Authors: Polly Samson
She checks the front door, the sitting room, before heading unsteadily for the stairs. Heino has lit Ellie’s lamp in the corner, the piano lid is raised. He’ll have stopped there a moment, wishing her portrait a silent and lingering goodnight before climbing to their room. It’s so touching, the constancy of his devotion. Heino goes alone to concerts and sits with his eyes shut so he can imagine she’s there beside him. He confesses that he goes to bed earlier and earlier because he dreams of Ellie every night.
Julia remembers how distressed Heino had been when she first came here. She used to hear him pacing up and down through the ceiling. Nowadays he keeps the radio on all night; the World Service seems to settle him. The room below his is now Claudine’s. Julia looks across at it. The door is ajar though she’s certain it was shut when she first came in. She catches a glimpse of the faded violet wallpaper, the soft bronze sheen of Ellie’s eiderdown. She has not been able to take a step inside since that shameful night, shudders to even touch the china doorknob. She sees him again, Julian, standing at the foot of the bed, stone-grey and motionless, his hair sticking up from his head like a thornbush, staring and mouthing, completely silent.
She pulls the door shut with a click but the memories won’t stay behind it. A sudden impulse sends her back to the kitchen and, before she can change her mind, to the phone. She dials and the mouthpiece seems to amplify her breathing back at her. She makes herself hold her nerve while the old Firdaws number clicks through. She has no idea what she’ll say to him if he answers.
Claudine has arrived in the night. From the top of the stairs Julia sees her bags piled up in the hall, her leather jacket slung over the the banister. The door to that bedroom is closed and Julia offers a little prayer that Claudine won’t sleep in too late. She’s told Freda she’ll be with her by lunchtime and can’t leave the girls with Heino on the one day he needs to be at the hospital. Her heart sinks a little as she remembers Claudine sleeping in very late every day during the part of her gap year she spent with them in Connecticut.
Still, she’s hardly sprightly and ready to go herself this morning, needs this time alone to let her hangover subside. Stupid to drink an entire bottle of wine; she’s always been useless with alcohol.
She forces down coffee then squeezes a full two-pints from Freda’s oranges, the whirring of the machine almost intolerable, her fingers sticky with their juice. And she really does feel quite peaky now, one lick of her fingers and something sour starts to swell in her mouth. She hasn’t had enough sleep – she couldn’t sleep, tormented by the calls she’d made, and the fear that she had slurred her words on Julian’s machine.
But now her mouth really is filling. Thank goodness there’s no one up to see her as she flees from the room with a tea towel to her face. She makes it to the bathroom, manages to sweep aside Claudine’s flannel and toothbrush before letting go. Last night’s wine comes up as pure acid, burns her throat. She dares herself to raise her throbbing head to the mirror; her pallid skin is filmed with sweat, consumptive. The shadows around her eyes draw her back and she groans with her hands to her face.
That night.
It was the shock of waking to find him there and his sour sick smell that sent her fleeing for the bathroom. Julian’s breathing was amplified behind her, so loud it sounded more like a creature than a man. He slid shut the door while she gripped the basin – this basin, as she gripped it now – and retched so violently she thought the baby might come up her throat. Julian stood, radiating fever, pulling at his hair. The nightdress she was wearing was one of Ellie’s, fine linen worn quite thin. She put her hands to her belly and his eyes followed them, widening in disbelief. ‘You’re pregnant.’ She nodded, and after that the words came easily, like water through a dam.
‘Sshhhh, shut up . . .’ he said. The burning heat of his sickness was repelling her as well as his hands, which he held as though to halt falling masonry, saying: ‘Please. Don’t come closer. Flu. Mira. Don’t wake Mira.’ He was grappling with the door in his haste to get away from what she was telling him, half-falling, half-flying down the stairs.
Now she ransacks Heino’s cupboard for Alka-Seltzer, sets up the percolator for more coffee. Flat Coca-Cola, isn’t that supposed to be the best thing for a hangover? She wonders what sort of person keeps an open can at the ready. By the time Heino joins her she’s downed a couple of Nurofen and gulped down a pint of tepid water. Her headache is starting to recede though her eyelids remain heavy. It was four in the morning by the time she got hold of Karl in Connecticut. They’d spoken and sighed and conducted long silences for over an hour. The things they said hadn’t made for sweet dreams and she wonders who will apologise first. She fetches orange juice for Heino, puts bread in the toaster. Heino is smartly dressed as always, but this morning he is wearing his polished leather shoes rather than slip-ons and his cufflinks are the gold ovals with the hospital crest. He arrives carrying sheafs of papers in blue files.
