CHAPTER FOUR

Martha

May ever remain in perfect love and peace

 

 

I was puzzled at first. I don’t expect visitors, not visitors for me personally; the local school coming to sing to the whole Home, or the hairdresser on Thursdays to see who wants a comb-through or a set, but not anyone to see me, to sit in my room and talk to me. I don’t say that in a mean-spirited or complaining way. Both my boys emigrated to Australia years ago, and are very good about sending letters and postcards, but it’s hardly a bus trip, and my husband’s been dead seven years now, long enough for any connections there to fall away.

I’m not lonely or unhappy, I’m not short of company. I have a good friend, Rose (that’s one of my discoveries about old age—the differences matter less and the similarities are easier to concentrate on). We play whist and rummy and draughts, and when the weather is warm we walk in the garden and deadhead the flowers to keep them coming and talk of things we did and what we thought. Except about him. I don’t talk about him. Even though I can start the sound of him and the feel of him and the smell of him in my head and he’s there so forcefully I’m giddy. A giddy old woman with reasonably good knees.

I don’t usually go into the lobby—perhaps only to help one of the frailer ones to the chair in front of the fish tank. By the reception desk you can see straight out through the door to the step; I can’t help but notice it hasn’t been given a good scrub in years. My mother used to say, There’s more as passes by as comes in. What a thing to saddle me with, years of scrubbing the step, washing down the paintwork and sweeping the path, as if it guaranteed the respectability within. Enough of a habit, though, for me to notice that this one needs doing, and the cobwebs fetching off from the top of the door frame, but I’m not tempted to ask for a bucket and do it myself, sleeves up, teeth gritted, watching for the transformation. No, the compulsion’s long gone; it’s just the memory that it mattered that’s stayed. That’s probably what it’s like for most of the people in here; people they loved, things they did. They can remember that it mattered, but it doesn’t matter anymore, and in that, a kind of worn-out peace.

And today, I’d only gone down there to find out if there was a whist drive tonight (someone had wandered off with the list on the notice board), when a woman came in through the door (cobweb now wafting up with the in-draft) and walked up to the reception desk and said my name; said it in a clear, well-spoken way that I felt I should have been able to place instantly. She was standing with her back to me. She wasn’t stooped in the least—a spine and posture as straight as could be—but I could tell by her hair (gray and pinned into some kind of chignon) and by her shin bones that she was not quite my age, but close. Usually, ordinarily, I would have walked up and touched her on the shoulder—I have nothing to fear from unexpected visitors—but something unsettled me, something made me turn on my heel and scoot, even though I was intrigued by what she was carrying. I could see books, rolls of something, something leather-bound—but it didn’t occur to me they could be intended for me. No, at that point I thought it was probably some trivial mistake—perhaps an old church register inquiry, or maybe something to do with voting—and that what was in her arms was her business alone. But there was something, something hard to describe, like a feather brushed over the back of my hand, an echo, a reminder of something long back. I was suddenly sure that her face would be familiar to me, and there it was, her voice suddenly taking me back to my own front door, a summer morning, all those years ago, my knuckle in my mouth where I had caught it in the lock.

Back in my room, I sat down in my armchair and looked out of the window, tried to look absorbed in the tree branches tugged by the east wind, so that when there was a tap on the door I could casually say Come in, and at the same time, take a deep breath, my right hand blanched white from gripping the chair. When the knock came, it was only Jackie, the receptionist, carrying the armful of things.

“She asked me to give these to you,” she said, “she left no name.”

She laid them out on the bed, so that what I suddenly saw to be paintings started to unfurl, and then I knew, knew with a start that winded me, what it was, who she was, and what she had brought to me. And so, with Jackie out of the room, I sat with my head in my hands, heart pounding. After all these years, to be with his things in the same room again. Understanding still, as I understood then, that the whole point of my life was him. That Robert was the huge, explosive, firecracking, world-spinning point of it all.

When I was born in Oxfordshire in 1920, England was still raw from the war. All those flickering films of dancing flapper girls, and cars, and liners setting sail aren’t it at all; instead, like holding your breath, knowing everything had changed. My mother’s brother Albert died in 1916 walking across the Somme into a tangle of wire and gunfire. As a boy, he liked rabbiting, and that’s how I always saw his death, like a rabbit snared in wire, snagged, eyes wide open. His photograph was on the wall above the kitchen table, smiling self-consciously from beneath his corporal’s hat, set to make something of himself but with no chance at all.

I was not a beautiful child, nor a beautiful woman. I was solid and strong like a wide-armed chair; broad-beamed, broad-busted, with thick ankles and lardy arms. Slabs of flesh that denied the bones beneath; not wobbly, just a body that was designed to carry things, fold sheets, iron shirts, pull pints, carry children. A body made for work when my mother dreamed of a flower fairy.

In my house, I understood from the start that cleanliness was next to godliness and that nothing pleased Jesus more than clean hands, a clean nose, and a well-eaten dinner. My mother standing me on the table, socks peeled down to my ankles, scrubbing me with the flannel until I was rosy-kneed. In Bible lessons, hoping it was as simple to get your insides scrubbed. Chanting the Thanksgiving “Give thee most humble and hearty thanks for all thy goodness and loving-kindness … and all the blessings of this life … we show forth thy praise, not only with our lips but with our lives” and wondering if this meant walking quietly past Tom Price who had the shakes from the war and lived with his mother again; a man-child now, my mother said, who was no longer right in the head, as if the rest of him was right enough. His mother back with a toddler, steering him down the street away from front doors that slammed. Maudie Taylor, the big, stout Catholic who lived three doors along telling her to, Offer it up offer it up, as if somehow that would make it right. The notion that the body belonged to God and best not question.

When I started my periods, and pieced all that business together from what my mother and Maudie told me, I thought suddenly of the Virgin Mary, and all those nativity paintings with her smiling serenely in the stable, blue and white and composed, star twinkling overhead, and ox and asses and shepherd boys with flutes, and realized that she probably wasn’t feeling serene at all, but bloody and sticky, and the ride on the donkey making her bladder ache. Maudie telling me that Jesus was made through Mary’s ear, and wondering how that had worked, and thinking for the first time that maybe the Bible didn’t tell you all, or that maybe God had different rules depending on who you were.

I’d sit at Maudie’s to escape our kitchen all steamed up with dinner, and she’d let me hold her rosary; amethyst beads in a special order, starting with a silver Jesus on a silver cross. A cross, then a single bead up from the cross, then three beads, then one more. An oval disk of silver engraved with an M, then a cross, then two hearts, one with a dagger through it and one with twelve little stars all around. And then Mary on the other side, hands outstretched as if she wouldn’t mind to pick you up even if you were grubby, and more words: O Mary conceived without sin pray for us who have recourse to thee. Then Jesus on the cross, with the nails through his hands, and the line of his ribs, and his muscles all clear, even his belly button. A scroll nailed to the cross, but I couldn’t make out the letters on it. Lord? Ecce? And on the back, in capital letters I-T-A-L-Y. I’d sit on Maudie’s lap while she said it, first the Apostles’ Creed, then Our Father, three Hail Marys, and then Glory Be to the Father.

There were five mysteries: joyful ones and sorrowful ones and glorious ones. I liked that—that Maudie could take the rosary and follow the same route and make it happy or sad, filled with peace and blessings or agony and scourging and grand things that started with The. The Resurrection. The Assumption. The Ascension. The Coronation. Sitting on Maudie’s fat broad lap with the beads between my finger and thumb, listening to her say all the words and wishing that it could be like that in life; see the route mapped out, the footprints there, and then choose the style of it. See the whole, and understand better.

But then, just Maudie’s words and her smell of soap and cabbage and starch, and her skin all papery soft, and wispy bits of hair stuck to her neck with steam or sweat. Over the mantelpiece a picture of Jesus, watching us, head tilted to one side, his eyes all weary with a halo yellow as an egg yolk. Maudie called the picture “Jesus in need of a good sit down, which was not surprising when you think of all he had to do.”

