The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy: A Novel

  The undertaker’s van was here this morning.

  In the dayroom, nobody spoke. Nobody took a nutritional drink. A heavy stillness sat over us, pressing all the life away. It was like the day your first letter arrived, Harold, only this was harder because then we had expected nothing and now we had grown used to something and it was gone again. No matter how we tried to look at life, everything was over. It was hard to see anything except the end.

  ‘I just thought—’ said Finty. She gave up.

  ‘Scrabble?’ asked Sister Lucy.

  ‘Maybe not, if you don’t mind,’ said the Pearly King. ‘Maybe not any more.’

  Behind him, the Harold Fry corner looked tired and out of date. A drawing pin must have loosened from one of the postcards and it hung at an angle, on the verge of falling.

  We closed our eyes. We slept.

  Morphine madness

  SIP. SIP.

  ‘I am concerned about the eye,’ said someone. I couldn’t tell who. They were all leaning over me. I could only smell the cleanness of them.

  ‘I do not think she can make it,’ said Lady with Grapefruit.

  DR SHAH: Sterilized dressing?

  NURSE: Yes, doctor.

  DR SHAH: Eyedrops?

  Plip plop.

  I heard someone say ‘Infection’ and someone else said ‘Temperature’.

  NURSE: Don’t worry, Queenie. It will be OK. (But it was not OK. She had spiders in her mouth.)

  SISTER PHILOMENA: Queenie is waiting for her friend called Harold Fry.

  Ha ha ha, went the horse.

  DR SHAH: I’ve heard about this.

  NURSE: It’s quite a story, isn’t it?

  Nurse smiles. (More spiders.)

  DR SHAH: Do you think he hopes to get here soon?

  Soon? laughed Lady with Grapefruit.

  Soon? laughed the horse.

  Where are you, Harold Fry?

  Six white handkerchiefs

  FOR TWO days I have not written. I have not felt well enough. Nothing I’ve seen or remembered has moved me to lift my pencil. Sister Mary Inconnue visited but I only slept and took my medication. Maybe someone forgot to draw the curtains last night, or maybe the night nurse opened them early without my noticing, but when I woke this morning the light at the window was silver.

  There remained a small scattering of stars. The dark leaves of the tree hung without moving. Not a breath of wind. It was that time just before you see the sun rising when there is a tiny slip of grey paling the dark but no more than that, no blue. It was my favourite time for working in my garden. I’d watch the dimmed stillness lift from the plants and figures. I’d watch the colour emerge in the lapping of the sea. It was like seeing the day wake up.

  The name for this time seemed significant. I wondered about ‘predawn’, but that sounded such a half-hearted way to describe the magical wash of light at my window.

  When the night nurse came to replace my pain patch, I wrote for her in my notebook. What is this light called?

  The night nurse said it was probably night, though it could be dawn, and she was sorry but she had lots of things to attend to before she finished her shift. I nodded to show that of course I understood. A little later Sister Catherine tapped on my door with a glass of water.

  ‘I hear you want to know about dawn? I looked it up on the computer.’ She pulled from her pocket a piece of paper. ‘I did some research.’

  And I can tell you now that the stage before dawn is not called ‘predawn’. It is called ‘NIGHT’. But there are three stages of dawn, and they are called ‘astronomical dawn’ (looks like night), ‘nautical dawn’ (just light enough to distinguish an object out of the dark), and ‘civil dawn’ (the time it is light enough for sensible people to get up without bumping into things).

  ‘But some people call it “the silver hour”,’ said Sister Catherine. ‘I like that best.’ Sister Catherine moved to the window and looked out over the sky. She touched the glass as if she were reaching for the air beyond. ‘Listen to those birds. It must be very fine, to walk on a morning like this. If I ever walked to Santiago de Compostela, I’d do that. I’d walk in the dawn. I guess I’d make friends too. People I don’t even know.’

  Six doves flew past, and they looked like white handkerchiefs coming in to land.

  Sister Catherine turned. ‘What are you doing, Queenie?’ She laughed. ‘Have you started writing already?’

