‘You had “a little talk” with her, Madam.’
‘So.’
‘So that started all this, and whatever you said brought on this fit of conscience.’
‘I can’t remember saying anything that could have.’
‘She said you’d made her think about what being a mother meant –’
‘Oh, that …’
‘Yes, that. It was embarrassing listening to her, frankly. Why did you go to stay with her anyway? She never got round to telling me.’
‘I was on a job. It was convenient.’
‘Liar.’
‘Oh well, no, I was supposed to be on a job, sort of, but I was trying to trace that stupid painting in the box, the unfinished thing –’
‘Did you?’
‘What do you think? Anyway, your mother saw it and she remembered a lot about it, but I’m not going to tell you, because I don’t want to talk about it. I left it with her, it’s over –’
‘And so you had a girly heart-to-heart about me?’
‘No. We just got talking –’
‘Just? Pray, just me no just – what do you mean, just?’
‘I can’t remember how it came about, honestly I can’t. You just came up. She and you. Talking about the wretched painting and Susannah, the whole mother thing, that kind of stuff. She seemed so nice suddenly, and she’d asked earlier if I remembered those dancing classes we went to –’
‘Spare me the nostalgia.’
‘Fine. But that’s what happened. She does love you, Rory, I’m sure she does. Think what it must have cost her to ring you up and ask for your forgiveness –’
‘Heh! She did no such thing. There was no “asking for forgiveness”. Good God, she –’
‘OK, OK, exaggeration, but she did ring up and I think you should respond. I think you should go and see her, and Hector, pay a flying visit and see how it goes.’
It was so tempting to choose that moment to tell him what Hector had told me, and yet I hesitated. Rory’s reactions were never dependable. He would not necessarily dissolve with sympathy for his mother just because she’d had a baby only a few weeks old who died of a cot death. He would be more likely to home in on Susannah’s involvement and to relish, in a way I would hate, the drama of the confrontation between the sisters. And he would want to know more details and might harass his mother to give them to him. He’d want to know the baby’s name and whether she had a grave and poor Isabella might loathe his open curiosity. He’d touch something she had buried deeply and perhaps cause her great pain. And once told, Rory would ignore all my pleas to be tactful and careful – I would have no control over him. He might even be angry that I imagined this revelation excused or at least offered some sort of explanation for his mother’s attitude to him. There was just no knowing. So all I felt I could do was urge him to go and see Isabella and try to be friends. It was cowardly, but it seemed safest. ‘Pay a flying visit to them,’ I repeated. ‘Please, Rory, I think you should.’
‘I’ve said I will.’
‘Brilliant.’
‘But only if you come with me.’
‘No.’
‘You have to. I can’t go on my own. You have to help.’
‘No. I promised myself I’m not going back to Edinburgh ever. It’s all in the past and I’m finished with the past – it does my head in.’
‘But you love the past, you dote on it … those blue-remembered hills, tra la …’
‘Shut up, Rory.’
He did, and then he fell asleep. He turned towards me, as I lay on my back listening to him, murmured, ‘Goodnight,’ and fell asleep. I knew that would happen, I knew I’d get stuck with him for the night. I could have prodded him awake and forced him out, but he looked so sweet asleep, like a child and not a thirty-something man. No other man I’d slept with had ever looked like Rory. Those other male faces which had slept next to mine had always seemed emphatically masculine, the beginnings of a beard bristling round the chin and mouth, skin coarsened in frowns and grimaces, but Rory’s face was smooth and blond and bland in repose. He was still a pretty boy and I found myself wishing his mother could see him.
I didn’t sleep. I lay and thought about Tony and knew I would have to go to see him. I practised in my head how it would be: the still ward, the sight of him bandaged and hooked up to drips, the pity it would arouse in me. Would he be able to speak? He would see me at his side and probably say my name and hold out a hand, if he had a hand free to hold out, and I, what would I say and do? I was not going to kiss him, nor would I cry or murmur endearments. I’d touch him, if I could, if there was an arm I could safely stroke, but I would not embrace him even if it were possible – not give him hope that all would go on to be well between us. I only wanted to show him I was not heartless and that I cared about his injuries. But as I went over this scenario, I was obliged to contemplate another. Suppose the sight of Tony stirred more than pity in me? Suppose common-or-garden compassion gave way to tenderness and a desire to be with him again? I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to succumb to that sort of emotion with all that might result. I wanted to keep myself apart and yet not be heartless.
