After Before

by Jemma Wayne

  I must say goodbye now. Emily is here and will be up soon with my lunch. Don’t cry John. Luke, don’t bury yourself in your bible. Do not be sad and do not stop your lives because mine has ended. Your happiness is the only thing I ask you to give me. I am happy. I am with your father now. I’m young again and every possibility is before me.

  Slowly, Luke lowers the letter.

  “That’s it,” he says, turning the page over again to check and fighting against the tremor in his voice. “The rest is just lists and some legal stuff. Do you want me to read it now?”

  John shakes his head. “I suppose we’ll need to talk to Emily.”

  “Emily… ” Luke practically whispers the word. He glances at Vera who smiles in what she hopes is a gentle, reassuring way. A way that says, I am here, though there is much to say. “I mean, she’s leaving so much, to Emily?”

  “She was an angel,” offers John.

  “But - ” Luke’s voice falters.

  Vera raises an eyebrow.

  “I mean we hardly knew her.”

  “Mother did,” says John.

  “But she’s practically a stranger. And I don’t - we should just let her into our lives? Into our… ” He trails off.

  John doesn’t respond but looks at him curiously, and Luke says nothing more. Vera too studies him closely. If asked, she would have gambled that he’d give his whole fortune away in a heartbeat for someone in need. It was after all the Christian thing to do. His resistance makes her wonder, again, how he will react when she tells him everything. She wonders if she will ever tell him that she wants her son back.

  “Shall I call her?” John ventures finally.

  “Not today, surely.”

  “Perhaps we’ll tell her at the funeral.”

  “Do you think she’ll want to come?”

  “Of course,” John stands up, He looks older suddenly. Anxiously, Luke stays his arm.

  “John - ”

  John stops and Luke pauses solemnly, as though reassessing his brother, or his own question, or his whole life. In the end he says nothing, but allows John to pat him on the shoulder, John’s hand lingering for Luke’s affirming tap back. Then John clutches his waistcoat tighter around himself and climbs the stairs to Lynn’s room.

  With John gone, Vera and Luke say nothing for a long while. It is the first time all day that the two of them have been alone and now that they are, Vera doesn’t know what to say to him. In the wake of Lynn’s passing it seems wrong to broach any topic other than her, wrong to mention Venice, wrong to address anything other than the sadness she can see deep in the pool of Luke’s green-grey eyes. Eyes that seem to be avoiding her now, sinking low in the silence.

  “Of course she should give the money to Emily,” Luke mutters finally, glancing ashamedly up at Vera and then down again.

  She wants to tell him it is okay, that a moment of selfishness on the day of his mother’s death is allowed. That this tiny slip is not even what she has been pondering. But they have not yet found a way to pick across the stillness. His fingers fiddle with the clips on the papers he is still holding, then he reties the string as closely as he can remember to the way his mother’s fingers had positioned it. He coughs, then looks at Vera, then shrugs his shoulders and coughs again. Finally he stands and picks up the rest of the paper pile. A key falls from within it, clattering into the quiet.

  “Her art room,” whispers Luke, picking it up gingerly. It seems suddenly necessary to whisper. Vera is grateful to the key for giving them something to whisper about. “She never let us in there.”

  Vera stands up tentatively. “Shall we see?”

  Together, they walk to the room facing the garden and slot the key into the lock. Both of them hesitate before pushing it open, acknowledging that this is hallowed ground. If a spectre of Lynn remains, this is where it will be. The air seems to change as they enter. Vera hangs back allowing Luke to go in first, and stepping across the threshold he inhales loudly, his reaction as stunned as Vera’s was when she first saw it. His mother’s talent is overwhelming, and now that Vera has time to study the room more closely, she sees that the paintings dripping colour from the walls are filled with Luke, and John, and an older man who looks like John, and other images without shape but overflowing with emotion. They are so intimate that even now Vera feels as though she is trespassing. Stepping on a grave.

  In the centre of the room is the wrapped canvas. Luke nods and Vera moves towards it, pausing for just a moment before unwrapping the heavy sheet.

