‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Does he know?’
‘God, no.’
‘Are you happy?’
‘Yes.’ I laugh. ‘Very.’
David stares at me for a while, trying to see inside my head and find the man I will not name. This time it is me who does the looking away.
*
Memory number three. We are down by the quay. Your son has beer. We are in coats and I wear gloves because we have just got back from Totnes and it’s late. We can’t see the water, but we can hear the creak of the boats against their moorings. It is taken, this memory, in October just before David leaves for Cambridge. Perhaps it’s the smell of decay in the night air that makes me sad. We have danced together only four times, but having David in my life has been like looking after another part of you.
And so I am surprised when he asks for my textbooks. He reminds me that I’d told you once that I would lend them. I hadn’t realized you had mentioned the idea to David. I wonder what else you have told him about me. Meanwhile, David says he could drop round at the weekend and collect the books before he goes to Cambridge. He asks me for my address. I write it on the back of my bus ticket.
He pockets the address without looking and then he says, ‘I think I’m allergic to my gloves.’
I laugh. It’s the sort of thing you would do: pop up with a remark that seems little to do with anything that came before. ‘How can you be allergic to your gloves? They’re not even wool.’
‘It’s the colour. Blue makes me sneeze. I had a blue scarf once. Mother gave it to me. That made me sneeze as well. It was like having a cold all the time. I had to pretend I’d lost it.’
‘But that’s ridiculous, David. A colour can’t make you sneeze.’
‘You mean a colour can’t make you sneeze. People always assume that just because something is true for them, it must be true for everyone else. It’s a very narrow way of looking at life.’
I rip off my red wool mittens and offer them. David wriggles them over his fingers, although they are so small on him they barely cover his knuckles. He studies his hands with interest, tilting them over and back again, as if he hasn’t seen them before. I have to rub my palms against the cold.
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I’ll keep those, Q.’
And he does. He keeps them.
‘Do you think I’ll be OK at Cambridge?’ he says to the dark.
In the dayroom, Finty interrupts my writing to ask if I heard Barbara in the night. I am focused on finishing the three memories of David, so at first I don’t look up.
‘Oi, gal,’ she says. ‘Put down your notebook. I’m talking here.’
When I turn to Finty, she has an anxious look. She comes and takes the chair beside mine and sits with her arms pulled around her, tight, and her knees poked high. She straightens her pink cowboy hat, pulls the cord tight up to her neck. She says, ‘It’s what happens to some of them. Right at the end. They get restless. They can’t let go, see. I’ve seen it before.’ She rubs her nose with her knuckle, and I wonder if she’s crying.
We watch Barbara sleeping in her chair. She is pale as a primrose. Sister Philomena holds her hand.
Finty says, ‘But she looks better today. I reckon she’ll be OK. She’ll pull through. I really reckon that. Don’t you?’
Outside, the nuns help patients walk in the morning sun. The wet grass shines silver. The blossom is almost gone. A cobweb hangs from a corner of the window and it is so wet it looks made of felt. Finty shakes my arm. Her face is close to mine. Her eyes brim.
‘Fucking shoot me,’ she whispers, ‘if I get restless.’
A letter to David
‘YOUR SON will be OK,’ I told you in the car. ‘I am sure he will be OK. University is fantastic.’
It was just before David left home. You hadn’t told me you were anxious about him going. It was nothing so direct as that. As far as you were concerned, I didn’t even know your son. What you’d told me was that your wife had been preparing food parcels for David. Fruitcakes wrapped in greaseproof paper. Bottled fruit. Jars of pickled onions. (His favourite, apparently.) Things that would keep a long time in his room. She was worried that, left to his own devices, David would forget to eat. She had also made a special trip to Plymouth to buy him dress shirts and a jacket because she wasn’t sure that students at Cambridge could wear black T-shirts.
‘But students can be very scruffy,’ I said.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, Harold. They don’t wear golf club ties.’ I laughed, and you laughed too.
‘I hope he writes,’ you said.
