‘I wish I could see the other side like you do, Grace,’ he said from his bed. ‘Then I would be certain of it.’ Audrey fluttered about him, nursing him with all the love and tenderness she could muster while Grace sat beside him on her mother’s side of the bed, trying to explain to him that death was simply going home.
‘Life is like a play. Death is only stepping off the stage, shedding your costume and returning to where we belong. It’s not oblivion. Trust me. I know.’
‘I’ve always thought you a little batty, Grace. I wish I could trust you.’ He chuckled then coughed and winced.
‘Oh, Daddy, does it hurt a lot?’
‘Not so bad, Grace,’ he replied. ‘Your mother’s magic pills dull the pain most of the time. I shall die on a high.’
‘Too many cigars,’ said Audrey, picking up his tray of tea and heading for the door. ‘I’ve got my father to blame for that.’
‘Cigars have nothing to do with it,’ he said gruffly. ‘I’m an old man, that’s all.’ He coughed again. ‘Audrey, stay a while, there’s something I want to tell Grace.’ Audrey went pale. She had suspected this moment might come and her heart lurched, not only because she dreaded her daughter’s reaction but because she knew now that death was very close. The tray began to shake in her hands as she turned and put it back down on the dressing table. She forced a smile and went and sat on the arm chair that stood beside the bed.
‘What do you want to tell her, my love?’ she asked, the muscles in her neck straining as she tried to mask her apprehension. The last few weeks had drained her of energy and emotion. She felt weary. But she knew by the light in his eyes that he wanted to tell her the truth.
Cecil took his daughter’s hand in his and looked at her with battle-weary eyes. He had spent many months deliberating whether or not to tell her the truth about her parentage. As much as it had hurt when Cicely had told him about her friendship with Louis he had forgiven his brother long ago. Now he was dying he wanted to leave everything settled. No more secrets. ‘I’m about to depart,’ he began dramatically, not knowing how to break it to her. Hoping, perversely, that such a revelation might make her happy. Audrey lowered her eyes in apprehension. ‘Your mother and I haven’t always been happy,’ he said carefully.
‘I know that, Daddy,’ Grace laughed. ‘Every marriage has its ups and downs.’
‘But your mother lost her heart to another man just before you were born.’
Grace narrowed her eyes and looked at her mother’s bowed head. ‘Go on,’ she said in a quiet voice.
Cecil sighed and his white cheeks stung with colour before draining just as quickly.
‘She had a brief affair during which time, my dear, you were conceived.’
Grace blinked at him in horror. She suddenly felt isolated, as if she didn’t belong to anyone. ‘So, you’re not my father?’
Cecil shook his head. ‘Not biologically,’ he replied, trying to state the facts without letting the tearing of his heart interfere with the delivery. Grace’s eyes shone and she visibly shrunk back.
‘Then who is?’ she asked.
Cecil looked at Audrey. She lifted her head and cast it on one side, apologetically.
‘Louis,’ she replied in a small voice. ‘Your uncle Louis.’
Grace climbed slowly off the bed and walked over to the window in silence. She thought of her uncle and now understood his sadness. He had never loved Isla. He had loved her mother all along. She appreciated the tragedy of their affair immediately. Suddenly her mother’s dance of tears made sense. She understood her father’s drinking as a result of his unhappiness. Their frostiness as they had struggled to come to terms with their situation. Their mutual understanding as they had buried the past and resolved to move to England and make a new start. It was all suddenly very clear.
No wonder Louis and she were so alike. He’s my father, she thought in disbelief. He’s my father and he knows it. He’s known it all along. She sighed heavily and leant against the window pane. Audrey stood up and walked over to her husband. She took his outstretched hand and smiled at him through her tears. But neither spoke. They knew what the other was thinking. Cecil felt as if he had just given his daughter away and Audrey squeezed his hand, knowing how much that had cost him. They watched to see what Grace would do next. But she just stood by the window looking out. Thinking it over. Coming to terms with such a shocking revelation. But to her surprise, as much as she tried to feel something, she felt very little but surprise. It didn’t change anything. She was still standing in her parents’ bedroom where her father lay in bed dying.
