After Before

by Jemma Wayne

  They talked about themselves. All three of them seemed united in this end, though the lunch had been, Lynn knew, a symptom of their guilt at the fact she was dying, a desire to do something nice for her while she was still alive. All the while John and Luke made jovial digs at the other that weren’t quite jovial, and didn’t notice how cross this made her, cross with herself. She should humour them, act the grateful parent, but she couldn’t help the surge of bitterness inside her. Particularly sour when the boys made it so plainly clear that she had done everything wrong. Every now and then one of them, usually Vera, made an inquiry into her health: was she experiencing any of those dizzy spells she’d been warned about yet, any sickness, any lethargy? This was the topic on which she was consulted, her illness, though even this was not something they considered her to be an expert in. They knew better it seemed. They were young, they’d been on the Internet, Googled it, had a better grip on these things. She was not yet 60. Philip had been 45… They chattered on about work, friends, the wedding, John’s play, Luke’s promotion, the new church Vera had stumbled upon. They included her in these conversations but not as an equal; she listened but only with half an ear.

  She didn’t care. It allowed her more time to think about Emily. She had not pushed the subject of Rwanda again since the day Luke’s appearance had prompted it. Such darkness could not be dragged out of a person, she knew. It had to be offered. Relinquished. Still, over the past weeks Lynn had been alert to opportunities to encourage it. She’d set them tasks over which conversation was inevitable, and sent Emily shopping for items that might provoke interest, like the waistcoat. And she’d purposely left open the door to her art room, uncovering a canvas she had painted some months earlier, full of blacks and purples and swirling angry markers of her own resentments and regrets. Signs that she might be a person to understand darkness. And wanted to.

  The conversation between her children bubbled lightly on. Occasionally Lynn resisted the pull of her own reveries and said something controversial to shock them, but they only looked at her with raised eyebrows as though it was the illness talking and not her, a sound in their periphery. They didn’t ask her about her hopes, her dreams, her ambitions. They probably assumed she didn’t have any. They probably thought she never had, or that they were it.

  Vera was full of enthusiasm all through the meal. Radiating even more youthful gusto than usual, a sugar-dipped energy dripping an elation that was driving Lynn mad. The starters! The fish! Had they seen the fish?! The cheesecake! She smiled constantly, particularly at Luke, trying in vain to infect him with her sickening excitement. Lynn noticed that Luke’s demeanour remained solemn. Perhaps out of respect for her own humourless deportment? It made her wonder from where Vera’s fervour had sprung.

  “Cheesecake is not meant to be eaten after fish,” she informed her.

  Vera ordered fruit.

  Lynn’s chocolate mousse was too sweet and reminded her of the sickly taste that was striking more regularly. She picked at it slowly. Had she ever sent a dish back? Philip used to do it sometimes, if something was overcooked or under, too salty or not hot enough, but this had always been an embarrassment to Lynn. She’d never wanted to offend, or point out the mistakes of others. Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone. But why? In the spirit of fairness? Since when had life been fair? It wasn’t for her. It wasn’t for Emily. Vera was the only one who seemed to have everything.

  “When does your play open?” Vera asked John as the coffees arrived. “And what’s it about?”

  Lynn handed her half-eaten mousse to the waiter and ordered a sorbet instead. She watched her coffee filter, the dark residue cleverly lifted from what was pure.

  “It’s a comedy,” John grinned over his own cappuccino. “Luke, you’d like it.”

  “Would I?”

  John brushed the long, front strands of his hair gracefully off his face and smiled again, indulgently, as though he was about to confide a secret.

  “It’s about a man who’s obsessed with himself,” he said. “He can’t see beyond his own person, you know.” He smiled mischievously at Vera. “And he’s constantly exasperated because nobody’s as good as he is. In the end, he dies in a car crash because he’s looking at himself in the mirror instead of at the road.” John took another sip of his coffee without taking his eyes off his brother.

  Vera laughed.

  “That’s a comedy?” Luke asked, with unusual quiet.

  “It’s very satirical. A lot of fun to play.”