Rory woke up about an hour later, just as I was on the verge of at last dropping off myself. He moaned, said he had a terrible headache, and I got up and brought him some aspirin. While he was making a production out of taking it, I rang the hospital again. He listened, face lighting up with the realisation something dramatic was going on. All he heard me say was Tony’s name and how was he, but it was enough.
‘Tony?’ he said, when I put the receiver down. ‘In hospital?’
‘An accident. Don’t ask me, I don’t know. His mother left a message. He’s in intensive care but stable.’ Rory leaned on one elbow and studied my expression without saying anything. ‘Don’t look at me like that.’
‘I always thought you made a mistake there,’ he said.
‘Did you now?’
‘Chucking him out, for no reason, lovely, lovely Tony. If I’d been so lucky …’
‘If you’re awake you could go now.’
‘Oh, come on, Catherine, it’s half past four.’
‘So? You’ve often been out till half past four.’
‘Tube hasn’t started yet.’
‘It will have done by the time you’ve walked all the way to Highgate to get it. You can make yourself some coffee first, if you like, and have a shower.’
‘You know what, you’ve been too long living alone.’
‘And you haven’t?’
‘I’m hardly ever on my own even if I live on my own. But you, you’re growing weirder every day on your own. I bet you talk to yourself. It’s that bloody box –’
‘Don’t call it that. I won’t have it cursed.’
‘It wasn’t a curse, but it’s put a curse on you.’
‘Don’t be so stupid, so ridiculous. It’s had no effect on me at all.’
‘Ha! It’s made you twice as irritable as you usually are, and three times as moody.’
‘Well, I’ve given up now. Not that it’s any of your business.’
‘Finding mother time is over?’
‘Charlotte was my mother.’
‘Oh, not that again. You’re like a cracked record when you get on to that – ’ and he mimicked me saying that Charlotte was my mother.
‘You’ve always exaggerated how wonderful Charlotte was and how you adored her. It never convinced me …’
‘Shut up, Rory. I hate you when –’
‘Of course you hate me when. You’re full of hate. The minute anyone disagrees with you, it’s hate, hate, hate –’ and he spat the word out again and again. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what I hate. I hate people who work so bloody hard at creating illusions, like you’ve done, with boring old Charlotte, as if you were terrified to admit you knew she was dull and boring and not what you wanted your mother to be any more than my mother is what I want a mother to be.’
I left the room, slamming the door, and
ran into the bathroom, where I turned both taps on to drown the sound of Rory still yelling at me. He came and banged on the door and shouted through it that he was going; then he went, banging every door he could, viciously. I sat on the edge of the bath, trembling. As ever, Rory knew how to wound. Even when I knew that what he’d said was not true his stabbing accusations hurt. And always, there was the merest, most fleeting fear in the back of my mind that he had identified something in me I had never allowed myself to think. He was wrong to say I had not loved and adored and been happy with Charlotte, but maybe it was true that I had never admitted she was not, in every respect, the mother I wanted.
It took me ages to calm down. I knew I should go to see Tony, but I couldn’t, not in the state Rory had left me in.
I slept a couple of hours and woke feeling so dreadful I knew it would have been better not to have slept at all. Not even a stingingly cold shower made me feel more alive and I couldn’t face coffee. I dressed all in black, which was probably tactless in the circumstances, but I couldn’t be bothered to choose different clothes and just pulled on the trousers and sweater and jacket that were to hand. There was no point in driving because I’d never be able to park anywhere near the UCH, so I took a bus and was glad it got stuck in traffic and didn’t reach Gower Street for an hour. I sat listlessly, staring out of the window on to the crowded streets and pavements, but seeing nothing, thinking only of the Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford where Charlotte had died. Day after day I went to that place, dreading it, the atmosphere, the smells. Often when I came out I had to lean against the wall and steady myself, I was so dizzy with the tension of escaping. Once, I fainted in a lavatory there. A safe place to pass out, a hospital lavatory: plenty of nurses around to see to me, you would have thought, but the joke – joke? – was that nobody was there and I came round from my faint on my own and saw to myself.
