Читать книгу Sea Music - Sara MacDonald, Sara MacDonald - Страница 14

Fred is feeding the birds with Martha’s breakfast crusts. There is no wind and the morning is mild. Barnaby has fixed a swing bird table on a branch of the old medlar tree, away from the aged interest of Eric, who can still produce a sneaky pounce from the shelter of weeds and bluebells.

Fred notices that the twisted branches of the medlar look as if they might be dying. The wind has caught the leaves and the back branches are too near the Monterey pine. What a pity. What were the three trees that were always planted together in his grandfather’s day? Medlar, mulberry … Damn it, he cannot remember the third.

He moves across the lawn and looks down at the disturbed earth between the roots of the cherry. He and Martha buried Puck under the tree. Lucy and Barnaby have just buried her little tabby here. He smiles to himself. He lost count of the hamsters buried here, until Martha had the idea of placing the catatonic little bodies in the warming oven of the Rayburn as a test. It was alarming how many of the poor creatures had only been hibernating. Barnaby was stricken with remorse, sure that they must have buried most of his hamsters alive.

Fred cannot remember how the tradition of burying all their pets under the trees came about. Perhaps because the dogs always sat here, half in and half out of the sun. He looks out towards the shrubbery for the blackbird with the freak white tail, and tosses a crust into the undergrowth. There is always a danger taming birds with a cat.

It is such a beautiful day and he has no headache. For once his mind is clear. This is the best bit of the day, just before the day begins in earnest. His private communion with the garden. For a few minutes he can pretend … Is it pretend? Or just looking back? Like old men do when they get ancient.

He can pretend that he has woken to find Martha already in the garden, checking her seeds in neat little trays in the old wooden greenhouse. He would walk across the grass with a cup of tea for her and she would look up as excited as a child and point out what each tray held and where in the garden they were going to be planted out.

She was so organised. From rubble and rampant weeds the garden evolved and grew steadily every year. She kept track of things in a little red exercise book, marking carefully where things failed or had been planted in the wrong place. She drew little diagrams for borders of colour and smell; made sure that in winter there were bright berries, shiny leaves and shrubs to look at.

Eventually, he had to employ someone to help her. At first she was reluctant – she was intensely possessive of her garden and her privacy – but Fred knew he must find someone who would not take over but who would understand the sort of garden she wanted to create.

They had two false starts and then Hattie suggested her nephew, a boy of sixteen. Neither Martha nor Fred knew anything about him, and that was just as well or Fred would never have employed him.

Hattie arrived one morning with a surly youth called Adam, who looked as if he had been frogmarched up the drive. Martha, pretending not to notice his scowl, sat him down in the kitchen, made him tea and gave him a huge slice of home-made cake. Then she took him into the garden, pointed out the things she hoped to do and asked for his advice on this and that. What did he think about a pond here? Did he think they could enlarge the terrace, so that it had steps coming down?

Fred, hovering nearby, saw Hattie’s anxious face at the kitchen window. The boy was monosyllabic. Fred wondered what on earth Hattie was palming them off with. He was about to leave to go back to medical school, and was anxious too, but he trusted Hattie.

He returned from London the following weekend to find Martha had a willing and able slave. The scowl had gone. The boy’s white face was beginning to tan and half a pond had been dug.

Adam and Martha worked together twice a week for ten years. They made a spectacular garden, through trial and error, both learning as they went along. The boy had a natural talent and when he was offered a job as under-gardener on an estate on the Helford, Martha made him take it. She never wanted to replace him.

Fred turns away from the bird table and takes a walk round the garden. The old wooden greenhouse fell down a long time ago and nature has reclaimed so much of the garden. There is no telling where the borders once were. Tulips and daffodils spring up everywhere through tufts of long grass and bluebells. The old pond lies choked in the corner, covered in green algae. The heavy Victorian statue of an angel Martha found in a junk shop still stands placidly facing the house, snails nestling in his arms in little clusters. Lichen grows on his face and body like an extra filigree robe.