She turned around and looked at her parents who hung suspended in a limbo, waiting with trepidation to see what would happen now they had let the demon out. Grace shook her head. Cecil caught his breath.
‘Louis isn’t my father,’ she said nonchalantly. ‘You’ll always be my Daddy. The fact that Louis is my biological father makes no difference to the last eighteen years. You raised me as your own daughter and loved me. I love you as my father. You’re all I’ve ever known. I don’t want another one. You’re the only father I’ll ever have.’
Audrey’s shoulders began to shake like they had done that day on the hill and Cecil smiled at his daughter in a way he had never smiled before. His face flushed with pride and gratitude and he held out his hand to her. With glistening eyes she took it and pressed her lips against it. ‘I love you, Daddy. I love you so much it fills me up inside like warm honey,’ she said and her voice croaked so that she couldn’t go on. They stared at each other with total understanding, for love is a bridge that can join even the two most dissimilar human beings. Then his eyes wandered past her and he smiled with recognition. Grace followed the line of his gaze and saw at once the watery forms of a woman and man who had come to take her father across to the other side. ‘Not yet, Daddy. There’s so much more I want to tell you,’ she sniffed. ‘Why is it that now I’m losing you I realize how much you mean to me?’ Audrey frowned at her, then looked down at the contented countenance of her dying husband. Grace watched in fascination and sorrow as her father’s spirit sat up in bed and moved into the outstretched arms of his mother and favourite Uncle Errol. He turned and grinned at her, understanding now as she did that the world of spirit awaited everyone. She wiped her face with her hand. ‘Bye, Daddy. We’ll meet again one day,’ she said softly and watched him fade into sunlight that now beamed in through the frosted window.
Grace’s legs were trembling so much she had to sit down. She saw the empty shell of her father lying on the bed and was almost surprised to see it there. Audrey sat stroking his hand, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘It was so fast. He was quite well this morning,’ she said, a frown now etched in deep lines on her troubled forehead.
‘He’s gone, Mummy.’ Grace sniffed and smiled at her mother. ‘Look at his face. Doesn’t he look happy?’
Audrey caressed his features with loving eyes. ‘I’ve never seen him look that happy, ever.’ She fixed her daughter with solicitous eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry. As I said, my life hasn’t changed. You can’t alter the past, even with a revelation like that. So you loved Louis. That’s got nothing to do with me.’ She smiled again. ‘Let’s not tell the twins. No one needs to know but you, me and Louis.’
‘Louis?’ Audrey asked.
‘He knows,’ she stated simply. ‘I know he knows. What I find most surprising is that I didn’t know. I seem to know so much about everyone else, but nothing about me.’
‘God works in mysterious ways,’ she said, kissing Cecil’s hand. She pressed her lips to his skin that still felt warm and soft. ‘God works in very mysterious ways.’
Chapter 34
October 1984
‘I feel cheated,’ Alicia said, sitting with her arms folded in the chair her father had always sat in. ‘I mean, you had barely told me that he was dying, Mummy, and then he was gone. Gone. I never got to say goodbye.’
‘Neither did I,’ said Leonor
a sadly.
‘That was the way he wanted it. He didn’t want anyone to fuss over him.’
‘Well, I still feel cheated and desperately sad,’ Alicia continued, wiping a large tear away with her glove. Grace rolled her eyes. Alicia had often told her that she had never felt close to him. As a child he was always working, then when they came to school in England she had only seen him once a year at Christmas. ‘Hardly the recipe for a close relationship,’ had been her exact words. But now of course, the opportunity for melodrama was too much to resist. She sat in her black funeral suit as if she were dressed for a London cocktail party. She was still single, still searching for that elusive dream and still getting nowhere.
Alicia had always been beautiful, but her youth had hidden all manner of evil behind the softness of her flesh and the flawlessness of innocence. As her youth had fallen away so the dark contours of her nature were revealed little by little in the sharpness of her features and the thinning of her once generous mouth. She still possessed an icy beauty. The chiselled, stony looks that turn heads and incite admiration. But bitterness had warped her and sucked the juice out of her face, leaving her dry and formidable but less able to bewitch.
