Authors: Elizabeth Day
‘Would you like some tea, dear?’ asks her mother brightly. ‘I think Mrs Timmins has prepared some cold ham for you.’
He nods. ‘Yes, that would be –’ A muscle twitches just below his right eye. ‘
Nice
,’ he says with precision. He strides up the stairs without another word, the heavy male footfall unfamiliar to Elsa’s ears.
A few days later, her father lights a fire in the back garden. The flames are straggly and weak and buffeted by the wind so that the smoke snakes in through the window frames and lingers, acrid, in the house. Elsa is sitting with her mother in the drawing room, carefully trying to read a book that has too many words for her yet to make sense of. But she likes the pictures, especially the burnished green-gold front cover that is decorated with looping, elegant pink roses. There is a picture of a girl in a bright red coat with long, curly blonde hair like an angel’s and the girl is bending over to push a key into a hidden door in the middle of a thick, dense hedge. The book is called
The Secret Garden
. Elsa likes secrets. She likes the idea of having a key to a place that is hers and hers alone, that no one else will ever be able to discover.
When she asks her mother what the fire is for, Alice replies that Papa was burning his uniform.
‘Why?’
‘Because it holds bad memories for him,’ she says. ‘Besides, he doesn’t need to wear it any more. The war is over.’
‘Is it?’
Alice puts down her embroidery and looks at Elsa, frowning.
‘Why yes, you knew that,’ she says, insistent. ‘You remember when Mrs Farrow came over and we heard the church bells ring out even though it wasn’t a Sunday? And we went into town and there were lots of people smiling and cheering?’
Elsa nods. She remembers clearly that her mother had been wearing her black voile dress and the hat with the feather that was normally only reserved for special occasions. Mrs Crawford, the butcher’s wife, had hung a string of triangular flags across the front of the shop window. Elsa had liked watching the flags blow gently in the breeze, seeing the colours and lines warp and blur in the white sunlight. Shortly afterwards, a man had come and removed the blue paint from all the street-lamps. She had known they were celebrating the end of the war because her mother had told her, but she hadn’t fully realised the implications. She had thought it was like a school holiday: a temporary interruption before things got back to normal. She sees now that she hadn’t understood.
‘Well,’ her mother continues, ‘that was the end of having to fight all those nasty Germans.’
Elsa considers this statement for a moment, and then asks: ‘Does that mean Papa is staying?’
She stares down at the line made by the white lace hem of her dress against the thick black wool of her stockings. The leather of her buttoned-up boots is pressing against her big toe. She has grown a lot over the past year and all her clothes now seem either too small or too big. Her mother takes up her sewing so that when she answers, her head is bowed and her profile is silhouetted against the gas-lamp and she does not look at Elsa as she speaks. ‘Yes,’ she replies. ‘Yes, it does.’
Elsa feels anxious. She is uncomfortable with this new, masculine presence in her home. Her mother now seems distant, more detached than before. She wishes, more than anything, that she and her mother could run away and live in a house of their own. She imagines this dream house down to every last detail. Her mother would have her own floor filled with all the pretty objects that she knew Alice loved: the green-and-white china vase in the living room; the Toile de Jouy curtains; the oil painting of a bend in a river near where Alice had grown up. In this house, they would exist in perfect peace with no one to disturb them. Mealtimes would be whenever they felt hungry. Elsa would paint her bedroom a cornflower blue just because she could. There would be no strange man, laying claim to things that were not his own.
Her reverie is interrupted by her father coming in from the garden, stooping even though he is several inches clear of the doorframe. ‘All finished,’ he says.
‘Well done,’ says Elsa’s mother and then, because there is a crackle to the silence that follows, she adds: ‘You managed to work up quite a good blaze in the end.’
