The Silent Treatment

by Abbie Greaves

  Before he gives it much more thought, he is off. The first few steps feel almost easy. He has a long gait, and he is lean, like a greyhound. Only that is where the similarities stop. After no more than fifty meters, he is spent. He is wheezing like a forty-a-day smoker despite having never so much as taken a puff in his life, square that he is.

  The incline is one of those terribly deceptive ones. It doesn’t look too bad from the bottom, but get going and it is another story altogether—long and continuous and enough to tax even a serious sprinter. The pavement is unforgiving, and with each step he feels that twinge in his left knee getting sharper and sharper. In life, there are so many things we always think we will get round to fixing—the slow puncture in the back wheel of a bike, the niggling ache, a fractured relationship. If there is one thing the past week has taught Frank, it is that you can never rely on time being on your side.

  Frank tries to distract himself from the pain and the sweat coursing down his forehead by running through what he has to say. Maggie emptied herself out to him, all her secrets compressed into rows and rows of lines on a series of wafer-fine pages. All that work to leave him with a clean slate and he couldn’t even bring himself to tell Maggie the one thing he had to. If anything will spur him on through the last two hundred yards, it is his own frustration.

  He cannot hear anything above the sound of his own panting. It must be loud, because every pedestrian that he passes gives him a wide berth, as if they are worried that he might drop down on any one of them at any second. Frank does not care. He is a man on a mission, and his eyes are trained on the revolving doors of the building at the top of the hill, wavering from side to side like a mirage.

  There is a minute, just before he hits the tarmac of the hospital drive, when he thinks he might not make it. He is so light-headed from fatigue, his stomach rattling on the syrupy dregs of just a few fruit chews, that there is just rush. The rush of traffic, the rush of relatives, the rushing rush of a world where he has just one vestige of hope left.

  He hits the spinning doors with the full force of his frame. There is a nurse shouting his name as he heads full pelt down the corridor to intensive care, barely managing to weave between the gurneys. At one point his flailing left hand knocks a cup of iced coffee straight out of a woman’s hand and down her white shirt. He mumbles something unintelligible about a refund into the air.

  Frank manages to weave past a cleaner who has the door to intensive care propped open with a hip. He is so focused on reaching his destination that he does not notice that he has attracted the attention of everyone in reception, their mouths agape. The minute he is within reach of Maggie’s door, he grabs for the handle, only his palms are slick with sweat and they slip right off the metal.

  Before he can think better of it, he throws his upper body against the door, which shakes on the impact. Or perhaps it is the bones in Frank’s shoulder. There is a tremor, and then both give way. Frank lands with his hands over Maggie in a way that could look rather inappropriate to anyone passing by. He spits an unattractive ball of phlegm onto the floor by her bed and slowly eases himself up to standing, trying his best not to lean on Maggie.

  “Maggie,” he says, the syllables bouncing out between breaths. “I’m back.”

  Chapter 9

  At first, it looks to Frank as if Maggie is sitting up, and he feels a rush of hope. He picks up the planner from where it has fallen at his feet, the page edges discolored with sweat where it has been wedged in his armpit. He tries to dry it off on his shirt, only that is saturated too. He wipes his forehead on his forearm and then, before he forgets, takes the chair from beside the door and scoops the plastic ridge at the top under the handle to buy them a little privacy. To buy himself a little more time too. God knows he needs it.

  Frank shuffles round the side of the bed so that he is looking directly at Maggie. After all, what do either of them have to hide?

  He notices then that it is all an illusion: four pillows are propped at various angles to keep her up and her eyes are shut. She doesn’t seem to have registered his presence at all.

  “Maggie? Can you hear me?” Frank reaches out with one hand and slides it under hers. “Squeeze if you can hear me.”

  Nothing.

  “Maggie, please, darling. This is all I’m asking. I know I don’t deserve it. I never deserved you, and I certainly don’t after everything I put you through. I’m sorry I stopped talking. I’m sorry I had to leave before I got to tell you why I closed off. But if you can do this for me, I promise I won’t ask for anything ever again.”

