The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  Dr Ormerod had walked them back to Caroline’s room and silently touched Deirdre’s arm in a way that was oddly comforting—you somehow didn’t expect someone with a Birmingham accent to have a good bedside manner. Then she had drifted away, murmuring that she would return soon to ‘see how they were all doing’.

  That was three hours ago. It was late afternoon and the weak January sun had already slunk beneath the cooling towers of the hospital laundry.

  Deirdre shifted in the small orange plastic chair that the hospital provided for the use of visitors. She had sent Eric from the room in search of Dr Ormerod and now she was left with Mr Milthorpe.

  She glanced discreetly at her watch. It was a little after four thirty in the afternoon. Outside (what you could see of outside through the venetian blinds and the grime on the window) was dark. There was a canal nearby, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, they had passed it on the way in, and the castle up on the hill, though you couldn’t see it from this window.

  It was evident that she and Eric weren’t going anywhere tonight. Or perhaps they should spend the night at Caroline’s house? They would need to get her keys from the nurse—unless Mr Milthorpe had them? When Mum had died she and Eric had waited in a corridor. She couldn’t recall being there for more than a few hours, certainly not overnight. Mum had collapsed on Sunday evening, an ambulance had arrived, they had waited outside, then sometime around midnight Mum had gone.

  Caroline hadn’t arrived until midday the next day.

  And now it’s your turn, she thought, watching her sister’s still face. But such thoughts made it seem as though the end, Caroline’s end, was inevitable.

  It was best not to think.

  ‘Looks like snow,’ observed Mr Milthorpe, peering through the blinds.

  After a while the nurse returned and Deirdre got stiffly to her feet then hesitated. She wanted to ask, Do you think she can hear us, do you think she’s awake? But she said nothing.

  The nurse was monitoring the intravenous drip. She smiled vaguely but didn’t even glance down at Caroline to see if there was any change. The nurse’s manner, her expression, made it clear she believed in instruments and electrical monitors. The change in a patient’s pallor, a shift of their head, an opening of their lips, meant nothing to her.

  When she had gone Deirdre sat down again and watched Caroline’s eyelids as her eyes flickered back and forth. It looked like she was dreaming.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  DEIRDRE HAD BEEN HERE, sitting by the bed, talking to Mr Milthorpe, which seemed to Caroline rather like Alice talking to the White Rabbit. Well, not really like that, but it was as unlikely a scenario.

  What had they talked about? Alice and the White Rabbit had talked about time. An appointment, being late. What would Deirdre and Mr Milthorpe find to talk about? Gardening. Yes, they both loved gardening. She hoped they would find that they had that in common. But the talking seemed to have stopped and she was no longer sure who was sitting by her bed or if anyone was.

  I really ought to speak, Caroline realised. At the very least, she should acknowledge Deirdre’s presence. After all, her sister had travelled some distance, all the way up from London presumably. It must be a long way, as they rarely seemed to undertake the journey north. But then, if you were being fair, she had rarely undertaken the journey south herself. There was so little need. Especially since Ted had died.

  In the years immediately following Mum’s death, when Ted had had the Sierra and had liked to drive and the traffic hadn’t been quite so bad, they had gone down two or three times a year. The children had suddenly become interesting, had developed distinct personalities. And she and Ted had had no children of their own, of course. She had been past that age long before Ted came on the scene. But since Ted’s death she’d gone south less. It was an unpleasant journey by car, worse by rail. She had all she needed right here.

  You were meant to get nostalgic for the past once you reached a certain age but it hadn’t happened. And why would it? The past wasn’t somewhere any right-thinking person would wish to dwell. It contained far too much that you were sad had gone forever, and so much more that was just plain unpleasant. And it got no less unpleasant just because the years had passed. You just felt the pain of it less, that was all. You could look at a death—Dad’s during the war and then Mum’s years later. William. Ted. You could see them from a distance, as an observer rather than as a participant, which was a relief. But it certainly didn’t make you want to go back there; it didn’t make you want to relive a single God-awful minute of it.

