The Tenth Gift
The Salt Road
The Sultan’s Wife
Pillars of Light
Court of Lions
First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Jane Johnson, 2020
The moral right of Jane Johnson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781789545166
ISBN (XTPB): 9781789545173
ISBN (E): 9781789545142
Cover design © Ami Smithson
Head of Zeus Ltd
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Welcome Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
Love deep as the sea as a rose must wither,
As the rose-red seaweed that mocks the rose.
Shall the dead take thought for the dead to love them?
What love was ever as deep as a grave?
They are loveless now as the grass above them
Or the wave.
All are at one now, roses and lovers,
Not known of the cliffs and the fields and the sea.
Not a breath of the time that has been hovers
In the air now soft with a summer to be.
From ‘A Forsaken Garden’
by Algernon Charles Swinburne
I TAKE THE PHONE AWAY FROM MY EAR, END THE CALL and stand looking at the impression of oil and powder left on its blank screen, traces of make-up I so rarely wear. I wipe the mark away with my thumb and transfer the phone to my jacket pocket. It is hard to take in the words that have just oozed into my ear.
There was something on the scan…
Across the street two women are still engaged in the noisy altercation that started just as my phone rang. The woman in the red car drove into a parking space that the woman in the muddy SUV was preparing to reverse into. The traffic is halted on either side of them: people have stopped on the pavement to watch the argument. Some are taking sides. Heated words are exchanged, photos taken. A moment ago I had been diverted by this intense little drama; now, it seems absurd and I experience the urge to run across the road and tell them that life is too short to get angry over something so trivial. But I don’t. I am feeling dislocated from the world. Words from the phone call buzz in my brain like angry bees, then spiral away again, trailing bitterness and regret, tinged with fear.
It may not be anything, but we should scan you again, just to be sure.
I find myself thinking, ‘I must tell Mum,’ and then remember why I am here. I cannot tell Mum anything ever again, not in this life.
A commuter sounds two angry blasts of their horn, summoning me back, and I watch the muddy-SUV woman concede defeat and drive off with a screech of tyres. The tide of humanity resumes, flowing around me as I stand on the corner, a still point, a pebble in a stream. Then the horn sounds again and someone calls my name.
‘Becky? Come on, we’re going to be late. Honestly, women drivers, shouldn’t be on the road. I’ve been sitting in this sodding traffic for ten minutes!’
It is my brother, James, in his shiny Lexus, and beside him in the passenger seat his wife, Evie. My heart sinks. At the best of times Evie makes me feel like a bag lady, with her exquisitely put-together look and superior manner. Feeling self-conscious in my ill-fitting black skirt, which I have not worn in years, I scramble into the back seat and give them a tight smile, keeping my terrors behind my teeth. My brother and his wife feel like members of a different species to me.
Funerals are uncomfortable occasions, no matter what your connection to the deceased. In unfamiliar surroundings, in unfamiliar clothes, you bid farewell to someone who can no longer see or hear you, and are not sure whether to sit or stand, almost more stressed by the rituals than by the loss itself. There is always something to knock you out of the moment, something out of place: the brisk compassion of a celebrant who never even met your loved one; a child’s cry erupting suddenly into silent contemplation; a bum note sung during the parting hymn. And when this happens you stand alone in your own head, your connection to the departed suddenly stretched so thin it is like a span of spider silk trembling in the air, and you don’t know who you are. And then, just as abruptly, grief at the transience of life almost bowls you over and you find your hands are trembling so much that the words on the hymn sheet have become unreadable. And then you catch yourself wondering if you are honestly grieving for your mother, or whether a selfish grain or two of self-pity may not have crept in and salted the occasion with terror about your own mortality.
At the end of the service I look around. Apart from James and Evie, I recognize only a couple of Mum’s friends from the Ramblers’ Association – one chap accompanied by a grey-haired woman in a dark red hat with a net veil that has probably not been out of its box since a wedding decades ago – and a family of four: Rosa, a blonde Lithuanian woman who used to come in to help Mum with the housework, her husband and their two children. Rosa and I hug briefly afterwards outside the crematorium in the bright daylight.
‘I’m so sorry about your mother. The news came as a terrible surprise.’ She considers me. ‘You look so pale! How are you, Becky?’ she asks, and I give the usual reply. She peers over my shoulder. ‘And where’s your handsome man?’
That’s a good question. I experience a physical yearning for Eddie that rushes through me like fire. I mumble something about unfortunate timing and quickly change the subject, brightening my tone. ‘How about you and Lukas, are you well? You look well! And your girls have grown so much!’
‘Anna is just finishing Key Stage 2. It’s a good time for us to move.’
‘You’re moving? Where are you going?’
She looks surprised, as if the answer is obvious. ‘Back to Lithuania. To be honest, we don’t really feel welcome here any more. Besides, Lukas says there are good jobs to be had with the energy company, so it makes sense for us to go.’ She puts her hand on my arm. ‘You know, I would have come in and helped Jenny more if I’d known she was ill. Not for money, you understand,’ she adds quickly. ‘But she didn’t tell me she was sick.’
