by Ruth Hogan
“I’m sure she only does it to wind me up.”
It was his sister’s latest manuscript.
“Does she send them to anyone else?”
Eunice peered over his shoulder and helped herself to the synopsis sheets.
“I’m sure she does. I’m beyond embarrassment now. She definitely sent the last one to Bruce. He said he was almost tempted to publish it just to see the look on my face.”
Eunice was already engrossed in the pages she was holding, shaking with silent mirth. Bomber leaned back in his chair and tucked his hands behind his head.
“Well, come on, then. Put me out of my misery.”
Eunice wagged her finger at him, grinning.
“It’s funny you should say that, but I was just thinking that maybe we could get Kathy Bates to kidnap Portia, tie her to a bed in a remote woodland cabin, break both her legs thoroughly with a lump hammer, and then give her some top tips on how to write a novel.”
When they had first seen the film Misery, they had amused themselves over dinner afterward by compiling a list of writers who might benefit from a term at the Kathy Bates school of creative writing. Eunice couldn’t believe that they had forgotten Portia.
“Might be simpler if she just broke all her fingers, and then she wouldn’t be able to write at all.”
Eunice shook her head at Bomber in mock disapproval.
“But then we would be deprived of such literary gems as this,” she said, waving the synopsis in the air. She cleared her throat and paused for dramatic effect. Baby Jane yapped at her to get on with it.
“Janine Ear is a young orphan being raised by her cruel, wealthy aunt, Mrs. Weed. She is a strange child who sees ghosts, and her aunt tells everyone that she is ‘on drugs’ and sends her to a private rehab clinic called High Wood. The owner of High Wood, Mr. Bratwurst, spends all the fees on heroin, and only feeds the girls bread and lard. Janine makes friends with a kind and sensible girl called Ellen Scalding, who dies when she chokes on a crust of dry bread because there is no nominated First Aider on duty and Janine doesn’t know how to do the Heimlich maneuver.”
Eunice paused to check that Bomber wasn’t in need of such assistance himself. He was convulsed with silent laughter and Baby Jane was sitting at his feet looking vaguely puzzled. Eunice waited for him to compose himself a little before continuing.
“Mr. Bratwurst is sent to prison for failing to meet the requirements of the Health and Safety legislation, and Janine accepts the position of Au Pair at a stately home called Pricklefields in Pontefract, where her charge is a lively little French girl named Belle, and her employer is a dark, brooding man with hidden troubles called Mr. Manchester, who shouts a lot but is kind to the servants. Janine falls in love with him. One evening, he wakes up to find that his hair is on fire and she saves his life. He proposes. The wedding day is a disaster.”
“It’s not the only thing,” spluttered Bomber.
Eunice went on.
“Just as they are about to exchange their vows, a man called Mr. Mason turns up claiming that Mr. Manchester is already married to his sister, Bunty. Mr. Manchester drags them back to Pricklefields, where they witness Bunty, out of her brains on crack cocaine, crawling round the attic on all fours, snarling and growling and trying to bite their ankles, chased by her carer brandishing a syringe of ketamine. Janine packs her bag. Just as she is about to die from hypothermia wandering round on the moors, a kind, Born Again Christian vicar and his two sisters find her and take her home. As luck would have it, they turn out to be her cousins, and even luckier than that, a long-lost uncle has died and left her all his money. Janine kindly shares her inheritance, but refuses to marry the vicar and join him as a missionary in Lewisham, because she now realizes that Mr. Manchester will always be the love of her life. She returns to Pricklefields to find that it has been burned to the ground. An old lady passing by tells her that the ‘junkie bitch Bunty’ started the fire and died dancing on the roof while it burned. Mr. Manchester bravely rescued all the servants and the kitten, but was blinded by a falling beam and lost one of his ears. Now he is single again, Janine decides to give their relationship another chance, but explains to Mr. Manchester that they will have to take things slowly, as she still has ‘trust issues.’ Six weeks later they marry, and when their first son is born, Mr. Manchester miraculously regains the sight in one eye.”