  “Well I suppose you can draw from - ”

  “It’s Echo and Narcissus,” pronounced Lynn, reaching for her coffee cup. Refereeing. Again they’d all assumed she hadn’t been listening, or forgotten she was there, and turned towards her now with evident surprise. She waited for the last drops of their attention to filter through, then slowly took a sip. “Isn’t it Vera?”

  “Narcissus? Do you mean the flower?” Vera squirmed, touching her loose blonde hair, and Lynn laughed cruelly. But they were listening now.

  “Didn’t you do Ancient History my dear?” she said. “Greek myths? At university?”

  “I did Social Policy at university.”

  “Oh. That’s a degree is it? I thought that must have been an extra little course you did, or something.” Lynn’s sorbet arrived and she dug into it, delivering a delicate spoonful of sour lemon into her mouth. For the first time all afternoon she didn’t notice the pain in her side. “Is social policy useful then?”

  “Actually, it is quite useful at the moment,” Vera replied, smiling tiresomely at Lynn. “It’s been helpful for the new charity I’m working on. There was a piece about it last week in the Sunday Times. That I wrote. I did the interviews.”

  “You mean you wrote down the stories people told you?” Lynn queried.

  “Well, I did a little more than - ”

  “Like a secretary? You must have impeccable shorthand.”

  “Actually I recorded them on a disc.”

  “Oh. I see. Well it sounds very high-powered my dear. Very clever of you.” Vera fell silent. Luke said nothing. “So then, John,” she continued brightly. “You were telling us about Echo and Narcissus, your play… ”

  To Lynn’s disappointment, the hush she had created was not satisfying; she felt slightly embarrassed, as though she was a teenager again and had said something a little too bold, a little too crass. She was grateful when John delicately resurrected the lightness of chatter, and this time she didn’t mean to interrupt it. But the pain came sharply. The cool taste of sorbet was replaced immediately by a return of hot, sticky sweetness and in the end Luke had to leave John his card to pay the bill so they could make a quick exit to the car. Back home, Luke wanted to call the doctor. He didn’t seem to trust himself with her disease the way he did with finance or faith or politics, and he didn’t trust her intuition either. Every time she made a sound, he made a fuss, but she knew the doctor would be as useless as they were. When Emily had gone with her to see Doctor Hammond the previous Tuesday he’d prescribed a few painkillers and recommended that she read about her particular kind of cancer, so that she’d be prepared for the symptoms when they began to manifest, but she hadn’t wanted to waste the last days of her life reading about her death. And so she’d asked him to be succinct - what could she expect? “Spell it out to me,” she’d demanded. But still he’d answered illusively: fatigue, nausea, perhaps pain, a deterioration of the cough she’d had for years, possibly jaundice in the latter stages, everyone was different. In essence, he didn’t know. So Lynn also didn’t know. Only that a doctor couldn’t help, and that the pain would continue to get worse as she neared the end.

  “Stop fussing Luke,” Lynn scolded him as he tucked a blanket around her on the sofa. “I’m perfectly fine now. I’m not an invalid.”

  He stood at the end of the sofa holding an extra cushion. “Are you sure Mother?” She noticed his jaw quivering and that he clutched the cushion tightly. Lynn nodded awkwardly at him now a
nd motioned for him to sit down. He did so slowly. “Mother, shall we pray?”

  Lynn closed her eyes. “The kettle’s boiled,” she answered.

  While Luke was tending to it, Lynn drifted. It was warm under the blanket, like the summer that John had turned two and Luke was sick with the chickenpox and the whole house had seemed in need of his cooling calamine lotion. Luke had been afraid of the doctor who made house calls and prodded at him with his stethoscope. He hadn’t liked the red beard or the bushiness of his eyebrows, and when the doctor asked him questions he’d answered in a voice far smaller than he was. Somewhere in the distance the doorbell rang. The doctor?

  “That’ll be John forgetting his keys again,” Luke mumbled from the kitchen, and in her sleepiness Lynn noticed that his voice was deeper now. “It is John,” he called from the hallway and she could almost hear his eyes rolling as he found her other son, as expected. Would he roll his eyes if he understood John’s absences? Not that being gay explained forgetting his keys, but it explained why he had withdrawn from them, why he would not come to church, or rather her forcing him to hide his sexuality explained these things.

