Sweet Home Summer

by Michelle Vernal

  Bridget was kneeling by the fireplace holding an envelope containing a letter she hadn’t read in a very long time in her hands. Even now the thought of taking out the piece of paper and unfolding it to read the words she knew had been written on it, words that once put down on paper could never be taken back, filled her with dread. It was a blessing, she thought, that Isla hadn’t delved deeper into her flotsam and jetsam drawer as she called it. It had been stupid of her to hold on to it in the first place.

  Annie had left ten minutes ago after popping in to tell her she’d been speaking to Isla and she was doing fine. She’d given her strict instructions to come and cuddle the cat for her, she said, making Bridget smile as she went to call Coal. He was curled up in a sunny spot in the garden and looked disgruntled at the realization no food was on offer after he’d obligingly trotted into the kitchen. He’d allowed Annie to hold him for a few beats before meowing and wriggling free. Normally Coal was anybody’s when it came to fuss, but he wasn’t his usual self. He was missing Isla, Bridget thought. Animals had a sense when all was not as it should be.

  The day she and Ben had rushed into Christchurch, she’d stayed at the hospital until the end of visiting hours along with Mary, and Joe. She’d pulled an ashen-faced Ben aside when Mary went to say goodbye to Isla, and Joe who’d already said his goodbyes had gone to bring the car around to the front of the hospital to take the two women home. ‘Isla told me to ask you, Ben. Ask you what? What did she mean?’

  He looked uncomfortable as though wrestling with himself as to whether he should tell her or not.

  ‘Spit it out, Ben.’

  There was nothing else for it, Bridget Collins was not a woman you disobeyed. Ben felt about ten years old under her wily gaze. ‘Isla and I fought about her taking things into her own hands and ringing someone she said you knew years ago, Charlie? And then it all kind of went from there.’

  Bridget nodded. She wasn’t surprised; she should have known Isla would never leave it be once she’d found those cards. ‘Yes, Charlie.’

  ‘She invited him to come to Bibury, to the Matchmaker Festival. I got mad at her because I didn’t think it was any of her business to do that and then I went and dredged stuff up from the past.’ Ben rubbed at his jawline, the six o’clock shadow threatening to turn into the beginnings of a beard. ‘Bridget, you know Isla, she had your best interests at heart.’

  Bridget was too shell-shocked by the events of the day to muster up much of a response. She laid a hand on Ben’s arm; the poor lad looked petrified. ‘It’s alright. I think it’s probably about time I put the past to rest once and for all.’

  And here she was about to do so.

  Chapter 38

  It was the smell of the hospital, that peculiar mix of disinfectant and overcooked food that had brought the painful memories bubbling back to the surface, Bridget thought. That, and the news that Charlie was on his way here to see her to rake it all up again. She closed her eyes and could see Tom as he had been during his last hours waiting to die in his hospital bed. His head had looked shrunken against the pillow upon which it lay, and she’d been amazed at how such a big man could suddenly seem so small and wizened. It was as though she’d pushed ‘play’ on a rerun of a scene she wished she could wipe from her memory, and it began to unfold.

  2010

  ‘It began the night of the Valentine’s Day dance.’ Tom’s voice had a rattle that came from deep within his ravaged lungs. ‘I fell in love.’

  Bridget looked at his ashen face, his hair damp and stringy. She rested her hand on top of his large gnarled one, a hand that had once been so strong but which now lay limply on the bed beneath hers. ‘Shush, don’t strain yourself, Tom. It’s all in the past.’ It was the night he’d begun courting Clara, and she met Charlie. But it wasn’t Clara’s name he wheezed next.

  ‘It was you, Bridget, it was always you.’

  Bridget didn’t realize she’d removed her hand from his until she glanced down at her lap to where both were now tightly clasped. There was no sound but the clicking and whirring of the machinery to which he was connected. She sat there, ramrod straight in the chair next to his bed, as interspersed with fits of coughing, he rewrote their shared history.

