Good Girls

by Amanda Brookfield

  Dismounting on the scruffy patch of tarmac in front of the garage, Eleanor noted to her dismay that it was already past three o’clock. She wrestled with the gate latch as usual, propping it open with a flower pot to save a similar inconvenience for guests, before wheeling her bike between the twiggy beds of lavender that bordered the path to the front door.

  Inside the hall, grappling with her purchases, Eleanor managed to collide with the stepladder left from the morning painting session that had made her late for the shopping. The ladder toppled with a clatter, only just missing knocking her freshly painted wall. Eleanor stepped over it and hurried into the kitchen, flicking on the radio before settling to the task of unpacking and sorting the fridge for the arrival of Trevor’s wine. Twenty guests, tops, he had said. If half of them drank red, that would only mean five bottles to squeeze inside for chilling. Except that Trevor and his friends drank a lot. Ten bottles then. Maybe twelve. Her phone buzzed.

  Thinking balloons for the gate? Prevent lost guests. Be there soon. Tx

  Eleanor took out one of the cold chicken dishes she had prepared the night before to make some extra room and emptied out her shopping. The wine would get squeezed in somehow. She needed to find vases for the flowers.

  A tune she liked came on the radio. She jigged her way into the dining room. A party would be fun. She would travel to the bookshop by bike so as not to have to worry about parking, and wear the charity dress that had seen her through the summer.

  She got two vases out of the dining room sideboard, one of the few furniture items to have survived from the Igor days, and then paused to look out onto the garden. The late September sun was hot on her face through the glass. It felt fantastic, like being stroked with big warm hands. Through half-closed eyes she stared out at the square lawn, bushy with moss and daisies, the borders of aged shrubs and various unsightly brambled patches that were clearly hangovers from attempts to grow vegetables. But there were bits that Eleanor remembered fondly and had grown to love again: like the magnolia by the bottom fence, fairly drab in its early autumn guise, but which on her first visit back in April had greeted her like a prima ballerina in full pirouette, its layered skirts of dusky pink flowers in full spin; and the old giant of a weeping ash that arched towards the house, exploding all summer like a great green fountain.

  Eleanor was trying to open one of the dining room’s lattice windows when the rat-tat-tat of her front door knocker sounded. She kept thumping at the window frame, sticky from more of her own recent efforts with a paintbrush, yelling over her shoulder to Trevor that the door was open. The window gave way suddenly, releasing an angry wasp, which bounced off into the garden like a bullet.

  ‘Trevor, it’s open,’ she called again, flicking off the radio as she returned to the hall, pausing to pick up the ladder and lean it against the banisters. Having arrived at the door, however, she stopped. The shadow of the figure visible through the mottled glass did not belong to Trevor. It was too tall.

  Eleanor stayed motionless, staring. Something wasn’t right. She could feel it in her bones, her hackles. She was a great believer in hackles. Animal instincts. Humans ignored them at their peril.

  She called out in a firm voice, ‘Who is it please?’

  There was a muffled answer, which might or might not have been her name.

  Eleanor slid the chain into place before turning the handle. A slice of a face greeted her. A face with a broad forehead topped by dusty brown hair, the sides receding; wide, boyish blue eyes, darkly lashed, but heavily crinkled at the corners in the manner of someone over-accustomed to squinting into bright sun. The skin on the face looked rough and pale, the cheeks sunken, leaving the cheekbones like two prominent points of an upturned triangle. It was the third point that saved the face from sadness: the strong jaw, topped by a mouth that was curling up slightly at the corners. It was a face she had thought of perhaps a thousand times, perhaps a million. Such a familiar face and yet so utterly changed.

  Eleanor gently closed the door and leant it against it, breathing hard.

  ‘Eleanor,’ he called, audibly this time. When she didn’t answer, the letterbox flap fluttered open. ‘Please.’ His voice boomed through the gap, making her jump to one side. ‘I got your letter.’

  Eleanor looked down at the fingers prised round the metal letter-flap, keeping it open. Unlike Nick’s face, they were extraordinarily unchanged, long and strong, the little finger on the left adorned with the signet ring she had forgotten, a lion and sword.

