The flowers looked too gaudy to be real, too ornate for this dingy crematorium. Out of their element, like David. Two months ago, he had ransacked the whole island to find her just one bloom. She had sent him nothing in return, no wreath, no smallest posy. She walked towards the patch of grass, hoping to find some flower or spray of foliage, something to leave behind. Nothing but weeds—a patch of groundsel, a stalk or two of plantain, a dead brown thistle. Plain and prickly plants to suit a scholarship boy. She trudged further on towards the gates, found only a skeleton leaf, one of autumn’s cast-offs, a few stray petals from someone else’s wreath. She couldn’t insult him with such tribute, such small change. It was too late for flowers, in any case. She slipped through the gate, turned into the puddled street outside it, broke into a run. The funeral was over.
Chatper Twenty Five
It had stopped raining, but the air was still damp and heavy, showers of raindrops strafing from windowsills and shop fronts with every gust of wind. Morna tramped on. She was back in the centre of the Midlands town again, a dirty sprawling town packed with shoppers. She had no idea where the station was, hardly cared. Why go back home? She preferred to linger where she was, here, in this town where David had grown up, try to make him whole again, find those missing parts of him which she had never known—the clever moody boy, the tortured adolescent, the would-be priest channelling violence into prayer.
It seemed an unlikely setting for him—a modern shopping precinct with garish supermarkets and greasy burger bars, sleazy fashion boutiques squeezed between unisex hair stylists and cut-price drugstores. She kept bumping into people, stupid people who wouldn’t look where they were going or blocked the pavement by strolling arm in arm, or ate bars of chocolate in the street then threw the wrappers down. She had eaten nothing since her mouthful or two of salted toast at dawn. The funeral guests would be guzzling at the Anthonys’, drowning David’s memory in tea. She stopped, leant against the steamed-up window of a snack bar, stared in at fish paste sandwiches, cheap iced fancies. She could see David’s mother spreading sandwich fillings, passing trays of cakes. A son died and you opened bloater paste, stuck cherries in pink icing. She jabbed her grubby bandage against the glass.
A woman passed her, striding purposefully, turned into Fine Fare, dumped her handbag in a shopping trolley. Morna followed, did the same. Almost a relief to have someone to copy, someone brisk and busy who seemed to know what she was doing, had a man to shop and cook for, wasn’t just a stranger wandering through wet streets. She stepped from grey drizzle into fluorescent glare; products and promises shouting from all sides. ‘This month’s bargain offer … Bigger bottle, lower price … New meatier recipe … 6% more fruit‘. Everything too bright and big. Man-size, family-size … Now she knew what her mother felt—must have felt for a whole lifetime—nothing widow-size. She stared at a two-pound tub of margarine, a bag of two dozen apples. She had no one to cook for tonight. Bea was eating at the convent, Chris meeting Martin at Roxy’s after work.
She trailed up and down each aisle, round and round the entire store, walking very slowly as if she were convalescent, had been cobbled together with only paste and string. She stopped at the packet desserts, heard David’s deep wary voice again. ‘I was planning to have Angel Delight for pudding—thought Abban would get a kick out of the name.’ She picked up the strawberry flavour, put it back again. Bloody stupid to blub over a 35p packet of starch and sugar, prettied up with chemicals. The whole place was too garish, insulting after a death. They were unpacking party cakes, playing schmaltzy music. She had craved a hymn for David and here it was—a jolly tonky tune which told the same old lies. The Birds Eye Promise, the Kellogg’s guarantee—bigger, brighter, cheaper. Live for ever. Rise again.
