Looking idly around, my eye lighted upon a white polystyrene cup on the bedside table, a twin to the still-full one in my hand. It contained less than an inch of cold, brownish liquid. Somebody (it could surely only be Margaret – sweet, indomitable Margaret!) had made valiant efforts to drink the undrinkable. The image of her sipping the abominable beverage without wincing, determined to appear cheerful and uncomplaining in front of Gran, I found inexplicably moving, and I had to pull my hand back from caressing the extruded polystyrene foam.
Anyhow, Gran still seemed to be quite glad to have me there, even unspeaking, so after a bit I asked if she minded me opening up my laptop, and I picked up a game of computer chess where I’d left off in the train. I had just got out of check, but had lost both rooks and a bishop and was still in a tricky corner. I was sitting in a chair beside her head, and presently I noticed that she was watching me, so I showed her how I was doing, and when I was check-mated five minutes later I set up a new game, put it on her lap, and explained to her how to work it . . . and she was soon well away. Not a highly strategic player, I’d say, but certainly a competent one.
Time wore on, and still no sign of Margaret, but the ward sister told me that she’s staying at her gran’s house and comes every day. So I decided to cut my losses for today, get a hotel room, and try my luck again tomorrow. I left the computer with Gran, as she was just beginning to mount what looked like a pretty solid defensive rearguard action in the face of a two-pronged onslaught by the computer’s queen and bishop.
I wonder if Margaret plays. And if so, whether I’ll ever get the chance to take her on.
Richard.
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
23 August 2005
Dear WITCH committee members,
I’m writing to you with some suggestions for plants that we might get for the patch of garden we are creating at Witch House in memory of Helen. As you know, we decided against a tree, as the space is very limited, and Margaret tells me that you would like me to suggest some smaller things we might put in instead. I have been looking in my gardening books and on the internet, and have had quite a few ideas, which I thought I’d put down on paper for you.
For a start, I do think some herbs would be a good plan, because it’s nice to have plants that are useful, as well as looking and smelling good. As Persephone says, healing herbs to remember someone in sore need of healing. A couple of suitable ones might be self-heal and comfrey, both of which are used in balms for the binding of wounds. I’d also love to get hold of some elecampane, a less common medicinal herb. Its proper name is Inula helenium, so it seems rather appropriate. Mrs Spreight, our herbalism teacher, says it is called after Helen of Troy. The Chinese used to plant it outside their windows because of the sound the leaves make when it rains, like tears, but the Romans made candied sweets out of the roots and reckoned that it causes mirth, and I’m sure you’d like to remember Helen with a smile. It’s also meant to be good for eczema.
Then I thought we should have some ordinary flowers, too, to make a bit of colour. The ones I’ve always known as heleniums are very cheerful – they have orangey daisy heads, and they come out in the mid to late summer, so you would always have a bright splash in the garden each year around the time of Helen’s death. And what about some heartsease? They are sweet little things, like three-coloured violets, and make excellent ground cover. And it’s such a perfect name, isn’t it? It’s the thing we all hope Helen has found at last.
I’ve already got the bed dug over, with the kind help of Lauren and Rrezja, so as soon as you decide what you would like, I can go ahead. All the plants I’ve mentioned, I’ve checked, and I can get hold of locally. As Margaret is away at the moment, down in Hampshire with her gran, I will drop this into the Witch House office, so you can see what you think.
With best wishes,
Cora.
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 26/8/05 18:31
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
Well, I’m back in the internet café but this time Richard is here, too, doubling the clientele – and holding my hand across the table so I have to type one-handed. I also think it might be my last visit here – leaving poor straggle-beard with no reason to remain in business at all. Because Gran is decidedly improved, so much so that they are discharging her from hospital tomorrow. Not home to The Hollies, it’s still too soon for that, but we’ve arranged a room in a residential care home a couple of miles from East Markhurst, and on the bus route. She can form her words with less difficulty now, and the speech therapist (a very nice woman) is going to be able to carry on seeing her in the new place. She’s working with some other recuperating patients there, and visits every Tuesday and Friday. The function in Gran’s right side is returning gradually, though there is still a long way to go before she’ll be walking or starting to look after herself again.
But what you’ll be wanting to know about is Richard, of course. Well, I agonised half the night on Saturday, after I’d e-mailed you and gone back to Gran’s. About whether he might come back, and what I should say to him if he did. Going back and forth over it all in my head. What I kept coming back to was a sick feeling of shame, that I had believed him capable of campaigning for that rat Adamson. How to confess what I’d thought, and how I’d found out that it wasn’t true. But in the end none of it ended up mattering. He just walked into the ward, with flowers for Gran and a book entitled Thinking Ahead in Chess, and suddenly it was so easy, it didn’t seem necessary to say anything at all.
