Sea Music

She jumps up. The only way to lift this mood will be to go out and walk. She pulls on jeans and two sweaters and makes her way downstairs again. Homer, who spends the nights with Lucy, opens one eye, but does not move. Lucy lets herself out, blowing across the road in the tail of the gale. She climbs the steps over the Cornish hedge into the silent and dark churchyard. She has never been afraid here; it is as familiar to her as Martha’s garden.

The sun is slow in rising and she is across the golf links and down on the beach before it emerges, a beautiful gilt curve, like the edge of a plate over the horizon. There is a high tide running and she sits on the rocks and watches the sun rise up, orange and gold over the harbour, glistening the surface of the water.

Lucy does not want to leave. This place, her grandparents and Barnaby have always been home. Now, suddenly and subtly over the past months, the responsibility has changed. The caring, the childlike dependence has shifted. Martha and Fred are slipping away from her into old age and the dread of one of them suddenly dying, of her not being here when it happens, feels unbearable. Lucy shivers despite her two sweaters. This anxiety is not just about her grandparents. It is about Tristan too. And the teaching job. And living in London on her own.

Anna will be in London, but Lucy is certainly not going to let her mother know she is nervous and afraid of failing. Anna would tell her she has spent too long in Cornwall, and this is what happens when you drop out, even for a short time.

She can hear her mother’s voice and she grins suddenly, thinking of Tristan, who would say the same thing but in a different way.

‘You’re just in a panic because you got a bloody good job when you didn’t expect to, Lu. Come on, you didn’t do languages to wait on tables, did you?’

Lucy sighs and jumps off the rocks onto the sand. She is not accustomed to being melancholy and she turns slowly for home. Now she is up and wide awake she might as well sort out her things. She has accumulated so much crap. She will have to go up into the attic and see if there is any room to store all the childhood stuff she cannot bear to throw away.

Lucy climbs the ladder up to the attic and pushes open the hatch. She feels vaguely guilty, as if she is about to trespass. She should really have asked Barnaby before she came up here.

Using her torch Lucy finds the light switch on her left, and the dim bulb swings slightly, catching the dust. There is plenty of room up here. Most of the floor has been professionally boarded and Lucy wonders why her grandfather has always had a thing about people coming up here and falling through the ceiling.

The room smells of mice and dust and a world that no longer exists. There is an old gilt mirror, mottled, the frame rotting. Heavy, old-fashioned golf clubs. A box of little pewter mugs, relics of school cricket matches. A box of books. A huge grim picture of a fast-running grey sea. A faded, frayed hat with paper flowers. Leather suitcases neatly stacked one on top of another. Rolled carpets, a broken wicker chair, and a disintegrating box of crockery and vases.

Lucy swings the torch round in an arc and sees a hardboard partition to the left of the hatch opening. Big enough to house a water tank, it has been eaten by mice and is beginning to disintegrate. There is a crude door into it with a small latch.

She heaves herself over the ledge of the open hatch and crawls over to the door. She pulls it cautiously and it falls away, completely rotten round the hinges. Kneeling upright she drags it carefully away from the partition and pushes it aside. Shining her torch inside the darkness she sees an old school trunk. Nothing else. No water tank, no hidden electric wires or pipes.

Moving inside the hidden room, Lucy sees that over the years the trunk lid, with her grandfather’s initials on the top, has warped, and documents have slid to the floor below. A rusty padlock lies broken in the lock. Lucy pulls it out and opens the lid. Mice have been in and made nests; there are droppings and small mounds of eaten paper. On the top lie cardboard files of deeds and medical journals; letters in bundles, some stored in plastic files.

Lucy shines the torch downwards into the trunk and pokes about with her free hand. Why has Grandpa made a room to hide this trunk? Under her fingers Lucy suddenly sees a faded pink box nestling under letters and old documents, pushed carefully to the bottom of the trunk, underneath diaries and ancient ledgers.

She leans over and moves the bundles of letters carefully so that she can pull the box out and she places it on the floor beside her. The box is tied with colourless ribbon and the writing on the lid is faded and in Polish. Lucy’s fingers hover over it.

