Flying Under Bridges

by Sandi Toksvig

  Mr Andrews had risen to turn off the television. Kate’s mother had slowly put the hand-knitted cosy on the teapot and risen to her feet.

  ‘Come along, Harold,’ she had announced, ‘Mrs Bentley has invited us for sherry to toast the royal couple. Say goodbye to Kate. She won’t be coming again.’

  Kate’s father had stood still for a moment and then left the room. Kate thought he had stroked her arm as he left but she couldn’t be sure.

  ‘Mum, don’t do this,’ Kate had protested. ‘Talk to me.’ Her mother put on her cardigan and picked up her bag.

  ‘You may be very clever and book learned but even you cannot expect us to talk to the dead.’ And with that Kate’s parents walked from her life.

  Eve, Inge and Kate sat in silence for a while after Kate finished telling her story. Eve saw that both the women were exhausted and she needed to think. Why had Kate told her that story? Why had she told her mother? Perhaps you never stop thinking you can always turn to your mum. What could her children do that would make her walk away from them? What could she do that would make them walk away from her? At that moment Eve knew that she didn’t understand Shirley’s life but that that would change. She would try harder.

  Eve looked up and saw Pastor Lawrence standing in the doorway with John. John raised his hand and said quickly ‘Now, Eve, don’t get upset. Both Lawrence and I were distressed about what happened and we’re here to put it right.’

  Lawrence moved towards the bed and looked down at Kate.

  ‘Hello, Kate.’

  ‘Lawrence. So you finally saw things my way, eh?’

  ‘No, but I was in the area and I wanted to see you were still fighting.’

  Kate grinned at him. ‘Sure.’

  ‘I understand you asked Reverend Davies to visit you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Kate said evenly. ‘I believe he was busy.’

  ‘Did you want to see a priest?’

  ‘Yes, yes I did.’

  ‘Will I do?’

  Kate looked up at him. ‘Why, Lawrence, why?’

  ‘Because he’s your God too.’

  Eve, John and Inge left Kate and Lawrence together for about half an hour. John and Eve sat silent in the corridor while Inge fell into an instant deep sleep. At last the door opened and Eve could hear quiet conversation.

  ‘Give my love to my son and remember, try not to give St Paul too hard a time. Bless you, Kate.’

  ‘Thank you, Father.’

  Lawrence shut the door behind him and stood looking at us. Inge awoke to find him weeping uncontrollably. No one said anything and he left.

  ‘Thank you, John, thanks for that,’ Eve said. It had been a good thing. She could see that. Good for both of them.

  John shook his head. ‘Oh no, that was Lawrence’s own idea. I didn’t do that but I did phone the Andrews.’ Neither Inge nor Eve were quite sure they had heard what he said. ‘Kate’s parents. You remember when I was there at your house that night,’ he nodded at Inge, ‘Kate said she hadn’t seen her parents in some time? Well, I was sitting in my office yesterday looking out the window towards the pub. There were these two little girls waiting endlessly outside in the street for their mum to come out. They had been there for hours when their mother finally stumbled out, yet they hugged her with abandoned affection and I thought about Kate. I mean she is her parents’ child. I thought, you know, whatever the issues were in the past they deserved the chance to say goodbye. I thought her parents should know. I thought they should know before she went. I thought it was best.

  Kate’s mother came on her own the next day. Kate had deteriorated rapidly. Eve was changing the water for the flowers when she arrived. She knew it was Mrs Andrews, as she had Kate’s Caribbean complexion and she never stopped crossing herself and muttering psalms all the way down the corridor. Inge didn’t want to let her in but Kate was really too weak to protest. The cancer had grabbed her and now the tubes and monitors that relayed her life held her in place ready for the end. Inge wanted Kate to find peace so she didn’t argue.

  ‘She said I was dead years ago,’ said Kate with a sigh, reaching for her lover’s hand. ‘It can’t make any difference. Let her make her peace.

