The Peacock Summer

by Hannah Richell

  It brings her back to this very room, daylight flooding through the same arched windows, glancing off the familiar mahogany furniture. Only in this memory she is her younger self and she is standing, not sitting, watching from the edge of the rug as her husband lies twitching and convulsing like a fish drowning in air, gasping his last breaths.

  ‘We should fetch help,’ she says.

  Charles’s legs kick out, his black brogues knocking repetitively into the leg of a side table, spilling a stack of coasters to the floor. One of his laces has come undone. She bends to help him but a hand reaches for her arm.

  ‘Wait,’ says Bentham. He watches Charles over her shoulder, his presence solid and reassuring. Lillian doesn’t move and neither does he.

  Charles thrashes again, his arms flailing wildly as if reaching out for her, even though she knows he cannot see her, not with his eyes rolled back to the whites. They stand and wait until at last he falls still, his face mottled, an unappealing red and white, like Mrs Hill’s corned beef, a strange blue colour ringing his mouth. His lips glisten with drool.

  Only then does Bentham leave the room. She hears his steady footsteps walking across the checked floor tiles. She hears him pick up the telephone receiver in the entrance hall and dial three numbers. ‘This is Cloudesley,’ he says, his deep voice calm and composed. ‘We have a medical emergency. Yes, an ambulance, please. Thank you.’ The sound of his footsteps indicates his return.

  ‘Is he dead?’ she asks.

  He steps forward and bends over the body, feeling for a pulse. ‘No,’ he says, turning back to her, not quite meeting her gaze. ‘Not dead.’

  Lillian stares at Charles and sees the shallow rise and fall of his chest. It takes her a moment to identify the feeling rising up in her: disappointment.

  When she looks back at Bentham, she nods, half thank-you, half acknowledgement of the strange moment they have shared, complicit in another’s suffering.

  The car engine splutters once more out on the drive. Lillian casts the memory back into the wash of her mind, though the taste of it lingers like sour milk on her tongue. Her reflection stares back at her from the windowpane. No longer that unmoved woman watching her husband suffer a stroke, but an old lady, sitting hunched and useless in an armchair. Is it any wonder, she thinks, that the past often feels more real to her than the present? The sharpness of the life she lived, the emotion and the memories that come to her – the pleasure and the pain – somehow always more vivid than the soft, blunt present, trapped in this slow, traitorous body?

  All those versions of herself she has lived; so many different Lillians, all in this one body. If she could reach back through the years and warn the person she once was, what would she say? What would she tell that sorrowful girl standing in a London graveyard scattering earth onto the lid of her mother’s coffin? Or the young woman with grazed knees and a twisted bike lying at her feet? The woman staring down at a solitaire diamond ring, marvelling at its dazzling promise? Would she have a warning for the wife walking away into the woods carrying a crumpled bird in a cardboard box? Or wisdom for the cold-hearted woman standing in this very room watching a man thrash and convulse in front of her? Life, she thinks, is strange and mysterious. Not linear, but a jumbled mess of moments: elation, sadness, pain and excruciating boredom.

  All those versions of herself she has lived. So many moments when life veered on a startling new trajectory, splitting her from the old life like a knife falling and separating her forever from what once was – from those she once loved. What would she say to the girl – the woman – who experienced those moments, who made her decisions and had to live by them? What would she say to the ghosts who now inhabit her days? So many of those she has known and loved are now nothing but dust and memory. Oh, the tyranny of old age. The loneliness of living.

  So many times it’s felt as though she has taken a wrong turn; that she’s been living a life that was not meant to be hers; the one she wanted always tantalisingly out of reach. Though perhaps, she wonders, gazing at her slumped reflection in the window, the time has come to accept that all these moments and all these versions of herself are what make up her life. For it all brings her to where she sits now, an old lady with a lined face and jewelled rings on her fat, wrinkled fingers. This is the life she lived. Perhaps it’s even the life she chose.

  The car engine outside gives one final loud splutter then revs loudly. Life in the old dog yet, she thinks. She feels as though she has been given a last-minute reprieve. There is something she holds. Something she must pass on . . . to Maggie. But whether it is medication or memory clouding her brain, she cannot for the life of her think what it could be.

  Chapter 25

  Maggie knows there is something different about the house as soon as she steps through the back door. She dumps the bags of groceries on the kitchen table and makes her way through the ground floor, trying to work out what it might be. Everything seems to be in order. Lillian is dozing in her armchair in the drawing room, the radio playing softly. The doors to the unused ground-floor rooms are all closed. No sign of disturbance or alteration. It’s only as she arrives in the entrance hall that she begins to have an inkling what it might be.

  On the dusty console, a ring on the wooden surface marks where a tall porcelain vase once stood, and beside the empty space lies a sheet of paper. Maggie picks it up and reads the words scrawled across it. When she has finished, she screws the paper up into a tight ball and hurls it across the hall. ‘Fucking bastard,’ she says to the empty room.

