Daughters (5 page)

Clickety-clack.

Halfway down, flakes of snow drifted past the carriage window but didn’t settle.

Every so often, Eve consulted her phone.

‘Evie, darling, it’s the weekend.’

She raised those remarkable eyes from the screen and sent Lara a funny little smile. ‘Haven’t you noticed that work is twenty-four/seven these days?’

Well, yes, she had.

Andrew said, ‘Let me sleep, girls.’

So easy his manner.

From the station at Middleford, the taxi driver took them down a couple of lanes, and Andrew, who had woken up, said, ‘Will this work?’ The lane had narrowed. ‘It’s much easier access at my parents’ house. People will get stuck down here.’

Eve looked alarmed. ‘Don’t.’ She flashed him her special smile. ‘Trust me.’

‘I do. I do.’ Now his phone went round and round between his fingers.

Lara looked out of the window at the undulating Hampshire countryside, the frost painting it with a Dickensian sparkle. Settled into it was a traditional-looking village, which, as the result of new builds on its flanks, showed signs of sprawl. It had a grey-stone church, far too substantial for the size of the village, which probably indicated that it had been built on the profits of the medieval wool industry.

‘I’m so excited,’ said Eve.

Lara hunched forward. A wedding here would be picture postcard, no doubt of that. No city dirt and grime to soil the hem of a wedding dress – only soil and good, honest mud.

Andrew read her thoughts. ‘It’s certainly a good setting.’

‘Begin as you mean to go on.’ She smiled at him.

He did not return the smile but took her gloved hand, and patted it.

A house came into view
.

The taxi turned into a drive and sped towards it. A grey sky bore down on them as they passed trees whose bare branches permitted the sunlight to freckle the frozen earth at their roots. Lurking around them were clumps of
Helleborus orientalis
and, flaunting pale green flowers against lingering snow,
Helleborus argutifolius.

Winter’s sleep.

Deep and cold.

She gazed. Beginning in her feet, a shudder went through her. Fragments of the old dream nagged at her. The ragged memories of a childhood spent in a garden rushed to the surface. It was as if the swaddling in which she had bound the remnants of her early self had loosened.

Why? What?

Enfolded over this garden – indefinable, but there – was the suggestion of many lives, the whisper of now-vanished presences who had walked its boundaries, loved it, and had been intimate with its corners and the long lie of the land. Lara closed her eyes. She, the city spirit, found herself, to her astonishment, envying those presences. They had known
the smell of its wet earth after rain, the dry meadow scents of summer, and the rot of frost-nipped fruit in the autumn garden.

Will I ever be whole?

The question was posed by her inner voice. She and it were old acquaintances. Sensible, matter-of-fact, quiet, it had, over the years, asked many questions of Lara.

They drew up in front of the house.

Wrapped in a headscarf and a sheepskin coat, Sarah was waiting in her car parked in the drive. She had driven down the night before and had put herself up in the local B-and-B as the legal niceties were still in train. ‘Terrible,’ she said. ‘Why don’t people spend their money on proper beds instead of tassels on the curtains and knick-knacks in the bathroom?’ She turned to Andrew. ‘I know your parents would probably love the wedding at your home but Bill is so keen for his daughters to marry from … well, hopefully from Membury. Providing …’

There. The unvoiced ifs and buts.

Eve looked bewildered. ‘Didn’t Dad come with you?’

‘He’ll be here later.’ Sarah tucked her hand under Eve’s elbow. ‘Shall we go and have a look? We can’t go further into the house than the hall as the lawyers are being bossy, but I’ve got permission for us to go round the grounds. And I’ve discovered the perfect position for a marquee …’

I must pull my thoughts together, Lara told herself.

Ten seconds, and it was apparent to her that this house was the place where Eve would be married. It was beautiful and crumbling. Much of its charm lay in its decay – and in the fact that it had survived.

Ten seconds, and she
wanted
Eve to be married from here.

Clods of frozen earth clung to her shoes as she paced in Sarah’s wake and breathed in the smell of a garden suspended and its woody undertone of leaf decay.

‘Wonderful,
wonderful
,’ Eve said. ‘Mum … Look over here.’

Fretted and patchworked by old browns and new greens, with occasional splashes of winter colour – a clump of crocuses under a tree, the pale hopeful stars of the viburnum – the garden was patiently enduring its months of suffering in order to begin again.

She observed Eve’s deepening commitment to the idea, could almost see the plans taking shape in her head while Sarah paraded this way and that and flirted with Andrew.