It’s fear, of course. It must be. Fear that I will come to this, lying ill, and dying perhaps, in such a place, trapped, with no hope. I think of the pain and the horror of missing limbs and of terrible sores that will not heal and of the cruelties and indignities of suffering. And I even feel faint if I don’t get out quickly enough. Charlotte knew and said I must not put myself through this ordeal and I said I despised myself and that it was she who was enduring the ordeal and nothing would keep me away. ‘Just going to the loo,’ I’d say about twice every half-hour towards the end, and then I’d dash to the lavatory and splash my face with cold water, or sit with my head between my knees till the dizziness passed. It did poor Charlotte no good at all. And now here I was, about to go into another hospital to see another very ill person, and I was behaving as badly as ever.
So why was I doing it? I am not a good person. I don’t do things because it is the right thing to do them. I shirk what others see as my duty all the time, just like Rory. I’d brave a hospital for him, too, of course, for Rory. For my parents and for Rory I could always force myself to do anything, but for Tony? It wasn’t moral blackmail: his mother hadn’t pushed me with her phone call. It was more a need to face up to something, but I hadn’t a clue what it was. Settle something, be sure of something about myself which had only emerged lately. The noise as I got off the bus in Euston Road and walked round to Gower Street and the hospital was for once welcome – because of it I couldn’t think at all. I went in at the main door numb with apprehension, my jacket collar turned up against imaginary draughts and my hands folded across my chest as though holding myself together. I didn’t know the way, but I didn’t trust myself to speak at all and relied on the many notices and signs to direct me to the ward I’d been told Tony was in. On and on I walked, down dreary corridors, up flights of stairs, past the stretchers and trolleys and all the impedimenta of hospitals, sucked further and further into this world I loathed. I felt, long before I found the right ward, that I’d lost any identity I had ever had.
I couldn’t just walk in to see him and walk out again. The intensive care part of the ward he was in was more of a large cubicle than anything else, cut off from the main ward but visible from it through glass panels. There were four beds in it, all occupied. I had to give my name to a nurse sitting at a table at the far end of the ordinary ward and she referred to a list. I thought how lucky it would be if my name was not on it – I hadn’t, after all, said I would visit, nobody knew I would come – but it was. Only family and close friends who had the family’s permission were allowed to visit, and then only one at a time for no more than ten minutes and not more than four visitors in any one day. The nurse told me all this while she held out a white gown thing and a gauze mask to put on, explaining there was a risk of taking infection into the unit and these were a precaution. My hands trembled as I tried to tie the strings of the mask, and she did it for me, smiling sympathetically. Tony should fall in love with this nurse, who was what a nurse should be, and marry her.
He was in the far corner of the unit. She took me in, past the other still beds. The silence was not complete – there were various hissings from machines and odd rhythmic clickings – but it was intense behind these superficial sounds. Tony was stripped to the waist, half propped up with a tube coming out of his right armpit and another from his side. I hadn’t asked what his injuries were and the nurse had presumed I’d know. But I could see that though his head and chest were bandaged his face was unmarked, and that he had both arms and legs. The nurse checked something to do with one of the tubes and then indicated she would leave. She pointed at her watch and held up all ten fingers and mouthed she would return. I held up five of my own and mouthed, ‘Enough, thank you,’ and she nodded.