  They all came into the sitting room and Vera poured the tea, remembering how Lynn took it and this time not spilling. They had filled the green teapot with the white crocuses, which Lynn never used, and she recalled without meaning to the weekend in Cornwall when she and Philip had found it. “We’ll use it for tea parties,” they’d promised each other as the shopkeeper wrapped it up for them carefully in newspaper. But it didn’t match the rest of their set and they’d always selected the cream and red one instead.

  “Philip, pass the biscuits,” she said to John, noticing the slip of her tongue even as she said it.

  “Mother, I’m John,” he said. “Not Philip.”

  “I know, I know,” she snapped, taking a ginger crunch biscuit that Emily had bought. But she saw the boys glancing at each other.

  They seemed to be waiting for something. All three of them were watching her carefully and speaking quietly as if she were as delicate as the china they were holding.

  “Stop it,” she told them, and again they exchanged furtive glances. “Stop it at once,” she repeated.

  “Mother, are you in pain?” Luke fretted, hovering half-seated before her.

  “No. I’m fine.”

  “Is it your stomach?” John asked.

  “I said I’m fine.” Suddenly she was the centre of attention, no longer peripheral, her every move watched and analysed; but this was not the narrative she’d wanted a lead role in. This was not what she’d been waiting for, sacrificed for, been promised.

  “Perhaps she needs another painkiller,” Vera suggested to Luke.

  Lynn dropped her teacup onto the floor. The china shattered at once on the wooden surface and the tea quickly soaked through the floorboards, into the nearby Persian rug, and up the sides of the cream sofa. Vera gasped.

  “Don’t worry Mother, we can fix it,” Luke declared, leaping into action and gathering the broken pieces.

  “Leave it.”

  “We can do it Mother,” John confirmed, the two of them finally, anxiously, united. Vera ran into the kitchen to fetch a damp cloth.

  “Leave it alone,” Lynn demanded, but they ignored her, or didn’t hear her, and carried on.

  “We can save it,” Luke soothed.

  “It’s okay,” John hushed.

  But all at once Lynn found herself bellowing.

  “I said leave it alone!” she yelled, coughing as the strength of her command scratched its way through her chest and into her throat. “It’s broken. It’s shattered. It cannot be fixed. That’s the end of it. Clear up the mess and let’s move on.”

  “But I can save it Mother,” Luke ventured once more. “If we just follow the pattern I can glue it back together, I can save it.”

  “No you can’t,” she decreed. “It’s too late. And I don’t want you to try.”

  The broken pieces were swept into a dustpan and transferred into the kitchen bin. Vera dabbed at the accusatory marks on the sofa, but only lightly. Nobody made an attempt at the stained Persian rug. Silence pervaded.

  “If I were you, I’d get on with your lives,” she announced suddenly, opening her eyes wide, sitting up more and startling them all. “This could go on for quite a while you know. I’m not dead yet.”

  For once Luke was speechless, so it was John who protested for them. “Mother, don’t talk like that,” he said. “Please… ”

  The phone rang. Letting out an overly irritated sigh, Lynn flapped a hand, feeling the need to be consistent in front of Vera who she’d chided for such an interruption a few weeks before. But she used to love the sound of that ring. And there was a time when her phone used to buzz as often as the young ones, with dinner invitations, with gossip, Philip just saying hello, her mother checking in – Have you been resting enough? How are the boys? Are you eating properly? – irritating queries she missed now with a burning sadness.

  “It’s a woman called Pippa, from Home Care,” John announced hesitantly, the receiver in his hand. “Says she needs to talk to you about sending Emily on weekends.”

  “I’ve already told them!” Lynn exploded again, this time not intending the excess of her reaction. She was aware that her poise was completely extinguished now; but she would not be an invalid publicly. She would not let on that she had already conceded to ask Home Care for more help. Taking a deep, painful breath, she glanced away from her sons towards the books that lined the room. The stories. This wasn’t her story. In The Secret Garden she’d seen herself in Mary Lennox, not Colin; in Great Expectations she hadn’t been Miss Havisham, but Pip; and in Pride and Prejudice she’d loved Elizabeth Bennett: bright, bold, unconventional. She was Elizabeth.