  Inge had left the small, private room and gone out in the corridor to prepare Mrs Andrews for her child’s deterioration. It had been years since she had last seen her. Inge had lived with the changes in her lover on a daily basis but the photographs in their house showed a different Kate from the one Mr and Mrs Andrews had turned away. The hospital corridor was dark with just a single slant of light from the small window above the intensive care sign. Kate’s mother sat on a plastic chair clutching her handbag.

  All Inge managed was ‘Mrs Andrews?’ and then the onslaught came from nowhere. Mrs Andrews was a tall woman and she rose and launched herself at Inge.

  ‘You, you… murderer.’ Eve thought for a minute she was going to grab Inge by the throat but the onslaught was verbal and fierce. Venom spat from her lips.

  ‘She never would have got sick … down … there… if it wasn’t for you. You are evil. The devil is manifest in you. I hope you get cancer and die. Don’t smile at me, you hussy, don’t you dare…’

  Mrs Andrews launched herself at Inge so that Eve had to step between them and push the older woman away. Inge sank down on to the linoleum floor and stared at her lover’s mother. Mrs Andrews returned to her seat as if no interruption had occurred. She didn’t go into Kate’s room but just sat there. Eve took Inge away to calm her down and not once would Mrs Andrews catch anyone’s eye. She just sat reading and rereading the wall poster on stress and related heart disease.

  Inge was ranting in the cafeteria. Everyone was looking. This was, after all, Inge Holbrook, television personality and newly discovered lesbian. Eve tried to get her to quieten. ‘Fucking woman, fucking woman. Maybe I’ll go back there and seduce her. Shall I? Isn’t that what we do? Aren’t we so persuasive that anyone put under the slightest pressure will turn gay? Isn’t that right, Eve?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about it. It’s your choice—’

  ‘My choice? My choice?’ Inge’s voice rose in anger. ‘Why the hell would I choose to be something that horrifies my parents, that could ruin my career, that my religion condemns and that could cost me my life if I dared to walk down the street holding hands with my partner? My choice? To live in the closet. To watch everything you say, everything you do, making sure no one guesses the truth till you’re exhausted and frightened and think you’re going to lose your mind. Why would anyone choose that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Inge stopped shouting and sat down. She reached for Eve’s hand and held it tight. ‘Because you don’t choose who you fall in love with.’ And they sat holding hands.

  When they came back from the cafeteria, a young doctor had just appeared carrying Kate’s notes. He was new on the ward. Until now the doctors had given Inge all the information they could about Kate’s condition. Now she was ignored.

  ‘Mrs Andrews?’ the young intern enquired. Mrs Andrews nodded, entirely composed. ‘I’m afraid your daughter’s condition is deteriorating. Are you the only family?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’

  ‘I wonder, could you sign these forms?’

  As they busied themselves about the papers, Inge slipped into Kate’s room. She reached for her hand and was there when the heart monitor faded to a single tone. Mrs Andrews appeared in the doorway.

  ‘She’s dead, isn’t she?’

  These were not words either Inge or Eve could form in their minds. A mobile phone rang. Mrs Andrews pulled it from her bag.

  ‘Hello, Harold. Yes, I’ll be home soon. I’ll tell you when I get home. Goodbye dear.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  2 February

  Holloway Prison for Women

  London

  Dear Inge,

  Maybe Not Mensa but Tenser

  I have looked out on everything I have made

  and behold i
t is very good.

  (GENESIS 1.31)

  They let me have all the papers in here and some of the stories are bizarre. I mean, what people get up to. What they spend their time on. A group of Dutch scientists have discovered that people with warm feet fall asleep thirteen minutes quicker on average than people with cold feet. I have cold feet and I don’t sleep. I miss sleeping with Adam. Hearing his little noises and knowing he’s there if I have to say ‘What was that noise?’ in the middle of the night.

  There are also several fairly thrilling developments in the world of communications — a Professor David Premack of the University of Pennsylvania has developed an experimental language enabling him to teach chimpanzees to ‘talk’ and communicate with him. We could do with that for some people.

