by Jemma Wayne
Lynn replaced the overall, selected a dark blue dress from her wardrobe and snarled at her reflection in the mirror. She had been beautiful once. Men used to stare at her and whistle if she wore a short enough skirt. Women had envied her full breasts and tiny waist. Once, she was invited to be a model. Now her blonde hair was thin and white, the skin around her eyes too flimsy to take much make-up, and her breasts sat blithely on the waist that after two children, one caesarean section, and 58 years, was no longer so perfectly formed. Lynn pulled her excuse for hair back from her face and tied it perfunctorily into a low bun, before looking again.
It still startled her sometimes that she didn’t see Philip alongside her own reflection. He had been handsome when they’d first met in the years after adolescence, between childish dreams and reality, before either of them had contemplated the existence of Luke and John. They’d met at Cambridge. Lynn had been amongst a new wave of women taking serious degrees and she and Philip had both read History, though she was more adept at it, despite the damning indictment of their final grades.
Together they had dreamed. Lying on the grass on the bank of the Cam half way to Grantchester, he’d whispered of Paris, Rome, the Sistine Chapel, of Notre Dame, of Mont Saint-Michel, the Coliseum, the great dome of the Pantheon, cafés and parks and churches and moonlight, all traced with gentle precision across the curves and valleys of her body by fingers that knew the future, or seemed to. Sometimes she showed him her sketchpad. During those years she drew prolifically, each day stumbling across a new, life-altering emotion that had to be recorded in brave, sprawling strokes. In watercolours, she created shimmering, rolling landscapes. In charcoal, usually only him. But during that final summer they’d swapped their dreams for books that they devoured in chunks, feeding each other morsels, like wolves.
Philip proposed to Lynn three days before their first final. It was his birthday and they’d decided against a party since everyone they knew was studying around the clock. But the two of them managed to spare an hour to meet at their usual restaurant, a tiny bistro hidden at the bottom of an alley behind Lion’s Yard that still used oil lamps and served hearty onion soup even at the height of summer. Lynn had been in the throes of the French Revolution all day and neglected to leave herself enough time to get ready. But she’d tied her long, thick hair into a playful ponytail and pulled on the yellow dress she knew was Philip’s favourite, before remembering the matching silk scarf she’d chosen for him and wrapped weeks earlier, and cycling down the hill to meet him. He’d been wearing a pale blue shirt that she’d always remember, because in the midst of their celebrations she’d spilt red wine all over it and to make her feel better he’d joked that the stain wouldn’t last anywhere near as long as their marriage. As it turned out, the shirt still sat in the attic in a cardboard memento box larger than the brass one in which Philip’s ashes were entombed, the stain having proved permanent and their marriage less so. But that night the future hadn’t mattered, or rather it had mattered, acutely, and was bathed in indomitable light.
At once, the French Revolution seemed irrelevant.
An engagement party was hurriedly planned for the day after their last exam before all of their friends went home, and Lynn spent much of the following week making lists of menus, sketching hairstyles and dresses, and not dwelling on History. It wasn’t until many years later that she felt the depth and significance of this mistake.
Lynn held onto the banister as she made her way downstairs to the kitchen. The pain in her right side wasn’t as bad as it had been the day before but nevertheless packed her with an exasperation that crept up on her every morning, swelling throughout the afternoon and poisoning her internal narrative. In the kitchen she filled the kettle, arranged some chocolate covered biscuits onto a plate, and set about making a round of triangular cucumber sandwiches. When she had finished, she pulled out a tray from under the sink and set it with teacups from her best set. She never used to use their best china. She and Philip had chosen it when they were first married and each year, on their anniversary, they’d added to it, in the beginning with an imperial feeling of expansion, then later, with the sensation that she was trapped in a porcelain china cage. They had kept the set in a display cabinet in the dining room where Philip’s urn now stood. Lynn had made space for it by clearing the top shelf and transferring its contents – cups and saucers – into the larger cupboards in the kitchen. Now she used the delicately flowered crockery every time she made herself a cup of tea, and every time contemplated the waste in not having utilised them earlier.
Lynn heard the door of Luke’s new hybrid Prius slam before he rang the doorbell - out of politeness as he had a key. She switched on the kettle and moved to the hallway where through the small window, she watched her son’s girlfriend dance towards the house. She was so young, so carefree, her son laughing delightedly at the girl’s effervescence, she reaching her arms around his neck and he taking her hands in his, holding them between them then leaning down to kiss her forehead. It reminded Lynn of a day she’d spent once, in a park somewhere. She gathered herself to her full height before opening the door. Luke towered above her from the lowered doorstep. Behind him, Vera shifted her weight from foot to foot and smiled with irritating, youthful gusto.
“Darlings! How are you? What a lovely surprise! Come in, come in.”
She ushered them into the sitting room where Luke sank comfortably into the sofa and Vera perched as always on the edge of the cushion next to his. The girl seemed even more uncomfortable than usual, fiddling with her blonde hair, which wove itself around pale, young, angular arms. Luke nodded at her as though to lift her into assurance. On the other side of the room was a seat that used to be Philip’s and still bore his dent.
