by Alice Jolly
Sorry I didn’t call, she says.
That’s OK. I understood.
Kiss me, she says. So I know you forgive me.
Oliver wants to kiss her but not while she is driving. And yet he can’t say no so he leans across and kisses her on the cheek. She laughs at him and turns her head to kiss him properly. He keeps his eyes on the road, puts his hand out to steady the steering wheel.
Be careful.
She laughs again, wobbles the wheel a few times, mocking him.
I love you, she says. And he knows that in that moment she does – but there is no guarantee it will be the same tomorrow, because there is no guarantee that there will be a tomorrow. He begins to wonder why he had wanted to see her so much, when he will worry all day. Can he ask her what the hospital said? Is the situation getting worse? She doesn’t want to discuss any of that.
When they arrive in Weston it is still only eight o’clock and hardly anyone is about. The streets are littered with bottles and paper from partying the night before. A greengrocer is opening up his shop and a café owner places an A board on the pavement advertising bacon sandwiches. They walk together down to the deserted beach. The donkeys haven’t yet arrived and the pier is silent. The small train which usually rolls along the seafront has not yet started its journeys for the day.
The sea is in – Grace checked the tides to make sure it would be. They put their towels down and sit on the damp sand in the stinging morning air. Around them the once-grand Victorian buildings were both garish and grey, a line sweeping out towards Birnbeck Pier. Seaside hotels, cheap restaurants, old people’s homes. They drink a cup of tea. He thinks of the map he looked at, the distance to the hospital. And he can’t help but ask her then, Have you got your blower here?
Yes, yes. I’ve got it. Her voice is patient.
Well, I just ask because obviously you didn’t have it.
Yes, I know. I know. And that’s my decision, Oliver. I refuse to have my life ruled by this. You know that. Anyway, blower or no blower, there’s risk.
They have had this same argument so many times and Grace always says the same thing. This is how I live. Oliver always wants to say, Yes, but I can’t live like that. But it feels wrong to do that, when it is so much harder for her than for him. She always leaves him, always comes back. They even lived together for a while but then one day she was gone. He knew he was at fault. He should’ve been able to live as she lived, thinking of nothing but the day. He longs for a cure but knows that she is the illness, the illness her. A doctor said to him once that Grace was allergic to the unknown but it seems to him that she has fallen in love with it. She frequently fails to turn up for medical tests which might help to make the attacks more predictable.
I’m just saying, you don’t have to make it worse than it is.
Oliver, can you shut up? I’ve come to the sea for the day. I want to enjoy it. She leans over and kisses him. Let’s swim, she says. Come on.
So where actually is it?
In this bag, she says, pointing, making an effort to be reassuring.
Everything is the same to her, nothing is permanent. Life with her is continually the last day of term. The confusion, the hurried farewells, the dizzying sense of liberation. She drives too fast, walks too far, sleeps too long in the mornings, and always asks, What shall we do today? Go to Alaska, buy a hot-air balloon, ride on a camel? She likes cake – particularly cake with colours and cream, the cheaper the better.
Come on, she says. Let’s swim while there’s no one else in the water.
Maybe.
OK. Well, if you don’t want to swim, let’s walk along to the West Pier.
No. No. You swim. I’m fine here.
She yanks her swimming things out of her bag.
I know you’re waiting for me to say thank you. But I’m not going to. OK?
That’s fine. I don’t expect any thanks.
Good. Because you didn’t do anything.
It made him angry that an intelligent woman could deny the facts. He watches her as she pulls off all her clothes, not bothering to hide herself with a towel. He likes the white stretch of her limbs, the curve of her waist, the triangle of hair at the meeting of her thighs which is the same pale red as the hair on her head.
I just started breathing again because that’s what sometimes happens.
Oliver watches her, saying nothing.
It didn’t have anything to do with healing, or God, or any of that stuff.
You’re sure about that?
Yes, I’m sure.
The hospital didn’t seem able to give any explanation.
