“Hi,” she says. “I’m Toby’s mother. Sally Clore.”
Unfair to call her an old woman: she looks about fifty, almost certainly younger than Henry himself, and was clearly once good-looking. But she has aged early, and the strenuous make-up is unable to disguise the brittle skin, the puckered lines. She wears dark glasses up on her forehead, holding back the mane of tawny hair. This hair, this slender body, by raising such expectations of youth, makes a sad mockery of the aging face.
“Henry Broad,” says Henry, holding out his hand.
“So good of you to put up with Toby. I’m sure he’s made a perfect nuisance of himself.”
“No, not at all. Come on in.”
Sally Clore comes into the house, bringing with her a wave of expensive perfume. Henry calls to Laura in the kitchen.
“It’s Toby’s mum.”
He leads the visitor through into the living room. Roddy lumbers to his feet. Sally Clore doesn’t notice him: her gaze has already discovered Toby out in the garden. As if drawn by a magnetic force, she goes out through the French windows onto the terrace.
“Toby,” she says.
Her voice is low, but it has immediate effect. Toby starts as though stung, and gets up off the grass. He turns toward Carrie, then back toward his mother.
“Hi, Mum,” he says.
She holds out her arms. He comes to her, bounding over the terrace wall, his expression suddenly that of a small boy who has stayed out playing too long.
She takes him in her arms and holds him close.
“Who’s a naughty boy?” she says.
Carrie comes up onto the terrace after Toby. Henry looks on in surprise. The maternal embrace goes on. Toby, far from trying to hold back, seems content to remain like a child or a lover in his mother’s arms.
Henry makes further introductions. Toby’s mother doesn’t even pretend to take these in. Her eyes are only for her son. She strokes his face, draws his long hair back from his cheeks, tugs at his beard.
“Still that horrible beard, darling? When are you going to get rid of it?”
Laura joins them.
“Toby’s mother, Sally,” says Henry.
“Oh, I’m so glad Toby called you,” Laura says. “I gather he’s been away for ages.”
“He has!” Sally Clore smacks her son lightly on the cheek. “He’s so unkind to his poor old mama! I haven’t set eyes on him for weeks and weeks!”
“Weeks?” says Carrie.
Toby turns his gaze on her and she says no more. His look is not a warning of any kind: it’s the look of one who no longer knows her, and turns to hear what she has to say out of common politeness.
“I’d got the idea he’d been away much longer,” says Laura.
“It’s been long enough, believe me,” says Sally Clore. “But we have a very special relationship, my bad boy and me. We know when we’ve been apart for too long. As soon as I start to feel it, he feels it too. Don’t you, Boby?”
“Let’s go home, Mum,” Toby says.
“Your carriage awaits, Master.”
She gives a silvery laugh, and holding Toby by the hand, leads him back through the house. The three members of the Broad family are too astonished to intervene. Mother and son seem to have lost all sense of normal social behavior. For a moment it seems as if they will go skipping out of the house together without a word of farewell.
“You’re wearing Jack’s clothes,” says Carrie.
“Give me a moment,” Toby says to his mother, and runs upstairs.
Sally Clore stands in the hall smiling at nobody in particular.
“Would you like a drink or something?” says Laura.
“No, thank you,” she replies. “I drink only water, and only a very particular kind of water. It’s one of my silly little fads, and causes no end of nuisance, but if you knew what they put in the water you’d think twice too. I’m not just talking about human waste. I’m talking about male sex hormones.”
“Goodness!” says Roddy.
Toby comes back downstairs in his own clothes, swinging his backpack.
“Thanks for everything,” he says.
As he gets into the convertible beside his mother, Diana’s BMW pulls into the drive.
“We must absolutely run!” cries Sally Clore. “Come along, Bobes. You’ve outstayed your welcome as usual.”
The Mercedes disappears in a screech of gravel as Diana gets out of her car. She stares after the convertible in awed fascination.
“Who on earth was that?” Then turning to the group on the doorstep, she issues a sharp command. “Roddy! Bags!”
Roddy unloads the car. Diana follows Laura into the kitchen, carrying a bottle of champagne. She puts the champagne in the fridge, her inquisitive eyes scanning the bright shelves.
“Summer pudding! Ooh, yummy. Have you tried making Jane Grigson’s summer pudding? You line the bowl with sponge cake and mix the fruit with whipped cream. It’s sensational.”
“Diana, I’ve already made it.”
“Oh, so you have. So who was the kept woman?”
“I don’t think she is kept. She’s the mother of a friend of Jack’s called Toby. Toby’s been staying here for a few days.”
“Ooh!” says Diana, ogling Carrie. “Nice for someone.”
Carrie turns and runs upstairs to her room.
“Honestly, Diana.”
“What did I do wrong?” cries Diana. “Doesn’t she want a boyfriend? She must be getting just a little desperate. When Isla was her age she’d worked her way through half her year group.”
Roddy struggles across the hall and up the stairs with a suitcase and a heavily laden basket.
