The Carer Read online

  No. They didn’t know.

  Mandy found out because she recognised the Croydon accent; apparently it had its own special twang. She simply asked Torren if he came from there and his answer popped out. She’d had no idea about his fabricated past. Nor the effect of this on Phoebe.

  His poor sister, so vulnerable, so insecure. So desperate for love.

  She said she’d had it out with Torren on the drive home from the Cotswolds.

  ‘And all that Radnorshire dialect?’ she’d asked him. ‘All those words and phrases, you just made them up?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Just like that? Off the top of your head?’

  ‘Yeah. They just, like, came out in a rush. I was in a hurry, see, ’cos I wanted to get into your knickers.’

  Robert had no idea if she was flattered by this explanation. She’d sounded utterly heartbroken to him.

  ‘How could he?’ she said. ‘I never, ever want to see him again.’

  And that day, too, his novel died.

  He kept silent about this. It felt as if he’d been pregnant, and had told the world his news. Rejoicings all round. Then suddenly, after months, he’d been crippled by pain and a flood of blood and miscarried. Alone, in his shed. And it was all gone.

  He knew what people would say. Surely you could salvage it? Find out the real words, substitute them, keep calm and carry on. It’s not the end of the world.

  But something mysterious had happened. His characters had lost their voice. More profoundly than that, they had lost their personalities. Their humanity. They had become utterly unknown to him and had simply faded back into the void in which they had been born. Their unwritten stories lay ahead of them but they couldn’t step into them. They couldn’t do anything. He hadn’t a clue.

  For it had all become poisoned. The falsehoods running through it had spread and made it all become tinny and untrue – what he had written and what he had planned to write. He’d totally lost his nerve.

  He tried, truly he tried. He sat in his shed, laptop open. No doubt he looked like a real novelist to the Romanian gardeners now massacring the shrubbery. But all he did was noodle about on the internet.

  Sooner or later he’d have to tell his family, and the publishers, and pay back his advance. But the only person he told was his sister, who was also mourning her loss.

  He met her at Pret A Manger on Paddington Station. No Zédel’s for those two failures.

  ‘I feel so abused,’ she said, gazing at her sandwich. ‘I can’t believe he could do that to me.’

  She looked a wreck. At their age, tragedy could have a catastrophic effect on what remained of their looks. Phoebe was a handsome woman but her face was drained and gaunt. Once she’d been a stylish old hippie-chick but now her droopy charity-shop dress made her look like a bag lady. Her hennaed hair had frizzed into a shapeless, pubic tangle.

  ‘I’ll never get another man, not at my age.’

  ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘The weird thing is, I’d pictured that farm so vividly,’ she said. ‘I felt I knew it, every inch. And his dad and his uncle and the bullocks. And now it’s all gone. Worse than gone, poisoned. It’s as if he’s actually stolen my imaginary world.’

  ‘Me, too,’ Robert said. ‘Join the club.’

  He told her about his book, how his fictional farm had also vaporised. As he suspected, she urged him to persevere but Robert said the muse had deserted him.

  ‘I can’t paint either,’ she said. ‘I’m too depressed.’

  ‘I didn’t realise he meant that much to you. I thought he was just a, you know—’

  ‘Don’t!’ She picked up her sandwich and put it down again. ‘Actually, I was starting to care for him.’

  The Tannoy announced train departures. People hurried past, pulling their wheelies behind them – people who had jobs, and loved ones to greet them.

  ‘It’s all Mandy’s fault,’ she said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘For blundering in and ruining everything.’

  ‘Come on, sis. That’s totally unfair.’

  ‘Since when are things fair?’

  ‘We’d have found out sooner or later that the chap was a fraud. In fact she’s done us a favour.’

  ‘Huh!’ she snorted.

  There was no arguing with her in this mood. Of course it wasn’t Mandy’s fault. She had just unwittingly lit the touchpaper, with no idea it would cause an explosion.

  ‘I think she knew,’ Phoebe said.

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘She’s beadier than you think, digging around, snuffling around.’

  ‘She’s just interested in people, the stuff going in the village, that sort of thing.’

