When Cynthia had finally realised that she and Vincent weren’t ever to have children, she had turned elsewhere for comfort, indulging in the affections of a male dancer whose lustful advances she’d fought off for years. In a moment of weakness, however, she’d given in to the dancer – but it turned out that Cynthia was prone to moments of weakness and an affair had flourished. She had convinced herself that she was barren, so she was sure Vincent would never find out about the affair, but the truth was that Cynthia wasn’t the one who was unable to have children. Only weeks into her affair with Antoine Blanc, she realised something was amiss, and after weeks of vomiting, tender breasts and no sign of Aunt Flo, she could no longer deny that she was with child, and that that child didn’t belong to her husband.
Vincent was devastated. Cynthia, in a cruel act of self-preservation, had lashed out and blamed him for preventing her from having children earlier in her life, and Vincent could only agree and apologise. She went to live with her mother for a while, leaving Vincent alone with several bottles of cheap whisky to drink himself into oblivion. Until an old friend showed up on his doorstep.
Sonny Shine, inebriated as always, had obtained Vincent’s new address from Violet Winters, and when Vincent opened the door to find his ex-flatmate lying on his front steps because he’d thrown himself at the door by way of knocking, it was enough to sober him up. Subsequent conversation showed him that Sonny’s life hadn’t changed at all over the years they hadn’t seen each other and when Sonny offered him a swig from his hip flask, Vincent declined. He didn’t want people looking at him and seeing what he saw in Sonny.
The very next day he called Cynthia and told her he would look after the child and raise it as if it were his own if only she would come home. Life would continue as normal, he told her. Her answer came in sobs down the crackling line. Cynthia had lost the baby. According to the doctors, it was a miracle she’d fallen pregnant in the first place, but sustaining the pregnancy would never have been possible.
Cynthia came home full of remorse and promises that it was over with Antoine, and Vincent found it in his big heart to forgive her. She was the only woman who had ever made him any kind of happy after Evie, and he just couldn’t lose her. Their lives resumed, except they now had a fragility about them that everyone who knew them could sense. As individuals they were stone, but together they were glass, and their friends and families danced a ballet around them, careful not to ripple the peace they had found. They lived happily but quietly and their adventures became few and far between, until they stopped altogether. Cynthia passed away when she was seventy-six, leaving Vincent with only pictures of their adventures to keep him company.
Vincent Winters read the cursive writing on the invitation over and over. He desperately wished he’d gone to Evie’s funeral to pay his respects properly, but he hadn’t had the courage and had convinced himself it was what Evie would have wanted. Jim had sent the invitation, so it wasn’t concern about Jim’s reaction that had stopped him; more the fact that he was sure Evie wouldn’t have wanted her children to start asking questions about the strange old man from their mother’s past who they’d never seen or heard of before. He didn’t think his heart would be able to handle it either. Not a day went by that he didn’t think of Evie, but he’d had good practice at pushing thoughts of her away and hiding them in the tiniest corners of his mind. Meeting her children, though, who he already believed would look like her, talk like her and hold pieces of her in everything they did, would be like losing her all over again.
He’d made up his mind not to go as soon as he’d seen the invitation, and the funeral had taken place weeks ago anyway, but now he was rethinking his decision and he didn’t know why. The dream he’d had about Evie had filled every pore with this strange, inconceivable hope. The same hope and energy he’d had when he’d asked her to run away with him all those years ago. It had been an impossible and downright foolish idea, but he’d believed with all his heart that they could make it work. That was exactly the same kind of belief he had now.
Vincent flipped the invitation over to read the address of the Summers’ house. He’d never thought it before, but now, although impossible and downright foolish, he somehow believed, over his breakfast porridge, that one day he’d see Evie Snow once more.
