Her Living Image (16 page)

Next morning she was up at seven. She wasn’t expected at the Refuge till lunch time. She could busy herself in the garden till then. She’d been digging for a while when she looked up
to swing the stone in her hand on to the pile, and saw Clare standing there.

“Smells nice.”

“Yes – it’s the soil.”

“Aren’t you cold?”

Carolyn shook her head. “You get warm working.”

“Are you coming to the Refuge today?” Clare asked quietly.

Carolyn watched Clare’s feet. It hadn’t occurred to her that she had a choice. “Don’t you need me?”

“Yes.” Clare grimaced. “But if you’d rather do this –”

There was a silence.

“You don’t like coming to the Refuge do you.” It was a statement.

Carolyn shook her head, still not looking up.

“Well –”

“I would rather do this. If you don’t mind.”

Clare laughed. “You must really hate the Refuge!”

“No – no – I mean –”

“Why are you doing this? Isn’t it an awful waste of energy?”

“I – no.” Again she felt that stubborn anger. “Perhaps I want to waste energy.”

Clare watched her in silence, then asked, “Why?”

“I don’t know.” She scraped at the earth covering a brick.

“OK,” said Clare briskly. “Shall we go for a drink tonight?”

“Who?”

“You and me.”

Carolyn just stopped herself from saying why. “I – yes, that would be nice.”

“OK. I’m at the Refuge for tea. Meet you at the pub on the corner, at nine?”

Carolyn nodded.

“See you then.” Clare walked quickly back to the house.

Carolyn wanted to leap with joy. You don’t have to go! You don’t have to go to the Refuge! The reprieve had been so quick and sudden and she had been dreading the conversation so
much. . . . She was afraid that Clare would try to make her feel guilty that evening. But it was done. She’d told her she didn’t like going. She’d escaped.

She worked in the garden every day, from then on, unless the rain was torrential. She cleared the sills in the greenhouse and planted more seeds in flowerpots, repairing the holes in the glass
with sheets of polythene. With the bricks she had unearthed she started to build a path around the perimeter of the garden. The slowly growing clear patch, the sprouting seeds in the greenhouse,
the peace of the garden and spring unfolding around her were all marvellous.

And the miserable hotchpotch of confused ideas and pressures was quietly buried in the depths of her mind, just as a wilderness of plants dies down and goes underground for the winter.

On July 7th the sun was already hot by seven-thirty, shining through veils of mist rising like steam from the drying earth. Carolyn let herself out of the french windows and
made her way along the trodden track to her garden, now a dug rectangle of some eight by twelve yards, backing on to the wall of Keswick’s warehouse. The low sun made the street wall cast a
long black shadow over half the garden, but it stopped just to the right of her patch. The morning air was vibrant with memories of similar mornings. She stood still, savouring the accumulation of
days of her life behind her like beads on a string, something tangible. The wet garden was alive with smells: damp earth, the dry smell of bricks, faint smoke from yesterday’s bonfire. Drops
of dew shone in the weeds and grass, and sparkled like diamonds in the centres of the dark green upturned palms of her nasturtium leaves. The nasturtiums were flowering, brilliant and ragged across
the soil, orange as flames. All their trumpets tilted up from the ground, as if together they were sounding a blast to the sky. She squatted at the edge of the dug soil, experiencing pleasure in
her own body’s supple movement and the warmth of the sun on her skin, and looked along the rows of plants. Pale lettuce seedlings, dark pansies, sweet peas, hopeless carrots, runner beans
showing two blood-bright flowers today. Across the earth between rows shone dry silver trails, sticky to sight, where the slugs had been. Behind the beans, onions, no lupins (it must be two months
now – they must be dead) and love-in-a-mists on impossibly frail stems curved and gyrated toward the ground, bearing slender eyelid-blue buds. She had not planted very sensibly, she thought.
The tall beans should have gone at the back. Trowel in hand Carolyn stooped over the dense lettuce seedlings and carefully removed a clump of them. The leaves were cool and wet. She picked off two
pale sticky little slugs and flicked them away into the weeds, then crouched over a clear patch of soil and started to pull apart their tangled cotton-thread roots. Working quickly, she planted out
the lettuces at ten-inch intervals, abandoning the trowel in favour of her fingers for hole boring and soil patting.