  The way forward

  AFTER YOUR SON’S death, Harold, the world changed. It did not change for Napier. It did not change for my landlady or your neighbours or people I passed in the street. If it altered for them, the shift was brief, it was a hiccup, it was a missing of a step, the way the sudden removal of a person is a reminder of one’s own fragility before we resume the familiar, ordinary things that make us feel untouchable again. But from where I was looking, a seismic shift occurred. And like most seismic shifts, it cut everything open and pulled it apart. Each morning I woke, and for a moment, perhaps, just a moment, life was as it had been, and then, with quiet horror, I would recall what had happened. Remembering what I had done, I had to get up. I had to be busy in order not to think. I had no idea how you would bear your loss or ever recover. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see the way forward.

  I remember feeling very angry. It shocked me, because of all the emotions attached to pain, anger is the one least spoken of. Loneliness, yes. Remorse, yes. But white fury? It came in a flash, when I wasn’t expecting it. One day a woman pushed in front of me on Fore Street with her shopping bags. She caught my ankles, it was nothing really, but I chased after her. I wanted her to know how wrong she had been, I wanted her to feel nothing but shame because that was how it was for me. The anger throbbed in my belly as if it were breathing. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she said when I demanded an apology. ‘Get a life.’

  So I tried to resume the way things had been before David’s death. I dressed in the mornings and took the bus to work. I bought milk on my way home. I made toast for my supper. I read at night. But no matter how many times I did these things, none of them had substance. They were things I did but they added up to nothing.

  Meanwhile you buried your son. You began to drink. Other events occurred. Other terrible events that I will come to later. It was clear to me I was to blame. I had not done enough to rescue David, and the pain I had caused you was unforgivable. It was time to move on but I still couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to leave you and Kingsbridge.

  When I went, in the end, I went in a hurry. I was hurling things into my suitcase. I didn’t pack my dance shoes. I didn’t pack the ball dress. And the brown wool suit? Yes, I left that too. The record player. No room for that. It was like shedding skin. Apart from clothing, the only things I allowed myself to keep were my favourite books and the green teacups and saucers. I wrapped them in my socks and tights. As dawn rose, I took the first bus to Exeter. I kept scanning the road, looking for you, but it was early. You wouldn’t even have arrived at work.

  Then I waited in the café opposite Exeter St David’s station and I met the lonely gentleman who was not lonely after all. After that I fled to purchase a train ticket. And there I was. On my way to Newcastle.

  I wished I had collapsed when I got there, on the station platform. That would have been a form of escape. As it was, I staggered to the ground and bruised my knees and caused a small flurry of unwanted attention. Later that afternoon I took a room in a cheap hotel. One of those new places beside a roundabout where the walls are so insubstantial you might as well be in a bed at the bus stop. A cleaner was pushing a trolley of clean sheets and towels and small toiletry items. When she saw me alone she showed me how to open the door, there was a knack to it, she said. I admit I wasn’t watching. I was only wondering what I was going to do with myself when I got into the room. There seemed to be no internal noise, only the traffic and shouts from the street below.

  It was still fairly warm outside, but my room was very cold. I remember that. I c
ould feel the flow of chilled air, even at the open door. I stared at the single white bed, the empty cabinet, the bare walls, and I couldn’t go any further. I told the cleaner I needed a walk. I didn’t even wait for her reply. I left my suitcase by the open door and off I ran.

  I walked fast. I was hungry, but I felt I could never slow down or sit at a table or eat. There was a time when I had been able to see only mothers and babies. Now it was mothers and grown-up sons. They were everywhere. Different versions of your wife and son. I’d have given anything to stop remembering, but Maureen’s words were fresh in my ears, even in Newcastle, even as I paced alongside the Tyne, and no matter how fast I went, how far, I couldn’t get away from them. By the time I returned to the hotel, it was late and I felt weak with the lack of food. The lights were on in reception, but it was empty.

