by Zoe Morrison
One day I came in from the park and saw a package in my pigeonhole. Finally, I thought, a reply from Mother. Without looking at it properly I opened it right there. There were two small parcels inside, and a folded letter in unfamiliar writing. It was from Dulcie Abbotsford, who lived around the corner from us; I’d been friends with her daughter.
I am writing to confirm you received the three telegrams informing you …
I looked in my pigeonhole, put my hand inside the empty space, touched the wall behind it.
… of the death of your parents. The rabbits were very bad, ring-barking the trees. He was cleaning his gun. We think that when your mother found him she must have thought there was still a chance. Somehow she got him into the truck. You know she could never drive that thing. She got it onto the road, took it over the bridge, there was a truck coming the other way, she must have put her foot down, pressed the wrong pedal, accelerated through the barrier … An orphan now, all our thoughts and prayers are with you, dear.
I might have been reading these words but I didn’t believe them. It was a hoax. I looked at the letter again.
… sneaked these things out of the house without them bank people seeing …
I pulled out the brown packages, about the size of two fists, tore them open. My mother’s rings, including her wedding ring. The crimson scarf she wore on special occasions, still smelling of lavender eau de toilette. Her pearl-drop earrings.
I staggered out of the foyer into the sun. I had been shot and drowned myself. I could not walk, I could not breathe. I looked at the words again, tearing at them with my eyes, willing them to say something else.
‘Coming for lunch?’ someone said to me, passing.
Turning the pages over, looking, looking, but the words did not change, the words were still there, my parents were dead, the block had gone back to the bank, and I was about to scream. I clapped both hands over my mouth, the letter fluttered to the ground.
‘All right, Alice? Lunchtime?’
I bent down, picked the letter up to read it again, but I was going to be late, late for lunch, so I pushed it all back in – the letter, the jewellery, the scarf, the wrapping – held the packet by my side and walked in.
The meal started with watercress soup, which tasted like nothing, but watercress was bland, I thought, and sitting there, shot and drowned, I tried to eat it.
Henry, a violinist, not someone I knew well, about to take up a position in London, leant across the table.
‘I say, Alice.’
Henry had gone to excellent schools, had a well-positioned family, he was a young man for whom life might go exactly as he wanted it, and I looked at him and hated him, but then he faded from view.
‘You’re very pale,’ I heard him say softly. ‘Are you all right?’
I said nothing. I was shot and drowned and drinking soup, but now he had spied the package.
‘I say, Alice,’ he began again. Not because he was a bad person, just someone who had not learnt the arts of restraint, empathy, kindness, love. He had seen a creature without its shell and was rushing towards it, eyes glittering, ten fingers extended. ‘Have you had some bad news?’
I felt the soup rise from my stomach to the back of my mouth. I must have started retching because there was George taking off his brand new hat, the felt one with the feather, putting it under my mouth, then Hetty swooped in and I was lifted up, up, away from the table, back out into the sun, and I had my hands over my ears because someone was screaming. I watched from the college roof as I curled into a ball on the grass below, Hetty and George crouching beside me, trying to reach me, trying to get me to move.
27.
London, September, 1950
‘Alice? Alice!’
People at the door, I did not hear them.
‘Alice, Alice.’
Someone shaking my shoulder, I did not feel it.
‘Alice, Alice,’ right in my ear.
‘What?’ I mumbled. ‘What?’
‘You need to get up. You need to eat something. You need to drink something. Here.’
A man’s voice next. Who was it? George? No, not George.
‘Miss Murray, there’s a gentleman here to see you.’
I opened an eye. Edward was standing by my bed. My God, what was he doing here? I looked around in confusion for Hetty and George. Where were they? But there was someone else. That new porter, Frank, he was in the room too. He had keys in his hand. He had telegrams in his other hand. He had let Edward into my room. Was I dreaming this? I closed my eyes.
‘Miss Murray, try to get up, come on now. People are worried about you.’
So? I thought. What is worry?