‘And here,’ said Sarah, padding ahead, in boots with thick rubber soles, ‘is where I think the marquee should be.’ They filed around a hedge and emerged in an area containing a sunken lawn edged by neglected flowerbeds. A myrtle tree stood in one corner and, flanked by statuary, a flight of steps led to a second expanse of lawn below and a small wild area in the distance.

Eve emitted a small sound of joy. Even as a tiny girl, she had loved flowers. (And her cardboard houses.) ‘Look at this.’ She nipped at the leaves of the box hedge edging one of the beds. ‘Such colour. Even now. Velvet, yes?’ She held out her hands. ‘Smell, Mum. Divine, isn’t it? So fresh.’ Her gaze travelled around the sunken garden, a winter vista of cold-stiffened grey-greens and lichen-etched stone. She paced up and down. ‘Where’s my notebook? She stripped off her gloves, wrote something down, blew on her fingers. ‘Imagine it in summer.’ Off came her beret.
‘All scented and dreamy with warmth.’ She came to a halt by Andrew, her frozen breath spiralling up into the air. ‘What do you say?’

He took possession of the beret, ‘Come here,’ and settled it carefully back on her head. ‘Let’s discuss it later.’

‘No – now, please.’

‘Evie,
later
.’ He tucked in a rogue strand. ‘What about Lara?’

Eve appealed to her: ‘Do you approve? You
must
approve.’ The chill had whipped colour into her normally pale cheeks and her eyelashes into spikes. She looked young, pitiless and determined, and Lara’s heart turned over.

‘Evie, don’t bully Lara.’

Eve frowned. ‘I’m not.’

Andrew was checking the messages on his phone and Lara heard his sharp intake of breath. With heightened colour, he dropped it back into his overcoat pocket. ‘Eve,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking. Let’s not have a big, fussy wedding. I’m not sure I want it.’

‘That can’t be true,’ she said, with a sound of distress, and backed away. ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’

‘I should have done.’

The wind was freshening, buffeting their cheeks with its icy breath. Tactfully, Sarah moved away down the steps.

‘Andrew.
Please.
’

His phone pinged. Then again. Lara saw that Andrew really wanted to look at those messages. Body language. ‘Hey,’ he said, his gaze sliding past Eve. ‘I’ve got to take this call.’ He moved away.

Lara watched him hunch over his phone by the myrtle, talking softly, rapidly. Eve flipped over the pages in her notebook. ‘Evie,’ she began, ‘just one thing. We have to be careful about the expense of –’

‘Don’t worry,’ she cut in. ‘Dad said he’d got it under control. There’s money.’

‘Ah,’ she said. Dry as a bone. ‘There is, is there?’

‘Problem, Mum?’

She looked into the oh-so-familiar face. There was nothing so strong, so
unfightable
, as what flowed between her and her daughters. If asked, she couldn’t have described mother-love but she could have told you it felt deeper and wider than the universe. ‘No problem, Evie.’

Andrew ceased talking. He gestured at them. ‘Sorry.’ His gaze did not quite meet either woman’s. ‘We were discussing? Lara, how would you feel about the set-up? Would it be difficult for you? I know that you and Bill and Sarah … but …?’

‘That’s very sweet and thoughtful of you,’ she said. ‘I appreciate it, but I’ll be OK.’

‘So?’ Eve was impatient.

‘I give in.’ Andrew pulled up his collar against the wind and was, clearly, searching for his customary emollient self. ‘If it pleases you, Evie.’

‘It does! It does!’

‘OK.’ Andrew’s gaze drifted past the group to a middle point in the distance. Then he waved at Sarah, who took it as a signal to rejoin them.

Eve was glowing. ‘Let’s set a date, then. Sarah, when do you think you and Dad will be sufficiently settled in?’

‘Is there a pub anywhere?’ asked Andrew. ‘I could do with a drink.’

Sarah said, ‘There are still things to be sorted.’

Behind Eve’s back, Lara signalled to Sarah.
Say nothing.

‘But easily sorted?’ Eve’s breath puffed into the air. Little clouds of excitement.

Sarah looked at Lara. ‘I think so.’ She gave a cat-with-the-cream smile, and placed a chatelaine’s hand under Lara’s elbow. ‘We can decide details later.’