Dad tanning me when he caught me making a rosary with white stones in the yard, complaining to my mother that Maudie was filling my head with papist nonsense. My mother saying it was no different from or worse than anything else that might be in there. Not that any of it saved me or stopped me in the end. Having knowledge of what not to do but doing it all the same. And once, when Maudie’s back was turned cleaning out the coal scuttle, just quickly putting the rosary into my mouth and sucking it to see what it was like, whether it made you feel different inside. But no, just cold and hard and bobbly, like sucking pebbles. Not like the bread and wine magic that Maudie explained to me—that sounded something—wine into blood right there in your mouth. Warm and thick and sweet, and the bread into his body. Isn’t that like eating Jesus? I asked her. She stopped scrubbing. Thought. In a way, I suppose. And I understood, years later, the wish to consume. To carry love around, inside of you. Precious, unspillable, blood-red bright.

As a young girl, sitting with Pearl Armstrong on the wall at the end of the street, singing, The gypsy rover came over the hill, down through the valley so shady. He whistled and he sang until the greenwoods rang, and he won the heart of his lady. Wondering what it would be like for me. Whether someone would whistle and sing until the greenwoods rang and that would be me all accounted for. Impossible to imagine, forty-three years later, a man in a churchyard with a book.

When I was seventeen, I worked in Mrs. Trewitt’s shoe shop in the town. You can tell a lot by a person’s shoes, Mrs. Trewitt used to say, and even more by their feet, as if chilblains and bunions came only to the guilty.

Bill was a plumber, doing his apprenticeship with Mr. Stafford. They came to put a basin in at the back of the shop. Mrs. Trewitt trilling around; wanting customers to know that we stretched to modern facilities but not wanting plumbers’ bags on the good wool carpet. It’s the grease, she said later, it gets everywhere.

The first time I clapped eyes on Bill, I watched him standing there passing bits of piping to Mr. Stafford, not saying much, rootling around in the brown leather bag. Broad-shouldered, with a sinewy neck and big wide hands and blue eyes with no sparks of cleverness, but kind. Noticing he was looking me up and down. Silently. Approvingly. As if he could put a washer on me and have me fixed up in no time. And because there were no customers—it was late on a Wednesday afternoon—watching him clean and wipe all the tools and put them away. For the first time, the litany that would run through the years. Bill’s big broad thumbs smoothing and checking and wiping each coppery tube, each silver spanner; his rosary of the plumbing bag, each thing in its right place, a language of interlocking parts.

Dressing that Friday night, ready for him to come and meet me. I was dressed in blue, a dress that wrapped across the front of me and fell in soft folds. Neat shoes. Lipstick. Hair in some semblance of order. My mother in her chair in the kitchen, saying, You look grand, encouragingly if a little doubtfully. You all have your bouquets to offer, she used to say to us, although perhaps a little stumped to say what mine might have been. Buxom. Good-hearted. Always dreaming of words. Could that be counted as a bouquet? I would like to tell her that at fifty-eight I had bouquets enough to fill a whole flower shop. Armfuls and armfuls of myself to give. Bouquets I never even knew I had. There are pears that only ripen in December; that’s what I’d like to tell her now.

Bill at the door all nervous and shy. At the dance, dancing together hesitantly. The valves no longer in his fingers but twisting them anyway. The solidness of his body; the thick scratchiness of his wool jacket against my cheek, a faint smell of wardrobes, of clothes that didn’t get out in the air much. The smell of soap along the top of his collar. My husband, all scrubbed up; knowing that already, and although no excitement in that knowledge, peace.

We married at St. James’s Church, in new shoes given by Mrs. Trewitt. Mine were little buff kitten heels with a strap across the instep; a neat button to fasten it up, and my foot surprised in a cream stocking. It’s odd that I can see those still, and yet not remember my wedding night. The cake, made by Mrs. Coleman from the Albert Road. White stiff little rosebuds, all around the edge, and cutting it with Bill and saying, Remember, we mustn’t cut through to the bottom, it’s bad luck, and Bill saying, As if a cake cut could change the flow of things. As if indeed.

Our first house, in fact our only house, was rented on Porter Street and bought years later. It was at the end of a terrace, with a path running up the side of it, past the front door and round to the back. Next to the back door, a rain barrel, balanced on four bricks to catch the rain and the overflow. Through the back door into the kitchen; a small fireplace with tiles round it and a black grate. That will be easy to keep clean, my mother said, not much to black. Her way of measuring, and at that time, mine, too. Cleanliness as next to godliness. Then.

A small parlor. Two armchairs bought secondhand from Manny Solomon. Brick red, with wings at the head and big broad arms. He laughed when I sat in it. Martha Fraser, that chair was made with your limbs in mind. Not in I-T-A-L-Y. Not exotic. Probably in Leeds or somewhere.

Two rooms upstairs, a privy up the garden path outside. Years later, Bill plumbing it all inside. Two pig sties at the bottom of the garden, then the steep escarpment made by the railway line. Years and years of lying in bed and hearing the trains go by. In the winter, making me press down deeper into the blankets, cozier at the thought, and in the summer, making me restless, thinking of others traveling, visiting, seeing things I wouldn’t. Starting a wanderlust that peppered my sleep but dissolved in the morning when the shirts came for ironing. The feeling that the ironing board was rooted into the ground and that all the hours I stood there, my feet grew roots, too, deep into the floor. My arms like branches up from the ironing board. Solidly smoothing. The thought, especially during the war, that what the world needed was a good ironing. That God obviously didn’t get involved with creases.

Married life with Bill straightforward from the start. His view that in this life much of what was said was probably better left unsaid, and much of what was left was probably just rattle, so better silent. Comfortable quietness. Like the ox and the ass; peaceful, companionable. All those years to have never seen him naked, nor him me. Modesty tied up with limited expectations. Just coupling; quietly, peacefully, in the dark.

In 1940, a year after we were married, growing rounder and solider still. Bold about my new outline, knowing there was room enough in me for all of this, and loving the swooshing kicks inside. Birthing like an old hand, with Rose Black to help. You’d think you’d had four already, she said. Four pushes and a slithery swoop and a wet little mop head and screwed-up fingers and a round O mouth yelling fit to bust. Putting him to me to feed; propped up on the pillow like a pink fat sow. Automatic. Instinctive. Simple.

Bill coming upstairs after Rose had gone; thumb pad circling the edge of his opposite cuff, as if somehow surprised that I’d done it for him. Looking at his son, and holding him carefully, the baby’s fist in the curl of his finger. We called him John; and in 1942, another one, Peter. Keep it simple. Fishers of men names.

I loved the boys, loved them up; their pudgy toddler limbs, and then little boy legs. Their wet-bright eyes, and naughtiness and muddiness. The smell of them after a bath. The look of them asleep in flannelette striped pajamas. Their short-cropped hair and the shape of their foreheads. The bits of rubbish in their pockets at the end of the day; the ant homes, worm tunnels, and mole traps dug in the backyard. But not changed by it, not becoming Martha, patient saint of mothering, arms outstretched. Not becoming Maudie either, talking and working and talking some more, always ready to stop and lift you onto her lap and tell you something. Instead, too much Out from under my feet from me, swooshing the broom behind them.

Then, when the boys were getting bigger, doing cleaning for three houses; sorting other peoples’ messes. Seeing straight through some fancy ways, but liking the feel of nice things. Chinese lamps, soft throws over armchairs, mahogany sideboards with handles inlaid with mother of pearl, Persian rugs made from colored thread I didn’t have words to name, beds with coverlets made from old French lace. One made from crushed velvet with crystal droplets at the edge that chinked softly when I did the corners. Welsh dressers stacked with good china. Crystal glasses that rang when I touched them. Woolen coats with cashmere in them. Soft to the fingers.

I worked lunchtimes and three evenings in the Working Men’s Club in Bower Street. Pulling pints and tidying up; nearly all men in there, but most not working. Boozing. Talking. Using words but not giving anything away. Sorrows and lost hopes swaddled up in beer and fags. Only their eyes showing their innards when the drink peeled their guard away, uncertain boy faces peeping back out, wanting their mom, for an instant. Slumped tired old faces with no resolve left. The smell of the beer; the line of their shoulder blades. Adrift of their anchor, nothing to do making them feel like nothing. But not saying. Watching some of them come in strutting like little bantams; full of the crack and bantering to me. Martha my lovely, Martha my darling. And later, mopping out the toilets, thinking if they learned to aim straight we might move the world on a little.

