Drowning Rose

  Drowning Rose

  Marika Cobbold

  To Michael,

  my common frame of reference

  Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Twenty-seven

  Twenty-eight

  Twenty-nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-one

  Thirty-two

  Thirty-three

  Thirty-four

  Thirty-five

  Thirty-six

  Thirty-seven

  Thirty-eight

  Thirty-nine

  Forty

  Forty-one

  Forty-two

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  A Note on the Author

  By the Same Author

  One

  Eliza

  What do you say to a man whose life you destroyed? That was the question I asked myself when, out of the blue, my godfather phoned just as I was leaving work at the museum.

  ‘Am I speaking to Eliza?’ It was the voice of an old man, a little hoarse, trembling on the last syllable. ‘This is Ian Bingham.’

  What sun there had been, pallid and diffident, had set a while ago but darkness was banished by the street lamps and cars and, since the weekend, the Christmas lights in the trees and round the ice-rink further up by the Science Museum. I loved that artificial brightness; it softened the blow of night and winter.

  My bus drove past, pulling in at the stop just a few yards away but I stayed where I was on the front steps of the building. Sleet was falling from a low sky but in my mind I saw wind-blown ripples of water lapping against a wooden jetty in the monochrome light of a spring evening.

  ‘I expect you’re surprised to hear from me.’

  Oh yes. The last time we had seen each other had been some moments after he had admitted he couldn’t stand the sight of me. He had been inside the house, talking to my mother. I had been sketching in the garden on the bench right outside the open window. Even now, twenty-five years later, I could recall his words precisely; they weren’t the kind that you forgot.

  ‘I know it’s unfair, Olivia, and I’ve tried my best, but the truth is that I can barely stand to be in the same room as her. I can’t stand looking at her, or hearing her voice.’ There had been a pause before he added, his voice lower but not too low for me to hear. ‘And the worst of it is I find myself wishing it had been her.’

  I didn’t blame him for feeling that way; in fact I felt pretty much the same way myself. But it was still hard to hear him say it. For a while, following the accident, the friendship between my mother and Uncle Ian had dragged along, like an injured fox trying to reach the safety of the roadside, snarling and biting at anyone trying to get close. But at that moment, with those words, it died.

  ‘Eliza, are you there?’ Uncle Ian asked.

  My voice seemed all bunched up in my throat and I had to take some extra breaths before managing a feeble ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your mother gave me your number.’

  ‘Oh. She didn’t tell me you’d been in touch.’ I paused before asking, ‘Are you in London?’

  ‘No, I’m at home. In Sweden.’

  I hoped he hadn’t heard my sigh of relief. A wet snowflake landed on my lashes like an insect and I wiped my eye, smudging the back of my hand with mascara.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d moved to Sweden.’

  ‘There’s no reason why you should know.’ There was a pause. Then he said, ‘You’ll no doubt be wondering why I’m calling.’

  I nodded before remembering the obvious fact that he couldn’t see me. ‘Well yes, I am. Although it’s lovely to hear from you. I mean there doesn’t always need to be a reason for calling other than the call itself. If you see what I mean.’ I was making the kind of conversation Uncle Ian used to compare to an idling engine.

  ‘I never intended for us to lose touch in this way. Still, better late than never, eh?’ He gave a forced laugh.

  ‘No’ would have been my honest reply, but as every child knows, there was a time and a place for honest answers and quite often that’s a different time and a different place. ‘Absolutely,’ I said.

  ‘I would very much like to see you.’

  ‘You would?’

  ‘I was hoping you might be able to come over for a visit?’

  I switched the phone from my right to my left ear and then back again. My voice sounded like someone else’s, high-pitched and anxious as I said, ‘A visit? To you?’

  ‘Well, of course to me.’

  Annoyance made his voice younger and I thought it was quite comical how, after a quarter of a century, we had managed to pick up where we had left off; as Irritated and Irritant.

  ‘And don’t worry about the tickets. I’ll arrange all that.’

