Sweets From Morocco

by Jo Verity

Tessa wished she could see Lewis’s face, better to gauge how to pull him back on her side. ‘Please don’t give me such a hard time. You don’t understand the pressure I was under to come up with a really strong story. And you have to admit it is. It’s already gone to a third print run.’

  ‘Bully for you,’ Lewis snapped, and the line went dead.

  A letter, her father’s laboured handwriting instantly recognisable on the envelope, arrived two days later.

  Tessa,

  What did we do to make you hate us? You have crucified us. Your mother is ill again and it is due to your filthy book. We are no longer your parents.

  It was signed Richard Swinburne – the signature of a stranger.

  She felt sick. But after several glasses of whisky, the stomach-churning diminished. So what? She was better off without them lurking in the background, forever criticising, dragging her down. In fact, a clean break was best all round.

  Lewis refused to take her calls and returned her letters, unopened. No matter how many drinks she had, she could find no bright side to his disapproval. During the ‘thing’ with Lotte, they had become close again. Jazz, Moroccan food, adultery – it had been fun seeing him embrace new experiences. They’d been through sticky patches before, barely speaking for a year when he married Andrea. It might take a while but it would be all right. Lewis could manage without Andrea but he couldn’t survive for long without Tessa.

  Drink was her first thing she reached for when it all got too much, with Rundle a close second. Whisky and Rundle – doubly effective when taken together. She sneaked off to Brighton with increasing regularity. If Dan asked where she was going, she invented another book signing.

  From the moment that she’d agreed to meet Rundle that afternoon, there had been no doubt that they would become lovers. Love? No. It was lust. Taking without giving, selfish and not quite ‘nice’.

  ‘You and me are two of a kind, Tess,’ Rundle whispered as they lay, spent, on the floor of his room, passing the whisky bottle between them. Had her body not been tingling with the aftershock, she might have asked what he meant by that.

  V

  1978

  Chapter 24

  Lewis stood at the sink, filling the kettle. Snow blanketed the back garden and the rooftops beyond, stifling every hint of colour and filling the kitchen with an eerie luminosity. His father was moving around in the bathroom directly overhead. He heard the flush hissing; water from the washbasin gurgling down the plughole; his father’s uneven tread as he came down the stairs. He shivered. February the tenth, nineteen seventy-eight.

  ‘Tea, Dad? Or something stronger?’ It was not yet noon but normal rules could be overlooked today. He pushed a packet of shortbread biscuits across the table. ‘You should eat something.’

  Dick Swinburne took a biscuit then, as if he had forgotten what biscuits were for, he set it gently on the table. ‘Did you get through to Frank?’

  ‘Yes. He’s coming over as soon as he can get his car started. Anyone else I should contact?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that. There’s a cousin somewhere up North … Macclesfield or Wrexham…’

  ‘Tessa?’ Lewis suggested tentatively.

  His father stared out of the window.

  In fact Lewis had phoned Tessa as soon as the hospital confirmed that Peggy Swinburne was dead. That was in the early hours of the morning – this morning. His sister had clearly been drinking because, when he told her, she accused him of joking. Too distraught to persevere, he’d hung up. A few hours later, he’d slipped away and rung again. ‘Had she been ill?’ she asked. The truce between them was flimsy and it was the first time they’d spoken since New Year. ‘No. She’s been a lot better recently, more relaxed. So much so, they’ve been letting her home for weekends. When Dad’s around to keep an eye on her.’ ‘So she was at home when it happened?’ Tessa had sounded surprised. ‘Oh God, she didn’t—’ ‘We don’t have any details yet. I’ll let you know the minute there’s anything to report.’ She’d offered to come immediately and then he’d had to come clean and confess that their father had no idea that he was calling her.

  Lewis cleared his throat. ‘We’ll have to tell her sooner or later, Dad. She’s got a right to know.’

  ‘She gave up her rights when she wrote that filthy book.’

  Before long there would be a plethora of things to occupy them but, for the time being, Lewis and his father were sidelined whilst the medical profession and the law deliberated how and why Margaret Anne Swinburne had died.