At chucking-out time, helping to pick up the ones who’d had a skinful; pulling them up by the elbow, sending them on their way, onto their feet and out of the door. The night air bracing, and making them snort in their next breath, eyes blinking. Martha the handmaiden, and while they were not recognizably Maudie’s Jesus, Him probably in there somewhere. And if they started spoiling for a fight, jollying them out if it; nudging them back from their boxer’s stance with a hand on their arm. Looking a bit blowsy myself probably; lipstick too red, busty barmaid, but more like their mother. Chiding them home to bed and then emptying the ashtrays. Remembering Blessed are the peacemakers and thinking perhaps He missed something. The picker-uppers. The mainly women. The putters to rights. Smoothing, folding, restoring, soothing, cleaning, wiping snot. Getting on with it.

When I came home from working Saturday lunchtime, Bill would be out by the sty with the pigs. Two huge pink Tamworth sows with coarse ginger hair on their backs. I would always find him there, scratching their backs, watching them shift and rootle as he collected apples for their trough from the crab tree on the escarpment in an old black bucket with a split handle. Using the same bucket to carry water up from the rain barrel. And always quiet. The odd word to them. Pushing them with his legs when he shoveled out the manure, their soft rubbery snouts snuffling. The scrunch of the apples. The water slopping over the sides of the water trough. Their trotters black and shiny like mussel shells, neat against the floor of the sty. Wafting drowsy flies away with my hand, leaning over the sty wall. My behind probably looking much like theirs. Flat. Broad. Slappable. Asking him about his day. Aye. If he’d sorted the pump on Mrs. Chapman’s shower. And not ask more. Not rattle. Just stand, companionably, not me not needing words but him not choosing them. And I wondered if he would have been happier doing this, farming stock, tending to cattle. Walking over fields plowed to chocolate ripples. Breath to mist on a frosty morning. And asking him, once, if that would have been better than the pipes and U-bends and joints and pumps. The sentence hanging thinly between us. And him saying, jaw down, that most times, folk get the life they would choose. And thinking it true; that if he’d said yes, I couldn’t really have seen him striding out, legs planted wide over a furrow, rustling wheat through his hand to see if it was ripe. The pigs one thing, but the litany of his plumbing bag his real peace. Each pipe in its place. Each valve properly greased. Each spanner according to size. The neatness of it. Not done in the face of what he saw beyond it, but because it was good in itself. Separate. Self-sufficient. Like him really. A good man, whose version of love was decent behavior and companionship.

On a Sunday morning, he’d go off to the canal, fishing. Get up early, make a bacon sandwich to take, sometimes catching, sometimes not. A few perch, or a roach, carefully put back. Sitting on a folding blue stool he kept under the stairs; a brown canvas bag with his hooks and bait. On winter mornings his cap pulled down low. Telling me, sometimes, things he had seen; that the water looked oily, the heron on the bridge again. And in the afternoon, digging in his allotment; carrots and cabbages and runner beans. Potatoes, marrows, sometimes peas; all in neat rows, a few marigolds between. His shed at the end and an old deck chair. I’d go down there sometimes to get some vegetables for dinner. The potatoes always floury but neither of us saying.

And when he came in to eat, we’d sit next to each other at the blue-and-white Formica table. Modern and wipeable, no need for scrubbing. The cutlery thin and awkward in his big hands. It made me think of the pigs in the sty, chewing quietly side by side. Not the company of strangers. The strangeness of company.

My mother died, of a stroke that first made her left side limp and useless. Mouth battling to chew or talk; being dressed, washed. Knowing how much she hated it; how much she would have liked to spring up from the bed and flannel herself clean as if dirty from a coal mine. Lazarus all over. To have scrubbed and cleaned and purged away her uselessness; clean before God and ready to give the step before St. Peter’s gate a good going over. The last time I saw her, sitting by the bed and holding her better hand. No wisdom to impart; me still baffled by what she had expected me to be; her still baffled by a world you couldn’t clean up. Me about to explode every notion of respectability she ever taught me. Her clutching the sheet edge, wet-eyed with the indignity of the bedpan.

Maudie, too; gone for a good sit down. At her funeral the air thick with incense, sweet and cloying and exotic. Like I-T-A-L-Y. Her rosary in the coffin with her, worn smooth with all the handling; Jesus’ ribs not quite so defined. Afterward, going to her house and helping with the sorting of things. Asking, if no one wanted it, if I could have Jesus with the egg-yolk halo, Jesus with the weary eyes. Taking it home and putting it in the bedroom, and Bill asking where it had come from, and what would I be wanting with that, and not replying properly; not saying that this was how my Jesus looked.

John and Peter both marrying, and having children. All that cuddling up, all over again. Sitting with one of the grandchildren on my lap, going through my button tin. Gold buttons with anchors on. Square buttons with sparkly glass centers, sapphire blue diamond shapes, polished and shiny. Maple toggles, etched frosted glass. Jiggling them in clasped hands, and sifting them through fingers. Flashes of color and a whooshing, clinking noise. Little voices chanting, legs swinging from my lap. Rich man poor man beggar man thief. Singing to them softly; A frog he did a wooing go. And then Robert.

On a Wednesday, aged fifty-eight, waiting for the bus, and not sitting at the bus stop, because the rain puddled there and the cars splashed it up, so sitting in the churchyard opposite, on a broad-beamed bench with the shopping at my feet, able to see over the low dry stone wall if the bus was coming.

The churchyard always quiet. Sitting among the dead, watching a robin sing from the top of a gravestone. The moss bright green and frizzled and curled at the edges of the stones; the lettering filled with lichen, dark green and yellow. I never felt morbid sitting there; soothed somehow. That all the chasing around and fetching and carrying finally came to this. All the rattle reduced to one robin’s song and a shaft of sunlight cutting across a stone; to some sparse words, and maybe a cross and a date to fix you in the pattern of it all.

That day, just enjoying the spring flowers; aubretia and alyssum scrambling out of the wall, and pasqueflowers with silky seedheads and late primulas in the dappled shade and beautiful blue veronica. Veronica, she interested me, too. Maudie had told me the story of her handkerchief, and the imprint His face left on it when she wiped His brow. Veronica, another of the picker-uppers, the wipers and cleaners. Finding it astonishing that you could touch Him and carry away an imprint, see His features in a handkerchief. And that day, about to understand that it could happen. That you could be imprinted upon. That you could touch someone and walk away, not with their features on cloth, but on you. Imprinted on you and in you. Right to the bone.

But on that day, just looking at the flowers, listening to the robin, and feeling the warmth of the spring sunshine across my knees. Thinking how nice it was to have warm knees, and thinking of long-ago fine ladies in grand carriages with rugs across their laps and hair piled up in elaborate styles, and chalk-white skin and footmen riding behind. Then, catching in the corner of my eye the sight of a man standing to the east of the church with a book in his hand looking up at the roof. Watching, despite myself, as he walked around, all the time looking and turning the pages in his book. Knowing straightaway that he wasn’t the type to be drinking at Bower Street; the jacket a soft tweed with blue heathery greens, his shoulder blades too composed, his shoes too fine. The book too accustomed in his hands. His skin warm from the soft freshness of a spring day, not weather-beaten and whipped from working outside. Noticing with a start that he was looking right back, and wondering what he thought he saw. Maybe a middle-aged woman with thick ankles on a broad-beamed bench with shopping at her feet. Wondering why the thought occurred to me; long past the time when men held any mysteries. Or so I thought.

Puzzled as to what I wanted him to see, this well-dressed man with a book in a churchyard on a day in May with a robin singing and the number fifteen bus late again. Wondering why I didn’t look away, and why I was smiling back. As he walked toward me, resisting the urge to move along on the bench, which would have openly invited him to sit awhile, and at the same time seeing the bus coming around the corner, and not standing up, not moving at all, but instead sitting quite still and watching him walk toward me with a book in one hand and his other hand empty except that it held the rest of my life.