Much later, Martha told him that Adam had been in constant trouble for his violent, uncontrollable temper. Hattie took him in when her sister washed her hands of him. All he had done at her house, apart from being bored and sullen, was read her gardening magazines. Adam told Martha that he had been beaten constantly by his father. If Hattie had not taken him in, he would have killed him.

Fred thought then how right it was that Martha and Adam had come together. This garden that they made out of nothing had for both of them begun as a replacement activity and became an obsession and an abiding passion.

He supposes he ought to go in. Must not hold Barnaby up. The one thing he did not want to happen has happened. He and Martha have become Barnaby’s burden. So unfair. His head begins to throb. Damn head. Difficult to think sometimes.

Is he sacrificing Barnaby for Martha? No. No. Can’t think like that. Useless. Barnaby would no more think of a home than he would.

He walks slowly across the grass back to the house and the ghost of Martha flits with him. He so much wants to remember the young woman full of life and joy, who could make an ordinary day special. The young woman who built a garden. The young woman who wept in the dark when the shadows came and reached out for him. The woman he held and made love to. Breathed in. Breathed new life into.

He looks up. An old woman is standing at the French windows in her nightgown, waving at him. He could be Fred. He could be the gardener. He could be anyone. Her beautiful face is vacant, contains nothing of their life together. This, Fred thinks, is the hardest thing I have ever had to bear.

The new carer, arriving that morning, makes something of an entrance. She has spiky dark hair, a nose ring, an ethnic sweater and flimsy skirt finished off with a tight leather belt and boots. When Barnaby has finished showing her around, briefed her on Martha and Fred’s routine and left the house in a rush, she makes coffee and takes it into the conservatory.

She stands looking down at Martha as the cup of coffee she holds for her grows cold. The old lady is crying silently and the girl examines her wonderful high cheekbones and sees the tears falling from Martha’s closed eyes. She is disturbed and touched by the smallness of the old lady and the isolation of her senility.

She bends to Martha. ‘What is it?’ she asks. ‘What’s the matter, Martha? Look, I’ve brought you a cup of coffee.’

Martha opens her eyes at the sound of her name. She is going to say, ‘I am Mrs Tremain to you,’ but when she sees the pretty girl whose anxious face is close to hers she is so pleased she smiles. ‘Hanna! Where have you sprung from? I haven’t seen you for ages!’

The girl places the cup of coffee in Martha’s hands. ‘My name is Kate. Is Hanna your daughter?’

Martha looks puzzled. ‘No, no, I don’t think so.’

‘I’m from the agency. I’m here to help look after you.’

‘You’re very pretty.’

The girl laughs. ‘So are you.’

Martha’s face lights up. ‘I used to be, darling.’

In that small face suddenly alight, in the ease of that casual endearment, Kate is captivated. Fred lowers the Daily Telegraph he is not reading and smiles at her.

‘Hello, Kate. Welcome.’

‘Thank you, Dr Tremain. I’ll just go and get your coffee.’

She comes back and perches on a chair next to him. ‘The vicar suggested you might like a drive this afternoon. There is a little gallery at Newlyn? He said you both enjoy going there, and then walking or driving along the front past the harbour.’

Fred looks up at her. ‘That sounds absolutely wonderful. Martha would love it. How kind. Mrs Biddulph doesn’t drive, you know.’

Kate smiles. ‘So I understand. Are you both OK here, if I go and do a bit of tidying up?’

‘Of course. Of course. We are both fine. Enjoying the sun.’

Kate makes their beds and tidies the bathroom. She is intrigued by this strange house with its shabby sofas and beautiful furniture, by its fading elegance and enormous conservatory that throws sunlight everywhere. The whole house smells dusty, rather like a greenhouse, and there is this sense of waiting. Is it waiting, this stillness? Or is it a vague sense of sadness, of lives coming to an end? Kate is not sure.