Gran’s box? Her heart is thumping. In that small second of hesitation Lucy’s intuition tells her she should stop and put the box back in its hiding place, yet she is already sliding off the ribbon and lifting the lid.

Letters. Browning letters in a foreign hand. A large envelope with typewritten German: Social Welfare Department of the Municipal Administration of Warsaw. It is not sealed. Lucy opens a creased and faded piece of paper within a small cardboard folder like an identity card.

The document is torn and flimsy, almost in pieces. This writing too is in German. It seems to be some sort of crude birth certificate: ‘Anna Esther … Born 8 February 1941, Warsaw, Poland.’ The surname is indecipherable, as if it has been rubbed out.

‘Mother. Marta Esther …’ ‘Oweska’ has been added later, obliterating the name underneath. ‘Father …’ The paper is watermarked and conveniently torn.

All that is left on the card in which the paper is folded is some sort of German official stamp and the date, 1943. The rest is illegible. What does it mean? Her mother was born in London in 1945. Gran and Grandpa have told her so. This piece of paper would make Anna four years older than she is. It does not make sense, and why have the surnames been rubbed out?

Lucy shivers. With shaking fingers, she pushes the documents away from her, back into the box. She does not want to know. She replaces the lid and puts them all back into the top of the trunk. Clumsily she moves away backwards, anxious to be out of the attic. There is nothing she can do about the rotten door.

She closes the hatch with a bang, pushes the ladder back to the ceiling and, blanking from her mind all possible implications, she runs across the garden to go and dress Martha before she starts her breakfast shift at the hotel.

Chapter 3

Coming out of court Anna congratulates herself. She was unsure she could win this case, but she was assisted by an overconfident Junior Counsel for the Prosecution who had not done his homework.

She stands for a moment, a tall figure in navy suit, blinking in the early evening sun. Her fair hair blows away from a face with high cheekbones and startling blue eyes. People glance at her as they pass, turn for another look, as if she might be someone they should know.

She looks at her watch: it is rush hour, too late to walk back to chambers and get involved with post mortems. She hails a taxi, without any difficulty, much to the annoyance of two business men, and climbs in. She will make her way to the Old Vic. If she is early she can have a drink while she waits for Rudi.

As she sits in the early evening traffic, Anna’s mind returns to the man she has just defended. His solicitor rang her at her chambers. He was not from the usual firm who instructed Anna, but he told her he had a client who had insisted he contacted Anna, as he had been told she was the best QC he could have to defend him.

The solicitor had apologised, knowing Anna’s list would be full, but he had promised his client that he would approach her. Anna was immediately interested when he mentioned the name of the firm involved in the fraud case. The solicitor also came from a prestigious law firm it would be useful for Anna to have instruct her in the future. She arranged for a conference with Counsel for the one hour she had left that week.

The client had come to her chambers on his own as his solicitor was in court. He had thanked her for seeing him and was visibly distressed.

‘I have nothing to lose by asking you to help me.’ He held out an envelope to Anna with shaking hands. ‘Would this be enough to retain you?’

Anna was amused, but she also admired his courage and determination in wanting her to defend him. She was aware she had a rather alarming reputation. She went over the case with him, then asked her long-suffering clerk to juggle her list so she could take on the case. Something in the man’s blind faith in her had made her sad. She rang the man’s solicitor and asked him to look into legal aid.

The Prosecution Counsel tried to prove that the defendant’s ignorance of the deception going on within his own firm was pure fabrication, a callous and calculated fraud. Anna’s defence rested on the fact that he was totally ingenuous and had had a steadfast but misplaced trust in the honesty of his business partner.

That fraud, operated on the vast scale it had been, would have been beyond him. She was forced to make him seem stupid in court, but it was part of her job. He’d paid dearly for blind trust. She worked for a fraction of her normal fee and, against all the odds, she won.

She takes her mobile phone from her bag and telephones Alice, her clerk. They chat for a moment about the case, then Anna asks her to return her client’s savings minus a derisory amount for her fee, and to tell him that legal aid had covered the costs. That small, rather pathetic man, without an ounce of malice or bitterness, has lost his wife, his house and every penny he possessed.