  She cannot help but gasp when she sees herself staring back from within the frame. And not just herself, but the best, most dynamic, most vital version of herself. The version she thought nobody could see. In the bottom right hand corner, Lynn has signed the piece. And in the left is a title: ‘Myself’.

  Vera exhales. Herself? She who was so good? And thought Vera so bad? But yes, she can see Lynn in the eyes, there is something in the front-facing sweep of them. Transfixed, Vera stands staring. Then ever so gently, she feels a soft weight creeping onto her shoulders. Without thinking she lets her shoulders drop, relaxing into the warmth of returning hands. She looks behind her for Luke, but it is not him. The hands nudge her forwards. Gently, she runs her own hand over the edge of the canvas, admiring the myriad of reds that layer and define and create a thousand shades. When her fingers reach the bottom, her ring catches something wedged into the corner on the back. Vera peers around the other side of the canvas and pulls out a loose piece of paper. Luke shrugs his shoulders, so Vera unfolds it, quickly, as though caught up in a hunt for treasure. Lynn’s elegant script is artwork itself, but there are just three words on the page.

  Vera, it reads simply. Have both.

  Vera freezes. Both? A coolness prickles her skin as though she is being spoken to from the grave. But it is not possible that Lynn knew about her son. Unless Luke told her? Even then she could not have known that she wants him back, or that the circumstances are such that having one – Luke or Charles – seems so much to rule out the other. Have both. Have both. Have both. Could she? Can she? It seems so unlikely, Charlie so unmovable, a legal battle so unwinnable. Yet amidst the sadness of the day, Vera dares to hope. Dares to summon strength for the fight. She turns to Luke and sees tears building behind his eyes as he continues to stare at the canvas, his mother and his fiancée rolled with red into one. She goes to him. It doesn’t matter what happened in Venice. It doesn’t matter that there is much to tell, much to navigate. Suddenly nothing seems to matter except that she loves him, and trusts him to love her too, all of her, even her sins. As Jesus loves them both.

  Instinctively, Luke shrugs away her extended hand, but Vera whispers,

  “Don’t shut me out Luke. Let me be here for you.”

  “I want you to be here,” Luke replies, his voice cracking slightly. “More than anything. But - Vera, if you knew the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t want to be. I’ve, I’ve… ” he trails off.

  “It’s not important now.”

  “I committed a great sin.”

  “Stop.” Vera grabs his hand again before Luke can move it away and holds it tight. “Stop Luke. Today is about your mother. Tomorrow, tomorrow we’ll swap our truths.”

  Luke smiles weakly, and she nods. And suddenly he pulls her hands inwards until she moves closer to hug him properly, her heart unexpectedly skipping a beat as she feels the needy wrench of his arms, and they melt into each other. It has been so long since they embraced this way. His frame is so strong, his chest so warm. Vera wraps her arms around his waist beneath his cardigan. And wants never to let him go.

  “Marry me. Marry me today,” he asks of her.

  “Tell me something true,” she whispers into his ear. “Not everything, just one true thing until morning.”

  “I love you,” Luke sobs.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  There were no buses on Christmas Day and so Emily trudged the entire way from Lynn’s house to her flat in He
ndon, thankful for the hours it took in which to think. Her insides were twisted in two, torn between sadness and mourning and regret, and something else, something brighter that made the streets look clean and vivid, despite the weak English sun.

  There was no point in sorry. It would change nothing because Emily wasn’t really regretful at all, and as her mother had told her once, forgiveness only means anything if you are truly full of remorse. She was sorry for Vera of course, and had she met Luke’s fiancée earlier then perhaps she would have chosen differently, especially now she knew how much she must mean to Lynn. But the moment with Luke had transpired so rapidly she wasn’t certain she had chosen it at all. It had seemed more like a necessity, in order to forgive Luke, or rather Jean, and the others like him. Had she managed it? She tested the words in her head: Hutu; uncle; neighbour; friend. No longer numb she felt the full clout of them, but the usual panic seemed to be gone, her scar didn’t throb, she didn’t shiver.

