“I suppose it’s all right for you,” says Kath. “It isn’t for me.” Their mother had been dead two years. Elaine sees Kath with her, intimate in a way that she never was. Hugs and kisses, those long cozy consultations, laughter. Elaine could never be like that; she was impatient with their mother. She saw her as dull, she saw home as a place from which you had to move away. And their mother in turn became wary of Elaine, conscious that she was measured and found wanting. She stood back from Elaine, she mollified, she apologized. But with Kath their mother was someone different; she was at ease with herself, confident, comfortable.
There is more to that meeting under the plane trees. Something that came earlier. Kath on the phone: “I can’t go on living there. Jenny doesn’t like me. Can I come and see you?” Elaine has heard this often, over time, but now she is hearing herself as well. Not words, or phrases, but a jumbled effect that comes across clearly enough today, also conjured up by the square, the pigeons, the trees: Well, if you can’t you can’t, but I don’t see what you’re going to do, I mean it’s not as though you were at college or something, had a
base,
you’re talking about drama school, well, fine, so long as you realize there’s no job guarantee attached. . . .
I’m not your mother.
Elaine finishes her coffee, disposes of the container in a rubbish bin. She is rattled, bothered, she is experiencing a further and different level of disquiet. She is angry with Kath: What did you think you were doing?
Nick
, for Christ’s sake . . . And Kath has nothing to say; she is safe, beyond reproach. But she is also forever there, and forever provoking some new testimony.
Saturday. Garden-opening day. And it is all that was promised by the weather forecasters: Wedgwood-blue summer sky with trails of rippling cirrus, warm sunshine, the lightest of breezes. And there is a steady flow of cars from the lane into the paddock car park; Jim’s nephew is kept busy. So is Pam, dodging between the plant-sales area and the till in the shop. They are short-handed today; the girl who usually helps out with sales phoned in sick, so Pam must deal with that side of things rather than provide a cheery and informative presence in the garden. Elaine herself is doing garden duty. There have been the usual idiot queries, and a woman presuming to offer advice on epimediums, and various unrestrained children, but also the gardening correspondent from one of the broadsheets, which might be promising, and several genuinely well-informed and appreciative punters. So she is in reasonably good humor when she finds herself confronted by a person in straw hat and sunglasses, who places herself foursquare in Elaine’s path, saying warmly, “
Hello!
”
In the person’s wake is a girl, also hatted and shaded, but with something about her that causes Elaine a faint stir of disquiet. Elaine offers the woman a somewhat frosty smile, and at the same instant she sees that this is Linda. Cousin Linda—whose mum, Auntie Clare, was Elaine’s mother’s sister. And still is—festering in some nursing home, one has heard.
“Oh—hello.” Elaine’s greeting is barely more robust than her smile. She has not set eyes on Linda for many a year and has had no particular desire to do so. She remembers Linda—ten years her junior—as a pasty, importunate child, and Auntie Clare as an occasional tedious visitor with whom her mother engaged in mild competition over cookery skills, dressmaking, and the charms of their respective children. In adult life, she and Linda have exchanged Christmas cards from time to time, and that has been about the size of it.
Linda now lives in the west country, it seems, and is on her way home after a trip to London: “And Sophie was looking at the map and said, Hey! Auntie Elaine’s famous garden is on the way—why don’t we look in? So here we are!”
Sophie steps forward, demure. Elaine knows now whence the disquiet. There is a whisper there of Kath. She is not Kath, she is not even a pale shade of Kath, but there are flickers and glints of Kath: the curve of a nostril, the tilt of an eyebrow, a way of standing. Genes have skipped sideways and downwards, and surfaced in dumpy Linda’s offspring.
“How nice,” says Elaine. Few would be fooled, but Linda beams appreciatively. She waves a hand vaguely at the surrounding garden—at the terrace with its clouds of roses and clematis, at the grass walk edged with tree peonies, at the rill and the ginkgos and the lawn sweeping away to the ha-ha. “You’ve made it really nice here. I must get you to come and sort out our little patch—we’ve not got green fingers at all, I’m afraid.”