  Frank’s words pour out like a hose on full blast. A long winter when the plastic was frozen solid, and now this—just a few minutes to spill out everything he needs to. No sprinkling of anecdotes, no draining the message.

  Frank waits. He has to resort to counting time by the beats of his heart, fat, heavy, painful beats. One, two. Maggie is as still as ever. He will not let this be an excuse again.

  “I read this.” Frank shakes the planner in Maggie’s direction. A few of the photos she enclosed scatter on the sheet; he had not had the time nor the inclination to clip them back in. “I read it all. This, Maggie, this bit about you being the last person to see her. Well, we were in it together. We always were.”

  Then there it is. A squeeze.

  “Maggie? Oh God . . . right . . .”

  Slowly, Maggie’s eyes flutter. One opens, and then the other. It reminds Frank of the butterflies he and Eleanor watched in the conservatory at the Botanic Gardens, back when she was just nine. The fluttering before the flight.

  Before Frank has a chance to check that Maggie is awake, there is a rapping at the door. The handle wavers, but the chair is doing its job. The door won’t budge now, not without getting the heavies involved. Through the small glass panel, Frank can pick out the doctor. Dr. Singh is smiling, a little too much, the sort of smile you give to someone unhinged. He wants him to open up.

  That makes two of them.

  Frank shakes his head and turns back to Maggie, her eyes definitely open now, though glazed. Her gaze has not moved from him. Not to the photos. Not to the planner. Certainly not to the commotion outside her room.

  He takes as deep a breath as his screaming lungs allow and looks Maggie square in the face. “You weren’t the only one to see her, Mags. That night. I did too.”

  Maggie pinches his hand. He doesn’t have the time to figure out if that is a good sign or not. He has been sitting on this secret for six months now, and it has wrecked him. More than just his voice, it has taken every second of every minute of every day that he has survived, and it has corroded everything.

  “I thought I was the last person to see Eleanor. I had no idea it was the last time—how could I? It was definitely her, though—the duffel bag, the messy bun—I’d know her anywhere. I’d just gotten off the bus, it was dark, but I knew it was her. I was standing at the bus stop, and she was at the end of the road, all flustered, you know the way she would be, when she had other stuff on her mind . . .

  “She didn’t see me. I am almost certain of that. But I ignored her, Mags. I was scared. Scared of her coming home, scared of how it would be. It’s not a justification, I know that. But that’s why . . . that’s why I ignored her. I wasn’t there for her when she needed me the most.”

  There is another rap at the door. Two new gentlemen have arrived, one bearing a walkie-talkie. Security? Let them haul him out; there is no way Frank is leaving voluntarily now.

  He crouches down so he is at eye level with Maggie. His hand has not moved from beneath hers.

  “There was no way I could tell you, Mags. I didn’t want to lose you too. I was so ashamed of myself. That was not the man you married or the father I am . . .”

  There are tears coming, sobs that are beginning to break like hiccups in Frank’s throat. He swallows them down. Not now, this is not about him. This is his last shot.

  “When I went to see her, Maggie, she was in a little side room on
her own, and do you know what my first thought was? God, I hope she won’t be lonely. I was being led down the corridor toward her, blind with terror. We got to the room where she was being held, and the escort stepped aside. He wanted to give me some space, but really I needed him to push me. I don’t know how I crossed the threshold, but somehow my feet just kept going.

  “I had no idea what to expect. A body exhumed from the canal. That was what the police had said, like she was a trainer or a trolley or something. She looked so small on that slab, a doll among the dead. Her eyes were shut, but I made sure to open them, I wanted to see her properly, to make a new last time for us, father and daughter. It took me right back to that first moment when I held her as a baby, when I told myself there and then that I would do everything I could to protect her.

