by Anna Legat
‘Don’t say that -’
‘I can say what I like. I’ve had a good life, and I’m done with it. My children are grown-ups. They have their own families. They don’t need me hanging around their necks -’ She grinds her teeth and shuts her eyes. ‘Go! You’ve got things to do...’
Wanda lowers the back of Yvonne’s bed, watches her head flop backwards, and caresses her hand which is curled with pain into a tight-knuckled fist. She strokes a wisp of her hair from her forehead before leaving.
She is startled to run into Yvonne’s son as she steps out into the corridor. He is standing there, just outside the door, large and smart in his black suit jacket. He says, ‘I’ve been eavesdropping... She doesn’t talk to me, not like she does to you. She wants to die, doesn’t she?’
‘She just needs to rest.’
‘I’m talking about what she wants, not needs!’ He is towering over her, an intimidating man. Wanda tries to push by him, but he blocks her exit. ‘Resting doesn’t come into it. I can’t bear to watch her suffer. She’s my mother. She wants to die. How much longer does she have to suffer,’ his voice trails off.
‘You’ll have to speak to her doctor. I’m only a nurse.’
‘You can help her.’
‘I am doing my best -’
‘I don’t mean that.’ His glare is intense and unhealthy. Wanda is frightened of him. There should be a panic button somewhere around, next to the fire extinguisher. ‘You can help her die. That’s what she wants. She wants the pain to stop. I can pay -’
‘I don’t want your money. You are insulting me.’
‘Surely you can see she’s suffering. It’s just basic human kindness. It’s within your power to -’
‘No, it isn’t. I’m a Catholic, not a killer,’ Wanda is walking away, and the man lets her.
She is sitting in front of a blank television set. It is off, but she can still hear the TV from the neighbours’ flat. They listen to it loud, all hours of the day and night. It never goes silent. Most of the time Wanda is too tired to care, or even to notice the noise level. In a way it is comforting to know that somewhere in the background the hustle and bustle of everyday life goes on – carries on regardless. Wanda smiles at the thought of that phrase, a phrase that sums up Englishness.
Andrzej won’t be home until well after nine tonight. And when he gets here, he’ll grab something quick and easy to eat and go to sleep. He has another mid-day shift tomorrow. He needs to be well rested. Driving trains isn’t a walk in the park. You have to be alert at all times – you never know when someone decides to cross the rail tracks in front of you, and get his foot stuck between the sleepers. Andrzej has seen it all. But he hardly sees his wife. Sometimes, depending on their respective shifts, they miss each other altogether. Sometimes they pass each other in the doorway – two ships in the night. They exchange small pecks on the cheek and proceed in their opposite directions. It is rare that they both have a day to spend together at their leisure. It is that constant race against the clock – making money, building their future, saving for the flat in Krakow. And flats in Krakow don’t come cheap. But Wanda has already decided – it will have to be a smaller flat. Or a different – cheaper – city. They are going home. And with the Brexit vote, they may have to go home anyway. It should make it easier to convince Andrzej that this isn’t his home, that he shouldn’t grow too attached to it. Yes, he has been here for ten years – most of his working life. He is used to things here, but he will just have to make the effort to say goodbye to it and to find his way back home. He has missed out on so much: Paulina’s birth, most of her seven birthdays, his best friend’s wedding and, most recently, his own father’s funeral. Always too busy to take time off, no matter what the occasion. It seems his life here has swallowed him whole.
She can hear his heavy steps on the landing, then the key turns in the door.
‘I’m home!’ he shouts cheerily from the doorway. No, you’re not! Wanda grinds her teeth. She hears him take off his boots and hang his rustling waterproof jacket on the peg in the hallway. He comes into the lounge – a peck on the cheek. ‘I’m starved,’ he says for hello.
‘I’m homesick. I want to go home.’ She ignores his needs. Andrzej sighs. ‘We’ve been here before, haven’t we? We need another two-three years, that’s all. Then we’ll go, cross my heart and hope to die!’
‘You’ve been saying that since I came here. Remember, I only came here to take you home? And I’m still here, three damned years later! I want to go now – tomorrow,’ she digs her heels in.
