by Rebecca Tope
Having hacked herself a piece of bread, baked in the rickety caravan stove, and dashed a thick layer of that summer’s strawberry jam over it, she went to open the door. It must be nearly ten by now, she calculated. Any early mist had long since cleared and it was a sharply bright day, despite the warning pink sky. She’d told Pauline she would hurry to her side, but now she felt reluctant to do so. Once there, all would be despair and misery again. Here in the field, she could pretend there was nobody in the world but her and the bullocks, everything else an hallucination.
She followed the meandering path leading to the field gate, and stood for a moment, looking back. The path became more clearly marked every day, trodden by Roxanne herself and her visitors. Something told her that there’d be more than one set of feet to tread down yet more encroaching grass, before the day was over.
* * *
Monica had the television on, as she slowly got herself some breakfast. The silence in the house had been unbearable, and the raucous merriment coming from the box at least gave the illusion of company. The absence of Jim was a tangible thing. Not just the empty place in the bed, but the silence where his voice had been, and the very pressure of his presence. Their marriage had been a minefield of mutual secrets, carefully shielded not so much for the damage they might do directly, but the uncomfortable shift in the delicate balance of power which any revelation would have caused. Nonetheless she would have done a lot to have him back again.
She and Jodie had stayed all Saturday evening at David’s, cleaning the flat for him, cooking supper, talking about Julia. Once the dam of secrecy had been breached, Monica had indulged in an ecstasy of reminiscence. She had described the onset of Julia’s disease – multiple sclerosis being diagnosed when she was twenty-seven, forcing her to abandon her much-loved job as an air stewardess. Monica, newly married to Jim, and unprepared for the emotional turmoil of Julia’s illness, had chosen to concentrate on her new baby – Philip – and hope that Jim would eventually recover a sense of proportion. When Julia announced that she was pregnant, although by then weak in her legs, and unable to support herself financially, Jim became even more distressed. ‘We’ll take the baby,’ he insisted. ‘You can see him as much as you like, but there’s no way you’ll be able to care for him yourself.’ Julia had been very content with that arrangement.
At first Jim hadn’t known the identity of Julia’s lover. She had no obvious association with anybody, and flatly refused to explain herself. Only gradually did Monica realise that he had either guessed or been told, but he never shared the secret. ‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ he’d said. ‘David is ours now. Nobody is going to argue with that.’
Julia died when her baby was almost two, sooner than anyone expected. A few months later, the baby was formally adopted. Jim’s grief slowly abated, helped enormously by the presence of Julia’s child. ‘But you were never an easy baby,’ Monica told David. ‘It was a difficult birth, and they weren’t sure that you’d live, at first. And I suppose your first year must have had some effect. Julia insisted on having you with her for whole days, every two or three weeks, but she couldn’t do much more than just hold you. You must have been very confused as to who your real mother was. It was a long time before I felt you were truly mine.’
David had listened calmly. Jodie had held his hand, her own reactions to the revelations causing some tears to flow. ‘I wish I’d known,’ she said. ‘Why did Jim make you keep it a secret?’
‘He couldn’t bear to have Julia’s name mentioned,’ Monica explained. ‘He carried her around inside himself, and nobody was ever allowed to talk about her. David would have asked questions, wanted to see pictures.’
‘So he was protecting himself from pain,’ supplied Jodie. ‘Selfish, really.’
Monica had had no choice but to agree.
But this morning she felt calmer. She carried some toast and coffee into the living room, where the television was still on. A short news summary was halfway through when she caught the name Craig Rawlinson, uttered in the carefully sensitive tones that accompanied bad news. ‘What?’ she said out loud. ‘What about Craig?’ But the scene had shifted to the local football club’s current performance, and all that remained was an impression of calamity. She scanned her memory for whatever words might have lodged there. Had they said ‘no suspicious circumstances’? She thought so. Choking with disbelief, fear, horror, she wondered what she should do. The simple thing was to phone Pauline and ask. Why was the simple thing always so impossible to do?
