Michael, Michael

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Of course,’ he smiled. ‘I’ll draw the curtains properly. The sun’s coming through that gap. It’s a marvellous day outside, you know – sun and snow together.’

  She shut her eyes. Sun and snow were both too cruel. One glared and mocked; the other glared and froze.

  ‘Goodnight, then,’ he said softly, still fiddling with the curtains. ‘Or should I say good morning? It’s well after ten o’clock.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘Goodnight.’ It was night till she found Michael, but she was already halfway there. This other Michael had been sent to help – she knew that beyond all doubt.

  ‘Afternoon?’ groaned Tessa, sitting up in bed again, remembering where she was this time, and why she’d woken up to find a strange man in her room. ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘It’s five past one,’ said Michael, ‘which is strictly speaking afternoon. I came to see if you wanted any lunch.’

  Tessa asked her stomach, astonished when it shouted ‘Yes!’ How could she be hungry, and no longer have a headache; all the throbbing/churning/griping calmed and quelled? She tried to concentrate. He was running through the menu, expecting her to choose – tomato soup, cheese omelettes, Welsh rarebit, toasted sandwiches. She plumped for toasted sandwiches. They’d be warm and filling, the most solid thing he had mentioned on his list.

  ‘Would cheese and ham be all right?’

  ‘Perfect!’

  ‘And perhaps you’d like to put these on.’ He gestured to the wicker chair, where he had draped a pale pink jersey and a pair of navy slacks. ‘You’re a good bit taller than my wife, so I’m afraid they may not fit. The trousers look miles too short – I can see that straight away. You could wear a pair of mine, instead, but I wasn’t sure if …’ His voice petered out, embarrassed by the mention of his trousers. ‘Anyway, I’ll leave you to get dressed. The bathroom’s just next door. Come down when you’re ready. I’ll be in the kitchen.’

  And where will your wife be? she was tempted to demand. He hadn’t said ‘my ex-wife’, and if her clothes were still around, then it was unlikely she’d waltzed off with someone else. So why wasn’t she at home on New Year’s Day, or helping her husband with the lunch?

  She shrugged, pulled back the curtains, jolted by the scene outside – everything transformed by snow: thick white powdery pristine snow, glittering in the sun, with blue shadows cast across it from bushes iced like Christmas cakes; the lawn criss-crossed with bird-prints. Every branch and smallest twig boasted its white coating; each withered brown hydrangea-head had burst into white bloom. She suddenly felt a child’s delight, longed to race downstairs and play – build a snowman, make her own footmarks on the still virgin garden-path.

  The garden looked familiar – the same size and shape as theirs at home; neat wooden fences either side, and a small shed at the back. This was semi-detached suburban-land – no extensive grounds nor sweeping drives, no ostentatious architecture; each small-boned house no different from its fellows; not allowed to spread, or shout ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ She was back where she’d been born, and surprisingly content with it. She had often criticized her mother’s boring semi, aware how mean and commonplace it was, compared with Vicky’s mansion, or the Harvey-Taylors’ country house, or even Dr Edwards’ place, but today she was almost glad of the confinement. That meagre plot below the window was all the grounds she needed; a child’s bedroom plenty big enough, and it was somehow right and fitting that she’d found refuge in this undistinguished haven.

  It also seemed important that the landscape was disguised – snow shrouding all the landmarks, concealing normal colours, prettifying mundane things like wheelbarrow and washing-line. Even the peg-bag wore a white tiara, and the compost-heap had turned into Mont Blanc. She, too, felt revived – her raw wounds staunched by snow; the sun lighting up her own internal landscape, so that she dared to hope again. The hope was linked to her surroundings, even to the fact that she had no idea where she was; could have fetched up anywhere – a hundred miles from the golf club, or a few short streets away. It gave her a sense of adventure, like someone in a fairy tale who had entered an enchanted forest, or set out on a journey – a new beginning, which tied in with the New Year.

