by A. J. Elwood
Still, anger rises. ‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Oh, dear girl,’ she says, ‘dear girl. He had hope, didn’t he? Our friend Lawrence.’
She holds out her hand and I remember the letter. I’m glad to pull it from my pocket and hand it to her, breaking that tie at least. I’m not going to let her see that I’m interested. I won’t read any more of them, even if she gives them to me; I won’t look at her pictures.
‘It’s so sad to feel trapped,’ she says, ‘especially when you are, and it’s far too late for regret, even when you haven’t – even – realised it yet.’
Her words are so pointed I try to believe she’s talking about herself, living here in her little eyrie at Sunnyside, but she slowly moves her gaze from my eyes and scans downwards, taking in everything: my neck, my uniform, my breasts – my belly – and she stops there, staring.
I look back at her, my eyes wide, as something blooms within. It’s as if she’s pushing a new idea into me, something I’d never thought of or imagined, and I turn cold. I rush from the room, hearing the echo of other words, ones she said at a different time:
Life decisions… No point in crying over them when it’s already too late – is it, Rose?
It isn’t right, can’t be right. I lean against the wall, bending over, clutching at my belly, thinking, Oh God. I suddenly feel nauseous. I still have half a day to work but all I want to do is get into the car, drive home as fast as I can, go upstairs and count my pills. All I want is to be a hundred miles away.
9
Oh God, oh God, oh God. I mutter the words, my mind empty. The test shows positive. I’m pregnant, and if the little stick in my hand is to be trusted, by several weeks. I’m sitting on the bed, willing the tiny reading that means so much to disappear. It doesn’t, but it still can’t be true. I haven’t missed a pill. I checked as soon as I got in, relieved that Paul is out on a job, that I’m home before him. Just buying the testing kit felt like stepping into an alien world. I couldn’t look the pharmacist in the eye, though to him it was nothing, humdrum. Women do this every day.
Not me.
I remember the way Mrs Favell eyed my belly and feel sick all over again. She didn’t know. She can’t have known, not really, but it feels as if she’s the one who told me and that makes everything worse. Even the memory of it makes me feel as if she’s running her hand over my body. How could she have known? I hadn’t even suspected. Now that feels like another failure.
I close my eyes and instead of Mrs Favell, I see my mother. What would she have said? She hadn’t liked Paul, not at first. She’d have preferred someone else, a doctor or an accountant or someone in a suit, not a man with shaggy hair and strong arms and God forbid, tattoos. But she had known, in the end, that he was good for me. She had known he would look after me when she could not, and Paul had. He’d visited the funeral home and helped me choose a casket for her and organised the wake when I couldn’t think or see or know how to feel. He’d held me while I cried. My handsome prince.
If she could have been here, she’d have been happy. She could have nestled her granddaughter in her lap and read to her. I wonder what story she would have chosen. Mum never did enjoy ‘The Little Mermaid’. She hadn’t altogether liked to read it to me. Is that why the book had vanished – because she hadn’t wanted to see me cry?
I wish I could see her now, to tell her it’s all right that I cried, that I had wanted to cry. That even if there never was a happy ending, at least it was magic. At least the sadness made it possible to believe.
I curl in on myself. I don’t know what I’m thinking. I want to cry now, but I can’t. The shock is too great.
It is only then that it hits me: I won’t be leaving here. Perhaps I never will.
I look around the little room, the thin walls with their peeling wallpaper that echo with other people’s lives, ordinary lives, and they loom over me, pressing in. For a fleeting instant I picture running away from it, leaving the house and the street and my job and Paul and my child far behind me. I don’t have to have the baby – but I know I do. I can’t contemplate getting rid of it. I see my mother’s face again, and Paul’s, imagine looking at the knowledge of it in my own eyes in the mirror, not even recognising the face staring back at me. I hear the whisper of Mrs Favell’s voice: Life decisions… No point in crying over them when it’s already too late – is it, Rose? And I think I hear the sound of a door clanging shut.
