The Girl Below (35 page)

After a short interval, Elena slipped between the siblings and popped up next to Peggy’s head, where her busy hands closed the old woman’s eyes and mouth. Peggy looked more serene after that, like people in death are supposed to look, and I tried to un-remember a little of the horror she had gone through to get there.

On the other side of the bed, I noticed Caleb sitting on his hands, staring at his feet, his face pinched in a scowl. To get his attention, I had to say his name twice, and when he finally looked up, I nodded toward Pippa. He didn’t understand at first, but then he rushed forward and wrapped his arms around her and burst into childish tears. Seconds later, a surge of such strong emotion hit me that I had to steady myself against the bed rail. Some long-buried canister of unshed tears had burst, and out they all came. Tears for my mother, pure grief, and hot, angry tears for my father, who had been such a jerk. For Caleb, tears of shame and regret. I cried for the bottle-top girl who’d found a hand in the cupboard that nobody else believed in, and for the loser that she had turned into. I cried because I hated her, hated myself, but did not know how to change. A few tears were even for Peggy, who would never host charades in a Kabuki gown again.

For about an hour, I let it all hang out, and so did everyone else. Then I blew my nose once, twice, three times for good measure, and went to the kitchen to make a pot of tea, the first of dozens that I would brew, pour, and sip with others in the ensuing days. While I was waiting for the stovetop kettle to boil, it struck me that I hadn’t missed the moment of my mother’s death because I was unfeeling or unobservant, but because there probably hadn’t been one. She hadn’t fought it like Peggy; one minute she had been breathing very quietly with her eyes shut and then a few minutes later not breathing at all. It had been a gradual fading out and nothing to feel ashamed of for missing, yet that was still the emotion I associated with her death—along with remorse that I had lied about losing her locket.

So much of what I remembered about my mother was like that, obscured by my own preoccupations. I thought of her constantly, but the image I had was only a sketch, its lines drawn from the self-centered perspective of my eighteen-year-old self. I wished I could have seen her, just once, as an adult, to take in everything about her I had missed.

At lunchtime the family assembled at the large outdoor dining table and failed to make a dent in the dozen moussakas dropped off by relatives and neighbors. Around the table, we were all cried out and had arrived at a plateau of hyperaware silence. Our skins were thinner, our hearing more receptive, and each time anyone so much as sighed, a ripple of emotions passed among us. The small wire-spectacled man who had joined us to discuss funeral arrangements was treated like an interloper. He passed around a folder of coffin styles and prices, and each of us flicked through it before passing it on to the next person, until it had been round the circle three or four times without anyone taking in a thing. The man chatted on, a fresh pot of tea was made, and it wasn’t until he suggested their top-selling model—basic pine with a matte varnish—that anyone seemed to realize a decision was expected. “Basic pine?” exclaimed Harold, actually standing up from his chair. “Mummy would never consent to that!”

He had spoken so forcefully that Pippa looked quite shocked. “What do you suggest?” she said.

Harold turned to the bespectacled man. “Do you have anything vintage—an antique perhaps?”

“A secondhand coffin?” The undertaker shook his head. “Only new,” and Harold cringed at the battiness of his request.

Once Harold had picked one out (brass handles, mahogany stain) the man with the wire spectacles informed us, perhaps not as delicately as he might have, that his embalmer would be round to start work “right away.” In this heat, he said, they had to move fast or nature did it for them. He wasn’t exaggerating: the embalmer appeared so quickly he must have been waiting outside. His arrival triggered a secret signal to the village that a funeral was imminent, and within the hour, an army of elderly women in shawls descended on the villa and transformed it from muted hospice to hive of burial activity.

While the village women scuttled back and forth with wire brushes and pots of boiling water under a canopy of incense, the family was stranded at the dining table, almost afraid to leave the circle. Only Ari had about him an air of impatience, and nearing twilight, the source of it was revealed. His brother Soteris came to the door of the villa, and after offering his condolences, he and Ari had huddled near the fig tree discussing something in hushed voices. Once Soteris had left, Ari returned to the table with a small piece of paper and stood looking nervously at Pippa. “A few days ago,” he began, “Peggy asked me to carry out her final request.”

“She asked
you
?” Pippa exclaimed.

