An Ordinary Life

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘And that’s my point – we should talk about it, talk about everything!’ He flung his arm in a wide arc and Molly knew by the lurch in her stomach at the thought of doing just that that it signified the beginning of the end. She liked Ian Morgan of the Neighbourhood Watch, but to tell him all her secrets? Well, that was another matter entirely.

  ‘You are sweet, Ian, the best – great company and so much fun.’ She nodded to emphasise how much he had meant to her. ‘But I carry my secret loss like a caged bird that sits in my chest. It’s still most of the time and silent, so much so that I don’t remember it’s there, but then on occasion, it flutters its wings, a gentle reminder of sadness. But that’s okay; it doesn’t overshadow all the good, all the happy times. I sometimes picture that little bird being set free as I take my last breath, and it will be a relief for us both, I’m sure . . .’

  ‘Well, look at us, sharing our innermost truths.’ He drew breath. ‘I rather think we’re at a crossroads here . . .’

  ‘In what way?’ she asked as she sipped her cup of tea.

  ‘In that—’

  The phone in the hallway rang, interrupting him.

  ‘Sorry, Ian, just a minute. Can you watch the peas?’ She smiled as she ran to the phone.

  ‘Chelmsford 57286?’

  ‘Molly?’

  ‘Estelle, how lovely to hear from you!’

  Molly expected the conversation to flow in the way that it did when all was well and it was a chance to catch up on the news with titbits and questions flying back and forth down the line . . . Estelle’s pause was therefore enough to tell Molly that all was not well and her heart felt heavy with portent.

  ‘Molly, I’m so sorry to call you like this, but—’ The girl paused, clearly crying.

  Just say it! Say it! Is it Joe? Is he hurt? Molly could hardly breathe.

  ‘Joe’s just had a call from his dad, and it’s Joycey.’

  Molly stepped back until she was sitting on Ian’s coat covering the stool.

  ‘Joycey?’ She gripped the phone and pushed it tighter to her face.

  ‘She’s passed away suddenly, Molly. I am so sorry, but she’s dead.’

  Molly expected to feel a crack of grief similar to the one that had threatened to fell her when Mrs Duggan gave her comparable news, but she did not. She waited, but there was nothing. She was numb, entirely numb, with one calm thought that now rose above all others: What on earth does my life look like without my Joycey in it?

  TWENTY-ONE

  Chelmsford, Essex

  2002

  Aged 77

  Molly slowly dragged the black wheelie bin down the narrow path and out onto the pavement. She ground her teeth, exasperated at her weakened physical state, which, while only temporary, was still the biggest irritation to her. She then went back into the cottage, treading carefully in her sheepskin slippers. They were gloriously comfortable and warm, a present last Christmas from Amelie, who was a GP, married to David’s grandson, Arthur, also a doctor. They lived in Leith, Scotland. Amelie was a sweet girl who had taken a bit of a shine to Molly; she wrote notes to her on floral paper for no reason at all and sent gifts at Valentine’s and Christmas, visiting occasionally too, for all of which Molly was grateful.

  She had, since her beloved Joyce died and, sadly, Clara now too, almost by default become matriarch of the family. Without Joyce to phone for the smallest thing, she noticed that Joe and Estelle, Adam and Roz, Frances, Hetty and all of their broods called her with wonderful regularity and spoiled her in the way Amelie did. Molly smiled now to think that when she first gave Joe up, one of her biggest worries had been whether she would have a place in the family, unable to imagine how it might work, living in the shadows, a secret mother, and yet here she was, mothering many and surrounded by love. Not, of course, that she wouldn’t have given up her new crown in a heartbeat to have her darling sister back with her for one more day. Geertruida, too, had passed away. Molly bit her bottom lip. It was still a sadness that the two had not reconciled, despite her friend’s generous and timely letter, but as the years passed Molly almost understood the toxic combination of grief and anger and the desire to have someone to blame. It was with a level of distress which surprised her that in 1988 Molly came across her obituary in The Times:

  Geertruida Hanscombe has passed away peacefully at home in West Sussex after a short illness, aged sixty-three, leaving her husband Benedict, her two children Johan and Anika and her four adored grandchildren.

