Life_ An Exploded Diagram - Mal Peet [117]
“Yes, of course.”
So anyway, Frankie said, after eighteen months of triangular hell, Nicole went to Montreal to visit her parents. She never came back. She wouldn’t allow Gerard a divorce on the grounds that she was a catheter.
“Christ, Clem, did I just say catheter? I meant Catholic.”
I thought, She’s been drinking. What time did she say it was in England?
I said, “Interesting Freudian slip.”
“No. Catheters have been a major concern of mine, these last few months.”
“Right,” I said.
So Gerard had soldiered on, pretending that the separation was temporary. His wife’s parents were unwell and needed her. She was looking after their business interests over there. The story varied, then became uninteresting. Gossip and conjecture moved on elsewhere. Gerard started drinking heavily.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Your mother didn’t take you with her?”
“No. She left me, too.”
But, Frankie said, that was okay. She wouldn’t have wanted to go back to Montreal, anyway. As it turned out, Nicole moved to California within a year. Frankie had, she said, married the Chamberlain guy so as to put an end to “the boomeranging back and forth across the Atlantic” between her parents. Then, when Clementine was three years old, Nicole had died in a road accident near San Diego. In her will, she’d left everything to Frankie. A lot of money. Much more than Frankie had expected.
I checked my watch again. Oh, my God, five past eight already. I tucked the phone between my shoulder and my ear and started fumbling drawings into my portfolio.
“Frankie, listen, I’m sorry, but I have to . . .”
“I’ve thought about you a lot, Clem,” she said, out of nowhere, stopping me in my tracks. “More than you could imagine. Especially since being back here. Revisiting the places where we used to meet.”
I felt myself welling up again, like an inconsolable child.
I said (why, for God’s sake?), “Have you been to Hazeborough?”
“Yes.”
I waited.
“I . . . I didn’t recognize it. I didn’t remember it. I can’t remember anything about . . . about that day. Actually, that’s not quite true. I do remember that morning, cycling down the back lane away from the manor. I can even remember what I was wearing. Then nothing until I woke up in the hospital. I wish more than anything that I could remember. I thought that going there might bring it back.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, Clem. It does to me.”
There was a sort of challenge in the way she said it. But there was no way I was going to respond, even if I’d known how to. And time was pressing.
“So, Frankie, what will you do now? What’s next?”
“I’m staying here, of course.” She sounded surprised by my question. “The estate is my responsibility now.”
“And is that a responsibility you want?”
“Oh, yes. Very much so. In fact, that’s why I called you. Or, rather, it’s one of the reasons I called you.”
“Really? How so?”
I heard her take in a long breath and let it out.
“I intend to restore it, Clem. Make it beautiful again. Put everything back.”
“Uh, right. What does that mean, exactly?”
She started to talk faster, more urgently. For which I was grateful.
“You know what my father did to this place. He, he scoured it. Leveled it. Trashed it. Turned it into a prairie, a wasteland. It’s ugly. I hate it.”
“Our fathers,” I said. “Fathers, plural. Yours and mine.”
“Yes,” she said. “George bulldozed everything Gerard pointed at. But I’m going to put right what they did. I’m going to replant trees, hedges. Copses. Woods. Dig out the ditches and ponds they filled in. I’m going to bring birdsong back to this place before I die. I don’t care if it costs every penny I own.”
“Frankie . . .”
“I’m going to re-create Franklins, Clem. I’m going to plant pines up there. I’m going to rebuild the barn.”
I took hold of the phone again. I sat down.
“What?” I sort of gurgled the word, I think.
“You heard me.”
“Frankie . . .”
“What? You think I’m crazy?”
“No. No, I . . . But, you know. You’re talking about turning the