by Gillian Best
She stirred the pot. ‘You were the one who disowned her.’
‘I didn’t mean it.’
‘Sounded like you were quite serious at the time.’
‘Well, that was then.’
‘And this is now?’
Martha had that tone that subtly implied I was being ridiculous.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked.
She added salt to what smelled like lamb stew. Her back was to me and I wished I had been able to see her face.
‘Martha?’
She put the wooden spoon down slowly on the saucer to the left of the hob. Then she turned around, her face a tangle of emotions.
‘You can start by reading the article she wrote and being proud of her.’
I did as I was told and read the article, twice. While I was reading it all I could think of were not the recommendations the government had devised to encourage better eating habits amongst its citizens but the girl I had helped raise. I remembered how impatient she was to learn to read as she sat on my knee after dinner, as I read to her from the paper, her finger following along, her mouth working, as though somehow chewing the words to get a sense of them.
When we’d finished eating that evening, Martha cleared the plates quickly and set out her Channel charts.
‘You’re thinking of doing another swim?’ I asked.
She mumbled something in a non-committal way and I took the hint.
‘Think I’ll take Webb out for his constitutional,’ I said.
‘Fine,’ she replied, without looking up.
The dog and I had a few well-trodden routes that we took on evening walks but that night I didn’t feel the pull of the castle’s grounds or any of the woods on the eastern side of town, so we walked without a specific destination or path in mind, letting our feet make the decisions.
Eventually we ended up on what was technically called the Marine Parade even though the locals all just referred to it as the harbourfront, if they were that specific at all. We walked parallel to the shoreline and listened to the wind whip the water into waves that threw themselves against the seawall a few hundred metres out. Nights like this made me wary of the sea – more so than usual – though Webb didn’t appear bothered.
We walked away from the pier toward the foot of the castle and when the weather overwhelmed us, I decided we should call into the White Horse Inn for a swift one. It wasn’t my habit to frequent pubs, I wasn’t much of a drinker, but there were times when the idea of a cosy, warm pub on a cold, dark wintery evening seemed the most sensible course of action. And this pub in particular always felt welcoming.
Away from the draughts of the door, we settled in and my thoughts drifted to London and my daughter. I pictured her life as best I could but having never once gone to London myself I only knew it from pictures and even then it was only the newsworthy areas or places popular with tourists that I had seen. Piccadilly Circus, Oxford Street, the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. Trafalgar Square. I had no idea what the residential areas looked like, so in my mind they looked like Dover but on a much grander scale.
I tried my best to imagine Harriet going out to the butcher’s and the green grocers, doing her weekly shop as Martha had always done but I realised that I was just substituting our life for hers. Knowing the insignificant details of her life felt important even though I knew they weren’t the issue, but it was easier to focus on the inconsequential, the trivial. It brought my attention to the fact that my assumptions about our relationship had been inaccurate for years. I had thought that I knew her well, knew her character and person in the way that only a parent could but the revelations of Boxing Day indicated otherwise. When had this happened? When had we grown apart? Because now it felt that it had happened much less recently than Christmas.
I sunk a pint and tried to work out how I might bring myself to overlook my daughter’s choices because that seemed like the only solution if I wanted to be part of her life again. What would have been preferable of course was if she hadn’t mentioned it in the first place. What could we have possibly gained from knowing?
These were not helpful thoughts and so I pushed them from my mind. What would it take to bring her back into the fold?
I went to the bar and got another pint and as I was sitting down I knew exactly what I would have to do. Apologise. There was simply nothing else for it.
An apology. It was so simple. I’m sorry, Harriet. That was all I needed to say but the thing about that was that I would have to mean it. By uttering those few, small words I would sanction her actions and negate my own. And I didn’t know if I had it in me to do it, though I knew it was the right thing to do.
I got up and asked the barman for a piece of paper and a biro. I didn’t trust myself to have the courage to say it over the phone.
My hand was positioned at the top of the paper for a long time as I thought of her face next to me at the dinner table that evening. How wretched she must have felt. When my thoughts wandered to my own feelings I pushed them away.
Focus on her, I told myself. Focus on everything else about her that you love. She is an accumulation of hundreds and thousands of other things. She is not just someone who has made the wrong choice. It’s not your choice, it’s hers. It’s her life.
Eventually, I was able to begin.
Dear Harry, I wrote.
And then I didn’t know what to say. All I had to do was write I’m sorry. It should not have been hard.
I thought of Martha, a few miles off the French coast right where the currents pick up. I remembered watching her exhaust herself swimming just to keep in place as the wind picked up and the chop increased to the point where the bright yellow of her bonnet appeared intermittently. She did not give up, though I’m certain part of her wanted to.
Dear Harry,
I read your article that was in today’s Guardian. It was very good, well-written, balanced, informed. I’m so proud of you. You’re a talented young woman and you have accomplished a lot.