If Craig was dead, she realised, then Pauline would no longer be her chief support and mainstay. She, Monica, would have to look after Pauline, instead. The loss of a son was considered far worse than the loss of a husband. The idea was not appealing; her inclination was to run away, hide from this new wave of grief and confusion. If Craig was dead, his timing could not have been worse. She found herself clutching her hands together, the fingers rigidly interlocked. The next unbidden thought did a little to loosen them. It could have been David, it said. You thought yesterday that it might have been David. And then she made the link.
That body yesterday, just cut down from the tree, causing the traffic jam, that must have been Craig. She should have known it was him, from the start. Those boots – she ought to have recognised them. And even though Craig was the son of her friend, a boy she had watched grow up and had in her house a thousand times, she rejoiced that it was he who was dead, and not her own dear David.
Guilt followed fast on the heels of relief, but could not completely eradicate it. It was not, after all, any of her doing. Craig had always lived on the edge, involved in a world that had sucked David in for a time. Craig’s death had no meaning; no significance; it was just one of those ghastly tricks of fate, which brought troubles not singly but in battalions. But, oh dear, poor Pauline, she sighed. Every mother’s nightmare.
She supposed that Pauline would be waiting for her to get in touch. If Craig had died the previous afternoon, that would now seem a very long time ago, with police and hospital and statements and all the things that happen after a violent death. Monica knew enough to be deeply relieved that Jim’s death had avoided all that rigmarole. But you might have got it all wrong, a voice reminded her. You might be leaping to conclusions about the body by the road being Craig. Rationally, she knew this was true, but everything else told her she was right. Craig had died on that tree, with no suspicious circumstances. Beside that, the loss of her husband quietly in bed was a tame catastrophe, a minor disaster. Uncharitably, she resented the loss of the limelight. Now, she thought, everyone will be fussing round Pauline, instead of me. I’ll be pushed aside.
She had to speak to someone, if only to prevent these unworthy thoughts from taking over completely. Someone prosaic and clear-headed, who was likely to have heard the local news. The choice was obvious.
‘Phil – it’s me,’ she said, when the phone was quickly answered. ‘I think I just heard something awful on the news.’
He responded cautiously. ‘About Craig?’ he said.
‘It’s true then, is it?’
‘They say he was found hanging from a tree close to the Garnstone road. Well, you were there, weren’t you? You must have seen something.’
‘Yes, I was there. I saw him. But I had no idea it was him. At least—’ The image of the silly studded boots returned to her. She hadn’t seen the face, she couldn’t have known who it was. She couldn’t have done anything.
‘David’s going to be very upset,’ remarked Philip.
‘Maybe it’ll take his mind off Jim,’ said Monica, before she could stop herself.
‘Possibly,’ was the only reply, but she could hear a startled tang of disapproval in the voice. Was she really such a selfish bitch as she sounded to her own ears?
‘I mean—’ she tried again, ‘It’ll make him see that others are worse off than him.’ It sounded pathetically trite.
‘I think you’ve got that wrong,’ Philip corrected her. ‘As I see i
t, David’s going to think everything’s against him, if even his friend is dead. You must admit it’s quite a shock, losing two people in one week.’
‘That’s just the way it goes sometimes,’ she said, trying to sound mature and wise, full of experience of life’s ironies, but suspecting she just sounded hard. ‘You just have to cope.’
‘That’s right, Mum,’ he agreed, and the sarcasm was almost tangible.
Sunday passed miserably for Lorraine, too. After her visit to Roxanne, she had slumped into a state of inertia, unable to feel angry even with her rival for Jim’s attentions. Unable to feel angry with Jim himself. Frank had got his holiday photos back and was arranging them meticulously in a specially bought looseleaf album. ‘You’re the only person in the world who does that any more,’ she told him. ‘Why can’t you keep them in a drawer like a normal person?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ he said with maddening forbearance. ‘Now, this one will have to be enlarged. I can get one of those clip frames for it.’ The picture showed Lorraine silhouetted against a dramatic flaming sunset, with a palm tree at one side of the frame.
‘Nice,’ she said shortly. ‘You should enter it in a competition.’
