Page 22 of Sunset at Embthwaite Farm
“That must have been hard.”
“Yes, it was. You both were so little, and your father couldn’t really take time off the farm, which was understandable.” She’d taken both Harriet and Rachel to the funeral on her own, aching with grief and exhaustion. She’d been only twenty-five years old, which seemed like a child now, but she’d felt rather miserably grown-up at the time—burying her father with two small children in tow.
“And Granny?” Rachel asked after a moment. “She got cancer when we were in our teens… I remember you travelling there quite a bit.”
“She did,” Anna confirmed. “She had a carer who came in, but I’d go down to Reading to help out as often as I could.”
“Why didn’t we see them more?” Rachel asked abruptly. “Granny, especially, when she was on her own? I feel like we visited her once a year, if that.”
“Well.” Anna gave a small sigh as she recalled that fraught relationship. “The truth is, I didn’t get along very well with either of my parents, and even less after I married your father, although I still loved them and missed them when they were gone.”
Rachel’s eyebrows rose. “I feel like this needs a cup of tea.”
“Maybe,” Anna allowed with a small smile. A cup of tea—Britain’s great answer to everything.
“That is, if you want to talk about it?” Rachel ventured. “I know we’re doing that whole give-each-other-space thing…”
“Emotional as well as physical space?” Anna surmised. “No, I don’t mind, Rachel. If you have questions, I want to provide answers.” Within reason.
“All right, then.” Rachel went to fill the kettle. “Then, question number one. Why didn’t you get along with your parents?”
“That’s not an easy one to answer,” Anna replied as she settled herself at the table while Rachel set about making them both tea. “They were both academics at the University of Reading—”
“I think I knew that,” Rachel confirmed. “Grandad was a biology lecturer, right?”
“Yes, and your grandmother taught French. They were both very driven in their careers, very intelligent and intellectual, and they had me late in life, something, I think, of an afterthought.”
Rachel’s mouth dropped open. “You mean an accident?”
“They never said,” Anna replied. “But I suppose it felt that way sometimes. Like I was in the way of all their aspirations. So, for most of my years growing up, I was determined to live completely differently than they did—and I suppose, in a convoluted way, I succeeded.”
The kettle began to whistle, and Rachel poured the boiled water into the pot. “You mean by marrying Dad and living on a farm, having kids early…?” she surmised.
“Yes, all of that. My parents weren’t pleased that I was marrying a man I barely knew—your dad and I only dated for two months before we got married—and he was twenty years older than me, to boot. Looking back, I suppose they had a right to be concerned.”
“I never thought about that,” Rachel said slowly as she brought the tea things to the table. “I think if I’d been them, I would have had a right barney about it.”
Anna laughed. “Well, they did, in their own way. It was allveryfrosty. ‘If you’re really sure you want to do this, Anna’ kind of thing. But it created even more of a strain between us, which led to the decrease in visits. Not,” she amended, sinking her chin into her hand, “that I think there would have been loads of visits otherwise. My parents were very busy people, even in their retirement, and they weren’t all that keen on children, although I think they loved you and Harriet in their own way. It was more that they just didn’t know what to do with children. They were like an alien species to them.” Which hadn’t helped Anna herself figure out what to do with children, when she’d been a mother. Very little had come naturally, but then maybe very little did, generally.
“They sound like real gems,” Rachel replied with a wry twist of her lips.
“They had their faults,” Anna acknowledged, “but I loved them. But like you, perhaps, with your father, I missed the idea of what they could have been to me—and I to them—if things had been different. If they had, or I had, or maybe we all had.” She lapsed into silence, afraid she’d presumed too much, to draw such comparisons.
To her surprise, Rachel’s eyes filled with tears which she quickly blinked away. “Yes,” she admitted thickly. “That’s exactly how I feel sometimes.”
“Oh, darling.” It felt entirely natural—almost—to pull Rachel into a quick hug, which she did. When had she last touched one of her daughters like this? It made her ache, to realise just how long it had been. “I’m so sorry for what you’re going through.”
“It sounds like you went through the same thing,” Rachel replied, sniffing, briefly hugging Anna back before she pulled away. “And more besides.”
Anna gave a little shrug as she picked up her teacup, a smile twitching her lips. “‘Life is pain, princess.’”
“‘And anyone telling you different is selling you something,’” Rachel finished the quote with a smile. “We must have watchedThe Princess Bridea hundred times.”
“It’s a good film.” She could picture Rachel and Harriet piled onto the sofa, watching the TV, while she’d made the popcorn. There had been happy times, she acknowledged, amidst the many sorrows. Sometimes all she remembered was the hardship and the pain—that annoying negativity bias of memory—but it hadn’t been like that.
Rachel hesitated and then asked very quietly, “Why…why were you sectioned, Mum? I mean…what was going on, that had driven you to that point? If you don’t want to talk about it,” she added hurriedly, “I understand. But it feels like such a big thing, and I mean, I knew you were sad growing up, I remember things, but…I guess I didn’t realise just how hard things had been for you.”
Anna let out a heavy sigh. No, she didn’t want to talk about it, but she’d spent the last thirteen years ducking this question in one way or another. It felt like a particularly bad moment, to talk about it now, when Peter was, quite literally, on death’s door. And yet maybe it was the living she needed to focus on. Keeping these secrets wasn’t helping anyone, even if she once thought they might have…or maybe she just hadn’t wanted to admit the truth. In any case, they would surely have to come out into the light at some point. At least now she could choose the time.
