One Good Thing, page 26
My mobile rings, interrupting my thoughts. The clock on the wall shows it’s not even 8 a.m. Who on earth would call at this time? I look at the screen of my phone. It’s Evelyn. We swapped numbers when she helped me with Stanley’s school. I pick up.
‘Olivia?’ Evelyn is one of those people who sound surprised, and rather annoyed, that you’ve answered the phone, when it’s your number they’ve called.
‘Oh, hi, Evelyn, is everything OK?’
‘It’s about the village hall and the funds raised.’
‘Isn’t it amazing?’
‘Marvellous,’ she replies, before moving swiftly on. ‘As head of the parish council committee, I’m in charge of the restoration works. The council has agreed to support the project, but I’m going to need some help in breathing life back into the place and coordinating a calendar of events. Which is why I’m calling you.’
‘Me?’
The kettle boils and, as I reach for the tea canister, I discover a mouldy old teabag wedged behind it. Ben might be gone, but he’s certainly not forgotten. Despite its revoltingness, I smile as I chuck it in the bin.
‘Yes. I’m ringing to offer you a job.’
A Confession
‘It’s only part-time, and the money is horrible.’
‘So what did you tell her?’
‘That I’d be delighted, of course.’ Pulling into a space in the car park, I switch off the engine and glance across at Valentine in the passenger seat. ‘Evelyn is terrifying. I wouldn’t have dared say anything less.’
It’s a few days later and I’ve given Valentine a lift to the care home, as it was raining. Usually he’d catch the bus, but it’s their wedding anniversary and he’s made Gisele a bird feeder to hang outside her bedroom window so she can watch the birds.
Being a good half an hour’s drive, I’ve spent the journey relaying my conversation with Evelyn. But while it’s true – I am a little bit scared of her – the fact is I am excited by the opportunity to bring something to my community. The old, sensible me would have turned it down, as the salary is awful, there is no pension plan and it doesn’t tick any career box, but the new me is getting much better at embracing uncertainty and I didn’t think twice about accepting her job offer.
Plus these past six months I’ve realized I can survive on a lot less money. Living in London I would think nothing of takeout coffees, weekend brunches and Friday-night dinner reservations. I was always booking tickets for stuff I thought I needed to see, shopping on the high street, buying things I didn’t need; every month my credit-card bill was huge.
Now I spend my time walking Harry, talking to Valentine, laughing with Stanley. I wear old clothes, no make-up and spend time at home and in my garden. I’ve been inspired to start trying to grow my own vegetables and have sown rows of kale, spinach, carrots and beetroot. I’ve even got some quite impressive tomato plants that are loving the sunny spot beneath my kitchen window. Which makes me smile, when I remember all those comments about heirloom tomatoes that people made when I said I was moving to the country.
My life might be much smaller, but in many ways it’s so much bigger.
‘Evelyn can be very persuasive, I’ll give her that,’ says Valentine, undoing his seatbelt. ‘She’s roped me in to help decorate.’
‘She has?’
We both climb out of the Land Rover and I pull forward the seat to let Harry out. I don’t like him jumping out of the back with his arthritis, though it’s improved dramatically since I started him on the turmeric that Valentine recommended.
‘Though she called it volunteering.’ He raises an eyebrow.
‘On the phone she mentioned something about getting together an army of volunteers.’
‘“Army” is the right word. More like bloody conscription,’ he grumbles, slamming the door of the Land Rover. I catch his eye across the bonnet and he cracks a sheepish smile. ‘Only joking. I’m more than happy to help get the place back up and running again. When it closed down, it was a real blow for a lot of folk.’
‘She said works have already started.’
Valentine nods. ‘Evelyn’s not one to hang around. She nursed Charlie for a long time; afterwards, it was if she had to make up for all the time she’d lost.’
The summer showers have stopped and we start walking across the car park, Valentine carrying his gift in a carrier bag, Harry trotting beside us. I think back to our phone call. Apparently the parish council invited local building companies to submit quotes for the work, but it was no surprise to anyone when Ben’s company was the winning bid. Not only had his been the most competitive, and his firm had the best reputation, but like Evelyn said, ‘This is a community project, and Ben and Stanley are very much part of the community.’
‘What was Charlie like?’
‘Shy and softly spoken, but she had Evelyn wrapped around her little finger.’
‘She?’
‘Charlie was Evelyn’s wife. They were together for over forty years and married as soon as it was legal – their reception was held in the village hall.’ Reaching the front door of the reception, he pauses. ‘Like I said, it was special for a lot of people.’
His eyes meet mine and I nod in understanding. This isn’t simply about fixing the roof of a village hall, it’s about fixing the heart of a community, because that can be broken too.
‘Well, I won’t be long.’ Valentine straightens his shoulders, as if bracing himself. ‘Gisele gets tired easily these days.’
A look passes between us. The results of her recent blood tests have proved inconclusive, but the last few weeks she’s been spending more and more time in bed.
I want to give him a hug, but Valentine isn’t much of a hugger and stands awkwardly, hands by his sides.
I give him one anyway.
‘Take as long as you need.’