  Only when I was standing outside my room did it occur to me that I had not taken the key. There was no sign of my suitcase, and when I tried the door it was locked. I had been dreading my return to that room and now that I was there, now that I had made up my mind to go to bed, I wanted nothing else. I was desperate for the cold white of that bare room, and sleep.

  ‘Does no one work here?’ I pressed my hand repeatedly on the bell at reception. No one emerged. In the end, I crept behind the desk and retrieved the key.

  You’d think it should be so simple, opening a door. It is supposed to be simple. One of those things you do without thinking while you think instead about other, more interesting things. No matter how many times I twisted the key and felt the lock spring open, that door would not budge. I pushed and pulled. I rattled. I even kicked it. Nothing. Between waves of despair, I tried to compose myself and think carefully, but whatever I did, it made no difference. The stupid door would not open. I ended up sitting on the carpet and trying to doze in the corridor.

  It was the cleaner who found me. ‘But I showed you, pet,’ she said, helping me to my feet. ‘I explained about the door.’ She took the key from my hand and twisted it gently in the lock. She grasped the handle, and with the smallest effort she moved the door to the left. Of course. A sliding door. ‘Will you be OK now?’ she asked. I wish I could tell you that I slept that night because I had not slept for weeks, but life is not like that and I didn’t.

  The following morning, I took an early bus to Alnwick. Another bus. I had it in my head that I must keep moving north. The bus got as far as a village called Embleton, thirty miles south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and then it broke down. Another bus? Yes, that will come tomorrow. All change, please. Everything, it seemed, was drawing to a close. I tried to move and all I met was blockage.

  The village was almost empty. I could have asked in the local hotel or shop for a taxi but I had no desire to meet anyone. No inclination to ask for help because help implies a conversation, an exchange, and all I wanted was to be alone and keep moving. I dragged my suitcase down a road signposted to the golf course. The road leads like an invitation towards the sea. I know every hedge of it now, every gate, every flower. I can see why I followed it because it has a pull, a wide straight road like that. Between me and a thread of blue in the distance rose pale sand dunes and clumps of marram grass. I don’t know that I was thinking of David specifically as I walked but endings were very much on my mind.

  I passed the clipped greens of the golf course and made my way up and down the soft paths. When I reached the mouth of the estuary, I smelt the salt of the kelp beds in the same moment that the wind began to tug at my clothes and hair.

  The bay stretched wide around me, a perfect whitened arc. Across the other side, the decaying profile of Dunstanburgh Castle poked towards the sky. The tide was out, and the sand shone like glass. Far away the waves met the land and were broken. It’s Bantham Beach, I thought. I travel more than six hundred miles and I’m back where I started. Where next? What was left?

  I trudged forward, past the kelp beds, past the black stone boulders, until the sea lapped my shoes. This time I would keep going. Let the water wash over my feet. Tip my waist, my breasts, my chin. Get it over and done with this time. The waves folded over my shoes, and the water was so sharp it stung my ankles and I almost cried out. I kept pushing forward.

  The sea must have been almost at my knees when something tiny and pale glinted beneath the waves and caught my eye. For the first time I peered down. Threads of green seaweed curled at my ankles. Shells and stones patterned the rills of sand. With the passing of every wave, the image distorted a little, was lost, and then returned. A garden in the sea and I could so easily have missed it.

  I thought of the hotel door that wouldn’t pull or push but only slid from right to left. Sometimes, Harold, the way forward takes you by surprise. You try to force something in the familiar direction and discover that what it needs is to move in a different dimension. The way forward is not forward, but off to one side, in a place you have not noticed before.

  I left the sea and dragged my suitcase towards the dunes.

  ‘Jolly nice day for paddling,’ I said to a young family wrapped in coats. They watched with open mouths.

  I returned to the coastal path.

  The pilgrims

  WHEN SISTER Catherine wheeled me into the dayroom, Finty was not in her reclining seat. My stomach dropped. Not Finty. Please, not her. I couldn’t help myself. I felt hollowed.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ I had no idea where her voice was coming from. Maybe she was already haunting me. It was the sort of thing Finty would get up to.

