Sylvia Garland's Broken Heart

“So well does Miss Harris handle this story, so convincingly and passionately does she write, that we get to know the hero and heroine, fear for them, feel for them … an accomplished first novel.”

Susan Hill,
Good Housekeeping

“The relationship between Sarah and Ravi is very nicely, perceptively and credibly handled. Miss Harris has got a real subject, she can tell a story and create character.”

Alan Massie,
The Scotsman

“An unbridgeable gap is the moving theme explored in talented Helen Harris’s first novel.”

Daily Express

“Helen Harris has command over her language … there are passages which are rich in suggestion and imagination.”

Punch

“A reassuringly solid descriptive sense and the confidence to handle a delicate theme of racial integration with forthright and readable flair.”

Books and Bookmen

“Skilfully told.”

Evening Standard

“The old woman is a totally convincing, rather surprising character and Alison is immensely likeable …
Angel Cake
… consolidates her reputation as a young writer of talent … well worth reading.”

Susan Hill,
Good Housekeeping

“A fascinating evocation of what life was like in the English theatre in the 1930s, cleverly interwoven with the hopes and fears of a young woman of today.”

Yorkshire Post

“A story of immense beauty and sadness, written with a rare compassion.”

Jewish Chronicle

“Few novels I have read give a better picture of the confusions of an old age where the world has shrunk to one room and the only events in life are the visit to the grocer, the battles with the brisk social worker and the skirmishing with the home help.”

David Holloway,
Daily Telegraph

“A breath of spring, although with two acclaimed novels already to her credit Helen Harris’s talents are well past the budding stage … wry, beautifully exact and bubbling with life.”

Christopher Wordsworth,
The Guardian

“I have never read a novel which describes so well the plight of the ex-pat in Paris … the fraught progress of the affair is described with sharply wry observation.”

Clare Colvin,
The Sunday Express

“The couple’s story is colourful, often funny and absorbing.”

Eastern Daily Press

“An attractive, well written portrait of a young man and an elderly Russian family … well worth reading.”

The Bookseller

A
FTER MANY YEARS
, Sylvia Garland returned to England. She had never intended to stay away so long. But one thing had led to another somehow and what had originally been meant as a short refreshing absence had turned, unimaginably, into thirty-five years.

Thirty-five years; it was half a lifetime and yet, when she thought about it, Sylvia really could not say how it had come about. All she knew was that at some moment there must have come a tipping point, unnoticed at the time, after which returning no longer made any sense and so they had decided to stay put until Roger retired.

But wasn’t it extraordinary that she could not account for how she had lived more than half her life? Or was that maybe the way more often than one imagined; that when people looked back at their lives, they were forced to acknowledge that they had actually not been in control at all? Everything had happened willy-nilly, they had simply blundered along, making the most of unpredictable circumstances and the lives which they ended up living bore little resemblance to what they had originally
intended. Of one thing Sylvia was certain; she no longer bore any resemblance to the well-intentioned blonde young woman who had set out so bravely from England, newly married, in 1969.

Her flight landed at Heathrow at half past seven on an overcast April morning. Neither the time nor the season was of her choosing but she was looking forward to one thing: the feel of cool damp air on her face as she stepped out of the plane. She had hoped, during the last part of the flight, that the pilot would use some lovely English expression to describe the weather in London as they began their descent – “drizzly” or “nippy” – or that he might advise his passengers arriving from desert heat to get their “macs” out before they disembarked. But no such luck; the pilot was, wouldn’t you know it, Australian and he simply remarked that it was “a grey old day” in London which was perfectly obvious to everyone.

Sylvia looked down at the small tidy country appearing beneath the clouds, all neat little rows of identical houses and orderly cars driving obediently along narrow roads like a toy town laid out in a good boy’s bedroom. She felt excitement and apprehension in equal measure; her son, whom she had not seen since shortly after the funeral, would be waiting to meet her at the Arrivals gate but beyond that lay the unknown. Well, not absolutely the unknown of course since she had spent the first twenty-five years of her life in this country but, as everyone overseas was always telling her, it wasn’t the same anymore.

When the cabin doors were finally opened after a
tedious and uncomfortable wait, during which the ridiculously overweight passenger sitting next to her made three utterly unnecessary calls on his mobile phone, Sylvia made her cumbersome way to the exit, nearly beside herself with excitement. But instead of emerging into cool damp air, as she had happily anticipated, a tubular passageway had been attached to the side of the plane and she emerged into another indoors. She was so disconcerted, she did not watch her footing and nearly stumbled as she stepped over the threshold. Determined to be brave at all costs, she exclaimed audibly “Oops-a-daisy!” and quickly regained her equilibrium without any help from anyone. But it was under the banner of “Oops-a-daisy!” that her return to England began.