  Besides, she found that most of the memories that popped into her head at odd times were insignificant and inconsequential, quite meaningless to anyone but herself: the prickliness of sunburn on her legs after a daytrip to Scarborough just after the war; the smell of a biology classroom in summertime over sixty years ago; the feel of a school tunic against her skin; the sound of the old Ford reversing up the street. And others—the rubber of a gasmask pressed against her face, the smell of bodies burnt to a crisp, the sound of a buzz bomb cutting out overhead. The shock of losing someone.

  Not that you remembered shock or loss. You just remembered that it had happened and that you had done this or that at the time.

  The sound of an ambulance siren floated up from below, muffled and then louder as the wind changed direction.

  There was something she needed to do. The electricity bill was due today or tomorrow. No, it wasn’t the electricity bill. An iron left on? Well, if the house had burned down they would probably have told her it about by now. She had been doing the ironing, moving a load of clothes from the ironing board in the kitchen to the cupboard under the stairs, when the room had started spinning, had gone red then black, the floor had rushed up and hit her...and here she was.

  Doing the ironing. Not very glorious. Not at all heroic. Most accidents happened in the home. And sometimes they happened in the street in the middle of the afternoon: Dad falling into the bomb crater right outside the post office in March ’45. Lying in a foot of water at the bottom of the crater all night until a returning nightshift worker had spotted him early the next morning. Dead, his neck broken.

  Nowadays you’d get compensation—you got compensation for anything if the newspapers were to be believed, even tripping over your own feet. All Dad had got was a minor obituary in the Gazette and Mum had got a small pension from the post office and a brief letter of condolence in recognition of services rendered. And that was that, really. A hurried wartime funeral, quickly forgotten. Dying accidentally in the blackout, falling into a bomb crater outside the very post office where you’d worked for thirty-odd years, did not get you a state funeral or your name inscribed on the town war memorial. Or even on a bench in Acton Park.

  Dad would have hated to go that way. So undignified. He would have loved to have his name on the war memorial. William was there, or so Deirdre had once said. She’d never gone there herself to see it.

  So many people gone and soon no one left to remember them. Whole families with nothing to show for their time on Earth. There was Grandma and Grandpa Flaxheed, whose house in Wells Lane she could recall—just—visiting as a child of four or five. Walking through the silent, sunny Sunday afternoon streets, holding hands. Whose hand? She couldn’t remember. A man’s hand. Going round for Sunday afternoon tea.

  How shrunken and dour they had always seemed. Grandma fussing over a dropped stitch or a draught at the window, Grandpa in his big old armchair, pointing at some story in the newspaper or trying to engage her in some child-like conversation. And always on the mantelpiece the wedding photograph of Jemima, the daughter who had died young, and her husband, who had died a short while later of diphtheria or scarlet fever or some such old-fashioned disease. She could remember sitting on Dad’s knee, had a vivid impression of rolled-up white shirt sleeves, a lap to perch on, scratchy tweed trousers. The smell of sawdust and raw meat.

  Was it Dad?

  Deirdre would know. She would a
sk Deirdre.

  She remembered then what it was she had meant to tell Jennifer. It was about Charlotte. Charlotte had come up to stay that December of Mum’s funeral. Had told them—herself and Ted, after some persuasion—what had happened, why she was looking so peaky. They had been sworn to secrecy. And they had kept that secret for twenty-five years—well, Ted wasn’t going to be telling anyone anything was he? Not now. But herself... She had promised. And now she had decided to break that promise. But Jennifer had come and gone and she had said nothing.

  Well, it wasn’t too late.

  Jennifer and Charlotte

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ‘HOW DO I LOOK?’ SAID Charlotte, inspecting herself doubtfully in the car’s wing mirror.

  ‘Like someone going to a funeral,’ replied Dr Ashley Lempriere, glancing over from the driver’s seat. Then she swerved left off Princes Street and into North Bridge without indicating, causing the Volvo behind to blast its horn angrily and Charlotte to grip the handle above the passenger-side door.

  ‘Jeez, people get so hung up about which lane they gotta be in in this city,’ Ashley observed, turning indignantly into the forecourt of Edinburgh’s Waverley Station.

