Ten years ago, Chris’s tortoise had drowned in the garden pond. Neil had fished it out, stiff and bloated, eyes staring, a smear of dried-on blood congealed around its mouth. A human body would look worse. No shell to conceal the middle parts. The sea was crueller than a garden pond, could maim a body, strip an arm or leg off, dash it against rocks. She could see the Russian doll again, still bobbing up and down, but on the waves now, floating face-downwards, tossed by the pitiless tide.
She tried to struggle up. What was she doing, lying useless on her bed? She had to help him, pull him out. It might not be too late. Doctors could be wrong, mistake a coma for death. When had the whole thing happened? Hours ago? Weeks ago? Had David been dead all the time she had been remembering him alive, sleeping with a corpse in the double bed of her mind? She could feel his hands clammy on her body, cold against her breasts. No. Impossible. He wasn’t dead at all. Couldn’t be. You didn’t think of someone all month, all day, miss them, fantasise, then have them die on you. She would have known. Something would have warned her, stopped her planning and exulting. Unless it was a punishment. Because she had planned, fate had paid her back. This was the reprisal for abandoning her mother, shrugging off her daughter so she would be free to live her own life.
She slumped back on the bed, groped out her hands. Nothing there. Only empty space. Strange when she could feel blackness pressing down on top of her—thick black choking blankets, deep black choking water. Listen. She half sat up again. Someone was crying, a thin frail watery cry. Water. Too much water. Was it her? She touched her cheeks, found them dry. Yet the noise was growing louder. It sounded like a baby. She switched the light back on, blundered to the carrycot, picked the infant up. Yes, the child was crying—crying instead of her, howling out her own grief.
‘Cry,’ she whispered. ‘Cry.’ She couldn’t weep herself. Nothing there. Numbness. The baby’s feet were flailing against her stomach. Rage as well as grief. She switched on the bedside light, fingers trembling, every smallest action needing skills and strengths she lacked. The child had ceased its sobbing, almost in surprise at the sudden startle of light. ‘Don’t stop,’ she muttered, shaking the small damp body in her arms. ‘Cry for him. Please cry for him. Cry all night.’
She put the baby back, sank down on the bed again, confused to see a bottle on the bedside table. Sparkling wine. That was for marriages, not funerals. Bubbles. Bubbles streaming from a drowning man’s last shout. She tried to pick the bottle up. It felt heavy, water-logged. Message in a bottle. ‘Help me. Save me.’ She hadn’t seen it, let him drown. She filled her glass, hand unsteady, spilling half, watched the tiny bubbles pop and fizz to nothing. Nothing. That was right—nothing had happened, nothing terrible. She was celebrating Chris and Martin’s engagement, dressed in her smart two-piece, pink-pearl lipstick, silver glitter eye-gloss. She ought to go downstairs and have a dance, pass Bea’s cake around. No. The cake was shattered, mutilated, two hearts a mess of crumbs. It wasn’t safe down-stairs. That phone was there, heavy with black words—mortuary, postmortem, pathologist, police. She would never want to pick it up again. The entire study was tainted now. She had been fussing about some footling little wine stain while David’s body was lying blotched and bloated, bundled into a sack, tipped out on a mortuary slab, poked and prodded by callous men for whom dead bodies were just wages, part of the day‘s work.
She reached out her hand, felt the hard cold smoothness of another phone. She ought to get the facts, contact the pathologist, question the police. She groped for the receiver, put it down again. You didn’t invite the police to an engagement party, mix dead bodies up with streamers and balloons. Better to ring his mother, speak to her again, make sure she hadn’t heard wrong. Or father. Mr Anthony. That was David, wasn’t it? No. Couldn’t speak to Mr Anthony. He was dead, lying on a slab. Anyway, his father might accuse her. ‘You killed our son. You were the last to see him.’ Why were her teeth chattering like that? It was stifling in the bedroom. Neil’s oil-fired central heating. If they were in the cottage still, they’d be wearing three thick sweaters each. Three sweaters on a corpse. She clawed at David’s sweaters, had to get them off. They were dragging him down, water closing over him. Her hand knocked against the phone. She was meant to be ringing someone. David’s mother? No, no. That hadn’t been David’s mother, just a joker, an imposter.
