The Storyteller's Daughter (29 page)

The sky is grey and overcast, promising rain again. Ewan is sitting on an upturned wooden crate with his back to me eating a handful of blackberries.

“I could charge you for those, you know,” I say, as I approach.

He turns with a start and then smiles. I walk towards him across a patch of soil that previously bore rows of lettuces, but which today lies bare, the soil freshly dug over. I look around me and see that several patches are in the same state. Naked, stripped of their summer plants, they wait in limbo between one season and the next. I hold one of the mugs out to Ewan, and he looks slightly surprised but takes it.

“How's your mother?” he asks, looking up at me, his face full of concern.

“She's okay. Tired. She's been in bed most of the day. She doesn't remember anything about yesterday. About Gwennie arriving I mean, and fainting.”

Ewan nods. I wonder if he's going to ask me about Gwennie, about who she was, why my mother was so shocked to see her, what happened after he left, but he doesn't.

Instead he just says: “I hope everything's okay.”

I smile, grateful for this simple, unintrusive gesture of support. “Thanks.”

Digger trots over to see me and I fondle his ear.

“We saw Mark leaving earlier,” says Ewan, “unfortunately I couldn't stop Digger from rushing over to say hello to his old friend. I think Mark will be spending the evening washing muddy paw prints out of his clothes.”

“Well, don't worry,” I say, “you won't be seeing Mark around here again.”

Ewan raises his eyebrows, surprised. “I'm sorry.”

I give him a knowing look. “No you're not.”

“No, honestly, I am. I mean, if you're upset then I'm sorry.”

I shake my head. “Actually, it's strange. I'm not nearly as upset as I thought I would be.”

“In that case, I couldn't care less.”

I turn to him, shocked by his bluntness. He flashes me a cheeky half smile, and I almost laugh.

We sip our coffee in silence, until Ewan catches me looking around for somewhere to sit and quickly shifts sideways along the wooden crate. I can feel him, watching me curiously as I settle myself next to him. He is not used to me voluntarily being in his presence, let alone deliberately sitting down with him. I feel slightly awkward and wonder if he does too, but my mother is in bed asleep and I don't want to be on my own right now. The crate is small for both of us, and I try to hold my body at an angle so that there is a little gap between us. We sit looking around us, gazing at the sky, at the orchard, at the barren vegetable patches. I count the holes in the ground that Digger has made. Only five. He's definitely getting better.

“I'm going to fill them in later,” says Ewan, reading my mind.

“I should hope so,” I tell him.

Out of the corner of my eye I watch his hands, covered in grime, clasped around his coffee cup, and his sinewy forearms, tanned and covered with golden brown hairs. I look at the rip in his grubby jeans, just over the knee, where the skin of his leg just shows through; and at his tatty boots, covered in mud, with laces that don't match.

“Will you tell me a story?” I ask him.

He strokes the top of Digger's head, long, hard strokes that pull the dog's skin back, revealing the white at the top of his eyes. It is some time before he speaks, and in that time in silence I realise how confused he must be. After the way I have mocked his legends and ridiculed his myths, accused him of having his head in the clouds and scolded him for being a fantasist. And now I have the gall to ask this of him.

“What sort of a story?” he asks, finally.

I shake my head. “I don't mind. Anything.” Anything, I think, to take me away from here for a while.

Digger lies down by Ewan's feet and settles his head on one of his master's boots as if waiting for him to begin. Ewan gazes thoughtfully down the garden.

“After Zeus had punished Prometheus for giving fire to man,” he begins, “he decided that all humans should be punished for their lack of respect. So he came up with a very cunning plan. He created a woman from clay. The goddess Athene breathed life into the clay, Aphrodite made her very beautiful and Hermes taught her how to be charming and deceitful. Zeus called her Pandora, and he sent her as a gift to Prometheus's brother, Epimetheus.

“‘Don't trust any gift from Zeus,' Prometheus warned his brother. ‘He is cruel. Think about what he did to me.'

“But Epimetheus had already fallen head over heels in love with Pandora, and so he decided to marry her.