They never have any explanation.
So nothing happened?
No. I’m not saying that. Something happened. I know that. But it didn’t have anything to do with you or with God. It’s random, Oliver. It’s just the toss of a coin, the turn of a dice. That’s all it is. You can’t control it. You’re not responsible.
Yes but—
Yes, I know. I know there are loads of people out there who honestly believe that you have special powers and that you can call on the power of God and make the blind see and the lame walk. But those people are just gullible.
No, Grace. No. That isn’t fair and you know it. You’ve seen. Through the grace of God many of those people find that.
Shut up, Oliver. Shut up. You’re ruining my day.
The worst crime, ruining her day.
Listen, she says. Listen. Just because, when we were children, you might – or might not – have saved my life doesn’t mean you have to be responsible for me forever. I don’t want to have a relationship with God, just with you. I just want to enjoy the day – and preferably I’d like to enjoy it with you. But it seems like I can’t do that.
She turns away from him in anger, marches away down the beach. Her bathing costume is baggy and black with a crossover back – like something left over from school. And she has a ridiculous swimming hat into which she has shoved her hair. It is green rubber with flapping flowers, like something from the fifties. The kind of jokey kitsch which Grace loves. Now she pulls it down further over her ears as she starts to run. Oliver watches her go. She is gangly and angular as a coat hanger. Grace-less really. But somehow she seems to fill the whole beach as she splashes at the water’s edge, gasping at the cold, running backwards and forwards, into the waves and out, a pantomime performance, unable to find the courage to plunge into the freezing water.
Oliver is glad to sit on the beach watching her. In the parish where he works he is always busy. He hadn’t known before he became a vicar just how much illness and death there is in the world. Now his whole day seems to be spent at sickbeds or conducting funerals. And then there’s his faith healer training as well. Lying back on the sand, he watches the seagulls overhead. They glide and swoop and sway on the wind, moving with joy and ease through the air. They are in their medium, he thinks, as we humans never are. On the road along the front, traffic is building up and he hears the buzz of engines. He hopes that the weather might get a little hotter and then he’ll go down and swim. But there seems no chance of it. The day wears a determined scowl.
He has tried to form relationships with other women and he finds that easy. In the community of believers, competition is limited and women like him. Young women who help out at the church, and believe in God, and talk to him fervently of their faith. Doubtless these women would make excellent vicars’ wives. And there is no reason to think they will die young. Oliver occasionally goes out with these women, likes them, tries desperately to talk himself into making a decision to spend his life with one of them. But it never works. There is always Grace. He can’t escape her and he loves her – has done ever since the first day they’d met.
He looks out towards where she is swimming. The air is still fuzzy with spray and morning mist. His eyes are dazzled by the seaside light. He sees the pier, spikes of black against the headland beyond. But where is Grace? His vision becomes clearer but he can’t see her.
He jumps to his feet. Something black is washing at the end of the water. He starts to run. In his mind he goes through it. Should he go back for the blower now? Will he remember which button to push? Could the battery have gone flat? She could just be lying down at the water’s edge but no, no.
Grace, he yells. He is still wondering whether he should have brought the blower with him straight away. Should he check first whether she is breathing and then run back and fetch it? He keeps running as he tries to decide. Should he go back? The moments are gasping by. She lies just above the tide line in her black costume, wet and slippery as a seal, her hat gripped in her hand, with her hair spread out. He kneels down beside her, calls her name. Above him the seagulls are screeching and the frilled edge of the water rolls up towards her. He stares down into her face.
Then her lips move. She opens her eyes and laughs. Jumping up, she runs away from him back into the sea. Shaking, he stands up and starts to shout. Then he keeps on shouting, the salt air tearing at his lungs. Standing at the edge of the sea he yells abuse at her, but his voice is lost in the sound of the sea and she seems not to hear, ducks in and out of the water, waving back at him happily. But still he keeps on shouting until he is exhausted.