“I’ll be in in two ticks!” Lynn called from the doorway. “The kettle’s almost boiled.”
“Don’t rush Mother, I’ll light the fire,” Luke shouted back in typical can-do pitch, but he was still fiddling with the coals when she returned.
She tried not to smile. Placing the tray of tea, biscuits and sandwiches expertly down on the mahogany coffee table, with a flapping hand she shooed Luke away from the hearth, her deep blue buttocks waving at them as she manipulated the gas. “Ah ha! There we are! A fire.” Triumphantly she sat down opposite her guests. In an attempt at politeness, Vera had begun to pour the tea but was struggling to manoeuvre the pot’s spout without spilling. There was a knack, it had to be tilted slightly to the left, but Lynn decided not to offer this piece of information. She hadn’t offered it last time either. Eventually, Vera managed to fill a cup.
“Milk and sugar Mrs Hunter?” she asked sweetly.
“Certainly not, just a little lemon.”
Vera handed the cup to her, spilling some tea into the saucer, and Lynn mopped it up with a serviette before placing it on the side table next to her chair. “Did you manage to get your washing machine fixed in the end?” Vera asked, starting to pour a second cup. But as she lifted the pot, Luke caught the girl’s eye, the two of them exchanging surreptitious glances, and she spilled it again. Lynn knew that look. The two of them were conspiring over something. She stood up.
“Thank you Vera, I’ll do the rest. I know how Luke likes his.” Vera conceded the pot with a smile, though Lynn was unable to tell if it was laced with gratitude or reluctant defeat. No official battle had been declared between the two of them, but she was the first girl Luke had ever dated who made Lynn feel the need to keep her guard. She raised her eyebrows, deftly poured out the remaining tea, and offered them the plate of sandwiches.
“Oh, no, I’m stuffed thanks, we’ve just had a huge breakfast,” Vera protested.
“I’ll take one Mother,” hurried Luke, and Vera looked embarrassed.
“Don’t if you’re not hungry. I had them made already.”
Luke ignored her and took two. “They look delicious.”
For a moment the three of them sat upright, sipping tea, listening to the sound of Luke chewing, and
staring at each other. Usually Lynn would have asked after Vera’s parents, or her job, or their weekend plans, but that morning she couldn’t bear the thought of having to listen to the answers. Vera fidgeted in her seat, her eyes scanning the walls, lined with books that Lynn had read every one of, with the exception of the dictionaries, encyclopaedias, and a few of Philip’s old law texts. “So we have some news Mother,” Luke said finally.
“Oh?” Lynn put her tea down on the side table again, scowling with impatience at the pain that shot through her side.
“It’s good news,” Luke clarified, noticing.
It wasn’t his fault, she knew, but the confirmation of her distress reflected in his eyes angered her. She would have to tell them soon. “Good,” she said curtly.
“And it’s big news.”
“Well, what is it?” It was Philip’s tendency and not hers to create decoration around plain facts.
Luke’s hand wandered across the old sofa for Vera’s. He uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, and coughed. “Well, I’ve asked Vera if she’ll do me the honour of being my wife. And she’s said yes. Mother, we’re getting married.”
The fire crackled. From the next room the kettle whistled, Lynn having boiled it a second time in anticipation of them needing another pot. Her side burned. She winced.
“Mother?” urged Luke.
“Are you sure?”
Vera flinched but Luke only laughed. “Of course we’re sure Mother!”
Lynn winced again, and tried not to frown. The pain had never been this intense before. “Yes, of course you are.”
There was a pause while they waited for her to continue. Lynn shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
“I think you’ve knocked your mother speechless,” Vera joked awkwardly.
“Aren’t you happy for us Mother?”
“Of course I am.” Lynn shook her head angrily at the pain, picked up her flowered cup again and then replaced it. Usually she hid her symptoms so well. She stood up. “Of course I am.”
“You don’t seem quite happy,” Luke pressed.
“Don’t I?” She punched her side gently, hitting back at the soreness, pretending to tidy.
“You’re scowling Mother.”
“It’s wonderful news, Luke,” Lynn affirmed edgily, trying her best to smile. She turned to pick up her tea and while she was facing away let out a small exhalation of stinging air, steeling herself before she turned back. But when she did, Vera and her son were swapping intimate, bemused expressions. Private entreaties. “The thing is,” Lynn continued abruptly. “I might not be here to see a wedding happen.”
Now Luke turned away from Vera and stood up. “What do you mean Mother? We haven’t even set a date. Are you going away?”
“No Luke,” said Lynn slowly. “I’m going to die.”
Upstairs, Lynn lay on the king-sized bed she used to share with Philip and closed her eyes. She pushed a pillow underneath her feet and contemplated how much more comfortable she would be if she changed out of her dress and constricting tights, but decided against it. Instead she thought about Luke, for whom she had reluctantly agreed to lie down. On her oak bedside table was a photograph of him aged four standing upright and serious in front of Philip, with John just a toddler in her arms; but she didn’t need to open her eyes to picture either of her sons at this age. Already their personalities had been quite distinct. John forever clung to her, crying if she left the room, nervous, beautiful, expressive, sensitive; while Luke tried to follow his father to work, resisted being hugged, stood next to Philip in the mirror copying the way he wet his hair and slicked it back, and held fiercely to Lynn’s hand when they were out shopping, protecting her. Now he was going to be married. To a girl still young and lovely, still in possession of possibility, whose unwrinkled fingers he’d lace with his own.
