Drowning Rose Read online

  ‘Would you like to freshen up first?’ Katarina asked.

  I thought about it. Did I want to delay the inevitable by taking a small detour, the scenic route to the gallows, or was it best just to get it over with? I turned to her with a smile. ‘I’m fine, thanks.’

  I followed as she led the way through the small library and into a large rectangular room with windows on three sides. I imagined my feet on backwards so that with every step I was actually getting further away.

  ‘And here is the sitting room,’ Katarina said. This room was painted in a warm apricot pink and the wooden-framed sofa and two of the chairs were upholstered in pale blue and white striped cotton. The curtains were of the same white lace as in the hall and the floorboards were of the same golden pine. The rugs here were finer, though. Chinese silk in gold and shades of blue from sapphire to dove. There was a tiled stove and a fire warmed the room. The tiles were Delft-blue and white in a delicate flower and bow pattern I recognised as Gustavian. Katarina cleared her throat and the tall figure in the wingchair by the window turned to face me. I heard the soft click of a door shutting and we were alone.

  Five

  Sandra/Cassandra

  I don’t want to appear big-headed but I always knew I was destined for something special. People around here are nice enough but they’re ordinary, humdrum. Their lives are not the kind I see myself living. Most of all I didn’t want the life my parents had. They knew that’s how I felt and to be fair they understood, which was why they were making the sacrifice.

  ‘We won’t see her for dust will we, Derek?’ my mother said to my father as I was getting ready to leave. ‘She’ll be far too busy with all her new friends to have time for her old parents.’

  ‘Oh yes, hobnobbing with all those debs and whatnots,’ my father said, and I sighed and rolled my eyes although secretly I agreed with them.

  I’d had a brother once but he died, and my father had ambition once, hoping for a promotion and a move to the country but the promotion happened to someone else, and someone else after that, so my mother never got her big garden. So for a long time now I had been the only thing my parents really cared about. It was exhausting, quite frankly. They ruled me with their innocence, controlled me with their goodness and gagged me with their adoration. I couldn’t wait to get away.

  I waved goodbye to them as they stood on the doorstep of the pebbledash box that was my home. They both had their hankies out. Tears rolled down my father’s cheeks. ‘Tears of pride,’ he kept saying. ‘Don’t worry, Princess, they’re tears of pride.’

  I hadn’t been able to sleep properly for a week and each morning I had ticked off another day in my diary as if I were a child waiting for Christmas, instead of what I was, a teenager about to go off to boarding school. But seeing them, my parents, standing there so small and, well, humble, I suddenly wasn’t so sure I wanted to go after all. I felt like running over to them and putting my arms round them and telling them I loved them. Then I got annoyed. They didn’t need to be that pathetic. All that was needed was a flat cap for my father and wrinkled stockings for my mother and they could have walked straight out of Last of the Summer Wine. Us not having a car used to really upset me but now I thanked God. If we’d had one they would have insisted on taking me all the way to LAGs. Honestly, I would have died! As it was, Mr Bennings, the minicab driver, was dropping me, for free, at the train station and then the school minibus would pick me up the other end. Apparently there were several girls on that same train from Manchester.

  I turned round and looked behind me as we drove off. My parents were still waving. I realised how stooped they both were. Jesus, they were sixty, not a hundred. My father’s roses, though, those garish Peace and Queen Elizabeth roses, stood ramrod straight, glad to get rid of me no doubt. They had long memories, flowers, and I suppose they’d never forgotten the weed-killer incident.

  I had tried to make my parents see how naff our garden was. ‘Like some municipal park with everything in perfect straight lines. Jessica’s garden is all wild and overgrown. It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Well, Jessica’s parents are very bohemian, aren’t they?’

  I would have killed to have bohemian parents but instead I had a mother who crocheted antimacassars and a father who used a tape measure when he planted his narcissi.

  Three hours after leaving home, I stepped out on to the hallowed gravel of the Lakeland Academy for Girls and right in front of a reception committee. Three girls, one dark, one fair and one auburn, all of them tall and willowy and managing somehow to make the lumpen blue/grey uniform look chic, spoke at once. ‘You must be Sandra.’

  I never felt Sandra suited me as a name. Of course my parents were pleased with their choice. To show me what a great pick it was they pointed to Sandra Castle, Lady Mayoress of our town about a hundred years ago and to such luminaries as Sandra Dee (some old actress who anyway had actually been christened Alexandra, which wasn’t so bad). I had never met people so pleased about so little as my parents were. Most of all they were pleased with me. They worshipped me from my thick ankles to the ends of my frizzy hair, or golden curls, as mother liked to describe it. My mother and Aunt Gina said I had style and character and that was worth much more than just a pretty face. And I had believed them, sort of, until I saw the princesses.

  Then I heard myself say, ‘I’m christened Sandra but everyone calls me Cassandra.’ OK, so that wasn’t actually true. But this was the start of my new life. Why shouldn’t I be allowed a new name too, a name that suited me?

