People We Love Page 10
He was right. On her left foot was a black walking shoe, laced criss-cross and finished in a bow, double-knotted for security; on the right, a navy slip-on with a more pointed toe.
The carer apologised. ‘We couldn’t find a pair. Edith’s a demon for hiding things, aren’t you my love?’ She gave the old woman an affectionate cuddle.
Edith chortled. ‘You have to,’ she said with a sly sideways glance. ‘People steal things here.’
Cameron grinned at her. ‘Like squirrels? Hiding things for a rainy day? What do they do with one odd shoe?’
‘I needed to escape,’ Edith said with great precision, ‘and you need shoes, you know.’
‘That’s very true. Shoes do it for me when I’m escaping.’
‘Cameron!’ Lexie hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
‘Well, come on, slippers are no good for running away, are they? And as for bare feet —I ran away once, when I was six, but my mother knew I’d just hidden in our neighbour’s garden and that I’d come back when I was hungry. Isn’t that right, Edith? Doesn’t do to be hungry, eh?’
‘Maudie makes great rice pudding,’ Edith said. ‘Are we having rice pudding for lunch, Maud?’
Lexie grew weak at the thought of an afternoon of this. ‘Maybe. I don’t really know.’
‘The coat’s not hers either,’ the carer confided, ‘but we couldn’t find a name tag on it, so it will do.’
‘Where’s my bag?’ Edith asked, looking around. Her hair had been washed and looked soft and silky, like a baby’s hair. It was so fine and thin that the pink scalp was clearly visible.
‘Here it is.’ The carer turned to Lexie and said under her breath, ‘There’s no money in it, I’m afraid, just a hankie and some odds and sods.’
‘Come on then, gorgeous,’ Cameron tucked his arm through Edith’s, ‘let’s go.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘We’re going on an outing, Edith,’ Cameron said, ‘A special trip.’
When he switched on the charm, Cameron could be irresistible. Edith went straight into full flirt mode. ‘An outing, how delicious. Will we have ice cream?’
‘If you want.’ He started to move her along the corridor towards the front door. ‘And sweeties. What kind of sweeties do you like?’
‘Humbugs.’
Cameron laughed. ‘Humbugs? You’re an old humbug, you daft thing.’
Lexie was shocked. You can’t say that to her, she wanted to hiss, but Edith just cackled.
‘Humbug yourself,’ she said.
Chapter Ten
Catalogue number 1: Ladies’ court shoe, black patent leather, slightly pointed toe, simple bow embellishment, small heel. Donated by Martha Gordon. This shoe says everything about Martha Gordon’s lifestyle as a legal secretary. They are smart, but practical, designed to give comfort throughout a working day, while still being stylish. For Martha Gordon, however, they tell the story of a life she has lost. ‘I am no longer the woman who wore these shoes,’ she says...
Artists are taught to observe. There are dozens of colours in a peach: russet, gold, pomegranate, butternut, caramel, tan, bisque, copper, terracotta, carrot, burnt almond, ochre, clementine, brioche, honey. The light streams in from the left onto a silver jug, but reflects there, and there. The symmetry of the daisy is mirrored by the spokes of a bicycle wheel.
Lexie knew all this, it had been drummed into her often enough at college – and yet when Edith Lawrence entered Fernhill, she found herself looking at the home she’d grown up in with new eyes.
‘Leo’s looking tired,’ was the first thing Edith said, before they were even inside.
‘Leo?’
Bent fingers stroked the front door knocker, a scowling lion’s face fashioned from iron, with a heavy ring through its nose. How many times had Lexie come in through this door and forgotten to notice it? It had been there for ever.
‘A wire brush, that’s what you need. Mother’s help used to do it every week, she kept it lovely. Look at the rust.’ Edith tutted reproachfully.
‘We’ll clean it tomorrow,’ Lexie promised, annoyed at her own inattention. She should have noticed the lion. Martha wasn’t up to observing such details of housekeeping at the moment and didn’t have the energy to deal with them.
