You (42 page)

‘What?’ she said. She paused. ‘How?’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t,’ she said.

And she realised that with no Ari at home, she could meet him during an evening with Romy supervising. So she lied to her girls and to her mother. She was seeing Diana, she said: Diana was in Devon. She went to dinner with James Dahl, her one-time lover, for the first time in her life.

She was learning. Since her moment of clarity and the promise to herself that accompanied it, Dora was learning to live with gut-tightening emptiness, her resolve punctuated with seethes of outrage that Elisabeth did not defy her by contacting her, and at weaker moments she moaned audibly with an appalled sense of desertion. The loss of hope was what gradually came to her. A glimpse, a glimpse only, of comfort that she had chosen the better option. That she could, after all, manage this and survive. It had to become a habit. A lesser life, a better life.

A car stopped outside on the lane; the gate to Wind Tor Cottage opened, the honeysuckle shaking, and Elisabeth Dahl walked across the garden. She stopped, even today, to bend and examine some campions that had seeded themselves, and she appeared to be absorbed in the scents of flowers as she wandered up the path. She was like a mirage, but the apparition was sharply outlined and over-vivid.

Relief and excitement tumbled through Dora. She wanted to cry. She hardened herself.

‘Hello,’ she said uncertainly. She glanced at her watch. It was almost five o’clock.

‘Hello, darling,’ said Elisabeth, and kissed Dora on the cheek, then pulled her into a hug.

‘Come in,’ said Dora, without meaning to say it.

‘How are you?’ said Elisabeth, openly surveying the cottage.

Dora cursed the habitual mess, the jars of old flower water, the spots of shadiness and nests of unexamined clutter. Only now did her eye land on dead flies from the previous year on the window frame, on a mousetrap just visible beneath the crockery cupboard, on piles of seed catalogues, hoarded bags, newspaper cuttings, reading glasses and post-surgery exercise sheets. In truly not expecting Elisabeth, she was unprepared. She ran a hand through her hair. She searched ineffectually for wine that might suit Elisabeth’s exacting tastes. Then she stood up abruptly. She took in a deep breath that seemed to hurt her chest with tiny barbs.

‘I asked you not to come here,’ she said.

‘You didn’t.’

‘I did.’

‘I don’t recall this.’

‘As good as. I asked you not to call.’

‘And I believe I haven’t. I’m here instead. I was on the moor. I thought I would see you.’

‘Well –’ Dora held her hands up. She walked to the door, opened it, went out into the garden with its settling light. Her shadow was alarmingly elongated on the grass; death’s companion. She looked up at the tor and Elisabeth lifted her head in an echoing gesture. Romy was in a field below, a flare of hair against the green.

‘She looks like her mother at that age,’ said Elisabeth.

‘Do you even remember her mother at that age?’ said Dora sharply.

‘Of course,’ said Elisabeth after a slight hesitation.

‘Because I am realising that what happened to her at that age has halfway wrecked her life.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Elisabeth, her features barely moving as she spoke, her eyes occluded, still trained on the tor.

‘You know what I mean,’ said Dora.

There was silence. Dora habitually broke such silences. The silence continued. Dora said nothing.

‘What is the point of unearthing
this
?’ said Elisabeth eventually. She was visibly ruffled.

‘Because it has become clearer to me, the mistake.’

The air was restless, blowy in sudden gusts. They stood in silence.

‘I don’t need you here,’ said Dora. ‘I don’t
want
you here. I need to do this now.’

‘Oh Dora,’ said Elisabeth, and pulled her to her and held her for a long time, running her hand from her brow and kissing her head. The breeze lifted their hair.

‘You know it’s – it’s – let alone others’ lives – it’s – it’s pretty much wrecked my life,’ said Dora clearly into Elisabeth’s chest, breathing in that remarkable individual scent. She felt paralysed by it. ‘That’s an exaggeration, but it’s also not.’

‘What has?’

‘What what?’

‘What has wrecked your life?’

‘You really don’t know?’

‘Me? You mean me?’ said Elisabeth, raising her eyebrows, her mouth twitching. She sounded humbled, or vulnerable.

