In Her Shadow Page 4

  When Ellen was in disgrace, Mr Brecht paid special attention to me. I basked in the glory of being with him, and not having to share him with her. I alone would perform a dance routine I’d spent hours practising, or pretend to be amazed by his magic tricks, or listen to him singing silly, and sometimes rude, lyrics to popular songs and clap my hands with genuine delight. His irreverence excited, seduced and appalled me; and being appalled by Mr Brecht was a thrill in itself.

  At those times, Ellen would hide away somewhere for as long as she could bear to be alone, but eventually she always turned up, sucking a strand of hair, scowling. Mr Brecht would pretend he hadn’t noticed her for a while then suddenly he’d leap over to where she was standing, pick her up and swing her round; he danced outrageously with her, she holding on for dear life as he galloped around the garden. My girl! Mr Brecht would sing, leaning forward so Ellen had to arch her back, and usually by this time she would be laughing, no matter how hard she tried not to: it was impossible to sulk when Mr Brecht was trying to make you happy. ‘Dancing round with my girl!’ he sang, waltzing around the pond swinging Ellen until she was flushed with dizziness and joy.

  Mr Brecht had employed a local man, Adam Tremlett, to work on the garden, and he and Mrs Brecht would laugh as they watched.

  ‘It’s so good to be back,’ Mrs Brecht would say, and she and Adam would exchange smiles.

  I used to spend hours wondering what I could do to make Mr Brecht so pleased with me that he’d dance with me like he did with Ellen. There had to be something that would make him look at me the way he looked at her, with such love, with such complete adoration.

  ‘I am the luckiest man in the world,’ he used to say. ‘I have the most beautiful wife and the loveliest daughter, and I will never, ever let anyone hurt them or take them away from me!’

  A few weeks after we first met, Ellen and I were playing upstairs, when she sent me to fetch some juice. In the passageway outside the kitchen, I overheard Mrs Brecht and Mrs Todd talking in suspiciously quiet voices. I crept to the door, put my ear to the crack and listened.

  ‘Hannah’s such a nice, uncomplicated child,’ Mrs Brecht said. ‘She’s a good influence.’ I felt a clutch of pleasure in my stomach. ‘Don’t you think Ellen seems calmer now, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘She has settled down,’ the other woman agreed. ‘But it’s not Ellen’s fault she’s precocious.’

  Mrs Brecht laughed. ‘You always defend her, but there’s a fine line, Mrs Todd, between being precocious and being an over-indulged little monster!’

  I went back upstairs without the juice, but I did not forget what Mrs Brecht had said about Ellen. I kept her words in my mind and turned them over and looked at them from different angles, and each time I came to the same conclusion. Ellen must have a great capacity for being bad, for her own, gentle mother to speak of her like that.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JOHN TOOK ME to a small Turkish restaurant tucked away in the back streets of Easton. It was packed with people, its cave-like interior twinkling with red and gold fairy-lights that matched the decor. We were shown to a small table, beside the wall. A candle flickered inside a glass jar the colour of blood. The tablecloth was decorated with spangles that reminded me of a shawl Ellen had given me for my fourteenth birthday. I used to wear it wrapped around my waist when I went to the beach. I remembered the dazzle of sunlight on the glass diamonds sewn around the hem, and a picture came into my mind of Ellen tanned, lying on the sand, shading her eyes from the glare with one hand, leaning on her elbow, smiling at me, and the teenage Jago standing behind her, wet from the sea, watching, dripping, with a towel around his bony shoulders dotted with acne.

  I blinked the image away, slid into the seat, unfolded the paper napkin on my lap. John ordered wine. The waiter brought a bottle, opened it and filled our glasses then fetched a large plate of meze. I broke off a piece of warm pitta bread and dipped it in the hummus.

  ‘So how are you feeling now?’ John asked.

  ‘I’m OK. Just a bit tired.’

