Dancing in the Dark (34 page)

‘I'm her daughter, Hugo.'

‘Yes, you most indubitably are.'

‘I think she needs me.'

He nods. ‘There's a house,' he says slowly, hands flat against the wall behind him. ‘On the south-east coast. Near Dover. She's down there.'

‘She told me that she was dividing her time between Stockholm and Rome.

‘She's . . .' His refined eyelids droop. ‘She hasn't been well recently. She's . . . she's over here for some tests.'

‘What kind of tests?' A shroud of alarm wraps itself around me. Her hand like a claw on my arm. The unfleshed oval of her beautiful face. ‘What's wrong with her?'

He doesn't want to answer,

‘
What
, Hugo? Is it . . . cancer?' The word is monstrous.

‘We don't know.'

‘But it's definitely something.'

‘Yes.'

The blood clogs in my veins. With infinite slowness, I put out my hand and reach for the table. It feels like several centuries before it connects with the edge. My eyes are as heavy as stones. ‘Is it . . . life-threatening?'

‘That's what she's here to find out.'

‘I just saw her, Hugo. At Westminster Cathedral.'

‘She said she was going to stop off there on her way to Charing Cross.'

‘Why was she there?'

He hesitates, torn between truth and lies. He clears his throat. ‘I can make an educated guess.'

He knows too, I think. All these years, he's known who my father is. Or, at the very least, suspected. ‘Whose house is this one near Dover?'

‘Mine. I bought it a few years ago. Lucia stays there sometimes.'

‘Give me the address, Hugo.'

‘She doesn't want to be disturbed. To see anyone.'

‘Too bad. She's going to see me.'

For a long minute he stares at me. Finally, reluctantly, he finds paper and pen, and writes it down. I'm out of the door almost before he's finished.

I have to wait for a train and, when it arrives, the journey is long and tedious, full of unexplained halts and delays. I reflect upon the chain of events which has led me to make this journey. If Fergus hadn't gone to visit Sean Costello, Sean would not have sent him the newspaper cutting which gave a clue to my father's identity, and then I would never have gone to the forecourt of Westminster Cathedral and seen the man for myself.

I hug against my chest the dress I bought for my mother when I was in Boston. It's by the same designer as the one I bought for myself, but hers is scarlet, the colour of the shoes I dream of her wearing as she runs, runs. My gypsy mother, in her crimson-beaded dress; is she running towards someone, or away?

By the time I reach the salt-fresh, seagull-screaming railway station where I'm to get out, the sun is casting a golden glow over tall chimneypots and slate roofs. There is a sense of summer drawing to a close, as the taxi drives through streets full of guest houses, past boarded-up whelk-stalls and ice-cream parlours, a Tudor castle, a lifeboat station.

Two miles out of town, I am dropped at the end of an unmade-up lane which runs past a row of seaside cottages set behind privet hedges and fronting a pebble beach which spreads for miles on either side. The shingle is like bones, bleached and scoured by uncountable tides. In the distance is a headland – white cliffs topped with bright green grass. A grey sea stretches to where a low hump of land squats on the horizon.

Seaview
is the name of Hugo's house. Pebbledash painted white. Brick chimneys at either end of the roof gables. A balcony along the first floor and casement windows, all wide open to catch the brisk evening air. It's almost dark as I walk to the front door between scrubby bushes. Clumps of coarse marram grass and pinky-purple valerian push up between the pebbles which make up the front garden. Beside the door is an unkempt bush of fuchsia.

Since there's no bell, I rap at the glass panes of the front door – deep, rich blue round the edges, a ruby-red central pane with an elaborate star cut into it – and after a while, my mother appears. She looks exhausted and, at the same time, tranquil. As though she has at last found peace. As though she has been dragging at a heavy weight and has finally let it go. At the sight of her, I am overwhelmed with emotion. I put my hands to my face. She is so familiar to me, so loved, yet still so unknown, though more known now than she ever has been. She opens the door and I stumble into the house. ‘Mother . . .'

‘Theodora,' she says. Her voice is soft.