Elaine sees that she is going to have difficulty keeping civil. She looks round for help. Why does no one come up to ask what that blue flower is called, or why their roses keep getting mildew? But the garden is ticking over nicely, with little groups of satisfied customers cruising to and fro.
Linda’s attention has shifted. “We’ve been looking out for Nick too.”
“He had to be somewhere else today, unfortunately,” says Elaine. No way is she going to explain to this intrusive relative that she has recently required her husband to leave home because he once had an affair with her sister.
Linda is disappointed. “What a shame. Sophie wanted to meet Nick. She’s working in publishing, you see.” She shoots a proud glance at Sophie, who glimmers prettily. No, she is not like Kath—it is just that there are these eerie reflections.
Linda asks what Polly is doing. Elaine counters with Web design. At least this is saving her from any more crass garden-observations, though she is uncomfortably reminded of her mother and Auntie Clare trading child achievements.
Sophie pats her mother’s arm: “Don’t forget . . .”
“Oh—” Linda reaches into her bag. “I’ve got something for you, Elaine. We were going through old photos and I found one I thought you’d like. I daresay you’ve got lots of her. But still—” There is a respectful lowering of the voice; she holds out an envelope.
Elaine knows what is coming. She feels like saying: Thank you, but I’ve seen enough old photos of Kath to be going on with.
This one is inoffensive enough. Kath sits in a white plastic garden chair, under a striped sun umbrella. She looks directly at the camera, with an air of compliance. Some obligatory photo call.
“In our garden,” says Linda. “A couple of years after she was married, I think. She dropped in, quite out of the blue—off to see friends in Cornwall. But I gathered she’d just had that nasty little upset, poor dear, so she was rather under par.” Linda gives Elaine a furtive look—regret, and complicity. “Such a shame—”
Elaine thrusts the photo into her pocket. “Thank you. How kind.” She becomes brisk. “Have you been down to the woodland garden yet? At its best in spring, of course, but the
Astrantia
are just coming out. I wish I could take you indoors for a cup of tea, but I should be around in case anyone needs me.” She is ignoring what she has just heard, and also stashing it away for future contemplation.
But Linda is not to be disposed of quite so easily. She is talking about Kath. It becomes clear that this was not an isolated meeting. Elaine is surprised; apparently Kath had kept up a spasmodic relationship with Linda, over the years. Why? Linda is not Kath’s style at all, she has probably never set foot in an art gallery or a concert hall in her life, she would never attend an arts festival, she does not pot or paint or take arty photographs. She is the opposite of the kind of people Kath sought out as friends. So why did Kath bother with her?
Linda is saying it was always a red-letter day when Kath breezed in, a real tonic she was. . . . Kath is cocooned in clichés as Linda talks, and Elaine is further exasperated. Can’t the woman see that this is a travesty of Kath? She is reducing Kath to her own humdrum vision, she is re-creating her as some cheery health-visitor. She has no right to this tone of knowing intimacy. She has no right to Kath.
And now the winsome Sophie chips in. She simply loved Kath. I mean, Kath was just
so
cool, she always looked so marvelous, and she was such fun, she’d turn up with these lovely silly presents.
“Actually,” says Linda, “we think Sophie has something of Kath about her.” A fond glance at her daughter, and a shift to the tone of regretful respect. “Sophie was devastated when—when she—so sad. We couldn’t believe it.”
Enough. Elaine can stand this no longer. These two helping themselves to Kath. It is an invasion, a presumption. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m going to have to leave you. I need to check out the car park. Do go and see the woodland garden. Nick will be sorry to have missed you.”
Later, she cannot think why she said that. Nick did not give a toss about Cousin Linda. And Nick is not here, he is no longer a part of the place. Why did this hollow remark insert itself, as though she needed the armor of marital solidarity, of normal service?
Later, she hears Linda again. “That nasty little upset . . . under par.”
But later is on hold until after six, when the garden empties, the customers and the cars depart, Jim and his nephew pile into the red truck, Pam goes off to the pub with an admirer from the village. Alone, Elaine checks the ticket sales and is quietly pleased with visitor levels, locks up the shop, goes into the silent house. Only then does that other aspect of the afternoon come bustling in. Cousin Linda hangs around all evening, saying that again. And again.