  John looked at me, but did not push it. I knew I could trust him, but I could not tell the truth about what had happened in the Egyptian Gallery without explaining my past. I didn’t want him to know how, after I returned home from Chile, twelve months of suffering from increasingly acute anxiety had culminated in what used to be called a nervous breakdown but would now be termed a psychotic episode. Along with the psychosis there had been delusional paranoia – voices in my head and hallucinations. I had, at the time, been so convinced that Ellen had come back from the dead to haunt me, that I admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital, pleading with the staff to make her go away. I stayed for several months until a combination of drugs and counselling had restored me somewhat, before being handed over into the care of my long-suffering parents. It was not a picture of myself I wanted to paint for John.

  ‘Really, I’m fine,’ I said.

  John nodded. ‘I’m lucky. I’ve never had a migraine in my life,’ he said. ‘Charlotte’s mother is a martyr to them.’

  I smiled politely. ‘How awful for her.’

  The waiter returned and put a hot tray on the table between us. He laid out bowls of tiny, herby lamb chops, diced cucumber, salad, bulgur and stuffed beef tomatoes. We ate in silence for a while. I was hungry. I licked the lamb fat from my fingers, made a small pile of bones at the side of my plate and tried to relax. John talked about his ideas for the new annexe – it was an opportunity to introduce more interactive exhibits, and to bring the museum into the twenty-first century, and I was interested in what he had to say. Everything was going fine until the restaurant door opened and a woman and a man came in together. There was something about the woman, the way her hair was tucked behind her ear and the shape of her eyebrows, which reminded me of Ellen. Suddenly, as if from nowhere, I was battered by the emotional storm I’d been holding back since the afternoon.

  I missed Ellen so badly and at the same time I wished I’d never met her. I had loved her and I’d hated her. I’d wanted to help her and I’d wanted to destroy her. I wished, more than anything, that she was alive; at the same time, I was glad she was dead. I couldn’t rationalize the conflicts in my mind. My heart seemed to swell until it hurt, pressing against the bones of my ribcage. It was filled with passion – a combination of love and rage – that, since Ellen had died and Jago had gone to live in Canada, had had no outlet and had turned into a hard kernel of repressed emotion. John was saying something about the amulet that I’d dropped in the museum earlier, how he had gone up to the Egyptian Gallery to help search for it and how there had been a panic when it could not be found. I tried to listen, but it was too late. I couldn’t help myself. Tears began to fall from my eyes. I tried to hide the crying, but John noticed almost at once.

  ‘Hannah, what is it? What’s wrong? Oh Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you …’

  ‘You didn’t. It wasn’t you.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said hastily. ‘Somebody had already found the amulet and handed it in as lost property. There’s no problem about it.’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘No?’

  He looked at me anxiously. I tried to compose myself, to swallow my feelings and press them back down inside.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Ignore me. I’m not myself.’

  ‘Bloody migraines!’ said John. ‘Here, have a drink. Have a napkin. Have another lamb chop.’

  I smiled weakly. I dabbed my eyes with the corner of my serviette. The people at the neighbouring tables were trying not to look at me, but we were all sitting so close together it was difficult for them. The conversations around us had dried up.

  John cleared his throat. He cut a roast tomato into very small pieces and spread it about his plate. I was mortified to think that I might have embarrassed him. I didn’t want him to think that I was like Charlotte, that I enjoyed drawing attention to myself.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said again.

  ‘Fo
rget it,’ he said. ‘Worse things happen at sea.’ He smiled and gave my elbow a friendly squeeze. ‘You are all right, Hannah, aren’t you? You would let me know if there was anything I could do to help?’

  I nodded and pretended, just for a moment, that we were a couple and that he would always be there at my side, to pick me up when I fell and brush me down and stand me back on my feet. I imagined the relief of telling the truth, how unburdened I would feel.

  I only held onto the fantasy for a moment but that was enough to restore me a little.

  In the restaurant, a waiter picked up a small fiddle and began to play, and another sang, his voice like honey and heat. I listened and the grief subsided, ebbed away, fingered its way back into its shell. The other diners began to relax again. Things returned to normal.

