Chapter Four

‘That’s what’s so disconcerting.’ Amelia stirred the earthenware pan filled with vegetable soup. ‘One moment she’s the old Selma; with it, sensible, the sort of person you feel you can go to with your problems. Next thing you know, whoosh, she’s gone, replaced by this large, malfunctioning child.’ She looked across the kitchen at Gerald. ‘It’s really very upsetting.’

‘Well there you are, it was obviously right to put her in a home,’ Gerald said, picking up the Independent and turning to the sports pages.

Amelia slammed the spoon down by the side of the cooker making Gerald wince. ‘It wasn’t all that long ago that she enthralled people with her piano recitals. You know, back in Sweden a young man actually shot himself underneath her balcony because her parents wouldn’t let her marry him. And now, now she’s someone who’s “put” places. What the hell help is it knowing that “it was obviously right”?’

‘A lot I should think,’ Gerald said sourly.

How her vagueness irritated him, he thought, her habit of making illogical remarks in that rather slow, deliberate voice of hers, a voice that, just like her grandmother’s playing, had once enthralled. Even her prettiness annoyed him these days. Her grey, slanted eyes, the soft wavy hair that framed the oval face, all reminded him of how much in love he had been with her once.

Oh Amelia, he thought, looking at her moving about the kitchen, wiping down the cooker, using three matches to light the candle on the kitchen table, you’re altogether too languid, too useless. Suddenly angry he snapped, ‘Why don’t you do something about the situation if you think it’s so terrible.’ And he slammed down the paper and strode from the room.

Amelia cried as she kept the soup warm on the stove, stirring it slowly. She cried bitterly, because now she really feared that Gerald had stopped loving her, but she also cried carefully, so as not to smudge her make-up, because he was not lost to her yet, and he could come back in to the kitchen any moment.

‘There’s a sweetness about you,’ Gerald had said soon after their first meeting, and he had shaken his head with a bemused air as if to say, I might seem strong, but against you I’m helpless. He was so good natured too, like over that silly business with the modelling. He had been as hard-working and serious a painter as he was a solicitor now. Yet he had shown no irritation when, after having promised to sit for an important canvas, she had turned up in his studio only to end up wasting his day. She hadn’t intended to, of course. She had watched him set up his easel, she had undressed and sat down where he wanted her to, and then she had panicked like a fool when he asked her to part her legs for the pose. But Gerald had been only kind and understanding. She had sat crying in his huge blue armchair, her knees pressed together as if they had been welded that way, and he, kneeling by her side, had just smiled and said, ‘You’re a sweet, fragile, dreamy girl, and I should never have asked you to do this.’

‘Sweet, dreamy, fragile,’ Amelia hissed, splashing the wooden spoon round the soup. ‘Try wet, gullible and inconsistent.’

The soup had simmered so long she knew there would be no flavour left. She took it off the stove and went to look for Gerald. She found him in the bedroom, speaking on the phone. As he looked up to see her in the doorway, he said a loud and hurried goodbye and hung up.

Amelia took a deep breath and walked over to the bed. She sat down next to him and, giving him a little smile, she put her hand out, running her fingers through his hair. Ignoring his irritated flinching, she kissed him lightly on the cheek. ‘Gerald, I love you.’

Gerald looked at a point somewhere over her left shoulder. ‘And I love you too,’ he mumbled.

Grateful, she hugged him and, after a few moments, she felt his arms around her back.

In a small but beautifully furnished flat not far from the cathedral in Exeter, Dagmar Lindsay shone a torch into the back of her wardrobe, making sure it really was clean, that it was just a shadow she’d seen earlier, not dirt. Again she rubbed her finger against the back wall of the cupboard, checking. Her long-fingered hands – pianist hands Selma always said delightedly – were raw, the skin chapped and rough, not fitting the creamy complexion of her face and the soft skin on her slim arms.

‘I just haven’t got the time to go off to Kingsmouth,’ she muttered to herself, as she removed hanger after hanger from the rail, wiping them with a J-cloth drenched in Dettol. ‘I can’t see why Robert should get away scot-free, I really can’t.’ She went over to the basin and rinsed the cloth carefully, turning it under the hot tap, then she washed her hands. She pushed a strand of pale, blond hair from her forehead and, taking a deep breath, smoothed down her cornflower-blue, silk skirt before returning smiling to the sitting room where her guests were having coffee. ‘So sorry,’ Dagmar said, ‘I had to call to see how mother was.’

‘Miss Lindsay, Miss Amelia Lindsay? I hope we didn’t wake you up.’ The voice on the phone was nasal and apologetic. ‘I told your grandmother it was much too late to call anyone up, but she would not listen I’m afraid. Miss Lindsay, are you there?’