While Valentine is inside, Harry and I take a walk around the grounds. I called ahead to make sure it was OK, as so many places don’t allow dogs; but on the contrary, the senior staff nurse was very welcoming. ‘Of course! Just as long as he’s friendly and you keep him on a lead. Our residents love animals, especially dogs. We’ve found their presence brings a lot of benefits to those suffering from dementia.’ Which comes as no surprise to me, because Harry has brought so many benefits to my life too, so why should the care home’s residents be any different?
Now that the rain has stopped, the sun has come out and the temperatures are rising quickly; it promises to be another scorcher of a day. Everything looks freshly washed and bursting with colour. The grass is so green it’s almost iridescent, and the swathes of rose bushes scent the air with a damp, sweet fragrance. The grounds are impressive. There are flower beds, a water feature and a sensory garden. A few residents appear to be gardening, while others are sitting on benches, chatting with visiting relatives or being accompanied on walks by the nursing staff.
Everyone seems delighted to see Harry and he gets lots of strokes and pats. Which of course he loves, wagging his tail and bashing their legs. Though it’s as if he knows when he can be excited and when he needs to be calm, resting his soft head on the lap of one lady who stops hugging her teddy bear to tickle his ears gently. After a while we stop walking and I settle myself on an empty bench to wait for Valentine, lifting my face to the warm rays of sunshine and closing my eyes as Harry flops down beside me.
Valentine is subdued when he returns. Any excitement or anticipation at giving Gisele her gift has evaporated. I try to make conversation on the drive home.
‘Did she love her present?’
‘It’s hard to tell these days.’
‘I’m sure she does. It’s a wonderful anniversary gift. How many years is it?’
‘Sixty.’
‘Sixty! Wow, that’s amazing! Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘What’s there to tell?’
‘Well, it’s a huge achievement!’
‘Not when you love someone.’
There’s a beat as he turns to look out of the window. Out of the corner of my eye I notice his hands in his lap, fingering his wedding ring.
‘Isn’t that your diamond anniversary?’
‘Is it? Perhaps I should have bought her diamonds then.’
‘Trust me, diamonds are totally overrated,’ I reply, my mind flicking to the large rock on the finger of my ex-husband’s new fiancée. ‘I’d much rather have someone make me a bird feeder.’
Glancing sideways at him, I smile, but Valentine remains turned away, staring out of the window, so I don’t press him. Instead I turn on the radio, but it wheezes and crackles in complaint, refusing to tune into a station. In the end I turn it off and we spend the rest of the journey in silence, winding our way across the Dales, lost in our own thoughts.
I drop him at his bungalow. Originally it was my intention to head straight home, as I’ve got some work to do, but instead I invite myself in for a cup of tea. As he goes to put the kettle on, I notice a few cards on his mantelpiece, wishing him a happy anniversary. There’s one from Evelyn, another from the landlord at the pub, a couple more from people I don’t know – most likely relatives or friends from when they lived in the city. But there’s one that is distinctly absent.
When Valentine reappears from the kitchen we sit down at the table by the window and he pours me tea. The bungalow is quiet, but for the soft ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. A shaft of sunlight shines across the table, illuminating tiny sparkles of dust in the air. There’s a stillness.
‘Helen’s not in Paris, is she?’
There’s a pause. Valentine’s face betrays nothing, but I feel a shift. As if we’re about to cross a line and we can never go back.
‘No, she’s not.’
And then his shoulders collapse and he drops his head. When he finally raises his eyes to meet mine, the look that passes between us confirms what I’ve suspected for a long time.
‘Helen died.’
Valentine
He never set out to lie to anyone.
Not to Olivia. Or the care workers. And certainly not to Gisele.
But he had no choice, you see. He couldn’t bear to see her so upset. To watch her cry when she asked him where her daughter was and he had to tell her the truth. Over and over again. Because she’d always forget. And each time he broke it to her, it was like hearing the news for the first time. They say time is a great healer, but it’s not, when you can’t remember if it happened today or thirty years ago. For Gisele, the shock and the grief were as raw as the morning the police knocked on their door.
In the end he couldn’t bear it any longer. He couldn’t watch her break down every time she asked when her daughter was coming to visit and he had to tell her again and again what had happened. So he made up a story – about Helen being in Paris, visiting Gisele’s sister Agnès and living life to the full. Living the life she never got to live. He filled it with laughter and red wine, and young men who would take Helen dancing. With all the fun and the fancy French fashions, and the pavement cafes and the walks along the Seine, that she should have had. He told Gisele how happy Helen was. How much she loved her. How she’d see her soon.
And he’d been telling it for so long that after a while he almost started to believe it himself.
Of course the reality couldn’t be further from the truth. Helen never got to go dancing in jazz clubs, twirled around by some handsome French man, whom he would no doubt have disapproved of and declared not good enough for his daughter. Instead, while away at university, Helen had an asthma attack. It was nothing new, she’d had them before. She’d suffered from asthma as a child and always had to carry an inhaler. Except that night she’d gone to stay at a friend’s house. When she woke in the night to find she couldn’t breathe, she reached into her handbag only to realize that she’d left her inhaler at home. By the time her friend raised the alarm and the ambulance arrived, she’d already gone. Helen was nineteen years old.
