The Missing World

by Margot Livesey

  In his mind, Jonathan had gone over and over the details of the wedding: the registry office, with Hazel’s grateful parents and, perhaps, one or two of his colleagues; the meal, a quietly festive lunch at a local restaurant; the honeymoon, a weekend in Cambridge of walks by the river and a visit to Ely Cathedral. But he had entirely failed to consider what it would be like to sit around the table with Hazel and Maud and hear Hazel say, “Jonathan and I have something we want to tell you.”

  At once he was on his feet, bending to inspect the contents of the fridge: white, orderly, and absolutely no comfort. He studied the cheese, opened the vegetable drawer and, when he could not stay down a moment longer, retrieved a bottle of Pinot Grigio. The Orsini bomb was flying through the air, and all he could do was wait for it to land, harmless or fatal. Finally, sensing Hazel’s expectant gaze, he edged over to stand behind her, his free hand on her shoulder.

  “Jonathan and I,” she said again, and with those three words Maud’s face underwent a terrible, subtle transformation, as if beneath the skin a host of tiny muscles were tugging and pulling in different directions, “are getting married.”

  Maud was perfect. Her mouth split into a facsimile of a smile. She jumped up and flung her arms first around Hazel and then—he had stepped back slightly—Jonathan. As she came towards him, he braced himself to feel christ knows what and felt … nothing, neither temperature nor fragrance. He knew that Maud was hugging him, pressing her cheek to his, but no sensation reached him.

  Then she was back in her chair and he was opening the wine and pouring them each a glass, even Hazel. “Here’s to you,” Maud said.

  “To us,” they echoed.

  Maud reached to lift her glass and instead, as if it were overly full, lowered her head to drink.

  “Only a little for me,” said Hazel gaily. “I don’t want to end up on the floor.”

  At the same instant he and Maud burst out laughing, raucous cries. Hazel watched, baffled. “It isn’t that funny,” she protested.

  “Sorry.” He caught Maud’s eye, and they both fell silent. As she asked about dates and plans, he excused himself. What the fuck, he thought, am I doing? In the bathroom that question, along with Maud and her eerie embrace, gave way to an image of Hogarth. Picturing the doctor tapping his fingers, talking about the long climb back to health, he realised here was another person he would prefer not to know about the marriage. Once or twice he’d caught the neurologist glancing at him suspiciously. Had he guessed that Hazel and Jonathan were not quite the happy couple Jonathan advertised, or had she said something during one of her seizures? The faint braying of a car alarm brought him back to the present. Quickly he completed his business and returned downstairs.

  In the kitchen, the situation seemed unchanged. Maud’s cheeks were still burning and her glass was full again. Hazel was talking about the nurse. “She’s nice. Our age, with two kids. Not scary.”

  “Anyone for pudding?” said Jonathan.

  “Pudding,” said Hazel. “You didn’t tell us.”

  From a box on the counter he produced a Linzer torte and served them each a slice. Hazel tried a mouthful and asked where he’d got it.

  “At the bakery near the office, Patisserie Jacques.”

  A tremor passed over Hazel. “It just opened a couple of years ago,” he said gently.

  She gripped the table. “Sometime soon I’d like to come to your office. Bernadette suggested I should revisit the important places in my life, make a kind of map.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Maud. Seemingly by accident her gaze fell on Jonathan. “You can start with my flat.”

  Abruptly he reached to refill her glass.

  All this, though, was easy compared to what came next. Hazel went off to bed, and he was alone with Maud. He dived into the washing up. She dried and put things away. Go home, he thought. Please, go home. But she had no intention of leaving. Quite the contrary. He could feel her purpose filling the room. He washed a plate, rinsed it, held it to the light, and, catching the slightest smear, began again. Finally, when not even a teaspoon remained, he drained the sink and sat down. Maud scraped a chair over the floor to sit opposite.

  “May I get you something?” he asked. “Tea, coffee, more wine?”

  “No thanks.” Chin in hand, she studied the table.

