Greg was given the honour of carving the turkey on Christmas Day. Everyone else had a task, and Sarah and John were reminded of their own upbringing at Val du Douit, when Marie had ruled the household.
Marie and Aline had declined the invitation to join the party, but accepted the offer of Boxing Day lunch. As had old Alice, Greg’s mother.
Sarah joined in the fun, laughing and joking, and hoping her almost non-existent appetite went unnoticed. It didn’t, but no one was foolish enough to comment.
So many Christmases had passed, so similar in format that it was hard to recall which was which. But Christmas 1954 was one that Sue would never forget.
*
Jonathan had made a New Year’s Resolution. “I need more independence,” he told Sue, “So I have ordered a custom-built car and shall learn to drive it. I hate having to rely on other people to get out and about.”
Sue couldn’t think of a reply. He was the one constantly nagging about expenditure, and a special car for him would cost the earth. Then she decided she was being mean; why shouldn’t he have a car of his own, regardless of expense. Anyway, apart from the deposit, they wouldn’t have to pay up till it was delivered several months hence, by which time they might well be into a bumper season.
*
“This place is a mess,” Sue commented, looking round the bar at the blotched wallpaper and chipped paintwork. “We must get it redecorated before we reopen for the season.”
Jonathan nodded. “Definitely. But we can’t afford professionals. We’ll have to do it ourselves.”
Sue frowned. He was using the term ‘ourselves’ rather loosely: what he meant was she would have to do it, herself. “I don’t know when . . .” she began, thinking about his expensive car.
“You’ll have to bring Debbie here with her playpen while you work, and spend less time round at your mother’s.”
“I can’t! I feel guilty enough as it is, about being there for such a short time each day.”
“Oh for God’s sake! She’s going to die whether you are there or not. Tell your father to get a nurse in. He can afford it.” He swung the wheelchair round and left the room.
It was hard to believe anyone could be so cold and callous! There were a dozen retorts on the tip of her tongue . . . but what was the point? How could one possibly argue with that kind of mentality?
She elected to hang the new paper over the old, stained one. The drinks and glasses were moved into the dining room, using it as a temporary bar, leaving her free to get on with the job uninterrupted. Richard sometimes dropped in to help at weekends, mainly to pick up extra pocket money secretly removed by Sue from her housekeeping purse when Jonathan wasn’t around. Stephen came too, happy to work for nothing other than easing Sue’s burden.
The late winter and early spring was a sad period for them all, seeing Sarah’s weight rapidly dwindling. Her skin was like parchment, yellow and wrinkled way beyond her years.
“Dad, do you think we should try to persuade Aunt Ethel to come over, soon?” Sue suggested. “Much better that she arrives while Mummy is . . . still compos mentis.”
There was a lot more grey in Greg’s hair, now, his eyes, dull and sad, had sunk deep into their sockets as he looked up at her from his chair. “You don’t think she’s going to get better?”
Sue’s lower lip quivered. “No, Daddy, I don’t. Nor do you. Hm?”
Greg shook his head. It was the first time they had spoken about it. “You’re probably right. But if Ethel turns up here, don’t you think your mother will smell a rat?”
“I think Mummy has guessed the truth, anyway. But if not I’m sure she would want to know.”
“Why?”
“When one . . . goes before one’s time, there must surely be things you want to say to people. Unfinished jobs and plans you’d like to hand over to someone else.”
Greg rocked to and fro in the creaking armchair for a few minutes before muttering, “The doctor hasn’t said anything specific, you know.”
“When is he coming again?”
“Tomorrow.”
“I suspect the only reason he hasn’t spelled it out is because he knows it is something you don’t want to hear. But I think for all our sakes you should ask him, point blank.”
They heard the bedroom door open and Greg’s sister-in-law, Maureen, joined them.
“Hello,” Sue greeted her, “Haven’t seen you for ages. How are you? How is Uncle Andrew?”
The two women pecked cheeks. “I’m extremely well, thanks. Wish I could say the same for your uncle. Is that a pot of tea you have there?”
A few minutes later Sue returned to her mother’s bedside.
The following day the doctor confirmed what the family had already guessed. “Yes, I knew as soon as we operated last year,” he told Greg. “We were able to remove very little because it involved some of her vital organs. Frankly, I am surprised she has hung on so well.”
Greg took a deep breath before asking the burning question. “How long do you reckon she has?”
“Three, maybe four weeks.” He put a sympathetic hand on Greg’s arm. “I’m so sorry, old chap. But she is becoming very weak. I doubt she’ll be with us much longer.”
Greg spent a long time in the privacy of the bathroom trying to plan, between bouts of weeping, how to tell Sarah the news.
He need not have worried: the moment she saw his freshly dried cheeks and swollen eyes, she knew. “I only wish we’d been told sooner, my darling. Then we could have spent more time together doing some of the things we’ve been meaning to do for years and never got round to. Tell me, did the doctor give you a guess how long I have left?”
“Three or four weeks.”
She smiled. “I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies. I mean, just imagine how awful it would have been if I’d fallen under a bus and we had never had the chance to say goodbye.”
She rocked and comforted him while he wept in her arms.