Except it doesn’t. The bedroom door swings open and I turn but I can’t focus. It takes me a moment to recognise Paul. He’s staring down at me and I don’t say a word and neither does he and I wonder why – can everyone see the pregnancy in my face? He reaches out and I only remember the testing stick when he lifts it from my hands. He must be looking at it, taking in what it means, but I only see the floor, an old thinning carpet with a pattern I would never have chosen. A weird sound escapes me.
He says, ‘Oh my God, Rose. That’s amazing.’
I can’t look up. He moves around me, dropping to his knees, teasing my arms from my sides. He puts his hands on my cheeks and lifts my chin. He waits until I meet his eyes – his are wide and clear, and he’s smiling.
I know what he’s looking at. He is seeing our future stretching ahead, both of us together, walking the same paths on the same streets of the same town for years and years and years, and he’s so happy he could die.
* * *
That night Paul says he’s never going to get to sleep but he goes under quickly and lies with his back turned to me like a wall. I stare at the flaking paint of the ceiling. My mind can’t assimilate the idea of a baby. It’s unthinkable. I can’t have it; I can’t not have it. I think of it inside me, a part of us both. I tell myself I love Paul. I suppose one day I will love the baby too. I wonder what it looks like: a cluster of cells? A little curled form with arms and hands and legs? Does it have eyes, staring into the darkness inside me? I try to imagine holding it in my arms, gazing into its face and seeing my own eyes looking back at me. Maybe then I won’t want to leave here any longer. With a stab of bitterness, I suppose that would make Paul happy. Is that what he wanted all along, what he’s been counting on? I bend away from him, drawing up my knees, my hands forming into fists, and wonder if I’m echoing the shape of the baby inside me, curled up like a comma – or a full stop.
Before we went to bed, Paul said he’ll take me to the doctor, that we’ll get things checked out. The idea makes me cringe. I don’t want to tell anyone about this. I don’t even want to know myself. But then, the doctor might say the test I took was wrong. They can’t be one hundred percent accurate, can they? I draw in a deep breath. Nothing’s certain, not yet. The thing inside me might not even be real. I close my eyes and a face rises before me: Mrs Favell. I try to shake the image away.
I can’t bear the prospect of seeing her tomorrow, her mocking triumph. So glad I never troubled over it, she’d said, as if it was so easy, something that could simply be brushed off. Saved myself a world of bother.
I hate her. I hate all of it: the stupid job I didn’t want, this town, our house, Paul’s indifferent back rising and falling with his breath. Most of all I hate myself. Why didn’t I leave long ago?
As if to underline my thoughts, the thump-thump of next door’s music starts up from beyond the walls. It sounds like a muffled heartbeat. I bury my face in my hands, feeling tears, hot and I suppose selfish. I don’t care. I let myself cry, never making a sound.
Soon I won’t be me any longer. I won’t even be Rose. I’ll be ‘Mum’. I’ll nurse and clean and cook and care, though it won’t just be a job; it’s never just a job. Maybe I’ll still be at Sunnyside. If so my days and nights won’t be all that different, apart from the age of the bodies I wash and feed and comfort.
I remember the way Mrs Favell had looked at me when I told her my name. The way she twisted her lip in scorn, as if she had already known it wouldn’t belong to me for very much longer; as if she knew that wasn’t really who
I was.
10
As soon as Patricia sees me pouring double-strength coffee in the staff room, I can see she knows something is wrong. It’s not surprising. My skin is washed out and my hair is lank and I have the unsteady, swimmy sense of not quite being in the room, of not quite being anywhere. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth. I don’t know if that’s a symptom of being pregnant or my reaction to it. I suppose there will be a lot of that now, not knowing what’s the baby and what’s really me.
‘Are you all right, Rose?’ She moves to grab a mug herself. The room feels tinier than ever with the two of us in it.
I do the expected thing and tell her I’m fine. Of course I’m fine. I half turn to the counter, leaning over my drink, breathing in the steam. The mug halfway to my lips, I wonder if I’m allowed caffeine now. There’s so much I don’t know. What will Patricia say when she finds out? Will she have to keep me on? I never wanted the job, but the thought of being fired from it makes me cringe.