  “But Mother, you’re going to need more help,” Luke appeased. “If not Home Care then even the church can - ”

  She would not slip without a stand into oblivion.

  “If she doesn’t want the carer more often, she doesn’t want the carer more often,” John declared, quickly asking Pippa if they could call her back and putting the phone down on the side table. “Mother, I have to go now.” He bent down to kiss her.

  It was not over yet. She still felt a sense of purpose. Since listening to Emily, she should say, she felt again she had a task.

  Luke stood up. “John, you can’t just say that and walk out. Take some responsibility.”

  Her task was to help Emily. That was why she couldn’t stop thinking of her. That was why, maybe, Emily had arrived at her door. That was why, perhaps, she’d gotten this sick, sick sickness. Too early. Too abruptly, like Philip… Lynn shook her head. It was too indulgent to believe in such a grand plan. Too romantic, too stupid. But nevertheless, perhaps this was her chance to leave a mark on the world, on Life - not in the printed word, but in the careful language passed between herself and just one other.

  “I am taking responsibility, I’m listening to Mother.”

  A language she’d learnt as a wife, as a mother. It had to be.

  “You’re not.” Luke’s eyes were flashing at John, his hands in fists. “You’re ignoring how sick she is, and how sick she’s going to get, and you’re doing what’s easy. Grow up John. She needs help. Are you going to look after her?”

  “Nobody has to look after me.” Lynn interrupted, pulling the blanket indignantly around her and trying not to cough. Luke was looking to her now to referee, but she merely flapped her hand. She didn’t have time for their squabbles. She had to find a way, quickly, to get Emily to open up. To deconstruct her barriers. Before time ran out.

  “This is what you always do!” Luke continued at John. “You leave all of the hard decisions to me and go off to live your carefree life. The prodigal son.”

  She had to convince Emily to let out the truth. To speak it.

  “My life is not carefree,” John admonished abruptly, his face suddenly dark. “You know nothing about my life. You never wanted to know any
thing about my life, none of you did, so - ”

  Lynn looked up. Her youngest son was standing paralysed by the door, full of anger, full of injury. She sighed. Of course. Emily was not the only one who needed to speak the truth.

  After John had left, Luke sat back down in his chair. Vera touched his shoulder but he shrugged it off.

  “He won’t think of anyone besides himself,” Luke said finally.

  “He has enough to deal with.”

  “Why do you always defend him?” Luke sighed heavily. A long time ago Philip used to do the same.

  Vera glanced at the clock.

  “Emily can come at weekends,” Lynn said finally.

  Chapter

  Twenty-One

  Charlie is waiting outside her flat. It is the third time that Vera has seen him in as many days and the hours between these encounters seem unbearably long. Today, he has promised that he will bring photos and Vera can barely contain her urge to skip and jump and leap down the corridor towards him. All afternoon during lunch with Lynn, and afterwards in her heavy, lifeless living room, watching heavy, dying seconds tick by, Vera has been looking forward to this moment. And replaying another in her mind, as she has been doing for many days.

  She likes to tell it to herself again and again. She likes to say it aloud. She likes to hear it and feel it and cling to it with both arms. And laugh hysterically into the mirror where there is a not entirely disfigured woman laughing back at her. Even as she strides towards Charlie, she whispers it under her breath, his words: He’s alive Vera. That newspaper cutting you gave me, you didn’t read it properly, you fool. It was another baby, a poor sod in Clapham. You said Euston, right? St Andrew’s? I’ve been checking. I’ve been inquiring. I hired a lawyer. Vera, I’ve found him.

  Charlie waves and pulls an envelope from his pocket. She reaches for it, but Charlie lifts it above her until she has delivered a kiss to his pursed lips. She tears it open.

  And he is there.

  Alive.

  Beautiful.

  With eyes still blue.