  Then a Boston Television station, WBGH, has developed a system for blind people to watch TV. They get a special stereo channel that transmits a description of the action and the sets, narrated during pauses in the dialogue. Why not just listen to the radio? There’s so much I don’t understand. If dogs are so intelligent, why can’t they walk themselves? In Victorian times you used to be able to buy a dog-driven sewing machine. Apparently it was marketed in the 1 870s and actually used in some English households. There was this special set of wheels which were moved by a little dog on a leash. The dog trotted round and round a movable disc, pretty much the way asses and horses used to move mill-wheels, and that ran the sewing machine. You see— ‘Eve! Eve!’ The psychiatrist is losing patience with me. The trial is soon and he still doesn’t know what to say. We must concentrate. He has his reputation to think of.

  ‘I’m sorry. I think too much without being very clever. It’s a terrible combination.’ I put down my sewing and try to concentrate.

  ‘What did you feel when the boy killed himself?’

  ‘I don’t know. Angry, confused. I was starting to feel angry about so many things. Not all the time, you understand. I mean, some days I was really good. I did all my duties — looked after Mother, cooked for Tom and Adam, smiled at my neighbours, didn’t buy leylandii hedging, and then sometimes I would just be in such a temper. I felt so … outraged at … everything. And then Kate died and I did know how to help Inge. It was in all the papers. Close-up pictures of her outside the hospital, at home. Everyone pretending to be nice but shocked, you know. Shocked about Kate. About the whole gay thing.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘The first thing was that I got on with my mission — raising the money for the refugees to come to Edenford. I thought I didn’t have the nerve but the morning after the news about Patrick I was out early, banging on doors and asking for donations for my Eve Marshall’s Mission to the Children. Then I cleared out the garage to store everything and got Mr Ozbal to agree that I could have all his old cardboard boxes the next time he went to the Cash and Carry. I collected quite a lot of things straight away. You see, I think the mistake Susan Lithgood made was waiting in the shop for people to bring things. If you go to people’s houses instead you get loads more stuff.’

  ‘And what did Adam think of all this?’

  ‘Not much. He had stopped campaigning for the council. I think he hoped to keep quiet about the security thing and get re-elected on his past record. It mattered terribly. All he did was go to the office in the day and work on his Shirley Bassey routine at night. We hardly spoke except when he tried to stop me going up to watch them building the bypass in Bluebell Wood.’

  ‘You shouldn’t go up there,’ he said, ‘it’s not safe.’

  ‘Don’t start with that ridiculous “safe” thing again, Adam. I don’t want to walk up to the new bypass and keep looking over my shoulder to see if some rapist is behind me.’

  ‘Eve, you are not to go up there. It isn’t safe.’

  ‘Don’t start, Adam.’

  ‘I am not starting, I am finishing. I know about these things, Eve. I know about security. How do you think I paid for the dinner we just had?’

  That was when William and Pe Pe dropped in for coffee. They didn’t seem to know it was late and popped round to have an argument of their own. They’d started having counselling at something called Relate. It seemed mainly to involve relating all their problems to me. Pe Pe wanted them to move back to her home in Australia. I tried to make encouraging noises but I didn’t think it was going to happen.

  William kept pacing up and down. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ he kept saying, and then, ‘Look, we all know it will be fine when Pe Pe gets pregnant.’ Pe Pe looked at me and smiled.

  Mother woke up and for a moment I thought I heard her call ‘William, William!’

  ‘She’s calling you,’ I said. ‘Please go to her.’ But he wouldn’t so I told him, ‘I don’t know how much longer I can cope. She doesn’t seem to be getting any better. It’s not fair, William.’

  We have to go home now,’ he said. ‘Pe Pe!’

  ‘William!’ Mother and I called together.

  He turned and muttered over his shoulder, ‘Now is not a good time.

  Woman’s Work

  A good wife… is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet.

  (PROVERBS 31.21)

  I tried to talk to Shirley but she had gone sort of gooey and ridiculous. Not like her at all.

