The Feast of All Souls

by Simon Bestwick

  “Yeah.” He smiled up at her. “I do.”

  “No. You don’t. We’ve got money. We’ve got good jobs.” Your family’s loaded – no, she’d best not say that. “We’ve got some sort of security for the future. Just that, just having that – growing up, I didn’t have that, and I wanted that so much. A nice house. Health. Bloody hell, we’ve got clean water and food on the table and a roof over our heads. Half the people on the fucking planet haven’t got that. The room we’re staying in tonight, that’s got more than some people will ever see in their lives. Do you know what I mean?”

  He didn’t, she knew; God love him, he just didn’t have a clue. But he said “Yes,” and maybe he even thought he did, too. And then he was kissing her and she was kissing him back and his hands were pushing the great spilt froth of lace up over her pale thighs while her fingers fumbled at his shirt buttons and trouser belt. And then they were together on the four-poster bed – the first time, she thought, the first time as husband and wife – and all thoughts and fears and questions were gone for a time.

  AND AFTERWARDS, THEY tidied themselves up and straightened their clothes, laughing, and Alice retouched her smudged and smeared make-up before they went back downstairs.

  And they cleared the floor at the reception ready for the disco and the two of them took the first dance to Carolyn’s Fingers by the Cocteau Twins, because that was the song that had been playing on the stereo in Alice’s flat the night they’d first kissed, and everyone agreed that it was a funny sort of song for the bride and groom to dance to but that it sort of worked.

  And then there was the disco and there was music of all kinds, and Teddy stole the show with his dancing while Alice and Andrew sagged on a couch, and Alice dozed off with her head on Andrew’s shoulder.

  And the next day they set off on their honeymoon to Portugal.

  And through all of that, Alice never thought once of John Revell.

  Not then.

  May 2006

  IT STARTED OUT as just another morning. They woke when the alarm raised them, went through the normal morning round of bathroom visits, coffee, and went out to the car.

  The house was a cottage on the outskirts of Apsley, a village some miles inland of Seaford. No big stores yet, just a string of little shops. A kids’ playground, nature trails, the River Cuckmere running through it, and the odd night out just a short drive away. It was perfect for them; perfect for a young couple, and perfect for a family. Which would follow in due course, just not yet. A couple more years, perhaps.

  They drove to Amberson’s. Afterwards Alice couldn’t remember any details of the drive, although it often seemed to her that she should. But there wasn’t much to remember; they’d lived together long enough by then that there weren’t much in the way of highs or lows. They weren’t feeling crazy in love all over again; they hadn’t had a blazing row either. Nothing much was said; nothing of import, nothing she remembered. Perhaps because a faint sense of queasiness passed through her stomach, coming and going several times over the course of the car ride.

  When they walked in through the reception area later, though, Andrew slipped an arm round her waist for an instant. She turned to face him and his lips brushed across hers, and then they were going their separate ways.

  She went to the lab and waved hello to Teddy, who’d already been at his desk for half an hour, and the new lab assistant, Henry. The flat in Hastings, the first few months alone, setting off as dawn broke on winter mornings to be there first – all that was gone now, and so different a life. Another life, another woman.

  “Oh, there you are. About bloody time. Some of us have work to do, you know.”

  “Morning, Teddy.”

  “How about a nice cup of coffee?”

  “Great idea. You know where the kettle is.” An old routine for them by now, worn smooth by countless repetitions.

  “Dear God,” said Teddy, getting up. “They are revolting, I tell you, Henry, revolting.” Henry blinked. He’d joined two months earlier, after Andrew’s transfer to HR, and still gave every sign of being an elective mute. Teddy made a quick mock-bow in Alice’s direction. “Purely in the sense of rebellion, you understand, my dear – I intend no slur on your looks or personal hygiene. They’re talking back to men, Henry. Do you hear? Answering back, driving motor cars, refusing to stay in the kitchen where they belong – by the Beard of the Prophet, they’ll want the vote next.”

