Daughters (27 page)

‘Because I love you.’

Eve blinked. ‘I know you do. But …’ She retrieved the shoe from Lara. ‘But sometimes it’s as well to let things alone.’

‘Ah.’

Inserting the shoe into its tissue, Eve wrapped it up.

Lara searched for her courage. ‘Evie, don’t repeat my mistakes. Don’t get married without knowing each other properly.’

That girl in the overlong veil
.

Eve’s hand was arrested in the act of replacing the shoe box in the carrier bag. ‘Whoa. What are you trying to tell me? That
I
’m
making a mistake? Or that
you
made a mistake?’

‘I did make a mistake but –’

‘It isn’t the same.’ Eve’s lips tightened. ‘Don’t push yours on to me.’

‘Unfair, Eve.’

Eve dashed a hand across a cheek. ‘Why are you doing this, Mum? What are you trying to achieve? Put me off getting married? Don’t you like Andrew? If so, why didn’t you say so before and I could have kept him out of your way?
I
could have kept out of your way.’

Lara grabbed the bag containing the shoes from Eve, replaced it on the table and took both Eve’s hands in hers. The pressure that had been building in her released as she told Eve what she knew. ‘Listen to me, Eve. I found out something. Quite by mistake. I wasn’t looking. About a girl called Fern and Andrew.’

Red … white … The colours slapped into Eve’s cheeks. ‘That’s gossip. Gossip. Why repeat it to me?’

‘It wasn’t gossip, Eve. I saw them.’

‘What a thing to say to me.’ Cool and contemptuous.

‘It’s the truth.’

Eve’s nails dug into Lara’s palms. ‘And couldn’t you have minded your own business?’

Lara clung tightly to her. ‘As I told you, I love you. I’m your mother and I need to make sure that you’re all right.’

Eve looked down at their entwined hands. She said, in a cool, distant voice, ‘Take your hands off me, Lara.’

A lot later, as the evening sun slanted over the streets, long after a white, wordless Eve had packed up her stuff and left the house without saying goodbye, Lara let herself out into the scrubby, untended back garden.

She stretched out a hand. It was shaking.

However hollow her victory, it had been better to say something than nothing. Silence was conspiracy. That much she had learned in her work. Silence allowed children to be beaten, abused, neglected.

And deceived.

She knew, also … she
knew
 … that this was the beginning of the long farewell to her daughters. They were leaving. There was nothing that could be done. There was almost nothing to say for this was the way life went. In the end, as they moved inexorably on, away and out of sight, they would be hidden from her.

Her heart contracted with the pain and inevitability of it.

Eve’s emails increased in urgency by the week. Marquee … flooring … china … glassware … umbrellas.

Umbrellas? ‘For the guests between the church and the garden if it should be raining,’ explained Eve, patiently.

Lara marvelled at the depth and reach of her capacity to plan.

Bill sent Lara an email detailing the wedding costs to which she had agreed. She totted them up, entered the total into her on-line spreadsheet and swallowed. He had added, in a PS:

The bees are at full throttle, and as I write, I’m spying on a thrush banging a snail on a stone and the dragonflies are swarming by stream. Did you know dragonflies have almost 360° vision?

She wrote back to agree to it all.

How well she and Bill communicated by email – clearly their new vocabulary.

Maudie was deep in her exams. There were many phone calls, once a bout of tears, then a hysterically cheerful thirty-second or so report on a history paper. In yet another phone call, Lucy, Bill’s sister, reported that all seemed to be well. ‘It’s extraordinary, Lara. Maudie’s up
early, is back at the house on time, and does masses of revision.’

Sleepwise, exams were always a tough period – for Lara. Forget the girls.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she told Robin, when they met at the practice. ‘After three daughters, it doesn’t get easier.’

Robin made a noncommittal answer, which was unlike him.

‘You OK?’ she asked. He admitted to bad nights too.

She laid a hand on his arm, and looked into his face. ‘I see nightmares. You’re coming for a walk.’

The consulting rooms had been dim, as usual, and, in the daylight outside, their eyes watered.

‘Have I got mascara running down my cheeks?’

‘No. Even if you had, it wouldn’t matter.’

She hid behind her sunglasses and they strolled over to the pond, which was shared by virulently green algae and ducks.

Robin pointed to a mother duck leading a flotilla of young into the rushes growing at the water’s edge. ‘That’s you.’

