The Last Words of Madeleine Anderson

by Helen Kitson

  I couldn’t even swim. I removed my boots, sat on the bank, eased myself into the water. ‘Maddie!’ I shouted, but I knew she intended to pay no attention to me. I gulped water, floundering as the river shocked me with its iciness. She was a strong swimmer. She swam to a point well beyond my reach. I attempted an untidy doggy-paddle, but I knew I’d never reach her without going under. I should have turned back, run for help, but by then I knew it would be too late. Her calmness I read as determination. She’d made up her mind.

  ‘Maddie, listen to me,’ I called. ‘Listen – about the book – I lied. I was jealous, okay? It’s the finest thing I’ve ever read. I hate you for it, for being better than me, but I don’t want you to die. Maddie!’ My voice shook with tears. Either she couldn’t hear me or she thought I was lying, saying anything calculated to make her change her mind. ‘It’s the truth, Maddie! It’s the truth.’

  I made one last-ditch attempt to reach her, but her head disappeared beneath the water. She didn’t struggle. I couldn’t make out where she was, had no clue which direction to go. I was cold, tired and scared. I panicked when I put my foot down and couldn’t feel the bottom of the river. My head went under. I fought to stay alive, the dank river water washing away my tears.

  I headed back towards the bank. My clothes were sopping, I was freezing. I looked back. She’d gone, surely for ever. I wept, shivering from the cold, shaking from fear. Of course I should have run for help, but I was winded and exhausted, heartbroken and confused.

  I huddled down beside the tree, my arms around my body, rocking backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards…

  Madeleine had been dead for six months. During that time I’d lived with her book, waiting for the right moment to mail it off. I expected to receive rejections: no work of art, however brilliant, is universally loved. To my parents I hinted I’d been writing a book (all those hours I spent alone in my bedroom – it was a credible enough assertion). I said nothing to Madeleine’s parents, afraid that I might, in a moment of guilt, blurt out the truth. (And then what? Perhaps they’d insist on having her grave opened up, on burying the book with her.)

  The book did, of course, find a publisher, and became one of those sensations no one can quite explain. Soon I was in a position where I could afford to give up my job. While pretending to be working on a second novel, I spent my time obsessively reading, analysing books, picking them apart, trying to hit upon the trick Madeleine had fallen upon instinctively. Surely, eventually, I would learn how Madeleine had done it? But its mysteries baffled me. Frustration and pounding headaches were the only results of my labours.

  If only Madeleine had left some clue, even working notes for other novels she might have written. Her parents had allowed me to choose any of her books I wanted for myself. I’d been over every inch of her room, but I found nothing, not even drafts for The Song of the Air. It was as if she’d simply sat down one day and it came to her, all of a piece. There was nothing about her room to suggest it had belonged to a writer apart from the covered electronic typewriter and an unopened ream of typing paper.

  How had she done it? It seemed I would never know.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Dear Mr Latham. Dear ineffectual Mr Latham. A man who wanted, I am sure, to be of service, to be useful, but who was ultimately unequal to the manifold problems of modern life.

  Simon thought me a coward, not understanding how passionately I yearned to confess everything and to have my sins absolved. Seated in Mr Latham’s study, still wearing my stripy work tabard, I wanted comfort, to be guided into a leafy glade in which stood a group of smiling people, all of them holding out their arms to me. I despised it and I wanted it.

  ‘Well, Gabrielle, I feel honoured that you’ve chosen to confide in me.’

  Embarrassed, not honoured: I knew the signs. ‘I feel I oughtn’t to,’ I said, ‘especially as I’m not even a member of your congregation. I’ve tried to believe in God, honestly I have. But I couldn’t make myself believe, you see, and there’s no use pretending, is there? Just so that one might belong.’

  I spoke too quickly, too urgently, and perhaps I wasn’t being entirely truthful. I didn’t want to believe, because with belief comes a certain responsibility: deference to a being greater than oneself.

