Yellow Room

by Shelan Rodger

  Denise got up sharply and walked over to the window. Chala waited for her to come back and sit down again, but she started to speak, with her back to Chala, still staring out the window. ‘The lett… it was written not long after I left—’

  Then the phone rang and Denise moved away from the window to pick it up and her voice transformed itself into cool professionalism.

  ‘Listen,’ she said as she put the phone down afterwards. ‘Let’s leave the letter until tomorrow. Can you bear that? Let’s have supper and talk about the weather for a bit, shall we?’ She smiled warmly, and Chala, exhausted already, found herself breathing out and joining in.

  ‘OK, the weather it is, for now.’

  CHAPTER 45

  But the weather didn’t last long. Chala was just returning from the loo, between courses, when she caught Denise scanning her quizzically.

  ‘Yes, I’m pregnant.’ She almost wanted to laugh, desperate to share this news with someone who could take it at face value.

  ‘Are you pleased?’ Denise gave nothing away, however.

  ‘I wasn’t at first, but now I am. Now it feels right to have it.’

  ‘And Paul?’

  Chala searched for words and both women made eye contact. ‘Is it his?’ asked Denise quietly.

  ‘I think so.’ Chala’s response was barely audible. But Denise spoke quickly. ‘Do you love Paul?’

  ‘Yes.’ Chala felt emotion welling at the back of her throat again.

  ‘Do you want to have your baby with him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then it’s his.’ There was the tiniest pause and then Denise spoke again so quickly that Chala would wonder later if she’d recalled the conversation accurately. ‘So how did he react? I take it you didn’t tell him until you got back?’

  It was uncanny how perceptive Denise was about her. It made Chala imagine this was what it might be like to have your own mother.

  ‘No, I didn’t tell him until the day after I got back and now he’s gone away to think about it all. He was shocked and angry, I think, that I didn’t tell him while I was still in Kenya. And I always said I never wanted children, but then it felt different, when I actually got pregnant. I—’ Chala swallowed. ‘I couldn’t kill it.’

  ‘Chala—’ Denise had reached across the table and pulled Chala’s hand towards her, looking straight at her, and Chala wanted to curl up and hide from the intensity in her. ‘If you love him, stand by him and by your decision. It will be for the best, trust me.’

  Silence. But eventually Denise filled it comfortably. ‘Right, time for some very rich, cheeky chocolate mousse – perfect for pregnant women – and now I understand why you’ve been refusing my alcohol all evening!’

  As she disappeared into the kitchen, Chala realised, gratefully, that the conversation that might have developed between them had been allowed to drop. Even now she almost doubted what had actually been said. At some obscure level, it was almost as if Denise was enabling Chala to do what she herself had failed to do: to turn the clock back, to pick up the pieces and rescue her future with Paul.

  ‘He’ll come back, I’m sure of it.’ Denise was back, spooning thick dark chocolate into their bowls.

  ‘What makes you so sure?”

  ‘I don’t know him, and I suppose I don’t really know you either, although I feel I do, but I could see it in the way he looked at you at the funeral. He adores you, it’s obvious, and he cares about you. He cared enough to risk losing you by letting you go to Kenya. He won’t want to lose you now. He strikes me as very different from Philip.’

  ‘In what way?’ Chala was intrigued.

  ‘Philip would never fight for anything. It strikes me that Paul will.’

  ‘Philip fought for me,’ were the words that went through Chala’s mind, but she didn’t voice them. ‘I hope you’re right,’ was all she said.

  That night, Chala dreamed about a buttercup-yellow room and in it her own little baby girl lay sleeping peacefully in a cot. Beside her, perched on the tiny pillow at the head of the cot, sat a cloth doll called Rosie, who kept watch to make sure that nothing ever happened to her charge, never for a second closing her eyes.

  CHAPTER 46

  Fried bananas and honey, fresh croissants and the smell of coffee, talk of the weather again and the previous night’s sleep and the day’s innocuous headlines – there was nothing left to delay the moment that both women were dreading.