  In his confusion Jonathan adopted the same position while his thoughts leapt from one possibility to the next. Should he apologise, throw himself on Maud’s mercy, beg her to keep quiet? Let them talk, Alastair, his boss, always said about their clients. They’ll hang, draw, and quarter themselves if you only let them. But this time, he thought, emptying the glass before him, his or Hazel’s, he was the one approaching that desperate trinity.

  “What about Daniel?” Maud said at last.

  “Daniel?”

  “Hazel’s tenant.”

  So that was how she was coming at it. Not their faux pas on the living-room floor, not him taking advantage of Hazel being ill, but the simple fact that a few months ago she’d been so determined to get away from him that she’d rented her own flat. A sudden crack and a flare of pain made him jump.

  “Oh, my god,” Maud cried.

  Blood sprang up across his palm. Unwittingly he had crushed the glass he was holding.

  She was by his side. “Let me help. Do you need a bandage?”

  Ignoring her, he stood, swaying slightly, light-headed, and walked to the sink. Cold water, he thought, remembering his mother’s homely remedies. His hand numbed while the water flushed and ran clear.

  When he was again seated and Maud had stopped asking if he was all right, she announced she would have that drink. She left the room and returned with a bottle of Scotch and two squat tumblers. “Now don’t break this one,” she cautioned, and poured the whisky as if it were wine.

  “It just isn’t very sensible,” she went on, “to try to keep such a large secret. Even apart from her memory coming back, there are too many ways she could find out: George and Nora, friends, people at work.”

  “Well …” He stole a glance at his beekeeper’s veil, the white folds slightly soiled, hanging on its hook by the door. “What would you recommend?”

  “I think”—her voice gathered speed—“you should tell her. Tell her more or less what she told her parents, that you had a row and she moved out, temporarily, to give you both space while you came to your senses.”

  “And what would the row be about?”

  Maud drank some Scotch. “I’ve been pondering that. At first I wondered if a version of the truth might be easiest.” She raised her eyebrows and the yellow walls seemed to fall towards him. She knows, he thought, my god, she knows everything: Suzanne, my slip-up. He dipped a finger in the Scotch and ran it along the cut, craving the sting of pain.

  “Then,” she continued, “I thought, better to be more ordinary. Perhaps you were busy at work, the threat of redundancy, you couldn’t give Hazel the attention she needed. This flat came along for a few months, a sublet, and it seemed like a break would be best for both of you.”

  “Will that wash? Moving out is pretty serious.”

  “Which is precisely why we don’t want to attribute the motivation to Hazel. If we say it was her decision, then she’ll try to figure out what would drive her to that. Whereas if it was your idea, you’re the obvious person to ask. Of course”—again something odd happened to the muscles of her face—“I’ll back you up.”

  Of course? thought Jonathan. Am I losing my mind? He wanted to lean across the table and shake her. He understood his own behaviour: however convoluted, he had one clear and radiant motive. But why would Maud aid and abet him against her best friend? What had Hazel done to deserve such treachery?

  “Maud,” he said. His tongue thickened. Instead he found his uncut hand sliding towards hers. She stood, kissed him open-mouthed and open-eyed, and went into the hall. He followed, hopeful, only to see her putting on her bicycle helmet.

  “Not tonight,” she whisper
ed. Then she was out of the door, her bicycle clicking down the pavement.

  chapter 12

  The only solution, thought Charlotte, gazing bleakly at the saucepan dappled with baked beans, the slice of bread, one small, crooked bite gone, the plates and cups, cars and crayons, was to pretend she was in a play. Mother Courage does the dishes, or that downtrodden woman in Look Back in Anger. After a prolonged struggle Melissa and Oliver had retired to bed, leaving the house looking more like her home than Bernie’s, a change for which, Charlotte knew, she would be held solely responsible. Since the afternoon her sister had returned early to find the kitchen awash and herself asleep in front of the television, she had made a rule to use only one set of dishes a day, but serving first tea, then supper to the children seemed to have dirtied every piece of crockery Bernie possessed.

