All the way to Marion’s house, along the Dingwall road, slowing for the railway bridge on the bend, faster down the last straight stretch into the town, joy rose in Eleanor like a bubble of laughter.
I am all right, the words drummed in her head. There is nothing wrong with me.
All those years, had she really thought there was? All those years – was that happening to other women, regularly, often? To Marion? They knew everything about each other except this. They had lived apart for the first years of their marriages, and you do not write in letters, say on the phone, I’m having wonderful orgasms, or, in Eleanor’s case, I never manage to get there, no I never have … Eleanor laughed aloud, unable to help herself.
She could not remember driving the last of the road to Marion’s house, the traffic lights, the corner, the street dividing. I’m a crazy woman, she thought. I’ve never been like this, ever. Still that tingling all the way through, a teasing echo.
Marion was white-faced and looked tired, but not ill. Eleanor, torn between guilt and relief, said, ‘Are you all right? I’ll make us tea, shall I?’
‘If you like, but I probably won’t drink it.’
They went into the living room, which was scattered with newspapers, mugs and glasses.
‘I haven’t even tidied in here since last night,’ Marion said, half-heartedly gathering things up and trying not to bend too low or too sharply.
‘I’ll do it.’ Eleanor had the energy of half a dozen women. In a moment the room was straight.
‘What’s happened?’ Marion asked, when Eleanor finally sat down with her.
‘Nothing!’
‘Eleanor, you look – well, I have to say, you look great.’
‘I’m sorry, I feel so mean when you’re not well.’
‘For goodness sake, why should you? It’s only this nausea. It’s a side-effect, Fergus says it’s common. Mary Mackay warned me, and the consultant. It’s past now, I’m all right.’ She leaned back in her chair. ‘Anyway, tell me what’s happened.’
Eleanor flushed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I mean it, I hardly know myself what’s going on.’
‘It’s this man, isn’t it? I thought he was going away soon?’
‘Today.’
‘Oh, you were having dinner with him, you and Claire, weren’t you?’
‘Claire didn’t go. She was at the cinema with Sarah – then sleeping over at the Pattersons’.’
‘I see.’ Eleanor was still glowing. My goodness, thought Marion, about time. ‘Well, well,’ she said aloud. ‘I hope you’re being … careful.’
‘Oh, he was.’ And blushed again, laughing, her head dipping so that the heavy hair fell over her face, hiding the joy. This is crazy,’ she murmured. ‘Like I was fifteen again.’
‘I thought men with red hair were impossible?’ Marion was laughing with her.
‘I know, I know – I’m not – I don’t know, Marion. I feel stunned.’
‘I can see that.’
Marion thinks I’m in love with Gavin, and perhaps I am, Eleanor wondered, it’s so long since – and I know so little about it. Love.
‘I’ll phone you,’ he had promised.
‘From an oil rig?’
‘We do have telephones,’ he said, amused. ‘Sure, ring you in a few days.’
By Sunday night, one day later, she was listening for this, longing for the call to come. When it did, it was her father.
‘You tell me,’ he said, ‘how Marion is. She just says she’s fine.’
‘She feels sick a lot,’ Eleanor explained, ‘and she’s tired. That’s all. Don’t worry, it’s common.’
‘This chemotherapy,’ he said. ‘How long is she to go on getting it?’
‘Every three weeks, just for a day or so. She’s in overnight, then home.’ They had gone over this already with their father, but he did not seem to hold onto the information. Marion had said to Eleanor, ‘it’s like me not taking in what the doctor says – fear, anxiety – something gets in the way.’
‘It’ll be for about three, four months,’ she explained again. ‘Six treatments, then they’ll do a scan. After that, maybe a bit of radio-therapy. But we don’t know that yet.’
‘But she’s keeping all right, so far?’
‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, not wanting to tell him about the sickness again. Better he did not know, really. If her mother had still been there, it would have been different. No way of protecting her from the truth, who always knew it before they did. ‘What about David?’ she went on. ‘Any word? I haven’t heard a thing since New Year.’
‘Oh, he rang, now, when was it? Monday – I forget. Sometime in the week.’
‘Is he working?’
‘Oh aye. Something to do with computers.’
A few minutes later, there was another call. This time she picked it up in the kitchen. Claire was in her room with Sarah and two or three other girls. It would be for her. They seemed to spend hours ringing each other at the weekend: three girls in one house, four in another, shrieking and giggling. Since the conference call David had arranged before Christmas, Claire had been begging her mother to let them all have one too. It would be brilliant. Mum.
