by Helen Harris
I was so surprised that I was momentarily at a loss for an excuse. ‘Gosh,’ I said, ‘that’s awfully sweet of you!’
‘Which night would suit you best?’ Jean asked, a trifle briskly.
I hesitated. ‘Look, are you quite sure?’ I said feebly. ‘I mean, you mustn’t feel I need inviting out just because Rob’s away for a week.’
‘We don’t,’ Jean answered. There was an awkward slight pause and then she said, ‘What about tomorrow?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I’m busy tomorrow,’ I lied.
‘Thursday?’ she said.
I realized that for whatever reason, she wasn’t going to let me get out of this, so I replied, ‘Thursday’s fine. Thank you very much.’
‘Great,’ she said. ‘We’ll see you then.’
‘Oh, what time should I come?’ I asked.
‘Whenever you like,’ Jean answered. ‘It won’t be anything special.’
When I got to their house on Thursday evening Jean was out, delayed at a meeting, Eddy told me as he let me in. He was peeling an enormous mixture of different vegetables on the kitchen table, while Adam sat docilely in the middle of them, absorbed in sampling one after another peelings of potatoes, parsnips and onions. Eddy gave me a vegetable knife in response to my offer of help, and for an hour or so we worked there together, while Eddy spluttered at the evening news bulletins on the radio and I wondered whyever they had invited me over.
It didn’t become clear until the strained evening was almost over. Jean came back at nearly nine o’clock, worn out and irritated by the confrontations of her women’s meeting. By then Adam was grizzling on the kitchen floor, petulantly protesting at the lack of direction to his evening by repeatedly pulling vegetable peelings out of the bin and flinging them on the floor. For an instant, Jean looked quite shocked to see me sitting there and I realized she had forgotten that I was coming.
We sat down to eat in the end, very late, already having drunk nearly two bottles of wine between us, while the vegetables were turned into a big vegetable curry and Adam was coaxed unsuccessfully into bed two or three times.
I waited for some intimation all through the curry, and the crumble which followed. But Jean and Eddy chatted on in an offhand way, Jean about her meeting and Eddy about some new book project. They really didn’t seem to attribute any particular significance to my presence at all and I had virtually decided it was an act of duty, which they had reluctantly fulfilled with a minimum of effort, when Jean said to me, ‘I’m not sure how you’re going to take this, Alison, but we wondered if we could help you in any way? We thought maybe you had some sort of problem?’
I said, ‘Sorry?’
‘Don’t take this the wrong way,’ she said earnestly, ‘but it hasn’t escaped our attention that you’ve been a bit – well, out of it recently. None of us ever sees you and when we do, you seem, you know, not quite all there. We wondered if you were having some kind of hassles? We thought we might be able to help you work through whatever it is?’
I said, ‘I’m fine.’ I laughed. ‘I don’t really know what you’re talking about.’
‘Oh, come on, Alison,’ said Eddy. ‘There’s no need to be like that; it’s so counter-productive. We’re not trying to interrogate you here. We’re just offering to discuss whatever’s bugging you in a constructive, non-confrontational way. Group therapy, you know.’
Jean said, ‘Ed-dy.’
‘OK, OK,’ Eddy said. ‘I’ll leave it to the expert.’ He took a big swig of wine and sat back in his chair.
‘But nothing’s bugging me,’ I said brightly. ‘I don’t know what gave you the idea –’
‘Well, for instance, things don’t seem to be going too brilliantly between you and Rob,’ Jean said sarcastically.
I stared at her. ‘What makes you say that?’ I snapped.
‘Oh, please,’ said Jean, ‘give me the credit for a little nous.’ She softened. ‘Look, Alison, I know it’s never easy to admit to oneself that things are in a mess. I’ve done a doctorate in self-deception in my time. But it’s the only way we’re going to start to work towards a solution.’
‘Thanks very much for the offer,’ I said rudely, ‘but fortunately, there’s no need.’
Jean and Eddy sighed in unison.
Eddy said, ‘I hate to see someone turning their back on a positive approach.’
Impatiently, I answered, ‘Look, there’s nothing to discuss. And, even if there were, do you honestly imagine I’d sit here at your kitchen table discussing the ins and outs of Rob’s and my private life?’
