‘And has he?’
Cordelia is silent.
‘How long since he went?’
‘I don’t know. It feels like a lifetime.’
‘You still care about him?’
Cordelia’s eyes flash in Vanessa’s direction. ‘Course I do!’
Vanessa clenches the strap of her shoulder bag in her fist. ‘Perhaps you need to call him. Tell him that.’
‘He must know already.’
‘How? How do people know how much we love them if we don’t tell them?’
Vanessa looks at Cordelia and sees her hunched shoulders, her bent head. She puts her arm round her and her fingers stroke her hair away from her face. ‘Cry, if it helps. Cry your heart out.’
Vanessa pulls up the shop blinds. She moves a cardigan in the palest of lilacs to the front of the window display. Two women come in and start looking through the garments. She hears them exclaiming over some jumpers and jackets: ‘I love this.’ … ‘Look at the greens and mauves in this one.’
There are two missed calls from Esme and a text message: ring me as soon as u can. She presses the call button. Esme answers straight away.
‘How are things?’ Vanessa keeps her voice low as her eyes follow the two women round the shop. ‘I was expecting you or Gerald to ring last night. What did the consultant say?’
‘Dad’s still in hospital.’
‘Why? Has he got to have more treatment?’ There’s a silence on the line. ‘I can’t hear you. You keep fading.’
‘It’s not good news.’
‘What? Tell me.’
‘They’ve found more tumours.’
‘Oh no!’ Vanessa sees the two women look round at her. She glares at them. ‘Does that mean another operation?’
‘Apparently, they can’t operate. The tumours … ’ Esme’s voice disappears, ‘… chemotherapy … refusing more treatment.’
‘What’s going to happen?’
The line is free of disturbance and Vanessa hears the next words loud and clear: ‘He’s coming home to you.’
Cordelia and Savannah are in the living room, their packed bags waiting in the hall.
‘Sorry to abandon you.’ Cordelia gets up from the sofa. ‘We’re catching the train at seven. The taxi will be here in half an hour.’
‘Why? Have I said something wrong?’
Cordelia is smiling. ‘Of course you haven’t.’
‘It’s not you, Granny.’ Savannah is perched on the back of the sofa in her usual position at the window. ‘I don’t want to go, but Mum – ’
‘I called Patrick,’ Cordelia explains. ‘We decided we’ve got a lot to talk about, so … ’ She gives an embarrassed grin.
Vanessa suddenly sees an earnest little girl, tongue sticking out, eyes almost crossed as she focuses on her needles and wool. She rubs either side of her temples with the balls of her hands.
‘Vanessa, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine. It’s been a busy day.’ She takes Cordelia’s hand. She won’t say what she wants to say: Don’t go. Wait and see your father. The moment is too precious. For the first time since her daughter was a little girl, skipping along the pavement beside her, it feels the most natural thing in the world. ‘I’m glad about Patrick. I hope you manage to sort things out.’
Vanessa feels Cordelia’s arms go round her, the gentle pressure of a hand on her back, the tickle of hair across her face.
‘Thanks for everything,’ Cordelia says. ‘I don’t know what I would do without you.’
This is what I have wanted for so long, Vanessa thinks. This is happiness.
Vanessa is waiting out by the bridge when the taxi pulls up. The driver helps Gerald from the car. Even in the few days he’s been away, he seems to have deteriorated: a grey tinge to his skin, the shrunken flesh on his cheeks so that there’s not quite enough to cover the bones comfortably. Skin and bone, she thinks, as she holds him to her. That’s all he is.
He cups his hands round her face. In spite of the warm evening, his palms feel cold against her cheeks. ‘I needed this,’ he whispers.
Over Gerald’s shoulder, she catches the driver’s eye. He turns away, shaking his head. He scrapes his foot from side to side across the ground. She imagines him going home to his cosy house, to his wife. Poor sod, she hears him saying.