Downstairs, voices rose. Vera had left almost immediately. In those first, terrible moments, she’d reached for Luke’s hand, muttered her sympathies and tried not to reveal her disappointment with the way the afternoon had turned out. But Luke had asked her to go. Then he had made Lynn give him the number of her doctor, and spoken to him for almost an hour. Finally, he had called John and forced him to leave his rehearsal, as though it was urgent, this thing she’d been keeping from them for weeks, as though there was something to be done. Now the two of them were sitting at the kitchen table, arguing.
It didn’t surprise Lynn that her sons had already made this about them. Their pain, their responsibilities, their rivalry. This was what she’d been cheated out of all along – a story of her own – so it was apt that even her death was being appropriated by others. In the days after the doctor had told her she had cancer of the liver, and that it had spread there from her breasts by way of her lungs, and that she could have treatment but in his opinion she had only months to live, she had been thinking a lot about where she had lost her narrative, her life, where she had misplaced it. Because that’s what it felt like: a To-Do list that had somehow been mislaid, a piece of lost property, out of sight but still belonging, staunchly, to the original owner, like those war veterans who’ve lost a limb but can still feel it flailing in the empty space, can still deceive themselves that it is there.
When had it happened?
There wasn’t a moment, she supposed. It didn’t come about like that. It was a progression: slow, undetectable, like the cancer. The contrast however between the days in which everything lay sparkling in front of her and then suddenly half-crumpled in her wake was sometimes too much to bear. Summers crept up on her. Days and days and years in which she was hardy and ambitious and the new woman everyone was either excited about or afraid of. She was one of the lucky ones, part of a generation in which things were possible, the whole world open to her if only she was bold enough to grab it. Nobody would have imagined then that she – clever, strong-willed, boyish – would choose an apron, a clean home, a set of china, the same life her mother had had. Not even she would have imagined it, or chosen it perhaps if she’d been aware of what she was choosing in those hours with Philip on the river bank; that she was choosing.
Was it his fault?
Lynn no longer knew the answer to this. A haze had descended without warning on her memories and it was impossible to decipher whose wishes she had been following, Philip’s or her own, whose suggestion it had been that she stay at home, forgo her Masters degree, reject a career; whose doing it was that she sacrificed her story.
Mrs Hunter.
Those two simple words had filled her with such joy, pride and excitement. The day after they returned from their honeymoon in Cannes she had dressed in a new silk blouse they’d bought on the trip, and together they’d made a round of all the institutions that would require knowledge of her new status: the doctor’s surgery, the council office, and the bank where they opened a joint household account, had both names printed on the cheque book, and where, when they left, the doorman said Good day Mrs Hunter, prompting her to run back inside under the pretence of having forgotten her pen just so she could hear it again. No, it wasn’t his fault. She had been complicit.
She should never have taken such joy in baking. This was often what she felt the whole thing boiled down to: food, the substance of life. Right at the beginning when there was still space to mould their roles like the pastry she cut, she should have shaped herself as one of those women who got their husbands to help, or taken a job and hired someone to cook for them. But it was all a game then, being a wife, playing house, not real but a fantastical world like those she visited in the books she read and could dip in and out of at will. In the game, it pleased her to look after him. It pleased her to embrace the novelty of housewifery. It pleased her to see Philip tuck into meals she had prepared especially for him, develop favourites and request them, depend on her.
Luke knocked on the door.
It was quiet in the hallway. John must have left.
“You’ve been asleep,” Luke said as he entered. “Mother, how are you?
”
Rolling her eyes, Lynn sighed overtly back at him. Her son. One of only two accomplishments in her life. Not like women nowadays who could have it all. Like bright, career-driven, youthful Vera. Vera would live.
Lynn should have lived. She should have dared. The problem was she’d always liked to excel. Having taken on the role of wife, mother, it followed that she should strive to be the ideal version of that. No affairs, no complaints, no help, no excess; just church and family and rules and principles and propriety, and everything done properly from scratch. Doing what was right, what was expected. Not that suddenly losing one’s husband – and validation, and dreams, and future – was right, or proper, or expected.
“You’ll have to look after John. When I’m gone,” she told her son.
“Mother, don’t talk like that.”
“He’s not as strong as you are.”
Luke took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, half-filled with the green of hers. He looked a little like Philip as he rested his blond head in his hands, though John was the one that bore Philip’s dark eyes and angular jaw-line and sometimes made her gasp when she was surprised by his silhouette. It was strange that Philip had never seen this likeness, that it was Luke who he filled with himself.
“John can look after himself, Mother. That’s all he can look after.”
“John’s sensitive Luke. And he looks up to you.”