*
Sue was trying to be all things to all people with mixed success. Nurse to Sarah, comforter to Greg, painter and decorator in the hotel, and psychologist-cum-pacifier to Jonathan, while attempting to run her own home and be mother to her children. She was constantly tired. If only it had been possible to have an occasional break, she thought, but having married a man a few years older than herself she had lost contact with her school friends who had married in their own age group and were referred to by Jonathan as ‘puerile’. It would have been helpful to have a friend her own age to compare notes with, about babies, washing powder, men, and how to make the Yorkshire pudding rise in the oven. And she would like to have a friend with whom she might to go to the theatre or cinema, but the only possible young women were married, and she had no intention of inviting herself along without a partner.
Jonathan, of course, was uninterested in any form of entertainment or socialising other than greeting customers in the bar. He had taken to drinking quite heavily, shortening his temper even more, especially after whisky. There were days on end when he didn’t even stay in the bar, but wheeled himself home to sit brooding with bottle and book. Sue was seldom at home with him in the evenings, taking the opportunity when the children were in bed to get on with papering the bar, or visiting Les Mouettes to be with her mother.
“Why don’t you take Sue out for the evening, sometimes?” Stephen suggested to him. “I’ll keep an eye on things here.”
“What the hell for?”
“Well . . .” Stephen was staggered at his cousin’s reaction, “I thought it would be nice for you both.”
“Then you thought wrong, old chap. I hate going out to see some amateur play or fake war film. Bores me rigid.”
“Fair enough,” the younger man tried to keep his tongue under control. “But what about Sue? Doesn’t she like a break now and then?”
Jonathan swung round and glared at him. “For Chrissake, Steve, you’re as bad as my mother! Look, if you think she needs a night out, you take her
. But not yet,” he added, “she’s dawdling over that decorating enough as it is.”
Stephen picked up a glass and began polishing it, furiously.
Not that Sue actually felt like a night out, anyway. Sarah was on her mind constantly, while she was wielding a paintbrush, or at home with the children her mother would never see grow up; whispering prayers as she drove down to Bordeaux, or weeping as she drove back. Amazingly, she felt most cheerful when sitting beside her mother, chatting, or reading to her, the dying woman was always so bright and smiling, even when the pains were very bad.
Sarah had never been a deeply religious woman; she knew her Bible reasonably well; she believed in God and felt free to speak to Him without the ceremony of formal prayer. She loved books both fictitious and factual, on religious subjects and now that she was too weary to read she loved to have Greg, Sue or Richard sit reading to her.
She was less interested in newspapers. “Always full of declining morals, death and destruction about which it is too late for me to do anything. I leave your generation to put the world to rights, after I’ve gone,” she would tell Sue.
Almost as though prompted by some telepathic message, she insisted on getting up and dressed on the day that, unknown to her, Ethel was due to arrive from New Zealand.
“I don’t believe it!” Sarah exclaimed when her eldest sister walked into the sitting room. “Where have you come from? Did you just drop out of the sky?”
“Yes, literally. Well almost. Fortunately the plane didn’t actually fall but landed quite comfortably.” Ethel sat down on the settee beside Sarah to hug her.
“You mean you came by aeroplane?”
“Yes. Why not?”
“I suppose if you’d come by boat . . .” Sarah began, then stopped. “Tea, someone. And something solid for the girl to eat before we start on the champagne!” She turned to look at her bronzed and healthy-looking sibling. “You haven’t changed much since last I saw you. And still looking as though Ma had an affair with a black man!”
“It’s summer back home, remember?”
“I’d meant to come out and visit you,” Sarah said wistfully, adding in a more strident tone, “I’ll be very disappointed if you haven’t brought lots of photographs.”
“Hundreds. I’ll just go and fetch them.” Ethel hastened out of the room . . . and collapsed on to her bed in tears.
*
One of Sarah’s many regrets about dying at fifty-one was being denied the joy of seeing Richard and her grandchildren grow up. Richard would be fifteen in June and was already a tall, handsome lad. She and Greg were not sorry the boy was showing no interest in the tomato industry. It was certainly lucrative, at the moment, but was endlessly hard, tiring work with long hours, and they were happy that he spent so much of his spare time at the boatyard with George Schmit, though slightly worried about his friendship with Gelly’s nephew, Michael Smart. There was something about the older boy that neither of them liked.
One of the highlights of Sarah’s life, now, were the visits of her grandchildren. Roderick was a serious child, often preoccupied with his own thoughts and imagination, but nevertheless very open, friendly and polite for his almost five years while, in contrast, the beautiful three-year-old Stephanie bounced through her days with vigorous, noisy passion. She adored everyone and had no doubt everyone adored her, and her idol-in-chief was young Uncle Richard. Sarah loved to witness the child’s big amber eyes gazing into Richard’s face as he helped her with a simple jigsaw puzzle or read her a story; the fact that Richard would invariably choose a book which interested himself and was often way over Stephanie’s understanding, mattered not. At twenty-one months Deborah already had a mop of wavy, red hair and deliciously enchanting green eyes. Sarah often sighed, wondering if she, too, would develop into a raving beauty.
