After Guy, had gone, I lay counting the throbs of my aching foot. I couldn’t sleep and so I found a cigarette and, lying back, puffed great clouds of smoke into the room. I couldn’t relax. I was a bit – not sure of the right word – unsettled, the sort of feeling you get when you are waiting for something. As if something was in the air, so to speak. And it had to do with Guy, but I wasn’t sure what it was.
I did eventually fall into a deep sleep and when I woke I felt an unaccustomed lightness, a kind of strange hopefulness, although my foot was hurting badly. I looked at my watch and was amazed to see it was half-past two already.
He hadn’t come with my lunch, as promised. I decided he had probably forgotten, or was too busy, and was disappointed if I’m honest, but I told myself: Who cares, anyway.
I remember shrugging my shoulders and getting off the bed as if to do something distracting. I thought, I will not sit here waiting; I must do something. Not be here. Be busy. Not waiting for anything or anyone. But what? Go to the garden and fetch the fork and basket – tidy up. Could I walk that far? Yes. In any case and in some bizarre way I welcomed the physical pain because it was real and a distraction. I could concentrate on the pain and not think about anything else.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, I thought how many times, for how many hours had I sat just like this, sat and stared, frozen in inactivity. I used to think that if I sat quite still, mindless, I could take myself out of life, waiting to be found. I looked at the crucifix on the wall, arms outstretched and, crazily, I wanted someone, arms outstretched, to ask me to dance!
I must have been feeling better, because I did get up and made for the garden, limping slowly; I mustn’t do any further damage or make matters worse; didn’t want Guy to think me stupid and attention-seeking.
The basket and spade were where I’d left them and I noticed the mess I’d made. There were particles of earth thrown all over the place. I bent and swept the granules back onto the bed with my hands, but black spots spun in front of my eyes and I had to give up and sit down in the shade of a holly tree that stood on the other side of the wall.
We had had a holly tree in our hedge at home, but it never had berries and I had to make red bows to put amongst the sprigs of holly at Christmas. Fleur always demanded to be in charge of the decorations, but by the time we had lifted her onto chairs or held her up to reach, it made a long job of it. If anyone so much as changed the position of a bauble on the tree she noticed and wasn’t pleased. It was difficult, because all her baubles were hung so low to the ground the cat played with them and knocked them off.
At Christmas, I indulged all my sentimental, romantic childhood fantasies. I strove to create the Christmas-card Christmas, and like a child, I longed for snow.
One Christmas it did snow. It started snowing while we were in church and we emerged to swirling, fat snowflakes and to pealing bells. Perfect! Then I would have conjured, if I could, ladies in long dresses and muffs, gentlemen with top hats and silver-knobbed walking sticks, happy children with coloured scarves and boots. Even the dogs would have been nosing and barking through the snow. But what I could do to bring alive my fairy-tale Christmas, I did. The house was filled with holly, ivy, silver balls, bells and red bows. There were walks with a basket to collect kindling for the open fires. The silver and copper shone in the firelight and candles were lit as we became more and more excited. Now I am amazed at my sentimentality. But then it had been for the children; precious memories from childhood, I thought, that they could carry with them always. And it was always so flat after Christmas, when the tree came down and the house was cleared of cards and decorations. Then the house stood bare and colourless. Had it been worth it?
Imagine that your child has fallen down a very deep, very narrow well-shaft. He is stuck far down and cannot move. You can just see the top of his head and you can hear him crying, ‘Mother, Mother,’ but you can’t get down to him. You can only stand and listen. That is all you can do. I read something like that in the newspaper, once.
I’d been sitting with my eyes shut, but I opened them abruptly because I began to shiver as if I were cold, just for a second, and I wondered if anyone had come to see me, to bring me some lunch. He’d said he would.
I got back into my room, having dumped the fork and basket outside the door, and saw a tray with a plate of sandwiches, a banana and a glass of milk. So he had brought me some lunch then, after all. And I’d not been there. I hate milk like that, but I suppose he thought it would be good for me. They were ham sandwiches, quite OK, and actually I was hungry, I realised.
I had my mouth full when someone hammered on the door. No, it wasn’t Guy, but Joseph and his rabbit. I wanted to tell him to go away, thinking, Why does it always have to be you? but he looked so pleased to see me, I had to smile.
‘I brought your lunch.’
‘Thank you very much.’
‘I’ve got his box here,’ he said.
The box was full of filthy straw and bits of newspaper. He noticed my face.
‘I’m going to put clean stuff in.’
‘Good.’
‘Do you want to come?’
I really didn’t want to. ‘All right, if you want me to. Just let me finish this.’
He waited while I finished the sandwich and then, nodding, he picked up the box and hurried off towards the shed. I took the banana with me and cursed to myself as I followed him. I watched as he tipped out the dirty straw onto a compost heap, which was piled high behind the shed, and as wisps of straw caught the edge of his sleeve and the side of his habit.
‘You’ve got some straw on you,’ I said, but he only chuckled.
‘It’s good for the garden.’ He stared at me again. He was always staring with his face close to mine.
‘Muck! It’s called muck.’ And with that he turned back to the shed.
Leaning in the back corner was a half-used bale of straw and he tore handfuls from it and tossed them into the box. He’s lonely, I thought, amongst all these brothers, he’s lonely. He was frail and silly-looking, dirty and a bit smelly, but watching him, I was sad for him.
