War of the Wives

by Tamar Cohen

  But Josh is speaking again. I must concentrate.

  “Then I was thinking about all the shit that’s been going on, and I got this mad idea that it was because of Dad not being...you know...sorted.”

  I blink at him. “Sorted?”

  “You know, peaceful.”

  Don’t tell me Josh is getting spiritual?

  “So then I thought, what I should do is do something with the ashes.”

  Josh says this as though it’s entirely obvious and for a second, I nod. Then it sinks in...

  “Your father’s ashes? You’ve disposed of your father’s ashes without consulting anyone else?”

  He looks at me, sheepish. “Sorry,” he says.

  He opened the safe, he tells me, remembering that the new combination was our wedding anniversary, and took out the box, deciding to get the holdall from the garage when he realized how heavy it would be to carry. He also took his father’s coat from the cupboard in the hall.

  “And then I went,” he says.

  “Went where?”

  “Along the river,” comes the answer. My son strolled out into the night, wheeling the ashes of his dead father all the way to Putney Bridge.

  And the madness keeps on coming!

  I can picture him so clearly, still warmed by the effects of the whiskey (was there also a spliff involved? I wouldn’t be surprised. I’ve been such a negligent mother, thinking only of myself), reaching into the box and opening up the plastic urn.

  “It was a plastic flowerpot, for fuck’s sake,” says Josh, suddenly angry. “No wonder Dad hated it in there.”

  He tipped out most of the ashes, standing in the middle of the bridge, and watched them fall into the water, wondering where they’d end up. A rogue gust of wind blew some of the finer particles back at him, and they settled like dandruff on his coat. Literally wearing his father on his back. My anger at what he’s done drains out of me. Somehow it doesn’t seem wrong, after all, this private little ceremony.

  “Did you say anything?” I want to know.

  God knows why it seems important. What is there to say, for goodness’ sake? And yet...

  Josh looks embarrassed. “I dunno. I guess so,” he says. He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it, but I press him.

  It suddenly seems burningly important to me that Simon had some sort of send-off, lying bastard though he was.

  Josh looks at my face. Gives in.

  “I told him he really bollocksed things up, but he wasn’t a bad person. I said he was my dad, and I loved him and I miss him.”

  Josh stares fixedly at Walter’s basket, obviously mortified to have made such an admission out loud. We both gaze in rigid silence at the small blanket-covered body.

  The sob comes from nowhere, ripped out of him like something he has absolutely no control over. And suddenly he’s once again the cheeky, good-natured, warmhearted toddler he once was, albeit one who reeks of whiskey. How impossibly long seems the decade and a half that separates the person I am now from the woman I was then, who kissed his chubby hand when he fell over and crawled out of his room at night on my knees in case he woke. It’s a whole lifetime, and yet, looking at my sad, grief-drained boy, it seems like no time at all.

  I move toward him, my arms open, and suddenly we’re hugging each other quite as if the world might be about to end.

  27

  LOTTIE

  I am up well before it’s light, my stomach churning with a mixture of panic and dread, knowing I have to confront what Sadie told me last night. I don’t want to talk to my daughter about the things she’s done with that boy, that man. Everything in me wants to shy away from it, pretend it didn’t happen. Yet I must, because if not me, then who? I steel myself to bring it up over breakfast. Entering the kitchen, Sadie is already closed off after last night’s blurted confidences. She doesn’t want to talk.

  “I need to know,” I tell her, my voice sounding unnaturally loud. “Did it go...all the way?”

  All the way? I’ve turned into a 1950s housewife! But we don’t have the language for this kind of conversation, Sadie and I. It’s all so new.

  Sadie snorts with laughter. “All the way?” she parrots, but her face is burning.

  “It’s important, Sadie. Did you use...?”

  She makes an ugh sound and turns away, embarrassed.

  “It’s okay,” she says, to the wall. “I’m not completely stupid, you know?”

  I expect her to storm off to her room at this point, as she usually does, but to my surprise she stays, spooning cereal into her mouth.

  “And afterward?” I venture. “What happened then?”

  Her face droops, and I want to get a straw and suck all the sadness away from her.

  “I never heard from him,” she says. Again, I feel a rush of hatred for the boy that is Simon’s son.

  “I must tell Selina,” I say. “She needs to know.”

  Sadie glances at me then away. She doesn’t speak.

  SELINA

  I awake to the beeping of my phone, announcing a text message.

  Greg out of coma, it reads.

  Not yet fully conscious but all looks promising.

  I stare at the screen, trying to assess my own reaction. Guilt tugs at me like a small child at my hem. Obviously, I’m happy to hear he’s going to be all right, but I ought to have been more concerned, oughtn’t I? I oughtn’t to have pushed him from my mind so easily. I ought definitely to have given him as much thought as a dead dog. This is someone I was intimate with... Or was I? Does intimacy really describe the relationship I had with Greg Ronaldson? Come to think of it, does relationship really describe it? Wasn’t it just sex, when you come down to it?

  In the cold light of a dreary, late-February day, the crazy theories that ran through my head after finding out about Greg’s attack seem ludicrously far-fetched. The grief-stricken widow grasping at straws to prove her husband didn’t choose to die.