“Zeus was pleased. His trap was working. He gave Pandora a wedding gift of a beautiful box.

“‘But I give you this gift on one condition,' he told her. ‘You must never, ever open the box.'

“Well, every day Pandora wondered what on earth was in that box. She couldn't for the life of her understand why Zeus would keep it a secret. It seemed to make no sense. It drove her crazy, to the point where she couldn't think of anything else except finding out what was inside.

“Finally, Pandora could no longer bear the agony of not knowing. One day, she took the key off the shelf, crept up to the box, fitted the key carefully into the lock and turned it. Slowly, she lifted the lid of the box, holding her breath. What will I find, she wondered. Perhaps some fine silks, some gold bracelets, or even a large sum of money?

“But there was no golden treasure. There were no shining bracelets and no fine silks. Pandora's excitement quickly turned to disappointment, and then to horror. Inside, were all the evils she could think of. Out of the box poured terrible misery, sadness, anger and pain, all shaped like tiny buzzing moths. The creatures stung Pandora over and over again, and she slammed the lid shut. Epimetheus ran into the room to find her crying in pain. ‘Pandora,' he said to her, tending to her stings, ‘Zeus tried to warn you. Why did you have to find out what lay inside that box? Well, now you know. You should never have opened it.'”

Ewan stops and sips his coffee. I don't know what to say. I feel like I've been slapped in the face. The message of the story is clear: pursue the truth and you might not like what you find. Either way, on your head be it. Ewan knows what has happened without my saying a word. And this is his message to me? That I have to suffer the consequences of my actions? That I made my bed and now I must lie in it? This isn't the story I wanted. This isn't what I wanted to hear. I feel a lump rise in my throat and prepare to leave.

“But that wasn't the end,” Ewan suddenly begins again, “because Pandora could still hear a voice calling to her from the box, pleading with her to be let out. Epimetheus agreed that nothing inside the box could be worse than the horrors that had already been released, so together they opened the lid once more. And inside they found that something had been left behind.”

Ewan pauses. I turn, watching his profile expectantly. The clouds overhead have parted slightly, bathing us in comforting rays of warm afternoon sunshine. I study the way the golden light illuminates Ewan's eyelashes, the stubble on his chin, his eyebrows, highlighting the contours of his face.

“What was inside?” I ask, quietly.

He turns to face me, flecks of amber twinkling in his warm brown eyes. One side of his mouth raises slightly into a smile. “Hope,” he says.

Chapter 17

The day comes, all too soon, when my mother can't get out of bed.

“I'll get up soon and make us both some breakfast,” she murmurs, pulling the covers closer around her. “What would you like? Perhaps some cinnamon toast? Or some stewed apples?”

“Mother,” I say, about to tell her that it is already two o'clock in the afternoon and that she has missed both breakfast and lunch, but she is already asleep again.

Later, when she still hasn't risen, I offer her soup, toast, fruit, ice-cream, tea, juice, but she doesn't want anything.

“I might get up and make myself something in a while,” she says, but she never does.

That night she doesn't sleep at all, complaining of an ache in her bones that she puts down to too much exertion recently.

“Perhaps I've overdone it this Summer,” she wonders out loud, wincing as she shifts under the covers, trying to get comfortable. Her breathing is laboured and wheezy, and she complains that it feels like an elephant is sitting on her chest.

“Do you remember the time that elephant broke through the railings,” she asks, looking up at me with heavy eyes as I adjust her pillow, “in a bid to get to our delicious iced buns?”

“Shh,” I whisper, gently placing my hand on hers, “don't.”

Dr Bloomberg comes. He gives her pink pills to stop the pain, and blue pills to stop the nausea caused by the pink pills.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Doctor?” my mother asks, smiling up at him from her bed. Her face is white and her skin has taken on a certain transparency. “There's some lovely stroganoff in the freezer.”

She struggles to push herself up from the pillow, ready to start playing hostess.

“I'm afraid I've just eaten, Valerie,” the Doctor says, laying a large hand on her shoulder so that she sinks back down. “Otherwise I wouldn't miss your stroganoff for the world.”