‘No. Well yes, that too. But I blame no one but myself for that. That has been my choice; my . . .’ she trembled ‘. . . failing.’

Elisabeth was motionless.

‘It’s the other . . . this other . . .’ Dora stumbled over her words. ‘The fact of not keeping Celie’s baby. It was a monumental mistake.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ said Elisabeth. ‘Good God. Isn’t that all buried and past? It must be what – I have no idea. A good twenty, twenty-five years. She has three others!’

‘It was a catastrophic mistake. This is what has become clear to me.’

‘Oh of course it was not a mistake to give a decent home to the child of a child! Good lord, the house was overrun with babies. What did you want to do? Set up a nursing home? Drown in nappies?
You
would have been left with that baby. Yet another baby. Don’t indulge your delusions, Dora.’

‘You really don’t understand,’ said Dora, hearing Cecilia’s own phrases coming to the fore. ‘You don’t understand at all, do you?’

‘I don’t think I do.’

‘Well you should,’ said Dora in a strangled voice.

‘And why is that?’

‘I did it for you,’ said Dora.

‘Me –’ said Elisabeth. ‘You did it for me?’ Her eyebrows shot into a disdainful arch. ‘Don’t be utterly ridiculous.’

‘I did,’ said Dora, beginning to cry.

‘It was your decision, your –’ Elisabeth said with icy distance ‘– family’s. I made no demands. Nor could I have.’

‘ “I loathe babies, especially of the male variety” was how you greeted Barnaby’s birth,’ said Dora.

‘And?’

‘I’ve never told anyone,’ said Dora steadily. ‘I’ve never told anyone. I can barely tell myself . . . But I did this because of you.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘I did. It was my weakness. I take all responsibility of course. No one made me do anything, but I did it for you, because I loved you so much. And yes, I was very worried that it would be too much for Celie. But . . . really, it was that I wanted you so much. I wanted to be with you. Nothing else.’

‘Oh Dora, I cannot believe you would say –’

‘Don’t you remember all the things you said about babies? As though you’d never had one yourself. “
Boy babies are the worst.
” Mother of sons. There was poor snotty Barnaby. You were vile to him.’

‘You didn’t want that child either.’

‘I know, I know,’ said Dora in a half-wail. ‘But I loved him. I suffered for him but I loved him. And . . . I wanted him once he was there, of course. But I wanted you. You,
you
.’

‘This is irrelevant now.’

‘It’s all I can think of.’

Elisabeth raised one eyebrow.

‘That, and you. Which is an awful – sinful – waste of time.’

Elisabeth said nothing, a flicker of pain passing her eyes, but she drew Dora into her arms again. She was motherly and caring; she was wearing her perfume; her strokes, skimming and kneading over Dora’s back and shoulders, were firm and comforting. She held her against skin warmth in a shelter of intimacy. Dora felt, at that moment, that she could die from having wanted this so much.

‘I thought you would leave with me and we’d be together,’ said Dora. ‘It’s shameful to admit. But – I don’t care what I tell you now, really. Everything you said indicated that. Didn’t it? All those plans we made.’

Elisabeth gazed at the horizon as though remembering, or denying.

This was my world, thought Dora. Into that, that child-friendly world, a baby came and went.

The baby had grown upstairs. Its mother stayed up there in hibernation. It was fed: a slow, sweet feeding like a spider dopey in its web. Speedy had gone by that time. Patrick was shocked into near-silence, yet love for his only daughter who adored him underlay his deep disapproval, and he and Cecilia would hug without speech for minutes on end while he continued to ignore the pregnancy and never once asked about the baby. He absorbed Dora’s assurances that the matter was in hand with the passive acceptance that was increasingly his recourse. Dora watched the baby bump’s progression through the late summer and autumn with exhausted dread while lodgers detained her, children required feeding, and Barnaby’s demands began at dawn.