‘She didn’t tell any of us,’ I say. Her death feels unreal. Why hadn’t I paid more attention during our twice-weekly calls? I must have missed so many little clues. Had there been some small hesitation when I asked how she was? The answer was always, ‘Fine, dear. But more importantly, how are you?’ and I hadn’t recognized this as deflection. Mum had been putting others before herself all her life. I didn’t even know she was in hospital when we last spoke: my mother used the same mobile phone no matter where she was.
‘Why didn’t she tell us she was so ill?’ I had asked my brother when he called to break the terrible news.
An uncomfortable pause. ‘She told me,’ he said. ‘But only recently. She said there was nothing that could be done, and you already had enough on your plate. She knew I wouldn’t fuss and would just get on with doing what she wanted.’
The word ‘fuss’ cut deep. I had always unloaded my problems on Mum, because if you can’t tell your mother your deepest fears and your daily disasters, then who can you tell? Every time something awful happened I would think, Well, at least it’ll give me something to talk about with Mum, and would gather amusing or gruesome details with which to embroider the telling.
The realization was a sort of second bereavement, a mourning for the relationship we shared, as well as for the mother I lost. It is confirmation of how weak Mum must have thought me, and now I will never have the opportunity to change her perception.
*
The next day James, Evie and I make our way to Mum’s flat, which lies at the top of an unprepossessing building on the edge of Warwick. James turns the spare key in the lock and pushes the door, but it won’t budge more than a few inches. I drop to my knees on the dusty doorstep and reach around the frame to find that the obstruction is a pile of unopened post. I claw it away till the door opens a bit wider and James steps inside. I am about to get up to follow him, but Evie presses a hand down on my shoulder and steps over me, placing the spiked heels of her crocodile-skin boots carefully into the islands of floorboard revealed between the ocean of envelopes and flyers. ‘Good grief,’ she says as she passes. ‘Anyone would think she’d been dead for years.’
I stare at her retreating back in disbelief.
She stalks down the hallway and stares in passing at the framed pictures on the wall, dismissing them as worthless. Yes, Evie, they’re barely worth the cost of the canvas they’re daubed on: I painted them.
I gather the post into a pile, imagining Mum lying in her hospital bed with the stupid, oppressive reminders of ordinary life spilling through the letter box day after day. Sixty-four years old, gone without warning; of course the bills and letters and junk mail have kept on coming – no one expected this sudden departure. Again, the enormity of her passing hits me. I will never be able to call her on a whim, to ask if she’s seen the size of the moon tonight, or to check on her recipe for scones; never share another Christmas lunch with her, never have to sneakily return ill-fitting birthday presents to Marks & Spencer. Never be able to hear her say, Don’t worry, darling, I’m sure it’s nothing. I sniff back tears.
James reappears with a roll of black bin bags, a long length of which he tears off and passes to me. ‘Here you go. Evie, bless her, is going through Mum’s clothes.’
I feel suddenly hot with outrage. ‘Don’t you think you should have asked me to do that?’
‘Calm down! We thought it’d be too much for you, so Evie volunteered. You should be grateful: you know what a good eye she has. She’ll be able to tell at a glance if there’s anything worth selling on, though she said right away she thinks most of it will have to go into recycling or to charity shops—’
‘It’s not Mum’s fault she didn’t dress the way Evie thinks she should. Dad left with all the money and then fucked off and died after spending the lot on his mistress!’
James shuffles his feet. ‘No need to swear, not very ladylike.’
Not very ladylike, I mouth at his back. When did my brother become such a prig? Probably ever since Evie started campaigning.
Gathering the post into my arms, I take it into the lounge and dump it on the coffee table, knocking a framed photograph to the floor in the process. James picks it up and stares at it, hands it to me. The photo is faded into the ochre and pale blue of old Kodak stock. It shows the four of us, Mum and Dad with James and me, standing in front of a hedge and old gate, and beyond us a shining expanse of sea stretching into flared-out infinity. James and I look about eight or so. You’d never know we were twins. We don’t look alike, have never even had much in common. As soon as we’d developed our own little personalities the family had fractured along gender lines: me and Mum, with our fine, fair hair and introversion, our love of books and plants; James and Dad, dark and confident and loud, disappearing to take part in manly pursuits. It’s a window into a lost age.
‘I wonder who took it?’ I muse. ‘It obviously meant a lot to her but I can’t remember where or when it was taken.’
James shrugs, uninterested. ‘May as well chuck it. The frame’s just plastic.’
‘I’m going to keep it.’ I pick at the black metal clips on the back so that I can remove the precious print, but James has already moved on and is opening cupboards and exclaiming at the crammed contents.
Mum moved into this flat when she and Dad divorced, declaring that she loved that it was bijou – like a jewel – and so much easier to look after than their big old four-bedroomed house. Which I took at face value, never looking past the fresh paint, the bright curtains and rugs, to see that the underlying carpets were worn, that mould was encroaching in the bathroom and beneath the bedroom window, that its peeling, unloved state mirrored her own. Looking past James, I see damp has brought down a sizable chunk of cornicing. It must have fallen recently, since it has not been cleared away, as if it was holding on all this time and as soon as Mum was gone, simply let go.
‘If you go through the post I’ll check her bureau for the documents we need for probate. Just chuck all the crap and keep the official stuff and bills.’ And off he goes to the spare room. Beyond, I can hear the clack of clothes hangers and the efficient rustle of discarded garments being thrust into bin bags.
Boy jobs and girl jobs.
