At first, I didn’t know what everyone was asking. There were people shuffling all around us and I couldn’t understand how none of them had been told. I thought everyone would have known. Vi said things like ‘Where have you been?’ and ‘What has happened?’ Martin asked, ‘Have you seen Mum?’
‘Where’s George?’ I said. ‘Is George all right?’
‘Never mind about George,’ said Vi.
‘Where is he?’ I asked.
‘He went for a walk.’
‘A walk?’ I said. ‘In this?’
‘What happened, Dad?’
‘Where’s Lily?’ Vi asked but she said it so quickly I hardly had time to think of an answer. They weren’t listening to me that well.
‘I found her.’
‘Thank God.’
Perhaps if I said nothing I could undo it all, I could go back to when we were getting ready to go dancing, when we were a family and were happy. If I said it aloud then it would have to be true.
Vi gave me a cup of tea but I didn’t know what to do with it. I only knew that I had come to the place where I had to tell my story and I didn’t want to tell it.
‘I think she was breathing,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t be sure even though they felt for a pulse. I thought I heard Lily say something but it must have been the wind. The waters had gone down, and she had either fallen or she had been too tired to go further. Either way, I could see the strength had left her.
‘Her clothes were torn, and she was wearing her nightdress, the one with the rose petals round the neck – you gave it to her, Vi – and there was blood on her forehead and elbow but it didn’t look like blood. It was dark in the centre and yet the ridges to the wounds were almost pink and her lips were a blue I’d never seen before. And her skin was so white. You could almost see through it.
‘She was so cold but the doctor who was with me swore that she might still be alive. He said, “No one is dead until warm and dead.”
‘So we lifted her into the ambulance and covered her with blankets. I started rubbing her arms and her legs, and then I began to pump at her heart to get it going again. The ambulance man told me to stop and give her the kiss of life. I didn’t understand what to do so he showed me. I hated him touching her, his breathing into her mouth.
‘She was beautiful, Vi; she was so beautiful.
‘Then he let me try and I found that I was blowing into Lily’s mouth, but her lips were thin and hard and cold, and it didn’t feel right, I was embarrassed, people shouldn’t have been looking. I wanted everyone to go away and leave me so I could help her properly. I didn’t like being watched, blowing into the mouth and pressing on the chest of a woman I couldn’t believe was my wife any more.
‘Then the man told me to stop. “Enough,” I think he said, but he was so quiet, “that’s enough, Mr Turner.”
‘He had been feeling for her pulse. Now he leant against her chest. When he did so I took her hand. It felt a bit warmer, and I thought she must have been coming back to life, and that there was hope. But the man said, “I’m sorry, Mr Turner.” That was all. He didn’t say dead or anything.
‘Then he said he wasn’t sure if we had done the right thing in moving her. Perhaps we had made her warm too quickly. Perhaps we had tried too hard and taken it all too fast. How can you try your best and make a mistake by doing it like that? I did what he said. I did everything he said. All I wanted was for my wife to live, for us to be together. I took off my jacket and put it over her. How can I have done too much or tried too hard?
‘The man from the ambulance kept on talking like it was his wife that had died, not mine. He kept babbling on, talking so much that I wanted to punch him. He said that if we had made her warm where she was instead of moving her then we might have had a better chance. But the road was cold and wet. There were other people and there were the cars. What were we supposed to do?’
Vi began to cry, her whole body shaking, except it wasn’t so much crying as something I had never heard before. She was weeping with everything: her shoulders, her chest and her legs, her whole body twitching.
But Martin didn’t move. ‘Go on, Dad,’ he said.
I stared forward, speaking into the space ahead of me because I didn’t want to see either of them listening.
‘Then other men came,’ I said. ‘And some women. They asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. It would help, they thought. “Well,” I said, “a cup of tea isn’t going to make much difference.”
‘“Can’t do any harm.”
‘“Haven’t you done enough?” I said.
‘And then I felt ashamed I’d said that. It wasn’t their fault, but I wanted to be on my own with Lily, say sorry to the girl, you understand. I didn’t want posh women with cups of tea telling me I’d be all right soon enough.’