Chapter 37 Phyllida
PHYLLIDA
NOW, NSW SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS, AUSTRALIA
Phyllida awakes with a sense of danger. A sense that something has collapsed around her. Time, light, noise. Her body feels alien, her arm like jelly as she lifts it from the bed. But the dream-like state in her mind has receded. She is here, in hospital. Her mind is clearer.
A nurse appears and says, ‘Well, hello, Mrs Banks.’
Phyllida murmurs a greeting. The sound feels distant. She tries to smile.
‘Your granddaughter was here. You just missed her. She didn’t want to wake you.’
Phyllida blinks her understanding, her lips twitch.
‘Her mother was in too. Haven’t seen her before. Miriam, is it? Your daughter-in-law I think? Very attractive lady, all dressed up she was. Maybe she was off somewhere nice.’ The nurse writes on the chart. Phyllida closes her eyes and her sense of danger returns. Miriam.
Phyllida remembers sitting on the bench seat in the village as Lottie slammed the van door and disappeared up the main street.
She had peered across the top of a red Corolla, which had hidden her from view.
Should she have made her presence known to Lottie and Miriam as they stood arguing in the carpark?
What had stopped her? Curiosity? Guilt? Concern for Lottie?
Miriam was standing, rigid, in the near-empty carpark, staring after the van. If Phyllida was pressed to speculate—and this didn’t require her special intuitive powers—she supposed Miriam would not want her input. Still. Needs must.
‘It’s difficult, mothering, isn’t it?’
Miriam startled. ‘Oh, what are you doing there?’
Phyllida smiled. The argument had not been hers to overhear, but here she was.
Her usual calm was ragged, in the way that only seemed to happen when Miriam was nearby.
So much negative energy in the woman. It was always a little off-putting.
‘What a wonderful woman you’ve raised. A success story indeed. ’
‘She’s obstinate, single, under-employed and broke. At nearly thirty years old, I would hardly call that success.’
‘She’s fully employed in the bookshop now. And I’m thrilled to have her.’
‘Couldn’t wait to get your claws into her, could you?’
Phyllida regarded Miriam. She wondered what it would be like to carry around so much boiling hot pain, right on the surface. ‘Like you, Miriam, I love Lottie dearly.’
‘Well, apparently the two of us are not enough. This DNA test she’s doing is really quite upsetting. Why she wants to go digging around for cousins and random aunts and uncles I don’t understand.’
Phyllida stared. ‘What?’
‘The DNA test she’s done.’ Miriam paused, looked at Phyllida quizzically. ‘She’s convinced she’ll find Nordic cousins. Vikings apparently. Why, I’m not sure. Although you’ve never told us anything about David’s lineage.’ Miriam looked at her pointedly. ‘So, perhaps she will.’
‘A DNA test? I … are you not worried, Miriam? About what it might reveal?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Her … paternity?’
‘David’s lineage will no doubt be of interest to her.’
‘But, I … I don’t believe she is David’s.
’ Phyllida felt her heart beating a little fast. Was she upsetting the balance of a wordless agreement cemented over David’s grave; the mosaic of careful silences and precarious understandings that had glued their relationship together since Lottie’s birth? Surely Miriam must know it too?
‘Why would you say that?’ asked Miriam, but Phyllida saw a flicker of doubt. Had Miriam spent the last decades convincing herself Lottie was David’s? A more palatable outcome, certainly.
‘I sensed you were carrying a baby—knew it—the moment I met you at the funeral, Miriam. And I’m not saying you did too, but there it was. And if Lottie finds this out from the DNA results, it might be very hurtful unless you … give her some warning, perhaps?’
‘How could you know I was pregnant?’
‘I just did.’
‘How interesting,’ said Miriam. ‘And you kept this to yourself? Didn’t mention it to David?’
‘It wasn’t my place.’ Phyllida regarded Miriam, so elegant in the deepening light.
Phyllida often wondered if she’d made the right decision.
