The Winter Folly (47 page)

Tina came into the kitchen, looking about curiously as everyone always did when they came to madam’s house. Alexandra wondered what they all said about her. No doubt there were rumours.
They always called her madam, as though they had found out that she had once had a rank back home. Not that it mattered now, of course – or, indeed, had ever mattered.

Tina took out two loaves of bread and put them on the counter. ‘Here you are, madam.’

‘Thank you, Tina. Do you have something else for me?’

She giggled and said, ‘Of course.’ She produced a small cardboard box that held four pastries filled with a sticky concoction of honey and nuts.

‘Delicious! Your mama is a wonderful pastry cook.’ Alexandra bent down towards the girl. They both knew the routine but enjoyed it just the same. ‘But you know, I don’t
think I’ll be able to eat all this on my own. I can hardly manage one of these rich pastries, let alone four. I think you should help me. Why don’t you take one?’

‘Thank you, madam,’ Tina said, eagerly plucking one out of the box. ‘May I have it now?’

‘Eat it before you go back. Then you can wash your hands here. Come onto the terrace and you can enjoy it outside.’

They both went back to the warm scented outdoors. Summer was at its height and Alexandra could already sense the year on the turn. The freshness was leaving the air, the season of dust was
beginning and then she would feel the plants starting to age around her, tiring of the great burst of energy they had expended since the spring. Tina munched happily on her sticky treat, licking
her fingers as she went along. Alexandra watched her, enjoying the girl’s simple pleasure in the sweetness of the honey and the crisp layers of golden brown pastry. The sound of a horn
blasting out below them somewhere made them both look towards the sea.

‘The ferry must be arriving,’ she said. It was invisible from where they were, approaching from the south and sliding into the harbour below the hills. But she always heard the horns
as they announced the approach and departure of the great vessel.

She had grown so used to the sound over the years that she barely noticed it now. That was, until the woman, Delilah, had come here. Now she realised that the horn was a harbinger of change and
always had been. Growing deaf to it had been a mistake. Any day might bring a stranger here, one who intended to change her life in some way. She’d existed so long in this place untroubled by
the outside world except on her terms – when she chose to read a newspaper or watch a television programme – that she’d begun to forget that it might still have an interest in
her. In fact, that it certainly would one day or another. And so it had proved to be. The question was whether it was done with her now or not.

She turned to the girl who was licking the last traces of honey off her fingers and from the corners of her mouth, like a cat might clean itself after eating. ‘Now, Tina, rinse your
fingers, then you’d better be getting home. Thank your mother. Tell her to give me the month’s bill.’

‘Yes, madam.’ Tina was already on the steps to the kitchen. ‘Goodbye, and thank you.’

‘See you soon!’ Alexandra waved to her, knowing that it wouldn’t be Tina next time who came with the bread. It would be one of her brothers or sisters, taking turns to walk up
to the English lady’s house and be given a cake.

She went back to her salad and finished assembling it. She cut a slice of the fresh bread, covered the pastries with a towel against the marauding flies, and took her meal outside to the terrace
as she usually did. She liked to eat her supper slowly, without reading or listening to the radio, absorbing the sounds and smells around her and savouring each mouthful. The years were moving so
quickly now that it made sense to open her eyes as much as she could to every season, catching it and living it before it sailed past and was gone.

The memory of that woman came back to her as it so often did. She had imagined that she would find it easy to shut Delilah out of her mind. After all, she’d had many years of practice
closing herself off from what was happening beyond her immediate existence. Eventually, she’d even been able to stop herself returning home in dreams – except for those regular
nightmares that still came to punish her – although occasionally she was unexpectedly ambushed. She would be in a perfectly normal dream and would turn to find John as a boy standing there,
staring up at her with his huge grey eyes, demanding to know where she had gone, or she would realise she was standing at the door of Fort Stirling, with everyone expecting her to go inside and
take over her old life. Sometimes she would see Nicky and he would be furious with her, or else blankly detached, happy with a new life that didn’t include her. Those dreams were almost
unbearable, but at least they were easier than the nightmares.