She trudged back towards the eggs, shelves and shelves of eggs—sized, graded, boxed, labelled. She put a box in her trolley, Grade One, largest size; added a second box, a third. Her tears were soaking into the cheap brown cardboard. A fourth box, a fifth. Eggs for new life and resurrection, eggs for fertility. Her hands were shaking, but she still took down more boxes from the shelf. Eggs as source and symbol of creation. Eggs for spring, hope, youth, continuance. Her trolley was loaded now. She wheeled it to the checkout, joined a queue. This town was full of queues. It queued to be cremated as well as for its taxis, probably queued to be born. The woman in front of her was unloading a week’s supply of food. Morna felt suddenly nauseous as she watched the mounting pile of cans and cartons, the jars of strawberry jam and mango chutney, the sticky buns in cellophane, the bloody hunks of meat. This was the time to fast, not feast. She glanced at her own trolley. Why so many eggs when she and David had been content with one between them? She was following Neil again, shoring up her ruins with produce and possessions. David had tried to point her out a different way; had died before she’d grasped it. Now she was caught between the two of them, no partner left, no path.
She left her trolley where it was, drifted away, heard a girl shout after her, took no notice, walked on through the exit, round a corner, out of sight.
The shops were closing now, people struggling home. She ought to ask directions to the station, go home herself, escape. Yet how could she leave when she hadn’t found David; no trace of him, no memory? Had he shopped in that supermarket, walked up this hill which led off from the precinct? She tried to picture him twenty years ago—a lad of just sixteen, already too clever and too tall. She would have been still single then, free to court him. She could see herself strolling hand in hand with him, laughing at nothing, sharing chocolate bars, blocking the pavement for boring middle-aged women like the one she had become. She was walking faster now. It was easier with him there, someone to lean on, someone to help her up the hill. She stopped at the top to thank him, stared in shock. There, on the other side, striding down the incline, was the real David, the adult David—David with his grey hair contradicted by his young lean shoulders, strong determined walk; David with his shabby jacket over polo-neck, woolly scarf trailing as it always did.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘Stop, please stop.’ She dashed across the road, darted after him. ‘David, wait!’
He turned round. She saw pale blue eyes in a coarse and pitted face, someone else’s face under not-quite-David’s hair. She backed away.
‘S … Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I thought you were …’
He shrugged, walked on. Morna stood stock-still where she was, trembling with rage as much as shock. Stupid deceitful fool, pretending to be David, walking like him, wearing his clothes, giving her hope when hope had been cremated. She kicked out at the kerb, watched him turn the corner at the bottom of the hill, disappear from sight. What right had he to be alive at all with those watery blue eyes, that alien fatuous face, when David was dead?
‘Bloody fool!’ she shouted, tears smarting on her cheeks. He couldn’t hear. Neither of them could hear. ‘Fool,’ she shrieked at David. ‘Going out in that matchstick boat when you’re not a sailor. You knew about the currents. The police said that Cormack warned you, advised you not to risk it.’
She was sobbing now, doubled up against the fence. How could he have thrown his life away, smashed himself to pieces like Cormack’s dinghy? A woman passed her at the bottom of the hill, stopped, turned back, touched her on the shoulder.
‘Are you all right?’
‘F … Fine,’ Morna sobbed. ‘Absolutely fine.’
She shook the woman off, crossed the road, started struggling up another hill. Steep and pitiless town with no gentle gradients, not even any signposts. Was she walking north to David’s island, or south to home and Weybridge? It hardly mattered. Both were dark. She trudged on. Shops and houses thinned; rough wasteland on one side, empty boarded buildings on the other. It helped to keep on moving. Her back ached, her feet throbbed, but at least there was a rhythm which blocked out other sorts of pain. That was the answer, really, not to think, not to blame. Just one foot forward, next foot forward, right left right. Her shoes were soaked, s
illy flimsy shoes only suited to cremations. She could feel the left one rubbing into a blister, took no notice. One foot forward, next foot forward …
Dusk was falling, the leaden greyness of the afternoon purpling into evening. She glanced around at the shadows—shapes and colours beginning to swallow up and fade, the sharp edges of the world blurring into void. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Let it not be night again. Not yet. Not so soon, please.’ She stretched out her hands as if she could hold the darkness off. It lay so heavy on you, darkness, pressed down down, filling all the holes and spaces in your body. It was black dense fog stuffed into your mouth, dark heavy bandages drawn tight across your eyes. It was like living in a cellar, living in a nightmare.
