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The mention of her father’s name caused Elsa to breathe in sharply and to hold the air there, deep down in the pit of her stomach, where it would not make a sound. It made her feel small to do this, unnoticeable, a crumpled-up ball of paper that could be flicked to one side.
She sat on the chair by the fireplace not moving, straining to understand what was being said without appearing to eavesdrop, without drawing attention to herself. Through the corner of her eye, she could see her mother smiling her blank, colourless smile. Elsa had never met anyone else who could smile in quite the same way, so that whoever was on the receiving end of it could read whatever they wanted into the shape of her lips. It made her shiver to see it. The smile seemed to belong to another person; a borrowed piece of clothing.
She suspected that Mrs Farrow knew her father would not come, but the truth of it would not be spoken out loud. She glanced across at her mother. The smile was still there, fixed in place like glass in a window.
Her father didn’t want anything to do with the war, not any more. He couldn’t even touch the newspaper if there was a mention of the war on the front page. He would go out of his way to avoid the engraved plaque of names that had recently been erected at the bottom of their street. ‘Our Glorious Dead’ was the inscription across the top. Elsa thought that was an odd phrase. She couldn’t imagine a glorious way of dying. Even Our Lord Jesus who died on the cross – how could you call it glorious when he had nails hammered through his palms and feet?
But that was the phrase they had carved smooth and clear into the stone, the lettering cut so deep that Elsa could fit the tip of her little finger in the shallow grooves of the curving G. The stone felt cold to the touch.
On the morning they went to Westminster Abbey with Mrs Farrow, Elsa’s father was locked in his study working on his papers. They left him behind, even though he was the only one of them who had experienced the war first-hand.
Now here she is, holding her mother’s hand and standing amidst rows and rows of silent strangers. Above her, the russet-brown leaves of the sycamore trees quiver and twist in the sunlight. Mrs Farrow says it is ‘unseasonably warm’ for the time of year and Elsa thinks the men in uniforms must be hot, the collars of their tunics scratching against their neck as they walk. Hundreds upon hundreds of them seem to march past her and she imagines that each one of them has a family akin to hers that stretches all the way back from children to parents to aunts and uncles and grandparents and nieces and nephews and cousins and wives.
At school, the teacher had once drawn the family tree of Queen Victoria in chalk on the board. It had branches like a real tree, but made straight and long, and where you might have expected there to be a leaf, there was instead a name, a date of birth, of marriage and of death. She had been intrigued by that family tree, by the simple beauty of it, by the way everything could be connected. She had found the idea of it comforting.
She recalls it now, mapping out a family tree for each of these soldiers in her mind’s eye, the lines unravelling and criss-crossing through the generations, each interlinked branch expanding until she imagines the chalked-out marks covering the ground and the sky and the faces of the people who stood around her.
She begins to feel faint and her vision blurs around the edges. She blinks twice in quick succession to clear her sightline, dropping her head so that the muscles in her neck relax. When she looks up again, the procession is retreating into the distance, on its way to the Abbey. Someone has put a dented steel helmet on top of the coffin and Elsa finds herself wondering if it had been the unknown soldier’s helmet or not. How would they have worked it out? And if it wasn’t his helmet, whose was it? She does not like the thought of a soldier lying on his own, his head uncovered and defenceless. Would he be missing his helmet now, wherever he was? Wouldn’t his family want it back?
Her arm is aching. She wishes she could shake herself loose and let go of her mother’s hand. She twists back to look at her and sees that her mother is crying. She is embarrassed for her and shocked that she is showing such visible emotion in public.
