The Best Of Times

by Penny Vincenzi

  How lucky she was, how lucky they both were, to have found so much so late, and not to have been disappointed by it in any respect.

  “You obviously did so well today, Sparrow. I wish I’d come now, I’d have been so proud of you.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, there was nothing to be proud of…”

  “Oh now, you say that, but Georgia told me how you recited that nursery rhyme to the judge-”

  “The coroner.”

  “Pardon me, the coroner.”

  “And what on earth was Georgia telling you that for?”

  “She said you’d told her I was tired, and she was worried about me. Really, Sparrow, people will think I’m an invalid or an old man if you keep talking like that.”

  “How could anyone think you were an old man,” said Mary, walking over to him and kissing the top of his head, “when you look so extremely youthful and handsome? Anyway, I didn’t recite it exactly…”

  “She said you did.”

  “Well, maybe I did. Anyway, it caught his fancy and he quoted it in his summing up at the end. Which was very nice. And I said how anxious I had been about holding up the young man-the bridegroom, you know-and the coroner said-such a courteous, kind man-that I should have no concerns about it, that it would have made no difference. I still think perhaps it might, but… he was so very good at his job, Russell; everyone left looking happier, even the poor families of those who died.”

  “Good. And Georgia was happier at the end of it?”

  “So much happier. He was very gentle with her.”

  “Good. Well, he sounds like a fine chap.”

  “He is a fine chap.”

  “Well done anyway. Oh, my Sparrow. You don’t have any regrets, do you?”

  “Regrets?” she said, surprised at the question. “Of course not. Unless it is that we weren’t together sooner. But then, we couldn’t have been, could we?”

  “Not playing it your way, no. If it had been down to me, we’d have had sixty years together now, instead of six months.”

  “I know, I know. But… we did the right thing.”

  She sat smiling into the fire, remembering. She had been seventeen at the beginning of the war, Donald nineteen; she had loved him so much, and if anyone had told her she would fall in love with someone else, she would not have believed them; she would have said her heart was far too occupied, her future too settled. But Russell had been irresistible. She told him so now.

  “I wasn’t, though, Sparrow, was I? You resisted me very well.”

  “I know. But it was more… as you know, keeping faith with Donald. I suppose I might have changed my mind at one stage. But then, you know…”

  “I know. The letters.”

  The many letters from Donald, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Italy, all telling her that it was only knowing she was there, waiting for him, that was keeping him going at all.

  “Yes. I couldn’t have failed him, Russell, could I?”

  “I don’t believe you could. Being you.”

  “And I was happy, and so indeed were you. And we have each other now. It’s been so perfectly lovely, these past months. At long, long last. Worth waiting for.”

  “Worth it indeed… Now, Mary, do you think Rome and then Florence or the other way round? Remember we’ll have just spent a month in New York; I’ll have been working, so we’ll need a proper break. Maybe we should take a villa in the Tuscan hills and base ourselves there and then we can travel at our leisure; we could hire a driver… or we could take the train between the two; that sounds a lovely journey.”

  “I think either would be very nice. You do have to do this month in New York, do you, working so hard? I’m sure Morton could manage with your being there for a shorter time…”

  “Mary, we have a very big shareholders’ meeting at the beginning of April; it’s essential I’m there, and we have to prepare for that.”

  “Yes, but Russell, dear, perhaps you don’t. You’ve been tired lately, even living down here and-”

  “That’s purely because I had a touch of flu. I’m never tired normally, as you very well know.”

  “Of course not, dear. Well… I think the villa sounds a wonderful idea. Although…”

  “Yes?” Russell smiled at her. “I’m getting to know your ‘althoughs.’”

  “Well, you know, we could just stay here. Spring in England is so very lovely, and I can’t imagine anything nicer than sitting in the garden and going for walks and just… well… just sharing all of it with you, hearing the birds-they sing so beautifully in the spring-oh, and I’ve been meaning to tell you, I think there’s a thrush nesting in the apple tree; I’ve been watching it, either Mr. or Mrs. Thrush, I’m never sure which, flying in and out, in and out with twigs… We’ll have to watch our wicked kittens; we don’t want any tragedies… And then we can see the bulbs come up-we don’t know what will grow where; it will be so exciting-and then there’ll be the blossoms on the trees in the orchard, and… But of course, if you’ve set your heart on Italy…”

  “I think I have, dearest Sparrow. We have plenty of years to enjoy the English spring, and I do so want to see Italy with you. I…”

  Mary was bending over her silks now, sorting out the blues and the greens; she was not looking at Russell, so she did not see his face suddenly change, did not see him momentarily thump at his chest, nor the fright in his eyes; nor did she notice that he was slowly slumping down in his chair; all she was aware of was an odd sound, halfway between a whimper and a gasp, and by the time she did look up, he was losing consciousness fast and she was never to know whether he heard her as she cradled his head in her arms and whispered again and again how much she loved him.