  ‘My friend Jane, from school, is getting married,’ she said, while I washed and washed Mother’s fading clothes in the kitchen sink. ‘She’s having an all-white wedding with six page boys.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  ‘She’s so happy. She just glows. Isn’t that nice?’ Shirley continued.

  ‘That’s nice,’ I said.

  Shirley had come round to help with Mother but actually she just sat reading Brides magazine while I dealt with what needed to be done. Mother had been with us for months. There seemed to be no movement from the social services, William was utterly preoccupied and Martha had already left for Bangkok.

  I wanted to travel. I dreamt about it all the time. Maybe, if I ever get out of here, I’ll never go back to Edenford. Would you travel with me, Inge?

  Come with me, we shall set offwith a light heart, a heavy purse and a merry companion to go amongst the Mohammedans and Barbarians. I shall pack a Gladstone bag for it straps easily to the back of a mule.

  I want to be an unescorted and independent person — a lady traveller. I want to be like Lady Anne Blunt who rode two thousand miles as a Bedouin from the shores of the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, or Ella Sykes who passed through Persia riding side-saddle and wearing a golden silk handkerchief that covered her head and fell about the chest and shoulders to the waist. I want to try everything. I shall even eat sweetbreads if they are offered. They say the testes, thymus and pancreas all have the reputation of sharpening your mind and body. (Testes, apparently, are usually skinned then sliced and sautéed in butter. I’ve sent the recipe anonymously to the Centurions.)

  I pulled Mother up in her bed and tried to smooth the sheets while Shirley carried on talking from the kitchen.

  ‘Of course, the whole bridesmaid thing has changed. The dresses are so much nicer and you can get shoes dyed any colour to match.’ (The wedding magazines were full of ads for handmade shoes in any size so I sent off for a catalogue for Adam. He loved it, but I warned him, ‘Don’t get too high a heel. You don’t know how long you’ll have to stand for.’)

  Mother’s ribs poked into my hand as I tried to lift her. She ate nothing but soup now. Soup that I hand-fed her. There was nothing of her, but my back hurt from the endless turning and lifting to make her comfortable. Shirley was jabbering on when out of nowhere Mother looked at me and said quite clearly, ‘I hate this.’

  We looked at each other and I nodded. ‘I know. Me too.’ It only lasted a moment and then she was gone again but I knew something had to be done. Adam was continuously occupied with his Bassey impersonation. He firmly believed this was going to be the route back into the hearts of the community, or if not the communi
ty then at least the golf club. I was glad he had an interest because what with Mother and my mission I was too busy to keep worrying about him. I needed to be busy. It was when I stopped that I thought too much.

  My mission had only been open a few days and already I was being flooded with things. To be honest, I think people give tins of rice pudding and so on not so much to help but because they want you to go away. I’d been sorting boxes for about a week when Adam said he couldn’t rehearse in the garage any more. Apparently there wasn’t room for his arm movements so he spent all his spare time upstairs in the back bedroom giving his all as the Tigress of Tiger Bay.

  He was up there belting out that he was what he was and what he was needed no excuses, when Horace Hoddle came to call. I tried to call Adam but the music was too loud and I didn’t want to let Horace upstairs in case he found out about the surprise.

  ‘I’m afraid Adam is a bit busy just now.’

  Horace eyed the jumble I was in the middle of sorting. ‘I came to see you actually, Eve.’

  ‘Oh.’ Horace had never been to see me about anything.

  ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  He would, and he sat looking at me while I made it. ‘Always had a lovely way about you, Eve. Adam’s a lucky fellow.’

  I handed him his mug and his hand brushed mine as he took it. He looked so intently at me that I thought for a minute there must be something unpleasant on my nose. ‘You’re a fine woman, a very fine woman.

  We drank our coffee while we thought about how fine I was. I hadn’t been alone with a man like this since Adam and I had been dating. It was very awkward. I tried to break the silence.

  ‘Garibaldi?’

  ‘No, thank you. Eve, if I were a different sort of man then I might be here on a different sort of mission. I have always thought you were very lovely, and my wife.., but I’m not that sort of man. I am here to help Adam.’