Eddy said, ‘Why ever not? Don’t you see, we can help you by putting a new perspective on things?’
‘What I don’t understand,’ said Jean, ‘is why you insist on clutching “ your private life” to your breast, as if it were somehow sacred and top-secret. I mean, for God’s sake, it’s perfectly obvious something’s the matter, and I don’t really see what you think you stand to gain by hushing it up.’
We glared at each other.
I said hotly, ‘My private life is sacred and top-secret. I’ve no intention of airing my woes for public consumption – If there are any.’
‘God!’ Jean exclaimed. ‘I find your concept of a relationship so claustrophobic. I wonder if that’s not part of the problem? Don’t you see, you’re cutting yourself off from all sources of outside input?’ She paused. ‘Are you sure Rob sees things the way you do?’
‘Look,’ I said angrily, ‘there’s no point in going on. Firstly, I’ve already said there’s nothing to discuss and, secondly, even if there were, I assure you I wouldn’t hold a DIY analysis of it here.’
I was quite proud of myself for that. I thanked them for the dinner and I got up to go. They were both shaking their heads over their wine-glasses.
‘I think you’re being amazingly short-sighted,’ Jean said warningly.
I took my jacket off the back of my chair and, without meaning to underline my disgust, I picked two or three stray carrot scrapings from it.
‘I appreciate you meant well,’ I added pompously.
I rode home, sitting especially straight, pumping fast and furiously on my pedals. How dare they? I thought indignantly. How dare they stick their prying noses into my affairs?
All the next day, the taste of their pungent vegetable curry kept returning to remind me of my righteous indignation.
Rob came back on Friday. I heard him typing in his study as I came up the last flight of stairs. As I opened the front door, I called out cheerily, ‘Hello-oh!’ and he called back, ‘Hi, hi!’ He came to the door of the study and looked out at me warily to see how things stood between us. He must have decided that they were on the mend, that distance, to quote Mrs Q, had made the heart grow fonder, because he came bounding across the hall and gave me a big hug. I gave him a token one in return.
‘Well,’ I asked him, ‘how was it? Come into the kitchen and tell me all about it.’
When he had finished, Rob asked, ‘What’s new with you?’
I told him that Jean and Eddy had invited me over to dinner.
He said, ‘Uh-huh?’
It was too casual.
‘You don’t sound very surprised,’ I said sharply. ‘Did you know they were going to?’
‘Put it this way,’ said Rob, ‘I’m not surprised.’ He hesitated. ‘How was it?’
I pulled a wry face. ‘Not a great success, I’m afraid. Why aren’t you surprised? I was.’
Rob said weakly, ‘They’re decent people. They knew you were on your own.’
‘It was nothing of the sort,’ I contradicted him angrily. ‘They invited me over to grill me.’
Rob shifted on his seat. ‘OK, I confess,’ he said, grinning ruefully. ‘I was a bit worried about the state you were in before I went away, so I asked them to take you under their wing. Why are you looking at me like that? It’s not such a big deal, is it?’
I said tensely, ‘What did you say to them? Did you just say I’d be by myself and coul
d they keep an eye on me? Or did you tell them – something else?’
Rob sighed, ‘Oh God, does it really matter what I said to them? I assure you it was nothing important.’
I nearly shouted, ‘What did you say to them?’
Rob started to lose his temper too. ‘All right,’ he said hotly, ‘I asked them to invite you over. I asked them to see if they could make head or tail of what’s going on in your head these days. And I dare say they couldn’t. Now are you happy?’
I sat aghast. I imagined his group sitting round, maybe on a Sunday afternoon when I had been over at Mrs Queripel’s, earnestly debating the best method to combat my hang-ups. Above the roaring sound in my ears of all my faith in Rob draining in one deafening go, I struggled to hear myself say, ‘But how could you?’
‘I don’t see why you’re making such a fuss,’ Rob said bluntly. ‘Surely the fact that I’ve discussed this bloody business with other people shows that I care about it, doesn’t it?’
As I stood up without a word, he grabbed at my hand and he bellowed, ‘Doesn’t it?’
‘Let go of my hand,’ I said coldly.
