Four New Words for Love

by Michael Cannon

  He decants the delivery that afternoon, bottles randomly littering the kitchen surfaces in pleasing confusion. He takes a cigar to the terrace. From the first fragrant puff he knows this will deliver what it promises. Marjory never did. He recalls their trysting days, turning the bend in the top landing of her parents’ house. Her bedroom door half ajar, her topless reflection arresting him as the sound of placing cutlery wafts up from below, the right-angled collision of their gaze as her eyes meet his in the tilted glass and she glances downwards, directing his scrutiny to her coffee-coloured nipples. Look, she seemed to be saying, these are only for you, as she made an unseen motion with her foot and slowly closed the door, bringing down the curtain on the promise of carnality – never honoured. Given she didn’t care for intimacy, he was surprised and saddened by the lengths she would go to, tending her appearance for half strangers.

  A Sunday afternoon, over two years ago now. Felicity is beginning her long, long decline and George has advertised the prognosis to anyone who will listen. Marjory sits at her three-mirrored bureau, a reflective triptych giving her back her double profile. She has applied some foundation that makes her as pale as the woman they are about to meet. Christopher considers the elaborateness of her preparations an oblique insult and pointedly looks at his watch.

  ‘We’re going to be late.’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘My face,’ she says, ‘I can’t go without my face.’

  She pads and brushes and tweaks and smudges, her blooming civic mask emerging as the growth, in the bedroom across the common, metastasises.

  ‘Don’t go overboard.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘As a mark of respect.’

  ‘She has cancer.’

  ‘You can bet your bottom dollar George won’t be dowdy.’

  He suspects this is a slight aimed at him, rather than an endorsement of her efforts, but she has missed the point again: it isn’t George they are going to visit.

  Marjory is right. George is wearing a blazer and a tie of subdued diagonals, transfixed with an enormous tie pin. His shoes shine like glass. Christopher is reminded of a retired wing-commander with too much consideration for his appearance. He has that over-groomed look Christopher finds disturbing in a man, and vaguely effeminate, if George’s reputation didn’t belie this.

  George opens the door slowly. He has a new persona. His manner is reverential. They are shown into the bedroom. One look at Felicity and Christopher wonders if she will ever see another four walls. Marjory bends forward to mime a kiss, and he is struck by the obscene discrepancy in colour. George lingeringly appraises Marjory’s buttocks. Looking past Marjory’s ear, Felicity catches George, and a flicker of irritation crosses her face. Christopher witnesses the whole exchange. Realising he has been caught George steps forward, takes one of Felicity’s hands and turns to the visitors. He sustains this tableau for five seconds.

  ‘Tea?’ he asks, cheerfully.

  ‘That would be nice.’ Marjory answers for them both. Christopher sits on the bed as George tramps down the stairs, the reverential manner forgotten in the preoccupation of a small task. Marjory straightens some drooping daffodils.

  ‘These want some water.’ Christopher continues to look at Felicity. Marjory gives a brief roll call of the women who intend to visit, and whisks off the flowers to refresh them. She could do it in the bathroom, but they hear her footsteps following George’s. She has had enough of the sickroom. On an impulse Christopher takes Felicity’s hand.

  ‘She’s very attractive you know, Christopher.’

  ‘Yes. She has all the components. Somehow the total effect is a little off true. It’s her expression, I think. Took me years to notice. No doubt you spotted it immediately.’

  ‘Yes. But then, I didn’t have the distractions of a man.’

  ‘Do you think George has noticed?’

  ‘No. He never gets beyond the components. Are you worried about them down there?’

  He laughs, briefly, at the thought of George considering whether or not to paw her as she bends across the sink, arrested by her glacial stare as she guesses his thoughts. It’s not difficult with George.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean... No I’m not worried. She’s not interested. I don’t just mean George...’

  ‘That’s a shame – for you, I mean.’ He shrugs. Her hand is dry, phthisic, in the sudden candour of this companionable silence.

  ‘I take it George is interested, not just in Marjory I mean.’

  ‘Not just in Marjory.’

  ‘And did you spot that immediately?’

