by Caro Ramsay
I wondered where Mum was. Downstairs Dad was waiting for her to come back. And she needed to be quick if she wanted to say goodbye to her eldest daughter.
The tension of that was almost unbearable, the idea that it’s now or never.
I shook that thought from my mind, waiting a minute or two before I pushed the handle to Melissa’s bedroom; the catch had been tightened and oiled so it was as deathly silent as the rest of the house. Inside the room was warm and dark but it smelled fresh. The curtains were closed over the open windows, giving the drapes an eerie undulation, wafting and waning on a breeze I couldn’t feel.
Melissa was lying on the bed. What was left of her.
Her dog, Anastasia, the Boston terrier, was curled in a little black ball at the bottom of the bed, between Fred Bear and Winnie The Pooh. Her ears pricked as I slid in, but she didn’t move. Dogs sense death very acutely.
Melissa did not react. Her room, like mine, had been frozen in time; pale yellow roses and antique cream lace, white cotton and cream rugs on the warm parquet floor. A white embroidered sheet was neatly folded over the bottom of the wrought iron frame. In the fireplace was an arrangement of fresh white flowers and greenery.
All very Melissa, flittery and feminine.
Except for the corner behind the door, where the Victorian washstand used to be, adorned with some porcelain figurines of Greek goddesses. That was her kind of thing. Now there was a lifting device, a commode, a machine with a screen surrounded by switches all parked neatly. They had been removed from her body at midnight according to Dad in his text earlier. He said the removal of the oxygen mask had been at dawn, witnessed by Dad and the doctor. And the doctor had then left, allowing nature to take its course. Whatever was keeping Melissa alive was running out. I had called Dad back with my hearing aids in, he had asked me to come home, his voice breaking, telling me the times of the ferries, no time to drive the long way round, get here now, or don’t bother. Not that he said that, but having given so many excuses over the last three years, he was leaving me with no choice.
The Italian House had a habit of pulling back those that had been born there, driving them to insanity, or suicide by inherited melancholy.
And here we all were. Listening to the silence of history repeating itself.
It seems a heartless thought, but when on the phone that morning, I had looked at my desk, my work colleagues staring at their screens as I listened to him. Despite his pleas, his obvious desperation, I waited, thinking, was this really it? Or was it another act from the drama queen? Was Dad trying to lure me back to the house, the Benbrae and happier times?
I had no doubts now. The machines lay redundant, her life slipping away by increments, like the ever-slowing ticking of an anniversary clock.
On the bed, she was a stick-thin figure, covered to the chin by a duvet, her body impervious to the heat of the room. From the look of her, she might have passed already, except for the faint flicker of a translucent eyelid. Round her neck, lying flat on the nacreous flesh throat was the family heirloom, a necklace with silver unicorn and lion intertwined. I reached out and repositioned it, in case the chain was annoying her, then pulling up the quilted chair, I sat at the side of the bed, watching her. She’s like a delicate rose wilting in a drought. Something so pretty, disintegrating. Her dark hair looked like dried seaweed spread on white sand, her eyes were closed. Her face unrecognizable, narrow, pinched, the cheekbones that had wowed audiences as Cleopatra were now knife-blade sharp, a couple of white cliffs falling into the dark hollows of her cheeks. For her final act she was wearing a chiaroscuro mask.
I placed the back of my hand on the skin of her face and was rewarded with a flicker of a smile. I was content to hold her hand, she knew I was here.
My eyes drifted along the mantelpiece. A photograph of Jago and Melissa on their wedding day, an award for her portrayal of Ophelia, a pair of antique statues, a gold anniversary clock spinning, and another version of the carousel photograph. Mum and Dad were in this one, standing. Melissa and Jago are on a horse. I’m standing at the back, there is no Carla. Her absence makes it bittersweet. We were so happy in that moment, with no idea the disaster that was going to befall us in the next few hours.