  ‘I’ll get tickets.’

  ‘I am inviting you.’

  ‘Really, I’d prefer to get them myself.’

  He sighed. ‘You always were stubborn.’

  I thought that as reconciliations went this one was definitely not up there with the greats. A second bus passed, its massive wheels squelching.

  ‘My bus is here. May I call you back?’ But I didn’t board this time either. I needed to stay out in the open. My entire body was itching as if ants were using my veins as motorways. My chest was aching from all the swallowed words and most likely, once this conversation was over, I would have to shout and scream and swear which, were I on a bus, might cause alarm. So instead I sat down on the museum steps, not caring about the cold and wet while all around me the city I thought of as my friend carried on as if nothing had happened.

  My phone rang a second time. ‘It’s, me, Ian. Are you on your bus?’

  ‘Didn’t make it.’

  ‘I realised that of course you won’t have my number and it won’t have come up on your phone as it’s a trunk call.’

  ‘Sorry. I didn’t think about that.’

  ‘So, you’ll come?’

  There was a pause and then I asked the obvious question. ‘Uncle Ian, what made you decide to get in touch, now, after all this time?’

  It was his turn to hesitate before saying in a pre-emptive voice, as if he expected to be challenged, ‘It was Rose.’

  My heart leapt like a fish in my chest. ‘Rose?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  I scrunched up my eyes and the headlights of the passing traffic elongated and merged into a stream of golden light. I pushed a strand of damp hair from my face. ‘How do you mean, Rose?’

  ‘I saw her.’

  He’d gone mad. Or senile? Please let it be senile. Senile wouldn’t be my fault, but grief could make you crazy. ‘You’ve seen Rose?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’ I could hear he was trying to stop himself from snapping. ‘She’s angry.’

  Rose was angry. Of course she was. I put the mobile down on the step, having decided against throwing it into the road. I pushed my head between my knees, taking deep breaths, one after the other.

  ‘Eliza, Eliza, are you there?’

  I realised that I’d been rocking back and forth like some crazy woman. I straightened up and picked up the phone. ‘I’m here.’

  ‘As I s
aid, she’s angry with me.’

  ‘With you?’

  ‘There is no need to repeat every word I say. It’s all perfectly straightforward. Rose came to see me. And she is angry with me for neglecting you all these years. She told me to get on and sort it out.’

  That last bit dispelled any doubts I might have had as to the state of mind of my godfather. He had gone mad. Rose would never tell him or anyone else to ‘get on and sort it out’. Getting on was not what Rose did. Rose rested and she hesitated, she shook her head and hid her face, she wandered and floated but she did not get on with it. Nor did she sort things out. Instead she smiled sweetly at a problem. Sometimes she laughed at it. She walked round it and over it and under it. She did not sort it out. That’s what the rest of the world had been for.

  ‘Uncle Ian, Rose can’t be angry.’ I paused. It was hard to go on. ‘She can’t be anything.’

  ‘I’m telling you that I saw her. You can believe me or not.’ This was a man who had worn two watches, each for a different time zone. A man, who when he closed a factory, closed a town; a man who had never to my knowledge sat in a soft chair. I should not let the voice that had become as unreliable as that of an adolescent boy mislead me, nor the fact that he seemed to be seeing ghosts; Uncle Ian remained the kind of man who brooked no arguments.

  ‘She told me to get in touch with you and she was right to do so. My neglect of you, my betrayal of your dear father’s trust, has weighed heavy on my conscience and . . .’

  ‘But you were entirely right to feel the way you did.’ I must have been shouting because the woman hurrying past, laden with Harrods bags, stopped abruptly and stared. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, just a woman speaking too loudly on her mobile, she hurried on, her expression once more reflecting only the usual despair of the Christmas shopper.

  ‘Rose doesn’t think so. She wants me to make amends. And I agree with her.’

