Trevay without Sennen
The black void left by Sennen was impossible to avoid, yet too painful to explore.
‘How could she leave Ella and Henry?’ Bill, staring out of their bedroom window, looking out over the roofs of Trevay and down to the sea.
He was like a wounded bear. He could neither sit down nor stand up without doing the opposite in moments.
‘Please, Bill …’ Adela tried to soothe him. ‘We need to stay calm, for Henry and Ella. They are missing her terribly. Henry woke up at two this morning, sobbing his little heart out.’
‘How could she do it, Adela? We have never judged her. Always loved her.’ He wiped his broken eyes. ‘Is she even still alive?’
Adela came towards him and put her arm around his shoulder. ‘She’s a young woman breaking free from her life. She needs to find herself.’ He dropped his head onto her shoulder and sobbed. She stroked his head in the same way she had stroked Henry’s just a few hours before. ‘She’ll come back.’
He broke away from her, angry. ‘We were too soft on her. Should have been tougher. When she first told us about Henry, I should have shaken sense into her. How can a teenager deal with a baby? We should have demanded to know who the father is. Some little toerag out there is running around Trevay laughing at us, at her, at Henry.’ His voice was rising, the words almost choking him.
‘Darling, please – don’t let the children hear you.’ Adela put a hand on his arm but he shrugged her off.
‘Just scraped her O Levels. Will miss her A levels. She’s cruel and stupid.’ He sat on the bed, his head in his hands. ‘Where did we go wrong? I honestly thought I knew her, but I don’t. She was laughing at us. Using us all along. She’s ruined her life and the lives of Henry and Ella.’ He stood up and walked to the window, banging his hands down on the sill. ‘I never want to see her again. I will never let her back into this house. Never. It’s Henry and Ella we must focus on now.’
Adela clutched him. ‘Stop it, Bill. Stop it. You’re hurting. You don’t mean those things. She’s Sennen. Our daughter. You love her. We all love her. She’ll come back to us.’
Bill looked at her with sneering pity, ‘Not while I’m alive.’
‘Bill!’ Adela was frightened. ‘That’s a terrible thing to say and untrue. She will come back and you will be alive and we will be a family again.’
He crumpled then. Adela watched the man she loved break down in front of her. She put her arms out to him and he came to her like a child. He clung to her, his whole body shuddering with every sob.
When Rosemary returned from Spain, without Sennen, and came knocking at their door with the presents for the children, Adela was even more worried for Bill. He took the toys and put them in the dustbin. He sat for hours in Sennen’s room crying and finally burnt all the photos they had of her.
The doctor arranged for grief counselling, which Bill refused to attend, and it fell to Adela to care for him. She quietly carried the burden of the children, her husband, the house and her own desolation, never allowing the internal scream that deafened her to escape her lips.
At Christmas Sennen sent a postcard from Madrid. The message read,
Dear Mum, Poppa, Henry and Ella,
Happy Christmas. I’m okay. Don’t worry.
Lots of love
Sennen
Adela, always the first up in the house, picked it off the mat and read it. She never told Bill. It would upset him too much. She didn’t have the strength to face that. Greedily, she kept it for herself.
Sennen never forgot their birthdays. Each year, from somewhere in Europe, cards would arrive. All with the briefest of messages and always ending with ‘I’m okay. Don’t worry.’
Adela kept them all for herself, and the years passed. Henry and Ella got through primary school well enough and were happy popular children. Ella had a real talent for art, which Bill delighted in. She was the apple of his eye and wherever he was Adela would usually find her with him, chatting and laughing.
Henry was a good boy, but quieter, with a quick temper. He was good at maths and accumulating money. At school he ran an illicit tuck shop, selling penny sweets he’d bought from the newsagents for twice as much in the playground. The head teacher, whilst acknowledging his entrepreneurship, had to ban him, but it didn’t stop Henry: he simply sold the sweets outside the school gate, and therefore outside the school’s jurisdiction, instead.
Adela had always run a small ad hoc painting school for young artists, providing bed and board as well as classes. Sennen had hated having to share her parents with them and after she left, Adela stopped doing it.
It was Henry who suggested she should start it up again. ‘How much would you pay me to help?’ he asked.
‘It depends,’ she said, thinking about what needed to be done. ‘I shall have to give the spare bedrooms a lick of paint and maybe make some new curtains.’
‘I will paint. You and Ella can do the curtains,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll do it for twenty pounds a room.’
‘Ten pounds and you have a deal,’ laughed Adela.
‘Ten pounds for the small rooms. Fifteen for the big ones. Including Mum’s.’ He held his hand out to seal the deal.
‘No. No, not Sennen’s,’ Adela replied.
‘Granny, Mum’s room has been a shrine for too long.’
‘It is not a shrine.’ Adela was firm.
‘It is a shrine, Granny. If Mum ever came back, she’d think she’d never been away. And anyway, Ella would like that bedroom.’
‘Would she?’
