The Poets' Wives

by David Park

  Her daughters reappeared and Anna served her glazed salmon on a bed of rice and vegetables. There was a bowl of salad and a dish of olives, sliced ciabatta bread and another bottle of wine appeared.

  ‘We couldn’t find napkins,’ Francesca said, handing her a square of white paper, ‘so we’re making do with kitchen roll.’

  ‘It’s all beautiful,’ she said as she took in everything on the table. ‘You’ve gone to so much trouble.’

  She saw how her praise pleased them and then was sad to think how often they had gone without it, how often they had to find some other approbation for themselves. How even now in adulthood it still mattered. What did he want of his children? She presumed it was that they should achieve something he would consider worthy of himself, but she understood him well enough to know that even if they had been able to do that his pride would eventually have been consumed by jealousy. She told Anna that the salmon was lovely and asked her if she cooked much at home.

  ‘Mostly just at weekends. It’s sometimes easier during the week to stick something in the microwave. Cooking takes so much time when all you want to do is flop down and stare at the television. Sometimes, though, I make something at the weekend and freeze part of it to use later.’

  They chatted about food, about restaurants, both of them comparing notes on places in London that did good-quality take-away for lunchtimes. They asked her why she didn’t try to get tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show in May and come and stay with one of them. The idea appealed to her – it was something she had always wanted to visit. She felt the future opening up with them in a way that previously didn’t seem possible. She didn’t say anything but perhaps when she made her trip to the village in the mountains before the end of the year she might stay with one of them for a night before coming home. She didn’t want to impose herself – it would have to come from them and she would be grateful for whatever they found themselves able to give. And she knew that a great deal of time had passed and the patterns of their lives had become established without her deep involvement. She wasn’t entitled to expect that suddenly to change.

  Anna put more coal on the fire and opened the second bottle of wine. They each had a slice of the supermarket chocolate cake and Francesca made coffee, apologising for the fact that it was only instant. After she had served them she moved her chair sideways to the hearth saying she had forgotten how nice a real fire was.

  ‘When you stayed here as children you used to squabble about who would get the closest seat and, Francesca, you used to sit so close you’d get your legs all measled.’

  ‘I remember how Don made us all gather driftwood and pile it up behind the kitchen and then some nights he’d make these great bonfires with sparks flying everywhere – you can still see where the carpet was burnt,’ Anna said, pointing at the marks with the toe of her shoe.

  They sat on, in part it seemed to her because there wasn’t really anywhere else to go and in part because of the warmth of the fire, but also because she wanted to believe that it was the three of them together. From time to time one of her daughters would say something about their father and then her own eyes would turn to the urn as if to confirm its reality but even having done so it didn’t always prevent his image, his voice, some memory drifting out of the thickening folds of shadows that appeared to be slowly enveloping the room. She looked at the empty chair beside her and saw him in the courtyard of the riad down below her seated at the small round table with the mosaic tiles, writing in his Moleskine notebook, pausing only to sip from the mint tea one of the young women had brought him. Writing out his grief, writing out his loss, writing her out and everything inside her that threatened in those moments to render her asunder. She thought too of the new love poems he had written – his final legacy – blind to the irony of his praise for ‘the unbroken constancy of love’.

  Her daughters chattered, the second bottle of wine and the pleasure of having carried off the meal loosening their tongues as if to make up for the long periods when there had been silence between them. She listened to the timbre of their voices, recording and preserving every inflection; the places where their accents diverged from what she had known when they were growing up. She wondered how many other things their lives now possessed that ran counter to the identities she had attributed to them in the past. She wasn’t sure but she thought Anna might smoke. She had smelled the slightest trace of it in their embrace at the station, perhaps on her clothes but more likely on her hair as they brushed cheeks. She wondered if Francesca wanted a child – she had seen the way she had looked at the toddler in Morelli’s, her eyes flicking again and again in the child’s direction.

  They had slipped into a kind of competition now, an adult echoing of a teenage habit, with Francesca telling her sister that although she made wedding dresses and hats she too encountered life in all its forms and when her sister emitted some sound that was clearly an expression of doubt, Francesca insisted, ‘It’s true, Anna. It’s not all ribbons and bows – I get all kinds of trauma.’

  ‘Like someone doesn’t like their dress or some stitching unravels,’ Anna said.

  ‘No, like the woman who came for a dress last month who’s terminally ill and has less than a year to live. Like the women who come to do their final fitting or even to collect their dress and then cry their eyes out and you don’t know what to say to them.’

  ‘So why are they crying?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Sometimes because they’re frightened. Once because she knew she was making the worst mistake of her life.’

  ‘So why was she going to go through with it?’

  ‘Because it’s complicated and sometimes there are other reasons and other pressures than are obvious. Things aren’t always as simple as they seem.’

  ‘I don’t know why anyone would want to be with a man they didn’t love,’ Anna argued but then stopped abruptly. Francesca said nothing in reply but glanced quickly at her. The silence lingered too long.

  ‘When I married your father I loved him. I believe he loved me equally,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to talk about it, Mum,’ Francesca said.

