The Rain Before it Falls (20 page)

We took the train to Shrewsbury the next day, Christmas Eve, and it was my father who picked us up from the station and drove us over to Warden Farm. The sky was silver-grey. A pale late-afternoon sun washed the meadows and hedgerows in winter light. In London there had been dustings of snow. Here it lay thick and deep: unbroken swathes of smooth, white velvet. I had not travelled these roads for ten years or more. They seemed utterly familiar; and at the same time, utterly strange and otherworldly. I could not reconcile these two feelings. I can remember this sensation – this thought – very clearly. The realization that sometimes, it is possible – even necessary – to entertain contradictory ideas; to accept the truth of two things that flatly contradict each other. I was only just beginning to understand this: only just beginning to acknowledge that this is one of the fundamental conditions of our existence. How old was I? I was thirty-three. So, yes: you could say that I was just starting to grow up.

As we came close to the farmhouse, I asked my father to take the longer way round, through the village, so that we approached it from the south. This way, we could stop about half a mile from the house and have a good view of it through the elder trees by the side of the road. So this is what we did. And there it stood, just as I remembered it: ancient, commanding, ivy-clad; rooted in the soil, and seeming to belong so organically to the surrounding landscape that it was easier to believe it had grown from some seed scattered two centuries ago, than that it had ever been designed or constructed. Today its roofs were snow-capped, as were the tops of the trees that surrounded it. The fields that lay before it were ploughed, now, and carpeted in snow that rose and fell in furrows of pure whiteness, like waves on an Arctic ocean.

We drove on, and entered the farmyard through the back gate. Hearing my father’s car crunch its way across the ice-covered yard, Ivy came running to the back door to greet us. I was reminded, powerfully reminded, of my first arrival there, more than a quarter of a century ago. Once again I felt myself enfolded in her smoky, doggy embrace, and heard her stretch out the words, ‘Hallo, my dear,’ to an unprecedented length. Then she saw Thea, and gasped. She put a hand on her shoulder, keeping her at a distance, and looked her up and down, delight and amazement on her face. ‘Is that my granddaughter?’ she asked, disbelievingly, then seized her with incredible violence (Thea looked briefly stunned and also, if truth be told, ever so slightly bruised) and clasped her in a vicelike embrace. While she found herself being clutched in this way, Thea’s face was towards me: I looked at her, searching, again, for signs of emotion – joy, affection, discomfort,
any
kind
of feeling,
in short – but I could see nothing. There was no light in her eyes, nothing behind them, no spirit animating her at all.

Deadness.

At least in this photograph there is some expression on her face, even if she just seems to be cross that she has been made to wear a party hat. These hats had come out of Christmas crackers, the remains of which can be seen here lying strewn across the kitchen table. The debris of the meal is visible, too, or some of it: I can see traces of ham and cold turkey and celery, and the discarded jackets of baked potatoes. Aunt Ivy has not changed, noticeably, since the last time we saw her in a photograph (1948, at your grandmother’s wedding, wasn’t it?). Uncle Owen, on the other hand, seems to have doubled in size. He is holding the half-chewed leg of a turkey in his right hand, and his lips are purple – which means, I think, not that he is about to have some sort of seizure, but that he’s been eating beetroot. David and Gill seem to be lost in some conversation of their own – not surprising, I suppose – and David’s hat (a red one) has slid down over his eyes: it is far too big for him. My mother, I have to say, looks a little remote and preoccupied. Was this the Christmas when she’d just been doing her jury service? They gave her a rather grisly and distressing case to deal with, I seem to remember. But I honestly couldn’t say whether that was this year, or another year altogether.

No doubt we played charades at some point – that was a long-standing family tradition, though a very tedious one, in my opinion – but my next clear memory of the evening comes much later. Some time between eleven-thirty and eleven-forty-five, everybody left for the parish church, to attend midnight communion. Even David and Gill, despite being so young – I recall that quite vividly. Aunt Ivy was due to read one of the lessons: a regular duty, on her part. She was much in demand for this purpose because even in ordinary conversation her voice could be heard as far as the Wrekin. The only people who didn’t go were myself and Thea.

