Araminta is that suspicious calm again, the face she does so well: drained of animation and unreadable. Her cheekbones stand out and her jaw is a firm line of bone. The woman in the painting behind her holds her face the same way.
‘Richard wasn’t a gambler,’ she says.
I don’t want to make her think ill of her brother. It doesn’t matter now whether he was or he wasn’t: it’s in the past and the consequences of it are all unchangeable. ‘It’s gone, Araminta. It doesn’t make him a bad person. Like your father, he was eaten up with demons.’
‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘Richard didn’t gamble with that money. At least, not in any conventional sense. I didn’t know where it had come from – he was completely estranged from our grandfather by then.’
And the bombshell lands, launched from her to me across my bedroom.
‘I had letters, over the years, from Richard,’ she says.
‘He wrote to you?’ It’s a complete surprise to me. A wave of frustration swells in me and I wonder if Richard was still writing to Araminta during those years when he found it almost impossible to communicate with me or with Simon. When he couldn’t talk to his counsellor or the psychiatrists, the legions of professionals who tried to help him. I will feel betrayed if he was. I will be more angry, more cheated, than I already am.
‘Each one of those envelopes contained a cheque. It kept us going. I assumed he’d done as well in life as we’d always believed he would, that he could afford it.’
A flicker of light opens in the back of my mind, glows and turns amber, licks at and catches the crinkled edges of my understanding. The explosion of realisation is colossal. Memories and conversations and suspicions and arguments stream through my head in a sudden wall of sound: the soft persistent noise of Richard crying; the gurgles of an infant Leo; the rumbling growl of the lion who came to me on the upstairs landing when I thought I was going to die.
Araminta walks the few steps across the room. She stands beside me, looking concerned. I want to laugh.
‘He couldn’t afford it. No.’
‘Richard sent cheques every few months. No card, no address, just a few lines and a cheque. Until the last one.’
My lost house, my stolen bricks and mortar, is here. All the lunatic loans that Richard took out, all the stupid risks, the dangerous secrets: they made their way here; they propped up the apes and the elephants and the ocelots; they cut the grass and mended fences and cleaned the wide glass fronts of the dioramas.
I learnt not to care about the money a long time ago: I only resented the secrets. I say the same thing I’ve said about Richard so many times: ‘Why didn’t he tell me?’
But even as I say it, I know Richard didn’t tell me lots of things about being ill. He didn’t tell me what tortured his dreams and made him scream out in the night.
He kept so much to himself: the demons; the debts; the despairs.
‘The last one, no cheque – just a letter – came a week or so before he died.’
‘Araminta, Min. Can we take this downstairs? Get a cup of tea?’ If secrets are going to spill out, if there are going to be hard words and difficult confessions, I don’t want them to be in here, to be in my bedroom. This space is not yet recovered from the loss of Patch: I need it to be clear and happy – my sanctuary and home to the tiny lightning-quick bats who roost in the spaces above the window. It cannot be a place where dark thoughts can creep about in the night, shuffle and twist under my bed.
*
Araminta has brought the envelopes downstairs with her. They are in her hand, I know she is going to ask me to look at them but I don’t know that I can. She closes her eyes and I sense she is imagining him, summoning him up. I do the same.
Behind her closed eyes she is far away: elsewhere, else-when, but the Richard she sees will not be the grey-faced man I saw at the end, the broken man who couldn’t take another day of the torture his life had become.
She hunts for the handkerchief again, this time it is in her sleeve. She blows her nose elegantly: I hadn’t known that was possible.
‘He told me, in the letter, that he was going away. And he talked about you. He talked about things that didn’t really make much sense – at least, not before he died. He talked about the nature of exploration, of moving on to new experiences. I didn’t know what he meant by that then. I could have stopped him.’
I am crying now too. I can feel Richard here in the room, the pale quiet breath of the ghost boy. I imagine that I can reach down and take his little hand in mine, that he leans his small soft body against my leg.
‘And he said his marriage had been a wonder. “As much as I could have ever hoped for, Min, and then some more,” were his exact words.’ She unfolds the paper in her hand although she obviously knows it off-by-heart. ‘And I was so very pleased for him, so glad that it had worked out that way for one of us. He said that he wasn’t afraid to leave you because he had the best friend in the whole world and that he could trust Simon to take care of you when he was gone.’ She chokes on the word ‘gone’, gulps in air after it as if saying it threatened to suffocate her.
I wipe my eyes again. ‘You couldn’t have stopped him. No one could. Except perhaps me.’
She offers me the handkerchief but I shake my head and wipe my nose on my sleeve instead.
‘He said it was time for him to go: he was excited – it had taken a long time to get things into place with you and Simon and Leo, apparently, and it hadn’t been easy. But now he’d got all his ducks in a row and could rest easy.
‘And then he was gone,’ she says. ‘What if I could have saved him and I didn’t?’
*
Those last days were liminal. Richard slipped between waking and sleep – there was little difference between the two states of being. When he was awake, his eyes focused on objects that weren’t there, when he was asleep he cried, softly and quietly.