Stop panicking. Right left right. Only babies feared the dark. It wasn’t night yet, anyway. Still an hour to go. Half an hour. Even the birds hadn’t gone to roost yet. Sparrows chattering in the hedge, a flock of starlings flapping across the sky. Left foot forward, right foot forward. No swallows yet. Still too cold for them. David had told her that the terns were known as sea swallows, joked with her once that she should have been born an arctic tern herself, since they enjoyed more daylight hours than any other creature, flying to the North Pole in the summer and the South Pole in the winter, travelling thousands and thousands of miles in search of nightless days. Only David understood her fear of darkness and he had gone into the dark himself. The terns would be flocking in to nest on David’s island. New life when he was dead.
Right foot forward, left foot … No. Impossible. Couldn’t not think, couldn’t not rage and blame. Had to stop, in any case. Her blister was too painful to go on. She kicked off her shoe, crouched down on the verge, examined swollen heel with bandaged finger. One foot and one hand out of action now. That’s what happened. Things fouled up, stopped working. You grew old and rotted, died. Darkness was so frightening because it was the colour of death. She had been born to death—her father’s death—had it in her bones. Worse for her mother, though, far worse. Bea had been a: widow almost all her adult life.
‘Mummy …’ she whispered, lying back against the verge. Since David had died, she had longed to be a child again. Mothers could make light of death, pack it away like dark and heavy winter wraps in summertime. She didn’t remember a childhood draped in black, a mother always grieving. Bea had been cheerful, chosen bright and flattering clothes, stressed optimistic texts like ‘God is Love’, gave every cloud its double silver lining. Maybe those were lies again, but good lies for a child.
She hadn’t told her mother about her own bereavement—had spared her deliberately. Forty years of mourning was enough. Why drag her down again when she had just found a new contentment in her Job, force her to reassume the thankless role of comforter?
She had also warned her daughter not to mention it, though she hardly knew what Chris might think herself. It was harder to dissemble with someone who shared the house with you, actually saw the fierceness of your grief. She had confided in Chris to some extent—lame and halting phrases which hid as much as they revealed. ‘He … er … wasn’t just a colleague. We had a lot in common, you see, and the work brought us closer. I was … quite fond of him, in fact.’ She had concealed the love, never said a word about the sex. Yet Chris appeared to understand without the need for words. Her daughter had been tactful, touchingly supportive, no longer prickly or aloof, but older, somehow, wiser; in fact had never been so precious.
Morna sat up, stared down at the patch of flattened grass. Precious—and alive. It was only death which made you realise how valuable things were—valuable and vulnerable. Her daughter had been spared her, was a whole and breathing person with her entire life ahead of her—and at a crucial point in it—doing her first job, soon to start at college, to be married the year after. Was she to ignore all that because her own life seemed bleak and pointless; neglect her daughter because a man had died whom she had known a few short months?
She struggled up, stood motionless a moment. It wasn’t too late, wasn’t even dark yet—not completely—though the street lamps had come on. She glanced back the way she had come, saw the lights of the town sparkling below her, making it look exotic and alluring, gilding its raw edges. Lies again. She had lied to herself over David, believed she could relive her youth with him, be sensual and selfish, cut all other ties. Even after the drowning, she had gone on clinging to his bloated lifeless body, filled the whole house with his death like a Victorian widow shrouding every room in black. And for five whole years before that, she had clung to Neil, refused to accept his absence as a fact, an actuality; endlessly resenting him or missing him, comparing, craving, criticising; still following his values or mouthing his opinions, if only to refute them. Could she never let things go, start anew? Even Bunny’s group had tried to tell her how negative and narrowing it was to remain locked in hate or bitterness, envy or resentment; had explained how one could simply move beyond them, turn the key. She had been too busy mocking their simplistic metaphors to see the truth in them.
