‘Oh, this isn’t like you, what are you being so soppy for? Now then, wait until you see what I’ve got and he — him downstairs — he knows nothing about. It’s our secret...’
Harriet opened a bag, tied up with string, and began to take out jewel cases, so many that in the end the bed was covered with them. Jinks reached over to open one and promptly had her hand slapped. ‘No... don’t you dare open one. There’s a story to each, and I want to sort them out so you can see them in order.’
Jinks watched her mother as she placed the boxes in line along the bed. This took considerable time as she peeked inside each one before she put it down, then switched them around until she was satisfied. She was totally preoccupied with what she was doing, so her daughter could sit back and watch. After a while Jinks inched around the mess of boxes to stand at the window. She looked down into the garden. ‘How’s your vegetarian gardener’s book coming along?’
‘Oh heavens, I’ve not had time to finish it, what with Allard and everything. Now then, I’m almost ready.’
‘It looks as if you’ll need me to do some weeding, how are your lettuces?’
‘It’s not the right time of year for them, now don’t interrupt.’
Jinks leaned against the windowsill and studied her nails. ‘Have you heard from you-know-who?’
‘Well I got all the divorce papers, and sent them back, but I’ve heard nothing. He won’t get around to it. Even Dewint doesn’t know where he is... There you see? I’m muddled now.’
‘I’ve got a place at Cambridge if I want, and Oxford... I had my interviews last month...’
‘Oh that’s nice, dear. I’m nearly ready.’
‘I got my usual birthday card. Miss Henderson’s even started signing it now she knows that I know, so the charade is rather a waste of time. Does he send you money?’
‘Good heavens yes, of course, more than I know what to do with. Not that I tell him downstairs, he’s such a tight-wad. Oh brill, I’m ready... now sit down, I’m going to tell you a story.’
Jinks sat on the edge of the bed, and Harriet, sitting cross-legged on the floor, picked up a red jewel case. For a moment she stared at the box in her hands, hands worn rough from all the gardening. She smiled, hunching her shoulders like a girl, a gleeful gesture. ‘Now then... take your glasses off, close your eyes, and I shall begin.’
Jinks did as she was instructed and instinctively rubbed the bridge of her nose. She had tied her long, dark auburn hair back from her face. She kept it long hoping in some way it would make her look shorter. Her height meant she even had to hunch her legs to sit down on the bed. She was, embarrassingly, almost six foot in her stockinged feet. The tweed skirt and twin set she wore were given to her by Harriet. The colour didn’t really suit her but she had no interest in clothes. She sighed, her thoughts drifting, and suddenly she realized her mother was silent, very silent... she was holding up a small gold bracelet. The cold winter sunlight caught it, it glittered magically, rainbow colours.
‘This was the first present he gave me, I was just fourteen. He was here with Allard for the vacation, from Cambridge. We travelled down from London by train, and by the time we reached the station I knew I loved him... Oh Jinks, he had such a look to him, such a wildness, like no boy I had ever met...’
Jinks listened in totally enraptured silence as Harriet told of her first meeting with Edward, the hunting, the dances, the chapel...
Four hours later the bed was covered with jewellery: diamond necklaces, pearls, bracelets, rings, earrings... and with each piece, each box, came a story. The date Jinks’ father had given it to her mother. Unfolding like a dream sequence in a film was a love story that their daughter had never known, nor understood anything of until that moment. At last Harriet finished, and swept all the jewellery into Jinks’ arms. ‘It’s all for you, my darling, all the memories, all the love, is for you... No, don’t say anything, because I know. I know I haven’t always been the best of mothers and you have had to put up with dreadful things. But here, here’s the proof of my love, and your father’s...’
Jinks couldn’t stop the tears, she shook her head. ‘Oh Mama, I can’t take it, it’s yours...’
‘Now it’s yours...’
Allard’s irate voice screamed up the stairs. ‘When are we going to eat? Harry?’
Harriet flung open the door and shouted, ‘Do you think you could refrain from shouting? I am not deaf, I am not in an open field... and we are going to eat now.’ She slammed the door and leaned against it, her face shining. And just as the tiny gold bracelet had been caught in the sun so her face was bathed in golden light. As if suspended in time, Jinks saw the face of a child, and once again had the desire to throw her arms around her mother.
This time she wasn’t pushed away, wasn’t told she was being soppy. She was hugged tight, and her mother’s voice whispered, ‘There was never, never anyone like him. I was his from the moment we met... Everything went wrong only because my baby boy died. I had promised him, you see, I made a promise — four boys, four wild sons. Freedom, I named him Freedom...’
Jinks wiped away the tear that ran down her mother’s cheek, cupped that sweet, innocent face in her slender hands.
Harriet’s lips trembled as she continued, fighting back the tears, ‘You couldn’t make up for him, you see, my little boy... You were not enough — but he does love you, and I love you... And now you have all my past, you can hold me in your hands whenever you want...’
Jinks couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning in her cold attic room. If she closed her eyes, she could see her father’s face, hear her mother’s voice telling her the story. Harriet had never said a single bad word about him, and yet he had left her, pregnant with his child, made no contact with her for years. She felt the anger rising inside her body as she repeated over and over to herself, ‘You couldn’t make up for him, you see, you were not enough.’ She threw her blankets aside and sat up. It wasn’t her fault she’d been born a girl — and what a girl.
She looked at herself in the mirror — so tall and skinny she had to bend at the knee to see herself. She said aloud to her reflection, ‘Why wasn’t I born small and beautiful so he would at least love me...? Why wasn’t I born a man...?’
She lay on her bed and wept, holding the pillow over her face so no one would hear. She would have changed places with any dumb pretty woman, given the opportunity. She hated herself, hated her body — she even hated her own intelligence.
Still red-eyed from weeping, Jinks went down to breakfast. Allard was banging the water pipes with a hammer because they had frozen during the night.
‘Where’s your mother? It’s her job to stoke up the fire at night,’ he complained. ‘There’s no hot water and we have someone coming to view the place this morning. They’ll be frozen before they reach the first bloody landing, it’s colder in than out, ridiculous. One of the first things about selling a place is to make sure it’s boiling hot, potential buyers are always interested in the central heating.’
He continued around the house, hammering, more than likely causing more damage than repair by his total ignorance of the archaic heating system. Harriet still did not appear, so Jinks laid a breakfast tray and took it up to her room. She found the bed made, so she carried it down again to the kitchen.
‘Allard, where’s Mother?’
‘Well, don’t ruddy well ask me, we’ve got a leak on the top floor. Do I have to do everything? They’re the first people we’ve had even remotely interested in the place. Isn’t she in her room?’
‘No, and her bed is made. What about the garden?’