‘Roar,’ Cameron said, opening his mouth wide and turning his head sideways in a poor imitation of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer trade mark. He’d been enjoying Edith ever since they’d left Sea View, and his observations were becoming more and more hilarious. Lexie shot him yet another glance she hoped was withering, and said cheerfully to Edith, ‘Do come inside.’
Edith sniffed noisily. ‘Ahhh! Roast beef. Is it ready?’
‘I’m sure it’ll be ready in a minute.’
She threw up a hand dramatically to shield her eyes.
‘It’s terribly bright.’
Lexie looked around at the hall, surprised. It had been redecorated at least twice since they’d lived here, and was currently painted in shades of stone – pale above the dado rail, a fraction darker below it. The space didn’t seem unduly bright to her. She tried to picture what it had been like originally, but couldn’t.
‘Can you remember?’ she asked her mother. ‘Was it dark before we painted it?’
‘I don’t recall,’ Martha said, coming forward. ‘Hello Edith.’
‘The stair window made a red patch like a rabbit in the corner when the sun was out,’ Edith said, ignoring her and heading for the far corner of the hall, where Tom now kept his neglected golf clubs. She shoved impatiently at the bag. Cameron caught it just before it toppled over. ‘See?’
Her finger pointed in triumph at a blood-red patch low on the wall. Lexie looked up. Just at this time of day, and only because the sun was shining, there was indeed a rabbit-shaped patch of scarlet on the deeply-embossed paper – refracted light from the Edwardian stained glass on the stairwell distorted by some small unevenness of the wall.
‘It’s a miracle,’ Cameron said from behind the golf clubs.
Lexie grabbed the bag from him and dumped them back in the corner.
‘Edith,’ she said, turning her back firmly on Cameron, ‘why don’t you come into the living room? Maybe you’d like a little sherry?’
But Edith was standing stock still at the bottom of the stairs, staring up. Her mouth had sagged open and her eyes were wide, the pale irises made paler by emotion.
‘Oh my,’ she whispered, ‘oh my.’
‘Through here?’ Lexie tucked her hand gently under Edith’s elbow and tried to turn her towards the living room.
Edith shook her off impatiently.
‘Upstairs,’ she said, all the brightness leached from her voice. ‘It’s upstairs.’
‘What’s upstairs, Edith?’
‘I have to go up.’
‘That’s okay. Here, let me help—’
She started to take Edith’s arm, but Cameron shot forward and got there first.
‘Let’s go together, shall we? I’ll take one arm, you can hold on to the banister with the other hand.’
It was an odd procession: the frail ninety-year-old woman with shoes that didn’t match; the sturdy man in jeans and trainers; the girl in the vintage pinafore with cropped crimson hair; and tagging behind them all, the sixty-something woman whose face was alight with interest for the first time in a year. Near the top of the first flight, Cameron said, ‘Which way, darling?’ with such unexpected gentleness that a lump formed in Alexa’s throat.
Edith didn’t miss a beat. She didn’t turn the corner to the second flight, but instead moved unhesitatingly across the landing and reached for the handle on Jamie’s door. Lexie, still only half way up the stairs, froze. Behind her, she heard her mother’s sharp intake of breath. Edith was fretting with the knob, its smoothness making it hard for her slight hands to grasp, so Cameron reached round and turned it for her. The door swung open and for a moment Edith was silhouetted in the sunshine like some apocalyptic figure. Her feet, in their odd sh
oes, were planted wide apart to provide a broad base to steady herself, and the coat-that-wasn’t-her-coat flared outwards at the hem, then settled as she stilled. Wisps of white hair framed her head like the seeds on a dandelion. One puff and she’d be gone.
Then she was inside, and Lexie flew up the last few stairs in an instant. What did she want in there? Why Jamie’s room? And how – dear God – how would her mother react?
By the time Edith reached the fireplace, Cameron, Lexie and Martha were all in the room. Edith made her way to the chimney, unsteadily but with determination and purpose. Cameron’s joviality was overtaken by curiosity, while Martha stood by the door, her tension obvious.
The silence was absolute.
Then Edith fell to her knees, Cameron rushed forward to help her and Martha jerked as if released from a trance.