15
hello, goodbye
Vincent stood on the bottom step of a grand house, looking up at a blue door. He tapped his walking stick nervously on the gravel, enjoying the sound it made, then turned and watched the taxi drive further and further away, wishing he’d asked it to wait in case he changed his mind. This is good, he thought. Can’t back out now, and with a brave push forward, he climbed the steps and knocked on the door with his knuckles, quite hard. The moments that followed turned his stomach. He dreaded one of Evie’s children answering the door and turning the crazy old man away, but the face that greeted him, though one he didn’t know well, was at the very least one he knew.
‘James Summer?’ Vincent croaked, then coughed to clear his dry throat.
‘Yes, that’s me.’ Jim took a step forward, pulling the door mostly closed behind him. He knew that he knew this man from somewhere. Quickly he rattled through his mental Filofax, trying to fit a name to the face.
‘Jim …’ Vincent said to break the silence as he watched the other man trying desperately to place this blast from the past. The dawning realisation on his face was picture-worthy.
‘Vincent Winters,’ he breathed, and before Vincent could back down the steps and forget all about this silly idea of his, Jim had hobbled down towards him and embraced him. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to see you,’ he said, the words muffled as they caught in his throat.
Vincent’s back stiffened. The last time he’d been hugged like this was by his own mother, the night she had passed away twenty years before. ‘It’s good to see you too,’ he said, returning the hug, relaxing into it and enjoying the interaction with another human. Something he’d had little of in recent years.
‘Are you well? You look well.’ Jim couldn’t contain his excitement. He’d spent so many years wondering how Vincent was, whether he was coping and what he’d done with his life. Out of respect for his wife’s wishes, he’d never dared find out, but now the man himself was on his doorstep, and he felt he owed it to Vincent to ask all the questions he wished he’d asked and to offer him the friendship he’d always wanted to offer.
‘Yes, I am. I think I am. I’ve had a strange few weeks …’ Vincent said. Both men had shrunk in height now that they were elderly, but Vincent still had half a foot over Jim and looked down on him even when hunched over his walking stick.
‘Since Evie died?’ Jim asked, and Vincent nodded sheepishly. ‘We all have. Would you like to come in? Meet the family?’
The front door had swung open a little in the wind, and Vincent could hear voices talking over each other, laughing, tutting, making a din somewhere in the house. His heart strained forward in his chest, trying to urge him towards the sound, but he dug his heels in.
‘Won’t they ask questions?’ he asked.
Jim nodded. ‘Probably. There’s a lot they’ve already learned about you in the last few weeks, but even so, I think it’s about time they knew everything … don’t you?’ He put his arm around Vincent’s shoulders and together they walked inside. ‘They’ve all been staying here for the last few weeks to sort through Evie’s things. Now, though, it feels like they’re staying to look after me.’
‘How’ve you been? Since …’ Vincent asked, feeling as though he’d forgotten how to make conversation with people.
Jim sighed and leaned gently on a chest of drawers in the hallway. ‘You know what it’s like losing Evie.’
A familiar sting prickled through Vincent like electricity.
‘But I’m doing … better. Thank you.’ Jim smiled with his lips but not his eyes, and Vincent understood only too well.
‘Dad?’ a woman’s voice called.
‘Yo
u arrived just at the right time, Vincent,’ Jim said quickly as the sound of footsteps got louder. ‘Isla’s making lunch and usually she recruits me, only to tell me I’m not doing things fast enough.’ He rolled his eyes with warm affection.
‘Am I getting you out of kitchen duties?’ Vincent smiled, amused.
‘No, you’ll be taking my place!’ Jim laughed as a middle-aged woman appeared at the end of the hall in baggy tracksuit bottoms, a bright pink T-shirt and a frilly red apron covered in flour.
‘There you are! You’re supposed to be helping, and … Oh. Who’s this?’
Vincent couldn’t take his eyes off her round face. It was like not wanting to look away from a car crash. In truth, she looked more like Jim, but her lips moved in the same way as Evie’s, and, although greying slightly, her hair was the same shade of blonde.
‘This is Isla, my daughter.’
Isla walked towards them, her floury hand outstretched to take Vincent’s. He shook it, hoping she didn’t notice how sweaty his palm was. He hated how awkward and out of place he felt.
