The Keys To The Garden by Susan Sallis

Author:Susan Sallis [Sallis, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-03-22T00:00:00+00:00

Eleven

⊖Martha thought her heart might literally break when she saw Lucy first. She told herself they were both – Len and Lucy – suffering from jet lag, but she knew it was much worse than that. Anyway, they had had forty-eight hours to sleep it out and Len looked well; it was Lucy whose appearance was shocking. Thin, drawn, all her prettiness gone, she was like a stranger, looking beyond her mother at something no-one else could see.

They had flown home overnight to find typical British weather; no March winds but plenty of mist and light drizzle. George and Toto met them at Gatwick and took them straight back to the flat in Birmingham, then left immediately. As soon as they got back to their own place in Tewkesbury, Toto telephoned Martha.

‘They say they’re fine, Martha. But … well, none of us are exactly fine, are we?’

‘And jet lag,’ Martha insisted, trying desperately to be ‘positive’.

‘That too. It’s silly to anticipate … anything. They’ll be fine. But I wish they had let George and me bring them back here. When all’s said and done, I was a nurse. I could have looked after Lucy – got the roses back in her cheeks.’

It was such an old-fashioned phrase and Martha had to swallow hard before she said, ‘They could have come here too. But I sensed … they didn’t want to.’

Toto said quickly – too quickly, ‘Well, we must accept they want to be together to shoulder this particular burden, Martha. We have to understand.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course.’

So she gave them that forty-eight hours when hopefully they would sleep, then she caught the bus into the city and walked along Corporation Street to the old-fashioned block where Len had lived for the past ten years. It was March and the daffodils blew lustily along the bus route and in Canonhill Park. The flower shops along the city streets were full of them, packed along the front of stalls and backed by the taller statelier tulips. Martha remembered bringing Lucy and Jennifer to lessons at the skating rink and listening to their chatter. Lucy had insisted that the daffodils were trumpeting, unheard only by humans, and Jennifer, so like a tulip herself, had said scornfully, ‘I wonder you don’t call them fairy trumpets! You’re so soppy sometimes, Luce!’ Lucy had laughed amiably; she had never minded Jennifer’s scathing put-downs. Martha stopped and bought half a dozen bunches and stared down into their golden density, wondering whether Jennifer would contact Lucy now, blocking out that awful scene with Linda. That hadn’t been difficult when all was said and done. Len’s telephone call had put everything else well into the background.

She rang the bell expecting Len to appear, but the door opened and, shockingly, Lucy was there. And yet not there. For a dreadful moment neither she nor Martha made a move. Martha was controlling her face with some difficulty and Lucy hardly seemed to register that it was her mother standing there behind the phalanx of daffodils.

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