By the time they had pulled into the main road the incident seemed so unreal they could hardly believe they had done it. Already it had taken on the patina of a myth.
Prudence, driving, patted Louise’s knee. ‘Let’s stick together. We make a great team.’
That Saturday was the last day of Gordon’s life. If they had known it, his daughters wouldn’t have been at the horse show, humiliating a blacksmith. If they had known, they would have made their peace with him and no longer blamed him for breaking up their family, for by now they had learned the havoc that love can wreak. Maddy would have told him what she had been planning to say, one day – that he wasn’t entirely to blame for her misery when she was growing up. That his disappointment was understandable, for she had burst from her old skin like a butterfly and she too could look back on her old self, an atrophied chrysalis all those years, with bemused pity. That Erin, for all her arrogance, had solved her, and for this she would always be grateful.
His other daughters, what could they have told him – that they loved him? They hadn’t told him this since they were children, maybe not even then, though they had signed their letters lots of love, all my love – how easily such words slip from the pen. Neither of them felt anything as simple as love but it must be lying there hidden, surely it must. If they had known he was going to die the wind would have blown away the topsoil and revealed the rock beneath, wouldn’t it? Louise, caught in the present, was still hurt by his refusal of help when she most needed it. If she had known, that Sunday lunch when he’d visited her with April, she would have forgotten her own distractions: after all, Imogen had survived.
But they were caught in the present, in the myopia of the moment. Nobody more so than Gordon himself, a man of impulse, who seldom reflected on the past or anticipated the future. That was his wife’s department, and it was something he missed, had he realised it, when in the company of April. He also missed the past itself. Though it was exhilarating to start afresh, Dorothy was his aide-mémoire for his adult life, the early struggles in Chislehurst, the raising of their girls, the world events that he was frequently too busy to heed; without her presence, he felt, at times, drifting and untethered.
This particular morning, this Saturday, he was buying a new lawn-mower and cursing his recklessness in leaving the old one back in the shed at The Birches. If he had known, he would have taken April to Paris, or at least taught her the words of the song which now she would never sing.
And if she had known, April would never have spoken to him the way she did when he came home. He unloaded the car. She followed him out into the garden. The nameless bushes challenged her – prune us, don’t prune us, you haven’t a clue, have you? She thought: why are we weighing ourselves down with a house, with things? With all these things? He’s done this before; why is he doing it all over again? The dry rot, the tasks. The building of a home only to find that its occupants have fled.
The scent of roasting meat drifted through the hedge; next door was having a barbecue. The woman laughed shrilly. April had only met her once, when she’d been coming home with some shopping and the woman had asked her: ‘Excuse me, do you work here? I’m desperate for a cleaning lady.’
Gordon was tearing open the box. He never undid things, he always tore them open. Today, because she was feeling out of temper, this annoyed her. She said: ‘I’m feeling homesick, Gordon. I want to go back to Brixton.’
He straightened up. ‘What, to live?’
She didn’t nod, thank God, though this was the answer in her heart. She was unhappy in Wandsworth. She missed her friends, she missed the late-night shops, she missed her job. She had realised this, with a sinking sensation, over the past week. Thank God she didn’t speak the truth.
‘You don’t like it here?’ he asked.
‘It’s fine. I’m sure it’ll be fine.’
‘You having second thoughts, about me?’
‘Of course not.’ Thank God she said this, too, though in fact she was having doubts. Not about Gordon, exactly, but the reality of their life together. But nobody ever knew this. She said: ‘I just feel a bit like one of those plants, pulled up by the roots. I don’t like being dependent on a bloke. I want to get some agency work.’
He put his hands on her shoulders and gazed into her eyes. ‘You do whatever you want, my love. You saved my life, know that?’ He smiled but she could see he was upset.
‘I just fancy – you know – seeing some of my mates, maybe having a bite.’
‘Your wish is my command,’ he said. ‘Sod the lawn. Had forty years of mowing the lawn.’
