Chapter 17

Chapter 17

Emma

Bearded Iris

The evening has brought more rain. Emma looks out into the garden from the kitchen window and thinks back to her conversation with Betty and Les. With the memory comes warmth, and a glimmer of something else … anticipation? She had said she was writing a book, and maybe she will do just that. She has no idea what type of book, but it feels like it could be the start of something.

Her phone rings. It's her mother. She feels a faint headache form at her temples, but the lingering warmth gives her the confidence to answer.

‘Hi, Mum, how are you?'

‘Ah, you're there. Nice of you to call me back…'

Her mother lets that hang a while– an early marker that claims the space and air between them.

‘… I've been thinking about my birthday,' her mother continues.

Emma does a quick mental calculation. She hasn't missed a significant one. Her mother is sixty-seven. ‘That's not until October.' Her anxiety wrings the flat statement out until only questions are left. Have I missed something, got something wrong?

Her mother ignores her; Emma's words are mere stepping stones to what she really wants to say. ‘Mathias needs to know the numbers in plenty of time. We will all be at his chateau on the Loire.'

‘Mathias?'

‘You know, Mathias and Lina, friends of Paul and Celia– I've mentioned them a dozen times. Mathias is insisting we have the week in the chateau with him.'

Emma has no idea who these people are. Her mother lives on her own in Paris but surrounds herself with an ever-changing circle of the ‘right' people. Well, Emma corrects herself, the right men . Thinking back to Mathias, Emma wonders what his wife, Lina, thinks of this week in the chateau– ‘with him'. Not ‘them', she notices.

Her mother rattles on, ‘Mathias employs over a hundred gardeners. He has a lime tree grove, a topiary maze and five thousand Oriental lilies.'

Emma does another quick calculation; fifty lilies per gardener. She doesn't imagine Mathias is a man who gets his hands dirty.

‘Mum, I'm thinking of writing a book.' She doesn't know why she says this. Maybe to grab at something, to stop the slide into her mother's world?

Her mother ignores this. Did she even say it at all?

‘We're going for the week, but my plan is that you should come down for the weekend. Mathias is hosting a party for me on the Saturday night. You could fix it around one of your conferences…'

Great, I'll ask the scientific world to plan an international symposium around your birthday, and, by the way, Mum, I've left work.

She is back to words that only resonate in her head. She has never told her mother about her new job, and as her mother never asks about her work, weeks pass, months pass and her mum is none the wiser about her life.

‘… We will be heading down the river on M's boat on the Friday night– I haven't included you in that. You can have a night in the chateau. It's wonderful, original baroque. We can't take the children on the boat– it's not really suitable—'

What children?

‘—but I said you wouldn't mind keeping an eye on them.'

Ah, so I'm the free childcare.

‘You're so good with children.' Her mother pauses, and Emma relaxes infinitesimally.

‘I always said you and Will should have had a family.'

She is winded, as though her mother has driven her fist into her guts. A compliment to make her drop her guard, and then the full-force punch.

She never confided in her mother about not being able to have children. Now she wonders if she knew anyway.

‘We would have liked that, too.'

‘You'll have to speak up Emma– it's no good muttering at me. It's important to get this sorted. You really need to make more of an effort.'

‘I'm writing a book, Mum.' She is sweating now, wanting to get some words out about herself, her own life– something to ease the ache that has started in her abdomen and is now spreading to her heart.

‘Really? Have you got a publisher?' Her mother does incredulous well.

‘It's about flowers.'

‘Then you'll love the chateau, Mathias has more than a hundred gardeners.'

‘You said.'

And I don't give a toss. Nobody needs that many gardeners.

‘You'll need an agent. It took Carrie over six years to get hers, and then she only got a deal for one book. I read it and really, I'm not surprised. She only has herself to blame. I've always thought I should write a book…'

As her mother talks about the many books she could have written and how successful they would have been, Emma tries to remind herself of all she has done. But her qualifications, languages, friendships and loves are nothing– just dust in theair. She tells herself that at forty she should be beyond the reach of her mother's spite. She doesn't even live in the same country. But logic and reason have no place here. All she is left with is the bare thought: if your mother cannot love you or even like you, what hope have you got. She would like to phrase this thought as a question, plant even the smallest seed of doubt, but she cannot find it. Nor can she find the tools to root out the thought.

