These stories left Viola in a state of unresolved horror that wasn’t quite matched by how she felt about, for example, cruelty to children. She had to keep this fact to herself, it was a taboo, like voting Tory. Not even Gregory, her therapist, knew. Especially not Gregory as he would have had a field day with it. Her Secret Self: How to Hide Your True Nature by Viola Romaine.
Her excuse (Did she need one? Yes, probably) was that she had been exiled from love after her mother died. “After I lost my wife,” was the way her father would have put it, as if he had accidentally mislaid Nancy. Exile from Love, that was the title of one of Viola’s early novels. “A poignant tale of struggle and loss,” according to Woman’s Own. That was where the best of her was to be found, in her books. (“Almost as good as Jodi Picoult,” Mumsnet.) Her readers (almost exclusively women)—and she had many, devoted, etcetera—all thought she was a nice—nay, wonderful—person. It was alarming. It made her feel guilty, as if she had made promises that she could never live up to.
She had been making this visit to Poplar Hill every week for three years now and would have been quite happy never to set foot in the place, but didn’t want to be seen as neglectful. Viola derived no pleasure from being with her father. She had always been wary of him for one reason or another, but now that he was a wreck, more child than colossus, he felt like an utter stranger. The Ancient Mariner was lucky—his albatross was already dead before it was hung round his neck.
She had come from Harrogate by train today because she was on her way to somewhere else. She made a mental note. On the Way to Somewhere Else—good title. Harrogate was the kind of place that won Britain in Bloom competitions and where what poverty there was was swept neatly out of sight. Viola still harboured a regret that she had never made it beyond the borders of Yorkshire, never lived a London life, sophisticated and metropolitan (or so she imagined).
Her brief sojourn in a squat with deadbeat Dominic hardly counted. That had been in Islington, before it was fashionable, and she had hardly left the house. “Postnatal depression,” she told people afterwards, a legitimate badge of suffering to parade, although really it was just straightforward depression. (“I think I was born depressed,” she tells Psychologies magazine. “I think it’s given me a greater understanding of people.”)
If she lived in London these days she would be invited to parties, to lunches and “do”s. She sold too well (“international bestseller”) to be embraced by the glitterati, but it would be nice not to feel that she was a populist barbarian knocking on the gates. (“I’m a northerner and proud of it,” Daily Express interview, March 2006. Was she? Not really.)
She would rather have been brought up in the plush Home Counties, at Fox Corner, semi-mythical now in her memory, everyone’s memory. She was six when Sylvie died and the house was sold. Her mother’s childhood home, Jackdaws, followed a few years later when Mrs. Shawcross succumbed to genteel senility and lived out her days in Dorset with the tolerant Gertie. It was her father’s fault, he had chosen to settle up here after the war. She had never asked why. Too late now. Too late for everything.
The Queen sailed on heroically, through wind and rain. “Her Diamond Jubilee,” Viola said to Teddy. “She’s been on the throne for sixty years. That’s a long time. Can you remember her Coronation?” Viola was barely a year old when the Queen was crowned and had never known another monarch. She would see Charles ascend to the throne, she supposed, possibly William if she lived long enough, but she wouldn’t see that fat baby become George VII. Life was finite. Civilizations rose and fell and in the end everything was dust and sand, even that fat royal baby. Nothing beside remained. Hotels, maybe.