Another sigh. ‘You know you’re being irrational.’
‘I don’t care. We must go home. Sit down. For God’s sake, stop hovering over me! Just sit down!’
He slumps next to her on the couch. ‘OK, I’m sitting down.’
‘I had an eye-opening chat with one of our patients. Yvonne, her name. She has days left, a couple of weeks if she’s lucky. She wants to go, really... It’s heart-breaking I can’t do anything for her...’
He pats the back of her hand, ‘I know how these things unsettle you. You can get a job somewhere else. They need nurses all over the show. Apply in a normal hospital, they’ll have you like a shot, with your experience...’
‘No, no, it’s not about the hospice or Yvonne dying. It’s about me – I’m dying, inside... Yvonne sees these things. You’ve got that clarity of mind before you die.’ She can see a tiny, almost imperceptible smirk quiver on his lips.
Andrzej is such a cynic! He hates superstitions. The dying woman’s intuition is just hocus-pocus as far as Andrzej is concerned. Wanda has to refocus him, ‘Don’t say anything – just listen. We talked, Yvonne and I. I showed her Paulina’s photo. She said I – we – should be with our child, watch over her, be there for her. We’re wasting our lives here while her childhood flies by... I can’t take it. It’s wrong to be away from your own child. Out of choice!’
‘OK. We’ll bring Paulina here.’
He tries to give her a hug, but she pushes him away. ‘No, we won’t. We aren’t bringing her here now that things are so uncertain. Absolutely no way! We’re going home.’
His expression is grim and hard. He knows how to put on that face. His eyes can be soft and twinkling at times, but at a drop of a hat, they can harden into lumps of pale blue ice. ‘No, we’re not. We’ve agreed and we’re going to stick to our agreement. Another two-three years and we’ll have enough cash raised for the flat. We’ll buy it outright, no credits, no debts. That’s the best we can do for Paulina.’
‘The best we can do for her is to be with her, like real parents!’
‘I don’t want her to watch me sit there, at your mother’s, unemployed, without hope, like I used to.’
‘Things have changed in the last ten years! You’ll find a job. They need train drivers. They need nurses. It’s a different world!’
‘No,’ he says quietly, but his tone is more powerful than if he were shouting. ‘Two-three years...’
Wanda can’t hold back her tears. ‘I can’t carry on like this! You don’t care about Paulina! You don’t know her. She hardly recognises you. You’ve destroyed our family. There’s nothing left between us and our child, nothing! I can’t do this!’
He gets to his feet, ‘No – it’s me! I can’t do what you’re asking me! Not yet...’
‘I’ll leave you... If you don’t come home with me, I’ll leave you. I swear I will!’
He gives her another hard, unfeeling look, and leaves. She can hear him slam the door behind him, his steps receding on the staircase, and then all she can hear is the neighbours’ TV.
Andrzej is on his third vodka. He drinks it neat, like they do in Poland. Nowadays, it’d be a pint for him – he has integrated well, hasn’t he? But not today. Today, he is drinking alone and he is drinking neat vodka. It is his usual pub, the George & Dragon, just around the corner from the housing estate where he and Wanda live. He doesn’t come here often, and never alone, but today is different. He has
to think.
The bar is full of drunken people and drunken voices. The usual Friday night piss-up. Andrzej sits on his own, on a high stool at the bar. It’s easy this way to order another vodka without having to get up.
He is shit scared.
It’s not like him to be scared – a black belt in karate, a Junior European champion, fourteen years ago. He used to be fearless until reality had its way with him. Real life, it turned out, isn’t about winning small battles. Real life is an uphill struggle. A war that goes on. In Poland, he was losing that war. He might have been, once upon a time, a Junior European champion in karate, but he had no real life skills and no work. No prospects. Not until he came here and trained to be a train driver. He has vindicated himself over the last ten years. He has proved himself. He is a breadwinner and yes – damn it! – he is a good father to Paulina. She has everything she will ever need, and more! He loves her more than anything. And he loves Wanda, damn it! He just shows it differently...
‘Another one?’ the barman asks.