  “I stayed and watched her for an hour, maybe more. I only left when the poor man in the morgue charged with looking after me cleared his throat and said that he had to close up soon.

  “You still hadn’t moved when I came home that night. And that’s when it began, Mags. The silence. I had caused her death, Maggie, ignored her, and I knew that if I told you, however good a person you might be, you wouldn’t be able to forgive me. I’m right, aren’t I? I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t lose you too.”

  There is no way Frank can hold down the sobs now. They have risen up like dry retches, heaving out of his throat. A tear drops from the end of his nose and lands on Maggie’s hand.

  “I’m so sorry, Maggie. I am sorry every moment that I am awake. I miss her, and I will never stop missing her—”

  There is a crash as a security guard sends the chair slamming across the room. Maggie shudders, as if startled by just the noise. A second later, the door gives way and the doctor enters, flanked by the backup.

  All eyes are on Frank. No one moves. No one says a word.

  Frank carries on, oblivious.

  “I am sorry that I couldn’t bring myself to tell you what I did. I’m sorry that you had to suffer in my silence too. I’m sorry for how I let you down. I’m sorry for most things, Maggie, but I have never been sorry that I loved you. I never will be either.”

  At that, Frank’s knees give up on the squat and he falls forward, his forehead onto the mattress, his stubble brushing Maggie’s thigh through the sheet.

  It takes all her strength for Maggie to reach over and place a hand on the top of Frank’s back, nestling it between two taut shoulder blades.

  “Hush now, Frank,” she says.

  Epilogue

  One year later

  From above, Maggie looks like a fifties film starlet, reclining on the bed, a vibrant orange drink to her side. There is jazz on the radio, the melody smooth and full beneath the trumpet’s intricate, improvised trails. Maggie’s book, A Rough Guide to the Scottish Highlands & Islands, is balanced across her thighs and a pen is perched on the cracked spine. In front of her, half-obscured by the ottoman, her not-so-glamorous assistant is rooting around in the wardrobe.

  Shuffle in just that little bit more and you’ll see the pillow behind Maggie’s back isn’t quite to her liking. You will notice how she struggles to move herself to a more comfortable position, her biceps tensed but nothing moving quite as it should. Frank looks over from his search every few minutes (less often now than he used to) just to calm his nerves. He does it as subtly as he can manage while he is up to his ankles in discarded bits of clothing; she hates it when he questions her independence.

  Those were long, painful days, when Maggie was being roused from the coma, her organs stubbornly refusing to give up the security of standby mode. Then the endless physiotherapy sessions, where a bright young thing lifted her from the wheelchair so that her body was thrust forward over a walker, her feet querying every tiny movement.

  It was hard for Frank to watch, but he refused to leave her side, except for when he needed to speak to the consultant. No one had ever seen a man so determined. She would recover, he told him, jabbing his index finger with such force on the desk that the whole thing juddered. People made full recoveries from this sort of thing every day. More than that, Maggie wanted to recover.

  Frank was right about that. Maggie is nothing if not stubborn, and she was discharged a full week ahead of schedule, albeit with a lot of work still to do. When they got home, the whole place felt brighter. Edie had been round to the house and transformed the living room into a temporary bedroom. There was a new lick of paint and flowers everywhere. Somewhere they could feel proud of when visitors started to arrive.

  The nurse, Daisy, was one of the first, a week or so later. She wasn’t sent by the hospital; they had someone else for that. It was a courtesy visit then, shall we say, although Frank was struggling so much with the new arrangements that it slipped his mind to offer her a cup of tea or to extend the most basic hospitality. Maggie barked something about the kettle, but it came out wrong, along with a flurry of frustrated tears that broke Frank in two.

  Since then, there have been a few wobbles. Christmas was hard, even with Edie and her brood to keep the show on the road. Now it has been and gone (this too shall pass), New Year’s too. Everything started to feel more manageable in spring, and now, in high summer, when the days are long and the sun can be out as late as ten o’clock, it feels like a new future is starting to take root.