I turn my attention to the pile of post. Bills. Bank statements. Credit card demands. More bills. Catalogues, flyers for local reading groups, adverts for mobility scooters, circulation improvers, novelty garden ornaments, solar panels. I sigh. It’s tragic how little a life can be reduced to, how much of it is transient and disposable.
Evie appears carrying a bulging bin bag in each rubber-gloved hand. Did she bring the Marigolds with her? I wonder. Does she have a full hazmat suit tucked away in her Prada handbag? ‘Sooo much to go through!’ she trills. ‘It’s like the aftermath of a jumble sale in there.’ She manoeuvres the stuffed bags through the doorway and out into the hall, reappears empty-handed. ‘We should have hired a skip!’
My throat feels hard and swollen, as if bulky words are trying to choke me. I watch her peel off the gloves finger by finger, snapping them back into shape with brisk efficiency as if performing a medical procedure. Her nail varnish is a shade of dark plum, like old blood.
‘Poor Becky.’ She knows I don’t like her calling me that: it’s too intimate. ‘It’s so awful to lose your mother after all you’ve been through.’ She pauses. ‘Such a shame Eddie couldn’t be here to support you.’
Is there any real concern here, or is she just point-scoring?
‘I mean, it’s a bit much, not coming to your mother’s funeral. And with you so fragile.’
I hate that she knows so much about the sinkholes in my life. But the worst part is she’s completely right. Tears sting the back of my eyes, but I cannot cry in front of Evie. I thrust myself to my feet. ‘Need a cigarette,’ I mutter, and flee.
*
I don’t smoke, actually – never have. Out on the concrete steps I sit and fiddle with my phone, selecting my home number with trembling fingers. I need to hear Eddie’s voice: it will calm me down.
When I told him tearfully about the awful readings James had chosen, and the soulless venue for the funeral, he had held me close and let me weep into his chest. But as soon as I mentioned getting his suit dry-cleaned, he’d gazed at me as if I’d mortally wounded him.
‘Becks, you know I don’t do suits and funerals – I’m an artist.’ He ran a hand through his wild, dark hair, exasperated by my failure to understand something so fundamental to his being. ‘Look, you know how fond I was of your mum. I’d love to help you give her a proper send-off. But I just can’t afford to lose the time, not now, for God’s sake, Rebecca, my exhibition! I can’t lose an hour, let alone days! Besides, what does it matter? Jenny’s gone, and anyway she’d hate all the ritual and empty show. She’d say, “Eddie, for goodness’ sake, you’ve got to make your exhibition a success. It’s so important.”’
My mother would have said exactly this. At once I had felt mean and unworthy. But that was before yesterday’s world-altering phone call, which has ricocheted around my skull all through the night, nicking little edges of sentient matter here and there, leaving me thick and dull after barely two hours of sleep. I want to share the content of that call with Eddie. But I can’t: that really would be selfish. He’s already been through so much with me. I’ll tell him after the exhibition, but for now all I want is to hear his voice, to receive a virtual hug from the man I’ve lived with for ten years.
We never actually got married, because Eddie said marriage was a bourgeois social construct designed to control people’s individuality. ‘All that parading around in fancy clothes, while a load of people you don’t really like, who’ve bought you gifts you don’t really want, stuff their faces with food and booze you’ve paid for with money you don’t have!’ I had sort of agreed with him: we didn’t need a piece of paper to prove how much we loved one another, and neither of us was religious. Besides, we were broke.
But if we had been married and if he had come with me to Mum’s funeral, I would have felt more armoured against the world, including Evie’s sniping, which in the bigger picture is such a small thing.
The bigger picture looms at me again, and I push it to the back of my mind, and tap our home number in the Contacts list. The ringback tone goes on and on. I can imagine the phone sounding out in the lounge of our London maisonette, echoing off the walls, the mismatched furniture, the blank TV screen, the half-drawn curtains. I let it ring on in case Eddie’s in another room, but I know he’s not there. I cut the call and try his mobile and for a moment my heart rises as I hear his hello, then falls as I realize it’s just his voicemail message. He must be in the studio, cracking on with the last pieces for the exhibition. It’s an exciting opportunity for him, and he really deserves a break, that crucial bit of luck all artists need.
When I go back in I am relieved to find no one in the lounge, though the furniture appears to have acquired coloured stickers: white ones on the sofa, the armchair, the coffee table, the bookcase; a red one on the television and the Georgian mirror that was Granny Jo’s. I frown. Somewhere overhead the joists creak: James up in the attic, rummaging for anything saleable amongst the detritus of our mother’s stored hopes and faded dreams.
Forcing myself to my task, I discard the catalogues and junk mail into a bin bag and stack up the official-looking letters. I have got through over half of the pile before I come upon a pale blue envelope addressed in an emphatic hand to Mrs Geneviève Young.
I slit it open. Inside are two folded sheets of Basildon Bond, covered in erratic handwriting.
Dearest Jenny
Someone who knows Mum well, then, to use that rare, affectionate shortening.
I must ask you to come down RIGHT AWAY.
This is so savagely underlined that the pen’s nib has gone right through the paper.
They are talking about putting me away, the devils, in one of those establishments so erroneously referred to as ‘care homes’. But I DO NOT want to go. I may be ninety-odd, and I dare say there are some who would place the emphasis on ‘odd’, but I am not losing my marbles! Chynalls is my home. My BELOVED home. I was born in this house and I am determined to die in it! THEY WILL HAVE TO CARRY ME OUT OF HERE FEET FIRST!