She had intended, in fact, to go alone. Later, she was grateful that he had misunderstood her, for it had saved his feelings being hurt.
Ah, but if he had been a more sensitive man – if he had understood her and stayed home – if that had happened, might he still be alive?
So they went to Brixton later that day and had a coffee in the market. They dropped in on her friend Carole, who ran the hair salon in Second Avenue, and when Carole’s last client left they bought some wine and went back to her place, where her husband cooked them a curry. Beverley dropped by, the friend who had told April about the earlobes, which hadn’t worked because Gordon had resumed smoking but which, on the other hand, had worked because it was his earlobes that she had first touched, apart from nursing touching, and it had been his earlobes that had switched on their electricity. The evening gathered momentum, as Saturday evenings do when one is not living in Purley, or Wandsworth, and soon another couple of people dropped by and then somebody said: ‘Let’s go dancing.’
‘Me?’ said Gordon. ‘I’d look a right nincompoop.’
But he went, willingly, and as they walked to The Fridge he flung back his head and looked at the stars, bright even in the sodium light, and he turned to April and ceremoniously kissed her hand. ‘Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes,’ he sang, and she knew he was drunk but then so was she. She fell in love with him again that night – it wasn’t just in retrospect – she loved this stubborn, sentimental man, and then they were inside, under another galaxy of pulsing lights and she shouted at him: ‘Better than a hottie, eh?’
He didn’t hear, the music was too loud. She took his hand and led him onto the dance floor. His last words, shouted at her over the noise, were: ‘Oh well, you only live once.’ But she didn’t hear them, they were drowned by the music.
The music thumped, it beat through three hundred shared heartbeats. It thudded through their skulls, through their pulsing, jointed bodies, the miracle of them. Don’t they know what a miracle it is? No matter what an idiot someone is, how selfish or stupid, still their bodies go on digesting, pumping . . . April and Gordon, who were both guilty of selfishness, and more besides, drew closer. However bad we’ve been, our bodies always forgive us. Heart-breaking, isn’t it?
He took her in his arms. For a moment they danced together, cheek to cheek, heart to heart, the proper way to dance, the way they’d danced when he was young.
And then he fell and she was sliding with him to the ground.
She wrestled his collar open. Hunched over him, bumped by the legs of other people, she opened his mouth with hers. Before Gordon died his lover left him; she was replaced by April the nurse, the April he had first loved.
But all her professional skills, great though they were, could not save him now.
Three
THAT SATURDAY, FOR Dorothy, was one of the bad days. Her rage against Gordon had a life of its own, it flared up unexpectedly like the inflammation from a gunshot wound where the bullet has not been removed. It existed alongside her new-found contentment with Eric, and she kept it quiet. Her marriage had not been kindly dismantled. Gordon had torn it open like the lawn-mower’s packaging; he had cut the knots he couldn’t untie, removed the contents and left her to cope with the rubbish. What could she do with all the stuff that filled her head?
Eric had come to lunch. He had brought his road map with him; they were lo
oking at possible places to live in the country. ‘What about opening a tea shop?’ he suggested. ‘A little business, something to keep us busy.’
A watercress farm? It was April, she was sure, who had told Gordon that story. You wouldn’t believe what happened to April last night. She remembered him sitting up in bed, his eyes bright.
Dorothy felt sick. How could she start a new life when her old self was raw and unfinished? Later that afternoon, when Eric left, she dialled Gordon’s number.
His machine answered. ‘We’re not at home . . .’ How easily one we had replaced another! She ignored the fact that exactly the same thing had happened to her. The machine played a moronic, electronic version of ‘Greensleeves’ and beeped.
‘Gordon,’ she said, ‘Dorothy here. Are you going to go on burying your head in the sand or will you meet me and talk? Maybe you haven’t even heard about Imogen or the various other things that have been happening to your family whilst you have been otherwise engaged. Maddy’s out of work, Louise and your grandchildren will soon be homeless. D’you think if you just keep your eyes closed these things will go away? Please phone me at your earliest convenience.’