“Not the basket, Roddy! That’s house gifts. What do we want with a bottle of olive oil in the bedroom?” To Laura, “Chance would be a fine thing!” Then, seeing Henry, she inclines her cheek for a kiss. “Hello, Henry. How was the garden party? I felt for you on Thursday afternoon. Was it utterly ghastly?”
“No,” says Henry. “I loved it, actually.”
“You loved it?” Diana stares, incredulous. “You can’t have loved it. I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“When did you last have an experience you loved, Diana?”
“Oh, heavens! Loads of times! I adored the Polly Morgan sculptures at the Haunch of Venison. Did you see them? Gutted animals and balloons. Incredibly powerful. And I’m wild about XX. I’ve been playing a download Isla got me all the way from town.” She looks at her watch. “I have to make a business call before lunch. I have one very rich but very elusive donor.”
She takes out her BlackBerry and heads through the living room onto the terrace.
“Drink,” says Laura. “Get me a drink.”
Henry pours them both a glass of wine.
“Should I find Roddy and offer him a glass?”
“He’ll be lying down in the spare bedroom. Diana has that effect on him.”
“And Carrie.”
The phone rings. It’s Maggie Dutton to say that she and Andrew will come this evening.
“That’s wonderful,” says Laura. “Don’t come too late, the early evenings are so lovely. Any time after seven.”
Carrie comes creeping downstairs, looking around warily as she comes.
“Where is she?”
“On the terrace. On her phone.”
“I’m starving.”
She goes to the larder.
“Can I have what’s left of the ginger cake? There’s almost nothing.”
“Yes, if you must,” says Laura. “But we’ll be having lunch in an hour.”
Carrie comes out of the larder, cake in hand.
“What about Toby’s mum?” Laura says to her. “Did you hear? She called him Boby!”
“Something very odd going on there,” says Henry.
“He’s very, very screwed up,” says Carrie. “I mean, very.”
“Are you a bit relieved he’s gone?” says Laura.
Carrie thinks about that, nibbli
ng away at the cake.
“I think maybe every single thing he said was a lie,” she says.
“But I don’t know. It doesn’t seem to make much difference. He’s not like any one else I’ve ever met. He told me when we were talking this morning that he thinks he has a demon inside him.”
“A demon? That’s a bit worrying, isn’t it?”
“It sort of made sense to me.”
Diana returns.
“Where’s Roddy?” she says. “Has he come down?”
“No,” says Henry. “Not yet.”
“That means he’s gone to sleep on the bed. Honestly! Take your eyes off him for a minute and he’ll find somewhere to lie down and go to sleep.”
Roddy comes down a little later, holding a book he’s found in the spare bedroom. It’s Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours.
“I’ve just realized,” he says. “The river across the fields here. That must be where Virginia Woolf drowned herself.”
“That’s right,” says Henry. “She lived in Rodmell, the other side of the river.”
“She just walked out of her house, across the fields, and into the river.”
“Yes, Roddy,” says Diana. “We know. It’s quite well known, you know. We saw the film.”
But Roddy seems powerfully struck by the discovery.
“Just out there,” he says, pointing out of the window. “Just a short walk away. According to the novel, she didn’t throw herself in, she just walked in.”
“She wasn’t in her right mind,” says Laura. “She was terrified she was going mad again.”
“Does anyone know exactly where?” says Roddy.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Roddy!” exclaims Diana.
“Not exactly where,” says Laura. “Her body wasn’t found for three weeks.”
“She left a note for her husband saying, I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.”
“Yes,” says Laura. “It’s so sad.”
Henry hands Roddy a glass of wine.
“Here,” he says. And raising his own glass, “Moriturus te saluto.”
43
Cas sits very still, watching the old lady. They’re in the garden, on green plastic chairs, in the shade of the magnolia tree, near the straw-littered run where the guinea pig is eating his evening salad. Cas likes Granny’s garden, it’s got a little patch of lawn, but beyond it’s mostly wild. He imagines little creatures creeping about in the thickets of overgrown shrubs, making their homes there, though he’s never actually seen any. They’d be much smaller than the guinea pig, of course. Tiny voles and field mice. Also beetles and spiders and woodlice and ants. If you lie with your face to the ground after a while you start to see them. There are little things living just about everywhere, some of them so small they can’t even see you, you’re as enormous and invisible as the sky.
Granny sits with her shoulders slumped and her eyes closed, but she’s not asleep. You can tell that because from time to time she opens and shuts her mouth and mumbles words you can’t quite hear, as if she’s arguing with someone in a dream. Her hands move up and down on her lap. The skin on her hands is amazingly wrinkled. Now she’s making one hand stroke the other hand, it’s like she wants to smooth out the wrinkled skin. Cas, watching, wants to reach out and touch her hands too. He wants to see if they feel scratchy or soft.
Mum says Granny has been unhappy all her life but surely that’s impossible, you’d just die. You can’t be unhappy all the time. You’d get tired of it, you’d have to have a rest. Maybe that’s what Granny’s doing now, having a rest from being unhappy. Bridget is in the house making supper for them both, then after supper Bridget will put Granny to bed, then after that she’ll take Cas home and he’ll go to bed. Cas likes it that Granny will go to bed earlier than him, it makes him feel that he’s more grown-up than her.
