The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel

  David laughs as if he has just got the punchline to a joke only he knows. ‘Oh, right,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t know why you think it’s funny. You were about to get into a lot of trouble back there.’

  ‘Kingsbridge needs some trouble. It needs an enema. That’s what it needs.’ David grins at me. His face is full of it. ‘Do you have any cash?’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Well, I am, actually. Sorry about that.’

  When I open my purse to give him a pound coin, he says the five-pound note will do it. And when I object, he begins to talk. He tells a complicated story about someone stealing his wallet, his grandmother dying, the cat dying, only even as he tells me the story he has had enough of the lie and he starts smiling. The grin erupts into another laugh. He has your eyes. Very deep blue. But they do not have your gentleness, and neither do they have your humility. This boy is smart. His intelligence is like a knife. Nevertheless, the story about the cat is elaborate and wild. It’s the sort of thing I would have made up once, though in an exercise book and not with a stranger. I begin to laugh too.

  ‘Are you going to give me this money, or not?’ he says.

  ‘What about a cup of tea, David?’

  ‘With you?’ He gives a look that is a question mark. I feel ashamed of my suggestion. It is too forward. Then he says, ‘You can buy me a can of beer, if you want.’

  The cans of beer. Of course. I picture you secretly disposing of those empties in the yard, and once again I feel a flush of such tenderness for you that my throat thickens. ‘Isn’t it a bit early in the day, David?’

  ‘No one gives a toss in Kingsbridge.’ He offers me a cigarette, and when I say no, he shrugs. ‘I started drinking in pubs when I was twelve. I was in my school uniform and no one said anything. Nice meeting you, Queenie.’ He taps the side of his forehead with his fingertips in a mock salute. Then he turns and strides away. ‘See you again some time,’ he calls as an afterthought.

  I watch him as he strides back through the rain towards the High Street, pushing with his shoulders past strangers, his coat flapping, his Dr Martens boots slapping the wet pavement. He rolls his neck every now and then as if it is a hard thing to carry so much cleverness in that head of his.

  Only when he’s gone does it occur to me that he is not the only person who stands out in Kingsbridge.

  David knew my name.

  Homage to Harold Fry

  A DAY of mist. At the window there is nothing. No tree. No sky. It is as if the hospice has been cut from its moorings and we are drifting in a white sea. I hope it is not misty with you, Harold. In my mind, I give you a fluorescent jacket and a lantern.

  This morning something unexpected occurred in the dayroom.

  ‘What exactly are those?’ enquired Mr Henderson, pointing at the cork noticeboard. Two new pages had been pinned up, above the NHS posters about care in the community and useful contact numbers in Northumberland. I went back to my notebook.

  We were all at the table. A volunteer was demonstrating how to make greeting cards. Sometimes it helps, she said, to write a message for a person you love. ‘It is another way of voicing the things you find hard to say.’ The volunteer had brought a tote bag of glue, folding cards, sequins, foam craft stickers, assorted feathers, self-adhesive stars and metallic pens. Finty had made a card to send to Prince Harry, because he is her favourite royal. Sister Catherine was helping Barbara to make a card for her neighbour. The Pearly King had lifted the glue tube to his nose several times and told us there was nothing like the good old days, but so far he had not used it to stick any foam shapes to his greeting card.

  ‘Is everyone deaf, as well as dying?’ shouted Mr Henderson. Surprise, surprise, he had not made a card. He pointed again at the noticeboard. This time we all stopped our work and looked up. Sister Lucy rose from her chair.

  ‘Oh, I did that,’ she said. She removed the pictures in order to show us.

  They were two calendar pages, for April and May. Each had a glossy photographic illustration, one of yellow primroses and the other of a tortoiseshell kitten. Sister Lucy squinted a little in order to read out the captions.

  ‘The first is “Spring in Berwick-upon-Tweed”.’ She pointed to the second. ‘And this is “A Sweet Kitten”.’

  ‘Is the sweet kitten also in Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ said Mr Henderson.

  Sister Lucy chewed her mouth. ‘Well, I suppose. It doesn’t say.’

