Getting The Picture (14 page)

Even Dad likes him. And Robyn.

105.
letter from florence oliver to lizzie corn

Dear Lizzie,

So we are all a little sad here. Annabel Armstrong was moved to the hospital last night. We could all see it coming, but it's still a shock when it happens. Three residents have left since I've been here. After the first time, I kept thinking it may be me next. I guess we all did. But it's not, it's Annabel.

I've noticed we are all bowing our heads a little when we walk past her room. The door's been shut all day but before lunch I could hear Steve and Brenda in there chatting, and then the sound of the vacuum cleaner. Helen said they'd be getting ready for the next person but as Lady F pointed out, people do sometimes come back. It's just not all that usual. Tom Pardoe didn't, after all. We were still waiting for him when Martin appeared in his room.

It's funny how you learn things about someone after they've gone. Annabel has two sons apparently. She never mentioned them so we all thought she was childless. Barren. That's the proper term. It's what Graham used to call me, and it still hurts. It feels like such a manly thing to be. Like a baron, all German moustaches and baton swirling. As if I wasn't a proper woman. Which of course in many ways I'm not. Don't be kind and jump in. I know what you think about women and motherhood.

Anyway, one of the sons lives just up the road. He was the one who came around to pick up her things after she'd gone to the hospital.

Beth Crosbie and I watched him from the sitting room. He seemed normal. The sort of man you'd pass in the street and would expect to keep in touch with his mother. So how did we never know about him? And who was it, if it wasn't for him, that she would sing ‘Daisy Daisy' and all those other nursery rhymes for?

And if there are two sons, then there had to be a Mister Annabel too, which comes as more of a shock. I always thought she might have been untouched. She was so much like a small girl in her flowered dresses and straight hair. I wonder about him now, was he kind to her or was he harsh? It's as if, here, we all go back to the beginning when none of that need matter.

I'm writing this in the sitting room now. We're nearly a full house. Beth is drowsing on one of the chairs opposite while, in the corner, Keith ploughs on with his research. He sticks his tongue out when he works. Doesn't just let it fall, but actually holds the tip of it between his thumb and forefinger. I want to ask Beth if that's something he's always done, or if it's a strange new habit he's picked up. But she doesn't pay him any attention, so I think that yes, he will have always done that and maybe it annoyed her at one time but now she's used to it. I suppose it's these little things about people that we come to love or hate. Sometimes both.

Helen's sitting a little closer to Lady F than she normally does as I write this, but they're not playing their usual game of Scrabble. And Martin and George have disappeared. They've gone to Martin's room, I should imagine, because they spend hours in there. And so we wait to hear whether Annabel will come back to us or not. Somehow if there are plans afoot tonight, then I'm too tired for them.

Yours aye,

Flo

106.
letter from martin morris to mo griffiths

Dear Mo,

I swear I can hear Marta crying in her bed at night. It comes through the wall and echoes around my room until I want to scrabble through the bricks and shake her back into happiness. Or at least into her way of ‘being'.

And then the next morning, I go back to my chair at the window and watch her in the garden with the boys. They've taken to including her in their games. She's either the princess they have to tie up before rescuing, or she is the foreign witch they need to capture and then tie up.

I have told them they can have one of my cameras if they play nicely with her.

‘But you wouldn't know if we did or not, would you?' the first boy says. He's the loudest, but the second boy is the cleverest, I think.

‘I know everything,' I told him. ‘I know, for instance, where you've planted your treasure.'

They both gave a start then, but while the first boy looked at the base of the tree where I'd seen them digging the other day, the second boy looked up at the house, trying to see if I could have been watching them.

A camera is a camera, though. I think Marta will be spared some of their rope.

M

107.
email from nell baker to angie griffiths

Dad is now officially worrying me.

I'd gone in to Pilgrim House to tell him about Martin and Robyn's poetry classes. She'd persuaded me that it could put Martin in an awkward position if Dad didn't know. And she's right. You wait until you have the little nipper and it starts telling you how to behave.

