With much affection,
Meredith.
In 1931 Meredith would have been just twenty years old. Twenty years old, married and expecting a baby that she must have lost, because my mother was not born for some time after that. I read the letter again, try to re-imagine Caroline as a mother somebody loved, as somebody Meredith clearly missed. The letter makes me sad, and I have to read it again to work out why. It is such a lonely letter. From far below, I hear Beth calling me for lunch. I slip the letter back into the case and tuck it beneath my arm before going down to her.
The rain doesn’t stop until Tuesday afternoon, and I am itching to get outside. I envy Eddie, who comes back as it gets dark, hair in damp curls and mud up to the knees of his jeans. At what age do you start to notice the cold and the wet and the mud? About the same time you stop moving everywhere at a run, I suppose. In the nursery the gap where the linen press stood yawns at me from the wall. An imprint of dust and cobwebs and unfaded paint. I cross to the piles of cloth I evicted from it, start to go through them, putting cot sheets, lacy sleeping bags, tiny pillowcases and an exuberant christening gown to one side. A pile of muslin squares that I find tucked away, and a small feather eiderdown as well. I have no idea if any of it will be any use to Honey and her baby, when it comes. Will she even have a cot? But it is good, heavy linen, smooth to the touch. Luxurious. She might like that idea, perhaps: swathing the child in expensive bedding, even if the ambulance will be a more basic nursery. I catch sight of those pillowcases again, with the yellow stitched flowers. I make a mental note to look the flowers up, identify them, in case that will tell me why they tug at my subconscious so.
“Where are you going with that lot?” Beth asks, as I lug it down the stairs.
“I’m taking it over to Honey. It’s all baby stuff-I thought she could use it.” Beth frowns. “What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Erica, why are you trying to…”
“What?”
“You know. I don’t think you should be trying so hard to be friends with them again, that’s all.”
“Why not? Anyway, I’m not trying that hard. They are our neighbors, though. You seemed happy enough to chat to Dinny at the party the other night.”
“Well, you made me go, you and Eddie. It would have been rude not to talk to him. But I… I don’t think we have much in common any more. In fact I’m not sure we ever knew him as well as we thought we did. And I don’t see what purpose it serves, trying to pretend everything is how it was before.”
“Of course we knew him! What’s that supposed to mean? And why shouldn’t things be how they were before, Beth?” I ask. She seals her lips, looks away from me. “If something happened between the two of you that I don’t know about…”
“Nothing happened that you don’t know about!”
“Well, I’m not so sure,” I say. “Besides, just because you don’t want to be friends with him any more, doesn’t mean I shouldn’t be,” I mutter, dragging the bag to the door and pulling on my coat.
“Erica, wait!” Beth comes across the hall to me. I turn, search her face for clues. Troubled blue eyes, closely guarded. “We can’t go back to the way things were. Too much has happened. Too much time has passed! It’s far better to just… move on. Leave the past alone,” she says, her eyes sliding away from mine. I think of Dinny’s hand, its gentle, proprietorial grip on her elbow.
“It sounds to me,” I say, steadily, “that you don’t want him any more, but you don’t want me to have him either.”
“Have him? What is that supposed to mean?” she says sharply. I feel color flare in my cheeks and I say nothing. Beth draws in a deep, uneven breath. “It’s hard enough being back here as it is, Erica, without you acting like an eight-year-old again. Can’t you just stay away, for once? We’re supposed to be spending time here together. Now Eddie is off with that Harry all day long, and you’d rather chase after Dinny than… I don’t have to stay, you know. I could take Eddie and go back to Esher for Christmas…”
“Well, that’s a great idea, Beth. Just the kind of unpredictable behavior that Maxwell is always looking out for!” I regret this as soon as I say it. Beth recoils from me. “I’m sorry,” I say quickly.
“How can you say things like that to me?” she asks softly, her eyes growing bright, blurred. She turns and walks away.
Outside, I take a deep breath, listen to the muted calls of the rooks, the gentle dripping and unfurling of soaked foliage. A living sound, a living smell in the middle of winter. I’ve never really noticed it before. I drop the bag of linens, suddenly unsure of myself, and sit down on a rusting metal bench at the edge of the lawn; feel the dead cold of it bite through my jeans. Perhaps I will take it down later. I can hear voices coming from the stream beyond the eastern edge of the garden. I make my way over, through the little gate at the side of the lawn and down across the scrubby slope. After the rain the ground is heavy with water. It squeezes up around my feet as I walk.
Eddie and Harry are in the stream, the water swirling perilously close to the tops of their wellies. All the rain of late has made the water fast, and even faster in the center, channelled deep because Eddie and Harry have built a dam of flints and sticks reaching out from each bank. Harry’s trousers are wet all the way up to his hips, and I know how cold the water must be.
“Rick! Check it out! We almost got it right the way across a moment ago, but then part of it collapsed,” Eddie calls, excited, as I reach them. “But before it did the water got really high! That’s when we got soaked, actually…”
“I can see that. Boys, you must be freezing!” I smile at Harry, who smiles back and points at a rock by my feet. I bend down and pass it to him gingerly, slipping on the muddy bank, and he adds it to the dam.
“Thanks,” Eddie says absently, unconsciously speaking for his friend. “It’s not that cold once you get used to it,” he shrugs.
“Really?”
“No, not really-my feet are bloody freezing!” he grins.
“Language,” I say, automatically and without conviction. “It’s a good dam, I have to admit,” I continue, standing in the mud with hands on hips. “What are you going to do if you manage to finish it? It’ll make a huge lake.”
“That’s the idea!”
“I see. God, Eddie, you are covered in mud!” It’s all up the sleeves of his sweater, where he has pushed them up with muddy hands; all up the legs of his cords where he’s wiped his hands. There’s a smear across his forehead, sticking his hair into clumps. “How have you managed to get so filthy? Look-Harry’s managed to stay clean!”
“He’s further from the ground than I am!” Eddie protests.
“True enough,” I concede.
Grabbing a fistful of Harry’s coat to steady himself, Eddie makes his way toward me, feet rocking over the stony stream bed.