I freeze, hit by the unmistakable stench of sherry. The smell unleashes a little remnant of fear and unease that burrows its way out onto the skin of my arms, crawling between the hairs. It’s the smell of Maud. I back away from the door and close it again, quietly. I wait until I hear Vivien’s footsteps pass above me to her room before I go quietly to my own.
Chapter 15
In Remembrance of Pauline Abbey Clarke
Once I’m in my room, I rearrange the pillows at the head of my bed, stacking them up so I can sit and admire the sleepy Bulburrow valley through the south windows. Outside the breeze leads the tips of the creeper’s new shoots in a quivering dance, each one searching for a partner to entwine. Maud said she’d planted the creeper because it was my namesake—Virginia. She said she liked the idea of me creeping all over the house forever, and I remember that then she laughed a lot because I asked her what she meant by that and she said I shouldn’t be so serious about everything.
I can’t help thinking what a shock the smell of sherry has just given me, and the memories it’s inflamed. I’d forgotten how fearful I was of Maud when she was drunk. There’d be so little warning. One moment she’d be humming to herself, happily inebriated, and the next she’d have grabbed a weapon—a mug, a brolly, a book or whatever else was close to hand—and lashed out at me in unrestrained fury. But—I think I’ve mentioned this before—I always forgave her for what she did, I knew she couldn’t help it and, somehow, she more than made up for it when she was sober, with her sublime reassurances of love, when she’d lay her head on my lap, or squeeze me tight and kiss me. It was at those times that I thought we’d never been so close, and that we’d never needed each other so much.
I could cope with the violence. That was easy—I could rationalize it. It was the incessant insults I found hardest to bear. I knew not to believe a word of it, I knew not to listen and, thanks to Maud herself, I knew how to lock myself in that place in my head where I can go and not hear. But there was one that came up over and over again, the one about how I’d ruined her life.
“You’ll never know how much you’ve ruined my life,” she’d shout, grabbing my face in her hand as if she wanted to grind it to dust. I always thought how lucky it was that it was me, not Vivi; that I was able to detach myself from it in a way that Vivi’s mercurial personality would not have permitted. But it was this theme, that I’d ruined her life, that came up the most, that all the others would culminate with, the one she’d repeat over and over in different ways and, by the end, I couldn’t help but believe—in a little part of me—that she truly thought I had.
Once or twice I let myself wonder what on earth I might have done to make her think it, but mostly I knew it was nonsense. Her life would have been ruined without me to cover up her every misplaced step, to shield her outbursts from her husband and her other daughter. She couldn’t have coped without me.
I made sure Maud never knew that her gibes got to me. I remained impassive and unaffected, even though I saw the danger in that too. I saw the pattern but I couldn’t stop it. The more resilient I appeared, the more Maud wanted a reaction and the more vicious her behavior became. Only now, looking back, can I see that a clash was spiraling out of control.
I stretch over to pull out the drawer at the top of my bedside table. It lost its handle many years ago so I have to pull on the screws that once fixed it and stick out two inches apart. The drawer is stiff, but once I wangle it out enough to slip my fingers into the top, I can wrench it all the way. There, lined up neatly, are two full rows of cannabis tea bags, each like a perfectly crafted marble with the muslin gathered in a spray at the top and a length of cotton thread for manipulating it in the mug. I don’t like to use them unless it’s absolutely necessary and I’ve exhausted all the other ways to alleviate the pain in my joints. It’s not that I’m moderating myself. It’s just that I so much prefer the two rows in the drawer being full. When there’s a gap the bags slide about as I open or close the drawer, upsetting their careful alignment.
I lift up a bag and smell it. I like the idea of the smell more than the smell itself. My favorite thing is to take them all out and line them up on the bed. Then I pick up each one in turn—as I’m doing now—and roll it in my fingers, admiring the handiwork, the immaculate rows of small, even stitches along the seams. As I study it I picture Michael working at his late mother’s kitchen table, his fat, practiced fingers carefully folding the muslin, gently pulling the stitching to gather and tie it at the top.
I like to believe he thinks of me while he’s stitching. I feel that he and I have a small connection and not only because our families go back for three generations in an employment partnership. We are both quiet and, I should imagine, similarly misjudged. Besides, I’ve known him all his life. Soon after his birth it became evident Michael was a near clone of his mother, missing out on all his father’s failings. He was born big and gentle and calm, and soon disclosed a big heart and a small intellect. But, like his mother, Michael was a grafter, and after she died he took over nursing his father patiently through his final ailing years. No other son would have put up with the childlike tantrums of that cantankerous man, until one glorious cold and cloudless day when Michael was collecting blood-blue sloes from the hedges along the willow walk and his father was choking slowly to death at home. For many years Michael was haunted by the ghosts of guilt, believing they were the actual ghosts of his father’s celestial fury.
It took Michael several years to understand that he had, in picking the sloes that day, secured his freedom. He rebelled gently, admitting his hatred of gardening—the only education his father had given him. I released him from his duties in the Bulburrow grounds and allowed him to continue living in the Stables in return for nothing. With the scrapings of a lifetime savings his father had forgotten to, or not got round to, spending in his own lifetime, Michael bought a big motorcycle and a small tent, about the size of our hanging pantry. He hired it that first year to the Jeffersons at Christmas for mince pies and carols, and for some yearly gathering at the Liberal Club, then to Ethel Phelps in the gatehouse lodge to extend her conservatory for Stan’s seventieth. And then he bought another slightly bigger tent—about the size of the kitchen study. Throughout the following summer, he hired them out for events and parties in the neighboring villages, Saxton, Broadhampton and Selby.
I could swear Michael showed no sign of strategy, cunning or business, but now he has sixteen marquees, enormous ones, the size of the drawing room and library put together, with all the trimmings for weddings and funerals, and all of life’s ceremonies between. Michael never needed or cared for anything but that which he couldn’t have: a loving father. He still lives at the Stables, he still rides his bike and he still looks as if he works in the vegetable patch, but I know that he’s now the wealthiest man in the village. His late mother would have laughed and loved him just the same, but he would never have been able to make his father proud.
He had acquired some cannabis seeds from his biker friends and, with the expertise in tending plants that his father had drummed into him from an early age, he used the remaining peach houses in the walled garden to grow a celebrated line in skunk, as he calls it. Like me, he lives alone, and although I wouldn’t be so bold as to claim a friendship, Michael and I have a long-term connection. He visits me irregularly—about twice a month—to deliver my groceries, take out my rubbish, block up new drafts, tell me the briefest of village news and, if necessary, to top up my supply of his personalized brand of herbal remedy.