  CHAPTER 53

  It had been a stroke, they said: a massive haemorrhage in his brain. If he had recovered, he would have been paralysed, probably unable to speak. Or to smile, Mary thought-there would have been no more of that wonderful, quick, loving smile; or indeed of anything else that made him Russell: not just the brilliant blue eyes, the thick white hair, the beautifully kept hands, the proudly erect back; but the fast, almost urgent walk, the swift turn of his head, the way he sat lost to the world, visibly devouring books, the absurdly careful way he folded things-his table napkin, his scarf, the Wall Street Journal… how often had she teased him about that-the way he laughed, slowly at first, almost reluctantly, then throwing his head back and giving himself up to jokes, to amusement, to fun.

  And his voice, not deep, quite light really, but very clear, calling her as he did a hundred times a day, for he liked to know where she was in the house, not so much to be constantly with her as to be able to find her if he needed to. “Where are you, Sparrow?” he would shout from the hall, the kitchen, his study, and she would answer him, quite impatiently sometimes, for she liked to do as she pleased, be where she wished… And what would she have given now, she thought, arriving home that first day from the hospital, arriving home to that quiet, dead house, to be summoned, called to account. Now she could wander where she would, from room to room, to the garden and beyond, and no one would care or need to know.

  He had died peacefully and apparently happily, twenty-four hours after the stroke, with Mary holding his hand; she hoped above all things that he knew she was there. The nurses assured her he would.

  She had sat by him almost all that time. “They don’t make them like that anymore,” one of the nurses said, looking at her small, upright figure, her eyes fixed on Russell’s face, and indeed they did not, the doctor had agreed; they were a special breed, her generation, with the courage to face down for six long years the worst that a savage enemy could do to them and still remain strong, generous, merry hearted.

  When she finally became exhausted, they urged her to sleep, but she refused to leave the room, and they brought her a bed so that she could stay with him. She slept fitfully, woke every hour or so to make sure that he had not gone, and was afraid even to go to the bathroom they had made available to her.


  “He won’t go without you, Mary,” the ward sister had said. “He’ll wait until you are back with him again; they do, I promise you.” But she didn’t believe her and each time came scuttling back into the room, fearful of not having properly been with him at this, their darkest hour together.

  She had been told that hearing was the last sense to go, and she talked to him from time to time, told him how much she loved him, how happy she had been with him, how wonderful their few months together had been.

  “I shall go to Italy, dearest Russell,” she said, “even without you. I will see it for you, all those wonders, as I know you would have wished. And I shall watch the spring garden grow and the apple trees blossom in the orchard, and when the baby thrushes fly I will know you are part of it all.”

  Every so often his hold on her hand tightened and she would tense, thinking he was coming back to her; once he seemed to try to speak; once he half smiled. But in the end he left her, slipped away with a sigh and a long, long breath, and she knew it was over without having to be told, knew that she was alone now, alone in the room, alone in the world.

  ***

  They all came, of course, his children. Shocked, grieving, but saying that it had after all been a blessing, given how much he would have been changed, how poor the quality of his life would have been, and that he could not have suffered; it had been so swift, so mercifully swift. Mary listened, politely patient, nodding, smiling, sometimes weeping, but thinking that he was their father, not their husband; he was not the centre of their worlds anymore. So much easier to see it as a blessing, given all that; so very much harder for her.

  Her children came too, Christine remorseful, as well as visibly grieving; Douglas shocked; and Tim and Lorraine both genuinely and horribly upset. All rallying round, loving her, but quite unable to comfort her, to ease the jagged place in her heart.

  She kept telling herself that a year ago, Russell had been no more to her than a writer of letters, a happy memory. She had been content then; she would be content again. But it was not quite true, for she had changed; Russell’s love and vigour and generosity had brought her back to life, had given her indeed more life, a new, broader, richer one. She had grown accustomed to a voice in the darkness, a presence in the bed, a smile first thing in the morning, a kiss last thing at night; to a face opposite her at the table, an arm to take as she walked. She had come to enjoy ideas, suggestions, to being argued and reasoned with, to being appreciated and loved.

  ***

  The funeral was small, family only, apart from the Connells, who had become family. In the same little church where the wedding had been. Maeve found it almost unbearable, looking at Mary standing beside the flower-covered coffin, all alone, when three months earlier she had stood beside Russell, becoming so happily his wife. She was brave, so brave-cried only once, when the coffin was carried in-and after that held her small, strong self together.

  Morton spoke of a wise and wonderful father who had been all the world to him; and then Tim, briefly, of a new grandfather in his life whom he had come to love and revere.

  “And who made my grandmother absolutely happy. They never seemed old to us, just a wonderful couple who had found each other, and relaunched their lives. We shall remember him always. And we will take care of Grandma for him.”

  And then Russell left the church again, and was buried in the small churchyard; Mary stood looking down into the grave, quite composed, even when she threw the handful of earth onto the coffin; then she walked quickly away, on Tim’s arm. Her flowers went into the coffin, with her simple message: “Russell, thank you, with all my love.”

  ***

  Morton stayed only a few days, Coral and Pearl for over a week; Mary was glad of their company but more glad when they left. She wanted the house to herself, to grieve and to explore her feelings. It seemed very large, very empty, very silent. But Russell lingered in every room.