‘Oh, Mother,' I say. ‘I've missed you so much.' I stare at her, pulling her into me, reassessing all the memories I've kept locked up for so long. ‘I tried to pretend it was your ghost,' I say. She won't know what I mean, of course. But she does.

‘It really was me.'

‘Keeping watch.'

‘Sometimes the need to look at you was too . . .' She doesn't finish the sentence.

I see, suddenly, a woman, a mother, not knowing how to erase the past or bridge the chasm which divides her from her daughter. ‘I guess I was pretty hostile,' I say. ‘And always so darn sorry for myself.'

‘You had good cause.'

We gaze at each other for a timeless fulfilling moment. ‘This is for you,' I say, handing her the dress in its protective cover. ‘It's a dress.'

‘A dress?' She takes my hand. ‘Come inside, Theodora.'

I follow her into the house and she gazes back at me over her shoulder. ‘Theodora. Such a lovely name. Given the circumstances, it was the only possible name I could give you.'

Inside, the sitting room has been knocked through so that it faces both to the sea and to the garden behind the house. A slate-floored kitchen ends in a circular conservatory where there are rattan chairs softened by plump cushions. Otherwise, the house is furnished like any other holiday home. Neutral, well-used sofas. A couple of armchairs. A bookcase along one wall crammed with paperbacks and board games. Tall sea-grasses have been pushed into a spaghetti jar. A basket of driftwood sits beside an unlit hearth; on the mantlepiece above it, a fading shabby-edged postcard of the Virgin of the Rocks. One of the icons of my childhood.

‘I'll be back in a moment,' my mother says.

I watch the way her dancer's calves flex as she walks, and the thinly frail set of her shoulders. My chest aches. Through the open windows, I can hear the endless suck and sigh of the sea, the push as the waves surge in, the grinding of shingle as they recede. Far away on the horizon are lights, a glow in the sky.

Then she is standing beside me again. ‘That's France,' she says. ‘It's so exciting to be here on the edge of England, looking across at another country.'

She reaches for a bottle of white wine standing on a teak tray, already open. There are two heavy crystal glasses beside it, a dish of macadamia nuts. It's very different from the way she used to be when we lived together.

‘You were expecting me,' I say.

‘Hugo rang to warn me you were on your way.' She pours me a glass and hands it to me. ‘It's an Australian Chardonnay. Your favourite.'

How does she know? ‘Your very good health,' I say formally, raising the glass to my mouth. Her face changes. I put the glass down on the counter, very carefully, as though it might shatter at the slightest knock. I want to take her into my arms. Behind her, I see a world closing in where she no longer exists and wonder if I can bear it. ‘How bad is it?' I say.

A shadow passes over her eyes as she decides whether to lie. ‘Not particularly good.' Her fingers flutter towards her breast and fall back. ‘But it's under control. If it happens, it won't be yet. Not for a long while.'

She's still trying to protect me, I think, but this time I know what from. My mind rejects the information but already I'm making plans. I'll take her back with me tomorrow, get Bob Lovage to start converting the downstairs rooms immediately. Or maybe wait a couple of weeks until the work is finished, and then bring her down. And I'll have to ring Fergus. There's definitely no way I can go to Mexico, not now that my mother needs me.

My mother needs me.

She puts her hand to her throat. ‘I think it's time we talked.' She too drinks her wine, sipping slowly, savouring it. ‘So you know what's at stake.'

‘I already know.' I walk over the slate tiles to stand at the window overlooking the sloping back garden. In the early-autumn fade of the light, the sky is darkening. I look out at bushes, flowerbeds, rocks.

‘The garden's nothing,' my mother says. ‘I'm not here often enough to get it into any real kind of order. And I know so little about . . .' She speaks quickly, as though she is embarrassed and I realize she wants my approval but at the same time is guarding against the possibility that I will find her wanting in this matter of growing a garden.

‘It looks great from here.' I can see my reflection in the window and then hers, as she comes to stand beside me. How alike we are. How very much I do not want her to be ill. She has changed into the black silk dress, which flows over her breasts and hips. The beaded red flowers curve around her slender waist. She looks beautiful, even more beautiful than I remembered. Very carefully, she puts her hand on my shoulder, light as a leaf, and I reach up to cover it with my own. Her little crabbed hand, already signalling mortal illness. We stand like that for a long time.