  I looked around me for reassurance but the world had slipped out of focus and for now, remained that way. The people, the cars, the buildings, all appeared distorted, like reflections in a funfair mirror, the kind that were supposed to make you laugh. Never being able to make amends, I thought, was a particular kind of hell. I said, ‘Of course I’ll come.’

  ‘Thank you, Eliza,’ the old man said. ‘I’ll tell Rose. She will be very pleased.’

  Two

  As we finished our conversation another bus drove up and this time I got on. I rode through the city, gazing at the festive streets. From the hive of electric lights, the energy-wasting, global warming-schwarming two-fingered gesture to the mood of our time that was Harrods, through the grand baubles of Regent Street to the scrappy strings of traffic-light coloured bulbs nearer home, London, like a good old girl, was making an effort.

  The day, when it began, had given me no warning that it was going to turn out to be any different from any other Tuesday. I am not a morning person. My natural inclination, when faced with the choice of catching a worm or staying in my warm bed, is to leave the worm for a more deserving, perkier bird. It had been no different this morning when it had taken three alarms sounding in sequence as well as the mantra that never failed to put a spring in my step, ‘Get out of bed, you useless lump, and be grateful you’re not dead’, to get me up.

  I had opened the curtains, that were yellow with a pattern of flowers and butterflies in the dragon-reds and blues and greens of Fairyland Lustre Ware, and looked out on to my street. All had been as it usually was: the bags of rubbish drawn to the lamp-post at the corner like party-goers to the most glittering guest, the graffiti taking the place of Christmas wreaths on the row of doors opposite and the large dog of undetermined parentage taking his morning dump in the middle of the pavement while his owner, a fat middle-aged man dressed like a rocker, looked the other way. As usual I had toyed with the idea of sticking my head out of the window and, if not actually yelling abuse, at least asking him, politely, if he would mind clearing up after his pet. As always I decided not to as I didn’t want him posting the turd through my letterbox. After my shower I had eaten my usual breakfast of Cheerios with a sliced banana and a large mug of sweet milky tea while I glanced through the paper. It was Tuesday so my day to walk Mrs Milford’s dachshund, Jonah. I didn’t like Mrs Milford or Jonah, but somehow it had been my idea to set up a rota amongst neighbours willing to walk the damn dog after MRSA following a hip operation had landed Mrs Milford in a wheelchair.

  Jonah had, as usual, bitten me as I tried to put his harness on. Jonah was a small dog so his bites, leaving two punctures and a slight swelling, were more like the bites of a mildly venomous snake, but I had been careful to keep up my tetanus shots all the same. I had asked another neighbour on the rota how long a miniature dachshund might be expected to live – Jonah was seven – and she had told me up to seventeen years.

  By eight o’clock I had delivered Jonah back home to Mrs Milford and by eight fifteen I was on the bus. At eight fifty-five I had walked through the staff entrance of the museum. I had made my way up the stairs and along the corridors to the ceramic restoration studio, feeling the modest thrill I always felt as I went about my business behind the scenes, as if moving around the intricate works of a beautiful old clock. Diana, one of the other restorers, and I were about to start work on a rare William de Morgan panel. The panel was an exciting find. It had not been thought that any of the panels de Morgan designed for the P&O liners had survived until this was discovered in an architectural salvage yard in Somerset.

  I had told my mother all about it a day or so ago. I had sensed I was losing my audience; it might have been the tapping of fingernails against the receiver or possibly the fact that she was simultaneously keeping up a conversation with my stepfather: ‘In the drawer. I said in the drawer. No, not that one. The one to the left. Well, right then. Don’t be so pedantic.’

  I wound up my story of the tiles and my mother had suggested that I go and buy myself something nice to wear. She might not share my enthusiasm for porcelain but she did place great importance on appearance and she seemed to sense the gaps in my wardrobe even from the other side of the world in Australia.