“You need to start preparing yourself, Meg,” Dr Bloomberg tells me gently, as we stand in the hallway.

I know what he is saying, but it feels unreal, as if this is a play and we are all actors. Any minute now I expect the curtain to fall, and when it rises again my mother will run down the stairs and we will all link hands and take a bow amidst a flourish of applause.

“As things progress,” says Dr Bloomberg, lowering his head and peering at me over the top of his spectacles, “there are various options. The hospice is one, although at this stage hospital might be – ”

“She's staying here,” I blurt out immediately.

My mother has always hated hospitals, and it had never even occurred to me that she would die anywhere else but at home, or that anyone else should take care of her other than me.

“It may be hard,” says Dr Bloomberg, “as she gets worse... ”

“She's staying here,” I repeat, forcibly.

Dr Bloomberg frowns, his bushy white eyebrows meeting in the middle. “Meg,” he says, slowly and clearly, “if things get bad... ”

I hold my hand up to stop him. Okay, okay, I understand. Just don't say it. Don't say that she will be in pain. Don't say that it will get too much to bear.

“I will call as soon as I need someone,” I say, quickly as way of cutting him off. “I promise.”

“What's the weather like?”

Every time my mother wakes, she asks me this same question.

“It's raining,” I tell her.

“I can't hear the rain,” she says, twisting and straining to try and get a glimpse out of the window.

“It's raining very quietly,” I say.

In fact, it hasn't rained all day, but my mother is such a lover of the great outdoors that I am convinced it would only pain her to know that the sun is shining while she is confined to her bed.

“I've always rather liked the rain,” muses my mother, somewhat undermining my plan, “it's so refreshing on your skin.”

“I can sprinkle you with the watering can if you like,” I suggest.

She laughs, a wheezy, painful laugh, and I laugh too at the very idea of it.

But then she starts to cough, taking in great gulps of air, and within seconds I am holding her as she gasps for breath, her chest rattling like a pinball machine, her body shaking, as she hunches over and I rub her back.

“It's okay,” I whisper, “it's okay.”

Ewan comes and brings her a tangled, unruly spray of wild flowers with odd names such as ‘Toadflax' and ‘Sneezewort', which my mother finds very amusing.

“They're absolutely beautiful,” she smiles, her eyes lighting up for the first time in ages. “I miss being outdoors in my garden. Have you brought in the last of the tomatoes?”

“Yes, and I've hung them by the kitchen window to ripen,” says Ewan.

“And the basil will need bringing in, won't it?”

“It's good for a few weeks yet.”

“And the onion sets will need planting.”

“Give me a chance, boss!” he laughs. “Anyway, who's the gardener here, you or me?”

“You are, but I'm still in charge. I'll be out there tomorrow checking you've done it all properly,” my mother teases.

Ewan smiles tactfully, knowing just from looking at her that she won't be going anywhere. Simply getting to the bathroom next door now requires all the strength and stamina she can muster.

“What's the weather like this evening?” my mother asks him.

“Not bad. Fairly warm,” says Ewan.

She nods, looking sad. I feel my heart aching for her, cooped up here inside.

“This is no good at all,” Ewan says, standing up purposefully and slapping his thigh. “Meg, help me shift that dressing table.”

Ten minutes later, after a lot of pushing and pulling and Ewan repeatedly demanding that I put some muscle into it, the furniture has all been moved and my mother's bed turned a hundred and eighty degrees so that she can now see out of the window, which Ewan has flung wide open despite my protestations about my mother's chest. Nothing is accessible. The wardrobe doors cannot be opened, the dresser has been abandoned in the middle of the floor, and the chest of drawers now sits out on the landing, but my mother is delighted. She lies with her head propped up on two pillows, her eyes glistening with wonder as she stares out at the sky.

“Now, that's what I call a sunset,” she sighs.

I sit next to her on the bed, while Ewan stands nearby with Digger quietly at his side, all four of us gazing in awe at the pink and orange glow that seems to have lit up the world.

“Never forget how beautiful life can be, Darling,” says my mother, taking my hand in hers. I give her bony fingers a gentle squeeze and show her my bravest smile.