  Father and son sat opposite each other, avoiding eye contact, as if they had seen something that they shouldn’t and were too embarrassed to talk about it. Lewis wished that he’d put a cloth on the table. His mother used a tablecloth even when he popped in for a quick cup of coffee. He’d remarked, once, that there was no need; that she was making unnecessary washing for herself. ‘What else have I got to do with my time?’ There was no trace of irony or resentment in her reply. ‘I think a cloth makes it feel like a tea party, don’t you?’ And, as if to prove her point, she’d gone to the cupboard and brought out a packet of chocolate teacakes, usually saved for special occasions.

  The wind was in the north-east. Now and again it whipped the snow off the laden branches, creating miniature avalanches. It rattled the letter box and found its way under the doors. There had been no sign of snow the previous night when Lewis had left Cranwell Lodge, summoned by his father’s desperate phone call. He’d pulled on yesterday’s clothes and grabbed his old anorak. Now he drew the shabby coat around him but it failed to combat the arctic draughts. The feeble electric heaters made no impression on the temperature. The house was a giant cold store.

  ‘Warm enough, Dad?’ Lewis’s breath condensed in the air, mocking his enquiry.

  His father was wearing grey flannel trousers, a cardigan and a black tie, as if being warm and comfortable would be disrespectful. His eyes were dark-ringed, his cheeks waxen; a scrap of bloodied toilet paper drew attention to the razor nick below his left ear.

  Lewis tried again. ‘Shall I light a fire in the living room?’ Fires. Cups of tea. Phone calls. Anything but what had taken place upstairs.

  His father raised the biscuit to his lips and then returned it, untouched, to the table. ‘We don’t usually light the fire until after tea.’

  We. Lewis ached for what lay ahead for this man.

  Frank Swinburne turned up, stomping the snow off his shoes, making a great to-do about the lack of bread in his local shop and the tricky driving conditions.

  Fuck your breakfast. Fuck the Council’s failure to grit the by-pass. Fuck the forecast for more heavy snow. My mother is dead.

  Lewis zipped up his jacket. ‘I might go home for an hour or so. Sort a few things out. If that’s okay with you.’

  His father appeared not to have heard but Frank nodded. ‘I’ll hang on here until you get back.’

  When Lewis stepped out of the front door, it seemed wholly fitting that, overnight, the world had been transformed in to an unrecognisable place.

  *

  Tessa tipped a measure of whisky into her coffee. She was hazy about what had happened in the night. Lewis’s phone calls certainly hadn’t been a dream. What precisely had he said? Mum went to bed early and when Dad went up, he found her unconscious. She died before they could get her to the hospital. Was that it?

  She shook her head. No. That couldn’t be right. Her mother was only sixty-something – nowhere near her three-score-and-ten. And she would have told them if there was anything wrong with her. She wouldn’t sneak away like that, without giving them a chance to prepare themselves. That would be an act of appalling selfishness.

  Tessa removed two letters from her desk drawer. Taking them, and the bottle of whisky, into her bedroom, she climbed back into her unmade bed, the mound of blankets still holding traces of warmth from the night. She leaned against the pillows and swigged from the bottle. The sky was overcast, sullen with threatening snow, and she switched
on the bedside lamp, holding the sheets of pale blue notepaper up to the light, revealing a semi-transparent watermark. Basildon Bond.

  The stationery, in a fancy box, had been a belated birthday gift for her mother. Tessa had been making a flying visit home and had picked it up at the station. It was nothing special, but her mother had been delighted. She’d been particularly taken with the envelopes, lined with royal blue tissue and tied in two bundles, each secured with satin ribbon. ‘I’ll keep it for best.’ Her mother’s parsimony and gratitude were exasperating. ‘Don’t be daft, Mum, I’ll get you some more when you’ve used it all. What are “best” letters anyway?’ That was a couple of years ago but she would wager a hundred pounds that the box was still in the top left-hand drawer of the sideboard, and that no more than half a dozen sheets had gone from the pad.