It was David.
‘Dad’s just been on. How are you?’
‘Great – couldn’t be better. This thing with Phil’s really taking off. I’m out and about all the time.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Seeing clients, fixing stuff up for them. You know.’
Of course, Eleanor did not. This was David at his worst, full of himself, expansive with plans and great connections, unreachable.
‘Oh well, good. I’m glad it’s going well.’
‘How about you? Marion? Is she having her chemo yet?’
‘What? Yes, of course she is. She’s due for the second lot next week.’
‘How’s she coping? Phil’s partner was married before, you know. He died of cancer. Different kind, obviously, but she’s been through the mill with it. I was telling her about Marion, she’s totally sympathetic, Sophie. Understanding.’
‘This is really what we want to hear, David,’ Eleanor sighed. ‘For goodness sake don’t go telling Marion about your friends dying of cancer.’
‘What do you take me for?’ He was offended, but not enough to shut up. ‘I only meant, you know, Sophie was the sort who understands all that stuff. Pity Marion can’t speak to her. Does she have anyone like that?’
Eleanor had been longing to say to David, ‘Look, my life’s changed, changing.’ Why hadn’t he picked it up at once, tuning into her mood? Once he would have done.
‘Marion’s being very sick,’ she said now. ‘It’s hard on her. Fergus says she won’t be able to work.’
‘Doesn’t have to though, does she? With the good doctor to provide.’
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’ She had wanted him to be in touch, had missed him, but this was hopeless. ‘I have to go,’ she lied. ‘Claire’s wanting me.’
A pause, where he said nothing, then suddenly, ‘Sorry. Had a couple before I rang you. Give my love to Marion, right?’
‘Yes, of course I—’ A click, then silence. He had gone. That was it, of course; he had been drinking.
The phone rang three times after that. Claire’s friends: prolonged conversations, much whispering and giggling, Eleanor’s bed rumpled by the girls sprawling across it.
Eleanor sat in the living room with a cup of cooling coffee and tried, and failed, to write a poem about sex. She looked at the flat words on the page, which did not seem to reflect in any way what they had done, what she had felt. How could she live for the next three weeks not seeing him, forgetting day by day how he looked, the way his voice lowered when he spoke to her, the touch of him.
Later, in a row on the sofa bed in the boxroom, the girls talked late into the night, cosily tucked up together. Eleanor lay alone, and could not sleep.
For the next chemotherapy session, Eleanor drove Marion to the hospital. It was a fine February day, sudden and deceptive, mild as spring. The sun lay yellow on the calm waters of the firth. The trees were still bare, but everywhere, if you looked closely, were the tight black embryos of new buds, and in the wet winter earth, green shoots breaking through.
‘What a lovely day,’ Eleanor said, opening the car door for Marion to get in. Her sister made a face.
‘What a day to be going into hospital.’
‘I know – but it’s only overnight. This weather might last a few days.’
They drove in silence for a while.
‘Your friend, Gavin – he’s away, is he?’
‘Yes, he said he’d phone sometime.’
‘I’m sure he will.’ Marion had heard despair in Eleanor’s voice. Already, she thought. This man’s only been gone a week or so. Perhaps it was serious. Well, you could tell Eleanor was serious, that was to be expected. Marion hoped it was serious for Gavin Soutar too. If only Eleanor did not expect too much.
Marion pursued this line of thought, glad of anything that would distract her from the hospital bed, the doctor coming round, the drip feeding into her arm, the long hours till tomorrow, when she could go home again.
‘Why can’t they just give you tablets to take at home?’ Eilidh had wanted to know.
‘It’s not tablets, it’s an injection, and this drip thing, it goes in slowly, so you have to lie down while it does.’ Marion did not feel she could explain any further.
One or two of her friends had said to her (perhaps not knowing what other comfort to offer) that at least, being married to a doctor, she would have someone to answer all the questions. Of course, it was not like that. Fergus did his best, but his reluctance to commit himself to advice in an area where he had only general knowledge, and his fear of worrying Marion, had kept them from much talk of her treatment or symptoms. Marion found it hard to remember what any of the hospital doctors had told her, and she had failed to ask sensible questions, even when she had the opportunity. This, as much as anything, alarmed her. Illness makes you childish, she thought, her mind running on this after all, as Eleanor negotiated the Maryburgh roundabout, and they soared off up the hill to Inverness.