  ‘Yes. If we could just loosen up and do away with road rules altogether, I’m sure we’d all be a lot happier,’ agreed Charlotte dryly.

  ‘Funny,’ said Ashley, narrowing her eyes and tailgating a slow-moving Subaru.

  Charlotte didn’t feel funny. She felt like someone who was going to a funeral. She closed her eyes and tried not to think about the day ahead. And she was pretty keen not to think about the previous evening either. She opened her eyes and concentrated on the rear of the white Subaru instead.

  ‘Where are you meant to drop people? There’s, like, not even a turning circle!’ said Ashley, swinging her car in a tight circle and almost collecting a courier on a 338 bicycle.

  Last night the Cultural Studies department, following a particularly depressing staff meeting that had seen Tom Pitney bemoaning the usual things (budget cuts, teaching loads, tutorial double-ups, student numbers), had somewhat surprisingly, and at Dave Glengorran’s suggestion, adjourned to the Union Bar. There, having consumed a number of 99p pints of Auld Augie, Charlotte had found herself in the pub car park around midnight being propositioned by the eminent Dr Lempriere, a proposition that had involved a taxicab ride to Ashley’s Canonmills flat and a warm, electric-blanketed double bed.

  This was baffling because she hadn’t been looking for anything; had, in fact, finally reached a stage in life where she was happy being celibate and single. And, more to the point, she had most definitely had her mind on other things last night. Perhaps she looked more attractive when she was grieving and in shock? This was unfortunate.

  It was also complicated.

  And the complications had started this morning, the morning of the funeral. She had awoken in a strange bed with a colleague whom, until twelve hours ago, she had barely trusted and whom she had spent a fair part of the last term avoiding. Her only choice of clothes had been the ones she had been wearing the night before and her train left in less than an hour. She now found herself in a silver Audi in a borrowed black suit, about to be dropped off in the early morning gloom at Waverley Station, and no, she did not feel in the least bit funny.

  ‘You want me to drop you here?’ said Ashley, looking around for a spot to pull over near the brightly lit station entrance. No Waiting and No Parking signs flashed in the car headlights, crowding both sides of the kerb.

  ‘Thanks. You’re going to be late for work,’ she said.

  That wasn’t funny, it sounded like someone’s mum. But she was going to a funeral—what did she care if Ashley was late for work?

  ‘First lecture’s not till eleven. I got plenty of time. Here you go.’ And Ashley swung into a spot that had suddenly been vacated by a taxi and pulled up with a jolt.

  Charlotte focused her attention on unfastening her seatbelt, opening the car door and going round to the boot. The air was freezing and she pulled up the collar of her borrowed jacket. Ashley was already there and as the boot swung up they both reached for Charlotte’s purple backpack, which still contained yesterday’s unmarked semiotics essays. It was Charlotte’s bag, so she made a grab for it and Ashley stood back and shut the boot.

  She called it a trunk.

  Charlotte hesitated, standing in the icy road, holding her backpack and awaiting the moment of parting. She was going to a funeral, it was okay to be emotional, highly strung, taciturn even. She smiled, a smile that was intended to convey a casual farewell, tinged with sadness because, after all, her aunt had died, and yet with a certain restrained tenderness in acknowledgment of last night. It came out like a grimace.

  ‘Should I come with you?’ said Ashley, touching her arm, and looking searchingly into her face.

  Charlotte blinked in astonishment. ‘To Skipton?’

  ‘No, to the ticket office. See you off, that kinda thing.’

  ‘No need,’ said Charlotte, brusquely, to cover her embarrassment. To Skipton, indeed! How absurd. ‘Thanks for the lift.’

  ‘No biggie. My fault you needed one.’

  This reference to last night seemed to hang in the air, demanding some kind of response. What? Another smile? Charlotte hitched the backpack over her shoulder, giving herself time. Should they kiss?

  ‘Were you close? Will it be a horrible ordeal?’ said Ashley, reaching out and touching both arms now, and this reminder of the funeral was a welcome distraction.

