Marjorie didn’t seem to hear.
‘I closed my eyes,’ she said eventually, still clutching Peter as she rocked back and forth. ‘It was only for a moment . . . I shouted at her . . .’
*
The rest of that day was a blur. Peggy called an ambulance and neighbours started to gather, and soon Marjorie was aware of there being a lot of strangers in her house and garden. Someone made tea and someone else thought to contact Ted at work, and then a policeman came and went. After all the fuss had died down and Peggy had taken Eleanor back to stay with her and Ken for a while, a grim-faced doctor arrived. She didn’t know him, but she was grateful because he gave her a sedative that worked quickly and made her feel as though she was retreating, just falling away from everything that had happened, as though it hadn’t really happened at all.
Eleanor, the present
Eleanor blows her nose and attempts a smile, then kisses Charlie on the head. ‘Thank you, Charlie.’ She sets him gently back on the floor. ‘I feel a bit better now.’ She folds the pages again and slips the letter into her back pocket, where she can simply touch it and feel the reassuring thickness of the paper. She still can’t quite believe what she’s read, although reading her mother’s account – her confession – has finally opened the door to her own memory of that day. For over thirty years she has desperately tried to recall that little pocket of time leading up to the moment when she put her baby brother in the water; she has agonised repeatedly over whether she’d been angry with him or felt jealous of him. But although she’s remembered fragments over the years – waking her mother up, being shouted at, running back down the garden and into the house – nothing else has come back to her until today.
Now, though, she can conjure up that morning, crisp and clear, there in the garden on that sunny June day. Peter was crying and she’d tried to wake her mother, but when that failed, she went back to the pram and tried jiggling it about like her mother did and saying, Shush, shush, Peter Poppet; what’s all this in aid of? But his cries only became louder, and the smell coming from his nappy suggested that it was very wet indeed. She’d reached in and lifted him as carefully as she could. As she thinks of this now, she can feel his overheated forehead against her chin, damp and salty with baby sweat, and the stench of ammonia coming from his sodden nappy. She’d pulled that nappy off in one go along with his rubber pants, and she remembers the weight of it as she threw it on the grass. Then she laid him gently on a towel and entertained him for a while by blowing raspberries on his bare tummy. But he soon started crying again, and so that was when she decided to try putting him in the paddling pool. As she lowered him into the sun-warmed water, he stopped crying instantly and, pleased that she’d found a solution, she climbed in with him so they could play a game together. She would be the mermaid, she decided, and he could be the water baby, just like in her book.
She is aware of Charlie still looking at her with great concern. They’ve called from the kitchen a couple of times to say that the tea’s ready, so she stands up now and finds she is holding Charlie’s hand and allowing him to lead her back to the others. She has remembered, finally. And the truth is that not only had she not intended to harm her brother, but she now knows that it was her mother who . . . at least, she knows her mother contributed to his death.
Before they can ask about her tear-streaked face, she tells them what she’s just found.
‘Really?’ Peggy says. ‘Do you think that’s what she’s been looking for all this time?’
‘Yes, I think it may be.’
‘What does it say?’ Jill says. The way she and Peggy are looking at her makes it clear they expect her to produce the letter. Instead, she tells them about part of the content, the part where her mother acknowledges that talking about their shared grief may have helped, and where she talks about Peter and Sarah, finally able to use their names. ‘I know it’s made me cry,’ she says. ‘But they’re good tears, and I think I understand her a bit more now.’ She turns to Peggy. ‘She wrote it the day I left, apparently, when I took off in the camper.’
‘That makes sense. She was devastated that she’d missed you that day. She was genuinely shocked when she realised how much worse she’d made things by not talking about it all.’
Eleanor nods. ‘A lot of what she says is exactly what you’ve been telling me, but this feels . . . I don’t know, almost as if I’m hearing it from her own lips.’
‘And that helps?’
‘Massively.’
Peggy smiles and gives Eleanor’s arm a comforting rub. ‘Good. I think you going away was good for her in the long run. It gave her the shake-up she needed, made her face up to things she’d tried to wipe out.’
‘Maybe.’ She lets her gaze linger briefly on Peggy’s face. Might Peggy know the truth? According to her mum’s account, she’d pulled Peter out of the water by the time Peggy arrived. But wouldn’t she have confided in her best friend at some point in four and a half decades?
