Facing the Light (15 page)

Breakfast at Willow Court used to be a formal meal. Almost Beth's first memory of the house, of her life with Rilla as her new mother, was Leonora, who didn't like being called Gran or Granny, telling her where she must sit, and how to slice the top neatly off her boiled egg. She even remembered the egg-cup, which was made of china and had a pair of feet in red and white spotted shoes to balance it on the plate. Beth was fascinated by it. It was one of a set of children's crockery in which all the cups had been given feet and different sorts of shoe. Efe's were brown and laced-up and Alex had green boots on his.

Nowadays, when the house was full of visitors, everyone came downstairs when they felt like it and helped themselves in the kitchen to whatever they wanted and took it through to the dining room. Leonora herself was the only fixed point. She was always there in her usual place, at eight o'clock sharp every single day, eating her usual meal of a grapefruit, peeled and chopped into small pieces and sprinkled with a little sugar, followed by two small slices of wholewheat toast spread with butter and marmalade. Margarine reminded her of the war, she told Beth once, and though Gwen and James listened to the advertisements promising them lower cholesterol and a multitude of health benefits and went in for modern spreads and pastes, she wouldn't let the tasteless greasy stuff pass her lips. She always drank Earl Grey tea from a
translucent china cup and saucer decorated with pale pink and blue flowers.

Beth took her mug of coffee and a banana into the dining room. It was a quarter past eight and there was no sign of anyone else. Gus, the laziest cat in the world, was in his usual place on the window-seat and she stroked him on her way to the table. He looked up briefly, made a purring noise deep in his throat and closed his eyes again. Beth sat down and peeled the fruit and ate it slowly. Where was Leonora? Was it possible that she'd finished already? Had her breakfast and gone out somewhere? Gwen had probably got up hours ago and started on one of the thousand things she claimed to have to do before the party. James, she knew, was out in the garden overseeing the electricians.

She sat by herself in the dining room and stared at the banana skin on her plate, feeling something like a small whisper of worry in the back of her mind. Efe's announcement last night had obviously shocked Leonora. Maybe she was ill. Maybe she was … no, of course not, Beth, don't be so bloody alarmist. She shook her head to rid it of even the smallest vestige of the possibility that Leonora might have suffered a fatal heart attack.

She picked up her dishes, took them through to the kitchen and washed them up. I'll go into the garden, she decided, and see what they're doing in the marquee. And maybe see Efe, go on, admit it. Maybe he'll be there. Surely Leonora's all right.

She'd almost stepped over the threshold into the warm sunlight that was beginning to filter through early mist, when her footsteps took her to the stairs instead and she found herself halfway up them before she knew it. I'll just go and check on her, she thought, and then I'll go out. She's never late for breakfast. Never ever.

At the top of the stairs, she paused. Douggie, still in his pyjamas, was outside the nursery with his hand on the
doorknob. Neither Fiona nor Efe were anywhere to be seen, and Leonora, Beth knew, would have a fit if a toddler were to go into the nursery all by himself. He probably wanted to play with the dolls' house, but someone should have made it clear to him that it wasn't allowed.

Beth hesitated. She wasn't quite sure how she felt about Douggie. On the one hand she loved him because he was a part of Efe, but he was also a constant reminder of Efe's marriage, his relationship with his wife. Now that Fiona was pregnant again, Beth found herself thinking more than usual about the two of them together and had to make an effort to turn her thoughts to something else. Little Douggie didn't resemble Efe in the slightest, but seemed a quiet, grave sort of child, not given to wildness or much noise. As she approached him, he smiled tentatively and said, ‘Going in now.'

Beth went up to him and knelt at his side. She removed his hand from the doorknob.

‘No, darling,' she said as gently as she could. ‘Not in there. It's not allowed. Come with me and I'll take you back to your mummy.'

‘Don't want Mummy,' he said firmly and looked as though he might be going to cry. ‘Want dolly house.'

‘No one's allowed in there without Leonora,' Beth explained, wondering briefly whether Douggie knew who she meant. Perhaps Fiona had given the child's great-grandmother another name altogether.
Leonora
was a bit of a mouthful for such a baby, she thought, before remembering that she and Efe and Alex and Chloë had all managed it perfectly well.