  What would she do if she saw Jean now? If she bumped into him on the dull London street? Immediately, her stomach tightened. There was no pretending that she could ever be pleased by the sight of him, that she could ever again call him a friend, or an almost more than friend. No matter how much she wanted to she could not forget those horrific days and weeks and months in Rwanda in which everything was taken from her, and he was part of it. If only Cassien was alive, or her mother, or one single person that she loved, if there was just one. Infinite presence rather than infinite absence. Maybe then, maybe. Nevertheless, the hatred that had once consumed her had subsided. She did not want to see Jean, but perhaps she had finally escaped him.

  “You are still in the cage,” Lynn had warned her. But she was out now. She was free. They both were. How could she be sorry about that?

  Her thoughts drifted to Omar. She wondered if his brother had flown to New York yet, if his parents were visiting, if he was visiting them. She pictured the pride that dripped from his handsome face when he spoke of his younger brother, the student of law, and imagined that perhaps it was not too late for him to wear such a smile when he thought of her. “Sister,” he had called her, unconscious of how much had hung on such a simple word, how much had been called up by it. Would he still call her sister if he knew about Luke? She thought about Omar’s long, elegant hands, the way he used them in broad gestures to defend her to his friend, the wave he always reserved for her. She could imagine a time when she would allow those hands to touch her.

  When she arrived at her building, there was a collection of empty beer cans lining the front wall, a group of children playing with new footballs which they kicked right across the Christmas-quiet road, and a small cluster of teenagers displaying unblemished trainers while they chain-smoked and pretended not to care; but no Omar. Making her way inside, she embraced her disappointment, tantalisingly aware of what it suggested and wishing she could tell Lynn that she had, after all, been right.

  As she climbed the stairs she was struck by the clamour of Christmas day, struck too by the realisation that for once she longed for quiet, for the chance to hear birdsong and the rustling of the wind.

  When she rounded the last flight of stairs and made her way down the corridor she looked immediately towards Omar’s flat, listening carefully for any sounds that might be evidence of him. So she did not at first notice the white paper envelope with her name, ‘Emilienne’, neatly printed on the front of it pinned to her door. Her first thought was that it was from him, and tearing it open, she allowed her mind to jump ahead to declarations of love, or concern at least, a Christmas greeting, a phone number, a promise. But as soon as she unfolded the paper inside, she saw the official letter heading of GENSUR. Underneath was a handwritten note from Alice.

  ‘Dear Emilienne,’ she read in Kinyarwanda, ‘I am sorry for asking you too much. It was not my intention to probe. Please accept my apologies and contact us as soon as you can. I have some news. Alice.’

  Before opening her door, Emily folded the paper carefully in half, then in quarters, and then once more before pushing it deep into her back pocket, as though if she folded it small enough, she could make it disappear. She didn’t want to talk any more about the genocide. Through Luke, by confronting this apparition, she’d found a way to free herself from Jean, from the last memories of sun-red soil. Lynn had forced her to go back, but now it was time to move in the other direction.

  Inside her flat, she noticed for the first time how small the room was, how dark and claustrophobic, and she yearned suddenly for a window from which she could see the sun. She imagined herself bathing in it, with Omar. Omar. He was the only kernel of her life that she wanted to preserve.

  Emily showered, removing the last of Luke’s aroma from her flesh. She cleaned her teeth, applied perfume, and smoothed her thick hair back from her face into Lynn’s silk yellow headscarf, which had been scrunched up in the bottom of her bag. It was not dissimilar from the one her mother used to wear with her favourite red dress. The scar by Emily’s eye seemed to cut ever more insistently into her face, but for the first time, she wasn’t repulsed by it. It made her look as though she was running so fast that a streak of jet-black mascara was trailing in her wake. She liked the idea of that. The world wouldn’t be able to stop her now. Pulling on a pair of jeans and the most brightly coloured top she owned – a navy jumper – she forgot to paint a smile onto her face but left the apartment wearing one.