A saddleback roof, he said. A brilliant example of a saddleback roof; showing me in his book, his index finger pressing the page open, a drawing of a saddleback roof. The half-moon on the nail of his finger white, clean, and even. A brown leather button on the cuff of his jacket, stitched into quarters and resting on the edge of the page. And me looking up, looking up at the roof of the church to paste a name on it. To learn, then, that a saddleback roof is a tower roof shaped like a gabled timber roof, and asking him what other sorts there were. Waggon roofs with close-set rafters and arched braces. Hipped roofs. Tie-beam roofs. A whole new litany. Roofs made from ridges, common rafters, principal rafters, king posts, purlins, queen posts, struts, collar beams, and hammer beams. Roofs that kept the rain out and lifted the eyes up to God. A rosary of roofs.

There’s a bellcote, he said, on the west side. Bellcote another new word—a tower for bells that made me think of birds, with white dove notes flying out of it. Standing and walking with him toward the bellcote, past a window with a wedge-shaped stone at the top, and asking him if that had a name. Hungry for his words. A voussoir. Liking that, too. Like boudoir and slippery softness and feather cushions and round mouths. A word that sounded like it was asking you to do something rather than naming a stone. Do you voussoir? Yes, voussoir me.

We turned to each other by a lilac tree, a white lilac tree in a packet of its own perfume, and his words tripping and falling between the branches, and me looking at him, and knowing desire, and longing, for the first time, at my age. And knowing, too, that it was not just desire. It was the pulse of all the words not yet said. All the things not yet shared. The feeling, for the first time, of being an interlocking part; sliding into each other with a small click beneath the lilac tree. And still not moving; some more brief words. Where he lived. Where I lived. That he had a wife. That I had a husband. That he was a doctor. That I ironed clothes. Telling me where his surgery was; doctoring the villages on the edge of town. And me thinking that he would have a bag, too; a bag with stethoscopes, thermometers, antibiotics, bandages. Human plumbing. Him saying that he loved churches, church architecture, and visiting churchyards with his book, each Wednesday afternoon when he had no surgery. Finding roll molding and finials and fillets and spirelets. Tapping walls to see if they were made of cob—clay mixed with straw from long-ago harvests. I liked that thought, too. Seeing a long-ago hot day in July and a scythe cutting grass, and a man’s hands tying the grass into bundles and drying it in a barn and mixing it with clay and slapping and patting it into a wall. All is safely gathered in and made into churches; liking the neatness of that, the circle, and a man, now, who tapped walls to find it.

Standing before him, fixing his shape in my eye. His height, the breadth of his shoulders, the lines on his forehead, the lines around his eyes. His hair thick and gray-white, his eyebrows with some dark in them. Blue eyes; paint-chart blue eyes. Clear and clean. Eyes filled with looking at me, too; tiny versions of myself in his pupils, spinning down, down into his bottomless eyes. Not drowning. Skydiving. My lark time. Agreeing to meet him there next Wednesday.

I went home and peeled the potatoes for tea. Stood at the sink scraping the skin into the colander; cutting them into quarters; sealing the meat in the frying pan. Looked out of the window and saw a cloud so thick you could take a bite out of it. Plugged in the iron, ready to start Mrs. Collins’s basket. Trying to start the tune of the evening, the rhythm of the house. The familiarity of things in my hands; the handle of the frying pan, the plug of the iron. The tipping of the potato skins into the pigs’ bowl. Going outside to sit on the step, resting my head against the rain barrel, pressing my thumbnail into the moss at the edge. Crescent moons in the moss. Beginnings.

Knowing this, as I sat there, pressing the rust flakes onto my fingertips, knowing that I would have sat on the churchyard bench from that moment until next Wednesday just to see him again. Sat there like a fool in the spring rain and shine. Sat there for a week, just to look at the turn of his neck, at the inside of his wrist, at the line of his mouth. To imprint him. Be imprinted. Again.

Before I went to meet him the next week, I sat on the side of the bed, looked at my painting of Jesus in need of a good sit down, feeling aware of my almost old, jiggle-jaggled body. The heaviness of my breasts, the snaky vein on my calf, the coarse skin on my elbows. Suddenly summoning Mrs. Trewitt up before me. Remembering her telling me—she must have been in her fifties then, too—that the best thing for elbows was to halve a lemon, remove the fruit, and sit with your elbows in the halves. The pith and rind whitening and softening. And wondering who she’d been keeping her elbows nice for. What part of the week was deemed Care of Elbows. What other bits she had remedies for. What other things I might have learned. Seeing my mother suddenly. Apportioning to her mouth the flesh from Mrs. Trewitt’s lemon so that she could assume a sour look and tell me I was fast, with ideas beyond myself. A doctor indeed. Married. And feeling all that fall away, like the thick spiky case from a horse chestnut, leaving me with a polished, gleaming, suckable conker, perfect in the palm of my hand. Feeling the quiet interlocking click in the churchyard, beyond all of it. Knowing that I would talk to him, listen to him, love him. Knowing already that what Robert wanted in me, saw in me, Bill didn’t even know was there.

Passion and rattle. Realizing that whatever happened between Robert and me, nothing would change for Bill. The order of his day. His tea on the blue Formica table when he came home from work. Playing darts in The Crown for the league. Fishing in the canal on Sundays. All that would not change; I would keep all this from him; never justify it, but do it all the same. Knowing that what I was doing was by all notions wrong. Adulterous. Dishonest. But beyond all that, right. More right than anything had ever been for me. And I could spend the rest of my life wishing that I had met Robert when I was twenty, and watched him pack his bag through the years. But that I would not; I would not think of the whys and wherefores again. Instead, step off the bus and walk to the churchyard. Trembling.

Finding him waiting for me, through the arch of the lych-gate, standing by a small stone angel. The angel with its eyes up; him with his eyes down, and then looking. Seeing me, and smiling as I walked toward him, my hands completely empty, just carrying myself, to him.

That first day we went for a walk, across the road from the church and onto a track that led across the fields. That track still so clear in my mind; now, at eighty-two, I can still see it unrolling before us, fixed forever on a day in May. White and green. The hawthorn covered in tiny white flowers, the stems and leaves so vivid. The cow parsley like soft white lace against the hedgerow. A hare starting and running, twisting away in front of us. A small patch of dark fur visible on its cheek; liquid eyes; all legs and feet.

I asked him why he loved churches, why he spent afternoons seeking out spires and altars and stoups, whether to see God more clearly or to understand man better, whether he was brought to church by God or by men’s God-buildings. By what man’s hands could do, given a nudge in the right direction. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. And asking him how he saw his Jesus, in the face of his doctoring, people no hand could save. Not his, or His. Wondering where that left you; perhaps just liking the stones. Robert pausing, pressing a tuft of grass with his shoe, and agreeing that whatever God did like, he didn’t mind creases. Creases that couldn’t be ironed and steamed out with any amount of goodness. Creases that resisted any explanation, any fairness. Churches, he thought, simpler somehow. Men aiming to the good. Crocketing the sloping side of a spire with tumbling leaf shapes. Making cupolas to crown roofs. Making cartouches and lancet windows. In the face of it all. And the face of it all sometimes so beautiful it could make you trip. A track in May all white and green; a hare bolting through cow parsley.

Later, foreheads pressed together, as if breathing each other in. His hands holding my face, as if something precious found. I have been waiting for you, he said, for so very very long. Not answering him, but feeling it, too. Back in the churchyard, reaching into his pocket and bringing out a wrapped gift. A book, A Guide to English Parish Churches, the same as his. I thought you might like it, he said, we could go together, on Wednesdays.

And so it began. Walking around churchyards on Wednesdays. Churches made of flintstone, of Cotswold stone, of marlstone, of redbrick. Looking at steeples and arches and carvings and tracery and chancels, and mullions soaring from floor to ceiling. Always talking; all the things never said, never shared, until then. Sometimes silent, sitting back to back, looking at carvings; self-satisfied knights in effigy, weepers on the side of tombs, a tree of Jesse made of glass and stone. And loving the words. Spandrels and corbels and ogees and cinquefoil canopies; trying them out in my mouth. Words that made me think of pieces of jewelry; ornate brooches stuck onto medieval clothing, words that carried the centuries along before them. Not like my workaday, everyday words; the church words winking and flashing like jewels. Robert smiling and calling me a wordcomber, picking up words like sticks on a beach and carrying them home to keep.