‘Just move this, laddie,’ Edith said impatiently to Cameron as she tried to shove aside a heavy stoneware vase filled with dried flowers. Lexie noticed it for the first time. When had that been put there? Surely it wasn’t something Jamie had ever done? He definitely hadn’t been a dried-flowers type of guy.
Cameron lifted the vase and put it well out of the way. By the time he turned back, Edith was kneeling on the slate hearthstone, trying to peer up the chimney.
‘It’s in here,’ she said, her voice quite sure of itself.
‘What’s in here, Edith?’
‘Up there. Up there,’ she said impatiently, reaching her arm forward and trying to stick it up inside the chimney.
‘Okay. Why don’t you move aside, and let me find it? Lexie?’
Lexie responded hastily, pulling a couple of pillows off the bed as she passed. ‘Why don’t you sit back on these and let Cameron find it?’
Whatever ‘it’ is.
Edith’s body was rigid, but she allowed herself to be guided onto the pillows where she sat, for all the world like a small fairy on a toadstool, supervising proceedings.
‘I can’t feel anything,’ Cameron said after a tense interval.
‘There’s a loose brick. On the left.’
‘Really?’ He fumbled around, dislodging a shower of soot. ‘Damn.’
Martha said, ‘It hasn’t been swept in an age, we never use the fire.’
A brick fell onto the hearth with a resounding clatter and split in two. ‘Hell,’ Cameron cursed. ‘Sorry.’
Edith leant forward. ‘That’s it!’ she said, her voice higher than normal, ‘go on, laddie, in there. It’s in there, behind the bricks.’
Cameron’s head had almost disappeared up the chimney. Lexie watched as another small cloud of soot swirled lazily downwards, settling in his hair and on his face. There was a scraping sound, then a grunt. He was leaning as far in as he could.
‘Got it!’
He pulled out a small box with a jubilant flourish.
‘Here,’ Edith demanded, almost rolling off pillows in her eagerness.
Cameron placed the box carefully on her lap. Her face was working energetically, the mouth puckering and crumpling, trailing a fine web of lines and wrinkles in its wake, the nostrils flaring as if she was trying to grab for breath.
Lexie stared down at the box, fighting the impulse to kneel down and rip off the top to see for herself what was inside. It looked innocuous enough, just brown card, smeared with soot and faded with age, but otherwise in good condition.
‘What is it, Edith?’
But Edith didn’t take off the lid. Instead, she clutched the box messily to her chest, her breathing quickening alarmingly.
Cameron said, ‘All right, ducks?’ and sat on the floor next to her. His hair was thick with soot and there was a smudge across his cheek, but Lexie had never found him more attractive than she did in this moment of tenderness.
‘Would you like me to help?’
He had one arm around Edith, his other hand stroking hers in a gesture so sweet that it caught Lexie’s breath. After a few moments, Edith began to relax. Her breathing slowed and her arms unclenched. The box, released, fell to her lap with a soft bump.
‘Here. Shall we do it together?’
When she nodded, he lifted the lid. Lexie craned forward, but the contents were obscured from view, covered with crumpled and yellowed tissue paper. Martha grabbed her hand and squeezed tightly. Edith’s puckered hands hovered over the paper, trembling. At last she peeled back the tissue.
Nestling inside was a perfectly pink pair of crocheted baby bootees.
Deep in Lexie’s throat, a lump formed. She gulped to shift it. Beside her, Martha swayed and her hand gripped Lexie’s fingers so tightly that they ached.
‘I thought,’ Edith said brightly, ‘that I’d dreamed it.’
She looked around at the anxious faces peering down at her and explained,
‘I do get quite muddled, you know.’
The emotions of earlier – the impatience, the distress – appeared to have vanished and she was beaming. She lifted the bootees out of their protective wrapping and laid them against her cheek.
‘They were Charlotte’s, you see. Charlotte was my baby.’
Her chin jutted forward.
‘Father said I couldn’t keep her, but I did. I wouldn’t let anyone take her away from me. I didn’t care what they said. She was my baby, my first little child.’
‘Why did you hide the bootees, Edith?’ Cameron voiced what Lexie was afraid to ask.