‘I'd better feed you,' my mother says. ‘You've come a long way.'

Our sentences are laden with double meaning. ‘Such a long way,' I agree. And it's true. I have come a long way from those days when all I would acknowledge was what she
didn't
do.

She sets white dishes on the table. ‘It's not much. There's soup in the fridge if you'd like.'

‘This is more than enough. I had lunch.'

‘With that writer?'

‘Fergus, yes.'

‘An uncommon man, I would say.' She eyes me sideways. ‘Very much your sort of person.'

‘A man who never stays in the same place for more than a few months is my sort of person?'

‘You love him, don't you?'

I think for a while about the answer. How do you express the totality of love without descending into cliché or sentimentality? How do you convey the completeness of two people perfectly, infinitely, attuned, or the burn and throb of desire which transcends time and distance and yet is only one of the links which bind you together? But she knows about that. She has loved, still loves. ‘Yes,' I say. ‘I love him.' Why say more?

‘Does he love you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then you'll work it out.' She puts a loaf on the table. A slab of creamy cheese. Cold sliced chicken. Tomatoes. Apples, yellow flushed with crimson. ‘Sit,' she says. She refills my glass, straightens the cutlery at my place, lights the candle in the centre of the table.

She is my mother again, the woman who used to sweep me against her, the woman I used to think about at five o'clock each evening, until resentment pushed the habit away. I remember Gemma on the plane to Boston, the certainty of her connection to the woman who gave birth to her.

When she has seated herself opposite me, I raise my glass. ‘Let's have another toast.'

‘To what?'

‘To us. To . . . love.' Looking at my mother, I appreciate her in a way that I have never done before. A child – a daughter – can never fully know her parent. This moment of recognition, the acceptance of fallibility, is perhaps as intimate as we shall ever be.

She smiles at me. ‘To love.' She lifts her glass and sips. Picks up her fork and looks down at the food in front of her. ‘I wanted you to be strong and certain,' she says. ‘I wanted you to be independent. I wanted you to be confident. You're all those things and I'm proud of us both for that.'

‘I know who my father is,' I say.

Her head goes back. The olive tones of her face fade to ivory.

‘This afternoon, in London . . .' Other scenes come back to me. Memories. Candles and incense. Gold-embroidered robes. A presence so beneficent that it embraced the world, drew people after it like Orpheus's lute.

‘Oh, God . . .' She covers her face with her hands.

‘When I saw his photo in the paper . . . You always said I had my paternal grandmother's eyes. I'd already begun to wonder whether my father might not be a priest of some kind. And then this afternoon, when he blessed me, I knew it was him. It had to be.'

She places both her hands flat on the table as though she is about to stand. She looks frightened. ‘You're jumping to conclusions.'

‘I looked into his face and it was like seeing my own reflection.' I am strong and certain. As she wants me to be.

‘No.'

‘I think yes,' I say. ‘It explains so many things. I can see why you didn't want to tell me.' I watch her absorb what I am saying. Very gradually the tension drains from her thin shoulders.

‘I might have done.' She sips thoughtfully at her wine. ‘Maybe eventually I
would
have done, if only for your safety's sake.'

‘I went to St Joseph's, in Vermont,' I say, and her head comes up again, rigid with alarm. ‘I spoke to Dom Francis.'

‘Oh my God. What did you say?'

‘That I was your daughter. That I suspected my father was one of his students.'

She is rising from her seat, hands fluttering with tension. ‘What have you done? What have you . . .?' She gazes wildly around. ‘All these years I've tried to protect you and now you say you . . . Oh God, what have you
done
?'

‘Luna, Mother: what is all this about?'

‘He'll kill you,' she says wildly. ‘He would stop at nothing, for John's sake. When he found out about . . . about John and me, he threatened me. He said I must never contact him or John again, that if I did, the consequences would be fatal. He was always there, somehow, in the background . . . I was so terrified, for your sake. And then I came face to face with him in Rome, and he must have realized that I was there because of John. It was Easter – you probably won't remember –'