Chapter 9 #2
‘What I’ll do,’ she said, almost to herself, ‘I’ll put it back on the mantelpiece where it was, and I’ll look at it and see the cracks and then I’ll stop looking at it and I’ll forget about the cracks, I’ll just know it’s there.
I’ll know what it stands for.’ That was the truth of it, she realised.
The gluing together stood for putting things right, or trying to, as best you could.
It was her turn, now, to put things right. She met Elisavet’s anxious eyes and cleared her throat. ‘Thank you.’
Elisavet nodded. She pencilled over the black squares of her drawing with deliberate concentration, her head bowed so the shadows hid her face, and after a few moments she said in a dead monotone, ‘My fiancé wrote. He broke up with me that day.’
‘Fiancé?’ Well now, this was news. Cora dabbed more pink paint on the flower that had become Gladdie’s head.
‘Too many problems knowing me.’ Elisavet’s eyes rimmed silver with tears and the holy, innocent look was replaced by hurt confusion.
‘All these years we grew up together, we went to the same school, our parents were friends. And then all of sudden it changed, and his family wouldn’t speak to us because they are Serbs and I’m the enemy now. ’
‘Ah.’ Cora frowned. She was beginning to see the picture, like the magic painting books that were popular when Gwyn was a child, all black and white until you wetted the paper and the colours showed through. She wrapped the figurine up in the newspaper. Too many problems knowing me.
I know exactly what it feels like, Cora thought, when love causes too many problems. She wanted to tell Elisavet that, but whether she could find the right words to explain it was another matter entirely.
‘Do you remember that old notebook of my husband’s, written in 1944, that we found in the tin box?
’ she began awkwardly, jerking her head in the vague direction of home.
Elisavet glanced at her and gave a brief nod. ‘The book that he wrote in German.’
‘Yes. You see, Frank was a German.’
Elisavet chewed her lip. She was a smart woman, quick.
‘Oh?’ She lifted her eyebrows and instantly understood the bigger picture. ‘But in 1944, Germany and Britain were at war, no?’
Cora nodded, feeling secretly gratified she still had the power to surprise.
‘Yes, exactly. He was a prisoner of war. So there we are,’ she said, ‘if it helps.’ She wasn’t sure it did, but she didn’t want to labour the point.
Let Elisavet make what she wanted of it.
After all, Cora wasn’t Gladdie, who always wanted to teach a person something – considered it her duty to, actually, whether you wanted to learn a thing or not.
Elisavet frowned. ‘And the German loved you?’ she asked in a tone of disbelief.
‘Well, I was younger then, obviously,’ Cora said quickly, ‘and not bad looking as it goes.’
‘Of course.’
‘Anyway, I’m thinking of getting a dictionary, see if I can make sense of what he wrote or at least get the gist. He mentions my name a few times. It would be nice to see things from his point of view.’
Elisavet pursed her lips and went back to sharpening the stub of her pencil as methodically as she did everything else.
It seemed to be the end of the conversation and Cora sat back, tilted her head up and watched the clouds creep slowly over Gladdie’s roof, sliding shade on it.
Elisavet tapped her arm. ‘I don’t do anything on Friday nights. I know German. I can tell you what the book says if you want,’ she said softly.
‘Can you?’ Surprised, Cora felt a rush of excitement, as though Frank had suddenly got in touch with her after a long absence. ‘Oh! I’d like that!’
‘What are you two whispering about?’ Megan asked brightly, holding her paint-puckered tree trunk at arm’s length. Without waiting for a reply, she turned it to show them. ‘What do you think?’
Cora nodded. ‘Nice. It looks like your dad.’
‘Interesting texture to the face,’ Elisavet agreed.
Gladdie wiped her hands on her painting apron and hurried over to add her own judgement, as hers was the one that counted. ‘Hm. Good effort, Megan, fair play. What have you drawn, Elisavet?’ she asked her in an encouraging, teacherly tone. ‘What are they? Squares? Modernism, is it?’
‘Windows,’ Elisavet said, pointing towards Gladdie’s house.