  ‘I looked across the dance floor and saw you there, Bridget. You were the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. But then Charlie caught your eye, and there was no room for anybody else after that.’ Tom tried to gather his breath and Bridget wanted to tell him to stop and just to rest. She knew instinctively that he was unburdening himself but that in doing so he would leave her to carry whatever that burden was alone. The words didn’t form in her mouth, and he continued.

  ‘She was a pretty lass alright, Clara, and I knew she liked me. Courting her was a way of being around you.’

  She felt guilty then as if Tom’s using her friend was her doing, and she had somehow betrayed Clara.

  ‘But she was in love with you Tom, she thought you felt the same way. I had no idea.’

  ‘I’m not proud of the way I behaved. We were all so young, but it was wrong what I d—’ He erupted into a fit of coughing.

  Bridget waited for a beat longer than she should have to pass him the glass of water. She held it up to his lips, and his rheumy eyes grasped onto hers. She could see the plea in them, that she understand what he was telling her, that she absolve him. He closed his eyes, and when his breathing had regulated a degree, he continued to speak in bursts that Bridget had to piece together.

  ‘Charlie sent the letters he wrote to you care of my address at the boarding house. He asked me to pass them on to you because he knew there was no point sending them to your parents’ house.’

  ‘But he never wrote to me,’ Bridget murmured. ‘I wrote to him, and I never heard a word from him, not a single word.’

  Tom’s eyes fluttered open, and he tried to grab her arm, but she was out of reach. ‘But he did write to you, that’s what I’m trying to tell you.’ His voice broke off again, and his frail, body convulsed and shuddered with the effort as it was wracked with coughing once more. A nurse came into the room and helped to settle him, and Bridget felt the urge to run. To leave now before he could finish telling her what was laying heavily on his heart because she knew it was going to change everything. But as she got up he cried out, and the nurse looked at her.

  ‘He wants you to stay, will you sit with him awhile longer?’ The look on her face said it wouldn’t be much longer now.

  She couldn’t leave, and reluctantly she lowered herself back down on the seat. They sat in silence for a while, and she thought he must have drifted off to sleep because his eyes were shut. There was no sound in the room but that incessant whirring and clicking intermingling with the rattling of his breath, hollow and desperate in his chest.

  He didn’t open his eyes as his voice like sandpaper rasped. ‘I never passed the letters onto you.’

  Bridget wanted to put her hands over her ears to make him stop but he wouldn’t, she knew that even before he continued to wheeze the words he wanted to say out.

  ‘I thought I’d own up to what I’d done one day but then Clara died, and you finally saw me.’

  It hit Bridget then what had happened, she just knew. ‘Clara found the letters didn’t she?’

  A tear trickled down his cheek but Bridget made no move to wipe it away for him, and she watched it disappear under his chin pooling in the folds of his neck. He inclined his head in a nod.

  ‘How?’ Bridget’s voice was barely a whisper now.

  ‘In the Bible.’ He moved his eyes to the bedside table, and Bridget got up moving around the bed. There was a photograph of the children when they were small and another of the grandchildren on the table and there was a bible too, though Tom wasn’t a religious man. She picked it up and opened it. Inside the cover was an envelope. Her hands trembled as she tore the seal.

  Present day

  Now, Bridget took that same letter from the envelope once more, her hands trembling just as th
ey had that terrible day in the hospital. The writing was the spidery scrawl of a dying man, and it was short and straight to the point. Tom was not a flowery man, nor was he a man given to too many words, not even on the brink of death. Her eyes flickered over what he’d so desperately needed to purge himself off. It was undated.

  Dear Bridget,

  I want to ask your forgiveness for what I did. I’ve lived with it for a long time, and I’m ready to go now and answer to my maker. It was love for you that made me do it, fear and love. I loved you from the minute I saw you, but I couldn’t have you. It was Charlie you wanted, and it ate away at me seeing you with him. Looking back now I think it was a sickness I had. Clara was sweet on me and being with her meant I could be around you. I’m not proud of the way I treated her or of what I did. I’ve already said I’ve lived with it for too long.