The flat was dark in the day and light at night. I kept a routine for Leo, took him to school, cooked his tea, but my own life was beyond fixable: I had taken a leave of absence from school – compassionate leave that I knew, in my heart, was the countdown to Richard’s death.
Death waited for us like a friend. We asked it to leave when Leo came home from school, hid it in the cupboards – shoved in and ready to pour out when we forgot it was there and opened the door. We disguised it under piles of coats, tried to put it out with the rubbish, asked it – over and over – to leave. Death outstayed its welcome and it was all we could do to keep it from Leo’s door, from introducing itself with that sickly breath, those thin red lips, to our son. We shuddered at the thought of death’s long bony hand clasping Leo’s, walking him along the road and out of sight. We did not trust death.
And then, one morning, Richard woke up. The real Richard. The man I married, the man who held me up, who made me laugh. The man I trusted above all others.
‘Stay here,’ I begged him. ‘Stay the same while I take Leo to school.’ I just wanted to talk to him, to grip him to me. I wanted to spend real time with him.
The real Richard ate breakfast with Leo. He was slow and croaky, but he was him again. There was a light in his eye that had blown out before: I could see the spark wavering and glowing, ebbing and flowing as he breathed.
The real Richard was hidden inside the body of the ill Richard. His arms and legs were emaciated. What had once been a muscled barrel chest was pale and slack, his skin too big for his ribs, but the real Richard was here and he was shining out of the dim dull body.
When I got back from taking Leo to school I was breathless and sweaty. I had run home through the leafy streets, past our old house – the scar of a journey that Leo and I had to make every day. I burst into the flat, threw my coat off and looked for Richard. I had imagined a hundred conversations on the way back. I had seen him enter and leave these phases so many times. I had not believed he would come back from the last one – it had gone on for months.
The unwashed dark
smell of madness still hung around the flat. It wasn’t something that could be banished in a day. You can’t open the windows and blow that kind of illness out, empty your world of germs and right it instantly. There is no amount of hot yellow lemon drinks or vibrant orange juice, no bright luminescent colours you can swallow, that can relight the person you have lost to depression. But, if you are lucky, they will occasionally swim to the surface, gasp at the air there like a dying man, and maybe float awhile.
Richard was in our bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, and facing away from me. The room smelled like a damp wool coat – that is the smell of death as it hovers nearby: damp wool, and daffodils that have been in a vase too long, that have turned sweet and rotten. I would know that smell anywhere.
Richard’s back was a knobbly xylophone. His vertebrae shone inside his skin and his ribs were dark stripes whipped into his sides. He was wearing tracksuit bottoms that had once stretched against his runner’s legs, but now hung from him, emphasising his weakness.
He patted the bed and I lay down next to him. I turned and kissed his cheek.
‘I can’t do it anymore, darling.’ His voice was calm, controlled. ‘I can’t go back there.’
I nodded. Even if I could have found words, they would have been platitudes, hollow promises. I understood exactly what he meant.
‘As soon as I’m ill again . . .’ He put one arm around me. His fingers traced the shape of my shoulder. ‘As soon as I’m ill again I’ll lose the motivation. It’s not that I want to live, Cate, it’s that I can’t move myself to die once I’m trapped in that Hell.’
The words were painful. But listening to him weep while he slept, hearing him call out to hallucinations of demons and dread, that was worse.
‘If I was an animal, my darling, you’d let me die. You’d help me.’
And I nodded again, nodded my assertion that, yes, I would help him, I would set him free.
I moved over in the bed and death rolled into my place.
*
‘And so I helped him,’ I whisper to Araminta. ‘We were careful that I didn’t break the law – Leo would only have one parent as it is – we couldn’t risk anything. But I helped him: I facilitated his death. And then I waited to be told about it, that it was done.’
She says nothing.
‘So you couldn’t have saved him: I would have been there to stop you.’
She reaches down into her bunch of letters. Richard’s writing looks up at me, a real piece of him, here in his house.
‘He sent me this with that last letter. He said I would know when to give it to you.’
And there it is. An everyday white oblong envelope: and at the same time the thing I had dreamed of. One more message from Richard. I reach out with trembling hands and take it from her.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘To Cate, when she gets home’ it says on the envelope. It says it in Richard’s writing.
I know that where I open this letter matters. I will only read it for the first time once. I cannot imagine what Richard has left to say. The benefit of knowing exactly when someone is going to die is the hours of crying together, the holding each other tight, the words of love that are all you have left. Richard and I have said it all.
I walk away from Araminta in silence, and through the quiet of the museum. We are closed today and there is no danger of being interrupted.
When I get to Gallery One, I switch on the light. The lighting shudders and flickers, before peeling into brightness like the first dawn. Around me, sleeping bears and startled chimps stare wide-eyed, not even the sudden light making them blink.
I look at the back of the envelope where it has been stuck down. Four years ago, Richard licked the line of glue on this, ran his fingerprint along its fold to make it stick. He is in the DNA of this paper, and his words are inside.
