“Hello, Maud. You’ve been a bit sick,” I informed her as I busied about, unable to look her in the eye. She stirred slowly back to the here and now.
“Oh. Oh, darling, how disgusting, oh, you are a sweetie. I must have…I don’t feel too well,” she said. She looked dreadful—old, even. She stuck out her hand, signaling to me not to clear up the mess, then grabbed my arm and held it tight. “What happened, darling?” she said. “I don’t remember.” Her eyes pleaded for comprehension. I led her gaze with mine to a Garvey’s amontillado bottle lying empty on the floor a yard away.
“Oh. Oh, yes,” she said and let go of my arm, leaving a little bleached band where her fingers had squeezed it bloodless.
“Vivi’s coming home soon—the weekend after next. And she’s bringing Arthur,” I said.
“Arthur?”
“Her boyfriend.”
“Vivien,” she said. “Oh, no.” She crashed back onto the sofa, defeated by the day before it had begun.
I knew what she was thinking. “Don’t worry, Maud, I’ll help you,” I said, putting my hand on her arm.
“Would you, darling?” she asked. “Would you really?” Right there and then there passed between us an unsaid secret. We both knew what kind of help she needed. If she was to keep her dignity, she must have an ally. She could no longer control the drink’s hold on her, so she needed me to do whatever was necessary to cover it up, to hide her ignominious habit. That I should know it she could bear, but that anyone else—most of all Vivi—should discover it would be too humiliating. So, not having found the courage to help her stop, I would become her accomplice instead, standing guard between her and the outside world, protecting her against giving herself away.
Vivi and Arthur arrived just before lunch on Friday, a day earlier than expected. Vivi looked exhausted. She hadn’t been home for almost six months and it seemed that so much had changed. As soon as I saw her, I realized I could never tell her about Maud. It wasn’t only that I’d promised Maud not to, but also because of the unexpected wedge that lodges itself between people once one of them moves out of the house, as if they’ve swapped teams. Even though she was a daughter and a sister, Vivi was now officially a visitor and it seemed natural that the message should be we were coping just fine without her. So it was that the allegiances of the people within the house, however unstable, far outweighed all external bonds of love and friendship. When Vivi left Bulburrow, she had given up the right to be party to its authenticity; she had visitor status now, so that week I’d made sure I’d scrubbed the house clean and unreal.
When they arrived, I made soup with some courgettes I found in the pantry, and I dragged Clive from the attic and Maud from the library to sit and eat with us alclass="underline" a pretend family.
I felt a heavy responsibility to everyone to ensure it went smoothly: to Maud, to cover up her secret; to Vivi, to make Arthur feel welcome; and to Clive, to translate for him between his own world and the real one. It felt like I was orchestrating a grand performance. I was protecting everyone from everyone else, and some of them also from themselves.
Arthur Morris was a baker, or rather, he helped his father run a business that supplied bread to shops all over London. It was a difficult topic to talk about if you knew nothing much about bakeries or the new self-service stores that Arthur told us were coming from America.
Vivi had first mentioned him to me about four months ago, but I hadn’t appreciated until recently that they were actually stepping out together. Arthur had short wavy black hair and two overblown freckles on his forehead. Dimples dug into his face to frame his ready smile, and you could see that his teeth were a little crossed at the front. He was very enthusiastic, about practically everything, and he seemed extraordinarily appreciative to be with us, as if he’d won a golden ticket. He talked a lot, about shopping schemes and shoppers’ habits, although during lunch, Clive was patently more interested in the habits of a slothful hornet that had landed on a slice of bread near his elbow and was walking slowly round the edge of it. All in all I thought it was very lucky Arthur was helping himself to conversation because he wasn’t being offered any.
It struck me that none of us had any common ground with Arthur, not even Vivi. He had hardly ever set foot outside the city and she had only recently stepped into it. Arthur knew everything about convenience shopping and nothing about insects; Vivi knew little about shops and lots about insects. Arthur was full of optimism and eagerness; Vivi was forever finding obstacles.
I was clearing the soup bowls as Arthur set to with a lengthy description of his baking premises, which, he said, were out to the west on Wainscot Road. Clive sprang on the name as if it were the punch line to the entire luncheon conversation.
“Wainscot Road? How interesting,” he said, more animated than he’d been all day. “Why’s it called Wainscot?”
“I have no idea, actually,” said Arthur, tilting his head, giving the impression that now it had been asked it was an interesting question.
“You don’t know?” Clive said incredulously. “You work in a bakery on Wainscot Road—”
“I don’t actually work in it,” Arthur corrected him—politely and without arrogance. “I run it.”
“All the same,” Clive said, flipping the comment back at Arthur with his hand as if it were a fly, “you run a bakery on the road but you’ve never bothered to find out how it got its name?”
“Clive!” Vivi exclaimed, but he ignored her and went on to get assurances from Vivi’s boyfriend that he’d go back and find out the origin of the road’s name. Because, did Arthur know?, there was an entire family of moths called the Wainscots, so he would be extremely interested to discover if the road was named after these moths or—which he thought more likely—if it was named after the very famous family from whom the moths had also got their name. Arthur agreed cheerfully that it was important, as well as profoundly interesting, that he should find out how the street had got its name, but I had the impression he didn’t think Clive was being altogether serious.
Once that conversation was over and agreed on, I was about to prepare for an uncomfortable silence when Vivi saved the moment in one swoop, as easy as a stroll in the park. “Clive is very clever, aren’t you, Clive?” she teased.
“Well…,” Clive started seriously, missing Vivi’s playful sarcasm.
“But the thing, Arthur, that he’s particularly clever at is bringing absolutely any conversation round to moths. Most people find it incredibly difficult to put anything about a moth into a conversation, but Clive finds that most conversations naturally come to moths in the end, don’t you, Clive?” It was only when Maud and I started to giggle that Clive understood he was being gently teased and braved a small smile. Arthur was gazing at Vivi adoringly.
“Clive,” Vivi continued bossily, “why don’t you show Arthur some of your specimens? He’d love to see them.” She turned to Arthur. “Clive’s got moths from all over the world. Some are bigger than your hand.”
I relaxed a little, letting my responsibility lighten. Vivi was taking control. She was pure, fresh air, and slowly she was filling up the house with it, resuscitating the space and pulling us all back together.
Caring for caterpillars is like caring for the young of any animal. They require constant attention. Our attic and our drawing room and, incidentally, much of our south terrace were full of larvae boxes housing our self-created plague of Brimstone caterpillars. Once we’d given Arthur a tour of the museum, he volunteered to come on our rounds of the caterpillars, helping to clean them out, give them fresh food and check them over.