In Her Shadow Page 9

  ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ I would reply. ‘You leave her alone.’

  Some girls tried to befriend Ellen, because they wanted to be part of the drama, they were fascinated by the proximity of death, but Ellen was not interested in them. She seemed to need only me, and that made me proud to be her friend and I felt more protective of her.

  It was true that her grief did not manifest itself conventionally, but I knew it was there. When she wasn’t being looked at, and judged, she depended on me for comfort. She bit her nails and shivered inside clothes that were suddenly too big for her. She came as close to me as she possibly could, all the time, as if to share my warmth. She put her hands into my pockets and I covered them with my bigger, warmer hands. Sometimes we squeezed into the same jumper, or we shared a cardigan, me taking one arm, she the other, and our bodies pressed together in between. I felt as if I was growing larger all the time, and Ellen, meanwhile, was disappearing. I was the big, fluffy mother hen, she the scrawny little hatchling.

  I liked it that I was the leader and protector now. I enjoyed the changed dynamic. I felt, at last, as if I was truly involved, and not just hovering on the sidelines.

  And all the time Ellen’s behaviour became stranger.

  When she was asked to read out her essay on ‘The Nature of Beauty’ in English, she stood up and recited a poem about a deer skull she’d found washed up on the beach and now kept on her dressing-table. It was, in fact, a sheep skull, but Ellen insisted it had been a deer. It was not even really a poem, more a random collection of words, like verbal driftwood. She didn’t get into trouble for that, nor for all the occasions she sat in class biting off her split ends and taking no notice of the teachers at all. They left her alone, they didn’t seem to know what to do with her. Even the sports mistress, Miss Tunnock, said nothing when she sloped off on her own instead of joining in with the cross-country running; rather, to my joy, she sent me off too, to look after Ellen. I particularly enjoyed the expressions of jealousy and outrage on the faces of our classmates as I trotted back to the changing rooms. Ellen and I found a warm place beside a radiator and huddled together, a coat buttoned up around both of us, a single scarf around our necks, so close that our heartbeats aligned themselves and shared the same rhythm.

  One afternoon, the school bus dropped us off and I was turning to go home to Cross Hands Lane when Ellen took my arm.

  ‘Walk back with me,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if you’ll be able to come in, but walk back with me anyway.’

  It was cold and the wind was blowing in our faces. We tucked our chins down into our scarves and linked arms. Our feet shared a rhythm, like our hearts sometimes did.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked.

  She shrugged. ‘My fingers hurt.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s Papa. He makes me play the piano.’

  ‘Because your Mama likes to hear it?’

  Ellen nodded. I felt a tingle of irritation with her. Was it really too much to ask that she played her mother’s favourite pieces of music at such a time?

  ‘It’s not just for an hour or two, it’s all the time,’ she said. ‘Yesterday I had to play the Moonlight Sonata fifty times.’

  ‘Honestly, fifty times?’

  ‘It felt like fifty times. Now the music’s in my head and I keep hearing it. I can’t concentrate! I can’t think of anything else!’

  She pulled her arm free of mine, picked up a stick and whipped it against the leafless hedgerow. Some black-and-white cows on the other side raised their heads. They rotated their jaws and blinked at us.

  ‘He’s mad,’ she said then. ‘Honestly, Hannah, I really think Papa is going mad.’

  ‘Mad with grief?’

  ‘He’s obsessed. He won’t leave Mama alone, not for a single moment. He sits with her all night; even when she’s sleeping he won’t leave her. He sleeps beside her.’

  I thought that was romantic. I imagined if I were Mrs Brecht, how pleased I would be to wake and find Mr Brecht next to me. I could see myself, my head on the pillow, my hair prettily spread about my pale face, and him, holding my little hand between both of his. I could see a tender smile on his lips as my eyelids flickered open and then he would raise my hand and gently kiss each of the knuckles in turn.

  Ellen broke the stick in half and threw it over the hedge.

  ‘I have to play the piano even when Mama is asleep.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So she has music for her dreams. Papa said it will help her remember her happiest days, when she was young and healthy.’

  I glanced at Ellen to see if she minded that her mother’s happiest days were before she was born. I could not tell from her expression.

