The Secrets We Keep

by Stephanie Butland

  “What’s happened?”

  “Kate,” Richenda says, “has been walking Beatle to that poor”—she stops herself, decides to do the hard thing—“to Michael Gray’s house when she goes out early, and she’s been leaving little bunches of flowers—floral tributes, I suppose—in the garden. His widow found her there first thing this morning. Blake rang to tell me.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Rufus says, and he is so utterly crestfallen that Richenda stops what she is doing, puts her hand on his arm, and says only, “That’s what I said.”

  “So, what do we do?”

  “Blake says not to worry—”

  “That’s easy for Blake to say.”

  Richenda takes her hand away. “Blake says not to worry, because it’s not unusual for people who’ve been through a trauma to find a way to deal with their feelings that doesn’t seem completely rational to anyone outside. He says we should encourage her to visit his grave, or think about taking her down to the place where it happened.”

  “Well,” Rufus says grudgingly, “that sounds sensible enough.”

  “Yes.”

  And then it’s Rufus’s turn to reach out to Richenda as he says, “I can’t believe that I didn’t realize. I was so pleased she was going out. I thought she would talk when she was ready. I thought time would put her right.”

  “Me too,” Richenda says, and in the closest thing they ever get to closeness now, they clasp hands, briefly, look into each other’s faces, more briefly still.

  • • •

  Kate, upstairs, is scratching Beatle’s ears—the look of bliss on his face makes it impossible for her to stop—and thinking about Elizabeth. Even before all this happened, she’d seen her around: months ago, she’d stood behind her in the line at the co-op once when she was picking up something her mother had run out of. Elizabeth’s hair had been pulled back in a knot and she was wearing a black skirt, a white shirt, and heels, from which Kate assumed she was on her way home from work. There were potatoes and tampons in her basket and she wore tiny diamond earrings, and Kate could see from where she stood that her ears had been pierced for a second time and the holes left to close. She was wearing a scent that smelled summery and familiar but Kate couldn’t quite decode: peaches, roses, maybe.

  The Elizabeth of the inquest had seemed smaller in every sense, thinner, but also treated like a child, dressed up and then pushed and pointed into the right places, coaxed into the courtroom and out again, always a hand at her elbow, her waist, her shoulder. Kate, who could have been similarly supported if she had wanted—she had kept shrinking away from her mother’s hand until Richenda had gotten the message and let her be—sat as straight as she could, hoping she looked dignified, imagining Michael watching her and seeing her strength and grace under pressure.

  Kate had kept her head low and peeped up through her fringe to look at Elizabeth, until she caught a look from Melissa that had made her decide to concentrate on her fingernails until the hearing was over. She nodded and shook her head when she needed to, crossed and uncrossed her fingers, and spoke quietly, marveling at how easily these people were speaking of death, wondering if they would do it that way if they’d ever choked on water and felt sure that they were dying.

  And then there was the Elizabeth of the garden, smelling of sleep, salt scabbing the edges of her eyes, skin pale, nails bitten, hair neglected. Smaller still than she had been at the inquest, but frightening in her grief and her insistence that Kate knew more than she was saying.

  As Beatle dozes, Kate rewrites the history of Michael and Elizabeth that she has made. In the new version, she changes the neglectful, uninterested wife to someone clinging, needy, fawning. Michael remains the same: strong, loving, reliable, in need of true love. Although the meeting in the garden had thrown Kate, this new tale makes her happy and gives her courage.

  The tiredness comes over her again, and she gives in to it, thinking as she drifts off that this might be her last night of thinking of herself as just tired. Because tomorrow morning is the morning when she’ll do the thing that she knows she’s been putting off for too long. She should have done it the moment she had that crashing, crushing realization. But she’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow will be soon enough.

  • • •

  Richenda cannot stop thinking about Elizabeth, and how she looked at the inquest. How she had seemed hollow, her clothes too big and her hands never still. How, when Blake had put his arm on her back to guide her to her place, Richenda wouldn’t have been surprised if it went straight through her. How it was as though there was a wave behind her, swelling, and she wasn’t moving away from it fast enough to stop it from engulfing her. She watches Rufus eating, as he reads the newspaper, and thinks, If anything happened to you, if you died, I wouldn’t care anything like the way that Elizabeth cares about Michael. I would care, of course, because we’ve shared such a lot, good and bad, and been together for so long, but the fact is I’m relieved when you leave, my heart drops when you come back, and I wish one of us had had the courage to call it a day before it felt too late to start over.

  Suddenly Richenda is tired, and although it’s barely nine all she wants to do is sleep. “I’m going to check on Kate, and then I’m going to bed,” she says.

  Rufus nods. “I’ll see you later.”

  “Yes.” But Richenda pauses at the bottom of the stairs. “Actually, Rufus, would you mind sleeping in the spare room tonight?”

  “If you like,” he says. After a moment flicking through his memories of the last few days, he adds, in the tone of a child given an undeserved detention, “But I haven’t done anything.”

  “I know,” Richenda says, and she gives him a sad smile that says, Humor me, please, for the sake of all the times that you have done something that means you deserve to spend the night on the too-thin mattress under the Sergeant Pepper poster.

