The Secret by the Lake (9 page)

It was early, still. The sun was only just rising over the hill on the far side of the lake, the sky was a pearly dazzle of pink and yellow. At the top of the other side of the valley, farm buildings and trees stood silhouetted against the colours of the sky and frosted fields as white as if they’d been sprinkled with sugar. In the distance, the odd car and lorry wound their way up the shoulder of the hill, on the road to Bristol. The lake looked beautiful and mysterious that morning, like a film star glimpsed at a distance; like a memory of my mother, lips painted into a red cupid’s bow framing little white teeth that were smiling above a fox-collared coat, waving as she walked to the shop to buy her cigarettes. I wanted to stare at the lake but I kept losing sight of it as we walked, as it disappeared behind the walls of a house, or a copse of trees … and each time it came again into view it seemed to have changed colour and shape and texture, just like the memory of my mother.

I waited with Viviane until the bus came trundling around the corner, watched hot-eyed as she climbed on board and found a seat by the window, pale and brave and stoic. I touched my fingers to my lips and blew her a kiss as the bus bumped away, puffing out clouds of exhaust smoke.

When it was gone, I felt as lonely as I had ever felt in my life. I walked on up to the village, tied Bess outside the stores and went inside, in to the smell of ham and cheese and cabbage leaves. Our neighbour, Mrs Croucher, was already there. I knew she had been a great support to Julia before my arrival at the cottage. We’d exchanged pleasantries before, but this was the first time the two of us had talked at any length. The old woman was pleased to hear that Vivi was starting at Hailswood. She also asked about Julia.

‘I never see her out and about,’ she said quietly, so she wouldn’t be overheard. ‘I don’t believe she’s left that house since the day she arrived.’

‘She’s finding life very difficult without Alain.’

‘Of course she is, the poor dear.’

‘I wish I knew what to do,’ I said.

‘I’ll have a word with my husband. He’ll know. He attended to the bereaved during the war, you know.’

The old woman paused to cough into her handkerchief. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘I have a terrible weak chest.’ She leaned over, struggling to breathe, and then, when she had recovered, continued: ‘Oh yes, and afterwards we received so many letters telling us what an enormous help he had been.’

‘That would be awfully kind of you. Would your husband mind? He’s in the nursing home, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, dear, but he’s perfectly well. His body’s not what it was but there’s nothing wrong with his brain.’

Her face was soft and sad. ‘I don’t like to think of poor dear Julia suffering,’ she said. ‘Dr Croucher and I were never blessed with children but if we had been, we’d have wanted a child exactly like Julia. We couldn’t have loved her more if she’d been our own daughter.’

She paid the shopkeeper, took her change and began to pack her shopping trolley. When it was full, she tipped it on to its wheels and dragged it towards the door. ‘I’ll ask my husband about Julia,’ she called. ‘Remember, if there’s anything else we can do to help, you know where to find us.’

I thanked her and told her I would pull the trolley back to her cottage for her. As we left the shop, she asked, ‘Does Robert Aldridge know that Julia’s back?’

‘Daniel’s father? Yes, he knows.’

‘Ah,’ said Mrs Croucher. ‘Good. That’s all right then.’

VIVIANE FINISHED HER
first week at the new school and it had been a success. She slept in on Saturday and mooched around in the morning in her dressing gown with a sweater over it, her hair flattened where she had slept on it.

Meanwhile, the cold front passed over and behind it came the rain. The colours of the lake dulled and softened, they became brown, green, black. Fallen leaves were thick on the ground, like a new layer of time laying itself down, being absorbed back into the earth. I thought of all the leaves that had fallen in the lake. I imagined them floating down through the depths, lying on the bed, the old valley floor, hiding whatever was down there, covering it over, layer upon layer, year upon year.

I had not seen Daniel for a week or so. I called his number several times, but nobody ever answered and I did not have the courage to leave a message with his father. Once or twice I saw the jeep in the distance, and I waved to it, but it never came near to me. I thought perhaps I had misconstrued the warmth I’d felt between us, the desire that was in that first kiss we shared. I thought about it so often that the memory became distorted. I couldn’t be sure of anything.