She traipsed a remarkably long way on her swollen feet along anonymous corridors to what was now called Border Control. Ahead of her in the plastic booth she saw a dark-skinned young woman wearing the Muslim veil low on her stern brow. Sylvia could barely believe her eyes and, for a few disorientated moments, she imagined that she had got out at the wrong airport or that her flight had somehow come full circle and carried her back to where she had come from. She was roused from her fantasy by the passport officer calling her sharply to come forward in a broad Yorkshire accent.

Startled, Sylvia stepped forward, forgetting her hand luggage which she had parked on the floor beside her. The fat family who was standing behind her in the queue all four called out bossily, “Your bag, your bag” and, it seemed to Sylvia, everyone for several hundred yards around
turned to stare at her. Blushing, apologetic, she retrieved her bag, dropped her passport which she had been holding ready in her hand, bent to pick it up and came forward again to the passport booth, flustered and flushed.

The young woman sitting inside looked at her severely. Sylvia smiled at her ingratiatingly – although why she should feel the need to ingratiate herself on this unprepossessing young woman, she had frankly no idea. The young woman tapped the counter impatiently. “Passport?” and Sylvia realised with embarrassment that she was still clutching her passport in a moist hand. Hastily, she handed it over. She was considering whether or not to tell the young woman that this was a big moment for her when she scornfully returned the passport to Sylvia, without even looking at her and called, “Next.”

Sylvia left the counter feeling hurt. Of course, the passport officer had no idea that Sylvia was coming back to live in England after thirty-five years away and in tragic circumstances too. But still, she could see from the passport that Sylvia had every right to be here, this was her home, wasn’t it and besides didn’t the young woman come from a culture which traditionally treated older people with more respect?

Clearly, Sylvia thought indignantly as she made her weary way towards the baggage hall, clearly that young woman had chosen to adopt the worst of Western ways. In her off duty hours, she probably loitered in shopping malls, frequented discos and afterwards gorged on fast food. Still smarting, Sylvia spent some time trying to identify which carousel was receiving the baggage from
her flight. The hall was crowded with milling multitudes, all unslept, unwashed, unshaven and all calling to one another in a bewildering assortment of languages. Sylvia might as well have been anywhere. To make matters worse, the passport woman had made her feel as if she was as much a foreigner here as any of them; a time traveller who had returned from a distant, more polite past.

It took Sylvia an age to find the right carousel. To make matters worse, she could not exactly remember her flight number anymore either – was it 106 or 160? – and she had lost the stub of her boarding card which would have helped. She was so tired too, she could only dimly remember where she had come from. She had hardly slept; all night an irritating small child with apparently disproportionately large feet had kept kicking her seat back and snivelling. Sylvia had nearly given its useless parents a piece of her mind.

Finally she spotted the preposterous overweight passenger who had overlapped indelicately into her seat for much of the flight. He was standing beside a rotating carousel which did not yet have any suitcases on it, still talking volubly with extravagant hand gestures on his mobile. Sylvia went to occupy a vacant spot at a safe distance away from him, confident that she must at last be in the right place. Sure enough, within a few minutes, suitcases began to tumble forth and, remarkably quickly, she spotted her own which she had made easier to identify some years earlier with a number of eye-catching transfers of exotic birds.

As her case came towards her, she turned instinctively
to point it out to the person who should have been standing next to her and to step considerately out of his way as he lifted it off. But an icy wave flooded through her because she remembered instantly that she was alone, alone and bereaved and she had not hauled a heavy case off one of these contraptions herself for a long time. Still, icy wave or no icy wave, there was nothing for it but to step bravely forward, to seize the case with both hands and to hope for the best. Heavy lifting could have unspeakable consequences. Before she knew what was happening, a short but tremendously broad-shouldered man in a black leather jacket had pushed unceremoniously in front of her, grunted brusquely “No!” and lifted her case off the carousel and placed it politely at her feet with as little visible effort as if it had been a pill box.

Sylvia was so overcome, she staggered slightly. She was overwhelmed by the icy wave turning to a warm wash of embarrassment and by a sneaking feeling that wasn’t betrayal exactly but possibly disloyalty. She had just been the recipient of gallantry from a strange man. She stood there, blushing and battling with her fluctuating body temperature and afterwards she was not even sure if she had remembered to stammer “Thank you.” She felt quite ashamed of herself too for the man who had come to her aid so promptly, so perfectly was one of those Russian Mafia types whom they had always made such fun of in Dubai. He had vanished into the crowd already, with his leather jacket and his puff of powerful cologne, leaving Sylvia looking after him helplessly, awash with her swirling emotions.