  Rufus nods. “It’s been a tough day. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Mike,

  I wasn’t sure whether you would get any more letters, but it turns out that you do. I’m not sure how many more there will be, so make the most of it, wherever you are. I’m still angry. I know it’s not your fault. I’m angry with Kate too. And with myself, for being stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Being angry is exhausting, but if I stop I don’t know what there’ll be. A space big enough for me to drown in too.

  Whenever there’s something about a fatal accident on the news, a cyclist killed or someone getting shot or a car accident, you see so many people at the place where it happened. Parents, neighbors, school friends, whoever, laying teddy bears and tying flowers onto fences with twine. Messages to the person who’s died, as though they are going to pop along and read them when everyone’s gone.

  But I’ve never wanted to go to Butler’s Pond. Plenty of people have offered to take me. Blake, Andy, even your mother, who I think goes down there, quietly, every couple of days, and then goes to your grave. I haven’t been able to see the point of looking at the place where you died. Maybe it’s denial, or a desire to bypass that sort of mawkishness. To me, there’s more dignity in staying here, in our home, and grieving for you. Your mother doesn’t see any dignity in me sitting around the house in track pants, getting further and further away from the world, but it’s felt right to me, so I’ve done it. The last couple of nights, I’ve gone to bed being able to remember what was on TV. I don’t know why I resisted sleeping pills for so long. Anything that wipes out ten hours of my life at a swallow has got to be a good thing. In the fortnight since the Garden Incident I’ve taken them every night and the mechanics of life—sleep, food, night, day—are starting to make a semblance of sense.

  Mel, your mother, Andy, and Blake are all acting as though I’m a marvel because I sleep at night and eat at the table. I’ve been out for three walks in the last two weeks, up to Beau’s Heights with Blake and Hope. What everyone sees as going forward fe
els a bit like defeat to me. I’m not sure that I want to move forward, or on, or away, or whatever it is. These last three months have been dark as all hell, but dark is safe.

  Anyway. Tomorrow, I’m going to go and take a look at the place where you died. I’m going to go quietly, on my own, except for Pepper, who’ll be my excuse for leaving the house unescorted. (Andy keeps offering to take Mel to get some walking shoes. You can imagine how likely that is.)

  I won’t ever get over you, but I might learn to live with the fact that you’re not here. One day. Not tomorrow, though.

  I’ll take daffodils from the garden and hope that it isn’t too grim.

  E xxx

  Then

  Elizabeth’s first visit to Throckton had been better than any of them could have hoped. For Michael, seeing the woman he loved in the place that he loved, after months of wondering and longing, was a simple, all-absorbing delight.

  Elizabeth had been ecstatic to see Michael, bursting into sobs at the airport when she saw him waiting for her, his arms opening wide as soon as she stepped into his view. She had become awash with worries about what she was doing as soon as her flight took off from Sydney, and she spent a fair amount of the twenty-three hours of travel time checking the small print on her return flight and working out whether she could afford to change it and go home early. So the sight of Mike, not only looking top to toe exactly as she remembered, but also making her feel just as she’d hoped, a key sliding into a lock, had been a great relief. And a new worry.

  “You do know,” Mel had said into the quiet on the way to the airport, “that he’s going to want you to stay, don’t you?”

  Elizabeth had protested, brandishing her return ticket.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Mel had said. “I mean, he’s never going to settle here, is he? You can see that, just looking at him. He’s going to want you to live there, at some point. So you need to be thinking about whether you could learn to live there. He’s going to want to know.”

  • • •

  Michael refused overtime and spent every moment he could with Elizabeth, showing her everything from the park where he played as a boy to the pub where he spent Saturday nights. They walked to the top of Beau’s Heights, meandered around Butler’s Pond, strolled by the river and ate plowman’s lunches in quiet pubs.

  “I’ve never wanted a dog before,” Elizabeth had mused, “but it seems strange not to have one here.”

  Michael, looking for any sign that Elizabeth was giving serious thought to their future, had squeezed her hand a little more tightly as they walked home again.

  They’d taken day trips to the Cotswolds and the seaside. “Now this is a beach,” Michael had said proudly as they stood on a slab of pebbly damp sand, alone apart from a handful of seagulls and a dog walker, looking at the sullen, gray-purple water—and spent a long weekend in London.

  Elizabeth, who would be running a marathon three weeks after she got back, went for long runs while Michael was at work. He only once had to rescue her. “I took a wrong turn and I’m in a phone box and all I can see is a bridge and a bunch of oak trees,” she’d said, and instead of giving her directions he’d gone to pick her up and found her sitting on a five-bar gate looking at the sunset. “It’s so lovely,” she’d said, and Michael, watching his love for signs of something deeper than tourist appreciation, hoped. But it was hard to tell.

  So Elizabeth had thought about it all. She’d looked at the pale sky and the pale people, casting off clothes at the first hint of sun, exclaiming at what seemed to her a laughable lack of heat. She’d listened to Michael as he explained the land, the reason the roads were the way they were, the importance of hedgerows. She’d been astonished by the history that everything seemed to have—not just capital H History, but how everything around Michael had significance. There was the wall he fell off where he broke his leg when he was nine, the place he first got really drunk, his father’s grave. Everywhere Michael and Elizabeth went, there was someone to say hello to: an ex-girlfriend’s mother, a colleague’s son, an old teacher, someone who knew Michael’s mother from the library.