‘Have you heard from David again?’ she asked Eleanor, making an effort to get her mind on something else.
‘No. I told you he phoned, didn’t I, and he was asking for you?’ Eleanor sighed. ‘He was awful though, it was a dreadful conversation.’
‘What sort of awful? You did say he’d been drinking.’
‘Oh, you know. Boasting about his job, which I still don’t really believe in. On a high. You couldn’t talk to him at all.’
‘Sometimes, he doesn’t seem to belong to our family,’ Marion said.
‘Oh, of course he does. He’s just different. But I don’t know why.’ Now Eleanor wanted to defend him.
Marion knew there was something linking David and Eleanor that she did not understand. Something about Ian, more than Eleanor had told her after the funeral. Marion had liked Ian well enough, without feeling she really knew him. They had moved South so soon after the wedding, there was hardly time. He was not the sort of man you could easily feel close to in weekend visits, short holidays. Marion remembered him as fit, looking always slightly tanned, with blue eyes and thick fair lashes. An attractive, impatient man. Well, impatient with Eleanor, and Claire too, even when she was little. But the last man in the world to have a heart-attack at thirty-seven. Just as I am the last woman in the world to have cancer, she thought now, a breast missing, a world split open. It was no good, all she could think about was the day and night to come.
‘I hate to leave you,’ Eleanor said, hesitating in the hospital foyer. She had walked across the car park with Marion, and insisted on coming in.
‘I’m fine.’
‘Ring tomorrow when you want me to come.’
‘I will.’ Marion smiled, reassuring Eleanor, since it could not be the other way round.
Eleanor thought how small her sister looked in the wide, pale-painted corridor. Like a fleeting shadow over the sun, the image of their mother appeared, then vanished. Eleanor turned away, and walked back to the car.
Afterwards, this time, Marion felt much worse.
‘It’s getting to me,’ she admitted to Fergus, when she was home.
‘It’ll wear off,’ he said. ‘If it doesn’t soon, we’ll get you some anti-nausea tablets. In fact, you should really have them now.’
‘More drugs,’ she said. Then back into hospital, for it to start all over again.’
‘Count down the days, the weeks,’ he said, ‘if you think that would help. Make a chart – some patients do that.’
‘I’m not some patients,’ she snapped. I’m your wife.’ Then she burst into tears, feeling guilty. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry – I don’t cry in front of anyone else, really I don’t.’
Marion’s friends said to each other, and to Fergus and Eleanor, how wonderful she was, how brave, how cheerful.
‘It’s a matter of pride,’ Marion told Eleanor. ‘You can’t afford to let other people see. But I get angry sometimes. I know that’s not fair, but I can see them thinking, which one is it? I want to put my hand up, point, say, “You’d never know, would you?” And if it’s not that, they’re looking at me and thinking, is her hair getting thinner, would you say?’
‘Oh, Marion, they mean well, everyone is so anxious for you to be all right.’ Eleanor herself had wondered about Marion’s hair.
‘I know.’ Marion sighed. ‘Sorry, I know all that. Look at the cards and notes I’m still getting, the way everyone keeps popping in. I just wish sometimes they wouldn’t, that’s all. I’m too tired even to talk.’ She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.
Eleanor waited, not knowing what to say. I’m useless, I can’t help her at all. Then Marion opened her eyes and smiled.
‘Sorry. It’s awful I’m grumpy and miserable with the people I love most. You and Fergus come in for all my moans.’
‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, there has to be someone you can say it all to.’ Is that what I do for her? It’s not much. But she was glad Marion had said this. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘you must stop doing things. Look at you today – making soup when I came in. Buy tins, no one will suffer.’
Eleanor knew Marion would ignore this. She was struggling to be normal and to look after everyone, just as usual.
Then one day Eleanor came into the house to find Marion white-faced, her cheeks streaked with tears. She was coming downstairs as Eleanor called from the kitchen door, It’s me.
‘What’s wrong?’ she cried. ‘Has something happened?’
‘Just been throwing up, that’s all.’ Marion leaned on the banister. ‘It’s not glamorous, cancer.’
‘Lie down then, go to bed. Oh, Marion.’
‘Sorry, no, I’m all right now. Better.’