Just as she was hesitating about whether or not to knock on the door of Efe and Fiona's bedroom, it opened and Fiona herself came out, looking for her son.

‘There you are, Douggie!' she said. ‘Naughty boy. I've said, haven't I, that you mustn't go wandering all over
the house without me. I'm sorry, Beth. He hasn't been worrying you, has he?'

‘Not at all,' Beth said. ‘It's fine. I was just going to bring him back.'

‘Thanks so much.' Fiona made an effort to smile, but Beth was surprised at how washed-out and bedraggled she looked. She took Douggie's hand and pulled him to her. ‘Come on now, lovey. Breakfast time soon, isn't it?'

Douggie could be heard complaining; whining that he wanted to see the dolls' house, but then Fiona closed the door behind them, and silence spread through the corridor. She was looking, in Beth's opinion, distinctly queasy. It must be early morning sickness. Whenever she thought about the new baby, it felt to Beth as though heavy weights had been attached to her heart. At one time it had been possible to imagine Efe leaving Fiona but every single thing that had happened to him lately (the engagement, the wedding, Douggie's birth, now this pregnancy) was like another steel ribbon thrown around him and Fiona, binding them together. I won't even think about this now, Beth decided, and made her way to Leonora's bedroom.

She hesitated for a moment. That was another unwritten rule at Willow Court: children didn't bother Leonora unless there was some kind of emergency. But I'm not a child, Beth thought. And maybe this is an emergency. She knocked firmly at the door and Leonora's blessedly strong voice called out, ‘Come in.'

Now that she'd heard her, Beth felt like running away, but of course that was quite impossible. Go on, she thought as she went in, she's not going to eat you.

Leonora was standing by the window. She was elegantly dressed in pale grey trousers and a hyacinth-blue cashmere jumper. Even at this hour of the morning, her make-up and pearls were immaculate. Rilla always called them
Mother's working pearls
, the necklace and
earrings Leonora always wore when she wasn't making any particular effort. The bed was so neatly made that you'd swear no one had ever slept in it. Bertie, the upstairs cat, eyes closed and purring gently, was stretched out like a ginger bolster just under the slope of the pillows. He was quite devoted to Leonora and as long as she was in his territory, he always tried to position himself somewhere close to her.

‘Hello, Beth dear,' Leonora said. ‘What's the matter? You look a little worried.'

‘I thought, I mean, I thought there must be something the matter with you because you weren't at breakfast.'

‘That's kind of you,' Leonora smiled, and went to sit in the armchair near her dressing-table. ‘To tell you the truth, I wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone and I didn't feel that I could ask Mary to bring me up a tray when everyone's so busy getting the party ready.'

‘I'll go,' Beth said. ‘What would you like? You should have said. I'd have brought a tray up, or Chloë would have.'

‘I'd starve to death if I had to rely on her for breakfast. It wouldn't appear till teatime. You know she sleeps all day.'

Beth sat down on the window seat. ‘I'm glad you're okay. I thought you'd be terribly upset. Angry. I don't know. Something.'

‘I'm not best pleased with Efe, to tell you the truth. That young man sometimes forgets what I've done for him.' Leonora winced. ‘I hate to hear myself saying that. I hate even thinking such things. It's exactly the sort of remark I promised myself would never pass my lips. I was never going to do that dreadful parental thing: look what I've sacrificed for you, and so forth.' She shook her head.

‘I'm sure you don't mean it like that,' Beth smiled encouragingly.

‘You're right, Beth. I don't. But don't let's talk about this now. Let's just go down and have some breakfast. I am rather peckish after all.'

Beth stood up and followed Leonora out of the room. Whatever did she mean? As they went slowly downstairs Beth asked, ‘Are you going to talk to Efe?'

‘In my own good time,' Leonora said. ‘He does, after all, know my response to his suggestion and I'm sure he's informing whoever it is in America who needs to be informed.'

In the kitchen, Beth said, ‘Sit down, Leonora, and I'll get your tea and toast ready. I'll carry it through to the dining room for you.'

