And as Maisie got milk from the refrigerator she saw it was packed with food in her mother’s neat way. Her mother’s kitchen. Still a kind of home up till now. At least a home if she had wanted one. Now no longer. For she no longer had a mother, she was motherless.
She had lost Michael and now she had lost her mother. In this new motherless, loverless world Maisie would have felt incorporeal if it had not been for her pregnancy, which she now remembered as if she had retrieved it just in time. It comforted her. She began to feel glad, really for the first time, that she was pregnant, and somewhere right at the back of everything, she was relieved that she would not need to tell her mother about it, and felt free in some respect which she did not yet examine.
Neither did she examine the way she knew she was using the pain of her mother’s death to assuage that of her lover’s betrayal, cauterising the first wound with more pain.
Though she kept forgetting that her mother was dead, resting as it were between bouts of pain. There they were, drinking coffee round the table, waiting for her to come in; except she would never come in now. Where had she gone? Where was she? She must be somewhere, Maisie thought. The calendar on the wall had reminders written in Mrs Sharpe’s writing under certain days, and tomorrow there was the Amnesty coffee morning, that was probably what the cheesecake in the fridge was meant for.
Scenes from the past kept replaying themselves, like snatches from an old film – a picnic on the sand dunes, her mother pouring milk from a silver thermos flask. Being measured for a new dress as she stood on the table, the tape measure sliding through her mother’s hands. Running across the daisied grass to her mother who sat in a deckchair slicing up runner beans.
Rose kept going into the bedroom to lie on the bed and sob. Imre looked stricken, almost frightened, as if he did not know quite what he was doing or where he was.
‘Would anyone like a slice of cheesecake?’ asked Maisie. Thèk shook his head and Rose did not bother to reply. It lightened things a little when Leo came back, laden with carrier-bags full of food and drink.
‘I thought we might need it,’ he said, giving Maisie a hug.
‘You’re wonderful,’ said Maisie. She remembered her mother saying of him, ‘So sociable and knowledgeable about things that interest me.’ And almost simultaneously she had a picture of her pouring whisky for Michael, looking at him with detached, cool interest. They would never have been friends, they had little in common. Both gone now, she reminded herself.
Evelyn Sharpe’s funeral was to be not in Brighton, but in the village about twenty miles away where she had been married and lived with her husband for the first years of their marriage and where her husband, Maisie’s father, was buried. Imre Thèk drove them there, Maisie sitting beside him. Leo and Rose sat in the back of the car.
It was a lovely day and Maisie reflected sorrowfully that now her mother’s eyes were closed for ever against the beauty of the world. They had driven through a golden tunnel of laburnum. It had reminded Maisie of one of the illustrations in her Russian fairy-story book – the trees with showering leaves of gold, shining coins in a story similar to the Twelve Dancing Princesses. She had felt no pleasure in the flowery tunnel, she too was cut off from the beauty of the world, or rather, it now inflicted pain, not pleasure. And then Maisie cried tears at last for her mother. She died too soon, no one had time to say anything, finish anything.
‘Behold, I shew you a mystery.’ The thin voice of the young vicar, just out of clergy school by the look of him. Maisie had asked for the Book of Common Prayer – the 1662 version: her mother would have wanted it. The unsurpassed, noble and unflinching words bore them all up. Such is the power of words. It was like being given plain, sustaining food to give them strength to get to the graveside.
Then they sang Evelyn Sharpe’s favourite hymn. It sounded brisk and sensible – ‘who so beset him round, with dismal stories, do but themselves confound’. She was still watching them. At the graveside Leo led Rose to sprinkle earth into the new grave. Maisie stood by herself and wished Michael was with her. Whatever he had done, at that moment she wanted him there, to touch his warm living flesh, to have his living presence there in that place. She remembered the night in the Kiev hotel when he had said, ‘Bones – decay – all part of the same creation,’ and as she stepped forward and looked down into the deep grave, she heard him saying it in his Irish voice.