  ‘She was back in Dad’s room.’

  His stomach sank. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘When I was there, last time. When we delivered the bench. I went upstairs to have a look and I found a biscuit wrapper in the wastepaper basket.’ She took a swig of juice. ‘Custard Creams.’

  Robert was momentarily unnerved, he had to admit. But he tried to reassure Phoebe, as she had once reassured him. Mandy was just searching out something for their dad. She simply liked sitting there, it made a change, and it was bigger than her own room. More to the point: why on earth shouldn’t she? There was no rule against it.

  ‘Maybe it’s you and me who’re the nosy ones,’ he said.

  Besides, he had bigger things to worry about.

  Phoebe

  Phoebe went to the National Gallery to get her suffering into perspective. For an hour she gazed at paintings by the Italian masters. There they hung, Jesus after Jesus after Jesus. How calm he looked! And nails were drilled through his hands and feet, blood spurted from the wound in his side, he was dying a lingering death. Quite honestly, she should pull herself together.

  She remembered kissing that boy in the tent all night. The lurching heart, the tender exploration. The naked skin. They were both virgins but she thought, it can’t get better than this.

  And now she was an ageing woman walking across Trafalgar Square. She looked down at her sandals; her toenails were painted blue but the varnish was chipping. No passing man would ever give her a glance, except perhaps out of curiosity, because she seemed to be crying.

  Suddenly she longed for her dad. Not out of duty; just to be with him, to love and be loved. He might be a shadow of his former self but he was still her father. She could take the train to Charlbury – it was on the way home – and a taxi to his house.

  But when Phoebe phoned she only got the answerphone. Ridiculously, she felt a jolt of disappointment. Why should he be there waiting for her, just because she needed him? He had a life, too.

  She phoned Mandy’s mobile but it was switched off.

  Suddenly her self-pity vanished. What if he’d had another fall and they were in hospital? What if he’d had a stroke?

  That evening, however, when she phoned again, they were home.

  ‘I’m ever so sorry,’ Mandy said. ‘The mob ran out of battery. It won’t happen again. I know how anxious you get.’

  Was that a hidden criticism? That Phoebe was a fusspot, that her father was in safe hands?

  When she asked where they’d been Mandy just said, ‘Out.’ She sounded distracted. ‘Your dad’s calling,’ she said. ‘I’d better toddle.’

  Phoebe arranged to visit at the weekend and she rang off.

  The next day Phoebe felt horribly depressed. There hadn’t been a word from Torren. He’d disappeared from her life as if he’d never existed. In fact, their trysts in the wood were starting to seem more and more unlikely – as unreal, by now, as his own fabrications. This didn’t lessen the pain, however. For some reason she felt lonelier now than she’d felt in the past, before she met him. And, weirdly, more elderly. She’d been shunted forward a notch, nearer to her dad.

  She remembered her father talking about the loneliness of old age. ‘It’s one of the things, like flatulence and phlegm, they don’
t warn you about.’

  He’d talked about this a great deal – more, in fact, than he talked about missing their mother. Maybe he’d been less prepared for it.

  That afternoon she walked to the abandoned factory site. After the recent heatwave the pond had shrunk. The remaining water was blackish and choked with crisp packets. There was no sign of the newts.

  In fact it hardly seemed the same pond. Had it all been a dream? Farida the laughing wife, her white jeans smudged with mud? Robert the successful novelist? She, the woman whose wrinkled body was actually desired? That joy they’d felt – was it as illusory as everything else seemed to be?

  Phoebe gazed at the expanse of concrete. Poor me, poor Robert, she thought. Our dreams had been born in sheds, his in a garden and mine in a wood, and both had turned out to be simply a figment of our imaginations. A puff of sound and fury, signifying nothing. A few words from Mandy, and they were demolished.

  She tried to be cheerful, for her father’s sake. She doubted, however, that he noticed anything was wrong. His world had shrunk to his and Mandy’s small doings. The trips to Lidl, a new girl at the shop. The ever-more-elaborate bird feeders, which he told her about in great – and indeed boring – detail. Her dad, boring. Who would believe it? The solipsism of the elderly is something she hadn’t anticipated, not with a man of his calibre. How had the mighty fallen. And it was happening so fast. Each time she visited, he seemed to have slipped further away.