Henry nodded. ‘Yep. She’s almost thirteen and her room is tiny. She needs the space to grow up in.’
Adela sighed. ‘Do you want a cup of tea? I’m going to put the kettle on for Poppa.’
‘Don’t change the subject,’ Henry said gently. ‘I was allowed a bigger room when I was twelve. Don’t baby her.’
‘I’ll ask your grandfather.’
Bill was accepting of the idea. ‘She’s been gone over a decade. It’s time to move on, Adela.’
‘It’s the last bit of her we have. It feels so final,’ Adela said sadly.
‘No, Adela. We have Henry and Ella to think of.’
Ella was delighted. ‘Can I choose the curtains, Granny?’
‘We’ll go into Wadebridge and have a look.’
‘Can I have Cath Kidston roses and matching wallpaper?’
‘We’ll see.’
It didn’t take long to erase Sennen. Her posters, books, old make-up and dusty shoes were sorted into rubbish or charity piles and Bill filled his car and drove them away for good.
Adela felt winded, dizzy and teary but she kept a cheery face and only twice had to go to the end of the small garden to cry silent tears.
A week later and the room was transformed. Ella had kept her mother’s old patchwork bed quilt, stitched by Adela’s mother when Sennen was a toddler, and her old teddy, Buster, but apart from those two things, no trace of Sennen remained.
Bill and Adela took in four art students and set up a new daily routine. Adela began to enjoy cooking the 8 a.m. breakfasts for seven and Bill started to shake off the malaise which had dogged him since Sennen’s disappearance. He began to lead stimulating conversations about art, politics and religion around their old kitchen table.
On wet days the students would have lessons in painting and drawing with Adela, or working clay by hand or on the wheel with Bill.
Once or twice a week there would be outings to Bodmin Moor, the cliffs around Trevay, or the beach of Shellsand Bay.
Laughter was again spontaneous in the house.
Henry did well in his GCSEs and was opting for Economics, Maths and Business Studies for his A Levels. In contrast, Ella excelled in English and her short stories were achieving some acclaim in the school magazine, but it was her painting that was her strength. From canvases of wild seas whipped by fierce winds, to small and delicate watercolours of field mice and wild flowers.
Lying in bed one night, Adela with Bill’s arm around her and her head on his chest, said, ‘I hope we’ve been good parents to Ella and Henry.’
Bill stroked her hair. ‘Better than with Sennen, you mean?’
‘I hope so.’
‘Perhaps we were too good to Sennen.’
‘I think of her every day.’
‘I know.’
‘I hope she’s happy.’
‘That’s all we can hope for.’
‘I’ve never stopped loving her.’
‘There was a time I thought I hated her, but now I can remember her with love.’
‘Do you think we’ll ever see her again?’
Bill inhaled deeply and Adela felt her head move against his ribs. ‘I really don’t know. But we have each other, Adela. And Henry and Ella. You’ve been so selfless with them. I was no help, was I.’
She pulled herself up and looked into his loving, familiar eyes. ‘Do you regret burning her photos?’
He nodded. ‘I was not in my right mind.’
‘I know. But we pulled together.’
‘Little did I know that the girl I fell in love with at harvest time would be so strong. It’s been hard for you.’
Adela kissed him softly. ‘Love at first sight for me.’
‘Foolish girl.’ He smiled at her.
‘That’s me.’
‘Don’t ever leave me, will you?’
‘No.’
He hugged her. ‘I love you Adela.’
‘I love you, Bill.’
Adela woke early. Bill was still sleeping so quietly she left him to make herself a cup of tea. She loved mornings like this. It was late September and the house was slumbering around her. She opened the back door and went out into the small courtyard to sit and drink her tea. The air was warm and fresh. She filled her lungs with it and leant back in her seat to feel the early sunshine on her face.
She thought about Bill. He had been so badly hurt when Sennen had left, and suffered so deeply. But now the Bill of old was coming back. She could see a future for them both now. Not the one they had imagined, but there was a future. They were still young, only in their fifties. Henry and Ella would be leaving home in a few years and then the world was their oyster. She’d always been keen on taking a cruise. Bill laughed at her. ‘How very middle class of you, darling.’
But she knew that if she asked him to join her, he’d come like a shot.
Bill wanted to keep chickens. She had always said no, but, why not? Life was for grabbing with both hands. Sennen had done it. Why not them?
She finished her tea and went back into the kitchen to get breakfast started. The smell of coffee and sausages was always enough to get everyone out of bed and around her table. Bill was the only one absent.
‘Ella, darling,’ said Adela, ‘go and get Poppa, would you?’
‘I’ll go,’ said Henry, ‘I’ve forgotten my phone anyway.’
When he returned a few minutes later, ashen and alone, Adela knew.
She put the milk jug she was carrying down and flew past Henry and up the stairs.
Bill was lying on his side as he always did. He was pale, but still warm to her touch. She stroked his forehead and kissed his lips before lovingly closing his sightless eyes.