Perhaps it was being slightly in shock that made her at first mistake the grave-digger, as he rested with his spade over his shoulder, for the hitch-hiker who was going to Swaffham. He did look a little like him, that ambiguous, half-baked look. He did not look altogether on the side of his clients, as if he knew something and wasn’t going to say what it was.
They shook the cold hand of the vicar and left the place, looking back at the grave-digger, now hard at work. Sobbing against her father’s chest, Rose sat in the back of the car again.
‘Shall I drive?’ Maisie asked. Thèk looked drawn and tired, as if he had given up in some inward way.
‘Thank you,’ he said.
Back at the Brighton flat, a weird sort of hilarity set in, as drinks were poured. But there was a guest they were all so aware of. They were aware of it. All of them.
Leo read the will, and it turned out the flat had been left to Thèk. Evelyn’s money went mostly to Maisie, with a useful amount to Rose. She had also left sums of money to various charities and odd small amounts to obscure, probably hard-pressed acquaintances. It was typical of her that there was an up-to-date will, and no mess or confusion about anything.
‘May I take the copy of Alice?’ Maisie asked, as they left.
‘Of course, yes,’ said Thèk. He did not know what to do or which way to turn.
‘Will you live here now?’ Rose asked him, her face blotchy.
‘I don’t know. I have a home,’ said Thèk. Maisie knew it was two rooms over a bookshop.
‘Will you be all right?’ she said.
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘What can we do?’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
Maisie hugged him a little. ‘God bless you,’ she said.
He smiled at this, thinly, ‘Oh – God,’ he said, as if to say, all that means nothing to me, nothing.
As they drove back to London with Leo, Maisie said, ‘We must keep in touch with Thèk.’
‘They were so good together – it’s such a waste,’ said Leo.
‘I hope he stays in Grandma’s flat, I hope he doesn’t sell it,’ said Rose.
When they got back Rose asked her father to stay the night. Leo hesitated. ‘All right, I’ll phone Irene,’ he said.
‘She’ll be all right?’ Maisie looked doubtful.
‘Just one night,’ said Leo. ‘She won’t mind. She has friends nearby.’
‘I’ll go and make up a bed,’ said Rose.
‘Well, I’m quite tired, and it’s still a drive to Hampstead, it would be nice to stay.’
Rose went off to find clean sheets for the swan room.
‘It will help her,’ said Maisie.
‘What about you?’
‘And me. Nothing stays the same. Life offers everything and then it is snatched away. I keep thinking of my mother, on her own like that.’
‘She wouldn’t have known very much – most likely.’
‘We can’t tell. She might have been saved if someone had been there.’
‘Well, you could not possibly have spent your life with her in case she had a sudden stroke. She wouldn’t have wanted that, you would have been in the way. She had her own life – a pretty good life.’
‘Well, she lost a husband and had a daughter who only went to see her when it suited.’
‘She was interested in life, she had friends, a lover – and a very nice daughter and granddaughter.’ Leo took out a handkerchief and blotted her tears.
‘I have broken with Michael,’ said Maisie. It was an effort to actually say the words, making it a reali
ty. Her own words cut her to pieces.
‘Well, there’s plenty more fish in the sea,’ said Leo. ‘He wasn’t really your sort, anyway, Maisie – you must have been aware of that.’ Maisie wished she had not said anything, and turned away, but Leo went on, ‘He was a bit of a surprise to me – self-centred sort of chap. What happened?’
‘Oh, I don’t know – there was another side to him …’ She trailed off, she didn’t want to think about it, talk about it.
‘You’re feeling low,’ said Leo. ‘Why don’t you come and stay with us for a bit?’
‘Oh, Leo, you are funny.’ Maisie pressed her hands to her eyes.
‘I never wanted to let you go. I really wanted us three to live together, Irene, you and me – and Rose if she wanted to. The whole trouble was – it wasn’t that I didn’t want you, it wasn’t ever that. I just wanted more than one life. That was it.’
Rose came back and said should she make coffee.