‘You’d better snap out of this pretty bloody quick, Alison,’ Rob shouted after me as I left the kitchen. ‘I’m warning you for the last time.’
*
‘Two years was all we were granted here, two years and six months to be exact, although the last six months were hardly what you’d call living. Back and forth to the hospital every day when Leonard was poorly, and caring for him day and night when he was home.
‘I still remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the day he first had an inkling something was amiss. We were sitting having breakfast over there at the table, a proper breakfast how Leonard used to like it, with eggs and bacon and toast and marmalade and tea. To tell you the truth, I’d hoped I wouldn’t need to do all that any more after we sold the boarding-house. But he’d developed a taste for it, hadn’t he, and I had to keep it up all those years. You know, even now I can’t look a fried egg in the face. For me, an egg’s got to be boiled or come scrambled, not running and jumping all over the pan. The slightest suggestion of a fried egg is enough to make me think twice.
‘Well, that day I’d put the eggs and bacon down in front of him and I’d gone back to the kitchen to fetch something I’d forgotten, the butter knife or the marmalade, and when I came back into the room Leonard was sitting in that chair; he hadn’t moved an inch, and he was staring down at his plate with this look of horror on his face. I said to him, “Whatever’s the matter?” You know, I thought something was off. And he said, “I can’t eat this.” Just like that: “I can’t eat this,” all surprised and mystified. I came over and took a look at his plate. It looked all right to me. “Why ever not?” I asked. “What’s wrong with it?” “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “There’s something wrong with me.” Well, I took a look at his face then and he did look crook. He’d gone as white as a sheet and his eyes were all staring. I thought, “Heart.” Well, you do, don’t you? But it wasn’t heart at all, as it turned out, but stomach. I helped him upstairs to lie down and get over it, and he was very quiet all day. He confessed to me then that he’d been getting these stomach pains for quite a while, but he’d put it down to indigestion and he hadn’t said a word. Well, I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, so the next day or the day after, I persuaded him to go and see the doctor. It wasn’t that nice Dr Chowdhury then, but a grumpy old English doctor called Greaves. He told Leonard it was most probably nothing but wind, but he’d send him up to the hospital for some tests just to be on the safe side. A few days later, we got an appointment card for the following week and on the day they said, we went up to the hospital and Leonard had the tests. Afterwards, we both felt a lot better. We might even have put the whole thing behind us if, a week or so later, we hadn’t got another card asking us to go and see Dr Greaves. Well, we knew then that something was up and Leonard started to sink before my very eyes. Dr Greaves said there was no cause for alarm, but Leonard had to have this operation and the sooner the better. An operation! You can imagine how we felt. I remember we came home on the bus together and we neither of us said a word, not till we were back in here and I’d got the kettle on. Then Leonard shook his head and he said, “It’s curtains, Alicia” and even though I was half in tears, I cried, “No, it’s not. You’ve got to fight back!” But he didn’t. He seemed to crumple up inside. He was never really right again after that morning when he found he couldn’t eat his eggs.
‘They said the operation was a success, at first. They said. But I’d seen him when he was coming round and I thought to myself, with someone looking so shocking, how could it possibly have been a success? They never fooled me with their medical ways. Anyway, after a few weeks, they let me bring Leonard home. He had pills and a diet sheet and everything had to be just so; he had to take one colour pill at one time and another colour at another time and eat his invalid meals on the dot. After a while, you got the feeling his stomach was the most major thing in the house. It seemed to rule the roost.
‘Still, we had that one summer of grace. It was May or June when he went into hospital and we had a clear stretch until nearly November before his stomach started to play up again. I remember one silly little thing. It’s funny how they’re always what sticks, isn’t it? It wasn’t a specially good summer as I recall, but we seemed to have a lot of ice-cream vans round here for some reason. Lord knows why, because no one much ever seemed to buy any. There was this one chap, especially regular, whose tune was Greensleeves. He used to come almost every day I think, and park just a little way down the road. We used to hear him coming and then he’d be at it, tinkling away outside whatever the weather, until he drove us both nearly mad. And ice-cream was one of the things Leonard wasn’t supposed to have.