‘What a shame she never found it,’ Peggy says, ‘so she could give it to you herself.’
‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘All that searching.’ But would she have given her the letter if she’d found it? Maybe; maybe not.
As they gradually drift back to stripping the wallpaper, Eleanor makes a decision. She will never show this letter to anyone, ever.
*
That evening, tired and aching from a day’s physical work – something which, six months ago, wouldn’t have phased her at all – she goes to the hospital to visit her mother. Her breath catches slightly when she sees the bed neatly made and the surrounding area cleared of all signs of occupancy. As her eyes scan the ward, one of the orderlies she’s spoken to a few times spots her. ‘Your mum’s been moved, love. Down the end there, see? She being discharged soon?’
‘Thanks. Yes, a day or two, I think – soon as we’ve sorted out her room.’
‘That’ll be why, then. They move ’em when they don’t need to be so near the nurses’ station no more. Good luck with it all, love.’
‘Thank you,’ she says again, and makes her way down the ward.
‘Hello, Mum.’ Marjorie is sitting in her chair, holding one of her slippers, pulling at the stitching. ‘What are you doing?’
Her mum carries on plucking at the threads, pulling them looser and looser.
‘Mum? Can you look at me?’
There is no response. Looks like it’s bad today. Slowly, she reaches for the slipper her mother is worrying at. She lets her fingers close around it but doesn’t try to take it away yet, because it’s the sort of action that could set her mum screaming as if she’s being murdered.
‘Mum,’ she says again, ‘it’s me, Eleanor.’ The fingers slow a little in their movement, and she pulls gently on the slipper. Marjorie grips it more tightly. ‘No,’ she mutters, but she looks up and there seems to be a glimmer of recognition in her eyes. ‘Eleanor. Ellie-belly.’
‘That’s right, Mum.’ She smiles. ‘Listen, we’ve started decorating your new bedroom. Jill and Dawn came to help. Do you remember them? Jill is my friend from the farm, and Dawn is her daughter, the one with the little boy and the baby girl. Remember?’
‘Baby girl,’ Marjorie says. ‘Baby girl. Baby girl. Baby girl. Baby—’
‘Mum!’ She takes her hand quite firmly, which usually breaks this needle-in-the-groove repetition. She has no idea whether any of this is going in, but she carries on anyway. ‘We’ve started putting up the lining paper, so I expect we’ll finish that tomorrow and start the painting. I thought a soft, forget-me-not blue might be nice. Do you think you’d like that?’
Marjorie smiles. She doesn’t say anything, but Eleanor takes this to mean that yes, she would be happy with the forget-me-not blue. Still holding the connection with her mother’s eyes, she says, ‘When we moved the sideboard, I found your letter, the one I think you’ve been looking for.’ She waits for a moment. ‘You wrote it a long time ago, when I’d been staying with you after my baby, Sa
rah, died. Do you remember?’ The smile is still there but it wavers now. She continues. ‘I’d been with you for a few months but then I left, and I wrote you a note, saying I wished we could have talked about Sarah . . .’ she pauses, ‘. . . and about Peter.’ At this her mum’s eyes flicker and she knows for sure something is going in. ‘You wrote the letter that night, after I left, and I don’t know if you remember this, but in it you explained everything.’
Is it her imagination, or are her mum’s eyes a little glittery? She’s still holding onto the slipper with one hand, so Eleanor takes the other in both of hers. ‘You told me exactly what happened when Peter died, and you asked if I could forgive you.’ She pauses. ‘Mum, I understand why you never told anyone the truth.’ She is still looking into Marjorie’s eyes, and for the briefest of moments, there is something, a sparkling of understanding, of perfect and absolute connection between them that reminds her of the moment she first laid eyes on her own daughter. She blinks, shaken by the intensity of the experience. She wants to say this quickly, before the connection disappears. ‘I’m grateful, Mum. And there’s nothing to forgive.’
*
Jill and Dawn come again the next day and, with the three of them working flat out, the lining paper is up by lunchtime, and by mid-afternoon there’s an undercoat on the woodwork and a first coat of emulsion on the walls. The colour is warm and restful, and while this room will never be particularly light, it now feels soft and cosy rather than dark and gloomy. Before she goes to the hospital, she photographs the almost finished room so she can show her mum.