Still, she had assumed that her little tricks for forgetting would work as well as they had for years. And that was wrong. The vision of Delilah on the terrace, her face strained between anger,
pity and confusion, was so strong she couldn’t shake it from her mind.

Was I right to write that letter?
she wondered, putting a sliver of creamy feta on her tongue and letting it melt there saltily. A picture came into her mind of John opening it, reading
and then . . . what? It was hard to say as the image in her mind was of the boy John. He was so young in her imagination that she saw him stumbling over the big words, as he had when she’d
heard him read from his storybooks, and bursting into tears with frustration at the end.

‘But, Mummy,’ he shouted, stamping his foot as he had when he was seven years old. ‘I want you to come back, don’t you understand?’

Her heart twisted in pain at the image.

‘Stop it!’ she ordered herself out loud. ‘None of that, do you hear? What good will it do?’

Since Delilah had come –
my daughter-in-law
, she reminded herself – some of the things she had always clung to as certainties had not seemed so immoveable as they once had.
Her absolute conviction that she had done the only thing she could for her family began to shimmer and look hazy, like a mirage when one begins to get close and realise that it is something
unsubstantial. She could not afford for that to happen. She had built her entire life and everything in it around her certain knowledge of what was right. While Delilah had been here, she had been
as convinced of it as ever. It was only after she left that the doubts began to come.

Perhaps it had been writing that letter. She hadn’t intended to leave anything for John, nothing to explain why things had turned out the way they had. Her promise to herself had been to
take everything with her, good and bad. No complaining, no explaining. And yet she had found herself sitting down and writing that letter, then phoning around the hotels until she found the one
where Delilah was staying so that she could deliver it there.

It’s no good regretting it!
she said to herself.
You’ve done it now. It’s gone, she’s taken it back. He’ll have read it by now.

Why did remembering the letter give her such a cold feeling? Perhaps it was because of how cold she had felt when she wrote it. She had thought herself back into the state of mind that had
enabled her to leave home all those years ago.
For the best
, she had told herself.
No other way.
And that was how she had framed it: a letter with no apology and little
explanation.
I loved you
, it said,
but that was not enough. You won’t believe me but I did it for you. I suffered too. It was the only way. Your mother, Alexandra.

How could she ever begin to write of the pain? It would take more paper than there was on the island and more hours than she probably had left to live. How could she convey the deadening despair
of feeling herself at the mercy of a malevolent fate that had sent her into a cursed marriage that would taint all of them? If it were ever known, what would happen then? She shuddered to think of
it. John would have lost his inheritance in one fell swoop, and been tainted by his parents’ disgrace.

And Nicky . . . her heart twisted with the thought of him. The pain was still so acute that she had been even more successful at shutting him out of her mind than her children. What had she done
to him? She’d had to save John’s right to the house, knowing how much it had mattered to Nicky to pass his legacy on to his son. Their marriage was over – it had to be over
– but he didn’t have to suffer seeing John lose the family inheritance that mattered so much to him. And at least he didn’t have to live with the knowledge that he’d spent
eight years in an incestuous union with his own sister. She could spare him that.

It was hard to remember those dreadful hours when Nicky had gradually come to accept that she was going – forever. He’d pleaded with her, shouted and wept. He’d begged to know
her reasons for leaving and she wouldn’t give them. He’d told her over and over that he forgave her for Elaine’s death and that leaving him and John would only make things a
hundred times worse.

‘Is it me?’ he’d asked, his voice cracking and his eyes full of anguish. ‘Is it me you hate?’

‘No,’ she’d said, knowing that if her heart were not already broken, this is when it would have shattered. ‘It’s not that. I can’t explain. You have to
believe it’s for the best.’

The truth had to remain concealed. It had already destroyed so much. She couldn’t let it continue its rampage, taking Nicky’s life and work, and John’s inheritance, with it.
She could give him a future at least.

