I glanced up at the boarding above the door to the kitchen and imagined Vivi’s hopes soaking into the rafters behind it.
“She’s going to stay right here and—”
Maud was interrupted by Clive slamming his desk drawer back into place. “Sorry,” he said, because the noise had broken off our conversation. “Virginia, thank you for coming to tell us.” He stood up. “Now, if you could leave us, your mother and I will think about what you’ve said.”
Of course I didn’t believe him. He hadn’t seemed interested in the slightest in what I was saying. I wanted to stay. Vivi would be disappointed I hadn’t talked for longer; she’d say I hadn’t tried hard enough. I wanted to think of a way to prolong the conversation, put forward a different viewpoint, anything to make them reconsider. But Clive had cut me short. He’d made it clear he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Perhaps he had blunt pencils to attend to, I thought unkindly.
I waited nervously in Vivi’s room for her to come back and tell me what had happened next. The wall by her bed was plastered with posters and postcards and messages from her friends. The posters were an odd mix of animal pictures and film stars that she’d pulled out of magazines. A funny one of a donkey in a boater, with holes cut out for his ears, was right next to Ava Gardner drawing seductively on a cigarette.
When Vivi came back she told me she’d heard their entire conversation. Apparently Clive had told Maud to let Vivi go to London, although I couldn’t imagine him being so forthright. They’d had quite a row about it, but in the end she said Clive had put his foot down. His decision was final, and he didn’t want to hear another word about it. I was surprised. None of it sounded like the Clive I had seen, the one testing his pencil leads. I wondered if she was making the whole thing up.
Vivi leaned her head back against the wall next to a recalcitrant-looking James Dean in
“What did Maud say?” I asked.
“She was worried about you and me not having each other, but Clive told her she should stop being so silly, we were going to have to go our separate ways at some point.” She looked up at James Dean—his jacket half undone and a defiant, ungovernable look on his furrowed brow—as if really only the poster could understand.
My room was painted yellow, and I’d not put anything on its walls. When, a few weeks later, Vivi left for London, I remember I felt that, somehow, her bedroom wall displayed how much I was going to miss her.
I am standing on the landing, with my head bent as far back as it will go, steadying myself with my right hand on the dado rail and staring up at the ceiling. I’m following her footsteps above me. Now she’s in the museum rooms, walking slowly, stopping. Something scrapes along the floor. Forty-five seconds later I hear her in the attic library, more shuffling and scuffing, then silence. The thud of a book landing on the floor. Now she’s in the storeroom, which isn’t above me but above the other landing, the one that’s out of my boundary through the double doors. Faint, faraway noises. Now she’s heading towards the laboratory, I think. A gentle tapping. Silence.
All of a sudden she’s coming, walking across the ceiling directly above me with purpose, towards the top of the spiral staircase. I hurry down the main stairs, leaning heavily on the thick banisters as I go, and twice splash a little milk out of the glass onto the stairs, but she’s coming fast. Now she’s on the landing. I sidestep off the bottom stair into the little study, close the door and sit quickly on the padded leather seat of the fire guard, poised awkwardly with my glass.
Vivien opens the door and walks in. My heart is still racing. I am surprised that, only three years younger than me, she is so much sprightlier. She came down two floors almost as fast as I came down one. “Oh, hello,” she says. “Well, you weren’t wrong. It really has been emptied, this place, hasn’t it?” She sits down on the window seat. “They even took the marble hearthstones in the drawing room and the main fireplace.”
“Did they? How odd,” I say, meaning it, and lower the glass of milk from my lips as if the thought had made me change my mind about drinking it. What had Bobby wanted those for? I wonder. He wouldn’t have been able to sell them, surely. They were made for this house.
“The fireplace. The hearthstones.” Vivien sighs in disgust. “Imagine that!”
I try.
“What does it look like? What’s underneath the hearthstones?” I ask her.
“Well, it’s just a great big hole. They must have been very thick slabs of marble. It’s like…well, it’s like a great big grave, darling,” she says grimly. “I was wondering, Ginny, did you keep anything of Maud’s, any little personal thing? I’d really like something of hers.”
“No, I don’t think so,” I reply.
“Are you sure? How about a perfume bottle…or a gourd? Just something to remember her by.” I’m studying the milk in my hand. My hand—and the outside of the glass—is wet from when I spilt it earlier so I hold it away from me. If it drips it’ll do so on the floor rather than on me.
“A shirt you’ve kept to use as a rag?” she offers.
“There are lots of Clive’s things, all his equipment and the observation diaries and recording books—”
“I don’t want anything of Clive’s,” she snaps. “I’d rather not be reminded of him, thank you,” she adds callously.
“Vivien!” I say, taken aback. “I know you think he favored me but he loved you too, whatever disputes you two may have had.”
She looks slightly disgusted. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she retorts, firmly but not unkindly. “He spun a little silk cocoon around you like you were one of his specimens.”
“Oh, that’s absurd. We just worked together, that’s all.” I’m shocked she has such a wrong impression of our father.
“He made everyone roll over for you, Ginny. Even the world would have had to go round the wrong way if necessary,” she adds.
I don’t know what she’s talking about. I never imagined we could have such opposing memories of Clive. I don’t remember any times that he went particularly out of his way for me, or anyone else, for that matter. He was always too embroiled in his work. I think she makes things up in her head. I’d always thought Clive was impossible to dislike. He was such a passive person, quiet, I’d go so far as to say unnoticeable, most of the time. He never had a strong opinion on anything outside his work. Or if he did, I certainly didn’t notice. He got on with his own business and didn’t meddle much in anyone else’s, and I couldn’t see how he could have caused offense to anyone. I probably understood him better than Vivien because I worked with him and we shared more interests. That was what it boiled down to, different interests, and I’d have thought she’d realize that. I try to brush it off lightly. “Vivien, we both know Clive couldn’t have made anything much go round. He was so entranced by his own little world.”
“What do you mean?”
I thought it was obvious. “Well, he didn’t have a clue what was going on anywhere in the house apart from his lab.”
“What, Clive?” She laughs scathingly. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person, Ginny. Clive could smell a rat in the pantry from that lab,” she says.
“A rat in the pantry?”
“Give me that milk if you’re not going to drink it. It’s dripping over the floor,” she says, changing the subject, and I’m glad; I don’t want another pointless argument. I also don’t want her to realize that I’m not drinking the milk, that it was a prop to help me spy on her, so I put the glass to my mouth and tip the milk up a little without actually sipping any. She’s watching me so I pretend to take some more, this time tilting it farther, until I feel the milk covering my lips. I wish I’d used something I don’t mind the taste of. The way she’s looking at me, I think for a moment she might have guessed I’m only pretending to drink it, but when she winces and says, “Do you want to go and wipe off your milk mustache?” I know she hasn’t seen through my milk prop after all, so I can stop.
Vivien follows me into the kitchen. “So, is there anything of Maud’s?”
“No, sorry,” I say. “Nothing.”