  Later that night, Maggie forgoes dinner and opens the bottle of whisky in the cupboard beneath her grandfather’s desk, sniffing its contents. Probably years old, but it smells OK. Does whisky even go off? She puts the bottle to her lips and swigs, feeling the burn as it slides down the back of her throat. It tastes OK, so she settles herself in the leather chair and props her feet on the desk. ‘Cheers,’ she says to the photograph of her grandfather and takes another swig.

  It takes about a third of the bottle and an almost constant internal dialogue before she is convinced that it is a good idea to go and see Will. She heads into the shed, hops on her bike, only narrowly missing one of the gateposts as she turns out of the drive. The lanes are dark and she has to lean right over the handlebars to anticipate their twists and turns. Halfway there she stops dead in the middle of the lane. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a purple-grey heart-shaped stone. ‘Something beautiful, my arse,’ she says and sends the rock skittering into the dark woodland beyond.

  When she reaches Will’s parents’ place, she leans the bike against the garage, and heads for the entrance to the studio annex.

  ‘I just came to tell you that you,’ she says, pointing one finger at Will’s chest as he opens the door to her, ‘that you were right.’

  ‘Hello,’ he says, clearly surprised to see her standing at his door. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She leans against the open doorframe and tries to focus on his face.

  ‘How did you get here?’ He looks past her into the darkness. ‘You rode your bike?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she says, only slightly slurring. ‘I was very, very careful.’

  ‘How much have you had to drink?’

  ‘Just a little whisky.’

  Will takes her by the arm. ‘Come inside. I’ll make you some tea.’

  She groans. ‘Tea and sympathy. Just what I need. Haven’t you got anything a little stronger?’

  ‘Coffee?’

  She rolls her eyes at him.

  ‘Come in and we’ll negotiate.’

  He takes her by the arm and steers her into the studio. It’s a modest space, just big enough for a small kitchen area, a couch and a large iron bed, but nicely done. There are simple white curtains at the windows, velvet cushions plumped on the sofa and pale grey carpet laid across the floor. All very tasteful – all very Mary Mortimer – but now with touches of Will here and there in the guitar propped in a corner, the muddy bo
ots at the door and the family photos across the hearth.

  ‘You’ve made it nice,’ she says, looking about.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Will fills the kettle and spoons coffee grounds into a cafetière. ‘We’ll start with coffee and see how we go.’

  Maggie flops onto the sofa with a sigh. ‘So aren’t you curious what you were right about?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Albie. He’s fucked off. He’s taken one of Charles’s most precious porcelain vases and he’s pissed off and left us again. So much for his big promises: “I’ll stay, until you don’t need me anymore,”’ she mimics.

  Will turns around from the cupboard where he is retrieving mugs. ‘I’m sorry. That’s rubbish.’

  She nods. Will’s feet are bare. There is a rip in the arm of his T-shirt, exposing the tanned skin of his bicep. Maggie’s eyes skim over his body as he opens the fridge door.

  ‘You know, I came across him rifling through some drawers in the house,’ he continues, pulling milk from the fridge. ‘I couldn’t think he was up to any good.’

  Maggie nods, dragging her mind from Will’s strong brown arms, as the shadow of a memory forms of Albie’s return, when she had found him rummaging through the mahogany dresser in the library. ‘I think the only reason he came back was to see what he could fleece off Lillian.’

  Will joins her on the sofa, placing two mugs of coffee on the table in front of them.

  She sighs. ‘It’s the same pattern every time. The big, emotional return. The lavish promises. It’s as if he’s convinced himself that it’s going to be different and then . . .’ she shakes her head, ‘something shifts. He starts to clam up. He goes all moody and quiet. I see him walking around as if the weight of the world is on his shoulders, until . . . bam! The sudden departure.’ She groans. ‘Why do I fall for it, every single time?’

  ‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. Some people can do that to us,’ says Will. ‘They know how to press the right buttons. We want to believe they can be different. So we let them in and they hurt us, time and time again.’

  ‘Well I’m sick of it.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Will carefully, not quite meeting her eye. ‘I’m sure you are.’

  She glances around again at Will’s scattered possessions in the studio. Her eye catches on a framed photo, one of Will and Gus standing on top of a snow-capped mountain, bundled up in ski gear, both of them grinning the same wide smile at the camera, arms slung around each other’s shoulders. She remembers the holiday. She remembers fumbling to remove her thick ski gloves so that she could catch the moment on her phone. She’d taken the snap four or five years ago, before she and Gus had got together. Before anything had gone wrong between the three of them.

  ‘Why are you here?’ she asks, turning back to Will.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Well, you had it all going on in London, didn’t you? A nice girlfriend. A good career at that law firm. Why did you throw it all away to come back to this tin-pot village? Living above your parents’ garage. Working for Lillian. It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Really? It doesn’t make any sense?’

  ‘No.’

  Will is staring at her. She is struggling to focus on his face and read his expression. It’s either exasperation or annoyance. She’s not sure which.

  ‘Well, if you really want to know, Georgia and I hadn’t been right for a while. When we split up it just made sense to come back here to sort myself out. Then Lillian offered me the job and I thought “what the hell”. I like her and it feels good to be helping out. It’s been good for me, I think, to leave the city behind for a while – to decompress – to work outside.’

