The Path to the Sea. Liz Fenwick

this was a sadness she had sought to lose in her work. Travelling the world as a war correspondent had filled the void for years, but now she was slowing down and that left gaps. Unwanted thoughts and questions had begun to seep into the spaces.

      Looking at the lawn, a memory of playing tag with her mother flashed in Diana’s mind. She was laughing and so was her mother. Once they must have been close but since her father died over fifty years ago, that had evaporated. Her mother loved Diana in her way. Diana had wanted for nothing . . . except her. Everything changed and she knew it was because of that long weekend fifty-six years ago.

      The front door was open, and she couldn’t stand on the threshold forever, as tempting as the view was. George would be around somewhere. Striding in, she put the past aside to focus on what was happening now.

      In the hallway the temperature dropped, and she shivered. The newspaper on the large round table in the centre of the hall flapped. Due to her early start she hadn’t read the papers cover to cover as she normally would, but she’d listened to today’s stories on the radio. They were eerily similar to those in her last summer here. She flattened the pages and placed an empty vase on top of it. In 1962 the world had been on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union and currently the great bear was roaring again. The world moved forward and thought things would be better, but people never learned.

      She peered into the drawing room then the snug, but George wasn’t in sight and she was reluctant to call out. All was quiet aside from a lawnmower and the distant beach sounds. The small kitchen was empty too. There was nothing for it but to head up to her mother’s room. She dropped her bag on an empty chair and took the stairs slowly, trying to prepare. She had seen the dead and the dying, but she knew this was different despite her ambivalent feelings.

      On the landing she hesitated. A cough echoed down the hallway. Her mother was still alive. Diana was not too late to say goodbye. The floorboards complained as she walked the corridor. A closet popped open as she passed, and she glanced away. It would be full and what on earth would Diana do with it all? Maybe she would be lucky, and it would be empty. The house had been let for nearly thirty years. It wasn’t until George retired in 1990 that Boskenna had become her mother’s home again. Diana stopped. She’d seen her mother’s will years ago. Boskenna would come to her but George had the right to live in it until his death. Her mother, of course, had expected to outlive George. That was the normal order of things but that hadn’t worked for her grandmother either. Caroline Penquite, née Carew, had died of cirrhosis of the liver long before her husband Edward had passed away. Boskenna had bypassed him and gone straight to Diana’s mother.

      There were seven steps up to the landing in front of her mother’s room. An odd detail to recall but she used to hop up and down them. Now the door was wide open, and the smell of illness hung in the air. Every few seconds as she stood there, she heard a raspy breath. Yet she remained motionless, staring not at her mother propped up in a chair but out of the windows. This room commanded an all-encompassing view, or it would have done if the trees hadn’t been allowed to grow untended.

      Boskenna had been added to over the years as the wealth of the family had increased. This room sat in the extension made in the 1840s. The ceilings were higher, and the sea-facing wall curved out towards the bay. Twenty years later the north end of the house was extended in the same way. As with all the windows at the front of the house, these framed a view. Gribben Head baked in the August sun while boats with white sails dotted the bay. It was postcard perfect, but what pithy lines would she pen on the back? Mother unwell but perfect holiday weather . . .

      She could make out Carrickowel Point, the little headland to the left, which seemed to spring from the end of Boskenna’s garden. Black Head to the right was just visible through the trees. Beauty could stop her in her tracks, but that wasn’t what was holding her here on the threshold. Fear was. It was foolish because in the course of her work she had walked straight up to men holding guns pointed at her heart, but here she was rooted to the spot afraid of facing her dying mother. What could she say? She’d thought about this the whole drive and she’d rehearsed words and phrases. ‘I love you,’ being one of them. But then the questions that had gnawed at her for years popped up. They would not sink down into the recesses of her mind. Like children’s toy ducks pushed to the bottom of the bath, they kept bobbing back up bringing unwanted emotions with them.

      Clenching her hands, she took one step after the other, keeping her gaze focused out of the windows. A gull swooped down from the roof and she jumped. She was hardened and had seen death in its worst forms, but her head refused to turn to look at her mother.

      George had been right to call her, but it would have been easier to come for the funeral. Being here now still gave her time, and time demanded action in some way. She exhaled. Standing here she couldn’t avoid thinking of her father, missing what she could barely remember. She’d been eight when he died, and she only had one photo of the two of them. Years ago, when she’d asked for others her mother had shrugged and said she didn’t know what had happened to them. Diana had found that hard to believe. Why wouldn’t she know? But her mother had never changed her answer.

      Around this one photo she had structured all her memories. The housekeeper at the time, Mrs Hoskine, had sent it to Diana at boarding school. Closing her eyes, she could envision the washed-out colours of the snapshot. Diana was on her father’s shoulders and they were looking out to the bay. Both of them were smiling and pointing. On that day she had been a pirate about to sail the seven seas but always to return home to Boskenna. Now, home and Boskenna were two words she wouldn’t put in the same sentence. Diana’s last visit, ten years ago, had been because of her daughter, Lottie . . . artistic, flighty, and too trusting.

      Her mother wheezed, and Diana turned to look at her. She had known what Lottie needed right from the start. Diana had been wrong. Not just then but in so much of her life. Yet she was sixty-four and still at the peak of her profession, about ready to slow down and allow others to move into her shoes. Her career, she was proud of but not much else and certainly not her mothering skills. Those she had learned from the woman in the chair. How she had longed for the closeness that Lottie had with her grandmother. Jealousy left a bitter taste and even now it lingered about the sides of her tongue.

      Her mother’s eyes were closed, and Diana watched the laboured rise and fall of her chest. Her brain told her to speak, to make her presence known. In the mirror on the wardrobe door she caught sight of her reflection but also glimpsed something else. She blinked. It was a dark-haired child, but there was no child in the room. She was imagining it. She was alone with her mother. The only figure in the mirror was Diana. Noticing the slight stoop, she straightened her shoulders.

      Another step took her to the chair. Her mother’s short, white hair was clean but not styled. Somehow it made her appear vulnerable. That was a word Diana didn’t associate with her mother. No foundation covered the discolouration on her forehead and cheeks, yet she seemed younger. Only her dried cracked lips distorted the image.

      ‘У меня не было выбора’ Her mother moved her head back and forth.

      ‘What?’ Diana bent down to try and hear her better.

      ‘Я не могла поступить иначе’

      ‘Mum, what on earth are you saying?’ She put her face close to her mother’s but pulled back at the smell of her stale breath. Her mother’s eyes opened wide, but Diana wasn’t sure what she was seeing. Haunted and hollowed were the words that described her, and Diana began to process the scene as if with camera angles. Taking in the sweep of the room and the view before a close-up on a dying woman’s face. Then it hit her, and she sank onto the edge of the bed. This wasn’t a war zone and she didn’t know what to do. There was no cameraman and she hadn’t written a script.

3

       Joan

       Friday, 3 August 1962, 1.00 p.m.

      The sun breaks