Loving him, the first time, in a small hotel in the Cotswolds; an afternoon in June with the air soft to the skin; ravenous for each other. Learning his outline, his shape, his smell, and feeling my own body, my broad-beamed body, tumbling and moving and loosening like water, and understanding for the first time the whole point of it all. The reason for all the fuss. The whole room-spinning, skin-melting point of it all. And all the time looking into his blue eyes, my naked body smaller and smaller, blurring the line of where he stopped and I started. The moment under the lilac tree, given flesh. And afterward, laughing, that this unbelievable redemption might be ours. Then, just holding each other. You mean everything, he said, and me unable to speak for tears. Inside, for the first time, so alive.

Little stories, that’s what we made up; little slices of life, together. Sharing the feeling that the truth of it, and the weight of it, was in the detail. That your whole life could be caught in the little things. Looking at the gravestone of a long-ago child who died aged twelve. Imagining the sampler she might have sewn, jabbing away at her stitches and pricking her finger, raising her stiff neck to look out of the window at a child with a hoop outside. Feeling at odds with her tiny embroidered flowers, the biblical verse, her finger with its bubble of blood; yeasty dough rising on the range beside her. Or, looking at a gargoyle and wondering who carved it. Whether a child came skipping to bring the stonemason lunch while he worked, bread and cheese, or cold pigeon pie. Whether he had a chair before his fire, a pile of cherry wood in the grate. Whether an old leghorn rooster crowed in his yard.

A year after we met, lying in a cornfield under a blazing June sky. A skylark visible above through the web of my lashes, wheeling and soaring and singing, and Robert taking from his pocket a handful of delphinium petals, the bluest of blue. Last night in the garden, I wanted them for you. And he scattered them over me, over my breasts, my arms, into my hair. Lying there, the green of the corn, the whip-thin poppy stems, the blue of the sky, and the petals all over me, making my bones sing new. That night, at home, undressing, finding one last petal tucked inside my clothes. Quickly concealing it in my closed hand, catching and holding the afternoon and all that brightness, and putting it under my pillow to savor in sleep. Thinking that when I am dead, if a couple, quietly talking in a churchyard made a story of my life, they would never guess that I slept on a delphinium petal pillow, warm from my breast, scattered from my lover’s hand.

Once, at an agricultural show on a hot day in July, inside a Horticultural Society tent, a vegetable competition, all the categories marked with neat, clear signs. Five potatoes, kidney or oval; twelve shallots for pickling; three carrots, long. Marmalade jars, chutney jars, Victoria sponges made to a specified recipe. Isobel would like this, he said, this is Isobel’s sort of tent. In his voice, somehow, the nearest he ever came to criticizing her, not that I was hungry for him to do so. Mostly, we avoided mentioning either Bill or Isobel; avoiding explanation, motive, reasons why. Creating, instead, a world in which there were only the two of us, unfettered, free. Afterward, sitting on a hay bale eating venison sausages in a roll and watching show jumping; betting with each other who would sail clear, who would fall. Like two old gods on a mountaintop, he said. Unaccountable. Safe.

Outside an old abbey in summer rain, getting wetter and wetter and finally going into a small gallery alongside. Watercolors of landscapes, of boats on waterfronts, fruit on kitchen tables, and then an empty eggshell so fine, so scooped clean, so perfect. Watching Robert look at it, and suddenly, uncontrollably, achingly wanting him. Then, in the car, the seat flipped back, the wheel pressed into my hips. The windows steaming up around us, the smell of wet clothes, warm rain. Kissing each other and murmuring into his skin, feeling my heart might stop with the joy of it.

On another afternoon, hiring a boat on a still, warm day; the water green and smooth, the banks a tangle of wetness. Robert moored the boat to an old wooden jetty, and we lay in a meadow bright with corncockle and rue. Robert took out paints and a sketch pad; a present from Kate, he said, I want to paint you. So I sat, patient, unkempt, in the grass, my back straight, my feet planted wide, the sun warm on my face. I feel, I told him, as if I should be wearing clogs, sitting on a stool in a harbor, a bucket of mussels at my feet with an old wooden knife with a small silver blade in my hand, scraping and cleaning the mussels. All the time, looking straight at him, so bold, so emboldened. So that’s how I shall paint you, he said. Simple as that.

Later, getting out of the car at the bottom of the street and walking up to the house, knowing Bill would be home. Straightening and tugging at my dress, at my hair. Putting to rights. Yet feeling as if trailing corncockle and rue; feeling ravished, pink with fulfillment, like a fat cat with the cream. Making the tea in the kitchen, hard-boiled eggs and pickle, tomatoes cut in half on a lettuce leaf. And all the time, my heart singing and soaring; still legs akimbo, with him.

One morning, the phone ringing, then a neat careful voice, a woman’s voice that was not familiar to me, explaining that her housekeeper was on holiday and could she drop off some shirts. Such a beautiful day I decided I would iron outside, the breeze already warm, the honeysuckle alive with bees, the livingstone daisies open to the sun. Robert laughed when I told him I did this. Told me he’d painted me ankle deep in grass and butterflies, ironing by the rain barrel. Aphrodite Ironing he’d called it.

She knocked at the front door, which took me by surprise. A front door was for policemen, for baliffs, for coffins; everyone else came round the back. I went to the door and started to undo it; the bolt all stiff, the frame a little swollen, and scrabbling for the key in the rose jug on the mantelpiece. All the time I was trying to open it, hearing her feet shift on the step, and a small cough, and the sound of car keys in her hand. And as I finally yanked the bolt across, pulling with my left hand while pressing down with my right, I caught my finger and pinched it badly, so opening the door with my knuckle in my mouth.

Nothing remarkable. Or at least not at that moment. My eye taking in a woman roughly my age, a little younger, neat and slim, with graying hair in a pleat held in place with a comb. Probably about my height, but looking smaller, with her standing one step down and me on the stoop. Aware that she was looking at me, really looking at me, but saying nothing, and me thinking I probably looked a sight, standing there sucking my finger, wanting to cuss but thinking probably better not. Clearing her throat to speak, but still saying nothing, just stretching out her hand and passing me the bag. I noticed that her nails were nice, polished and smooth, and that she wore a ring with a row of emeralds. Thinking that her usual ironer did a good job, because she was wearing a white blouse with an intricately stitched collar, and it was all done beautifully. Noticing her blouse, even while she told me that her housekeeper would be round to collect the shirts the day after tomorrow. Her voice even and clear, but with a tremble at the back, and me still thinking nothing of it.

Then, taking the ironing board out into the garden, and snapping up the wooden clothes horse to hang the coat hangers on when they were done, and putting my hand in the bag and pulling out a plain white shirt. Thick, soft cotton with good buttons; somehow familiar to my touch. Then, a blue shirt with a double cuff with two pleats and a double split yoke, and suddenly knowing, suddenly seeing it, unbuttoned from Robert’s body, my hands hungry for his skin. My first thought, his shirt on my ironing board some sort of gift. Not meant, but a gift all the same; the touch of it, the feel of it, holding what would hold him. Kissing the length of each seam, the circle of the collar, the turn of the cuff and each of the buttons. Thinking that when he stood in his bedroom and got dressed, I would be loving him. My garden kisses all over his shirt and brushed onto his skin.

Aware, too, how apt it all was. Martha the ironing woman finally ironing his shirts. Of all the clothes that had passed through my hands, all the fabric I had touched and smoothed, to be finally touching his. To do what I did well, however little the task, to do it for him. Aware, too, that an act so small could make my heart sing. Knowing that it couldn’t always be like that; not every day, every cup you washed or every bed you made; but that suddenly, unexpectedly, the everyday rose up and became sacred. At that moment, in the garden, with a blue shirt hanging on a clothes horse and stirring softly in the breeze, I had been given a gift, unintentionally, but a gift all the same.