I remember when you were a little girl and you sat on my lap and we read the paper together. I hope I have had a positive influence on you and the choices you’ve made in your career.
I can’t pretend to understand all the decisions you’ve made in your life and I can’t say I agree with them either.
But what I can say is that you are my daughter and I love you.
I read the short note back and had no idea if it would be enough.
When Webb and I got home, the lights were off except the one over the front door. It was late – for us – and Martha would have gone to bed. I shuffled through the drawers in the kitchen and the lounge, looking for the address book, an envelope, and postage. It was important to have the letter ready to send in the morning in case I lost my nerve.
I found what I needed and put the letter in the breast pocket of my jacket. In the morning, the nearer I got to the letterbox, the more nervous I became. The letter slipped through the slot with ease and that was that. In the days and weeks that followed I waited, hoping for a reply but nothing came. I had been rebuffed.
That evening as Martha and I sat pretending to eat our roast dinner and acting out a normal Sunday I promised myself that I would not make the same mistake again. I would not wait until it was too late to do anything.
‘Martha,’ I said. ‘I love you.’
She was in the middle of chewing and nearly choked on her food.
‘John, are you alright?’
I put my hand on her arm. ‘What makes you think I’m not?’
‘It’s a bit out of the blue.’
It’s a strange thing to be pleased and dismayed simultaneously. Her shock at my outburst led me to wonder if I ought to remind her of how much she meant to me more often.
‘I don’t say that enough, do I?’
‘You don’t need to tell me something I already know.’
‘Don’t you like hearing it?’
‘I do, it’s just… unusual.’
I pushed the pl
ate with my uneaten dinner away. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
‘Eat your dinner.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know, but it’s what I want,’ she said. ‘This cannot take over our lives.’
‘How can it not? You’re ill.’
‘I’ll get better.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t.’
‘What happens if you don’t?’
‘You’ll carry on.’
‘Not without you.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. You know perfectly well you will.’
I thought of the moment when I had first seen her. She had been riding her bicycle down by the sea. I had promised myself I would find out who she was. I had gone to great lengths to meet her and convince her to go out with me.
As I listened to the water sloshing about in the sink as she washed the plates, I thought about the moments in my life when more had been expected of me. They were small moments mostly, but a few bigger ones too.
I remembered dragging her out of the sea when I thought she might not make it and I remembered asking her to come out – voluntarily – for me. I had asked her to give up a part of herself and I remembered when she had one day asked for it back.
There she was in a white dress saying yes, then in hospital holding Harriet our first born and then again with Iain. To my eye they both took after her: hazel eyes, pronounced cupid’s bows above their mouths, and freckles when they were younger. I remember the way Martha looked at me when I first held our daughter. It was as if she couldn’t believe it.
I saw her left hand when I finally put the ring on her finger and I could feel the smoothness of the pebbles I had collected for each swim she did. And the tan lines, oh, the tan lines. If ever there were anything more alluring than that I had not seen it. They criss-crossed her back and were such a constant that I forgot their uniqueness.
I thought of Martha and of all the things she had done for me in the course of our life together. And I imagined what it would be like if she were gone.
No one would make my dinner and sit with me while I ate. It was selfish, but true. I was completely capable of making it myself but a lack of ability on my part was not why I was upset. And it was not why she cooked for me. Part of it was because she cared for me. It was why she washed and ironed my clothes, why she held my hand, and why she had stayed with me all these years even when I was unbearable. The bed would be empty if she were gone. She wouldn’t pull my arm around as she waited for sleep. No one would kiss me first thing in the morning and last thing at night.
Without Martha what would our home be? Just four walls and a roof, and the idea of it made me sick. I went up behind her and wrapped my arms around her, snuggling my head in the crook of her neck.
‘John,’ she said. ‘I’m busy.’
I spun her around slowly and admired her face. I took a breath, as though to speak, but found that I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell her how scared I was.
She put her hand – covered in a soapy, wet Marigold glove – on my shoulder, closed her eyes and leaned into me, her head resting on my chest. I smelled the almond-scented shampoo she used and knew that it would always be her shampoo in my mind.
‘I’ll fight it,’ she said.
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll think of it like a swim. Focus, commitment.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Don’t confuse it with something you love.’
‘It will take the same amount of strength and determination.’
‘It will ruin the sea.’
‘Since when did you side with the sea?’
‘Always,’ I said.
‘You have not.’
‘I have always sided with you, and you have always sided with the sea.’
It was true.
The letter I had written to Harriet had provoked nothing in the way of a response and after a month I had forgotten about it, so three months later, when the grey sky had taught itself some new colours and the rain had worn itself out, I was surprised to see the letter waiting for me on the kitchen table.
It was unopened with the words “no longer at this address” scrawled across the address. I had wished Martha hadn’t seen it. I decided that either Harriet had moved or – more likely – had refused to open it in silent protest, and in sending it back she was forcing me to bear witness to my own failures.
