Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online
Authors: Maggie O'farrell
Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction
The Hand That First Held Mine (44 page)
She fought like a crazed thing. She fought to live, she fought to come back. She has always wanted to tell him this, in some way. She tried. She would like to say to him, Theo, I tried. I fought because I didn’t see how I could leave you. But I lost.
What she would have given to win? She could not say.
I
t’s nightfall by the time they reach London. Elina sits in the back, her hands squeezed between her knees. Jonah sleeps in his car seat. Ted has stared straight out of the windscreen for the entire journey. On the Westway, he says, ‘Take me to Myddleton Square.’
t’s nightfall by the time they reach London. Elina sits in the back, her hands squeezed between her knees. Jonah sleeps in his car seat. Ted has stared straight out of the windscreen for the entire journey. On the Westway, he says, ‘Take me to Myddleton Square.’
Simmy glances at Ted, then his eyes meet Elina’s in the rear-view mirror. ‘Ted,’ he begins, ‘don’t you think you ought to—’
‘Take me to Myddleton Square, Sim, I mean it.’
Elina leans forward. ‘Why do you want to go there, Ted?’
‘Why?’ he snaps. ‘To talk to my parents, of course.’
‘It’s quite late,’ Elina ventures. ‘Won’t they be asleep? Why don’t we wait until—’
‘Either take me,’ Ted says, and his voice sounds near tears, ‘or let me out of the car and I’ll go by Tube.’
‘OK,’ Simmy says soothingly. ‘OK. Whatever you want. Why don’t I drop Elina and Jonah off at home first and then—’
‘I’ll go with Ted,’ Elina cuts in. ‘It’s fine. Jonah’s asleep. I’ll go with you,’ she says, and lays a hand on Ted’s shoulder.
When Simmy pulls up in Myddleton Square, Ted is out of the car and running up to his parents’ front door before either Elina or Simmy have taken off their seatbelts. Elina releases the catch on Jonah’s seat and opens the door.
‘Are you coming?’ she says to Simmy.
Simmy turns round and they look at each other. ‘What do you think?’ he says, in a low voice.
‘Maybe you’d better,’ she says quickly.
Simmy takes the car seat from her and they go towards the door, which is now opening, a slice of light appearing and falling over the pavement, and there is Ted’s father, whisky glass in hand, saying, ‘Good grief. Hello, old chap. Didn’t know you were coming.’
‘I need to talk to you,’ Ted says, and pushes past him.
In the kitchen downstairs, Elina sits at the table with Simmy and Ted’s father. Ted strides to the back door, to the window, to the table, to the cooker.
‘What’s going on?’ Ted’s father says, looking at them all one by one.
Elina clears her throat, wondering what she should say. ‘Well,’ she begins, ‘we were in Ly—’
‘Answer me this,’ Ted shouts, from across the room, and Elina whirls round to look at him. He has his wallet in his hands and is struggling to pull something – money? A credit card? – from it. She stares at him, appalled, as he bears down on them. He hurls something, something white, a piece of paper or card, on the table in front of his father. ‘Who is that?’
There is a long silence. Ted’s father glances at the piece of paper, then glances quickly away. He reaches into his shirt pocket for his packet of cigarettes. He extracts one, puts it to his mouth and leans sideways to get a lighter from his back pocket. His hands, Elina notices, are shaking. He gets the lighter and then places it square on the table. Instead of picking it up and lighting his cigarette with it, he picks up the piece of card, the postcard, again and holds it near his face. Elina leans over and looks at it too. It is a black and white shot of a man and a woman, leaning against a wall. She thinks she has never seen it before and then she thinks that maybe she has, and then she realises it’s one of the John Deakin photos from that exhibition they went to see. It is bent and creased from being folded inside Ted’s wallet. She opens her mouth to speak, then shuts it again.
Ted’s father puts it down. He props it with great care against a salt cellar. Only then does he light his cigarette. He inhales, blows out the smoke, inhales again.
And then he utters the following incredible words: ‘She’s your mother.’
‘My mother?’
‘Your real mother. Lexie Sinclair,’ he rubs his brow with an index finger, ‘was her name.’