‘I see that you’ve been watching over Mrs Favell.’ She smiles, waiting for my response. I can’t give one, not now. I can’t smile back.
‘I know she can be difficult.’ Again, there’s a pause I’m supposed to fill. ‘Try to be understanding with her, all right? It’s not easy, I know. But she’s had a difficult life. And she’s more vulnerable than you’d think – you wouldn’t believe it to look at her. Sicker, too…’
I make a non-committal noise in the back of my throat.
‘She’s a very private woman, you know. She likes things confidential, doesn’t like people talking, but I’m sure it’s all right to tell you that her husband died. Of course she’s not our only widow, we’ve plenty in that position, but this was years ago. Mrs Favell had to move in with her father-in-law, and – well, he did something terrible.’
That’s what she says, something terrible, conjuring vague shadowy forms looming in doorways, a broad-shouldered man curling his hands into fists or pulling the belt from his waist. She doesn’t explain and then she’s gone, giving me a pat on the shoulder as if that could possibly help. I don’t want to think of Mrs Favell just now. I don’t care about her terrible thing. For her, whatever it was is over. Mine is here; it’s all around and in front of me and inside me. I resolve to see the woman as little as possible, to get by with the bare minimum of contact, to pay no attention to anything she says.
I glance at the clock. I’m running late already and I need to help with breakfast. At least that will save me from thinking of other things. Paul, the house, the future – all of it can wait, time suspended for a while, as it is, I suppose, for everyone within these walls. Aren’t we all just waiting – the residents for an ending, me for the beginning of something that might never come? It’s a horrible thought, like something Mrs Favell might say, and her words echo in my mind: The truth often is.
I hurry along to breakfast, settle Alf into a chair and put a knife and fork into his hands while he peers into his plate, steer Reenie out of the kitchen and help her to cereal, then start adding thickener to cups of juice for those who have difficulty swallowing. Mandy is putting trays together to take to the less mobile residents; she looks up and scowls. Barry Pickerell is standing by the wall, staring blankly into a painting of a field of flowers, and I encourage him to turn from it; he looks at me as if he doesn’t know who or what I am. Maryam Lal, one of the brighter ladies, thankfully takes him under her wing and leads him to her table. Still Mrs Favell doesn’t come down. I wonder if she’s pecking away at an apple in her room and at first I’m glad, then realise that, sooner or later, I’ll have to go and check on her. None of my intentions matter; it feels as if she’s thwarting me with her absence, showing me who’s in charge.
Leaving the clatter and busyness behind me, walking up the stairs alone, I can’t shake the feeling that, once again, I’m being watched. Perhaps it’s only that I’m conscious of a new presence in my life; it isn’t because of her. It isn’t that she has a sense of being there even when she’s not; it isn’t that her room doesn’t feel quite like anyone else’s. Fiercely, I push such ideas away. They only serve to set her further apart – and she’s not.
I turn the corner and the corridor is empty. It’s too empty, like a lie; I tell myself this section is always this quiet at this time of day, since the residents who need breakfast in their rooms tend to be on the ground floor and plenty of others use the lift at the other end of the building. I tell myself it doesn’t mean anything at all, though when I push open the door of room ten I’m not surprised to see her standing in the centre of it, facing me, as if she was waiting. Her blouse is the exact blue-grey of a baby’s eyes and she’s holding something in her hands, though I can’t see what it is. She doesn’t smell of lilies, not now; there’s a fresh, sharp scent in the air and I see a hollowed-out core on her bedside table, stripped of its flesh. She has a seemingly endless supply of apples, although I never see them at breakfast or in the kitchen. No one else eats them: too much trouble for their dentures. I imagine her little teeth working at the fruit, scraping, biting.
‘Dear me, what a face!’ she says, and then adds, ‘Of course I didn’t miss breakfast, as you can see.’
I cross the room, pick up what remains of the apple by its stalk and toss it into the bin. The noise of it is too loud and the plastic liner billows, settling into the bottom along with the core.
