NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
Phyllida thinks of the news she received earlier. Roddy has found Francis. He has been told she is alive. And he does not blame her. He wants to see her.
Propped up in the hospital bed, an overwhelming sensation grips Phyllida. A weight being lifted.
She has just finished a session with a lovely psychologist called Gretchen.
Phyllida had told her about David’s death and about her psychiatric hospital stay back then, and the girl had explained she thinks Phyllida has something called PTSD. A fascinating brain condition that comes when a past trauma is triggered again by something that reminds you about it. When Phyllida had found the lump above her collarbone a few weeks ago, she knew it was a cancerous tumour.The knowinghadn’t deserted her. And yet she had theorised that it was likely one of thosecancers that is fatal. It seemed a terribly errant place to find a tumour. She had feared a swift, awful decline, as David had suffered. Her new oncologist, Doctor Mendoza, had lightened her worry. She explained it was thyroid cancer, and apparently ‘one of the good ones’ that could be treated. She wouldn’t suffer the same painful fate that dear David had. Not that she feared death for herself. But Lottie did not need to nurse her through such dreadful wasting away.
Apparently, this fear about the lump had triggered the nightmares and hallucinations she’d been having since she found it; they made her think that David was calling her to join him.
As Gretchen had listened and nodded, Phyllida had to hide her urge to smile and laugh as she nursed her new knowledge about Francis through the session. She wanted to cheer for the world and congratulate Gretchen for being so competent and so kind. She wanted to say,Well done! You are a credit to your parents,but she thinks this might be patronising given Gretchen looks to be in her late twenties and is a fully fledged professional person and probably moved out of home years ago. And who knows, her parents might be idiots, and her success occurred in spite of them. So, she had restrained herself. When Gretchen picked up on her good mood, Phyllida told her it was all down to the excellent therapy.
Phyllida closes her eyes and a memory of her family arrives. This has been happening more lately, as she ponders her own mortality. For some reason she had visited her father during the latter months of her pregnancy with Louis. One of her brothers had been home and she had snapped at him when asked if she’d got married without telling them or if she intended to ‘get thething adopted’. It was the mid-seventies for goodness’ sake! Ten years before, a single pregnant woman may well have been a woman in want of a husband (or a hasty adoption in her case) but things were different in the seventies; change was afoot! Did her brother live under a rock? There was no way she was going to give away another baby, however appallingly he came to be created.
She smiles as she remembers her father’s lecture that day, and her own indignance at the time. A fraudster lecturing her about morals! Still, when she had been forced to flee he had helped in every way, not just with the falsified documents and passport. He sent her money to a Swiss bank account. She had been reluctant to accept the bequest when first notified a few months earlier. Her mother may have been a lesser partner in her parents’ shady joint enterprise, and perhaps it was her mother’s family money but, still, Dorothea had considered it tainted. But with a baby to protect, she didn’t hesitate.
It paid for airfares, set her up in the bookshop and after that she invested, never realising the financial skills learned at her father’s knee would be so useful. She had loved her father; a warm-hearted, damaged man with a skewed moral compass. She felt his hands on her shoulders as a child, his thick Scottish accent the anchor she always reached for as a girl when she needed to feel calm. Even now, she missed him.
Phyllida would like to tell this story to Gretchen. Tell her the whole thing. There is something powerful in the sharing of a story; in the collating and creating of words into the tapestry of a life. The unfinished threads sit with her. They are reminders that she is not the centre of it all. Her story is a small part ofa greater whole. She remembers the long-ago words of Mrs Wilson:Lady Fitzhenry’s death was no accident. Don’t waste your pity on him.That thread is still loose. It feels frayed. What did Edith Wilson know? Why remain silent?
Phyllida is still. Through the hospital window, she listens to the birds.
58
FRANCIS
1972, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
Nanny Pam is snoring next door. Nanny doesn’t wake up when she is snoring even when I make noise. Snoring means Nanny got the bottle of drink from the shop in the village.
