by Beth Morrey
I took the bottle and sat in Leo’s study, in his chair, stroking his desk as I sipped. On a whim, I went over to the shelves and started pulling out his books – Killers of a Queen, the one he called his ‘blockbuster’. Pressured into writing it by his publishers, he hated the process and the result. Then The Three Ambitions of Archibald, about Archibald Roseberry. Another of Queen Victoria’s prime ministers, the more he found out about him the more he claimed to dislike him. Then The First Victorian, his Disraeli biography – some said his best work. They all came out, one by one, until I reached The Bedchamber Crisis, his first book – the one that bought us our sofa. As I pulled it from the shelf it slipped from my hand and crashed to the floor, the pages opening and fluttering, a piece of paper falling from the leaves. When I saw Leo’s handwriting spidering across the pages, I felt simultaneously hot and cold, hopeful and despairing, desperate to read and terrified of seeing more.
I took it back to the desk and unfolded it fully, my hands shaking.
‘Dear Missy,’ I read. Then stopped. A letter to me. His last letter.
Chapter 45
Dear Missy,
There are so many reasons I wish I didn’t have to write this. The first is obvious – I have to write it while I still can. Eventually, the mists will descend and swallow me whole, and then the Leo you know will be swept away for good. So while I have this brief and terrible period of clarity, I have to say the things that must be said. Forgive my poor scrawl – this is written in haste. Not to get it over with, but to make sure it’s done properly, before it’s too late.
Firstly, the money. Horace Simmonds will keep an eye on our investments, and we should muddle along for a good while yet, but if it comes to it, you must do as you see fit. Don’t worry about me; I will cease to have any say in the matter anyway. But know that whatever you decide, you have my blessing.
Secondly, Melanie and Alistair. I am sorry I never warned you of Alistair’s plans, which were evident to me. I thought it might not come to pass, but now that it has, please, Missy – when they finally go, send him off with a smile. That day when we took him to those grim digs in Selly Oak – I can’t remember what I had for breakfast this morning, but I remember your face that afternoon, your fingers clutching his sweater. You smiled then, so bravely, and you must do it again. Because if you don’t, you will lose him anyway.
When he is gone, lean on Melanie. She was always my girl, wasn’t she? From the moment she was born, my little curled-up hedgehog. But I know her spikes have irked you. You find her difficult for the same reason I admire her so: she reminds us both of you. Try to recognize Mel’s fine qualities as your own, and rely on them to carry you through this. She will be your rock.
I don’t deserve such an accolade. One of my greatest regrets is not being a truer and more devoted husband to you. Now I sit amidst all the books I wrote, I wonder if I couldn’t have written a little less and attended a little more. You were always there, always present, always loving, however hard you tried to hide it, while I … well, perhaps my fate is a fitting one, to be forever absent.
My other great regret – the main reason I wish I didn’t have to write this letter – is that I failed you. I remember Bertie. That night you told me – I did everything wrong. The shock of it, the anger, and the grief … and then it was blown away in one of those hideous blizzards where everything blurs and I can barely hold on to who I am. But it came back, bit by bit, and I pieced it together again. So I remember you telling me about him. And I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to say then what I can write now: let it go. The guilt, the pain, the loss – anything you are carrying with you is not yours to bear alone. I shoulder it now, and when I go I will take it with me.
We had such happy times, you and I, and that’s what I want you to hold onto. More than half a century rubbing along, and that’s something I don’t regret. You were always the one, Missy. The one I saw across the room at the St Botolph’s party, sipping your wine and looking so out of place. The one walking down Sidgwick Avenue with the sun in your curls. The one swaying in my arms in the cellars of the Union, with tears on your cheeks. You thought I didn’t see, but I did. I just never said. I never said.
I’m sorry for all the things I didn’t say, all the things I wasn’t. But I hope you’re not sorry. Don’t spend what’s left of your life feeling guilty or apologetic – move on. Onwards and upwards, Mrs Carmichael. I’m going to forget about you; you have my permission to do the same. Let go. But know this: we may have sung different songs, and sometimes we were out of tune, but I think we harmonized rather well, in the end. Don’t you?