Her mousy hair had been bleached by the sun to a more nearly-blonde than it had been since her childhood, and her skin was very brown. Squatting in the soil, knees bent double either side of her
head, intent on her hands working between her legs, Carolyn could have been taken for only half her age. She was painfully thin.

The road behind the tall wall was still quiet, but the birds were making up for it, their incessant repeated sounds rising to sudden random crescendos as they all chirped fiercely together. She
kept noticing the birds, here; always before she had thought of them as “singing”. They didn’t sing, they squawked and chattered like a jungle. June had been a lush warm month,
drawing her seeds from the ground with charmed fingers, stretching the runner beans a full four feet from their first green sprouts, and winding them neatly up their bamboo canes. Do beans always
curl around sticks in the same direction? she wondered. Or are there rebels? And can you fool them, by planting them back to front?

The soil was dark and friable between her fingers. She had commented on its goodness to Clare, who guessed at how many years it had lain fallow; five – six? Long enough to gather fertility
from the winters of dead leaves, the rotting vegetation and the passage of cats, birds and dogs, shrews and voles, caterpillars and slugs.

Suddenly she heard Sue calling her name.

“Yes!” she shouted. “Here. At the bottom.” She straightened, looking towards the house.

From among the grass and high weeds appeared her father. She was so surprised she couldn’t think of anything to say and just stood for a moment staring at him.

“Hello Carolyn.”

She put down her trowel and went towards him. He kissed her awkwardly on the head, and patted her shoulder.

“Is Mum – ?” She could think of no other reason for his appearance.

“Don’t worry.” He nodded gravely. “No one’s dead.”

“Oh. D’you – d’you want to come in and have a cup of tea?”

He glanced back at the house and she wondered who was in the kitchen. Sue and Sylvia – too early for Bryony. How strange the place must look, to him.

“No,” he said, “let’s stay out here. I’d like to have a little talk with you.”

Automatically she turned back towards her garden, and he followed her.

“This is very good,” he said, as they stopped at the edge of the bare earth. “Is this your handiwork?”

“I – yes. It was an awful job to clear the ground.”

He walked along the edge of the plot, naming her plants to himself. “Well done,” he said. “Those beans are further on than mine. You’ve an ideal spot here, haven’t
you? Sunny and sheltered – ideal.” He crouched, and picking up a handful of soil, rubbed it through his fingers.

“Soil’s not bad. Did you use anything on it?”

“No – no I didn’t. I didn’t know what.”

“Well, never any harm in a bit of manure. It’s not so easy to come by these days though. They’re all these chemical things now – I dare say they’re just as good
really. It’s a bit heavy, isn’t it? You could do with a spot of sand in it.” He stooped over the sweet peas and examined them.

Carolyn watched him, caught between her astonishment at his presence here, and the sudden absolutely natural way they were talking. At home, before the accident, he hadn’t said so much to
her for years. She hadn’t really thought about him, she realized. About him missing her or worrying. It had all been Mum. He came back and crouched by her side, staring at the garden as he
spoke.

“I took the liberty of calling,” he said.

“Dad!” she interrupted him. “You can come any time. You or Mum –”

“Yes,” he said. “It’s about your Mum I wanted a word with you. She’s taken all this badly, Carolyn.” He spoke slowly and deliberately, almost maddeningly
slowly. Adjusting her position and half closing her eyes against the sun, she too stared out over the garden, waiting for him to get to the point.

“She’s had a lot of disappointments in her life. She lost the first two babies, you know that, and she’s always done her best for you. She’s always worked hard and
thought of you. She’s not –” He hesitated. “She’s taking it badly now. She doesn’t understand, you see, why you’ve never been home.”

“I did,” Carolyn said quickly. “I came for that weekend. Then I came, oh, a couple of Saturdays ago.”

“Last month,” he said. “Yes. But it’s a shock, you see, after expecting you home all that time you was in hospital – it’s not what she expected, that you
would be off somewhere else. She’s – well, you’re important to her. Girls are, aren’t they, to their mothers. I don’t want. . . . She’s worried about you. Of
course she is – it’s only natural.”