But then Elsa realises that someone else is crying too. There is a tall woman in a pale pink cloche hat and threadbare gloves standing next to her. The woman has not made eye contact with anyone since she arrived a few minutes before the horse-drawn carriage came past. She had been flustered because she was late and her face had been covered in a light sheen of sweat. She had jostled her way to the front, bumping into Elsa as she did so but offering no apology. Instead, the woman had stood impassively to one side, her shoulders sloping. Her demeanour had not altered as she saw the coffin but now Elsa sees that tears are slipping down the woman’s cheeks, making her face appear misshapen. The woman is sobbing openly, oblivious to anyone else around her. The sobs are dry little hiccups and they catch in the woman’s throat as though she does not want to let go of them completely, as though she is frightened about what might happen if she forgets to control herself.
For a second, Elsa is ashamed for the woman and for her mother, but then her ears seem to pop, as if they had been filled with wax until that moment, and she hears the same scratchy sobbing sound replicated a dozen times over from all different directions. The whole crowd seems to be crying as one, their breaths heaving and creaking like a swinging rope.
She is unsettled by the strangeness of what is happening and, in search of reassurance, turns to find Mrs Farrow but her neighbour’s eyes are shaded by the tree leaves and Elsa cannot make out the expression on her face. Mrs Farrow’s son Bobby, who has been unusually quiet throughout the procession, is looking intently at his feet, scuffing the toe of his boot into the sand until his mother tells him to stop fidgeting. After several minutes, the woman in the pale pink cloche hat wipes her eyes with her gloved fingertips and turns to go. Slowly, the crowd thins out and disperses. Her mother lets Elsa’s hand drop and Mrs Farrow suggests they should start making their way home.
On the train back to Richmond, the four of them sit in a carriage, empty apart from an elderly gentleman in one corner, his left eye obscured by a glinting monocle. For a while no one speaks.
‘Alice, my dear, are you quite well?’ Mrs Farrow asks. The train judders forwards, hissing and spitting as it does so. Her mother nods, listless. Mrs Farrow leans across to pat the back of her hand. ‘That’s the spirit.’ She turns to look at Elsa and cocks her head to one side.
‘What a day,’ she says.
She has dark brown eyes that are almost black and Elsa finds that she cannot look away. She gazes back at Mrs Farrow without speaking. Bobby is swinging his legs against the train seat, his feet beating out an irregular rhythm.
‘Quiet now,’ Mrs Farrow says, resting a cautionary hand on his arm. He stops immediately and Mrs Farrow smiles, gently. She is a kind woman, Elsa thinks. Kind but firm.
She wishes she could say something to her, something that would explain how she feels. She wishes she could tell Mrs Farrow that she is scared to go home, that she does not like her father, that his return has changed everything for the worse, that her mother no longer loves her as much as she used to, that she does not know what to do about any of it, any of it at all. She wishes she could find the words, that she was old enough to know how.
Instead, Elsa breaks away from Mrs Farrow’s gaze and rests her head against the leather-lined upholstery. She does not want to have to think. After a while, she falls asleep. The war fades away in her mind: a bubble pricked before it reaches the ground. For the remainder of the train journey, her thoughts sink under a shroud of blankness, the flakes of its quietness falling like silent snow.
Back at the house, her father is nowhere to be seen.
‘I expect he’s still in the study,’ says Elsa’s mother, removing her gloves finger by finger. She leaves them on the hall table in a careless heap. Elsa stands by the doorway, not wishing to make a noise. Her mother looks at her and something about the way she is hanging back, wordlessly, seems to aggravate her.
‘What are you doing, dear?’ she says. ‘Close the door properly behind you and then . . .’ The sentence hangs between them, incomplete. A single strand of hair sticks to her mother’s forehead. Elsa wonders if she has noticed it there, the gentle itch of it against her skin. ‘Why don’t you go up and see if your Papa would like some tea?’ says her mother, walking into the drawing room.
She watches her go and whereas, in the past, Elsa might have felt a lurch of disappointment at her mother’s absence, she realises that her feelings have changed. She does not allow herself to need her, not like she used to. She thinks: I am no longer a baby.