Chapter 46
Sherry has always been my nepenthe, the anti-sorrow drug of choice, to quiet all pain and strife. After reading Leo’s letter, I drank another glass, put on my coat – the old black one, not my Christmas parka – and set out.
It wasn’t a long walk, and besides, it was one I did quite regularly. The usual route, down the little alleyway and along the boulevard until I came to a low, long building, wooden-clad on the ground floor with red-bricks on the second storey. We’d chosen it together, and Leo had joked about the red bricks; he still made jokes then. He always made me laugh, from the very beginning. Even when I’d been annoyed with him, he was able to tease me out of a bad mood, coax me to an unwilling chuckle. They say laughter is the best medicine, but that couldn’t save him in the end.
‘Good evening, Mrs Carmichael.’
I didn’t say hello to Rachel as usual, because I had to get in and get it over with before I lost my nerve. So I marched straight past, down the soft carpeted corridor to the last door on the left. At the back, with the big window overlooking the oak. That was the one he wanted. I turned the handle and went in, breathing in the faint scent of the daffodils I’d brought a fortnight ago. They’d be wilting by now.
‘Hello Leo, my darling.’
For a moment he sat in profile; that corrugated forehead, jutting Roman nose, firm chin. Such a strong, beloved face. Then he turned and gave me a hazy smile, lifting a finger from the arm of his chair before bending back to his cards. The Goldberg Variations were playing softly in the background; they were very good about ensuring he was always listening to music – it had been one of his stipulations. I joined him and sat down in the chair next to his. For a while I watched him laying out his cards in a vague approximation of Patience, but of course when you looked more closely you could see that there was no rhyme or reason to the order, just like there was no rhyme or reason to Leo any more.
He was still handsome, my husband of nearly sixty years. Still upright, with a full head of hair, mostly silver but threaded with the gold of his youth. He’d aged so well, in body. Such a tragedy, because I knew which he would have preferred, sitting there in his chair, turning over the same cards, looking at the same tree, day after day. After a while I cleared my throat and began my speech, wanting to get it all out before the effects of the sherry wore off.
‘Leo, there’s something I want to say to you.’
He turned again, and his striking blue eyes focused on me for a moment. Not the piercing gaze of his prime, of course, but still it was unusual, and I took heart from it.
‘That night, when we went to see the fireworks. I told you … about Bertie.’
Leo frowned slightly and tweaked an errant card back into place.
‘Leo, listen to me.’ He turned back obediently, and fixed me with that bright blue gaze again.
‘And then you forgot. Just after I told you, just after I’d plucked up the courage, you forgot. And I just shrivelled inside, because I thought I’d failed. Then I got Bobby the dog – I told you about Bobby, didn’t I? And it felt like something had healed a little. Like I might be loveable after all. Only now she’s gone, and I didn’t know what to do. But then I got your letter. Leo, you remembered! You remembered! And you wrote to me, and that letter, that letter … It was everything.’
‘Walnut,’ said Leo, sadly.
‘What?’
‘He was called Bertie,’ I said, my voice trembling with the effort. ‘I called him Bertie. I always thought of him as a boy. With your eyes.’
‘Bertie,’ he said. He looked at me with those eyes, those beautiful, blank eyes, and then suddenly he took my hand in his, which he hadn’t done in months – years, even. He held my hand, and stroked it, and then he said:
‘I love you, Missy. You know that, don’t you?’
I looked out at his oak tree framed in the window. He gazed at it every day, and while people came and went, the leaves unfurled, curled and fell, the trunk stood fast. Something to cling to, when everything else slipped from your grasp.
‘I love you too, Leo. So, so much.’
There didn’t seem to be much more we could say, so I stroked him back, and we sat there, hand in hand, until visiting hours were over. Then when it was time, I gently prised his fingers from mine and let go, leaving him sitting in his chair, my bright gold chain, looking out at his green oak.