‘Do you know, Alice, the sunset this evening is quite beautiful.’
What nonsense was he speaking?
‘It has turned Hyde Park entirely pink. I wish you could see it before it finishes. If you just get up for a minute and look out the window —’
Other voices. Hetty, George.
‘What are you doing here? She’s had a terrible shock. You shouldn’t be here.’
‘She shouldn’t be left alone. She isn’t well. People should be looking after her.’
I was so embarrassed I kept my eyes closed.
‘Just give us a minute,’ Hetty said, her voice carrying through. ‘Let her get her clothes on, for goodness sake.’
I sat up. I was still wearing the clothes I’d had on three days earlier when I’d come in from the park. But I put another cardigan on, for form’s sake, ran a brush through my hair. Hetty pulled up the covers on the bed; I sat on the edge.
‘All right,’ she called, ‘she’s ready now.’
In they came – Edward, Frank, George – in a row, as if they were about to perform a stage number, and I stood up and said, ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ and for some reason my voice now sounded exactly like Henry’s (I say, I say, I say). ‘I’ve received some very bad news from Australia.’
‘Some very bad news,’ Hetty repeated.
‘There is absolutely no need for you to apologise,’ George said, and he looked distressed, then looked away; and this I could not bear, this I could not see. I looked down at the bed.
‘I’ve been told,’ Edward said gravely, po-faced.
I looked at Frank and saw that he was still holding three telegrams in his hand. His face was pale, there were hollows beneath his eyes, the skin sagged from his cheeks. All of us in that room knew that death often arrived by telegram, or letter, and that it must be borne, it must be borne. And I could see that my reaction was alarming them, that it was foreign. I rubbed my face for a second, then looked at them and said, ‘So where’s this sunset then?’
And they looked as if the strings that drew them up so taut had been dropped. They drooped, someone pressed a hand to a forehead, another twisted a mouth into a smile, and all in a muddle they turned around to look out of the window, to see this spectacle of fading light, this last great blast of bright, bright colour. And I tried to forgive them for not seeing the blood pouring out of my ears, the water pouring from my mouth, for not realising that the pain this was causing me was so extreme it had stopped me thinking or seeing anything else; for not knowing the significance of two people dying in a faraway land, the magnitude of the bankruptcy of a small citrus block. For how could they know that an entire continent, an enormous jigsaw piece of the world, with all its crags and lakes and fault-lines, had just cracked from the earth’s crust, slipped from its platform and sunk deep into the dark, dark ocean.
28.
London, September, 1950
I was standing in my room looking at its four walls, thinking they must have moved. They seemed to be at strange angles. I got onto the floor, slid under the bed. Lying there, I counted my money.
I had saved all year, enough for the trip home, but that was all.
I stayed under the bed for a long time; it was calm under there, in that dark space. I did not have to look at those walls and their alarming angles, or
anything else.
Eventually I got up and looked at the calendar on the desk, counted the days I still had in the room. Death and bankruptcy notwithstanding, the college needed the room for a new student at the beginning of term.
I sat on the bed. I got back into it.
I was lying on my side. I was watching a grey sun rise sideways over London then sink back down.
When I got up I felt that I must walk, I must move, and that I must do this immediately.
I stood at the front door of the hall of residence, watching cars speed by. I had never noticed before how loud they were, how harsh the noise, how close they came to where I stood.
I walked along the pavement keeping as far from the road as I could, right next to the fence. My feet were not feeling the path in front of me. I turned and went back.
Bach, Bach, Bach. My fingers even, steady. The C minor Prelude, the running semi-quavers that went on and on, pummelling, pummelling. I played it without dynamics. Clean playing, immaculate. My fingers were moving, but I was not.
Hetty wanted to stay on until I’d got myself sorted out, as she put it, but she was expected in Edinburgh. I told her she must go.
When George left for Cardiff, he pressed a fiver into my hand just before leaping into the carriage, which in all likelihood was his entire savings; he was as poor as me. I ran after the train with the money in my fist, trying to give it back to him; he leant the top half of his body out of the window of the third-class carriage, blew me a kiss.
