by Beth Morrey
Sylvie led me back down the hallway, switching on lamps as she went.
“You have a lovely house,” I said, picking up my purse.
“Thank you, sweetie,” responded Sylvie, helping me with my coat. “Angie says yours is gorgeous too. Lovely to have a big house round here.”
Not if there was no one in it. “You should come round,” I found myself saying. “I wish it looked more like this.”
“Darling, I’m a designer—I live for that sort of thing.” She kissed me on the cheek and I could feel tears starting, so I ducked my head and walked quickly out the door, humming Sinatra to distract myself.
Out in the dusk, I hit rush hour; commuters, heads down like mine, braced against the chill, gunning for hearth and home. I walked slowly toward my destination, torn between hope and melancholy. I’d had a lovely day, but the warmth and cheer only served to highlight the dismal prospect of my lonely walk to an even lonelier place, trying to hold on to the threads of a previous life.
After my bleak pilgrimage to take flowers to the empty space that was once Leo, I headed home, trying to cheer myself up. Maybe Sylvie would come round. Maybe I would take Otis to the park. I let myself in and switched on the lights, wincing a little at the glare. Going through to the kitchen, I put the kettle on, opened my laptop, my state-of-the-art laptop given to me by my son the archeologist, and logged into my email.
Darling Ali, I began.
Chapter 8
I was a virgin, of course. This was 1956—what else could I be? An uptight nineteen-year-old, carefully reared in Kensington and Kirkheaton? I’d spent weeks hearing him traipse up and down my corridor on his way to Alicia’s room, gramophone blaring, though not entirely drowning out the sound of that grating little giggle. Once I bumped into him en route to the bathroom in my robe, and nodded awkwardly, cheeks burning with the shame of rejection, though of course it had never even got to that stage. Thankfully, Alicia had the decency not to ask me to let him out through my window after their late-night shenanigans. But then that just went to show, didn’t it, that she knew. I didn’t drink with her anymore, but found other ways to acquire alcohol.
Despite my social and seductive limitations, I was not entirely a loner. Dutifully doing the usual round of parties and gatherings, I acquired a few friends and was even asked to a play by a young man from St. Catharine’s College. I put on my best green dress with a sweetheart neckline, my hair curled right for once, and cycled over to the ADC Theatre to meet him. He was called Percy, but I wasn’t sure if that was his first name or last. He met me outside the theater and under the streetlamp I could tell he would go bald in later life. The play wasn’t a play at all but a series of little skits, none of which I found very funny, though everyone else roared with laughter throughout.
After an excruciating drink in the café round the corner, Percy walked me home, which was unnecessary as I had my bicycle with me, so he pushed it while I hugged my wrap around myself and wished I’d worn something warmer. Outside the door to the porter’s lodge he lunged, letting the bicycle fall to the ground in his enthusiasm. The feeling of that tongue forcing its way down my throat, his hands digging into my shoulders and ripping my dress, made me gag. He apologized afterward. I think the experience upset him as much as me. So I apologized as well, and he picked up my bicycle like a gentleman. Then he left for his college, promising to call on me the following week, although we both knew he wouldn’t.
Back in my room I cried a little and hung up my dress, although it kept slipping off the hanger because of the tear. Then I got a bottle of sherry out of my desk and poured myself a glass, and another, and another, so that by the time Leo knocked on my door just after midnight, I was already well away.
“Can I come in? Sorry, I’ve had rather a bad night.” He leaned against the doorframe, blinking owlishly and waving a half-empty bottle of wine. I tightened the cord of my dressing gown, feeling thankful my hair was still done. Of course I let him in; I’d let him in the moment I first saw him across a crowded room.
We shared the rest of the bottle as Leo told me Alicia had finished with him, that she’d met someone else, a viscount from St. John’s College. He was so stoic about it—“Obviously I can’t compete, he’s got a castle in Northumberland”—that when he kissed me, I didn’t mind at all. He was so different from Percy or any of the other bumbling, self-absorbed boys I’d met. He just felt like my home.
