So Grace walked the three miles up the hill to the hospital and sat with her father at the formica bench in the dining room. Also there were Wayne, a teenage schizophrenic whose parents were embarrassed by him, and a woman whose name Grace had never been told. From an overheard conversation between other patients Grace had learnt that this woman had had a child, who had died soon after birth.
“She won’t accept it, see,” the patient had said. “They caught her in the maternity hospital, trying to walk out with a little boy.”
The two nurses on duty tried to do their best and it was quite a pleasant meal. They ate turkey which had already been plated up in the hot trolley, pulled crackers and wore paper hats. Her father had been much calmer lately and didn’t even make too much fuss about the dreadful food.
After Christmas there was a period of quiet, very cold weather. She and her father, wrapped up in coats and scarves and gloves, because after the heat of the ward it felt glacial, even in the sun, went for walks in the hospital grounds. He was allowed to be away from the nurses for half an hour at a time now. She pointed out a red squirrel in the tall trees which separated the hospital from farmland beyond.
“I saw my first one when I went for a walk with Nan,” she said.
“Did you?” He was pleased, amused. “Fancy you remembering that.”
“Does she know you’ve been ill?”
She knew that her father had kept sporadically in touch with Nan who’d moved at last into sheltered accommodation.
“God, I hope not.”
He was being prepared for release. He had to attend a group. That was what it was called the group. It was run by a pretty young psychologist. There was a lot of drama and role play, lots of talking.
At first Edmund was sceptical, even antagonistic.
“Load of crap,” he said. “I wouldn’t go if I didn’t think they’d let me out quicker.” After a while Grace thought he must be finding the group useful, because he wouldn’t miss it, even when he was given the opportunity for a legitimate excuse. She was curious about what went on at these sessions but he wouldn’t answer her questions in any detail. It seemed unlike him to be so cooperative and she hoped he hadn’t fallen for the pretty young psychologist.
Usually the group met in the lounge with the finches and the fish tank.
They shut all the curtains so no one could see in. But one day when Grace arrived to visit her father, the time and the place of the group had changed. They were meeting in the TV room and it was still in session. It was cold and almost dark, so although the corridor was curtained they hadn’t bothered with the windows facing the garden. The therapist must have assumed that no one would venture outside.
Grace realized this by chance. She hadn’t meant to pry. When Elizabeth told her Edmund wouldn’t be available for at least half an hour she decided to walk to the WRVS canteen to buy him some chocolate.
On her way back she saw the light from the windows falling on the unpruned rose beds. Although she knew she shouldn’t look she was attracted closer, like a moth.
They had pulled the chairs into a circle, almost a huddle. Her father was sitting next to Bella, who had been released from the hospital but returned as a day patient to attend the group. Grace recognized most of them. The woman with the dead baby, who had shared Christmas lunch with them, was there too.
Bella was talking. The others were listening intently. Grace had the impression that it was a new development, Bella taking centre stage.
The psychologist who was sitting on the floor because there weren’t enough chairs to go round, nodded, encouraging Bella to continue.
Suddenly Bella got up from her chair and moved to the middle of the circle. She stood with one hand above her head, still talking. She seemed agitated but Grace couldn’t hear what she was saying. She dropped her hand to her side and began to cry. The others crowded round her. Grace saw Edmund put his arm round her and hug her.
She felt awkward about being there, pulled up the hood of her anorak because now she was very cold, and walked on round the building. She rang the doorbell and stood shivering on the doorstep for Elizabeth to let her in. When the door to the TV lounge opened and they came out, they were chatting and laughing like old friends. No one would have been able to tell that Bella had been crying. Edmund seemed preoccupied. Grace said she wouldn’t stay long, soon they’d have to go into the dining room for supper. But he walked with her to the bus stop.
“Good group tonight?” she asked.
He didn’t answer. “They’re letting me out next week.” He seemed almost sad.
“Will you go back to Rod’s?” “He says I can.”
“Well then.”
“It won’t be easy,” he said, and though he didn’t say so, she knew he was thinking about the support he’d received from the group.
“No reason why you shouldn’t stay in touch.”
“No,” he said relieved, ‘.”
When she arrived back in Laurel Close there was an ambulance outside the door. Frank had had a heart attack. The ambulance crew wheeled him out on a trolley. Grace rushed through the crowd and touched his hand. Before Maureen climbed into the back of the ambulance Grace put her arm around her, and they cried together.
Frank died before he reached hospital. Grace was offered another foster family but she opted instead for the children’s home. There she slept in a room with three empty beds. There were blankets folded at the foot of them and pillows in striped cases.
Chapter Twenty-Six.
The memory of the room in the children’s home, so similar to her room at Baikie’s, jolted her back to the present. An hour had passed. She had come to one of the stone blinds built by the estate for grouse shoots, and she imagined her father’s relatives crouched here, guns raised, waiting for the whirring grouse to speed overhead. They would have waxed jackets, braying voices. Her family’s decision to sell this land for the quarry had only reinforced her prejudices about them. In the days leading up to Bella’s funeral, once she had finished her survey in the morning, she would walk the hills, getting her bearings.
Late one afternoon she climbed Fairburn Crag. From there it was possible to look down on Holme Park House, laid out beneath her like an architect’s plan. In a bend in the river was the main house, with two wings, and beyond it the formal gardens. Grace understood that the gardens were what the visitors came to see. She had never been herself. The Halifax sisters had offered to take her, had planned a jolly day out in the Rover with a picnic. They said the park was the only place in Northumberland where you could guarantee seeing hawfinch.
Grace had been tempted but when Cynthia muttered something about her heritage she’d refused.
Now, looking down, she felt no connection with the house. She wouldn’t have wanted to live there. Her father’s bitterness seemed misplaced and she wished she hadn’t been drawn into it.
She began the long walk back to Baikie’s reluctantly. She hated the evenings in the cottage. She hadn’t expected it to be like this. She’d known it wouldn’t be easy she’d told her father that but she thought she might enjoy living with other women. She’d hoped for the easy camaraderie she’d experienced in the Halifax library. University had been competitive but she’d put that down to the presence of men. Here, she’d thought with three women sharing the same expertise and interest there’d be no pressure. She might even build some sort of friendship. Instead there were questions and suspicion. Anne Preece was the most intrusive.