‘He was an extremely troubled, extremely beautiful young man,’ she said. ‘I wanted to fix him, of course. But he didn’t want to be fixed. I doubt he believed he could be.’
She fell pregnant with me quickly, he panicked, dropped out of his course, packed his bags and left London without a word to Mum of where he was going, only to show up at Nan and Grandad’s house the afternoon I was born, with a teddybear that I’ve still got, and pictured myself one day giving to a child of mine.
‘I have no idea how he knew you’d come,’ Mum’s said. ‘I was stunned. And really just so angry. But I let him hold you, and he was …spellbound. He thought you were absolutely perfect.’
Not so perfect however that he stuck around. Instead, he vanished again, that same day, after my grandad came home from work and tore a strip off him. He couldn’t cope with hostility, Mum says. He’d grown up around too much of it. None of us ever saw him again, this damaged, troubled, untouchable father of mine. He died not long after. Mum’s never been able to find out how.
Or so I thought.
But, as Mum and I return to Doverley, she confesses that there are things shehasn’ttold me about my father.
And the last time I saw him was not the day I was born.
‘He used to telephone the house on your birthdays,’ she says, as we reach the fields. ‘He was always desperate to hear how you were.’
‘What did you tell him?’ I ask, squinting at the horizon. For the first time in days, there are clouds there. The rain everyone’s relying on for Emma’s final scene looks to be on its way, and it sends a rivulet of foreboding trickling through me. ‘That I wasn’t straightforward?’
‘Not just that,’ she says. ‘I told him everything about you. And that he should come and see you for himself. But he wouldn’t. I think he was afraid to let you know him. I suspect he … well …felt, somehow, that his time was running out.’
I frown. ‘Was he sick?’
‘Not so far as I was aware, no.’
I stop, confused. ‘Then … ?’
‘He was like you, Claude.’ She turns to me, her face pained.‘Not the same. He never spoke of having anyone else’s memories. Not to me, anyway. But he believed, utterly, that these lives of ours keep rolling around on constant repeat. Layers of existence that have just the slightest variations.’ She eyes me. ‘Sound familiar?’
Slowly, I nod, my mind filling and spinning with the dreams I had when I arrived at Doverley, of Nick and me acting out Iris and Robbie’s reunion all those different ways.
Also, what Imogen told me of Tim’s own confusion over where it happened.
He was completely convinced by whatever account he was giving me, she said,even if he’d told me something totally different the week before.
And Tim’s unforgettable words about the war.
It’s always happening.Always.
Mum talks on, describing how my father pictured this life we’re in as one of infinite others playing out in a boundless theatre of time: stages upon stages of existence, stacked in a dimensionless tower. ‘Your dad’s theory was that most of us never experience anything beyond the limits of our own stage,’ she says. ‘Some might get glimpses. A strange dream maybe, or murmuring of déjà vu, but no more than that.’ She sighs. ‘He believed he was different, of course. That his other stages helped him.Guidedhim.’
‘And did you believe him?’ I ask, looking up and around us, the hairs on the back of my neck rising as I picture it, this theatre of time: all our pasts, and presents, and tomorrows sharing this space, our earth and air, unfolding over and over and over.
The idea makes such perfect, instant sense to me.
It really is like I’ve had it all explained to me before.
‘I was captivated by him,’ says Mum. ‘At first. Then I got scared. He never seemed to be entirely here, was always at leasthalf somewhere else.’ Briefly, she closes her eyes. ‘It absolutely petrified me when you seemed to be starting down the same track. Your nan was straight on it, took you off to Eleanor. God knows how she and Dad afforded the fees, but you went every fortnight. Ate your biscuits. Chatted away. You loved going.’ She gives a forlorn shrug. ‘I think it was because she was so calm with you, where the rest of us just panicked. God –’ she expels a choked sound – ‘it’s so damn easy to deal with other people’s children, and so bloody hard when it’s your own.’
‘What about my dad?’ I ask. ‘Did he ever get help?’
‘I doubt it. He really did view it all as a gift. He never claimed to be able to predict the future, certainly not in any precise way, but he depended on the instincts he said came to him, for where he should be, what he should do. He saidthatwas how he knew to come to the house the day you were born, and I didn’t believe him. Who would believe a thing like that? But … Oh … ’ Her eyes brim. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this.’ Wretchedly, she stares at me. ‘I never wanted to tell you … ’
‘Tell me what?’ I ask, although I don’t know why.
I don’t think I want to know.
‘That he was with you,’ Mum says. ‘In the car.’
‘What car?’ I ask, and again, I’m not sure why I do.