Brandishing last night’s empty Sauvignon bottle she confesses, ‘I don’t know what came over me but it appears I’ve drunk the whole lot. It was in the fridge, I hope it wasn’t something precious.’
Heino takes the bottle from her, adjusts his glasses and reads the label. ‘One of Claudine’s, I think,’ he says and returns it to her, his eyebrow raised. ‘That’s not like you, my dear.’
She slumps beside him at the table, they hold hands and she rests her forehead to his knuckles. ‘Come, come,’ he says. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. Oh, excuse me, silly old fool, of course. I’m sorry. It’s one of the hardest things to lose a parent . . .’
‘Oh no, Heino. I don’t think it’s him. I’m not upset. I mean, I’d rather he wasn’t dead . . . I keep feeling a bit guilty to be honest.’ She rests her head again, likes the smell of his skin and soap.
He pats her shoulder with his free hand. ‘I’m sure I’ve bored you many times and so you know that after I came to England I never saw my father or grandparents again, all very sad. I got on with my life here, grew up, went to medical school. It wasn’t until after the war that we got official confirmation about what had happened to them, but I didn’t throw myself on the floor weeping,’ he says. ‘All my memories of Hamburg were happy ones and yet I was more upset by the death of our neighbour’s dog a week or so before. I felt wicked, but that dog was my main companion. He and I went for long walks over the Heath every evening and I told him all my troubles. I used to sit high on a ridge with him beside me, looking across to Cherry Tree Woods, and when he was run over I wept many tears. He was a dear old thing, with big paws and an intelligent look on his face. I’ve thought about that since, especially since Ellie died. Now I think that grief is more connected to the loss of tangible things, the day-to-day doings, not simply memories.’
She forces herself to chew some dry toast. Swallows painfully.
Heino gives her a sad smile. ‘You ran away from home very young, am I right? Sixteen?’
She nods. ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly running away. More like being pushed,’ she says. ‘But you’re right. Perhaps grief is only as big as the hole it needs to fill and my dad didn’t really figure in my life once I’d got away.’ The toast goes down like gravel, her throat still raw from earlier. Heino shakes his head while she fiddles with her necklace, running the gold sun back and forth along its fine chain.
‘What a shame for him. Missing out on a daughter like you,’ he says. ‘And, as I always tell you, how sad that my Ellie never got to meet you,’ and Julia has to stop fiddling to blot her eyes with her napkin.
He’s delighted by the idea that the juice they are drinking comes from the fruit of trees that she grafted and grew. He dabs his mouth with his napkin and proclaims it sweet and delicious, points to her glass. ‘And you need the vitamin C this morning yourself, so drink up.’
Julia starts to feel more optimistic, a day working with Freda is just the medicine she needs. ‘What time are you due at Great Ormond Street?’ she asks. ‘If Claudine’s up I could leave the girls and walk over there with you.’
‘I’d love you to accompany me there, my dear,’ he says and muses for a moment, looking into his cup, before continuing. ‘And I was wondering if we should leave half an hour early and take Mira. Do you think she’d be interested? I know some of those nurses would love to see her looking so fit and healthy.’
Julia takes another bite of toast, stalls while she chews. ‘Oh, I don’t know, Heino . . .’
‘Some children find it a very reassuring thing to do, I mean, not that I’m a psychiatrist . . .’ He searches her face then changes the subject. ‘There are some terribly difficult questions in here,’ he says and taps with a finger at his files. ‘Today I find I am dreading the Ethics Committee. Sometimes it’s too much like playing God. It is worse every year: these very sick babies that can be kept alive younger and younger, while the funding doesn’t rise to keep pace with medical advancements and technology. That’s what it comes down to. All these questions of life, and what can and should be done to prolong it, need to be asked with only thoughts of the child, not pounds and pence. The child first, always.’
Heino, like Karl, has soft brown eyes with bronze flecks around the pupils that flash when they get fired up, the same thick expressive brows, even in old age. ‘So, shall we show off Mira to the nurses or not?’
