Facing the Light - Softcover

Geras, Adele

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0752842846 ISBN 13: 9780752842844

Publisher: Orion, 2004

Synopsis

An extended family gathers in late August to celebrate the seventy-fifth birthday of its formidable matriarch, Leonora. She is the daughter of the famous Edwardian painter Ethan Walsh, whose paintings are kept at the family home, Willow Court in Wiltshire. At Leonora's house party will be her daughters, Gwen and Rilla, whom she raised alone after she was widowed in her late twenties; Rilla's stepdaughter Beth; and Gwen's husband and three children with their spouses and lovers. One outsider joins the group: Sean Everard, a television director who's making a documentary about the life and work of Ethan Walsh.

All families have their dark side and Leonora's is no exception. By the time the marquee is dismantled and all the guests have gone their separate ways, two shocking past events have come to light, to rock complacency and change for ever the lives of Leonora and her daughters.

About this title

About the Author

Adele Geras was born in Jerusalem in 1944. Her first book appeared in 1976, since when she has published 80 books for children and young adults. She is the mother of two daughters, and lives with her husband in Manchester.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Facing the Light
Wednesday, August 21st, 2002I'm allergic to my mother, Rilla thought. She leaned back in the bath, closed her eyes, and let the vanilla-scented foam and the hot water cover her. It happened every single time. The snake had come back. She could feel it, uncurling from where it lived, so deep in her head that for most of the time she forgot it was there. A white snake, that was how she imagined it, twisting and uncoiling and somehow winding itself around the separate parts of her brain to give her the only headaches she ever had. Tension headaches was what the doctor said when once Rilla had mentioned the problem, but of course she hadn't told him what caused the pain. She knew exactly. It was Leonora, her mother, and not just her. I'm allergic to the whole package, she told herself; Willow Court, Gwen, the entire set-up. Every time I have to visit the place, it's the same: the white snake tightens the scaly loops of his body around bits of my head, and I can feel my heart beating strangely too. She smiled. Usually, after only a few hours in her mother's presence Rilla recovered sufficiently to function in a more or less normal manner, but there was no getting away from it: the prospect of visiting Leonora filled her with something approaching dread.What was she afraid of? She looked around her bathroom, her haven, her lair. It was the room she loved best in the whole world. Her small house (How clever of you, darling, to find such a sweet little place. And in Chelsea! Leonora had said at the time) was, depending on your point of view, either sadly in need of total redecoration or the height of bohemian chic. Rilla herself thought that she and her house went well together. We're past our best, she often thought, but we've still got what it takes, oh yes. At least she had managed actually to buy a house of her own, which was more than could be said for Gwen, herelder sister, who had never lived anywhere but at Willow Court, under Leonora's gaze. Rilla couldn't for the life of her understand how her sister survived. She seemed happy enough, but you could never really tell with Gwen. Maybe she'd been dying to get away for years and not said a word. The martyrdom involved would have been typical, but in all probability Gwen had grown used to her own captivity. If anyone had asked her why she and her husband chose to spend their days in the depths of Wiltshire, she'd doubtless have murmured something about what a privilege it was to be entrusted with the care of the paintings of their grandfather, Ethan Walsh (the Walsh Collection was what she called it) and so boringly on and on. She wouldn't mention that her constant attendance on Leonora and her lifelong devotion to the house and property made it the most natural thing in the world for her to inherit Willow Court when Leonora died. Well, Gwen was welcome to it. Rilla would have regarded having to stay there forever as some kind of prison sentence, but was aware that most people didn't share her taste.For most people, she thought, read my sister and my mother. Why should I care what they think? I'm forty-eight years old and my bathroom is my business and no one else's. She looked at the candles on the long shelf beside the mirror. There were half a dozen of them, and she lit them every time she bathed, night or morning. The small, plain candlesticks that held them were made of opaque glass: blue and pink, and a pearly white that Rilla liked best of all. No one else saw the point, and how could she ever explain the lift in her heart when she stared at the moving flames, or how the shapes of the coloured wax growing into weird encrustations on the candlesticks pleased her, and how their faint fragrance spoke to her of peace and beauty and every sort of soothing? And the plants. There was a jungle of them above the basin and on the windowsill, and the greens (with almost every leaf a different shade, some blueish, some tinged with yellow, or brown, some striped, others streaked or blotched or spotted) made a garden for her, and one, moreover, that needed little attention because she let it run riot deliberately, revelling in the fronds and tendrils that spilled over the sides of their pots and trailed down past the tiles, touching the side of the bath.Gwen had been the first to see the bathroom after it was redone,and she hadn't needed to say a