Will was the one person who could uproot the words planted by her mother, and she has to live the rest of her life without him.

Emma is sitting at the kitchen table, staring into space, when she realises someone is knocking on the back door. A large figure stands there, rain dripping from his hood.

Les.

Emma jumps up, managing to summon a smile.

Shaking water onto the mat like a great St Bernard, drops of rain still clinging to his beard, he hands her a soggy, spindly plant. ‘I was passing. Bearded Iris. Doesn't look much now but it will be good for next year. Flower is a right beauty.' He then adds, frowning, ‘Doesn't live long, mind.' As if realising what he has said, he coughs loudly twice, before saying, ‘Well, time will tell.'

‘Thank you, Les.' Emma replies, warmly. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?'

‘No, no. Deliveries to do. Time waits for no man.' He looks at his feet but doesn't move. ‘Emma, we just wondered, it doesn't matter but… why didn't you mention you were, well, a doctor and a scientist? Betty and I … well, Betty wanted me to ask.'

Emma can't help feeling that Les wishes his wife hadn't allotted him this task.

‘Oh, Les, I'm sorry. I thought you might think I was overqualified, but not with the right stuff. I just wanted a change, I suppose.'

‘You can never have too many strings to your bow,' Les responds, looking brighter.

‘And I guess,' Emma continues, ‘I thought focusing on the languages might make you think I would remember the plant names.'

‘Now that is interesting.' Les nods. ‘Always struggle with the Latin names myself.'

‘Les,' Emma says, tentatively. She thinks she might not have such a good opportunity to say what she wants to him. ‘I'm sorry if I seem rude sometimes—'

‘No, no, not at all,' Les interrupts.

Emma pushes on. ‘Sometimes I think something in my head and it comes out wrong when I say it.'

‘A loose cannon?' Les suggests.

Emma laughs. ‘I guess,' she admits. ‘I suppose I should look before I leap.'

She thought this might make him smile, or at least respond in kind, but instead, Les is looking preoccupied. Eventually he says, ‘My first boss, now he spoke a fair few languages. He always said the thing that mattered was what language you thought in– said it made all the difference to how you spoke to people. Even had a bit of Japanese, he did. Now he said they were very polite folk.'

The realisation hits Emma like a hearty blow from Tamas between her shoulder blades. She is only ever rude in English. A second startling thought follows: she may not speak Japanese but what if she thought in Spanish (her favourite language) and then replied in English? At the very least, it would buy her time.

‘Well, with all those languages … food for thought, eh?' Les casts one last look around her kitchen and turns to leave.

After she shuts the door, Emma stands on the mat looking back into the kitchen as Les had done.

It really is the most god-almighty mess. She is glad that Betty didn't come with Les– she would hate her to see this.

She puts aside thoughts of her conversation with Les and her earlier one with her mother. She has something much more pressing to do.

It takes Emma most of the evening to clear the kitchen. She starts with the table, sorting, recycling and binning the accumulation of the past months. When the mess still inhabiting the kitchen sides is thrown into stark relief, she attacks this, too. For months she has not been able to find the energy or impetus to tidy up, but now not only does she never want Betty to catch sight of this– she also wants more space to work.

As she cleans, an idea comes to her. In her old research work, it was all about looking for connections. Isn't this what she needs to do here?

By 10 p.m., she is back at the kitchen table, laptop and printer in front of her, with a pinboard propped beside her chair. Periodically, Emma adds a photograph or note to the pinboard. She has been collecting pictures of the female crew. Some photos were taken on deck; some appear to be copies from old family albums. The women vary considerably in age and beauty– some have frank, open faces, others look grim, as though life has hardened them. She will just have to keep going, with a logical, scientific approach– making connections. Did any of them have a particular interest in flowers? Did they have some background in floristry?

The one thing that hasn't changed throughout all her research, is her belief that The Florist was a woman.