Jude is about to object, on the grounds that her father won’t feel much love emanating off these particular visitors, whether he’s conscious or not.
‘Well, you don’t want to hear me wittering, you want to see your father,’ Dr Ody says, still under the illusion that Jude will be a welcome visitor. ‘I’ll take you to him.’
‘Thank you,’ Jude mumbles.
The illusion is shattered as soon as Jude and Gertie step into the room and Dr Ody falls back to reveal the visitors to his patient. Because Arthur Simms is awake and regarding his daughter with horror.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Jude steps back. Gertie mirrors her. Only Dr Ody appears unperturbed.
‘Some of our patients lose their lucidity,’ he says. ‘With all the medication, I’m afraid they often lose a sense of themselves.’
Perhaps, Jude thinks, but that’s not what’s going on here.
‘It’s OK,’ Gertie pipes up, ‘he was like this the last time we saw him.’
‘Ah.’ Dr Ody moves in the direction of the door. ‘Then perhaps it’s best I leave you to catch up without a stranger watching over you.’
And, before Jude can protest, he’s gone.
Forcing herself to step forward, Jude looks at her father. He seems a more shrivelled, shrunken version of the man she saw only a few days before, at sea in the vast white bed. He refuses to meet her eye.
‘Come to gloat, have you?’
Jude frowns.
‘You always wished it’d be me in here, instead of your mother, didn’t you?’ he says. ‘You must be happy I finally got what I deserved.’
Not even, she wants to say, but holds back. She thinks of her mother, battered and bruised, yet always keeping up the pretence that everything was all right. It had happened again, and again. More times than Jude would be able to remember. As she became a teenager, Jude expected her father to come after her. Sometimes, she even bated him, hoping to ignite his ire and draw him away from her mother. But he never touched her.
It was on the eve of her fourteenth birthday, finding her mother icing a cake and sporting a fresh bruise on her temple, that Jude finally confronted her.
‘Mum, this has to stop. If you can’t kick him out then you – we – have to leave.’
Her mother smoothed chocolate ganache with a palate knife.
‘Mum, you can’t let him keep hurting you like this. It’s totally fucked up,’ Jude said, her voice rising. It was the first time she’d sworn in front of her mother.
‘Mum?’
Her mother dropped the knife into the sink, then began wiping the edges of the plate clean with a dish cloth.
‘Mum—’
Only then did Jude’s mother turn to face her.
‘And what do you suppose we should do if we left?’ she said, her voice barely above a whisper. ‘Live off thin air?’
‘No, but there are places, refuges, we could go to one of them. We could – I don’t know yet, but we’ve got to do something. We can’t, this isn’t …’
‘Don’t be so soft, Jude,’ she had said, louder this time. ‘Bring me those candles.’ She nodded at a small plastic packet on the table. ‘Come on, make yourself useful now.’
‘It didn’t come soon enough?’ her father mutters. ‘Is that what you’re thinking?’
Jude can’t deny it, since he’s right and since she’s not in the business of alleviating his conscience at the final hour – that being a job for priests or whatever denomination of professional forgivers and absolvers the hospital employs. So, she says nothing.
Her father closes his eyes. ‘I don’t know why you came.’
Gertie walks to the end of Arthur’s bed. His eyes open.
‘We came because I wanted to meet you.’ She proffers a smile. ‘I’m your granddaughter.’
Jude’s about to hurl herself in front of her niece – to protect her from the bullet she knows is coming. Thankfully, her father turns his wrath from the girl and onto his daughter.
‘Why did you bring her?’ Arthur Simms shouts – though it comes out in a splutter, since he hardly has breath to shout. ‘Get out! Get out!’
At this, Jude loses her last shred of calm. ‘What the—Who the hell are you?! Are you completely incapable of humanity? Kindness? You’re a fucking animal. You’re right, I wish you’d died years ago! And now I hope it hurts, I hope it hurts like hell!’
Jude grabs Gertie’s hand and pulls her away, out of the door, back onto the ward, where they hurry towards the exit – watched by a perplexed Dr Ody.
Tears pool in Arthur’s eyes. He turns his head into the pillow. ‘You should have stayed away,’ he murmurs. ‘You should protect her, keep her safe from …’ He trails off, his words falling, unheard, into the empty room.
