Aphrodite's Hat (5 page)

When Harriet Greenwald was cross she would often deal with it by gardening: vigorous digging, raking, mowing and – best of all – pruning usually put paid to any serious anger. Not that Harriet was essentially an angry person. She was, she liked to think, mostly easygoing. But, as everyone does, she had her moments. And these ‘moments' tended to arise where her father was concerned.

Harriet's mother had departed life when her only child was sixteen. She had died under an anaesthetic during a quite ordinary procedure and Harriet had sometimes wondered if her mother had done it as a last resort, having tried, and failed, to leave her husband by less drastic means. Her mother had twice before attempted to escape the marital home: once in a solitary dash for liberty and once on the arm of the owner of a Turkish restaurant, who had promised the earth, or at least to provide for her in Tooting. But despite the restaurateur's forceful demeanour and material advantages – the restaurant had been doing well – the liaison had not been proof against the remedial effects of Harriet's father's disconcerting charm.

The charm, as charm generally is, was ephemeral. It emerged as a winning card on those occasions which Harriet's mother had used to call ‘the last straw' (but which, due to the charm, never quite were). At other times, Harriet thought to herself as she savagely pruned swathes of the Virginia creeper which adorned their back wall, he was intransigent, selfish and crafty. He had been so today.

Harriet and her husband Mike were due to leave for the US at the end of the week to visit their daughter. Joanna had had an internship with a design studio in Boston specialising in sportswear. Despite the economic downturn, sportswear, it seemed, was booming and Jo had been taken on as an assistant designer.

Mike and Harriet were both teachers. It was over a year since they had seen their daughter and with the Easter holiday pending they had a splendid opportunity to pay her a visit. ‘But,' Harriet had said grimly, ‘before we make any serious commitment I'll have to be sure things are OK with Dad.'

Being sure things were ‘OK' meant seeing to it that her father did not alienate his latest carer, though how she was supposed to ensure such a thing, Harriet would dearly love to know. Mike said nothing to this. In the thirty-two years since his wife had died, his father-in-law had been a source of perpetual anxiety for his daughter, who was now the same age as her own mother when she finally escaped her husband's toils.

Over the last two years, Sam Davis had run through eight carers, all, as the agency assured in tones of reproach, coming with the highest recommendations. Four of the carers had been men, four women, so it was not gender discrimination operating as Harriet had hoped at first. Replacing the troupe of departed men with women had made not a blind bit of difference. Men and women alike, in the end Sam got them to go.

Nor was it any kind of racial prejudice. Her father had had British, Afro-Caribbean, Irish, Spanish, Polish and even Venezuelan carers. The fact was, whatever corner of the globe they hailed from, Sam Davis was always too much for them.

‘What is it he does exactly?' Mike asked when the last-but-one carer had given notice.

Harriet reflected. Mike knew her father, so the question was rhetorical but it was worth trying to put a finger on it.

‘He's changeable,' she said after a while. ‘But not in the way that we all are. Deliberately. He muddles them: asks them to do things and then when they do just what he has asked he says, quite charmingly, that that wasn't what he wanted them to do, or that he never asked them to do it in the first place. It drives them mad. And it's not as though he has dementia or anything. He's perfectly sound in mind. He just likes to mess people about. It amuses him.'

‘Yes, well it doesn't amuse me,' Mike had said. ‘If he wasn't your dad and half paralysed, I'd thump him.'

‘Someone will one day,' Harriet said. ‘I don't know whether to dread it or pray for it.'

But today, cutting back the Virginia creeper, she was more inclined to the latter course.

All had been going so well. They had booked their tickets, suitcases were filling, Mike had Googled what to do in Boston and Harriet had found Jo's black silk camisole, without which, she emailed, she could no longer survive. And Mira, Sam's latest carer, seemed really to like him. When Harriet, her heart in her mouth, had visited last, she had found Mira sitting on the kitchen table eating chocolate digestives and screaming with laughter. It was true that what she was laughing at was a fiction with which Sam was regaling her about his alleged career in the navy. There were things about her father's life of which Harriet guessed she was ignorant, but that he was ever in the British navy she was pretty sure was not one of them.