Elsa, still in her coat, makes her way towards the staircase. She walks slowly, so as to eke out each second before she has to confront her father, before the shape of the day will be changed by his mood. She holds out her hands. The right one is shaking and she is irritated by this, annoyed with herself for not being able to steady her nerves.
Upstairs, she creeps down the corridor to her father’s study. The door is ajar, a glimpse of sunlight streaming through in a narrow beam across the carpet. For a moment, she is dazzled by the whiteness of the light. Then, she can see her father, at his desk. He is sitting upright in the oak chair, his arms resting on the blotting pad. There is no evidence that he has been working on any papers. He is staring straight ahead, not moving, barely even breathing, and facing a blank wall that used to have a picture on it. There is a faint, discoloured triangle on the picture rail where once it had hung. It had been a faded reproduction of a country scene: a silty river, a hay cart, a pale blue sky, a man in a bright red coat. Elsa wonders where it has gone.
She knocks on the door. Horace starts at the noise. He shakes his head, as though to rid it of something and then takes out a pile of loose paper from a drawer, setting it in front of him.
‘Yes,’ he says. His voice is tired.
Elsa walks in. ‘Good afternoon, Papa. Mama has sent me up to ask whether you would like any tea.’ The words tumble out quickly. She dislikes how childish she sounds.
He shifts the chair round so that he is looking directly at her. She takes a step backwards, pressing herself as close to the wall as she can. His eyes seem unfocused, glittery.
‘Tell me,’ he says, leaning forwards, his expression intent. ‘How was it?’
Briefly, she is not sure what he is asking about. And then she thinks: of course, the procession. He is interested after all.
‘It was . . .’
‘Well, speak up, child, speak up.’
Elsa clears her throat. ‘It was . . .’ she cannot think what to say. What does he want her to say? What is the right way to answer? ‘It was busy.’
‘Busy?’ He repeats, eyebrows raised. Then he chuckles, a quiet sound that makes her nervous. ‘What else?’
‘It was impressive, sir.’
He nods his head. ‘Good, good.’ He stands up, without warning, the movement so quick that Elsa is startled. He comes towards her, arms behind his back. When he gets to within a foot of his daughter, he stops. He seems to be considering something, the thoughts scudding across his brow. And then he brings his right arm round to his chest and she notices that his hand is clenched tightly in a fist.
Elsa flinches.
He looks at her, surprised, then shakes his head again: quickly, in a succession of jerky movements.
‘Did you think …?’ he starts. Then again: ‘Did you . . .’ He does not complete the question but goes to the desk and sits down so that his back, once again, is turned towards her. ‘Go,’ he says, the words sharp, unkind.
She stands there for a second too long. ‘For God’s sake, go!’ he shouts and as she is running out of the study, she hears a crash and then a falling sound.
It is only later that she realises he must have thrown something at the wall.
Caroline, 2010 (#u87c53aff-a294-54c1-a407-d3d1962a57c6)
‘Caroline?’
She can hear Andrew calling her from downstairs but she can’t bring herself to answer. She lies on their bed, drifting in and out of consciousness, her thoughts half-disappearing into a grey sludginess that teeters perpetually on the brink of sleep. The curtains are drawn and fluttering gently as draughts filter through the gaps in the window frame.
They had been meaning to get the whole house double-glazed for months. Now, it seemed unlikely she would ever care enough to make it happen. Bricks and mortar did not seem to mean very much any more. The house had become a void; an unconvincing imitation of the home it had once been.
It seems almost funny to think of how concerned she used to be with how it looked, of how she had spent hours leafing through interminable sofa catalogues and pale, tasteful paint samples until she found the perfect combination of style and homeliness. She had liked the act of redecoration, of papering over something that she did not want to see. The smell of fresh paint, of clean, glossy newness, was soothing to her.