  Henry’s lips twitched in a smile before he glanced at Alice and looked back down at his work. Teddy rolled his eyes and made for the kettle, adding “Milk and no sugar, I presume, milady?”

  “Thank you, slave.”

  “And would madame perchance care for un petit crème de Bourbon?”

  “Yer what?”

  “A Bourbon cream, you peasant.”

  “Oh go on then, you old puff.”

  Henry kept his eyes down and on his work, except when temptation overwhelmed him and he dared to peek in her or Teddy’s direction. Alice couldn’t blame him, really. After five years, she and Teddy had built up the kind of banter that was impenetrable if not downright intimidating to a newcomer, especially one even fresher out of university than she’d been. She’d graduated, she supposed, from ‘minion’ to ‘chief henchman.’ Or henchperson. She powered up her desktop and yawned.

  “Une Nescafé avec le lait semi-skimmed et les biccies du chocolat,” said Teddy in a French accent that made Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau sound like the height of classical realism, setting mug and a china plate with three Bourbon creams on her worktop.

  “Cheers. Who’s doing the canteen run this morning?” Alice rarely bothered to eat breakfast at home. Amberson’s had a good – not to mention subsidised – canteen, the bacon rolls of which were the stuff of legend. In the meantime, there were bourbon creams. Alice devoured the first in two bites, chased it with a gulp of coffee.

  “Well, don’t look at me, dear. I’m far too old for that sort of thing.”

  “You’re too old for –” She never completed the sentence, and the sound that came out of her mouth defied spelling, even phonetically, accompanied as it was by the bourbon cream, the mouthful of coffee, the cup of coffee she’d had at home that morning, along with most of yesterday’s evening meal and quite possibly, she later thought, lunch too.

  “Fuck me,” said Henry.

  DESPITE ALICE’S PROTESTS that she felt fine, they sent her home. She called Andrew when she got back, assured him there was nothing to worry about, told him she’d see him later.

  By the early afternoon, her stomach was growling. She cooked poached eggs on toast, which wasn’t unusual for her – and nearly a full pack of bacon rashers into the bargain, which certainly was.

  When she found she was still hungry afterwards and ended up eating anchovy fillets, which she normally hated, out of the can, alarm bells rang.

  She went into the village and bought what she needed from the pharmacy – knowing as she did that word of her purchase would be all over the village by the time Andrew got home.

  At home she unwrapped the pregnancy test kit and sat at the kitchen table looking at it for some time. Then she picked it up and climbed the stairs to the bathroom.

  “YOU’RE WHAT?”

  “Pregnant, Andrew.”

  He gawped at her. He’d only walked in from the office a couple of minutes ago, come into the living room to find her curled up on the couch, and then before he could even kiss her cheek she’d dropped the bombshell on him. Cruel, maybe, but she couldn’t resist seeing the look on his face. “You – but – how?”

  “How? Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much –”

  “Oh bugger off.” But he was smiling when he said it, which made things a little easier. He still looked a little dazed, though, and she could almost see the cogs turning in his brain, trying to crack the question of how the hell are we ever going to afford this? Because that was the funny thing about Andrew. Under all the heavy-metal bad-boy trapping
s, he was a good little son of the middle classes who took care of his money, budgeted and planned. Kids hadn’t been on the agenda for a couple more years.

  “We’ll be okay,” she said. “We’ve both got good jobs, we can afford childcare. You know, couples a damn sight worse off than us have children.” Mum and Dad had had her, after all. If they’d waited until they were financially stable they’d probably never have had kids at all. “It’s not the end of the world.”

  “I know, I know. It’s just – whoa. Bit of a shock.”

  “Tell me about it. Look on the bright side. You’re not the one who’s going to be the size of a barrage balloon before this is over. Not to mention more bloody morning sickness.”

  “There’s that. How you feeling now?”