But that very morning, just as everything looked set fair, Harriet received a call.

‘Madam, I am sorry but I leave Mr Davis.' The sound of gentle crying filtered down the phone.

‘Oh dear, Mira. Why? What has happened?'

‘He ask me to buy him pyjamas and I buy and he send me back four times. Now he send me back to get the pyjamas I buy first. I say, “But these are what I bring in the first place.” He say, “I know, I want to see again to see why I no like them.” And then he hit my bottom. It is not right he do this, Mrs Greenwald. My behind it is not right he hit.'

‘Mira, wait there. I'm coming right round.'

Mira let her in red-eyed. Harriet went straight through to the untidy garden room where she found her father sitting, apparently studying the sky. ‘Dad, what's this I hear from Mira?'

Her father smiled in the way that to another person might have been winning. He waved his stick in the air. ‘Have you ever studied clouds?'

‘Dad, Mira says you hit her.'

‘Good Lord.' Sam Davis turned a mild and mischievous stare on his daughter. ‘As if I would.'

‘She claims you smacked her bottom.'

Her father shrugged. ‘The girl's an idiot. It was a mere affectionate pat.'

‘Dad! For God's sake, this is the twenty-first century. You simply
can
not pat girls' bottoms.'

‘Anyway, I've told her she must leave.'

‘Why? We're about to go away.'

This, she saw, was a mistake. Her father's face took on a musing look. He was cooking up, Harriet suspected, an answer to rile her further. ‘Have you considered the miracle of cloud formation?' he eventually asked.

‘No,' Harriet said, furious. ‘With a father like you I have more onerous things on my mind.'

Apologies and cajoling, and a couple of twenty-pound notes, failed to bring round Mira. She left, promising only, for Harriet's sake, or perhaps it was the twenty-pound notes, not to make any mention of the assault on her behind.

And now Harriet, clipping like mad at the already radically barbered Virginia creeper, was at a loss. Today was Saturday. On Maundy Thursday, she and Mike were due to fly to Boston, and what was to be done about her father? Social Services could of course be alerted but he had successfully alienated them long ago. And then, he had ‘means'. Quite how much these ‘means' amounted to, Harriet had never quite fathomed. But money it seemed was in too much supply for Social Services to consider a trying old man a real emergency.

The bell rang and, dismounting the ladder, Harriet went through the house to answer it.

Florid and smiling, Brenda Bottrell, the chairperson of the local gardening society, stood monumentally on the doorstep. ‘The promised Hostas,' she announced, brandishing a bag overflowing with earthy foliage.

‘Oh, thank you,' said Harriet, who had forgotten the chair had offered her these plants. ‘Do come in,' she suggested, trying to make up for her forgetfulness, ‘and have a cup of tea.'

‘Well, maybe just the one.'

Mrs Bottrell, moving like a tank, manoeuvred herself on to the ricketiest kitchen chair. It was impossible not to suppose she had picked it deliberately as the least fit to bear her weight. Widowed for who knew how many years, Mrs Bottrell, Harriet had always to remind herself, must be lonely. Lonely but undeniably awful.

Over tea, Harriet explained that, regrettably, their impending Easter trip would mean her missing the next meeting of the garden society. Mrs Bottrell was condescending and understanding.

‘I have never crossed the pond myself,' she averred, as if only the foolhardy failed to follow her example.

‘Though we mightn't be going after all.' Harriet explained to Mrs Bottrell's questioning brow that her father's carer had given notice and she was pessimistic, at such short notice, about finding a replacement for the Easter weekend.

‘Where does your poor father live?'

Electing not to query the ‘poor', Harriet said, ‘Just round the corner. We moved here to be near him when he had his stroke. He's half paralysed,' and sighed.

Mrs Bottrell's fierce little eyes took on a sudden lustre. ‘If I can be of any help …? I
was
, you know, a trained nurse.'

It was as if some empress had loftily offered her services. ‘Oh, I couldn't possibly impose,' said Harriet, flustered.

