I laugh unsteadily, even as my eyes fill.
‘I remember yours.’ She starts to smile. ‘You saved up your pocket money and bought them at the Women’s Institute. It was a lovely present. Pamela, Pamela. You must know. You were my joy, my treasure, my heart’s life.’
Her hands are spread on the table and I see again her old knuckles, her spread fingertips. My joy, my treasure, my heart’s life. I cannot absorb these words. I leave them far away, shining, a fleet of freighted ships standing off in the sea roads, waiting to come in.
‘Would you like to feed them now?’
‘What?’
‘The hens.’
I shake my head and the tears fall again.
‘Well. Maybe later. Sit, then. Talk to me. Tell me about your father.’
I wipe my face. ‘I saw your mother in the churchyard. I’d rather hear about you.’
‘That’s for later.’ Ellen straightens up, and the caved-in look is gone. She is wise again, strong, her smiling eyes roving over a rich past, acquainted with the world. ‘Tell me about Aubrey. His life.’
*
The hens make short work of the grain and the peelings. They dot their beaks on the toes of my shoes, a sensation printed into my body when I was five years old. I’ve told Ellen about my father, how he married late in life, and happily. She remembers every detail of their meeting. ‘We got out Selwyn’s best Venetian glasses. Your father showed us photographs of your mother, and then of your Aunt Hester. And the dog called Winnie, a Labrador.’
‘It must have been a dreadful day.’
‘Not as bad as the ones that followed.’
She’s keeping a firm grip on the doorpost of the hen run. She’s stooped now, and places her feet very carefully when she walks.
‘I’m ashamed to say we put a smock on Winnie and dragged her round in a trolley that used to contain wooden bricks.’
She smiles. ‘I’m glad that you were happy sometimes.’
Maybe I was. Maybe happiness is no more than that, a smocked, long-suffering dog on a wheeled cart. It begins to prick with rain from a small cloud mass above, surprising us, since there’s enough clear sky for hazy sun. ‘Oh, the sheets,’ says Ellen, and I go to pull them down into my arms. Lucy still grows blackcurrants, I see; a little row of three bushes. I ate a blackcurrant once, raw, and Lucy patted my head as I cried from the sourness, which, although I had been warned and warned again, I had to taste to understand. She was taking down the sheets herself at the time, and the whiteness and sourness together were blinding.
‘My darling,’ Ellen’s saying. ‘If I could have done anything. Anything.’
My eyes close in the imagined brightness.
I bundle the sheets in my arms and we walk towards the house. ‘You were so young, Ellen. Only, what, twenty?’
‘I was grown up. I’d been grown up for years.’ Her voice is mild. ‘Do you know, I felt younger the second time I married. Almost skittish—’
‘You married again?’
‘Yes. The vicar, would you believe.’ She’s smiling broadly. ‘James Acton. He’s dead now, of course. Lucy and I have outlived everyone. But James and I had twenty years together. It was absolutely super. In some ways I was rather … uneducated. He saw to that. Pamela, your jaw is hanging in a most unattractive way.’
I laugh as the blush rises.
‘You have to seize love,’ she says. ‘I did that with you. I seized you. I loved you so much, and I never stopped. So it’s all piled up, I’m afraid.’
Her hand lies heavy on my shoulder. The light rain continues to fall.
‘I can’t take it all at once,’ I find myself saying. ‘It’s too much. It’ll kill me.’
‘I was like that when I was hungry.’ She smiles. ‘I knew I needed the food but I couldn’t fit it in. I had to take it away in a paper bag.’
‘Maybe I can do that,’ I say. ‘Put your love into a paper bag.’
She holds out her arms. Along with the sheets I am folded into her embrace. Her arms bind me fast around my shoulders. My head used to rest against her belly, just beneath her bust. Now I fit neatly under her chin, my cheek against the collar of her blouse, squashed against a brooch pinned to her lapel.
‘You pair! The spuds are boiling themselves dry. We could see the steam out the kitchen window …’
Lucy’s making her way towards us from the steps. ‘Oh, thank you, Pam dear. Hang those sheets in the lavvy, we’ll pop ’em out again later … Ho, ho, you was thinking about that heart toilet, wasn’t you. I can see by your face. There it used to be, and good riddance. What do you think of Upton now we’re all spick and span? Int it lovely. All that cow muck and nuisance gone, and everyone so clean and respectable. I don’t mind saying it now. Them Suttons and Rails, sometimes their kitchen floors weren’t much better than a stall …’
Penny and her children fill the kitchen. Ellen, resolutely unaided, removes a heavy cast-iron casserole dish from the oven. A smell of great riches seeps from under the lid. ‘Where did you all go?’ she asks Penny as she unbends.
‘Down to see Mrs Corey in the Absaloms.’
The Absaloms. The name comes first, and then four damp walls that were open to the sky. ‘Aren’t they all tumbled down?’
Lucy laughs. ‘It’s a care home now. Tickles Ellen. How after all this, she’ll end up back in the Absaloms. So will I, too.’
Penny puts a hand on Lucy’s arm. ‘You don’t know that.’
Lucy shrugs. ‘I don’t mind. It’s comfy enough.’
We serve the boys first. They eat their main course at the little table and then stand up to wash and dry their plates. We take them and lay the table again. The adults sit. I lift my fork to my mouth eagerly. Crying brings appetite, I find. It’s a lamb stew from heaven, scraggy, knotty and reeking with flavour. Bright lumps of root veg, carrot and swede and sweet melting onion. And then a pie, one with black edges and an egg cup to keep the pastry up. Inside it, chunks of Bramley apple that I can’t taste at first because my mouth is full of steam, and then taste the sharpness that stays through sugar.
‘Now that’s a real apple pie, if I say so myself,’ says Ellen.
‘Made with proper tart cookers.’ Lucy guffaws. ‘Look at them kids pushing it around their plates.’
The children are eating their pudding standing up, leaning against the kitchen cupboards.
‘It’s a bit sour,’ ventures the middle boy, William.
‘They don’t know they’re born, these kids.’
Penny laughs. ‘Lucy, you spoke the truth.’
‘Pass him the custard,’ I say. ‘There’s no need to suffer.’
In the quiet, the freighted ships put in to port. Flags snap in the bright breeze. Gulls peal silently overhead. My joy, my treasure, my heart’s life. The sea sparkles with a million tiny lights. We eat without talking. The only sound is our spoons tinkling on our plates.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I WOULD LIKE TO THANK:
My agents. In the US, heartfelt thanks to Deborah Schneider. In the UK, Jo Unwin, who uttered those thrilling words, ‘Send me more!’ and whose hard work and wise counsel led to so many good things.
My editors, Helen Garnons-Williams of 4th Estate and Tara Singh Carlson of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Perceptive, ingenious, patient guides on this exhilarating journey.
Sarah-Jane Forder, for copyediting. You and I know what you did. Thank you.
My friends Alison Clink, Nikki Lloyd, Crysse Morrison and Rosie Jackson. Talented writers all, sensitive critics, and generous companions in craft.
Robert, my husband. Attentive reader, tolerant of deadlines, caring parent. Love and gratitude.
Juliet, my daughter, four years old when I began this book, nine when I finished it. Beloved.
Juliet’s godmother, Kate Teale, for our forty years of friendship. An inspiration to me as a woman and as an artist.
My grandparents, Betty and Brendan O’Hagan, and Bill and Joan Liardet. For being brave.
About the Author