‘The shawl looks lovely,’ I say, ‘it almost matches your eyes.’
‘Australian chap,’ she says. ‘They hit it off … how sometimes you do.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well this chap, Vince, got injured …’
‘An explosion …’
‘You know?’
‘That’s all.’
‘So, the Japs made him work, if you could stand you could work sort of thing … such pain. No pain-killers, of course.’ She stops, clutches her arm, her eyes widening with the thought that there could be no pain-killers. ‘I don’t know all the ins and outs of it, half of what he told me went straight in one ear, out the other …’ She is looking at the TV screen as she speaks, not at me. The light changes on her face, some programme about vets now.
‘And?’
‘He told me dreadful things that’d make your blood run cold. But he couldn’t tell me everything.’
‘But I thought…’
‘He couldn’t speak everything. Say it. Even to me. So he wrote it.’
‘Wrote?’
‘He wrote me a letter.’ There is a pause. She nods towards the television. ‘Shall we switch that off?’ A cat is being held down on an examining table, its tail lashing. I turn it off and the room is instantly gloomier, the traffic noise more intrusive. I get up and switch on the light. She needs a lamp in here. If I stayed any longer I would buy her a lamp with a pink shade to cast a rosy softening light, rather than the harsh white bulb that strips the life from her face – and mine too I’m sure. I wait but she seems miles away.
‘Wanda, the letter … what did it say?’
‘There’s a chocolate-box in Vass’s … in the spare room. That’s got photos and cards and stuff in, but if you look under everything you’ll find it.’
‘Can I …?’
‘Bring it down.’
I stand in the bedroom the letter in my hand. Addressed to Wanda, of course, not to me. I don’t know what to do, attacked by a sudden scruple about his privacy. But I am so close to knowing now and she said I could read it. I take the letter downstairs and give it to Wanda. She removes the pages from their envelope, smooths them out, glances at them and hands them to me. I would rather take the letter away, away from her eyes, but that would feel somehow rude, so I sit down on the sofa. The paper is blue Basildon Bond and Daddy’s handwriting is familiar and cramped, written in fountain-pen, probably the gold fountain-pen, which, when I left after the funeral, Mummy let me keep.
Dear Wanda,
6.6.75
Why should I burden you with my memories? I have no excuse for my cowardice in doing so, just this rather ridiculous notion that somehow to tell someone, to tell you might make it better. This is hardly rational. But I can’t tell even you the worst thing. Indeed now I have pen and paper in front of me I can hardly bring myself to write the words. Do not feel compelled to read what follows. Maybe it is enough that I write it and address it to you.
I told you some of Vince’s horrific injuries after the incident with the dynamite. He lost several fingers, suffered terrible flesh injuries to his torso and worse, worse perhaps for a man, certainly a young virile man, such injuries to his private parts that, well, that it was unlikely that he could ever father a child.
This was the lowest ebb for many of us. I escaped severe injury but was constantly plagued with disease, tortured by the deep tropical ulcers on my legs that refused to heal. We were all – Japs as well – close to starvation. On Christmas Eve Vince collapsed. He was in agony. Have you ever been with someone in agony? Someone you care about? Until that moment I didn’t understand what helplessness was. We had some hooch that someone had brewed from rice. Being so starved it took very little to make us immediately very drunk. In his agony Vince begged me to help him die. At first I refused but I thought it only a matter of time anyway and he was in such anguish. In short I killed him by suffocation. It took longer than you might believe to make him die, weak and co-operative as he was. Thus I am a murderer. I meant it well, but still I am a murderer. Sometimes I can’t look at my children without remembering that.
Worse. Next day, Christmas Day, we were given extra rations of fresh meat. Not till after we had eaten, the shreds of pink meat with rice and cabbage did we wonder what kind of meat it was. Unlike most of the bodies of our fellows which we prepared for burial ourselves, the bodies of Vince and another couple of men were buried by the Japanese before we held our services.
Writing this makes me sick to my stomach.
Oh Wanda, what would I have done without you?
With my dearest love to you and Vassily,
Ralph
The letter is held in both my hands. My eyes stay on the last word, his name. I can feel Wanda’s eyes on me. I swallow a mouthful of saliva. She is waiting for some response but what can I say? I feel almost embarrassed. What is there to say? I experience a sudden fierce itch between my shoulder-blades. I reach my thumb up backwards to scratch.
Oh Daddy.
There he is, suddenly, at the table, lifting the bottle of Tabasco, banging it with the heel of his hand, smothering the taste of his food, ruining it, Mummy said. I swallow hard, hug a cushion to my stomach, lean forward. I close my eyes and hear the trace of a scream, the rushing of water. My nostrils fill with the sickly air-freshener sweetness in the bathroom in the middle of the night.
‘You all right?’ Wanda leans towards me.
My blood is beating in my ears.
‘Don’t pass out on me for Christ’s sake.’ Wanda sounds frightened.