Suddenly, impulsively, she tugged at her wedding ring, tried to slip it off. She pulled and twisted, but the ring had jammed just below the knuckle, seemed to have taken root on her finger like another joint, a hard and permanent growth. She had heard of rings stuck tight for ever, sawn off corpses’ hands. She made one last frantic effort, forcing the gold band past her now sore and reddened knuckle; stared in shock at her naked hand. The third finger still bore the imprint of the metal, was indented round the base as if Neil had left his brand on her. She cupped the ring in her palm, surprised how light it felt after the weight of all those years. She was tempted simply to drop it where she was, lose it in the rough and scrubby grass, but that would be insulting, too extreme. The years with Neil had had their value. She had loved him—once—admired him—once—even enjoyed their pampered way of life; best of all, he had given her a child. It was over now—that‘s all.
She slipped the ring in her pocket, glanced down at her hand again. It looked pale and bare, devalued. Too damn bad. It had jobs to do, the first of which was to rip away the black, follow Bea’s example, pack death away—divorce, regret, remorse away—and let some light and warmth in.
She forced her shoe back on, broke into a slow and painful jogtrot. There was still time, still a train. If she really pushed herself, she could catch the fifty-two, get in before her daughter did, change into something less funereal, make an effort to sound cheerful and positive for once. She increased her pace, forced herself to run. She could hear a car coming up behind her, slowing to a halt, felt a prickle of fear until she saw the female at the wheel.
‘Want a lift?’ the woman shouted, winding the window down.
Morna limped over, out of breath. ‘Are you going anywhere near the station?’
‘I can drop you fifty yards from it. Get in.’
The passenger seat was piled with bags. Morna clambered into the back, let the woman’s flood of one-way conversation wash over her, up and back, up and back, like a tide.
‘Yes,’ she said and ‘No’ between the swelling waves of words. She craned her neck, leaned over to one side so that she could see in the driving mirror, could just make out a pale and faded face framed with dishevelled hair. She was no longer a wife and could never have been a mistress. No man would have desired her with those lines around her mouth, those dark ageing shadows under her eyes. It had been just a game with David. Mothers and fathers. When you grew up, you understood that fathers never stayed. Died or disappeared or went off with someone else. Mothers were more dependable—had to be—caught trains, always got back home in time to greet the others, fill hot water bottles, make hot drinks, bolt the doors against danger and intruders. Home was safe. She would go back home and take up the familiar simple things which couldn’t break, couldn’t let you down; live as Bea had, stitching her own fray-proof silver linings if none came ready-made.
They were back in the town again, lights less deceitful now, harsh pools of fluorescent glare, cheap a
nd flashing neon signs. David had never lived here. She had hardly known him, anyway. A colleague. An acquaintance. Only a few months, only an illusion.
‘Right, if you cut through that alleyway, it takes you straight into the station.’ The woman had pulled up in a narrow street piled with overflowing dustbin bags. ‘You’re a stranger here, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ said Morna, stepping out onto the cracked and puddled pavement. ‘A total stranger.’
Chapter Twenty Six
Morna scrambled another few yards up the cliff, stopped to get her breath, gaze around at the springy clumps of sea-pinks, the frail green croziers of fern, young sea birds trying out their wings, young lambs already sturdy. Spring had come to the island—late spring. It was already the first week of June, Whitsun in the South; here, more like April with a teasing wind and sudden skittish showers extinguishing the sun. Green was still rationed; the chief mood and colour grey. But across and between the sombre granite rocks were splashes of colour brighter than she had seen before—vivid lime-green lichen, the shock yellow of the gorse flowers singing out of dry brown winter deadwood. Two seasons on one bush. Surprising it should flower at all when the only soil it had was a stony inch or two between outcrops of harsh rock. The birds themselves looked brighter, their black and white enamelled, their strident cries crisscrossing the sky as if they were trying to erect a barrier of sound to warn her off their breeding sites. The island had emerged from some dark chrysalis, an embryo period when winter’s forces had been contending with spring’s shock troops. Now spring had won, David’s rituals worked; the first swanks and struts of green emblazoned on brown earth.
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