  What Eleanor felt most strongly was that there was nothing left to say. She had done all her explaining, written it down in the letter. She had laid herself bare, and then signed off with a final farewell that had come from the innermost point of her heart. The prospect of being forced to go over it all again, and worse, in person felt beyond her capabilities. It had taken a lot to get her life on an even keel. Every atom of her being was poised for the fight to keep it that way.

  Besides, there was the shock of seeing him to contend with. He looked old and terrible. She preferred the image she had been carrying round in her head for twenty years; the careless tousled beauty of Nick Wharton at twenty-two, his glory undiminished by baggy home-knitted jumpers, his shoulders broad and proud, his face still full of hope.

  Oh god, and now he knew she had loved him, Eleanor remembered, groaning softly. She had told him in the letter. She had told him everything. Loving him. Losing him. Kat. The cancer. The deceit. Vincent’s abuse. Everything. She wondered suddenly how much of it he had relayed to the beautiful South African wife; the incredulity and horror they must have shared in the build-up to this latest UK visit. Her guts churned.

  ‘Please go,’ she said, the strain making her voice stern. ‘I’ve said everything I have to say. It is done with. All of it is done with. I am so sorry for what I put you through.’ She sank to her knees as she spoke because her legs had started feeling curiously unequal to the task of keeping her upright. ‘I am sorry, Nick, okay? I’ve said sorry. Please leave me alone.’

  The fingers slowly withdrew and the flap closed with a thwack. Eleanor stared at it. Outside, all had gone quiet. She lifted the letter flap and peered out, seeing a section of the loose path tiles and some straggles of lavender. She got up and picked up the ladder from the banisters. It needed putting away in the cellar. Instead, she set it down again and returned to the front door, opening it quickly.

  He was sitting on the wall with his back to her, his long legs stretched out in front of him, crossed at the ankles.

  ‘I thought you had gone.’

  ‘No, I haven’t gone.’

  Eleanor stayed in the doorway, folding her arms, but only so she could hug herself. He had spoken without turning round. He had a nice voice. She had forgotten that. A light breeze was blowing at his hair, showing thinness over the crown. That his body had grown so stick-like was the fresh shock. It accentuated the length of him, even sitting down, but also made him look oddly angular. He was wearing off-white chinos that seemed far too wide for his legs and a dusty blue jacket through which she could clearly make out the sharp mounds of his shoulder blades.

  ‘Nick, look, I’m sorry—’

  ‘You took some tracking down—’

  Having both spoken together, they stopped at the same instant. He was the first to carry on, though still with his back to her.

  ‘Thank you for this.’ He plucked an envelope from inside the blue jacket and waved it over his head. Her letter, Eleanor realised with a start. Unbidden, the words that had spilled from her pen began flooding her mind…

  I fell in love with you the moment you walked into the college library. Of course I couldn’t say. Not at almost-nineteen with a raw heart and no confidence and you with your childhood sweetheart. Tilly. I had just about got my head around that when you fell for Kat. Which you had every right to do, by the way. EVERY RIGHT. Because all really is fair in love and war. You loved my sister and it was up to me to deal with it, which I did, mainly, as you migh
t recall, by avoiding both of you! I am not proud of that now – it was daft, but there you go. Like I say, I was young and had a broken heart. Unfortunately it put the seal on the distance between Kat and me, but as it turned out, there were other reasons for that too, which I fear I will get to in due course…

  ‘Look. Nick…’ Eleanor faltered. She wanted, more than anything, to put a stop to the sentences reforming in her head. They were clogging her brain, slowing her down. In retrospect it seemed incredible the detail that had poured out of her that March afternoon. Only the certainty that they would never meet had made it possible.

  It was a relief to see him slide the letter back inside his jacket pocket.

  ‘I understand if there is stuff you need to get off your chest,’ Eleanor said, feeling calmer, but remaining on the doorstep, an easy decision given that he appeared not even to want to look at her. ‘But I really have said everything I have to say. And right now I have to get ready for something. I’m badly behind as it is…’ She broke off as he reached for a stick she hadn’t noticed, propped on the wall next to him, and used it to lever himself upright and turn round. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’ It was impossible not to ask.

  He prodded at something on the ground with the tip, which had a thick cap of scuffed grey rubber.