The Loving Care Agency jumped at the chance of taking her on even though she assured them she would only be temporary, that she intended to move on. The pay is appalling, but Kate is used to working for peanuts. The only help she has accepted, from the aunt she was working for in London, is the cost of a few weeks in an hotel while she looks for somewhere to live for the summer.

Kate goes to check on the two old people. Dr Tremain is sitting beside Martha and has taken her hand. They both sit looking out through the French windows to the garden. ‘“It was a perfect day /For sowing: just/ As sweet and dry was the ground / As tobacco-dust. / I tasted deep the hour/ Between the far/ Owl’s chuckling first soft cry” …’ Dr Tremain is reading aloud to Martha. Kate smiles. How wonderful.

She starts to prepare their lunch with the food Barnaby has put out for her. It is incredibly quiet here after London. She has a moment’s dislocation, as if she has suddenly jumped lives and found herself in someone else’s kitchen.

Edward Thomas? Of course it is! She studied him for A level. ‘And now, hark at the rain,/ Windless and light/ Half a kiss, half a tear,/ Saying good-night.’

Martha, suddenly restless, comes in and out of the kitchen asking the same question. ‘What are we having for lunch today?’

‘Chicken and chips?’

‘How lovely!’

Martha wanders off, circles the house again and comes in through the conservatory door.

‘Hello. Who are you?’

‘I’m Kate. I’m just getting your lunch ready.’

‘Lovely, darling, what are we having?’

‘Chicken and chips. Is that OK?’

‘My favourite.’

‘Good. It won’t be long. Shall I come and put the lunch-time news on for you?’

‘Thank you,’ Martha says vaguely.

Kate finds Fred has already turned the television on.

‘Come and sit down, darling,’ he says to Martha, ‘and watch the news with me.’

‘I will in a moment,’ Martha says, ‘but I am worried about lunch. What –’

‘Chicken and chips,’ Kate says firmly, pushing Martha gently down next to her husband. ‘I will be back in a moment.’

She is beginning to wonder how the vicar has not taken to drink. It is taking her ages to get this meal ready and she feels dizzy with repeating the same thing over and over again. She puts both their lunches on trays and carries them into the sitting room.

The room is empty. The television is talking to an empty room. Kate cannot believe it. Fighting panic she rushes back to the kitchen and dumps the trays and runs round the empty house shouting for them. How on earth could they both disappear so quickly and quietly?

She bolts out of the front door and down the drive, shaking with anxiety. Why did this have to happen on her first day?

Barnaby comes from the church with a parent on each arm. He smiles at her as he crosses the road with them. ‘Lost anyone?’ he jokes.

Kate, mortified, nearly in tears with fright, turns and rushes back into the house.

Barnaby settles his parents in front of the television with their trays of food and a sherry each and waits for the new carer to come out of the bathroom. He makes them both a cup of coffee while he waits.

When Kate returns to the kitchen, embarrassed, he says gently, ‘It’s quite all right, you know. I was only joking. You can’t have eyes in the back of your head and I don’t want my parents imprisoned in their own home.’ He pauses, facing the facts. ‘It’s becoming obvious that I’ll have to have two people here soon; it’s going to be too much for one person. I’m truly sorry you got a fright, Kate. I really am well aware how tiring looking after my parents is.’ He grins at her. ‘One dotty person is bad enough, two is a nightmare! It will be no discredit to you if you decide it’s just too much.’

‘No way!’ Kate says quickly. ‘I just completely misjudged the speed of your parents. I’m not going to give up after one day!’

Barnaby hands her a mug of coffee. ‘I’m glad. Go and have your lunch in the garden. Relax. It is like summer out there this morning. I’ll sit with my parents for an hour. I like to do that if I have time.’

Kate digs out a book and a sandwich from her bag and goes and sits against the trunk of the cherry tree under a great, sweeping arch of buds about to burst into blossom. She wonders what a good-looking, youngish vicar – young by priestly standards anyway – is doing unmarried and looking after senile parents on his own.