‘Oh, yes,’ Gladdie said, comparing them. ‘Fair enough. But where’s the glass?’
Elisavet stared up at her and shook her head. Her voice trembled. ‘No glass.’
‘Oh. Never mind.’ Gladdie added encouragingly, ‘It’s quite difficult to draw something you can see through, isn’t it? That’s why in my painting, look, you’ll notice I’ve drawn the curtains in instead. A little trick I came up with. Anyway, it’s something for you to think about.’
No glass? Cora glanced at Megan and knew she was thinking the same thing. There was no glass in the windows because of the war. Gladdie could be surprisingly dense sometimes.
‘How’s the blue tit coming on?’ Cora asked her.
‘See for yourself,’ Gladdie said. She peeled it carefully off the table and held it up.
‘What are those red things?’ Megan asked.
‘Wellingtons. Had to give him wellingtons, see, because the toes came out wrong. But I think it works, don’t you? Glass of wine, anyone?’
Elisavet glanced at her watch. ‘I must go,’ she said. ‘I have a client.’ She picked up her bag and hoisted it over her shoulder. ‘Maybe another day.’
‘What a shame! Your windows are coming on so nicely, very lifelike,’ Gladdie said, walking with her back to the house.
‘A client! Hear that, Cora? Elisavet’s two-timing us,’ Megan said, scraping at a flake of brown paint on the front of her smock. ‘Do you think she enjoyed herself?’
‘Hard to tell.’
‘Not exactly the life and soul, is she?’
‘Not exactly, no,’ Cora agreed.
‘What were you whispering about?’
‘This.’ Cora lifted the newspaper bundle from her lap and unwrapped it to show her. ‘She mended it for me.’
‘Oh dear, your little evacuee,’ Megan said, taking the piece of china and running her thumb along the glued cracks. ‘It’s been in the wars, hasn’t it?’
‘Indeed.’ Cora gave a dry laugh. ‘Good choice of words.’
‘A bit of overzealous dusting, was it?’ Megan asked, propping it on the table.
‘Mmm. You could say that.’
They had been friends too long for Megan to let that pass. ‘So could you, so why didn’t you?’ she asked mildly. ‘Deliberate accident, was it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The fact that she’s taken it upon herself to glue it together. Why would she otherwise?’ Megan picked it up and held it to the light. It glowed with sunlight, candlelit. ‘What’s Gwyn going to say?’
‘That it can’t be helped, something like that, I expect.’ He’d given it to her in memory of the uncle he never knew. He was a lovely gift giver, was Gwyn, Cora thought.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t put it away somewhere safe when she came,’ Megan said.
‘I know, I should have.’
Megan looked towards the house again. ‘Where’s Gladdie with that wine she promised us?
Here, you’d better wrap this up again.’ Seeing her expression, she gave Cora a sympathetic smile.
‘I know, love. It’s a shame. I know what it meant to you and so does Gwyn, bless him.
But you’ve got to look at it long-term, see.
To Fiona it’s just a naff ornament, a bit of kitsch, and when you’re dead, sure as eggs she’ll have a clear-out and drop it off at the Oxfam shop in Wyndham Street along with all the other things you love.
’ She paused and added, ‘Mind you, they might not take it with it being chipped and all.’
Strangely enough, the idea cheered Cora up. She laughed. ‘You’re right. Or she’ll hire a skip and dump everything in it.’
Funny how perfectly acceptable that idea was in old age.
When she was a child, like most children, Cora had believed in that godlike childish manner that the world existed for her and because of her, and everything was solid and permanent.
But then the boys they’d known from childhood became men and went off to fight with a great deal of fanfare and never came back.
And from then on everything was transitory.
More or less everything. Because although she didn’t know it then, the concept of the enemy was transitory, too.
She should have told Elisavet that.
She realised that the remarkable thing about Elisavet was that she had the knack of letting them see old things through new eyes, Cora thought, taking a fresh look at Megan’s painting of a tree trunk resembling her father.
And suddenly, with a flash of clarity, Cora wondered if it was serendipity that had made her stop and look at the advert in Mr Patel’s window.