  ‘Yes. But I was foolish enough to think I could change him.’

  ‘Do you care?’

  ‘I used to. But not now. I don’t have the vitality any more. He’s got enough for us both. What does perplex me is the complete absence of what I thought I saw in him. I don’t know if he’s changed that much, or if I was deluding myself from the start.’

  ‘It’s easily done.’

  ‘Not for a woman. I think I must have refused to see.’

  ‘I can’t speak for everyone, but I don’t think it’s that uncommon to attribute things to people, generosity, care... whatever, because we want them to be the way we want to think about them, not the way they are.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’

  ‘I never thought about it in terms of anyone’s fault. I suppose if it’s anyone’s it’s the one deluding themselves, not the others being themselves. But if it’s a fault it’s a very venial one. I don’t think of it as blameworthy just to want to make people seem nicer.’

  She doesn’t say anything and gives his hand a faint squeeze, which he returns. He looks out the window, lets his eyes lose their focus till the foliage becomes a green blur.

  ‘We married the wrong people, Christopher.’ He refuses to turn and meet the gaze he knows is directed at his profile. ‘I’m sorry to sound presumptuous, especially with you and Marjory in full health. I don’t think of the consequences of what I say any more because I don’t have to live with them.’

  ‘Being sick still doesn’t give you the right.’

  ‘Doesn’t it? You’re probably right. I don’t know any more.’

  Nor does he, and he doesn’t know if he’s defending his bad choice or Marjory’s reputation, whatever that might be.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’ve hurt you.’ she says.

  He’s wrung by the scrupulousness of this compassion from a failing body. In her state would he see beyond his own demands? Then there are the two downstairs, in rude health, who see the surface of their world and their bodies. He turns to tell her that she couldn’t hurt him but she’s asleep, her face suddenly smaller still in the frame of its pillow. He’s upset that she has slid out of consciousness with the thought of his reproach. He goes downstairs and sits eating a biscuit while George and Marjory exchange pleasantries. George has formed a habit of dropping his voice when Felicity is mentioned, and discussing her prognosis sotto voce.

  ‘It’s all right – she’s asleep.’

  They are saying their goodbyes in the hall when Marjory excuses herself to go upstairs. Christopher knows she seldom uses other toilets unless she wants to appraise the fittings. They stand at the bottom of the stairs and listen to the running tap she turns on to conceal the tinkle of urine. Bereft of other company it’s plain they have absolutely nothing to say to one another. Discomfited by the silence, George repeatedly touches his tie pin. Christopher is not fazed, he is too mesmerised by the sheen of George’s oxfords to notice. Did he achieve this himself, or was the leather worked by some Dickensian boot boy? Do such functionaries still exist? If he leans forward he imagines he will see his distorted image in the gleaming toe cap, like the Arnolfini couple, slyly reflected, back to back, in the poised mirror behind them that so fascinated him on rainy afternoons in the National Gallery. Details, details. Life is a limitless succes
sion. And now Marjory is at the top of the stairs, unsuccessfully disguising her reconnaissance, and George is at the bottom, unashamedly staring up her skirt, without the good grace to look embarrassed when caught by Christopher.

  ‘Must keep up appearances,’ he says, in regard to nothing at all, stroking the diagonals of his tie. No, Christopher thinks, there are other more important things you must do. You must care more for your wife than the public depiction of your own grief. You must give her private evidence that the remainder of her short life is not eked out as the fag-end of a bad decision, taken in health and optimism and the mistaken belief that you would grow as a human being. You must, in short, learn to love before it is too late for her, and worse, for you. Marjory, clopping down the stairs in her heels, nods with the jerky motion, signifying her agreement with George.

  He puffs the smoke in a thin blue column, whistling steam from boyhood kettles. He returns inside and reaches for the glass of Pino Noir, clumsily nudging it and regaining balance by grasping the stem. Some liquid has spilled over the rim and continues to waver in the bowl. The geometry of its purple shadow is worth the attention of a Dutch master. What he assumed to be flecks in his vitreous humour, he now realises are motes of dust, banished from the house since Marjory’s occupancy. It pleases him that the glass has left a ring in its wake that will grow sticky, and persist till tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, until he decides to wipe it off.