‘Yes. No you didn’t wake me up, it’s quite all right. Are you calling from Cherryfield?’

‘I’m sorry, didn’t I say. It’s Nurse Kelly, I’m on duty tonight. Your grandmother has quite a temper when she wants.’ The voice laughed uncertainly. ‘Here’s your gran now.’

‘Amelia darling.’ Selma’s voice sounded faint, there was a crashing noise, nothing, then, ‘Oh bugger!’

‘Miss Lindsay, Mrs Merryman dropped the phone but here she is again now.’

‘Amelia,’ Selma’s voice was small and frightened. ‘I wanted to make sure I had your number.’ There was a pause and Amelia could hear Selma breathing heavily into the phone. ‘It’s 0962 3628 … Bother, I can’t read the last number. Is it nine … Or one?’

‘But Grandma, you’ve just called the right number, you’re talking to me now.’

‘Yes of course, silly of me. What did you say the number was? 0962 …’

Gerald, however irritated he got with Amelia, found it impossible not to continue giving her advice, attempting to sort her life out for her. The next evening he looked up from his brief and explained that it was a form of arrogance believing that no-one but she could look after Selma. ‘You just can’t go running off to Devon every other week. You have your own life to lead, responsibilities here, a home to run. Then there’s the question of the cost of all these trips, hotel rooms …’ He turned a page in the brief. ‘You’re not your grandmother’s keeper you know.’

Still Amelia couldn’t stop thinking of Selma alone and confused at Cherryfield. Friends with new babies had said that suddenly the world seemed populated almost exclusively by infants in prams. A member of the family, not recently arrived in the world, but on the way out, tottering into certified old age, had the same effect, Amelia felt. Old people, harassed by a blinking green man turning all too fast into angry red, crossed in front of her car at pedestrian crossings. They were found in their own cars at every roundabout, sitting paralysed by the stream of traffic pouring from every direction. There they were again, fumbling for the right change in the check-out queue at the supermarket, apologizing for their outmoded habit of carrying real money.

Two weeks after her first visit to Cherryfield, Amelia was again boarding the train to Plymouth. She wondered, as she looked for a seat, what had made Gerald suddenly quite happy with her decision to go. Could it just be that she had sold another couple of articles and was able to pay for the weekend herself?

An old man settled like a large shabby bird on the seat opposite, his dark brown mac flapping round his scrawny limbs. ‘All right, all right, I don’t need any more reminders, I’m going down, aren’t I?’ Amelia muttered in an inaudible voice.

When the train passed a large and heavily populated graveyard the old man and Amelia both stared out at it.

The stones, mostly marble, rose from the ground, new and shining like giant teeth, or old crumbling white, streaked by years of rain like powdered cheeks by tears. Amelia looked over her book at the old man and wondered if he felt the pull of the graves, or if death, even at his age, was something that only happened to others?

‘Nice day,’ smiled the old man, showing a perfect set of white dentures.

‘Lovely day,’ said the nurse who opened the door for Amelia at Cherryfield.

Selma sat in a chair in front of the television, her face half turned from the programme on learning difficulties in adult life. On her lap lay her copy of the Omnibus Jane Austen. Amelia had to go right up and put her hand on Selma’s arm before she looked up, a frown on her face. Resting the back of her head against the chair she gazed at Amelia, then, with a sudden delighted smile, she put out her hand. ‘Darling, what a lovely surprise.’

‘I phoned and told them I was coming, they should have told you.’

‘The maid’s been in and out of my room all morning, but she never said a word.’ Selma frowned, ‘I do wish I’d known, I haven’t been to the shops at all this week.’

‘We’ll go out for lunch,’ Amelia said quickly. ‘Is your toe better? Are you able to walk a little?’

‘It is a bit sore, but of course I can walk on it. Just give me a hand up darling.’

Amelia braced herself and began to pull. For a moment Selma stood tottering on both feet, her dress riding up at the back showing the edge of her flesh-coloured knickers, then with a shriek of pain, she toppled back into the chair.

‘Why don’t I get the wheelchair, just for today, give the foot a bit of a rest?’

‘This is quite ridiculous,’ Selma muttered. ‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with my foot, a small cut that’s all.’

As Amelia came through the door a few minutes later, pushing the wheelchair, she heard Selma’s laugh, soft and flirtatious like a girl’s. At her side, chatting, stood the Admiral and his son. Henry, looking relaxed, was leaning lightly against the half-empty bookcase behind him, his father, on the other hand, attempting the same easy pose, looked strained; his elbow resting on top of the bookcase the only thing preventing him from collapsing.