For a long time Valentine thought they’d never get over losing her. She was their only child. They’d planned on two children, but when it didn’t happen they weren’t sad, because Helen was more than enough. It was like that saying ‘You only get one life, but if you live it right, you only need one.’ She was such a lovely little girl, never any bother, always bright, always smiling. She was the light of their lives and, when she died, it was like the light went out.
You never get over losing a child – it’s not how it’s meant to be – but they were lucky. It tears some couples apart, but with Valentine and Gisele it brought them even closer. Losing Helen reminded them, more than ever, that life was short and they were both determined to make the best of it. It’s the reason why, when he retired, they decided to fulfil their dream and move to the Dales. They brought Helen’s ashes with them.
This was going to be their forever home. When they moved here they both knew they were never going to leave, so Valentine asked the vicar if they could lay Helen to rest in the garden of remembrance in the churchyard. That way they could all be buried in the same place, and that gave them both peace somehow. Knowing they’d all be together again one day. Moreover it was a lovely spot, by the far wall where you got shade from the oak tree and the air was filled with the scent of rose bushes. There were no headstones there, so instead they’d put her name on a bench.
He liked to go visit, to sit on Helen’s bench and talk to her. He often went after he’d been to see Gisele: to tell her how her mother was doing; about the birds; his battle with the neighbour’s bloody cat; something interesting he heard on the radio. There was no one at home to talk to any more. These past few years Helen was the only person he felt he could confide in.
But then he met Olivia and Harry, and all that changed.
Valentine stopped talking and looked at Olivia sitting opposite him across the table. She hadn’t said a word. Just listened while he spoke. He waited for her to say something.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said finally.
‘It’s all right, love. It’s a long time ago now. I’m the one that should be sorry. Not telling the truth.’
‘Don’t be sorry. You’re a kind man, and you did a kind thing. Helen was very lucky to have you as her dad.’
Valentine had been fine up to that point. Over the years he’d learned to detach himself from it somehow. Like he was telling someone else’s story. But now his eyes watered and he fought back tears.
‘Silly bugger,’ he sniffed sharply.
She reached for his hand across the table and rested hers upon it.
‘Silly bugger,’ she repeated and he smiled.
‘How did you guess,’ he asked, after a moment. ‘About Helen, I mean. Was it because there was no card from her? I saw you looking at the mantelpiece.’
‘It was your umbrella,’ Liv said simply.
‘My umbrella?’ In confusion, Valentine glanced over at it drying on the radiator in the utility room.
‘It was last December,’ she began explaining. ‘I’d come up from London to look at houses to buy and I walked into mine. It was such a mess back then, but so was my life. I didn’t know what I was doing. I nearly called the whole thing off, said it was a mistake, caught the train back to London . . .’
She paused to shake her head.
‘But then I looked out of the bedroom window, across the graveyard, and saw a flash of bright pink in the darkness – it was a bright-pink polka-dot umbrella. And it looked so bold and brave, so cheerful against the winter gloom; it was like a beacon of light amongst all those headstones . . . It was a sign of something good; that where there’s grief, there’s also joy.’
She looked at Valentine now and smiled.
‘I put an offer in there and then and forgot all about that umbrella until after I moved in. Then I would often catch sight of it in the graveyard . . . when the trees have no leaves, you get a clear view from upstairs,’ she added in explanation, reading his mind.
That had been the first thing Valentine had noticed when he’d gone to decorate. That she lived opposite. It had given him quite a shock. He’d stood at her bedroom window to try and see but, being summer, the large oaks had blocked him from making out anything.
‘And one day I realized its owner was you.’
She raised her eyes to meet his.
‘I used to observe you, come rain or shine; when it was fine, I’d see you sitting on the bench in the garden of remembrance. I presumed you were a widow.’
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. ‘I should’ve said. Explained.’
‘Why? It was none of my business.’ She dismissed the idea, batting away his guilt. ‘Only when you told me about Gisele, I was confused. Still, I didn’t want to say anything. I didn’t want you to think I’d been spying on you.’ She pulled her face. ‘I mean, can you imagine?’
She looked so horrified that he had to smile then, which made her smile too.
‘I looked for a headstone, but I couldn’t see anything,’ she continued. ‘Then one day I noticed the plaque on the bench you always sat on. Saw it was dedicated to Helen . . .’
Her voice trailed off then and her eyes glistened.
‘I’d wondered for a while about Helen – why she never called or visited, no mention of what she was up to . . . I wondered if maybe it was like my sister—’
At the mention of her sister, Liv suddenly looked upset and broke off. Valentine wanted to say something, but before he could think of the right thing, the moment had passed.
‘I wanted to talk to you about her – about what happened – but I was too afraid. You see, my dad never wanted to talk about Mum after she died, he got too upset and I was so scared of upsetting you. And then, when you said she was in Paris, and Gisele mistook me for Helen at the beach . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I think I worked it out then.’
