Come and Tell Me Some Lies (18 page)

I slept in a nylon bag on the floor in Brodie's attic that night, my head pressed against the black lumpy walls which hung their gloom over mine.

In a defeated monotone, Mummy had told me how Zoe had telephoned after Helen's operation. It had not worked, her liver could not be saved, and all they could do was wait. Helen's brother and sister, as well as Zoe and Daddy and Liza, were at the hospital. Mummy didn't say it, but I knew they would stay there until she died. Vinnie had been told how ill her mother was, but she had come to Mildney with Nat, Helen's small baby, too confused and shattered to be able to cope with the unfamiliar surroundings of the hospital room. Mildney was no safer haven. Each room glared grief and memory from dusty corners where I could picture Helen standing, laughing, or stubbing her cigarette out and then guiltily rubbing the carpet. The image of her dying in hospital in a metal bed with her family grouped around her flitted in and out of my head. I slept fitfully and uneasily.

Only Dan and Poppy went to school the next day. Brodie, Flook and I were determined to be at home with Mummy and
Vinnie. After breakfast, I shut myself in the cloakroom with the telephone and rang Miss Floyd. I hoped she couldn't hear my heart thudding in my throat as I spoke. ‘Miss Floyd, this is Gabriella Lincoln. I have to apologize for what I said yesterday. I am sorry I was rude and disrespectful, and what I said was not true.' I paused, and there was a horrible, black silence; I hurried on. ‘I know you wish to take the matter to my parents, but something awful has happened, and however much I deserve punishment, my parents cannot be bothered with the matter at present, so please,
please
don't bring it up with them.'

And Miss Floyd, as I knew she would but hoped against hope that she wouldn't, asked, ‘And what exactly is this awful thing, Gabriella?' Her question, cold and hard, rattled towards me like a marble on glass.

‘My half-sister Helen is very ill,' I said. ‘My father is at the hospital now, and my mother is looking after her little boy.' My ear was hot and bruised by the phone pressed against it. Relief and blood rushed to the rest of my head when Miss Floyd said, ‘Very well. I do not intend to let the matter rest, but for the moment I shall refrain from writing to your parents. It is up to you, Gabriella, to make amends.'

‘Thank you, Miss Floyd.' I put the phone down, praising God in His wisdom for making her forget to ask why I was not at school.

I told Mummy I had done it, and she smiled and hugged me. ‘Well done. I'm proud of you, and it takes one weight off my mind.'

The day crawled into afternoon. Vinnie prowled up and down the house like a caged animal, not speaking, not eating,
endlessly checking the telephone to see if it was working. Whenever it rang, she stopped and stood at bay, her wide eyes ready to absorb shock. Mummy went to collect Poppy and Dan at tea-time. ‘Look after Vinnie,' she whispered as she left.

Ten minutes later the phone jangled, clarion and demanding. It was Zoe. ‘Is Eleanor there?'

‘No, she's gone to Aylthorpe.'

‘Mum's dead.' Zoe's voice came from a million miles away, echoing, alone. ‘I've got to tell Vinnie.' I nodded and passed the phone to Vinnie.

I did not know what to do, so I went out of the room to give Vinnie privacy. A moment later a deep howl came rolling up and up until it was a scream. Vinnie couldn't stop. Until Mummy returned I stood hugging her. Brodie and Flook hovered at her side, holding her hands as great shudders passed through her and she went on howling. She was like someone in a trance, unaware of anything around her. Agony broke out of Vinnie and splintered into all of us, but Brodie, Flook and I were numb. Our sorrow was for Vinnie and we could feel nothing else.

Much later, when Vinnie had fallen asleep, exhausted, I went with Mummy to collect Daddy and Liza and Zoe. I was almost afraid to look at them as they came out to the car together. Liza and Zoe leaned on each other's arms, not speaking. Daddy walked with his shoulders set awkwardly and his steps halting, like a man on the moon, or a soul lost in limbo. No one spoke. As we drove home, I saw Daddy's face beside me. It was lit grey and stony by the street-lamps, his eyes staring at nothing, while silent tears poured down his cheeks.

A week later Helen was buried at a tiny church by a stream near Liza's house. The churchyard was bright with daffodils, and the wet flint walls dripped velvet grey, soft as a donkey's nose. Blossom drifted like macabre confetti on the spring breeze and mocked the herd of weeping mourners as we followed the coffin out into the churchyard. Hypnotized, I saw Helen in her neat box swing down into the grave and rest deep in black earth. Daddy and Liza huddled together supporting each other, tiny above the gaping wound in their lives. I held Mummy's hand and pushed my face into her coat, not wanting to see or touch grief, not wanting to know pain, longing to turn back time and be safe again.

