It seemed to me so bizarre that to this woman I had never met, my life was a soap opera, for so she came to call it.
What! Murderous Husband on top of Mad Father!!! How would you solve this one you great reader of mysteries? Do you think the husband and cousin really killed the old man and deposed of the body?
(I took great satisfaction in the “
deposed
.”) And then:
Skulls? Skeletons? Give me a break! Tell her to stick to reading Martha Grimes and stop lending her your Patricia Cornwells
.
One or two paragraphs quite interested me, despite myself, such as this one:
You mean she was married to one of those Mad Samphires? (“Those”
underlined.)
Weren't you at school with them? I seem to remember us St. Dorothy girls quivering in our loins at the mention of their names. Bad Boys! But sexy! Though one didn't even breathe that word in those days. How amazing. Hardly seems the type. But aren't they the ones who murdered their parents in cold blood and got off on a technicality? God, my sweetie, aren't you lucky she didn't murder you?
I took great satisfaction from the fact that her mention of the Samphire boys suggested she was much older than me. And him. But as I read on, any small glimmer of self-satisfaction would be skewered by the next barb.
There were times when I truly didn't want to live. On the days when I didn't feel physically ill, all I wanted was to get out of there, to return to my own little place in the country, the space where I now knew I belonged.
I LAY AWAKE AT
nights thinking about belonging. About going back. What ties me to that place? The earth and its bounties, the trees, the mountains, the heartbreaking landscape, the charting of the moon's traverses, the sky that I watched every night from the darkness of my veranda till its arc is drawn on my retina? People there do not belong to me nor I to them, not even Ken who's lived with me on and off since he was a child or Millie my neighbour or old Maud who has been peeling ginger and making cassava bread forever or one or two of the others. When I vanished so suddenly from that place, did anyone miss me? In my misery here, did I ever think of them? Is it that misguided search for belonging that makes me act so unthinking sometimes? Or am I just plain crazy, like my father? Stones belong, like the big smooth rock sitting in my backyard all by its lonesome. I have no idea how it got there, so out of place, but we use it for everything: for sitting on, bleaching clothes, spreading out ginger or coffee or cocoa beans to dry, using as a chopping board or a work table. Maybe it really is in its place, something solid and dependable around which everything revolves. Perhaps that's what I shall be in my next life. A rock.
AS LONG AS I
was suffering and sulking in my room, each day seemed to bring a new surprise, as if the gods were determined to shock me out of my misery. One day Celia told me repairs to my house were almost done. I could set a date for moving back. Then she added, “If you really want to.”
I bristled, for it sounded as if she doubted my resolve. “Don't you think I want to go back?”
I was aware of how sharp my voice was, and I was instantly ashamed. She smiled and said something that surprised me then. “It's just that I've got so used to having you around. It would be so nice if you could stay.”
I didn't say anything. I needed time to examine that statement.
“I thought you had finally settled down here,” she continued. “I know it was rough at first, I know you are not used to living with other people. But everyone likes you.”
I couldn't help feeling that she was talking about me as if I were a child she had settled in boarding school. Which, considering all the nonsense I have been through, wasn't far wrong.
“They can't stop talking about what you've done to the garden.” She was raving now. “Mrs. Spence says she wishes she had more residents like you, taking an active part in things.”
That old hypocrite, I thought, but inwardly I smiled, pleased despite myself, for in the new mould that I'd been recasting Matron she might well have said it.
I was lying on top of the bed cover, my back propped up by several pillows. I was finally wearing a dress instead of my nightie and housecoat, though I planned to go nowhere. I had my eyes half-closed, so I could shut them quickly if need be. I wasn't sure how to deal with the emotions that were being stirred up in me, especially by her, by her nearness; every time she sat beside me on that bed I felt such a surge of tenderness, it brought tears too close to the surface. Crying was something I'd banished along with a lot of other feelings following the first years of disillusionment of life with Sam. But now, once I started, tears seemed forever threatening.