I wanted to talk to Julia about Daniel, but I couldn’t. She had too much on her mind already and it would have seemed selfish to talk about my fledgling love when hers was already over.

Julia was not sleeping well. She said it was the pain in her hip that disturbed her but also she was anxious, worried about money. She talked about putting the cottage up for sale, there being nothing else available to sell. She had left everything of value in France. She blamed herself for not thinking ahead. In the aftermath of Alain’s death, she had been so consumed by emotion she had forgotten the practicalities of life, a carelessness that was completely understandable but, in her eyes, foolish because we still had to eat. She berated herself for not thinking to pack at least some jewellery, a few first-edition books, or pieces of antique silver. I almost ran up to my room to find the pendant, to show it to her. I was certain it had value and it would be an item we could sell, but something made me hold back. I didn’t feel ready to show it to Julia yet. I didn’t want to explain how I had come by it. Nor did I want to remind Julia of her sister, not when any mention of Caroline caused such obvious pain.

It would have been cruel. Julia was not herself. Before Alain’s death, she had been a happy, vivacious, attractive woman who cared about her appearance, who had an endless appetite for company and conversation and laughter.

Now she complained most days of a headache. She was gaunt and drawn; her face was ashy and lined and the dye was growing out of her hair so the roots were white around her skull, making her seem much older than she had looked before. I gave her aspirin and water and asked what else I could do to help her. She wanted nothing, she said, but solitude. She went outside most days, for a little fresh air, and watched as Vivi and I tidied the front garden as best we could. But she refused to walk to the village with me and only once or twice did she hobble down the lane to meet her daughter off the school bus.

The weather was inclement but still I took Viviane and Bess out so that Julia should have her peace. Vivi, at least, was more cheerful – full of stories about her new school.

There was no library in Blackwater, it was too small. There was no café either, nowhere we could go to meet people – and even if there had been, I wasn’t sure if I would have gone. I was beginning to notice a reservation amongst the villagers. I’d thought at first that their reticence, their unwillingness to chat, was because I was a newcomer to the area. But by this time my face must have become familiar yet still I found it difficult to strike up conversation. It was all right until I said that I worked for Julia – and then the shutters came down. Perhaps, I thought, people were made uncomfortable by knowing that Julia had so recently lost her husband. Perhaps they didn’t know what to say.

So Vivi and I kept our own counsel. We walked through the fields. The heavily-trafficked areas around the gates had been churned by the feet of cattle into pools of mud that clagged our boots. We stepped past or over the worst of it, Viviane trailing behind me, switching sticks. We walked the path around the reservoir as far as we could go without trespassing on the land belonging to the nursing home. I kept an eye out for Daniel, hoping I might see him, but there was no sign.

One day, when Julia’s headache was so bad she felt she could not leave her bed, Vivi and I walked down to the reservoir. We leaned over the wall at the near end of the dam where the overflow splashed 10 feet down into a wide spillway, a solid stone canal the width of a main road, and was carried away rushing and tumbling and foaming, fierce and angry.

‘Where does the water go?’ Viviane asked.

I held tightly to the back of her coat. ‘I suppose it must end up in the sea.’

‘But how does it get there?’

‘Through tunnels and underground pipes.’

‘What would happen to you if you fell in? Would you be able to swim to the sea?’

‘Oh Vivi, I don’t know! You’d be washed into the tunnels and you’d drown, I suppose. Don’t let’s talk about it.’

Vivi leaned further over the wall, so far that the soles of her wellington boots were no longer touching the ground. I held even more tightly to her coat.

‘What shall we talk about then?’ she shouted down into the water below.

‘I’ll tell you a story.’

‘Not another pigeon one.’

‘There are pigeons involved.’

‘I bet I know it already.’

‘You probably do.’

When she had jumped back down, I told her about the girl who lived in a house in Sheffield with her mother who smelled like toffee and her father who smelled of pigeons and her grandmother who smelled of vinegar. And how the girl was blissfully happy until one day her mother went to the shops to buy cigarettes and never came back.