  She dashed to the bathroom, bursting for a pee, then washed and cleaned her teeth, feeling guilty when she realized she could well be using Mrs Chalmers’ toothbrush. The wife’s gear was all around – her cleansing cream and make-up on the shelf; her gingham shower-cap hanging on the door. It felt really weird putting on her clothes – the sweater far too skimpy, the trousers barely meeting round the waist, and only reaching halfway down her calves. She never wore that prissy shade of pink, or frumpy fabrics like Crimplene, which made her feel like some menopausal housewife. But there was no sign of her own clothes, so she didn’t have much choice; was forced to go downstairs in her stockinged feet, and with a gap around her midriff. She had expected Michael to laugh, but instead he looked so stricken, her own shy smile died instantly, and they both stood in rigid silence in the kitchen, avoiding each other’s eyes; she mystified by his reaction.

  Suddenly, he swung back to the stove, alerted by a sputtering noise. ‘Blast! The soup’s boiled over.’

  She grabbed a dishcloth, helped him mop it up. ‘I thought we were having toasted sandwiches?’

  ‘We are. They’re done and keeping hot. The soup’s to start with – what’s left of it.’

  It was tinned soup – Heinz tomato – and again she was relieved. She couldn’t quite explain it, but she didn’t fancy exotic food, expensive snobby meals. Everything seemed right – the cramped and humble kitchen – no microwave, no freezer; the cheerful china, with poppies splashed across it; the sunshine-yellow walls.

  Michael tipped the soup into two bowls, put them on a tray with spoons and paper napkins. ‘We’ll eat on our laps in the other room. You can hardly swing a cat in here.’

  ‘I like it, though. It’s cosy.’

  ‘Yes, my wife chose the colour. I wasn’t all that keen at first, but I must admit it’s grown on me.’

  This wife, thought Tessa – everywhere and nowhere. Would she breeze in any moment? Had she gone to work? New Year’s Day was a bank holiday, but some people must still work – traffic wardens, policewomen. She couldn’t imagine Michael’s wife as either; decided not to mention her, didn’t want more complications, when things appeared to have quietened down, at last.

  She followed Michael into the sitting-room, exclaiming at the shields and silver cups. ‘I didn’t realize you were a second Ballasteros.’

  He laughed. ‘I’m not. I’m afraid my handicap’s a struggling seventeen. No, our dogs won those.’ He placed the tray on a low coffee-table between two chintzy chairs, then picked up the largest trophy, weighing it in his hands, fingering the inscription. ‘My wife used to show our three West Highland terriers, and as you can see, they all did rather well. We’ve got so many rosettes upstairs, we could paper a whole room with them.’

  ‘Where are they?’ Tessa asked. ‘The dogs, I mean, not the rosettes.’ Easier to stick to dogs – though perhaps they and Mrs Chalmers were together, at some top-notch championship show, even now posing for the cameras as they carried off yet another prize. But wouldn’t there be some evidence of dogs – leads or baskets or food-dishes – or even a faint doggy smell clinging to the house? There was no trace or whiff at all.

  ‘We … er … gave them away,’ said Michael, settling her into the right-hand chair and passing her a bowl of soup. ‘Fortunately, our favourite went to a friend in the next road, so I still see him at least once a week. In fact, I promised I’d take him out this afternoon, so perhaps you’d like to join me for a walk in Bushey Park?’

  ‘I’d love to,’ Tessa said, spooning in her first mouthful of soup. ‘I’ve never had a dog.’

  ‘Really? I’ve owned dogs all my life. That’s how I met Eileen.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘My … wife. I was out hiking in the pouring rain on the Sussex Downs one Sunday.
It was early March, I remember, and the weather was appalling – not just wet, but really cold and windy. I saw this tiny figure, all wrapped up in waterproofs, with her hair blowing back behind her …’ He paused a moment, savouring the memory, smoothing down his own hair as if he could feel the wind once more. ‘Anyway, it was our dogs who introduced us. My two ounces of Yorkshire terrier attacked her two ton of Great Dane. I’m not sure who got the worst of it!’ The laugh was unconvincing, and his voice had lost its vigour, become constrained, forlorn. She sensed he was making an effort to control himself, especially when he changed the subject to something safe and bland. ‘I do hope the soup’s all right, Tessa. It seems to have got a sort of scum on top. I don’t think it’s meant to boil.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ she said, wishing she dared to call him Michael, as he had called her Tessa. But the name was too explosive, might blow up in her face.

