‘I hate to leave you,’ Eleanor said, hesitating in the hospital foyer. She had walked across the car park with Marion, and insisted on coming in.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Ring tomorrow when you want me to come.’
‘I will.’ Marion smiled, reassuring Eleanor, since it could not be the other way round.
Eleanor thought how small her sister looked in the wide, pale-painted corridor. Like a fleeting shadow over the sun, the image of their mother appeared, then vanished. Eleanor turned away, and walked back to the car.
Afterwards, this time, Marion felt much worse.
‘It’s getting to me,’ she admitted to Fergus, when she was home.
‘It’ll wear off,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t soon, we’ll get you some anti-nausea tablets. In fact, you should really have them now.’
‘More drugs,’ she said. Then back into hospital, for it to start all over again.’
‘Count down the days, the weeks,’ he said, ‘if you think that would help. Make a chart – some patients do that.’
‘I’m not some patients,’ she snapped. I’m your wife.’ Then she burst into tears, feeling guilty. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I don’t cry in front of anyone else, really I don’t.’
Marion’s friends said to each other, and to Fergus and Eleanor, how wonderful she was, how brave, how cheerful.
‘It’s a matter of pride,’ Marion told Eleanor. ‘You can’t afford to let other people see. But I get angry sometimes. I know that’s not fair, but I can see them thinking, which one is it? I want to put my hand up, point, say, “You’d never know, would you?” And if it’s not that, they’re looking at me and thinking, is her hair getting thinner, would you say?’
‘Oh, Marion, they mean well, everyone is so anxious for you to be all right.’ Eleanor herself had wondered about Marion’s hair.
‘I know.’ Marion sighed. ‘Sorry, I know all that. Look at the cards and notes I’m still getting, the way everyone keeps popping in. I just wish sometimes they wouldn’t, that’s all. I’m too tired even to talk.’ She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Eleanor waited, not knowing what to say. I’m useless, I can’t help her at all. Then Marion opened her eyes and smiled.
‘Sorry. It’s awful I’m grumpy and miserable with the people I love most. You and Fergus come in for all my moans.’
‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, there has to be someone you can say it all to.’ Is that what I do for her? It’s not much. But she was glad Marion had said this. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘you must stop doing things. Look at you today – making soup when I came in. Buy tins, no one will suffer.’
Eleanor knew Marion would ignore this. She was struggling to be normal and to look after everyone, just as usual.
Then one day Eleanor came into the house to find Marion white-faced, her cheeks streaked with tears. She was coming downstairs as Eleanor called from the kitchen door, It’s me.
‘What’s wrong?’ she cried. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Just been throwing up, that’s all.’ Marion leaned on the banister. ‘It’s not glamorous, cancer.’
‘Lie down then, go to bed. Oh, Marion.’
‘Sorry, no, I’m all right now. Better.’
Eleanor had driven over from the cottage thinking about Gavin. What a fool I was, she had decided. It meant nothing to him. He had grown ugly in her imagination, and she found she could not even summon his face, his presence. He had not called her. She was obsessed with this silence, reading into it meanings that changed hourly, but came down in the end to this: she had made a terrible mistake.
Now, helping Marion to a comfortable chair, bringing her water to sip, sitting by her, smelling on her (for the first time) sickness, disease, she was ashamed and guilty. They sat in silence, Marion coming to herself again.
‘Oh dear,’ she murmured, ‘at least this happens when the children are at school. And at least – I was working it out – half-term will be my best week, before I go in again.’ She sat up straighter, less white now. ‘Just before I’m due to go in again, something changes. I wake up and that awful feeling has lifted. I can’t explain it. For a few days I’m almost back to normal. Then, well, then the treatment knocks me back. It’s the pattern, Fergus says, so when it’s over, I will get back to normal. I have a glimpse of it, normality, and I tell myself it will be all right in the end.’
‘Of course it will. As long as this kills off the cancer. That’s what matters.’
‘I watch the bottle, you know, think about that stuff dripping into me, and I wonder what is it killing in me that’s healthy? I try and look after myself – eat well, they say, get fresh air. But oh, some days all I want to do is sleep.’
‘I know, I know,’ Eleanor said, not knowing, but sitting close by Marion, wanting her to go on explaining.
‘The worst thing …’ Marion knew it was years since she had spoken so frankly about herself to Eleanor. But who else could she say these things to? Perhaps Eleanor would not really understand (no one could) but she would always be there, she would always want to listen.
‘What? What’s the worst thing?’ Eleanor prompted.
‘Oh, I have these dreams. That my breast is still there. I touch it, and I’m the same on both sides.’
‘Oh God.’ Eleanor felt tears coming. Don’t cry, she scolded herself, you fool, don’t cry.
Marion, dry-eyed, went on, ‘I wish I was. I wish I was the same. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty. I keep thinking that now.’
‘Hasty? But you didn’t have any choice – you said the surgeon recommended it.’
‘Oh yes, it’s what he does. Operate first. That’s why he recommends it. But Fergus wanted me to go to Aberdeen, to the oncology unit there. They could have given me some chemotherapy, to shrink the tumour. In the end, they might have saved … not operated, I mean.’