But later that evening, when the agency had ‘regretted' they had ‘no one at present suitable for Mr Davis', Mike said, ‘Why not accept the old trout's offer? She might even enjoy it if time's heavy on her hands.'

‘I doubt if anything is “heavy” on Mrs Bottrell's hands.'

None the less, the following morning Harriet rang the chair of the gardening society.

‘If you really mean it,' Mike heard her say, ‘then we will be for ever in your debt.'

Returning from Boston, Harriet delayed going round to her father's house longer than good conscience quite allowed. The trip had been heavenly. Jo was thriving and had a pleasant-seeming boyfriend, Mike had ‘done' Boston and she had had time to catch up on her reading. On the few calls they had made to her father he had been uncharacteristically polite. Nevertheless, after bracing herself to ring to arrange the dutiful visit, it was with some trepidation that she walked up the path to his front door. The door, she observed, had been newly painted a startling red.

‘Do come in.' Mrs Bottrell was gracious. ‘Samuel is in the conservatory.'

Walking through to the garden room, Harriet saw that it was not merely the front door that had been radically altered but the familiar interior landscape of her father's house. The piles of old shoes, the shabby books and dusty prints were clean gone. The denuded walls were brilliant with paint and on a shelf, which had for ever held the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
, she observed a dimpling china shepherdess and her swain.

Her father's appearance had undergone a corresponding change. His formerly unkempt hair had been cut short, as, she detected, had his nails, which were unwontedly clean. Instead of the moth-eaten maroon pullover in which, for the past ten years, he had received her, he was sporting a crisp blue-and-white striped shirt beneath a navy blazer. His ancient slippers, she saw, looking down at his feet, had been replaced by a pair of smart brown brogues.

‘He's looking better, isn't he.' It was an affirmation rather than a question. ‘We've had a bit of a tidy since you've been gone.'

Harriet glanced at her father, expecting outrage. But with a shock, she saw his being was wholly focused on Mrs Bottrell, at whom he was gazing with adoring eyes. ‘She's a marvel,' he exclaimed, turning finally to his daughter. ‘Brenda is a marvel.'

‘Get away, you old silly.' With a terrible mirthful jauntiness, Mrs Bottrell whacked Harriet's father in the region of what Harriet instinctively knew the Chair of the Garden Society would refer to as his ‘backside'.

Harriet stared and Mrs Bottrell afforded her a majestic smile. ‘He just needed a bit of pruning, didn't you, dear?' at which Harriet's father (as Harriet later told Mike) positively simpered. ‘And there's no need to worry about “carers” any longer.' Mrs Bottrell waved a large manicured hand. ‘Samuel and I got engaged. On Easter Sunday, actually,' she announced and, quite dreadfully, giggled. ‘We are getting spliced as soon as we can. We were only waiting for you to come home, weren't we, Samuel?'

When Kitty Giles quarrelled with her mother she would say, ‘I am going round to Nan's house.'

‘Nan' was born Anna but she had been known in the street as ‘Nan' ever since her two grandchildren had come for a summer with her, years ago it was now. She lived two doors down from the Gileses in Cumberland Gardens where Kitty's parents had moved when their daughter was three.

Kitty's father Geoff was an artist, which meant he made next to no money, so when Kitty was four Susannah, her mother, who was a town planner, went back to work full time. Susannah was grateful when her elderly neighbour offered to look after her daughter. And Kitty seemed really to like going round to the house with the grass-green front door, now somewhat blistered but still clearly and cleverly painted over with spiders and beetles and ladybirds – for Nan was quite an artist herself in her way. The shy little girl didn't cry one bit when her mother left her with their neighbour at number seven. Perhaps not enough, even, for Susannah's sense of her own importance to her daughter, though it went without saying that she was grateful for Nan's kindness.