He stamps back up the beach, sits on the towel again, puts his head in his hand. He can’t stop remembering the fear he felt as he saw her lying there. It runs through him again and again and he watches her with hatred as she swims, her green hat bobbing in and out of the waves. Images come into his mind of violent acts. He imagines hacking her up, here, in the sand and throwing her bleeding limbs into the sea. Smashing her head with a large rock, or strangling her.
He pours himself a cup of tea and takes deep breaths, tries to stop shaking, to banish those images. She comes running up the beach, stops to shake herself, like a dog, her hair whipping around her head, then she sits down beside him and pleads for tea. He pours her a cup but is so angry he can’t look at her. She lays a hand on his arm. When he glances across at her, he knows she has seen his anger.
You’re so arrogant, she says.
She is right. It is arrogance. He should be able to live as she lives.
For God’s sake, Oliver. Get a sense of humour.
He is conscious of her watching him. She doesn’t often do that, she lives too fast to look at anything for long. But her eyes are now fixed on him. She reaches out her hand, touches his arm again, takes hold of his hand, interlaces her fingers with his.
Sorry, she says. I’m sorry.
He knows that he should apologise as well but he can’t. Sadness has fallen on him and he can’t shake it off. He is frightened, still frightened, by the image of her lying at the water’s edge, by the image from two weeks ago of her on the pavement, and the people crowded around and the ambulance arriving. And he is there, pleading with God not to let her die.
Oliver, she says, putting her arms around him. I do love you, you know. I really do. And I know I shouldn’t say those things. I know it’s important to you, God and stuff. But I just can’t. He feels her kisses, her cold body shivering in the towel, close to him. She faces him with her luminous green eyes, damp and flattened hair.
Listen, she says. Listen. I’ve got an idea. Let’s get married.
He laughs at her, knowing she is only saying this to try to make him feel better, to make sure that this turns out to be a good day.
No. Don’t laugh. I’m serious. Let’s get married. I love you, you love me. So let’s just do it – now.
Now?
He spills tea down the front of his jumper.
Yes, now.
But we would have to wait a while because—
Oh for God’s sake, Oliver. You’re a vicar, aren’t you?
He watches her sipping the tea. She is blue with cold and shaking convulsively, so that the metal cup rattles against her chattering teeth. That makes her laugh, and she pulls off the green plastic hat. Underneath her hair is damp and crumpled. Water runs down from her shoulders and forms rivulets down her thin white arms. She will make the worst possible vicar’s wife.
You never think, do you? she says. Never consider that maybe I try to look after you, that I try not to let you love me too much, that I don’t want you to be hurt. Sometimes I think I should leave you with God – at least he might be more reliable.
Should he believe her? Is her distance a kindness? He leans across, kisses her salty mouth, says, Of course, we should get married.
Now, right now, she says. She is always like that. Everything has to be now, she doesn’t have time to wait.
I know it’s for real, she says. But I want to pretend it isn’t and I want you to pretend as well.
I’m not making a choice between you and God, he says.
Oh I think you will.
She kisses him then, lying on top of him, freezing and slippery, making his clothes wet. She pushes her mouth against his too hard, so that their teeth bang together, and when finally she moves away from him, he sees that she’s got his blood on those unnaturally white teeth. And as he kisses her he feels sure that he could enter her world, that he could stop worrying, enjoy the time they have.
Now, she says. Now. And he agrees to her plan willingly because he knows that there is no escape. For her, marriage is just a good day out. It has no significance beyond that. She can’t allow him to take the risk of love. And he has to accept that, because there is no choice. But still those images fill his mind – axes, stones, blood, strangling. He knows that he is trying to take possession of something that can’t be possessed. Like getting married to a cloud.