Anyway, I got caught up in some traffic on the way there so I was all of about eight minutes late. I expected to find one of Dad's notes, you know the ones: ‘I'm very disappointed,' but he was standing there instead. Smiling. ‘I'm sorry,' I started, but he just shook his head. And then he suggested we go for a walk because it was a beautiful day. He was talking about how one of the residents had been taken to the hospital, and we walked around the garden twice before he even mentioned Robyn. He didn't complain about her though, just asked how her poetry was getting on. Of course that's when I should have said something about the lessons, but Dad said he'd never seen the point of poetry, but different courses for different horses, eh?

It was the ‘eh?' that put me off. Since when has Dad ever questioned anything?

But before I could say anything, he said he'd been thinking about me and he only wanted to know whether I would be interested in letting either Chrissie or Tina — they're the hairdressers who go in to Pilgrim House — do my hair. He even said he'd arrange it as a treat for me. I pretended I had to go to a meeting and I ran to the car, Angie, just to get away. But then I had to sit there for a few minutes catching my breath. Since when has Dad ever thought about hairdressers or how we look? Can you imagine him thinking about Mum's hair? You need to seriously think about coming over here. Fast.

108.
letter from claude bichourie to angela Griffiths

Ma petite,

What on earth could be so urgent that I need to break my family holiday to come back to Paris? Maybe you are missing me, but if so, then you will need to be patient just a little bit longer. I long for you too, but we both know there are rules for these things. And consequences for breaking them. Here is a check for you to buy something pretty, or take your girlfriends out for supper and complain about us. Your naughty absent men.

Until soon,

Claude

109.
letter from martin morris to mo griffiths

Dear Mo,

He's insatiable, this husband of yours. Every spare minute we have now and he's on at me to look at the photographs. I get them out, and just watch him while he looks. I can't help but think he's searching for someone.

‘They really are very tasteful.' He always sounds as if he's surprised when he says this, but of course the photographs are. Times were different then, but it's as if he needs to be persuaded that he's not committing some sin by looking through them. I wonder if he's a little disappointed too because I won't tell him anything about the girls. The way he talks sometimes makes me think he suspects we had ourselves one long party that he missed out on. As if he'd have been invited if we had.

I asked him straight the other day, ‘Did you ever play around?'

He winced. It was as if I'd hit him.

‘I think that's possibly between me and my conscience.' He adjusted his tie as he spoke. If he'd have pulled it any tighter, it would have throttled him.

‘So you did,' I replied. I tried not to look surprised, or too interested.

‘No!' He almost shouted. I raised an eyebrow at him. He was sitting there holding a photograph of Anita, the little Spanish girl who lived above her parents' restaurant. I'd got her to bring in this ornate fan from home and she was peeping out from behind it. ‘It's my mother's,' she kept saying, and laughing. That was a good shoot, but she came just the once. Although they never said as much, for some of these girls coming to me was their last fling before marriage. As if they wanted a record of another them, not the dutiful wife they were bound to turn into, out there in the world.

I have learned to keep silent with George, so I said nothing until he started to turn Anita's photograph this way and that so energetically I wanted to hold out my hand for him to give it back.

‘I may have gone shopping once,' he said, ‘with a lady who was not my wife.'

Shopping! Well, call the police, why don't you? It was all I could do not to laugh but he was red-faced. I bit my tongue.

‘It was Maureen's friend who had the idea,' George said. ‘It was to buy a dress for Maureen's fortieth birthday. And the whole thing was to be a surprise. We met at lunchtime and went to a department store together.'

I could just picture old George rushing out from Flanders, Flanders and Flanders, or whatever it was his accountancy office was called. All flustered and looking around to see if anyone was noticing him. And you oblivious at home, love. Thinking of me.

