The Forgotten Letters of Esther Durrant Page 4
Chapter Five
London, Spring 2018
The shopping cart had a faulty wheel and Eve yanked it sideways, narrowly missing a display of turquoise baked bean cans. She could imagine the fuss if she knocked over the towering pyramid: the apron-clad supermarket assistants would come running, possibly the manager, shoppers would tut judgmentally and any small children in the vicinity might scream. She could do without any of that today, thank you very much, and breathed relief as she passed it without incident.
She consulted her list again, and checked the contents of the cart. Milk, bread—“the soft stuff, none of those chewy grains if you please” her grandmother requested—bananas, oatmeal, ham, tomatoes, green beans, and broccoli, sparkling water and a trio of prepared meals. That was everything. She pulled the bothersome cart toward the checkout, noticing as she did, buckets of bright yellow blooms. Daffs. Grams’s favorite. A couple of bunches of those might cheer her up. On impulse she shoved them into the cart and then reached into her jeans pocket for her bank card.
* * *
It was past noon by the time she had battled the traffic back to the house, and her stomach growled in hunger as she pulled up. The yeasty aroma of the loaf she’d chosen from the baker’s wafted toward her from the shopping bag that swung from her elbow and reminded her of how long it had been since breakfast. Eve juggled her phone and the keys, looking for the one that would open the door to her grandmother’s house.
“Hello!” she called into the echoing hallway.
No reply.
Halfway along, a steep set of stairs led up to the first floor, and she noticed with annoyance the stack of overdue library books at the bottom. Damn. She had meant to take them back that morning. Sitting on top of them was a pile of folded clean washing and a pair of well-worn hiking boots with cherry-red laces rested on the step below. It would be a long time before her grandmother wore those again, but they had sat unmoved at the bottom of the stairs for months. Eve had at first wondered whether to tidy them away but had decided in the end to leave them be and so they’d stayed there, gradually acquiring a layer of dust and taunting her with their memories of paths long ago explored together.
A long, tiled corridor stretched past the stairs to the back of the house, where the kitchen looked onto a pocket square of a courtyard. Her grandmother’s room was what used to be the dining room, off the corridor on the left. Grams had moved there last month, after a couple of weeks in the hospital, when it became obvious that her injuries precluded access to her bedroom on the floor above.
“Grams!” Eve called out again. “I’m back.” She put the shopping bags on the floor outside the room before tapping gently on the door. Opening it a fraction, she peered in. The curtains were still drawn and she could just make out a humped shape under the covers. No movement. She must still be asleep. Eve retreated from the room and made her way to the kitchen, stowing the shopping in the fridge and cupboards before pulling out a board, butter dish, and the bread to make lunch for them both.
She filled the kettle, flicked it on, and while it was boiling she assembled a tray. Linen napkin, china cup and saucer—“never a mug, thank you very much”—and a matching plate. She sliced the bread as neatly as she could, scraped on butter, added ham and some cucumber and cut the sandwich into triangles. She rummaged through the cupboards and found a vase for the daffodils, then tiptoed into the bedroom and placed them on the bookcase opposite her grandmother, where she’d see them as soon as she woke up.
* * *
Eve had taken her last bite of sandwich when she heard the cry. Swallowing hurriedly, she raced into the bedroom to see her grandmother sitting up in bed, eyes wide, long silver-gray hair a lion’s mane about her face. She had the almost translucent, papery skin of the very old, and though it drooped in folds from her neck, her fine bone structure gave a clue to what an arresting-looking woman she must once have been. “Where did you get those?” she said, her eyes focused on the vase of flowers.
“When I went to the supermarket, Grams. I thought you might like some daffs to cheer you up.”
Her grandmother leaned back against the pillows, closing her eyes. “Oh. I thought the ones in the garden had bloomed already. And actually, they are narcissi.”
“Okay, narcissi then.” Eve determinedly kept her tone upbeat. “Though I’m not sure there’s much of a difference,” she muttered. Then, more loudly, “And the ones outside are barely poking through the ground. It’s still freezing out there. Forecast says we might get snow—in March! In London! Can you believe it?”
“Snow?” Her grandmother perked up.
“Anyway, I reckon these must be hothouse ones,” Eve said.
“Or flown in from somewhere warmer.”
“Perhaps. They smell gorgeous though, don’t they?” For a moment, when Eve had pulled them from the bucket of water in the supermarket the thought that this might be the last spring her grandmother saw crossed her mind and she’d had to blink back a sudden rush of tears, leaning on the cart to steady herself. She’d always thought Grams indomitable, but seeing her in the hospital after her fall had changed her mind; she’d thought she might lose her. Although Grams seemed to be making a steady, if slow, recovery, Eve knew that things could change in the flutter of an elderly heart. A cold could lead to pneumonia, could lead to . . . she did her best not to dwell on it.
“Yes, they do. Thank you darling. Perhaps you might bring them closer.”
“Are you hungry? I made a sandwich.”
“Oh, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Of course not. I said, it’s already made.”
“Oh yes, well then, that would be lovely.” Her grandmother was making an effort, Eve could tell, just as she herself was. Grams was frustrated by her inability to do much for herself anymore and Eve bore the brunt of her occasional burst of bad temper by biting her tongue and trying not to retaliate, reminding herself of the alternative.