I have been an atheist all my life – since the age of about ten or eleven, at any rate. There was no question of my attending the service, but as for Thea, I had no idea whether she wanted to go or not. When the time came for everyone to leave, there was a confusion of boots and coats being pulled on, doors opening and slamming, cars being driven off into the night. I said goodbye to my parents, to Sylvia and Thomas, to David and Gill, knowing that after the service they would be returning directly to their cottage, and I wouldn’t see them until tomorrow afternoon. When that was done, all fell silent, and I went back inside, snugly believing that I had Warden Farm to myself for an hour or so: an agreeable prospect, I must say. The house was overheated by now, and the air inside was heavy and close. I decided, first of all, to step outside for a few minutes’ fresh air on the front lawn, beneath the stars of that lovely, crystalline night sky.

As soon as I stepped through the front door, however, I realized that Thea, too, had decided to stay behind. She was standing beneath the big old oak tree, leaning against its trunk and smoking a cigarette. Her back was to me, and to the house, and she was staring across the fields. There had been a fresh snowfall in the last few minutes. It was all but over now, but still a few flakes spiralled down from the branches of the tree, and rested a moment on her dark green overcoat before dissolving into nothingness. I approached her and when I touched her lightly on the shoulder, she turned sharply. She seemed to be alarmed that I had caught her smoking, but I told her that I didn’t mind. She offered me a cigarette, but it was many years since I had given up smoking, and I had no wish to start again.

Up until this moment, Thea and I had had no real opportunity for conversation. The train to Shrewsbury had been busy, and a compartment full of complete strangers was hardly the right audience for the kind of confidences I was anticipating. Since then, we had hardly once been left alone: the Christmas festivities had begun soon after our arrival at the farmhouse. Tonight, I would be sleeping in my old room, in my old bed beneath the eaves, and Thea would be sleeping next to me, in the bed where her mother used to sleep. How strange that would feel! What unexpected patterns were beginning to emerge; what curious circles of experience were being described. Certainly, it would be easy enough to talk once we were in bed, but I could not bring myself to wait that long. Circumstance had kept me at a distance from Thea all day, and I was hungry for closeness.

I began by asking if she missed her family. This drew an immediate, short response from her – something between an exclamation and a laugh – after which, her face resumed its former blankness. ‘Not really,’ was all she would say. ‘Anyway,’ she added, ‘it has to be better than last Christmas’ – at which point she described to me how, the previous year, her mother and Charles had had a furious row on Christmas morning, following which Beatrix left the house – still wearing her dressing gown and pyjamas – drove off down the street and was not seen again for three days. ‘The worst of it was,’ Thea told me, ‘Charles wouldn’t let any of us open our presents until she came back, for fear of offending her. So they just sat there, under the tree.
Agony
for Alice and Joseph.’ ‘And for you,’ I said, taking her by the arm.

We walked on, across the lawn, crunching fresh footprints into the virgin snow. Light spilled out of the house, from the windows of the billiard room and the two sitting rooms: golden, cheerful Christmas light. As we moved away from the house, down towards the sunken lawn and the ha-ha, this light faded, and we were left only with the silvery glow of the moon – barely in its first quarter – amplified and reflected by the white mirror of glittering snow. All was quiet, deathly quiet. I was reminded, once again, of what a magical and solemn place this was.

‘Poor Beatrix…’ I began, but Thea interrupted me scornfully. ‘Poor
Beatrix?’
she said. ‘What about us? What about the people who have to live with her?’ I replied, gently enough, that Beatrix probably still suffered a good deal of pain and discomfort as a result of her accident. To which Thea answered: ‘And do you think that justifies the things she says to me? Telling me all the time how useless and stupid and ugly I am, how she wishes I’d never even been born? Calling me every name under the sun? Accusing me of being a lesbian?’ I assumed that she was referring to the episode at the seaside, a few years ago, but seemingly this was not the only time that Thea’s mother had made this wild allegation. ‘She saw me once,’ she said, her voice low, bitter, thick with held-back tears, ‘walking with my friend Monica. We were walking down the street, back from school – arm in arm. She said it then, as well. She called us a pair of dykes. After that, she wouldn’t allow Monica to come round to our house. My best friend. I was
fifteen,
for God’s sake. I was only fifteen.’ I didn’t know what to say to this. What
could
I say? I must have murmured some well-worn, meaningless words of consolation. They seemed to have no impact at all on the stiff carapace of resentment Thea had wrapped around herself. ‘The worst thing,’ she continued, ‘is having to listen to everyone
else
– everyone she knows – telling us what a wonderful person she is, and how lucky we are to have her as our mother.’ I asked who she meant by ‘everyone else’, and Thea mentioned her mother’s work colleagues. It was news to me that she worked at all. Apparently she had taken a job at the local hospital: first as a volunteer, then in some paid managerial capacity. She was immensely popular with the staff, according to Thea.