  Encouraged by his openness, and perhaps by the fact that this is the first time he seems to have dropped his angry guard since the bathroom tap incident, she pushes a little harder. ‘I thought you’d want to stay as far away from my family . . . from me as possible.’

  Will holds her gaze. ‘What happened between you and Gus was bad, Maggie. He’s my brother and I care about him. But I’m guessing you must have had your reasons to do what you did. Mum might not be able to see it that way, but then Mum’s always been more black and white about stuff. In her eyes things are either good or bad, right or wrong. Besides, she doesn’t know you like I do.’

  Will holds her gaze – perhaps a little longer than is strictly necessary – but then Maggie is drunk and she’s not sure if she’s reading the situation too well. What is he trying to tell her? ‘So you don’t hate me?’ she fishes.

  Will sighs. ‘No, Maggie, I don’t hate you.’

  Encouraged, she reaches out and takes hold of his hand. ‘I’m sorry. I fucked everything up, didn’t I?’

  He stares down at his hand in hers. ‘You’re drunk, Maggie. I should take you home.’

  She leans in a little closer, looking up at him through her lowered eyelashes. ‘Do you remember how we used to stay up late, watching those horror movies, the three of us huddled on your parents’ sofa? A duvet and a bottle of wine shared between us.’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘I think those nights with you guys might be some of my happiest ever.’

  Will returns his mug to the coffee table, then leans further back into the sofa. ‘Yes, Maggie, they were fun times.’

  ‘It was more than fun.’

  Will raises an eyebrow.

  ‘I miss the closeness we shared.’ She leans forward a little and puts a hand on the front of his shirt, trying to focus on his face. ‘I miss you.’ She waits, breath held in her chest. He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t pull away either.

  Feeling encouraged, staring into his blue eyes and sensing the hot twist of something building inside her, she continues, suddenly reckless with desire, not caring what his answer might be but knowing that she needs to understand how he feels about her, once and for all. ‘What if I told you that I want to stay the night with you?’

  Will hesitates. ‘You want to stay here and watch horror movies with me?’

  ‘No. I want to stay here with you. In your bed,’ she adds, just in case he really hasn’t understood what she is asking of him.

  Will studies her for what feels like the longest time. ‘Even if I felt the same way, Maggie, don’t you think that ship has sailed? We could never be together. You chose Gus.’

  The effort of holding his eye and keeping him in focus is immense, but she tries her hardest. ‘I didn’t know I had a choice.’

  Will sighs.

  ‘I made a mistake.’

  Will doesn’t look away. ‘Yes, you did.’

  Maggie swallows. ‘I couldn’t tell him. I didn’t know how to.’

  ‘Couldn’t tell him what?’

  ‘Something I only realised far too late.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘That I was with the wrong brother. That it’s you I’m in love with. Not Gus. It was always you.’

  Will doesn’t say anything and in the face of his silence, Maggie blunders on. ‘I’ve spent the past year running away from so much, burying myself in anything that will stop me thinking about what I did to Gus, about how much I hurt him . . . but also hiding from this other huge thing, a fact that the last few weeks here with you have made clear . . . and that’s just how much I am in love with you. Head over heels in love with you.’

  Maggie holds her breath. Will remains silent, but he doesn’t look away and somewhere, in her whisky-addled brain, she takes his silence as a good sign. ‘Gus is with someone else now,’ she says. ‘We’re both single. Why can’t we be together?’ She leans in a little closer, close enough to feel his breath on her cheek. ‘I feel something between us . . . You feel it too, don’t you?’

  Will opens his mouth but no words come out.

  ‘What is it? Say something. Please.’

  Will finally finds his voice. ‘So you think we should forget the mistakes of the past?’

  She nods.

  ‘You think we should hop into bed togethe
r?’

  She gives him what she hopes is a winning smile. ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You think we should act on reckless impulse? To hell with everyone else and their feelings?’

  ‘No, I’m not say—’

  But he cuts her off, pulling back so that her hand slips from his chest. ‘Because that would be just like you, Maggie, wouldn’t it? Acting on impulse with no regard for anyone else. And that would make you just like Albie, don’t you think? Arriving back at Cloudesley with your high emotion and your lavish promises. Tell me, how long would you give it with me before you took off again? How long before you cut and run?’

  Maggie stares at him, trying to catch up with the sudden shift in mood.

  ‘I can’t do it, Maggie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Fine,’ she says, feeling the snub of his rejection like a physical blow. ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry I misread the situation between us. I’m sorry I told you how I feel. I’m sorry I came here tonight!’ She stands and sways slightly, feeling a sudden rush of nausea.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Cloudesley.’

  ‘You’ve had too much to drink.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, but even as she starts to move towards the door, she knows she won’t make it. Instead, she turns and runs for the bathroom, only just making it before a stream of hot bile and whisky splatters into the toilet bowl.

  Maggie wakes in the double bed, alone and fully dressed, the first glimmer of dawn just visible through the white curtains. She closes her eyes and lies very still, trying to remember the events of the night before. She recalls Albie’s departure. The whisky. Careening round the dark lanes of Cloud Green. Washing up at Will’s door. Her hand on his chest. And then . . . oh God . . .