‘You’ll learn,’ she said.
There was a parking space right outside Tom’s house, and it was, in addition, a big enough space for Elizabeth – who was not an experienced driver and had never needed to be a car owner – to manoeuvre into without difficulty. Tom had bought her this car, just like that, easily, amazing her.
‘You’ll need it.’
‘But I’ve never—’
‘You do now. Anyway, I want you to have a car. I want you to have the freedom.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
He had kissed her.
‘You’re joining another world. Families have cars.’
Already Elizabeth liked it. She liked the unexpected status she felt it gave her, the independence, the choice. Even now, lifting the back to heave out the bulging supermarket bags, she felt a small pride she couldn’t help relishing even though she was glad no-one more experienced was there to see. She carried the bags up the steps to the front door in pairs and then locked the car, carefully checking to see that the central-locking system had actually done what it was supposed to do. Then she climbed the steps again and put her key in the front door. It wasn’t locked. She turned the handle and pushed the door open.
‘Tom?’
‘Me,’ Dale called from the kitchen.
Elizabeth took a breath.
‘Oh—’
Dale came to the kitchen doorway. She wore a scarlet apron tied over a black T-shirt and jeans.
‘Been shopping?’
‘Yes.’
Dale moved forward.
‘I’ll help you carry.’
‘Dale,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Have you been here long?’
‘About an hour.’
‘Why didn’t you ring?’
‘What?’
‘To say you were coming. Why didn’t you ring me?’
Dale stooped to pick up the nearest bags.
‘Please leave those,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Please leave those and answer my question.’
Dale straightened slowly.
‘I don’t have to ring.’
‘You do now,’ Elizabeth said.
‘This is my home—’
Elizabeth put her hands in her jacket pockets.
‘Mine, too, now. You are welcome any time, any time, for any reason, but not unannounced. I need to know.’
Dale stared at her.
‘Why?’
‘Privacy,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Not secrecy, but privacy.’
Dale said fiercely, ‘This was my home for twenty-five years before my father even met you!’
Elizabeth bent to take the two bags closest to her feet.
‘We can’t have this conversation on the doorstep—’
‘You started it.’
‘No. You caused it by letting yourself into the house in our absence and without warning us.’
‘It’s my house!’ Dale yelled.
She turned her back on Elizabeth and marched into the kitchen. Elizabeth lifted the shopping bags from the front doorstep into the hall and then shut the door. She followed Dale into the kitchen. Half the cupboard doors were open and the table was piled with packets and jars.
‘What are you doing?’
‘What does it look like?’ Dale said rudely. She had pulled on a pair of yellow rubber gauntlets. ‘Spring cleaning. I always do it for Dad.’
‘Always?’
‘Well, the last year or two—’
Elizabeth took her jacket off and hung it over the nearest chair.
‘It’s my job now, Dale. If it’s anyone’s. And these are my cupboards and my kitchen. I am, in an old fashioned expression, to be mistress of this house.’
Dale banged a yellow-rubber fist down on the table. She said furiously, ‘Oh that’s obvious, you’ve made that perfectly plain, you don’t have to tell me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Dale shouted, ‘My mother’s photographs! My mother’s pictures! What have you done with all the pictures of my mother?’
Elizabeth said steadily, ‘You’ve been in the drawing-room—’
‘Yes!’
‘And where else? Where else have you been? In our bedroom?’
Dale glared.
‘In our bedroom?’
‘Only quickly—’
‘Only quickly! Not too quickly, I imagine, to notice that the photograph of your mother is where it’s always been?’
Dale was breathing fast. She tore the rubber gauntlets off and slapped them down on the nearest counter.
‘The drawing-room was her room!’
‘The pictures are perfectly safe. They are wrapped up and packed in a wine carton for you and Lucas. You’ll find them in his old bedroom. The portrait of your mother is still in the drawing-room and it will stay there. I’m not obliterating anything, I’m just making my mark, alongside.’
Dale said vehemently, ‘It was her room, she made it, she chose everything, she was Dad’s wife, she was Dad’s first choice, she was our mother—’
‘I know all that. I know.’
Dale slumped into the nearest chair and put her face in her hands. Elizabeth went round the table and stood next to her. She looked down at the gleaming dark hair so smoothly tied back into its velvet loop.
‘Dale—’
Dale said nothing.
‘Look,’ Elizabeth said, trying to speak gently. ‘Look, you’re a grown-up, a grown woman, you must use your imagination and maturity a little. I can’t negotiate with a ghost like this, Dale, I really can’t. I can’t compete with something idealized and you shouldn’t demand that I do, either. Anyway—’ She paused.
Dale took her hands from her face.
‘What?’
‘Aren’t you maybe too old to go on believing your mother was a saint?’
Dale stared ahead of her.
‘You never knew her. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You didn’t know her very well, either,’ Elizabeth said. ‘You were only a child.’
Dale sprang up and shouted, ‘There were hundreds of people at her funeral! Hundreds and hundreds! They came from all over England, all over the world.’
Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment.
‘I don’t doubt it.’
‘You do!’
‘I don’t doubt that your mother was a wonderful person and much loved. That’s not the point. The point is that she, tragically, is dead, and therefore, however fondly remembered, cannot influence how we, who are still living, choose to live our lives. When she lived here, this house was hers and she arranged it as she wished to. Now, it’s going to be mine and your father’s, and we will want to live in it rather differently.’
Dale bent her head and put the back of one hand against her eyes. She was crying.
‘Oh Dale,’ Elizabeth said in some despair. ‘Oh Dale dear, do try and grow up a little. I’m not some intruder you have to make bargains with.’
Dale whirled round and snatched several sheets of kitchen paper off a roll on a nearby worktop. She blew her nose fiercely.
‘You want to turn us out!’
‘I don’t,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It’s the last thing I want. All I want is for you to respect my privacy and independence as I respect yours.’
Dale blew again.
‘You don’t respect my past!’
‘I do,’ Elizabeth said. She gripped a chairback and leaned on it. ‘All I have difficulty with is when you try and insist that the past has more importance and significance than the present or the future.’
‘You’ll learn,’ Dale said bitterly. She untied the strings of the scarlet apron, ducked her head out of the neckband and threw the apron on the table among the boxes and bottles.
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Dale was pulling on a jacket.
‘You can’t touch what we’ve got, what we’ve got because of what we’ve had—’
‘I know that—’
‘You don’t!’ Dale cried. ‘You don’t and you never will. You think you can come in here with your tidy Civil Service mind and file us all away neatly so there’s nothing messy left, nothing real and human and powerful. Well, you can’t. What we had, we’ll always have and you can’t touch it. You’ll never understand us because you can’t, because you can’t feel what we’ve felt, you can’t know what we know, you’ll never belong. You can try changing Dad outwardly, nobody can stop you doing that, but you’ll never change him inwardly because you don’t have it in you. He’s been where you’ll never go.’