Paradise (6 page)

“What’ll you say?”

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Something. I’ll think of something.”

In the morning she tells her mother she is going to look for cowries.

Eleanor turns from her dressing-table mirror, eyelids heavy from the little white pills and rimmed with pink from crying. She looks at her daughter in the doorway. Nineteen years old, yet still lying like she did when she was nine. Keeping her skeletons, her secrets, buried inside. Eleanor wants so much to put her arms around her, to tell Het she knows where she’s going, and who with. That she understands. That she’s happy for her. But in her head she hears him. His measured words falling like fists, bruising her pale skin. That it cannot be allowed. That he will not be responsible for his actions if she condones it.

So instead she draws breath quickly, smiles, and says, “That’s nice, dear.”

THE HOUSE
is full of secrets.

Over the next two days, the rain drums endlessly against the windows, its rhythm only breaking for the gusts of wind that blow it out to the sea for a few seconds before it comes back around to the glass again. Mum works out how to conjure up heat from the ancient boiler while Finn and I unearth things: a recorder, a felt kitten, a jar of cowrie shells. Mum smiles at them, at our delight in them, says, “Oh, that’s from school . . . I made it . . . I collected them.” But I can see the flicker in the corner of her eyes, the tightening of her jawbone, wincing, as though someone were pinching her slowly, secretly behind her back. And I am scared that this is just the tip of it. That somewhere in this house lies that Pandora’s box, full of things that will make her start with the pain of remembering.

I find it in the attic. Finn has begged and begged to be allowed up there, to dig around in the dust and cobwebs. Mum says, “Not now. Later.” Repeats it like a mantra. Until in the end he gives in. But then, so does she.

My timing is textbook. Finn is watching television, some program that was forbidden at home. But not here, not on holiday. And Mum has lost something, an earring, is on all fours trying to find it in the thick green wool of the carpet. I say I’ll be careful, that I won’t touch anything that might break, that I’ll watch where I put my feet.

“Fine,” she says.

I shrug, not quite believing my luck, but not saying another word in case she realizes what she’s said, changes her mind.

The ladder slides down, attached to the loft floor by a pulley system so I can’t get trapped. There is electricity, too; a single bulb lights up the rafters. Wasps’ nests cling to the beams, their paper intricacy intact despite the owners’ long-since departure. But it is what lies beneath that draws out the gasp. I expected stacked boxes, the contents detailed in fat marker pen on the sides, shipping trunks, a rail of clothes. Even old furniture, a broken chair or a long-defunct cot. But instead there is a cavernous space, echoing with silence, and, under the spotlight of the bulb, a single unmarked box.

I am sure then, in that second, that this was left for me, the rest of the junk cleared out months ago, in readiness for this moment.
This is it,
I think, a skeleton in a closet, or in cardboard. Maybe a real one. I knew my grandfather had been a doctor, a surgeon, after all. But when I open it, I see not the creamy yellow white of a rib cage, of a Yorick skull, but soft red leather, edged in gilt.
Not a skeleton,
I think. Not bones. Photographs.

I flip slowly through the stiff vellum pages, peeling back the tracing-paper sheets in between to reveal the faces of this strange family, my family. At the table at Christmas, party crackers held out in their hands, Will’s pointed like a gun at the lens. It is only the second picture I have seen of him; the first, a cracked, faded thing in a drawer at home, his name and a date in blue-black ink on the back. A school photograph, his teenage years belied by spots, his tie loosened just enough to know that the sneer isn’t an accident. A single memory, the others too painful, or too much to carry from here to London. Here he is a boy, seven or eight. Still playing cowboys and Indians, I guess. Or gangs, like Finn and his mates back in London, whooping around the street with lightsabers, until they see the real thing, or something like it.

There is one of Will and another boy, the same blond hair and ruddy cheeks as him, flushed with cold and flanking a snowman. It actually has a carrot for a nose, and a pipe. At home they wore bandanas, before the snow melted in the city fug and turned to dirty slush.

There is Mum. Aged five, aged fifteen, the same haunted look on her face. Not smiling; sullen.

And this must be Eleanor. Her mother. My grandmother. She is beautiful, like Mum. But different, too. Her hair straighter, swept back in a tight chignon, her face tighter. But her smile is as absent as Mum’s. I see the lips move in my head, form the words I heard on the answering machine: the clipped accent, the crisp consonants. And I wonder what she said to Mum. To make her scowl. To make her leave. Or was it him?

There are just four photographs of the man I take to be her father: my grandfather. Two of him stiffly holding newborns: Will and Het. Then one of him in a surgical coat shaking hands with a man in a suit, both looking into the lens. A local newspaper kind of shot. I wonder if he’d won an award. Or retired. Yet he looks young still. His hair dark, his face unlined, yet severe.