‘No, of course not.’ I force a smile, remember to breathe. ‘I’m all right … really.’
‘I shouldn’t have …’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Sure?’
I look up. Something bright is caught in Wanda’s shawl. I shudder, realising that it’s another one of her nails come unstuck.
‘That he thought he was a murderer …’ I feel a rush of compassion, a rush of … love? His face so closed in, the glasses a shield hiding his eyes from my eyes, a bright glassy shield, his hair wild in the night like the texture of his screams.
So hard, so impossible to marry the two men, the tortured soul who thought himself a murderer, who feared he had eaten the flesh of his friend, and the grumpy man I knew, the man behind the newspaper, the man forever at work or at the golf course. The man I didn’t really know.
Wanda watches me anxiously. She picks up her tea and cups her hands round the mug as if to warm them, then she puts it down clumsily, slopping tea on the table as if it is too heavy to hold.
I am ashamed. I have been forgetting her pain. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, try to squeeze away what I have learnt. ‘Shall I help you upstairs?’
She shakes her head. ‘I am knackered, but I’m not going up stairs without Stan.’ She looks up at the wedding photograph and the ghost of a smile passes across her face. Then she looks back at me. ‘Sure you’re all right? I feel bad letting you …’
‘Wanda, don’t …’
‘That might not have been Vince … that might not have been human meat at all …’ she says.
‘I’m sure it wasn’t … and if it was …’
‘That wasn’t his fault.’
‘No,’ I say, ‘and anyway … that’s not the point.’
‘But in his dreams … well you know what dreams are like.’
My nails are sharp smiles in my palms. ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘yes, I do know what dreams are like.’
Upstairs in the cold, cold room I open the chocolate-box to replace the letter, and take out a slippery handful of photographs. On the bed I sort them into two piles, those that feature Daddy and those that do not. Then more slowly I browse through the images of Daddy – the man I knew and did not know at all. Here in his shirt-sleeves on some beach with Vassily grinning beside him; here with his arm slung casually round Wanda – a happy couple; here gazing into some unspecified distance, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun.
&n
bsp; And here, young Daddy in his uniform, not a father then, young Ralph in his uniform, smooth face, eyes big and lustrous dark behind his spectacles. A smooth and hopeful face looking forward into a future he could not guess.
I stare into the bright darkness of his eyes. Twin points of light in each one.
I swallow, gorge rising in my throat. Poor Daddy. With all that inside him. So horrifying, so … there is no word for it … and yet…
I am taken aback to discover – now that I know – that I had thought it would be worse.
How worse?
What could be worse?
What worse than the killing and eating of a friend?
But what could be darker than imagination?
What could be worse than guilt?
And whatever could equal forty-five years of nightmares and the shattering of sleep?
What possible equation could there be?
I want to ask Wanda what they said after she’d read the letter. I go downstairs to do so but she is so tired she cannot speak. I will not bother her any more. I feel a curious looseness inside, as if something has given, though I am not sure what.
Wanda will not go upstairs no matter how I urge her, so I draw the curtains, bring a pillow downstairs and she curls up on the sofa, the shawl covering her. I change her sheets and put the stale ones in the washing machine, tidy up the kitchen. In the bathroom I wash my face and pick a shred of ham from between my teeth, meeting my own mirrored eyes with a shudder and a flinch. I take my toothbrush and scrub my mouth minty fresh, spitting white froth over and over into the turquoise basin.
I change into my own crumpled clothes, odd with the boots but it can’t be helped – a little pang of regret for the Italian shoes. I retrieve my stockings from down the side of the sofa, and I bend over Wanda for a few moments watching her sleep. Her face is very smooth and blank, the lashless lids waxy as petals, above them one of the green eyebrows rubbed off. The light glints on the rings in her ears. I kiss her very softly on her forehead, hardly a kiss, a brush of the lips. I catch the bitter breath of her disease. And I know I’ll never see her again.
I wait, as I promised, for Stan to get home. When he arrives – rough, stubbled, donkey-jacketed – she is still sleeping. He greets me gruffly, goes straight to her, scared of what he will find. He kneels down beside the sofa and with his thick gentle oily finger strokes her cheek. I go upstairs and collect my things.
I leave before she wakes again.
10
Wanda’s funeral. Foxy beside me in a little netted pill-box hat. ‘I don’t think I could bear to lose you,’ she said when I got back, four months ago, on a freezing February night. ‘Funny,’ I said, ‘because I’ve just realised that maybe I could do without you.’ She was quiet for a moment, thinking before she spoke. ‘Well,’ she kept her voice calm, but I saw the flare of her pupils, felt the small intake of breath, ‘that’s good, that is healthier, don’t you think?’ And she’s still with me, though whether forever I really do not know. What is forever? How can one contemplate forever standing by an open grave?
I wear just what I wore for my father’s funeral nine months ago. The day is as bright as that day, hotter, more golden; the fat green and gold of early June. Many more people present than at Daddy’s funeral. Vassily, of course, with his daughter and his wife, a tiny dark woman who looks up at him with eyes that are both loving and critical. Who looks sideways at me. She’s sharp. What does she know about me? Vassily’s daughter, rosy and dark-eyed, noisy in the church, singing her own song. Stan dressed in his wedding-suit, wet-eyed and reeking of whisky. Many strangers. In the graveyard, in front of my mother, in front of everyone, Foxy holds my hand.
After the church we make our way to a pub on the seafront where Vassily has booked a room, a small glass extension with wicker chairs and puffy Roman blinds. Not at all suitable for a funeral, but Wanda would have liked it. It is blazing hot, greenhouse hot inside, despite a whirring fan, and open windows through which come shouts from people on the beach. There’s the occasional thwack of a beach-ball hitting the glass. Caroline wears white, not black. She’s the only one who looks cool. Stan’s drunken face seen too close, open pores, a flake of puff-pastry caught in the corner of his mouth. Mummy is very quiet. She has come with her friend John. I look at the two of them and wonder. They sit very close together sipping sherry.
Naomi trips over and bangs her head, she screams, unbearably piercing in the little room. At a sign from Caroline, Vassily scoops her up and carries her outside.
Despite the fan and the windows there is no air in the room, it’s suffocating. Foxy has fallen into conversation with an elderly woman in a black straw hat. I see her fumble in her handbag for her notebook and pen. I follow Vassily out. I need fresh air, the grief and the sherry and the hot June sun through glass are too much.
I find them on the beach. Naomi has recovered from her bump. She’s barefoot, her dress tucked in her knickers, splashing about at the edge of the sea. Vassily has loosened his tie, rolled up his shirt-sleeves. He sits on a breakwater watching Naomi, her little shoes and socks beside him. A few couples sprawl on rugs, some teenagers throw a beach-ball from the beach to the sea and back, brown skin, dripping limbs, shouting as if with joy.
In this heat the sea itself seems almost too lazy to move. It makes contented sounds, softly sucking and sighing, just the occasional refreshing plash when it summons the energy to send a small wave washing up. The child is singing again, I can’t quite hear what, just a soft high note now and then, sweet. But Vassily can’t hear the sea, or Naomi or the sound of my feet scrunching on the shingle as I approach.
I touch his arm and he jumps, turns round.
‘She’s lovely.’ I nod towards Naomi. I sit down beside him on the rough concrete of the breakwater. ‘Vassily, I’m so very sorry about Wanda.’
Sitting so close to him, looking at the long brown hairs on his forearms where he’s rolled his shirt-sleeves up, I’m suddenly hit by a humiliating memory: a drunken kiss. The sun on the sea makes me squint.
‘Daddy look,’ Naomi, limping up on the shingle on her wet pink feet brings him a stiffened starfish. ‘Is it deaded?’
He nods. ‘Yes, sweetie, it’s dead.’
‘Poor lickle star.’ She goes back to the sea, cradling it in her two hands.
Vassily is a good father I can see that. I am glad for the little girl. The bottom of her dress has come down and is dark and wet from the sea. But it doesn’t matter.
I touch his arm. ‘Vassily, I’m sorry.’
He nods.
‘I mean … when we were children.’
His face hardens. He has not forgotten. I thought maybe the game, the childish game may have been forgotten. His eyes are just the green of his mother’s, small tobacco-gold flecks round the pupils which are tiny in the brightness. The skin on the back of my neck is hot and itchy, this sun would burn you in an instant. Tears come into my eyes.
A little muscle twitches in his jaw. I cannot know what he is thinking.
‘Do you forgive me?’ I ask. The tears spill.
He watches my face for a long moment. His face is quite inscrutable. Then he puts his index finger on my cheek and catches a tear. He holds it in front of his eyes and examines it there on his finger-tip, a bright bead of wet reflecting the sun, reflecting too minutely to see the shape of his own head.
The child runs up the beach dragging behind her a giant ribbon of wet brown weed. ‘Look Daddy, it lasts for miles.’
Vassily licks the tear from his finger before he smiles at me.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Ernest Virgo for the loan of his POW diaries, and both Ernest and Olive Virgo for their generosity and help during my research for this novel.
About the Author
Lesley Glaister (b. 1956) is a British novelist, playwright, and teacher of writing, currently working at the University of St Andrews. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Soci
ety of Authors. Her first novel, Honour Thy Father, was published in 1990 and received both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award. Glaister became known for her darkly humorous works and has been dubbed the Queen of Domestic Gothic. Glaister was named Yorkshire Author of the Year in 1998 for her novel Easy Peasy, which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award in 1998. Now You See Me was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2002.Glaister lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband, author Andrew Greig.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Lesley Glaister
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9411-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Easy Peasy Page 22