by Annie Murray
Everyone listens and I can feel I have all their attention on me.
‘I suppose one day it might ease off.’ My chest is tightening now. ‘I might not think about him, almost every minute of every hour . . .’
I look up and meet Kim’s eyes which are already prepared with sympathy. I can feel them all listening, quiet and attentive.
‘OK,’ I say quickly, ‘so this is the past. This is a little aeroplane and this is a railway track – it almost looks like one!’ They all laugh. ‘I used to do a lot of travelling before I settled down. I loved it; saw a lot of interesting places. In fact, we’d been saving, Ian and I – we were going to take Paul on a big trip, before . . . Well, anyway . . . And this – the smiley face. That’s my dream, really. I hope one day I can get to that. Learn to live with it. Feel brighter, life more worth living and all that. That’s it, really.’
They all smile and thank me and Kim squeezes me round the shoulders for a moment.
‘Come on – Sunita and Pat. Who’s going first?’ Sheila says, offering round the mince pies again.
‘Go on, you go.’ Sunita nods at Pat.
‘All right.’ She looks reluctant. ‘Mine’s very boring.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Sheila says, looking at the neat little pictures on Pat’s flag. ‘Those are good drawings for a start.’
‘So – that’s me and Fred and the boys.’ Pat laughs with an air of apology. ‘I loved being a mum. Loved it when they were little. I’ve never quite known what to do with myself since. I’ve never had a career, as such. Worked in the Post Office a while before we were married. Then I’ve got my bit of childminding – it’s taking and collecting from school some days now. Not Thursdays, luckily! This here is supposed to be a drawing,’ she says. ‘Well, a painting. I’ve always liked art . . . And that’s me running. Not that I do that much any more but I used to like it. And that aeroplane . . .’ She sighs and looked comically at us. ‘I’ve never been anywhere very much, but I’d like to travel and see a bit of the world. Fred won’t go anywhere – says nowhere’s better than England for a holiday so we always go to Tenby. Not that Tenby’s not nice . . .’
‘And it is in Wales,’ Sheila points out. ‘Not England.’
‘Well – yes.’ Pat laughs and I see again what a nice smile she has. ‘That’s about it for me.’
We all look at Sunita.
‘Oh, I didn’t know what to put,’ Sunita says dismissively, dragging her piece of paper from her lap. ‘It’s all very silly.’
‘Go on – tell us,’ Kim says, then bursts out laughing. ‘Oh, Sunita – what’s that?’
An impenetrable cluster of lines and dots and squiggles adorns Sunita’s page. Hayley holds one side of it for her.
‘Well, I can’t draw!’ she protests, wide-eyed so that we laugh all the more. ‘These dots . . . this is my family – husband, daughters and their husbands, granddaughters . . . I got married when I was seventeen, my husband is ten years older. That’s what I have spent my life doing. Cooking, looking after my husband, children . . . No time for any more things, more education . . .’ Sunita talks with her free hand, making sweeping motions.
‘So – these are my knitting needles. I like knitting – knitted this jumper . . .’ She looks down, puffing her chest out like a pigeon, and we all make admiring noises. ‘I am always knitting – for children, grandchildren. Just now I am knitting a Postman Pat jumper. But this here, this is a book – because I would like to do something else. Reading and study are important . . . And my future dream, that is these curves here – this is me. This is when I am going to have a perfect body like a film star, sometime in the future.’
The drawing looks something vaguely like a Barbie and we all laugh again. But Sunita’s face sobers as she lays the paper back down and says, ‘Sometimes I get fed up with being fat and old. It feels as if my life has hardly begun and I am an old woman already.’
There is a silence as her honesty reaches into all of us.
‘Sunita – you’re not even sixty yet!’ Sheila says, but Sunita waves this away.
‘Yesterday,’ she goes on, her voice becoming indignant, ‘I was looking after my granddaughter – I do every Wednesday. And she said to me, ‘ “Nanimma, come and sit down here” – because my daughter has bought her a little table and chairs, small size, for playing at making dinner and so on . . . And I sat on the chair – it was plastic – and I said, “No, I won’t fit,” but she said, “Go on, go on” . . .’ Sunita tuts. ‘And then when I wanted to get up I couldn’t get my bottom out of the chair . . .’