So when he led me to that narrow, creaking bed I didn’t resist, and in fact it was I who pulled him down on top of me, to feel the weight of him, mooring me. Then there was the moment he looked into my eyes and said, “Shall I?” and I nodded fiercely, because right at that moment there was no fork in the road, no other option open to me but to pursue him, us. Afterward, we lay together in the embers, every bit entwined, him ringleting my hair on one of his fingers, and I felt replete, complete. My song, answered.
But later, when the dawn light pierced the thin curtains, I saw the blood on the sheets, felt the pounding in my head and heart, and realized what a mess I’d made of it all. Why couldn’t I be as sophisticated and experienced and elusive as Alicia and all the other girls who twirled around Cambridge as though they owned it?
While Leo slept, I sneaked out of bed to clean myself up and put on some makeup. Luckily the curls were intact. By the time he woke I was back, looking fairly decent and in control of myself despite a throbbing head. Smiling brightly, I chatted as he hastily put on his clothes. He was obviously desperate to leave and it didn’t matter at all; everything was absolutely fine. Closing the door on him, still smiling, smiling, as he assured me he’d call on me the following week, then slumping down the wall, silent tears taking the breath out of me as I thought about the blood on the sheets and the ripped dress. Jette’s purse and Fa-Fa’s shattered glasses—broken, ruined things that couldn’t be repaired.
After a while, I picked myself up and went to my desk, opening my Latin lexicon to prepare for my supervision. Luó; Gr λύω—“to loose, untie, release, destroy.” The message couldn’t have been clearer. Leo, Luó. I’d let go, when I should have hung on. But then, even then, I had a tiny shred of optimism, a hope against hope that he might call. He might.
Leo graduated and left Cambridge that summer, and it was two years before I saw him again.
Chapter 9
I was so cheered by my lunch at Sylvie’s that the comfort of it carried me through the next few days, remembering the warmth of her kitchen, the camaraderie of perching on those stools together. Maybe I wasn’t the social pariah I’d imagined; perhaps it would be possible to build up a small circle of friends to insulate me against the loss of Leo, and of Ali and Arthur.
Continuing my explorations, I ventured into independent shops, dropped in to the library, and visited a little redbrick church around the corner from my café. I’ve never been much of a churchgoer—religion was an irrelevance in our family, any reference met with baffled stares. Even my aunt Sibby, who married a vicar, rarely mentioned it. But I lit a candle for Leo all the same, and thought of whatever twilight world he was in, whether he was happy, if he remembered me at all.
So taken up with my wanderings, it was over a week before I realized Angela hadn’t visited. Despite not even liking her that much, it was disappointing, as I wanted to see Otis again. As the days went by with no further contact, I became despondent. Perhaps I’d said something at the lunch that she objected to? She was very left-wing. Or perhaps it was something I hadn’t said? I had no witty anecdotes, knew none of the mutual acquaintances they’d discussed, and most of all I was so old, so jaundiced—who would want to be friends with me? She didn’t need to like me to let me babysit her son. But maybe she thought I wasn’t even up to that.
Once again I retreated into my cavernous house, drifting around in my nightie, unearthing old albums and wallowing in them for hours. Me, in my gown in the gardens of Newnham after my graduation, my mother’s a
rm around me, proud and exultant. I looked shell-shocked. We were standing next to a little stone statue of a boy holding a dolphin. He looked like Arthur—naked, as my errant grandson often is.
Then a photograph of Leo and me on our wedding day, him grinning toward the camera, and me looking up at him, my veil partly obscuring my face. I gazed at that face, my younger self, those wide eyes, unwaveringly fixed on my prize, dark hair tumbling under the net, slim in borrowed silk, unlined but not unscarred, even then.
We were married in King’s College chapel, and after the photo was taken by his friend Tristan, a fellow historian, Leo swept our guests off to the Anchor pub, where everyone got very merry. I barely sipped my wine, already drunk on the prospect of being married to this flaxen god who dwarfed everyone around him. Later, my mother took me to one side and said, “Darling, are you sure?” as if anything could be done by then. It was all settled for me the moment I saw him in Falcon Yard. Alea iacta est.