  “Got them!” He holds two straw hats aloft, one with a wide brim and thick green velvet ribbon, the other a trilby, or so it was when they bought it in Spain fifteen years ago, before it was squashed beneath a couple of kilos of cupboard junk.

  “Now for a little spray of this!” Frank blitzes Maggie’s bare arms with suncream, and she has to bat him away before he can go for her face as well.

  “It’s nearly teatime!” she protests. “We aren’t going to get burned at this hour.” Frank runs a hand through his hair. There is still some red in among the gray. “Maybe do yourself. Better safe than sorry,” she adds as an afterthought.

  Frank draws a line down his nose, two on each cheek. He rubs a little and waits for Maggie’s exasperation to kick in. Right on time. She lets out a closed-lip sigh like a lawn mower starting up. Frank crouches down and lets her finish the job. He could have done it himself, but there is nothing quite like the tenderness that she has always applied to him, even to his factor fifty. When she is done, he sneaks a kiss and stands up to collect the bag he has prepared.

  “We’re going to be out for a little while tonight. I think we should take the chair. I can put the stuff on your lap.”

  Maggie isn’t as reluctant about that as she used to be. She nods and points at her sandals in the corner of the room. It is a beautiful August evening, perfect for an excursion. She is eager to get out—of the house and her head—and she is down the stairs, shawl on and at the front door, before Frank has had so much as a chance to offer any assistance. If Frank has seemed distracted today, Maggie hasn’t picked up on it. She has always had a lot on her mind, and today was never going to be easy on either of them.

  It is six o’clock by the time they reach the kissing gate at the entrance to the meadow. Frank can hear the peals from St. Giles’s starting up, the sound muffled by the distance between where he is standing and the church on the far side of the fields. Maggie does not appear to have noticed. She is focused on standing up and making her own way through the narrow gap. It isn’t the swiftest process, but even so, there is no way Frank is missing his opportunity to pucker up.

  “Incorrigible,” Maggie tuts, once she is on the other side. I can see her smile radiating, even from here.

  She has decided she doesn’t need the chair for this stretch, and once he has lifted it up and over the cast-iron railings, Maggie lets Frank steer it down the gravelly path with his left hand, his right held in hers. She isn’t as fast on her feet as she used to be, but there is no doubt that she will get there. A few months ago, the thought of Maggie walking was unfathomable. The doctors had all manner of charts to map progress and to temper expectations. Maggie
has reveled in confounding them both. It is easier when you have a focal point that calls to you. Frank has done everything he can to show that Maggie has much to look forward to. That they both do, together.

  They stop at the bench by the side of the Thames. To the untrained eye, it is just another stretch of grass in a sun-parched field. For us, it is a first walk, a space to learn to ride a bike, the venue for a hundred family picnics. A canoeist glides between the sailboats on either side of the bank, one hand raised in greeting. Frank responds with a nod, but Maggie is too absorbed in memories to notice.

  He is cautious of rushing Maggie’s reflection. He knows all too well the pull that the past will always exert, the way it frames their present. But that is just what it is, a frame, the surround for the new day they meet every morning, one foot in front of the other, hand in hand. They have suffered beyond comprehension. They can never forget. But there is still so much more beyond that. And what will it be like? No one can say for sure, although one thing remains certain—it is never too late to change the story.

  “Here, Mags. Try some of this.” Frank extends Maggie a tinfoil parcel with a molded plastic handle sticking out of it. The bowl of the spoon has already sunk into its contents—a banoffee pie.

  “I didn’t know we would be celebrating.”

  It was Maggie who used to make one every year for Eleanor’s birthday. But today? The second birthday since they lost Eleanor? The first they have endured since Maggie left hospital? Frank felt it was time for him to step up to the plate. While Maggie took a bath that morning, he swept into action. It took the best part of half an hour to whip the cream, and most of it ended up outside the bowl. It’s a good thing Maggie hasn’t been into the kitchen since.