‘Anyway, he was right as rain, more or less, until November. I remember it was November, because there were all the little boys doing “Penny for the Guy” out on Shepherd’s Bush Green. I’d been up to the shops one afternoon and when I came back, I saw Leonard sitting by the window watching for me. I shouted out, “Hello, dear!” as I unlocked the front door, but he didn’t answer me. I hurried in to take a look at him and he was sitting all stiff, like this, with his hand held out, and he said to me in a funny, croaky voice, “Penny for the Guy? Penny for the Guy?”
‘Well, that didn’t seem to me a very normal thing to do and, sure enough, a few days later he was doubled up again and it was back to Dr Greaves. That time, they didn’t shilly-shally. They whipped him into hospital quick as could be and he had had another operation before you could say Jack Robinson. That was his first Christmas in hospital, the first time in forty years of marriage that we’d had to spend Christmas apart. Of course, I was at his bedside the minute the doors opened for visiting hours, but it wasn’t the same. I shouldn’t say it, but I think he had the better Christmas, because at least he was surrounded by people, all those hale and hearty nurses, and all that to-do. He didn’t have to come home to an empty house.
‘They let him come home some time in January, but he wasn’t himself any more, I suppose literally, since he had so much missing by then. He used to sit around all day, just staring, and if you tried to talk to him, sometimes he would just sigh and look straight through you as if you weren’t even there. And all he thought about was the past, things which ought to have been long dead and buried. For instance, I might say to him something perfectly harmless: “D’you fancy some Welsh rarebit for your tea?” and he’d say, “Clara Willoughby was always very partial to Welsh rarebit, wasn’t she?” Clara Willoughby was an actress who once belonged to our company. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned her, but she was a dreadful woman. She and I never saw eye to eye. I can’t think what Leonard saw in her. So I’d say to him, a bit crossly, “For goodness sake, forget about Clara Willoughby and answer my question, would you?” But he’d go on, “Remember when we were doing The Age of Youth in Liverpool, and she used to make i
t on her little bar fire until all the other girls complained that the smell of it made them so hungry they couldn’t concentrate on their lines?” It drove me mad. I suppose it was only natural, mind you, with him thinking that the future didn’t hold very much for him, that his thoughts should turn towards things past. But it did upset me. He used to remember all the old quarrels and torment himself with them. He was always going on about Harry Levy, for instance, and saying how the memory of him had been a thorn in his flesh all those years. Sometimes I’d get so depressed, I’d just have to go out and leave him there. I couldn’t bear to sit and listen to him dragging up all those old troubles which I prayed to God I’d heard the last of.
‘He stayed in that state pretty well until the summer. One day, maybe, he’d be a little better and he’d perk up a bit. But then, the next day he might be back to square one. It was no sort of life for either of us really. It was like being a threesome, you know; Leonard and me and his cancer. Leonard used to make quite a thing of it being like a third party. He’d say he was being unfaithful to me, carrying on with his cancer. And when he had to go up to the hospital for his treatment or for tests, he’d get at me by saying he was off to a rendezvous. Even though I took him up there every time. Yes, you’re right, it was only a joke, but it upset me no end. I used to weep buckets.
‘In the autumn, he started to go downhill. You might think he was that far gone, he couldn’t go much further. But at least, most of the time, he was still himself. Of course, sometimes he said things which were quite out of character, cruel and cutting, and then you knew it wasn’t him; it was his cancer talking. But round about October time, he started to change for the worse. Half the time, he didn’t know any more if he was coming or going. He’d come up with these impossible statements and when you took him to task, he’d deny all knowledge of them. It wasn’t only eating away his body, you see, it was eating away his mind too.
‘They took him back into hospital at the beginning of November. We didn’t have to go through “Penny for the Guy” again, although by then he looked much more of a guy than he had the year before. He was only skin and bones and his hair, his lovely hair, was all falling out from what they were doing to him up at the hospital. In fact, I couldn’t bear to walk past the boys on the green any more. I got a lump in my throat. Their guys reminded me so much of my poor dear Leonard. He’d gone a funny colour too. And if any of them had the nerve to come up and ask me for money, I’d give them a piece of my mind. I’d send them packing. I’ve still got no time for them even now. They’re not to know it, but they turn the knife in the wound. They remind me of my loss.