  ‘Do you want me to tell you what it says or do you just want to read it?’ Denise looked as though she had slept very badly indeed. ‘Oh God,’ she continued, not waiting for Chala to reply, ‘I hope I’m doing the right thing, sharing this with you. There are some things best left alone and this may be one of them. I’m beginning to question my motivation. I thought you had a right to know, but now I’m not so sure that it isn’t just me wanting to share my burden. Chala, are you sure you want to know?’

  It was the most tortuous speech Chala had ever heard Denise make. She laughed with false bravado. ‘After a build-up like that I couldn’t say no, even if I wanted to!’ But she continued more gently when Denise failed to respond to her attempt at humour. ‘Yes, Denise, I do want to know what’s in that letter.’ She paused. ‘Nothing in it can change the way I feel about Philip.’

  Denise poured herself a coffee from the caffeinated pot and another decaf for Chala, pulled out the envelope and placed it on the table. ‘I think it’s probably best if you just read it yourself. I’ll be in the living room. Give me a shout when you’re ready.’

  Chala found herself staring at the envelope, much as she had looked at the pee stick in Naivasha, delaying the moment of no return. Then, too, a woman who cared had been waiting in another room. Pregnant or not pregnant? What could this letter possibly hold that could surprise or upset her? She picked up the envelope and smelled it for some sign of Philip. Then, feeling silly, she turned it over, opened the flap, pulled out the letter and started to read.

  My dearest Denise,

  How did the pain that came into our lives lodge so firmly between us? In a way I suppose I should feel grateful that you left, because by leaving you have taken away the easy option. Does it shock you that I actually thought about suicide? Suicide is for cowards, I hear you say. Or for those brave enough to accept the consequences of their actions, I might argue.

  Now that you’ve gone I cannot leave Chala and I’m not even sure I would have had the guts to leave her anyway. Perhaps if I thought she would have made you happy, filled the space of Emma, but you drew back from us both, as if there were some kind of awful collusion between us. Poor Chala, she is the innocent victim of this mess.

  I know you already blame me and yet you don’t even know what really happened. When I am strong enough, I will give you this letter so that you know the whole truth. I can’t do that yet. There is too much of me that still hopes you will come back. I don’t know how it got this far. It all happened so quickly and then suddenly there was this historical truth out there and we all used the word ‘accident’ to cover up the details, and Chala was so little, a part of me thought it wouldn’t matter. But I am eaten alive by what nobody knows. I want you to know, but I want you to forgive me. Can you do that? Can you forgive me? Can you give us another chance? Give Chala a chance?

  If I think your answer could be yes – or when I am strong enough to deal with the possibility that your answer may never be yes – then, only then, will I give you this letter. And then you will know that Emma was already dead and that Chala never had anything to do with what happened.

  I checked upstairs before I left the house. I know you told me never to leave her alone, but I thought it wouldn’t matter. I was only going round to the corner shop to buy loo roll. She seemed fine, but when I got back she wasn’t. I didn’t realise anything was wrong until Chala was already in the cot. I don’t know how long it was before you came into the room. I was in a state of shock and you were so convinced by the version of events that you thought you’d s
een. There were so many people around – doctors, police – and I can’t remember any of it clearly. You seemed to do all the talking and I let you.

  By the time I came to and realised what I had allowed to happen, it was too late. By then it would have looked too weird, too suspicious. And then there was the inquest and I was scared they might think I had done something to her. All the time a child was responsible, no one was guilty, it was just an accident, but if it was an adult, it might have been something else. I was too scared to open that door. I still am. Scared. And guilty. And sorry.

  If you ever read this it will be because I have reached a stronger place. If ever you want to come back, I am here for you, for you and for Chala, and I will stand by her now as best I can.

  Philip

  Chala drew her knees up onto the chair and put her arms around them, as if she needed the physical sense of her own body, as if its physicality were the only thing she could rely on right now. She closed her eyes, remembered the way she had seemed to float away from herself in a hotel room in Australia. She needed to stay inside her body now. She forced herself back to the words, read the letter again. The wheel of her brain moved slowly.