‘What? You didn’t have to – you could have gone somewhere else and they might – why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you say?’
‘Och, I just made up my mind.’ Marion sighed. ‘I couldn’t face it, Eleanor, I couldn’t face going all that way. Leaving home. And in the end, it might have been the same anyway. Get it over with, I thought.’
While Eleanor wept, and she comforted her, Marion thought of how she had imagined worse things than losing her breast – keeping it, being wrong to do so, dying anyway, for the vanity (it seemed to her) of a nipple preserved, a body staying, more or less, the same. However close Eleanor seemed just now, she did not say, could not say even to her, I miss my breast, that part of my body. I wake crying from the dream, and I long to have it back.
‘Oh,’ Eleanor gasped, ‘what a pathetic creature I am. Why am I crying?’
‘Because you always did, when I hurt myself, or David did. You’re too soft-hearted.’
They laughed then, shakily, and began to talk of other things.
That night, Gavin called. When she heard his voice, she was so utterly unprepared, despite all the longing and waiting, that for a moment she could not speak.
‘Hi – Eleanor?’ He did sound far away; she pictured him on the high sea, gales blowing round him. But it would not be like that; he said they had TV lounges, comfortable rooms, good food.
‘Hi. I – you sound – I thought—’
‘How’s things? Claire fine?’ He was starting again, not assuming intimacy. She too, grew distant.
‘Yes, we’re both fine.’
‘Soon be home,’ he said. ‘For nearly three weeks.’
‘Right.’ But she did not believe in this any more.
‘Would you look in on the cottage?’ he said. ‘I meant to ask you – just to check if there’s post, everything’s OK. I’ll ring you again tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes, all right.’
‘Seems to be ages since I saw you,’ he said, and his voice became lower, closer. ‘I’m looking forward to coming home, for once.’
‘Yes,’ she said, strugg
ling to put some warmth in her own voice, failing. ‘See you soon.’
Afterwards, her heart beat fast and hard. It was real, she told herself, going to find his key under a stone by the front door. Something will come of this.
15
The snow was so deep at Pitcairn the winter Marion was twelve that one morning they had to dig their way out of the back door and carve a trench as far as the henhouse. Marion, convalescing after glandular fever, had been moved to a bedroom at the back of the house, with a bed made up near the window, so that she could see what was going on in the garden and would not disturb Eleanor during the night. By this time, she was beginning to want to do something, though she had scarcely energy to do more than watch, or now and then read.
In the smothered garden, where only the trees and tallest shrubs poked bare branches through the snow, David and Eleanor helped their parents and Ruby dig the trench. The day before David and Stanley had begun work on an igloo. Stanley had not managed to get through to their house this morning, so their father helped David to finish it, since there was no possibility of getting as far as the end of the drive, let alone into Aberdeen for work. The world was paralysed by snow. The Post Office opened briefly, then shut again because no one could reach it. The schools were closed for a whole glorious week.
On the second day, Stanley got as far as Pitcairn by means of dogged persistence. He was so wet when he arrived he had to be changed into some of David’s clothes. Then the two of them went outside and got wet all over again. Marion heard the noise in the garden as they flung great wads of snow at each other. Eleanor, attempting to join in, ran inside shrieking when she was hit, complaining to her mother. Marion sat up on high pillows and looked out at endless whiteness, the landscape transformed, all the familiar landmarks invisible. Although all she could do was watch, she was still too weak to mind very much.
Her temperature was still rising in the evening, making her hot and uncomfortable again. She shifted about in bed, the sheets twisted beneath her, hearing voices from the landing, or in her head, rising and falling. It was not so bad now. In the worst of the fever, she had scrambled out of bed, calling loudly for her mother. It seemed always to be the middle of the night, the sort of night when time slows and stops. Marion had been falling into a long tunnel, then a great ball had come after her, a huge lead ball, rolling and rolling, heavier and faster, a taste like iron in her mouth, so that she cried out and stuffed the corner of her pyjama jacket in her mouth to get rid of the terrible taste, the sensation of that ball, rolling round and round.
Then she was in the armchair with a dressing gown round her, suddenly cold instead of hot, and in the light from the landing she could see her mother remaking her bed with fresh sheets, the sweat-soaked ones lying on the floor in a heap. Now then … She was helped back into bed, her legs like rubber beneath her, then she was lying down again on cool cotton, with a new hot water bottle making a warm patch for her feet. She lay still, grateful for the smoothness of those sheets, then the damp cloth on her face and a dry towel, soft and smelling cold, like fresh air.
The fever passed, and Marion was better, though not strong for a long time. She reached the lovely part of being ill: the fire in her bedroom, its glow lighting the room long after the lamp had been put out; the paper dolls Eleanor helped cut out, with all their clothes that you fastened on with tabs at the shoulders; the new comics and library books.
Then the snow came. Marion was awake when it first fell, and knew by the light behind the curtains (thinner in this spare room, showing moonlight through) that something was happening. She sat up, reaching, and managed to tug the edge of one of the curtains, so that it jerked open a little. She watched through the thin panel of exposed window, the snow falling and falling, all night. In the morning, she was able to say she knew, she had seen it first, when they came in to tell her.