“It’s comedy genius!” announced Eunice, grinning as she handed the pages back to Bomber. “Are you sure you’re not tempted to publish?”
Bomber threw a rubber, which just missed her head as she ducked.
Eunice sat down at her desk and cupped her chin in her hands, lost in thought.
“Why do you think she does it?” she asked Bomber. “I mean, she can’t just do it to wind you up. It’s too much effort. And anyway, knowing Portia, the joke would have worn thin by now. There has to be more to it than that. And if she wanted to, she could self-publish. She could certainly afford it.”
Bomber shook his head sadly.
“I think that she genuinely wants to be good at something. Unfortunately, she’s just picked the wrong thing. For all her money and so-called friends, I expect that hers is a pretty empty life sometimes.”
“I think, perhaps, that it’s all about you.” Eunice stood up again and strolled over to the window. She could order her thoughts better when she was moving.
“I think she wants her big brother’s approval—praise, love, validation—whatever you want to call it, and she’s trying to earn it through writing. She’s painted herself into a corner in every other way: she’s rude, selfish, shallow, and sometimes downright cruel, and she’d never admit that she cares a flying fortress what you think of her, but she does. Deep down, your little sister just wants you to be proud of her, and she’s chosen to write, not because she has any talent or because it gives her any joy. It’s a means to an end. You are a publisher and she wants to write a book that you think good enough to publish. That’s why she always ‘borrows’ her plot lines from the classic greats.”
“But I do love her. I can’t approve of the way she behaves—the way she treats Ma and Pa and the way she talks to you. But she’s my sister. I’ll always love her.”
Eunice came and stood behind him, and placed her hands gently on his shoulders.
“I know that. But I don’t think Portia does. Poor Portia.” And for once, she meant it.
CHAPTER 34
Laura sat on the bed, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingernails bit crescents into the flesh of her palms. She didn’t know whether to be frightened or furious. Al Bowlly’s voice drifted up from the garden room below, and his seductive tones were like fingernails scraping relentlessly down a blackboard.
“Well, I’m sick at the very thought of you!” she exploded, and launched the book from her bedside table violently across the room. It hit one of the glass candlesticks on the dressing table, which fell to the floor and smashed.
“Bugger!”
Laura made a silent apology to Anthony. She got up and went downstairs to fetch a dustpan and brush, and to check what she knew already to be absolutely, unarguably, indubitably true. The Al Bowlly record was still in its faded paper cover, in the middle of the table in the study. She had put it there herself only yesterday, sick of hearing the tune which now haunted her, quite literally, day and night. She had hoped, rather foolishly now, it seemed, that if she physically removed the record from the vicinity of the gramophone player, it would stop. But Therese didn’t have to play by those rules; physical rules. Her death had seemingly dispensed with such prosaic constraints, and she was free to make mischief in many more imaginative ways. And who or what else could it be? Anthony had been unfailingly kind to her while he was alive, so it was unlikely that he would take up such petty persecutions now he was dead. After all, Laura had done or was trying to do everything that he had asked of her. She picked up the record and looked at the smiling face of the man on the cover, with his slick black hair a
nd his sultry dark eyes.
“You have no idea,” she told him, shaking her head. She put the record in a drawer and leaned back against it with all her weight as though to emphasize its closing. As if that would make any difference. She had told Freddy about the door to Therese’s room and asked him to see if he could get it open. He had tried the handle and declared the door to be locked, but then said that he didn’t think that they should do anything about it.
“She’ll unlock it when she’s ready,” he had said, as though he was talking about a naughty child being left to exhaust a tantrum. Both Freddy and Sunshine seemed to accept Therese with an equanimity that Laura found infuriating. The troublesome presence of someone who was definitely dead and scattered in the garden should surely cause some consternation? Particularly as she should, by now, and thanks to their efforts, be existing somewhere in a state of postnuptial—although admittedly postmortem—bliss. It was damned ungrateful. Laura smiled to herself ruefully. But who else could it be except Therese? Where reason fails, chimera flourishes. Just as she was finishing sweeping up the shards of broken glass, she heard Freddy and Carrot coming in from their walk.