  Molly had wondered at the time whatever had become of Richard, Geer’s wartime beau? She wondered if he had made it home from the front and got to write love letters to a woman who might think enough of him not to share them over the table during lunch. How young and giddy they had all been! Molly was sad that Geer had passed at sixty-three, no age at all, but also happy that her beloved friend had found love, with Benedict, whoever he was, and had built a life, had children and known the joy of being called grandma . . .

  She smiled now, thinking about them all, as she walked cautiously back along the frost-covered track to fetch the recycling bin, in which, as instructed, she deposited all of her cardboard, tins and glass ready for the weekly collection. It bothered her how much packaging everything seemed to come in these days, remembering a time when she had used one sturdy nylon shopping bag in which she used to lob loose fruit and vegetables, a loaf of bread and meat wrapped in waxed paper, tied with string, and when almost nothing went to waste. Why put bananas and oranges into plastic when they were already perfectly well insulated? It was beyond her. This thought was immediately followed by a memory of the first bag of fresh plums she had tasted after the war, as she prepared Joe’s bedroom. She could even now swear they were the sweetest and best she had ever had.

  Molly took her time in the kitchen. She braced her arms on the sink and took a deep breath. The scars on her chest were itchy. She rubbed her hand over the two thick rinds of skin that sat in moon shapes, smiling at her mockingly when she dressed and undressed, in the place where her breasts had once lived.

  ‘So that’s it, Molly, you have the all-clear. How do you feel?’ The nice doctor had been most chirpy about a job well done.

  ‘Relieved, happy.’ She thought, a better substitute for what she had been going to say: Underwhelmed, really. Molly had been prepared to meet her maker and had made peace with it, but no, it was not her time. Joe and Estelle had fussed over her when she stayed with them after her surgery and she had been glad then that it was not her time, revelling in the opportunity to wake under the same roof as her boy.

  ‘We can give you reconstruction surgery. I mean, not immediately, but—’ the doctor had offered.

  ‘Oh gosh no, the thought of being pushed and pulled about all over again and having even more surgery—’ She shook her head. At seventy-seven, her cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatments had taken their toll. ‘I’d rather not bother, if that’s okay. But it’s a sad day. I can see that my glamour modelling days are finally over.’

  ‘Not necessarily!’ he had laughed. ‘You’re in great shape!’

  And she had laughed, too, until the bandages came off and she was standing in front of the mirror in her bathroom, all alone, and her laughter turned to tears. There was something essentially and obviously diminishing in the loss of her breasts, and no matter how much she told herself they were just lumps of fat, entirely redundant, the reality was they were so much more. And if it hadn’t sounded so embarrassingly ridiculous to her ears, she would have said that she mourned their loss, but it was the truth no less. This was the kind of thing she would have shared with Joyce. Oh, how she missed her! It was seventeen years since her sister had passed away and yet still Molly was prompted, almost daily, to pick up the phone and call her about something . . . and it was the absence of these small interactions that she missed the most.

  Surprising them all, Albert had moved back to Canada, where by all accounts he led a full and active life with his new lady friend, Nella-Rose, a peti
te country and western singer in her late sixties who wore a waist-length red wig and was, judging by their festive photographs, a little over-generous with the eye shadow palette. Molly could only guess what the very particular Joyce would have had to say about that! The thought of it made her smile. Molly had not, as her sister had requested, told Joe the truth. Not yet. It was complicated. She wanted to honour her sister’s wishes but had to factor in that Joyce had been two parts Cinzano when she made the suggestion, and also, what would telling Joe gain? Yes, she had longed her whole life to be called Mum by him, but would he now, a man in his late fifties, feel able to adjust to that huge change, and might it not undermine the wonderful relationship he had shared with Joyce, which had shaped him into the kindest, smartest father, husband and grandfather? She felt that to broach the topic would only be for the most selfish of reasons and so, for the time being, remained quiet. There was still time.

  Hubert the cat meowed loudly from the countertop.