Andrzej nods and searches his pockets for cash. He finds a note, gives it to the barman. He receives his change and his fourth vodka.
He can’t lose them, Wanda and Paulina. What would be the point of proving himself if he lost them? The whole idea was to provide for them and buy a flat in Krakow, the city both he and Wanda fell in love with on their honeymoon. He promised her they would make their home there. And when that was secured, he would start his own karate school. He had it all mapped out and everything was going to plan. He can still do it, he’s on track. But not without Wanda and Paulina. He may as well cut out his own heart. He downs the vodka and slams the glass on the bar, upside down. He’s done drinking. Done thinking.
Andrzej staggers home on unsteady legs. The rain has stopped temporarily, but the wind is whipping him mercilessly and tries to knock him off his feet. He stumbles into a couple of puddles. With his senses numbed by the alcohol he can feel neither the water in his shoes nor the water trickling under his collar and down his spine. He reaches his block of flats, climbs up the stairs and stabs the key into the keyhole of his front door. He succeeds opening it, tumbles in, kicks off his wet shoes and hurries to the lounge. Wanda is still sitting on the coach, in the same place, the same position, in front of a blank TV screen. Her face is swollen with crying and her eyes are vivid red. They look at him, sad but determined. He will be damned if he loses her. He mumbles, ‘Yeah, okay, we’re going home...’
‘We are?’
‘I said, we are.’
She jumps off the couch and runs to him and squeezes his cheeks between her hands, and plants a kiss on his lips. He grabs her, returns her kiss. His lips and his hands are kissing her face, her hair, her whole body. She is pulling off his wet clothes; he is pulling off hers. He is so thirsty for her! The hangover of almost losing her has drained him dry. And now he will have his fill making love to his wife.
VII
The George & Dragon isn’t Gillian’s regular watering hole. Situated on what people call the ‘Allotments Estate’ on the northern outskirts of Sexton’s where allotments used to be, it isn’t anywhere near Gillian’s usual hunting spots. It’s too far to walk, which isn’t any good if you want to have a few drinks and can’t drive. Coming here was Charlie’s idea – his idea of bonding with his future mother-in-law. He picked her up at the station and drove her here.
Doubled up, they run across the car park in the unforgiving weather, the wet wind lashing at them and tugging at their clothes. Inside, the pub is pleasant enough, but character-less. It used to be a mill once upon a time, and after that it had sat abandoned and derelict for decades until the Allotments Estate was built. It was restored rather hurriedly and castrated of all its original features which would no longer serve any purpose. Gillian doesn’t like it and she doesn’t like its clientele – predominantly males in their twenties and thirties watching sports on a large flat-screen TV, shouting and swearing. Charlie naturally fits in.
They find a table. That isn’t difficult as hardly anyone bothers to sit down in this establishment. They’re all standing and moving around a lot.
‘What’d you like?’ Charlie asks.
‘Can you afford a glass of red?’
He smiles and nods, taking himself and the flame of his strawberry-blond hair to the bar. That is the busiest part of the building. The patrons are all crowded around it, guarding their instant access to their next drinks. Charlie squeezes into the crowd. Gillian waits and gazes at the bunch of drunken young stallions without much interest. They simply aren’t in her demographic bracket and couldn’t possibly offer her anything she hasn’t already seen or done. Even though she is starved of a man. How long was it since she had sex? Not since Sean. Ever since Sean she has been dwelling in a sexual desert. She blames Charlie Outhwaite for that. She couldn’t bring home another man as long as that little twat remains co-habiting under her roof with her daughter. And now, to make it even more impossible, he is marrying her!
Where is he with those drinks? How long does it take to get a bloody drink? Charlie seems to be missing in action.
Gillian inspects the bar area packed to the brim. In the corner, a man in his mid-thirties, with a full, round face and a short crop of fair hair, is drinking alone – small shots of vodka or tequila, one after another. He is clearly intent on getting smashed.
‘Here you go!’ Charlie appears, bearing drinks. He places Gillian’s glass on a placemat – very tidy, very unlike him. The multiple mug rings all over her beech kitchen table testify to his habitual disregard for property.