‘I might take up photography,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘What on earth do you mean? You do it already.’
‘No, I mean the developing and printing. In a darkroom. I was chatting to an old lady down by the river, before we went away. She does all her own, apparently. Only black and white, though. Colour’s a lot more tricky.’
‘And expensive.’
‘Probably,’ he agreed.
Cindy was cutting out pictures from a mail order catalogue and making a snowstorm of tiny scraps of paper on the floor. Lorraine waited for Frank to notice and complain. For all she cared, the child could fill the room with mess, so long as she didn’t ask Lorraine to play with her. The prospect of a second baby was an alarming mixture of pleasure and dread. She hadn’t said anything about it to Frank yet, but she guessed that he knew exactly how overdue her period was, and was simply waiting for her to confirm it.
‘Isn’t it time the potatoes went on?’ he said, glancing at her. ‘I thought we’d go for a drive this afternoon.’
‘Where to?’
‘Oh, blackberrying, up on Dunmore Hill. There might be some sloes, too. I thought I’d do sloe gin.’
Lorraine contemplated this husband of hers, so domestic and easygoing. Frank hadn’t a vice of any description; you couldn’t even say that he was boring, when he was so enthusiastic about his fish and photography; so generous with his attention and concern. If she’d mentioned a headache or even tiredness, he’d have left his album and trotted off to peel potatoes. As it was, she had nothing else to do, and levered herself out of the chair submissively.
‘It’ll be ready by one-thirty. Plenty of time for an outing,’ she said. ‘That’ll be nice – won’t it, Cind?’
The child went on snipping, frowning fiercely.
‘Fantastic. Thank you, Mummy,’ supplied Frank, with a wink at Lorraine.
In the kitchen, she tried to feel cheerful. She believed that a person could control their own emotions, with a certain amount of perseverance. She ran through her usual bag of tricks for improving her mood. Plans were often helpful. Places to go, people to see, videos to hire, food to prepare. She liked to get the week ahead clear in her mind, so as not to waste too much time. It was also a good idea to have a reply for Frank when he asked about her intentions over the next few days. The fact that she brought no money into the house was an area of some uneasiness for them both. The new baby was good news from that point of view, giving her the best possible excuse to cruise through a few more years.
But plans were a bad idea this morning. They included Jim’s wake, which Roxanne had told her about, and her desire to be there. She didn’t think she’d have the nerve to show up. How could she ever explain her reasons for doing so? She had no public claim on him – they merely drank at the same pub. She wouldn’t want Frank to know that she’d gone – it would look very peculiar – and there was every chance that somebody would mention it to him. She thought perhaps she could just drive to the crematorium on Tuesday and sit in the car park, where she could see the hearse arrive, and say a final goodbye from the car. She knew she’d cry helplessly, and draw attention to herself, if she went into the chapel. Sniffing over the potatoes, she promised herself that this is what she would do. It would be much better than staying at home feeling she was missing something important.
She tried again to find something more cheering to think about. The new baby was the obvious choice, and she gave it her best efforts. A boy, without doubt. Frank always got what he wanted, and he had said from the start that he wanted two kids, girl first, then boy. Girls coped better with being experimented on, and would be more useful for babysitting the younger one. A decent gap between them, too, to make it easier to give them both plenty of attention. Lorraine sighed. If the uxorious Frank ever found out about her affair with Jim, he’d probably die of the shock. It would never occur to him as being even remotely possible that a wife and mother like her should want to stray. For didn’t she have everything she wanted already?
Jim, Jim, Jim. Every time she tried to push him out of her mind, he crept back in some slippery new guise. She could feel his warm skin against hers, even now; the spring in his dark grey hair, which she had loved to hold and even pull in moments of passion; the unselfconscious moans which marked his orgasms. She had loved being so much younger than him, revelling in her own lean body, not an ounce of surplus fat on her. There hadn’t been any guilt. Jim had said such sensible things about taking pleasure where you can find it, and people not owning each other. She had felt proud and privileged to be singled out by him, made special by his attention.