  ‘They say tinned tomato soup is full of sugar, but I’ve always had a sweet tooth,’ he confided.

  ‘So have I.’ They smiled at one another, as if confessing to some secret heinous vice. The smiles were followed by another awkward silence, in which they were both aware of the noise they made swallowing the soup.

  Michael put his spoon down, returned to wife and dogs. ‘Eileen was into big dogs when I met her. Her parents had this huge great place with a jungle of a garden, so Great Danes weren’t a problem. But once we married, we had to scale down. She wasn’t keen on Yorkies, so we compromised with Westies.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen one. What are they like?’

  He abandoned his soup to rummage through the top drawer in the sideboard; came back to his chair clutching sheaves of photographs, which he sorted on his lap, passing some to Tessa with descriptions, explanations.

  ‘That was Snowy as a pup. He’s only a few weeks old there, and still a bit unsteady on his pins. And here’s his mother, Sophie, who gave us quite a shock last year by producing seven puppies, instead of the usual three or four. Oh, and this will make you laugh – Jasper in the river, looking more like a drowned rat! I took it just this summer.’

  ‘You mean you still had the dogs as recently as that?’

  He nodded, gazing at the photo with devotion and regret, as if Jasper were a child he’d lost.

  ‘So why did you get rid of them?’

  It was the longest silence yet. Michael continued shuffling photos, but she noticed that his eyes weren’t really focusing. He was looking inwards, backwards.

  ‘Eileen … passed away,’ he admitted finally, his voice a ghost, a tatter.

  Tessa stared in horror at her navy knees. She was wearing a dead woman’s clothes, a corpse’s Crimplene trousers. Except that Mrs Chalmers wasn’t dead. Michael hadn’t used the word, nor called her his ‘late wife’. She was still his wife; her things all round the house: her apron in the kitchen, her jacket in the hall, even her Woman’s Owns on the table in the corner.

  ‘Hell! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’ Tessa pushed her bowl away, no longer able to eat.

  ‘That’s all right.’ Michael forced a smile. ‘I try not to talk about it. It only happened in the summer – the thirteenth of July – and I was the one who always said thirteen wasn’t unlucky.’

  ‘How did she …? What did she …?’ Tessa stopped, defeated. The word ‘death’ was unavoidable.

  ‘Cancer,’ he mumbled, crumpling up his paper napkin, then shredding it to bits. ‘And it was all so horribly quick. They only diagnosed it in February, and less than five months later, she was …’

  Tessa had never seen a man cry; found she, too, was crying. They sat in their separate chairs, weeping silently and rigidly, as if they wanted to deny their grief, suppress it, or conceal it; not disrupt the lunch. She didn’t have a Kleenex, so tears dripped slowly off her chin on to Mrs Chalmers’ clothes, making tiny damp-stains. Michael’s face was hidden in his large white handkerchief. She could see his shoulders heaving, but he didn’t make a sound. The only noise was from outside – a car reversing in the street, a child’s sudden yelp of laughter. Time seemed to fray and warp, so that instead of minutes passing, she was conscious of whole hopeless months dragging slowly by – months of loss and bitterness; not one grim death, but many.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Michael said at length, putting away his handkerchief and straightening his shoulders; his voice so carefully controlled now, he might have been apologizing for burnt toast or tepid soup. ‘I shouldn’t have looked at the photos. That’s what set me off.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too,’ she whispered. Sorry for his wife’s traumatic death; sorry for the death of Michael; the murder of a baby; sorry for the death of Oxford; sorry for last night.

  ‘I’ll … er … bring in the toasted sandwiches.’

  ‘Can I help?’ she offered, aware her face must be blotched from tears; her eyes inflamed and puffy.

  ‘No, you sit tight. And how about something warm to drink? Coffee? Tea? Or perhaps you’d prefer herbal tea? Camomile, I think it is. Eileen used to like it.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I’ll try some.’ If she was wearing the wife’s clothes, sitting in her chair, then why not drink her herbal tea as well?