Barnaby tucks Martha into bed for her afternoon nap. Fred has gone back to his chair in the conservatory to try to do the crossword. Barnaby is puzzled by Fred. He wonders if his father has simply withdrawn from a life where his beloved Martha is now dotty. Sometimes Fred seems quite dotty himself; at other times Barnaby has the sensation he is merely hiding behind a supposed dottiness in order to avoid facing what is happening, as if a dark cloud of depression or loss has stunned him into a senility he does not really have.

Barnaby says goodbye to a more cheerful Kate and drives off to a parish council meeting in the village hall. Normally he dreads these competitive parochial monthly meetings, but today everyone seems united in their desire to raise funds to help the refugees in Kosovo.

Martha lies propped up on pillows watching the movement of wind through buds of pink cherry blossom. The tree is getting old and gnarled. The branches bend and creak, spread and arch. Soon fat fingers of blossom will trail almost to the ground in great sprays of pink hands that layer the lawn like confetti.

It reminds Martha of something. Of somewhere else. The feeling she cannot capture squeezes her stomach, as if her body has recovered a memory her mind refuses to recall. She closes her eyes, tries to banish this disturbing sensation and is taken suddenly back to another garden, where the flowers are gone, and all is now laid with vegetables.

She sees Papa bend to pick a caterpillar off a cabbage, his face grave as he turns to Mama, standing in the doorway of their house.

‘Esther? It is time we talked about sending Marta to England. I don’t know how long we have.’

‘Paul, no! Please, let’s wait … Don’t be pessimistic. We have so many good friends here, you are respected by everyone. The patients and the staff love you. We have standing here, my dear, and financial means, if things get difficult.’

Papa stares at Mama and shakes his head. ‘Esther’, he says quietly, ‘I beg you not to bury your head. Things are not just difficult, they are dangerous. What is the good of money if we cannot keep Marta safe? Please, you must accept what is happening. Everyone is fearing the worst. Both Germans and Poles are jumpy and frightened. Everyone is looking out for themselves. You must not count on anyone except fellow Jews. You will see, our Polish neighbours and German colleagues will not want to know us if Poland is invaded.’

They stare at each other over the space that was once a garden full of flowers and now contains only things they can eat. Marta knows her father is frustrated by her mother, who has never in her life faced hardship or loss, and cannot yet grasp what is happening. Cannot, or is reluctant to face the end of their way of life.

‘Heinrich will see we are all right. Heinrich won’t let anything happen to us. I know it. You are colleagues, Paul. You are friends. Our children have played together nearly all their lives.’

Papa walks abruptly towards the house. He does not see Marta sitting up in the window, listening. ‘Esther!’ he says angrily. ‘We are Jews. His wife comes from one of the old Imperial families. Do you really think that Heinrich can protect us from anything? What is the matter with you? Are your eyes shut? How can you fail to notice what is going on around you? Do you think our money can project us against this rising tide of anti-Semitism? Do you?’

Marta’s mother grows pale at her husband’s anger. He is a gentle man who does not raise his voice. Esther is not used to people being unkind to her. She was a spoilt child and went straight on to being a sheltered and beautiful child-wife. ‘Our children have known each other, played together … all their lives,’ she repeats.

‘That time is over. It is gone. They are children no more,’ Papa says firmly. ‘I don’t want that boy, who has the makings of a dangerous little Nazi, anywhere near Marta.’

His voice is sad: ‘Heinrich and I have known each other for longer than I care to remember. But whatever he privately feels about what is happening, they are Germans, Esther, and we are on the brink of war. Already the family are distancing themselves. At work I am being relieved of many of my patients, many of my duties. If the Germans invade Poland, I Would be relieved of all of them. You must understand, Esther, I could lose my clinic, my life’s work and probably all my money.’

‘You can’t know that!’ Mama’s voice is full of panic. ‘England will stop the Germans, you’ll see, Paul.’ She claps her hand to her mouth.