It is a frightful nuisance not to be able to get up the stairs. The deterioration of the flesh is a grim business. Trips to the privy are getting to be as bad as Polar treks. I always hated the cold. Hot countries hold far greater appeal. I walked in the Sahara Desert once…
Who is this person? I turn to the last page to find a florid signature beneath the words Your cousin, Olivia Kitto, the K looping as madly as an inky Elizabethan capital. The name jolts a distant memory – a long-ago family holiday redolent of seaweed and saltwater. Rock pools and shrimping nets, the rub of a sandy towel on my thighs. The letterhead reads: Chynalls, Porth Enys, Cornwall. No postcode, as if the house is in Narnia, not part of the modern world at all.
Batty old biddy. I can hear Dad’s voice. Queer old bird.
Did we visit her? Yes, I remember it now, that long-ago Cornish visit. A hazy image of an enormous house, a smell that stings the nose, a strange sense of apprehension…
I need your help in getting Chynalls in order so that I can stay in my own house. Social Services say I must have a proper bathroom. Proper bathroom!! Who are they to determine what is proper and what is not? Ridiculous RED TAPE! I’m perfectly fine with a lick and a spit. I lived through a war, I told them. We didn’t have hot baths and power showers then. A fig for all their HEALTH & SAFETY! And they had the gall to complain about Gabriel, too! My only companion for all these years! Dirty and unhygienic, they called him.
Chynalls was beautiful once, and I suppose I was too. Both of us are rather decrepit now. There’s not much you can do to get me lickity spit but, Jenny dear, I need your help to get the house shipshape. Humilitas occidit superbiam and all that, but I am forced to throw myself on your mercy, since you are my only living relatives, you and your little girl, charming manners, name escapes me. I CAN TRUST NO ONE ELSE! They circle like vultures. If you come down we shall see them off! We must keep them AT BAY. When you arrive I will tell you all. You can stay in the upstairs rooms: they are COMPLETELY PRISTINE!
The capital letters, underlinings and incomprehensible Latin are alarming, but I begin to feel sorry for her: an elderly woman, beset by illness and infirmity and the complex manoeuvrings of social services. It must have been hard for her to overcome her pride enough to cry out for help.
‘What’s that?’
James appears, burdened by a large cardboard box. I fold the letter away. ‘Oh, nothing, a note from some old biddy.’ Daddy’s word.
I watch him put the box down and his shirt rides up out of his trousers. Red chinos: who wears red canvas trousers in their thirties? Husbands of Tory councillors, I suppose.
‘What have you found?’ I ask.
‘Usual rubbish. Did you know she even kept those hideous old dining room curtains from the old house, the ones with the giant poppies on them?’
I do know. Mum was constantly promising them to me, when you and Eddie buy a place of your own. Another lump forms in my throat. ‘Nothing else?’
‘Some personal papers. I suppose we ought to go through them to make sure there’s nothing important before the house clearance people come in.’
‘House clearance? But we haven’t even discussed…’
My brother shrugs. ‘It’s the only practical solution, Becks. I mean, we have our lives elsewhere: us down in Surrey and you in London. We can’t keep running up and down to Warwick, and life moves on, you know. There will be a ton of admin to do, and you know that’s not your forte… That’s exactly why Mum asked me and Evie to deal with everything.’
So Mum had specifically invited Evie to come here, into her inner sanctum. My sinuses burn and I blink and blink. Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes and spill, scalding.
‘Oh God, you see? Mum knew you wouldn’t cope with it. “Let Rebecca choose any of the jewellery or paintings she wants to keep,” she said. “And then get rid of the rest. I know there’s nothing worth keeping.”’
Nothing worth keeping. So Mum knew all along she was living a half-life among the decaying fragments of our broken family life. All that pain and betrayal, cruelty and sadness. I feel my heart may crack open.
James is still talking, individual words leaping out of a blur of sound.
‘… counterpart lease… grant of representation… insurance documents…’
I brush my hand across my cheeks, wiping the tears away, and make an effort to concentrate.
‘… make a stab at the probate value of the estate and get all the forms filled in. Just check through this lot and see if there’s anything we need to keep.’
And he’s off again, to check on Evie and her progress through the bedrooms.
I go back to Olivia Kitto’s letter. Such a lovely name. I didn’t know we had Kittos in the family: a proper Cornish cousin. Poor old woman, beset by officious nitpickers in her hour of need, reaching out to my mother – too late. I scan the first page but there’s no date on it, and the postmark on the envelope is smudged. I wonder how long it’s been sitting here. Weeks, maybe? Perhaps she’s already in a home, or worse, passed away. But what if she’s not? What if she’s trapped in hospital waiting for her last living relative to rescue her?
A mad thought strikes me. Perhaps I could step into Mum’s shoes and prove I am not completely useless. I could nip down to Cornwall to find out what needs to be done, see if I can help in any way. And let Olivia know that Mum is dead, poor old dear. I need something positive to focus on, and the universe has provided. It’s a gift, isn’t it? A gift to both Olivia and to me, both of us beset and bereaved.