Why not phone her own mother? Bea would be asleep, but you could always wake a mother. That’s what made them special. You screamed out in your sleep and they came running with their solid bodies and their soothing hands. ‘It’s all right—only a bad dream.’ Nice to be a child again. Her finger was throbbing underneath the plaster. A deep cut to the bone. Mummy kiss it better. Mummy bring iodine and bandages, rock her in her arms. She dialled the first two digits of the Oxshott number, stopped. She could see her mother lying on her bed, face pale, mouth half open—not asleep, but dead. She had killed her mother, wanted her to die instead of David. Only a second’s fleeting thought, a fraction of a second, but wicked, nonetheless, unforgivable. Proved what a monster she had become. Monsters were always punished, paid for things.
Anger was choking now, as well as darkness—anger with herself, with the police, the pathologist, the stupid blundering editor of The Times who filled his columns with trivia and trash when a tragedy had happened which should stun the whole front page; anger with her mother. If Bea had been less hysterical about Chris and Martin’s engagement, kept her cool, kept her head, then she wouldn’t have come dashing back herself. If she hadn’t left the island, David would still be alive. Maybe. Probably. She would never have allowed him to go out in that … Mustn’t think about it. Only a nightmare. Bea would bustle in soon, straighten out the covers, make a nice hot drink. ‘You’re safe now. Mummy’s here.’
She picked up the baby again. ‘Your Mummy’s here,’ she told him. ‘Downstairs. Dancing. Drinking wine. You haven’t got a father, have you? Nor had I.’ Had Bea felt like this herself when she was widowed? Must have done. Bereavement. Peculiar word. Three syllables. They should have had a child, she and David—something left of him. A relic, a piece of his body washed up on the shore of hers. All that fuss about the safe period. That was a lie, as well. Nothing was safe. Nothing lasted.
She banged the baby back into his cot, listened to him wail. Didn’t care now. He had no right to be alive when David was dead, their child dead, never conceived. Safe. What was safe? Safety belt. Safety razor. Slashed faces, smash-up on the motorway. Safety glass which you broke when flames were licking at your feet. Sauf. Sur. Sicher. All languages were lies. Mort. Tod. Stupid little words, not big or dread enough for what had happened. Dead. Death. She tried to spin the word out. ‘The wages of sin is death‘. Why did they say ‘is’ instead of ‘are’? Made no difference. She had sinned and David had died. The nuns were right. They had warned her she would go to hell. This was hell, this darkness, despite the deceitful light of the lamp which only hurt her eyes; this scorching heat which made her teeth chatter, put gooseflesh on her arms. Dead cold arms like David’s. Hell wasn’t fire, but water. Water over you and under you, surging into your mouth and ears and eyes, tossing you up on the strand with half your pieces missing. Hell was a soft cream carpet under your feet, your ex-husband’s precious Wilton carpet which you had decided you preferred to a scrap of tatty matting and a man with soul and genius who was now a piece of jetsam. She had doubted David, criticised, feared he would deprive her of her piddling little comforts. She had those comforts still. She touched the plump pink duvet—goose-feathers from Harrods—real down pillows. David was only a mass of drifting feathers, scattered on the wind, no shape to him, no warmth.
She stopped at the door, heard a fractured burst of music. What was she doing, skulking upstairs when there was a party going on? She was neglecting Chris again. They would punish her a second time, snatch Chris away as well. She pushed at the door—heavy, very heavy—took her first step down the stairs. They seemed steeper than they ever had before, t
he staircase dangerously long. It made her dizzy to see it plunging down down down … Mustn’t look. Stairs could drown. She clung to the banisters—one step, one step—stopping at each one. Two couples were sitting at the bottom, arms twined around each other. She squeezed her way between them, dazed by the noise, the glare. Chris had spotted her, was darting over.
‘Are you okay now, Mum?’
Morna nodded, didn’t trust her voice yet.
‘I was just trying to find the sausage rolls. Grandma said she made some spares, but I can’t see them anywhere. Know where she might have put them?’
Morna faltered into the kitchen. Sausage rolls. The word meant nothing. She looked in the fridge, shivered. Ice-cold like the mortuary. David stored like a hunk of frozen meat. She searched all the cupboards, tried the oven. Yes, there they were, a tray of sausage rolls waiting to be heated. Little boats with drowned pink bodies in them. She moved them to a higher shelf, switched the oven on. Cremation. Was David cooked already, a jar of ashes on the mantelpiece? Had she missed the funeral? All his relations there, but not his mistress. Useless as a mistress. Not only inexperienced but cowardly. She had run away, left her man to drown.