  Mr Henderson flapped open the newspaper. ‘No comment,’ he said.

  ‘But why are there kittens and flowers on the fucking noticeboard?’ shouted Finty. I should add that she was wearing a pink cowboy hat. If I knew why I would tell you. But I have no clue. One of the volunteers has a dressing-up box at home for her children. She brings the hats for Finty because Finty likes them.

  Sister Lucy explained that she had torn the pages from a spare calendar in the office. She had coloured every day that you have been walking. It is so that we can follow your progress, she said. She also pointed to a photograph she had cut from a celebrity magazine of a man in walking boots.

  ‘But that is John Travolta,’ said Finty. ‘Fuck me. Is he coming as well?’

  Sister Lucy said she didn’t know anything about John Travolta. So far as she knew, it was only Harold Fry who was walking. ‘I asked Sister Philomena, and she said we can have a Harold Fry corner,’ she added.

  ‘Fab!’ yelled Finty. ‘Can we have a drinks cabinet, and all?’

  Mr Henderson made a noise I am not going to describe.

  Sister Lucy blushed so hard she looked permanently stained. ‘Today is—’ She interrupted herself in order to point her finger at each date and count under her breath. ‘Today is the twentieth day of Harold Fry’s journey.’ She moved to the second page, with the kitten, and taking a pen from her pocket she carefully coloured the first square. ‘It is also the first of May.’ She suggested that she might display your postcards beside the calendar pages so that we can all see where you have been. When I agreed, she fetched them from my room and pinned them up. She wheeled me closer to the Harold Fry corner. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look, Queenie.’

  ‘Does that mean I’ve been here more than twenty days?’ growled the Pearly King. ‘Plenty of life in the old dog yet.’

  ‘What is that funny noise?’ asked Barbara.

  Finty laughed. ‘It’s the Pearly King. He’s beating his chest. Don’t try it, Babs. You’ll knock your eye out again.’

  ‘Good grief,’ sighed Mr Henderson. ‘This is worse than Huis Clos.’

  ‘Wee what?’ howled Finty.

  I returned to your postcards. Kingsbridge. Bantham Beach. Buckfast Abbey. South Brent. The topographical map. Chudleigh and Exeter. The Bluebell steam train. Taunton. Harold Fry is really coming, I thought. And I experienced a little spring in my heart, the way I used to when the spiny burnet rose in my sea garden rewarded me with one white flower.

  Then I remembered all the things I still have to tell you. I glanced at the thick mist pressed to the windows. I lowered my head.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Mr Henderson was saying. ‘Why is there a kitten on the calendar? Will someone explain to me what a kitten has to do with Berwick-upon-Tweed? Miss Hennessy?’

  But I was back with my notebook.

  A one-way ticket to Newcastle

  TIVERTON PARKWAY, Taunton, Bristol Temple Meads, Bristol Parkway, Cheltenham Spa, Birmingham New Street …

  I stood on the platform at Exeter, peering along the track. The line of sleepers stretched a little way and then disappeared in fog. When the train came, it didn’t so much arrive as appear. There had been nothing, and suddenly there were eight carriages.

  Even as I opened the door to the train, I believed you would rush out and stop me. I lifted my suitcase slowly up the step. I paused. Looked back. I was still hoping for that goodbye, you see. I was still waiting.

  In the carriage, I took my seat and pressed my face to the window. I kept my eye on th
e entrance to the platform. People were rushing through with their luggage. Is this it? Is this the Newcastle train? Plenty of time, madam. No need to rush. Even now it would not be too late for me to jump out. Jump out and run through the station, past the ticket office, through to the car park, where you might just have parked your car. Yes, maybe even now you were rushing past the ticket office, looking for a woman alone, thinking no, it surely was not too late. Glancing at your watch, the platform clock—

  Beyond the station, the outlines of the buildings and roofs and windows were smudged by the fog. Nothing looked substantial.

  The guard blew his whistle. The train gave a lurch. The familiar landscape began to slide away.