Out of the corner of my eye I watched her pick at a thread dangling from the hem of her cotton blouse and play with it, winding it around her finger. She was wearing linen pants of the same colour as the blouse, a beautiful tamarind shade.
“Listen, I know this business of Mr. Bridges is upsetting you, but are you sure you don't want to give it a few more months here at least?”
“No,” I said. “You've gone to all the expense of fixing the house. The sooner I get out of here the better. I don't want you to have to keep on paying for me here as well. I feel guilty enough as it is.”
“That's not the point, really. It's not a question of expense, it's what will make you happy.” She paused then, for so long that I turned my head to look fully at her. She had stopped playing with the thread and was holding her body perfectly still as if she was bracing herself for something. I automatically prepared myself, too, for more bad news. I was surprised when she said, “Of course now Gabriel is gone, we have lots of room. You could come and live with us.” She paused. “If you wanted to. Herman thinks it's a great idea. You know he likes you.”
She had made this offer before, but I hadn't taken it seriously. I was surprised she'd gone as far as discussing it with her husband. Where had her children gone to? Gabriel and Ashley. I had to struggle to recall their names. I felt ashamed that I had shown so little interest in her affairs, that I was in fact such a terrible mother. Grandmother. But now of course I was too ashamed to ask the questions I wanted to, for a caring, loving mother would not need to ask them. I wonder how close her children would have been to her other mother, her “Auntie,” had she lived to see them. What kind of grandmother would she have been? But I knew. I didn't have to ask. I could see that Phil had all the equipment for child seduction from the very first moment I set eyes on her.
Celia was saying something else, but I wasn't listening, for suddenly I was jerked back to another day, seeing in my mind's eye the Reverend Doctor that first time he arrived at our house. To steal my child.
I'M WONDERING NOW, AS
I have wondered many times, what made us say yes, and keep on saying yes to them. Was it the burden of another child expected that swung the balance? For Sam thought your going that Christmas was a great idea. He was the one who got to know them, who visited from time to time. He always told me about the visit afterwards, making out that he had made a detour on the way to somewhere else, a last-minute decision, but I knew it was because he never wanted to take me. You duly went for the Christmas holidays, that first time, and then it was for Easter and then it was for the whole of the summer that somehow merged into the following school year. You were taking piano lessons and tennis lessons and holidays with them abroad. Somehow, it became forever. They moved away, to the other side of the island. By then you were a boarder at school, so naturally you spent most of the holidays with them. We caught brief glimpses of you after that, for a week, two weeks at most out of the year. By the time you grew up and were on your own, it was a weekend snatched here and there, then years before you came back from university. Even then I saw you no more than a few hours, occasionally, when you drove down to see me and back in the same day. I can't remember the last time you spent a night in our house.
In all of this I remember nothing but your remoteness from me, your distance. So at what stage, I'm asking myself now, did you get so close to your father's family, to your brother and sisters?
I was so lost in thought, or perhaps I had fallen asleep, that I was shocked to find myself back in the present. With Celia gently shaking me.
“G, gosh, were you sleeping? Sorry. Listen, got to go. I'll talk to Junior later and see what he says about the electricians. They were supposed to finish the wiring this week.”
“Junior?” I came wide awake then. “Junior?” That made me sit up. “What's Junior got to do with it?”
I must have looked out of it, for she said, “You really were sleeping! You haven't heard a word I said.”
“Sorry,” I muttered, “it's these pills. They tire me out.” I don't know why I couldn't have come right out and told her what I had been thinking, for she herself had quizzed me on the topic only days before. I had tried, I'd really tried to talk about it then, before I hemmed and hawed and faked tiredness, so I wouldn't have to answer. I was feeling ashamed of myself, I have to admit, but I couldn't throw over a lifetime of subterfuge. Of shutting down like a crab the minute anything threatened to probe soft and tender places.
Celia was standing up, straightening her clothes and searching with her foot for her shoe, and I found I wanted so much to keep her, to bind her to me, to tell her ⦠So I licked my lips and said in as casual a voice as I could muster, “You know what, I just remembered about you and theâand those people. About how you came to live with them? Remember you were asking me?”