Eve returned with the tray, setting it on a side table, and eased her grandmother forward so that she could adjust the pillows and make her more comfortable. When she was satisfied, she placed the tray in front of her, being careful not to slop the tea in the saucer. She’d receive a ticking off for such a transgression.
“Do you think you might be up to some work after lunch?” Eve asked, as she had done almost every day since she’d moved in. Eve was helping her grandmother write her autobiography, a manuscript that was due at the publisher’s later that year. It had originally been planned to coincide with her ninetieth birthday but it now looked like that date would come and go before she’d even written a word of it. Lucky her publisher was patient.
True, there were sheaves of notes and a stack of indecipherable scrawls on scraps of paper, but each time Eve had asked if she wanted her to transcribe them, or for her grandmother to dictate to her, the answers had been a firm “no,” a “perhaps tomorrow,” or a “stop pestering me, darling. I’ll get to it in my own good time.”
Eve was taking a gap year. Just not the one she’d planned on. She’d graduated from UCL the summer before with little idea of what she wanted to do with her life. An offer to spend a few months with her boyfriend building a primary school in Africa, to do something that she could feel good about and put off getting a real job for a while longer had seemed like the answer, at least in the short term. But then her grandmother fell, breaking her hip. There had been no one else near enough to care for her—her uncle lived in New Zealand, and couldn’t leave his farm. Eve’s mother, who had moved to the South of France in pursuit of a sailing career years before, had died when Eve was a teenager, racing a sportscar on a winding road between Saint-Tropez and Ramatuelle. Eve’s brother was in New York and only managed to fly back for the occasional weekend. There was really only Eve.
She couldn’t bear the thought of Grams having to stay in the hospital for weeks on end, or worse, go into a home. Without even a second thought, she abandoned her plans—and David, who had made known his d
isappointment in her in no uncertain terms—and moved back in to the top floor of her grandmother’s house.
This was a different act of service than building schools, she told herself, though it had been hard to remember that when David’s occasional emails pinged in her inbox and told of heat and dust, making bricks and raising walls, bare feet and joyous singing. She knew he was doing his best to make her jealous, and she couldn’t help be aware that he was getting a tan and drinking beer with a foreign label while she bought prepared meals at Waitrose and massaged her grandmother’s pale, chilly feet. She tried not to mind too much, but it had made for a very long winter.
She saw her grandmother eyeing the flowers again. “Actually, Eve, I think we could. It’s time we made a start.”
“Okay then,” she said evenly, keeping the surprise out of her voice. She knew her grandmother was capricious enough to change her mind in five minutes’ time and pretend that Eve had misheard her. She went over to the window to open the curtains and let what little light there was into the room. “How about you finish your lunch and I’ll get my notebook?”
Editors had stalked her grandmother for years, petitioning to publish her memoirs, for, frail as she might appear now, she was once an Amazon of the climbing world, bagging summits with apparent ease, a better athlete than most men. In the 1950s and ’60s she, and a small handful of women like her, had pushed the boundaries of possibility with every peak they climbed, putting paid to the notion that women were the weaker sex when it came to endurance and strength of mind. They had paved the way for a generation of noted British climbers and made it possible for women anywhere to believe in their own strength and ability.
Though she’d stopped expedition climbing in her early fifties, her grandmother had been in demand as a motivational speaker and tour leader ever since, and even now there were several invitations awaiting her return to health. It was hard to reconcile this frail old lady with a woman who had once been at the pinnacle of physical fitness, though the fire in her eyes still burned bright.
“I think it’s time I got out of this damned bed too,” said her grandmother, finishing her tea and holding out the tray, with its plate now bearing only a few crumbs, to Eve.
“Are you sure? The doctor said not to rush things.”
“Pfft. What does he know? Let me be the judge of my own body. I’ve been in more pain than I am now and survived it.”
“Tough as old boots hey, Grams?” Eve smiled. “There’s a fire in the living room, so just let me get a few things sorted for you and we can work in there.”
Her grandmother could be stubborn—Eve had inherited the same streak of obstinacy—and so Eve was quietly pleased that she was getting up of her own accord. Six weeks was too long to spend in bed, even if you were a shade under ninety. Grams would normally have chafed against being bedridden, but Eve was aware that this accident had scared her more than she was prepared to admit. It scared Eve too. Her Grams had been more of a mother to her than her own mum, taking her and her brother every holiday, often collecting them from boarding school at the end of term. Grams’s home was as much Eve’s, and she’d only left when she went to live in halls of residence at university. She would be completely untethered if she lost her.
* * *
The accident had been the smallest of things. Apparently, Grams had been on her way out to the local shops when she’d skidded on the tiled floor and come crashing down. She’d lain there, stranded, for nearly twenty-four hours before her cleaner, Agata, arrived. “I might need a bit of a hand,” Grams had apparently said quite calmly, when the Polish girl had found her sprawled by the stairs the next morning. “I can’t seem to get up.” Agata had acted quickly, covering her with a blanket and calling for an ambulance. Grams had broken her hip and several ribs, and the paramedics who came and took her away chided her for not possessing an alarm button. “Living on your own, you really should have one,” one of them had insisted. When Eve visited her in the hospital, her Grams recounted this, as if to imply that he was being ridiculous. “A seniors’ medical alert pendant? Really? He obviously had no idea who he was talking to,” she’d said dismissively.