I was twenty-one then, and by my twenty-second birthday was nesting in our little cottage just off Jesus Green, pregnant with Melanie. I made a cake, still a luxury, and we ate it on the floor in front of the fire, because we couldn’t afford a sofa. The one we eventually bought, after the advance on Leo’s first book, was still in my living room today. And here I was, another birthday looming, but no one to spend it with.
What was this fear, this terror of being alone, when I was never a particularly gregarious being and in fact used to go out of my way to avoid social engagements? It always felt like too much of a chore to go to one dinner party or another, where I’d inevitably have to drink to relax, or worry about staying up late when I had to get up for the children. Leo was more of an extrovert, but he had his club, his golf and his books, and was mostly oblivious to the invitations I declined on his behalf. Was there another reason I said no? The more people—the more women—he met, the more likely he would realize what was lacking at home. I bound him to me, but was always fearful he would loosen the ties.
When Alistair was born, in Leo’s image, I thought perhaps the completion of our family and our new home—the oikos—might secure him, and me. But for years after, I was so tired. The dreary call of childcare wore me down, and the threads started to fray. While I struggled, he soared off—Dr. Leonard Carmichael, respected historian, lauded biographer, lecturer—jetting around the world, speaking on the radio, writing for the papers. When we were out, I felt he was always looking over my shoulder for the other person he knew, just like when we met.
I don’t know why I’d allowed myself to become so maudlin. The wine, probably. Two glasses, which sounded better than half a bottle. We had loved each other. He didn’t go in for passionate declarations, but we knew we were each other’s home—knew it in the way he always set my teacup on the table the night before, ready for morning; knew it in the tender Latin poems and quotes he left around the house for me to translate; the way he called me Missy just like Fa-Fa had, and was the only one who knew why he was doing it. He didn’t need to say it. He really didn’t. Love begets love, and I had so much that there was enough to reflect back.
But now there was only the echo of it in this ramshackle old house that lacked clutter, and light, and youth, and laughter. Draining my glass and closing the wedding album on my obscured face, I went up to bed, leaving the curtains open and watching the streetlight cast shadows on the walls until I fell into an uneasy sleep.
* * *
—
The next morning, my dreaded birthday, I tried to pull myself together. I’d go to the shops, buy the ingredients for a cake. Just a basic sponge to mark the occasion. Maybe I’d bump into someone on the way and could casually throw it into conversation. Just after ten, the post arrived. I ignored the bills, eagerly sifting through the junk mail to see if there was a card from Alistair. Maybe it would arrive tomorrow. It was so difficult to judge post times from Australia—the last birthday card I sent him arrived a week early. There was a Cambridge postcard from Mel, a terse scrawled greeting, which was more than I deserved after what happened last year.
There was the merest hint of spring in the air as I made my way to the shops on the high street. I bought the necessary ingredients, then decided to treat myself to a coffee. Hanna smiled at me and said, “For you is free today.” For a moment I thought somehow she knew, but realized she was looking at my card, which had eight stamps. I went to my usual table and sat down, on the lookout for Sylvie, or anyone vaguely familiar. I sat there for an hour, then walked up and down the road a few times without encountering anyone but heedless strangers.
Accepting defeat, I walked home with my shopping, and after lunch set about making my cake, assembling the ingredients in a haphazard way, as I’d never been much of a cook, and it would only be me eating it. No possibility that Angela might pop round and I could offer Otis a slice. It turned out burned around the edges, as the temperature of the Aga was difficult to gauge, but I cut myself a piece and ate it with my afternoon tea, and it was perfectly agreeable. After I’d tidied up the kitchen, I picked up one of Mel’s Nancy Mitford novels and read for a while until it grew too dark. I was just going round switching lights on when there was an almighty racket at the door.