Stay over there, Dulcie’s letter had said. There is nothing left for you here. Go to your mother’s relatives.
Time and again I thought of that thin, critical woman in the house in York, her indifferent husband, that piano of theirs in the front room that could only be played on Sunday afternoons, and nicely, quietly, and I could not bear the thought. These were no real relatives of my mother.
He was there in the foyer a few days later. I knew he would be. I stood before him, not saying anything, and he looked down at me. Then, with two fingers, he reached out, raised my chin.
29.
London, October, 1950
He wanted me to stay in Oxford; there was a visitor’s suite in his college, but I didn’t think that was right (and my mother would have been appalled by the idea). Fiona, a flautist, had a cousin with a room in a boarding house in Shepherd’s Bush; she’d just left for a couple of months in Spain. It had a single bed with a worn blanket, a nightstand that rocked whenever you put anything on it and a huge wardrobe still filled with her clothes. Most seemed to be made of tatty lace and other fancy fabrics. They looked second-hand but stitched cleverly into something else; they intimidated me. I kept my things in my suitcase. There was a kitchen along the corridor that was filthy, downstairs a bathroom with slimy tiles.
The Royal College allowed me to use a piano. I took the bus there every day to begin with, then walked to save the fare. I practised mechanically, automatically.
At night I couldn’t sleep. I walked around the streets instead, tracing a geometric shape of the path I trod in my head so that I wouldn’t get lost. I was so frightened of getting lost, this fear was like a force pulsing in my veins, but I persisted with that dark walk because being in the room was worse. In that room the air had been sucked from the world and I was trying to learn how to breathe something else.
He caught the train to Paddington on Saturday to collect me after my morning practice and took me back to Oxford. He said the change of scenery would be good for me. He was quiet in the train, serious; it was term time, I remember thinking he must have a lot of responsibilities.
In the summer Oxford had been green, gold, soft, dappled. Now it looked grey: the buildings were grey, the streets were grey, even the clothing people wore was grey and many held up umbrellas against a fine drizzle. At intersections bicycles piled up in groups then took off fast. Walking from the station I stepped into the street, not looking properly, and a man whizzing past on a bicycle yelled at me, not even a word, just a shout, very loud, and I jumped back, clutched Edward’s arm.
He took me to a teashop down one of those narrow streets around the Radcliffe Camera. He ordered a pot, some bread and butter, then a plate of bun. I remember finding myself in that warm shop very hungry. I started to eat the bread and butter and then I couldn’t stop; I started to laugh and I couldn’t stop that either.
‘You haven’t been eating at all, have you?’ he said. ‘Or sleeping. I can tell. You’d better finish those,’ pushing the plate of sliced bun towards me.
It was floury, that bun. I couldn’t help but remember the groaning supper table after the summer concerts, that bounty of luxuries. What I would have given to have put a slice of chocolate cream cake into my mouth, or a luscious fruit salad. I ate the whole bun, drank a pot of tea, then almost fell asleep.
He got up; I got up too. He tucked my arm into his.
We went for a walk in Christ Church Meadow, my limbs still felt heavy, I was woozy. When it started to rain properly he held his umbrella over me and his left side was drenched. We weren’t talking like we used to, he seemed to be thrumming with something that kept his lips tight. We went back to the college so he could change.
‘Why don’t you sit there?’ he said, pointing to a brocade armchair in the sitting room.
I must have fallen asleep. I woke in a strange bed wearing all my clothes, except my shoes. I sat up, looked around; it was dark and I got up in a panic, threw back the heavy covers; I had to push them hard to free my legs, then I started searching frantically for my shoes.
‘You’re awake,’ he said, coming into the room.
‘I have to go,’ I said. I had found my shoes tucked neatly beneath the bed. ‘I can’t believe I fell asleep. I’m very sorry.’
‘You were exhausted.’
‘What time is it?’
‘It’s eight o’clock. Not late.’