Ted leans both hands, curled into fists, on the table edge. He has bowed his head, like a supplicant, like a man about to receive communion. ‘Then would you mind telling me,’ he says, his voice muffled, ‘who that is asleep upstairs?’
Felix takes a deep draw on his cigarette. ‘The woman who brought you up. From the age of three.’
‘And you?’ Ted says. ‘Are you my father?’
‘I am. Without doubt.’
‘And something happened to her. My mother. In Lyme Regis.’
Felix nods. ‘She drowned.’ He circles his cigarette around his head. ‘A swimming accident. You were there. It was a week or so after your third birthday.’
‘Was it . . . ? Were you there?’
‘No. There was a . . . friend of hers with you both. I came to collect you that night. I brought you back here and . . . and Margot looked after you.’
Ted picks up the postcard. He looks at his father, whose face is wet. He looks at Elina. Or, rather, his eyes pass over her as he turns away, towards the windows to the garden.
‘Now, old chap,’ Felix says, getting to his feet, ‘I’m sorry, of course I am. Perhaps we were wrong – to hide it from you, I mean – but we—’
‘You’re sorry?’ Ted repeats, turning to his father. ‘
You’re sorry?
For lying to me my entire life? For passing off someone else as my mother? For pretending this never happened? It’s – it’s inhumane,’ he gets out, in a hoarse whisper. ‘You realise that? I mean, how did you manage it? I was three, for God’s sake. How did you do it?’
You’re sorry?
For lying to me my entire life? For passing off someone else as my mother? For pretending this never happened? It’s – it’s inhumane,’ he gets out, in a hoarse whisper. ‘You realise that? I mean, how did you manage it? I was three, for God’s sake. How did you do it?’
‘We . . .’ Felix’s shoulders slump. ‘The thing is, you sort of . . . forgot.’
‘I forgot?’ Ted hisses. ‘What do you mean, I forgot? It’s not something you forget – seeing your mother drown. What are you talking about?’
‘It sounds odd, I know. But you came back here and—’
‘What’s going on?’ a voice trills from the doorway. Everyone turns to see Margot, her hair flattened on one side, a dressing-gown tied tight around her middle. A confused smile lighting up her face. ‘Ted, I had no idea you were here. And Simmy and darling Jonah! What are you all . . .’ Her voice trails away. She looks from face to face. Her expression fades into uncertainty, then mistrust. ‘What’s the matter? Why is everybody . . . ?’ She sidles into the room. ‘Felix?’
Felix reaches out and takes the postcard from Ted’s fingers. He hands it to Margot. ‘He knows,’ he says, and comes to stand beside her or, rather, alongside her, puffing at his cigarette, as if he is in a queue with her, waiting for a bus, perhaps, as if she is no more to him than a stranger who just happens to be travelling in the same direction.
Felix and Margot and Gloria sit at the table in the kitchen of Myddleton Square. Opposite them sits the boy. He is perfectly still, his hands resting, upturned, one on each knee, his head slightly bowed. He has a ragged cat toy tucked into one armpit. He doesn’t even seem to blink. He stares at the plate of sausages in front of him. Or perhaps he is staring past it, at something he sees in the tablecloth. He is like the wax model of a boy, an effigy, a sculpture.
Boy, At Table
.
Boy, At Table
.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Margot says, in a bright voice.
He doesn’t reply.
‘You need to eat up,’ Gloria joins in. ‘Then you’ll grow big and strong.’
The sausages have cooled and are set in gelid puddles of grease. The boiled potatoes next to them have a floury, dry appearance. Margot puts up a nervous hand to fluff out the hair at the sides of her head: her mother’s always told her that flat hair makes her face look thin.
‘Listen, old chap,’ Felix says, ‘I’m going to go into the garden in a minute and do you know what I’m going to do?’ He pauses to see if the boy will reply. When he doesn’t, Felix presses on: ‘I’m going to light a bonfire. You’d like to come and help with that, wouldn’t you? A big bonfire? Eh?’