  Of course, he had always been preoccupied. His brain was fizzing with ideas, he was bound up with his work. Throughout her childhood the phone was ringing; it was their mother who had time to listen. But there were moments that she remembered so vividly, when he was with her, full-beam. I’m so glad you’re six and we can have a proper conversation. And she still had glimpses of this, even now. It was just that these moments were becoming increasingly rare. He was slipping away from her, and becoming Mandy’s. She was his world, now.

  Of course Phoebe didn’t resent it. Of course not. But then something happened that changed it all.

  The weather had broken and it was pouring with rain.

  ‘Nice weather for the ducks,’ Mandy said. Her father laughed. Was he being ironic or had he never heard this before?

  Phoebe had brought some flowers – they never had flowers in the house – and Mandy went into the kitchen to put them in a vase. Her father was wearing the tracksuit bottoms and his beige cardigan; today he looked like an elderly publican. It was hard to believe he had once been a professor of physics. She sat down next to him and took his hand. There were a couple of sticking-plasters on it. His skin was paper-thin; it tore easily and took forever to heal.

  ‘How’s your week been?’ she asked.

  ‘Graham next door’s bought a new car. They’ve got two now, him and Janet.’

  ‘Any jaunts?’

  He looked vague, for a moment. ‘I think we went somewhere.’

  ‘I rang on Wednesday but couldn’t get a reply, so I presumed you were out.’

  He raised his voice. ‘Where did we go, Mandy?’

  ‘Oh, just to Oxford.’ She came in with the vase. ‘These are ever so pretty. Can you tell me what they are? I don’t know anything about flowers.’

  ‘Did you drive past our old house?’ Phoebe asked her father. They had lived in North Oxford. ‘Someone said they’ve built a big new extension where Robert and I had our sandpit.’

  He shook his head. ‘We just went straight in and out again. Had to see my solicitors.’

  ‘That’s not true, pet,’ said Mandy. ‘We had a lovely cream tea in that hotel.’ She turned to Phoebe. ‘You know the one, the famous one, it’s got a lovely lounge and they had jam in proper little glass jars, Tiptree, not any old garbage.’

  She paused, breathing heavily. Her doughy face was flushed.

  ‘You saw your solicitor?’ Phoebe asked her dad. ‘Nothing wrong?’

  ‘No, nothing at all.’

  ‘Where would you like these flowers?’ asked Mandy. ‘On the table or in front of the window?’ She turned to Phoebe. ‘Are you still doing the paintings? You’re so clever. I can’t draw for toffee but my friend Maureen, she got the art prize for our whole year. She got a book of pictures by Constable.’ She babbled away, shuffling the flowers around in the vase. ‘I wasn’t good at anything at school. Well, I was good at swimming but that was it. I wasn’t clever like you and Robert. I only got three O levels.’

  ‘You’re very good at looking after grumpy old men,’ said her dad. ‘That’s the main thing.’

  Phoebe wasn’t listening. Solicitor. She felt that sinking sensation again, this time deepened with a darker suspicion. Why on earth had he gone to see his solicitor?

  She watched Mandy ease him out of his chair and help him across the room. That flat in Droitwich; it was left to her in somebody’s will. Some old chap she’d been looking after.

  Her dad went into the lavatory and closed the door. Mandy turned to the window, her glasses flashing in the sunshine. ‘It’s stopped raining,’ she said. ‘That’s a blessing.’ And she disappeared into the kitchen.

  Why had her father gone to his solicitor, and why were they both being so evasive?

  This time Phoebe brought along lunch. Mandy’s salads were disheartening – beetroot bleeding into lettuce, slices of tasteless tomato, the sort of thing people used to eat before they knew better. Her father had never been a foodie but she couldn’t bear him to spend the rest of his days eating this stuff when he had so few pleasures left. She remembered Rejoice and the maize-meal that turned his bowels to concrete.