Chapter 47
I missed the old Leo so much it was like a constant throb in my throat, and most of the time I could only bring myself to visit the new one in the hope of seeing some glimpse of the man he’d been. Once, when I was arranging his flowers, keeping up a flow of inconsequential chat, he suddenly looked up at me and said, ‘Missy, really! Stop jabbering!’ and it was so close to the kind of thing he would have said in the old days that I was jolted, my garden roses pricking my fingers as I clutched them. I sucked the blood away and stared at him hoping for more, but he just turned back to the book he was reading. He still read books; he had a little pile of them on the table next to him, and he would sit and turn the pages, carefully, considerately. Sometimes he would be holding them upside down. The light had gone out, and no one was home, no matter how often I knocked on the door.
Sometimes I would allow that thistle of tears to bubble up after I left him, and weep all the way home, back to that silent empty house with memories everywhere I looked. But the night after I visited Leo and he said he loved me, I walked out dry-eyed. As I stalked through the reception Rachel called out ‘Mrs Carmichael!’ but I ignored her, like I’d been ignoring all those letters and phone calls from Horace Simmonds for months. I knew the money was running out, but like everything else I thought that perhaps if I looked the other way then it would be all right. Semper eadem. Except that nothing did stay the same, did it? Hair got cut, cake got eaten and dogs ran out into the road. So I was going to have to accept that the money was almost gone, and come to terms with what that meant.
I was going to have to sell my house. My huge, prime location asset in Stoke Newington was going to have to go on the market to pay for Leo’s care. I would have to buy a tiny flat somewhere, probably quite far away if the house prices round here were anything to go by, and use the remainder to repay our debts and keep Leo’s precious status quo. I had to make a change, so he could carry on as he was.
I couldn’t bear to lose my home. I knew it would be snapped up by some bright, ambitious family with 2.4 children, a hybrid car and Cockapoo. I’d been reading Sylvie’s magazines – they’d rip out my kitchen and put sleek units in, replacing the back wall with toughened glass and laying those indoor/outdoor tiles that make the space ‘flow’. Meanwhile I’d be stuck in some godforsaken bit of North London that estate agents optimistically refer to as ‘up and coming’, in a flat that would make Angela’s look like a penthouse.
I’d lose all my friends. No one would be bothered to trek out there, so I’d be left, withering away, occasionally embarking on the trip back to see the husband who didn’t recognize me. Contemplating that fate, it was little wonder I’d tried to pretend it didn’t exist.
But it didn’t matter how much I stopped myself from thinking about it, it turned out I’d been thinking about it all along and had it all planned out. So I arrived home and went straight back to the sherry. I took a glass and the bottle into the living room and sat on my sofa looking at Bobby’s bed next to the fireplace. That beautiful, sumptuous bed the dog walkers bought me. The fleece was flattened in the shape of her. I drank a glass, and then another, and then I went to the kitchen and got two bin bags from one of the drawers.
Back in the living room, I stuffed Bobby’s bed into one of them, pushing it down hard so it all squashed in. Then I did the same with all those stupid knick-knacks Sylvie had cast about the place – the photos, vases, pens, ornaments all went into the other bin bag until the room was clear again. All that clutter. The pettiness of it all. I stood in the middle of the room, breathing heavily, still dizzy from the alcohol. The ring of the doorbell interrupted my stupor. I imagined Bobby barking furiously, dancing into the hallway, at once excited and outraged at the intrusion. It rang again, and again I ignored it, looking around the room for more things to put away.
Angela’s voice floated through the letterbox. ‘Missy! Let me in! I know you’re in there.’
I sat down on the sofa and poured myself another sherry as I considered my next move. I wasn’t sure I could get the bureau up to the attic on my own, but it would have to go.
‘I can see your light on! Let me in, please!’
I looked up at the portrait of my father, his clever, sensitive face half-smiling down at me. I could probably take that with me to the new place. Nothing else though. It all had to go.
‘I’ve been talking to Sylvie. She told me about Leo. Why didn’t you tell me?’