‘I want you to be happy,’ she said, ‘and that can’t be with me.’

‘Don’t you understand, Alex?’ Tears spilled out of his eyes. ‘I’ll be nothing without you. We’ll be lost if you go. Don’t leave me and John, I beg you.
We need you. We love you.’

It was almost more than she could stand to witness his grief but she could not be moved. She longed for things to be different but she knew their secret now, and she had to sacrifice herself to
keep it. At last, in bewildered pain, he’d had to give in and accept her terms. The agony of leaving John had felt like tearing her heart out. It had only been bearable because she believed
wholeheartedly that she was doing what was right for him. Losing Nicky had been like cutting off half of herself and trying to live without it. But for them, there truly was no other way. She could
not embrace him as a wife again. She couldn’t kiss him and think of making love to him. That was over forever, no matter how much her wicked self might yearn for him. She’d woken up
from dreams of indescribable pleasure, where they had met again and he’d kissed her, stripped her naked and made intense and extraordinary love to her. She’d woken shaking and crying
out as she’d shuddered around him, pulling him deeper into her, desperate to possess him again. She’d lie back on her pillows, panting at the vividness of her physical experience, still
in the grip of the aftermath of her climax, but as the pleasure of being with him waned, she became sickened by her own desires. She knew who he was and yet she still wanted him, and that made her
worse than she had been before. She’d spent most of her life now fighting against her deep need to have him again. It was her life’s challenge to subdue that desire and accept it as
base and evil. It was not the pure love that made John and Elaine but a perverted thing that tainted her children after all.

She got up and took her dishes back into the house. Tonight would be a night like most others. She might go up to the church for the late mass, where she often went to get comfort and strength.
Or she might sit here as night fell, listening to the night sounds and reading by candlelight until it was time to sleep. Since Delilah had come she hadn’t been able to read so well. Images
of Nicky kept floating into her mind. He was sick now; he had begun to lose his memories. The images of her life as it had once been were disappearing. While they lived in Nicky’s mind, they
had a kind of three-dimensional quality, a roundness that came from existing in two memories simultaneously. Now they were melting away from him, they were turning flat and unreal in her own head.
Could she trust that she recalled everything as it was? And then . . . she remembered what Delilah had said. ‘When you vanished, Elaine vanished too’ – or words to that effect.
Their daughter had lived on after death in their hearts and minds. But now that Nicky was forgetting, there was no one left to bring Elaine to life with their memories. She couldn’t be
resurrected. And when Alexandra died, Elaine would finally be snuffed out completely. She’d join the hordes of the past who now had no one to remember them as they were. They had faded to
names and then beyond that to something even less defined. Elaine was too young and fresh to become one of them, wasn’t she? Didn’t she deserve to live on a little longer?

I don’t know why you insist on thinking this way!
she rebuked herself.
What can you do about it now? It’s far too late! What’s done is done.

And yet she couldn’t help wondering about Delilah going back to Fort Stirling and taking the news of their meeting back to John. How had he taken it? She could only imagine him feeling
hatred, anger and bitterness. And who could blame him?

On impulse she went to her bedroom, climbing the wooden staircase to the second floor of the house. By her bed was a small cabinet and she opened the door and took out an old book of poetry.
Inside the cover was a folded piece of torn newspaper. She unfolded and smoothed it out. It showed a wedding party, a groom and his elegant bride, the gawky young best man, the father of the groom
standing beside the mother of the bride in all their finery. It was the only picture she had of John as an adult, taken at his first wedding and printed in the paper on some society page. She put
out a finger and touched his face, trying to imagine it mobile, speaking, frowning, crying. What had he said when his wife had broken the news that his mother was still alive and continuing, with
every day that passed, to abandon him?

‘Oh, John,’ she said, sitting down on the worn rug that covered the stone floor. ‘You will never understand. I can never tell you why.’