Later, when eight shirts were hanging up, I sat on the step with my tea and wondered what Isobel would do. Had she meant to challenge me, right there on the doorstep? Do you know my husband, do you love my husband? But seeing that was not in her eye, in the fixedness of her gaze. Perhaps it had been; perhaps it was her intention, but then unbelieving; surprised that he could love me, could want a woman like me. Perhaps baffled by my plainness, standing on a step sucking my knuckle. That he might want this. Aware, too, that I would not have known how to answer her; a denial transparent, a confession vicious. And mindful of Bill; the thought that I had justified my silence and my faithlessness by keeping his world as he wanted it. Or seemed to want it. Shut calm-tight and peaceful; the familiarity of me, the order of our days. The thought that Isobel might crack that all open for him; and then thinking, Damn her, why didn’t she say something to Robert? Why come to me, on my doorstep, armed with knowledge in her perfect white blouse?

After telling Robert, both waiting to see what she would do next. Her housekeeper coming to collect the shirts, instinctively round to the back. Taking the shirts away, the sleeves flapping down the path. Pulling at my chest. And still no word. No word at their dinner table, no word in their bed, no question on her lips, no accusation in her eyes. Nothing. Like waiting for a storm that does not come. Waiting for the birds to go quiet and still. Waiting for the sky to turn leaden and blue, for the light to slice silvery and bruised. But not.

“Is she different?” I asked. “Has anything changed?” I asked.

“No, nothing,” he said, like a man somewhat at sea. “Nothing, nothing has changed.”

A week later, suddenly, understanding it all. The purpose of her visit not to shake up, to spill it all out and make us admit, but to put a face to her knowledge of me, to increase the sum of her understanding. And in the midst of all that she had simply not conceived, not thought I would know they were his shirts by touch, by memory, by the sex of it all. Not think that I would know it was her, not anonymous at all.

Yet, realizing that I did not know what she felt at all. Perhaps that she saw Robert’s clothes as I saw Bill’s—things to keep ordered and clean, to hang in wardrobes in familiar groupings. Or that she hated them; looked at them hanging, empty, while his body was off betraying elsewhere. Or maybe held them, with memories I didn’t like to imagine, remembering passion, once. Or maybe not that at all; perhaps just indifference, gentle indifference. Wanting, simply, to know what was what, and looking elsewhere for her peace and consolation.

I wonder if Isobel and I would have liked each other. Loving the same man; probably for different reasons. If she did still love him. She must have loved him once. Wondering, for her, what wore it down; what ceased to be attractive and became irritating. When the accustomed, the familiar, became dull. Joylessness seeping in. Somehow expecting it to have been different from Bill and me; who had begun with so few words, so very little to dry up. Thinking, as my mother would probably have thought, that surely they had known better, or understood differently. Their lives were not measured in pay packets, pools money, co-op dividends, rent; as if there was purer air above all that which might make decisions cleaner and clearer. And realizing that that was probably not true. That it was probably no different at all.

Only once Robert and I spent a night away together. We went to Devon on a clear day in April. In all our four years together it was the only occasion when we rewrote our own stories, that night, that one night, when we shared a bed. Lying there, imagining how it might have been. The next day we walked on the beach, scrunching the shingle beneath our feet, and watched the gulls wheel high overhead, calling and squabbling and slicing down into the gray water with a flurry and folding of wings. Robert painted me sitting on a rock, some pebbles in my outstretched hand. Sitting there, the salt taste on my lips, my skin tingling from the wind, the cold of the rock on my hip, milk-water sunshine coming from behind the clouds, warming my fingertips and catching the flint-edge of the stones.

Martha the mermaid, Robert laughed, luring men to their fate, or at least me to mine. I think I shall give you a tail, he said, a blue and pink iridescent tail.

Fine, I replied, just don’t ask me to sing.

Sitting there, my shoes turned to flukes. Later, by the water’s edge, holding Robert’s hand; remembering how it had felt that morning to open my eyes and see his face on the pillow beside mine. The sea at my feet swelling blue and gray. The pebbles from the painting still in my pocket. Clutching them, squeezing them, making them mark my palm. Witness to the moment, to that perfect joy.

Everything has to end, has to somehow stop. I know that now, and I knew it then, but knowing something isn’t the same as accepting it. Accepting means swallowing the unpalatable like a cold, hard pill. Living with endings is the hardest part. It’s only recollecting this, sitting here in my chair now, that the irony of being on a bus strikes me now. Did I measure out my life in bus rides? I wonder. Shopping, visiting, fetching, carrying; sitting on buses with my chattels on my lap. So it’s not a coincidence, not unlikely, that so much of what happened with Robert I remember in relation to being on a bus. Perhaps that’s my epitaph: Martha, who loved Robert and rode on buses.

That day, sitting behind two women, one of them wearing a headscarf with a gauzy pattern, the scarf knotted tightly beneath her chin, as if to clamp her jaw or stop something escaping. The other woman with the local paper on her lap, reading out the choice bits to her jaw-locked friend. Like two old crows, pecking at a flattened rabbit on a road. Then her saying, Can you imagine it, Robert Lawrence, he used to be my sister’s doctor. Collapsing and dying in the surgery it says. Massive heart attack. What a way to go. Surgery full I imagine. Peck peck peck.

And me leaning forward, over the silver handrail, the newspaper print fuzzing and blurring and resuming its shape. Robert Lawrence, died, died, dead. Rearing up in my seat. Needing to get off the bus; excuse me please, to the woman next to me, I have to get off. Barging past, bags in my hand, hanks of dread in my throat. Lifting my hand to press the bell, just beyond a stop but pressing it anyway, and as I lifted my hand the carrier bag breaking, shopping spilling out. A cabbage bump bump bumping down the aisle after me, a milk carton catching my ankle, laddering my tights. The bus conductor saying Mrs.… Mrs.… your shopping. But not stopping, just getting off and running, pitiable and jerky, stumbling in my shoes, but not stopping.

Running back to our first churchyard, from that day in May. Running to a saddleback roof, a bench, and a lilac tree. The sobbing starting; huge wrenching sobs rising like shapes in my throat, blocking my windpipe until my head was dizzy with grief. Reaching the church and falling on my knees next to the wall; my forehead pressed to the stone, my knees on the flagstone path. Weeping and crying and banging my palms on the wall, and saying his name over and over, as if by will I could make him appear. Conjure him to walk up the path and wrap me in warmth, in the wool of his jacket, the smell of his skin. Instead, the crusty lichen pressing onto my cheek, the damp sourness of the stone. Alone, on my knees, in the gathering shadows.

Kneeling there, for hours. The twilight wrapping me to the stone, crying until I was heartsick. And the worst part, the unbearable part, imagining it all. Thinking of him in his surgery, whether he was alone or with a patient, or walking to the waiting room, or writing a prescription. How much pain, how much knowledge, how much time. What he thought. How much indignity, how much intervention. And the searing realization that all that detail would be Isobel’s; that his last moments would be pieced together for her. That she could see him, sit with him, see the life gone out of him, while I could not.

In the half-light, an awkward young curate coming to lock up the church. Looking at me quickly, probably sniffing for alcohol, the shopping around me, the split bag completely open. Assessing whether I was a tramp, a bag lady, or a deranged parishioner. And wanting to say to him, as he hesitated by the door, that this was how it was. Not Jesus in a blue cloak reaching out his hand to cherub-faced children; suffering them to come unto him while clean, smelling of vanilla, with milk-teeth smiles. Instead, a fat old woman, splayed out in a churchyard, a pack of sausages around her, and cracked eggs, and a quarter of lard with the corner all squashed, on her knees with grief. The curate stepping forward and asking if he could help, offering to fetch the vicar and asking if I’d had a turn or a fall, or if there was something I would like to talk about. And replying no, no, please no, thank you. Stumbling and shambling to my feet. Stuffing sausages into the other bag, using the egg box to scoop up the broken shells. Tidying up. And the curate walking away, thinking I was perhaps better left to God. Perhaps preferring grief of the hand-patting sofa-sitting kind. Not this mess.

Walking home, nursing my impossible, solitary, secret grief. Feeling sliced in two not only with loss, with longing, with disbelief, but also the knowledge that I could say nothing, tell nothing, show nothing. The realization that for the rest of my life I would be alone because not with him.