  ‘Oh right?’ The fair princess smiled politely. She was the tallest. She had sparkling blue eyes and honey skin. ‘That’s unusual, though, your nickname being longer than your real name. I’m Portia, by the way.’

  ‘But if you prefer Cassandra,’ the dark one said. She smiled too, a sort of all-purpose smile that might have been directed at me, or the minibus or a bird in a tree. ‘I’m Rose.’

  I took in the cascade of dark curls, the wide blue eyes and the peaches and cream complexion that looked as if it’d die of shock if it encountered a pimple. I wondered what it felt like going about the world being that beautiful.

  ‘Why don’t you like Sandra?’ the auburn princess asked. She put her hand out, a long-fingered, rather large hand, and shook mine in a firm grip. ‘I’m Eliza.’

  Portia, Rose and Eliza; yeah, that figured.

  The auburn princess seemed really to want to know the answer to her inane question because she asked again, ‘Why don’t you like Sandra?’

  I shrugged. ‘I’m used to Cassandra, that’s all. I was only named Sandra to suck up to a rich godmother.’ I smiled inwardly, pleased with my ingenuity.

  ‘Miss Philips asked us to look after you, show you around and all that,’ Portia said.

  ‘I have a rich godfather,’ Eliza said. ‘But I won’t get a bean from him because his avaricious daughter will inherit the lot.’ At that all three of them laughed as if she had said something hilarious.

  ‘Sorry, in-joke,’ Rose said. ‘It’s my father, you see. My father is Eliza’s godfather. And possibly soon to be stepfather.’ She giggled.

  I smiled back at them. In comparison with these girls Jessica and her family seemed positively conventional.

  ‘So all she’ll inherit is a stuffed fox,’ Rose said. She turned to Eliza, ‘Isn’t that right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Eliza said. ‘But I like the fox so that’s OK.’ Then they fell into each other’s arms and laughed some more.

  I was shocked, actually. In my world you didn’t start counting your inheritance while a person was still alive. At least if you did, you kept it to yourself.

  ‘So,’ Portia turned to me. ‘Which one is yours?’ She nodded towards the line of tuck boxes deposited at the back of the minibus. Stupid question. Mine was obviously the one without a single sticker. The brand-spanking-embarrassingly-new one. The one thing that would have been good to get second-hand my parents had insisted on getting new. ‘Don’t know what
nasty dirty things someone might have kept in there,’ my mother had said, wrinkling her nose at the very idea. I had tried to tell her how common it was to be bothered by dirt and germs. Jessica’s place was a complete pigsty by my mother’s standards but I wouldn’t have been ashamed to take any of the girls from LAGs there. I bet the floors at the princesses’ houses were a right health hazard.

  Eliza helped me carry the embarrassing tuck box. As we walked along to the boarding house I asked her, ‘So where’s your real dad?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘And Rose’s mum?’

  ‘Gone. She lives on some Greek island somewhere. So Rose and I thought it would be really excellent if my mother and her father got married because then Rose and I would be sisters. We’re making progress, aren’t we?’ She threw the last sentence over her shoulder.

  ‘Certainly looks like it,’ Rose said.

  ‘So how rich is he, then?’ I asked Rose, who had caught up. Next to me Eliza stiffened and her smile turned polite.

  Rose said, ‘I don’t really think one asks people that kind of thing.’

  I felt the heat rise in my cheeks. It was so unfair. They had talked about inheritance as if money and people dying were just some joke. They had opened the door but when I tried to step inside they had slammed it in my face.

  At bedtime, Eliza came into my cubicle to see how I was doing. I decided I liked her after all. For a start she wasn’t completely perfect-looking because of those large hands and feet and because of the slight bump on the bridge of her nose and the freckles. I thought we might become best friends.

  Six

  Eliza

  Would he ask questions first, or just shoot?

  ‘Uncle Ian.’

  Rose’s father eased himself up from the chair and, as he reached standing, he wobbled, gripping the armrests for support. I had been about to step closer to give him a steadying hand but I had checked myself. When you were old the very last thing you wanted, probably, was to be treated as if you were. Instead I stood there, silent, while a quarter of a century’s worth of words formed a disorderly queue at the back of my throat.

  Rose and I had thought her father was old twenty-five years ago. To us then, forty, fifty, sixty . . . was all much the same, a minor tragedy that was somehow never going to happen to us. And to Rose it hadn’t. So just as Rose herself was frozen in time, for ever sixteen, Uncle Ian had been fixed in my mind the way he had seemed to me when we last met, old, so there was nothing much now to surprise me apart from perhaps the air of fragility. Like with a piece of porcelain filigree you would handle him with care and worry about breaks and cracks. That and the fact that I had found him reclining in a soft chair doing absolutely nothing seemed to me the only difference. In the old days you would be lucky if you interrupted him in one task, it was more usually two or three: speaking on the phone, reading through a pile of papers, signalling at someone to do something right then, that minute, no hanging about. But he stood tall still, he wore the same kind of wire-rimmed spectacles he had always worn, his hair, though thinner, was more sandy than grey and his nose, a good Roman nose that Rose had feared would sneak up on her one day, still dominated his face. Instead it was I who had changed the most, going from child to middle age in the time since our last meeting. I suddenly felt ashamed of my adult state, as if in having grown up I had done the wrong thing.