  ‘I know, I know: you want your breakfast, but you don’t want me to miss the bin men, do you?’ She stared at the fat moggy with the lustrous tail, who gave her his usual look of disdain. ‘I swear, Hubert, that one day you’re going to answer me back.’ She laughed and went to the fridge to retrieve the other half of yesterday’s cat food, which, frankly, looked good enough to eat. ‘There you are, you spoiled pussycat.’ Molly watched as he took his time, eating in the same way that he did everything else, daintily and precisely and with a haughtiness that was as funny as it was endearing.

  ‘Right,’ Molly said aloud. ‘Better get a wiggle on – we’re expecting visitors!’

  Adam, Joe’s boy, his girlfriend, Roz, who was heavily pregnant with their second child, and their little daughter, Maisie Joyce, traipsed into the cottage with so many bags, boxes, bottles and accessories that Molly wondered if they were moving in. She was fascinated by Roz’s pregnant form. The girl’s large belly rested over the soft waistband of her maternity jeans and emerged beneath her cropped T-shirt, showing off her rounded stomach with its popped-out belly button in all its glory. So very different from her own pregnancy, when she had felt forced to wear a constricting corset to hide her ‘shame’. Molly wanted to stare at the girl, who cradled her bump with beringed fingers. How times had changed, for the better . . . She heard her sister’s voice in her ear: for the better . . .

  The troupe gathered in the cosy sitting room. Maisie pottered and chattered quite happily, talking to Hubert and fetching him plastic dolls and wooden cars from her endless bag of goodies that he had absolutely no interest in. Maisie, to her credit, persevered regardless.

  ‘So have you heard from Mum and Dad?’ Molly asked, keen to hear all about the cruise Joe and Estelle had taken to celebrate their upcoming sixtieth birthdays.

  ‘Yes, he felt terrible about missing Clara’s funeral, but obviously he didn’t know she’d died until Hetty called, and then Frances organised the funeral very quickly and they were away. Poor old Clara.’ Adam looked wistful. ‘We went, and it was really sad.’

  ‘They often are.’ Molly thought of her own mother’s send-off, when her mind had been elsewhere; David’s, where everyone was a little shell-shocked; and Joyce’s, when each and every one of them had been utterly inconsolable, their grief raw and painful. There was very little that had felt celebratory – people had been angry and felt cheated at her loss, for which they were all unprepared. And then, only last year, Ian Morgan had died, and she had sat at the back of the church, smiling and thinking fondly of the six months of fun they had had at a time in her life when she had felt she had no right to expect such things. They had, much to her joy, remained friends, stopping to chat when they met in the street and sharing at least two bottles of wine and two subsequent nights of passion in the intervening years. She wondered momentarily what might be the nature of her own funeral and inadvertently rubbed the thick rind of a scar on her chest, a reminder of her latest brush with death.

  ‘I was sorry not to go, but I wasn’t allowed to travel so soon after my op—’

  ‘You look really well!’ Roz offered sweetly.

  ‘Thank you, dear, I feel it. So yes, I missed it too, but sent flowers and cards, of course, to Hetty and Frances.’

  Molly thought of Clara, who was only strong and confident with David by her side, recalling how she had sat and cried into a handkerchief in the house in Bloomsbury when Clementine was only a little thing and they were in the midst of a world war, with everyone fearful of leaving their homes and climbing the walls, waiting for life to return to normal. Or as normal as it would get . . . She thought, as she often did, of Johan: just a glimpse, his face, a split-second grin that had not faded.

  ‘Well,’ Roz said, shifting forward in her seat, ‘there was a bit of a drama at the funeral. Hetty had organised caterers and Clementine had too much to drink and shouted at them! Said they were late and the food was substandard.’ Roz pulled an embarrassed face. ‘I think she was just a bit stressed. The whole place went quiet and no one knew where to look. Hetty cried and then Lindsey and Frances had a bit of a scrap.’