‘Isla, this is Vincent.’
Isla abruptly stopped shaking his hand and simply held it there, her mouth now slightly agape. ‘You … you’re Vincent? Vincent Winters?’
Vincent took a deep breath. ‘I am.’
Neither Vincent nor Jim knew what was rushing through Isla’s head, as the expression on her face didn’t change, but neither of them expected her to …
‘AAAUUUUGGGGUUUUSSSSTTT!!!!’ Both men jumped at her yell. ‘Oh goodness! I’m so sorry, but … you’re here! It’s you! You’re you and you’re actually here!’ After reading and rereading the notebook August, Daphne and Little One had put together, Isla felt as if one of her favourite fictional characters had come to life and was standing in the hallway.
August rushed in from the kitchen brandishing a wooden spatula, his clothes just as floury as Isla’s apron. ‘What’s going on!’ he yelled as he slipped on the rug in his socks, crashing into the wall at high speed but keeping hold of the spatula at all times.
It was clear to Vincent that August had got most of Evie’s genes. His eyes were as big and brown as hers had been, and his face was round, his cheeks pinchable. The bridge of his nose was slightly too wide, but it didn’t make his eyes look funny, in the same way it had never made Evie’s look funny. Just big, bright and full of happiness and mischief.
‘It’s OK, it’s OK! There’s someone here you need to meet!’ Isla said excitedly. ‘Dad …’ She gestured to Jim to do the introductions.
‘You’re impossible,’ Jim said, laughing at his daughter but very aware that all this might be too much for Vincent, until he saw that a smile was creeping on to the other man’s lips.
‘Daaaad,’ Isla moaned like she was a teenager again. ‘August.’ She turned to her brother, who was holding the spatula higher in the air than was necessary, still unsure if he was supposed to hit the intruder or cook him lunch. ‘This is Vincent Winters!’ she said with a squeak.
‘What?’ August dropped his arms to his sides in one great swoop, and sauce slopped off the end of the spatula and on to the rug. ‘You’re Vincent? The Vincent?’
‘I … I think so.’ Vincent, now feeling a little more confident, held out his hand, which August shook with pleasure.
‘Well I’ll be damned. I can’t believe it! Come in, come in!’ August and Isla bustled towards the kitchen, tripping over each other. Vincent shot a glance at Jim as they started to follow.
‘I don’t know what’s got into them,’ Jim confessed.
‘It’s what’s always been in them, I’m sure,’ Vincent said. ‘Their mother.’
August and Isla cooked lunch while Jim and Vincent set the table and sat down to talk.
‘How do they know who I am?’ Vincent leaned across the table to Jim, nodding towards the siblings, who wouldn’t stop looking at him and whispering to each other like kids in a school cafeteria.
‘How long do you have?’ Jim asked rhetorically, but Vincent checked his watch and replied, ‘Probably only a couple of years left in me, but tell me anyway. It’s been a long time since I heard a good story.’
August appeared with a notebook and surreptitiously placed it on the table in front of Vincent, trying to pretend he’d not been listening to their conversation. Vincent flipped it open to find his own handwriting, far steadier and neater than it had been for years, but his all the same.
‘Where did you get this?’ He closed the book and turned it over in his hands, sure that he’d never seen it before.
‘Little One,’ Jim said.
‘Little One,’ Vincent repeated, and laughed, remembering the blackbird that wasn’t a blackbird.
‘August had a dream about that bird, and that very night Little One turned up in his garden,’ Jim explained. ‘In the dream, he’d heard Evie’s voice telling him to wash the bird’s wings and relieve him of his duties, and when they cleaned him, all your notes to each other were revealed. August’s wife Daphne had the bright idea to save them all in a notebook.’
Vincent flipped the pages of a past he never thought he’d see again in such detail. He closed the book and placed it on the table before his tears could splash on to the pages.
‘May I borrow this?’ he asked.
‘Oh Vincent, they’re your memories. The book belongs to you.’ Jim pushed it towards him, and forgetting himself, Vincent picked it up again and hugged it to his chest.