  ‘If it helped Mama, I’d play the piano all day and all night,’ Ellen said. ‘I wouldn’t care that my fingers were sore or that I hated the music. But she’s tired of it too. That’s why she keeps asking to go to the hospice. She wants to get away from it … from him.’

  I didn’t understand anything back then. I felt sorry for Mrs Brecht, of course, but I couldn’t understand why she was being so cruel to her husband. My heart was almost breaking in sympathy with Mr Brecht’s. I thought it must be awful to die, but better to be the die-er than the person losing someone they loved as much as Mr Brecht loved his wife. He was the most tragic person I had ever known. Thinking about him made my eyes fill with tears.

  The last time I talked to Mrs Brecht was the day after my seventeenth birthday in November, a few weeks before she died. She was lying in the downstairs back room at Thornfield House where she could look out into the garden. She was covered with a cashmere shawl, resting. Mr Brecht had taken the car into Truro, and Ellen and Mrs Todd were looking after her.

  She had become even more drawn since the last time I had seen her. She was a person going backwards, in reverse, fading like a pencil drawing being erased, bit by bit. Adam Tremlett had brought on some daffodils in his greenhouse for Mrs Brecht, to remind her of the spring she would not see, and Mrs Todd told me to help Ellen carry them into the room. The whole house was full of flowers. My mum had been to Thornfield House once or twice to help Mrs Todd with the cleaning during this difficult time, and she said it was like coming into a botanical garden. Neither of us had ever seen so many flowers in one place.

  The daffodils were nothing special, in my eyes. They had small, sunshine-yellow heads bobbing and nodding on weedy green stems hardly strong enough to support them. Ellen walked into the room solemnly, holding her pot to her chest; I followed behind. Ellen placed her pot on the floor, by the French windows, where her mother could see them.

  ‘Aren’t they beautiful, Mama?’

  ‘Are they from Adam?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Mrs Brecht gave a sigh. ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, raising her tiny, misshapen hand a little. I stepped forward, into her line of vision, and put my pot down beside Ellen’s. Mrs Brecht smiled when she saw me. I was so shocked by how little of her was left I had trouble smiling at all.

  ‘Come and give me a kiss goodbye, Hannah,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid. This condition of mine is not contagious.’

  I leaned down and kissed her forehead. Her skin was cool and waxy.

  Ellen perched on the edge of the daybed, and took her mother’s hand.

  ‘How are you feeling, Mama?’

  ‘I’m all right, Schatzi.’

  ‘Do you want anything?’

  ‘I want you to stay with me a while. Where’s your father?’

  ‘He’s out. Do you want some music, Mama?’

  ‘Dear God, no,’ said Mrs Brecht. ‘Let’s enjoy the quiet.’ Her lips, which used to be so full and juicy-looking, were pale and dry, greyish in colour.

  Ellen twisted a strand of hair around her finger. Her cardigan gaped and I noticed bruises on the inside of her upper arm, four small, ugly bruises, sized and spaced like fingertips. Ellen let her arm drop. I meant to ask her what had happened and how she came by the bru
ises, but I never did. I forgot them.

  Mrs Brecht spoke softly. ‘The daffodils remind me of my birthday. I used to have beautiful parties in the garden here when I was a child,’ she said. ‘My mother filled it with decorations, paper lanterns, bunting … and the daffodils. Thousands of daffodils. I always thought they were my flowers, grown specially for me.’

  She rested her head back against the cushion. ‘I wish you had known your grandmother,’ she said to Ellen. ‘She had a good heart and she would have loved you very much.’

  ‘Yes, Mama.’

  Ellen shot me a significant look that I ignored. Nothing her mother had said had hinted at an inheritance. I remembered Mrs Withiel and how all the Trethene children called her ‘witch’ and how she lay dead for three weeks in Thornfield House before anyone found her. I twisted a strand of hair around my own finger and sucked the end of it. The clock on the mantelpiece was ticking, and Mrs Todd was vacuuming somewhere inside the house.

  ‘I’m so tired of this waiting,’ Mrs Brecht said quietly. ‘Really, I’ve had enough.’