  Molly took a sip of her tea and thought about the warring cousins who had always been rivals. ‘Well, Frances and Lindsey should have known better than to act like that. It’s disrespectful.’ She thought about her sister-in-law, who, towards the end of her life, had been very frail. ‘The last time I saw Clara she was really quite far gone. I don’t think she knew who I was, the poor love. Dementia is a horrible thing, especially for those who can only watch and do nothing for those they love.’

  ‘Has Frances been over?’ Adam enquired about his younger cousin.

  ‘She pops in.’ Molly nodded. Her great-niece lived in one of the small Essex villages for which Chelmsford was the main town and, as a result, Frances was her closest relative, physically speaking, and therefore the keeper of a spare key to the cottage, just in case. It wasn’t that Molly didn’t appreciate having her on hand, or how the girl took time out of her busy life to visit her aunt on occasion, but Frances, who could be a little boisterous, was not always the best company.

  Adam sat forward in the chair.

  ‘Dad said the ship’s really snazzy and Mum is loving the cocktails, but he would have been happy to stay in Nice, where they boarded, and spend some time in the south of France.’

  ‘I’m with Joe,’ Roz said loudly. ‘I can’t think I’d enjoy being stuck on a boat.’

  ‘Well, they’re hardly stuck, babe, and they’re being spoiled rotten – it’s a huge ship.’

  ‘Maisie, be gentle with Hubert!’ Roz called to her little girl, who was stroking him a little too vigorously. ‘I know they’re being spoiled, but I’d prefer to hire a little car and tootle around France any day.’

  ‘Not that we have the cash for either,’ Adam pointed out. ‘Not with babies, who cost money!’ Adam reached out and ran his fingers over his girlfriend’s stomach, an act so intimate, so beautiful, that it caused a lump to rise in Molly’s throat.

  ‘And not with my partner being a poor artist!’ Roz said, teasing the man she loved.

  ‘I think it’s lovely to chase a passion rather than money.’ Molly meant it.

  ‘Have you ever been to France, Auntie M?’

  ‘Hmmm?’ She tried to think how best to answer.

  ‘Have you ever been to France?’ Adam repeated, looking at her, as she felt the colour slip from her face.

  ‘No,’ she lied, unsure why exactly, but knowing it felt easier than having to go into painful detail that seemed to have no place in this world in which she now lived. And just like that, words from her training came into her head:

  Lie if necessary, rather than get drawn into any lengthy conversation that might give you away, might put you in danger . . . I am Claudette Menard, secretary. I am here to visit my sweet cousin Violet. I’m married to Benoît. We have no children. I’m quiet, myopic, and très réligieuse . . .

  ‘Auntie M?’ Adam rose and placed a hand on her forearm, ‘Roz was jus
t asking if you might like to go to France? Her grandad was involved in the Normandy landings and we went to have a look around. I think you’d like it there. We went on the ferry, had a mooch and some lunch, ham and French bread – although I suppose they just call it bread, don’t they?’ He laughed.

  ‘And they probably just call it kissing!’ Roz added. ‘We had a glass of wine and sat on the beach to toast my grandad. It’s funny to think that just a few years earlier and we’d have had Germans firing at us from the sea!’ Roz took a mouthful of her tea.

  ‘Now there’s a thought!’ Molly nodded and kept her eyes on Maisie – a welcome focal point while her thoughts tumbled.

  They weren’t in the sea, they were on the land. Our soldiers and allies were in the sea with packs on their backs so heavy they drowned the boys who carried them. The Germans were on the land with snipers poised, hidden in the cliffs and behind scrub, in sandbag castles, waiting to pick off the sons of women in houses all over the UK. Women who sat in chairs by the wireless with their hands folded in their laps and a handkerchief threaded through their fingers, waiting to hear news of how their son was faring, while that boy took one last breath, and one last look at the blue, blue sky, and sent one last message of love to fly across the miles to land in her ear as she fell asleep. And my love . . . my man died rehearsing for it . . . What a waste – what a terrible, terrible waste . . .

  ‘But I think you’d love it, Auntie M, France. I mean, it’s foreign, but lovely. I like to see all the signs written in French and the menus, and we go to the supermarket and laugh because we haven’t a clue what half the stuff is! I think they eat bloody anything over there!’