She laughed, and they walked on. Eventually, she asked, ‘Are you angry about something, Robin?’

People were pushing past them, and the sun made Lara sneeze. They regarded each other. Minus sunglasses, Robin narrowed his eyes against the glare and slipped his good arm around her shoulders. ‘Survivor’s guilt,’ he said lightly. ‘Think nothing of it.’

His arm was warm and heavy. Without thinking, she reached up and brushed his mouth with hers.

‘Does that come under the heading of “soldiers’ comforts”?’

‘It might.’

‘Are you allowed just one ration?’

She stared up at him, and surrendered to the huge surprise of a body, so long inactive in this respect, suddenly making demands. ‘Only if your name is Oliver Twist.’

This time he kissed her and made a more thorough job of it than Lara had. Her surprise gave way to the unmistakable, and very straightforward, feelings of desire, which she had feared were extinct. They weren’t.

‘Lara …’

‘Yes.’

‘Come to Damascus.’ He licked his finger and held it up to the breeze. ‘I postponed my trip and I’m thinking of going now. It’s not too late to change your mind. Perhaps it’s not the best time because it’ll be hot, but it is changing, and who knows what may happen?’ He paused. ‘Seize the day, Lara?’

As agreed, Robin was waiting by the vodka bar in the terminal. It was eight thirty in the morning and, seeing was believing, it was already doing a roaring trade. He was wearing a shirt, trousers that aped combats, and a pair of serviceable lace-up boots. A small rucksack waited at his feet.

He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘Vodka?’

‘
No.
’ It was a second or two before she clocked the tease.

‘You look very nice,’ he said.

‘So do you.’

There was a short, awkward pause. Lara pretended to adjust the strap of her shoulder bag. A couple of maps stuck out of the back pocket of his trousers and the cuff of his left sleeve had been buttoned down while the right was rolled up to reveal a muscular arm.

He hitched a strap of the rucksack over one shoulder. ‘You can get drunk on the plane if you want. There probably won’t be too much alcohol where we’re going.’

The departures board indicated that the flight to Damascus would board shortly. ‘Shall we go?’

‘Sure.’ But he stayed put. ‘Just to warn you, I can’t help too much with the carrying of stuff.’ He gestured to her hand luggage.

‘I didn’t expect it. I know the arm’s bad.’

‘OK, sorted.’

On board, she peered out of the window as the luggage trains plied to and fro. ‘You have to go, Mum,’ Maudie had advised, in an adult way, ‘and no second thoughts.’ She added the rider that took Lara’s breath temporarily away: ‘Time you had a love affair.’

‘It’s not a love affair, Maudie.’

‘Whatever, Mum.’

Jasmine had been wistful. ‘Enjoy.’

Eve had not responded to the messages Lara had left for her.

Bill sprang a surprise. He rang up. ‘Who’s this man you’re going off with?’

‘What sort of question is that?’

‘What it sounds like.’

‘Why are you interested in what I do? It’s Robin Brett, and I’ve known him a long time.’

‘You’ll be safe, then?’

‘Of course I’ll be
safe.
’

In the plane, she read the pages she had printed out from the Internet on Syrian flora and fauna – tamarisk, scrub oak, Aleppo pine.

‘OK?’ he asked.

‘OK.’

Other than that, they didn’t talk much. They read their papers, poked at the dismal airline meal and, after a while, Lara dozed.

You were born, grew up and expected life to run along a pattern. But it didn’t and it hadn’t. Here she was, on a plane at the start of a new route in her life … and she had not expected it at all. Fit the pattern to the material, her mother had said.

How?

She woke. A map unfolded in front of him, Robin was watching her. She pushed back her hair. ‘Hope I wasn’t talking in my sleep.’

‘No, only snoring.’

‘
You don’t mean it?
’ She was beginning to feel more relaxed with him – and less astonished that she had agreed to the trip.

‘No,’ he concurred, and grinned. He pointed to the map. ‘We’ll get a taxi to the hotel in the old city, settle in, then go up to Jebel Qassioun and look down on the city as we eat.’

On the way from the airport, he explained, ‘There’s
been a programme to restore the old quarter and the
riad
hotels. It might be a bit noisy, but I thought you’d like it best.’

Lara sat quietly in the taxi, which rattled. After a moment, she leaned over and wound the window down to allow in spicy scents and the smell of jasmine.