  ‘The nurse will be here soon,’ Ellen said. ‘Do you want anything in the meantime, Mama?’

  ‘Pull the curtains back, would you, Ellen. Tie them back so I can see the whole garden.’

  Outside, Adam was digging over one of the beds, wrapped in a donkey jacket and boots. It was so cold that his breath was fogging around him. Frost on the trees made them sparkly and white. It was like looking through a window into a Christmas globe.

  ‘I’ve known him all my life,’ Mrs Brecht whispered. ‘I was friends with Adam long before I knew your father.’

  Ellen stroked her mother’s hand.

  Mrs Brecht smiled. ‘When we were children we danced together at the Helston Flower Festival. He always used to say …’

  ‘What, Mama?’

  Ellen’s mother closed her eyes slowly and turned her head to one side as if trying to catch hold of the words from the past.

  ‘That’s where I wish I was,’ she murmured, ‘out in the garden with Adam.’

  ‘But it’s so cold out there, Mama.’

  ‘I wouldn’t feel it,’ Mrs Brecht said. ‘The cold wouldn’t bother me at all.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I WAS UP early on Saturday morning, feeling less edgy. I’d slept better and was glad to have something planned for the weekend, so it did not stretch out in front of me like a straight road going nowhere except towards another Monday morning. It would make me feel good to see my parents; they’d be pleased to see me and I would be less concerned about the fragility of my mental state if I was with other people. It was solitude I dreaded.

  I caught a taxi from Montpelier to Bristol’s Temple Meads station and the train, fortunately, was on time. I found a window seat, drank coffee and ate an almond pastry for breakfast as the train rumbled southwards through Somerset. It was altogether a pleasant journey. I had a book to read, the sun was shining, the countryside beyond was glorious. I even dozed for a while, and by the time I alighted at Helston, I was feeling better than I had for a while.

  At the station, I caught another cab, one that took me through the tiny, winding country lanes that led to Trethene. I felt like an adult in a toy world. Everything in South Cornwall seemed too green, too pretty, too small. The car rolled through little fords, and wildflowers dipped through steep-sided lanes – all foxgloves, campions and oxeye daisies. Sweet, whitewashed cottages sat amongst their gardens, and the leaves of the trees dappled the air.

  As the car pulled up outside number 8 Cross Hands Lane I pushed my sunglasses up onto my forehead and studied the cottage. There was nothing of the chocolate box about my parents’ home. It was a small, plain council house, but Mum and Dad had always been happy there. It had been their home since they married. They had tried to prettify it. White and pink sea breeze had self-seeded in the garden wall, and little red roses scrambled around the door. The front garden was tiny – a toy garden. How had Dad managed to fit Jago’s old car in there? How had they managed to restore it in that pocket-handkerchief space?

  I let myself into the house with the key that was always hidden under the plastic milk-bottle tidy by the front door. Mum was, predictably, in the kitchen wiping down the surfaces with a damp J-cloth and, through the window, I could see my father in the back garden watering his vegetables. The kitchen, as always, had been bleached to within an inch of its life and was neat as a pin. I called, ‘Hell-o-o! It’s me!’ and Mum’s face lit up as she turned to see me.

  ‘Hannah! What a lovely surprise,’ she said, drying her hands on a tea-towel, and then reaching her face towards mine for a kiss. She put the kettle on and asked, ‘We weren’t expecting you, were we?’

  ‘No, I just came over on a whim. I was missing you and Cornwall.’

  ‘That’s lovely! Can you stay?’

  ‘For the night, but I’ll have to go back to Bristol tomorrow.’

  ‘Oh.’ The single syllable was loaded with disappointment. I tried not to resent being made to feel guilty, turned my back on Mum so she wouldn’t see my face, and took some cups and saucers from the cupboard.

  Mum fussed about with a packet of biscuits and a knife, waiting for the kettle to boil before she risked antagonizing me again by saying, ‘You’re looking a bit peaky, dear.’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘You look tired.’