‘Yes.’ He sits down on an armchair, lifting a pinch of trouser leg with each hand as he does so. Her mother puts aside her embroidery in readiness for conversation but Horace does not speak. Instead he stares vaguely into the distance, his hands resting lightly on his knees. Elsa, who has been sitting by the fireplace with her book, feels that she should also suspend any activity out of politeness. She puts the book down on her lap but the shiny cover slips against the fabric of her dress and falls on to the tiled hearth with a sudden, loud slam.
At the noise, her father jumps in his seat. He makes a wet, whimpering sound and for a moment, Elsa wonders where the noise – so oddly vulnerable – is coming from. When Elsa looks up, she sees that he is pushing his shoulders forwards, curling himself tightly into a ball in the armchair. His mouth is twisted; his lips are pale blue against the red flush of his skin and an arm is raised up to shield his head. He is shivering. And then, as quickly as it started, it stops and he unclenches his muscles, as if nothing has happened.
The whole episode is over in less than a few seconds, but Elsa cannot stop staring.
He catches her eye and straightens up with a snap. His face, which just a second ago had been ashen and scared, now becomes contorted with anger.
‘Can’t you sit still for one second?’ he says and although his voice is level, spittle appears at each corner of his mouth. The room echoes with the question. He stands up and strides over to Elsa and his height makes her feel very small. She hangs her head, not wanting to make eye contact. She realises she is trembling and this makes her nervous that she might do something else wrong and that this might enrage her father even more.
‘Well? Speak up, child. What do you have to say for yourself?’ His words are harsh. He is trying to control his voice but the question comes out almost as a scream. Elsa puts her hands over her ears. She fears that he might lose control completely if she does not say the right thing. He is so close, she can smell the tang of his sweat.
‘Sorry, Papa,’ she says in a whisper. He bends down, grabbing her chin and forcing her head up.
‘Kindly extend me the courtesy of looking at me when you apologise,’ he says. Elsa meets his gaze. Tears obscure her sight.
‘Sorry, Papa,’ she says hoarsely.
‘Good.’ He lets go of her face and she can feel the pressure of his fingers against her skin. ‘Now get out.’
She picks up the book, one corner blunted with the impact, and places it on the card table in front of her, sliding it on to the surface of the wood as softly as she can. Without warning, her father lifts the book and throws it with all his force into the fireplace, the spine of it breaking and bending back on itself so that several pages rip loose and scatter like leaves across the coal. Elsa cries out and moves towards the fireplace, unable to stop herself. Her father swings back and slaps her across the face, so swiftly that she curves inwards with the strength of it, her body becoming concave before she crumples on to the floor, overcome by the sheer, hot pain of the blow.
‘Get out,’ her father says, pointing towards the door.
She can hear her mother interjecting. ‘Horace,’ she was saying. ‘Do you think . . .’
‘She has to learn,’ he says. ‘You’ve been too lenient with her, Alice.’
For a moment, Elsa is too winded to move. Then she tries to push herself upright. Her mother stays seated, her expression inscrutable. Eventually, Elsa manages to stand but the effort of it makes her gasp. She wants to disappear.
She walks to the door, trying to make as little noise as possible. She fumbles for the handle. It releases. She feels relief, then stumbles out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. She makes it up to her bedroom where she lies on the bed, allowing the sharpness of the pain on her cheek to subside gradually into a dull, persistent thud. She is not sure what she has done wrong but she knows it must have been something awful to have been so badly punished and she is upset with herself for misbehaving. If only she could learn how he wanted her to be. She tries to tell herself not to be weak, but it doesn’t work. She wants, more than anything, to hear her mother in the hallway and for her to hold Elsa tight and to make it better.
After a bit, she moves carefully to the window-seat so that she can search out the comfort of a familiar view, but she can focus only on the charred black patch of deadened grass where the fire had been. She notices a piece of something reflective on the ground, shining in the day’s dissolving light. It is smaller, smoother than a stone and yet it looks misshapen, dented. She realises it must be one of the brass buttons from her father’s serge tunic and her tears fall more insistently than before until her breath can no longer keep up and she starts hiccuping. A numb tiredness sweeps over her and, eventually, she dozes off on the counterpane, her legs and arms curled together in front of her chest.