‘No, I'll have it here at the kitchen table. It's so late.'

Beth could feel Leonora's eyes on her as she filled the kettle and took the cup and saucer down from the dresser.

‘You're staring at me, Leonora. Have I left something undone?'

‘No, no, dear. It's only that you look so young. Just like you did when you came here for the school holidays.'

Beth laughed, ‘Don't be fooled by jeans and a T-shirt! I'll be thirty in a couple of years, you know. On the shelf, that's what I am!'

‘What nonsense, child! Thirty's still a girl, almost. On the shelf indeed! Though there's a lot to be said for shelves. Things may get dusty on a shelf but they don't get broken.'

Beth knew from the way she said it that this particular pearl of wisdom was one Leonora was fond of and must have used a million times, probably to console her unmarried friends. On another day, she might have considered giving her an argument, but now wasn't the time, so she put two slices of bread into the toaster and wondered what she could say to change the subject.

*

James stood in the middle of the marquee, aware that there was really nothing in particular for him to do. Everything was under control, but he did enjoy pretending to be something like a ringmaster. As he turned his head, he caught sight of Chloë, carrying a sketch pad.

‘Am I seeing things?' he laughed. ‘Surely it can't be you, sweetheart, at this hour? I didn't think the morning was your time of day.'

‘Hello, Dad. It isn't,' said Chloë, sounding, James was glad to note, quite amiable. ‘But I wanted to go and look at the willows.'

‘Absolutely,' he said, as though this were the most normal thing in the world to be doing so early in the day. He would never have admitted it to Gwen, but he knew and Chloë knew that there was a bond between the two of them. They liked one another. James made no secret of his admiration for Chloë's work, and even had one of her less comprehensible sculptures displayed on a table in his office. He made a point of never commenting on her appearance, which was, he realized, a painless way of staying in her good books. Sometimes he could scarcely hide a smile as Gwen rose, predictably, to Chloë's bait, unable to stifle criticism of this or that outlandish fashion. He'd never discussed it with his daughter, but had a shrewd idea that a lot of what Chloë did was designed to irritate her mother. Once, when she was about ten, she'd said out loud what James had always thought himself but felt vaguely guilty about.

‘Mummy's always on Efe's side, isn't she?' Chloë had asked him, and when he'd hesitated, she'd added, ‘But it doesn't matter, does it, because you're on mine.'

‘Well, yes,' he had answered. ‘I suppose I am, but don't go saying so to your mother.'

‘I'm not stupid, Dad.' And she'd smiled the smile that melted his heart every time. His sweetheart … that was what she was and James felt proud that she never minded
him calling her that. She wouldn't have put up with it for a second from anyone else. What on earth did she want with willow trees, all of a sudden? She must have looked at them thousands of times.

‘I expect we'll see you later, then,' he said.

‘Suppose so,' she said cheerfully, and waved at him as she went off towards the lake.

*

Alex slung his camera over his shoulder and made his way back to the house. He'd been up for hours, and had gone out at what felt like dawn, but was actually only about seven o'clock, to photograph the men moving along the shining lengths of scaffolding, carrying stage lights to fix to the steel skeleton inside the marquee, ready for the party. Then he'd wandered down to the lake for some shots of the waterlilies. The swans were right over on the far bank and he didn't have the energy to go all the way round there without so much as a cup of coffee. I'll get some breakfast, he thought, and then go back later. It occurred to Alex that there were probably a hundred tasks his father would want him to take on, and he got his excuses ready as he walked across the terrace. I'll tell him I'm working on Leonora's present, and that won't even be an excuse but the plain truth.

As he approached the French windows of the drawing room, he heard Efe's voice coming from the conservatory. Tearing a strip off someone, by the sound of it. Alex stood quite still for a moment, wondering whether he should go away and leave whoever it was to their fate, or whether he should at least have a look to see what was going on. Perhaps Efe was shouting over the phone and no one was actually catching the blast full-on and in person. He looked in at the window.

Fiona was cowering – that was the only word for it – near the door, holding Douggie close to her. Her arm was hugging the little boy into her skirt, shielding him from
the full force of his father's anger, though the poor kid was obviously terrified.