word. It's me, Rilla thought. There must be something wrong with me if I can remember it all so clearly from years and years ago. How she'd stared at the bath and basin in silence, then turned and said, 'Are you sure it's not just a little too much?'Rilla had been madly in love with Jon then, just about to marry him, and everything she did was exuberant, happy, full of passion. Jon Frederick was a pop star, and while he was never, even at the height of his fame, quite at the very top, they'd been one of London's bright young couples in those days. She'd just been in a movie, Night Creatures, which was a silly sort of thing but at least it had paid well, and urged on by Jon she'd commissioned the artist Curtis Manstrum to paint the bath and basin. He was famous for his fountains and had perfected a technique of covering basins with highly coloured decorations which could withstand years of water falling on them. He'd done such a splendid job on Rilla's bathroom that a magazine came and photographed it and for a while it was the talk of London - the talk, anyway, of those people in London who made a habit of talking about such things.'What's the matter with it?' Rilla had answered Gwen, and for the first time she saw everything through her sister's eyes: blue and green and pink in Matisse-inspired swirls that made you feel dizzy just to look at them, covering every inch of porcelain, dazzling the eye with their singing brightness.'Well ...' Gwen hestitated. She doesn't know the right words, Rilla thought. She's the granddaughter of a famous artist and she still hasn't a clue. She has all those paintings all around her every day and she can't bloody think of a single intelligent thing to say. In the end, and only because she'd been asked directly, Gwen murmured, 'The colours are rather strong, aren't they? And all those patterns look a bit fussy to me. Over the top. Don't look so crestfallen, Rilla! You did ask. And it's not me who is going to be bathing here, is it?''No, right,' Rilla said. 'I saw what you had done in your ensuite bathroom. Peachy pink as far as the eye can see; peach basin, peach bath and peach His and Hers towels folded neatly on the heated towel rail.''There's no need to be nasty,' said Gwen.Rilla had bitten back the 'Fuck you, too,' which came into her head and quickly led the way out so that her sister's delicate tastes should no longer be affronted. To this day she could remember how Gwen's words had made her feel in the wrong, exposed as someone altogether too noisy who called attention to herself. Disapproved of.So why did she keep visiting? Why did she not distance herself from the whole damn thing? Love, as usual, was the answer. Twined in among all the other feelings that filled her whenever she thought of her family, entangled in everything, bound in so strongly that to try to cut it out would destroy her utterly, was the love she felt for her mother and her sister. She couldn't help it. All that nonsense about blood being thicker than water was, it appeared, no more than the truth. It was as though Leonora and Gwen were parts of herself, parts that she found difficult and irritating most of the time, but still pieces of the fabric. Also, there were things she remembered from her childhood which still shone, after everything, and you didn't throw such memories away in a hurry. You kept hold of them as a kind of talisman to guard against the others, the things you couldn't bear to think about.Rilla sat up and squeezed a spongeful of water on to her shoulder. They love me too, she thought, even though they disapprove of me, Gwen and Mother. Even if I'm not quite the sort of person they'd mix with if I wasn't their blood relative, they, too, probably need me in their lives. She wondered whether or not Gwen still recalled an earlier bathroom incident from when they were little. Rilla hadn't forgotten. She'd taken her felt-tipped pens one day and drawn all over the white walls. It wasn't an accident. She could remember thinking: the walls will be prettier with fishes all over them, and she'd gone and taken the felt-tips out of the nursery and brought them into the bathroom and spread them out on the side, by the sink, and then she'd set about making lovely fish outlines and colouring them in carefully with her best shades of turquoise, purple and orange. They looked beautiful. How happy Mummy would be when she saw them swimming there, across the wall! Rilla was only seven and she couldn't reach very high up even if she stood on the chair, but there were lots and lots of fishes and she'd added some seaweed too, otherwise it wouldn't be the proper sea. When she'd finished she called Gwen to come and have alook. Gwen went white all over. The colour left her face, then came back again, all red and blushing, as though she were ashamed.'She'll be angry, Rilla. You've spoiled the whole wall.''No, I haven't,' Rilla laughed. 'I've made it pretty. Look at the fishes! Don't you like it?''It's horrible and I'm going to tell Mummy. You're going to be in such trouble. Wait and see.'Rilla got out of the bath and found one of the enormous soft towels that covered her from head to toe. She smiled. I was in trouble too, she thought. No supper that night, and then no visit to the circus, and watching out of the window as Gwen went off with Mother in the car to see the clowns and the elephants. How I wept and sobbed and begged, but Mother was quite unmoved. You have to learn, Rilla dear, she'd said. Before you go galumphing into things and being naughty because you haven't thought properly. Even aft...

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0752842846
• ISBN 13: 9780752842844
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 512