  So there she was, peeling foil from various containers while Mandy stood beside her, so near she could hear the woman breathing. Neither of them spoke. Phoebe wondered if Mandy knew what she was thinking. When she was upstairs, eating those biscuits, had she been ferreting out his will? Had she been putting pressure on him to alter it? When Phoebe had mentioned his solicitor, Mandy had hastily changed the subject. And there had been an odd atmosphere in the room, as if Dad, too, was being purposefully vague. Phoebe had caught them exchanging glances.

  Or was it all her imagination?

  ‘What’s this when it’s at home?’

  Phoebe jumped.

  ‘Tabbouleh,’ she said. ‘From the deli in Knockton.’

  ‘Foreign, is it?’

  ‘Sort of Middle Eastern.’

  Mandy yanked open the cutlery drawer. ‘I expect you’ve been all over the world.’

  ‘Here and there, I suppose. Not as much as Dad.’

  ‘Well, he was an important person.’

  Phoebe looked at Mandy but her face was bland.

  ‘He was away a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Did your mum go with him?’

  ‘Sometimes. When Robert and I were older and had left home.’

  ‘I expect she wanted to keep him on the leash.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, she wasn’t stupid, from what I’ve heard.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He was a bit of a ladies’ man, wasn’t he?’ Mandy looked out of the window. ‘Shall I dry the seats? Then we could eat in the garden.’

  Phoebe stared at her. ‘What do you mean, ladies’ man ?’

  ‘Oops.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘Didn’t you know?’

  ‘He wasn’t like that! What on earth are you talking about?’

  Mandy shrugged. ‘I thought you knew. I mean, your mum not being keen on that sort of thing.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  Phoebe’s hands were shaking. She put down the glass. ‘I don’t think you should talk about them like that. And it’s not true. They were utterly devoted. I should know, I’m their bloody daughter.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry I spoke.’

  Mandy picked up the tray and kicked open the door into the garden. Phoebe followed her out.

  ‘Who told you this rubbish?’

  Mandy put the tray on the table. ‘Could yo
u get a cloth, love?’

  ‘Who told you? Dad?’

  ‘Listen, love, forget it. I talked out of turn. I’m such a blabbermouth.’ She gave her arm a slap. ‘Naughty Mandy.’

  For a moment Phoebe was too angry to speak. She glanced at the French windows. Dad sat there, in the shadowy room.

  ‘Anyway, it’s none of my business,’ Mandy said.

  ‘Exactly. So let’s just shut up, shall we?’

  Suddenly Mandy put her arms around her and gave her a hug. How tightly she held her! Too surprised to move, Phoebe sank into her soft flesh.

  ‘Please don’t kick me out,’ Mandy muttered into her hair. ‘I love you all – I just speak as I find. It’s always got me into trouble. Please say you forgive me.’

  Phoebe nodded and tried to disentangle herself but Mandy held her in her grip.

  ‘Pretty please?’ she mumbled.

  ‘Yes,’ Phoebe lied, and Mandy released her.

  Phoebe drove home in a daze. Clouds chased across the sky. A storm was brewing and the wind battered her car as she drove along the motorway.

  How could Mandy say things like that about her parents’ marriage? What right did she have to even hint at some sort of infidelity? It seemed extraordinarily presumptuous, to say the least. And just blurting it out – how weird was that? Her father might have charmed women but he was no adulterer. Why had Mandy tried to poison her mind?

  A vast lorry passed, shaking Phoebe’s car. She seemed to be crawling along in the slow lane. Was Mandy trying to prove something – that she knew her father better than his own children, that she was privy to his secrets? Was she just being spiteful? Jealous? Maybe so sexually frustrated herself that her fevered imagination had started to make stuff up?

  The only other explanation was that her dad had said something. His personality was going through a subtle change; they had all noticed it. There was the memory loss, of course, and the growing vagueness. Nowadays he even forgot the names of his grandchildren. But his very character was altering. There was that bewilderment in his eyes, a kind of wariness, which had grown more apparent over the past weeks. It seemed to have been triggered by the destruction of his love-seat. He had grown more querulous and confused, more irrationally angry. More frightened.