  He dragged his chair over to sit next to me. ‘I’ve often regretted that I haven’t taken the time to get to know you,’ he said, his voice soft, sincere. ‘All of us, I’m afraid, are guilty of taking other people too much for granted.’

  Oh, God, how I needed a holy man before whom I could lay all my dishevelled sins and have them folded up and given back to me in a neat, orderly pile.

  He leaned forward slightly, hands palms up on his lap. ‘At some time in our lives we all need someone simply to listen to us. I can’t promise to give you answers – those you will have to find within yourself, I’m afraid.’

  Was this what I wanted? Too much like psychotherapy, or what I imagined psychotherapy to be – an egocentric ejaculation of one’s fears and desires in front of an impassive analyst watching the ten-pound notes tick by. But wasn’t it worth a try? At least Mr Latham didn’t charge a fee.

  ‘This might sound an odd question, but are you bound to keep secret anything I tell you? Like in the Catholic confessional?’

  ‘Since I assume you’re not going to confess to murder, I think it’s safe to say that anything you tell me will be in the strictest confidence.’

  Of course he wouldn’t tell anyone. As if he were a common gossip!

  ‘I worry that I’ll shock you. That I’ll become somehow diminished in your eyes.’

  ‘I don’t pretend to be a very worldly person, but I am familiar with most of the highways and byways people travel along, however twisting and obscure those roads might appear to me.’

  I removed the tabard that made me feel unnecessarily servile, and at that point he asked if I’d care for a drink.

  ‘Thanks, but I should probably just get on with it, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘There’s no hurry.’

  ‘I hardly know where to start.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s an affair of the heart, I suppose. I had a relationship with a man, which sort of fizzled out. I don’t particularly miss him. And I suppose I should add that he was a married man.’

  Mr Latham nodded, his face expressing no emotion. I felt very sordid.

  ‘Lately he’s started ringing me up – mainly to shout abuse. He blames me for the problems in his marriage, which he’s convinced is over. And I keep thinking about my mother, how much she wanted me to get married, have children. Well, the children are probably out of the question, but I keep wondering if I’m the sort of person who is destined to travel through life alone.’

  Mr Latham blinked rapidly a few times, his hands perfectly still in his lap. ‘If you don’t love this man, any permanent relationship with him is unlikely to make you happy. Guilt, fear – these are never good reasons to be with someone.’

  ‘There’s someone else – someone of whom I’m fond – and that’s complicated, too.’

  ‘Is he also—?’

  ‘Married? No. I’m not involved with him, and even if I were, there could be no future in it, but he has this strange hold over me.’

  ‘He threatens you?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. I’m a bit obsessed with him, I suppose.’ That didn’t come close to describing how I felt about Simon. It seemed wrong to want someone you didn’t even like very much. But often I did like him. I couldn’t pin him down. Was that the explanation, the reason I found him so wonderful?

  It was madness, plain and simple. When I looked at Simon I saw someone who charmed me, infuriated me, hurt me; who made me want to beg him to understand me, forgive me, love me.

  Madness. For where thou art, there is the world itself… And where thou art not, desolation.

  Mr Latham mustn’t guess it was Simon I was talking about. I felt he would find the idea of me yearning for a man as young
as Simon more reprehensible than my affair with a married man. More unnatural, perhaps.

  Mr Latham smiled sadly. ‘I sense there is some deeper cause for unhappiness at the root of this. I do know a little about your background, of course, and it does seem a pity you weren’t able to write more books. Perhaps you feel you lack a purpose in life?’

  ‘I’ve made a mess of my life, that’s the truth of it. I’ve always felt it was too late to put things right – I could never see clearly what I ought to do. I envy people who know exactly what they want and pull out all the stops to achieve it.’

  ‘Are there many people like that, do you think? It’s possible you’re assuming people’s lives are better organised than they really are. Don’t you think?’

  ‘It’s just – this awful feeling that I’ve wasted my life. And that I’m the only person to blame for that.’

