So then I decided on another tack. I bought a gardening magazine and tried to start a conversation about our garden, and whether we should go for hardy annuals. I persevered for about ten minutes and even used a couple of Latin names, and at the end, Dan said, ‘Hmm, maybe,’ in this absent way.
Hmm, maybe?
I thought he loved gardening. I thought that was his undeclared passion. He should have leaped at the chance to talk about hardy annuals.
And it left a question burning in my mind. A more concerning question. If it wasn’t gardening that he was thinking about so wistfully the other night … what was it?
I haven’t addressed this. Not directly. I just said, ‘I thought you wanted to garden more, Dan?’ and Dan said, ‘Oh, I do, I do. We should make a plan,’ and went off to send some emails.
And now, of course, he’s in a filthy mood because it’s the opening ceremony at the hospital this afternoon and he has to take time off work and dress up super-smart and be nice to my mother and basically all the things he hates most in life.
The girls woke even earlier than usual and begged to play in the garden before school, so Dan and I are sitting in an unusual quietness at breakfast while I tweak my speech about Daddy. I’m lurching between thinking it’s too sentimental, then not sentimental enough. Every time I read it through, I get misty about the eyes, but I’m determined that at the actual event, I am not going to cry. I am going to be a dignified representative of the family.
It is taking me back, though. Life with Daddy was golden, somehow. Or do I mean gilded? I just remember endless summers and sunshine and being out on the boat and corner tables at restaurants and special ice-cream sundaes for ‘Miss Sylvie’. Daddy’s wink. Daddy’s firm hand holding mine. Daddy putting the world to rights.
I mean, OK, he had a few forthright political views that I didn’t totally agree with. And he wasn’t wild about being argued with. I remember arriving at his office once as a child with Mummy and witnessing him tearing into some hapless employee. I was so shocked that tears actually sprang into my eyes.
But Mummy hurried me away and explained that all bosses had to shout at their staff sometimes. And then Daddy joined us and kissed and cuddled me and let me buy two chocolate bars out of the vending machine. Then he took me into a meeting room and told his assembled employees I was going to run the world one day and they all clapped while Daddy lifted my hand up like a champion. It’s one of the best memories of my childhood.
And as for the shouting – well, everyone loses their temper once in a while. It’s simply a human flaw. And Daddy was such a positive force the rest of the time. Such a jolt of sunshine.
‘Dan,’ I say suddenly as I reread my anecdote about Daddy and the golf buggy, ‘let’s go on holiday to Spain next year.’
‘Spain?’ He flinches. ‘Why?’
‘Back to Los Bosques Antiguos,’ I explain. ‘Or nearby, anyway.’
There’s no way we could afford to stay at Los Bosques Antiguos. I’ve looked it up – the houses are way out of our league. But we could find a little hotel and go to Los Bosques Antiguos for the day, at least. Wander among the white houses. Dip our feet in the communal lake. Crush the scented pine needles of the neighbouring forest underfoot. Revisit my past.
‘Why?’ says Dan again.
‘Lots of people go on holiday there,’ I assert.
‘I just don’t think it’s a good idea.’ His face is closed up and tentery. Of course it is. ‘It’s too hot, too expensive …’
He’s talking nonsense. It’s only expensive if we stay somewhere expensive.
‘Flights to Spain are cheap,’ I retort. ‘We could probably find a campsite. And I could go back to Los Bosques Antiguos. See what it’s like now.’
‘I’m just not keen,’ Dan says at length, and I feel sudden fury boiling over.
‘What is your problem?’ I yell, and Anna comes hurtling in from the garden.
‘Mummy!’ She looks at me with wide eyes. ‘Don’t shout! You’ll scare Dora!’
I stare at her blankly. Dora? Oh, the bloody snake. Well, I hope I do scare it. I hope it has a heart attack out of fright.
‘Don’t worry, darling!’ I say as soothingly as I can. ‘I was just trying to make Daddy understand something. And I got a bit loud. Go and play with your stomp rocket.’
Anna runs outside again and I pour out more tea. But my words are still hanging in the air, unanswered. What is your problem?
And of course, deep down, I know what his problem is. We’ll walk among those huge white houses and Dan will see the wealth that I had when I was a child and it’ll somehow spoil everything. Not for me, but for him.
‘I just wanted to go and see where I went as a child,’ I say, staring down at my new tablecloth. ‘Nothing else. I don’t want to spend any money, I don’t want to go there every year, I just want to visit.’
In my peripheral vision, I can see Dan gathering himself.