  I lie in the big white bed, allowing my thoughts to settle. Daylight seeps in through the opaque ivory curtains, turning our bedroom, my bedroom, into something resembling an empty gallery—all white walls and white floorboards on which deep-pile white rugs settle like snow.

  “What this room needs is a bit of color,” Simon was for-ever saying. But I find it soothing, the purity of white on white. It’s strange to think I’ll soon be waking up in a different room. Once the house is on the market, the agents expect it to go very quickly—well, as soon as we’ve cleared up after Sadie’s little spree. Apparently, there’s a waiting list of people desperate to move into these roads. I try to imagine myself in that other bedroom in the Mortlake flat. Will I still be me, I wonder, in that new, unknown room that Simon will never see? Is the me without Simon still the same person as the me who chose that distressed-white-painted chest of drawers over there, or the painting of a Cornwall cove that hangs over the bed?

  From downstairs comes the sound of a woman laughing. What is the time anyway? I glance at my phone screen. Twelve thirty-five! How can I have slept so late?

  Heading downstairs, I try to make out the voices I hear. Flora definitely, and I think Hettie. Oh, and Josh is already up!

  Glancing out the window on the turn of the stairs, I see Felix’s vintage Merc parked in the driveway alongside Hettie’s convertible VW Beetle. Some kind of convention. What on earth is going on?

  Flora is upon me even before I reach the bottom of the stairs.

  “God, Mum,” she mumbles into my neck, her arms locked solid around my waist. “Poor Walter. I can’t believe it!”

  I pat her on the back and mumble something about it being his time. At times like this, it doesn’t really matter what you say, I always think, it’s all about the way you say it. Pulling away, I glance at the curious jumper Flora has on. An appl
iqué animal of some sort. And why not, for heaven’s sake? Good for her. Flora’s eyes are puffy, as if she’s been crying, but she seems to be holding herself together remarkably well.

  “What’s Ryan up to?” I ask her casually. It’s a Saturday, after all. Shouldn’t he be here, playing the supportive fiancé?

  She shrugs and examines the ends of her hair. “I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t really ask him.”

  Josh has appeared, red-eyed, in the hallway. “We’re going to give him a proper funeral,” he says. “We’ve been waiting ages.”

  I make my way to the kitchen, Flora stuck to my side, and find Hettie and Felix sitting at the table. Between them stands an empty cafetière of coffee and a wooden board heaped with leftover croissant flakes. Petra is curled up in one of the armchairs by the French windows, gazing out at the uninspiring, drab day. My stomach lurches at the sight of her. She’s lost weight, and her normally gleaming hair looks dull and lank. Guilt at never returning her call makes me unable to meet her eyes, my gaze sliding right over the surface of her.

  “So sorry, Sel,” says Hettie, jumping up to give me a kiss.

  Sorry for what? For my husband being dead? For being married to a bigamist? For losing my home? My life is a shop-window display of sorry.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “How are you, Madre?” asks Felix, getting slowly to his feet to give me a hug. “I’m loving the new decor.”

  I glance around the room. Already I’m so used to the damage wrought by Sadie the other night that I hardly notice it. Anyway, it looks as if someone has been clearing up. Hettie, I imagine, or Petra.

  I pull away, looking more closely at Felix. His eyes are sunk into his face, a sure sign that he’s not sleeping well. I’m not going to talk to him again about that business with Josh and Sadie, not in front of Hettie and certainly not Petra, but sooner or later we’ll have to have a proper chat about it, establish some boundaries. I don’t relish it.

  “I’m fine,” I say, dropping into one of the dining chairs. “Well, still alive anyway.”

  To my surprise, I notice my mother is here, too, sitting in her usual armchair by the window.

  “I went to pick her up,” explains Felix. “I know how Granny loves a good funeral.”

  “Come and see Walter,” says Flora, waving her hand in the direction of a large cardboard box in the corner of the room. “We’ve made him so comfy.”

  I allow myself to be pulled to my feet and escorted the length of the room. Walter is lying in a nest of blankets taken from his basket. Something catches in my throat when I see the threadbare toy seal he unaccountably took a liking to many years ago, which is tucked up next to his head. I remember Felix winning that seal at a fairground stall when he was young, bringing it proudly home like a hunter with the evening meal.

  “Your oldest son has been manfully wielding a shovel,” says Hettie. “He’s been digging a hole in the garden under the willow tree.”

  I nod. Why not?

  “I’d better go and finish it,” says Felix, disappearing through the French doors into the garden. His back is a curve of sadness.

  About a half hour later, we make a strange group of mourners, crowded under the willow tree in the gray drizzle, branches draped over our shoulders, leaves trailing over our backs. Flora sniffs as Josh staggers out through the French doors with the makeshift coffin, and I lean across to grab my daughter’s hand. At first it feels strange, but the longer I force myself to keep hold of it, the more natural it becomes.

  The children have decided they’ll each say a brief eulogy for the dog who has, faithfully and without fuss, patrolled the perimeters of their lives for fifteen years.

  Flora starts by remembering how Walter came to us as a puppy.