‘I’m going to sit down, won’t you join me?’ Amelia hurried forward. The Admiral shot her a grateful glance and said he’d love to.

‘I get very tired standing,’ she added, wondering if she might be overdoing it.

‘Amelia darling, you didn’t tell me your young man was here.’ Selma smiled graciously at Henry.

‘Grandma, that’s Henry Mallett, Admiral Mallett’s son.’

‘What a coincidence!’ Selma looked gratified. ‘I believe the Admiral is staying here too.’

‘Well, seeing we’re all here,’ Henry said, ‘why don’t we have lunch together?’

Amelia didn’t notice the make of Henry’s car, but it was burgundy coloured and they all fitted inside quite comfortably. Selma, fresh lipstick and scent applied, was hauled from the wheelchair into the front seat of the car and Amelia sat in the back with the Admiral.

Henry suggested they went to a hotel he knew on the edge of Dartmoor. They drove for half an hour, through nearby Totnes and out again on to narrow winding lanes flanked by tall hedgerows. Selma wound the window down and sighed happily as the air blew through her washed-out curls. The Admiral looked out at the passing landscape.

‘You almost forget there are such creatures as children.’ He smiled at three small girls on bikes.

As they parked in front of the hotel, there was a slight fracas when Selma could not release the seat belt. ‘The stupid thing,’ she fumed pink faced. ‘It’s completely stuck. No,’ she said to Henry as he leant across to try, ‘it doesn’t matter what you … Oh, thank you.’ And she was helped out and back into the collapsible wheelchair. ‘I can’t wait to be back on my feet again,’ she said over her shoulder to the Admiral, as Henry wheeled her towards the hotel entrance.

At the table in the restaurant, the Admiral was in expansive mood. ‘I’ll do the wine shall I, dear boy?’ he said as he peered short-sightedly at the wine list.

They had Stilton soup to start with, and a glass of dry sherry. This was followed by lamb chops and new potatoes and what the Admiral called ‘a robust claret’. Selma and he then ordered trifle. ‘None of this nouvelle stuff,’ the Admiral sniffed, ‘a fellow could starve to death.’ He hailed the waiter, ‘Be liberal with the cream.’ And he winked at Selma who giggled happily.

‘You are a dreadful man.’ Her chubby shoulders heaved with laughter.

It was, Amelia thought, as if the atmosphere at Cherryfield was too thin to sustain real life and that now, back in the world, Selma and the Admiral filled out and coloured in, ceasing to be old people, and becoming just people.

She looked up to see Henry smiling at her. ‘How long are you home for?’ she asked him.

‘Most of the summer, then we deploy to the Gulf for six months. At least my father will have had a chance to settle in at Cherryfield first.’

‘I wish I wasn’t so far away,’ Amelia sighed. ‘My mother lives in Exeter but without a car it’s no good staying with her.’ Amelia didn’t say that the thought of spending time alone with her mother in the flat made her feel like an escaped convict hauled back to prison.

‘… and of course they couldn’t believe their eyes at the High Commission when I dived into the pool in tropical mess dress.’ The Admiral laughed loudly at the memory as he raised a spoonful of cherry-topped trifle to his lips. Suddenly there was silence and the Admiral’s long face turned pink, then purple. Amelia stared as he gave a strangled cough, his pale blue eyes bulging, tears rising. Henry leapt from his chair.

At the table opposite, a young girl stared and nudged her mother, and the lunching family at another, carried on their conversation in carefully loud voices, as if to show that they at least were minding their own business.

The Admiral sat rigid in his chair as Henry prised his lips apart. He had stopped coughing and was making rasping, staccato noises, his face turning a bluish hue.

Selma didn’t move but sat silent, gripping the table edge with both hands.

‘An ambulance, quick!’ Amelia called to the waiter.

Beads of sweat appeared on Henry’s face as he pushed his fingers inside his father’s mouth. Suddenly the Admiral yanked free and, with a loud belch, disgorged his dentures on the plate of trifle.

Henry dabbed his father’s face with a napkin dipped in mineral water. ‘It’s all right Pa,’ he whispered, ‘I’m here.’

The guests at the next table left, gingerly carrying their cups of coffee, and, opposite, the teenage girl dissolved in giggles.

‘It’s not funny,’ Amelia whispered near to tears, ‘it’s not funny.’

‘He’ll be fine now,’ Henry said, looking up at her. ‘I don’t think we need the ambulance. Don’t worry he’ll be fine.’