It was hot.

It was strange.

London grew faint. The notion of her family grew faint.

Hotel Talisman was in the north part of the Old City. It dated back three hundred or so years, had recently been refurbished and boasted three courtyards. In her room, she unpacked rapidly and haphazardly. It was important not to miss the tick of a single second. Every so often she gravitated to the balcony. There, she simply stood and looked. Already it had done her good.

Twenty minutes later, having changed into linen trousers and jacket, she waited by the fountain in a courtyard. Absorbed in the play of light on the water, she had almost forgotten she was waiting for Robin when he appeared.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to make some calls.’

She wondered what sort of calls, then decided they didn’t interest her. A bubble seemed to have taken residence in her chest. ‘No talking about our real lives, OK?’

He nodded. ‘Done.’ He shepherded her out into the street. ‘The obvious sights. The Street Called Straight. St Paul’s Gate. John the Baptist’s tomb. But, first, we have a date.’

To walk in the Old City was akin to sliding into a lazy
stream. If the noise was constant, nobody hurried. Leisurely. Leisurely. There were tourists aplenty. This was, she perceived, a greatly cosmopolitan city sheltering many races into which they merged easily.

Robin was tour guide and she was grateful.

They passed stalls selling leather goods, brass bowls, coloured glass and cheap Chinese watches. Lara learned on the spot not to make eye contact with any of the vendors and, whatever she might have thought, her skills at evading pests were rusty. In fact, nil. But she didn’t care. It was like … It was like the moment when, after so many years of parenting (i.e., bent double with bags and shopping), she stepped out unencumbered and stood upright.

Other worlds
. Content and excited, she hailed them silently.

‘There’s one of the gates.’ They had stopped at a street intersection. Robin pointed up to the north wall. ‘Bab Al-Faradis. It means “Paradise”. The Romans called it Mercury Gate. Damascus is much the same shape as the early Hellenic and Roman city. The names were simply adapted.’

‘To think …’ she placed her feet carefully on the stones ‘… I might be walking where a disciple or an emperor walked.’

‘To think, Lara.’

‘Don’t mock.’

‘I’m not.’

‘The footprint of the city is the same, you say.’

‘The very same.’

‘OK. We’re treading through the deep litter of history
and, in doing so, connecting with the past. But because nothing much has changed, it’s also the present.’

‘I think many people … how shall I put this? … have said something similar.’

‘Many?’ She was rueful. ‘Thank you for pointing it out.’

‘Actually, Lara, I’m not laughing at you.’ Small pause. ‘I promise. Making that connection is important.’

‘Then we’re in agreement.’

‘We are.’

He told her about the Crusaders, and the long interregnum before the Ottomans conquered, and the fight the Arabs had subsequently had on their hands to secure their traditional lands. At last he said, ‘I’m overdoing it, I think.’

‘I’m listening to every word, Robin.’

Actually, she was looking. His eyes shone with passion, and the impassioned were always fatally attractive.

‘I know I’m talking too much.’

She couldn’t resist. ‘Only a little.’

They halted at the entrance to a pedestrian underpass. ‘Down the steps,’ he ordered, ‘then up the escalator.’

‘And?’

‘Prepare to be amazed.’

The escalator rose. She stepped off it and stopped dead. Coming up behind her, Robin narrowly avoided a collision. ‘You’re right,’ she said, without turning her head. ‘I am amazed.’

Colour. Confusion. People. Noise.

They stepped under the high corrugated roof and into the souk. ‘Look up,’ instructed Robin. ‘The holes in the
roof are bullet holes from the 1925 uprising against the French mandate.’ Later, when they had pushed further into the interior, he added, ‘This is built on the original Roman axis and processional way, which led to the temple of Jupiter. But now it leads to the Great Umayyad Mosque.’

The scents of an unknown place – spicy, perfumed, interesting. ‘I love it.’

‘Normally I would counsel you not to buy anything on your first visit. But we haven’t that much time and we know what we want.’

She thought of home, the dim shops and draughty shopping arcades with their garnish of litter, the stained pavements and, to her surprise, felt a faint distaste. Here, she wanted to surrender to the noisy, good-tempered crowd. Here, she was dazzled by the stuffed eagles, water-sellers and scarves in rainbow colours, and wanted to be one of the many drifting this way and that.