  With an imaginary audience and a male lead—You no longer love me. Of course I do. Look how beautifully you washed that plate—cleaning up proved less intractable. Might this strategy work, Charlotte pondered, tackling the frying pan, in other areas? If she invented scripts about earning money, going to auditions, would she suddenly be able to accomplish these tasks? Meanwhile, Bernie could not have come home at a better moment. By the time the key scraped in the lock, she had finished the dishes, wiped the counters, and was sweeping the floor.

  “Charlotte,” Bernie exclaimed. “Are you all right?”

  “Ace. Doing a spot of housework.” She moved the chairs to make a final pass under the table and manoeuvred the little pile of crumbs, cereal, apple fragments, green beans, and baked beans into the dustpan. “There,” she announced. “All done.” Arms akimbo, she turned to examine her sister. As usual, even in civilian clothes, Bernie gave the impression of being ready to wield a thermometer at a second’s notice. I should never have let her wear that beige cardigan, thought Charlotte. “How’s Rory?” she asked.

  Instantly Bernie lost some of her starchiness. “It’s hard going on dates with your husband,” she said, slumping against a pristine counter. “We say good night and don’t know what to do with ourselves.”

  She sighed, and Charlotte saw their mother at the end of a long evening, the last drunken customer newly departed and their father staggering around singing “Over the Sea to Skye.” She had always regarded Bernie as the opposite of their parents, firmly keeping chaos at bay, but it never worked, did it? “Would you like something?” she said. “Tea? Cocoa?”

  “I don’t think we have cocoa, unless you bought some.”

  Still in her domestic role—one of those Irish matriarchs, perhaps—Charlotte made tea, rinsing the pot as she had at Mr. Early’s and using two of the nicer mugs. “So,” Bernie asked, “did everything go all right?”

  At first Charlotte didn’t get it. What was there to go on her part? She’d been here the whole evening. Oh, of course, the rug-rats. “Fine,” she said firmly. “Oliver did his homework and Melissa laid the table and they went to bed within sight of the usual time. I did lose the battle of the bath, though.”

  “We can fix that in the morning.” Bernie swallowed a yawn. “Listen, I wanted to ask you—Hazel, my private patient, was saying she’d like a reader. Especially if she’s tired, she finds focussing tricky. I told her about you, your being an actress, and said you’d phone tomorrow.”

  “Why did you do that?” Already her life had dwindled to childcare and housework, and now her sister planned to add reading to the sick to that scintillating list.

  “For god’s sake, Charlie, you can’t lie around on the sofa all day.”

  They glared at each other. For a moment they were back in their bedroom above the pub, Bernie scolding Charlotte night after night into whitening her gym shoes, learning her lessons, while from below rose the babble of voices and the stink of beer. Then Bernie relented. “She sounded so beleaguered. I thought you’d cheer her up. You are good at that, you know, when you put your mind to it. And they’d pay five pounds an hour.”

  “I don’t lie around all day.” She was about to embark on an explanation of the creative process—Struan, the search for a new agent, the notion of writing her own play, which had occurred to her only yesterday—but suddenly she felt exhausted. Why was she being such a cow? She could read a couple of times, then quit. No big deal. And the extra dosh would be nice.

  At least, Charlotte thought, she doesn’t look ill. Hazel was sitting cross-legged on the floor, wearing a blue pullover a shade or two darker than her eyes and surrounded by large sheets of paper. If Charlotte had run into her, at the theatre or in a shop, she would’ve found an excuse to talk to her, to see those amazing eyes up close and how her face changed when she spoke.

  “This is Charlotte,” Jonathan said. “Bernadette’s sister. She’s come to read to you.”

  “If you like,” Charlotte added. Typical of Bernie not to mention that her employer was terrifically handsome in a dark, intense way; she was glad she’d worn her new leggings and put on makeup.

  Now he smiled, which oddly made him less attractive, and said he’d be working upstairs. Hazel pressed the point of a pencil against her finger while he fiddled with the doorknob, until Charlotte understood it was up to her to release him. “Thanks. We’ll give a shout if we need you.”