There was one incident that settled it, a routine accident that made the decision slot into place like a seal over a hatch. It had all been creeping towards a conclusion for some time, the tentative discussions becoming more frequent, their patina of pure fantasy now taking on a tangible reality. The childless couple, considerate and desperate, waited at the back of the garden. That morning, at breakfast, the tray of Aga ashes was over-filling. Benedict had occasionally emptied it; Patrick usually forgot; Cecilia could no longer be relied upon. An excess had built up at the back and Dora had to kick the Aga door hard to secure it over the container’s front, attempting to crash it into place. Strong kicks no longer worked. Growling, Dora started to empty the tray, but hot ashes spewed out on to the floor, and Barnaby, grizzly with one of the bouts of tonsillitis that increasingly kept him awake at night, grabbed at them, pressed them to his mouth, and screamed.

‘Barnaby!’ Dora cried.

Barnaby shrieked, more ash captured in a fist and retained with a furious grip despite its heat. He wiped it over his mouth. It stuck to the snot running beneath his nose, fell over his hands, his face and the floor while he screamed. Dora grabbed him, doused him with the dirty washing-up water that remained in the sink, his screaming instantly amplified to a level of hysteria. His clothes were soaked with cereal-logged water that now dripped over the floor creating runnels through the ash, while the moment he was released he bolted towards the open Aga door. Dora caught his ankle, fought him physically to remove his clothes as he roared and kicked, fresh ash attaching itself to his wet body, and with a sudden movement that made his head fall back, she picked him up, swearing out loud, and ran with his struggling, wailing form up the garden path. As she stumbled, she saw Cecilia, hollow-eyed, behind a window. This was motherhood. Her daughter would not go through this at eighteen – as a
child
– she thought with a tearful determination.

Dora made for the cottage, panted a word, barely distinguishably, to Moll and Flite, and bent over by their kitchen door to catch her breath, Barnaby now flailing with fury. ‘I’ve decided,’ she shouted above the caterwauling.

Elisabeth was due at one.

The breeze now blew through the dying jasmine, dispersing its worrying scent. Dora returned with Elisabeth to the cottage. Elisabeth linked her arm with Dora’s and, passively, Dora allowed her to.

‘You’re very thin,’ said Elisabeth.

‘The radiotherapy somehow makes me not want to eat.’

‘Poor sweetheart. I will look after you.’

‘No you won’t.’

‘You know I’m very good at that,’ said Elisabeth.

‘You are, you are. In the moment. But not in the long term.’

‘Oh –’ said Elisabeth, silenced.

There was a pause.

‘I can’t see you any more,’ said Dora in a voice that seemed to sway and snag.

‘Don’t cry,’ said Elisabeth rapidly.

‘I think,’ said Dora, carrying on, ‘I think – I know – Cecilia thinks I’m hard. Callous. I can’t express anything that I really feel about it at all. That’s all I want now, really.’

‘Well –’

‘With her, it’s dangerous to admit anything about it. It’s too – too, much too dangerous. But she thinks I don’t care. I do care. I do care. So much. I can never tell her that. Isn’t that pathetic, really?’

‘Oh Dora.’

‘Why can I
not
explain my regret, my sorrow, offer my sincere and everlasting apologies to her? Why can’t I just do that? It feels as if it would kill me to do that. I just – I just can’t. And I’m – a coward. I’m too scared of losing her, of losing those lovely girls again.’

‘Oh sweet Dora, how can I help you? Just tell me how I can help you.’

‘You can’t. You can help me by keeping away.’

‘You don’t want that,’ said Elisabeth, smiling.

‘I do. I do,’ said Dora.

‘Oh I –’

‘Think of all the lies I had to tell Celie to protect her,’ said Dora, swinging round wildly. ‘I – I wrecked her life – unwittingly wrecked my life in the process – by doing the wrong things. By attaching myself to someone who cannot be pinned down. And you know,’ she said, jabbing at a stained ball of Blu-Tack from the table, ‘you know, my own weakness in this astounds me. I think I was half afraid of Moll and Flite. I was afraid that if I enabled Celie to start a real search, it would unleash the terrible anger of Moll and Flite. That they would be my nemesis.’