It opens easily, the glue was never designed to stay closed this long. I unfold the single sheet and, with the silent lions, the sombre elephant, the wide-winged stork watching over me, I start to read.
My darling Cate,
What do you think? What do you make of my grandfather’s crazy world? Have you realised yet that the black dog that has devoured me ate up every man in my family, generation by generation? I assume so – and if not, ask Araminta. Tell her to tell you everything she knows, tell her I want you to.
I know Araminta well – she has been like a sister to me my whole life and I love her dearly – but she’s a cantankerous old sod and, if you’re reading this, then the two of you must have reached some kind of peace. It is peace that I want for you, my darling, and that is why I sent you to Hatters. For all its oddness, it is a beautiful place with so much happiness lying unnoticed beneath its silence and its secrets. Find the happiness, my darling Cate, for you and Leo – let Hatters take care of you. I was very happy there once upon a time.
I hope that Simon is there beside you – he has been the best friend a man could have. He has been in love with you since the moment we both set eyes on you, but I was the lucky one, I was the one you chose. Thank you for every moment.
I’m so sorry for how things worked out, that the curse of my family followed me however far away I got from the house. I could never explain how relieved I was that Leo had an extra chromosome, that he was not a carbon copy of my grandfather, my father, and me.
Even after everything you’ve done for me and we both know how much that is – I will always be, have always been, in your debt – I need you to do one more thing for me. Will you bring me home, Cate? To my grandfather who I punished with the pomposity of youth: by the time I was old enough to understand, it was too late – he’d died, lonely and without me. To my father who I didn’t know how to forgive – or that forgiving him might have saved me. To Min, who has always adored me. To my magnificent son, the best thing I ever did. And to you, Cate, who gave me everything. Bring me home where I belong.
All my love, my darling. Be happy.
Richard
From: Cate Morris
To: Simon Henderson
Subject:
Mail:
The email sits, open but unwritten, on my laptop. I can’t imagine what to put next. Part of me wants him to come immediately. But another part of me knows that I’ve changed. I’m not the person I was when Richard died, or directly afterwards: I need different things now and so does Leo. Leo’s life and mine, at the same time as becoming ever more entwined, have diverged into our own independence.
I was sort of in love with Simon once, I know that. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I still am. I know that if Richard walked back into my life, my heart would jump in my chest, thud with longing, and I would be in his arms before I’d drawn a breath. But Simon isn’t Richard.
I have to ask Simon here – if we are to carry out Richard’s last wish, Simon needs to be here too. Richard wanted Simon to be standing beside me.
I don’t miss Patch like I miss Simon. I can’t miss someone who never really existed, whose character was merely one more of his beautiful creations, a veil that he had invented, painted with all the shades I thought I needed. I know deep down that there was more to him, but that’s something I can’t share with anyone. We are all a product of our lives, and something in Patch had broken, stoppered up.
Andrew doesn’t believe Patch will ever return to the UK – why would he, he has no one to return for. He has been charged, in his absence, with burglary and theft. His passport will not let him across UK borders without arrest or into any of the countries we have extradition treaties with. He is gone.
*
We have two major events today. We have prepared for them both, frantically, over the last four weeks.
The 30th of September is Colonel Hugo’s birthday. He would be 125 years old today. He was born and died in this house, saw the orchard of apple trees, heavy with fruit now and gnarled with age, grow up past his head and celebrate each spring with clouds of blossom. He would have seen generations of peacocks,
perching vainly in the trees, turning themselves in the sun to make the most of their iridescent feathers.
When Colonel Hugo first looked out of the nursery window, the bedroom that is now Leo’s, there would have been wide waterlilies blooming pink under Atalanta and Hippomenes, and gardeners bustling and busying, making the most of every corner of the garden.
We may yet get back to that. We have a commitment from the local Horticultural Society to get the kitchen garden back in shape. The fruits of the labours will be shared between the local schools and the food bank: grown for the town, by the town. That turns out to be very much how things are done around here, how they have been done for centuries.
Leo decided that his time as an artist was over: Sophie was always the biggest draw of the class and now he sees plenty of her without having to go. He gave his picture of our two gold statues to me: the two figures that he was going to paint in remain people-shaped spaces: white and anonymous, skating across the pond. I like that they could be anyone, might be anyone, one day. It hangs, framed, in my bedroom, echoing the view to one side of it, the view of the real thing.
*
Today is the ‘official’ launch of our new – sparkling clean – museum. We have opened more rooms, let the sun into the dusty sadness, removed covers and polished furniture. We haven’t had time to make signage that explains the rooms but we have volunteers dotted around all over the place – new and enthusiastic – who will tell visitors what they know. Malcolm and Araminta are jointly in charge of the volunteers and are spending a lot of time together ‘planning’ and pottering in the kitchen garden.
I’ve worked closely with Poppy on today. She is running the art class now, fitting it around her studies and doing an amazing job. Today will publicise the work she does as much as the museum. Each day more and more visitors come, as the ones who’ve been the day before tell their friends how crazy it is, how very much worth seeing.
Where We Belong Page 27