  ‘So, how is Charlotte?’ I asked brightly.

  ‘She’s fine.’ John took a drink of wine. ‘She’s very much into her Music Society practice. It’s her latest thing.’

  ‘What are they practising?’

  ‘Grease. Charlotte’s one of the Pink Ladies.’

  ‘Oh. That’s good.’

  ‘It had better be, the amount of rehearsing they’re doing. You wouldn’t believe how much time it takes.’

  I glanced at him, but there was no edge to his voice, no irony. He said, ‘They’re performing at the Hippodrome at the end of term. I’m sure Charlotte would get you a ticket if you’d like to come.’

  ‘Thanks, but it’s not really my cup of tea.’

  ‘Mine neither. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to get out of it, though.’

  We smiled at one another.

  ‘You and Charlotte are very different people,’ I said carefully. ‘Different from each other.’

  ‘It’s true. We don’t have much in common.’

  ‘Doesn’t that make things … difficult?’

  John rotated his glass, making patterns of the candlelight flicker through the wine. He smiled at me. ‘I know people think Charlotte and I are an unlikely combination. I notice how people look at her, and I know they’re thinking she could have done far better than me. She could have had any man she wanted, so why did she end up with the scruffy eccentric? I don’t know why, any more than they do. I was just the lucky one.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone could be better than you,’ I said, but not loudly enough for John to hear.

  ‘Nobody chooses who they love,’ he went on. ‘That’s my good fortune.’

  I thought it was the exact opposite.

  I looked up and held his eyes for a moment; he smiled a little ruefully and then he looked away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ELLEN AND I had known each other for less than five weeks when the school holidays ended and we started together at the comprehensive in Helston, but we were already inseparable by then. I’d never had a best friend before and it was a strange and enchanting experience; for the first time in my life, I was never on my own. Ellen and I rode into school together on the bus, we shared the same table in class, we found a quiet spot to sit together and talk at break-time and we stuck together when we needed partners.

  The friendship suited Ellen, who didn’t know any other girls, and it suited me, because I’d always been a lonely child. I found friendships difficult. Ellen was not always easy, but I understood what I had to do. When she was happy, I simply admired her and swam in her wake. If she was unhappy – usually because she had been thwarted in some way – my role was to listen to her railing against the unfairnesss of life and to sym pathize. Sometimes we sat for hours, hidden in a leafy corner of the Thornfield House garden, her complaining and me agreeing with everything she said. On other occasions, I found myself aiding and abetting Ellen in some scheme that was certain to end badly because I could not talk her out of it. I don’t think she would have done half the things she did, if I had not been there. She needed an audience and I was it.

  I was no lapdog though. Our friendship worked both ways. Ellen gave to me as much as she took from me, perhaps more. One afternoon, during half-term, Ellen and I were in the garden of the Trethene Arms pushing ourselves backwards and forwards idly on the swings while we waited for Mr Brecht, who had ‘popped in’ to get a bottle of wine, but had been gone for twenty minutes or more. Two girls who had been in my class at primary school came into the garden clutching glasses of Coke. They sat at a bench, glanced at me, whispered and giggled. I ignored them and their voices grew louder.

  ‘It’s Hannah Brown, the weirdest girl in town!’ one of them sang out in a stage whisper.

  ‘The fattest girl in town!’ said the other.

  ‘The smelliest girl in town!’

  They waved their hands in front of their noses, pulled disgusted faces and collapsed in laughter.

  Ellen had been twisting her swing round so the chains had become woven. Now she lifted her feet and let the chains untangle, spinning faster and faster until they were clear. She jumped off the swing, dusted the rust from her hands on the side of her shorts, and sauntered over to the girls. They went quiet under her gaze. They hunched their shoulders.

  Ellen stood by their bench.

  ‘You were laughing at Hannah,’ she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘Hannah is my friend and I will never let anyone hurt her. Do you understand?’

  The girls looked at one another. They smirked, but I could tell they were uncomfortable.

  ‘Understand?’ Ellen asked again. They nodded.