  Diana and I had spent most of the day bent over the boxes, unwrapping the jewel-coloured tiles and fragments and placing them on the worktable, where they were left like broken promises. It had seemed no time at all had passed when darkness settled once more and the end of the day had been reached. By six o’clock I was making my way back down the corridors of the museum and on to the street.

  So, I thought as I rode home on the bus, it had been a day much like any other, a day giving me no clue that at its end I would be feeling like a glove puppet wrenched inside out, left to gaze uncomfortably at what was hidden inside.

  I reached my stop. The sleet had turned to rain and I hurried towards home, clip clop clip clop, in step with all the other drones, heads down, not looking left nor right, expressions blank when eyes accidentally met eyes, wanting only to reach the scents and warmth of home. I expected those others were thinking about what to cook for supper; thinking longingly of kicking off sodden shoes and swapping their uptight work clothes for something soft and loose and smelling of Lenor; looking forward perhaps to something nice on the television. At least, that was how my own thoughts went most winter evenings as I made my way those last few yards to home. But not this evening. Tonight it felt as if my mind were under attack from a swarm of killer bees each carrying its own deadly sting: a laughing girl, a moonlit lake, a cry for help, an angry grieving father, a careless friend who should have known better.

  I sang quietly to myself as I marched in step: ‘Oh death where is your stingeling-a-ling your stingeling-aling your stingelingaling,’ a smile fixed on my lips. Smiles however forced, they had told me at the clinic, brought smiley feelings with them. Just not tonight. I tried another trick: reciting facts, lovely, sure-footed, neutral facts, unchanging unchangeable facts, facts beyond my control. The Loire, France’s longest river. Lisbon, located at the mout
h of the River Tejos. The Mediterranean, connected to the Atlantic by the Sound of Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Rhymes were good too, simple, repetitive, constant: Jack and Jill went up the hill . . . Ding dong dell . . . Humpty Dumpty . . . no, not that. Humpty Dumpty was nothing but an ode to defeatism. The very antithesis of what a restorer stood for. I would have put him together again. It was what I did.

  I reached my front door. My flat was above a bridal shop. It was not a very good shop. Sometimes I would stand at the window looking at the young women arriving with their mothers and sisters and friends, all smiles and excited chatter. Then, some little time later they would come out looking a little bewildered, a little less glossy, as if the lacklustre pick of frocks and veils supplied by the shop had given them a foretaste of the compromises that lay ahead. But the shop was shut for the day and there was no one around now as I let myself in. I had my own front door and a tiny hallway with stairs leading up to the actual flat, that consisted of a bedroom and bathroom, a sitting room and a kitchen.

  Once I’d changed into the soft shapeless grey dress that was just respectable enough to open the door in but scruffy enough to count as comfort wear, I poured myself a glass of red wine and switched on the news with its comforting litany of bad tidings and other people’s misery: Yes, we were having a cold snap but do not be fooled, the world was getting hotter and in the future wars would be fought over water. There was flooding in the north. The nation’s debt was increasing. Greed and folly and abject materialism were to blame. We needed to increase spending on the high street. People were being laid off. And never ever forget to eat your Five a Day.

  I found it soothing. I felt detached and blameless. I was not a banker or an MP or a gas-guzzler or a footballer’s wife or an oligarch; I wasn’t even American and most days I ate not just a banana but also an orange, a carrot and at least two other kinds of fruits or vegetables.

  So what did Uncle Ian really want after nearly a quarter of a century’s silence?

  I turned the sound up on the television: The country had gone from ‘A terrorist attack is imminent’ alert to ‘A terrorist attack is certain but might not happen until next month’ alert. I also learnt that the new kind of euro-approved, planet-saving light bulbs do in fact kill on contact when broken and need to be transported by special contamination units to a dump beyond where any government official lives until unearthed by future generations who really won’t mind their children being born with six little fingers and six little toes. And don’t you ever forget those dinosaurs. They too carried on as if they were going to live for ever, putting their kids through school, planning their holidays and saving for their pensions and then – one little meteor strike and it was all over. That’s how fragile it all was.