“Yes,” said Ari. “And she asked me to keep it a secret”—he looked guiltily at his wife—“from you.”

Pippa’s expression was neutral—neither surprised nor upset—and Ari hurriedly continued. “She wanted everyone in the village to have a shot of Johnny Walker at her wake, and, well, the stuff doesn’t exactly grow on trees around here.”

“So you ordered some ahead of time?” said Pippa.

“Yes.” Ari started to fold up the piece of paper, but Pippa snatched it from his hand and read it.

“Three cases?” she said, incredulous. “And you’re going to pay for that how?”

“I thought . . .” he began, then looked hopefully at Harold. “Any ideas?”

“Sorry, old chum, those brass handles don’t grow on trees either.”

“Wait,” I said, remembering the stash of pound notes. “I think Peggy left something to pay for it.” I fetched the photograph album that had been moonlighting as a bank, and explained that the money had been hidden in Peggy’s fur coat. With all of them watching intently, I was nervous opening the album and my hands jittered on its yellowing, vellum pages. Done in haste, my attempt at stuffing had been poor, and the notes came out creased and in bunches. Harold held out his hands to form a collecting bowl, and Ari took the notes from him and acted as bank teller. The album was wide, and I had to reach far into the corners of the pocket to pull out the stragglers. As well as the money, a clutch of folded scrap paper—the papers I hadn’t looked at before—fell out.

“Two thousand, seven hundred and fifty pounds,” announced Ari, counting the last pile of notes. “But just to make sure, I’m going to count it again.”

Pippa was flabbergasted. “But she always needed to borrow money off us to pay for gas and electricity—and her phone was always getting cut off.”

“Well, now you know why,” said Harold. “She was hoarding it.”

“Maybe she forgot it was there,” said Caleb. “She was pretty mental at the end.”

“I don’t think so,” Pippa said. “She was adamant about bringing her mink over, even though it’s ninety degrees in the shade.”

“No wonder that effing coat weighed a ton,” said Harold, cracking a smile for the first time that day.

“She knew where the money was, all right,” I confirmed. “And when I stayed at her flat, I caught her hiding jewelry in the curtains.”

“Oh God,” said Pippa. “She was still hiding stuff from Jimmy.”

“But Jimmy’s dead—right?” I said.

“We think so,” said Pippa. “But no one really knows what happened to him. One day he just disappeared from his flat, leaving everything in it. The police came to ask us if we’d seen him, but no one had. He was a sitting tenant, like Peggy, so after a while, when he still hadn’t reappeared, they presumed he was dead and the landlord sold the flat.”

“And that’s when they renovated and found out what he’d done?” I asked.

Pippa nodded. “Mummy said she felt like he had been spying on her. It was awful.”

“But he didn’t spy on her—did he?”

“We don’t think so,” said Ari. “But who knows what he got up to. A man like that was capable of anything.” He gathered the pound notes into a wad and smacked it on the table. “Well, this should pay for the wake,” he said, smiling.

“Not all of it, darling,” said Pippa. “Peggy will have bills to pay.”

She held out her hand, but Ari hesitated. “Do you always have to spoil my fun?”

Pippa smiled, and Harold touched her shoulder. “You don’t need to this time,” he said. “I’ll find a way to help out with the bills. I believe it’s probably my turn.”

Pippa looked sharply at her brother, and I thought, for a second, she was going to refuse his offer. But she softened. “Thanks. That would really help.”

The whole time we’d been talking, I had been sitting with the photograph album and a pile of scrap-paper notes in my lap. Now I picked one up and unfolded it. Scrawled on it in curly, old-fashioned script, was a short sentence: “To Caleb, I leave my birdcage.” I unfolded another, written in the same handwriting. “To Harold,” it said, “I leave my photographs.”

“I think Peggy has left a sort of will,” I said. “Look.” I handed Harold and Caleb their bequests.

“Lame,” said Caleb, after reading his. “Those stuffed birds are utterly rank.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” said Pippa.

“No it isn’t,” said Caleb. “She could have left me some coin.”

Everyone was curious to see what was written on the remaining pieces of paper, so I unfolded them and handed them to the various beneficiaries. One or two were for Harold and Ari, plus another for Caleb, before one finally came up for Pippa. “One dress for Pippa—the rest to the Victoria and Albert museum,” it read.