  ‘Are you ill?’ she demanded next, much more shrilly than she had meant.

  ‘No, not ill. At least…’ He seemed about to smile and then sighed. ‘It is, as they say, a long story. An accident last December. Some lingering neural damage. But I am much better now.’

  ‘Jesus, I’m so sorry. What sort of accident?’

  He looked at her levelly. ‘Swimming off the cape. I got swept out too far. Nearly drowned.’ He let out a sudden laugh, shaking his head, ‘I did drown actually, for five minutes or so, but then I got fished out…’

  Eleanor had approached down the path without thinking about it, gawping. ‘Christ. How terrifying.’

  ‘It wasn’t actually. It was more…’ Nick frowned, searching for the right word, trying not to be distracted by the chance to have her near enough to scrutinise properly. She had put a tiny passport photo in with the letter, but it did not begin to do justice to the reality of her, so tremendously tall – he had forgotten how tall she was – and so carelessly attired in cut-off jeans and flip-flops, a white, rather grubby shirt half tucked in, her thick tumbling hair the colour of tea, her brown eyes huge and alarmed. ‘…More simple than terrifying, actually,’ he went on. ‘What mattered became very clear. Like a voice shouting inside my head.’

  Eleanor flinched with surprise but did not say anything.

  ‘There was no fighting it, just acceptance. Just knowing what mattered.’

  ‘And what did matter?’

  ‘Love.’ He shrugged.

  Eleanor had arrived at the gate and was holding on to it. Through the gaps in the roadside hedge she could see glints of silver which had to be his car. He could drive then, in spite of the stick.

  ‘I am so very sorry about Kat, Eleanor,’ he said quietly, ‘all of it… just so… cruel. I still can’t believe it.’

  Eleanor kept her eye on the hedge. ‘Thank you. Neither can I. And I am sorry for having to tell you like that. I can’t imagine what you must have felt.’ She swallowed, a wave of the old self-mortification coming at her. Justification for what she had done was impossible. She had done her best with that in the letter. ‘The worst of it was that we – I – thought she was all right and then she wasn’t. It was caught late that was the trouble. There had been things she’d noticed… oddities… for months, but she chose to ignore them. Then she decided she didn’t want treatment. Typical bloody obstinate girl. Determined to shoulder everything on her own. Like the other stuff… with Dad.’

  Nick groaned softly.

  ‘I am sorry for burdening you with that too. Another shock. It just seemed best to tell you everything, give you the full picture. It all seemed connected.’ Eleanor held the silver glints of his car in her gaze, realising that maybe the conversation could be got through after all, if she tackled it head-on and quickly, saying all that he could possibly expect of her, without any fuss. ‘It explained so much, you see. How she was back then. With me. With you.’ Eleanor took a deep breath. ‘And as for what I did, writing to you when she was sick, letting you think I was her – as I have tried to explain, it was never a game. It just somehow started… one decision to do something that led to another… and another. Snowballing. I suppose it took my mind off other things. Did I write that?’

  ‘Yes, you wrote that.’

  ‘I cannot tell you how sorry I am,’ Eleanor said softly. ‘How ashamed.’

  ‘Yes, you wrote that too.’

  A bubble of concentration seemed to have formed round them. Close-to, he looked not only unwell but so deeply sad that Eleanor experienced a rush of guilt worse than any she had hitherto experienced. ‘Your feelings for Kat… if I opened those up… I am so…’

  The squawk of a car horn made them both start. Trevor’s Nissan swung through the gap in the roadside hedge, revving to a stop on the square of tarmac. ‘Early guest?’ he boomed, leaping out, red-faced, a panama hat sitting at a jaunty angle on the back of his head. ‘If that’s your car, my friend,’ he went on to Nick, jerking a thumb in the direction of the road, ‘I have to say that is not the most ideal parking spot – a near-miss, if I am honest. Sweetest, I hope you’re feeling strong. We’ve got a bit to unload in here.’ He opened the boot and started tugging at one of several cardboard boxes wedged inside.

  ‘Trevor this is Nick Wharton, Nick this is Trevor Downs,’ said Eleanor as evenly as she could, hurrying to Trevor’s side so that she could give him a look designed to ward off any unhelpful questions.