  Following the furore over the book, Tessa had negotiated an uneasy peace with Lewis. They’d written to each other and spoken on the phone several times and she was confident that, in time, they would get back on their old footing. But her father had not budged an inch.

  Then, two months ago, the first envelope had arrived, tissue paper rustling beneath her finger as she’d eased open the flap.

  17th December 1977

  Dear Tessa,

  I just wanted to wish you a very happy Christmas and to send you my love. You are never far from my thoughts.

  A new year would be the perfect time for us all to make a fresh start. I’m praying that your father will reconsider but he’s a proud man and it is not easy for him to back down. I keep reminding myself that he’s doing this to protect me. All I want is for us all to get back to normal.

  Take care. Love from Mum

  P.S. Dad must never know that I have written to you.

  There was no address at the top of the page but Tessa had heard, from Lewis, that their mother was, once again, a patient in the local psychiatric hospital. Letter writing would unquestionably be easier away from her husband’s surveillance but what had prompted her to write? The clue lay in the first sentence. Christmas – when the past, lurking in every carol and strand of tinsel, threatened to spring out and deliver a below-the-belt blow.

  Tessa had wanted to shake her mother, to yell at her stand up to him. He’d brainwashed her, and everyone who knew her, into believing that she was incompetent, systematically camouflaging his cruelty with attentiveness.

  She’d envisaged her mother, tiptoeing along drab hospital corridors, apologising to the doctors for taking their time; to the nurses for putting them to any trouble. Prompted by this thought, she’d sent her parents a Christmas card – a non-committal card, depicting a robin on a snowy log. She’d addressed it to both of them and signed it simply ‘Tessa’.

  The second letter had turned up two weeks ago.

  24th January 1978

  Dearest Tess,

  I have done all I can but your father will not change his mind. Lewis tells me you two are in touch again. You were always close and I know that, whatever happens, you will support each other. It’s a great comfort to me. Good luck with your writing. You were such a clever little girl. I am so sorry for everything. This isn’t how I wanted it to end.

  Ever and always

  your loving Mother xx

  On re-reading, this message, delivered in her mother’s girlish handwriting, was unambiguous. Tessa had chosen to read it as an acceptance of separation but it was clearly a leave-taking. Until today there had been the possibility – no matter how slight – that the Swinburne family, all five, might be reunited. But now it could never happen because they would be at least one short.

  Tessa began to cry. How dare her mother give up on them? What right did she have to decide that it had ended? She took several gulps of whisky and flopped back against the pillows, closing her eyes, waiting for the alcohol to take effect. Turning on to her side, she drew her knees up to her chin and pulled the blankets over her head.

  The council had already gritted Medway Avenue but, if it kept on snowing, Cranwell Road would soon become impassable. It was the steepest hill for miles and children had turned up from all over, equipped with toboggans, tin trays, plastic sheeting – anything that would slide – hell-bent on transforming Cranwell Road into the Cresta Run. The whole place echoed with shrill voices and the sound of shovels scraping on garden paths.

  Lewis left his car at the bottom of the hill. On his precarious ascent he passed a growing battalion of snowmen and was caught in the barrage of snowballs between opposing armies of children. When he reached the top he saw his neighbour, clearing a path through the snow on the pavement. The family hadn’t long moved in and they seemed pleasant enough but, apart from occasional comments on the weather and the vagaries of the dustbin collection service, Lewis hadn’t had much to do with them.

  The man stopped work and leaned on the handle of his spade, wiping his nose with the back of a gloved hand. His breath condensed and dissipated as, open mouthed, he gasped, ‘I’m obviously … nowhere near as fit … as I thought I was.’

  This man – Dave? Yes, Dave – was the first person, apart from family and hospital staff, that Lewis had spoken to since his mother’s death. It seemed inconceivable that he bore no tell-tale mark, no scar, no stain to indicate that he had been struck by tragedy. It was up to him to say something but how could he broach the subject to this stranger, nice bloke though he might be, whose only concern was six inches of fresh, clean snow?