“Great,” she said, fluffing her hair in front of the mirror, not even looking at me. “Don't forget to tell me next time. But now”âlooking at her watchâ“must run.” I felt let down by the casual way she was treating this, as if it was of no importance at all.
“Yes,” I said, “but listen.” I sat up. “What about Junior, you haven't told me anything.”
She was already opening the door. “Sorry, can't stop now. Talk to you. Later.” She was gone.
I was left totally puzzled about Junior and what he had to do with anything, for I hadn't heard from him in years. But isn't that a boy for you? As a child, it hadn't taken him long to stop clinging to me. As soon as Lise was born and started crawling around, he metamorphosed into a boy's boy, old enough to wander around with the other boys from the area and to stay away all day long if I let him. But what turned him into a real little man was getting his own bicycle, an old Raleigh that his father got from somewhere and fixed up for him. Once he got his own wheels he could ride away, and he did.
Somehow, Junior wasn't someone I wanted to think about at all, especially when he left in such a hurry after Shirley's death without telling me. That really hurt, for I thought we had gotten over our early difficulties and were friends again. He could at least have placed a little of his trust in me, his mother. Not that I put the two things togetherâhis leaving and Shirley's deathâthough I know it must have hit him hard, for they were very close. But the fact that he put up such a block between us meant that for me, the blockage was still there, preventing me from seeing him clearly. Or perhaps nothing about Junior was ever clear. I couldn't wait to talk to Celia again to find out what this son of mine was doing in my business.
NEXT TIME CELIA CAME
she told me she had nothing to do with the fixing up of the house, that Junior was taking care of everything. I didn't know how to take this news at all, I felt trapped between anger and helplessness, as if I were being stripped by my children of all my decision-making powers. For that is how Celia got me here to Ellesmere Lodge in the first place: she had simply made the arrangements without consulting me and then swooped down and swept me off. At the time I didn't know what I was getting into, but in a way I was glad to get away from my broken-down house. The hurricane and its aftermath had left me dispirited, as it did all of us, in the dark, without electricity or running water, the fields virtually gone. No fresh vegetables or fruit. Downed trees and detritus everywhere, waiting to be cleared. At least Celia was someone who was continuously in my life, unlike the others. She came down to check on me the minute the roads were cleared and wanted to take me back with her that very day. I wouldn't leave the house the way it was, not until some temporary patching-up was done. Then Ken miraculously reappeared from one of his walkabouts, as I called them, for he would leave without warning and reappear months or years later just as suddenly, without any explanation of where he had been. Over the years, I had grown used to this behaviour, so I just took him as I found him. Ken didn't talk much, perhaps one of the reasons we got on well together. He said he had come to check that I was all right after the storm and promised to stay put for a while and look after my house. I had no further excuse for not going with Celia. At the time I thought it would be for a few weeks at the most while the roof was repaired, so I didn't feel resentment at her taking charge like thatâat least I didn't until I found out what kind of place Ellesmere Lodge was, though that's all water under the bridge now. But to be told that Junior had taken charge of my house and is doing as he likes is an entirely different matter.
It must be twenty years since Junior went to Canada and I don't think he ever came back, or he never got in touch if he did. Some years after he left, I got a card and a picture of him and this blonde girl to tell me that they were married. No mention of Shirley, his leaving, or anything else. No apology or expression of regret. It was like a communication between people who knew each other vaguely. After that, I got the occasional card from his wife, Dolly, with a note and sometimes some money from Junior. Over the years she sent me photos and news of their growing family, their two children Charlene and Mark, but it was all rather hit-and-miss. She kept saying they were hoping to visit, but it was always next year. Then a few years back, the letters and cards stopped coming, and there was no reply to the letters I sent. I interpreted this as their loss of interest in me, so I stopped writing. To hear from Celia now in this casual way that Junior had been down here all along fixing up my house was a shock to me.