  ‘Good,’ said Ellen, and she leaned forward over the table and carefully and precisely spat into each of the girls’ drinks. They opened their mouths and stared at her. She smiled at them with her lips, not her eyes, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, turned around and returned to the swing.

  I understood then. That was what it meant to be a friend. It meant standing up for the people you cared about. It meant being brave and not turning a blind eye when the other was in trouble. Ellen showed me the value of loyalty.

  I should have learned from her. I didn’t.

  I have one more important memory from that time. It was a different evening, but soon afterwards. My parents had gone to a church social and I wanted to get away from Cross Hands Lane because volleys of ugly words were pinging like gunshot over the fence that separated our garden from the Cardells’. ‘If you don’t want a hiding, why d’you talk to me like that, Jago? Why d’you do it, you little shit? Look at you, such a fucking waste of space your mum died and your dad dumped you. Loser, loser, loser!’ The words were interspersed with yelps of fear, or pain, from the dog, a large-headed, bow-legged white Staffie-cross. Covering my ears with my hands didn’t stop the words, I had to get far enough away so I couldn’t hear them, so I cycled up the hill until the noise of the brook running over the tree roots and rocks in the tunnel of greenery at the side of the lane cancelled out the misery next door. At the crossroads, I decided to ride to Thornfield House. I wanted to be with Ellen.

  I heard the music as soon as I reached the house. It was piano music, but not the tinkety-tonk hymn kind the teachers bashed out on the piano at school; no, this was music like moonlight on water, music that ebbed and flowed, rippled and sparkled.

  I propped my bike against the wall and walked through the open gates onto the flagstone path. The lower half of one of the front-room sash windows was open. Ivory-coloured voile curtains shimmied in the draught. I walked slowly to the window, taking care not to make a noise, and I looked through.

  Ellen was sitting at the piano, with her back to me. She was wearing what appeared to be a sleeveless nightdress, and her feet were bare. Her black hair slid down her back, between her shoulder blades, and her arms were moving in time to the music, backwards and forwards, stretching to get the reach of the keys. Ellen’s head occasionally dipped a little. Her feet were tucked under the piano stool. She wasn’t using the pedals.

  I hadn’t known Ellen could play the piano, let alone that she could play so well and so beautifully, as if it were something she had been born to do. Why h
ad she kept this part of her life from me? Why wasn’t I allowed to share it? I wanted to knock on the window and interrupt her, so that she would be forced to let me into her world, but then I realized I was enjoying watching her secretly. It gave me a kind of power over her.

  It was only when she had finished, when the piece trickled delicately to its end, that I noticed Ellen’s parents were also in the room. Her mother was lying on the chaise longue. She was covered by a cashmere throw; just one deformed ankle, one narrow foot with lumpy joints, the white growths stretching the skin, was visible on the pale velvet. Her hair was loose and messy and she too had her back to the window. Beside her, on the floor, was an almost-empty wine bottle and a long-stemmed glass lying on its side.

  As Ellen slowly turned on the piano stool, as if she were in a dream, her father raised himself from the chair where he had been sitting, went over to Ellen, and leaned down to kiss her. He held his daughter so tenderly, his hands on her shoulders and his hair falling over his face, and the two of them seemed to be caught in a moment of exquisite intimacy. It was perfect, Mr Brecht looking down at Ellen, she looking back up at him, and smoke from the cigarette pincered between the first two fingers of his left hand curling elegantly around them, wreathing them in a delicate mist.

  I felt a pang of loneliness in my heart.

  I wanted Mr Brecht to hold me like that.

  I wanted to be part of that perfect family so closely bound by their private music. I had thought they included me in everything, but I had not known about this, and if I did not know about this, what else was there? What other secrets?

  ‘Play that piece again, Ellen,’ Mr Brecht said, ‘for your mother.’

  Ellen gave a little smile and a nod. She turned back to the piano, and Mr Brecht stood beside her as the music started up again, just a few notes to begin with, trickling over one another brightly like water running over stone.