  ‘No, it’s all right. I think there are things you’re both owed and perhaps the truth is one of them.’

  She saw her daughters looking at each other. The light from the replenished fire rouged their cheeks and burnished the glasses they held. But she didn’t know what it was she should say to them and so she too sipped from her glass and stared at the fire.

  ‘Is it true that Don had other women?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Anna! You’ve no right!’ Francesca’s voice was raised and the effect was so unfamiliar that they both were taken by surprise.

  ‘It’s all right, Francesca,’ she said, ‘you’ve both a right to know whatever it is you want. So yes Don had other women but how did you hear?’

  ‘We would all hear gossip from time to time, mostly about him and that woman Roseanne. Was it true?’

  ‘Yes, it was true. I’m sorry if you were embarrassed or upset by hearing about it.’

  ‘She was at the funeral, wasn’t she?’ Francesca asked.

  ‘Yes, she was there and I think she was probably entitled to be as much as anyone else.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because, Francesca, I think she was the person who still loved him.’

  ‘And were there others?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yes, there were always others.’

  ‘Why did you stay with him?’ Francesca asked without looking at her.

  She had to think about what it was she should say and faced with her mother’s momentary silence Francesca told her she didn’t have to reply. But she knew that the words were for herself as well as for them so she sipped the wine again before she said, ‘I don’t know that I have any answer to that which will make sense or be easily understood and I’m not sure that I really understand either. So I suppose I stayed with him because I loved him for what now seems like a long time and when that
love had finally faded on both our parts there were three children and I was frightened of admitting failure to them, even when they were grown up. Probably, if I’m honest, frightened too of being on my own. There was also a time when I wasn’t a particularly strong person and I suppose I let your father’s will override my own.’ She looked at them to see if their faces reflected any of the meaning she was trying to grasp. ‘And there’s another reason which might be difficult for you to understand but it’s to do with the poetry, to do with your father’s words, and for a very long time, all our marriage I suppose, I felt that something was always owed to it. That the words were something precious so even when his failings were in the front of my head I still respected the written words and his struggle to find them.’

  She paused and looked at them again but they sat silently and their expressions gave no clue as to whether they had understood or not.

  ‘And do you regret that now?’ Anna asked.

  ‘It’s not easy to say that because there’s so many good bits mixed up with all the rest. Like Francesca said, things aren’t always so simple.’

  ‘Maybe nothing ever comes as just one thing,’ Francesca ventured. ‘Maybe things are always mixed up.’

  Anna poured them more wine but said nothing. She wanted her to speak but didn’t know whether what she had said had weakened her further in her daughter’s estimation. Francesca broke the silence by saying she would clear the table but Anna told her to leave it, her voice edged with insistence, and she sat down again. They began to talk about their childhood, safe, shared memories of holidays in the cottage, and Francesca even succeeded in making her sister blush when she reminded her of the time she had gone on a date with the greenkeeper’s son. As a payback Anna asked why she didn’t stop being such a style snob and get in on some of the Big Fat Gypsy wedding action.

  ‘Cash in hand – they carry a big fat wad of it in their pockets. You could charge them by the yard and the trains stretch into infinity.’

  ‘Not a bad idea. I read somewhere that the giant wedding cakes are mostly polystyrene.’

  Her daughters laughed and she laughed with them even though she only had a vague idea of what they were talking about. More wine was poured for her despite her half-hearted protests and telling them that she needed a clear head in the morning. She sensed there was a feeling that this experience might not be repeated so no one wanted to be the one who brought it to an end. More coal was put on the fire and even though the candles burned ever lower there was no desire to switch on lights. It felt as it had done when their father had read to them except then she had watched and listened from the edge. Now she had them to herself even though she had no story with which to enthral them, no range of voices or dramatic characterisations. She only had what was left of herself and she didn’t know if that could ever be enough. But as she spoke about things that had happened on those holidays when they were very young they looked at her with interest and she was surprised by how many things they had forgotten or claimed to have no memory of. Sometimes when their faces registered a struggle to recall something it felt as if she too was recounting a fiction and the events in which she made them characters merely products of her maternal imagination. But just when she ran out of memories and glanced towards the urn to find that it too had disappeared into the shadows she heard, ‘Perhaps he wasn’t such a bad father.’

  The words didn’t come from Francesca but Anna. They both looked intently at her as she continued, ‘Of course he had his faults. We all know that. But if we’re fair you’d have to say that there are worse fathers in the world – men who beat or abuse their children, men who don’t provide anything.’ She paused as if to gauge whether her own words carried the necessary conviction. ‘I’m not saying he wasn’t pretty awful on occasion and I’m ready to believe that he was an awful husband – well some of the time at least – but maybe now we should try to dwell on the better sides.’

  ‘Where does this come from all of a sudden?’ Francesca asked with what sounded like genuine confusion. ‘You’re singing a very different tune. What brought this on?’

  ‘I’m just saying. That’s all.’ But as if because she had failed to convince her sister, or failed perhaps to convince herself, she added, ‘I’m reporting on human trafficking and I’ve come across cases where fathers have sold their own daughters.’