Something is happening to the empty house, the Nick-free house, the tranquil and compliant house. Initially, it had been just that: there was no longer the hovering irritation factor, the Nick-generated annoyances, the intermittent requirements and provocations. Elaine’s grateful relish of solitude is marred by some subliminal disquiet. She is fine, just fine; she is sitting there at the end of a demanding day, a glass of wine in her hand, something simple in the oven, and then a creeping malaise sets in. The place is too still; its small disturbances are all mechanical—the phone rings, the fax clicks and grinds, the microwave beeps. Its blankness makes Elaine restless; she finds herself wandering around, turning on the television—the background chatter that always so exasperated her in Nick’s time. She makes phone calls just for the sake of it, needing to be occupied and purposeful.
She keeps the phone on answer, in case Nick rings, but hovers near to listen, picking up at once if it is not him. When she hears Polly’s voice she experiences a mixture of pleasure and apprehension, but is clipped and careful in her responses. Polly’s voice brims with agitation and concern, which frequently spill over into further exhortations and appeals.
“Please,” says Elaine. “Can we not talk about this.”
“But,
Mum
—”
He doesn’t know what to do with himself, says Polly. (Did he ever? thinks Elaine.) It’s pathetic, says Polly, and I mean
really
pathetic. He doesn’t shave some days, and incidentally he’s buggered up my washing machine—I had no idea he was so untechnical. And he won’t go and look at flats, in case you’re wondering; he says he’d rather be here.
I can’t believe my
father
is living with me, says Polly.
Actually, Elaine can’t quite believe it either. Much of the time she is on course, she is calm and cool and ordered. She deals with each day in a systematic manner, as she ever did. Her attention is on the matter in hand, whether it is a session with Sonia over paperwork or a client visit or a stint at the drawing board on some design. She is operating at full strength. But then there come those moments when she is suddenly adrift. She is dazed by events, and she is confused. What exactly is it that has happened? Nick is no longer here, apparently because she sent him away. Kath is in her head more than ever before, but her response to Kath swerves wildly. Sometimes she is angry with Kath: “Why Nick?” she demands. At other times she is trying to recover a shadowy, elusive Kath who seems to be saying something that she cannot quite hear, and occasionally she is startled by some uncontrollable reaction of her own. She had been affronted by Cousin Linda, jolted into resentment by that tone of casual intimacy; Linda was nothing to Kath, nobody, she had no business talking that way.
After a long day visiting a health retreat under refurbishment, for which she is designing the grounds, Elaine returns home and at once has the sense that something is not quite right, even as she turns in at the gate. There are a few moments of disorientation before she realizes that Nick’s car has gone. The Golf is no longer sitting in the drive.
Elaine goes into the house. Sonia has left the usual pile of letters and memos; there is no reference to Nick. A note on the kitchen blackboard tells her Pam has detected some suspected honey fungus on one of the old chestnuts; below this, there is Nick’s scrawl:
“Sorry you weren’t here.”
He has taken a few more of his clothes. The almost bare wardrobe is disconcertingly eloquent, as is the empty space on the driveway where his car is not.
Children talk a lot about love. “I love you,” they say. “Do you love me?” they ask. Elaine remembers this of Polly. As language began to flow from Polly, there came this word, flung casually around, in a house that had not much heard it hitherto. It is a word with which Elaine has always had some difficulty; it did not much pass between her and Nick. Polly’s carefree usage had reminded her of Kath, when Kath was young. Kath too had bestowed love in all directions, and had asked for it in return. “Do you love me?” she would say, appearing suddenly at Elaine’s side, interrupting her homework or her hair washing or her preparations for an outing. And she hears herself: “Don’t be silly, Kath.”
Don’t be silly, you’re my sister. That is what she had meant. Sisters don’t talk about love. And anyway I don’t talk about love. I’m not that sort of person.
Polly and Nick
Listen, I’m not seeing Dan anymore. It wasn’t going anywhere. As of last week. All perfectly sensible and grown-up—at least I was. So that’s that. A free woman. Though actually there’s this guy . . . No, there
might
be this guy. Early days yet—I could be quite wrong. So enough said.