Margot hasn’t spoken to Felix directly this morning. She hasn’t forgiven him for putting the boy to sleep in the nursery last night. The nursery that had once been hers and which she had decorated two years ago with a frieze of rocking horses and jack-in-the-boxes and a matching coverlet in primrose yellow.
‘Well, where else should I have put him?’ Felix had said, when she’d objected.
‘I don’t know!’ she’d cried. ‘The spare room!’
‘The spare room?’ He’d gazed at her as if he didn’t recognise her. He was slumped against the landing wall, still in his raincoat, still wearing his driving gloves, and his face was ashen and hooded in the dim light. Something told her she should curtail this conversation; she ought to take him down to the drawing room, give him a whisky, take his coat for him. But she couldn’t. He’d put that boy to sleep in there, under her primrose coverlet.
‘It’s my nursery,’ she’d tried to explain but she heard the bleat in her voice, and saw the flare of anger in his eyes. He’d pushed himself away from the wall and stepped up very close to her. For a moment she thought he might strike her.
‘That child,’ he began, in a quiet, frightening voice, ‘has just lost his mother. Do you understand that? He’s seen his mother drown. And all you can think about is yourself. You . . .’ he hesitated, choosing his words, as he sometimes did when she watched him on television, when he was faced with something moving, a flood perhaps, a famine of vast proportions, the collapse of a valued building ‘. . . you disgust me.’
Then he’d turned and walked down the stairs. And she’d known she should leave it, she’d known she should say nothing more but she somehow couldn’t stop herself and she’d shouted after him, ‘You’re upset because it’s her, aren’t you? You can’t bear that she’s dead. You love her. You love her and you – you despise me. You think I don’t know it but I do. I do!’
At the bottom of the stairs, he turned and looked back at her. In the light coming from the hall lamp, she saw suddenly that he’d been weeping. ‘You’re right,’ he said softly. ‘On all counts.’ And then he went into the study and shut the door.
In the kitchen, Felix gets up and goes to the sink. He drinks a glass of water; he leaves the glass on the side; he comes over to his son. He places a hand on top of his head. ‘Shall we make a start, old chap?’
The child still doesn’t move. Margot isn’t sure that he even knows Felix is there. She hears her mother, next to her, let out a sigh.
‘On the bonfire?’ Felix prompts. ‘What do you say?’
He says nothing. Felix stands there, clearly at a loss to know what to do.
Margot clears her throat. ‘Why doesn’t Daddy go and start’ – she addresses the child in the high, brittle voice in which she seems to have been talking all this long morning – ‘and when you’re ready you can go and join Daddy? How about that?’
He blinks, once, and Margot and Felix strain forward, ready to catch whatever sounds he’s prepared to send their way. But nothing comes.
‘Well,’ Felix says, and he is using Margot’s bright voice – it seems to be catching, ‘I’ll go and do that. You be sure to watch out of the window.’ He heads off into the garden, putting on his boots at the back door, then retreating down the path. Gloria murmurs something about needing a lie-down and disappears into her rooms.
And so Margot finds herself alone with the boy. The hair gleaming in the sunshine. The small shoulders beneath the shirt, which, she notices, has been patched on the collar. He has the same set jaw as his mother, she sees, the line of her nose, the slight overbite. Margot looks away. She crosses her legs, she picks a bit of lint off her sweater, she fluffs her hair again. When she looks back, the boy is staring straight at her and the dark, frank eyes are so unsettling, so disconcerting she almost jumps.
‘Oh.’ She lets out a little laugh and rises from her seat. She has to get away from that gaze, so like his bloody mother’s. To cover herself, she reaches for the plate of sausages. ‘Let’s take these away, shall we?’ She carries them to the kitchen, where she busies herself with scraping the food into the bin and putting the plate in the sink for the char to wash later. Then she thinks of something.
She walks to the table, where she bends down. ‘Theodore,’ she says, trying to swallow, to suppress the fact that she now knows his middle name is Innes – how dare she? Damn that woman to hell, she catches herself thinking, and feels ashamed, ‘how would you like some ice-cream? Hmm? We’ve got vanilla or—’
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