She had spent years refurbishing the house, stripping back the damp, acrid-smelling carpets, sanding the floorboards and covering them artfully with thick, woven rugs. She had painted every single wall and skirting board herself, from the duck-egg blue of the downstairs bathroom to the delicate ivory hues of their bedroom, offset by the wrought-iron bed frame and the dark, almost blackened wood of the wardrobe. She had discovered that you can learn taste quite easily. The home she had created for her family bore little relation to the Artex tiles and pebble dash of her youth.
There was one room she left untouched so that, now, still, after everything that has happened, the walls are magnolia, the floor is carpeted in a brownish-grey that does not show up the dirt. There are two stripped-pine bookcases on either side of the fireplace, the shelves devoid of books so that they stand empty as a toothless mouth. The wardrobe door bears the pitted marks of blu-tack and the shallow black dots of drawing pins withdrawn. The sheetless single bed, covered by a thin, tartan blanket, looks hollow. In this room, it is only the spaces that have been left behind.
Sometimes, when she passes the door, she thinks she sees him there in a lump beneath the blankets, sleeping in, wasting half the day, snoring gently. But it is always a trick of the light, or of the mind. And then she is forced to remember, all over again.
‘Caroline!’ Andrew’s voice resurfaces, this time more impatient. She knows she should answer but she thinks hazily that if it is important, he will come upstairs to find her. She stays sheltered underneath the duvet, numbed against any sense of time by those oblong white pills the doctor has given her to blot out the sharpest edges of her grief. Xanax, they are called, and the name makes her think of a creature from science fiction, an alien being burrowing away inside her, reshaping her internal moonscape.
‘These should make you feel a bit better,’ the doctor had said, in an attempt to be reassuring. But they do not make her feel better so much as remove the need to feel in the first place, so that her distress becomes strangely separated from her sense of self. The pain is still there but it begins to exist almost as a curiosity, a thing to be looked at and acknowledged rather than the awfulness that envelops her, that makes existing on any sort of practical level seem impossible.
Most of the time these days, she finds that the best way of dispersing the encroaching shadow, the slow puddle that spreads across her consciousness like spilt ink, is to take another pill. She is aware that she is ignoring the doctor’s advice. The printed label on the front of the brown plastic bottle tells her she is allowed a maximum of four over a period of twenty-four hours. Yesterday, Caroline took six, convincing herself that she needed them, craving the consolation. Also, if she is truly honest, part of her likes the thought that she is deliberately causing herself harm. There is something so comforting in the thought of self-destruction, in the thought of painting herself out altogether.
‘Caroline! Where are you?’
But there is Andrew to think about, of course. There is always him. Always, always Andrew . . . She hears him bounding up the stairs, taking them two at a time and the mere thought of this makes her feel exhausted. She is mystified that he can still possess so much energy. There is something unseemly about it, she thinks, something untrustworthy about his absurd good health. His hair has turned grey in the last twelve weeks but oddly this change appears to suit him, emphasising the prominent incline of his cheekbones and the dark hazel of his wide-set eyes. He has grown into his looks, the weathering of his flesh lending him an air of self-contained purpose.
By contrast, Caroline’s looks have been slipping away from her, as though her physical appearance is no longer under her control. Her skin, once fair and smooth, has turned sallow. She has dark circles under her eyes and a delicate web of faint wrinkles at each corner, radiating outwards. Her lips have narrowed and dried so that she finds herself licking them without thinking, running the tip of her tongue across the surface, feeling the sticky bits of skin dislodge as she does so. She has lost weight and although she has always disliked being plump in the past, has always tried to shift the extra heaviness around her belly and thighs, this new thinness does not suit her: her arms poke out of T-shirts and her hair has got thinner at the ends, sparse as straw.
She is not yet so far gone that she does not care about these changes. She has never been enamoured by her own appearance but these days it makes her sad to look at herself in the mirror. She sees an image of a face reflected but it does not seem to be her. There is no recognition at the image in the glass. There is nothing there, just emptiness, a lack of expression.
She feels defeated.