‘Dear me,’ she says again. ‘Facing what is to come with fortitude is not your métier, I take it?’
Again I ignore her, though her words stab into me. Does she truly know? I tell myself she can’t.
She holds out her hand. In it she holds a bundle of letters, three or four, all softened with age and yellowed with time. An abundance; a generosity. I scowl at them. I don’t care about her letters, not now. Perhaps she knows that. It’s probably the very reason she’s giving them to me.
But a creeping greed steals over me and despite my resolutions, despite the fact that it only binds me to her more closely, I reach out and take them. I expect her expression to change to one of triumph but it doesn’t. She lets her hand fall and half turns away, glancing towards the window with a wistful eye. For the first time, her posture seems to wilt.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask what I should have asked at the beginning. ‘Would you like to go and sit in the garden? It’s a little grey, but—’
‘Oh, it’s never grey,’ she says, ‘not if you’re really looking. The rampion has come early. See its little bells? The pea shoots are making curlicues around their stakes. They’re never still, you know. The sap is rising, can’t you hear it?’ She closes her eyes as if she really can hear everything. I notice one of her fingers twitching, as if conducting an unseen orchestra. ‘The cuckoo calls.’
I glance towards the window. I can’t hear anything at all. ‘We could go outside now, if you like.’
Her eyes open. ‘It isn’t what you want,’ she says, ‘but you can feel the life in it, can’t you? There’s no stopping it. No holding it back. It lasts as long as you want it to last.’
I catch my breath. I tell myself she’s old – even having some kind of lapse. I can’t think what she means, though perhaps that’s because I don’t want to.
She says, ‘You can go.’
I bite my lip to keep from telling her I’d be glad to, and step back, and feel something small and hard beneath my shoe. I can’t see what it is, though amid the institutional beige carpet fibres, something gleams.
‘Be a dear,’ she says. ‘I think I dropped my earrings, but my back, you know.’
I’d swear her back’s better than mine but I stoop and run my hand over the floor. I feel a hard object under my fingers and there’s the cold glitter of a diamond stud. I can’t see the other so I sweep my hand more widely, pushing aside the valance of the bed. There, just beyond reach, is a matching gleam. I lower myself to the floor and slide my hand under.
There is a box under the bed. It’s made of wood, about twelve inches long and six inches
wide. It’s of ample size to conceal a fairy skeleton, tiny and delicate: wings transparent as an insect’s, arms like a woman’s, the knees, on close inspection, bending backwards. Ugly or beautiful? Perhaps it is both.
I tell myself it’s only a box, probably placed there on purpose to taunt me, something she wanted me to find and made sure I did. I still itch to reach out and touch it. I want to open the lid and see what’s inside. My desire to read the letters stirs within me. I want to read all the letters, though I’m suddenly certain that’s not what she’s given me.
‘Are you finished?’ Her voice cuts through my reverie. I leave the box and withdraw, clutching her earrings.
‘Ah – victory,’ she says as I hold them out, and we both look down at them. The earrings are not diamonds. They don’t shine. The things in my hand are dull, tarnished; cheap.
She smiles and takes them from me, then bends to pick something up from her bedside table – her back is miraculously healed, I see – and she rubs the earrings with cotton wool, releasing the tang of antiseptic. They’ve been on the floor of course, though I half feel she’s washing me off them. She puts one in her ear, then the other, no need for a mirror. Now that she’s wearing them, they gleam. They’re no longer tarnished, never cheap; she can’t have managed that with simple antiseptic and yet as she tilts her head they shine out even more fiercely. They are no longer glitter; they are fire.
She says nothing, just stares at me as if in challenge. I was wrong, that’s all there is to it. Of course they’re diamonds: they’re hers. It was only ever a trick of the light that could have made me think otherwise.
I turn from her and close her door behind me, clutching the letters to my chest. They felt like a boon when she handed them over; now they feel like a sop, a fraction of the riches she must have hidden away. I unfurl the bundle and examine them. The topmost is different to the rest, printed in black ink and on thinner paper. It almost falls to the floor but I catch it and read:
