Lewis was there as Lizzie took her last breath. He brushed her hair until it shone like burnished copper. In repose she looked like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be kissed awake. But there was no prince for Lizzie. There never had been.
Lewis knew that it was all his fault. He shouldn’t have brought her over to the house in Paddington where she had got the drugs. He shouldn’t have left her there all night and gone to a work dinner. He shouldn’t have asked Marnie to go over and get her. He should have gone himself. He should have left the jazz club earlier and gone straight to Marnie’s flat. He should have told Marnie to ring the ambulance immediately, as soon as he called her. He should have made Lizzie sick when they had got to the flat. All these regrets tumbled in on him as he held Lizzie’s hand and felt the warmth drain out of it. He was turned to stone, unable to let her go.
When the doctor finally announced that she had passed away and tried to persuade him to release his sister’s hand, Lewis snapped out of the numb cold of shock. It felt as if he had been stung by a thousand wasps, and the pain of his loss made him bellow like a mad bull. All the anger he’d bottled up during their childhood swelled within him, and he picked up the spindly wooden chair he’d been sitting on and threw it against the wall. It smashed into pieces as two junior doctors restrained him, while Lizzie’s doctor gave him a sedative.
‘Just to calm you down,’ he told him. ‘You’ve had a big shock.’
Lewis entered a world under water. The sounds of the hospital were a background hum, and he could see nothing around him: not the daylight seeping up through the frosted glass windows, nor the cleaners mopping the linoleum floor, nor the pretty nurses trooping by, looking at the distraught young man with his head in his hands. He sat on an orange plastic chair outside Lizzie’s room. He was unable to go in. He was unable to walk away. He felt the guilt of a murderer.
Finally Lewis dragged himself out of the chair and stumbled down the corridor towards the public telephones. He called his mother, and with no ceremony told her that her daughter was dead. He could hear her shock, her cries on the other end of the phone, but he couldn’t feel anything for her. He was outside of the conversation, as if he were watching himself talking to her.
‘What happened? What happened?’ his mother screeched. ‘Why didn’t you call me sooner? Lewis, why couldn’t you look after her?’
His fury began to unfurl. ‘Don’t pretend you care now, Mother,’ he snarled.
‘How can you say such a thing?’ she sobbed.
He slammed down the phone. He hated his mother, but more than that he hated himself. He was just like Sylvia Bell – so obsessed with his own life that he hadn’t been able to look after his little sister. He sank onto another chair and stared at the cracked hospital floor.
He heard her footsteps first; saw the high heels of her black boots next, the hem of her green coat. He looked up. Marnie was standing in front of him. At first he couldn’t speak. His voice was lost inside him. All he could do was shake his heavy head until the words came.
‘She’s dead,’ he finally whispered. ‘It’s my fault – she’s dead.’
‘No, it’s not your fault, Lewis.’ Marnie kneeled down next to him, bringing her tear-stained face close to his.
‘I should have looked after her,’ he whispered.
‘She needed proper help . . . the way things were with your mother and all that stuff to do with Uncle Howard . . . Lizzie was very unhappy.’
What was Marnie talking about? What had Uncle Howard to do with any of this? Lewis felt a sudden flare of rage, that she should see him so exposed and vulnerable. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘On the way back to my flat she was talking a lot . . . about what happened. She never got over it.’ Marnie reached out to take his hand in hers. ‘It’s not your fault.’
What was she telling him? That she knew his sister better than he did?
He pulled his hand away from her. ‘Go away! Leave me alone!’ His voice burst out of him with such violence that Marnie wobbled back on her heels.
‘Lewis, please, I want to help you,’ she said.
‘I don’t need your help,’ he hissed. ‘If it hadn’t been for you my sister would still be alive right now.’
‘It was an accident,’ Marnie told him, her face drained of all colour. She looked so pale she might faint. ‘Lewis, please, you know I love you.’
He took the treasure of those words and threw them right back at her. ‘I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I can never forgive you. Never. Go away.’