If Carla was here, now, what would she make of this? Me watching my sister, measuring time by her slow, shallow breathing, seeing her skin drift from pink and warm, to blue and chilled, then purple and cold?
Carla would see something funny in it, she always pricked at Melissa’s pretension.
I sat there for hours. Debs came in with a coffee and a cheese sandwich for me at five o’clock, gave me a hug and left. Heather appeared and sat with me for a while, Dad joined us for a few short conversations, before they both left me alone to say my own goodbyes. At one point, maybe in the early evening, Melissa’s cold, blue fingers crawled over the surface of the daffodil duvet towards mine, little more than cold clammy sticks covered in human flesh, her nails merely purple picks on the end.
Her lips pulled and contorted, trying to form a word. I checked my hearing aid, leaning forward to catch it. She breathed out, the sound formed on her lips and would have died there if I had not been able to lip-read.
‘Megs?’
I recognized that.
I leaned down, my mouth close to her ear. ‘Yes, it’s Megan.’
I looked again at her lips, they struggled to move.
Watching carefully, I thought they were going to form a smile, ask for Jago, maybe ask for Dad or Mum. Or say goodbye.
None of these things. A five letter word, a soft word, formed by a pliant tongue, leaving the roof of her mouth, her lips kissing it to life.
I saw it.
There was a change after that, a subtle relaxation of tension.
Her eyes sank back into her head, her eyelids stopped flickering. I looked at the clock, half past seven. I sat beside her, numb. There was a slight reaction, a twitch of her mouth when Deborah knocked quietly on the door just after eleven, and came in, offering me another cup of tea. She hesitated a moment, looking at Melissa, fighting back the tears, then retreated back out the door.
Ten minutes later, Dad came in, carrying a malt. There was no reaction from Melissa at all. He cleared his throat, trying to be brave as he closed the door behind him. He stood at the bottom of the bed, straight backed and strong, no doubt wondering why his child was dying before him. There is something erroneous about that in the scheme of nature.
If he said anything, I didn’t catch it. When I glanced round to see him, his eyes were not on Melissa or on me, but they were looking around. Was he recalling the day Melissa was born, in this very room, twenty-eight years before? Fred Bear and Winnie The Pooh have been here since then with the odd trip to the nursery and the laundry.
Melissa’s eyelids had not flickered since that one slight blink at the back of nine. I did check, placing my clumsy little thumbs on the translucent skin and gently peeling it back only to see and reveal opal white, her eyes had rolled upwards looking to heaven, her destination if there is any justice in the world.
By midnight, I knew, sensed, that the real Melissa had gone, the process of decay that had started five, six years ago had destroyed the previous twenty-two of wonderment. It had finally come to a close, and how can that be? Do we both have a different expression of the same condition? The same curse more like. There is something malevolent in this house.
The Melvick curse.
Melissa had lost her beauty now. The face of Ophelia lying in the water surrounded by flowers, plus her rosemary for remembrance was gone. She had been a passionate, bitter Ophelia that audiences had applauded, an empowered Ophelia as some feminist wrote in a cheap paper. Melissa had hated that review.
The actress had gone. Her final curtain call.
Suddenly I was aware Dad was looking at me, having said something I had missed.
‘Has she gone?’
‘I think so.’
We sat for another twenty minutes gazing at her.<
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Dad stood up and walked round the bed to stand behind me, tapping me on the shoulder so I’d look at him.
‘Did she say anything?’ He leaned forward, gently pulling the chain from her neck, easing the catch to the front and opening it.
‘She said my name,’ I said, as he lifted the necklace and turned away.
He nodded as if this was the way it should have been. ‘Nothing else?’
I turned my head back to look at her face, as still as marble. Dad had expected her to say something. ‘No,’ I lied.
Her last word on this earth, spoken with such intense effort to ensure clarity?
Sorry.
Carla
It’s sad when somebody dies but it was only Melissa and she was a pain in the bum. We didn’t call her Princess Frosty Pants for nothing.