She took a grip on herself and simultaneously on her suitcase and went in search of a trolley. Feeling needlessly guilty as always, she made her way through the “Nothing to Declare” channel towards the Arrivals door. Halfway along she came upon her Russian rescuer being intently questioned by two customs officers who had opened both his expensive suitcases. Sylvia faltered, she was on the verge of dashing over to put the customs people straight, to tell them what a perfect gentleman the Russian was. But memories of the stories she had been told in Dubai about rich Russians and the kind of things they were said to carry in their suitcases made her walk on towards the Arrivals door, feeling even guiltier still. In any case, Jeremy was waiting for her and she didn’t want to keep him waiting any longer than necessary, poor dear.

An African woman walking slightly ahead of Sylvia, pushing a trolley piled high with her vivid luggage, reached the frosted glass double doors first and they slid apart. Beyond them, a crowd was waving and roaring. There were people from all four corners of the earth gathered here: every possible colour, every possible race, every conceivable style of dress and headgear. Sylvia knew she was in London but, frankly, looking around her, she might as well have been anywhere. Jeremy was nowhere to be seen.

Sylvia came forward between the slung ropes which formed a passageway through the crowd. ‘How absolutely typical,’ she thought to herself, ‘of Jeremy not to be here, today of all days.’ She wondered what mistake he might have made: the wrong flight, the wrong terminal, still stuck
somewhere in heavy traffic due to having set out too late? She knew her displeasure must already have been visible on her face when she finally spotted him, right at the back of the crowd – did he not have the gumption to come forward? – and, simultaneously catching sight of his mother, Jeremy lifted his arm in a stiff little gesture of greeting.

He extricated himself with evident difficulty from the thicket of people where he was waiting and made his way forward towards Sylvia, she noticed with affection and irritation in equal measure, carefully apologising to everyone he brushed against on his way.

Finally, they stood in front of each other and for a moment neither of them seemed to know quite what to do. Jeremy seemed fearful of patronising his mother with a consoling hug and Sylvia hesitated to embarrass him with a display of affection in front of all the gawking people. So they just stood there for a few seconds and neither of them did anything at all. But, when all was said and done, Jeremy was still her boy, even if he was thirty years old now and unwisely married and it was the most obvious thing in the world for Sylvia to scoop him into her arms and draw comfort from his warmth and strength and youth. As she did so, she felt Jeremy’s hand reach around and tap her awkwardly but well-meaningly on the back.

They let each other go quite quickly and began to talk, covering their embarrassment with a brisk exchange of questions: “How was the flight?” “Where’s the car?” “Have you been waiting long?” Jeremy took his mother’s trolley
and, rather too obviously slowing his pace to hers, began to lead her towards the car park. It was only then, as Sylvia recovered a little from the ordeal of her arrival and took pleasure in the sight of Jeremy’s slim, strong silhouette pushing the trolley – was he not maybe getting a little round-shouldered? – that it occurred to her belatedly that her daughter-in-law had not come to meet her and, immediately offended, she wondered why.

“Jeremy,” she asked cautiously, doing her utmost to sound concerned rather than reproachful, “where is Smita?”

The strangest expression crossed Jeremy’s face. To Sylvia, it looked like a child who has been caught out in naughtiness, a booby trap, a stink bomb; guilt and delight in his own ingenuity in equal measure.

“She’s awfully sorry,” Jeremy volunteered quickly. “She was fully intending to come of course. But she wasn’t feeling at all well when she woke up this morning and we both decided it would be better if she stayed at home.”

Sylvia saw him sneak a furtive look at her face and she knew her expression was one of dignified offence.

Jeremy added placatingly, “I think maybe she felt you and I might like to have a little time together on our own, in the circumstances.”

Red-faced, Sylvia thought but refrained from saying, ‘What a load of tosh Jeremy. Since when have you and I
ever
wanted to spend time on our own? Well,
I
might have, I suppose, on occasion but I don’t think you ever have and if your wife doesn’t know that, then she doesn’t know you very well, I’m afraid.’

Of course, she said no such thing. She followed Jeremy across the ugly vastness of the terminal, still no sign anywhere one could see that she was in England. She added to herself, ‘Besides, Smita doesn’t think like that, as far as I’m aware. Smita thinks about Smita, my boy and not very much about either you or me.’

She brought herself to the point where she always began to feel sorry for Jeremy, saddled with his self-centred ice maiden of a wife. This time she felt guilty too for hadn’t she just added to his burden by deciding to come back to England? Although where else was she supposed to go, for heaven’s sake?

She looked fondly at Jeremy’s slightly stooping figure as he pushed the trolley. His shoulders were definitely rounder than they used to be. She resolved that, come what may, she would not be a burden to him. At that moment, Jeremy stopped without warning and Sylvia trod heavily onto his heel. Jeremy winced and Sylvia said sorry and everything was immediately back to normal; chafing along together, friction generated by the simple fact of being in the same place at the same time, unintentionally hurting each other by everything they said and did.