33
BEFORE
Mollie – Worcester, July 1953
The visitor is in the drawing room. Mollie puts her satchel down and watches him through the crack at the hinge of the door. Usually nobody ever comes to the house. Her mother and stepfather go out but people don’t come in. Cook said that the visitor is a friend of Mollie’s mother – or perhaps a cousin – but her mother doesn’t have any cousins, or any relatives at all, and this man is foreign-looking, grubby. He wears no hat and his overcoat is stained. The bottom half of his face is the colour of dried blood and one of his trouser legs is strangely crumpled. He might only have one leg. But still he’s a visitor and dreams might be hidden within the folds of that dirty coat, or concealed inside that crumpled trouser leg.
Mollie is the princess in the tower on top of the hill, the beauty who’s been asleep for one hundred years, waiting for her lover’s kiss. But just at the moment, she doesn’t look like a princess. Instead she’s limp and shiny after a shimmering-hot school day. If only she had time to change. She has black patent-leather shoes and several pink and white silk dresses which Bertie, her stepfather, bought for her. They hang in a white wood wardrobe in her bedroom. The wardrobe has heart shapes cut out of the door and the same shapes are on the white headboard of her bed – like Little Red Riding Hood.
The pink and white dress – but there is no time. A visitor is here. Cocktail parties, bridge evenings, dinners, golf. Mollie hears about such things but she has no experience of them. She never goes anywhere except to school and back. Perhaps if she’s charming to this man he’ll invite her – although she can’t imagine going to a party with a man in a stained overcoat. But still she’ll behave as her mother would expect. Cook must be asked to provide tea and biscuits, if she hasn’t already done so. Mollie will make amusing conversation, offer the stranger a cigarette. She glides through the door of the sitting room, the perfect hostess.
The man turns, stands awkwardly, then stares and stares, his eyes wide and deep as tunnels. Mollie twists her arms behind her back, swings herself from side to side, looks down at the floor. Why is he staring? She wonders if her school dress is tucked into her knickers, runs her hands down the gingham cotton to check. The man is examining every detail of her, as though trying to convince himself of her existence.
You’re Mollie, he says.
The man’s voice has a strange lilt, the sound rising at the
end of each word.
Yes.
And there’s another Mollie?
No.
Ah, I see, the stranger says, although he clearly doesn’t.
Mollie feels as though she has been caught out in a lie. Perhaps there is another Mollie and this stranger knows that? It’s always seemed as though there might be some other Mollie, a girl who would fit into the pink and white painted bedroom, a girl with pale red hair perhaps, who would go out to parties with her mother and stepfather.
And your mother has – remarried?
Mollie doubts this man is a friend of her mother’s. My stepfather is Bertie Fawcett, she says. He’s General Manager of Roxwell Engineering, which is one of the biggest companies in Worcester. Mollie is aware that this sounds boastful but just the sound of Bertie’s name might anchor this situation, might untangle the conversation.
I am Arthur Bonacci, the man says.
Mollie stretches out her hand and the stranger takes it. His grip is warm and dry, his hand enfolds all of hers, his fingers hold hers tenderly.
Warwick Road. Coventry. The house was cordoned off when I got there. I was told the back of it had been blown off, the stranger says.
Yes, Mollie says. Yes. We’ve had a lot of problems with the house. The roof has been redone and they had to dig out the foundations as well.
So this stranger must know her mother well or how would he know about the foundations? Now the stranger is looking around him, taking in the dimensions of the room, the mirror over the mantelpiece, the velvet-covered sofa with its tasselled and sequinned cushions. Perhaps this stranger also knows that soon the house will fall down? Mollie’s mother has told her so many times about the structural problems which no builder can solve. Despite the fact that the roof has been redone, and the wiring and the plumbing, despite the fact that the timbers in the cellar have been replaced and the foundation underpinned, cracks will move like spiders down the wall. The glass in the windows is so fragile that it might blow in at any minute, the foundations are too shallow and no matter how many fires you light you’ll never get warm. It’s a house on the edge of a cliff and at any moment the land may shift. Mollie begins to forgive the stranger for his dirty coat, his foreign voice, his missing leg. He understands and Mollie is less alone.