That night Louise phoned her father. She was sitting in Robert’s study. His framed print of Charterhouse had been knocked sideways by somebody pushing past his desk. Strangers moved over her house, herds of them; they ground their cigarette butts into her lawn. She gazed at the picture of Robert’s old school. It was a boring print; she had never liked it. Why had he left it here; was he putting childish things behind him?
‘Gordon Hammond here. We’re not home at present but if you want to leave a message for me or April please speak after the beep.’
She was pleased. It was easier to leave a message on a machine. How much simpler life would be if you never had to speak to a living, breathing person.
‘Dad . . . Hi. Hope you’re well. Maybe April’s spilled the beans already, she’s known for a while. Just to say, remember Immy’s birthday? You said she’d beat her aunts to it? Well, you were right. In January you’ll be a great-grandfather. Hope it doesn’t make you feel too old . . . Lots of love. Bye.’
When she replaced the receiver Louise immediately regretted the message. How abrupt it had sounded! But she couldn’t undo it now.
Two days passed before April could bring herself to listen to the answerphone. She replayed the messages. They rolled off her like drops of mercury. What did any of it matter now? She paused for a moment. Then she pressed OGM Play.
‘Gordon Hammond here. We’re not home . . .’ She thought: typical Gordon, putting himself first. Her eyes filled with tears. She pressed Eject. She took out the tape and put Gordon’s voice into her pocket to keep for ever.
The coffin slid into the furnace. The curtains closed the little show that was Gordon’s life. They paused halfway, as if hesitating; then they made up their mind and swished together, swinging gently. Gordon had not been a religious man, he hadn’t had time to believe in God. He slid into the unknown to a recording of Bali Ha’i, his favourite song from South Pacific.
His daughters, to their surprise, shuddered with tears at this point. Until then they had coped. They sat squashed together, passing each other tissues. Robert, who had arrived late from work, sat behind them. Afterwards, they drove back to the house in Wandsworth, where, in the half-decorated dining room, April had laid out food and drink.
It was a strange gathering, for they had regressed back a step. Eric and Deirdre were not present; nor were Stephen and Erin, ghosts who had briefly entered their lives and vanished. Their family had reverted to its original cast of characters, to how they’d been before everything had changed. Yet the room was filled with people-shaped spaces – those from the past and those who would be the future. And the largest space of all was the space that had been Gordon.
They stood around awkwardly. Louise passed Robert a glass of wine. ‘How’s Dollis Hill?’ She looked at him warily. ‘Are you happy there, in your own little way?’
‘Can we be friends?’ he asked. ‘Please?’
Prudence, munching a chicken leg, was talking to her mother: ‘What sort of little business?’
‘Something in the country. Something Eric and I can do together.’
Imogen said: ‘Why don’t you take over the village shop?’
They turned and looked at her.
Outside, the sun came out. Buttercups were flowering amongst the tall grasses that nobody had cut. April opened the french windows. Dorothy came up to her. ‘I was just wondering – did he hear my phone message? Was he upset?’
April shook her head. ‘No, it was me who killed him. By asking him to dance.’ She refilled Dorothy’s glass. ‘Shall we get pissed?’
‘Shall we?’
‘One day he told me he wanted his ashes to be scattered in the Lake District,’ said April. ‘Where you courted. He said you would know the place.’
‘Did he?’
April nodded.
Just then there was the sound of hammering. It came from upstairs. They fell silent.
‘It’s Gordon,’ said Robert. ‘He just had to finish fixing that skirting board before he left.’
‘No,’ said Jamie, ‘he’s knocking at the Pearly Gates. Let me in! I’ve been hanging around here for bloody hours.’
‘I think he’s in heaven already,’ said Imogen, ‘and he’s starting to sort it out.’
‘You’re right,’ said April. ‘That was his idea of heaven.’
‘He’s saying I’ll get the lads in . . .’
‘Got a nasty damp patch there, must be all those clouds . . .’
‘Roll over, Beethoven, got to get to work . . .’