‘Sylvie,’ he says in what is clearly an effort to be reasonable. ‘You can’t possibly remember Los Bosques Antiguos. You only went there until the age of four.’
‘Of course I remember it!’ I protest impatiently. ‘It made a huge impression on me. I remember our house with the verandah and the lake, and sitting on the jetty and the smell of the forest and the sea views …’
I want to add what I really feel, which is: ‘I wish Daddy had never sold that house,’ but it probably wouldn’t go down well. Nor will I admit that my memories are a tad hazy. The point is, I want to go back.
Dan’s silent. His face is motionless. It’s as if he can’t hear me. Or maybe he can hear me, but something else in his head is louder and more insistent.
My energy levels are sinking. There’s only so many times you can try. Sometimes I feel his issue with my father is like a huge boulder, and I’m going to have to push it and drag it and heave it along beside us, our whole marriage.
‘Fine,’ I say at last. ‘Where shall we go next year?’
‘I don’t know,’ says Dan, and I can tell he feels defensive. ‘Somewhere in Britain, maybe.’
‘Like an organic garden?’ I say pointedly, but I’m not sure Dan gets my little dig. I’m about to add, ‘I hope you’ve got your snake-sitter lined up,’ when Tessa comes running in, her mouth an ‘O’ of horror.
‘Mummy!’ she cries. ‘Mummeeee! We’ve lost our stomp rocket!’
As Professor Russell answers the front door, his eyes seem to have a glint of humour in them, and I suddenly wonder: did he hear me yelling at Dan just now? Oh God, of course he did. They’re not deaf at all, are they? He and Owen probably sit and listen to Dan and me as though we’re The Archers.
‘Hello,’ I begin politely. ‘I’m so sorry to disturb you, but I think my daughter’s rocket has landed on your greenhouse. I do apologize.’
‘My stomp rocket,’ clarifies Tessa, who was determined to accompany me on this little visit and is clutching my hand.
‘Ah. Oh dear.’ Professor Russell’s eyes dim, and I can tell he’s got visions of Dan climbing up and cracking his glass.
‘I’ve brought this,’ I say hastily, and I gesture at the telescopic broom in my hand. ‘I’ll be really gentle, I promise. And if I can’t reach it, then we’ll get the window cleaner to do it.’
‘Very well.’ The professor’s face relaxes into a smile. ‘Let’s “give it a go”, as they say.’
As he leads us through the house, I look curiously about. Wow. Lots of books. Lots of books. We pass through a bare little kitchen and a tiny conservatory furnished with two Ercol chairs and a radio. And there, dominating the garden, is the greenhouse. It’s a modernist structure of metal and glass, and if you put a kitchen in it, it could totally go in an interiors magazine.
I can already see our stomp rocket, looking incongruous and childlike on the glass roof, but I’m more interested in what’s inside. It’s not like other people’s greenhouses. There aren’t any tomatoes or flowers or wrought-iron furniture. It’s more lab-like. I can see functional tables and rows of pots, all containing what looks like the same kind of fern at different stages of growth, and a computer. No, two computers.
‘This is amazing,’ I say as we approach. ‘Are these all the same kind of plant?’
‘They are all varieties of fern,’ says Professor Russell with that glimmering smile he has, as though sharing a private joke with someone. (His plants, probably.) ‘Ferns are my particular interest.’
‘Look, Tessa.’ I point through the glass panes. ‘Professor Russell has written books about these ferns. He knows everything about them.’
‘“Knows everything about them”?’ Professor Russell echoes. ‘Oh my goodness, no. Oh no, no, no. I’m only just beginning to fathom their mysteries.’
‘You’ve been studying plants at school, haven’t you, darling?’ I say to Tessa. ‘You grew cress, didn’t you?’ I’m suddenly wondering if we could get Professor Russell to go into the girls’ primary school and give a talk. I would get major brownie points.
‘Plants need water,’ recites Tessa, on cue. ‘Plants grow towards the light.’
‘Quite right.’ Professor Russell beams benevolently at her, and I feel a swell of pride. Look at my five-year-old, discussing botany with an Oxford professor!
‘Do people grow towards the light?’ Tessa says, in that joking way she has.
I’m about to say, ‘Of course not, darling!’ and share an amused glance with Professor Russell. But he says mildly, ‘Yes, my dear. I believe we do.’
Oh, OK. That tells me.
‘We have, of course, many different kinds of light,’ Professor Russell continues, almost dreamily. ‘Sometimes our light might be a faith, or an ideology, or even a person, and we grow towards that.’