She makes her voice brisk. ‘Let’s go inside, Gerald. If I take this arm, perhaps you …’ she indicates to the driver. ‘We’ve got steps up to the front door.’
‘Righto. Here, mate, lean on me.’
The process of helping Gerald get ready for bed takes an age. He scarcely has the energy to lift his arms. She eases the jacket from his shoulders, and pulls the T-shirt over his head.
‘If I help you into the bathroom – ’
‘I can manage.’ He catches hold of the bedside table and pulls himself up. He doesn’t seem all that steady on his feet.
She watches him lean against the doorframe and then the wall as he crosses the landing to the bathroom. She takes a clean T-shirt and a pair of boxer shorts from the drawer and pulls back the duvet. It’s strange to think Cordelia’s only just slept in this bed, put her head on this pillow. What would Gerald say if he knew the daughter he longs to see has been so tantalisingly close?
When he comes back, Vanessa busies herself unpacking his bag and putting his toilet things on the chest of drawers. It hurts to see the body that once intoxicated her so changed. She takes the biography of Elisabeth Frink from the bag and carries it over to the bedside table.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed. He takes her hands and draws her towards him. She stands between his thighs and he rests his head against her breasts. She feels his hands on her buttocks. She looks down at his hair, thin now. His scalp is a bluish colour. She pictures the network of lines and whorls beneath the skin like a complicated piece of crochet. If only she’d been able understand his mind’s complexity in the way she understood her knitwear designs. If there’d been a pattern she could follow: say this, do that twice, repeat until your knowledge of this person measures thirty-six inches. Perhaps they’d have managed things better. Perhaps he would never have left.
‘Let’s get you into bed.’ She helps to swing his legs round and up. She hooks her arm through his and he leans against her, while she plumps the pillows. ‘There. Now you can rest.’
‘Will you sit with me for a while?’
‘Better still …’ She goes to the other side of the bed and lies down beside him. ‘I’ll stay until you fall asleep.’
He lifts his arm and she settles her head in the crook of his shoulder. She turns on her side so that she can nestle against him, her hand on his chest. There’s a gentle pulsating under her palm. Its fluttering reminds her of being pregnant and the first tentative movements of the baby in her belly. ‘I can feel your heart beating.’
‘At least it proves I’ve got one.’ He makes a noise between a laugh and a groan – she feels his chest vibrate.
‘Gerald?’
‘Yes?’
‘Cordelia says you and she met after … you know … after you went away.’ For a few seconds it seems as if the steady beat under Vanessa’s hand has stopped. God, she’s killed him. She didn’t even mean to ask the question, didn’t know it was going to come out of her mouth until it was there: on the duvet between them, in the pulse of his heart that she can feel again, in the scared look in his eyes as he turns his head towards her.
‘Yes, we did,’ he says.
‘You told her to keep it secret.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why.’
‘Tell me.’ She hates the hardness of her tone, but she won’t let herself weaken.
‘You would have stopped her,’ he says.
‘So you made her lie to me?’
‘I suppose. I didn’t see it like that at the time.’
She lifts her head from his arm and leans up on her
elbow. ‘How did you see it?’
He covers his eyes with his hand. His lips are pressed together. Half of her wishes she hadn’t asked, wishes she could shut the need for answers away, like she has for so long. But the other half knows there will be no peace until she’s asked it all. Until there are no more whys or hows, or whats or whos.
‘I knew you wouldn’t see me,’ he says, ‘and I knew Cordy would.’
‘You used her to get to me?’
‘No, Nessa. I needed to see her. She made it all bearable.’
‘And what happened when she came back from America?’ Vanessa thinks about Cordelia’s return: the joy of baby Savvy, the relief that Cordelia was less hostile. Was she seeing Gerald in secret all that time?
‘I let her down again,’ Gerald says.
‘What happened?’
‘I arranged to meet her for lunch, catch up, see the baby – we’d hardly had any contact while she was away – but I was working. I had a commission for a piece to stand on the river bank, near where the Globe theatre is now, and – no point dressing it up – I put that first.’