I turn to the last page, to a family shot, all of them posed together, lined up on the lawn. Eleanor smiling, her husband’s arm around her shoulder. Yet still she looks uncomfortable, strained. Next to her Will is making a face again, the collar of his rugby shirt turned up. Then Mum. Lost. Her face turned away, looking blankly at something in the distance, to the left of whoever was calling out “Say ‘Cheese.’”

I look at the date underneath. It was taken the summer before I was born. I look hard at Mum’s stomach, but I can’t see the trace of me yet. I wonder if she knows, if they know. If this is the last time they were all together. Before I came and put some unbreachable wall between them.

This isn’t ephemera,
I think. Not fleeting. Even though the bodies are gone, the bones buried or burned, the people are preserved. Captured in a single Kodak moment.

I close the album, its heavy binding snapping and sending motes of dust whirling in the beams of light. But then something bigger flutters down, a paper square, a Polaroid, twisting to the floor like a sycamore seed. It lands faceup, and I start. Because this isn’t a stranger. This is almost identical to a picture that was stuck to our fridge door with a magnet shaped like a cob of corn. Taken a second before, or a second after, its subject is the same. A fat-faced baby, mouth open, eyes tight shut, held in its mother’s arms, her face chopped off by white edging.

This is a picture of me.

“SMILE,” SAYS
Martha.

And Het does. Motherhood becomes her, she knows that. Even with the cracked sleep, the endless washing and drying and feeding, she shines somehow. The weight she felt before, the torpor, a ceaseless dragging at her chest, her legs, has gone. The midwife warned her about baby blues. Fussed about having family around to help, what with the father gone. Het shook her head. Said she didn’t need them. That she had everyone she needed. Martha, and now Billie.

Billie chooses that moment to yawn. Martha laughs as she clicks the Polaroid shutter, jolts the camera, and the image spat out is missing part of its subject.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Het.

She holds the photograph between two fingers, fanning it back and forth to dry the ink. “No one wants to see me anyway.”

Martha drops her head to one side, beseeching. “Come on, I’ll take another.”

Het groans. “She needs feeding.”

Martha ignores her, holds the camera up anyway. “Say ‘Cheese,’” she says.

Het rolls her eyes, but obliges.

This time the photo is complete.

But this isn’t the image that Het chooses. It is the cutoff photo that she will send. On the wide white strip underneath she writes her daughter’s name and weight. No birth date. Because that would mean birthday cards and a knot in her stomach every year. So she picks her words carefully. Just enough so that they know she is real. And she is beautiful.

Eleanor recognizes the handwriting on the envelope. Has seen it morph from meticulously copied
a’
s and fat, open
b’
s to the close, sloped script it is today. Her delicate fingers tremble as she slides the knife under the flap, pulls it sharply away. She hears the rip of paper, the clatter of the knife as she drops it onto the table, leaving a dent that cannot be polished out, that he will poke at later, worry over. But it is the
thud thud
of her heart that resonates loudest, and she is glad he is already out, worries the sound would betray her.

She slips her still-shaking fingers inside the brown paper and takes out a single glossy rectangle. A burst of color, of life, it hits her full square, knocks the breath out of her. Because now she knows she has lost not just a son and a daughter, but a granddaughter, too.

She doesn’t let him see it. Of course she can’t. Instead the Polaroid hides in her handbag,
thud-thudding
away, a still-beating thing, reminding her, begging to be let out every time she fumbles for change or reaches for a lipstick. Then, one morning, in a burst of belief, of faith, of wanting, she knows who she can show it to. He will understand; will smile and hold her, tell her she should be proud, that she is a beautiful baby. With a beautiful grandmother.

She can see him through the gallery window. Sitting behind the wide wooden desk, his forehead creased, mouth drawn into an
O
as he studies a print held at arm’s length. Eleanor touches her gloved hand to the handle of the door. But she cannot go in. Her belief has deserted her, drained away, and instead she scuttles back up the hill, ashamed, empty. The photograph she slips into the torn leather lining of an album, where he will never think to look, or want to. She knows this is the last of Het. That there will be no more pictures, no more envelopes. So she places the album in a box and carries it up to the attic.
It will be safe there,
she thinks. He won’t find it. Then she lets the trapdoor slam shut, and gradually, in weeks, months, the thud of her telltale heart fades until all she can hear is the tick-tocking of the clock, and the screaming silence of what her world has become.

I WATCH
Mum as she peels carrots at the sink. I haven’t said anything to her about the photo. Because I don’t know what words to use.

Cass used to say I wasn’t missing anything, not having a nan, seeing as hers only ever sent her kids’ stuff: kitten-covered cards and gift certificates. And anyway, I had Nonna. But now this is eating away at me. I wonder if he knew, too. My dad. If there were three photos, three fat-faced baby Billies. If he had one, still has it maybe, taped to a fridge or hidden away.

It’s raining again. An endless murky drizzle that seems to drip into your lungs, permeates your clothing until you can feel it trickle coldly down your skin. But I can’t breathe in here anymore. Need to get out. Need to start looking.