  After he had left for Australia, Charlie wrote to you. The letters arrived at the boarding house where I was living, only I didn’t pass them on to you as I promised him I would. I burnt them. All except for one. So many times I’ve wished I could change what happened, but you can’t go back. A lad from work called around for a drink before I had a chance to get rid of it and I put it in my jacket pocket meaning to burn it later. I was dead on my feet with the double shifts I’d been pulling, and I forgot it was there.

  The day it happened, Clara told me she would bring my lunch to the mine as she hadn’t seen much of me with the extra hours I was doing. I had a break between shifts, so I walked down the road to meet her. We decided to sit on the grass away from the road for a bit because I was hoping for more than lunch. I was a young man, Bridget, you understand, I had needs. The letter fell out of my pocket as I flapped my jacket out to lay on the ground for us to sit on. Clara snatched it before I could stop her. She must have seen something in my face because she wouldn’t give it back and she saw that the postmark was from Australia. I don’t know how she guessed, but she did, she ran from me and opened it then she threatened to tell you what I’d done. I could tell by the look on her face that she knew why it was I’d done what I’d done, and she started to scream at me.

  I just wanted her to stop making all that noise. It got inside my head, and I wanted it to stop. I never meant to hurt her but when I pushed her she fell backward, and I panicked. It’s no excuse, but it’s the truth. She’d hit her head on a rock, and there was a pool of blood. She was gone just like that and I was so bloody frightened. It was as if I was somebody else that day. It’s the only way I can explain what I did next because I picked her up and took her to the old mine shaft where she was found. I was going to confess to what I’d done, the guilt was terrible, but the days ticked by and it got harder and harder. Everybody believed she’d fallen in the shaft. I couldn’t see how it would make things better by telling the truth as to what happened and then one day you looked my way. You needed me and I knew that if I tried hard enough I could make myself believe she really had fallen into that shaft.

  Please forgive me, Bridget, for Clara, for not being faithful to you in our marriage and for all the hurt we have caused each other. Only it was so hard you see, to love you and to know that you didn’t love me back the same way.

  Your husband, Tom

  Bridget crumpled the paper, her husband’s confession, and tossed it on the fire before striking a match. She watched the ball of paper erupt into flame and continued to kneel there until it was no more than a pile of ash. She had to hold onto the chair to haul herself upright. It was hard to believe now that she’d once been agile enough to do handstands, she thought, walking through to her bedroom, her hand supporting her hip. She paused in front of her dressing table to look at herself in the mirror trying to see what Charlie would see when he looked at her.

  She couldn’t believe that she was that old lady looking back at her. Where had that girl with the mane of dark hair, smooth skin and flashing eyes disappeared to? She caught glimpses of her from time to time in Isla and felt a pang for her lost youth. That was the cruel thing about aging, Bridget mused. Although your body gave the game away inside you never actually felt old. What was that saying? Something about a silk purse, that was it. ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ she said out loud to the old woman in the mirror. Well, she could bloody well try, she thought putting on her lipstick and fluffing her hair.

  When the knock on the door came later that same day, Bridget knew it was Charlie. Even still, she clutched the door frame to steady herself when she opened the door, surprised her knees didn’t give way seeing him standing there. He hadn’t changed, she thought drinking in the sight of him. Oh, he’d gotten older of course, but he was still Charlie. It was in his eyes and the curve of his mouth as he smiled. She noticed his hand trembling as he held the bunch of red roses out towards her.

  ‘These are for you, Bridget. I’m sorry if I’ve given you a fright. I would’ve telephoned but I wasn’t sure you’d let me call on you, and I had to see you.’ He studied her face. ‘You’re still my beautiful Bridget. I knew you would be.’