‘You didn’t turn up?’
‘Well, I did, but three hours after we’d arranged to meet.’
No wonder Cordelia hates Gerald so much: she can see it all now. ‘Did you phone to apologise?’
He takes his hand from his eyes, and even in the fading light she can see they’re rimmed with red. Little bubbles of perspiration line his forehead. ‘No. I went back and took a hammer to the piece I was working on and refused the commission.’
Vanessa puts her head on the pillow next to his. ‘I know this stuff’s not easy.’
They lie quietly while the darkness in the room deepens. ‘Can I ask you something else?’ she says. The shadows make it easier.
‘Nessa, this is worse than the surgeon’s knife.’
‘It’s not about the past.’
‘Go on.’
‘Esme says the consultant wants you to have more chemotherapy.’ Vanessa tries to say it, as if the words are no more than – what time would you like breakfast? The evenings are growing cooler.
She waits for Gerald to answer. The silence stretches out. ‘She says you’ve refused it.’
‘No point.’
She lets her fingers slip backwards and forwards across his chest, a gentle rhythmic movement. ‘You don’t know that.’
‘I told the consultant to give me the worst that could happen.’
‘And?’
‘You don’t want to know. He didn’t pull any punches.’
‘But that’s the worst,’ she protests. ‘If you have the treatment, we can hope for the best.’
Gerald’s hand tightens on her shoulder. ‘There is no best to this fucking disease! It’s dirty and degrading.’
‘Only if you look on it like that.’
She knows from the change in his breathing that he’s getting angry. She clamps her teeth together so hard they start to hurt. Has she got any right to persuade him? She’s not the one who’s suffering. But she can’t bear him to give up, to sound so defeated. How can she lose him now? She’s just got him back.
‘I can’t stay here,’ he says after a while.
‘Of course you must stay.’
‘I’m going to get worse before it’s all over – ’
‘Don’t say that!’
He reaches over and strokes her cheek. ‘We have to be realistic. I can face it, if I’ve got you. I’ve lived too much of my life without you. I don’t want to die on my own.’
She runs her hand up and down his arm. ‘You won’t. I promise you won’t.’
‘I want you to see if they’ll take me in a hospice.’
‘No!’ The word comes from deep in her chest, leaving a ragged tearing pain behind. ‘I’m going to look after you.’
‘You’d have to do things for me. Let me keep some dignity.’ He seems to gather strength from somewhere and pushes himself up. He leans over until his face is close to hers. ‘You know you didn’t ever answer the question I asked you.’
‘What question?’
‘Will you marry me?’
She wants to say yes. Her tongue is already poised against the roof of her mouth ready to shout out the word. She aches to give him this last gift, to wipe out the years of pain and separation with that one little word. Then she remembers Andrew. Kind, loving, beautiful Andrew. Can she really give herself to the man who killed him? I’ll never forgive you for this, she yelled at Gerald that day in the hospital. Inside her, a rage waited to explode, sending pieces of her body splattering over the white coats of the doctors. She hated him because Andrew was dead. He’d killed Andrew.
Moments have already passed and she hasn’t answered Gerald’s question. In the silence, she pulls his head down towards her. His face is wet and his mouth tastes salty.
Twenty-five
Patrick’s sitting on the sofa near the back of the wine bar. He’s checking his phone and doesn’t see her. It’s where they always sit when they come to this bar. Cordelia visualises the wall opposite him: a Mediterranean mural, a ball of orange and red shimmering on an iridescent sea, a sky of the sharpest clearest blue; in the foreground a couple walking hand-in-hand along an expanse of sand stretching into the distance. They used to fantasise that the couple was them. Planned the house they would build on the hills crouching above the cove, imagined their love blossoming in this little piece of heaven. Paradise, Utopia, Shangri-la, Arcadia: whenever they came to the bar, Patrick tried to think of new words for heaven. This is where he first said he wanted to marry her.