  ‘A desire for companionship is perfectly natural, but sometimes it’s a desire that masks a deeper need for a different kind of fulfilment.’

  Here it comes, I thought, the sales pitch on behalf of the Anglican church.

  ‘I don’t doubt for a moment that many people do find what they’re looking for in religion,’ I said, ‘but I won’t pretend to be something I’m not.’

  ‘And what do you believe in – generally? I don’t necessarily mean in a spiritual sense. Some people find consolation in nature, others in vocational work.’

  Hug a few trees, listen to the birds, contemplate becoming a nun… Such consolations were precisely that: things people did to make up for the disappointment of their lives. I couldn’t even believe in something vague but magnificent like the redemptive power of love.

  ‘Would you consider coming to a service?’

  God’s pimp. His fee for listening to me prattling about my problems?

  ‘I’ll think about it.’ Didn’t I already do enough? Helping at jumble sales, handing out lemonade and ice-cream to children at the summer fete, delivering leaflets at Easter and Christmas. I had no quarrel with the Anglican church and would have described it as a broadly good thing in the same way that a regular bus service is a good thing.

  ‘Please don’t despair,’ he said. ‘Some people are lucky enough to know what they want and have the talent and determination to get it. If you feel your life hasn’t turned out quite as you’d have liked, it’s not too late to make changes. They don’t have to be large changes and you don’t have to make them all at once. But it would be a tragedy if you did nothing and allowed life to slip through your fingers.’

  A nice speech. Sensible, practical encouragement, but not quite what I wanted. Well, he hadn’t claimed to have the answers, had he? And without my admission of the deep rooted sin – the curse of the book, if you will – he could never understand why it felt so impossible for me to move on. No confession, no atonement, no closure.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do – anything of a practical nature, I mean. I can’t imagine what, but I’ve often wondered why a woman as intelligent and capable as you is content to work in a job that doesn’t come close to testing your capabilities.’

  Tempted to tell him I might make a useful vicar’s wife, I managed to resist the urge. It would have been a frivolous suggestion, but not an entirely stupid one.

  ‘You’ve been very kind, very understanding,’ I said.

  ‘It’s entirely my fault that we haven’t got to know each other better, and the loss is mine. Your competence has perhaps blinded me to the fact that you are very much alone in the world.’

  ‘Yes. Completely alone. But I should have got used to that by now, shouldn’t I?’

  After my parents divorced, my father emigrated. I was given to understand the marriage had been failing for some time, but they’d hung on until they considered I would not be adversely affected by the break-up of the family unit. At any rate, it was all very civilised. The divvying up of items they owned jointly was accomplished without fuss, my father in any case reluctant to haul great crates filled with the past to his new home in France.

  ‘You must come out for a visit once I’ve got settled,’ he told me. In his hand, a mug I’d bought for him on a school trip to some stately home or other. ‘Don’t be too upset, will you? I’ll tell everyone I meet they must buy your book.’ A gentle, playful punch on my arm. He and my mother were behaving beautifully so I was obliged to do likewise. Mustn’t let the side down, mustn’t be childish. Marriages failed all the time, didn’t they? And there was no bitterness, no rancour, nothing to be sad about. I didn’t even tell him I would miss him, and we idled away our last moments together talking about all the places in France we’d visit together some day.

  We never did. No one’s fault, not really. If I’d been younger when they split up I daresay formal arrangements would have been made, but I was an adult. I could see him whenever I wanted, if I wanted. Our relationship became one of postcards and brief meet-ups on his occasional trips to England. To have made more of an effort than that would, I think, have felt contrived.

  ‘Look after your mum,’ he told me whenever we parted after an awkward hug, both of us laden with bags and takeaway coffees. ‘Tell her I’ll phone her in the week, see how she’s keeping.’

  Not a tragedy, then. Not a disaster, my parents’ divorce; merely a sense of the world having gone slightly awry, a gap that would never quite close.