  One of the hardest things to deal with was his clothes, the vast dressing room in which he stored literally dozens of suits-more than Donald had had in his whole life, she thought: jackets, trousers, shirts, drawers full of ties and sweaters and belts and the silk pyjamas without which he said he would not be able to sleep. She stood there one afternoon, looking at them all, remembering him buying them-or some of them-seeing him wearing them, wondering where to begin sorting them out and getting rid of them… and then realised she did not have to begin at all. They could stay there for as long as she wished.

  ***

  She applied the same principle to his study, to all his absurd gadgets, some of them hardly used, most of them quite useless to her; she called Timothy and told him to come and take what he wanted, and then after that she simply kept it all.

  It was all part of Russell, this superabundance of things; and therefore, now, part of her.

  ***

  She found routine helpful; she walked in the morning, watched TV in the evenings, in the company of the kittens-another source of comfort-making a great effort to watch at least some of the vast number of DVDs Russell had brought and told her she would enjoy… and in the afternoon, she played the piano, his last gift to her. She found this more comforting than anything; she had found a teacher, a sparky sixty-year-old called Genevieve, who came to the house twice a week, saw exactly what Mary needed, and created quite a punishing programme of pieces and practice. Moreover, if Mary hadn’t done her practice, she didn’t tell her it didn’t matter, but that if she hadn’t improved by her next lesson, she wouldn’t teach her anymore. She also entered Mary for her grade-three piano exam (she had passed one and two as a child) and booked several concerts for them to attend together in Bath, “just so you can hear how it should be done.” Mary was frequently to be found weeping over the piano in the afternoons, partly through frustration, partly through sorrow, but she knew it was helping her more than she would have believed.

  ***

  People were very kind: Tim and Lorraine came once a week, sometimes in the evening, sometimes at the weekend, and Christine came twice, once to take her mother to the farmers’ market, which she enjoyed, and once to have lunch with her at home. She had ventured quite early on into the realms of apology for her hostility to Russell; Mary told her quite briskly to be quiet.

  “You came to the wedding, dear-that was marvellous-and became friends with Russell after that, and I really don’t want to discuss it any further.”

  Everyone told her she was being wonderful; Mary thought they should see her at night, when she had gone to bed, and wept and sometimes howled with misery.

  ***

  Other people visited her: Georgia had been terribly upset and wept so long and so copiously after Tim had called her-they had made rather good friends at the wedding, so good indeed that Lorraine had become quite spiky-that her mother thought something dreadful had happened to her.

  “It is dreadful,” Georgia wailed; “Russell has died, and I was going to visit them the very next week, and now I’ll never see him again and I can’t bear it.”

  “You won’t see him again, Georgia, no, but neither will Mary. She’s the one something dreadful has happened to, and I think she’s the one who feels she can’t bear it. Go and see her, keep her company, tell her about your life, go for walks with her-that’s what you can do for her now.

  “Sometimes,” Bea said to Jack with a sigh, “I feel Georgia’s development was arrested at about the age of six.”

  Georgia telephoned Mary to arrange a day, and Mary said that if she was coming on the train, then she would send the car to meet her in Bath. Georgia, who felt her visit should be as difficult as possible by way of reparation, said that wouldn’t be necessary and arrived therefore an hour and a half late on the twice-daily bus to Tadwick. Mary, who had by then decided she couldn’t be coming, was trying to comfort herself by playing the piano, which was in fact rather fortuitous, as Georgia found some old sheet music of Russell’s and they spent an extremely happy afternoon together, Georgia singing while Mary acc
ompanied her.

  “Right,” Georgia said when they were both exhausted and she was hoarse, “that’s Oklahoma and My Fair Lady ticked off; next week we’ll do Annie Get Your Gun and Carousel. And how do you think you’d be with Scott Joplin? This is fun.”

  “It is indeed,” said Mary, “and next week, dear, please do allow yourself to be driven. We’ll have more time together; we can even go for a walk as well.”

  Georgia ’s visit had cheered Mary immensely; she insisted on hearing all about the festival and said she’d be there.

  “Really? Goodness, Mary, that would be… well… wonderful,” said Georgia slightly doubtfully. “But it’ll be very noisy and… well, very noisy. And a lot of people.”

  “That’s fine; I like noise and lots of people. Tim and Lorraine can look after me, or perhaps the Connells; I presume they’ll be there. I may not stay very long, and I certainly won’t be camping, but I’d love to see it all.”

  “You are so cool,” said Georgia, giving her a kiss.

  ***

  Two days later a letter arrived from Mary, enclosing a cheque for a thousand pounds.

  “You said you were hoping to find a sponsor for your festival. Of course, I am not in that league, and I’m sure this won’t make a great deal of difference, but it might pay for some posters or something. I know that Russell would have loved to have helped you; he so loved young people-as I do-and even got involved. In fact, he rather fancied himself a song-and-dance man; you might have got more than you bargained for! Please pass this to your committee as a token of my great interest and pleasure in being involved, in a small way.”