  Omar didn’t answer. She knocked three times, but he wasn’t there and the anticlimax of this drove the breath from Emily. She tapped again. On the other side of the door was silence. She sank slowly to the floor and peered underneath the crack into his flat, hoping for a glimpse of his white trainers or the wiry hair she knew lay beneath them. There were only some scattered flyers, and the bottoms of his shantytown boxes. Emily pulled herself into sitting and rested her head against the door.

  The plan to wait for him wasn’t a conscious decision, but Lynn was gone, there was nowhere else to go, and sitting there at least contained the hope of Omar’s return. As she leant her head against the hard wood she noticed how sore and tired her eyes were. She had barely slept the previous night and memories of Lynn’s tiny, gasping mound under the bed covers now danced in front of her heavy lids. Sometimes Lynn’s face sat atop her mother’s body, or visions of John slumped in his chair merged with images of Cassien, but the sorrow she felt washed over her gently, without shaking her frame. She opened her eyes. Omar had still not come, but perhaps he would appear a little later. Perhaps he would apologise for not understanding her desolation. Or let her explain. Perhaps he would say that they should leave this place together, move out of London, out of the city, somewhere she could see the sun.

  When she awoke it was to the sound of a baby crying. “Hush Mary,” she murmured, still caked in sleep, feeling the weight of something heavy in her arms and reaching in half-remembered habit to place a quietening finger inside her sister’s mouth. The crying continued from further away. Slowly, Emily opened her eyes and gradually deciphered the shape of a book and not a baby in her lap. ‘Allah can help you.’ Omar had been.

  Immediately Emily stood and knocked on his door. There was no answer. She tried again but the same stubborn silence from the day before pervaded. A dim morning light was inching its way through a tiny window at the end of the corridor. She jostled the stiff, graffitied frame and found that it could be nudged open. Below, a group of kids were already out again with their footballs, a hum of traffic crawled by, no longer subdued by Christmas, and there, standing at the bus stop across the road, was Omar. Emily dropped the book. A piece of paper fluttered from inside it. She grabbed it from the floor. ‘From afar, you have been loved,’ Omar had written. ‘Not only by Allah.’ Emily glanced again towards the window, and she ran.

  The stairs were far too many and conversations in which Omar had mentioned his intentions to go away soon tumbled through her mind, as she flung herself outside the building and turned towards the road. She scanned the ar
ea, certain that this would be her final opportunity to see him, her last chance. Her frantic eyes found him still standing at the bus stop. His hostile friend was with him and the two seemed locked in deep, angry conversation. Omar’s head was bent, and every now and then he shook it, but even hunched he seemed proud, unable to be beaten. Finally the friend pointed an accusatory finger at Omar, held it there, glared at him, then he threw his hands into the sky and turned away.

  Omar smiled, defiantly.

  From 50 feet away, Emily smiled with him.

  Then, she noticed the suitcases at his feet.

  A noisy grumbling bus came up the road and pulled heavily into the stop. Omar reached for the cases on the floor and boarded, waving a greeting to the bus driver. With the same wave he had once saved for Emily. Or perhaps not. Perhaps it only seemed that way because it was all Emily could see from behind the bars of her cage. The last of the waiting passengers got on behind her old neighbour. And Emily stood, still smiling, transfixed by the scene of him moving seamlessly through the present: settling his bags in the storage rack at the front of the bus, finding a seat, checking his phone, taking out a book, removing his good jacket, glancing out of the window, leaving. Leaving. Leaving.

  “Omar!”

  The bus hissed its doors to a close and sighed as it began to pull away.

  “Omar!” Emily screamed. She ran towards it, fast, faster, her legs and arms flooding with acid, but somehow, the distance seemed only to grow. She shouted again, but no sound came out. She waved, but her movements were slow and minuscule. She ran. But with every metre she covered, the bus and Omar on it fell further away. An unreachable plane.

  She stopped. He was gone.

  A car beeped impatiently as she stood in the middle of the road. And he was gone.

  On the pavement, a couple glanced at her curiously, interested but from a distance, without a stake in her loss.