But if we had been married and if he had come with me to Mum’s funeral, I would have felt more armoured against the world, including Evie’s sniping, which in the bigger picture is such a small thing.
The bigger picture looms at me again, and I push it to the back of my mind, and tap our home number in the Contacts list. The ringback tone goes on and on. I can imagine the phone sounding out in the lounge of our London maisonette, echoing off the walls, the mismatched furniture, the blank TV screen, the half-drawn curtains. I let it ring on in case Eddie’s in another room, but I know he’s not there. I cut the call and try his mobile and for a moment my heart rises as I hear his hello, then falls as I realize it’s just his voicemail message. He must be in the studio, cracking on with the last pieces for the exhibition. It’s an exciting opportunity for him, and he really deserves a break, that crucial bit of luck all artists need.
When I go back in I am relieved to find no one in the lounge, though the furniture appears to have acquired coloured stickers: white ones on the sofa, the armchair, the coffee table, the bookcase; a red one on the television and the Georgian mirror that was Granny Jo’s. I frown. Somewhere overhead the joists creak: James up in the attic, rummaging for anything saleable amongst the detritus of our mother’s stored hopes and faded dreams.
Forcing myself to my task, I discard the catalogues and junk mail into a bin bag and stack up the official-looking letters. I have got through over half of the pile before I come upon a pale blue envelope addressed in an emphatic hand to Mrs Geneviève Young.
I slit it open. Inside are two folded sheets of Basildon Bond, covered in erratic handwriting.
Dearest Jenny
Someone who knows Mum well, then, to use that rare, affectionate shortening.
I must ask you to come down RIGHT AWAY.
This is so savagely underlined that the pen’s nib has gone right through the paper.
They are talking about putting me away, the devils, in one of those establishments so erroneously referred to as ‘care homes’. But I DO NOT want to go. I may be ninety-odd, and I dare say there are some who would place the emphasis on ‘odd’, but I am not losing my marbles! Chynalls is my home. My BELOVED home. I was born in this house and I am determined to die in it! THEY WILL HAVE TO CARRY ME OUT OF HERE FEET FIRST!
It is a frightful nuisance not to be able to get up the stairs. The deterioration of the flesh is a grim business. Trips to the privy are getting to be as bad as Polar treks. I always hated the cold. Hot countries hold far greater appeal. I walked in the Sahara Desert once…
Who is this person? I turn to the last page to find a florid signature beneath the words Your cousin, Olivia Kitto, the K looping as madly as an inky Elizabethan capital. The name jolts a distant memory – a long-ago family holiday redolent of seaweed and saltwater. Rock pools and shrimping nets, the rub of a sandy towel on my thighs. The letterhead reads: Chynalls, Porth Enys, Cornwall. No postcode, as if the house is in Narnia, not part of the modern world at all.
Batty old biddy. I can hear Dad’s voice. Queer old bird.
Did we visit her? Yes, I remember it now, that long-ago Cornish visit. A hazy image of an enormous house, a smell that stings the nose, a strange sense of apprehension…
I need your help in getting Chynalls in order so that I can stay in my own house. Social Services say I must have a proper bathroom. Proper bathroom!! Who are they to determine what is proper and what is not? Ridiculous RED TAPE! I’m perfectly fine with a lick and a spit. I lived through a war, I told them. We didn’t have hot baths and power showers then. A fig for all their HEALTH & SAFETY! And they had the gall to complain about Gabriel, too! My only companion for all these years! Dirty and unhygienic, they called him.
Chynalls was beautiful once, and I suppose I was too. Both of us are rather decrepit now. There’s not much you can do to get me lickity spit but, Jenny dear, I need your help to get the house shipshape. Humilitas occidit superbiam and all that, but I am forced to throw myself on your mercy, since you are my only living relatives, you and your little girl, charming manners, name escapes me. I CAN TRUST NO ONE ELSE! They circle like vultures. If you come down we shall see them off! We must keep them AT BAY. When you arrive I will tell you all. You can stay in the upstairs rooms: they are COMPLETELY PRISTINE!
The capital letters, underlinings and incomprehensible Latin are alarming, but I begin to feel sorry for her: an elderly woman, beset by illness and infirmity and the complex manoeuvrings of social services. It must have been hard for her to overcome her pride enough to cry out for help.
‘What’s that?’
James appears, burdened by a large cardboard box. I fold the letter away. ‘Oh, nothing, a note from some old biddy.’ Daddy’s word.
I watch him put the box down and his shirt rides up out of his trousers. Red chinos: who wears red canvas trousers in their thirties? Husbands of Tory councillors, I suppose.
‘What have you found?’ I ask.
‘Usual rubbish. Did you know she even kept those hideous old dining room curtains from the old house, the ones with the giant poppies on them?’
I do know. Mum was constantly promising them to me, when you and Eddie buy a place of your own. Another lump forms in my throat. ‘Nothing else?’
‘Some personal papers. I suppose we ought to go through them to make sure there’s nothing important before the house clearance people come in.’
‘House clearance? But we haven’t even discussed…’
My brother shrugs. ‘It’s the only practical solution, Becks. I mean, we have our lives elsewhere: us down in Surrey and you in London. We can’t keep running up and down to Warwick, and life moves on, you know. There will be a ton of admin to do, and you know that’s not your forte… That’s exactly why Mum asked me and Evie to deal with everything.’
So Mum had specifically invited Evie to come here, into her inner sanctum. My sinuses burn and I blink and blink. Tears slide out of the corners of my eyes and spill, scalding.
‘Oh God, you see? Mum knew you wouldn’t cope with it. “Let Rebecca choose any of the jewellery or paintings she wants to keep,” she said. “And then get rid of the rest. I know there’s nothing worth keeping.”’
Nothing worth keeping. So Mum knew all along she was living a half-life among the decaying fragments of our broken family life. All that pain and betrayal, cruelty and sadness. I feel my heart may crack open.
James is still talking, individual words leaping out of a blur of sound.
‘… counterpart lease… grant of representation… insurance documents…’
I brush my hand across my cheeks, wiping the tears away, and make an effort to concentrate.
‘… make a stab at the probate value of the estate and get all the forms filled in. Just check through this lot and see if there’s anything we need to keep.’
And he’s off again, to check on Evie and her progress through the bedrooms.
I go back to Olivia Kitto’s letter. Such a lovely name. I didn’t know we had Kittos in the family: a proper Cornish cousin. Poor old woman, beset by officious nitpickers in her hour of need, reaching out to my mother – too late. I scan the first page but there’s no date on it, and the postmark on the envelope is smudged. I wonder how long it’s been sitting here. Weeks, maybe? Perhaps she’s already in a home, or worse, passed away. But what if she’s not? What if she’s trapped in hospital waiting for her last living relative to rescue her?