The ridiculous thing, I kept thinking of Isobel, too; of what she might be thinking and feeling. Whether she was lying awake, or had been given something to help her sleep, or whether she was sitting surrounded by all her mountains of his things. Mourning her husband, all those years of patterns and habits and memories and homes, of rooms with first one wallpaper and then another. Old black-and-white polaroids; Kate, tiny, sitting on their laps. What he had been to her, what he may have become to her, how she saw it all. Perhaps she was furious; mourning her unfaithful husband, teeth gritted, because he never came clean.

Her husband, my lover. Acknowledging all the ties and claims she had to him, the rightfulness of what they shared. Night after night, when one has a cough and keeps the other awake, talking quietly in the early hours. Isobel making fine lunches and complicated sauces, pounding herbs from the garden in her pestle and mortar, and calling him into lunch. Yet I had my claim, too. Spines laced together in a churchyard in July. Wishing I was dead, too, and could be buried with him; that all the layers would fall away and our bones powder together.

Grieving because I had no things, no photographs, none of his clothes, nothing to hold. Nothing to take in my hands and press to me. When he was alive, it had not occurred to me. Now in death, as if he had vanished. That first night, lying in my bed, pole-axed. Even now, unspeakable.

On the day of the funeral I sat in his village churchyard on a small bench, dressed in my ordinary clothes and holding my book, so that if anyone looked twice I would seem to have a purpose.

It was a bleak, gray, October day. Most of the leaves had fallen from the trees and were huddled in wet heaps up against the wall. There was a fine drizzle in the wind, the kind that seems not to touch you but then soaks you through. The congregation arriving; noticing, despite myself, how well turned-out they were. Well-shod women, with fine scarves at their necks and leather gloves that went up past their wrists.

Recognizing Isobel, pale and stiff, taking refuge under a hat. The coffin with late roses on top, carried slowly up the path. Through the lych-gate and close enough that I could have reached out and touched it. Sitting stone-still, my nails in my palms, the crazed-grief madness making me want to run to him, open it, hold him, and wail. But not moving; knowing and respecting that all this was Isobel’s, yet not being able to stop scalding, scalding tears as the hymns drifted out through the door. That moment, that day, that bleak empty sense of loss, never to leave me.

Watching the coffin carried out on the west side. The soil banked high, and brown and fresh. The rain leaden and spiteful now. Weeping at the thought of him in all that wormy damp and cold. Realizing that so much of how I saw him (the color of his eyes, the blue spring sky I first met him under) was full of light, of delphinium blue light, so that I could not bear the thought of him in the dark, pressed in. Even though I tried to tell myself it was just his body; that what had been him, was him, was not in there, I could not bear it. And, in a ruffle of pettiness, bridled, too, that he was not to be placed in the south side, knowing how he loved a good rose window.

Watching Isobel and Kate throw earth on the top, not near enough to hear the sound of it on the wood. Isobel paler still, yet seeing her wrapped in the consolation of other people’s words. And yet I was not hungry for their words, I was hungry only for him. I wanted to close my eyes and open them at a stranger’s funeral. For Robert to be sitting at my side waiting for the service to finish so that we could go into the church and see a chancel arch or a three-decker pulpit, or an alternating row of Norman and Perpendicular clerestory windows. To be sitting on the bench talking quietly with him, his arm around the small of my back, noting an inscription on a tombstone of a long-dead child, who wrote on slates and wore serge pinafores. That was what I wanted to be seeing, not this, not Robert’s final church.

I watched until the gravediggers had replaced all the soil, until Robert was under a mound of earth, with all the flowers and wreaths laid on top. I had no flowers, no words to bring. Instead, I knelt down, stiff-kneed, cold-legged, and took out my book, my Guide to English Parish Churches, and pushed it into the soil to turn to dust with him. It was all I had, you see, it was all I could give. Each page a memory of time spent with him, Robert turning to me in sunlight, in November grayness, laughing, talking about something. Belonging.

In tears again, flowing into my lap. Saying softly, my love, my love to a mound of earth. Knowing then, as I know now, that the rest of my life would be spent replaying him back.

*   *   *

Afterward, the pattern of my life with Bill not really changing. The coal fire stoked a little higher on autumn evenings. Both feeling the damp more, the chill more, the cold creeping in. Endless conversations with Robert in my dreams. His body before me, alive and warm, tumbling together in a fudge of memory and desire. Sometimes, nightmares when I lost him, where he walked between tombstones calling to show me something and I could not follow. Or catching the wrong bus, or stepping into the wrong car, running to meet him and always in the wrong place. My dreams peppered with the flotsam of everyday life. Often, things in my hands, my iron or Bill’s boots, and once a pestle and mortar that I knew was not mine, but which I had to return.

Understanding my life was not a sequence of events, instead, all of it transparent, folded on top of itself. Nothing goes away, even if you want it to. Realizing, too, that I had no words that could really tell it as it was. That I only knew what it felt like that first day, and that all I could do was to let myself love. To have not loved Robert would have been to sleepwalk through my life. Harboring a stubborn view that God might see the rightness of it, in the midst of all that was wrong. Long-ago prayers and psalms. Lord have mercy on us. Christ have mercy on us. Let my cry come unto thee. And it occurred to me that maybe losing him was my punishment. That secret, aching, agonizing grief my payment to God. That I have grown older still, my body cracking around me like an old chrysalis, while paying my dues. Old feet in old shoes, with slipper-satin memories.

And with what was left of my heart being kind and considerate to Bill. Coming home to find him always in his chair by the fire; the skin of his cheeks furrowing down onto his collar; his hands resting on his middle and snoring softly. A suck-in of air and a whistle of it out; the new rhythm of his day. First diabetes, and then his kidneys, until he went into hospital with a small brown suitcase filled with pajamas and a puzzle book. Sitting on the bed while I packed it all, like a child sent to school. Him saying, hesitantly, Not much to show, is it? His life boiled down to three sets of pajamas, a blue towel, slippers, a dressing gown, and a puzzle book. Wondering what it was he wanted me to say. If that’s what he was seeking. Words that would make it better or easier or different. Or just less alone. Wondering why he might choose words now; falling from his mouth like white pebbles, heavy on his lips. Falling on the bed between us, while I folded pajamas and smoothed down the crease with the side of my hand. Sensing his anxiety and knowing there was nothing I could do but continue to fold; to loop the dressing gown tie round and round in a whorl of toweling. Standing by the bed, clicking the suitcase shut, and seeing through the net curtain out onto the street and watching a child on a bike going up and down the curbstone, weaving and bumping and jolting, a spatter of dried mud up the back of his coat from riding in puddles. And Bill so still, and the child in the corner of my eye always moving, and the net curtain stirring in the slightly open window. And me doing nothing to disturb it all. Putting the case on the floor and smoothing out the bedspread; noticing that he never took his eyes away from my hands. Wondering if he always saw fabric in my hands like I saw washers in his. Wondering but not asking. Knowing that it would be an intrusion, and better to keep smoothing and ordering. Silently. While he walked, heavy-footed, glancing at the window, from the room.

All the time me knowing that it was some form of good-bye. Not the final one, but the one in our bedroom. The room of all those years of starting and ending days, of shuffling in and out of clothes, of lying, sleeping, side by side. The window open in the summer, the extra blanket on from October. Familiarity and separateness, all at once. And thinking again of what Robert and I would have made of such a chance. The chance to say good-bye in a blizzard of words and tangled limbs. Knowing that I would have held him and held him and held him, blind to the child, to the curtain, to the rumpled bedspread. Only wanting that he should never fear, never hurt, never be pained. That I would be with him, in him. Always.