Keeping the information from David had been difficult, but she had so much to worry about back then, and the baby was the only thing that made him look to the future.
Her rationality had churned against the edges of her knowing.
She had almost faltered again when Lottie came to her as a teenager, angry with her mother and wanting information about her father.
When a child looked you in the eye and asked for the truth, lying was difficult.
I have nothing in common with Mum! Tell me about my father, Phyllida. Am I like him?
Phyllida had wanted to unburden herself. Her own life was built on a lie too. But she didn’t dare reveal what she had intuited. The girl was fifteen; an impressionable age. She needed only one thing from Phyllida. To feel secure.
Miriam fiddled with her car keys. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you were wrong. David was her father. I’ve never been in any doubt. And this stupid DNA test will prove it.’
‘How can you be sure?’
‘I’m positive.’
Phyllida frowned. Miriam seemed so certain. No, that’s not right. It couldn’t be. But in the face of Miriam’s certainty, her own was crumbling, leaving feverish fragments between the known and the true.
‘You have secrets, don’t you, Phyllida? David told me once. About the money, and the past you’ve left behind. Are you worried that Lottie will discover you’ve created a fabricated world for her to live in? It’s fascinating what DNA can reveal, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Science doesn’t lie. It will show David is her father.
It will trace her roots back generations, so your secrets, your son’s secrets, my secrets—not that I have any, sadly—will all come out.
Won’t that be nice?’ She looked up, as if consulting the early moon.
‘Police use DNA databases for all sorts of things these days. There are fascinating podcasts I can recommend.’ Miriam smiled.
‘And, when the test is back, Lottie can see exactly what genetic traits she inherited from David.’
Phyllida’s heart was now beating erratically. This was silly. She saw the pregnancy the day she and David met this woman! David was not Lottie’s father. Obviously, it would be lovely if Lottie and David were related, although it didn’t matter either way.
Except, it did.
If Lottie’s DNA was linked to David, it would lead back to England. To his roots; to Edward’s family. To the day Phyllida had run. Phyllida stared down at her shaking hands. So much blood. Her gut roiled.
‘Are you … really sure?’ she said to Miriam.
‘Oh, Phyllida.’ Miriam shook her head. ‘I find it sad that you’re so keen to genetically disown Lottie. I thought you loved her.’
Now, in the hospital, Phyllida tries to examine the memory.
The nurse is staring down at her, looking worried. ‘Are you in pain, Mrs Banks? The doctor will be in soon.’
She shifts, shakes her head. She had spent every day after that meeting with Miriam thinking about Lottie’s DNA results.
She had drawn on all her wisdom to calm her mind.
If Lottie was not related to David, there was no danger of the test linking Phyllida to Bleddesley House.
But if Miriam was right, if Lottie was David’s, it changed things.
And Miriam seemed so utterly sure. A noble family like Edward’s was bound to be documented in some genetic way, somewhere along the line.
A brother, a cousin, an aunt. Everybody seemed so obsessed these days with flaunting the skeletons unearthed by their genomes.
So be it, she had decided. But she could not have Francis discovering she was alive. She was too old to run anymore. And she could not have the truth coming out.
She remembered her lump, then. It was her death approaching.
She was not afraid of death itself. Of course, she did not wish to suffer as David suffered, but mostly she did not wish to force others to witness it.
She had begun having nightmares. And terrible daytime flashbacks to David’s dying days.
A sense of pure discombobulation. She had called on the wisdom of the goddesses and the seasons.
But the nightmares and the flashbacks had overtaken her.
The lump, paired with Miriam’s revelation, had been signposts. She must be gone before Francis was found. Then a crow had landed on the bookshop signboard. The Morrigan, she assumed, announcing her end.
But here she still is.
The nurse regards her.
Phyllida pushes her hands into the mattress. She tries to sit up, then finds her voice, raspy and dry. ‘Might I have a cup of tea?’