Chapter 5
Gwyn’s surprising revelation that Elisavet was actually a lawyer really shouldn’t have made any difference, but it did, because now Cora felt obliged to tidy up a bit before she came.
It was embarrassing for the woman to have to do these menial tasks, and the least Cora could do was make life easier for her.
She put the dishes away and propped up her birthday cards on the kitchen windowsill where the breeze had blown them down.
‘Come in, come in,’ she said heartily when Elisavet arrived.
No response, as if she had no time for earthly matters.
Face to face, Elisavet still looked like a nun with her unsmiling face framed by the wide white band, preoccupied by suffering.
‘I’m sorry we didn’t get much time to talk on Saturday,’ Cora said. The truth was, she’d had plenty of time, but never mind that now. She followed Elisavet into the sitting room. ‘My son said you’d had a nice chat.’
Elisavet frowned at her and tilted her head slightly, as if she was trying to make her out. She took her blue overall out of her bag, unfolded it, put it on and buttoned it up. Said nothing. Then she busied herself retrieving the yellow duster and Mr Sheen.
Cora could hear the ingratiating way she was talking to her, couldn’t help herself.
She was trying to be friendly! Next thing she’d be wringing her hands obsequiously, and what was the point?
It was funny, really, to be so very anxious to please.
But she’s a lawyer! She gave Elisavet a smile and a playful nudge.
‘Now it’s your turn to say, “Yes, your son’s a lovely man, you’ve brought him up well.
” Something like that,’ she prompted. This was the kind of thing she’d say to Gladdie or Megan.
Elisavet’s frown deepened. ‘You want me to say those words to you?’ she asked seriously.
‘No. Never mind.’ Cora felt like an idiot. ‘It’s a joke.’
‘A joke,’ Elisavet said contemptuously, breathing hard and turning to the mantelpiece. She leant on it for a moment as if she was overcome by despair. ‘You think life is a joke.’
It stung like a slap, took Cora’s breath away.
Cora knew very well that life wasn’t a joke, she only pretended that it was. It was a deliberate choice. And now she was breathing hard, too, feeling the anger rush through her. ‘Better to treat it as a joke than a tragedy, don’t you think,’ she replied sharply.
‘Oh, you think that, do you really?’ Elisavet said coldly. ‘Well now, let me see then, here is a little joke you will enjoy.’ She bunched up the yellow duster and in one swift, deliberate movement, she swept the china figurine of the boy evacuee right off the mantelpiece.
The figurine smashed and the pieces went skittering across the hearth and Cora fell heavily to her knees.
She cried out in agony and felt herself break too.
She reached for the curve of a flushed cheek and picked up the hollow chest in a green cardigan, her grief lodged solid and immovable in her throat.
Here now was one pink leg in a drooping grey sock.
She cupped the pieces in her hand with a whimper.
‘Owen,’ she tried to explain in a small, tight voice, and felt the terrible pain of devastation burst free of her.
She let out a hoarse roar of grief. Her tears were steaming hot, and although she was appalled by her noisy, ugly anguish she couldn’t stop herself.
She had never cried for Owen before, not in fifty years, but now, holding this broken evidence, she howled at the unfairness of his pointless destruction.
The hot tears fell freely into her cupped hands, wetting the fragments, soaking them, dripping through her fingers, salty as the sea.