‘Was the mother dead?’ Vivi asked.

‘No.’

‘Why didn’t she come back?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘That’s sad.’

‘But there’s a happy ending. Because when the girl grew up, she became a nanny and she went to live with the most perfect family
ever.
’

‘Did they live in France?’

‘Yes, they did.’

‘Were they called the Laurents?’

‘Yes!’

‘And did they have the best and most beautiful daughter in the whole wide world?’

‘That’s uncanny! How did you guess?’

‘I’m just a genius,’ said Viviane.

‘You certainly are.’

Vivi grinned. She put her hand into mine.

Back at the cottage, Julia was still in bed, in the dark, so tired she could barely open her eyes. There was a sour smell to the room. I sat beside her and tried to encourage her to drink some tea but she was too lethargic even for that. I felt the first stirrings of panic. Julia had had nothing but aspirin all day. I called the doctor, who arrived in due course. He was young, no older than me, and he smelled clean, of carbolic soap and hair oil. He went upstairs, spoke to Julia for a while and then he came back down and wrote a prescription.

‘Sleeping tablets,’ he said. ‘These are stronger than the ones she already has, so they should help her.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘You must be sure she doesn’t take them on an empty stomach.’

‘But she’s hardly eating anything at the moment.’

‘Can’t you tempt her with some of her favourite foods?’

Peaches from the tree trained up the wall of Les Aubépines? Fresh bread from the boulangerie in the village? The garlicky cold cuts she preferred from the Paris charcuterie, the little sugared pastries, the apricots, the unsalted butter so yellow and fresh, the lemons, the sparkling rosé wine, the cheese that smelled like drains but tasted like heaven? How could I tempt her with what little I could afford to buy from the village stores?

‘I’ll do my best,’ I said.

The doctor took his coat from the stand by the front door and put it on. He looked around him and I swear I saw him shudder.

‘It’s dreadfully cold in this house,’ he said. ‘Perhaps Mrs Laurent would feel more inclined to get up if you made the place a little more cheerful.’

I bit my tongue. I wanted to reply sarcastically that such a thought had never occurred to me but I held back. It didn’t do to be rude to doctors.

He left and eventually Julia did dress and come downstairs, very slowly, sideways, holding on to the banister. But I had to go and fill the prescription because she would not leave the cottage. All she wanted to do was sit rocking in her chair in the back room, remembering Alain. His sweater was always on her lap or nearby. Sometimes she held it to her face, as if she could inhale the essence of her lost husband from the wool.

JULIA REMAINED IN
this lethargic state for a few days so I was relieved when I came into the cottage one morning the following week after taking Vivi to the bus stop and heard her moving about in the back room.

‘Hello!’ I called. As I put my bag down by the front door, I noticed the thin layer of dust that lay on the banister, even though I’d polished it the day before. The dust depressed me. It felt sometimes as if the cottage hated me, as if it was deliberately, truculently, opposing all my efforts to civilize it and make it more homely.

I went to find Julia.

She was silhouetted in the light from the window behind but she turned to face me.

‘You’ll think I’m losing my mind, Amy,’ she said.

I laughed. ‘Of course I won’t.’

‘But you will.’ Julia looked about her. She fingered the crucifix around her neck. Then she said: ‘I know this sounds ridiculous, I know it’s crazy, but after you left this morning I came down and I was sitting in my chair, thinking about Alain, and I … oh! I heard my sister Caroline’s voice. I heard it clear as a bell.’

I crossed the room and I took hold of her hand, and stroked it.

‘Julia, darling, you know that can’t be right. You’re exhausted and you’re enervated and …’

‘There was a name she used to call me, Goody Two Shoes. I had completely forgotten about it. It’s been years and years since I’ve heard anyone use that term, but this morning I heard it again.’

I lifted Julia’s hand close to my cheek. ‘Julia … if Caroline
was
here, if she had the chance to talk to you, don’t you think she would have said something more significant? Out of all the thousands of words she could have used, why those ones?’

‘To let me know it was her. Because it could only be her. Because nobody else ever called me Goody Two Shoes ever, in all my life, only her.’