When it was time for Kitty to start school, it made sense for Nan to collect her at the end of the day and give her her tea and keep the child round at hers until Susannah came home from work. And it made sense, too, that Kitty went to Nan's over half-term and in the school holidays. Kitty seemed not to miss her home or her parents during these periods and quite often spent the night in the brass bed, not quite a double but certainly wider than the usual single, which had once belonged to Nan's daughter, Bella, and then had been the province of Bella's twin girls. The twins were grown up now and had gone to New Zealand where one had married an oncologist and the other an ear, nose and throat specialist, keeping, as Nan liked to remark, on twin lines. On the head of the bed, Nan had painted a field mouse's nest with tiny curled field mice babies and beneath it, watching, a weasel with a predatory look in his black beads of eyes. These animals, the mouse family and the weasel, were among the cast of creatures woven into the stories which Nan told Kitty as she fell asleep on the nights her parents were out or it just seemed so much simpler for Kitty not to go home.

From time to time, Susannah worried about Kitty's attachment to Nan but Geoff would reassure her. ‘She doesn't love us any the less for loving Nan,' he would say. ‘Anyway, it's good for kids to have an extended family. Your parents are no use. Nor are mine, if it comes to that.'

Geoff's parents had been killed in an air crash before Kitty was born. Susannah had been born to her parents late in life and had been brought up on stern lines. She loved her daughter deeply, but the habits laid down in our childhood will noiselessly inform our adult behaviour and more of Susannah's parents' philosophy had rubbed off on her than she would have recognised or wanted to own.

One half-term holiday Kitty was staying over at Nan's and she had a nightmare. She got out of bed and ran to Nan's room where, hardly seeming to surface from unconsciousness, Nan had said soothingly, ‘Hop in with me, pet, and snuggle down here.'

When she woke in the big bed which smelled of Nan's
Coty
talc, Kitty said, ‘Mummy doesn't let me get into bed with them if I have nightmares.'

Nan said, ‘Oh, there, Kitten. I'm sure she will if you ask her.'

Two days later Susannah called round to see Nan. After some awkward conversation about local events she said, ‘Nan, Geoff and I want Kitty to learn to sleep alone. We'd prefer that when she stays here you don't allow her into your bed.'

Nan for a moment spoke her mind. ‘That's cruel if the child is scared.'

Susannah's face took on the expressionless look of which Geoff, had he thought about it, had grown afraid. ‘I don't want this to become an issue, Nan.'

The next time Kitty had a nightmare while staying at Nan's, Nan said, ‘Go back to bed, darling,' and when Kitty began to wail piteously, ‘Don't cry, my pet. I'll come and sit with you.'

Kitty, through tears, sobbed, ‘But you let me last time …'

‘I know, lovie.'

Nan sat by Kitty's bed till she fell asleep, her face still damp with tears. By then it was hardly worth going back to bed herself. She went downstairs and made a cup of tea and watched the dawn come up with a pain in her side.

After that, every time Kitty had a bad dream while staying at Nan's the child would beg to come into Nan's bed – and Nan, hating herself, refused. But one half-term, when Nan had not been feeling too good, and was too tired to keep up a protest she had in any case no belief in, she said, ‘All right then, pet, hop in, but don't tell your mum or we'll both be in trouble.'

In the morning she said, ‘Look, Kit. As far as I'm concerned you can sleep where ever under God's heaven you like, but I have to do what your mum says.'

‘Why?'

‘I just have to, love.'

‘I think she's silly.'

‘No, she's your mum. We – that's you and I – have to do as she says.'

‘I don't like her when she says things like that,' Kitty said.

By the time Kitty was eight years old, her open shyness had fallen away and her stand-offs with her mother were more frequent and sometimes nasty. One evening she shouted, ‘I don't want to live with you any more, I want to live with Nan.'

‘Well, you can't, you have to do as I say, young lady.' Susannah, who loved her daughter dearly, was wounded and retorted more sharply than she intended.

‘I can, so.'

‘No, you can't. While you're a child you have to do as I say.'

‘It's not fair. I hate you,' Kitty yelled, rushing to her room and slamming the door. ‘I only love Nan.'

Susannah was crying when Geoff came in from his studio. She told him what Kitty had said.

‘Oh, Suzie, that's just kid's talk. Kit adores you.'

‘No more than she adores Nan.'

‘Nan's been kind to her. We've been glad enough when it suited us. Don't pick a fight, please.'