Jude strides back along the hospital corridor, pulling her niece along after her, intending not to stop until she’s at least five miles away and swearing, on her life, never to come back.
‘Stop, you’re hurting me,’ Gertie says, wriggling free from her aunt’s grasp.
Jude stops. ‘I’m sorry, I’m … I just wanted to get us out of there as quickly as possible. I didn’t want him to hurt you any more.’
Gertie frowns. ‘He couldn’t hurt me, he couldn’t even get out of bed.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ Jude says, the edges of her voice sharpening. ‘His words, I meant his words.’
Gertie’s frown deepens. ‘Like your words?’
Jude stops walking. ‘Yes, you’re right. I’m sorry.’
‘Stop saying you’re sorry. I’m fed up with it. Don’t keep apologising, just stop being mean.’ Gertie glares at her. ‘Maybe, if you weren’t so mean to Granddad, he wouldn’t be so mean to you.’
Jude stares at her niece, open-mouthed. What the fuck?! She wants to scream. You have no idea. Absolutely no idea! I’m acting in self-defence. I’m mean to him now because he was so cruel to me. He deserves every word, every awful word and much, much more.
‘Let’s just go home,’ Gertie says, striding off along the hospital corridor. ‘I wish we’d never come.’
Chapter Forty-Seven
For the rest of that day and into the next, Viola continues to feel nothing. She wanders through her flat as if wrapped in cotton wool, so that every sound is muffled, every thought sluggish, every emotion dulled. She wanders in a daze, as if she’s stumbled onto a film set and nothing is real any more, as if everything she does, which isn’t much, has been scripted and she’s simply following instructions. And so, when there’s a knock at the door, Viola walks, trance-like, along the hallway and opens it.
‘Tu es en vie! Dieu merci! Qu’est-il arrivé? Où diable étais-tu? Pourquoi m’as-tu laissé comme ça? Pourquoi tu n’as pas répondu à ton téléphone? J’ai appelé mille fois, qu’est-ce qui se passe?’
Finally running out of steam, Mathieu just stares at her. Viola stares back. He snaps his fingers in front of her face, she doesn’t flinch.
‘OK, I’m sorry, I’ll calm down now,’ he says, taking one long deep breath then another. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. But you must – I’ve been completely terrified. You left like that, you just ran out, you promised you’d call and you never did. It’s been – what?’ – he glances at his watch – ‘nearly thirty hours. Why? Why? Why?’ He takes yet another deep breath and waits, but Viola doesn’t respond.
‘Where the hell have you been?’ Mathieu demands, his voice rising again. ‘Why did you leave me like that?! Why haven’t you answered your phone? I’ve called a thousand times—What the hell is going on? Don’t just stand there, tell me!’
‘I’m sorry,’ Viola says finally. ‘I didn’t mean to. I forgot.’
‘You forgot?’ Mathieu is shrill now. ‘You forgot?!’
‘No, well, yes, I mean …’ Viola turns to walk slowly back along her hallway, gesturing for Mathieu to follow. He does, still questioning, still shrill.
‘I got fired,’ Viola says, stopping as she reaches t
he kitchen, turning back to him. ‘I missed the competition and I was fired.’
Mathieu frowns. ‘What do you mean? You can’t have missed it. The competition’s tomorrow.’
Viola shakes her head, slowly. ‘No. My boss, he changed it. He had some stupid thing to—He’s in the Caymans now.’
Mathieu’s frown deepens. ‘The Caymans?’
‘The Caymans, the Bahamas.’ Viola shrugs. ‘Something like that.’
‘But … but, I don’t understand. How could he have changed it? You’ve been preparing for this for months.’
‘Years, really,’ Viola says, as if time hardly matters any more. ‘As long as I’ve been there I’ve been working for the position of head chef.’
‘But,’ Mathieu persists, ‘why didn’t … Why didn’t he let you compete, even late? I don’t see what purpose—’
Viola shrugs. ‘Jacques is a dick. He’s always been a dick. Why would he be any different now?’
Mathieu looks at her. ‘Oh, V. Je suis désolé.’