They laughed. The atmosphere thawed, for funerals can be surprisingly boisterous occasions. April explained that it was a local plumber hammering away upstairs, but Imogen, her head cocked, was listening to the tattoo of her blacksmith, who in her case had died whilst creating life.
April put on some music. Robert pushed back the table and took his daughter in his arms. Frank the foreman grabbed Dorothy and April kicked back the rug and led Jamie into the middle of the room. They danced, and then the song changed and Robert took Louise into his arms. They had always danced well together. Robert pushed Louise’s hair back from her face, which weeping had washed bare, and after a while she relaxed in his arms and moved with him around the floor.
And then they all stopped and drank a toast to Gordon, who had had the last dance of all. April tapped her glass for silence. Later, when they thought of her, this was the image they remembered – April ablaze in a red satin suit, her hair pulled back with silver clips; a woman who radiated life.
She said: ‘I just want to tell you I’ll be packing up tomorrow. You can have the house, it was never really mine, to tell the truth, it never felt like it. I’ve got this friend, you see, she’s matron at an old people’s home, it might sound funny but I prefer nursing old people –’ She stopped. ‘Maybe it’s not so surprising. Anyway, she’s asked me to join the staff so –’ She pointed to the table. ‘Eat, drink and be merry – be merry, please, Gordon would have wanted that.’ She smiled. ‘And one day, who knows? If you need me, I’ll be waiting for you.’
Four
A YEAR HAD passed. It was a cloudless Saturday in May and Maddy was working in the garden. Neither she nor her sisters had liked the shrubs; they had seemed sooty and lifeless, atrophied in somebody else’s past. She had pulled them out and now she was planting a herbaceous border. She lifted the plants from their pots, cradling their matted roots. Each plant she willed into its new home. A blackbird sang from the flowering cherry; the petals drifted onto the grass like snow.
At the end of the garden stood the caravan. Inside it, Allegra sat doing her homework. The caravan was her secret place, its dwarfish furniture absorbed her hopes and dreams as it had absorbed those of her almost-aunts. She was happy here, living in Wandsworth with her almost-family. For they had earned her love through loving her, rather
than bearing her, and it was her mother now who arrived on Sundays, as Aziz had used to do, to take her out.
Aziz considered it Chekhovian; the three sisters living in a house that sopped up outsiders like a sponge. People drifted in and out – Jamie’s friends from York, Aziz, who spent most evenings there. He and Prudence had a tender, cautious understanding; they treated each carefully, like breakable china. Maybe one day they would move out and live together but this present arrangement seemed charmed for they were alone, yet not alone, and the presence of children released them from their spinsterly habits.
Imogen and her baby were lying on the grass. Imogen, like Allegra, was doing her homework. In a month she would be taking her A levels. Aziz was drawing up plans for their new kitchen and Prudence was unpacking her weekend’s pile of manuscripts. This studious atmosphere was broken by the baby’s yells. Louise dumped down her shopping, went outside and scooped up the baby in her arms. She held her, swaying in the sunshine.
Prudence picked up the manuscript. Home Truths by Erin Fox. She sat down in the armchair and turned to the first page.
‘Once upon a time there were three sisters – Isobelle, Effie and Vida . . .’
Prudence looked out of the window. Louise twirled the baby round and round in a snowdrift of petals.
‘Isobelle was the sweet one, the pretty one, the good little girl who wanted to grow up and have babies . . .’
Outside in the garden the little Louise sat playing with her dolls. How gold her hair shone in the sunlight! She tucked up her favourite doll, Mary-Belle, in a tea-doth and laid her on the grass . . .
‘Effie was the bookworm, the clever one. And Vida? Vida was the tomboy . . .’
The blackbird’s song echoed down the years. Out in the garden, Maddy, square and determined, trundled her bulldozer across the grass. She drove it over Pru’s open Enid Blyton book – how Prudence yelled! She drove it over Lou’s doll, except it wouldn’t go over, it pushed the doll along the ground – how Lou screamed! . . .