‘She died. My little baby, my sweet thing, my darling died, and Father wouldn’t let me keep anything of hers, nothing at all. He said it was shameful and I had disgraced the family, but once Charlotte had gone I didn’t care about anything any more.’
She lifted her nose to the ceiling and her voice sharpened.
‘I was only sixteen, you see, and the boy had run away. Papa said when she died it was a judgement on me and he threw everything out. But I hid these up the chimney, and I never forgot. No,’ she folded the bootees into the palm of her hand and closed her fingers round the fine wool as if to conceal them from sight again, ‘I never forgot.’
She opened her hand and the bootees sprang back into shape.
‘Then I got muddled, and I thought I’d got it all wrong. But they’re here,’ she crooned, ‘and I was right all along. Wasn’t I, darling Charlotte?’
‘Would you like me to put them back?’ Cameron asked, ‘or will you keep them?’
‘You keep them for me.’ She thrust them at him, then looked at the serious faces around her. ‘Is lunch ready yet? I’m really very hungry.’
Shoes, Lexie thought as she watched Edith down second helpings of rice pudding, tell stories. Stories of tiny, much-loved babies who can’t even walk, of the tottering steps of little children towards adulthood, of special events in our lives, of dances, and marriages and mountain climbs and escapes.
Charlotte’s tiny bootees told two tales; of a baby who never found her chance in this world, and of a mother who spent a lifetime secretly mourning her.
She had an idea.
‘Edith,’ she said, laying down her spoon, her own pudding almost untasted, ‘would you let me take your photograph with Charlotte’s shoes?’
‘Alexa, darling—’ Martha began.
‘Are you sure that—’ Tom said.
Cameron just looked at her, while Edith seemed oblivious. She simply carried on spooning rice into her mouth.
Swept up on a wave of enthusiasm, Lexie ignored them all.
‘I have an idea, you see. I want to paint your bootees – Charlotte’s bootees. I’d like to tell Charlotte’s story. A photograph would really help me. How would you feel about that?’
Edith’s bowl was empty. She put her spoon down with obvious reluctance. Lexie waited.
‘Charlotte and I,’ said Edith with great clarity, ‘would love to have our picture taken.’
We can only turn our faces to the future when we have laid the past to rest. The feeling that this was true had been plaguing Lexie for months now and Edith had underscored it emphatically.
A few days after they’d returned a chirpy Edith to Sea View, the answer finally came to her. Edith had found peace.
The irony was that she had found it in Jamie’s room.
Lexie went to Martha, who was mending a hole in one of Tom’s sweaters.
‘Damn these moths,’ Martha said, glancing up as Lexie came into the kitchen. ‘We never seem to get rid of them. They’ve chewed a great hole in your father’s favourite alpaca sweater.’
‘Can I talk to you, Mummy?’ she said, lapsing unconsciously into the childhood appellation.
Martha was surprised. ‘Of course. I hope we can always talk.’
‘It’s time,’ Lexie said, swallowing, ‘to clear out Jamie’s things. Don’t you think?’
Martha paused in her darning, one hand high in the air, trailing behind it a long thread of brown wool.
‘It’s the only way we can move on,’ Lexie persisted, ‘do you see? We have to face it together. We have to talk about Jamie. We have to deal with things.’
Martha resumed her darning, her face intent. She lifted the sweater to the light and examined her work. She said, ‘It’s so difficult to see the hole when you’re working with dark colours.’
‘I know it will be hard,’ Lexie continued steadily, ‘and I know that Daddy will take a little longer to join us, but you and I should make a beginning.’
Martha’s hand rose and fell in a jagged rhythm.
‘It was Edith who showed me the way,’ Lexie continued. ‘Didn’t you see how tranquil she became after she found Charlotte’s shoes? And I thought, that’s it. That’s it absolutely. We must uncover our own lurking demons, and deal with them. Then we can start to live our lives again.’
In the corner of the room, the clock on the wall ticked remorselessly. Outside the window came the sudden alarm call of a blue tit, a rapid trrr-trrr-trrr that signalled the arrival, in all likelihood, of a cat. Other than these sounds, there was nothing, just the shrillness of Martha’s determined silence.