Filled with new energy, I burn through the rest of the mountain of post, filling a bag with rubbish, and placing the remaining official letters into a neat pile. In a heap of correspondence beside Mum’s armchair I find more letters from our Cornish cousin. I am just sifting through these when James and Evie reappear, James with more full bin bags, Evie with a cardboard box. James deposits the bags in the hall, then comes back in, rubbing his hands on his trousers. ‘We’d better get cracking,’ he says.
‘The town planner and her husband are coming for dinner tonight,’ Evie says brightly over the top of the box. ‘I was going to put them off, but sometimes it’s good to have practical things to focus on, don’t you think?’
I am so gobsmacked I can’t find any words. I just look at my twin in disbelief. To give him some credit, he looks abashed. ‘Sorry, Becks. Life goes on, eh?’
I swallow, and nod. Getting to my feet, I add the pile of official correspondence to the cardboard box.
‘Can I give you a lift to the station?’ James asks.
I shake my head. ‘I’ll hang on here for a bit.’
Evie leans forward to give me an air kiss and I can smell her perfume – something musky and expensive, tainted by the lingering trace of rubber gloves. ‘I left your mother’s jewellery box on the bed,’ she says, nodding back towards the bedroom. ‘It’s all cheap costume stuff but you may want to keep something out of sentimental value. Oh and,’ she hands the box to James then reaches into her handbag and gives me the roll of red stickers. ‘You may want to put these on the paintings you don’t want the clearance chaps to take.’ She pulls away. ‘And you know, dear, you shouldn’t smoke…’ A meaningful pause.
I stare hotly at the sticky labels, then at James.
‘Take care of yourself, sis,’ he says, then shoulders his way out of the narrow door, and just like that they are gone. I can almost feel the apartment sigh in relief, its violations at an end.
I go into Mum’s room. It shows little trace of Evie’s depredations, but when I open the wardrobe doors, there is nothing left inside but the smell of camphor and a couple of dozen empty hangers. The jewellery box lies on the floral duvet covering the bed where Mum has not lain for two months. There is nothing left of her, nothing left but absence itself. Disconsolately, I open the box and gaze at the meagre contents: strands of coloured beads, a coral necklace with a broken clasp, an old cameo brooch, some rings. I remember Mum wearing this one: a dress ring with a long green stone set in silver. When I pick it up I am suddenly assailed by her perfume. Je Reviens by Worth. I will return. Except she won’t, not ever. I remember her wearing this ring so clearly, holding her hand out to admire it. ‘Who cares if it’s not valuable?’ she said. ‘It could have come out of a cracker and I’d still love it. You should never wear jewellery you don’t love.’
Oh, Mum. I put it away: a keepsake.
Going to her bedroom window, I press my hand against the pane, my breath making a bloom on the glass, just in time to see James’s Lexus disappear at the junction. My splayed fingers look like a plea for help and the little winking stone in my ‘engagement’ ring seems to mock me.
I call Eddie’s number one more time, and one more time I get his voicemail. ‘Hi there, it’s me, Becks,’ I tell the message recorder. ‘Look, it’s a bit complicated, and I’ll explain properly when we speak, but I’m going to Cornwall for a few days. It’s a family thing. It’ll give you time to finish the final preparations for the show.’ I pause. ‘Eddie? I wish you’d been able to come with me.’ I tap the red phone icon and stare at the screen. I wish I hadn’t said the last bit. It sounds whiny, needy; weak.
Am I making a foolish, even dangerous, mistake? Or is this the chance to do something for someone worse off than me? Though perhaps she isn’t worse off than me. After all, this cousin, this Olivia Kitto, is ancient and I’ve barely lived at all.
No self-pity, you’re stronger than you think, darling.
Sometimes it’s as if Mum’s voice is right there inside my head.
You know, my engagement ring really is hideous. I’ve never even liked it, let alone loved it. I lick my finger, tug and twist, and force it over swollen, reddening flesh until at last it comes off. It lies in my palm, two curlicues of cheap nine-carat gold joined by a single zircon. Thirty quid, from a cheap jewellery chain that no longer exists, bought because… I can’t even remember exactly why. The only way Eddie and I could book a hotel room? An empty gesture? A joke? Certainly, it wasn’t meant to be a proper engagement ring, binding two hearts together for all time, though I so wanted it to be, so there it has been all this time, a small and tawdry lie.
Without it, my hand looks naked, the skin pale.
But I feel unshackled.
‘ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE PLACE?’ I LOOK UP AT THE house, indistinct against a wooded hill. Grey granite, grey trees merging into a grey, grey sky.
The taxi driver mutters something. I am too strung out after the journey, which has taken the best part of eight hours, including two changes and a lot of running up and down station stairs with my luggage, on the fraying edge of missing every train, to ask him to repeat himself. I have spent much of the journey trying to convince myself that my decision is a good one, but it seemed increasingly unlikely as the train crawled through the longest county in the country, making every mile count.
‘Fifteen seventy-five,’ the driver says, possibly again, and not even with a ‘please’. Unbelievable! We have come only three miles.
I hand over a precious twenty-pound note and defiantly take all the change. The driver huffs out of the car, pops the boot, and wrestles my case out onto the side of the road where it promptly falls over. Without setting it upright, or offering a word of farewell, he gets back into the car, slams the door, performs an angry five-point turn and drives off down the unmade road, leaving a swirling cloud of dust in his wake.