The day after the funeral, I took Mummy to Norwich. Aided by prescribed opiates, she passed her driving test. It was the twenty-fourth time she had taken it.

February 1991

I came home for Dad's seventy-eighth birthday. February was flat and grey, and Mildney smouldered around its fireplaces, wells of bright warmth linked by empty passages where your breath frosted the air. Dad had been in hospital for a few days after having sudden torrential nosebleeds. In hospital he exasperated the doctors by refusing to wear a name tag. ‘I know who I am,' he stated, summoning dignity to his prone position. He had more success with the nurses, and quoted Housman to them as they chivvied him like a child through the dreary daily routine. He came home weary, and slept a lot in his old armchair in front of the playroom fire. Waking, he reached down to the piles of books and boxes at his side. He collected junk like a jackdaw and arranged his spoils in old shoeboxes, sifting through them for hours on end. He made a necklace to hang over the mantelpiece by joining a silver-plated elephant to a tiny sword on a thread of copper wire and a watchstrap out of folded masking tape and bicycle chain.

When I arrived from London he greeted me with a mocking smile. ‘You look tired, love. Playing too hard, I suspect. Or could you have been working?'

He loved to hear detailed explanations of our lives, and leaned forward, listening and nodding, interrupting with his own anecdotes. For his birthday, I had brought a Rolls-Royce. I had been lent it to test-drive for a television programme. Dad laughed and clapped his hands. ‘Let's take it out and show it Norfolk,' he said. Leaning on his stick, he walked out to the car. ‘Get the hood up,' Dad demanded, and I fumbled for the catch, praying that he wouldn't insist on sticking a twig into the carburettor or implementing any of his other practical improvements for recalcitrant cars. He stared into the gleaming silver engine. ‘What a beautiful sight. A piece of perfection.' He blew his nose and got into the car. We swooped off down the drive, Dad in full flow about driving a racing car across Arizona in the forties. He insisted on taking the wheel, and I plunged back in the seat and stifled a moan of horror as he skidded on to a bank past an advancing tractor, revving the haughty, silent engine to Neanderthal squeals.

‘I'll drop you in Aylthorpe and you can get me a paper. I want to take this machine down to the garage. Mr Watts will love it.' Dad's eyes sparkled. We screeched into Aylthorpe on two wheels. Dad stopped by a newsagent's shop. I began to get out. Before my feet were on the ground I was forgotten; Dad put his foot down and sped away. I bounced off the squashy seat and fell sprawling on the tarmac. Shaking, laughing hysterically, I picked myself up. I couldn't believe he had done it. He could have killed me.

Moments later he was back. ‘Jump in, love, we're going home.'

He denied all knowledge of my fall from the car. ‘No, darling. Really? I couldn't have done that to you.'

Birthday tea was an orgy of chocolate cake and presents. Dad opened them with childish glee. The hot-water bottle clad in a Ninja Turtle outfit was a big hit, and afterwards Dad dozed, exhausted, his cheek resting on Donatello's beaming face. Mum and Poppy, home from school to revise for her ‘mocks', went to collect the boys from the station and Dan from a friend's house. I started to cook supper. Half an hour later, I went into the playroom. Dad was still asleep but his face was parchment white, and a terrible black stream of blood oozed from his nose. Panic froze me in the doorway. Dad woke with a start and, hunched in his chair, pressed the fabric of the hot-water bottle cover to his face. I brought him wads of loo paper and sat with him. He tried to speak, but blood came out of his mouth. My cat Angelica, never one to miss an opportunity, leapt up and started licking the blood-soaked chair.

‘You fiend!' I hauled her out of the room. Dad coughed. He looked miserable and macabre. I rang the doctor. An ambulance arrived. Dad was still bleeding, the playroom was a battlefield; strewn toys had caught drips of blood and lay like corpses on the carpet. I kicked them out of sight, drivelling non-conversation at Dad. He couldn't answer. Waiting in the ambulance, I held his hand and my mind raced with prayers for Mum's return. She appeared at the moment the ambulance men were driving off, and leapt in. ‘I'm here, Patrick, I'm here.'