Later on, when we were back at The Hollies, we did talk, and once we’d started we couldn’t stop, until finally the talking turned into kissing . . . But then I was encountering reticence again, like before, and we were right back where we left off after Helen’s funeral. Sleeping together in Gran’s spare bed, but with his T-shirt and boxers still resolutely in place, and only an incorruptible arm curled round me, his hand carefully resting somewhere in the safe zone between navel and ribs. This time it’s because I’m so anxious about Gran, apparently, that I am regarded as untouchable.
And it was much the same the next night, before he had to go back to London on Tuesday. He just came down again this afternoon, bringing the car this time, to help get Gran moved tomorrow. Then he’s said he’ll take me home to Ipswich, after we’ve settled her in. In fact ‘to Cora’s’ is what he said, and I fear he might actually mean it. Not that I won’t be very glad to see Cora, but . . . well, you know.
Hope your mum is over her flu. We could probably both do with a break from being Florence Nightingale.
Love,
Margaret xx
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 29/8/05 19:09
To: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Dear Richard,
Thank you so much for all you’ve done for Gran this last week or so. She really likes you – I don’t think people normally tease elderly stroke patients nearly enough! – and I really don’t know how I would have coped without you. Thank you for a lovely bank holiday weekend, too. This afternoon was so beautiful, walking along the foreshore down at Pin Mill, before you had to leave and go back to London. When I took my trainers off just now they were still half full of sand from walking barefoot. You expect mud along an estuary somehow, not that fine powdery sand, and I never thought we’d find shells (the pockets of Gran’s rosebud dress are still jangling). I thought you were joking about that, until you said about the east coast oyster – and then I felt silly, because of course we’d been sitting outside the Butt and Oyster drinking our beer and looking at the boats.
Every time you kissed me this weekend it felt great, it felt blissful, but I wanted more. I wanted you. There, I’ve said it now, after not quite being brave enough to say it all weekend when I was actually with you.
I’m sure if I was your age
we’d have been in bed together that first time I came to London. But I’m not a child, Richard. I am twenty-four. I bet you knew your own mind well enough when you were twenty-four. That month thinking that you had gone from my life has only shown me what I want even more clearly. I know that you think that I am out of kilter somehow, that you mustn’t let me do anything while my feet are less than firmly on the ground which I might regret later. And it is true, I do seem to be in a state of dizzying disequilibrium. I’ve felt off balance nearly every time I’ve been with you. But it has had nothing to do with Nas, or with Helen’s death, or worrying about Gran. It’s because I love you.
Margaret xx
From: Richard Slater [[email protected]]
Sent: 29/8/05 20:42
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
M – Just got in and read your message. Don’t move. I’m coming straight back.
R.
NEWTON’S GARAGE
SPECIALISTS IN RENAULT AND PEUGEOT
188, Station Road, Ipswich IP1 6DZ
30 August 2005
Dear Mr Slater,
I have pleasure in enclosing our invoice for the replacement of the speedometer on your Renault Mégane, carried out today to your instructions.
We are slightly puzzled as to why this second speedometer should have malfunctioned so soon after being fitted by ourselves on 14 July 2005. If you have any further problems with the unit, please let us know immediately, and we will take it up with the manufacturer.
With respectful thanks for your continuing esteemed custom,
Yours sincerely,
Arthur Newton (Manager).
WITCH
Women of Ipswich Together Combating Homelessness
Extract from minutes of meeting at Pat and Pat’s house, 1 September 2005, 8 p.m.
News of residents
It was noted that Rrezja needs to put in train her application for permanent leave to remain. Margaret agreed to talk to Richard Slater about possible assistance with this.
Rosemary has heard that she can expect to be admitted to hospital for her hip replacement towards the end of October, which is great news. Persephone is starting Rosemary upon a course of moxabustion, which will help prepare her body to cope with the effects of the general anaesthetic. In future they are going to have the sessions at Persephone’s house, as the Witch House fire-detection and sprinkler system seems to be rather sensitive to the burning moxa.
Alison has had to have a stiff word with Carole. The laboratory are very strict about not allowing apparatus to be taken off the premises, even to be brought home overnight for an extra polish.
Any other business
Margaret outlined her idea for a befriending scheme for young people in the community with psychiatric illnesses, particularly depression. The Volunteer Centre would probably provide the person-power, and the Young People’s Psychiatric Unit the referrals of those needing support. What would be needed would be funding to cover the task of matching befriender to befriended, as well as the initial training and ongoing supervision of the volunteers, the maintaining of records, etc. It was agreed that WITCH’s name should be used to lend weight to any grant applications, although if funding is secured the scheme would be fully independent, and would accept referrals of men as well as women. (Pat W. pointed out, however, that statistically speaking most of the likely users would probably be young women, nevertheless.)
From: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Sent: 7/9/05 19:15
To: Margaret Hayton [[email protected]]
So Margaret, hi. A new term, a new class. In my case just six of the little darlings on Monday, followed by three further cohorts of six, to start at half-weekly intervals. Even six seems like a classroomful at this stage, when just getting them all to sit cross-legged on the Quiet Room carpet at once and facing in the same direction can be a whole morning’s undertaking. I am reminded of a cardboard boxful of puppies my friend Sasha’s Staffordshire bull terrier had when we were nine. There is a similar level of squirming and wrestling, and only marginally less untimely urination.