I had known of them, Melissa and Megan, Mel and Megs, all my life, of course. We called them M and M, because they were both nuts. Growing up, Melissa was an ethereal creature of great beauty who had been on the telly. Gran said Melissa had been a corpse on Midsummer Murders and had been ‘quite good’. I guess that is ironic, she’s playing that part for real now.
Everything was about Melissa though. My dad, who worked up at the Italian House, had to tell me that Melissa was not the only daughter. There was a younger one, Megan, who was my age and perfect and not an ‘ungrateful little shit’ like me. Megan Melvick didn’t answer back, didn’t steal money and didn’t bite people.
If I had lived with Dad all the time, rather than only when Mum was in the pokey, I would have got a chance to know both the Melvick girls because of Dad’s job. He said he actually spoke to Ivan Melvick sometimes, like the guy was God.
The family were loaded though.
Where did it get them, all that money? I might have been the result of a good curry and a fumble in Morrison’s car park but from humble beginnings great things can happen. The mighty have fallen further as my gran would say. The Melvicks were a case in point, they had a daughter who couldn’t manage the simple act of eating, yet they have a protective glass panel on a painting to save it from air pollution. So work that out. And it was a picture of a horse. Just a horse. And not even a very convincing horse, his head was too long and the neck too bendy, his eyes were too high up. I could do better.
And even weirder, in the home field of the Italian House were pedigree Highland ponies all with normal heads and necks, both eyes in the right place. So the dad, Ivan, likes pictures of horses more than horses whereas the mum, Beth, liked her horses more than her she liked her kids, Mel and Megs.
So I considered myself lucky that I had my mum’s drunken attention and a dad who always kept an eye out for me. Even Gran felt moved to give me a slap with the back of her hand in an attempt to keep me on the straight and narrow. We might be a dysfunctional family but at least my parents knew my name, unlike up at the Italian House where the nannies were employed to look after the dogs and the girls just tagged along.
Or did I make that up.
So the Melvicks were always on my radar. Looking back, it seemed there was something predetermined about it all but maybe that’s just so those involved can ease their guilt.
In the summer, when I had run away from Mum after a fight in the pub, I was back up north and, in an attempt to appease Gran, Dad got me a paper round. I had to walk from the far side of Kilaird back through Kilmun. After a week of a Land Rover driving past me at the same point in the road after Kilmun, I, being clever, decided to start a little earlier. Dad was pleased that I was keen, thinking that I was proud to be earning some money for myself, but I was early so that Ivan Melvick would be driving away from the Italian House just as I was walking that long stretch of the road where the lay-by was. I knew he’d stop and give me a lift as far as Sandbank and I’d deliver the papers on the way back.
I loved sitting in that car, high off the road, pretending I was his third daughter. I fantasized about having a car like his, with automatic gears and leather seats that didn’t smell of dog shit.
Dad found out of course and went ballistic. He said I had to stop taking advantage of his boss’s good nature in case it affected his job. Mum said I was to say that Ivan Melvick touched me and we’d do him for money. But I knew Ivan Melvick was a true gentleman. And there was a long game to be played here. I could sense that. I asked Ivan about the golden eagles, the powan and the otters. He explained things to me, like how the powan were rare and he was breeding them in the pond in the garden. I looked things up and came back with more questions. He was impressed.
Gran took me to church and I remember the three Melvicks all had something to say as they came out from the service; a hello and goodbye and chat about the weather and whatever, the way that posh folk can afford to do, they had that easy confidence. Ivan spoke to me and shook me by the hand, asking me how the paper round was going. I asked him about the powan.
I say three, Ivan, Beth and Melissa, but I mean four. Megan was invisible amongst them, if she wasn’t as rich as she was, she would have got bullied rotten. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, given what happened later.
Both girls were barking mad. Maybe Melissa’s problem was that she was so startlingly beautiful, much more so than Megan. Melissa was tall, willowy, slim, raven-haired and with ivory silken skin.