The snow went on falling. Then came the igloo-making day, then the next, when no one could go anywhere at all. Marion lay in bed reading Shirley Flight, Air Hostess, and thought that was what she might do, when she grew up. It was hard to imagine being dressed and walking about again, never mind being grown up and getting on an aeroplane.
‘You wouldn’t like it,’ Eleanor said. ‘You’d get homesick.’
‘I know,’ Marion sighed. So that was that. She would never be like Shirley Flight. Eleanor was sitting on the bed with a sketch pad, a box of coloured pencils and scissors. They were going to make their own cut-out dolls, with specially designed dresses and accessories.
‘We’ll be dress designers instead,’ Marion suggested. ‘You can do that at home.’
‘Daddy says we’ll have to go back to school tomorrow,’ Eleanor said, colouring in a blue skirt. ‘The snow plough managed to get along the lane this morning.’
‘I wish you didn’t have to. I’ll be on my own again.’
‘Auntie Alice and Auntie Mamie are coming out as soon as the roads are clear. Mummy says they were worrying about you.’
‘It’s not the same as you being here, is it?’
They always bring stuff. Sweets and that.’
‘I don’t feel like eating sweets.’
‘Comics as well.’
‘I’m bored reading.’
‘They could read to you, or tell stories.’
‘For goodness sake, I’m not a baby.’
‘Well, I was only making suggestions,’ Eleanor pointed out. ‘I can’t help going back to school, can I?’
Marion subsided, fretful. ‘I know. I just feel all cross and miserable.’
‘That’s because you’re not well yet,’ Eleanor soothed. ‘Look, I’ll get your tray to lean on and you can draw both the wedding dresses if you like — one for my doll and one for yours.’
This sacrifice was too much for Marion, who burst into tears. Bewildered, Eleanor too began to cry.
‘I’m sorry,’ Marion said, blowing her nose. ‘I’m sorry. It’s horrible being ill. I don’t feel like me.’
Eleanor had privately hoped to catch glandular fever too, so that she could lie in bed with a fire in her room, cosy and warm. All she had to heat her room was the smelly paraffin heater on the landing which made hardly any difference at all. Then she could read and read, and draw pictures all day, as Marion was allowed to do.
By the time Marion was downstairs dressed, no longer for just half an hour in a dressing gown, the snow had begun to thaw, and everywhere people were complaining about burst pipes and flooded land. For weeks after the roads and paths were clear, snow could still be found in ditches, or heaped up underneath trees. The igloo collapsed into a greyish, pock-marked heap, smaller each day.
On her own again, Marion played with the dolls’ house. Really, she had outgrown it, but when there was no one else around you could read the baby books again, and play with the old toys. The father doll was the worse for wear: the wire beneath the padding of his legs poked through, and he had lost his smart blue jacket a long time ago. He had a slightly dissolute appearance, his face had been rubbed off and replaced so many times, and his woollen hair was all but gone. The mother and daughter were in better shape. Faith had made them new dresses and Eleanor had taken great care with the inking in of their blue eyes and red lips and cheeks. Sometimes Marion played that they were not mother and daughter but sisters, and the father was their older brother, who was usually away exploring Africa. Since David was at school and could not object, she was able to use his train set. Then all three dolls, propped up in the goods wagon, could take long journeys round the living-room floor, to the land behind the sofa, or to the sea, which was the blue rug by the fire.
When Marion wearied of this, she was too tired to put everything away again, and Faith, scolding her upstairs to rest, threw furniture and dolls back higgledy piggledy, spoiling the game. Marion decided she would do something else next day; she was too old for the dolls’ house now, and playing with it on your own was boring. She cast around for what she might do instead, but listlessly, unable to think
much about it.
She discovered that being ill had changed her: she was thinner, and her legs, even when they stopped shaking, were spindly and long.
‘You’ve grown,’ Faith said, swirling warm water in the bath with one hand, and looking up at Marion in her vest and pants. Left alone, Marion got cautiously into the bath. Here the paraffin heater made the room at least lukewarm, but the bits of her under the water were the only parts that did not soon feel cold. Something else had happened too: her breasts, which had only just begun to swell, were fatter. The nipples looked big and had turned a deeper pink. When she touched them, they were tender, as if all this growing hurt a bit. Other things were happening too: she could feel, under the water, downy hairs on the pad of flesh between her legs that seemed to have no name. ‘Remember to wash down below,’ Faith said, and this covered everything that you did not mention.
Marion was half proud, half fearful of what was happening to her body. She had no sense of foreboding about any of it, till Faith sat on her bed one evening, while Eleanor was still downstairs playing Ludo with Dad and David. Warm and sleepy from the bath, Marion lay eating toast and sipping hot milk, trying not to spill crumbs, knowing she would soon be well enough not to be allowed this any more.
‘Now then,’ Faith began, ‘I think it’s time I explained something to you.’ Marion’s heart jumped. Her mother seemed not embarrassed, but conscious, solemn, as she began to speak. She finished by saying. ‘Eleanor’s too young yet, don’t talk to her about this. Time enough when she gets to your stage.’
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