  Cot death. Very little was known about it then. Now everybody knew about it, avoided putting their babies in certain positions. Her mind was working in slow motion, a rational piece of it trying to calculate what age she might have been when the notion of cot death became normal.

  She felt peculiarly hollow, almost lethargic. So, it was… real accident after all. A tiny real accident that created a lifetime of guilt in a little girl. It wasn’t Chala who’d killed Emma. Her hand moved to the life in her tummy. Paul, she wanted to cry out. Paul, imagine if I’d killed this baby. For nothing. She felt two emotions surge inside her, emotions that didn’t fit naturally in the same space: relief and a mute bitterness. Suddenly, memories were swimming through her: the endless nightmares about Rosie, the taunting at school, the dryness of her eyes when they rescued the fox at the side of the road, the fraudulent calm in her step on her wedding day, the rotten core of her being that had made it possible to sleep with someone else and had made it seem impossible that she could ever be a moth…

  This rotten, dysfunctional core was a mistake? She didn’t know how to process what this meant. And yet Denise had believed it was h… and Philip had allowed the world to think that was true. Philip, why didn’t you tell me? The bitterness gave way to a powerless sense of empathy. She was not the only one who had carried guilt in the core of her being because of this tiny, genuine accident.

  She looked up, confused by a noise at the door, to see Denise walk in and sit down at the table.

  ‘You’ve read it? You understand now that it wasn’t you?’

  She looked at Denise with incomprehension on her face. And she saw the pain in Denise’s own face.

  ‘Oh God, you must feel terrible. No wonder it had such an impact on you.’ She understood suddenly how this revelation must have played havoc with Denise’s own sense of self. Like a painter returning to a tired old canvas, in one swift movement the letter had splashed paint over the top of Chala’s guilt and painted a new, red gash of guilt in Denise’s own life. It was Denise’s interpretation of events that had allowed a child to grow up thinking it was all her fault. ‘Denise, don’t blame yourself. There’s been too much blame, too much guilt already.’ She reached out and put an unsteady hand on Denise’s arm.

  Denise spoke quietly. ‘I felt consumed by guilt when I read the letter. I’m so sorry, Chala, for my part in all this. I couldn’t tell you by phone or email.’

  ‘Denise, don’t. I understand.’

  At a rational level, she did understand, but emotionally the letter had been too much to take in. You couldn’t paint away your entire sense of self with just one stroke of a brush, could you? You couldn’t paint over a lifetime with just a few words, could you?

  That little girl in the playground – she remembered the incomprehension, the utter bewilderment she’d felt in the face of Louise’s revelation; the life she had spent since, trying to make sense of it, come to terms with it. And Philip? His secret guilt. She felt as if she were in her namesake lake all over again, a sickly cloying of dark water all around her.

  CHAPTER 47

  Daytime sleep had left her feeling drugged and heavy. Exhausted and unsteady, she had gone to lie down after the conversation with Denise and fallen asleep on top of the bed. Still fully clothed, she felt now as if her whole body were creased. She tiptoed into the bathroom and splashed cold water over her face to try and reduce the puffiness around her eyes. She went back into her room and sat in the artificial darkness on the side of her bed, looking at her feet. One foot at a time, Femke always said. Which foot now?

  She walked over to the window and pulled the thick, green curtain back slightly to see what kind of day was left. It was a hazy autumn afternoon and copper-coloured leaves sprinkled the pavement. A school memory surfaced. Amanda was off sick and a shy new girl called Betty had asked if she could sit beside her. Chala had felt pleased and flattered and proud, but then in the break she had seen Louise pulling Betty aside in the corridor and whispering something in her ear. Betty never sat beside her again.

  Oh Philip, how could you have let that happen? How could you have stood on the sidelines of my growing up like that? Who would I have been if I’d grown up without that kind of stigma? I understand why it was too hard to say anything at the time, I do, but later? Why didn’t you tell me later?