  In panic, I stood. No, no. Not yet. I pressed the side of my face flat to the window. My eyes strained with the effort to stay focused on the little platform, the people waving, the absence of you. I watched them grow smaller and smaller until the platform was a dent and the people were specks and still there was no you. They vanished to nothing in the fog and I was the same. I was so small I was nothing. I slunk back to my seat. At least I suppose I must have done. Because after a while I realized I wasn’t standing any more.

  I couldn’t look at a book. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t do anything but sit as the train bore me away. It still didn’t seem real that I was on the move again. That I was leaving you behind. I stared at the window and the land was shifting hints of autumn: russets and golds and greens on the turn. They were like watercolour paints, bleeding on a wet page, and I didn’t know if it was the fog that made them run or my tears.

  Taunton.

  Did someone say ‘Taunton’? It was not too late! I could get off. There was a bus service, I knew that. Even as I fumbled for my coat, even as I wiped my eyes and dug my hands into the sleeves, I thought of what I had done and I remembered my conversation with Maureen. The air was punched out of me. Everything was over in Kingsbridge. I sat again, very neat, not daring to move a muscle in case my body carried me off the train before my head could stop it, waiting for the guard to blow his whistle.

  As the train ploughed north, the fog began to lift. The sun poked its way through – a pale, white eye – and touched the clouds with silver. Bristol Temple Meads. Bristol Parkway. Cheltenham Spa. The miles you tread every day, Harold, I witnessed at such speed it was like slicing my way through England. Hedgerows, rosebay willowherb, buddleia, bridges, fields, canals, burnt-out cars, streams, gravel pits, concrete boulders, gardens. They flashed past and they meant nothing, they were broken pictures that held no connection. At Birmingham a wedding party crowded into the carriage: red cheeks, pillbox hats, loosened ties, open bottles. They sang until the next stop and then a woman began to cry so hard her make-up ran and her tiny hat slipped above her ear and her face was streaked like a tiger. I wondered if she loved the bridegroom and no one knew but me. Later I noticed the crooked church spire at Chesterfield, like an askew pointed hat, and I longed to say to you, Look! I knew we would have laughed, and laughing at the same thing would have been another way of being together, but you weren’t there and so I could only notice that broken steeple and feel your loss. At Sheffield a gang of young women boarded and took up a discussion about door-to-door sales. The young women got off and were replaced by families with suitcases returning home, and shoppers laden with bags. And so it continued. People getting on, travelling a little, talking of the future, while I sat alone, belonging nowhere. Only in motion. Even the upholstery had more colour than I did.

  Voices round me grew higher and flatter. Electricity pylons and telephone poles spanned the landscape, carrying cable to places I couldn’t see. There were farm buildings, some red-brick, some dirty pinks and then there were housing estates and makeshift warehouses. In the distance, smoke gushed from the chimneys and blew at a sideways angle like giant grey sheets against the sky. Humanity looked so industrious, so busy being what it was, I could no longer find my place in it. After Doncaster the land flattened and spread. Recent rainwater sat on the fields.

  By the time we passed York, the day had become a mellow gold and the trees glowed. At Darlington there was more red-brick and then once again there was movement in the earth. Houses were stacked and pitched into the hillsides, fields were yellow with wheat for harvesting, the river snaked alongside the railway line. The black profiles of Durham’s cathedral and castle met my eye, their towers and spires cutting into the sky. Down below, the slate roofs of the city shone black. There was already a darkness creeping into the late afternoon. Newcastle would be the last stop.

  All change! All change!

  I was the last to get off. As I stepped down to the platform, I had to hold on to the door to keep steady. People were pushing past me, impatient to arrive at wherever they were heading. It had been all right, I realized; the journey had been bearable so long as I kept moving. But now that I was still again and the ground was solid beneath my feet, I felt so light-headed I could barely breathe. I tried to fix my eye on the iron girders of the station roof, but even as I found them they unhooked from their rivets and swam free.

  My stomach lurched. My knees buckled.

  I began to fall.

  The puzzle’s progress

  THIS AFTERNOON, Mr Henderson stopped by Sister Lucy on his way out of the dayroom. Looking over her shoulder at the jigsaw, he frowned a moment as if he were checking it for mistakes.