Pippa laughed when she saw it. “So begrudging, to the end.”

“At least you can see the funny side,” said Harold.

“I have to,” said Pippa. “Otherwise I’d slash my wrists.”

One piece of paper was left, and I unfolded it, then read and reread the message, for I could not believe my eyes. “I want Suki to have Madeline,” it said, and then: “She is to be treasured, not left on the curb.”

I showed the note to Pippa, who smiled. “I told you she remembered your name. And how thoughtful of her to leave you that ghastly old thing.”

“Ghastly is right,” I said. “I can’t think of anything I’d less like to own.”

By evening, the black-shawled women had left the villa, but other than to take toilet and tea breaks, none of the family except Caleb had moved from the table. A few hours earlier, he’d stood up and announced he was going to hang out at Yanni’s house where, he said, at least people would be acting “normal.” It was a warm night, the air thick with chirruping cicadas and Saturday-night festivities—unnatural, boisterous sounds, so discordant with our mood. We had all forgotten about the embalmer, about his work, so it was a shock when he emerged in the courtyard to inform us that Peggy, in her coffin, had been laid out on a trestle table and was ready to receive visitors.

It seemed so like her to have kept us waiting until she was ready to make her entrance, and I forgot, for a second, that he was talking about a corpse. We filed in to see her, to stare at her garishly made-up face, a face that looked more alive in death than it had in months. But no one commented on her appearance—it would have been too obvious, too tasteless—and Pippa, Harold, and Ari went to stand wordlessly at her side. Another wave of sorrow engulfed the room, but I felt immune from it this time, and left the family alone to grieve for their loss.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Skyros, 2003

I
had a walk in mind, and set off down a steep cobbled street toward the village, but a little way along I was taken aback by the sight of so many people not stricken with grief and turned back toward the villa. I went to bed, wanting only to pass out, but I was overtired and my body trilled with nerves that made it impossible to sleep. My mind was a shambles, overrun with chaotic thoughts of Caleb and coffins and my mother, all of it incoherent. I tried to think of nothing—the insomniac’s meditation—but I was too wired even for that. I had left the others still sitting round the table, but after an hour or two there was a brief flurry of noises—toilets flushing; faucets turning on and off; Elena shuffling past, switching off her halos—followed by the deep hush of collective slumber.

When I was sure they had all gone to sleep, I climbed down from my bed and crossed over to the courtyard door. I’d not heard scraping metal or any other noise, but as I put my hand on the door to push it open I was still apprehensive and held my breath a little, just in case. But on the other side of the door were only the ordinary features of Elena’s courtyard—the olive tree, low white wall, and a dark expanse of sky. No garden, nor anything even to suggest a recent death.

That the courtyard should be so oblivious seemed a little disrespectful, and I crossed to Peggy’s room to remind myself that she had really passed away. Since I’d last been in there, the family had lit candles, a whole flotilla of them, and the room smelled strongly of hot, melting wax. Under their golden flames, Peggy’s skin was at last glowing with her longed-for tan, and I smiled for her benefit. Her body looked heavier than it had, but also deserted, and I remembered how my mother’s corpse had looked the same way, unoccupied by the person I loved.

For good measure, I added another candle to the blaze and bent to kiss Peggy’s forehead, bidding her farewell. Beneath my lips, her skin felt cold but firm—blood turned marble—and I was still thinking about how unexpectedly dense it was when out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. It was very fast, a shadow passing quickly from one side of the room to the other, and when I looked behind me to see what it was, Peggy’s door clicked shut, as though whatever it was had slipped outside.

I remembered what Peggy had said near the end about how Madeline would visit her at night and sit by her bed. How she would keep vigil. I had thought at the time that it was only the ravings of a dying woman, but now I couldn’t help but wonder: had the spirit of Madeline come to pay her final respects? It seemed to make an absurd sort of sense that if I could return to Ladbroke Gardens from Greece, Madeline might be able to travel the other way, that perhaps she had been doing so all along. A chill went through me and I was seized with an urge to bolt from the room. In a fraction of a second, I reached the door, swung it open, and strode out into the courtyard—then abruptly came to a halt. Spread out in front of me was not Elena’s courtyard but the garden, my old garden, only viewed from a different angle than on previous nights.