Before she rings off, she checks on her morning mail and her appointments for the following day. She has an unusual meeting in the afternoon with the CPS, who want her advice on the possibility of prosecuting an old Nazi living on a housing estate in Dorset.

Anna stretches tiredly, feeling herself coming down from the high she always gets when she wins a case. Out of the corner of her eye, she catches the flash of a cherry tree about to explode into blossom and is reminded suddenly of Martha’s garden. She wants to take Rudi down to Cornwall so he can see it in the spring. Like a lot of Germans he has romantic notions of the west coast.

Barnaby seems to be making rather a meal of looking after Martha and Fred. After all he does have outside help, and he has Lucy. Cornwall is too far away for Anna to see Martha and Fred as much as she would like. Holidays have to be planned like a military campaign.

Not wanting to dwell on her parents’ senility, Anna hastily picks up her mobile phone again to speak to Rudi. His secretary tells her he has just left for the theatre. Anna leans back in the slow moving taxi and closes her eyes.

She still has trouble believing her luck in her late and happy marriage. Rudi, a financial consultant for a Swiss bank, works long hours himself, so accepts her workload and ambition as perfectly normal.

As a child, Anna felt Martha and Fred’s disapproval if she was too competitive. She had learnt that to be openly ambitious at home was considered pushy. Not very nice. It was not that her parents ever articulated this sentiment, it was something she instinctively knew.

In the long nights away at boarding school she would sometimes day-dream she had been adopted or sent home with the wrong family at birth. She would lie imagining Fred’s wealthy, sophisticated family somewhere out there in the dark, wilds of Yorkshire, beyond the windows, longing to meet her, so alienated did she so often feel in the holidays, with Martha and Fred and saintly little Barnaby.

Her parents bent over backwards to appease her, and she had felt furious with them for being so patient, so bloody understanding. She felt her power, the sheer force of her own personality at a very young age.

She would get a surge of satisfaction in knowing Martha and Fred would do almost anything to pacify her, keep her sweet, because the alternative would be a pervading atmosphere that upset the whole household.

Yet imposing her will on her parents brought her a sharp loneliness and sense of loss. All through her childhood she had looked for something to anchor her to Martha and Fred, to the place where she lived.

Later, as a teenager, her fantasy changed and she would search in her mind now for a figure who would immediately recognise that she was far cleverer than these very average parents living in their insular, West Country world.

This person – usually in her daydreams a young and handsome man – would whisk her away from total obscurity in the country to her rightful position, centre stage. Like the place she effortlessly occupied all her school life.

Yet, something in her ached for the place Barnaby held in her parents’ hearts. Martha and Fred told her continually how proud they were of her, but Anna was sure they wished her kinder, gentler, other than she was. They seemed as puzzled at the way she had turned out, as she herself was.

Coming home from school in the holidays, Anna would immediately see Barnaby and be consumed by a frightening rage of jealousy of this placid baby, this good small boy, who had had her parents’ undivided attention while she had been away.

She would spend the holidays slyly making him cry. After he too left home for boarding school and she started university she still verbally bullied him. Once he was steeped in the timeless and barbaric ways of public school, he never told, never blabbed. There was something wet but intransigent in Barnaby that still irritated her to death.

As the taxi filters out of the traffic, Anna sees Rudi waiting for her outside the theatre. He waves, his face lighting up when he sees her. His eyes dwelling on her face. He moves forward to pay the taxi as she gets out. She feels the familiar surge of excitement and pleasure in him.

They met at a conference in Zurich. After a seminar she had given she overheard him muttering appreciative and complimentary remarks about her to a colleague, not realising she was fluent in German and understood every word.

Rudi had told her that he had been so bowled over by that beautiful English barrister, it had been like walking into a door. She was giving a series of lectures to clever, noisy delegates that weekend and it had been a challenge to keep them engrossed and silent.