No, it was a lie, a lie. David was returning in twenty-seven and three-quarter days. She had marked it on the calendar and calendars weren’t wrong. They were all worked out by proper official people, followed religiously by governments and churches, schools and farmers, law courts. ‘David back’, it said, scrawled in huge scarlet letters across 7th May. ‘Meet him St Pancras.’ She had planned the reunion already—the swift drive home, the special meal, their first night together in a proper double bed. She could see the figure 7 in her mind—king-size like the bed—towering over all the other dates. That calendar had never lied before. It had been right about today, Chris’s birthday. The cards had all arrived, plopping on the doormat. That proved it, didn’t it? And then they’d opened presents, decorated the house. She had put the streamers up herself, wobbling on the ladder, laughed and joked with Chris, hung balloons in bunches.
She stood at the door, watched the crowd of guests. It must be a birthday because everyone was dancing—some crazy modern dance where you clapped and shouted, clicked your fingers, swayed your hips. Someone grabbed her, a tall lad with a navy headband lassooing long and lanky hair. ‘Come on, mate, join in.’
She was ‘mate’ now, one of them. She had wanted a dance and here it was; longed to be young again and now she had a partner under twenty. His hand was hot and sweaty, but at least it stopped her falling. Her body was powered by his, supported by the crowd of other dancers pressing round.
‘Follow me,’ he shouted. ‘Do what I do.’
She followed, clicked her fingers, swayed her hips.
‘Bravo!’ someone yelled. She whirled faster, stomped her feet, clapped her hands. She could smell sweat and scent curdling on hot bodies, fumes of wine and garlic breathed into her face. The floor was swaying with her, tipping up, then swerving down again. She couldn’t fall. Too many people jerking, spinning close. Thump of feet, whine of electric guitars, glow of fag ends, a curling plume of smoke. The boy had lit a cigarette. He was reaching up, popping balloons with it. Shrieks of laughter. Bangs. More balloons let loose in the study. Neil’s study. Sacrosanct. Wild girls whooping after them, dance breaking up in chaos.
‘Here, Mum, one for you.’ Chris flushed now, flushed with wine and dancing, darting towards her with a green balloon. Green for safety. Morna held it on its string, went on dancing. Easier not to stop. She had lost her partner, but still she couldn’t fall. She was buoyed up by an air balloon. The music made her strong. It was strong itself, pounding, vehement, throbbing through the floor and through her body. She could float on it and fly. The balloon was a kite keeping her in motion, towing her along. Careful, though, the floor was treacherous, kept tipping all the time. Couldn’t trust it. Couldn’t trust that boy. He was lurching towards her with his lighted cigarette; face in close-up, laughing. She swung away, too late, felt the shock right through her arm as the balloon exploded and she was left clutching a piece of string with nothing on the end of it but a piece of punctured rubber. She stared at the remains, the limp and ragged fragment, unclenched her palm, let it fall.
‘Time to go,’ she whispered. They ought to leave now. It was late, very late indeed. ‘Time to go,’ she said again, except nobody was listening. She stepped over bodies, tried to find the staircase. ‘All over now,’ she murmured to herself. ‘All finished.’
Chapter Twenty Four
They shouldn’t be sleeping on the sand. It was too cold, too uncomfortable. The tide was coming in, showering them with spray, creeping over their ankles, soaking their shoes. Morna tried to drag David up the beach. His body was chilled, heavy, wouldn’t wake from sleep. She had to rouse him so that they could make love, conceive their child. She kissed his lips. His mouth was empty—no tongue, no teeth, just a gaping hole. No eyes in the sockets, only sand. She climbed on top of him. He was always shy, needed her to get things going. She lowered herself on his body, plumper than she remembered it, with little tufts of hair sticking up where the knife had missed a patch. Spite, he had told her, revenge for a broken net. The skinless body stank. It had been around too long. Inquest on a dead seal. Coroner’s report. ‘The skin has been removed, the flesh beneath marbled green and black with purple splodges. Putrefaction has begun. There is a frayed rope round the neck.’
Morna grabbed the rope, pulled herself up on it, squatted down on his loins. They still weren’t making contact. She laid her cheek against his chest. Cold, cold as granite. She wished he would put his arms around her, but they seemed too short to reach. Black claws instead of hands, seaweed wreaths around his neck. Seals shouldn’t drown. Seals could swim, dive a thousand feet beneath the water and still bob up again.