Viola sighs. ‘That’s exactly, it’s the right word, désolé. What do the English say? “Sorry”. It hardly counts when one is so, so very—’
Mathieu steps towards Viola and pulls her into a hug. She tucks her head into his chest and he strokes her hair, gently, slowly, as he’d once stroked Hugo’s when he was a little boy.
‘I wish I could do something,’ Mathieu says. ‘I wish I could have known, I wish we could go back in time and …’
‘Yes, I’ve been wishing all that, every single second since it happened,’ Viola says, her mouth pressed into his chest. ‘My head is so full of regret it hurts. My whole body hurts.’
‘Come to the sofa,’ Mathieu says. ‘You need to sit. Let me hold you.’
Viola allows him to lead her there and she slumps into the cushions, head down, deflated, defeated. Mathieu sits beside her and she rests her head in his lap. Viola closes her eyes as he draws figures of eight on her scalp and then, languidly, along her arm. Then he stops.
‘Where’s your ring?’
Viola opens her eyes. Slowly, she pulls herself up off his lap. She doesn’t look him in the eye but down at her toes. ‘I lost it.’
Mathieu’s fingers go to his own foil ring, still wrapped tight around his ring finger. ‘You lost it?’
‘In the rush,’ Viola lies. ‘I must have dropped it in the taxi or something, perhaps on the train. I was running, rushing and I didn’t, I just didn’t see it.’
Mathieu pinches the skin between his finger and thumb. ‘Because you didn’t take care of it.’
‘Hey,’ Viola protests. ‘I wasn’t thinking about it, I had other things to worry about. Fuck. You know how important this competition was to me, you know how much it mattered. I’m sorry if I lost it, but it’s not even a real ring. It’s only made of a chocolate wrapper. Get another box of—’
‘It’s real to me,’ Mathieu whispers. ‘It’s real to me.’
Viola looks at him, eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I said I’m sorry. What more can I …?’ She sighs. ‘I keep thinking, if we hadn’t been in London, if I’d been at home, it’d never have happened. I could have been there in ten minutes. I’d have been an hour early, I—’
‘Are you blaming me?’
Viola frowns. ‘No, of course not. I’m just saying, if I hadn’t been in London it would have been alright. I would have made it. I’m just, in my mind I keep reliving it, trying to do it differently. It’s driving me absolutely insane.’
‘Because, I was trying to do something nice for you, something romantic. It was supposed to be special, I didn’t know it would all go so wrong.’
‘I know, I know,’ Viola says. ‘I’m not blaming you, OK? I’m just tormenting myself, that’s all.’
‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t.’
Viola looks at him and, all of a sudden, a spark of fury flares in her chest. ‘I wish I wouldn’t too,’ she snaps. ‘It’s fucking hideous. It’s unbearable. Don’t you think I’d stop it if I could? Of course I bloody would.’
‘Yes, I know, I’m only saying—’
Viola pulls back into the sofa, increasing the distance between them. ‘I know what you’re only saying. And, you know what, if we hadn’t been in London, if you hadn’t pushed so hard for us to go away, if you’d just waited until after the competition, just like I begged you to do, then this wouldn’t have happened, would it, none of this would have happened.’
‘I knew it!’ Mathieu stands. ‘I knew you were blaming me for all this. That’s why you weren’t answering my calls, that’s why you were freezing me – you were punishing me, punishing me for ruining your career.’
‘I was not,’ Viola says. ‘I was just—I was suffering, by myself, alone. I didn’t want to call anyone. I just wanted to get through it. So, not everything is about you, OK?’
‘Clearly,’ Mathieu nods at Viola’s hand, at her empty ring finger. ‘Would you ever have called me? If I hadn’t—’ He runs his fingers through his hair. ‘Look, I think … I shouldn’t have come. You clearly wish I hadn’t, so I’m – I’m going to go.’
Viola is going to say something, to protest, to stop him, to say she really does want him there. But, suddenly, it feels like too much effort. It’s all just … too much. And so she sits in silence, watching as he walks across the room, turning at the doorway to look back. And she listens, to his footsteps along the hallway, to the echo of the bang in her eardrums after he’s slammed the door.
