Claire Kendal - I Spy

And that is how I came to hear Peggy and Milly talking together when I was back home in St Ives, two months after my disastrous final MI5 interview. As soon as I saw that the laundry room light was on and Peggy and Milly had gone in, I ran downstairs, slipped into the garden, squeezed through the rip in the fence Milly and I always used as a not-very-secret passage, and flattened myself against a tangle of Peggy’s honeysuckle.

‘She’s so deflated,’ Peggy was saying, ‘since she’s come home. I think she’s embarrassed about the reason – she can’t bear to look your father in the eye.’

I’d had to say something about why MI5 didn’t give me the job, because Peggy and James and Milly knew I’d got to the final stage of the recruitment process. There was no disguising the outcome.

‘She was brave to tell us, Mum,’ Milly said. ‘And fucking stupid.’

‘You don’t need to use that language, Milly.’

But Milly was right. I had been stupid to reveal the truth about the way I’d messed up. What had possessed me to give them the details? Perhaps I did it because it was the most un-spy-like action I could take, a kind of embracing of my failure. It was an act of self-sabotage I decided never to repeat.

‘Sorry.’ Milly didn’t sound at all sorry. ‘People say all sorts of shit.’

‘Honestly, Milly,’ Peggy said.

‘She wanted us to see her real self,’ said Milly. ‘To see her at her worst and still love her. She knows she’s not going to save the world by fucking someone.’

I imagined Peggy rolling her eyes in weariness at Milly’s continued swearing. ‘She’d never have actually done it,’ Peggy said. ‘Those recruiters were fools to believe she would.’

The scent of honeysuckle was choking me, mixed with the nearby roses I had been trying not to stab myself with. Somehow, though, a thorn caught my finger and my eyes welled up as I sucked away the blood and hoped that Peggy was right.

I know the day is going to be bad as soon as I see the kingfisher. He is so perfect, captured beneath the surface of the ice. He stops me in my run as if I have slammed into an invisible wall. Just like him.

I peer over the railings of the small bridge at the frozen water below, for a closer look. He must have been fishing, when the water thickened and trapped him. The vivid blue of his tail, and the dots on the top of his head, are clear beneath the thin layer above him. He is beautifully preserved in his ice cube. There is no sign he fought it, with those wings cupping his body so peacefully, his beak closed and pointed straight ahead.

I cannot bear to look any more, and if I don’t get going I will be late for my visit to my grandmother at the nursing home. So I tear my eyes away and resume my run, trying to tell myself it isn’t a bad omen, but knowing deep down that it must be.

My grandmother has refused to get out of bed today, so Katarina takes me upstairs to her room. The door is open a crack, but not wide enough for me to see in. The sharp scent of lemon disinfectant makes the inside of my nose prickle.

‘Who’s that!’ my grandmother says.

I push the door wide open. ‘It’s me, Grandma.’

‘Who are you? I don’t know you.’ My grandmother rattles the safety rails of her bed like an angry child. ‘You’re not Princess Anne.’

‘No. Sorry. It’s just me. Just Holly.’ It isn’t possible for my grandmother to call me anything else. I moved her from the nursing home in St Ives to this one in Bath twenty months ago, and I told Katarina and the others who look after her here that Holly has always been my grandmother’s nickname for me, but that my actual name is Helen.

‘Go away. Go get Princess Anne.’

‘After I’ve spent a little time with you.’ I bend to kiss my grandmother’s cheek. She is wearing the lilac nightdress and matching bed jacket that I asked Katarina to put under the tree for her. Katarina has arranged the pillows so that my grandmother is sitting up.

I move a slippery vinyl chair closer to the bed. I lift one of her hands. The skin is loose, and so thin it tears when she bruises. The surface is a jungle of liver spots and protruding green veins. Her fingers are bent as the gnarled branches of a weathered tree. ‘Happy Christmas, Grandma.’

‘Is it Christmas?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is that why you’re wearing that ridiculous red hat?’

‘Yes. Katarina gave it to me. There’s going to be a lovely party downstairs. Will you let me help you dress? We can go together.’

‘I had a feeling something was happening today.’ She grimaces.

‘It’s also my birthday, Grandma.’

‘How old are you then?’

‘Twenty-seven.’

‘Have you seen my Christmas present?’

‘You’re wearing it. It’s a pretty colour on you.’

She examines her sleeve as if it were covered in bird poo. ‘Not this.’ She stresses this to make her disgust clear. ‘My new photograph.’

The frame sits on her bedside table, beside a plastic jug of water with a matching tumbler in an unfortunate shade of urine-yellow. Almost immediately, my grandmother blocks it from my view, lurching her upper body to the side to try to grab at the photograph with her arthritic fingers. There is a crash, and a cry. ‘Blast! Oh, oh oh!’ She is screaming in frustration.

‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’ I am out of my chair and rushing to the other side of the bed. Water has sloshed everywhere. The jug has bounced onto the linoleum floor.

‘Don’t be upset.’ I am already in her efficient wet room with its accessible shower and toilet and sink, grabbing a vinegar-smelling towel. I retrieve the frame from beneath the bed where it landed, and wrap it in the towel.

‘Is Princess Anne all right?’ my grandmother says.

I can feel my face creasing in puzzlement as I sweep the towel over the floor with a foot. I study the image inside the frame. ‘Oh my God.’

‘Don’t talk that way. You’re a heathen – you cannot be my granddaughter.’

‘But it really is Princess Anne.’

‘Of course it is. Kindly answer my question, please.’ My grandmother makes the words kindly and please sound like insults. ‘I asked if Princess Anne is all right.’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t hear you.’

Her ears are still as sharp as the wolf’s, but I repeat the word. ‘Yes.’

‘No cracks?’

‘Not even a hairline fracture.’ I cannot tear my eyes from the picture, which has been cut from an article that appeared in a local newspaper last September. Three whole months ago. All that time, I was living my poor imitation of a normal life, not knowing this was out there.

Princess Anne’s skirt and jacket are sewn from maroon and navy tartan. My grandmother is wearing her favourite dress. A background of dried earth, sprinkled with flowers the shade of wet mud. This is an adventurous pattern and pallet for my grandmother. Her white wisps of hair look lit from within.