  ‘You were always his favourite, Anna. Because you were smarter than the rest of us.’

  She looked at Francesca and at Anna. There was a trace of resentment in Francesca’s voice even though she had tried to disguise it with a lightness of tone.

  ‘Being his favourite didn’t really get me very much – if I was his favourite.’

  ‘Come on, Anna, you know you were.’

  ‘I never felt it.’

  ‘Well Rory and me did.’

  She needed to say something but didn’t know what it was. She could neither say something good about him nor criticise without losing one or the other. She didn’t want him to do this even now to her children, wanted to embrace them both, but knew that to say the wrong thing, or do the wrong thing, might send them spinning away. So instead she simply stood up and started to clear the table. In the candlelight the flowers looked like slowly melting snow.

  ‘Leave it, Mum, we’ll do it,’ Francesca said, but it was as if the earlier spell had been broken and she carried on until they started to help. In the kitchen the electric light seemed harsh and intrusive and no one looked at the other’s face as they moved back and forwards, carefully avoiding each of their burdened pathways. After it was done her daughters moved the desk back to its former place at the window and replaced the chair with its battered green-velvet cushion, as if in the morning he would be coming to sit at it once more. Under the overhead light she saw the colour on the tips of the petals was brown not pink – they were already beginning to wither. She filled the sink with hot water and started to wash up. Anna excused herself, saying she had a phone call to make but would be back to help, and eventually after making her a coffee she managed to persuade Francesca to sit back down by the fire.

  She saw Anna standing across the road looking out to sea, the red tip of a cigarette scoring the darkness while in her other hand flared the light of her mobile phone. She hoped the Chinese girl was safe and that soon she might know what it was to be free. She felt the warm water in the sink comforting her hands, held them there for a few moments even after the last dish was done then went in to see Francesca.

  ‘We should all go to bed soon,’ she told her gently. ‘It’s been a long day.’

  Her daughter sat with both hands cupping the mug in front of her face, her bare feet resting on the edge of the hearth.

  ‘Careful or you’ll measle your legs again. That wouldn’t go down too well in Kensington.’

  Francesca attempted a smile but almost at once started to cry for the second time that day.

  ‘Anna thinks she’s the only one who sees what life’s like. But she’s not, she’s not.’

  She put her hand on her daughter’s shoulder and tried to soothe her, saying, ‘I know, I know.’ Anna came in, giving a shiver as she closed the door behind her, then seeing her sister crying said in a voice that registered genuine concern, ‘What’s wrong, Francesca?’

  ‘That young woman who had cancer, when she came for the last fitting she’d lost her hair. And she never got to wear the dress,’ she said, her speech breaking in little sobbing breaths.

  ‘She died before she could get married?’

  ‘No, she did get married. In the hospice. But she was too ill to wear the dress. Afterwards her husband told me they laid it across the bottom of the bed so at least she could see it.’

  She was crying now and taking the mug from her hands they cradled and hugged her, stroking her hair and holding her as best they could until she told them she was all right, and when she apologised for crying they hugged her again. Anna got her a tissue from the kitchen and then pulling two chairs up they sat beside
her and no one spoke for a long time but simply stared at the hollowed-out caverns of the fire.

  ‘What do you see in the fire, Mum?’ Francesca asked eventually as she slipped the tissue under a cuff but the attempts she had made to restore her voice only drew attention to her efforts.

  ‘I see three tired girls. Perhaps it’s time we went to bed because we’ve to be up early in the morning. I think we need to be on the beach for about seven to be sure of avoiding an audience.’

  ‘What’s the forecast?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Generally bright, I think. Perhaps rain later in the afternoon was what the radio said.’

  ‘We’ll be long gone by then,’ Anna said, resting her hand on Francesca’s knee.

  ‘I’m OK now. I’m OK. Sorry for embarrassing everyone.’

  They reassured her again and then Anna told them how mild and still it was outside. ‘Hardly a breeze blowing,’ she said and all three of them glanced towards the window.

  ‘Perhaps before we go to bed a little night air might clear our heads,’ she told her daughters and they followed her to the door, Anna still holding her glass of wine.

  The night was immensely still and even the soft moan of the retreating sea seemed to lull everywhere into such a calm that it almost felt as if they were intruding when they walked across the road and stood on the edge of the beach. She looked for the green light but couldn’t see it. What inescapable folly existed in the world! What unspeakable follies of the human heart! The sky was folded tightly in a starless gauze over a sea that looked broken and spent. The stone pier where they would walk in the morning was a distant shadow and she wasn’t even sure if what she saw was real or merely constructed from her memory. When the children were young they often played hide and seek in the dunes, the searcher having to count inside the cottage while the others hid where they wouldn’t be found. If such a place existed now she would go to it, listen while her pursuer’s cries sought her in vain. She was frightened of what the morning might bring, of walking to the end of the pier where as a child she was scared that a wave would snatch her. Her daughters who stood on either side of her linked arms with her and she tried to tell herself that there was strength in the chain but it was Rory she thought of and how in the brightness of the morning she must try to bring him back into the light in the only way she knew.