  Uncle Ian held out his arms towards me and we embraced briefly, awkwardly, armour to armour.

  ‘Eliza.’

  I felt as if I had a face in two parts as my mouth smiled wide and my anxious eyes blinked. I knew of people who couldn’t control their dogs or their children but not to be able to rule over your own face was quite frankly feeble.

  ‘It’s good of you to come.’

  ‘It was kind of you to invite me.’

  ‘Please,’ he indicated the other chair. ‘Sit down.’ He began the process of lowering himself back down on his seat. I put my handbag on the small table between us. Then I picked it up again and placed it at my feet instead.

  ‘It was good too, to speak to your mother again,’ Uncle Ian said.

  I was forty-one years old. My mother lived in Australia. I was used to managing without her, but right then I would have given a great deal to have her there.

  ‘You’ll want something to eat or drink after your journey?’

  ‘I’d love some coffee.’ I tried to think of something else to say, something inane, anything at all would do as long as it succeeded in warding off a meaningful conversation. I managed, ‘It’s quite early for snow, even for Sweden.’

  Uncle Ian did well with, ‘Quite early, yes.’

  ‘Though it isn’t as cold as one might have expected. Then again, it’s true that it can be too cold for snow.’ I gave a little laugh. ‘People don’t believe me when I tell them that but it’s a fact.’

  Uncle Ian nodded. ‘Is that so.’

  I thought I only needed to go on like this, spouting pointless little phrases, avoiding anything smacking of serious purpose, for three more days and then I’d be home and dry, back in my little flat.

  ‘I’ve missed talking to your mother. We were good friends.’

  It was my turn to nod. ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you get on with your stepfather?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘And he makes your mother happy?’

  ‘Oh absolutely.’

  Uncle Ian sat back and closed his eyes and for a moment I thought he might have dropped off but he opened them again almost immediately and said, ‘When Barbro, that’s my late wife, passed away I was still working. When that all came to an end, well, I’ve had time to think.’

  ‘That’s no good,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean, that’s no good?’

  Just then Katarina entered the room. Either she knew people’s minds or she had listened at the door because she was bringing coffee. As well as the coffee there was a plateful of buns and pastries. ‘Seven sorts?’ I smiled up at her.

  Eva had told Rose and me about the custom of offering people coffee and seven varieties of cakes and pastries. Of course we had preferred the fairy tales over the niceties of entertaining. From the moment we had seen the picture of Näcken in one of Grandmother Eva’s books we were in love with the beautiful naked boy who lived in the lakes and the rivers, playing his fiddle. Näcken’s hair was a tumble of dark curls. His eyes, set into a face as pale as death, were filled with sorrow. Rose had thought Julian looked just like that picture. I hadn’t seen the resemblance myself but that was infatuation for you; nothing but a mirror of your own deep desires. In the months after the accident I had told myself that Rose was with him, with Näcken, the beautiful boy with the fiddle, and that it was he who had brought her into the deep of the lake to sleep in his arms for ever. Those thoughts had been comforting at times and at others had driven me close to insanity.

  ‘Not quite seven. Five, I think.’ Katarina’s voice brought me back.

  ‘I seem to remember,’ I said, ‘that in Sweden, what we in England would call a biscuit counts as a cake. So it isn’t quite as extravagant as it might at first appear to be. Of course a biscuit in America is what we would call a roll.’

  ‘Really,’ Katarina said. As she walked out of the room, the empty tray in her hand, I looked after her with long eyes and a sigh escaped me.

  Uncle Ian said, ‘I feel acutely at this stage, near the end of my life, that I have to settle with the past.’

  I was biting into a moon-shaped butter biscuit when he said that and the crumbs caught in my dry throat. I choked and coughed. ‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘frog in my throat. Do you ever wonder where that expression comes from? I mean, whoever would get a frog in their throat? And if we are dealing in unlikely scenarios why not go the whole hog and make it a toad. A toad sounds even more dramatic. Or a hog. I’m sorry, I’ve got a hog in my throat. Or would that just be silly? It would, wouldn’t it? Because it is just about possible to swallow a frog or even a toad if it’s sma
ll but a hog, never.’

  ‘As I was saying,’ he was speaking loudly and his sparse sandy eyebrows knitted together in a frown. ‘I need to put things right before it’s too late. That’s what Rose was trying to tell me.’

  ‘Rose?’

  ‘I told you I had seen her.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, you did.’

  ‘Well then, there’s no need to sound so surprised.’ He changed the subject the way he always did when he was bored with an argument. ‘Your mother filled me in on what has been happening in your life. Not that there was very much.’ Uncle Ian always was one of these people who pride themselves on telling it as it is.

  ‘Oh I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Don’t be vague, Eliza. I can’t be doing with vague.’

  I had always irritated him. It had been good when that was the worst I could do to him.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t really know what to say.’

  ‘Say what you think.’