  Trevor duly limited himself to a brief polite nod in Nick’s direction, saying he was delighted to make his acquaintance before hurriedly returning his attentions to the contents of the boot. Trevor was, in fact, beyond curiosity. With just a couple of hours to go, he had entered the blinkered phase of one-track concern that had once characterised his preparation to go on stage and act well. His mind was entirely on himself: his book event, his speech, his reading, and the smooth running of the after-party.

  ‘After all that, I forgot the blooming balloons,’ he muttered, trundling off towards the house with a case of wine.

  ‘I better go,’ Nick said.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor muttered, fighting a mad impulse to ask him to stay. She accompanied him to the roadside, trying not to stare as he walked. Both legs worked all right, but the right one stuck out slightly, so that the foot led at an odd angle. She could see at once Trevor’s point about how he had parked the car. An attempt to line up with a curve in the road had left it sticking out badly at one end. ‘Look, thank you for coming. I hope you don’t feel it was a wasted journey. It’s just that I’ve said all I can. There’s nothing more I could add to make you understand or forgive me—’

  ‘Of course I forgive you,’ he snapped. ‘Your letter was… extraordinary. Life – all our lives – are complicated. Forgiveness is not an issue.’

  ‘Oh,’ Eleanor murmured, somewhat stunned. ‘Good. Thanks.’ She stood by the car, keeping an eye out for traffic as he levered himself into the driver’s seat, noting the controls on the steering wheel and the disabled sticker on the windscreen. It impressed her that car-rental firms could be so accommodating. ‘Enjoy the rest of your trip,’ she said, as he wound the window down.

  ‘Back there…’ He nodded in the direction of the house. ‘Was that Trevor Downs, the actor?’

  ‘Yes, yes it was.’

  ‘I saw him do Hamlet once, decades ago, at the Old Vic. Fantastic.’

  ‘Really? Wow, that’s…’ Eleanor hopped out of the way as a tractor rumbled into view, bearing a surly-faced farmer and a wide, trembling load of hay bales. Nick needed to reverse to give it room to pass. Eleanor walked backwards behind the bumper offering hand signals to assist during the manoeuvre.

  ‘Th
anks. And good luck with everything,’ he said, once the tractor had roared off. ‘I just felt that, after everything, it was right in the end to try to see you.’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. So it was. Where are you headed now?’

  ‘My mother. She’s in Cheltenham these days.’

  ‘Oh good. Well, best of luck to you too.’ Eleanor waved him off. He went slowly, tooting the horn twice.

  She raced back to find the Nissan boot closed and Trevor standing in some dismay before the crammed shelves of her small fridge.

  ‘All sorted out there?’ He shot her a beady look.

  ‘Yes thanks, all sorted.’ Eleanor reached past him and began pulling out more dishes to make room for the wine, gripping them hard to stop the tremor in her hands.

  ‘Tell me later maybe?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She rummaged, not looking at him. ‘I got some bags of ice last week, they’re in the freezer in the utility room. We could stick them in a bucket now, and put a few bottles in there. What do you think?’

  ‘I think you are a genius.’

  ‘And now I ought to change,’ she muttered, pushing straggles of hair out of her eyes and making a mental note to pin it with something for the evening. ‘Then I’ll be all yours,’ she added with a grin, darting off before he could reply.

  Only in the privacy of her bedroom, not the one she had shared with Igor, but another, plainer one she had picked out for herself, standing before her wall-mirror in the charity-shop dress, a butterfly-clip in her wild hair, did Eleanor allow herself to pause and breathe and think. It had been good of Nick to come. Good and thoughtful. And very brave. He looked old before his time, and wounded. Nick Wharton had become real again. He nurtured no rancour towards her. It ought to mean she could let him go.

  Nick unclicked his seat belt and pulled out Eleanor’s letter. He had got onto the M40 and then off it again, taking the exit to the Oxford Services, where the car park was even vaster than he remembered and a fancy water feature had been added to the front of a building that now resembled an airport terminal. He had deliberately selected a space with nothing on either side, but the moment he turned the engine off, a small dusty black car had pulled up beside him, rap music pulsing from its open roof.