Lewis could see that she was fighting back tears. But he couldn’t stop hurting her; it took him away from his own grief.
‘You shouldn’t be on your own,’ she said.
‘I’ll decide what I need right now. Just get out of here – get away from me.’
His voice was rising, and people were looking over at them. He could see two small points of red on each of her cheeks. He wasn’t sure what they signalled: embarrassment, hurt, anger?
‘If you need me, Lewis, you know where to find me.’
She looked at him for a long moment, her blue eyes brimming with sorrow. Then she turned and walked away, in that green coat, through the swing door and out into a London downpour, the rain enfolding her, taking her away from him.
He never saw her again.
Skerries to Mayo, Easter Sunday,26 March 1989
He could hear that rain again. The pounding of it on the hospital porch, the sheer violence of it, as if Lizzie’s rage was being released. He pulled back the sheets and got out of bed, walking over to the window and opening the curtains. He stared through grey swathes of rain down at the windswept beach below. Waves crashed upon the wet sand. It was a picture of desertion apart from one lone figure walking by the sea. He watched as she walked back along the strand towards the hotel, her dark hair swirling around her, hunched over as she pushed against the wet wind. She had to be soaking, but she didn’t seem to care. He watched her walk with such determination. Sometimes people were not what they seemed. His memories of Marnie had been of a strong woman with monumental drive who had said that she loved him. Despite this she had not stayed with him in the hospital that day. How could he have expected her not to walk away when he had blamed her for Lizzie’s death?
As Lewis watched Joy striding along the beach, against the rain, against the wind, walking into the unknown on the other side of the world he wondered if Joy would have done the same as Marnie. Would she have walked away that day, or would she have stayed in the hospital with him and taken his blame and rage?
*
Joy hadn’t slept well. The whisky had made her restless, and what sleep she did get was full of nightmares. She dreamed that her father was still alive but sick with the cancer. She had to find a cure and time was running out. She didn’t know what to do and was filled with a sense of her own failure to help him.
She’d woken up devastated with the realisation that it was a dream and her father was already dead. She was too late.
Afraid to go back to sleep and dream the same dream, she lay awake watching the hours tick by, the light changing in the room from gloaming darkness to a dusky, hopeless dawn.
Joy stared out the window Lewis had left with the curtains open for her, watching a patch of sky change a thousand shades of grey. She could hear the wind whipping the hotel, the rain hammering against the glass. She shivered under the covers, not knowing what to do.
In the sober light of morning she was mortified by her forwardness the night before. How could she face Lewis after she had thrown herself at him? She was a desperate woman, a pathetic creature that husbands cheated on and other men rejected. She considered leaving before he got up. She had no idea how to get to Ballycastle in County Mayo, but she could ask in the hotel lobby where she could take a bus to, or if there was a train out of this little seaside town. Lewis had promised he would drive her, and still she longed to see him one last time, even if it was embarrassing. Before she had kissed him she had
been looking forward to their road trip together. Now she had ruined everything. What had she been thinking of, jumping on him like that?
She winced at the memory of him stopping her as she unbuttoned her pyjama top. Their night in the desert had been a one-off. They’d agreed that. He was in love with another woman, and she was supposed to love her husband.
Just because she now knew that Eddie had cheated on her, did that mean she had stopped loving him? You couldn’t just switch it off, could you? You tried to work it out together and repair the marriage. How could she let all those years together count for nothing? She needed to find their love again.
But what if her suspicions were correct and Eddie had cheated on her multiple times? How could their love survive such extensive betrayal? Every time she thought of Eddie, she thought too of her night in the desert with Lewis. It had been intoxicating. As if the two of them were in this cocoon of sensuality, of wanting to give pleasure with no expectation. Eddie had never made her feel like that, and she wanted to experience it again, though her desire was against all reason or logic.
Unable to lie in bed any longer, she got up and made straight for the window. Despite her pounding head and her confused heart, she was uplifted by what she saw. The sea raged against the shore. She pressed her palms upon the cold glass, making handprints in the streaming condensation, and drank in the view. She didn’t care if it was freezing outside or a full-blown storm, she had to be by the sea.
The hotel was deathly silent as she made her way downstairs. She wondered if it was empty apart from her and Lewis. In the lobby a young man with tawny red hair was sitting at the desk, reading a newspaper. He looked up and smiled at her. ‘I’m afraid breakfast isn’t served yet,’ he said. ‘Not until seven.’
‘I was going for a walk first,’ she replied.
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Out in that dirty weather?’
‘That’s right,’ she said with determination. ‘Is there a door out to the beach?’
He got up and walked round the side of the lobby desk. ‘Are you from America?’ he asked her.
‘Yes, Arizona.’
‘I like those,’ he said, pointing at her blue cowboy boots, ‘but they’re not the best for this weather.’
‘I’ll be fine.’
‘Sure they’ll be ruined,’ he said with a grin. ‘If you really want to go out let me lend you a pair of wellies and a mac. You’re my mum’s size I’ll bet.’
‘Oh, that’s very kind.’
‘It’s no bother. You’ll be drowned if you don’t put something on. This is my parents’ hotel. They always keep some stuff in the press by the kitchen.’
The wind was behind her as she walked up the beach. She felt it pushing her along, like the guiding hand of a parent on the small of her back. Despite the intense chill of the rain, the assault of the wind, she felt an exhilarating sense of relief. She had made it to the sea. Whatever came next in her life, at least she had made it this far.
She hardly cared what would happen to her now. She could not think past this day, and maybe it was just as well. She walked along the beach, looking down at the sand, marvelling at its multi-toned grain and the myriad shells that glistened at her feet. Every few minutes she had to stop and pick one up, slip it into her pocket. Mostly they were blue mussel shells, intense blue ovals fading to indigo, their insides pearlescent like her abalone shell.
The grey sky lightened until it was almost white, yet filled still with rain. She turned to walk back to the hotel, and the wet wind slapped her cold cheeks. She pulled her scarf up to cover her face as best she could and tied the hood of the mac tight around her chin. She was glad now of the kind young man and his mum’s wellies as they dug into the wet sand.
She walked right to the edge of the sea and into its frothy fringe, letting small waves splash against the side of her boots, almost holding herself back from going too far in.
She thought about her husband’s betrayal. Could she really forgive him and try to rebuild their love? She had no idea what that would entail; no idea whether she could count on him to commit to her again. She was still reeling from that vision of him with Erin. In that moment, she had felt like the intruder, the third party in their romance. That’s what was so shocking.
What had happened to her and Eddie? She remembered the passion of their early years. How he used to swoop her up in his arms and twirl her all the time. How he used to laugh and say, ‘I am full of Joy,’ every time they made love. But she couldn’t remember the last time Eddie had laughed with her, and now she realised there had always been something missing in their intimacy. He had been angry, detached for years. Was that her fault? She’d thought she and Eddie were special, that their bond was timeless, but perhaps she was merely deluded, blind to the truth.
Could she live on her own? Would her husband move in with Erin – the mother of her daughter’s fiancé? Joy’s head spun at the horror of it. She felt sick at the memory of Erin talking about her lover at that awful dinner party with her mean friends. The woman had actually been talking about Eddie – and all her friends would have known that! She couldn’t believe anyone could be so cruel. What had she ever done to Erin?
The wind beat her back, and Joy longed to collapse onto the sand and let it carry her away, buffet her into the sea. She wanted the waves to close over her and suck her down so she could give up at last. But her body kept walking. As if it knew best.
She bent into the wind and pushed forward, her arms tight by her sides, each step taken with determination. The rain mixed with her tears and salt spray from the sea so that her cheeks stung.
‘Just walk to the hotel, Joy,’ she told herself. ‘Don’t worry about what comes next. Take one step at a time.’
She had come to Ireland on a mission. No matter what, she had to see it through.
Lewis was already seated and eating breakfast when she came into the dining room. They were the only guests there. He had chosen a table right by the window, with a view of the beach.
‘Good morning. Happy Easter,’ she said, taking the chair opposite him, too embarrassed to look him in the eye.
‘Your hair is wet,’ he said.
She touched it with her damp hand. ‘There’s no hairdryer in the room,’ she said. ‘I was walking by the sea.’
‘I know – I saw you,’ he said, sounding relaxed, as if last night had never happened. ‘I was wondering who the mad woman out in a hurricane was. And then I realised it was you.’
She sneaked a look at him and saw he was smiling at her. He feels sorry for me, she thought, her heart sinking. I am a woman to be pitied.
Breakfast arrived on large plates, each one decorated with a fluffy, feathery yellow chick and one small chocolate egg for Easter. Joy dipped her toast in her yolk and drank two cups of weak coffee. She already felt exhausted, and this day, one of the most important of her life, had hardly begun.
‘Are you sure you don’t mind taking me all the way to Mayo?’ she asked Lewis as she poured herself another cup of coffee.
‘Of course I don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s not that far from Sligo, just a slight detour.’
She reached over to take the jug of milk at exactly the same time as Lewis and their fingers unintentionally interlaced. She quickly pulled back and the milk was knocked over.
‘Oh, I’m sorry! I’m so stupid!’ She felt tears begin to prick again and tried her best to swallow them down.
‘It’s just an accident,’ Lewis said, picking up his napkin and mopping up the milk. ‘My fault just as much as yours.’ But his gentle words slid off her. She felt clumsy, useless, unwanted.
By the time they hit the road the rain had abated slightly from a full-on downpour to a light drizzle. Her clothes felt damp and cold on her skin. She was wearing a shirt with a print of tiny purple violets all over, her jeans and cowboy boots, plus her leather jacket. She still didn’t feel warm enough. She sat in the passenger seat of the car, shivering. Lewis glanced over at her, his hand on the
ignition key.
‘You look cold,’ he said. ‘Your nose is blue.’
‘No, really,’ she lied, ‘I’m good.’
‘It doesn’t look like it.’
He got out of the car and opened up the trunk. She watched him in the rear-view mirror. He looked like he fitted in to this landscape. He had taken off his sharp black suit and was wearing an old pair of Levi’s and a deep crimson sweater. His wild hair had been made even more unruly by the wind. He looked rugged, at one with his surroundings.
‘Here you are,’ he said, handing her a sky-blue sweater.
She felt herself colouring. ‘Really, I’m okay.’
How could she have been so stupid as to not bring any warm clothes with her? She had been in such a rush when she’d packed.
‘Put it on,’ he ordered.
‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, pulling the sweater on over her shirt. It was pure wool, incredibly soft, and had a woody scent, like Lewis. She put her leather jacket back on over the jumper and zipped it up.
He was smiling at her.
‘What?’
‘The rain has made your hair curly,’ he said. ‘It’s pretty.’
‘Does Marnie have curly hair?’ She felt like slapping herself. Why did she have to mention Marnie when Lewis was actually paying her a compliment?
His smile disappeared. ‘No, Marnie’s hair is straight.’ And, with a frown, he turned on the car and pulled out of the parking lot.
They drove in silence for about thirty minutes. The unspoken words between them filled the air. She wanted to ask him, Why did you kiss me back? Why did you stop kissing me? What will happen when you find Marnie? Will you ever think of me again? Are we really friends?
As each mile passed, as they got closer and closer to her destination, it was harder to speak. There was such tension between them. It was undeniable. Wearing his sweater was making it worse. She was enveloped by his scent, and she wanted so much to touch him, to be touched by him. She opened her purse and rummaged around, trying to find something to distract her. Her hand bumped against the last tape Ray had sent her. It was her favourite of all, a singer called Tracy Chapman.
The Gravity of Love Page 23