‘It’s cold,’ she said, switching on the fire. ‘Bring your chairs round the fire.’
The three of them drew nearer to the heat.
‘Do you think Grandma can see us?’
‘Who knows?’ said Leo.
‘It does feel like it,’ said Maisie. They fell silent, watching the bright filaments of the fire.
‘I may as well tell you both,’ Maisie said at last. ‘I’m pregnant.’
Leo looked at her. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘I remembered what you were like last time. It makes you more beautiful.’
‘What a mess you have got yourself in,’ said Rose. ‘Why isn’t he here? I bet he’s turned out to be married or something.’
‘Something like that,’ said Maisie. She wanted to get away from them both. She felt as if something was crushing the breath from her, as if she was shut up in a box.
‘Well, we’ll help to sort things out,’ said Rose. ‘Won’t we?’ She put her hand on her father’s knee.
For a moment Maisie remembered why she had let another woman take away her husband. Everything is about power, she thought wearily.
‘I’m tired,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed.’
She slept soundly that night and did not wake until she saw Leo standing there with a morning cup of coffee for her.
‘I must be off,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring very soon.’
‘Thanks for everything,’ she said.
‘If you need anything …’
‘Thanks.’
‘I’ve said goodbye to Rose. She’s crying again. You’d better go and see her.’
‘It’s better to cry.’
‘Yes, I know. Goodbye, Maisie.’ He kissed her cheek, and then her mouth. ‘If you fancy a ménage à trois, just give me a ring.’
‘Oh, Leo, you bloody idiot.’
‘It would be fun.’
‘Oh, yes, marvellous fun.’
‘I brought your letters up.’
Among them was one from Professor Werner. And a grand-looking invitation to some sort of White Russian fund-raising shindig. And there was a letter from Ireland.
4
MAISlE looked at the letter from Ireland lying in the fold of the duvet. She picked it up again. It had a Dublin postmark. Michael’s fast, free-flowing handwriting. She thought about tearing it up unopened. She thought about just putting it away inside a book and trying to forget it. She thought about returning it. She opened it.
She read through a mist of something like terror.
Dearest Maisie,
Maisie, listen – I have to try to wheedle my way back to you. Listen, Maisie, all I want to do is follow you, and make you come back to me. What stops me – something – I don’t know. Perhaps I am afraid of you, I think you will destroy something that must not be destroyed. I’m going to try to make you understand about Kate. No, don’t go away, Maisie, please listen. Because I love you and you love me.
It’s hard for me to talk about Kate to you. It must be hard for you to listen – if you are.
This is it, how it is – the truth of the whole damned thing. She sort of rescued me when I was about fifteen – made sure I’d end up heterosexual. I’m grateful to her and I do love her in a way, Maisie. We’ve had this sexual thing going since I can’t remember – it’s always been there. How could I just turn her away? I couldn’t.
I'm sorry, Maisie. But it’s a background, ordinary thing that’s always been there. It’s nothing like the way I feel about you. How am I going to get you back? I know you will be full of damned principles and arguments, all the while I know we want each other. Are you going to batter our love to death? I suppose you’ll say I did that. I was taken by surprise, Maisie – I had not thought she would expect everything to be the same. I reckoned bringing you to Ireland would end it naturally. But she thought things would be the same, and I couldn’t hurt her. She seemed to take you into the arrangement – that’s what took me by surprise. It was not intended on my part. I couldn’t just chuck her out. To be honest, Maisie, I never could do that ever. I’m not saying it’s over with her – it’s one of those things that’s never over. I realise that now. I would change it if I could. I can’t bear to lose you through it.
Can you understand and tell me what to do?
I suppose in some way I have always been in the hands of women, and expect them to sort things out. Sort it out for me, Maisie.
And I suppose I was always expected eventually to marry Kate when her grandmother died. She is close to my mother – something like a daughter, someone for my mother to have as an ally against the men – drunken useless lot that we are. Somehow Liam’s wife never fitted into the daughter slot – it was always Kate.