Chapter Forty-Eight
‘What’s going on?! Tell me right now what’s going on! I can’t believe …’
Viola holds the phone a few inches from her ear and waits for her mother to run out of steam. When she finally lapses into silence, Viola reattaches herself to the phone.
‘I,’ she begins. ‘I’ve—’
‘—I called you at work,’ with a fresh breath, Daisy launches again, ‘only to be told you don’t work there any more. Can you imagine my shock, my humiliation, that your own mother doesn’t even know what’s going on in your life – what must they have thought?!’
‘I told you,’ Viola interrupts. ‘I-I asked you never to call me at work. So, if you insist on doing it anyway, then—’
‘But what happened? I thought the big competition was tomorrow, why on earth would you leave your job before you’ve even—’
‘I didn’t leave, Mum. I was fired,’ Viola says, holding the phone away again even before she’s finished saying the final word ‘fir-ed’, in anticipation of what’s to come.
‘What?!’
Still, she’d underestimated the pitch of her mother’s outrage. Viola closes her eyes. She’s long ago given up wishing that she had a mother who felt things less keenly, who was able to contain her emotions, at least in front of the person who was suffering first-hand. Ever since she was a little girl, Viola had experienced everything twice: when it happened and then when she’d told her mother what happened. The second time was always worse because her mother’s reaction would always reignite Viola’s own pain and then she’d have the extra pain of her mother to contend with too. So it was when Viola had been bullied at school, when she’d been unceremoniously dumped by her first real boyfriend, when she’d dropped out of university, when she’d had a cancer scare. Finally, Viola had stopped telling her mother anything. And yet, no matter what it was, Daisy, with her extraordinary psychic radar, always seemed to find out.
Viola tuned back in to see if her mother was still collapsing. Mercifully, given the subdued silence at the other end of the phone, she clearly had.
‘Mum,’ Viola says. ‘I’m only going to say this once and I’m not going to explain it. I just don’t have the energy right now, OK? If you want to know all the details, call Jacques or I’ll, I’ll tell you some other time—’
‘No, but—’
‘Mum.’ Viola’s tone is sharp, firm. She’s never spoken to her mother this way before but she no longer cares about sugar-coating, tip-toeing and
all that. She’s got nothing to lose any more. ‘Jacques changed the date of the competition. He didn’t give me much notice. I missed it. He fired me. End of story.’
‘What?!’ Daisy shrieks. ‘I can’t—’
‘Mum.’
But Viola is too quiet and Daisy, not hearing, barrels on.
‘Mum!’
Her mother falls silent.
‘I’m serious, Mum. If you do your – if you flip out on me, I’m hanging up, OK? Then you can spend Christmas on your own this year. I don’t care. I’d rather pretend it wasn’t happening anyway. All I want to do is stay in bed. So just leave it alone and let it go, alright?’
Her mother is so quiet then that Viola wonders, for a moment, whether she’s taken offence and hung up. Then she hears a slight, tentative intake of breath.
‘What is it?’ Viola says with a sigh. ‘I didn’t say you couldn’t say anything at all. I just – I can’t cope with any of your histrionics right now. So, if you want to say something, I just want you to stay calm. Alright. That’s all.’
‘Alright,’ Daisy says. ‘Although I think you’re being a little unfair, I’m hardly as hysterical as you’re suggesting.’
Viola laughs. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she says, still laughing. ‘Thank you. I didn’t think I was capable of finding anything funny right now. Thank you.’
Daisy snorts. ‘I’m glad I can do something right.’
Viola smiles, a retort ready, but she holds back.
‘Can I only ask,’ Daisy says, ‘what happened that made you miss it? I just don’t understand that.’
Viola bites her lip and sighs. ‘Mathieu had taken me out for a special treat, to a fancy hotel in London. I was still asleep when I got the call to come in. It started at 6 a.m. and the first train didn’t leave till past five. I was an hour late.’
Viola waits for the verbal flood, the crashing waves of criticism, the tide of reasons why she’s living her life all wrong. But her mother is quiet.
‘Oh, Vi,’ she says at last. ‘I’m so sorry.’
The Patron Saint of Lost Souls Page 16