‘I am sure he will.’
‘It will be hard for Maureen. If she doesn’t hear from him. His silence, you know. Well, it would break her heart.’
The afternoon before he left for university, David turned up at my flat. He had come to collect my textbooks, he said. He hovered at my door, looking surprisingly nervous. He kept swiping his fringe, although normally he was happy for it to flop all over his face. I assured him he didn’t need to come inside, but he said he would like to. The truth is, I was nervous too. We hadn’t fixed a definite time, and I hadn’t been sure he would turn up. Even though I’d only spent a few evenings with him, I understood he could be unpredictable.
‘You’ll have to excuse the mess,’ I said. My flat wasn’t untidy, it never was, but I didn’t know what else to say. It is one thing to teach an eighteen-year-old boy to foxtrot in a public place. It is altogether stranger to allow him to enter the place you call your home. He followed me into the sitting room.
I assembled the books quickly into a pile. I had written my name inside each of them. I thought he would leave straight away, but he took one up and began flicking through the pages. And even as he did so, I watched him take in, out of the corner of his eye, the chair by my electric heater, the door to the small kitchen, the two sandwiches I had made for my lunch. It was as though he were observing all these details about my private life and somehow absorbing them for himself.
‘I don’t have beer to offer you, I’m afraid.’ This was me politely saying goodbye.
But David smiled. ‘Tea would be nice, Q.’
He dropped down into my chair and continued to read. He didn’t take off his coat. When I placed the green teacup at his feet, he reached for it with his long fingers. He drank without seeming to notice, and then he ate my lunch without seeming to notice that either. Afterwards he lifted his legs over the arm of my chair and began to smoke, tipping the ash sometimes into my green cup, sometimes missing and sprinkling it instead on the carpet. ‘You must have a lot to do at home,’ I said. ‘Your parents must be waiting for you.’
‘It’s fine,’ he said. He asked for more tea.
In the end I sat in my kitchen. I wondered if David had told you he was coming to my flat to borrow the textbooks. Once again I resolved that however difficult it was, I must come clean with you. I had failed to set boundaries with David, and it was time to put things straight.
‘Hiya.’ I hadn’t heard him approach, and so when I turned and found David silently watching me, I jumped. I had no idea how long he’d been there. He gave an edgy grin. He’d finished the book, he said.
‘All of it?’ It was Plato’s Republic.
‘Yeah, it was good.’
He took up the loaf of bread and started ripping bits out of it in an absent-minded way again, as if his body was accustomed to feeding itself without his head noticing. Then he pulled an envelope out of his coat pocket. ‘Is this for me, Q?’ My stomach turned. To David. It was my handwriting.
I’d finished writing the letter just before David turned up. I’d slipped it inside one of the books, intending for him to find it once he got to Cambridge.
I tried to snatch at the letter, but he dangled it high above my head, where I couldn’t quite reach. ‘It’s addressed to me.’ He laughed at the way I flapped at his arms, trying to get the letter from him.
‘It’s nothing,’ I said.
‘Feels like there’s some cash in there.’
‘Give it back.’
‘It’s mine. I want to know what’s inside it.’
He ripped open the envelope. He peered inside. I was so embarrassed I had to brush past him in order to leave the kitchen. I paced the little sitting room while he read.
The truth is, I had spent a good deal of time on my letter to David. My father had sent a similar one to me when I left for Oxford, and I still kept it, pressed between the pages of a poetry book. I reminded David what a brilliant young man he was, blessed with phenomenal intelligence and a very bright future. I urged him to think before he spoke, because forgetting to do that was how most people got into difficulty. Like you, I was worried for him, going into the bigger world. I didn’t want him to get into trouble; I’d seen the effect he had sometimes. I added that it would be nice for the folks back home to hear from him once in a while. I was referring to you and Maureen. I was trying to help.
