Sea Music

‘I’m from the agency. I’m here to help look after you.’

‘You’re very pretty.’

The girl laughs. ‘So are you.’

Martha’s face lights up. ‘I used to be, darling.’

In that small face suddenly alight, in the ease of that casual endearment, Kate is captivated. Fred lowers the Daily Telegraph he is not reading and smiles at her.

‘Hello, Kate. Welcome.’

‘Thank you, Dr Tremain. I’ll just go and get your coffee.’

She comes back and perches on a chair next to him. ‘The vicar suggested you might like a drive this afternoon. There is a little gallery at Newlyn? He said you both enjoy going there, and then walking or driving along the front past the harbour.’

Fred looks up at her. ‘That sounds absolutely wonderful. Martha would love it. How kind. Mrs Biddulph doesn’t drive, you know.’

Kate smiles. ‘So I understand. Are you both OK here, if I go and do a bit of tidying up?’

‘Of course. Of course. We are both fine. Enjoying the sun.’

Kate makes their beds and tidies the bathroom. She is intrigued by this strange house with its shabby sofas and beautiful furniture, by its fading elegance and enormous conservatory that throws sunlight everywhere. The whole house smells dusty, rather like a greenhouse, and there is this sense of waiting. Is it waiting, this stillness? Or is it a vague sense of sadness, of lives coming to an end? Kate is not sure.

The Loving Care Agency jumped at the chance of taking her on even though she assured them she would only be temporary, that she intended to move on. The pay is appalling, but Kate is used to working for peanuts. The only help she has accepted, from the aunt she was working for in London, is the cost of a few weeks in an hotel while she looks for somewhere to live for the summer.

Kate goes to check on the two old people. Dr Tremain is sitting beside Martha and has taken her hand. They both sit looking out through the French windows to the garden. ‘“It was a perfect day /For sowing: just/ As sweet and dry was the ground / As tobacco-dust. / I tasted deep the hour/ Between the far/ Owl’s chuckling first soft cry” …’ Dr Tremain is reading aloud to Martha. Kate smiles. How wonderful.

She starts to prepare their lunch with the food Barnaby has put out for her. It is incredibly quiet here after London. She has a moment’s dislocation, as if she has suddenly jumped lives and found herself in someone else’s kitchen.

Edward Thomas? Of course it is! She studied him for A level. ‘And now, hark at the rain,/ Windless and light/ Half a kiss, half a tear,/ Saying good-night.’

Martha, suddenly restless, comes in and out of the kitchen asking the same question. ‘What are we having for lunch today?’

‘Chicken and chips?’

‘How lovely!’

Martha wanders off, circles the house again and comes in through the conservatory door.

‘Hello. Who are you?’

‘I’m Kate. I’m just getting your lunch ready.’

‘Lovely, darling, what are we having?’

‘Chicken and chips. Is that OK?’

‘My favourite.’

‘Good. It won’t be long. Shall I come and put the lunch-time news on for you?’

‘Thank you,’ Martha says vaguely.

Kate finds Fred has already turned the television on.

‘Come and sit down, darling,’ he says to Martha, ‘and watch the news with me.’

‘I will in a moment,’ Martha says, ‘but I am worried about lunch. What –’

‘Chicken and chips,’ Kate says firmly, pushing Martha gently down next to her husband. ‘I will be back in a moment.’

She is beginning to wonder how the vicar has not taken to drink. It is taking her ages to get this meal ready and she feels dizzy with repeating the same thing over and over again. She puts both their lunches on trays and carries them into the sitting room.

The room is empty. The television is talking to an empty room. Kate cannot believe it. Fighting panic she rushes back to the kitchen and dumps the trays and runs round the empty house shouting for them. How on earth could they both disappear so quickly and quietly?

She bolts out of the front door and down the drive, shaking with anxiety. Why did this have to happen on her first day?

Barnaby comes from the church with a parent on each arm. He smiles at her as he crosses the road with them. ‘Lost anyone?’ he jokes.

Kate, mortified, nearly in tears with fright, turns and rushes back into the house.

Barnaby settles his parents in front of the television with their trays of food and a sherry each and waits for the new carer to come out of the bathroom. He makes them both a cup of coffee while he waits.

When Kate returns to the kitchen, embarrassed, he says gently, ‘It’s quite all right, you know. I was only joking. You can’t have eyes in the back of your head and I don’t want my parents imprisoned in their own home.’ He pauses, facing the facts. ‘It’s becoming obvious that I’ll have to have two people here soon; it’s going to be too much for one person. I’m truly sorry you got a fright, Kate. I really am well aware how tiring looking after my parents is.’ He grins at her. ‘One dotty person is bad enough, two is a nightmare! It will be no discredit to you if you decide it’s just too much.’

‘No way!’ Kate says quickly. ‘I just completely misjudged the speed of your parents. I’m not going to give up after one day!’

Barnaby hands her a mug of coffee. ‘I’m glad. Go and have your lunch in the garden. Relax. It is like summer out there this morning. I’ll sit with my parents for an hour. I like to do that if I have time.’

Kate digs out a book and a sandwich from her bag and goes and sits against the trunk of the cherry tree under a great, sweeping arch of buds about to burst into blossom. She wonders what a good-looking, youngish vicar – young by priestly standards anyway – is doing unmarried and looking after senile parents on his own.

Barnaby tucks Martha into bed for her afternoon nap. Fred has gone back to his chair in the conservatory to try to do the crossword. Barnaby is puzzled by Fred. He wonders if his father has simply withdrawn from a life where his beloved Martha is now dotty. Sometimes Fred seems quite dotty himself; at other times Barnaby has the sensation he is merely hiding behind a supposed dottiness in order to avoid facing what is happening, as if a dark cloud of depression or loss has stunned him into a senility he does not really have.

Barnaby says goodbye to a more cheerful Kate and drives off to a parish council meeting in the village hall. Normally he dreads these competitive parochial monthly meetings, but today everyone seems united in their desire to raise funds to help the refugees in Kosovo.

Martha lies propped up on pillows watching the movement of wind through buds of pink cherry blossom. The tree is getting old and gnarled. The branches bend and creak, spread and arch. Soon fat fingers of blossom will trail almost to the ground in great sprays of pink hands that layer the lawn like confetti.

It reminds Martha of something. Of somewhere else. The feeling she cannot capture squeezes her stomach, as if her body has recovered a memory her mind refuses to recall. She closes her eyes, tries to banish this disturbing sensation and is taken suddenly back to another garden, where the flowers are gone, and all is now laid with vegetables.

She sees Papa bend to pick a caterpillar off a cabbage, his face grave as he turns to Mama, standing in the doorway of their house.

‘Esther? It is time we talked about sending Marta to England. I don’t know how long we have.’

‘Paul, no! Please, let’s wait … Don’t be pessimistic. We have so many good friends here, you are respected by everyone. The patients and the staff love you. We have standing here, my dear, and financial means, if things get difficult.’

Papa stares at Mama and shakes his head. ‘Esther’, he says quietly, ‘I beg you not to bury your head. Things are not just difficult, they are dangerous. What is the good of money if we cannot keep Marta safe? Please, you must accept what is happening. Everyone is fearing the worst. Both Germans and Poles are jumpy and frightened. Everyone is looking out for themselves. You must not count on anyone except fellow Jews. You will see, our Polish neighbours and German colleagues will not want to know us if Poland is invaded.’

They stare at each other over the space that was once a garden full of flowers and now contains only things they can eat. Marta knows her father is frustrated by her mother, who has never in her life faced hardship or loss, and cannot yet grasp what is happening. Cannot, or is reluctant to face the end of their way of life.