The ward has a slightly abandoned feel today, with so many of the other patients having been discharged. She spots Marjorie making her way back to her bed with the aid of a walking frame. Her mobility is improving every day, but progress is still slow. She notices that her mum’s nearest ‘neighbour’, who also appears to have dementia, although not so far advanced, is wearing a coat and outdoor shoes. Her husband is there, holding her bags and listening to instructions from the nurse as an orderly helps her into a wheelchair. ‘Hello, love,’ the woman calls out when she sees Eleanor. ‘I’m off home today.’
‘That’s nice.’ Eleanor smiles. ‘I expect you’re looking forward to it.’
‘Oh, yes. Can’t wait to get out of this place.’ She grips the arms of the wheelchair, tips her head back and yells, ‘It’s a fucking shithole!’ at the top of her voice.
‘Jean! For heaven’s sake!’ Her husband looks mortified, but no one else takes any notice.
Marjorie is standing by her chair now, watching with a vague smile. As Jean is wheeled out of the ward with the nurse in attendance, she waves and calls, ‘Good luck, love, hope you get out of here soon.’ Marjorie, still smiling, lifts her hand and waves back.
‘How are you today, Mum?’ Eleanor pulls up a chair. ‘You’re looking fairly bright and cheerful.’
‘Hello.’ Marjorie smiles as she settles herself in her chair, but Eleanor isn’t sure she recognises her.
‘Look, Mum.’ She takes out her phone. ‘I took a picture of your new bedroom. Remember, we’re moving your bed up to the dining room so you don’t have to cope with the stairs. Isn’t it a lovely colour?’
Marjorie takes the phone and looks at the picture. She is still smiling, but Eleanor can’t tell if she knows what she’s looking at, or if she remembers – or understands – that she’s coming home. ‘This is taken from the door, so your bed’ll go on this side here, see?’ Marjorie nods but her smile has gone. She lets out a low moan and puts her hand to her head, screwing up her eyes. ‘What is it, Mum? Have you got a headache?’ There is a slight tremor in Marjorie’s other arm which Eleanor only notices a split second before the phone falls to the floor. Her mum appears to move forward. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get it.’ She bends down and picks it up, examines the screen. ‘It’s okay, it’s not broken.’
Her mum is looking at her but her expression is blank. Her skin is pale, and there’s a sheen of perspiration on her forehead. ‘Are you feeling all right, Mum? It’s ever so warm in here, isn’t it? Let me get you some water.’ She pours water from the plastic jug into a beaker, but as she holds it to her mum’s lips, Marjorie moves so suddenly that the water spills down the side of her dressing gown and onto the floor.
‘Never mind.’ Eleanor stands up and grabs a handful of paper towels from above the washbasin then stoops to mop up the puddle by her mum’s feet. Marjorie doesn’t move. It’s not a lot of water and she manages to get most of it up, then she puts the paper towels in the bin and sits back down just as Marjorie slumps forward in her chair. The grunting noise she makes sounds a bit like a snore, and for a moment, Eleanor thinks she has dropped off to sleep – it wouldn’t be the first time. But then she notices Marjorie’s left arm hanging limply by her side and it comes back to her straight away: the acronym, FAST, the doctor explained after the first stroke. She’d googled it and printed it out for Peggy: Face, Arms, Speech and Time, as in, Time is of the essence.
She lifts Marjorie’s head so she can see her face. Sure enough, one side looks as if it’s collapsed. The left eye is half closed and the left side of her mouth is turned down; a dribble of saliva runs down her chin.
‘Oh, God . . . oh, shit . . .’ She looks down the ward but there’s no one around, and she can’t see the nurses’ station from here. ‘Hang on, Mum, I’ll get the nurse.’ She starts to get up then jumps as her mother’s good hand clamps around her wrist. ‘Mum, I need to find someone.’
Marjorie’s grip tightens. Her lips are moving as if she’s trying to speak, but there’s barely any sound, more a thin stream of air.
‘What is it, Mum?’ She leans in close, straining to make sense of the wisps of sound coming from her mother’s pale lips. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t quite . . .’ She shakes her head. She rests her hand over her mother’s, which is still clasped claw-like around her wrist, and moves round so they’re facing each other. Marjorie’s face now appears completely frozen on one side.