I picked it up and turned it over in my hands and Martha didn’t mention it, instead she went to the sideboard and got the address book out. She set it on the table, open to the right page and pointed.
‘Try again,’ she said, her finger stabbing at what I assumed was Harriet’s most recent address.
I shook my head. ‘What’s the point? She knows everything I’ve said in here.’
‘Knowing isn’t the same thing as hearing.’
So I put the unopened envelope in a larger envelope and addressed it correctly. I put it in the post box and hoped for the very, very best.
The Marigold gloves had soaked through my shirt but I didn’t let go of Martha. I leaned back and looked at her, committing to memory all the things I had already stored about her face and I said the things that we both knew and that we both needed to hear.
‘I love you,’ I said.
‘I won’t let this hurt you,’ she said.
‘I promised to protect you and I will. I promised I would love you forever and I will.’
Her eyes got wet and she nodded. ‘I know, John.’
The Tide Turned
There were good days and bad days, but it was impossible to predict when they would arrive. All we could do was muddle through as best we could. It was our shared life that we navigated together and I don’t know if it was the one John had imagined for us, if it had changed in ways he hadn’t anticipated or if – when we were young and first married – he had considered our future at all beyond the perfunctory basics: marriage, home, children. A short checklist that would grow into a life.
No, that’s unkind. In truth, I didn’t know what he wanted and hoped for, what the contents of his dreams for us were because I had never asked. I hadn’t thought he would need to be asked, but like many things with my husband the truth was not all what I had imagined.
I heard him creaking down the stairs as I rested my head on the gloriously cold bathroom tiles and I wondered which John would be joining me that morning: the lucid one or the more recent version of himself, a man who had recently proven himself rather adept at time travel, skipping backwards and forwards through the years at uneven speeds.
Webb had been guarding either the door or me, it was hard to tell, all night and he roused himself when he heard John’s footsteps. The pair of them shuffling with uneven gaits as they crossed the kitchen, angling towards one another and meeting at the counter where the dog would be hoping for the crusts, which he saw as payment for a hard night’s work.
The kitchen tap ran and a few moments later I heard him put what I knew to be the empty glass on the counter. I counted to five and when he cleared his throat I smiled and took comfort in knowing so deeply someone else’s habits.
I tested the waters and slowly lifted my head off the tiles, the aches in my body seeking out recesses in my joints that I had never known existed. When my head was level with my shoulders I paused, waiting to see if the nausea would strike again. I thought of all the times I’d been in the boat, speeding back across the chop for three hours from Cap Gris Nez and how I had never once been seasick. I thought of this new development darkly as a way of making up for lost time, my days and nights spent here next to the toilet, holding on for dear life as my stomach convulsed and my insides burned.
There was a gentle knock on the door. ‘Martha?’ he asked.
I managed a feeble reply. ‘Yes.’
I could imagine my daughter and her wife seeing this sort of behaviour as antithetical to a marriage. I would not have been surprised if they left the bathroom door open at all times and believed
privacy was a barrier to be overcome.
‘Are you alright?’ he asked.
Questions that were once banal became imperative overnight. Commonplace questions that we hadn’t previously considered our answers to now had the potential to become life-changing.
‘Yes,’ I said.
I had no idea if it was true or not. Along with my left breast, I had lost the ability to tell.
‘I’m putting the kettle on,’ he said.
‘Good.’
‘Will I make two?’
‘Hot water, lemon and honey,’ I said. The trick was to avoid dehydration and that I knew how to do.
While the kettle boiled I hoisted myself into a seated position, pushing my top half up to lean back against the tub and I was dismayed to see how shrivelled and weak my arms had become. The muscles that had dragged me to and from France and that had propelled me through the sea over countless miles had become shadows of their former selves. The skin hung off what used to be biceps, and the deltoids that had always caused so much trouble when I had tried to squeeze them into women’s blouses now looked beaten and withered.
John knocked on the door again. ‘You decent?’
‘Yes, come in.’
He opened the door and I laughed at the sight of him: worn flannel pyjamas, tartan dressing gown, white hair stood on end like a mad professor carrying a tray full of tea things.
‘You needn’t have made such a fuss,’ I said as he shuffled in.
He balanced the tray on the edge of the sink. ‘Nonsense. If you’re going to do something…’
‘You may as well do it properly,’ I finished.
He set my drink on the floor.
Webb wormed his way into the room, coming up to me and sniffing my feet, legs, and arms and then apparently unable to resist, licked my face and when I pushed him away he looked crushed.
‘Good dog,’ I said and he settled himself in the doorway, guarding the threshold from potential intruders.
John looked around for a place to sit. ‘Crowded in here.’
I motioned to the toilet. ‘Sit there,’ I suggested.
He shook his head and climbed into the tub. ‘You might need that.’