  As the door closed behind him, the room seemed to grow lighter. Charlotte glanced around, searching for the source, but the sky beyond the bay window was the same leaden grey; the standard lamp next to the fireplace gave off the same steady glow. The mysterious change, she realised, emanated from Hazel. “What are you doing?” she said, crossing the room to kneel beside her.

  Hazel explained she was drawing a map of her parents’ farm, or at least that was the objective; she kept spilling over from one piece of paper to the next. Scale was the problem: the duckhouse was bigger than the bier. Charlotte nodded, as if following this rigmarole: where was the farm?

  “North of Kendall, in the Lake District.”

  “Oh, I went to Dove Cottage a few years ago.” Vainly she tried to summon the documentary she’d seen last summer. “Great scenery.”

  Hazel looked at her narrowly. “You can’t live on scenery. Or at least I can’t. It was fine when I was six or seven and liked baby animals, but as a teenager I thought I’d go mad.”

  “And did you?”

  “No, I ran away with a lorry driver.”

  “Brilliant.” Charlotte couldn’t help giving a little bounce. “What was he like? Were you in love?”

  Hazel laughed. “Colin was gorgeous. I met him at the pub. He had a weekly run through Kendall, up to Glasgow, and back. I went to live with him in his flat in Preston. That turned out to be the opposite of romantic, too. The place was filthy, his feet smelled, and neither of us gave a toss about housework. I lasted four months before I got tired of take-aways and went home. What about you?”

  “Me?” said Charlotte, filled with regret for her well-behaved childhood. “We lived near Northampton, and I started coming to London to see plays. I’d get student tickets or sneak in at the interval. Afterwards I’d hang around the stage door, hoping some actor would buy me a drink.”

  “Jailbait,” Hazel said appreciatively.

  Charlotte shook her head. “At the time, I was sure people just wanted to chat about perfecting their art.”

  “Maybe they did. Did you have a boyfriend?”

  Boyfriend, thought Charlotte, such a nice, innocent word. No, she’d never had one of those. Then Toby’s freckled face and lanky frame popped up. “I’d forgotten all about him,” she offered. “I only got interested because of Bernie. She had a mad pash for him.”

  “Imagine your sister having mad pashes. Did you go all the way?”

  “Certainly not.” Now it was Charlotte’s turn to laugh. She could still picture herself in the ghastly school uniform, even the knickers labelled, and the contortions she and Toby had gone through at the back of the gym. “You’re a journalist, aren’t you?”

  “In other words, I’m being nosy. You can always tell me
to shut up.”

  People often made this sort of remark—tell me if I’m being a nuisance—but Charlotte could see that Hazel actually meant it. “Why are you drawing the farm?” she said.

  Once again the room changed, and this time she was close enough to watch a kind of scrim fall over Hazel’s brightness. “I had an accident,” she said, “that wiped out part of my memory. Your sister thought making a map of places I do remember might help me to reach some of the ones I don’t.”

  “What would you like to remember?”

  “Everything.”

  Charlotte stared, dumbfounded. “You would? There are so many things I’d love to forget.” She struggled for a safe example. “Once I closed a door in a set and it wouldn’t open for the rest of the play. Another time I skipped two scenes in Tooth of Crime. Half the actors skipped with me and the rest didn’t.”

  “But you have the choice. What if you really couldn’t remember? Wouldn’t you feel other people had an advantage over you?”

  “They do anyway.” Charlotte shrugged. “I know all this Santayana stuff: that which we do not remember, we are doomed to repeat. As far as I’m concerned it’s the other way round. We repeat what we remember. Only forgetfulness sets us free.”

  Hazel was frowning, a sign of disagreement, Charlotte assumed, until she saw Jonathan peering round the door. She’d heard no footsteps, she now realised, since he left the room. Might he have been loitering, this whole time, in the hall? “I came to see if you wanted anything.” He smiled in his disquieting fashion at Hazel, and raised an eyebrow at Charlotte. “I thought you were going to read.”