They strolled through the parks of the city together. They went to the opera, talked of their failed marriages, their work and themselves. For the whole of that weekend Anna spoke only German and it was a strangely liberating feeling. She felt comfortable in her skin, in the country, and with Rudi. It had been like waking from a long, lonely sleep. That weekend was also the beginning of a successful international lecture she was establishing as a consultant. Rudi was seconded to the Swiss Bank in London the following year and he took a lease on a flat in Chiswick. His sons flew out regularly for holidays. They were adolescent and enjoyed London and all it had to offer, so they were polite to Anna. She found them much easier to handle than Lucy, who had always been an enigma.

Anna and Rudi married a year later, when their respective children had got used to the idea. Lucy begged to leave her Dorset boarding school and go down to live with Barnaby and her grandparents. She wanted to take her A levels at a sixth-form college.

After talking to her headmistress, Anna eventually agreed. Both she and Rudi tried to persuade Lucy to stay in London, believing that the standard of teaching would be higher, but Lucy was adamant. She did not want to live in the flat with Rudi, Anna, and Rudi’s visiting children.

Anna was not surprised. Anything or anybody Anna liked, Lucy would dislike on principle. However, the flat was too small for three teenage children, and the thought of having Rudi to herself, except for his sons’ visits, had been a huge relief. Lucy got surprisingly good A levels. She was as happy with Barnaby, Martha and Fred as Anna felt distanced and irritated by them.

Anna feels a sudden relief that Lucy is now adult. Life is so much easier. As Rudi bends to kiss her, she thinks how lucky she is. Rudi, having fulfilled most of his own ambitions, opted to forgo promotion and coast happily towards retirement in London to be with her. Anna knows she is happier than she has ever been.

Anna shakes hands with Rudi’s Swiss guests and they make their way to the bar. Rudi’s hand hovers courteously at the small of her back. It reminds Anna of the way Fred walked beside Martha, and she is touched. Somehow, it makes her feel secure, for Fred has been as constant to Martha as the changing seasons.

Chapter 4

Evensong is over and Lucy is helping Barnaby put Martha to bed. Fred is perfectly capable of managing himself, but he cannot manage Martha any more and it upsets him. Her grandparents have single beds now, near enough to touch, to hold hands in the night, but not to disturb each other’s sleep.

Martha always goes to bed first and Lucy will sit and hold her hands, check her hot-water bottle, give her her pills, talk to her and marvel at her still-beautiful face. Martha has always worn pretty linen nightdresses, and somehow, once she is in bed she relaxes, her face loses its anxious look and smoothes into a tiny unlined child’s face. Suddenly coherent, she will tell Lucy long rambling tales of building this house, of starting the garden from scratch. Of meeting Fred in London. Of love at first sight.

Fred will appear out of the bathroom, bathed and immaculate in pyjamas and dressing gown, and say politely but firmly to Lucy, ‘Good night, child.’

It is her signal to leave them. She will bend and kiss her grandmother, who twines her thin arms round Lucy’s neck. ‘Oh, my darling, how I love you!’

‘I love you too, Gran. Sleep well. Good night.’

She bends to her stooped grandfather. ‘Good night, Gramps. God bless.’

‘God bless, child.’

Every night it is the same. Barnaby comes then to tuck them in, to stand at the end of their beds, to say a good night prayer.

‘Good night, darling Barnaby,’ his mother whispers, eyes closed, half asleep.

‘Good night, Mum.’

‘Good night, old chap,’ his father says.

‘Good night, Dad. Sleep well.’

The security of ritual. Barnaby shuts the bedroom door and leans against it. ‘Sans everything,’ he breathes. Fred will fall into a deep and heavy sleep, but Martha could get up a dozen times and wander about during the evening.

Lucy is pouring them both a glass of wine and they sit together in silence, drinking. All week she has wanted to ask Barnaby about the box she found in the attic. She has never had secrets from him, but she looks at his drained and exhausted face and is silent.

After a while she says, ‘Barnes, you can’t go on like this. Sundays are hell for you. You need weekend carers now, not just old Mrs B. for a few hours. You are going to need round-the-clock help soon.’

She hesitates, then says miserably, ‘You know that interview I went up to London for, teaching foreign students? Well, I got the job.’

‘Lucy, that’s marvellous.’ Barnaby leaps up and kisses her. ‘You clever girl. I’m so pleased for you. Just think, you’ll be able to use your degree and earn some decent money.’