  We put on a brave face, my mother and I. She got involved in a few community activities; talked for a while about studying with the Open University, but never did; bumped up the “My daughter is a clever novelist!” thread; spun her divorce as something that had given her the opportunity to do all the things she’d never got round to before. And I think she was reasonably contented with the way things turned out. My father had a well-paid job and he was scrupulous in making sure we had what he called our “fair share”.

  Money was something my mother rarely worried about. I did, conscious of the fact that I couldn’t live for ever on the proceeds of one book. Mother said there was no hurry; that I should concentrate on writing more books, make a career of it. And every day I would sit in what had once been “your father’s study” and was now “Gabrielle’s office” and force the words to come. In desperate moments I wondered if I might persuade the Andersons to allow me another rummage around in Madeleine’s bedroom on the pretext of looking for something I’d once lent her, in case there was something I’d missed. Even a sketchy synopsis would have done, for I had nothing. Not a single idea.

  My mother expressed disappointment when I told her I wanted to look for a job, but I promised I would take only part-time work, so that I would have plenty of time for writing.

  ‘You know best, I suppose,’ she said. ‘But it seems such a shame – such a comedown.’

  ‘Lots of writers have part-time jobs,’ I told her.

  ‘Journalism and book reviews, not office temping.’

  ‘What does it matter? It drives me mad, being stuck in that little room all day.’ I’d toyed with the idea of getting my own place, a modest one-bedroom flat, but it seemed extravagant when our house was more than adequate for two people. And we got on, more or less, neither of us inclined to encroach upon the other’s personal space.

  And so the years drifted by. Jobs came and went, boyfriends came and went, but otherwise everything stayed much the same. My father’s remarriage was the cause of one of the few occasions when my mother’s carapace of capable, busy divorcee came a little unglued.

  I caught her sitting on the sofa with a photograph album opened on her lap, a tissue pressed against her nose. My parents’ wedding photos, my mother choosing to marry in a white mini-skirt, my father in flares, his hair long, his smile gauche.

  ‘Don’t torment yourself,’ I said, squeezing her shoulder.

  She shook her head. ‘I can’t help it. It was a lovely day. We were so happy, we really were.’

  What could I say? Nothing lasts for ever, nothing is set in stone? No point. To mourn is necessary. I left her a
lone with her pictures, her memories, having already decided not to attend my father’s wedding. My mother wouldn’t have objected if I’d gone; my reason for refusing the invitation had more to do with a feeling that I no longer had a part to play in my father’s life. I wished him well, I wished him and his bride every possible happiness, but I had no stake in his future. If I’d ever married, I daresay he would have turned up, given me away, performed his role with good grace but not, I felt, with any great emotion.

  ‘I do think you ought to go,’ my mother later told me. ‘I don’t want him to think you’re snubbing him, or that I’ve turned you against him.’

  ‘He won’t think any of those things. I’ll send a card and a present.’

  He sent me a letter expressing disappointment that I wouldn’t be with him on his “special day”. His fiancée, he said, was keen to meet me, particularly since she’d read and admired my book. I did, then, feel a little guilty, a little mean-spirited, and sent a reply requesting copies of some of the wedding pictures if he could manage it.

  He brought the photos with him when we next met up in England, but he didn’t bring his new wife. ‘Miriam sends her best wishes,’ he told me.

  ‘She’s very pretty.’ She was, though I would have said so even if she hadn’t been.

  ‘Clever, too. She really would like to meet you. It’s a pity she couldn’t get time off work otherwise she’d be with me now.’

  I never did meet her. Every Christmas she dutifully signed the card my father sent me and always he’d enclose a recent photo of the two of them taken in some sunny location, my father’s arm around the waist of his petite wife. I never showed them to my mother, whose card was signed solely by my father.

  No one could have accused my father of failing in his duties to his first family. He was generous, insisting on providing me with a monthly allowance like a Victorian patriarch. I don’t know how much money he gave my mother, but it must have been more than ample. He sent frequent, impersonal postcards and responded point by point to everything I wrote in my occasional letters to him.