‘Where’s the box going?’ I asked, although I knew.
‘In the run.’
I followed him back down the path.
‘They were Billie’s.’
‘Billie?’
‘Had his dogs there.’
‘What?’
We’d reached my room and I stopped by the door.
‘He was ill. He had his dogs there. Puppies – little, like Francis.’
I think he wanted me to say something.
‘We were always together, to be sure. I want to be with him again.’ His face was creased with hopeful expectation. ‘I wish I was dead like him.’ He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
It was an ugly laugh and embarrassed me. I didn’t feel able to say anything; I didn’t feel very well, anyway.
‘Where is Francis?’ I asked, guilty at not wanting to talk about his friend Billie and the dogs and his dying and all that, and he pointed in the direction of the tree.
‘Are you coming?’ he asked again.
‘I won’t just now. My foot really is hurting a lot.’
‘Later, then? To put him to bed?’
I just couldn’t say no. ‘We’ll see,’ but I knew I wouldn’t. Still, he nodded with satisfaction and trotted off down the path.
I lay on the bed feeling empty and depressed. There was nothing to do and nothing I wanted to do. I thought about Guy and then was annoyed with myself. I didn’t want to think about him. He had just been doing a job, nothing more. I wouldn’t let anything else come into my head: certainly not some stranger who happened to bandage up my foot. Yet there was something about him, something that made me feel safe, like a child again. He appeared relaxed, unfazed, moving calmly, easily. That must have been part of it; there was something easy about him. I didn’t have to pretend. I could be myself with him. Was it just that he was a doctor? And yet I had never been one of those who put doctors on a pedestal – apart from my father, of course. After all, I worked with them, I knew too much from the inside, so surely it couldn’t be something as idiotic as ‘doctor worship’?
Anyway, his looks were peculiar, with his round face and staring eyes. But his voice: soft and throaty with that touch of laughter. And when he had something to do, he did it with serious concentration, I’d noticed.
Dear God what was happening to me? Was I so needy? Perhaps, deep down, well hidden down. Yet how could I ever allow myself to feel anything for Guy? It was the most appalling betrayal. Dan. Fleur.
I remembered my only dream of Dan. He was sitting on the edge of my bed and I sat up and put on the light. He had put his arms round me. No honestly, I am not exaggerating. I felt them, actually felt him just as he always felt when he put his arms so firmly round me, as if he were the grown-up. I clung to him, felt his arms around me. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he said. ‘I am not going to leave you at the moment. I’ll stay with you.’ And then he walked away down a long, dark corridor, and as he got to the end of it and was disappearing, he looked back and called: ‘I have to go here. I don’t want to, Mum, but don’t worry, I won’t leave you for a bit.’
I suppose I woke, but the bedside lamp was on and there was a dip in the bed where he must have been sitting for that moment. ‘He’s been here. He’s been here, to me.’ And then I cried, but with a kind of joy.
Fleur came to me in the boat. It was strange that it was she who came in the boat, but that was how it was. She was rowing very well all on her own and steered the boat into our landing stage, smiling that pixie grin, which she smiled whenever she was doing something she knew she shouldn’t do but knowing that I would love her anyway. She knew that, no matter what, I would be overjoyed to see her. It was a heavenly smile. Then I noticed water in the bottom of the boat and around her feet. ‘You’ll catch cold, Flower’ I called, but she laughed and said, ‘Don’t be silly, Minch. I’m quite all right now. You know that, don’t you?’
Sad as I was, the dreams were strangely comforting, for I became all the more certain that we three could never really be separated; that they would keep a place for me, wherever they were. That they would be waiting.
Those dreams began shortly after Dan’s death. But, later, the terrible dreams started. I dreamed, once, of them both together. They were thumb-sized foetuses. I had wrapped them in white stuff, a kind of bandage, and put them on the grill plate above the gas hob. There I left them, going away and forgetting them. I was a long way off when I suddenly remembered them but, try as I might, desperate, I couldn’t find home. When I got there at last, the foetuses were cold and stiff.
Another time, I dreamed they were sitting next to each other in high chairs and Dan leaned across and held a nappy across Fleur’s face as if to smother her. I woke terrified. In another dream – you can never forget them – I heard Fleur calling from the cellar and I ran down to dig her out. I dug her out and took her up and gave her tea, but as soon as I turned my back, she ran back down the cellar steps and disappeared into the sand dunes. Horrific. Horrific: that is all I can say. What was my mind doing? What did the dreams say about me as a mother? I woke guilty, torn and unable to concentrate.
I was probably mad, struggling with the memories, struggling to keep them raw and alive and with me all the time. If I forgot, who could remember? Forgetting is the most punishing thing of all.
Anyway, I don’t know why the dreams returned to haunt me just then, but they drove me to make the conscious effort not to think about Guy any more but to concentrate, instead, on Brother Joseph. I could think about him because he was like a child. He needed someone to love him. For him, love was the rabbit, and I was irritated by the idea of the rabbit being put at night into the run, so far from the house. No, I was angry. Something about it all made me angry. I thought it was a kind of bullying. I even considered saying something to Father Godfrey. Can you imagine that? I had only been there five minutes and was thinking of interfering in their business.
I thought about it a lot but in the end decided to be kinder to Joseph, take more trouble with him while I was there. Perhaps, I thought, my time there would not be wasted after all; I could do some good. Why then, after all my good intentions, did my rage get the better of me?