by Janet Ellis
Chapter 79
‘I’d say “race you”, but it’s all bloody uphill,’ I said, walking away. I could feel where Adrian had touched me as if his hands were still there. Didn’t your skin renew itself constantly? In time, then, there’d be no trace of him on my body. I wondered how long it would be before I had sloughed him completely. We passed a pub, its door open to release the thumping jukebox music into the night. Adrian joined in. ‘If you want it, here it is, come and get it,’ he sang. ‘Make your mind up fast.’ The young man’s words in his mouth as he sang along made him look older and more solid. He sang flat, too. From quite a distance away down the street, I could see a bright spill of light in Ocean Cottage’s porch. As I got closer, I could make out the woman standing there, shielding her eyes as if she looked into a bright light, not into darkness. I saw her hold her glasses up to her face and then drop them as she confirmed what she suspected. They glinted as they dangled from the chain.
‘Mrs Thomas?’ she said, clasping her hands together. ‘There was a telephone call for you. A Mrs Furlow.’
It was a moment before I registered Bridget’s surname. I felt as if I were falling very fast down a bottomless hole, with nothing to hold on to.
‘What did she say?’ Adrian said, mercifully steady.
‘She said it was urgent.’ The woman looked earnestly at him, as if he were better qualified to receive any information than his so-called wife.
I gasped and shook my head, trying to concentrate.
‘She wants you to call her.’ The woman sounded less confident now, faced with the consequences of her words. ‘As soon as possible,’ she said, with a wobble in her voice. ‘I said did she want to speak to Mr Thomas, if he came back first. She said she didn’t think so.’
‘Where’s your telephone?’ said Adrian.
The woman pointed to where one was mounted on the wall, above a little podium. I wondered why anyone would think it was better to have to take a step up to make a call.
‘No, no. Where’s your telephone?’ Adrian said. ‘We’re not fishing about for loose change.’
We followed her into a cramped kitchen. It was very recently vacated. A cigarette stubbed out in the ashtray was only half smoked and there was a full mug of tea beside it. A newspaper lay folded open at the puzzle page. The three of us had to stand very close together.
‘Here you are,’ said the woman, meek now. She patted the hard back of a wooden chair as though she offered a comfy armchair.
I fixed my gaze on the blue, rectangular telephone, anticipating its cruelty.
Adrian’s chair squealed on the hard lino as he pulled it up to the table. ‘And some privacy?’ he said to the woman, smiling at her without any warmth.
She sniffed and picked up the newspaper from the table. ‘I’ll be next door,’ she said.
I lifted the receiver. It smelled faintly of TCP. I replaced it at once. ‘I don’t know . . .’ I said, but it was more to myself than to Adrian. I opened my handbag and found the slip of paper with Bridget’s number on it.
Adrian took it from my trembling hands and dialled. When he handed the telephone back to me, I turned away from him as the call connected.
‘8788?’ said Bridget, from the other end of the map of the country in my head.
For a moment, I couldn’t speak. ‘It’s me,’ I said eventually, and tears ran down my cheeks.
‘Oh, Marion.’ Bridget sighed my name on a downward fall. Just tell me, I wanted to shout. ‘It’s Eddie,’ she said. ‘Eddie’s—’
The Trimphone receiver was too insubstantial to hold it tightly. I caught sight of Adrian and for a split second I couldn’t remember who he was.
‘He went riding,’ Bridget said. ‘Michael said he’d wanted to go and—’
‘Why was he riding?’ I said.
‘Stop shouting, Marion,’ said Bridget calmly. ‘I’m trying to tell you. He’d wanted to go to the stables, apparently, and Sally put him on a horse that was a bit big for him and it bolted and he fell. Concussion. He might have a fractured skull. He’s still unconscious. They’re keeping him under observation, but—’
‘Who’s Sally?’ I was trembling with anger. Which woman had put my son anywhere near a horse, let alone a wild one?
‘Your daughter,’ said Bridget, with the reasonable tone of one who understands how distress might take a person.
‘Her name’s Sarah.’ This miserable wrongness connected me to my daughter as immediately and strongly as if there were still a cord between us. Bridget’s voice squeaked again from the receiver but I put the phone to my chest to muffle her.