Then, shaking myself back, looking to see if there was anything else of Bill’s I could add to the case; anything to make his cubicle on the ward more familiar. Thinking, not unkindly, how most of his life had been marked by an absence of conversation and an absence of things. That what captured him most were his plumbing bag, his fishing bag, his darts set, and the old broken bucket from the pigs. Then, going downstairs and finding him out in the yard, leaning on the rain barrel, looking at the border, the straggled brown remains of plants, the stones flint-edged in the bare soil, a flock of starlings wheeling high in the sky, and yesterday’s rain still puddled and pooled in the tin roof of the pigsty, and his boot pressing on a fat strip of moss between the paving. Bill still saying nothing; taking the case from my hand and walking down the path. Noticing, as I walked behind him, the stoop of his shoulders, the bone-aching weariness of his walk. Choked by sympathy, beginning to reminisce about the pigs. Filling the cold February air that smoked from my mouth with pink gingery pigs and September sunshine and slices of light and the smell of apples, and huge rear ends shifting against the back of the sty, and Bill shoveling and mucking out with sleeves rolled up and his cap pushed back. And both of us smiling as we walked past the boy on the bike. United in the memory of snouts and trotters.

Coming to visit him each day on the ward. Sitting by him all afternoon while the doctors tested and checked and sampled. Wires in and tubes out. Plumbing him up. Sitting by the bed and looking at his hands all still and obedient on the overturn of the sheets. His hands looking so big and weak and clean; his fingers sometimes tracing the edge of the sheet. Watching him sleep, placing my hand on his hand. Remembering his young hands, twisting the washer, long ago, in Mrs. Trewitt’s shop. His young strong hands somewhere inside the old heavy ones on the sheet. Somewhere in there, under all that sediment, from long ago. And thinking of all the things that hands could do. All the buildings built, all the books written, all the instruments played, all the new things made and invented. And his hands none the lesser for it. His hands that had done their bit. Quiet and true.

Wondering what secrets he had from me. If any. And what he had thought I had done for those four years. If he had guessed anything, known anything, regretted anything. The truth not heavy in my mouth. No wish to tell. No deathbed confessions to trouble him on his way. Just wondering. Just wondering what he had thought.

One morning in March, Bill dying quietly; dying quietly in his sleep with no fuss. As if leaving the room to fetch something, unannounced and with no trouble. When I reached the hospital to visit him, the nurse was waiting by the ward entrance. Mrs. Fraser, I must talk to you. Shepherding me into a side room, her face all tight with awkwardness. Probably wondering what I would do, how I would react; probably not relishing the prospect of a sobbing old woman with the ward so busy and so many to see to. Telling me that she had tried to telephone to let me know; that the phone had rung and rung and rung while I was out buying fruit to bring to him. Listening to her talking, and all the time seeing the phone ringing on the little table in the front room; ringing and ringing to the silence. Wondering if I had failed him in that, too; that whatever comfort it may have brought him to have me sitting beside him, that I was not there. Concentrating again on what she was telling me; that he had been asleep, that it had happened very quickly; his heart seizing and stopping while his kidneys pumped on.

Not crying. Not crying at all. Just sitting and listening and taking it all in. A widow now, but with the secret widowhood still so raw, still such a wound, that crying would be for both and so not fair. Walking, instead, to his bedside, the curtain pulled all round. The tubes taken out and wiped and cleaned and put away. Neatly probably. Someone else’s rosary. His eyes closed and his hands overlapping on his chest. Leaning over and kissing them, with tears in my eyes. Knowing I would mourn him, not with the anguish and cracking that I felt for Robert, but with affection and gratitude and knowledge. The familiarity of a road long traveled together. In the knowledge that the way is hard, the wind can cut through you, and shoes chafe. Sitting there, next to my dead husband. My husband of the every day: of the blue Formica table, of the stitched feather eiderdown, of Manny Solomon’s brick-red chairs. My husband of decades commenting that spring was a long time coming. Of trying to make the colored lights on the Christmas tree work, endlessly rotating and twisting the pointed little bulbs.

Years of knowing the little things. That he didn’t like mince pies. Or trifle. What toothpaste he preferred. That woolen jumpers fridged his skin, unless over a good thick brushed cotton shirt. That on a cold January night, with a cough on his chest, he would ask for Vicks vapor rub and smell of eucalyptus and mint. And the look of his writing on the boys’ birthday cards, and on old plumbing bills. As if his hand had never quite got accustomed to the feel of holding a pen. Surprised by ink.

The nurse again, bringing me forms to sign, and then leaving the hospital. Stepping outside and walking back to the bus stop, the wind slicing through me and the daffodils jarring against the gray squalling sky. The yellow, and the gray, and the black spikiness of the bare trees. The branches rattling against the roof of the bus shelter. A crow blown backward, cawing with rage. Buttoning up my coat, a quiet calm inside. Mourning Bill, but accepting his death. Not knocked to my knees as for Robert. None of that anguish, that howling, that grief. Just gratitude, affection, and relief that it had been peaceful. Comfort in the thought that I could take care of him at his end, sort out his things, make sure it was the way he would choose. Do it with kindness, not the resignation of a stranger, picking up clothes in finger and thumb, stuffing envelopes with a watch or a photograph. As it will be for me.

At his funeral, a few of his friends from The Crown, and some from the Council plumbing works. A woman from The Crown, too, who organized the darts fixtures. Looking a bit like me, but not; the makeup heavier, the mouth harder. The shoes a little higher, the strap cutting into her ankle. Looking me up and down, her eye a bit judgmental. Saying he was a good man, but tartly, as if I might not know. To think, all those years, she said, and we never saw you down there. Me never having considered it an option. He always said you were busy with your own things. Busy busy. Her eye flickering slightly. Me wondering, fleetingly, if she had ever stepped in. Wondering if she was standing talking to me with knowledge strapped to her like a breastplate, and not minding if that was the case, that she made my betrayal easier. But also knowing he probably hadn’t, that Bill would live by the rules, unlike Robert and me, who justified making our own.

And now, aged eighty-two, all of this long enough ago and yet still with me. Always with me. Living in my own home until two years ago, when suddenly I couldn’t be bothered anymore. Choosing this nursing home with its big bay windows so that I could look out and see. If everything crumbled, if my limbs or my mind failed, I could just sit and look out, be sucked into the available light. That not happening yet; instead, playing whist and dominoes and still reading books. Still finding new words and holding them precious in my mouth. Listening to the schoolchildren coming in to sing carols or to play their recorders. A hairdresser coming on Thursdays. Not minding the routines; the coffee at eleven wheeled in on a trolley, the warm milk settling to a thin skin on the top. The cooking better than mine. Still able to iron my own clothes; not relinquishing that yet. The vicar of St. Agatha’s coming each Thursday to visit. Patting our hands and making small talk. Smelling, in my mind, of uncooked sausage and egg.

All that until today, and now my room filled with Robert. Here on my bed, everything restored. Things that are familiar, things I have never seen. Some kind of blessing, from Isobel, to give these things to me after so many years.

Our Guides to English Parish Churches; mine not seen since that day by the graveside when I pushed it into the bitter, dark soil. Inside the first page, To Martha, Love Robert, the ink soft and faded from that churchyard in May. And the paintings, none of which I had ever seen, only the first sketches, on those days, in those places. I am resplendent, silver and pink, sprinkled with blue petals and with jewels in my hands. I, a plain woman, thick ankled, broad-beamed, am a mermaid on a beach, with rubies in my outstretched hand, my iron a sceptre glinting on the shoreline.

All of it back before me, forcing sweet tears. His diary telling me how much I was loved. Hearing again the sound of his voice. That night, at his death, with nothing to hold. Now, all these years later, my lap overflows.

To Isobel, I feel gratitude that she should have done this thing. Chosen, freely, to give all of this to me. In that, surely, some kind of peace. Not done in anger, but in some kind of faith. Faith perhaps that I loved him, loved him with conviction. That in reality, my life amounts to little else.

I will choose to be buried with these things; I will hold them to me, my bones to dust. I have no one to leave them to; no one to tell. No one for whom they would not cause pain. And when I am dead, whichever nurse sorts my things, she will find the instructions, what I wish to be done. I am sure she will look, just one quick look, and see me naked, delphinium-blue, arms outstretched, in a field in June. She will probably think, perhaps unbelieving, how surprising this is. Will talk to the other nurses at the shift changeover time; Whoever would have thought it, Martha Fraser indeed?

Martha Fraser indeed. In word and in deed and in thought and in body. All that I can say, all I can know that I did, was to love him and be loved. To be full of it, pulsing with it. Jam-packed with love.

And that’s all I said, when the night nurse came in. This was my beginning, I told her, jam-packed with love.