She seems to swell at the neck and her face presents such a picture of flustered indignation that we just can’t help laughing. Her face is so funny that I find bubbles of mirth rising in me and popping out, like something long forgotten in a wine cellar.
‘I even stood up and the chair was stuck on my bum – and Leela said, “You kneel and I’ll pull it off” – she’s only five years old!’
‘And did she?’ Kim says, her shoulders shaking.
‘I am pushing and she is pulling the other side . . .’ Sunita gestures, eyes popping. ‘And I wiggle a bit . . . And yes, finally we got the damn thing off. And my granddaughter says to me, very serious, “You’re a bit too fat, aren’t you, Nanimma?” ’
‘Oh, dear,’ Sheila says, wiping her eyes. ‘Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.’
Sunita groans, patting her hips. ‘I suppose I ought to lose a stone or two.’ She eyes the plate in front of her and her dimples appear. ‘All the same, this stollen cake is very good – maybe just one more little slice?’
Fourteen
As the party breaks up, everyone thanking Sheila and sharing Christmas wishes, Pat says to me, ‘I think I’m going in your direction. I followed your example and didn’t bring the car today.’
Muffled in our coats, we say our thanks to Sheila and everyone parts with Christmas good wishes and Kim hugs us all. The others peel off in various directions or go to their cars. Pat and I can walk part of the way together.
Pat is wearing black ski-pants, a padded, pale blue jacket over her jumper and a knitted hat in cherry-and-cream stripes. She’s a pleasant person, I realize, but suddenly, with a pang, I miss Ange’s vibrant presence by my side. Pat seems nice, but somehow bland in comparison. Still, nice is a good start. We chat about everyday things: cooking Christmas dinner, relatives. I tell her about Dorrie and she says I’m lucky. She laughs about her own mother-in-law, saying she gets on really well with her now she’s no longer alive and this sharp honesty takes me by surprise. Maybe she’s not as bland as I thought. Soon we reach the corner where she will turn off.
‘Well,’ I say, about to add, ‘Merry Christmas,’ or some such, when Pat turns to me, putting a hand on my arm.
‘I do understand a little bit of what you’re going through.’ Her voice is quiet but urgent and I wait, bewildered at this sudden change in the tone of the conversation.
Pat glances in each direction as if she’s afraid someone might be listening in.
‘I lost . . . I mean, our first baby . . . our little girl. She . . .’ She speaks all in a rush, then looks down for a moment, her face creasing, before managing to compose herself. ‘She just stopped moving – late on sometime. I mean, I noticed, but . . . Anyway, I had her but she . . . well, she never lived. Fred doesn’t like to talk about it, so we never do. Course, we had the boys. But . . .’
She looks up at me, a desperate appeal in her eyes. ‘I never talk about her. My little Becky. They – I mean, at the time – they never told me where she was buried. They just took her away. And I could never settle. I never could forget about it. I know I’ve never been the same since that morning when she was born. I mean, I found out later where she was, much later . . . so that made things a bit better, but . . .’ She makes a gesture with her hand as if to cut to the present. ‘It never goes away. Not completely. I know that. You just have to learn to live with it – and you will, Jo, I promise.’
W
alking home after that, alone, I feel the afternoon’s chill wrapping itself about me after all the warmth – not just from the fire – of Sheila’s house. But for the moment, the flag game and all the chat is pushed out of my mind by what has just happened with Pat. I tried to say the right things, how awful and that I’m sorry . . . And I’m stunned to find out that I feel just as hopeless and as doomed as anyone else would, not to open my palm and hand her just the right small offering of solace.
A memory comes to me of the afternoon after Paul died, sitting on the sofa in our old house, Ange beside me, struggling to find words as if there were any: Ange with her two sons alive and well. And how impossible it all was because what no one can say is, You are going to be trapped in this for years to come and no one else can feel it, no one else can reach your endless grief and you can’t escape it and if you did escape you would feel as if you had let him down. You will wake some mornings for a few seconds believing you are the person you were before, young and free, single and running hopefully into your future and then you will open your eyes to the day and it will crash over you again, pressing you down into this deep, cold, lonely furrow that no one else can reach . . .
