size too large.
‘That’s right,’ Nicola chimed in, her tone liberally soaked in pity, ‘poor Aunt Lucy hardly knows what day it is, bless her.’ She shot me a swift appraising look, critically taking in my own cheap black suit, practical flat shoes, and hurried attempt to pin up my straight salt and pepper bob.
She was a little shorter than her sister, and slimmer in build. From a distance her outfit had looked smart, but close up it was stunning. The knee-length black dress with matching jacket, delicate gold flowers stitched into the fabric, had the unmistakable sheen of heavy silk.The outfit was finished off with inky stilettos, a designer’s golden tag glinting at their heel backs. Her hairstyle was eye-catching too. The overall shade was altogether more natural than her sister’s, a deep mocha-brown, aflame with red and gold highlights. It was cut into irregular bangs that suited the fine bone structure of her face. But bizarrely her hands, I noticed, were those of a nineteenth-century scullery maid, rubbed red and raw. Now she fixed me with her own inscrutable eyes, just the colour of the slab of liver I had purchased for Lucy from the butcher’s that week.
‘You really shouldn’t be concerning yourself with Aunt Lucy’s ramblings, Ingrid. Surely you’re experienced in caring for the elderly? You should know what to expect.’ And I could have sworn there was a warning edge to a voice that had an unsettling, forced brightness in it.
‘Of course,’ I said, understanding that the conversation had been brought to a close.
I pushed Lucy onwards, briefly shaking Myrtle Safford’s hand. The matriarch of this family was a tall woman with a proud but guarded face, gimlet eyes, glittering jewels, and outdated clothes which nevertheless screamed quality. However, I barely had time to express my sympathy, before her children whisked her away to speak to a less troublesome mourner. My thoughts in turmoil now, I steered my charge to a quiet spot in the churchyard, beneath the shade of an oak tree encircled with a wooden seat. I tucked a cheerful tartan rug I had brought with me about Lucy’s knees, and told her gently that she must be mistaken about Alice. Was she perhaps thinking of someone else, from her husband’s side of the family? Another niece or perhaps the child of a friend? When she said nothing, I crouched before her, my hands resting on the arms of her wheelchair, levelling my gaze with hers. For a moment her sharp blue eyes had a promising intensity about them. She opened her mouth and took a shaky but deliberate breath.
‘You see, Ingrid, Alice is…is…’
‘Is what?’ I urged her eagerly. But the elusive thought had wriggled away, and Lucy’s eyes suddenly shut tremulously. ‘You’re tired. I’ll take you home now,’ I told her, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.
But just before I helped her into my car she grasped my bare arm. I had peeled off my jacket by then and was only wearing a short-sleeved cream blouse. Now Lucy’s fingers scrabbled against the flesh of my forearm, splayed and light as birds’ feet.
‘Where is Alice? Alice should have been here. Ralph would be most upset,Ingrid,you know,’she croaked. Shortly after this I bundled her into the car, and she immediately fell into a deep sleep, snoring lightly.
I was staying overnight with Lucy in her small terraced house in Hailsham. After her tea, cottage pie and raspberry jelly, I decided a warm bath might settle her for the night. I never quite got used to the shrivelled bodies I handled daily, with their spun-glass bones and their tracing paper flesh. As I sponged the curve of Lucy’s back, knotted and wrinkled as the bark of some ancient tree, my mind played over the events of the day. No matter which thread of thought I plucked at, they all seemed to lead back to Alice, as if by merely uttering her name Lucy had conjured up her ghost. Later, when my charge was tucked up in bed, just before I slipped out her false teeth, I tried once more.
‘Are you sure your brother Ralph had a fourth child, a child called Alice?’ I asked softly.
The last thing I wanted to do was to distress Lucy just before she fell asleep. But I needn’t have worried. She looked at me blankly, and then the coquettish smile of a flirtatious young woman wreathed her wizened face.
‘Who…is Alice?’ she said.
For the remainder of the evening I watched a bit of television, and then settled to a crossword puzzle. I like doing crosswords, everything fitting into its correct space, all the words connected, interdependent. Just before turning in, I drew back the green velour curtains, and stared out into the tiny garden.The pane had misted lightly with the cool of the night. I wrote the name ‘Alice’ very carefully on it with my index finger.
‘Alice who?’ I whispered and climbed the stairs to bed.
I am sitting in the back room of Orchard House. I am always sitting in the back room waiting for something to happen. And when you sit, as I do, for hour after hour, you find yourself reminiscing. You cannot help it.You begin to wonder about how it all came to pass. The young look forward. The old look backward.
I remember the child I once was, the child who visited Kew Gardens with Mother and brother Albert. I craned my small neck, looking at the red pagoda that rocked upwards, diminishing into the unremitting drabness of an oyster-grey sky.And I dreamed my dreams. All the way home, as the bus rumbled and coughed, and juddered and spluttered, through London traffic, I watched a fly fling itself against a sooty pane of glass. Turning my head, I could see Albert, beautiful Albert, with his piercing ice-blue eyes, sensuous red mouth, and dark curls. And I could see my mother, her brown hair neatly crimped, her own prim mouth, bright with deep pink lipstick, her round cinnamon eyes, dancing with obvious delight. Their heads were touching, mother and son, their voices low and intimate, washed into one another. Close as conspirators they were, oblivious of me, gazing at them from across the aisle. So I turned away, back to the fly buzzing and battering itself against the glass, its frenzy futile. I imagined smashing that pane of glass with a closed fist, hearing it shatter. I pictured the fly bursting out into the infinite space, and whirring away, hardly daring to believe its luck.
I recall how years later, shortly after the war, my gentle giant of a father died. His disease-ridden heart, the organ that had prevented him fighting for his country and earned him a coward’s feather, finally gave out in peacetime. It seized up and froze before a plate of pink blancmange. As the breath trickled out of him he keeled over, right into the cold, gelatinous pinkness of it, a single bubble of breath breaking the surface seconds after. I remember my dismay looking on, knowing I had lost my only ally in the gloomy red-brick house in Ealing.
And I recollect my first sight of you, Ralph—dark, tall and dashing, with alert steely-blue eyes, clasping a camera before you.You were covering an amateur show for the local rag, and had come to photograph its parochial stars. I was numbered among them. Gwendolen in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. At best, my performance could be described as lacklustre; at worst, wooden. But you, it appeared, had seen a different play altogether, as you posed me for your photographs, your face so animated, those beguiling eyes of yours sparkling. Next to your striking looks, it was the enthusiasm that captured and held me. It was as if there was nothing you couldn’t do with it. Take a shabby little amateur production in a village hall, with threadbare costumes and tatty scenery, and transform it into a glittering spectacle, showcasing the astonishing talent that lay at the heart of a thriving community. Or, perhaps, take a dull British girl destined for banal suburbia and transform her into a shimmering princess?
‘What a superb show! I don’t know when I’ve laughed so much. And you, well, you were wonderful Miss Lambert, entrancing. I brought Lucy, my sister, along too.And she loved your performance.’