Adrian took it from me and continued the conversation, repeating numbers and the name of a hospital and thanking Bridget. He reached for a pen and paper as he spoke, writing everything down in handwriting that would never become familiar. The nearby stove was spattered with grey grease spots and hardened dribbles of something brown. I’d have to telephone Michael. He’d have to walk down miles of hospital corridors to speak to me on a public telephone. The nurses would gossip, I’d have done so myself. Yes, he’s all alone. The wife had to be summoned. She was staying with a friend, or so she said.
Ignoring Adrian, who was leaning back in his chair, tipping it so that the front legs rose a few inches from the floor, I dialled the number. It rang for several minutes. I could hardly speak to the nurse who answered, she sounded distracted and distant. When I heard Michael’s voice, I breathed out with such a rush of relief that the little note on the table in front of me lifted in the air.
‘How long will it take you to get home?’ Michael said at once.
I winced. I could hardly wait here for as long as it was supposed to take me to travel back from Yorkshire. ‘About two hours,’ I said, wondering if my voice changed when I told the truth.
When Eddie was three, we’d all gone to the seaside. We were miles from anywhere, or at least a long way from the car, when Eddie had declared he couldn’t walk any more. I had tried to carry him but staggered under his weight. Michael had taken him from me and held him as easily as if he were a lightweight jacket he’d draped over one arm. I wanted to be carried now, lifted up like the Baby Jesus on St Christopher’s shoulders.
‘Where did it happen?’ I said.
‘Castle Field,’ Michael said.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the galloping horse, Eddie’s inert body and Sarah kneeling by his side. ‘Has he come round?’ I said.
There was a pause, I heard Michael catch his breath. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Oh, Marion. He looks so small.’
‘And Sarah?’ I folded and unfolded the piece of paper as he spoke.
‘Sobbing,’ Michael said. ‘Saying it’s all her fault. She wants you.’
I remembered Sarah lying in the crook of my arm, the bottle of milk emptying with noisy regularity as she fed, her baby toes twisting and circling. I wanted to fill my arms with her again. I wanted to smooth her hair from the face that was almost my own. My heart had swollen inside me and was forcing its way out through my throat.
‘Come home,’ said Michael and hung up.
‘Well?’ Adrian said, righting his chair and leaning forward. He was like an actor who hadn’t been in the scene until this point, but now turned over the pages of his script to see, with delight, his own name. ‘You need to go home, right? It won’t take long to pack, will it? I’ll grab my bag and get the car.’ A wireless began playing nearby; the woman had obviously tired of respectful silence.
‘I’ll get a taxi to the station,’ I said. ‘I don’t suppose I’ve missed the last train.’
He began to protest, but I shook my head. ‘Okay,’ he said, holding up his hands in acquiescence.
I wondered, briefly, if I should kiss him, but it was too much of an effort to stand up. He’d had all of me now that he would ever get. I heard him run up the stairs. Only moments later he bounced back down. I sensed him pausing outside the door, but his script didn’t include a proper goodbye. The front door slammed.
I went up to the bedroom. Someone, presumably the landlady, had smoothed the bedcovers and made little triangles of the corners. The idea of waking up beside Adrian seemed ridiculous. Our time together was tiny, like a scene depicted inside a matchbox. I closed the clasps of my suitcase. The only thing I’d taken out of it was my nightdress. I bumped the case down the narrow stairs and knocked on the kitchen door. The woman squeezed her way out into the hallway. She wore a brown and orange pinafore over her clothing.
‘Excuse me, Mrs Thomas.’ The woman smoothed her apron as she spoke. The nylon crackled and clung to her. ‘I do hope it wasn’t bad news?’ She couldn’t disguise how very much she wanted to know.
I was tempted to lie, but I’d used up my lying for now. ‘I need to go home,’ I said. ‘I expect Ade – I expect Mr Thomas told you we’d have to leave?’
‘Yes. No, he didn’t. Has he already gone, then?’ In Latin you can preface a question with a word that lets everyone know what you expect in answer. Non for ‘no’ or nonne for ‘yes’. This was a nonne question, all right.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Do you have a train timetable, please?’ I should have let him drop me at the station at least. But I hadn’t wanted the shared space of his car, of his wife’s car, for even that brief journey. The woman produced a tiny book from among the directories. There were still two more trains I could get, thank God. ‘Is it far to the station?’ I said.