The gate below the house bears no name: I don’t even know if this is the right place. The house regards me from brooding blank windows.
I get my phone out to let Eddie know I’ve arrived. There is, of course, no signal. The sense that I am making a monumental mistake begins to mount up. What do I know about helping an elderly lady? I’ve made such a mess of my own life, it is sheer hubris to think I can take on someone else’s problems. But it seems there is no immediate choice than to go up to the house and say hello, tell her the sad news. And maybe then I can call for a taxi and flee.
Tugging my case, I step through the gate and forge a path through the vegetation. Clusters of bright orange flowers flame above shanks of pale, bladed leaves; brambles snake out to snag my coat. Somewhere in the midst of all this I can smell lavender.
At last, huffing from the effort, I reach a shanty of a porch whose indeterminate shade of paint has flaked back to silvered wood. The corpses of long-dead insects twist in thick corner webs. Dusty shelves sit to either side of the structure, stacked with bric-a-brac. Panels of stained glass flank an old-fashioned doorbell which, nervously, I ring. The bell makes a tired ratcheting noise as if I have set off some dysfunctional mechanical on the other side. The sound is met only by a watchful silence as if the house is holding its breath, waiting for me to give up and go away. Then a harsh voice shrieks, ‘Bugger off, arsehole!’
Shocked, I take a step backwards, and trip over my suitcase. I lunge for the porch frame to steady myself, but fall backwards anyway. A loud splintering sound is followed by a long moment of imminence, as if some key part of the world hangs in the balance, then the whole rickety structure comes down with a groan, showering me in shards of rotten wood and glass. Rolling sideways, I manage to get out of the way just before the porch’s pitched roof lands like a miniature pyramid amid the carnage.
Sitting up, I register that I have a sore tailbone and a grazed palm. My right ankle throbs. I test it, circling my foot. Not broken. I stare up at the house, at the naked patch of granite that has been sheltered by the porch for, no doubt, centuries, through the rise and fall of kings and queens and two world wars, and feel sick.
Despite the noise, the door remains closed and no face appears at the dark windows, and after a time it becomes clear no one is coming out.
My belongings have sprung out of my suitcase and strewn themselves down the steps: a spill of knickers, make-up and spare clothes mingling with escaped letters and notebooks. And then the sky turns black, and rain comes pelting down, soaking everything in an instant.
I stumble down the steps, half blinded by weather, swearing in frustration, and quickly gather the letters before they can be ruined or fly off into the storm. So intent am I, that I do not hear footsteps until a pair of feet comes into view, clad in a pair of huge, scuffed brogues tied with mismatched laces.
Pushing wet hair out of my eyes, I stare up into a face as wrinkled as an old russet apple, haloed by a misshapen golf umbrella with two or three broken struts hanging down.
‘Mind the stingers, bird,’ this person says and holds out something black and green.
My most fancy knickers, a strand of stinging nettle tangled in the leg opening. Grasping the nettle is something I have consistently failed to do in my life and now is no exception. I burst into tears.
‘Ah, don’t take on.’ The umbrella-holder stuffs the underwear into a pocket and extends a large hand. ‘The Lord sends such travails to try our faith.’
I force a grin. ‘I’m fine, really.’
‘That’s splann. Upsadaisy.’
A hand snakes under my armpit. Shocked by this unwanted intimacy, I shoot to my feet, cradling the broken suitcase, clothes lolling out of it like intestines from a slit belly. ‘I’m sorry about the porch,’ I say.
The person stoops to pick up the basket. ‘It were only held together by spider-thread and memories.’
Is this Olivia Kitto? She, or he, certainly looks old enough. But if it is Cousin Olivia, then who shouted the obscenity?
It’s as if the embrogued person has read my thoughts. ‘I’m Jeremiah Sparrow. Folk call me Jem,’ he says, covering me with the broken umbrella, though it is far too late for this courtly gesture. ‘And who are you? She never been one for welcoming strangers.’
‘I’m Rebecca Young. I’ve come instead of my mum, who’s…’ I can’t bring myself to say the word.
Jem’s expression becomes guarded. ‘Oh ah? She never mentioned you. Why you here?’
‘Cousin Olivia wrote to Mum to ask if she’d come down to help her.’
Jeremiah stills. Then he turns his head up to the house, scrutinizing it through half-closed eyes. ‘Did she now?’ he says softly. ‘Never mentioned it to me or the missus.’ He looks back at me. ‘Well, I’m here to see to Gabriel.’
Gabriel. I remember now that in Mum’s letter, Olivia had referred to her companion. Her unhygienic companion. Feeling some trepidation, I follow Jem to the door, which he opens up, and we enter a gloomy hallway.
Inside, the house seems huge, much bigger than it appears from outside. A long corridor between panelled walls disappears into distant murk. A staircase ascends into darkness. The place smells of mildew, and something worse. I set my suitcase down on the tiles, ready to greet my elderly relative. Jem does not announce himself but just crosses the hall and flicks the light switch. Nothing happens. ‘Agh, bleddy thing. I swear this house is haunted by spriggans.’ He goes down the hall and drags an aluminium half-ladder out from a cupboard, sets it beneath the junction box and climbs awkwardly to the top step.