Gran had told me that they once wanted to make Melissa the Queen of the Kilmun and Kilaird fete, even though that would be important for who exactly? About eight hundred people? The Melvick family politely declined quoting a fear of favouritism as the fete was held in the Tentor field of the Italian House but in reality the Melvicks thought the lovely Melissa should never steep so low. In the end the fete queen was Fatty Sally McGuire, a spotty girl who worked in the Greggs in Dunoon. Sally had two great loves in her life: the pies in Greggs and the cakes in Greggs.
The queen was supposed to arrive on the back of a pony, provided by the Melvicks of course, a small white pretty thing called Marple. I don’t think the pony that carried Fatty McGuire ever recovered. Afterwards Beth took it away for a good feed. Maybe she should have tried a bit of that with Melissa.
Gran knew a lot of the goss. Melissa was studying business with languages and then, on a trip to Paris, she started doing a little modelling. That led to her giving up her course and transferring to acting. Her love affair with Paris and a hedge fund manager Jago Harrington Hyphenated, all started from there. She got the part of Ophelia in some small production and smashed it, then the part of Cleopatra and with her looks, and the fact she was really bossy, I guess that was the part she was born to play. She loved all that Shakespearean stuff, all that strutting, dying and talking to yourself.
She was not impressed when she was wittering on about Dame Eileen Atkins and Caesar, and all I could think of was Carry On Cleo and the ‘Infamy, Infamy’ joke. Weirdly, Megan gave me one of her quizzical looks. Nobody ever told her jokes, nobody. Imagine living in a world where you have never pissed yourself laughing at a Carry On film because you can’t hear it.
So Melissa’s trajectory was very much on the up. After a couple of years of modelling in very posh magazines with shiny pages, her academic stuff was forgotten, much to her dad’s disappointment. The bright lights of London and Jago were a permanent fixture by then, and Jago had money.
But was it the fact that her career relied so much on appearance that made her start to unravel? I can be excused for not noticing as I was not around much and I always thought Melissa should get a grip on herself.
However after her wedding, the radiant Melissa slowly faded in front of the eyes of the Melvick family and once that train had left the station, there was no way of bringing it back.
Nobody in the village was surprised. There was a sense that a permanent winter had settled over the family, nothing would be right for them.
And now Megan is saying goodbye to the brightest bauble from their family tree.
I do wonder how many Melvicks actually died of old age; there can’t be that many families tha
t have their own hanging tree at the bottom of the garden.
While Melissa was a right cow, Megan was just a wee bit odd. We first met the year after I had seen her in church. Mum had got out of jail and taken me to Brighton where she had a new man with long arms and a short fuse. He had me back in Kilaird before the end of term nursing a badly broken arm, and I was still gunning for my revenge on Wullie Campbell after the school disco incident the previous summer so I was happy to be back north, although it could be boring and I had to suffer Gran’s cockaleekie soup. I already had a difficult relationship with the forces of law and order, Constable Harry Murray, or Hairy Monkey as we called him. He knew I wasn’t a bad kid, just bored with a dad who worked long hard hours and whose wife hated me, and living with a gran who never knew where I was plus a mum who was either drunk or staying at her majesty’s pleasure.
Over that summer I was constantly pursued by a gang of tossers from the estate. Such things are important at that age. Some kind of tribalism kicks in while growing up on the streets, in bedsit land and refuges, even drifting out to a small village like Kilaird, or a town like Dunoon. Humanity is the same the world over. The Kilmun kids fought the Kilaird kids. The village kids joined forces to fight the Sandbank kids and we all tore into the Dunoon kids whenever we could. It’s very easy to pick your allies when you know who your enemies are.
But my big memory is me, on my own. I was the outsider.
Then, on that last day of term, the usual chilled wind was absent, making the air strangely tense. At school, the kids were restless, their energy was high, looking forward to the long summer holidays of illicit drinking. They were tired of school, tired of being poor and they were in a pack.
And they had their eye on their prey.