Through sheer will-power and determination, Sarah was at the family party to celebrate Roderick’s fifth birthday. She gave him a bicycle and a surfboard and a wonderful set of Meccano.
“Mummy! Daddy!” Sue admonished, out of Roddy’s earshot. “That’s far too much. You really are spoiling him!”
“Just think of all the birthdays to come when I won’t be giving him anything,” Sarah replied in a practical tone of voice. “I’ve put by a good stock of gifts for the girls, too. They are out in the garage, waiting for their coming birthdays and Christmas.”
Sue watched through the window where Richard was holding Roddy on the new cycle, then had an idea. “Why don’t we have an unbirthday party next week for the girls and you can see them receive their presents?”
Sarah shook her head. “A lovely thought, dear, but somehow I don’t think I shall be around, then. I hope not,” she added with a sigh.
“Oh Mum! Are you feeling very ill?”
Sarah nodded. “Yes. Rotten. I shall crawl back to bed as soon as we’ve had tea.” She said it with a smile, determined not to reveal just how difficult it was, despite the pillows, to sit there on the settee, or how dreadfully wearying was the sound of her beloved grandchildren’s happy voices. “Don’t look so sad, my dear. My father and my brother, Bertie, who was killed in the war, you remember, they are waiting up there for me. I’ll never be far away from you all, watching to see you behave yourselves. It is God’s will, and who are we to question His decisions?”
Next day, Marie and Aline arrived, unannounced.
Greg was worried lest they upset Sarah, but Marie had her heart set on seeing her youngest daughter one last time. “You stay here in the sitting room with Aline,” she ordered him, while I go and speak to her.”
Sarah was half awake when her mother walked in and managed a smile. “Hello, Ma. I’m so glad you’ve come.”
Marie sat on a chair beside the bed and took Sarah’s hand between her own. She sniffed, and her eyes were brimming. “I only wish I’d come before. It’s what they call nowadays a character flaw, that I’m so bad at saying sorry.” She sniffed again. “Ten years wasted, when we could have been good friends.” She groped in her handbag for a hankie as tears began to trickle over her wrinkled cheeks.
Sarah pulled Marie’s hand to her lips and kissed it. “It was all a silly misunderstanding, Ma.”
“It’s never too late to make up, is it?” Marie murmured.
“Well, in this case it’s been a damn near-run thing!”
The two women hugged and had a little giggle together.
“Do you want to see Aline?”
“Yes, of course.” She was so tired, but felt she must perform this last duty. Aline approached the bed, tongue-tied, but Sarah held out her hand. “Come and sit down, a minute. I’m so glad to have the opportunity to say goodbye to you.”
Looking distressed, her sister shook her head and mumbled, “I can’t think why. We never got on, did we?”
“We found it difficult to understand each other. But we are older and wiser, now. I’m so glad you are able to go on looking after Ma. She’s eighty-four now, isn’t she?”
“Coming up eighty-five, but she’s tough for her age.” Aline swallowed hard. “Is there anything you would like me to do for you?”
Sarah stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Do you think you you could persuade Ma to patch things up with John and Edna?”
Aline’s eyes widened. She had made a life’s work of being the family troublemaker and now her sister’s dying wish was for a total role reversal. She flushed to the roots of her hair. “I could try . . .” she said hesitantly.
Sarah smiled. “Now? Will you go and ask her now?”
Aline got up slowly and left Sarah to doze quietly.
Marie didn’t hesitate. “Where is the telephone?”
Twenty minutes later John and Edna walked into the sitting room at Les Mouettes to find his mother chatting quite amiably with Ethel, the daughter she had banished from the island nearly a quarter of a century ago. The diminutive family matriarch promptly stood up and said, “Come,” and marched ahead of them all into Sarah’s bedroom.
&nb
sp; Sarah opened her eyes to see them standing around her bed; her siblings John, Ethel, Aline and William who had flown over from Southampton that morning, plus Edna, Greg and Sue. “Seems like it’s a day for saying sorry, doesn’t it?” Marie smiled. “Well, first of all John. Come here and give your mother a hug.”
John had answered his mother’s summons, but had had little idea what it was about. He looked round the group, open mouthed, then willingly did as he was told. “Ma! I’m sorry you’ve been so upset by what happened.”
She hugged him back. “My fault. It was none of my business. I didn’t know how things were between you and Mary . . . and Edna. Can we all be friends, now?” adding, when she saw his nervous glance at his wife, “yes, that means you too, my dear.” She held out an arm and Edna hurried round the bed to be kissed.
William, Aline and Ethel joined in and they gathered close round Sarah, who closed her eyes and smiled. “I don’t believe heaven can be better than this,” she whispered.
*
For the next three days Sue, Ethel and Greg scarcely left Sarah’s side. The doctor came each day to administer painkilling injections, which kept her very drowsy, but she was able to open her eyes one last time as Greg leaned over the bed to hold her frail body which was now only skin and bone. “It’s time for me to go, now, my darling. I love you.” She continued to doze fitfully until nearly midnight, then with one last shuddering breath she slid into the after world.
The Guernsey Saga Box Set Page 45