Despite my attempt at lightness, it was probably a maudlin message to read as an eighteen-year-old. Shortly after David left, I found the letter discarded, along with the envelope, on my kitchen table. The only thing he had kept was the twenty-pound note folded inside the letter. He had also, as it turned out, helped himself to a further twenty pounds from my purse, a bottle of Gordon’s gin from the fridge, and my egg whisk. For reasons I could not understand, it was the theft of my egg whisk that irritated me most.
Every time I wanted to have an omelette and had to make do with a fork I was reminded of what he’d done. Why my egg whisk? What use had he for that? And yet I didn’t go out and buy another. Maybe I wanted to mark the ending of that part of my life. I wanted to move on from it. Since David stole my egg whisk all those years ago, I have never been able to buy another. I have lived, as it were, whisk-free.
I should add here that there are things I have tried to lose. A pair of slippers I won on a tombola. A sunflower ornament that clapped its plastic leaves as daylight came and released a refreshing odour of such chemical toxicity that all my bean seedlings died. No matter how hard I tried to lose them, these things stayed. The plastic sunflower, for instance, will still be on my windowsill. The slippers are on my feet as I write.
David didn’t refer to my letter. He just walked into the sitting room and picked up the books. He headed for the door. But I was nervous about what I had written so I blurted out, ‘Does your father know? That you came here?’
He stopped in his tracks with his back towards me. For a few moments he didn’t move, he only stood there. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Our secret’s safe.’
I stammered, ‘But I don’t want a secret, David.’
Still he remained hidden from me. I was afraid I had hurt him because his shoulders began to shake and he gave a tiny series of nods and sniffs. I reached to touch his coat. ‘Are you all right?’
When he turned, he was rubbing his face with his fingers. Tears poured from his eyes and his mouth was swollen. The skin beneath his eyes was so red it was almost blue. ‘Yeah, yeah,’ he said. He gave a brave nod to show his emotion was over.
‘Can I help?’
‘I’m just nervous, I guess. About going away and stuff. I’ll be fine.’
I gave him a brief polite hug. David seemed tense and uncomfortable. I’d noticed it wasn’t easy to get close to him unless he was dancing. I said, ‘I’m glad you’re going to Cambridge. You need that place. You need somewhere big. It will contain you. I was really happy at Oxford. It was the first time I met people like me who loved books. Are your parents driving you tomorrow?’
David didn’t answer that question. Instead he returned to an earlier one. ‘Please don’t tell the father about the dancing and shit. He’ll call me a poof.’
I laughed. The idea seemed so ridiculous. And it was a relief to laugh. It broke the tension. ‘He won’t. He wouldn’t.’
He shoved his face close to mine. His eyes appeared black. ‘Just don’t tell him, OK?’
I look back to that moment now and try again to understand. I think David wanted to come between us. That’s the truth. He saw I respected you, and like a child he wanted to take that away from both of us. He wanted to place himself in the middle. I am sorry to say this, Harold. I don’t believe he was deliberately deceptive. But I think he liked danger. It was his instinct. He liked to rub things against each other and set them alight.
I did not see this then.
With my books in his arms, David strode away. ‘Good luck!’ I called. I waited at the open door, wondering if he would turn to wave, but he didn’t. ‘Remember to write!’ He paced into the dusk with that fast, stooped walk of his, as if he had already forgotten all about me. It was a relief to be alone, although when I returned to my sitting room I saw the empty cup, the cigarette ash and my screwed-up envelope, and I felt trapped again.
It made no sense that I should cry that night, but a few hours later I could not stop. Even though I had justified my silence, I had no wish to keep deceiving you. It hurt so much.
I ended up telephoning the man with plastic hair from the Royal and accepting dinner. It wasn’t because I was hungry. It was because I couldn’t bear to be with my head any more. The evening was a disaster. It was the first time I had been out with a man since I’d arrived in Kingsbridge, and instead of being an escape it felt only like another betrayal.
On Monday morning, I asked you how it had been, driving David to Cambridge. I could barely look at you in your driving seat. I felt so ashamed of what I’d done.
‘Yes.’ You nodded several times as though you were searching in your mind for the right words and could not quite lay your hands on them.