He doesn’t mind that she doesn’t talk to him, sitting here in the evening garden. He just watches her, keeping very still, not frightening her, waiting for her to feel safe. And after a bit he sees her eyes open and she looks at him. He looks back at her, but she doesn’t speak or smile or do anything. You have to just wait. When they feel safe they start to make little noises. Then you can make little noises back.
She’s staring at him and she’s frowning, trying to remember.
“Who are you?” She says.
“Caspar.”
“Caspar? What sort of name’s that?” She speaks in a small cross voice. “They should have called you John.”
“Why?” he says.
“It doesn’t matter. No one listens to me.”
Cas is listening to her. He doesn’t say so, he just goes on listening. She’s started making her little noises now.
“What are you doing here?” she says.
“You’re babysitting me, Granny.”
“Am I?”
“Mum’s gone to a dinner party.”
“Has she?”
“Bridget’s going to take me home after supper.”
“Bridget? Is she here?”
“Yes, Granny. She’s in the kitchen, making supper.”
The old lady closes her eyes, not to sleep but to ponder this information. When her eyes are closed she has a nice face. Quite suddenly Cas sees something he’s not seen before, which is that Granny looks very like Mum. If you don’t look at the gray hair or the wrinkles, just at the way the nose and mouth and chin go together, it could almost be Mum. And Mum is the person he loves most in the world.
“She’s won,” says Granny. Then she opens her eyes again. “Bridget has.”
“What’s she won?” says Cas.
“She does as she pleases. I can’t stop her. This is her house now. I’m surprised she lets me go on living here. But I shan’t live much longer. Then she can have it all.”
Mum said to Cas when she drove him over, “You know Granny is not always quite right in the head. She gets muddled about things. But Bridget will be there, so you mustn’t mind.”
Cas doesn’t mind. He’s interested.
“Bridget shouldn’t have the house,” he says. “It’s your house.”
“That’s what I say,” exclaims the old lady with sudden force. “This is my house! What’s she doing here?”
“She’s making supper,” says Cas.
“What do I want supper for? I don’t want to go on living.”
“I want supper,” says Cas. “I’m hungry.”
“Oh, well then. She can make supper for you.”
This thought seems to calm her. The fit of anger passes.
“Granny,” says Cas. “Does your guinea pig talk?”
“Oh, yes. She talks a great deal. They talk to each other all the time.”
“Are there two guinea pigs?”
Cas can only see one, still steadily working its way through the bowl of salad.
“Oh, I forgot. One of them died. That was Bridget. She killed it.”
“Then she should go to prison.”
“She should! She should go to prison!” She smiles for the first time, a cruel little smile on her wrinkly face. “Then she’d get a taste of her own medicine.”
“I think rabbits talk to each other,” says Cas. “But they do it without making any sounds. It’s a kind of silent talking.”
“I talk to Perry,” says the old lady. “I tell him everything that’s happening to me.”
“Who’s Perry?”
“Perry’s my little dog. You remember Perry.”
Cas doesn’t remember Perry. But there’s no need to say this. She’s got her wrinkly hands on her lap, moving one over the other, pushing at those fine wrinkles, making him want to touch them.
“Does Perry talk to you, Granny?”
“No, darling. Perry’s gone now. But I talk to him anyway, because it makes me feel he’s not gone so far.”
“Dad’s got a dog in his film that talks. It doesn’t really talk, it’s only film tricks. But if you hold up two fingers, or three, he can count them. He does it wit
h barking.”
He holds up two fingers to demonstrate.
“Woof! Woof!”
The old lady is delighted.
“Woof! Woof!” she repeats.
“You like animals, don’t you, Granny,” he says.
“Oh, yes. I do.”
“So do I.”
“Animals are innocent, you see. They don’t tell lies. They don’t want to hurt you. But they have just as much love to give as people. Really they’re much better to have round you than people. I wish I could have a carer who was a dog.”
“Like Nana,” says Cas.
“Who’s Nana?”
“The dog in Peter Pan. It looks after the children.”
“Oh, yes.” But she looks confused.
“Why didn’t you get another dog after Perry died, Granny?”
“I couldn’t bear to go through that again,” she says. “When Perry died, I wanted to die. I loved him so much. It was much worse than when Rex left me. No, I’d rather be alone. And I can still talk to Perry, you see. He’s not so very far away.”
“And you’ve got Bridget.”
“I don’t like Bridget. I have to do what she says. My father was a solicitor, we lived in Farnborough, we were gentry, the butcher delivered every Friday. It said it on his van, Supplier to the Gentry. Who is this Bridget to tell me what to do?” She lowers her voice to a theatrical whisper. “The working classes have no manners, you know? Bridget has no idea how to lay a table. She calls me Mrs. D!”
Cas ponders the situation.
“So what will you do, Granny?”
“There’s nothing I can do. I’ve lost.”
“But you can’t spend all day being unhappy. Not every day.” He says this earnestly, unable to believe that there aren’t moments of relief from the misery. “You’re not unhappy now, are you?”
“No,” she says. “Not so much right now.”
“So if I come and see you sometimes, you won’t always be unhappy.”
“Oh, my dear.”