In those seconds, I had seen that Pat knew. She knew, the way I know. The way Dorrie knew too, and at the time just let me come to her and sit and grieve.
On the face of it I could see Pat was trying to be helpful. Of course she was. She was a kindly woman, trying to say what everyone says: that time is the great healer, that I have gone on and you will go on . . . And yet, in those moments, I found myself looking at a woman carrying inside her a lagoon of unspent emotion, as if she herself needed my help almost as much as I might need hers.
Fred doesn’t like to talk about it . . .
Anger swells in me again. I seem to be angry all the time as well. Is it something about men? Ian never wants to talk about what happened to Paul, whereas I need to say it – to myself, to someone – over and over again.
I felt calm, almost happy for those moments when I left Sheila’s. But now, opening the door into our house, I feel stirred up and raw.
I can sense that someone else is in the house as soon as I go in, but still I jump violently as Ian comes out of the kitchen, holding a mug.
‘Oh, my God!’ My whole body feels jarred. ‘What’re you doing here? You scared the life out of me.’
Ian has already changed out of his work clothes, into navy track pants and his thick grey fleece. He looks put out.
‘I came home early – thought you’d be pleased. Where’ve you been? I went round to Mom’s thinking you were there and she said she hadn’t seen you.’
‘Well, she has seen me.’ I can forgive Dorrie for forgetting things that I say to her, but I definitely told him I was going to his mom’s. I might as well not waste my breath. ‘I was with your mom this morning, she must’ve forgotten. And I’ve been round to see the yoga group – I told you. We have a cuppa every Thursday.’
‘Oh. Right.’ But he sounds very put out.
‘Hang on.’ I realize I need to make things better. ‘You go and sit down. I’ll just get myself another cup of tea.’
I find Ian sitting on the sofa, not in a relaxed way. He’s perched on the edge, arms resting on his thighs, still holding the mug half full of tea. Cautiously I sit beside him. Inside me, my own bell of need is ringing: Speak to me, look at me . . . But I can see that something is wrong and I must try, for him. From the back, his head – with a crown at the top right, the coil of salt-and-pepper hair around it – and his neck and shoulders, all look both aged and boyish at once. I pull myself forward so that I can look into his face.
‘How’s it going? You managed to knock off early.’
Slowly he shakes his head. ‘Not great.’ He puts his mug down on the floor. ‘Gideon – he’s moving on.’
I’m taken aback by this. Gideon? Who’s Gideon? I have to rake through my mind to remember. Gideon – like the Bible.
‘Moving on? How d’you mean? I thought he was your apprentice?’
‘Well, that was the idea, I thought.’ Ian sighs. ‘We hadn’t sorted anything formal but I was going to. Had my hands full . . . He’s a good lad, though . . .’ He stops, seems really emotional. ‘He’s been offered another job. Said he thought he’d get on there a bit better. All very polite, he was, but . . .’ His voice thickens again.
And then he lowers his head and his body starts to shake. He’s sobbing, as I have never seen him before, brokenly, from the depths of him, hands over his face.
I’m so startled and bewildered that I just sit there for a moment, almost unable to believe what’s happening. In the past two years I’ve only known Ian to cry twice – once at the funeral, not sobs like this but tears, certainly. You couldn’t not. And once, in the same brief way, after Dorrie had her little stroke. Yet now, all these deeply buried tears, all this feeling, finally releasing itself over a boy I have never even met and have barely been aware of the existence of. How hopeless we both are, I think, how impossible we have found it to grieve straight, all of it coming out instead at odd angles and at odd times.
‘Ian?’ I put my arm round his shoulders. He shakes and sobs and I wait, feeling glad that these tears have come, and yet also strangely distant from his emotion. I have had too much locked-in emotion of my own, have felt too alone and we have moved too far from each other.
‘I just thought . . . he’d stay.’ The words are muffled by his hands.
I keep caressing his back, gradually leaning closer, making comforting noises; trying, really trying.
He straightens up at last and gives a few heaving groans, as if relieved but that he can’t believe himself, his emotion. He pats his pockets for a hanky.