But next half-term Susannah arranged for her daughter to spend it with a friend.

Kitty went down the road to tell Nan. ‘Mummy says I'm going for a sleepover with Flora.'

‘That's nice,' Nan said. She had made a hazelnut cake, Kitty's favourite.

‘She says I'm not coming here.'

‘Never mind,' Nan said, comfortingly. ‘There'll be other times.' When she understood that she was not going to see Kitty at all that half-term, she gave the tickets for the new Walt Disney film to the Garrod children over the road.

And somehow there were no ‘other' times. With some difficulty, Susannah managed to organise different houses that her daughter could visit after school or over half-term, where she also spent nights when it was convenient. When Nan and Kitty met in the street they still hugged but no further occasion arose for Kitty to pass a night in the field-mouse bed.

One day, Kitty's teacher, Mrs Allen, asked if she could ‘have a word'.

‘Kitty's been a little off colour lately. Is everything all right at home?'

‘I think so,' said Susannah, trying to pretend to herself that she had not been wondering about this too. ‘What's the matter with her?' She had noticed that Kitty seemed strained and tired.

‘She's not eating her school meals. And she's getting into a few fights. Maybe it's just a bad patch. Children go through them, same as we do. I dare say it will pass.'

But a few weeks later Mrs Allen said, ‘Mrs Giles, if you don't mind my asking, who is Nan?'

‘A neighbour,' Susannah said. She didn't quite like to hear Nan's name.

‘Kitty mentions her a lot. And she has written some stories. I just wondered quite what the relationship …'

‘She used to fetch Kitty from school,' Susannah said.

‘Did Kitty ever spend the night with her?'

‘She used to,' Susannah said. She perhaps could not have explained why her tone had become defensive. ‘But we've rather gone off the arrangement.'

‘You know, I think that might be wise.'

Mrs Allen raised her pencilled eyebrows questioningly and Susannah, who had been feeling guilty about Nan, said in an effort to be fair, ‘I don't think she was ever unkind to Kitty.'

Mrs Allen's frosted pink lipstick folded into a line. ‘No. I'm sure. But that wasn't … I don't want to … but I wonder if there wasn't some sort of …'

‘What?' Susannah asked, feeling rather frightened.

‘I wouldn't say “abuse”, because I don't say that it was anything overt, but Kitty writes a lot about their cuddles. It seems she sometimes slept with, er, Nan.'

That night Geoff said, ‘Don't be ridiculous. My brother and I used to get into my parents' bed all the time. We often slept with them if we were ill – or had nightmares.'

‘Geoff, we talked about that and we agreed. It was you as much as me.' Susannah was the more indignant for surmising that with another woman her easygoing husband would have been likely to accede to other terms for his child's sleeping arrangements.

‘All I'm saying is that there is nothing sinister about Kitty's sleeping in Nan's bed. Until the Victorian period, everyone slept together: men, women and children. It was quite normal.'

He might have added that it is only humankind among the mammals who think it natural, and preferable, to sleep apart from their young.

Kitty looked anxious and then defiant when her mother explained that there was something she needed to ask.

‘It's nothing horrible, darling, I promise. It's just about Nan.'

Kitty had grown wary of that word ‘just'. It always seemed to bode so much more than implied. ‘What about Nan?'

‘When you slept in her bed –'

‘I didn't.'

‘Kitty, it is OK. We know you did. I only want to know what happened …'

‘Nothing did.'

‘Did Nan touch you?'

‘'Course she did. She cuddled me. We snuggled down together.'

‘What did “snuggling” mean?'

Kitty looked at her mother in surprised scorn. ‘Don't you know what “snuggling down” is?'

Two days later Nan received a note:

At the end of the year, the Gileses moved house. Kitty needed a larger room, Susannah explained to Mrs Garrod over the road, when she met her in Tesco's. For some time, when Kitty had a nightmare she would comfort herself by imagining that she was safe and warm in Nan's large, soft, talc-scented bed. She knew better than to mention this to her mother. And after a longer while, because to do so was easier, Kitty forgot all about Nan.