‘Where is Miss Kitto?’ I ask. Jem is muttering over the thick tangle of wires and with a sinking feeling I am sure I know the answer. There was no date on the letter. How long did it sit unopened at Mum’s flat? Weeks, or months? With some cruel symmetry have they passed away within days of one another?
Jem’s voice cuts in. ‘If you could go and open up the drawing room shutters I could see what I’m doing.’
I guess at the first door on the left. The brass doorknob fills my hand, and the catch yields with a creak. As I walk into semi-darkness, a stench stings the back of my nose as sharply as mustard. And then I feel eyes on me, a distinctly primeval sensation. Is Cousin Olivia sitting in the darkness, watching me? Or does her shade occupy one of the hulking easy chairs, a malevolent ghost bent on scaring the shit out of anyone who dares to cross the threshold? The thought is so eerie I run towards the window.
As soon as I set my hand on the shutter-bar the air in the room stirs and an unseen entity whooshes past my head.
‘Bl—ack! Blackkk!’
Something brushes my face and I yelp. Hauling the shutters open to flood the room with light, I turn to face the demon… which is regarding me balefully out of a cold, white-ringed eye from the top of the standard lamp.
It is a parrot. A grey parrot with a hooked beak and a neat fan of crimson tail-feathers and I am cast back to that long-ago Cornish holiday – a big, sunny sitting room where Mum and I sat side by side on a lumpy chintz sofa eating spicy yellow bread studded with dried fruit and spread thick with butter while from the top of a bookcase a large grey bird scrutinized our every move. I had looked away, unnerved, and in that moment it had descended on outstretched wings, dug its scaly grey claws into my saffron cake, and with a loud clatter of feathers retreated to the shelves to consume its booty. Surely it can’t be the same bird? How long do parrots live?
‘That will teach you to pay attention!’ Olivia had laughed. ‘What Gabriel wants Gabriel takes.’ Turning to him she said, ‘What will our guests think? I don’t know why we named you for an angel: you are the very devil!’
‘Shut the fuck up!’ the creature retorted.
Mum had gasped and I had clapped my hands to my mouth as if it had been me, not the bird, who had uttered these forbidden words. But the old woman was laughing, and the parrot hopped from foot to foot, hugely pleased with itself, and I suddenly burst out in such giggles that even Mum had smiled.
How could I have forgotten such a bizarre incident?
The room looks smaller now, and infinitely shabbier. The chintz roses are faded to ambiguity and all the surfaces are covered in dust and guano.
Jem shows his face at the door. ‘I see you found Gabriel,’ he says and at the sight of him Gabriel lets out a banshee caw followed by, ‘Messy moose key.’ Jem grimaces. ‘You’d think it were human sometimes.’ He wags his finger at the bird. ‘Picked the lock again, did you, you old bugger? Bleddy thing ought to have its neck wrung.’ He looks at me sharply. ‘Pardon my French. Don’t suppose you’ll want to stay: lots of diseases you can get from parrots, they say.’
‘Oh yes, psittacosis,’ I say, the word popping into my mouth. ‘But I’m sure it can be cleaned up.’ I look around. ‘This must be such a lovely room in summer, all these windows, and the views over the garden.’ And the rubble of the porch. ‘But it doesn’t look as if Cousin Olivia has used it in ages. Where is she?’ I dread the answer.
Jem offers an unfamiliar word, then adds, ‘Hospital. Took a tumble and broke her leg.’
I feel an inner pang at the very word ‘hospital’. How I hate them. ‘Oh no. How is she doing?’
He gives me a humourless smile. ‘If you knew her you’d be more concerned about the nurses.’
‘Bit of a termagant, is she?’
‘She’m some heller.’
He makes a move towards the bird, which allows him to approach before lofting into the air and skimming past his head to the bookcase, where it sits making a noise like a cane hitting flesh. Clack, clack, clack. It sounds taunting, triumphant.
‘I’ll wring your neck one day, boy. Killed plenty chickens in my time.’ Jem turns back to me. ‘My missus keeps house for Miss Olivia but she won’t set foot in this room.’
Is he trying to change the subject? ‘Is the hospital far? I must go and see Olivia.’
Grasping the nettle, darling: well done.
‘Truro,’ he replies.
I remember passing Truro on the train – an attractive little city gathered around a cathedral in a dip between low hills. But it seemed to take ages from Truro to Penzance and the idea of making my way back to the station, then to the hospital in Truro and back again tonight is daunting.
Jem notes my despair. ‘There be a pub with rooms in the village, you can stay there overnight. Missus can take you into Truro to see Miss Olivia tomorrow.’
I think about this for a moment. I haven’t been able to work much these past months and there isn’t much in the bank. ‘If it’s OK I’ll stay here. Olivia said in her letter that the upstairs was pristine. Would that be all right?’
Jem makes a face. ‘Suit yourself, bird. If you’m staying, you can feed Gabriel. There’s food for un in the scullery.’
And with that he is off, leaving me alone. With the parrot.
Gabriel fixes me with a black regard.
‘What on earth am I going to do with you?’ I ask.
‘Fuck off,’ he says, so quietly it is almost an endearment.
‘You are very rude.’
I pick my way across the room between the splats of guano, but as I take hold of the door handle there is a titanic thud on my shoulder as Gabriel lands on me, his claws digging through my coat. When I scream the bird echoes my cry with perfect pitch, making my eardrums ring. Then he takes off again to land on top of his cage, where he sits and preens, as if this is a fine old game.