  * * *

  Christopher is getting his car out of the garage. It is a Morris Traveller complete with a fretwork of timber, a Tudor cottage on wheels. Marjory disliked it, considering it tantamount to a van, suitable for trade. He keeps it exorbitantly taxed, insured and maintained, to languish in darkness, trundled out for the few annual excursions it enjoys. Until the wine and cigars this was his one indulgence.

  He is going to visit Felicity. She has endured beyond medical expectation and has lived to see another four walls. She is in a hospice. George has modified his persona accordingly. With Marjory’s death little gossip now percolates down to Christopher, but he has seen the ostentatious flowers George stands with at the bus stop, the sombre expression broken by the distraction of a passing skirt. The hospice is awkward to get to by public transport, two buses, hence Christopher dusting off the Morris. He has been tempted to give George a lift but hasn’t, for motives that disappoint him. George has a car. It’s the display that public transport affords George that put him off offering. Their visits have never overlapped, more by serendipity than design. The longer Felicity lasts, the greater the chance of their meeting at her bedside. The longer Felicity lasts the greater her private candour. Christopher doesn’t want her to die and he doesn’t want to meet George there either.

  He turns into the driveway. It curves, ‘round the bend’. It’s rumoured that the place was once an asylum, thus, he is told by Sister Judith, the origin of the phrase. No one wanted bedlam in plain sight. He wants to corroborate this in Brewers, but forgets each time he tells himself to remember. Sister Judith came as a surprise, as did the others. Felicity has dredged up unsuspected Catholic antecedents and ‘gone home to Rome’, as the High Street has it.

  Christopher anticipated a staff of crones, desiccated by piety. Sister Judith is in her thirties, and follows racing form. She wears tiny earphones in the corridor to get the latest on the two thirty at Chepstow. She has the outdoor looks of a Brontë heroine, and an appetite for life that confounds him. How can this place contain it? Perhaps she is the equilibrium of vitality, as the spirits of those she ministers to fail. Christopher and Sister Judith are in silent cahoots. He knows, without being told, that she likes him and dislikes George.

  She is standing at the entrance, listening to the radio, as he turns the bend. He gets out. The dog jumps down. She detaches her earphones as she crosses towards him.

  ‘Have you named him yet?’

  ‘No. Seems somehow arrogant. If he’s this age already he’s got an identity.’

  ‘True. You can’t bring him in you know.’ Christopher looks at a loss. She rephrases. ‘You can’t bring him in the main entrance. Go round the side and I’ll let you in there. He can stay outside but he’ll still see you. It’s better than being in the van by himself.’

  ‘It’s a Morris Traveller.’

  She disappears inside. He walks the dog round the side of the building. Felicity has a private room on the ground floor, with a full-length window that opens to the lawn beyond. She was previously upstairs, and Christopher feels something ominous in the transfer to accommodation nearer the elements she is to return to. There are a number of these rooms that he passes, some uncurtained. He is presented with a series of tableaux. What would Hogarth have made of it? He is humbled by the smile of resignation from a cadaverous woman who beams at the dog. The curtains of the next window part, pat on his arrival, and there is framed Sister Judith, vital as Saint Joan, with the receding room and the tilted bed propping up its occupant, another lesson in perspective. The window opens and Sister Judith steps out, taking the length of the clothes rope from Christopher.

  ‘You ought to do something about this. What if he gets lost?’

  ‘I haven’t really thought of him as found. He’d just go back to what he was.’

  ‘Lost. You can’t just take up with things. Not if they come to depend on you.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re right.’

  Having satisfied herself that he’s suitably admonished, she nods behind her. ‘Not long today. She’s feeling poorly. I’ll take the dog. Three laps then you’re out.’ He hands across the rope. She takes half a dozen vigorous strides and considers the lagging animal.

  ‘He’s used to my speed.’

  It doesn’t seem to occur to her to slow down. She picks the dog up and turns to him as it licks her face. ‘The other one was here earlier. He’s tired her out. He’d tire anyone out.’