  I opened my mouth to reassure her, but suddenly I did feel tired. I wished I was thirteen again and that I could run upstairs and put on my pyjamas and snuggle beneath the coverlet of my single bed. I wished Trixie was still alive to lie across my legs, and my life was full of sparkly nail varnish and hair-crimpers, magazine problem pages, a passion for animals and Saturdays spent in Falmouth town trying on all the items on the sales rails and sitting on the sea wall dipping chips in ketchup with Ellen. I wished Jago was there, bringing his energy into the house and making us all laugh. I wished my mother was younger and less frail so that I could tell her everything, ask her what I needed to know, and trust her to take care of things without burdening her with the fear that I might be slipping back to the dark place she and Dad had had to pull me from before.

  ‘I’ve been working hard, that’s all,’ I said with a brittle cheerfulness.

  ‘You mustn’t overdo it, Hannah.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Remember what the doctor said about stress and—’

  ‘Mum, I know. Please don’t go on.’

  I filled the teapot, laid a tray, and then me and my mother, she slightly chastened, went out through the little lean-to conservatory that Dad and Jago had put up years back so that Mum had somewhere nice to sit and read, and out into the back garden. Dad greeted me effusively, found mismatched deck chairs in the shed, dusted off the cobwebs, and set them up for us. He continued with his work, listening to the cricket on the radio, while we sat in the shade of the cherry tree and chatted. For a while, the conversation was innocuous. I began to relax. I watched the bees busy about the honeysuckle flowers that grew through the hedge. And then … I don’t know what came over me – I truly did not mean to talk about the past – but for some reason I found myself saying, ‘Mum, you remember Ellen Brecht, don’t you?’

  At that very moment, Dad dropped his hose and it twirled around him like a snake, soaking the washing on the line. Mum looked up at the bedlinen that had been almost dry and was now spattered with dark wet patches. She gave a little sigh but, uncharacteristically, did not scold Dad for his clumsiness.

  ‘Yes, I remember Ellen, and her parents. I cleaned at Thornfield House for a while when Mrs Brecht was ill.’

  ‘Of course you did. I’d forgotten.’

  ‘It’s been turned into a pub now, Thornfield House. Did you know?’

  ‘Last time I was here, you told me it was going to be knocked down.’

  ‘I think they wanted to demolish it and build holiday flats, but they couldn’t get permission.’

  ‘It would have been the best thing for it,’
said Dad. ‘Good riddance. They should have bulldozed that place years ago.’

  ‘It had been on the market for a while,’ Mum continued. ‘Nobody wanted to take it on. But now it’s a gastric pub. Sally Next-door-but-one went for lunch there the other week. She said it’s quite tasteful, if you like that kind of thing. Olives and you-know-what. It’s popular with the tourists. They’ve turned that lovely front room into a bar.’

  I blinked and for a moment I recalled every detail of the room with its tall twin sash windows and the piano taking pride of place, and the chaise longue where Ellen’s mother used to rest. I remembered how the sunlight fell on the beautiful chestnut-coloured wooden floor, the gently billowing curtains and the fancy plaster rose-work above the chandelier, the ornate marble fireplace full of candles, the smell of lavender and candle-wax, the sound of Clair de lune.

  I remembered the bloodstain soaked into the floorboards that no amount of scrubbing would lift, the broken mirror, glass on the windowledge. I remembered Ellen screaming as if her heart was broken – oh God, the sound of her! I covered my face with my hands, trying to block out the memory.

  ‘Hannah?’

  I blinked again and I was back in my parents’ small garden, sitting awkwardly in the orange-and-green-striped deck chair with the sound of the water splashing from the hose and the birdsong and children’s television coming over the hedges together with the smell of frying onions from the open kitchen window of the neighbouring house. I felt a little dizzy. I tipped the dregs of my tea onto the grass.

  ‘Were Ellen’s parents nice to you, Mum?’ I asked.

  My mother frowned. ‘Oh, I don’t know. They were generous enough but I didn’t really get to know either of them. They weren’t the kind of people you could talk to. They weren’t like us.’

  ‘No. I suppose they weren’t.’

  ‘Mrs Todd kept herself to herself. And of course they were Catholics so we never socialized at church.’

  Mum fiddled with her earlobe. Then she said, ‘I never used to like going into that house after Mrs Brecht was gone. It changed. Everything changed.’