Desi Haber told Sylvie about Leo, just as I feared she might, and Sylvie had told Angela. I supposed the world of historians was a small one. Not that it mattered now. I thought of the terrible row I’d had with Melanie. We didn’t speak for months afterwards, then one day she called, and I’d thawed enough to talk. But then she couldn’t resist broaching Leo’s care again, refusing to believe that we had enough in savings to cover the cost, suggesting that I move him to a home she’d found in Cambridge and then buy a flat nearby for myself. Sheltered accommodation, she called it. I hung up on her.
‘We can fix this, Missy. I promise.’
I switched the light off in the living room and sat in the gloom until Angela went away. Then I rolled up the Aubusson rug like I did all those years ago, and lugged it up to the attic. I was far too old for this. When I’d finished the sweat was pooling between my ribs, and I had the beginnings of a headache. So I went downstairs and got ready for bed, taking paracetamol in anticipation of the inevitable hangover. I had work to do tomorrow. Although Bobby wasn’t there any more, I didn’t bother to do my round of checking – who cared what was in the cupboards? As I got into bed and pushed my feet down, I felt a lump under the duvet and, reaching down, unearthed Bobby’s rabbit. We should have buried him with her. Too late now. So instead I held him and stared at the wall, making shapes out of the shadows, until it was too dark to see any more.
Chapter 48
I didn’t leave the house for three days, sitting in my dressing gown on the sofa staring at my father’s portrait, reading more of my mother’s letters and looking at photos of Arthur. I wanted to absorb everything from my past, to help me come to terms with what lay ahead. Periodically someone would knock at the door or yell through the letterbox, but I learned to tune it out, and when a face appeared at the window I simply closed the curtains and carried on as I was.
I ate the remains of the wake-feast, curling ham sandwiches and cold sausage rolls. The pastry was greasy and flat; shards of it fell on the sofa, and there was no Bobby there to hoover it up. I was alone as I’d always been, unknit and in flux, a mess of tangled thoughts and random impulses. The alcohol had run out, and so had the milk. When I’d finished the sandwiches and sausage rolls, I ate dry cereal and called the estate agent to arrange a value estimate. Hearing the excitement in his voice when I gave him the address and the thought of him salivating over his fee made me unusually curt over the phone. Afterwards I had to go and clean the kitchen, savagely washing down u
nits and scrubbing the floor until the whole place gleamed like a newly-fallen conker.
It was late afternoon by then and, feeling drained, I drifted upstairs towards the attic, drawn to my mother’s old trunks. In the half-light I sorted through some dresses, running my hands along silks and chiffons, letting the feathers and beads trail between my fingers. On a whim, I selected a long, high-necked Edwardian dress and held it against me, looking at myself in the tilting mirror in the corner. It was lilac, the colour of mourning. Shrugging off my dressing gown, I slowly pulled the dress over my head and it fell in silky folds around my shoulders, settling into the grooves and curves of my body like it was made for me. In the gloom I looked like my grandmother, restless hands plucking at the full skirt. Jette and her Singer, distracting herself with the thrash and hum of the machine, trying to ignore the ghost in it. It didn’t work in the end – the only thing that worked was putting yourself out of your misery altogether. Like Jette. Take the pills, give up the ghost.
‘Missy.’
I gave a shocked cry. In the mirror behind me was Angela, white-faced and red-eyed. I whirled around, and there she was, standing in my attic.
‘How did you get in here?’
Wordlessly she held up a key – the one I’d given Sylvie. Then a clattering up the stairs, and there was Sylvie herself and – I drew a sharp breath – Melanie. Her eyes roamed around the rooms, before resting on the dress I was wearing over my nightgown.
‘Come downstairs and let’s talk,’ she said.
I thought about refusing to come down, and spending whatever I had left of my life stalking these attics, the kind of ghoul I checked the cupboards for, but a glance at Sylvie and Angela’s set faces suggested they would be perfectly capable of physically dragging me downstairs. So I picked up the train of my dress and sailed past them, my head held high.