  Bridget was conscious of her white hair and the age spots on the back of her hands as she took the flowers from him. Red roses were her favourite. He had remembered. She was too old to be coy and bury her nose in the sweet smell of the bouquet. She found her tongue at last. ‘Isla told me you were coming. These are lovely Charlie, it’s been a long time since I’ve had flowers, but you shouldn’t have come back here.’

  ‘They’re still your favourite?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘Do you know that I’ve lived a whole life since my time with you, but I never got over you, Bridget Upton. That’s why I had no choice but to come when your granddaughter called.’

  ‘She overstepped the mark there, and it’s Bridget Collins these days. It has been for a very long time.’

  ‘Yes, you married Tom.’

  Bridget felt herself bristle at the accusatory tone. ‘And you? Did you marry and have a family?’

  ‘No. I had two significant others in my life though, and I have two sons who are both grown up with families of their own now. They’re good lads.’ His voice choked. ‘We’re too old to pussyfoot around each other. Why did you never write back to me? That’s what I came here to find out, why you broke my heart the way you did. I thought you loved me as much as I loved you.’

  ‘Charlie, I …’ The confusion and the hurt on his face even now so many years later was hard to bear witness to. She didn’t know what to say. The truth would hurt him more, but he had waited a long time to hear as much of it as she had decided she would ever divulge. ‘You broke my heart too, you know.’

  ‘How? I would’ve waited for you, but you couldn’t wait for me. I understood a little when I heard of Clara’s death but still, to not write back and tell me that you didn’t feel the same way anymore. That was the worst of it, Bridget, the not knowing what had happened.’

  ‘Oh Charlie, I can’t do this. You should have left things well alone.’

  ‘Ah, but I can’t, you and I have an unfinished history. You see Bridget, I reached a conclusion one day that I’m getting old, and I don’t want to waste another day wondering. I had to come and see you again, but I can see it’s been a shock to you and it’s not my intention to upset you. I’ll leave you to think things through.’ He took a step backwards. ‘I’m staying at Fern House, do you know it?’

  Bridget nodded, it was the bed and breakfast near the river.

  ‘I’ll leave you be for now but please when you’re ready, come and see me. We owe it to each other, don’t we?’

  She gave a small nod and turned away, shutting the door on him before he could see the tears that she knew were about to spill over. Leaning her head back against the solid timber of the door, she blinked hard to make them disappear but they escaped and streaked down her cheeks nevertheless. Hearing him go, and still clutching the blooms she went through to the living room, pulling the curtain back. His body was slightly stooped by age and his hair too was white li
ke hers was – but he was still her Charlie, she thought watching him walk back down the path.

  It was as though all the ensuing years had melted away at the sight of him. She let the curtain fall back and buried her nose in the roses, inhaling their pungent sweet scent wanting to hold onto something tangible and real. There was so much water that had gone under the bridge, too much and her mind began to trace the tracks back to that night in the hospital when Tom had wheezed and coughed his way through the story that she wished he’d never told her. A story that she could never share in its entirety because of the hurt it would inflict. She could never tell Charlie the truth of what happened all those years ago.

  ‘I’m alright Mum, stop fussing, and for goodness’ sake can you go a bit faster, you’ll get a ticket at this rate.’ Isla was seated next to Mary who was driving as though she’d reached an age when she should be considering relinquishing her license.

  ‘I feel like I did when your brother was born and we brought him home from the hospital. It was windy that day too, I remember being frightened a tree might come down in it. I tell you Isla, you won’t understand this until you have a baby of your own, but it’s terrifying finding yourself in a car with a newborn and realizing that baby is now your responsibility.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘I just don’t want to hit any potholes, not with your ribs still healing.’

  Isla shuddered at the mention of potholes. ‘I’ll be fine, Mum. I took some pain relief tablets before we left.’ The hospital was getting further and further behind them. Mary put her foot on the accelerator.