  Lewis pointed to the trench running through the snow. ‘You’re putting me to shame.’

  After the cutting wind, the house, even without a fire, felt pleasantly warm. He changed into corduroy trousers, woolly socks and a thick sweater, then made himself a mug of drinking chocolate and a jam sandwich.

  Slumped on the sofa in the breakfast room, fatigue swept over him and he dipped into sleep. Newton’s First Law of Motion. His head jerked forward and he roused then dipped again. A body remains in a state of rest until an external force acts upon it. Jerk then dip. Body. Would that be everybody? At rest. Jerk. Rest in peace. Awake. Dip. Peace. Police. Jerk. Dip. Force.

  The doorbell woke him. For a second, the world was at peace then his haphazard thoughts consolidated into a wrecking ball, smashing him into consciousness with jagged recollection.

  Dave stood in the porch, a spade in either hand, offering to help clear the pavement outside the house. Lewis guessed that he was keen to strengthen the neighbourly connection and the weather conditions offered the perfect opportunity.

  ‘It won’t take long and, if you haven’t already eaten, you’re more than welcome to join us for a bite. Casserole. Nothing fancy.’

  Afterwards, Lewis realised that he couldn’t have been thinking straight. Exhaustion, probably. And shock. But, at the time, getting togged up against the smarting cold, engaging in honest labour and looking forward to a hot meal shared with new friends seemed not such an inexcusable way to spend this exceptional day.

  Chapter 25

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Dan offered.

  ‘No. God, no.’ He was driving Tessa mad, fussing as though she were an invalid. ‘It’s not as if you ever met her.’

  Why did he put up with her? No matter how consistently she let him down, how offhand and bad-tempered she was, he came back for more. It seemed that taming her had become a matter of honour to him, a self-imposed mission. He was the white-hatted cowboy, determined to break the wild mustang.

  ‘No, but I thought you might like a—’

  ‘A what? A chaperone? A bodyguard?’

  ‘Sshhh. Sshhh.’ He kissed her mouth and stroked the nape of her neck. ‘When this is over, we’ll go away. Find some sun. Get you mended.’

  The requirement for a post-mortem, combined with a backlog of burials following an influenza outbreak, meant that it was ten days before Peggy Swinburne’s funeral went ahead. Lewis phoned frequently to keep her abreast of events.

  ‘Is it grim there?’ she asked.

  ‘Not grim exactly. I feel … uns
ettled. Like I’m sickening for something. Waiting for the spots to appear. Will I or won’t I succumb.’ He sighed. ‘Does that make sense?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’ She waited a second before asking, ‘D’you think Mum killed herself?’

  When he didn’t reply she prompted, ‘Lewis?’

  ‘It’s pointless to speculate. We’ll only get ourselves in a state and we’ll know the answer soon enough.’

  ‘You’re talking to me, remember, not giving a statement to the press. Aren’t we already “in a state”? I’m asking you what you think?’

  But he wouldn’t be drawn.

  ‘Should I come down?’

  She half-wanted him to say Yes, jump on the next train, I can’t manage without you. And I forgive you for writing the book. But he told her again that there was nothing to be done and really no need for her to come before the funeral.

  ‘It’s best if I keep out of the way, is that what you’re trying to say? You’re probably right. Dad phoned me, by the way. I suppose you had a finger in that.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing much. It was terribly civilised. I had the feeling that Uncle Frank was hovering nearby, making sure Dad didn’t have a go at me. Oh, and he told me how wonderful you were. Lewis, the rock.’

  Tessa had known that she and her father would have to speak sooner or later, and, although she didn’t look on it as a victory, she was relieved that he’d been the one to crack. During the brief conversation, they had both been on their guard, keeping the exchange factual, avoiding the unanswered question that was hanging over them all.

  ‘How’s he coping? I suppose he’s got used to fending for himself over the past couple of months.’

  ‘He’s managing. I offered to stay there, or for him to come up here, but he refused. He says he’s eating and sleeping okay. He’s moved in to your room by the way. I expect he can’t face—’