“Yes, Ginny, it’s me,” she said quietly.
I couldn’t tell if she was crying, or angry, or tired, or all of them, but I knew she wasn’t herself. “Are you okay?” I asked, wishing I hadn’t as soon as it was said.
For a while she didn’t answer. “Oh, wonderful,” she said sarcastically. “Is Arthur there?”
“Are you angry with me?” I said.
“Not especially.” She sighed. “I’m angry with everyone and everything.”
Well, that didn’t make any sense to me, and such a broad sphere of anger doesn’t naturally offer a starting point to help, so I didn’t try. I decided, as always, to come back to the practical issues. “When shall we have her funeral?”
“We’re having it next Friday,” she stated. “I’ve already arranged it with the rector.”
“And Clive? Does he know?”
“I have no idea, darling,” she said.
“I’ve just seen him,” I said. “He says to tell you he loves you—”
Vivi butted in. “I’d like to speak to Arthur, please. Has he arrived yet?”
I handed the phone to him and went into the back pantry to find some eggs to make a cake for tea. When I came back Arthur was staring disconsolately out the kitchen window at the gloomy day beyond, the phone call over. I was surprised how glad I was that he had come. I was usually happy with my own company—I’m extremely self-sufficient—but I was so much happier now that Arthur was there. I didn’t want him to leave. I studied his back for a moment, his thickly knitted navy polo-neck, the black curls at the back of his head, slightly bowed shoulders, and I thought how wonderful and thoughtful and interesting he was, and how comfortable and easy I felt with him. I cracked an egg against the side of the mixing bowl and he swung round, surprised that I was back in the room. I smiled into the bowl and imagined the baby growing inside me—our baby—and, I’m ashamed to admit, allowed myself to fall into a daydream that Arthur and I were married and we lived here with a houseful of children, as it had been when the evacuees were staying all that time ago.
I pulled myself out of it quickly. “How was she?” I asked.
“She and Clive have completely fallen out,” he said, glancing at me and widening his eyes.
That must have been why Clive was worried about her, I thought. My family was disintegrating before my eyes, despite my efforts to keep it together. I cracked three more eggs, one by one, against the side of the bowl. “It’s not the time to fall out, for goodness’ sake, not when Maud’s just died. She would have hated it. It’ll be something ridiculous. Was it about the will?” I asked.
“I don’t know, she won’t tell me, but she’s consumed by anger. I’ve never seen her like this before. She’s turned into a raging bull,” he said, clearly exasperated. “And I don’t know how to calm her down,” he added, staring out of the window onto the drive.
“Oh, Lord. She must be unhappy about something in the will or in Clive’s handing over the estate to us,” I reasoned, “but she ought to just tell me and then we might be able to sort it out, talk it through. I can’t be expected to guess what’s got to her. I’ve never been able to and she knows that better than anyone.”
“It’ll pass, I’m sure,” Arthur said optimistically. “It usually does with Vivi. But at the moment she’s refusing to go to the funeral if Clive’s there.”
“What? Of course he’ll be there!” I sat down heavily and resolved to talk to her about it the next time we spoke, try to patch things up between her and our father. Why was it that I was the only person who didn’t fall out with my family? I thought, as I added two cups of sugar and one of flour to the mixture.
“Does she still want a baby?” I asked, worried their plans might have changed.
“Oh, yes, she definitely still wants a baby,” he said, without hesitation.
“Oh, good, because I think she’s got one.”
“What?”
“I’m pregnant.”
“Really?” His face broke into a smile. “I’m going to be a daddy,” he said as he sidestepped a chair to embrace me. We stayed like that for a long while, long enough for it to feel as if the embrace was welcome for other reasons than the baby. It felt more like comfort than joy.
Sunday
Chapter 17
A Prayer
Blossom falls like snow against the mottled sky, blizzarding my path until I reach the Tunnel Walk along our eastern boundary. Today is Sunday, the third day since Vivien came home, and I’m on my way to church. I’m not going to church because I don’t do that, but I’m on my way there to do…I don’t know what, take a look, try to crush my curiosity. Yesterday, after I missed Vivien leaving the house, I spent the entire afternoon waiting for her to return so when, at breakfast this morning, she announced that she was going to church, this time I couldn’t help but follow her.
Vivien walked down the drive, in the same way that she strode out boldly yesterday, right down the middle of it, in a tweed suit and black leather gloves, but I’m cutting down the path between the row of firs and the high fence, the Tunnel Walk down which I’d taken Arthur once. It’s strange, now I think of it, that I’d brought him this way when I hardly knew him. It’s a secret, childish route, but that didn’t cross my mind at the time. That must have been the last time I was here, but it hasn’t changed, and most probably not for a century. It’s ageless and, as I stand here, looking up into the woven branches above, I’m dizzied into any age I want. I can be a child again, hearing Vivi giggling farther down, urging me to hurry, or I can be a young woman collecting moss for the pupa cages, scouring the fence for the hairy gray chrysalis of a Vapourer, or searching for the holes of the Goat Moth caterpillar as it bores into the hard wood of the tree trunks. The path in the tunnel appears well worn, managed, even, compared to the rest of the wilderness our land has become, but it isn’t. It’s so starved of light that nothing grows here. It can’t get wild. Instead it is carpeted with layer upon layer of soft needles, year on year, so that the ground has become a mattress, thick and springy as I walk on it.
When I reach the brook at the other end, I see that the split weeping beech is no longer the bridge. Half of the tree stands alone and naked on this bank, and the other half, the half that had fallen over the water and given years of service to the villagers, has been removed. In its place is a flat man-made bridge, rows of neatly sawn wooden slats over which no balance is required. I remember Arthur poised precariously on the middle of the log, his arms outstretched, how it had made him think that growing up here would be fun.
Arthur visited me a lot back then, during my pregnancy, at least every other weekend and sometimes more to check that I was all right and because, I think, he loved his weekend escapes to the country. Vivi was thrilled about the baby and, although she couldn’t visit—she said she found it too painful to come to the house—she telephoned every other day.
My pregnancy filled a gap for all of us. After Maud’s death, it gave life a new meaning and, thankfully, seemed to lessen the storm raging inside Vivi. She did come to Maud’s funeral, even though I saw her glower at Clive at every opportunity. Clive didn’t notice. He didn’t notice anything or anyone and he didn’t hold back his tears. It was as if, without her, he had shrunk to a small part of himself, the oldest, least meaningful part, a case without its contents. I didn’t even get to speak to him. After the service he traipsed off to the bus stop to wait for the Belford bus to take him home to Paul Street, while Vivi raced off in her car back to London, neither going near each other or the house. If Maud had been around she’d have made Clive go to the little party Arthur helped me organize at Bulburrow Court. The entire village (and many from the surrounding villages too) filed in for what they instinctively realized was the last time, all talking somberly about the steep steps they would now be wary of in their own houses and being especially careful not to notice that Maud’s husband and younger daughter were not there.