‘No, it’s not. The thing is’ – the woman moved her lips as if she was chewing something – ‘the thing is, Mrs Thomas, the room’s not been paid for.’
I laughed. I wished I could thank Adrian for this last, perfect gift. The woman bent over a notebook and wrote a bill. She handed it to me with solemnity. I took it with similar care, read it and scrunched it into a little ball. I threw it into the air and swatted it with my palm. We watched it roll down the hall and come to rest beside the skirting. I handed over the money and the woman slid it into the front pocket of her apron.
She pulled out a slip of paper. ‘I think this might be yours,’ she said uncertainly. ‘I found it on the floor in your room, when I was turning down.’
I recognised the size and shape of the pad we kept in the kitchen. There was a capital ‘M’ on the front of the folded sheet. It must have been tucked into my suitcase and fallen out during my unsuccessful attempt to put my nightdress under a pillow. ‘PLEASE COME HOME MUMMY’ I read. The writing was unfamiliar and the letters were oddly shaped. ‘Thank you,’ I said, keeping my head down, so that the woman couldn’t see my face and the threat of tears.
‘Do you like jigsaw puzzles?’ I said.
‘Oh, I don’t mind them,’ she answered cautiously. ‘I’ve a nephew who sends me one sometimes. Country scenes mostly.’
‘I’m a missing piece.’ I picked up my case. ‘I’m going home to slot back in. There’s a space where I should be.’
The woman frowned. ‘It’s annoying when you lose a piece,’ she said. ‘Do you want a little tip? My nephew told me not to start at the corners. He says that’s what everyone does, but it leaves you with so much to do. He says you should begin with the difficult areas first, like the sky, so you feel you’ve really made progress when you come to the rest.’
‘That’s very good advice,’ I said. ‘Thank you. Which way is the station?’ The woman took my arm and led me to the door. ‘It’s not far. Turn right and then follow the road. Mind how you go,’ she said, her tone surprisingly kind.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I will.’
Not a single car came past me. No headlights illuminated the road and the streetlights were sparse. I stumbled on uneven paving and swapped my bags from hand to hand, to lighten the load. A longing for my children, so fierce it was almost palpable, weighed me down. They seemed like the survivors of a blast, lying untended in the open air. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said aloud. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ I couldn’t undo what I’d done. There were no bargains I could make to change things or alter the course of the future. The past was set in stone, a great monolith visible from wherever I stood, eternally recording my stupidity and recklessness. My eyes filled with tears and for a moment I couldn’t see anything at all. I followed the road to the station without looking back.
Chapter 80
Eddie couldn’t understand what had happened to his arms. They were pinned to his sides and too heavy to lift. He couldn’t move them, even though he needed them to take the pain away from his head. He wanted to scoop it out, like getting the last bit of yolk from the egg. People appeared in front of him and disappeared again as if he was watching the slides he projected on to his ceiling. Sarah looked scared in a way that made him feel terrified too. His father’s face loomed close enough to touch, if he’d been able to move. Nurses’ voices were low and firm as they encouraged him to open his mouth to admit a thermometer. Nobody asked him to do anything else. His real life, and most of the people in it, seemed to have vanished to make way for this new state.
When he’d had his eyes tested, the glasses man had held a huge magnifying glass in front of him and twirled it like a conjuror’s wand. He’d demanded to know which side was better for seeing the chart he pointed at. Weighed down by the owl-eyes spectacles that the glasses man made him wear, and not very sure of his letters anyway, Eddie couldn’t tell what he was supposed to say, but he was sure there was only one right answer. He’d felt so put on the spot, so afraid of speaking at all in case he was wrong, that he’d cried. The opposite of that experience was happening as he lay on this bed. If he even so much as groaned when they spoke to him, they were happy. His father wept so hard that Eddie wanted to ask him if he was dead. He thought he probably wasn’t, but he knew he’d had a very bad accident. He was glad he was still a bit alive, because he didn’t want any of them to be able to look at his dead body if he couldn’t see what it looked like, too. He wanted to sleep. Very much. He’d try to wait until his mother came, before he slept. He’d really, really try.