Downstairs in the kitchen over tea and toast, she told Freddy about the music.
“Oh, that,” he said, feeding bits of buttered toast to Carrot. “I’ve heard it too, but I never take much notice. I never know whether it’s Sunshine or not.”
“I took the record away, but it made no difference, so now I’ve put it in a drawer in the study.”
“Why?” said Freddy, stirring sugar into his tea.
“Why did I take it away, or why did I put it in the drawer?”
“Both.”
“Because it’s driving me mad. I took it away so that she couldn’t play it anymore.”
“Who? Sunshine?”
“No.” Laura paused for a moment, reluctant to say it out loud. “Therese.”
“Ah. Our resident ghost. So, you took it away, which didn’t work, and you thought that shutting it away in a drawer might?”
“Not really. But it made me feel better. I keep wondering what else she might do. Why is she being such a bloody prima donna? She’s got Anthony now, so what’s the problem with me having the house? It’s what he wanted.”
Freddy sipped his tea, frowning as he mulled over her question.
“Remember what Sunshine said. She said that Therese wasn’t cross with you, she was cross with everyone. Her ire is indiscriminate. So it isn’t about the house. Did anything like this ever happen while Anthony was still alive?”
“Not as far as I know. There’s always been that scent of roses in the house, and a vague sense that Therese was still about, but I never saw or heard anything definite. And Anthony didn’t mention anything.”
“So it’s only since Anthony died that Madam’s started playing up?”
“Yes. But that’s what’s so wrong about it. I always assumed that she’d been waiting for him somewhere in the ether or wherever for all these years, practicing her fox-trot or painting her nails . . .”
Freddy wagged his finger at her, gently admonishing the catty tone that had crept into her voice.
“I know, I know. I’m being horrid.” Laura laughed at herself. “But honestly, what more does she want? She should be happy now she’s got him back. Instead she’s hanging around here misbehaving, like a disgruntled diva; deceased.”
Freddy put his hand over hers and squeezed it.
“I know it’s unsettling. She’s certainly a bit of a live wire.”
“Especially for someone who’s supposed to be dead,” interrupted Laura.
Freddy grinned. “I think you two might have got on rather well. From what Anthony told me about her, I reckon you’re more alike than you realize.”
“He talked to you about Therese?”
“Sometimes, yes. Especially toward the end.”
He drained his mug and refilled it from the teapot.
“But maybe we’re missing something here. We’re assuming that, just because Anthony’s dead and we scattered him in the same place where he scattered Therese, they must be together. But are the ashes really what matters? Aren’t they just ‘remains’; what’s left behind when the person is gone? Anthony and Therese are both dead, but maybe they’re not together, and that’s the problem. If you and I both went to London separately and didn’t arrange a place to meet, what would be the likelihood of us ever finding one another? And let’s face it, wherever it is that they’ve gone has to be a whole hell of a lot bigger than London, bearing in mind all the dead people who will have pitched up there since . . . well, since people started dying.”
Freddy leaned back in his chair looking rather pleased with himself and his explanation. Laura sighed and slumped back in her chair despondently.
“So what you’re saying is that Therese is actually worse off now than before he died, because at least then she knew where he was? Well, that’s just marvelous. We could be stuck with her for years. Forever. Bugger!”
Freddy came and stood behind her and placed his hands gently on her shoulders.
“Poor Therese. I think you should put the record back in the garden room.”
He kissed the top of her head and went out to work in the garden. Suddenly Laura felt guilty. It was probably all nonsense, but just supposing it wasn’t? She had Freddy now, but what if, after all this time, Therese still didn’t have Anthony?
Poor Therese.