I got out, shaking, and my parents drove away, blue lights flashing their path through the darkness.

In the house, Brodie, Flook and Dan sat doleful at the kitchen table, their carefully wrapped presents for Dad mocking his absence. Poppy sniffed back tears as she washed up tea plates. They looked like tiny children deprived of a treat. ‘He'll be all right,' I urged. ‘Mum will be a while, though. Let's go to the pub for a bit.'

‘I've got Dad some champagne.' Brodie leaned his head in his hands. ‘And now he's not here to drink it.' His expression had returned to infant dolour, shock denuding him of sophistication. Flook had painted a picture of Dad's Mercedes; the paint was still wet, and it glistened when it caught the light.

There was a knock at the door and Jim came in carrying a camera. ‘I've brought Patrick a present,' he said. Then he saw our drawn faces. ‘What's the matter?'

Poppy told him. Jim put the camera on the dresser and hugged her. ‘Come on. He's as strong as an ox. He'll be back home in a day or two. Now I'm going to buy you each a drink to cheer you up and I'll stay with you till Eleanor comes back.'

Jim now seemed to feel responsible for all of us. He chivvied us like a mother hen, his eyes beady for any dawdling, as we walked down the drive to the pub. We paused on the bridge, peering through the dark of the evening into the river, searching for a silvered hint of a trout or a powder-puff duck floating past. We saw nothing save our heads silhouetted in moonlight, peering in line over the bridge in the gloom.

The pub was full. It was Saturday night, and a group of young farmers were prematurely celebrating the end of the filthy, mud-logged winter. Their round red faces moustached with creamy foam from their pints of beer were cheery and
alien. We sat at a distant table, fiddling with beer-mats, lost for conversation. Jim was at the bar. The young farmers gurgled into song.

‘Swing low, sweet chariot,

Coming for to carry me home,

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Coming for to carry me home.'

They stopped, some still humming, but they didn't know the words. But Flook and Brodie, Dan, Poppy and I did, and we sang all the verses, at once wounded and healed by the song.

‘It's my fault for letting him drive that car.' After two brandies, I was ready for some self-reproach.

Poppy was crisp. ‘Rubbish. It's happened before. It was nothing to do with going out. He had a brilliant time, didn't he?'

She told the boys about Dad hurling me from the car. They laughed and, spirits flickering, we returned home. Behind the house, Jim caught sight of the Rolls-Royce. His smile gleamed in the dark. ‘I used to steal those when I was a kid.'

‘You didn't!' Poppy and I laughed.

‘You'll never know, will you?' Jim stroked the long bonnet of the car and followed us into the house.

Mum wasn't in the kitchen; Flook charged through to the playroom. ‘Dad, you're back!' he bellowed, and we herded behind him.

There was no sign of any blood. Mum and Dad were sitting
by the fire, the remains of supper on trays being devoured by cats at their feet.

Mum came out with the trays. ‘He recovered as soon as we got to hospital. I think the shock of being back in the ward stopped the nosebleed. He's fine now.'

I started towards the door. ‘I wouldn't go in there,' Mum warned. ‘He's giving a nut-by-bolt account of the Rolls-Royce engine to the boys.' She snorted with sudden laughter. ‘I don't think they're at all interested, but it's his birthday, so they think they have to pretend to be.'

A few minutes later, Dad, deceptively placid in the wheelchair the hospital had lent him, led a troop of unenthusiastic boys and Jim outside. They were going to photograph the Rolls-Royce with Dad's new camera.

After Helen died, Liza brought Vinnie and Nat, refugees with all their world in cardboard boxes and plastic bags, to live with us. As I stalked furiously through the house, searching for my slime-green PVC trousers, I felt Mildney had become a crazed doll's house. In the black attic, Brodie sat in front of a mirror, delicately Supergluing his ears to the sides of his head, a French textbook forgotten, lying spattered with sticky drips on the table. Dan and Poppy, bewildered by suddenly not being the youngest, stoutly got on with their games, sawing Action Man's legs off with a carving knife and flushing them down the loo, where they bobbed pinkly when anyone went for a pee.

Liza couldn't bear to return to the Glade alone. Shrunken by sorrow she scuttled through our house, silently materializing from empty rooms, head bowed to hide the coursing tears on her face. She followed Mummy, mirroring her actions because she couldn't remember how to function alone, and sat with Daddy, each one trying to rally the other's spirits with damp jokes.