‘Mum,’ she whispers, ‘I think you’re having another stroke. We need to get some help.’ As she looks into her mother’s eyes, she becomes aware of her own heartbeat, louder than usual, but suddenly sluggish and cumbersome, as though it is dragging in her chest. At the same moment she has a sense of time slowing, stilling almost. She looks again into her mother’s eyes. Once a deep, strong blue, the colour has faded now to a watery grey, and yet there is still something, some hint of memory that flickers behind them.
‘Mum,’ she whispers, ‘are you . . . are you trying to tell me . . . ?’
Marjorie’s hand falls back into her lap as her grip on Eleanor’s wrist loosens. She searches her mum’s face; she can’t absolutely swear to it, but she is as sure as she can be that she is reading those eyes correctly. The look that passes between them right then carries more meaning than should be possible in those few brief moments, and she feels almost hypnotised as she sits unmoving while her mother’s brain cells die at the rate of two million per second.
After several seconds, maybe minutes, she looks along the ward again, down towards the nurses’ station. There’s no one behind the desk, but she can hear voices and she knows they’re there, just round the corner, out of sight. If she were to shout for help, they would hear her straight away and would probably come running. She has no idea what the emergency treatment for a stroke is, especially a major one. This is a major one, she’s pretty sure of that.
But she does not shout for help. Instead, she takes her mother’s hand in both of her own. ‘I’m here, Mum,’ she murmurs, trying to shut her ears to that horrible rasping sound.
Someone will notice eventually, of course, but she doesn’t turn her head to look along the ward to see if anyone’s coming. She wonders what they’ll do when they realise what is happening, and she wonders what, if anything, will happen to her afterwards. But she remains sitting there, holding Marjorie’s hand, while the brain cells continue to die.
EPILOGUE
Six months l
ater
There are forty or so guests at the wedding. Everyone is friendly and smiling and the warm glow surrounding the bride and groom seems to suffuse the whole wedding party with happiness. The ceremony is simple but moving, and Eleanor’s eyes are moist, partly because she wishes her mum were here to see this woman who has loved and cared for them both so selflessly, finally finding the happiness she deserves.
They make a handsome couple. Peggy’s hair is a delicate silvery blonde and the soft style frames her face perfectly. Her 1940s-style dress is oyster pink, decorated with seed pearls; Dennis is even more dashing than usual in a cream linen suit and a dazzling white shirt. They’re honeymooning in Italy, apparently – a bit of a coincidence, given that she’ll be flying there herself in a couple of days. Peggy and Dennis are going to Florence, though, whereas Eleanor is heading for a little town just north of Genoa, where Dylan has settled for the time being. She can stay as long as she wants, he said when they spoke on the phone – he’s ‘given in’, as he puts it, and bought a mobile. For good, if she’d like to. That took her aback slightly, and she still isn’t sure what she feels about the idea. But in the meantime, she’s told him she’ll definitely stay for a few weeks, and after that, she’ll see.
She’s been back at the farm since she cleared the house, and she assumes that’s where she’ll stay, at least for the present. She isn’t too old to train as a primary school teacher, she’s discovered, so that’s an option. Although now she feels able to trust herself in that role, she’s no longer sure she wants it. She’ll probably follow Peggy’s advice and not make any decisions for a while.
She enjoys the wedding more than she expected to, and it’s been especially nice to see Peggy’s sons again, but once the happy couple have left in a shower of confetti, she says goodbye to Martin and Michael and their partners and heads back to the house.
When Peggy told her the sale was about to complete, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to see the place again, but it’s her childhood home, after all, so she decides to have one last look before she hands over the keys. She and Peggy cleared it soon after her mum died. They’d chosen mementoes – she kept photos, a pair of pearl earrings that belonged to her grandmother and a pair of gold cufflinks that must have been her father’s, and Peggy kept a couple of pictures, a pretty glass vase and a few pieces of jewellery. When they’d finished packing everything up, and Peggy went upstairs to ‘put the kettle on and open the brandy’, Eleanor had walked slowly from room to room, keenly aware of an almost tangible weight to the air. This house was the centre of so much unhappiness – for her, for her mother and no doubt for her father, too. Even with the rooms emptied, it still felt heavy and oppressive, and yet it was hard to say goodbye.
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