  ‘All funerals are an ordeal, I suppose,’ Charlotte replied, choosing to ignore the first question, and then realising she had only ever been to one other funeral, Grandma Lake’s, over twenty years ago. That had been an ordeal, she realised, though not because Grandma Lake had died.

  ‘Well, you got my cell phone number,’ said Ashley, and then she settled the problem of the farewell by offering a quick hug.

  Charlotte released herself from the hug as soon as was decently possible and, with a vague wave, dived through the darkness to the station entrance.

  Once inside the vast station concourse, she paused and took a deep breath, relaxing—until she saw the queue at the ticket hall. She hurried over to join it, dodging around a stationary group of backpackers and a pigeon that swooped her from its nest in the glass-domed ceiling high above. The snow meant that most of the northbound services had been cancelled but the train for Bristol Temple Meads was still scheduled to leave in fifteen minutes. Three hours to Leeds then the local train to Skipton and a minicab to Aunt Caroline’s house. She would arrive at about midday.

  “Scuse me? Are ye in this queue?’ said a young woman in a suit and Charlotte mumbled a reply and shuffled forward in the line.

  An uneasy thought was nagging her. Aunt Caroline had rung a few days before her stroke and invited her down for tea. And she hadn’t gone. Well, you didn’t go all the way down to Yorkshire for afternoon tea, did you? She’d said, Yes, of course, though it would have to be during half-term. And a few days later Aunt Caroline had had the stroke.

  She wished she had gone.

  She wouldn’t mention it, she decided, as the queue inched forward. Not that she had done anything to be ashamed of, it was just that no one needed to know. There was nothing to be gained by it. And there would be plenty of other things to talk about, or to avoid talking about, beside that.

  Jennifer’s spectacular television debut, for one. Christ. Would they talk about that? How could they avoid it? Graham would mention it, surely.

  And me? she wondered. Will I mention it?

  A scruffy young man carrying a large musical instrument case was ahead of her in the queue and he knocked the case against her shins as he manoeuvred it then stared blankly at Charlotte when she protested.

  Ten minutes till departure. There were five ticket windows open and as one became free a hand from inside the window shot out and flipped over the Open sign to read Closed and pulled down the shutter. Four windows open.
Above the ticket windows was a huge advertising hoarding promoting Focus on Scotland, a weekly current affairs program on Scottish Television. Most of the poster was taken up by a vast head-and-shoulders close-up of a heavily made-up woman in her late fifties with smooth, flawless skin and a most unScottish tan, sporting a newsreader’s coiffured hairstyle. She was Naomi Findlay, long-time presenter of the program.

  ‘Ha!’ Charlotte said out loud, and what ought to have been an ironic laugh merely sounded bitter, as it did each time she saw this particular poster. That would be right, she thought, that would be too bloody right.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  JULY 1981

  AN UNACCOUNTABLY HOT and cloudless afternoon meant that everyone at Henry Morton Secondary was suddenly in shirt sleeves with their socks rolled down. The upper-school boys had removed their grey-and-red-striped school ties. The fifth-form girls lounged in groups on the grass of the school field, their skirts hitched up high to tan their legs, listening to radios and swatting lazily at wasps. No one looked like they had a maths O-level to sit in less than an hour.

  A noisy game of football was going on in the school playground, two discarded jumpers on the ground acting as goalposts and, crossing the playground, Charlotte ducked to avoid the ball as it flew past her head.

  ‘Oi! Throw us it back then!’ called one of the boys, but she ignored him. She barely heard him.

  She was heading towards the girls’ toilet block, the one behind the science labs. She didn’t often go there. Smokers congregated there and you learned early on to avoid the place unless you wanted to be ambushed. But if there was any smoking and ambushing to be done today she hoped it would be done outside in the sunshine. She hoped there was no one in the toilet block at all.

  Someone’s written stuff about us on the wall of the girls’ toilets.

  Zoe Findlay had said this. Had come up to her in the library, pulled up a chair, leaned over, looked left and right, then made her dramatic announcement. Then she had added, mysteriously, ‘You didn’t write it, did you?’