When she opens her eyes some time later, the walls are stained with darkness. Her first thought on waking is that her mother still had not come.
She realises then that she is on her own.
The next morning, she wakes to find a new copy of
The Secret Garden
beside the lamp on her bedside table. The cover is exactly the same: the same gold lettering, the same pink roses, the same girl pushing a key into the lock of the concealed door. Elsa frowns. She wonders, for a brief moment, whether she had dreamed the events of the previous day. Perhaps her book had not been thrown into the fire after all.
She touches her cheek with the tips of her fingers and then goes to the glass hanging on one wall to look at her face. A tiny bruise is leaking out of the corner of one eye. So she had not imagined it after all. The pain seems to have moved down, towards the edges of her ribcage. If she breathes in deeply, there is a sharp discomfort in her chest.
At breakfast, no one mentions what had happened. Her father sits at the top of the table, his back erect, his two forearms flat on the polished wood, waiting to be served. Her mother, sitting next to him, seems not to be able to look at Elsa directly. Her eyes skitter to and fro, from the mantelpiece to the rug to the teapot, never settling on one firm location. She is fidgeting with her cup and saucer, chattering away with a forced brightness punctuated with the occasional, uneasy laugh. Elsa does not speak. She does not feel hungry, but she manages to eat a few forkfuls of kedgeree, the rice sticking lumpenly to her throat as she swallows. She tries to imagine herself somewhere else. She thinks of herself deep in a secret garden, surrounded by the heady scent of crimson flowers and the squawking of exotic, big-beaked birds. She imagines climbing a tree, clambering deep into its branches so that she is hidden by the leaves. From up here, she can look down on the plants and the grass and the animals. From up here, she can see the four thick stone walls, the heavy door that only she possesses the key to, and she feels safe.
‘Elsa.’ Her mother’s voice is sharp. The flowers pop and burst in her mind. ‘Elsa, answer your Papa.’
Elsa looks up, blindly.
‘I wondered if you found your present this morning,’ he says. He seems expectant, almost nervous. The twitch under his eye is more pronounced than usual.
Unsure what is required of her, she waits before answering, scanning his face for clues.
He looks at her levelly and then wipes a speck of egg off his moustache with the bunched-up edge of a napkin. ‘The book, I mean,’ he continues. ‘Did you find the book I bought you?’ He places the napkin on the table and then repositions it, ever so slightly, as though it had not been straight enough.
Elsa nods her head, slowly. Her mother looks at her with an expression of panic. ‘Yes, Papa,’ she says. When she speaks her voice is scratchy and she realises these are the first words she has uttered for hours.
‘Good,’ Horace says. He looks as though he is about to carry on speaking, as though he has something more he wants to say. Instead, he clears his throat. ‘Good,’ he says again. And then he smiles.
It is the first time Elsa has seen his smile and for a second, his face seems young, unlined. She cannot help but smile back at him. And she realises she still wants him to like her.
‘Thank you,’ she says and then she pushes her knife and fork together neatly on the plate, trying not to make too much noise as she does so.
They arrive while Caroline is watching the television news. She is sitting on the sofa, with the light from the screen sending her into a semi-hypnotic trance, when she hears the car draw up in the driveway. She reaches for the remote control and mutes the volume, but her gaze is still fixed to the screen. They are showing footage of a procession of hearses driving through a provincial English town, each one containing the coffin of a dead serviceman. It isn’t raining but the first car has its windscreen wipers on because so many flowers are being thrown by the gathered crowd that the driver is finding it impossible to see where he is going through the density of petals and stalks. To one side, a white-faced woman in black clothes is pressing a tissue to her mouth. She seems aware that the television cameras are on her; that she is being watched; that her emotions are being probed for wider consumption.