  ‘I don’t think it’s quite working,’ said Sister Lucy. ‘I should probably give up.’

  Mr Henderson glanced back at me and my notebook.

  He said, ‘I hope you don’t write about us in there. We would make poor copy.’

  I gave what I could of a smile.

  With a shaking hand, Mr Henderson took one piece of Sister Lucy’s jigsaw from the box and slotted it very carefully beside another.

  ‘That’s St Ives,’ he said. ‘My wife and I used to take a holiday cottage in St Ives.’

  Mr Henderson stayed with Sister Lucy all afternoon. They have completed a section of Cornwall and also East Anglia.

  And you, my friend? Where are you?

  A dance lesson for David

  AUGUST. A Thursday evening. I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to Totnes. I’d changed secretly in the women’s toilet at the brewery. Under my summer coat, I wore my ballroom dress. I had my dance shoes in my bag along with a library book. I’d unpinned my hair and sprayed it to give it some curl.

  You were on your family holiday and it shocked me how much I missed you. Napier had arranged to replace you for the fortnight with a younger rep. Nibbs, that was his name. Do you remember? Nibbs drove fast and yawned a lot. Often both at the same time. When a thing is taken away, you see more clearly what it brought to your life, and every time I got into Nibbs’s car I missed the safety, the companionship, of yours. I made it clear to Napier that Nibbs was not an appropriate replacement, just in case our boss had any funny ideas about sacking you on your return. It was my fourth day without you. I still had another full week to endure. I needed to dance. I needed to stand beside a tall man and lift my arms and pretend, for a few moments, that I was with you again.

  At the bus stop I felt a tug at my sleeve. I got that smell. Patchouli, cigarettes, beer. I knew David before I saw him. Were you already home?

  I hadn’t mentioned to you that I’d met David because I didn’t want to embarrass you. He’d almost got into a fight, and then he’d taken my money. Finding me all dressed up, my hair in soft curls, my mouth a coral pink, David twisted his face into a grimace. He cocked his head, as if he were trying to fix me in a new perspective. Apparently the change amused him.

  ‘Where are you going, Queenie Hennessy?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Out? Where’s out?’

  I turned my gaze to the road. I’d never told you that I liked to dance, and I hadn’t mentioned that I’d been a few times to the Royal. (I didn’t want you to think that I was desperate.) I needed to think straight. Your son looked the sort of young man who mig
ht betray a secret, just to see what happened. ‘Never you mind where I’m going,’ I said.

  David took up residence at my side. ‘Never you mind? That sounds fun.’ He lit a cigarette and wagged the match without looking. ‘I’ll come too.’ He blew out the first plume of smoke.

  Wherever I went, wherever I travelled, I found a dance hall. I went alone, even if I didn’t always leave that way. When you’re alone in a dance hall it’s a different kind of loneliness. It’s not like sitting in a bedsit and no one knowing a thing about you. In a dance hall you can be defined by your separateness. You can be both a part of something and not a part. Also, my parents loved it. The dancing. It was how I’d first met the Shit in Corby. He asked me to foxtrot and things followed from there.

  I said to David, ‘You don’t want to come with me. It will be full of old people. Go home. Your parents might be worried.’

  He laughed. ‘It’s only half past six. And anyway, they’re still on holiday.’

  Despite myself, I felt my shoulders slump. ‘And you’re not with them?’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking.’

  David began scouring the oncoming traffic. He stepped out into the road, and I had to yank him back. ‘You can buy me that beer you owe me,’ he said.

  I refused to sit beside him on the bus. If he wanted to go to Totnes then of course I couldn’t stop him, but he wasn’t travelling with me and neither was I paying his fare.

  ‘I don’t know why you’re so touchy, Queenie,’ said David, resting his big boots on the seat near mine. I kept trying to read my library book, but I might as well have been holding it upside down. All I was aware of was this slim dark-haired young man staring at me with your eyes. There were no other passengers and the conductor was upstairs. I felt very much on my own with David.

  ‘What are you reading?’ Before I could reply, he had got up and slipped the book out of my hands. ‘Proust? Nice.’