Eleanor had driven over from the cottage thinking about Gavin. What a fool I was, she had decided. It meant nothing to him. He had grown ugly in her imagination, and she found she could not even summon his face, his presence. He had not called her. She was obsessed with this silence, reading into it meanings that changed hourly, but came down in the end to this: she had made a terrible mistake.
Now, helping Marion to a comfortable chair, bringing her water to sip, sitting by her, smelling on her (for the first time) sickness, disease, she was ashamed and guilty. They sat in silence, Marion coming to herself again.
‘Oh dear,’ she murmured, ‘at least this happens when the children are at school. And at least – I was working it out – half-term will be my best week, before I go in again.’ She sat up straighter, less white now. ‘Just before I’m due to go in again, something changes. I wake up and that awful feeling has lifted. I can’t explain it. For a few days I’m almost back to normal. Then, well, then the treatment knocks me back. It’s the pattern, Fergus says, so when it’s over, I will get back to normal. I have a glimpse of it, normality, and I tell myself it will be all right in the end.’
‘Of course it will. As long as this kills off the cancer. That’s what matters.’
‘I watch the bottle, you know, think about that stuff dripping into me, and I wonder what is it killing in me that’s healthy? I try and look after myself – eat well, they say, get fresh air. But oh, some days all I want to do is sleep.’
‘I know, I know,’ Eleanor said, not knowing, but sitting close by Marion, wanting her to go on explaining.
‘The worst thing …’ Marion knew it was years since she had spoken so frankly about herself to Eleanor. But who else could she say these things to? Perhaps Eleanor would not really understand (no one could) but she would always be there, she would always want to listen.
‘What? What’s the worst thing?’ Eleanor prompted.
‘Oh, I have these dreams. That my breast is still there. I touch it, and I’m the same on both sides.’
‘Oh God.’ Eleanor felt tears coming. Don’t cry, she scolded herself, you fool, don’t cry.
Marion, dry-eyed, went on, ‘I wish I was. I wish I was the same. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so hasty. I keep thinking that now.’
‘Hasty? But you didn’t have any choice – you said the surgeon recommended it.’
‘Oh yes, it’s what he does. Operate first. That’s why he recommends it. But Fergus wanted me to go to Aberdeen, to the oncology unit there. They could have given me some chemotherapy, to shrink the tumour. In the end, they might have saved … not operated, I mean.’
‘What? You didn’t have to – you could have gone somewhere else and they might – why didn’t you do that? Why didn’t you say?’
‘Och, I just made up my mind.’ Marion sighed. ‘I couldn’t face it, Eleanor, I couldn’t face going all that way. Leaving home. And in the end, it might have been the same anyway. Get it over with, I thought.’
While Eleanor wept, and she comforted her, Marion thought of how she had imagined worse things than losing her breast – keeping it, being wrong to do so, dying anyway, for the vanity (it seemed to her) of a nipple preserved, a body staying, more or less, the same. However close Eleanor seemed just now, she did not say, could not say even to her, I miss my breast, that part of my body. I wake crying from the dream, and I long to have it back.
‘Oh,’ Eleanor gasped, ‘what a pathetic creature I am. Why am I crying?’
‘Because you always did, when I hurt myself, or David did. You’re too soft-hearted.’
They laughed then, shakily, and began to talk of other things.
That night, Gavin called. When she heard his voice, she was so utterly unprepared, despite all the longing and waiting, that for a moment she could not speak.
‘Hi – Eleanor?’ He did sound far away; she pictured him on the high sea, gales blowing round him. But it would not be like that; he said they had TV lounges, comfortable rooms, good food.
‘Hi. I – you sound – I thought—’
‘How’s things? Claire fine?’ He was starting again, not assuming intimacy. She too, grew distant.
‘Yes, we’re both fine.’
‘Soon be home,’ he said. ‘For nearly three weeks.’
‘Right.’ But she did not believe in this any more.
‘Would you look in on the cottage?’ he said. ‘I meant to ask you – just to check if there’s post, everything’s OK. I’ll ring you again tomorrow.’
‘Yes, yes, all right.’
‘Seems to be ages since I saw you,’ he said, and his voice became lower, closer. ‘I’m looking forward to coming home, for once.’
‘Yes,’ she said, struggling to put some warmth in her own voice, failing. ‘See you soon.’
Afterwards, her heart beat fast and hard. It was real, she told herself, going to find his key under a stone by the front door. Something will come of this.