Eve had gone out the next day and bought one.
* * *
After Eve helped her grandmother into a dressing gown, she held her arm out. Grams put her swollen-knuckled, liver-spotted hand on it, levered herself off the edge of the bed, and together they made halting progress out of the bedroom and along the corridor. Eve knew she must mind this reliance on someone else very much, but she uttered not one word of complaint, made not even a groan.
When they reached the front living room, she settled her grandmother on the sofa and stoked the fire, then took a seat on the chair opposite and turned the page of a brand-new notebook she’d bought in anticipation of this moment. She reached for the dictaphone that lay on the table next to her and switched it on. She planned to record her grandmother’s memories and transcribe them later. The notebook was for any questions that might arise as she spoke.
Grams cleared her throat and launched straight in. “I suppose I was an accidental mountaineer, for I never really intended it. Women in those days didn’t dream of abandoning their families to go in pursuit of their own goals.” She paused. “But it was the making of me really. I see that now. I had to do what was needed in order to survive, to put one foot in front of the other and just keep going.”
Eve had always known there was a core of steel running through her grandmother but the hairs rose on the back of her neck at the determination in her grandmother’s voice.
“Pen y Fan. As you well know, it’s the highest peak in South Wales, a shade under nine hundred meters, little more than a hill really. You remember we went there one October, you must have been about eleven or twelve—shocking day it was, thought the wind might blow you all the way to England. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, your grandfather suggested it, though I still for the life of me have no idea why. It was the first time we’d ever walked anywhere. We left your mother and uncle—they were still little—with my parents for the weekend and joined a group from the local hiking and climbing club.” She paused, thinking. “That’s right, someone your father knew from work was a member, so that’s how we came to be there. Anyway, it was a glorious day and the view down the valley and across to Bristol was spectacular. The sky seemed almost close enough to touch. We went on several walks that weekend and I learned to read a compass, and more important how to keep on going even when I thought I couldn’t take another step. Who would have thought that would be the catalyst, the start of it?”
Eve glanced up from her notebook at her grandmother, who was looking at her as if daring her to deny the last statement. Eve had never heard her grandmother talk about her early climbing days before, but there was something about the tone of her voice as she said it, the cloud that passed fleetingly across her eyes, that told Eve that Grams wasn’t speaking the entire truth, that the hiking trip to Wales wasn’t really where it had all begun. She wondered what it was that she wasn’t telling her.
Chapter Six
St. Mary’s, Spring 2018
The sharp cries of seagulls tore at the morning peace. Almost exactly a month after she had left the balmy South Pacific, Rachel found herself sitting at a quayside café in Penzance, wrapping her hand around a mug of weak coffee and guarding a muffin from the marauding gulls that hovered overhead. The Scillonian III, her final transport, was waiting, its white bulk looming over the stone quay.
Living in tropical heat for so long had reduced Rachel’s ability to cope with temperatures any less than twenty-five degrees Celsius, and in London it had been close to freezing. Even with her new thick woolen sweater, socks, leather boots, and a down jacket firmly zipped up to her chin, she had shivered her way about her errands. Snow had begun to fall as she left, thick flurries that muffled the sounds of the city, blurring its hard edges. Radio announcers warned people to stay indoors, not to venture out unless absolutely necessary.
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br /> But here, down south, it was warm enough for her to sit outside—albeit with her thick jacket on—and the day was calm, only a light onshore wind to ruffle the gulls’ feathers.
She had stayed at a bed and breakfast to the north of the quay the previous night and her landlord had told horror stories of seasickness when the shallow-bottomed boat got under way in anything more than a slight swell. She was happy to see flat conditions that morning for the two-and-a-half-hour voyage.
As per her brief, she would map the locations of the venus clam (Rachel preferred not to think of it as warty, it was merely bumpy, with pretty frilled rings, rather like a crinoline petticoat, judging by the photographs she’d studied), noting the differences in numbers and size on the larger islands compared to the more remote ones. There would almost certainly be a difference—she well knew that small marine creatures such as these were some of the first indicators of the effects of global warming and pollution. She would then compare her data with that of the study that had been undertaken five years previously.
Dr. Wentworth had given her a list of locations where the previous observations had been carried out and she had studied them before she left London. Tooth Rock, Droopy Nose Point, Monk’s Cowl, Darrity’s Hole, Paper Ledge, Bread and Cheese Cove . . . the names sounded delightfully, eccentrically English and she looked forward to exploring them, even if she was less certain about Hell Bay and Cuckold’s Carn.
When she had arrived in Penzance, she’d made her way to a dive shop and fitted herself out with a dry suit and a new mask and fins. She didn’t expect to be doing much diving, but would certainly need it for snorkeling. She had also purchased waders, an incongruous rubber apron-and-boot combo that made her laugh at herself in the mirror when she tried them on.