Chapter 81
When I arrived at the house, Michael didn’t move to embrace me. I put my suitcase down.
He stared at it. ‘Just so you know,’ he said, ‘Eddie’s awake. Only just, and very groggy.’
‘Thank God,’ I said. I could allow myself only the smallest sliver of relief. I didn’t ask Michael any questions, I felt I had no right to know more.
‘We’ll go in the morning,’ he said. ‘It’s outside visiting hours, of course, but I’ve asked if I can bring you.’ He looked at me for the first time. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said. ‘It’s been very frightening.’ He didn’t mention where I might have been, he hadn’t pretended to enquire after Bridget. He was as polite to me as if I were a visiting relative. His courtesy alone would have broken my heart, if it wasn’t in pieces already.
I crept into Sarah’s room. The covers were pulled up almost over her head and only a dark spill of hair was visible. Propped on the pillow was a little plastic horse, the sort that she’d once spent hours playing with.
When she opened her eyes and saw me, she gasped. ‘I didn’t know when you were coming,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to frighten Eddie. But I didn’t mean to hurt him.’ Her voice was light with fear.
‘I know. You wanted to hurt me. I know,’ I said. I started to cry.
Sarah looked alarmed. She leaned forward and put one hand on my arm. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said. ‘Please.’ Her hand rested lightly, as if she daren’t let me feel it. ‘Is he going to be all right?’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, and felt her tense.
‘He looked so little,’ she said. ‘When the ambulance men put him on the stretcher there was so much of it empty around him.’
‘Why did you want to frighten him?’ I said.
She mumbled something and looked away.
‘What did you say?’ I said.
‘I wanted to stop you,’ she said. Her face was red with effort. ‘Both of you. It’s because of you and him.’
‘Adrian Mr Cavanagh?’ I sa
id.
She frowned. ‘How do you know I call him that?’ she said. It was too late to pretend.
‘I know about the painting,’ I said. ‘How you met him after school. I know about Bobbie and—’
She began to get out of bed, pushing me away as she untangled herself from the bedclothes. ‘Did he tell you?’ she said. She was louder now, her face contorted with anger and grief.
‘Sarah.’ I tried to hold on to her, but she flinched away then lashed out. ‘He didn’t tell me,’ I said. ‘I read your diary.’ She gasped. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have but I thought you and he—’
‘I wanted to save you from him,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want him, why would I? I wanted to get him away from you. I wanted you to see what he was like, how he just wants everyone and we don’t matter to him. I wanted you to choose us instead. I didn’t want you to go. I thought if you saw the note, you’d think it was from Eddie and you’d come home before—’
I felt as if I were under water, sinking. I couldn’t breathe. I could hardly hear her.
‘Shall I tell you what he said to me? No, I can’t. It’s too awful. I hate him. I hate you.’ She turned away. I watched her shoulders rise and fall as she sobbed. ‘Go away,’ she said, her voice flooded with tears. ‘You have to go away.’
I couldn’t stand upright without swaying. I was unbalanced by grief. I said, ‘Please, Sarah, talk to me,’ but I knew she wouldn’t. I’d thrown away everything I ever was to her. In my mind’s eye, I saw her small, plump toddler self stumble towards me, arms outstretched. I heard her calling for me to watch her as she climbed high or danced or swam. I’d soothed her, sung to her, calmed her fears, nursed her wounds. All this was lost now, as scattered as pages torn from a book. I would never get back to where I was. I hadn’t even marked my place.
The war had flattened most of the old hospital and a replacement had been thrown up hastily. It was a collection of structures never intended for permanence. The single surviving building, which housed the maternity unit, sat haughtily in the centre, like a dowager surveying youthful folly. As Michael drove, I dug my nails into my palms with embarrassment, remembering Adrian’s more hectic style. The last time Michael and I were here, was when we were leaving with our infant son. Michael has always known who I am, I thought. He’s been waiting all this time for me to recognise him. And now it might be too late. I felt as if I’d been shedding layers of myself to reveal this last, and lasting, skin.