  “Remember how I used to wrap him up in my T-shirt and carry him around in that Easter egg basket?” she says. “This little ball of fluff. And remember, Fee, how you held him on your lap in the car when we first brought him home and said—” here everyone joins in the well-worn phrase that has long since been absorbed into family folklore “‘—I’m going to love you more than my mum’?”

  Josh’s contribution is short and to the point.

  “Walter was the crappiest guard dog that ever lived.” A murmur of assent from the assembled company. “But when it came to getting in the way so you tripped over him, or chasing squirrels in his sleep, he was champion.”

  Now Felix. How ill at ease he looks, with his red-rimmed eyes and his fingers always fidgeting at his leg.

  “Dearly beloved, and everyone I can’t stand the sight of,” he begins, “we are here to commend the soul of our dear departed Walter—the best, if not the brightest dog in the history of the world.”

  Now he stops.

  “Walter was...” he tries. “Walter was...” Everyone stares.

  Felix is crying!

  He didn’t cry for his father, but here he is with tears silently running down his face, crying for his dog. Poor Felix. Poor boy.

  “Oh, Fee, are you all right?” Flora asks. Her own eyes are surprisingly dry, as if her older brother’s tears have soaked up her own.

  “He didn’t deserve to die,” Felix blurts out, and my heart contracts for him. Nearly twenty-six but still such an emotional baby—still thinking of death as something merited, rather than something meted out willy-nilly.

  “Well!” My mother is looking around as if she can’t quite believe her eyes. “All this fuss over a dog. You want to try getting to my age. Death is just another thing that happens, you know. Like supper.”

  As we all fall into contemplative silence, I look around at the family Simon and I made together, and for the first time since his funeral, I feel a sense of, if not peace, then at least acceptance. In my mind the burial of our Walter merges with Simon’s death, and it feels almost as if I’m laying something to rest between us. In the end, I think there are as many versions of Simon as there are people gathered around the willow tree. More, when you consider how our perceptions of him have changed since he died. Alive, Simon was infuriating and bombastic and funny and inconsiderate and suddenly, unexpectedly kind. Dead Simon is cloudy with secrets. His secrets were rocks in his pockets, weighing him down.

  I feel an overwhelming urge to come up with a message for Simon now, something that will give some meaning to this occasion. I could find a million things to say about our life and about how I feel, but in the end, my message comes down to just three words.

  I forgive you.

  LOTTIE

  It has a name, this thing that has happened to my daughter. Genetic Sexual Attraction. I’ve been searching Google all afternoon, propped up in bed while Sadie’s music thumps through the walls, and I put off calling Selina Busfield. Apparently, it’s not uncommon where family members have been separated and then find each other later in life. It happens with sisters and brothers who were adopted, even mothers and sons and fathers and daughters. This scientific provenance ought to make it easier to bear, yet it doesn’t. I can’t put it off any longer. I steel myself to call Selina, not even knowing what I’ll say. When the phone goes straight to voice mail, I feel at first relieved and then deflated. The dread that kept me awake last night won’t leave. I need to speak to someone about what’s been happening, but at the same time, I don’t want to tell my sisters. I need to handle this myself. This is about my daughter, my family.

  I fire up the laptop again to read more about Genetic Sexual Attraction. Opening up the History bar to find the site I was on, I am confronted by a whole list of sites I’ve never heard of before, obviously ones Sadie has been visiting while using my computer. What on earth? My mind races as I go down the column—debt sites, loan sites, no-win-no-fee solicitors, dating sites, STD clinics. I click on a few at random, trying to work out what my daughter could possibly have been looking for. Finally, I call up a
website inviting me to register for an immediate cash payment, despite my poor credit rating. Your registration is incomplete, it says. When I click on the link, there’s a form, which is empty apart from the name of the person being registered: Selina Busfield.

  SELINA

  After the burial ceremony, the afternoon limps slowly and bad-temperedly on toward evening. My mother (why can I never think of her as Mum, even now? Always “my mother.”) is still impatient with what she sees as our self-indulgent grief over Walter. “All this fuss,” she keeps repeating. “For a dog!”

  The children, who don’t yet understand how age can make you tired of feelings, are hurt by her lack of sympathy.

  “He was part of the family, Grandma,” Flora tries to explain.

  “What does that mean?” asks my mother. “My sister Milly was part of the family, and I didn’t speak to her for forty-five years.”

  In the end, Felix says he’ll take her back to her residential home. She spends ages hobbling painfully around collecting her scarf and gloves and coat, refusing offers of help.

  Before she leaves, she reappears in the doorway of the den.

  “I expect you all think I’m a bit harsh,” she says, and there’s a suspicion of pink in the whites of her blue eyes. “I just meant...it’s not the end all and be all. Death, I’m talking about. It’s just...something else we live with. Because there’s no other choice.”

  I get up and give her a hug. She’s so tiny now. How long before she shrinks clear away?

  After they’ve gone, I go into the kitchen to make tea. As I’m filling the kettle at the sink, Petra materializes by my side. Her lovely olive skin is stretched so tight over the delicate bones of her face, it looks as if it could snap.