  “Fine, apart from craving flipping anchovies again. Well, I’ll need my strength for pushing the bloody sprog out.” She grinned. “At least I can pig out all I like with no-one pecking my head.”

  He grinned and climbed onto the sofa beside her. “I’m sure your Mum’ll manage.”

  “Oi, cheeky.” She poked him in the ribs. “Don’t be dissing my Mum.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Besides, God knows what I’ll have to put up with from your Mum. And Mandy.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  He slipped his arms around her and she sank against him. Out of nowhere, she felt sad and afraid. Hormones, maybe? Or it might just be the sudden shock of realising everything would change now, had already started to – here was a new life, and it meant – it would have to mean – more than hers, than his, than both of them together. This is a big job, so make sure you do it right. “We’ll be okay, won’t we, babe?”

  “’Course we will.” His hand inched down, stroked her belly through the sweater, then slipped under it to caress the skin. “Me and you, sweetheart. And the Blob here.”

  “The Blob?” she snorted. “Last of the bloody romantics, you.”

  “What can I say? You bring out the best in me.”

  November 2006

  SOMEWHERE IN THE evening, fireworks popped and crackled. Alice peered through the kitchen window, saw the fields and woods beyond the village, their colours dimmed and faded by the coming of night.

  She fished out the teabag, dropped it in the kitchen bin, splashed milk into the brew and then cradled it in cupped hands. Her fingers felt cold a lot these days; one of the quirks of this particular pregnancy. No two, they’d told her at the prenatal class, were exactly alike; each had its own little oddities.

  Another firework popped. Pink lights glittered in the velvet dusk, dying as they fell through the sky.

  Alice went back to the kitchen table, set the mug down, returned to her notes and her laptop. The chair was parked side-on to the table. Her belly was too big now for her to sit there comfortably, and she didn’t like lying back in an armchair or lying on the couch these days. Her centre of gravity was all over the place and getting up again was a bloody nightmare. This posture was the best one for writing in, although it cricked her neck. And there was still a month of this to go. At least if the baby came on Christmas Eve, she told herself, they’d save money on presents.

  Alice looked down at her notes again. A couple of months ago, a publisher had approached her about writing a popular science textbook for A-level students. Simple stuff compared to the work at Amberson’s, but it would bring in some extra money and be another string to her bow.

  With maternity leave coming up in her future, she’d agreed to it; she had no doubt she’d want something to keep her occupied. And so she’d spent her time feverishly jotting notes whenever inspiration struck – descriptions of experiments, explanations of principles and clever metaphors to demonstrate them, scribbled variously on A4 and A5 paper, the backs of envelopes from the bank, even, in one case, a receipt from Tesco’s in Hastings.

  They were spilled out in a heap on the table-top now. She’d spent the past couple of days making various stabs at a chapter-by-chapter plan to get the material into some semblance of order. After several attempts, she’d finished that last night – Halloween, after the bloody trick-or-treaters had stopped rattling the door every five minutes, after she and Andrew had watched a double bill of old Hammer horror movies and he’d gone off to bed. It was a tradition with them, and pretty much the only time they watched such films; as far as Alice was concerned, they were comedy gold. A few fireworks had gone off – five days early, she’d remembered thinking – while Andrew snored upstairs and bit by bit, the outline had finally come together.

  Of course, the next step was actually starting to write the damned thing properly, which was proving to be a proper bind. She’d lost count of how much tea she’d drunk, mostly done in order to avoid work by brewing up, washing up or trotting back and forth to the loo. The new addition to the Villiers household – the Blob, probably a lot less blobby by now but whose gender remained indeterminate as they’d decided to wait and see – seemed to spend most of its time tap-dancing on her bladder, and the tea influx sent it into positive overdrive.