‘Then Isla had a dream too. Long story short, she found a shoebox that Evie and I hid under the floor of her old flat in which she’d hidden all her drawings.’
‘Can I see them?’ Vincent asked.
‘You can, absolutely, but maybe not quite in the way you remember.’ Jim stood halfway out of his chair to go upstairs to retrieve the sun catcher before seeing Isla stood in the doorway holding it delicately in her hands, with a sheepish smile.
‘I thought Vincent might want to see this at some point,’ she said placing it on the table. Before she returned to the kitchen, she turned back and said, ‘I’ve not been listening …’ Jim gave her a disapproving look but shooed her away playfully.
‘In Isla’s dream, she heard her mother’s voice telling her to find the shoebox, and when she did, she made this.’ Jim took the suncatcher and hung it from the light fitting above the table where the sun from the windows could hit it when it came out from behind the clouds. ‘Brace yourself. Just one moment … there!’
The sun shone through the window, hit the glass: the drawings came to life. Startled, Vincent clutched the book tighter, but as soon as he recognised the goose that had caused him to fall in the pond, he howled with laughter. He even recognised the drawing of himself and Evie huddled under an umbrella. The Vincent drawing waved at the real one, but the sketched-out Evie was miming, like she was trying to tell him something. She was pointing at Vincent with a jabbing finger, then gesturing to her own lips and moving her hands to suggest sound coming out of her mouth. Then she pushed both palms flat together, put them under her head and pretended to sleep.
‘What’s she doing?’ Jim asked.
Vincent shook his head, knowing full well that the drawing was miming Tell him about your dream. He wasn’t sure he could handle anything extraordinary happening to him at his age. Just being around this family had his old heart fighting to keep him upright. Telling Jim about his own dream of Evie might invite strange goings-on, and Vincent was too tired to be played with. Evie was still dead, and that was all that mattered. No matter how many extraordinary things happened that made it feel like she was still here, none of them would bring her back.
‘I should really be going,’ he said, avoiding eye contact with the drawing, who was still waving her hands about. He turned to leave, but the cartoon Evie jumped on to a sunbeam and appeared on the wall beside the door, hands on hips and nose scrunched up in frustration.
‘Vincent …’ Jim was concerned, but he had a feeling he knew what had got Vincent so skittish. ‘Yo
u’ve had a dream of your own, haven’t you?’
Vincent was staring at the version of Evie on the wall. It was Evie as she saw herself. Big cheeks, funny eyes and far bigger around the middle than she’d ever been, but even so, he couldn’t ignore it. He turned to Jim and nodded.
Over a roast lunch, Vincent recounted his dream. How real Evie had seemed, what she’d said, and his speculations about why he’d had the dream at all.
‘Why does she want you to see the tree?’ Isla laughed. ‘It’s nothing special.’ Vincent felt a little disappointed that he wasn’t here to see something marvellous, but he caught Jim looking quickly away from both his children and into his gravy.
‘Well, it’s very clear that he needs to see it all the same,’ Jim said, not looking up from cutting his meat far more precisely than necessary.
‘All these dreams,’ August said. ‘It makes you wonder what really happens after you die.’
‘You really think it’s Mum doing this?’ Isla asked in a challenging tone. ‘From beyond the grave!’ She wiggled her fingers at her brother, teasing him.
‘You’re more than willing to believe it when all those drawings are dancing about the place!’ August said, trying to keep his cool.
‘That’s just a trick of the light,’ Isla said feebly.
‘It’s not!’ August put his fork down with force.
‘It is!’ Isla did the same. Gravy splattered across the tablecloth and on to Vincent’s sleeve.
‘Right, you two. That’s enough,’ Jim said sternly, handing Vincent a napkin. ‘It doesn’t matter why you’ve been having these dreams. What matters is what they’ve led you to. You’ve learned so much about your mother. Things that have made you feel closer to her now that she’s gone. That’s what’s important, and don’t forget it.’
On the Other Side Page 22