‘Gregory,’ she whispered. Was that his name? Difficult to know now. He seemed so changed. If she didn’t move up the beach, she would drown herself. She could hear the waves pounding on the sand, feel the salt spray of their breath flicking on her face. She made one last effort, pressed her body full length against his, felt the flesh flabby, decomposing under her weight. He was breaking up beneath her, bits of his body dragged away by the tide. Waves were crashing over both their bodies now—or what was left of his. She swallowed a mouthful of water, choked, tried to spit it out, clutched at a rock, opened her eyes on darkness and dry land.
Her eyes were streaming still and she could taste salt on her lips. She had never cried in her sleep before, although she had woken screaming the previous two nights, struggling with the same horrific nightmares. She mopped her face with a corner of the sheet, could feel the sea still throbbing in one finger. She switched on the bedside light, examined the cut. The dressing had slipped off, the fingertip oozing pus. Cuts had always healed before. Not this one. It had festered, swollen, the skin around it blotched and bloated. She had to keep it bandaged, had lost the use of that hand. David had lost a hand, a whole arm, perhaps. She still didn’t know how much of him remained. Half his body? Less? It hardly mattered, really, when all the bits were dead. She ought to be used to death by now. Her father had died, then God, then her marriage. Why make such a fuss about it? All she had to do was stuff the pain back under the bandage, confine it to one fingertip.
She eased out of bed, fetched lint and antiseptic from the medicine chest, returned to the bedroom. Difficult to bandage your own finger. You needed someone else to tie the ends or insert the safety pin. She couldn’t do it on her own, sat on the edge of the bed, cradling the finger in the other hand. So much pain.
She got up again, paced to and fro, to and fro, stopped at the dressing table, opened the top drawer. She took out David’s letters, touched his silver coin—all she had left of him. The quartz, the shells, the sea urchin, were still in his cottage on the island. The coltsfoot he had given her had withered the next day; they had shared the egg between them for their breakfast. There was nothing else—no ring, no outward b
ond.
She picked up the card which Chris had made for her—a sort of mourning card with a double-edged black border, crayoned in, verses printed neatly in the centre in her best italic script. Her daughter was embarrassed by death and grief, didn’t have the words for them, had used T.S. Eliot’s, instead.
‘Also pray for those who were in ships and
Ended their voyage on the sand, in the sea’s lips
Or in the dark throat which …’
Morna replaced the card, face downwards. The sea was in her eyes again. She dabbed them with the bandage, smelt antiseptic, pain. Since David’s death, she was terrified of water. Chris and Martin went diving in that same ruthless sea which had coffined David. She longed to implore them never to go under again—but that would be another sort of death. Water was power and joy for them, not terror. ‘Accept the terror,’ David had urged her, months ago, when they were walking in the Weybridge cemetery. Strange that they should have had their first deep conversation in a graveyard. ‘And we all go with them, into the silent funeral …’ She remembered the lines her daughter hadn’t copied.
‘We cannot think of a time that is oceanless
Or of an ocean not littered with wastage
Or of a future that is not liable
Like the past, to have no destination.’
Eliot knew that April was the cruellest month. April 14th today, day of the funeral. She hadn’t missed it. Things had dragged out—holdups, complications, practical problems of sending the body back. Corpses hanging around for days and days, outstinking Eliot’s lilacs. She walked across to the window, pushed aside the curtain, watched the first grey film of dawn curl like smoke beneath the edges of the darkness. British Summertime had started just three weeks ago, the clocks gone forward, giving the world an extra hour of light. Not her world, though. She could feel only darkness, the darkness of the island moved to Weybridge. Here she had electric light, every type of lamp—table lamps, bedside lamps, reading lights, Anglepoises, even spotlights in the garden. Yet the dark gloom still pressed down. On the island, David had been her light. Despite the total blackness of the nights there, the swarthy sea, often starless sky, short days, early dusk, her fear had disappeared. Now it had her trapped again; here, in this cosy suburb where the lampposts came on almost before the sun went down, the close-packed houses beamed back light at them; headlights swivelled across well-lit roads; shops and restaurants made bright squares in the streets. The darkness had moved inward. If a surgeon were to slice her body open, he would find nothing but an empty shell. Someone had already removed her lungs and stomach, so that she could no longer eat or breathe. Her body felt bruised and sore as if it had been shoved about on the operating table. It hurt to swallow. All noises seemed too loud, especially laughter. Laughter was extraordinary and blasphemous. Why should anybody laugh?
The Stillness the Dancing Page 53