His eyes were closed. He needed a shave. His skin, usually olive-coloured and easily tanned, was yellow. There were dark, dark shadows under his eyes. I could easily take either of his hands. They were not bandaged. They lay by his side, inert, the palms upwards. He was always so fit and strong and his body now, whatever damage had been done internally, still looked whole and healthy, the muscles in his shoulders clearly defined. It wasn’t like looking at Charlotte, all wasted as she was, a skeleton by the end. I could look at Tony and not flinch. There was nowhere to sit – there wasn’t much space at all – so I stood motionless, looking at him. Then he opened his eyes, slowly, as though the lids weighed a ton, and through the slits he saw me. His eyes were dark brown, like mine, and with so little of the eyelids lifted only a black glint showed. I held my breath, praying he was so doped up he would not be able to recognise me, but slowly the eyelids closed again and instead of feeling relief I felt dismayed.
Now I did take his hand, timidly, placing mine over his, lightly, covering it rather than holding it. He was hot, the skin on the back of his hand burning. I exerted the slightest of pressures and his eyes opened fractionally again. ‘Tony?’ I murmured. His lips parted a little and his eyes opened a little further, but he frowned and looked in pain and I was afraid to repeat his name. I felt strangely breathless and kept trying to swallow, over and over again, as though I were practising to say something. But there was nothing I could say even if any words were capable of reaching him. I could lean over and whisper in his ear that it was me, Catherine, and that I loved him. Except I wasn’t sure that I did, or even that I ever truly had – not as he wished me to, not enough to link myself with him for ever and let myself be absorbed into his life. All I wanted him to know was that I had come because I was sorry for what had happened to him, sorry to see him in this state, and I cared about him, and had always wanted to remain friends. It wouldn’t be enough.
The nurse came back and I lifted my hand from his and turned and left the unit with her. I thought myself completely composed, but she must have thought otherwise because she urged me to take a seat for a moment in the corridor and brought me a glass of water. ‘He’s improving,’ she said. ‘He’s stable now, doing well. He’ll probably be moved into the ward tomorrow and be more alert.’ I nodded and thanked her, and asked if I could leave a note. She brought me a Biro and a piece of paper and the
n tactfully left me to write whatever I wanted.
I sat for ages, wondering what I did want to write. All I wanted was for him and his mother to know that I’d been, but for neither of them to get the wrong idea. Finally, I wrote only a couple of lines, saying I’d come to say how sorry I was to see him so ill but that I’d been told he was stable and improving and I hoped he would soon be better. I said I would come again, when he was feeling better. And I signed it ‘Love, Catherine’. Anything less would have sounded too cold, too harsh in the circumstances – even for me. There wasn’t an envelope available, so I folded the paper over and made a little packet of it, and printed Tony’s name on the front. I didn’t care if anyone else read it; it wasn’t private.
My definition of happiness is coming out of a hospital. The moment I leave one, no matter what I have left behind, I feel giddy not only with the release of tension but with joy that I am alive and well and able to walk away unhindered. God knows, Gower Street is a noisy, ugly street and walking round to Tottenham Court Road nothing improves, but I felt exhilarated, thrilled to be striding out and breathing air which, though heavy with petrol fumes, did not carry the smells of disease and disinfectant upon it. I’d done what I needed to do, I’d gone to see Tony, and I’d been lucky in more ways than one. If he’d been fully conscious, if we’d had to have any dialogue, things might have disintegrated into some sort of distressing scene and I’d have been trapped by my own emotions, forced perhaps to agree that I cared about him more than I found I did. But none of that had happened. I’d been, I’d left evidence that I’d been, and I’d signalled that I would come again, without saying when.
As I travelled home it occurred to me that, when he came to, Tony might even be angry that his mother had called me, and she would have to defend herself by telling him he’d asked for me himself. He might deny that he had, it would amount to such loss of face to him, or say she ought to have realised he was in agony, or drugged, and didn’t know what he was saying. I thought how lucky I’d been in a trivial way, too, choosing to visit the hospital so early in the morning. The nurse had told me Tony’s parents had rarely left his side until the day before and that they would be back very soon. I didn’t like to think of an encounter with his mother, who would have been blaming me for months for his unhappiness and who would have found it impossible to credit that any woman could resist her son.
The Memory Box Page 24