The opening of the school year has, of course, also brought back Declan, now adorning the courtyard outside the Year 1 classrooms at 3 p.m., with a summer’s deeper bronzing in his face, and over his shoulder a brand new silver scooter for Zoe’s journey home. The way I see it is, he’s not a parent any more. Or rather, not a parent of anyone in my class. So I asked him what he and Zoe have planned for the new term, and it turned out not much, except cooking me lunch on Saturday. Zoe is going to help, so experience suggests that the menu will include grated cheese, which is her speciality. It goes right against the alphabetical grain, of course, but this time I find I’m struggling to care.
Love and hugs,
Becs xx
From: Margaret Hayton
[[email protected]]
Sent: 7/9/05 21:05
To: Rebecca Prichard [[email protected]]
Dear Becs,
You mean, you might go back to square D? But can you really step twice in the same lexicographical river?
We started on Monday, same as you, and my class seem lively and full of beans. I have no fewer than four Emilys, beating even Mrs Martin’s personal best. I do so love the feeling of new beginnings that you get when the school year opens. All that fresh hope and ambition, all those newly sharpened pencils and brand new exercise books as yet unblotted: everything in front of you, everything possible. I don’t know about you, but it always makes me think of that paragon of a teacher, Miss Stacy, who reminded Anne Shirley of the exciting truth that ‘tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it’.
Meanwhile, from what I can make out, the Westminster summer recess appears to go on until shortly before Christmas. Of course, with his ministerial position, Richard is supposed to be hard at work on behalf of the nation whether Parliament is in session or not, but when I ask him whether he ought not to be at the department rather more often, he gets that hunted look which I have witnessed in colleagues’ eyes (no doubt mirroring my own) when the head mentions the reworking of next year’s lesson plans. In fact, I have noticed that he generally tries to distract me, often by the use of underhand means, such as the unbuttoning of his shirt, or mine, or both.
But if he insists on abandoning his desk occasionally in order to spend time here with me, then I intend to find things to keep him busy over the next few weeks, never fear. There is Rrezja’s leave to remain to be obtained, with which she might well need the assistance of her constituency MP. Richard isn’t the Home Secretary (yet!), and Rrezja isn’t my nanny, so a little spot of fast-tracking shouldn’t cost him his job. (I’ve already nearly done that once, so I’m being extra careful.) Nothing is happening yet about those raised gratings in bike lanes. And I have been reading a lot recently about the need to improve Africa’s access to the markets of the developed world. It’s not just a case of dismantling trade barriers and reducing tariffs, we also have to eliminate trade-distorting support to western commodities, which make it impossible for poorer countries to compete. I may find that I need to lobby my parliamentary representative about that too. Mind you, since European beet sugar is one of the subsidised commodities in question, I may have to tread softly. I think I’ll get him focused on cotton to start off with – there’s not a lot of that growing along the banks of the river Orwell.
I’m going to see Gran on Saturday, just for the day. Richard has gone away for a few days – to Minsk, of all places, on some sort of cultural exchange or link-forging visit or something, although he has been very vague about the details. Gran has invited me to go again at half term, and stay with her for a few days (they have guest rooms in the care home, if she’s still not back home by then). I think I’ll ask her if Richard can come too that time. I know he’d enjoy that. I expect I’ll bite the bullet and take him to Mum and Dad’s some time this term, too. He’s already dutifully spoken to them both on the phone. H
e won an immediate place in Dad’s heart by informing him, in the words of John Thornton, that he very much wanted ‘to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is’. I was touched, too, because Richard had never even mentioned that he knew the book, when I told him where my name came from. I’d very much like to meet Richard’s mother, too, but I rather gather it’s been a long time . . . I don’t want to push my luck all at once right at the beginning.
With love, and best wishes to your parents,
Margaret xxx
42 Gledhill Street
Ipswich
8 September 2005
Dear Richard,
I know there is no point in posting this to Minsk. Goodness knows what the Belarusian postal service is like, and you have only gone for five days – you would certainly be back again before it arrived. So I am sending it to Charterhouse Square. I can imagine you reading it when you arrive back at the flat on Sunday, before you head home to Ipswich. I dare say you will think me crazy – I’ll be seeing you just a few hours after that. And yes, there is the telephone, and e-mail (even in Minsk). I’m sure we’ll be doing that as well, but I wanted to write you a letter. A proper old-fashioned love letter. To tell you how hard it was seeing you off at the station this morning, having to break our embrace when the London train pulled in, having to relinquish your lips. And how long five days is going to seem – and five nights without being able to reach out and touch you whenever I wake up, or even stir in my sleep.
More Than Love Letters Page 23