventually he sat down, in the chair furthest from hers. ‘Well?'

‘I've got a sort of … plan,' she said, trying to dispel the gory images of her parents' mangled bodies. ‘I know you'll probably come up with all sorts of objections. But it wouldn't be for long. Only a few months. And
I
'd do everything …'

‘For heaven's sake get to the point. What are you trying to say?'

‘I'd like to invite Agnes to come and live here. With me – with us. I owe it to her, darling. She brought me up. I can't let her die alone.' She glanced at Ralph apprehensively, but his face was expressionless. ‘We've got plenty of room – it's the obvious solution.' The house seemed huge after Agnes's poky cottage, and luxuriously warm. ‘It's terribly bad for her lungs to be living in all that damp. But it's not just that. I want to make her feel that someone cares. And
wants
her. She wouldn't be a nuisance. You know how independent she is. And if … when … she gets worse I can arrange for a nurse to come in. It would mean so much to her to be offered a home. And she's always liked you, Ralph. Remember how relieved she was to see me marrying a successful, sensible businessman and settling down at last?'

He gave a bitter laugh.

‘What's funny?'

‘Sensible. Successful.'

‘Well, you were, darling.'

‘
Were
being the operative word.'

‘Getting back to Agnes – I admit it's a lot to ask, but please would you consider it? Honestly, Ralph, you'll hardly know she's here. She'll stay in her room most of the time. And meals won't be a problem because she only eats things like soup and Complan. And at least she'll be warm and dry, and feel less …' The words petered out in the face of Ralph's continued silence. His mouth was set in a thin line, his hand clamped tightly around his glass. ‘I don't know why I bothered to ask. You've no intention of agreeing, have you? We swan about in this great barn of a house, yet you'd let a poor old woman die alone.'