FOR MY BIRTHDAY, LAWRIE WAS taking me to the house in Surrey. Gerry was away, he said, and he wanted to show me the place. In the near six years I’d been in England, I’d not seen that bucolic heaven peddled to us in Trinidad. I was ready for hedgerows, crumbling Eleanor crosses covered in yellow lichen, the dip of autumn trees overburdened by their fruit, village shops selling eggs in boxes by the step. In fact, when I saw Lawrie’s house, this wasn’t actually far off, which made me think that perhaps the only truth my colonial educators had told me was the one about the English countryside.
Lawrie’s family lived near a place called Baldock’s Ridge, in a detached red--brick Victorian farmhouse. In a childlike simplicity, it was called The Red House. It had a mature orchard of apple trees in the front, and peeling paintwork on its windows. It was enchanting. Inside, however, there wasn’t much evidence of feminine life, despite how recently his mother had died. I wanted ball gowns hanging up in dignified tatters, tobacco--infused dining chairs, chocolate--box paintings on the wall, the smell of dog hair on old picnic rugs. But there was nothing like that. Either she’d lived as a spartan, or Bastard Gerry had cleared his dead wife out.
I sat in the kitchen, and closed my eyes as Lawrie made the tea. Just be careful of him. You don’t just happen upon a painting like that, Odelle. I pushed Quick’s words away with a flash of anger. Did she want to ruin this for me?
‘Here we are,’ said Lawrie, handing me a chipped blue cup. ‘It’s still lovely and warm out. Shall we sit in the garden?’
I followed him, my hands wrapped round the cup, padding along the rugless hallway.
THE BACK GARDEN WAS A bit of a mess in a Hodgson Burnett way; overgrown bushes and gnarled plum trees, broken terracotta pots sprouting mint, wild pansies faring perfectly. There was a greenhouse at the end of the long lawn, its windows streaked with dried mud and rain so it was impossible to see inside. Who had tended this place? Perhaps Lawrie had, once upon a time, up and down the furrows.
‘How long have you lived here?’ I asked.
‘On and off all my life. We had a flat in London, too, but my mother stopped liking the city. She preferred it here.’
‘I can see why. It’s beautiful.’
He sighed. ‘It has its moments.’
We sat in silence for a while, listening to the blackbirds in the dusk. ‘Are you excited for what Reede might discover next?’ I asked.
He stared out at the orchard. ‘What if it was stolen?’
‘It wouldn’t be your fault – or your mother’s.’
‘Well – no. No, I suppose not. Imagine if it’s worth a fortune. God, the look on Gerry’s face. The only thing she left me and it’s worth a bomb.’
‘If you sold it, you wouldn’t have anything of your mother left.’
He turned to me, a shrewd expression in his eyes. ‘Don’t you go soft. My mother was the least sentimental person I knew.’
‘I think it is quite sentimental, leaving you a single painting in her will.’
‘You didn’t know her,’ he said. ‘It’s more likely a loaded gun.’
‘What do you mean?’
Lawrie cast his eye over the wilderness before us, sipping on his tea. ‘She always attracted trouble. I think she would have liked you very much.’
‘Why? I never attract trouble.’
‘And she could be a pain in the arse as well.’
‘Hey.’
He said he had made a shepherd’s pie; I was impressed that he could cook. I wondered when Lawrie had learned, and had the suspicion he had spent quite a lot of his life looking after himself. He said he’d lay the table, I was the birthday girl – so whilst he was doing all that, heating up the oven and looking for forks, I took the opportunity to go upstairs.
I WENT INTO ONE OF the large back rooms, evening sunbeams slanting through its windows, a shade of deep whisky, dust motes swirling in the shafts. Again, no rugs or carpets on the floor, no paintings on the wall, just the bed frame and a wardrobe, empty save for a percussive clutch of wire hangers when I opened its door. Upturned bluebottles were scattered against the skirting. There were piles of documents and boxes of paper everywhere, curled and faded with time.
I tried to imagine Lawrie’s mother in this house; what she looked like, her marriage to Gerry, what she’d done in her life after her husband died in the war. There were no photos of her anywhere, but there was the faintest trace of perfume in the air; sophisticated, woody, alluring. I sat gently on the edge of the metal bed frame, wondering whether another family would fill this place again with life, with second chances, hopes and failures. I felt a pang of anxiety that Cynth would never speak to me again. I must telephone her, I thought. It’s gone on too long. Or write to her, at least.
I rose from the bed and approached the window to view the rolling Surrey hills in this extraordinary light. I rested my elbows on yet another pile of old papers, and Quick’s caution over Lawrie entered my thoughts again. What was it that bothered her so much? It was none of her business, but I couldn’t get her comments out of my mind.
Absently, I sifted through a pile of papers on the windowsill. They were receipts mainly, one for a butcher’s delivery back in 1958, a Guildford shopping centre parking ticket, electricity bills, an order of ser-vice for the Baldock’s Ridge Carol Concert, 1949. Here was someone who didn’t throw things away, yet Lawrie had said his mother was not the type who kept receipts.
Underneath the carol ser-vice sheet was a tissue--thin pamphlet for an exhibition of young British artists, from 1955. I opened it. It had been held in the London Gallery on Cork Street, and whoever had attended had put a line through the names of the artists and their works one by one with a pencil. No Sign, they had written at the bottom. No sign of what? I wondered. The frustration of whoever had written this was evident in the pressure of lead upon the paper.
I folded the pamphlet in two, slid it in my pocket and went downstairs, telling myself that in that mess of papers up there, no one would miss it.
LAWRIE HAD LIT CANDLES, WEDGING them into empty wine bottles and a burnished, sinuous candelabra that had more than a hint of murder weapon about it. We sat in the kitchen, the day now faded, eating his shepherd’s pie, drinking cider that the neighbour had made from the orchard. ‘Happy birthday, Odelle,’ he said, and raised his glass.
‘Thank you. I feel like we’re hiding from the world out here.’