Angela stood swaying in the doorway, evidently drunk. As she pushed past me, I realized she was holding a lead, tugging along a dog. It followed her into the house and when we reached the living room, it sat in front of the fireplace, panting slightly. I was nonetheless pleased at the intrusion.
“Have you kidnapped him as well?” She didn’t smile, but instead pushed lank hair back from her forehead and pinched the bridge of her nose.
“No. Well, yes, sort of. This is Bob. She’s been staying with me for a few days.”
“She?”
“Yes, she.”
“Bob isn’t a girl’s name.”
Angela shrugged. “It’s something to do with Blackadder, the one where they’re in Elizabethan times, Queenie, you know? Bob is a girl, disguised as a boy. Have you seen it?”
“No.” Mel was a fan, and she’d once made Leo watch an episode with her. The sight of them guffawing together had left me with a vague feeling of isolation, and chagrin. I never laughed that way with Melanie.
“Well, you should. Anyway, that’s not the point. I need you to do me a massive favor and look after Bob for a bit.”
“What on earth are you talking about? I don’t want a dog.” I looked at Bob, still sitting by the fireplace. She was a mongrel, colored like an Alsatian but smaller, like a collie. Not unattractive, as dogs go, but I’ve never been keen on them. Too dim and needy.
“I tried to talk to you about it the other day. My friend Fix—Felicity—is having a bit of trouble at the moment and has to go away, but she needs someone to look after her dog.”
“Can’t it go to a kennel?”
Angela sighed. “No. Bob needs looking after for a few months, maybe a bit longer, I’m not sure—”
“A few months?” I gripped the back of Leo’s armchair.
“Like I said, she’s got some problems right now.”
“Then she should find Bob a new permanent home.”
“You don’t understand!” Angela shot out, sitting down on the sofa uninvited. “She loves Bob, she doesn’t want to give her away, but she has to. She’s leaving her husband.”
“Well, can’t the husband take her?”
“No. He’s . . . not good news. That’s why she’s leaving. She’s got children. They need to get away. She needs to get herself sorted out. But she can’t take the dog. For now. So I thought . . .” She tailed off and looked at me expectantly.
“I’m very sorry for your friend, but I couldn’t possibly look after her dog.”
“Why not?”
“What?”
“Why couldn’t you look after a dog?” she demanded. “You’ve got a big house, a garden, you’re always walking in the park. W
hat’s more, you’re lonely. Sylvie saw it straightaway. We think a dog could be just what you need.”
“How dare you!” I couldn’t bear that they had discussed me, the sad lonely old lady, a charity case for them to take on. Was my need so obvious? How pathetic they must think me, wandering round the park hoping to bump into someone. The gush of embarrassment and shame hit, flooding my face, and I looked down at the floor to hide my scarlet cheeks.
But Angela pressed on, oblivious. “I could help you walk her. Otis loves dogs, he could come round and visit. And it’s only till Fix is on her feet again. Please. Please.”
I’d so hoped someone would visit me today and bring me something, but this was not what I’d imagined. Today of all days, barging into my house to insult me and suggest that the answer to my troubles was some homeless mutt? I kept my eyes down, unsure if it was anger or humiliation causing them to brim.
“Why can’t you take her, if you’re so desperate? You love dogs, Otis loves dogs.”
Angela sighed. “Because my landlord won’t let me. I already asked him. I ask him every time I renew my lease. He won’t budge. But I’ll help, I promise. I could buy the dog food, I could pay the vet’s bills, whatever you want.”
I bit my lip, and with an effort met her gaze. “I’m sorry but the answer’s no. I don’t want a dog.”
Bob gave a huge yawn, trotted over to Angela, bounded onto the sofa and curled up alongside her, whereupon she serenely proceeded to lick her own genitals.
Angela gave a tearful laugh. “There’s dogs for you, always inappropriate, just like me. I’m sorry, it was a stupid idea.” She clipped Bob back onto the lead and heaved her off the sofa.
“What will you do?” I asked as I led her back to the front door. I’d absolved myself of responsibility, but not of guilt, which was now beginning to chafe.