‘Well, the pay is not brilliant, but the best thing about it is that I can go and teach in Italy for three months. But how are you going to cope on your own? It’s going to get worse with Gran.’ She gets up and pours more wine into Barnaby’s glass.

‘I don’t start the job for a couple of months, but Tristan wants me to spend his leave with him before he goes. It means I would have to leave quite soon …’

‘Lucy,’ Barnaby says firmly, ‘how I manage is not your responsibility. You’ve got your own life to lead.’ He is watching her closely. He suspects Lucy is anxious about leaving Cornwall and the security of this household. ‘It will be fun for you to live in London for a while; it doesn’t have to be for ever. It will be a great adventure and much easier for you and Tristan to be together when he gets back from Kosovo. I’ll miss you enormously, you know that, Lu. You’ve been wonderful these last few months, but there is a world out there waiting for you.’

Lucy bursts into tears. ‘I don’t think I should go. I should be here, near my family. I don’t think you dare admit you need more help with Gran and Gramps. I feel sick just thinking of leaving you.’

Barnaby is startled because this is so unlike Lucy. ‘Then I’ve been very wrong and relied on you too much. I’d feel mortified if you thought you couldn’t get on with your own life, Lu, or that you might be influenced by my needs or those of Martha and Fred. I understand how you feel about Cornwall, but there’s always going to be a home for you here. You have your whole life ahead of you with a man you love, who thinks the light shines out of your bottom.’

Lucy gives a watery grin, then giggles. ‘True. But, Barnes, will you please, please think about getting live-in help? It doesn’t have to be through the agency. There must be retired nurses, people like that. You could move into the cottage, have a bit of space and peace. You need it.’

‘Lucy, round-the-clock care is very expensive. The only way we could begin to afford it would be to rent out the cottage again. Don’t forget the cottage does not just belong to me; Anna and I share it.’

‘Well, Mother will bloody well have to help financially. It’s about time she took some responsibility. Barnaby, you must have some life, somewhere to shut yourself away. You’ll go mad with carers here all the time –’

‘Lucy,’ Barnaby interrupts, ‘I am quite capable of looking after myself. Just think what you want to do, what will make you happy, and do it.’

The phone goes suddenly, making them both jump. Barnaby’s heart sinks; he knows who it will be.

‘That will be Anna,’ Lucy says, ‘with a guilty Sunday duty call. Don’t let her get to you, Barnes.’

But Barnaby is already tense, and listening to Anna’s firm, confident voice puts him more on edge. She is about to take a short break and would like to come down with Rudi to see Martha and Fred. She presumes it will be all right if they stay in the house as she would rather not inflict the cottage and Lucy’s lack of hygiene on Rudi.

Barnaby swallows his annoyance. ‘Anna, it’s not all right, I’m afraid. The carers arrive early. There is chaos in the mornings with only one bathroom. You’ll also find Martha and Fred very confused, especially with anyone they don’t know. I’m sorry, but it’s not fair on the carers, and I couldn’t cope with two extra people in the house either. Could you come down on your own this time and stay at the cottage? It’s some time since you last saw Martha and Fred and I’m afraid you will notice a difference.’

Anna is annoyed and snaps back at him, ‘You are evidently finding it difficult to cope, Barnaby. You should have let me know. It’s obviously time we thought about a home. We’d better talk about it when I come down.’

Barnaby explodes. ‘We most certainly will not! I can’t believe you are even suggesting it, Anna. Come down and see for yourself before you start making comments like that. I’ll get Lucy to tidy the cottage before you arrive.’

He waves at Lucy to be quiet. She is jumping up and down and punching the air, sticking her thumbs up to the sky.

‘Of course I haven’t any objection to you coming down with Rudi …’ Barnaby takes a deep breath. ‘It’s just that if you come down on your own, you could spend a little time with Martha and Fred, Anna. Have a holiday with Rudi another time. Fred, especially, will appreciate you coming. Please think about it and let me know. Good night.’

Barnaby finds he is trembling with weariness and suppressed rage as he replaces the receiver. Anna continues to be one of the most self-centred people he has ever come across.