Where the Heart Is. Annie Groves
he leaned into her she could see that he was trying to say something, but his voice was so changed by his weakness that it took her several seconds to recognise that he was saying, ‘I’m sorry.’
As he spoke he tried to straighten up but somehow instead he lost his balance and crashed to the floor, his flailing arms sending glasses flying from a nearby table as he did so.
In the silence that followed it was possible to hear the sound of liquid from the broken glasses dripping onto the floor, accompanied by the occasional nervous clearing of a throat. These small sparse sounds gradually gathered volume and pace as they were joined by hushed whispers and speedy footsteps; then the Ambassador’s voice reaching down to Francine as she kneeled on the floor at Brandon’s side, asking curtly, ‘Is he all right?’
Knowing exactly how Brandon felt about his condition, and his determination that no one else was to know about it, Francine could only say shakily, ‘He hasn’t been very well,’
Above her she could hear other voices: ‘He must be drunk …’ ‘How dreadful …’ ‘Shameful …’ ‘But what do you expect? I mean, he’s married that showgirl …’
Ignore them, Francine told herself. They know nothing, mean nothing. Brandon was what mattered.
He wasn’t unconscious, thank heavens, but she could see how shocked and humiliated he felt from his expression. She reached for his hand and held it tightly in her own. His doctor had warned them about this happening: a sudden weakness that would rob him of the ability to move, and perhaps even speak, that would come out of nowhere and then pass – at first – a sign that his illness was advancing.
‘I’ll get you some help,’ the Ambassador was saying and within seconds two burly Marines had appeared and were helping Brandon to his feet, their expressions wooden but their manner faultlessly correct and polite as they went either side of Brandon to support him.
‘It’s the bourbon, I guess. It’s a mite too strong after London’s watered-down whisky,’ one wit was suggesting as Francine made their apologies to the Ambassador and explained that they would have to leave.
‘But I still don’t understand what you’re doing here, Bella. After all, you do have a house of your own.’
Bella tried not to feel too low as she sat with her mother in the kitchen of Vi’s house. It wasn’t just her mother’s attitude that made her feel so unwilling to be here, Bella acknowledged, it was the house itself. Her mother might have insisted on Bella’s father fitting out the whole house with everything that was new and up to date when they had first moved into it a couple of years before Bella had married, but now that she knew what really made a house a home, Bella could see how cold and barren of loving warmth her mother’s house was. Somehow the house was cold and unwelcoming – just like her mother?
‘I have to say that I think it very selfish of you not to have made such a dreadful fuss about it that your poor brother and dearest Daphne felt unable to move into it. It’s your fault that they aren’t living up here, you know. Daphne would have been such a comfort to me, and of course if Charlie had been here working with your father, as he should have been, then that wretched woman would never have got her claws into him. It’s all your fault, Bella. You do realise that, don’t you?’
Her mother’s voice had risen with every imagined injustice she was relaying, causing Bella’s heart to sink even further. There was no point trying to reason with her mother when she was in this frame of mind, Bella knew. Although her mother’s neighbour, Muriel, had assured Bella in a conspiratorial whisper as she had left that ‘Your dear mother hasn’t had any you-know-what whilst I’ve been here, dear,’ Bella suspected that her mother’s current overemotional mood had its roots in alcohol.
‘Did you hear me, Bella?’ Vi demanded. ‘It is your fault that I’m in this wretched state, and that your father has left.’
Bella wanted to be patient but her mother’s selfishness and the injustice of her accusations, never mind their inaccuracies, tried her temper to its limits.
‘I don’t want to hear another word about Charlie or Daphne, if you don’t mind, Mummy,’ she began firmly, but once again her mother overruled her.
‘Well, that’s just typical of your selfishness, isn’t it, Bella, not wanting a poor mother to talk about her beloved son? Isn’t it enough for you that you practically drove poor Charlie away with your selfishness is not giving him that house? That poor boy, forced to stay in the army – and live apart from dearest Daphne when they could have been living up here, and all because of you.’
Bella put down with some force the kettle she had been just about to fill and turned to her mother.
‘Mummy, that is ridiculous. You know perfectly well that why Charlie is still in the army and not up here working for Father is because he tried and failed to get himself dismissed from the army on the grounds of ill health and they very sensibly, in my opinion, saw through him and have insisted that he must do his duty, like all the other young men who have had to enlist. As for Daphne, it seems to me that she was only too pleased to have an excuse to go home to her own parents.’
‘You are a very unkind sister and daughter, Bella. And it’s all because of that dreadful … that person.’
Even now her mother could not bring herself to mention Lena by name, and blamed her and not Charlie for the fact that Lena had had Charlie’s baby.
Bella felt angry on Lena’s behalf, but she also felt that now that Lena was so happily married to Gavin it could do more harm than good to keep reminding her mother that Charlie was the baby’s father and not Gavin, who was, after all, being a far better father to the little girl than Charlie, married to someone else, and who had refused point-blank to accept his responsibility towards Lena, could ever have been.
‘I think you should go home now, Bella. I’ve got an awful headache, I really must go and lie down.’
Her mother’s voice was thin and fretful, and Bella could see that she was plucking at the edge of the stained tablecloth, a habit Bella had noticed she had developed. A wave of pity and defeat washed out Bella’s earlier anger. She lit the gas under the kettle, then went over to her mother and said lightly, ‘I am home, Mummy. Remember, we talked about it this morning and I said that I would come and live here with you for a little while so that you wouldn’t feel as lonely.’
‘Did we? I don’t remember.’ For a moment her mother looked so lost and confused that Bella’s heart ached for her.
‘Why don’t I make us both a nice cup of cocoa, Mummy, and then we can listen to the news together?’
‘The news? Is it that time already?’
Bella had a particular reason to want to listen to the news today.
Half an hour later, on the pretext of going upstairs to unpack her suitcase, Bella made a quick inspection of her mother’s bedroom. Its general untidiness, along with the unmade bed, was upsetting, all the more so because her mother had always been so fastidious.
At least she wasn’t drinking any more like she had been when Bella’s father had first left. It had been such a terrible shock for Bella to discover her mother drunk, buying gin from a criminal selling it on the black market.
Bella was so grateful to her mother’s doctor for the help he had given, sending Vi to a nursing home where she could be probably looked after. But she was not the person she had been, Bella knew, although whether that was because of her drinking or because her husband had left her, or a combination of both, Bella did not know. It was impossible to imagine Bella’s auntie Jean or her auntie Francine behaving as her mother had done. They were both so much stronger in their different ways, women to be admired, not pitied. Bella now felt so much closer to her auntie Jean, who had been such a rock and so very kind to her since Bella had taken her courage in both hands and gone to tell her what had happened. She didn’t feel she deserved the love and kindness Auntie Jean had shown her, but she was very grateful for it.
Her