  Christopher can’t imagine anyone tiring Sister Judith out. She heaves the dog over her shoulder, like a burping baby, turns on her heel and strides off. The dog yawns at him and settles its chin on her bobbing shoulder. He goes in through the window. She is waiting to meet his eye, perhaps calibrating her decline from the expressions of her visitors. He was here the day before yesterday. There is a marked change. She is becoming friable. He thinks a gust of wind could disperse her, like a bad special effect.

  ‘I hear George was here.’

  ‘Yes. Do you wait to avoid him?’

  ‘No.’ That would be to admit he was doing something wrong. He’s doing something right. ‘We’re bound to bump into one another. It’s a matter of time.’ It’s said before he has realised. He sits and takes her hand to cover his confusion. They sit in silence like this for a minute. ‘I think Sister Judith thinks I’m the third part of your ménage à trois.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be much of a sin it if were true and I wish it were. A ménage minus George. Pity the dog’s gone. I’d have liked to see it.’ It’s something he has noticed before: a revelation followed by a commonplace. She’s too far gone to care or calculate. There are no conversational ploys left and he finds this liberating. Marjory stuck to rules, spoke for over half a century and never said anything.

  ‘She’s doing laps. I’m only allowed here for three. The dog will be back.’

  ‘Good. Mongrel?’ and before he can answer, ‘I wonder if the ability to sin disappears when you just don’t have the energy to act on it. Can you think a sin?’

  ‘I certainly hope not. If you can then everyone’s tarnished. Where did all this latent Catholicism come from?’

  ‘School.’ She gestures, indicating the surroundings. The movement exhausts her. ‘Taught by nuns. Back with nuns. You never escape the vestiges of a Catholic education.’

  ‘I suppose George thought it vulgar or something.’

  ‘You’re trying to mitigate my lapse. It wasn’t George’s fault. George never thought anything. George has no spiritual faculty. Not like you.’

  ‘Please...’

&n
bsp; ‘Don’t be modest. Even though you are. George wasn’t to blame, at least for that. It was pure apathy. Do you know there’s a sin of acedia? Spiritual sloth. That’s what the sisters taught us. Where’s the dog?’

  And on cue he appears, still bobbing on the nun’s shoulder. Christopher gestures Sister Judith to come in. She is about to put the dog down when he opens the window.

  ‘She wants to see the dog.’

  ‘You’ll be getting me the sack.’

  ‘I thought God was your boss.’

  ‘That’ll be a joke then, Christopher.’

  She brings the dog over to the bed. He has left a stream of saliva over one shoulder. Christopher wonders if he should point it out, hospital hygiene and all that. But then, no one’s coming here to get better. Realising he is the focus of attention and something is expected of him, the dog wags its tail and barks obligingly. Felicity smiles. The dog is lowered to have its ears ruffled.

  ‘I don’t want dog hairs on the bedding. Hell to pay with Mother Superior. I think it’s time for you to go, Christopher.’

  ‘I must have another lap yet.’

  ‘She’s tired.’ And so it proves. By curious cause and effect the dog has barked her to sleep. Sister Judith puts him down with a grunt, hands the clothes rope to Christopher and shepherds them both out the window.

  ‘And for God’s sake get him a proper lead.’

  He retraces his steps to the car, winds down the passenger window and trundles off down the drive, he, hunched forward over the steering wheel in concentration, the dog, tongue lolling, head snapping from side to side as the lamp posts pass by.

  There is a pet shop of sorts in the High Street. He stands in the twittering concourse explaining what he needs while the dog savours the smells. Next a visit to the Heel Bar, shoe repairs and keys cut while you wait, a curious concept to Christopher, a man of solid welted brogues. Locksmith and cobbler. Discrete trades in his youth. What’s the connection he’s failing to make? Are there others? Baker and glazier? Plumber and copy editor? Gynaecologist and plumber. At least that’s got an overlap. Fire eating air-traffic controller? While he ponders this the young man inscribes an address on a metal tag. And now the dog looks legitimate, with its clerical collar and authentic lead, which slightly saddens him, for, let’s face it, he says to himself, such cosmetic touches are for our enjoyment.