There was silence.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Carolyn.

“Well,” he said slowly. “I don’t want you living in our pockets. When it’s time for you to go, then you must go. But she broods, you see. At the weekends she
broods. She sits and thinks about you. It would cheer her up if you came for your tea.” He paused. “Children do grow up, I know,” he said, staring at the bean poles. “They
do grow up.”

It seemed inconclusive. He straightened his knees. “You do what you like, lass. I’m glad to see this, you’ve done well here. You can have some carnation slips next time you
come home.” He turned to go.

“Dad – Dad – don’t you want a drink or –”

“No lass, I’m on my way to pick up a radiator. I’m on garage time already.”

He glanced at his watch. Suddenly he looked awkward, she saw his shoulders tense and his head duck slightly as they neared the french windows.

“Here, you can get out this way Dad, there’s a side gate.” She led him round and past the greenhouse.

“Right then,” he said, “Thanks,” and hurried away without kissing her goodbye.

She wandered slowly back to the garden. He must remember those days well she thought. Yet he had come here on her mother’s account, not on his own. He was content to let it go. Childishly,
she wished she could still go gardening with him. She could have asked him about the carrots. Substantial memory melted suddenly to consciousness of present loss. As she grew up, her father had
been of no account to her. Whose fault was it? Her mother’s? But he had always chosen to stand back; to be busy. He believed that children were the woman’s affair. She felt that between
them, they had cheated her.

Alan, Carolyn and Christopher moved into a flat the September after he was born. It was the converted first floor of a large terraced house, within walking distance of the
university. Alan continued to work hard at his course, and Carolyn looked after the baby and kept house. Christopher was a slight child, with rather too thin arms and legs, and little flat wrists
which always gave Carolyn a stab of apprehensive fear when she noticed them. His face was elfin, with wide grey eyes and a fuzz of pale hair, more like the fluff on a duckling than human hair. He
was a demanding baby, and rarely slept through the night, even when he was a year old. When she heard him, Carolyn got up quietly, pressing the blankets down again to stop the cold air getting at
Alan’s back. She crept into Chrissy’s room, shutting the door silently behind her. She was usually able to rock him back to sleep quite quickly. He fell asleep with one arm curled
around her head, clutching a handful of her hair, his other thumb in his mouth. The only moment of danger was as she laid him in his cot again. Sometimes then he would wake and start to
cry.

She dreaded Alan waking up. He would roll over heavily and sigh and say, “Oh that damned child,” and then, “I’ll go, I’ll go – you stay here.” He
would get up and blunder about falling over shoes and unable to find his dressing gown, until at last the light had to be turned on to sort him out, and Chrissy had worked himself into a frenzy.
When he went into Chrissy’s room he said, “Well, what’s up then?” too loudly. She listened, shrinking under the blankets, for Chrissy’s angry wail at the sight of him,
and the “Mu – Mu – Mu!” that he chanted when he wanted her. Alan always came back defeated, sooner or later, and then it took her twice as long to settle the child. It was
so much better if she could slip out quietly and not let Alan know. Sometimes Alan said, “He didn’t wake at all last night, did he?” with such pleased pride that she smiled and
shook her head. What did it matter, a little white lie like that? Anyway, Alan needed
his sleep, he had books to read, plans to draw, and essays to write. You can’t think clearly on
four hours’ sleep. It was better not to let him know that Chris woke regularly two or three times every night.

When he was twenty months old he became ill. The doctor examined him cursorily and told Carolyn that it was some kind of viral infection.

“Keep him warm and give him plenty to drink. His temperature may well go up before it goes down. Nothing to worry about.” He left two prescriptions.

Chris was plagued by a dry ticklish cough which kept him (and Carolyn) awake for the best part of three nights, and on which the cough medicine had little effect. He refused all food and she
could hardly get him to drink. Within a few days he was a pitiful sight, white-faced with huge puffy red-rimmed eyes, his thin hair plastered to his head with sweat and the comfortable roundness of
his baby tummy melted away. He cried on Carolyn’s shoulder, through pure discomfort and weariness, she believed, rocking him automatically and feeling like crying too.