He’s wearing the blue cashmere jumper she bought him for his birthday. He knows she loves the way the colour makes the blueness of his eyes shimmer. She can’t help staring at him, even though he’s going to look up at any minute. He’s thinner in the face and his hair is unkempt.
Cordelia threads her way through the crowded tables. As she approaches, Patrick leaps up and steps towards her. He puts his hands on her shoulders but holds his body stiffly, away from hers. His lips graze each of her cheeks.
She notices an orange juice on the table in front of him and orders a diet coke. They sit down, the big squashy cushions on the sofa tilting them towards each other. She can feel Patrick’s arm touching hers.
‘It’s good to see you,’ he says.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve missed you.’
It’s your turn, she tells herself. Tell him you’ve missed him too. He’s flipping a beer mat over and over. It slaps against the table. Her mouth remains shut.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
‘Fine. And you?’
‘Lance is driving me mad.’
‘I wondered if you were staying with him.’
‘I didn’t want to arrange anything permanent until … until I knew … ’
She waits. Surely it’s up to him to broach the subject? He was the one who left. It seemed so easy on the phone: we need to talk; we must be honest; this is too important. Now, all they can do is advance and retreat, reluctant dancers in a minuet.
‘How’s Savannah?’ Patrick asks.
Savannah, Cordelia notices, not Savvy, which he called her almost from the moment they met. ‘Weighed down with homework. Five minutes in the sixth form and she’s already got loads.’
‘Is she coping?’
‘She’s loving it. I’m amazed. She’s always reading or at the computer.’
‘What about your course? Have you started?’
She hears the tightness in his voice. He’s been so involved in their lives, and now he’s like a little boy longing to join in the football match but forced to watch from the touchline.
‘It’s great,’ she says. ‘My head’s buzzing with new ideas.’
He doesn’t say any more.
The silence hangs.
‘Shall we have a glass of wine?’ she asks.
‘You have one.’ He stops playing with the beer
mat at last and stares up at the mural.
She tries to think of a topic: ask him how Lance is, how the magazine’s going.
‘Do you remember – ’
‘I wish – ’
In the end, they both speak at the same time. They stop and try again. The words clash once more. They laugh, and something between them is released. He reaches out for her hand. His skin feels warm and soft. His fingers are long, the nails beautifully cared for. She remembers them caressing her, circling her nipples, parting her thighs, and an erotic charge ignites in her body. Trying to keep her expression impassive, she returns his hand to his knee. He studies the back carefully, turning it over to examine his palm, as if he hasn’t seen it before.
‘I’ve been a fool,’ he says, his gaze still fixed on his hand.
Cordelia feels her breathing quicken. This is it. She’s about to face one of the most difficult conversations of her life. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘I thought if I didn’t tell you all that stuff about my life, I could pretend it had never happened. I could make a new family, a perfect one instead of the broken dirty one I’d had.’
‘Who has a perfect family? Even the best ones have faults.’ Cordelia wonders how she can say this. She hasn’t been willing to let her mother and father have faults.
‘You don’t understand,’ Patrick insists. ‘I thought by being different from my dad, I could make everything perfect. My father never bought my mum or me a present, so I wanted you to have the biggest, best presents. He always said I was worthless and wouldn’t ever make anything of myself. That’s why I desperately wanted to help you become an artist, why when I saw Savannah looking at some models in a magazine, I told her I had contacts and could help her become one.’
‘She didn’t tell you she wanted to be a model?’
‘Of course not. I just imagined it all, so I could play the perfect dad.’ Patrick clenches his hands so tightly, the knuckles are white. ‘That’s all I was doing – playing. I didn’t know how to be the real thing.’
‘The trouble is … I find it hard to trust people anyway … my father leaving us and …’ Cordelia bites her lip. ‘How can I trust you? I didn’t even know you’d changed your name until Savannah told me.’
Unravelling Page 28
