She smiled. And then lifted her face to his in the moonlight and kissed him again, sealing their hearts together so that, like the shell which she clasped in one hand, they became two halves of a perfect whole.
2014, Edinburgh
It’s been a good day today: a day without tantrums and screaming; a day without Finn’s terrified withdrawal from a world that makes no sense to him, which leaves him tearing at his hair and clawing at his face in a panic, drawing blood sometimes. A normal day, almost, for most other people, but for us, days like this are so few and far between that they become the remarkable ones.
Dan’s found a community project, which he heard about from someone at the allotments one day when he and Finn were working there. It’s council-funded, based on a patch of derelict land just outside the city, building a garden for children with special needs.
‘Finn’s always so much calmer when we’re outdoors,’ Dan enthused as we sat at the kitchen table eating our spaghetti bolognese this evening. ‘Digging and planting seem to steady him; they seem to be activities that make sense, that he can understand. Perhaps working with the earth roots him as well as the plants.’
It’s late now. I’m shuffling through some more of Ella’s letters, as Dan finishes drying the spaghetti pan, wiping his hands on the tea-towel before hanging it over the handle of the oven door.
Beside him, on the kitchen-dresser, alongside a bunch of keys and a pile of bills, there’s a framed photo of my mother with me and Finn shortly after he was born. We’d brought him home from the hospital and within days I was at my wits’ end, trying to get him to eat and sleep. It all sounded so simple and logical in the baby books I’d bought, so why couldn’t I do it? Why did my tiny son scream with pain and rage when I brought him to my breast? Why couldn’t I console him and settle him with my hugs and songs and hours and hours of walking up and down with him held on my shoulder as I gently patted his back? Mum came up on the train straight away when she heard my frustrated, exhausted sobs after I’d called her to admit defeat with my attempts at breast-feeding Finn. And, as usual, her calm presence reassured me as she made up bottles of formula and gently helped me to find ways to soothe my baby boy. She gave me back my confidence, just as she always had done when I was young. From the perspective of being a mother myself now, I remember how she would alternately cajole and cheer me through the soap operas of school friendships and fallings-out, and how she encouraged me, quietly, but firmly, through the awkward, terrifying stage of adolescence and exams. In the photo, I am holding Finn who is, thankfully, asleep. And my mother is perched on the arm of the sofa beside me, a supportive arm around my shoulders. I am smiling – just a little wanly – towards Dan as he takes the picture; but my mother, Rhona, is gazing down at her daughter and her grandson with an expression of utter love.
I find it hard to reconcile the two facets of Mum’s character: how can someone who is so warm and loving have shut her own mother out of her life? As I look at the framed photograph, I realise that she must have been hurt very badly indeed to have resorted to protecting herself in such a drastic way.
Dan follows my gaze and reaches out to straighten the photo slightly. I smile at him as I rub the knots of tiredness out of my neck, setting aside the letters I’ve been reading. The paper is yellowed with age, but Christophe’s scrawling handwriting and Caroline’s looping French script are still clear after all these years, their words still communicating the warmth of their love for Ella.
Paris
1 September 1938
Ma Chère Ella,
It’s my first day at the bank and I feel I have been put in prison! I’m writing to you, under cover of pretending to take notes on the systems of accounting that we are to use for clients, because I miss you more than ever and it’s the only way I will stay sane enough to be able to come back again tomorrow and do it all again. I cannot bear to think that this could be a life sentence. But the thought of you makes me believe anything is possible: that the day will come when we will be together again, somewhere, somehow, and that I WILL find a way of making a living from my art. The knowledge that you understand, that you believe in me, keeps me going.
In my mind I am out on Bijou, sailing far beyond the point to the place where the ocean is the colour of your eyes. My memories of this past summer will get me through the drab days spent incarcerated in this dull office until I see you again. Work hard in Edinburgh and I shall work hard in Paris, knowing all the while that there is another way of life waiting out there beyond the walls that now confine us. These walls can never confine our hearts, and mine beats a little faster when I remember that night in the dunes and I think how wonderful it will be to kiss you again.
Sorry for the smudging – Monsieur Arnaud, my jailer, came by to enquire whether I required any further explanation of the bookkeeping methods and to give me a copy of the bank’s regulations in case I would like to read through it at home this evening, so I had to hide this letter beneath the ledger tout de suite! I smiled and nodded, although I wanted to tell him that I have not the slightest intention of doing so, since this evening I shall be working on a sketch of the beautiful girl I met on the Île de Ré this summer, who has entirely captured my heart.
We are being released now, allowed out for good behaviour, so I shall hurry to the Poste to send this to you.
It comes with all my love.
Christophe
A little later as Dan and I make our way along the landing, I pause in the doorway of Finn’s bedroom. Christophe’s letter, filled with dreams of living a different way of life, has reminded me how trapped we are in our own situation. Could we move out to the country, I wonder? Would life be easier there? But the city is where Dan’s work is – or at least will be when he finds a job again – and at the moment my salary is the only way we can pay the bills. And we’ve established a support system now for Finn here; got him a place at the specialist school where he seems to be managing better. So, we can’t afford to risk throwing all of that away. We’re keeping our heads above water. Only just, admittedly, but to make any major changes now would be to risk going under. So, for the moment I’ll settle for the allotment and the gardening project on a scrap of wasteland, and be happy that today was a good day and that Finn is now safely asleep in his bed.
The night light casts its glow into the darkness, keeping the night terrors at bay. In sleep, Finn’s fingers curl open softly, instead of contracting into tight fists as they do for so much of the day when he can’t relax for a second in his fear of whatever incomprehensible terror the next moment might bring. His fingernails are ragged and bitten, engrained with earth from his gardening today which the bath could not soak away and which he wouldn’t let me clean with the nail brush. But tonight, for now, he is sleeping soundly, his habitual twitches stilled. The light plays across his face, picking out the faint blush on his cheeks from being out in the fresh air today, but also darkening the bruised-looking half-moons beneath his eyes. I tiptoe across the rug with its design of smiling elephants and stoop down to kiss his forehead, oh so carefully gentle, a touch as light as a summer breeze, so that I don’t risk waking him. But I treasure this rare opportunity to express my love for him as I never can do when he’s awake, before I creep back out.
Dan, who is watching me from the doorway, takes my hand in his and his strong fingers, calloused these days from digging at the allotment, enfold mine for a fleeting, precious moment before he releases them and walks away down the corridor.
Yes, this has been a good day; we’ll settle for that.
3, rue des Arcades
Paris
20 September 1938
Dearest Ella,
We are all missing you terribly! It was good to hear your journey home went smoothly. By now you must have embarked upon the secretarial course, so we look forward to receiving some extremely neat, efficiently typed letters from you in future. I hope your fellow students are all ‘sympas’ (but not so ‘sympas’ that you forget your friends in Paris and your promise to come and visit us next year).
I adore working at the Louvre. Apart from the Director of Picture Conservation, who is strict, forbidding and scares me rigid as he hovers nearby watching my every move, the staff are all very congenial and I am learning lots. They haven’t let me loose on any actual paintings yet, of course, but I am allowed to pass the blades and brushes during the more involved restoration projects (there are some delicate operations: it is not unlike being a surgeon!), and to tidy up the studio. I can’t wait to show you, when you are here, what goes on behind the scenes.