‘She was quite different from Maureen,' George was saying. I went alert then because he so rarely talked about you. I wanted him to carry on, but he was talking about this friend of yours. ‘All bubbly and giggly. A real daredevil. She was always going on about living in America and becoming a film star. I had never seen what Maureen saw in her before our shopping trip.'

I could, because I suddenly guessed who that friend might be. Trisha. I couldn't imagine you having more than one friend who would be a daredevil. No harm in that, but you were always such a safety-first woman. Was I your only reckless gesture? There's a certain pleasure in the way I'm able now to put pieces of your life together like a jigsaw. Now, as George talked, I could even picture Trisha waiting for him, twiddling those long pearls she wore and laughing. You never liked her giggle, did you? But I think most men did. I did, and I could tell from the way he was smiling now that George did too. He'd certainly learned to see what you saw in her.

‘We looked at several dresses, and Pat – that was her name, Maureen's friend.' He looked across at me and I nodded. Pat, Trisha. Maureen, Mo. It made sense. ‘Well, she kept teasing me about my choices. Said Maureen was going to be forty, not sixty.'

I'd have dressed you in white every day, love. I'd have had simple shifts made for you that you could just slip on. Coloured scarves to drape over your shoulder so you could change your look from moment to moment. A red silk dressing gown. A pair of blue Chinese slippers so you would feel you were floating.

‘And then she picked out this dress. I stared at it. Maureen in that? I thought she must be joking, but she wasn't. This is the one, she kept saying. Maureen will love it.

‘So I said yes. Just like that. Although I told her she'd have to try it on for me first. I don't know what came over me.'

I did. I'd seen him look through my box of photographs enough times by now to know he had more fire beneath his surface than he let on. I was trying to think what happened to those photographs of Trisha I took that first day.

‘So she went into the changing room with the dress and I waited outside. It's not something I've ever done before so I didn't know what to do. There was another man sitting there waiting too and we smiled at each other. Women, we seemed to say, and I thought I could get used to this, but then Pat came out and I moved across so the other man couldn't keep staring at her in the way he was.'

George's face was transformed. It was as if someone had smoothed all the lines away. He was looking out of the window of my room as if he could see someone standing there.

‘She looked so beautiful, Martin. Like she was lit up. And she did this twirl for me.'

He held up his hands then, and I had a sudden panic he was going to stand up and twirl right in the middle of my room, but he let them drop. As if his fingers had suddenly become heavy.

‘And the shop assistant came up and said to me, ‘Don't you think this suits your wife?' ‘Yes,' I said. ‘Yes, yes. We'll have it.' But it was only after, when Pat went back in to get changed that I realised I'd lied about Pat being my wife and she hadn't corrected me either.'

His shoulders slipped down his back, like wings dropping. I could imagine his stupid embarrassment. ‘But you got the dress?' I asked. My mouth was dry. I was thinking about that time in the studio, when you and Trisha came for the first time. You and me together, when Trisha was in the changing room. I didn't want George to ruin that memory with this silly shopping story.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘It was red silk. Very inappropriate. Maureen gasped when she opened the box, but she wore it. For my sake, I suppose, because after the party, I never saw it again.'

Red silk. My red silk dressing gown. Pat would have remembered that. And so would Maureen.

‘And Pat?' I asked. ‘Did you and her go out again?'

‘We never spoke about it,' George said. ‘In fact, we didn't ever find ourselves alone again. Even at the party, we stayed apart. It felt deliberate, and afterwards she didn't come around so much. Much later I asked Maureen about her and she said she didn't see her anymore. My wife had a way of talking sometimes that stopped all further discussion.'

When George was telling this story, I kept thinking how easy it would have been if he'd had a proper love affair with Pat so I could feel angry.

Anyway, that was your husband's big secret. After he'd gone, I found the photograph of Anita on my bed. He'd torn it in half somewhere during the telling of his tale. I've taped it up, but it will never be the same again.