I took her arm again and squeezed it tightly. Another banal, inadequate gesture, which failed to elicit any response. I looked at the moonlit, snow-covered garden all around us, watched over tirelessly by the secretive house, so inscrutable, so full of memories, and I thought for the hundredth time what a strange, contradictory person Beatrix was. I wondered if it would help Thea in any way – not to forgive her mother, but at least to understand her, to learn something of who she was, where she came from – if I were to explain how we had met, Beatrix and I, how the story of our friendship began. (Much the same impulse, I suppose, as the one willing me to talk on and on into this microphone.) Perhaps if words – phrases – gestures – were not enough, then
narrative
was what Thea needed: perhaps the narrative of that night, that night twenty-five years ago when Beatrix led me such a merry, circular dance, might help to unpick the tangles of her mother’s character? Might it even help me to do the same thing? – since, even after all this time, I was really no closer to understanding Beatrix than Thea herself was. I thought it an endeavour worth pursuing; so I began by asking, tentatively: ‘Does your mother ever talk about this house? Did she ever tell you how we met, during the war, and how we became so close?’ I had it in mind to lead Thea towards the edge of the garden and to find, if possible – even in this darkness – the hidden path that led towards the clearing and the caravan. But she forestalled me, completely and quite unexpectedly, by saying: ‘Mother never talks about you.’

I must have looked wounded, and my silence (which lasted I don’t know how long) must have impressed her; for she then repeated the word ‘Never’; and looked at me in something like – could it be
triumph
? – before dropping her cigarette and grinding it, fizzing and hissing, into the snow with a twist of her foot.

Then she turned and walked back towards the house. Leaving me to stand alone in the garden – abashed, even humiliated by what she had told me – until the cold drove me, too, back indoors.

On Christmas afternoon, while most of the family were sleeping off the effects of yet more turkey and wine, I did make my way to the secret path again. Over the years it had become densely overgrown – I had to force my way through a brittle chaos of unyielding branches, pockets of snow falling around me as I went – but in the end I reached what had once been the clearing, and the caravan was still there, slightly to my surprise. The door was locked, and the windows were by now too dirty to see through, even after I had brushed the snow away with my gloved hand; but even the very outline of it, that peculiar teardrop shape, summoned up a host of uneasy memories. After a few minutes I turned, shaking a little, and pushed my way back through the trees. Afterwards, when I told Uncle Owen where I had been, he could hardly believe it; he’d thought that the caravan was long gone; he had truly forgotten its existence. Together, we spent a good while searching for the key, but it was nowhere to be found. He even volunteered to force the door open for me, or break a window; but I turned down these offers, chivalrous though they were. It seemed right to me, entirely right, that there could be no going back inside.

I’m not sure that I can put a very exact date on this one. What are we up to now – is it number sixteen? Five more to go, then. Thank goodness! I am growing tired of this story, and you must be exhausted, listening to me chatter on for hours on end. Can you bear with me for just a little longer, Imogen? It will be over now, all over, very soon. A relief all round, I am sure.

As I said, the precise date of this one escapes me. Late in the 1960s, I would think, or early in the 1970s. I am going by the hairstyles, as much as anything else. Joseph must be about fifteen in this picture, and his hair is almost down to his shoulders. The height of fashion at the time, I’m sure, although today it looks faintly ludicrous; like the collar on his shirt, which must be about four inches wide. It wasn’t just a teenage thing, either: Charles himself doesn’t look much better. What happened to everybody, at that time? How did we all suddenly lose our dress sense?