I’m hungry. I didn’t eat my dinner except two potatoes because it was beef casserole and I hate casserole. Mrs Wilson gave me a biscuit when Nanny Pam wasn’t watching, but it was only one biscuit. The kitchen is a long way from the nursery and two floors down. There are lots of ways I could be seen if I go down there.
If it was daytime I could use the servant’s passage, which has two secret doors, but then I would come out in Mummy’s bedroom where the secret passage ends. Mummy said in the olden days they needed the secret passage because people wanted secret friends to visit, and you could go all the way to the second gate underground if you wanted to. But I like the normal hallways,because the moon comes in the windows, and you can see all the way to the kitchen where Mrs Wilson keeps the treats.
On the landing of the second floor, Daddy has a suit of armour, and it looks like a man holding a sword. It has some dents in it from when it was in a battle. Daddy said it’s from the sixteenth century, which was a very long time ago. I’m not scared of it. Mummy always says I’m her brave little soldier because it’s in my blood from my ancestors. She says they were nice and jolly interesting people, but when I walk along the great hall and look at the pictures, they stare back like mean ghosts.
I sit at the top of the nursery staircase. I can hear a loud voice down below that I know is Daddy’s. He sounds angry so I will have to wait to go downstairs in case they see me and Daddy gives me a smack.
I move my bottom down each step until I am sitting on the landing and can see through the gallery railings. They have pretty shapes on the spindles. Mummy is all the way over the other side of the big space through the circle of spindles. She is speaking in her quiet voice to Daddy, who has his angry face on and is holding her arm.
I look down and keep my eyes on the Christmas tree in the hall below. Tomorrow Mummy and I will wrap all the presents to put beneath it. The top of it reaches up into the gap in the landing, and when we put the star on the top I could nearly reach through the spindles and do it. The tree is so big we had to use two saws to cut it down and bring it in the horse float. It has colourful lights that are twinkling, and I look at them instead of Mummy who sounds like she is going to cry and keeps saying, ‘Please, Edward, please, please, please.’
My tummy feels ill. Mummy has her back against the railing at the top of the staircase and keeps saying ‘please’ and Daddy keeps getting angry. I put my hands over my ears because I hate hearing Mummy cry and I want Daddy to be kind. There is a loud noise and even though I don’t mean to look, I do. Daddy has his arms on both of Mummy’s arms, and then she is lifted up, up, over, then a shriek like a fox in a trap.
She is gone.
It is quiet. I scrunch my eyes and hide inside my arms. Daddy begins yelling and even though my eyes are closed I feel the lights go on. Running and calling and screaming is everywhere and I open my eyes. Katie runs from her room near the chapel and Clive comes from his bedroom which is behind the green parlour, and everyone is making horrible screams and Daddy is saying, ‘She tumbled down them. Oh, my god. She fell down the stairs.’
I look down. Then I am rocking and rocking, until I am in The Hundred Acre Wood and climbing a big old tree to the highest branches. And my eyes are closed but from up here I still see Mummy. She is Sleeping Beauty on the black and white marble tiles next to the Christmas tree, but there is a river coming from her head. A beautiful red river, like ruby silk. Tomorrow I will draw a handsome silk dress and tell Mummy that she must have a dress made of red, because it is Christmas, and she always says, ‘Too much red at Christmas is never enough, Francis!’ And she will kiss me and say, ‘Good morning, darling boy,’ and we will wrap all the presents to put under the tree.
I feel a hand on my shoulder, and Mrs Wilson is pulling me away and she is tucking me in and she says, ‘Close youreyes now, Francis, there’s a good lad.’ And she sits on my bed and my eyes are shut tight and behind my eyes is the river of red. All I can feel is Mrs Wilson’s heavy hands. One is on my head and Mrs Wilson must be cold because she is shivering.
59
FRANCIS
NOW, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, ENGLAND