Leonora, on the other hand, whose loveliness had always shone from within, now glowed with a mellow beauty, for her nature had softened the features that had once been plain. Grace admired her for she was happy. She didn’t yearn for more than she had or covet what others had; Florien and her children were all she needed along with the velveteen fields of the Dorset countryside. According to Grace, her one flaw was her blind devotion to her twin sister. However much Alicia grew into a grotesque parody of herself, Leonora still saw her the way she was as a child and nothing she could do could change that. She would always admire her.
And what of her? Grace sat dressed for her father’s funeral but as far as she was concerned he wasn’t in the coffin that awaited burial in the churchyard, but free to fly with the power of thought in the world of spirit. She knew, she had seen him depart and she had said her goodbye. Since then she had thought a lot about Louis. It didn’t seem odd at all that he was her biological father. They were so alike. In a way she was pleased. She already loved him as a dear friend, now he was closer to her than that. But nothing could change the past eighteen years and the immense goodness of Cecil, who had raised his brother’s child as his own, in spite of the adulterous love that had brought her into the world. She would miss him.
‘Ah, Florien,’ said Audrey as her son-in-law entered the sitting room.
‘Hello, Audrey,’ he said. His tone was sympathetic. He nodded at Alicia briefly before turning to his wife. ‘Leonora, the children are in the car. Are you ready?’
‘We’ll see you there,’ she said to her mother and sisters who were waiting for Anthony and Cicely to collect them in their car. When they were gone Alicia turned to her mother.
‘Someone should tell Leo to lose a bit of weight. She’d look much better if she lost a few pounds.’
‘Darling, Florien likes her that way,’ replied her mother.
‘And so do I,’ Grace added. Alicia sat back with a sigh. She didn’t feel comfortable in the same room as her little sister, there was something in her eyes that spooked her.
Finally Cicely tumbled in, hobbling on her high heels. ‘I’m sorry we’re late, I tripped over one of the blasted dogs. Sprained my ankle. Still, the show must go on. Are you all ready? You look like a trio of blackbirds.’
Audrey stood up stiffly. She felt old although she was only in her early fifties. But she felt old in her bones and old in her heart. Cecil had been such a large presence in the house, now that he was gone it felt empty, even with her daughters around to fill it. It echoed with his absence and was cold.
‘It’s a beautiful day for the funeral,’ she said.
‘Isn’t it lovely,’ Cicely agreed, limping out into the hall.
‘Daddy’s here in spirit,’ said Grace. ‘I can feel him.’
Alicia sighed with impatience. ‘For God’s sake, Grace, he’s dead.’
The sky is almost too enchanting for a day such as this, thought Audrey as she watched the coffin being lowered into the ground. Surely this is the kind of beauty nature reserves for saints. It was as if Heaven opened her arms to welcome him home. If she were sensitive enough she was sure she would hear the sound of angels singing and celestial trumpets. But there before her was the humble body of Cecil Forrester and no one but she and God knew the magnitude of his virtues.
Audrey released Grace’s hand and stepped forward, holding her silver head high with a dignity that had supported her through many tumultuous years and dropped a single white lily into the grave. She whispered a hasty prayer then raised her eyes to the shrinking sun that descended behind the trees casting long black shadows over the churchyard. It was at that moment that the colour suddenly returned to her cheeks and her fingers touched her neck in an effort to loosen the skin that now seemed to choke her. At first she feared he was one of Grace’s ghosts, for his silhouette was outlined against the sunset and he appeared to float through the trees towards them. She squinted her eyes in an effort to see him better. Then her heart plummeted taking her breath with it and for a moment she thought she might faint away. He had come. She bowed her fevered head and stumbled backwards to where Grace extended her arms to steady her. Interpreting the widow’s sudden wilting as a natural expression of her grief, the Vicar concluded the burial with a hasty benediction then tactfully left the family to their sorrow.