  I scanned the room. All the other seats were occupied, even the one that had belonged to Barbara. The Pearly King dozed with a parcel in his lap. Mr Henderson stared at the newspaper, failing to turn the pages. Sister Lucy sat at the table, bent over her jigsaw, without picking up any pieces. New patients held hands with family and friends, none of them speaking, only waiting. At the window there was also a fisherman with a yellow sou’wester hat and a pair of binoculars trained towards the North Sea. But no Finty. No sign of her. Finty was gone.

  ‘Over here, gal!’

  The fisherman turned. He plucked off his sou’wester. He was bald. He was—

  ‘Finty?’ The noise came out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  ‘I’m waiting for Harold Fry!’ She lifted her binoculars and fixed them once more on the horizon.

  No one spoke. Everyone got on with doing nothing as if the yellow hat was not there. I opened my notebook to begin a fresh page but the sound of the pencil scratching at the paper was so loud in that stillness it was enough to make me stop again.

  ‘Where are you, Harold Fry?’ muttered Finty.

  Mr Henderson put down his newspaper. ‘You’re looking at the North Sea, woman. I don’t know if this has occurred to you but Harold Fry is not coming by boat. And even if he was, I doubt he would make his passage via the Orkneys.’

  Finty found this very funny, but it did not seem to deter her. (‘Make his passage? Ha ha ha.’) Mr Henderson shared a despairing look with me.

  Finty said, ‘I’ve been thinking. Since Babs went, it’s been no fun at all in this place. Now I may be dying but I’m not fucking dead yet. If Harold Fry is serious about walking, he might as well do it for me as well. All I gotta do is wait. That’s easy.’

  My throat felt full, as if I would cry, though I didn’t know whether the feeling that came with it was one of joy or sadness.

  ‘You are waiting, Finty?’ said Sister Catherine slowly. ‘For Harold Fry?’

  ‘Too right I am, sister.’

  Finty proposed an extra round of nutritional drinks, followed by a nap and some afternoon prayers. She has not attended chapel before. From now on, she said, she has to keep up her strength and widen her options. ‘’Cos I’m not dying till the man gets here. An’ that’s final.’ She returned to her post at the window, complete with the binoculars and sou’wester hat.

  The Pearly King began to make a strange rattling noise that had Sister Lucy rushing to his aid with a glass of water. ‘Bless you. I’m la
ughing,’ he rumbled. And when she asked if there was anything he needed, he mentioned he would like to join Finty at the window. ‘I’m with her,’ he said, as he moved slowly beside Sister Lucy. ‘I’m waiting too. If you ask me, Harold Fry sounds a diamond geezer.’ So now there was a slight fisherman in a yellow hat and also a huge one-armed Pearly King with the air of a pirate on the lookout for you. I sank a little into my chair.

  ‘Henny?’ said Finty. ‘Are you gonna wait?’

  Everyone turned to Mr Henderson. He in turn glanced at me and gave a chivalrous bow of his head. ‘If Harold Fry is a friend of Miss Hennessy’s, he is a friend of mine.’

  ‘Yay!’ shrieked Finty. ‘Henny’s in too. Come on, you lot. Anyone else waiting for Harold Fry?’

  I could barely look. I thought, No one else will say yes. No one will even answer. And I knew they would be right because what am I doing? Waiting for you when death is everywhere, and I don’t mean only in a hospice.

  One by one, and in silence, the patients raised their hands. Sunken faces. Skeletal wrists. Bandages and tubes. Sunlight poured through the windows, and the air shone with dust motes, billowing like silvered snow. The friends and families of the patients began to raise their hands too, and so did the volunteers and nuns. At last everyone in the dayroom had a hand in the air. Tall, small, young, old, fat ones, thin ones, healthy, dying. They looked from one person to the next with a dawning sense of wonder. Something new was happening. It was palpable.

  ‘That’s it, then,’ said Finty. ‘It’s a unanermous yes vote. From now on, no one dies. We’re all waiting for Harold Fry.’

  What is going on?

  A CHANGE has occurred in the last few days. With so much attention, it has been difficult to find the quiet time to write to you.