  But here she was, back at the table, trying to get to grips with her nemesis, the heap of crumpled notes beside the laptop. First of all came the problem of deciphering what she’d scribbled down several weeks before, often under less-than-ideal conditions. Next she had to type them up. Then when she’d typed them up she realised that they were crap – they might have seemed clever and clear and perfect when she’d jotted them down, but when she read them back they seemed clumsy and stupid, so now she had to rephrase everything she’d written.

  This was going to be a long job.

  That was the last thought she had before the first contraction hit. She yelped, hunched forward in the chair and clutched her belly. Christ.

  The first emotion was fear: the baby wasn’t due for another month. Was something wrong, something she might have known about if she’d been a bit less bothered about waiting and seeing what sex the baby was? Then it passed. You could get the odd contraction in the weeks leading up to the birth. She turned her attention back to her notes.

  The next contraction hit a few minutes later. Another followed, then another. Oh God, this wasn’t right, something was wrong – and then there was a sudden hot gush of fluid down her thighs, and the maternity dress was suddenly sodden and plastered to her. There was a brief rush of shame – oh God, she thought, I’ve wet myself – and then the realisation of what had really happened.

  Stay calm. She got up, picked up her mobile phone, rang the hospital. When they told her the ambulance was on its way, she got up and made her way to the front door, speed-dialling Andrew’s number as she went.

  SHE WAS IN labour for nearly ten hours; Andrew reached the hospital an hour after she’d called and stayed by the bed the whole time.

  It hurt, obviously, and she didn’t suffer in silence. Andrew joked afterwards that they’d probably heard her in Portsmouth, but she’d been too tired to reply. Beside, she’d gripped his hand so hard during some of those contractions she was pretty sure she’d damn near crushed his bones to powder, so Alice decided he’d been punished enough.

  But just as all good things come to an end, so do the bad. At last, when the pain hit a crescendo she was certain couldn’t be exceeded without killing her, it vanished, and its place was a baby’s yowl.

  “Oh my God,” Andrew was saying. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”

  “What? Andrew, what?”

  “It’s a girl!” He was laughing and crying, all at once. “It’s a girl.”

  The nurse wiped the child clean, wrapped her in a towel and put her on Alice’s breast. She was tired and aching, her legs were slimed from blood and shit and amniotic fluid and her cheeks were sore and stinging because she’d cried so many tears of pain, but the second they put her child there all of that just went away. She reached up, stroked the tiny body through the towel, brushed her fingertips over the light down of the head, and her daughter looked back at her with big narrowed eyes in her tiny,
ancient-looking face.

  “Emily,” she said. They’d talked about names and settled long before on what they’d be: Ethan for a boy, Emily for a girl.

  “Emily,” said Andrew. “Emily Villiers.”

  Emily Collier, too. Hell, it was Alice who’d done all the work. But it didn’t really seem the right time to raise that point, somehow. And anyway, she was tired.

  After that... after that there was haze. There were painkillers and there was cleaning-up, and her daughter was put in an incubator because she’d been early.

  So that’s what love is, she remembered thinking at some point. She’d thought she’d known before, but she hadn’t, not until they laid Emily on her breast and it had come in a wave, blowing everything else away. Nothing else mattered: her career seemed an irrelevancy beside it, even her marriage if it came to that. Anything else, measured against her child, would lose every time.

  And then she opened her eyes and looked to see Andrew slumped in his chair beside her bed, still in his office clothes and fast asleep, and she remembered what love was all over again. She reached out and touched his hand; he stirred awake, smiled blearily and held her fingers fast. Him and her and Emily, just us, she thought, against the world.

  Chapter Twenty

  History

  31st October 2016

  THE DAY WAS almost done; the sun was already sinking westward and the streetlights were coming on, rows of little red coals lighting the way to Manchester.

  “So I spent a couple of hours in the University library,” said John as she locked the front door, “and picked up a whole load of stuff. But here’s the thing: when I try to find out more, I get nowhere. I get hold of Chris Fry – and my God, there’s a man who’s still carrying a torch for you –”