  Once he’d gone out to the kitchen, she flicked quickly through the photographs. Eileen was in most of them – though not the ones he’d shown her. The wife looked small and shy and eager to please: a little like a dog herself – a friendly and obedient breed, ready to retrieve a stick, or lick her husband’s hand. She returned the photos to the drawer, all except for one – a happy family group of Michael, Eileen, and the dogs. She could understand his grief. He’d lost them all – his entire family wiped out; his love destroyed, aborted. The picture seemed to change, and she was looking at herself – sitting next to Michael with their baby in his arms; Michael smiling and devoted, his cheek against her own.

  She replaced the photo face-down in the drawer and stood leaning against the sideboard, fighting a new surge of desolation, when her attention was caught by the initials M.I.C., stamped across a leather-bound address book. She picked it up, inspected it. How odd that his initials were also the first three letters of his Christian name. She wondered what the ‘I’ was for; couldn’t think of many names beginning with an ‘I’ – only Ian, or Ivan, or Irving, and the last two weren’t that common. She found a pen, and began to doodle with it, scribbling his full name in various combinations: Michael Ian Chalmers, Michael Ivan Chalmers, Michael Irving Chalmers.

  She wrote the Chalmers one last time, separating the letters out, rearranging their order; her idle curiosity changing to excitement as she realized that six of them were the letters which spelt Michael. Only the ‘I’ was missing, yet there it was in his middle name; completing a second Michael. He was Michael twice over, which must surely be significant. Wasn’t it a sign that this man had not turned up by chance, but been sent to play a crucial role in her life? Even his wife’s death must be part of the whole plan. However terrible and crushing for him, it meant he was freed now for his mission: to help her find her own Michael. They were already bonded by their grief – both in mourning; both suffering an irreplaceable loss – and had obviously been brought together to support and serve each other. She would do and be whatever he required – become another Eileen if necessary – as a small return for his restoring Michael Edwards to her.

  She shut the drawer hurriedly as she heard his footsteps just outside, sat back in her chair, stretching out her legs towards the fire – a hideous one with imitation logs and switch-on flames in an unconvincing shade of cherry red. Michael entered with a tray, passed her a plate of sandwiches oozing melted cheese, and a steaming mug of tea. The Peter Rabbit on the mug reminded her immediately of the rabbits in the room upstairs. He hadn’t said a word about his child. In fact, it struck her now as rather odd that he should have one quite so young – a tot who still liked bunnies and Jemima Puddle-Duck – when he was getting on a bit himself. She wasn’t good at guessing ages, but he must be nearly fifty. She didn’t w
ant some cherished son or daughter taking up his time; diverting his attention from the task she had in mind for him.

  ‘What about your child?’ she asked, observing with surprise that she’d cut her toasted sandwiches into fingers, as if she herself were an under-five. ‘I mean, who looks after him?’

  ‘What child? We haven’t got a child.’

  ‘But I thought … I mean, those rabbits on the wallpaper.’

  He hesitated, picking at the shreds of paper napkin still littered on the table. ‘We … we … lost our baby, Tessa. She only lived three days. My wife went into labour prematurely, and at first they thought the little mite would survive, though she can’t have weighed much more than a couple of pounds. They wired her up to all these frightening tubes and things, but I’m afraid she died of lung failure. We called her Amy – had her christened by the chaplain just before her breathing gave out. The name means ‘‘loved’’, so we felt it was appropriate. No child could have been loved more than that small scrap.’ He cupped his hands together, as if cradling Amy inside them, then slowly opened his fingers; forced to let her go. ‘We never had another, despite the fact that we tried for years and years; went through all those dreadful tests. And we never altered her room. I suppose it’s all we’ve got left of her – that and a few baby-clothes.’

  Tessa said nothing, though she felt strangely agitated; cramping pains juddering through her stomach, very like the contractions she’d had in hospital – her womb registering its loss. Both she and this new Michael had endured a double blow: their babies wrested from them; their partners dead or gone. It was almost unnerving, the links between their lives. Other, less perceptive people might shrug it off as one of those chance things, but she herself knew better. Their double dose of suffering had been destined from the start; a further proof that they were meant to be together, until such time as she moved on to Michael Edwards’ home, with Michael Chalmers’ help. She began to eat like a robot, hardly tasting anything, but speculating privately how much she dared risk telling him; how far she could rely on him.