‘Was he excited? Did he like his room?’
‘Well, you know, he had lots of people to meet. Things to do. Maureen and I waited, but he— You know.’
You didn’t tell me any more. Your voice sank into the roll of the engine and you smiled as though the conversation were finished. I assumed that David had given you the slip. A little later you said, ‘But no, no. I’m sure everything is fine. I’m sure he’ll be OK.’ You were answering a question I hadn’t even asked.
‘Mint?’ I asked.
‘Don’t mind if I do.’
I reached into my handbag and my heart missed a beat. I had to open my bag wide and get a proper look. I pulled out my purse, keys, chequebook, compact mirror, Polo mints. The zipped-up pocket where I kept my love poetry was open.
‘What is it?’ you said, slowing the car. ‘Are you all right?’
My poems were gone.
Midnight phone call
HELLO? HELLO? Do you hear me out there, HAROLD? Do you receive me?
According to the calendar, I have been writing and waiting for 22 days. But yesterday was too much. Another dying. Not Finty or Barb or Mr H or Pearly K, though DOG KNOWS it could be any of us next.
I could not sleep.
Duty nurse brought a fresh pain patch. Morphine shots not ENOUGH.
Dr Shah examined face and neck. He smelt of pressed shirts and vanilla.
DR SHAH (soft hands): There is further swelling in x gland and an infection in the closed eye.
A VOICE (cold hands): Also, problems with—
I didn’t want to hear. HORSE WAS EATING MY PINK SLIPPERS. (HURRAH FOR HORSE.)
NURSE: Clinishield?
DR SHAH: Thank you.
BLUE BIRDS flying out of the picture frame and TWEET tweeting.
Lady with Grapefruit singing ROCK OF AGES.
Today too tired to lift pencil. Even if I lift, what is POINT? I will only get to part I don’t want to get to. Part where I see DAVID for last time and he—
NO. I can’t write it. SOTP. SPOT. STOP.
Further spiritual advice
‘YOU’VE GOT yourself all in a pickle again,’ said Sister Mary Inconnue. She sat at the end of my bed with her typewriter, but I had only the page from last night to show her. Sometimes all I need is a sign, Harold. A postcard. A reminder t
hat I am right to wait for you. That is all I need.
Am I going mad?
Sister Mary Inconnue read my message. She smiled. She took my hand.
‘I think it is a very hard thing. What you are doing. It’s all very well for a man to step out of his front door and tell his friend to wait while he walks the length of England. It’s an entirely different kettle of fish when you are the woman at the other end. We take it for granted that the mind is robust and in one piece, but the imagination can take us to all sorts of places. You have to take care.’
I don’t want to think about the past any more. It hurts.
‘Well, indeed,’ she said. ‘But I wish you would listen to other people sometimes and take a rest.’
At this point Sister Mary Inconnue slipped her fingers out of mine. ‘Would you excuse me?’ she said. She lifted her hands and eased off her wimple. It was like watching her remove her head. I almost couldn’t look. To my astonishment, her hair was dark, as black and shiny as the wings of a crow. She had braided and coiled it into two pincushion shapes either side of her face. She scratched vigorously behind one ear. ‘What are you staring at?’ She did her wink. ‘Do you think nuns don’t get itchy?’ She replaced the cornette. She rested her red-raw hands in her lap. I wondered if I had dreamed this last bit.
‘Look at the window, Queenie. What do you see?’
I wrote, Clouds. I put, Grey ones. I added, This is England. What do you expect?
She laughed. ‘But you also see sky.’
Well, yes.
‘And sun.’
I do.
‘The sky and the sun are always there. It’s the clouds that come and go. Stop holding on to yourself, and look at the world around you.’
I made a grunt. I was still feeling put out.
‘You’re upset. You’re frightened. So what can you do? You can’t run any more. Those days are over. You can’t make the problem beautiful by dancing. You can’t even prune it. Those days are over too. So the only thing left for you to do now is to stop trying to fix the problem.’