Before she gets a chance to reply there’s a thundering of feet on the stairs. ‘Here they come.’ Ruth screams as she flies into the room: ‘Don’t push me, Meeee-rah!’
The girls cheer when she tells them they’ll be spending the day with Claudine and run to wake her. Heino is happy for her to keep using his car and, though it’s mawkish, she finds herself once again at Burnt Oak on her way out to Freda’s. When she gets to her old street she cranes her head to the top windows. She sees the curtains twitch, the pale moon of a face, then nothing.
Perhaps they were stuck there for ever in those sad December days. Julian, gaunt with loss, his library books piled up beside him, folded into their only comfortable chair. She, curled around a hot-water bottle in the bed, drifting and dreaming, barely able to admit to herself, let alone him, that what she felt for the poor lost baby was closer to guilt than grief. She bled quietly. ‘Let’s try again as soon as possible,’ he said, though he was still only twenty-one. He wrapped her in the embroidered quilt and the weight of his dreams seemed to press down on her.
Despite the detour she arrives at Freda’s early. ‘My God, you look gloomy.’ Freda tups her under the chin, draws up a stool and sits beside her. ‘What’s up?’
‘Oh, you know, Mira . . .’
‘Still grumpy?’
‘And Karl not being here so that we can work out what to do,’ Julia says. ‘He’s got this paper to prepare for the Administration by Friday, so it’s no use trying to talk to him about anything else. And I’ve got a hangover. Have you got any painkillers?’
Freda motions for her to stay where she is, fetches some paracetamol and pops a couple from the foil for her.
‘And one or two things she’s been saying. The other night, I think Ruthie got wind of the fact I was married before . . .’
‘Oh yes, I always forget him,’ Freda says. ‘The guy who taught you everything you know about, ahem, hydroponic gardening; it’s why I offered you the job in the first place.’ Freda winks and mimes rolling a joint, asks: ‘What was his name? You so rarely mention him. Chris, was it?’
Julia visibly shudders: ‘Yes, Chris. Best forgotten.’
‘I’m sorry, I interrupted you,’ Freda says.
‘To be honest, Freda, just thinking about him makes me feel sick. But Mira was asking me where I lived when I left home and I just said ‘With Chris’. And Ruthie is such a nosy little thing she pushed me for details. She wanted to know if he was a nice man and I had to admit that he wasn’t. Mira was crawling around behind the sofa looking for her shoes, pretending not to listen, but muttered something I couldn’t quite catch. She wouldn’t repeat whatever it was, but I thought I heard the word “Dadoo”.’ She gives Freda a rueful smile as she continues: ‘Which was her name for Julian. Maybe I imagined it.’
‘Come on,’ Julia gives herself a shake, jumps down from the stool. ‘Let’s get on. I’ve had a good look through the architect’s drawings and I’ve had some ideas. Can we make a list of the big trees, the fruiting varieties that you think would do well there?’
Freda rubs her hands together. ‘That’s more like it,’ she says and, grabbing her notebook, scribbles across a page with a pen to get it working.
Julia blurts it on their way out to the greenhouses, the thing she’s been longing to confess. ‘I rang him last night.’
‘Who?’
‘Julian.’
‘You did?’
‘It was his voice on the machine at Firdaws, so I guess he’s still there. You know we’ve not spoken since, not since . . .’
Freda lays a hand on her shoulder, gives it a rub. ‘These are some knots you’ve got here,’ she says. ‘I often think about how awful it must have been for poor Julian that night . . . I mean, for all of you, him just walking in like that.’ They arrive at the glasshouse and she props the notebook on a ledge and gives Julia’s crunchy muscles the full benefit of her plantswoman’s thumbs.
‘As I’m sure you remember, it wasn’t supposed to happen like that. Karl had come back on the red eye and I was dead on my feet. Mira was only just out of hospital. Karl came down from his shower in a bathrobe, we drank hot chocolate and took turns reading stories to her. We were tucked up on the bed. Somehow we all ended up falling asleep.’ Even now she feels the need to explain herself. ‘The stress of the hospital, and, you know, tired all the time from being pregnant with Ruth. We were going to tell him that day. Karl had flown in to talk to him: I mean, it was going to be gory. Just not like that. I can’t bear to think how long he was standing there at the foot of the bed looking at us.’