‘I must go,’ I said. ‘I’m very sorry, Edward, I can’t stay here. Please. Take me to the station.’
In London autumn had arrived too. Leaves lay in mounds on the pavement, in Hyde Park the trees were brown. A cold wind whipped across the lawns, whisked up the leaves, churned them around. The boarding house was very cold, the heating intermittent, tepid when it was there at all, and the system exuded a fetid odour, like rancid gravy. I slept in several layers of clothes.
I walked briskly to the College in the mornings to practise, hands in my pockets, head down. John, the porter, beckoned to me one morning. He’d heard what had happened, why I was still there. How are you? he said, concerned. Oh, I’m fine, John, as good as can be expected, and he looked pleased with that; I remember thinking that I’d said the right thing. He told me that if I ever had trouble finding a room to practise in I should just ask him.
I’d linger in the room after I finished playing. I’d take a book with me and sit on the floor, propped against the wall, then lie down and sleep. I spent whole days in that room, beside the piano, sustained by a bit of cheese and bread, some water from the washroom, drunk from cupped hands.
Edward took me to a teashop again and ordered more this time. He pushed plates of bland pastries in front of me without saying anything. I was embarrassed by my appetite. He ate little, if anything. When I spoke he barely answered, and he often looked out of the window.
We went punting, Edward standing at the end of the narrow boat, plunging the pole into the water, wrenching it out again. He manoeuvred the thing down the river in a straight, determined course, and all around us were boats of happy, excited students, laughing and talking, trailing their hands in the water. When we returned to the boat ramp he helped me out, wiped his hands on his handkerchief and said, ‘That is how punting is done.’
On Broad Street we passed the Sheldonian Theatre and he pointed to it, I nodded. We stepped into a second-hand bookshop and he walked straight through it to a room at the back that was filled with shelves of old sheet music. There were no labels, just stack upon stack of browning, curling
scores. He began pulling things off the shelves indiscriminately.
‘You’ll need to start your own library,’ he said, giving the scores to me. I had my arms outstretched like a tray for him to place them on, ‘now you’ve left the Royal College.’
I had nowhere to keep them; he had them delivered to his college.
The train was late that night and I could tell he was very annoyed by this, hands gripped behind his back, not saying anything, jerking his head now and again to look down the line. You go, I said finally. You don’t need to wait. He stayed until it came, but he was obviously put out. I knew he thought I should stay in Oxford.
The next time we planned a visit he said on the phone that I would need to meet him at the college, he couldn’t collect me from the station; and I said, of course, that was fine. When I asked for him at the college lodge it was a while before he came down.
The week after that he sent a message to the lodge to ask me to wait for him at the teashop. I sat in a window seat, spinning out a pot of tea. Finally I spotted him walking down the road. I felt limp with relief; I’d started to think he wasn’t going to come at all. Everyone had left me, it seemed, except him.
Sometimes I felt like I was not entirely present during this time. Another person, not I, was the one down there operating within the world – catching trains, talking. The following week we sat in a tavern and he bought me an ale, and as I sipped it I was hardly in that seat, I had gone somewhere else, perhaps to those high clouds above the building I had glimpsed before we stepped in, or maybe I’d kept walking down the road outside the tavern, my figure slowly receding.
Edward talked about leaving home very young for boarding school, and not feeling a thing when it had happened, just watching one of the dogs, an old brown and white spaniel, bow its head, then slowly walk back into the big house. He had spoken only a little of his childhood before. He told me about never really knowing his parents except as two tall, handsome figures in a grand drawing room; being paraded in front of them by different nannies when he was young, and being asked questions by them. He did not seem to remember a single act of kindness from these people. He liked school, he said; he was very good at it. He liked university too; he was even better at that. He won a lot of prizes. Discovering economics was like a calling, being able to explain all those complicated, important things with just a few grand theories, lines and numbers. He told me about an older brother he had not seen since adolescence, who was somewhere in America. ‘Left as soon as he could.’