  ‘I will never lie to you, little baby,’ she spoke softly to her tummy.

  But then she sank back down on the bed again, the irony crashing around her. There would be a secret between her and her baby. If she could never tell Paul she was unsure who the father really was, then she couldn’t tell anyone else either, she could never tell her own child. Like Philip, she would carry the burden of a secret guilt to her grave. The irony, she thought again: a lifetime of misplaced guilt, replaced by another, new, self-inflicted guilt. She would never get away from it. If she had not grown up defined by guilt, if the rot had never taken root, would she have been capable of that night with Bruce? And if that night hadn’t happened, would there be a baby now?

  She ached for the little girl she’d been; she ached for Philip. If only he had told her. She would have been able to reassure him, tell him she forgave him, perhaps saved him from taking his life…if that is what he did.

  A noise at the door made her jump. It was Denise, asking awkwardly if she would like a cup of tea. Her face looked old. Chala tried to find a spark of the anger she’d felt towards Denise before they met again at the funeral. After all, it was Denise’s interpretation of events that had been taken at face value, her version of what she thought she’d seen that Philip had colluded with, and if she hadn’t run away Philip might have found the strength to bring it all out into the open. But she could find no anger inside her for Denise. And when she thought of Philip there was just a soft, open wound that she didn’t know how to dress. She wanted desperately to talk to Paul, to process this new reality with him, to hand it to him like a present: here – I’m not a bad person after all. He would have sat her on his lap, looked into her eyes and said it didn’t make any difference to how much he loved her, but he would have rejoiced too, helped her focus on the positive.

  ‘Chala, are you ready to come downstairs for a cup of tea?’ Denise spoke again, almost in a whisper, and Chala found herself thinking of Winnie. Go girl, go and get yourself a cup of tea – and be strong for that woman. She needs you now. She could almost hear Winnie’s voice; the rich, deep, gospel tone of her words.

  ‘Yep, I’m coming. I’ll be down in a sec.’ She looked into the pain on Denise’s face. ‘Thanks, Denise.’

  ‘Do you think he did it, then?’ They were on their third cup of tea and Chala was stretched out on the red leather sofa.

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know.’

  ‘I was so sure he did, you know
, when I got back from Australia. I kept remembering this conversation we’d had when I was about fifteen, about the way we’d all do it if we had to. I knew how he’d do it. I said he’d just walk into the sea and he said, yes, that would be a good way to go.’

  ‘Maybe that was just a coincidence, something you seized on in your reconstruction of events.’

  The word reconstruction struck a chord for Chala. She thought of all the reconstructions that had played in her head over the years as she’d tried to create a version of her childhood act that made it possible to live with herself. But the reality of what she’d done, what she’d been capable of at such a tender age, had seeped into every pore of her being – and yet it had all been based on a lie, an untruth allowed to turn into reality. She wanted to reach back to the little girl she had been at school, reach out and tell her classmate Betty it was OK, it was OK to sit next to her.

  ‘I just wish Philip had told me,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I told you he was weak. That’s just something we have to accept.’

  ‘But he wasn’t weak for me,’ she objected gently, still unable to accept any criticism of Philip. ‘At least he stayed, at least he didn’t give up or run away, at least he tried to protect me.’ She was thinking of Philip, but she realised that the words sounded like a recrimination. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, groping for solidity. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I completely understand why you left, it’s just that—’

  ‘You’re right, though.’ It was said simply and it was disarming.

  ‘No, no, that’s not what I meant. It’s just, oh God, I don’t know. . . I wish I could talk to Philip,’ she finished lamely, up against the wall of his non-being. Denise said nothing, but her face was soft in sympathy.

  ‘You know,’ Chala spoke as if she were thinking aloud, ‘I’m actually less sure now that he committed suicide than I was before I read the letter. I mean, if he contemplated it all those years ago and didn’t do it, why would he do it now? And if he had chosen to do it, surely he would have wanted to make things right by sending that letter or a version of it to us both?’