She senses Andrew sitting down on the edge of the bed, his weight causing her to roll slightly towards him. She thinks: why can’t he just leave me alone?
‘How long have you been in bed for?’ he asks and she hears in his voice the tone of disapproval. In fact, she does not know the answer. Her sense of time has become rather elastic but she knows she must offer him something concrete, so she lies.
‘About forty minutes or so,’ she says, choosing a number that is long enough to convince him she is telling the truth and yet short enough still to be within the realms of respectability.
He nods his head once, satisfied, and then he reaches out and strokes her hair softly. She has not had a shower for days and for a brief moment she worries that Andrew will notice the grease, coating the palm of his hand.
‘Darling, you must try and keep going,’ he says.
He is a good man, her husband. She knows this. He is good in spite of her badness, in spite of her being unable to pull herself together. He loves her still, even though he knows her love has gone somewhere else, has been lost and cannot find its way back.
‘There’s something I need to talk to you about,’ Andrew continues and she notices there is a small note of hesitation in his voice. She can still read him so precisely, so intimately. This knowledge, which used to provide her with such a sense of security, now seems only to frustrate her. She hates the thought that they have become so dependent on each other, moulding their shapes and their silences around the solidifying shadows cast by the other person.
‘It’s about my mother.’ Andrew’s voice drifts back. ‘She’s taken a turn for the worse. Mrs Carswell called up this morning and said she’d found her in her nightdress, lying in a heap at the bottom of the stairs. We don’t know how long she’d been there but she wasn’t making much sense, apparently.’ Andrew breaks off, waiting for a response. She opens her eyes lazily and meets his gaze. He looks sad and confused: a small boy. ‘It was already hard enough understanding her on the phone so goodness knows what state she’s in now.’ He shakes his head. Caroline sits up, propping the pillow against the curved bars of the bed frame so that the coldness of the iron does not press through her cotton nightdress. The effort of this single movement leaves her momentarily dizzy and unable to speak. She touches Andrew’s wrist lightly. He grabs hold of her hand too eagerly and lifts it up to his lips, brushing a kiss against her knuckles. She lets him hold her hand for a few moments longer and then slips it back down to the mattress.
‘Poor Elsa,’ she says and she can hear that the words are slurred. She tries to remember how many pills she’s taken today but she can’t. Not a good sign.
Andrew looks at her quizzically. ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Oh . . . fine.’ Caroline turns away. She glances at the rosy wash of the linen curtains held up against the fading evening light. There is a tap-tap-tapping sound against the window like pebbles scattering across glass. ‘Is it raining?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ Andrew replies. ‘It might even be hail by the sounds of it.’ He clears his throat. ‘Anyway, Mrs Carswell said that she’s not sure how much longer the current arrangement will be . . .’ he pauses, searching for the right word, ‘viable.’
‘Oh?’
‘She was very nice about it but she doesn’t think she can offer Mummy the necessary level of care. She seemed to think that Mummy might need someone with her on a more permanent basis and she suggested . . .’
Too late, Caroline can see where this was going. A scratchy panic rises up her gullet and lodges itself there.
‘Well, she suggested that maybe Mummy could come and live here,’ Andrew finishes, speaking the words quickly so that the damage is done as quickly as possible. ‘After all, we’ve got the room.’
She doesn’t say anything but the thought of looking after anyone else, of having to plan what to make for dinner, of having to exist on a day-to-day basis, of continuing normal life, of picking it up where they had left off as if she were picking up a fallen stitch in a piece of knitting . . . the thought of it overcomes her and seems to press the breath out of her lungs.
‘I know that the timing isn’t ideal,’ says Andrew. ‘But she is my mother, after all, and I feel I owe this to her.’
His voice is firmer now, less apologetic. He has a streak of steeled strength buried underneath all those layers of politeness and good-humoured kindness and a strong sense of right and wrong. It is part of the reason she used to love him so much.