But maybe he’d been wrong, all along. Somehow his sudden death suggested that he must have been. His death felt like a punishment, a judgement – on him, and Lorraine and that Roxanne. It showed that you can’t get away with breaking the rules, however right it might feel.
The potatoes peeled, she put them on to boil. As she turned away from the cooker, the fact of Jim’s loss hit her like a physical blow. Before it had been just words, a story, sad, but not properly real. Now, she knew, in her blood and bones, that she would never see him again. Dizzy, she sat down at the kitchen table. Her mind felt like a captive bird, beating against glass, trying to find an escape from the awful truth. But the world had turned grey and unfriendly. Now she just had Frank and Cindy and a new baby and nothing at all to take her to the edge of ecstasy or risk. She trembled at the prospect. Words like settled and ordinary houswife hammered at her, until she wanted to run into the street stark naked and take a kitchen knife and stab the first person she met.
‘Lorrie?’ came Frank’s voice, harsh with concern. ‘What’s up?’
She merely shook her head, shrugging slightly.
‘Are you ill?’
‘No,’ she replied, her voice harsh. ‘Just pregnant. It must have happened on holiday. I’m only a week late, but I’m sure, just the same.’
He sat down facing her, and laid a hand very lightly on her wrist. ‘But, that’s great. Isn’t it?’
His predictable lack of surprise only increased her gloom. ‘I suppose so. I feel sick – and I nearly fainted just then. That’s all.’
‘But you were fine last time. It’ll be okay. Look, go and put your feet up on the sofa till lunch. I’ll do everything in here. Okay? I’m going to think about being a dad all over again, so if you hear a noise, it’ll be me getting excited.’
‘Oh, Frank,’ she smiled weakly, looking at him. ‘You’re very sweet.’ His light brown hair was the same colour as his skin, after the Cyprus tanning. His blue eyes were vulnerably prominent, and his ears stuck out just a little too far. Frank was no beauty, but he was easy and kind and reliable. For Frank, life was simple, so long as you didn’t expect too much. The world had always had a ballast of Franks, d
utiful and unambitious. Other people exploited them, herded them like sheep, appealed to their sense of decency, and they never complained. Lorraine shivered. What madness had ever persuaded her to marry him? She was committed to him as irrevocably as if they’d been surgically stitched together. More so than ever now, with Jim gone and another baby on the way. Even the escape hatch of the trysts with Jim had been closed to her. Obediently she got up and went back to the living room. ‘You could go and help Daddy with the lunch,’ she suggested to Cindy, who thought about it for a while before deciding to give it a try.
The noise Lorraine heard from the kitchen a few minutes later did not sound like the excitement Frank had warned her about. Cindy’s squeal made Lorraine sit up sharply. ‘Oh Daddy! You’re bleeding all over the carrots.’
‘Frank? What have you done?’ He came to meet her in the doorway, his left forefinger bright red from top to bottom. His face was white.
‘Quite a deep gash,’ he said faintly. ‘Chopped right into it with your best knife.’
She fetched warm water and lint, and wiped away the blood. It was immediately replaced. The gash was in the fleshy part of the finger, between the two lower knuckles. She felt directly responsible. She smiled feebly at him, trying to convey reassurance that she really did care.
‘It’s too deep for a plaster,’ she said helplessly. ‘We’ll have to get it stitched.’
‘Will you drive me?’ he asked, meekly.
‘Of course. Cindy, go and get some shoes on. You’ll have to come as well. With any luck they’ll be quiet at Sunday lunchtime.’
Drew’s phone rang just before lunch. It was Daphne, much to his surprise.
‘Drew? Sorry to phone you at the weekend, but there’s been a change to the rota, and I was wondering whether you could take any call-outs this afternoon?’
‘But—’
‘I know you’ve never done it, but it’s easy enough. I’d do it myself, but I’ve got a pretty watertight commitment. I can’t take the mobile with me, either. I’m visiting my neighbour in the Royal Vic, and they won’t let you use mobile phones in case you send the intensive care department into a spin.’