Laura got up and went to the study. She fetched the record from the drawer and took it back to the garden room, where she placed it on the table next to the gramophone player. Picking up the photograph of Therese, she gazed at the woman, now blurred and distant behind splintered glass. She saw, perhaps for the first time, the person behind the paper picture. Freddy might think that they were alike, but Laura could see the differences. She had already lived fifteen years longer than Therese, but she had no doubt that Therese had lived her short life harder, brighter, faster than Laura ever had. What a waste.
Laura gently ran her fingertips over the face behind the cruel mosaic. What was it that Sarah had said? “It’s time to stop hiding and start kicking life up the arse!”
“I’ll get you fixed,” she promised Therese.
She took up the record again and placed it on the turntable.
“Play nicely,” she said out loud to the room. “I’m trying to be on your side.”
CHAPTER 35
Eunice
1994
Eunice would never forget the scent of sun-warmed roses wafting in through the open window as she sat with Bomber and Grace watching Godfrey die. He was almost gone now. Just a worn-out body remained, barely ticking over, breaths too shallow to lift even a butterfly’s wings. The fear and anger and confusion that had racked his last years had finally relinquished their tyranny over him and left him in peace. Grace and Bomber were able, at last, to hold his hands, and Baby Jane snuggled in close to him with her head gently resting on his chest. They had long since stopped trying to make conversation to fill the uncomfortable space between dying and death itself. Every now and then, a nurse would knock softly on the door, bringing tea and unspoken sympathy to a closing scene she had witnessed countless times before.
Eunice got up and went over to the window. Outside, the afternoon was passing by without them. People were strolling in the gardens or snoozing in the shade, and a group of children were chasing one another across the lawns, squealing with delight. Somewhere, high in one of the trees, a thrush was scatting against the metronome tick of a sprinkler. Now would be a good time, she thought. To slip away on the coattails of a perfect English summer’s afternoon. It seemed that Grace was in accord. She leaned back in her chair and exhaled a long sigh of resignation. Keeping hold of Godfrey’s hand, she struggled to her feet; grudging joints stiff from too long sitting. She kissed Godfrey on the mouth and stroked his hair with a frail but steady hand.
“It’s time, my love. It’s time to let go.”
Godfr
ey stirred, but just barely. Translucent eyelids fluttered and his weary chest rose for one final ragged breath. And then he was gone. Nobody moved except Baby Jane. The little dog stood, and with infinite care, she sniffed every inch of Godfrey’s face. Finally satisfied that her friend was gone, she jumped down from the bed, shook herself thoroughly, and sat down at Bomber’s feet, looking up at him beseechingly with an expression that clearly said, And now I really need a wee.
An hour later they were sitting in what was called the Relatives Room drinking yet more tea. The Relatives Room was the place where the Folly End staff gently shepherded people once they were ready to leave the newly deceased. Its walls were the color of faded primroses and the light was soft through muslin curtains, hung as a veil from prying eyes. With sofas plush and deep, fresh flowers, and boxes of tissues, it was a room designed to cushion the sharp edges of raw grief.
After a few initial tears, Grace had rallied and was ready to talk. In truth, she had lost the man she married long ago, and now, with his death, at least she could begin to mourn. Bomber was pale but composed, dabbing at the tears that occasionally leaked silently down his face. Before they had left Godfrey’s room, he had kissed his father’s cheek for the final time. He had then removed Godfrey’s wedding ring from his finger for the first time since Grace had placed it there a lifetime ago. The gold was scratched and worn, the circle a little misshapen; a testament to a long and robust marriage where love was rarely voiced, but manifest every day. Bomber had handed the ring to his mother, who slipped it onto her middle finger without a word. Then he had telephoned Portia, who was now on her way there.
Grace came and sat next to Bomber and took his hand.
“Now, son, while we wait for your sister, I have something to say. You probably won’t want me to talk about this, but I’m your mother and I have to say my piece.”
Eunice had no idea what was coming, but offered to leave them in private.
“No, no, my dear. I’m sure Bomber won’t mind you hearing this, and I’d rather like you to back me up on this one if you don’t mind.”