‘Andrew, I don’t know if I can . . .’
‘Darling, I know you feel very weak at the moment –’ She looks at him, disbelieving. Does he honestly believe that is all it is? Weakness? ‘But maybe, just maybe, having someone else in the house might alleviate the pressure a bit.’
‘You think I’m wallowing, that I’m being self-indulgent.’
‘No, no,’ he insists. ‘I think you are having a terrible time, of course you are, but you can’t go on like this. At some point, you, we, both of us, we’ll have to get on with our lives . . .’
‘And forget Max ever existed?’
Andrew looks taken aback. ‘Neither of us will ever, ever do that,’ he says quietly. ‘But it’s been four months now –’
‘Three-and-a-half.’
‘OK, three-and-a-half months and I’m worried about you. I’m worried about these things –’ he takes the bottle of pills that is on the bedside table and rattles it in his hand. ‘You need to start living again. And part of that is being able to look outwards, to think about other people.’
She doesn’t say anything. She knows that this is Andrew’s way of coping: always doing things, thinking about the next thing, losing himself in involvement.
‘I’m not suggesting we move Mummy in immediately, but I do want her to come and stay with us. I know it’s an awful lot to ask but she’s old and fragile and she needs our help.’ He looks at her cautiously.
Caroline closes her eyes. After a while, she feels Andrew stand up and hears him walk out of the room, his footsteps going down the stairs. There is the sound of plates clashing as he loads the dishwasher. She is angry at that, at the resumption of normal service in the kitchen below, and she reaches, without thinking, for the pills, pressing down on the white lid of the bottle so that the catch releases as she twists. Caroline puts one in her mouth and swallows it with a sip of water from the glass on the bedside table. Within seconds, she eases into the familiar fog. Her thoughts relax. Her mind unclenches and fills slowly with the whiteness of space. The image of Andrew, washing plates, dissipates and his face is rubbed out, slowly, bit by bit, until there is nothing of him left and she falls into a state of numbness that is not quite sleep but near enough.
If she casts her mind back, she can remember the first time she met Elsa. The image comes to her completely intact: she is in the passenger seat of Andrew’s car, feeling the sticky rub of leather against her bare legs, and they have turned into a short gravel driveway and parked underneath the bending branches of a yellow-green willow. She has to be careful opening the door so that it does not scratch against the tree trunk and then she must squeeze herself out, shimmying through the narrow space, making sure her skirt doesn’t ride up her thighs as she manoeuvres herself upright and out of the car.
The house is medium-sized with latticed windows and a rambling rose climbing up the façade towards the tiled roof. The walls are painted the pink of iced cakes and there is a double garage with wooden doors to one side. Caroline has never seen a double garage.
‘Do they have two cars, your parents?’ she asks.
‘What?’ he says and then he notices her looking at the garage. ‘Oh, I see, no, only the one. They use the garage for storage mostly. Actually, there’s still some of my stuff in there.’
‘What kind of stuff?’
‘University stuff, old boxes of clothes, you know,’ he says. She nods her head as if the idea of university is unremarkable but inside she is impressed. She likes the fact that he is clever and more educated than she is. Caroline had never done well at school. Her father had always said she’d never amount to anything and, after a while, she began to think he was right and stopped making the effort. If her Dad could see her now, she thinks to herself, about to go for lunch with her boyfriend in a house with a double garage. That would make him stop and think.
She is nervous as she walks to the front door, her arm linked through Andrew’s. Sensing her unease, he smiles at her and pats her hand.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he says and a lock of hair falls forward over his left eyebrow. Caroline likes the way his hair does this. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him.
‘You’ll be wonderful,’ Andrew is saying.
She does not believe his reassurance, but she knows the appearance of confidence is important. She feels so lucky to be Andrew’s girlfriend, so surprised and flattered that he would choose to be with her that she is constantly on guard in case she does something wrong, in case she says something that will make him see who she really is.