Having chosen the incline on which to position it, Robert Adam’s disciple had unleashed his master’s taste for Palladian classical proportion but had deployed it to build a house on a human scale. The sort of house, Lara thought, which had nooks and crannies and places where the sun poured in through the windows.

Sarah glanced at her watch. ‘Bill should be here any minute.’ Eager to show off her new domain, she shepherded her caravan of the hopeful towards the house. ‘Only a quick look.’

She was halfway up the steps when Lara called, ‘Sarah, do you mind? I think I’ll go back to the garden.’

Sarah swung round. The hand resting on the balustrade whitened.

‘Sorry,’ said Lara, and added silently, But I can’t quite … you do understand? ‘See you later.’

Once at a safe enough distance, she claimed a moment to steady herself. Breathe in the icy air. Her verdict on the house? Nice.
Stupid
. It was better than nice … much, much better. But it was Bill and Sarah’s, not hers, to love …

Leaving a trail of frozen breath, she crossed the lawn, passing a copper beech whose branches swept grandly to the ground.

Unhappiness, fleeting or settled, is a condition of being alive, her sensible inner voice informed her.
Nothing to be done
.

Hands dug into her pockets, she turned a thoughtful 360 degrees. The garden was brittle – that was the word – and she understood how it felt. Everything was huddled in on itself, packed down under leaf mould, dry husks and stiffened earth.

There was one exception. In a frost pocket created by the wall, which ran from the house to the drive, a shrub poked its branches through a drift of ice. I don’t care about the weather, it seemed to say. Balled yellow blooms were held aloft on naked branches, draping like twisted ribbons over its white ice-cradle. Drawing closer, she inhaled a light, delicate, joyous scent, which stopped her in her tracks.

Where next? By now she had reached a lawn that sloped down to the stream running through the bottom of the garden. Full-bellied with winter rain, it flowed sullenly past ice sheets as thin as gelatine leaves and over acid-green weed. The cold crept up through her feet, inching up her legs.

Nothing much moved: the frost held everything in its grip.

She couldn’t,
mustn’t
, love it here.

She sensed, rather than saw, Bill come up behind her.

‘Not with the others?’

‘As you see.’

‘I spotted you as I came up the drive.’ He added, ‘You look lost.’

She stuffed her hands into her pockets. ‘Sarah’s very sweet and wants me to like the house. And I do.’ Inside the pockets, her fingers balled into a fist. ‘I do.’ She paused. ‘Sarah’s very generous.’

‘She is.’ Bill squinted up to the terrace that ran along the house’s southern aspect. Seeking Sarah out.

He moved along the bank. ‘I’ll show you round.’

She didn’t like to mention that Sarah had already done so, but followed in his wake. He pointed up the bank to where it looped away and out of sight. ‘That’s the boundary.’

They reached a tiny landing stage by the stream, which, like the garden, was rotting and neglected. Once, children might have sat there and fished. She imagined the ripple of water, the flash of blue and silver scales, a child’s excitement.

Bill placed an experimental foot on it.

‘Careful.’

‘Don’t worry.’ He pressed into the wood and little puffs of rot rose. ‘It needs a lot of work.’

‘I’ve got the message,’ she said angrily.

‘And what message would that be?’

‘You need the money.’

He was the first to drop his gaze. ‘Sorry. That was clumsy.’ He piloted her away from the stream into a small paddock, scrubby and infested with thistles. ‘I’m planning a vegetable garden near the house, and here, bees and massive compost heaps.’

With one ear she listened to him. Plans, schedules,
cultivation techniques. ‘There’s so much to do, Lara.’ This was an aspect of Bill she had not suspected. Despite the years they had been apart, the gap in her knowledge was hurtful.

The other ear listened to her own breathing … soft, rapid breaths. And, then, the tap-tap sounds of the garden holding itself intact against the cold.

‘I didn’t know you had this side to you,’ she admitted at last.

Bill stopped talking. ‘No, you didn’t.’ He touched her arm with a finger. ‘There were lots of things we didn’t know about each other.’

‘No,’ he had said flatly, when she told him she wanted a second baby. ‘Maudie is enough.’

It hadn’t been easy having Maudie. The labour was long, Maudie the wrong way round (typical), and the delivery was nerve-shredding. None of that would have mattered – except that it had had an incalculable effect on Bill.

‘I couldn’t bear it,’ he had said, when he visited her the following day, ‘if what happened to Mary happened to you too.’ He didn’t add,
And it nearly did.
He didn’t have to. ‘I couldn’t bear it, Lara.’