*
Now that Jem has restored the electrics, the hall is lit by an unshaded electric light, its illumination unforgiving. The mud of years has been ground into the tiles and runners; the floral wallpaper has faded to an unalluring palette of browns, like the husks of dead wildflowers. In the hall behind the staircase a silent longcase clock stands casting the shadow of a huge sentinel. I hear neither tick nor tock from it and the window into its innards shows a pendulum hanging motionless. It’s a handsome antique, but I am rather relieved it’s not working – is there anything eerier than late-night chimes echoing through an empty house?
Beyond the clock lies a series of closed doors. I open the first one and find a dining room full of big dark furniture, chinaware laid as if for dinner, like something off the Marie Celeste.
Opposite are two narrow doors. The first opens in a slant beneath the stairs and contains brooms and buckets and the half-ladder Jem used. When I try the neighbouring door I find it locked, the iron handle freezing, and chilly air seeps out around my wet feet.
At the end of the hall is a door held on a latch. I depress the catch, flick on the light switch – an old-fashioned brass one with a bobble on the end – and find a damp-smelling room containing an ancient range and a pair of stained, shallow copper sinks beneath a window. On the floor sits a metal tub of what appears to be verdigris-stained copper; pushed against the far wall is a strange contraption with a wooden handle, and beside it a tiled worktop upon which sits a dish of apples and a sack labelled ‘Pretty Boy Parrot Food’.
A channel cut into the floor leads to a door to the outside. To let water out? Or worse, blood? I shiver. The room is as cold as if it has absorbed a hundred winters. It is like stepping back into another century. But I am the one who feels like a ghost.
I go back into the hallway to explore further. The next door offers a kitchen of sorts, comprising a ramshackle collection of wooden cupboards, an old range, a butler’s sink and an armpit-high fridge bearing an Electrolux banner in a typeface no one has used in fifty years. The pale-blue interior contains complex mouldings inhabited by a milk bottle, something in a brown paper bag that turns out to be half a loaf of bread, a dish of butter, half a packet of chocolate digestives and some eggs. I lift the bottle and sniff it cautiously. How long did Jem say Olivia had been in hospital? Weeks? But there’s no mould, and it doesn’t smell sour. Someone has been using the kitchen, maybe Jem’s wife when she comes to clean the house. I am somewhat comforted: at least supper is sorted. The central door of the range is still warm to the touch and when I look inside I can see the glow of embers, as if someone has just been here, stoking it.
Once more I have the feeling of eyes upon me, and when I spin around I see above the wooden table a portrait of a young woman with a piercing black gaze. Her sleeves are rolled up and there’s some muscle on her forearms, which are folded: guarded and defiant. She’s wearing what appear to be men’s clothes and her face has an emphatic bone structure. I forget the eerie sensation, captivated by the skill of the artist. There’s a lot more texture in the painting than you’d expect, as if the oils have been laid on with a palette knife rather than a brush. The style is loose and daring, the application of light done in bold blocks of cadmium.
Continuing my explorations, I discover two further rooms, one entirely panelled with books, with a leather armchair pulled up beside an inglenooked woodburner; the other containing a camp bed covered in blankets and a candle-lantern on a makeshift table beside it. A pile of clothes in the corner are in need of a wash, and behind a hand-painted screen depicting Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden there is an exceptionally large, but thankfully empty, Victorian Flow Blue chamber pot. My grin is short-lived as I remember the bit in the letter about the polar trek to the ‘privy’. Oh, dear God. I am overtaken by an urgent need to pee.
I run upstairs and open door after door. Bedroom. Bedroom. Box room. Bedroom. Linens cupboard.
No bathroom.
‘I am not,’ I say out loud, running back down the stairs, ‘using that bloody pot. I would rather die!’ My voice disappears into the empty spaces of the house.
From the front sitting room comes a sardonic cackle.
The scullery door gives out onto an unevenly paved area, the stone underfoot rosetted with lichen. In the falling gloom, through the still-falling rain, I spy a brick shed. I make a run for it and push the door open. Lurking within is a toilet of cracked porcelain. Spider webs drape the dark spaces between the high cistern and ceiling, map out territory between the bricks, festoon the toilet roll holder with its roll of shiny Izal. I shudder. Perhaps the pot after all? No: I simply can’t.
I feel for a light switch. There is no light switch. I feel the walls of my self-control begin to crumble.
Pull yourself together, Becky, the voice of my mother chides me gently.
Sitting in the dark on the cold Bakelite seat, watched by myriad arachnid eyes, I curse my impulsiveness. It appears I have travelled not just three hundred miles, but three hundred years back in time.
THE NEXT MORNING I ROLL OFF THE BED IN THE LEAST mildewy of the upstairs rooms, pad to the window and pull back the heavy curtains, expecting to look out into a grey landscape and lashing rain. Instead, I feel the sun on my face, like a benediction. Sea and sky fuse at the distant horizon. Spangles of light glitter like spilled treasure, undulating with the rolling of the waves. Far out, a single crabber ploughs across the bay, as squat as a child’s toy. To the east, St Michael’s Mount, misty as legend, a barely sketched Disney castle rising out of the sea.