Papa says quietly, ‘I Wish with all my heart I could protect you and Marta from what is coming, but I can’t. I cannot leave. I am a doctor and will be needed. The only thing I can do is send you both to England.’

Mama stares at him, suddenly very sure. ‘No, Paul, We stay together as a family. Whatever happens, We stay together.’

Marta, sitting up in the window of her room, shivers. She looks down on her arms, which are covered in goose bumps as if a cold wind has suddenly sprung up. She runs down the stairs, past her mother and across the garden to her father and clutches his arms. ‘Don’t send me away,’ she cries. ‘You’re frightening me, Papa.’

Her father holds her hands between his for a moment and apologises for frightening her. He tries to change the subject, Make her laugh. He calls Pepe, their dog, and as they set off for their evening walk together he tells Marta about England and his friends who live there.

‘England is a very beautiful place, full of rivers and trees. In the towns there are parks to sit in the sun. People take their children and picnic and sail small boats in lakes. People mix freely, Matusia …’ Marta’s papa takes her arm. ‘A distant cousin of mine has offered to take you in. This is a great opportunity for you to learn, to extend your education. You are so good at languages … My dear child, I need to persuade your mama to let you go even if she will not leave me. You must trust me and help me to convince her that it really is the best thing to do.’

Marta is silent, for she knows Mama is right: they must all stay together. The birds of evening are singing and fluttering, caught in the blossom of the huge apple tree at the bottom of the next-door garden, where she plays with the boy. Marta listens to the noise the birds are making and her fear is back. She shivers again, her father draws her away and they circle the wood and go home for supper.

Marta remembers that walk. It was the last walk she ever took with her father without fear, without the hated yellow armband with the star.

Coming into Martha’s bedroom, Kate sees that despite the warmth of the room, Martha is shivering with cold, sitting upright in bed, her tiny limbs trembling. She looks in the cupboard and finds a pale blue mohair sweater, which she wraps round Martha. Then she helps her into her trousers, which she has taken off. Her legs are like sticks and slightly misshapen. Odd little legs.

Kate chats to Martha while she does these things, but Martha is a long, long way away and Kate knows in Martha’s head there is a different scene playing.

Twenty minutes later Kate has both the old people safely in the back of her car. She drives out of the gates and takes the road towards Newlyn.

As they drive along Kate thinks about how she will cope once she parks the car. She must hang on to both of them without seeming like a sheepdog. She is not going to lose them twice.

She turns the radio on low and twiddles the knob to Classic FM. Fred turns contentedly towards the sea as they reach the coast road. Frothy waves are bouncing off the sea wall and the sun glints on the surface of the sea in dancing sparks.

Martha does not see the sea. She is still somewhere far in the past. She is worrying about her knitting needle. Has someone stolen it? Her knitting needle is vital. Before she goes to bed she wants to poke it into the holes. She wants to poke out those revolting bugs that stop her sleeping.

‘My knitting needle,’ she murmurs.

Kate looks at her through the car mirror. ‘Don’t worry, Martha,’ she says comfortingly. ‘We’ll find it when we get you home.’

Fred folds her tiny hand in his large one and Martha is soothed. She looks out and sees the shimmering blueness of the sea and the bright fishing boats heading in and out of Newlyn, and is enchanted.

As they drive past the harbour with the heavy trawlers and sleek yachts crammed together, the wind catching their stanchions and making a wonderful clinking sound, Martha smiles happily.

‘How beautiful,’ she says to Fred, turning to him. ‘How beautiful, darling.’

Fred, seeing her lovely smile, smiles too, his heart aching with love and fear. All his life he has protected her, now the knowledge that he can no longer do so is slowly killing him. He brings her hand to his mouth.

‘My beloved little Martha,’ he whispers.

Kate turns the car round at the end of the road and drives back to park near the gallery. Watching their faces, she realises they don’t get out enough. She will try and change that.

‘What did you say?’ she asks Dr Tremain.

‘I said, it’s a long time since I was last here,’ Fred says clearly.

Kate smiles.