‘Hang on.’ I go out to the back for kitchen roll.
Ian mops his face. He seems dazed, exhausted. He screws up the ball of tissue in his hand, still sniffing. Eventually he turns to me, looking almost ashamed.
‘What the hell?’ he says.
I can’t think of anything to say. Quietly I sink down beside him again.
‘I’ve cooked – there’s a shepherd’s pie. Shall we have a nice quiet one – cuddle up and watch something together?’
It feels like trying to comfort Paul: sofa and cuddly blanket, TV, close, side by side. And I want to give comfort. But there’s an angry part of me thinking, needing. What about the bit where he puts his arms around me, says, I know you’re hurting too? Have I scared him off somehow, become so forbidding that he doesn’t know what to do?
Ian nods. His lips twitch into a smile for a second, sort of bashful as if he feels he’s being humoured but wanting it all the same. ‘Yeah. All right.’
Fifteen
BOY AT THE DENTIST
2015
I sit in the corner of the dentist’s waiting room, my nerves shredded by the endless grizzling of a round-faced toddler with cropped, blond hair. The constant problem of other people’s children. How dare they still have children?
The kid is happy neither in his buggy nor out of it, despite his harried mother’s attempts to quieten him. ‘Shh,’ she keeps saying. ‘C’m’ere, Jackson, come and have your juice.’ Jackson shakes his head, then his whole body, turning up the volume, his face pinking up. The buggy wheels squeak on the grey floor tiles. An immaculately dressed couple, probably in their eighties, sitting across from me look on in what seems to be mute disapproval.
I couldn’t get an appointment before Christmas – this was the first in the New Year. The waiting room fills up with people coming and going. Receptionists keep answering the phones. A couple of people tut at the racket.
When the boy, in red dungarees, veers close to the elderly lady, she forces a smile, showing a neat set of dentures, and says, ‘Hello, dear. Here – d’you want to play with these?’
She dangles a little set of keys in from of him. Roaring, he hits out and knocks them from her hand before running off. The lady looks shocked and rather hurt.
‘Jackson!’ H
is mother is overweight, looks weary and defeated. ‘Sorry,’ she says to the lady, who makes kindly signs of never-mind-dear. ‘I dunno know what’s got into him today. Jackson – c’m’ere.’ She picks him up and wrestles him into the buggy, where the screaming picks up several notches, his arms and legs thrashing. I can see how worn down with it she is, with the day-to-day endlessness of it. And I remember all this; the weariness and tedium mixed, the joy that can be forgotten in the exhaustion. I want to grab her by the shoulders and yell at her, He’s your child, your boy, your miracle: you have him, here, alive and in the flesh. Love him, take every moment, you’ve no idea what you have . . . But of course, I’d look like a madwoman. I feel like one sometimes.
A moment later, to everyone’s relief, the receptionist calls the toddler’s mother in. Maybe she’s been bumped up the list. A blessed quiet comes over the room and I close my eyes for a moment, recovering, wondering what the elderly lady would have done if her own child had behaved like that. So much has changed. Children are not eating the same foods they once did, are seeing different images, too many of them, maybe, flashing into their brains. I catch myself thinking the sort of things that older people say, that Dorrie might have said.
We spent Christmas Day at Dorrie’s, Ian and me and Cynthia and her husband, who made a rare visit with one of their twin boys, Michael. I cooked: beef, Dorrie’s favourite, all the trimmings and a Christmas pudding and trifle. It was a relief to do it for Dorrie, not to be in our own house, to be busy. Ian and I pulled together and tried to get along with Cynthia, who can be a bit superior to put it mildly. But I could see Dorrie was overjoyed to have everyone together for once.
Then there was the afternoon at Mom and Dad’s with Mark and Lisa and all the family, watching Amy’s antics, catching up with my nieces, Emma and Clare. Mom had done salmon and cucumber, all laid out perfectly; Dad was full of excitement about a new extension, spread his plans on the table after dinner and bent over them for ages with Ian and Mark while the women chatted. I sat, smiling until my face hurt, trying to stop my mind constantly jabbing at me. This time three years ago, when he was still here . . . Four years, five.