I don’t love her in the same desperate way that I love you, Maisie. She is not my sister, but in one way that is what she is. Can I keep her and have you too, Maisie? No? I suppose not.
I made a mistake taking you to Ireland. I wanted to bring my life together, the different parts of it, it didn’t work at all – why did I think it might?
This letter is reaching out for you, don’t let me go. Why did we meet and fall in love if it is going to end like this? We still love each other. I thought we had something we would never throw away. Don’t throw it away, Maisie. I know you want me still. One thing I have learned – true human passion, like ours, is quite rare. Did you know that? I must see you, Maisie. Don’t throw it away – it is a gift.
Michael
Maisie put the letter back in the envelope, and went over to her bookshelf, taking a book at random and hiding the letter from herself between its leaves, replacing the book, not noticing which one it was. She chose her clothes for the day, smoothing out the brown woollen skirt and laying it on the bed, finding a blouse to go with it, and a long casual jacket.
The second ménage à trois she had been offered in twenty-four hours, she thought bitterly. She thought this with the civilised part of her brain. There was another part that knew he was speaking only the truth, this part was telling her to write back at once saying she still loved him, asking him to come to her on the next boat – or the next flight, whichever would be quicker.
She stood under the shower, shocking her flesh by turning the temperature up very hot and then very cold – she emerged gasping for breath. She dressed and rubbed her hair half-dry, and fastened a pearl necklace under the collar of her blouse. She slipped the letter from Germany and the invitation to the monarchists’ ball into her jacket pocket. Last of all she put on a little eye shadow and, using her finger, a trace of lipstick. With these rituals of daily life she was attempting to hold on to herself, that self that was called Maisie Shergold. For she was beginning to feel as if split into two people, two Maisies. These two Maisies argued with each other, pulled different ways, and her comings and goings now began to be accompanied by this internal dispute. Sometimes one or the other of these Maisies won for a while, and she felt on firmer ground, but it never lasted. All the time everyday life had to go on, outwardly undisturbed by the racket in her head.
She went down to Rose’s, tapping on the door with one hand and opening it with the other. ‘Come up and have some breakfast, Rose,’ she said. Rose’s face was swollen with crying.
‘Come on,’ said Maisie, ‘we have to keep going. I’ll pop out and get some croissants. You get some coffee on.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Rose.
‘Yes, come with me.’
When they got out, passing a coffee-shop Maisie suggested they had breakfast there. They sat in the cheerful little place feeling wan and ghostly. ‘I hate the world,’ said Rose, tearing her roll up into pieces. ‘And most of all I hate places like this – bright, cheery places – it’s all so false. A veneer over the dreadfulness of life. And look at that woman – how can she bear to get up in the morning and put all that stuff on her face, curl her hair – she’s taken ages over it – put pearls round her neck? It’s all such a waste of time.’ She was looking savagely not at her mother but at a pretty woman behind the counter, dispensing cream puffs and éclairs with an indulgent air.
‘It’s pathetic. People are pathetic,’ said Rose.
‘Eat,’ said Maisie.
‘What is the use of life?’
‘It is a gift,’ said Maisie. ‘Don’t throw it away.’
But she did not feel it as such – she spoke in this way because she felt she had a duty to help her daughter, her own flesh and blood, survive this. The survival of her genes, she thought. And she loved and pitied Rose with her bleak look, her eyes which looked so drained of light.
‘Just when Grandma was so happy,’ said Rose. ‘What is the sense in that? Nothing good ever seems to happen.’
‘It’s not what happens.’ Maisie raked about in the ragbag of her mind. ‘It’s what you do with it.’
‘But death – Grandma was happy and she just died. What is death?’
‘It’s a bridge,’ said Maisie. ‘It’s part of a journey.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
Maisie hesitated. ‘I really believe I haven’t seen the last of Grandma.’
‘A life after death?’
‘I don’t know about that – but I don’t think life just stops. Perhaps I think life and death happen simultaneously – I mean, when we are in life we are in death and vice versa. Two sides of the same coin.’
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