  “It’s like a big web,” Elizabeth had said, and Michael had said, “Yes, isn’t it,” smiling at her, delighted at her understanding, with no idea that she might not be offering a compliment.

  • • •

  Michael had taken Elizabeth to meet his mother on her first night in Throckton. (“I’ve said we’ll go around there,” he’d said. “She’s desperate to meet you. I’m sorry.” And Elizabeth had smiled and said, “No, don’t be silly. Of course she wants to check me out. It’s what any mother would do. Mel did it to you. Just make my apologies if I go to sleep.’)

  They’d arrived, hand in hand and grinning like idiots at the simple thrill of simple touching after three months of the absence of each other’s skin, and Patricia had recognized in an instant that this was no passing romance. Elizabeth, struggling through tiredness but charming nonetheless, had wanted to know everything there was to know about Michael, and when Patricia had offered to get the photographs out and Michael had groaned, she and Elizabeth had looked at each other and laughed, the smallest of bonds made and shared, and Patricia had thought, Well, I still don’t know why he had to choose a girl from Australia when there are so many lovely ones in Throckton, but if she’s the one, he could have done a lot worse.

  “What do you think, Mum?” Michael had asked later, Elizabeth having fallen fast asleep on the sofa with no warning, and Patricia had told him that she was a lovely girl and, if she was really what he wanted, he’d be a fool to let her go. “I’m glad you like her, Mum,” he’d said. She had been about to ask whether he was sure that they would be making their lives here rather than there, when she’d decided that she didn’t want to know that, not yet. So she’d shooed them home and watched to see how Elizabeth got on in Throckton.

  It was three weeks afterward when the two of them got to talk. Michael had gone to work. Elizabeth was helping Patricia with the dishes. She’d developed a simple strategy for being with Patricia—she asked a lot of questions, about Throckton, about Michael, and so the conversation never stopped.

  But that night, Elizabeth had been quiet as she dried plates—methodically, thoroughly, front and back, Patricia noted—and so the older woman had seen a moment to understand more, and said, quietly, “A penny for your thoughts?”

  “Oh,” Elizabeth had said. “I don’t think they’re worth that, really.”

  Patricia had thought that that was going to be the end of it, but after the next plate was dried the younger woman had spoken again. The twang of her voice was still difficult for Patricia, who found herself paying closer attention, always, when Elizabeth said something. “I was just thinking about my mother. She died, you know?”

  “Yes, Michael told me. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Elizabeth had said, “but we were young, my sister and I, and we went to live with our aunt and uncle, and we were happy enough, but—”

  “You never quite get over it.”

  “No. And—” Elizabeth was feeling for just the right words now. “Because we never had a dad, not that we could remember—” Seeing Patricia’s face, she hurried to be clear. “He’s not dead or anything, was just a bit of a wild one, you know? And he left my mother, as soon as he found out that Mel was coming along.”

  Patricia tutted, although Elizabeth didn’t think she knew that she’d done it, and she dried another plate (actually, it was the same plate again, though neither woman noticed) before continuing. “What I was thinking was that Michael and I, we’ve both lost a parent, and we understand what that’s like. And it means we understand how important our close relationships are, and we know that we need to treasure them.” And she’d put down the last plate, folded the tea towel the way Michael’s mother liked them to be folded, long edge to long edge then on the oven door to dry, and smiled
.

  Patricia had said yes, and she’d put the kettle on. She wasn’t good at conversations with the word “relationship” in them. So instead she touched Elizabeth’s arm as she passed her, a touch that said, I understand that you are telling me my son is safe with you, and I thank you.

  • • •

  Michael and Elizabeth’s last night together wasn’t easy. They went out for dinner and looked miserably at each other as they drank too much wine and ate almost nothing.

  “Can we just go home,” Elizabeth had asked when the dessert menu came along, and Michael had paid the bill without a murmur, his idea of a romantic evening having died as soon as he’d seen the tears in her eyes when she picked up the menu.

  “The food’s not that bad,” he’d said, and she’d said, “Mike, I don’t know how I’m going to manage this next bit,” and he’d said, “I know,” because he had no idea either. Now that there was an imprint of Elizabeth everywhere in Throckton, there would be no way to stop missing her.

  At home, he said, “We said we’d talk about things after eighteen months.”

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we talk about them now, instead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you want me to come and live in Australia?” His face is solemn, true. Elizabeth takes a breath.

  “No,” she says, and his face is already crumpling, before she can get the rest out. “Mike, listen, I can’t ask you to move to Australia because I can see how much this place means to you, and I’ve seen you in Australia, and I don’t think it would work—”

  “I’d get used to it,” he says. “I would. It’s just a question of acclimatizing.”

  She wants to kiss his stoical face. She does, because tomorrow there will be no face to kiss. “Maybe,” Elizabeth says. In Michael’s eyes, hope. “Or I could come here. Settle. I could settle here.”