‘Are you all right, Mummy?’ Grace whispered to her mother. Audrey shook herself free and searched anxiously through the trees. Grace followed the direction of her mother’s eyes and frowned. ‘What do you see?’ she asked, bewildered because as much as she squinted her eyes she saw no one and spirits always revealed themselves to Grace.
‘Go and comfort Alicia, dear,’ Audrey said, patting her daughter on her arm distractedly. ‘I’m fine, I just need a little space,’ she added hoarsely, walking away with a purposeful rhythm in her step. Grace glanced at her sisters who stood the other side of the grave. Alicia had stopped crying. Her audience had dispersed so there was no longer any reason to perform. Leonora pulled a thin smile when she caught eyes with Grace and indicated with a shudder that it was getting cold and dark and was time to leave. When Grace reached them Leonora was staring across at their mother in bewilderment.
‘Who’s that man she’s talking to?’ she asked. The three sisters looked through the blue dusk at their mother who was standing some distance away at the other end of the churchyard, talking to a man they thought they recognized.
‘God knows,’ Alicia sighed, shrugging her shoulders. ‘But she better not be long, it’s cold.’ She pulled a cigarette out of her handbag and attempted to warm herself up by lighting it.
‘Do you know who he is, Grace?’ Leonora asked. Grace brought her long white fingers up to her lips where they traced the line of her mouth in wonderment.
‘That’s Uncle Louis,’ she replied slowly. Alicia exhaled with impatience.
‘Oh, I remember him. The mad uncle no one ever talks about,’ she said, clipping her consonants with efficiency. Alicia hadn’t the patience to dither or to think about anyone else but herself. ‘Let’s go over and find out if he really is mad.’
‘No, leave them,’ Grace said. ‘They have a lot of catching up to do.’
Leonora looked at her sister in puzzlement, but Alicia was only too happy to leave the churchyard and return to their mother’s house. She laughed throatily. ‘That’s fine by me. I’m cold. I really don’t care about mad Uncle Louis. Let’s go home and warm up. Aunt Cicely and Anthony will wait for her.’
When Louis Forrester stepped across the shadows towards her, Audrey felt the long years dissolve with the mists and placed a hand on one of the gravestones to steady herself. He wore a plain suit beneath a black coat and hat, which sat crookedly on his head, and he walked in the same unique way, with a slight dance in his step as if h
e were constantly hearing the melancholy rhythm of the tango, echoing still from another life, long ago when he was young and had someone to dance for. As he came nearer, Audrey recognized the gentle expression in his blue eyes and the longing behind them, barely disguised, as if at the sight of her he was no longer able to suppress feelings that had only grown stronger with the slow passing of time. And now, there he was, as if he had stepped across the decades, bringing the memories with him, in his smile and in his smell and all that had changed were the naïve expectations of youth, swallowed up into the deep furrows that marred his forehead.
He stood a moment staring into her features, devouring the details of the face he had carried with him during the lonely days of waiting which had rolled from years into decades until finally they had become so many and so long he had lost track of them, but never of his goal. Now the waiting was over.
‘You’re not angry,’ he said, taking his hands out of his pockets and letting them fall against his coat where he flicked his fingers together apprehensively. Audrey blinked at him with her soft eyes and he noticed how age had robbed them of their definition but not of their tenderness and he wanted to hold her against him and dance the way they had done when they were young and their music undiscovered.
‘Cecil was a good man,’ she said. She noticed his lips twitch and wished she hadn’t said it. But she didn’t know what to say. She was no longer certain of how she felt. ‘I’m getting old.’ She sighed in an effort to excuse her tactlessness.
‘So am I,’ he replied and the corners of his mouth extended into a small smile. ‘But I haven’t forgotten how to dance.’ Then with an impulsiveness that had conquered her timid heart all those years ago he took her cold hands in his and stepped closer. They both flinched at the startling sensation of physical contact and stood staring at each other not knowing where to go from there. Audrey lowered her eyes anxiously, thinking of the husband she had just buried, unable to ignore the shame she felt as the feeling of Louis’ warm hands ignited the spark in her heart, that in all the nineteen years they had been parted, had never gone out.
The Forget-Me-Not Sonata Page 44