‘Thanks.’
‘Glad you could make it. I know how busy you are.’
‘Alright. So what do you want? Spill it out.’ Gillian isn’t one for long preambles.
Charlie groans. ‘I don’t want anything... Just for us to get along. You know – have a drink from time to time. Talk...’
‘So you do want something.’
‘Well, no. Like I said -’
‘You want us to get along, right?’
‘Well, yes.’
‘OK.’ Gillian drinks half of her glass of wine, and looks, pensive, at the table. She nods, ‘I see.’
‘So we are friends?’
‘I wouldn’t take it that far.’
‘You don’t like me, then?’
She finishes the rest of her wine. ‘My turn?’ She points to his still full glass.
‘No, thank you, I’m driving. I can get you another one though.’
‘Thanks.’
Reluctantly, Charlie gets up from his seat and wanders to the bar. He must’ve realised by now that this conversation will be nowhere near as easy as he had hoped. Gillian waits and watches the lone drinker at the bar put his glass upside down on the counter, get up, and stagger towards the door. He’s had enough. Gillian has had enough, too. No, she doesn’t like Charlie Outhwaite. Since that day at the airport, nearly two years ago, when he walked away from Tara, leaving her sitting alone on top of her luggage, crying. Gillian will never forget his hand caressing his girlfriend’s back, the kiss the girl planted on his cheek and his face when he turned around to glance back and away again, and shatter Tara’s last hope. No, it’s not her job to like him. But she will watch him, every step of the way. If she can help it, she’ll not let him hurt her daughter. Of course, the key phrase here is if she can help it. If. Because how could she stop him? What could she do? Sweet fuck all.
‘You must know I’d never hurt Tara.’ Charlie places the second glass of wine in front of her. ‘I love her.’
‘I’m glad to hear that.’
‘You must believe me. Things happened in the past that will never happen again. I was confused. Stupid! I was stupid. I didn’t know what I wanted... I didn’t know how to tell Heidi about Tara – Heidi was my girlfriend since we were sixteen... I, I... I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. But I was wrong. I should’ve... There was no excuse. I’m not looking for excuses. But that’s behind us. We’re moving
on and it seems to me that you are not.’
Does he expect her to tell him not to beat himself up over the past? She doesn’t say any such thing. She drinks her wine and nods vaguely.
‘I know you’re against our marriage -’
‘You’re both a bit too young, don’t you think?’
‘No, I don’t. I’ve no doubts.’
‘Good. Tara doesn’t have any either, but then she’s a very impressionable girl.’
‘Look, Gillian, can we just forget about the past? Have you made no mistakes? Just cut me some slack here... Tara and I – we’re in love. We want nothing more than to be together. Give us a chance, will you? I... I...’ He is stammering. ‘I won’t let anything bad happen to her.’
‘Neither will I.’ She means this to sound like a warning. ‘We just need your blessing. Tara needs it -’
Gillian’s mobile rings. It’s work. She picks it up, ‘DI Marsh.’
‘We’ve a suspicious death,’ Webber tells her, ‘a seventy-eight-year-old woman in a residential home.’
‘What makes it suspicious? People die in residential homes all the time.’
‘They found her in her bed with her mouth taped. Otherwise they wouldn’t think much of it.’
‘Which residential home?’
‘Golden Autumn Retreat, in Bishops Well.’
‘Okay, I’m on my way.’ She looks at Charlie’s nearly full beer glass. ‘Can you give me a lift to Bishops Well? It’s not far from here.’
‘Gertrude Hornby, seventy-eight. Advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. She hasn’t been recognising her own daughter in the last few months. No hoper, they tell me.’ Gillian and Mark are looking at the body of an elderly lady, lying in bed, with the duvet drawn affectionately to her chest and tucked under her arms, her hands bound together on her stomach, her head resting on a smooth, well-puffed-up pillow. It seems that someone, who cared very much for her, has put her to sleep, turned off the lights and tiptoed out of her room. The only thing out of sync with this idea is the brown adhesive tape stuck across her lips. Packaging tape.
