David's Sisters

by Forsyth, Moira;

  Eleanor had often been lonely when Claire stayed away overnight with friends. Now she was glad when it happened. This time, on his last night, Gavin came to her house, something he rarely did, and Eleanor thought of how the smell of him, his imprint and warmth, would remain in her sheets after he had gone.

  Tell me,’ he said, as they lay close after love-making, ready to talk again.

  Tell you what?’

  ‘What happened.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘When your husband died.’

  ‘No. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think about it any more.’

  This was a lie. Gavin, guessing as much, did not persist.

  ‘Let me make you come,’ he murmured, his mouth coming down on her breast. ‘I love it when you come, all that moaning.’

  ‘Stop – I have already. I couldn’t possibly again – oh, Gavin.’

  ‘Yes, you could.’

  Am I a kind of test for him? she wondered. Is he proving how good he is in bed? He was always so pleased with himself.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Really.’ And pushed him away, her mood changing, her body tensing again.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  It was because he was leaving. Can I bear this, she thought, the leaving and coming back, the empty gaps between, all this intense glorious sex when he’s here … the uncertainty when he’s not? He moved over her and came inside again, lazily, without urgency, and she let him, but not moving much.

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of it,’ she asked, ‘sex?’

  ‘Never tired of you,’ he told her, and she gave way again, longing for this to be true, yielding, moving with him.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to go.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Got to do something about this.’ He slid away, and they lay side by side.

  Later in the night, she realised they were both awake, and she was part of him before she had time to think, was with him half in and half out of sleep. Suddenly, in the dark, it was easy to say what had seemed impossible an hour before.

  ‘Just don’t hate me,’ she said. ‘If I tell you.’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘You might hate me. But if I don’t say it now, I’ll never have the courage again. And if you don’t hate me, then—’

  ‘Then things are OK, is that what you mean? We’re OK?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘I won’t hate you, of course I won’t, whatever you say. But I can’t make promises about the future, if that’s what you want. How could I, with my history? I’m not a man to rely on. You know that.’

  The world gave way, and she lost courage. ‘I know.’

  ‘But—’ He got up on one elbow, and switched on the bedside lamp. ‘Look, if it’s any good to you, I want to get a job onshore. I want to see you more. I don’t want this to end.’

  That was enough. In relief, she turned to him, and told him what no one but David knew, what even Marion had been left to guess at, the only thing Marion did not know.

  ‘It was my fault Ian died,’ she said. She saw him again, coming down the stairs in their four-bedroom detached house, their house with the big windows and square of garden, its gleaming bathrooms, pine fitted kitchen. Our model house, our model marriage, she thought. Ian, white as paper, holding on to the door as he appeared in the living room; David, making her laugh so much she was weak with it. Music playing. She and David were both drunk, had been fooling about all evening. Ian, irritable and remote, disliking David, had not wanted him there for Hogmanay. Ian, in the doorway, said he was going to bed.

  ‘Stay up and see the New Year in,’ Eleanor had urged him.

  ‘Have a drink – after all, it’s your whisky.’ David in high good humour, at his worst. Now she thought of this as being his worst. Then, all she had thought was that David made her laugh, and she was comfortable with him; he was funny and good to be with. After Ian’s silences, his distant absorption in work.

  He had reappeared just before midnight, still dressed, his shirt collar open, holding on to the door.

  ‘Good!’ David had cried. ‘Good man – changed your mind – see the New Year in – have a dram.’

  Silence. As if they all held their breath. Then Ian had turned away, saying nothing, had gone back upstairs. Much later, going up to bed herself, Eleanor found him lying fully dressed on their bed. It was cold in the room. His eyes were open, but there was something strange about his breathing.

  ‘I was so drunk,’ she said to Gavin. ‘I didn’t realise – I thought he must have had a bottle upstairs, had a drink himself. I could smell gin. And I thought he was annoyed with me, and I was fed up. After all, I’d only been having a drink with my brother.’

  Ian turning to her, saying, ‘Do you think I should call the doctor?’

  ‘At Hogmanay?’ Her own careless, incredulous voice.

  ‘In the end,’ she said to Gavin, ‘I think I dozed off. We both did. When I woke again, Ian was gasping, he could hardly breathe, he couldn’t speak to me. I flew to the phone, called an ambulance right away. I was panicking. There was this pain in my own chest, this terrible pain, as if my heart was hurting too – I still get that pain. And he was lying there, and I kept running back and speaking to him, telling him the doctor was coming, he’d be all right.’

  She was crying now, sobbing into her hands. ‘I did something as soon as I realised, I did.’

  Gavin took her hands away from her face, held them. ‘What happened?’

  ‘He died. He died in the ambulance, on the way to hospital. I was there, but the medics, they were in the way, I couldn’t see him properly – he died.’ She went on crying, the tears pouring down her face, soaking into the sheet. ‘Claire was with David, I’d left her in the house, she was just little. She was just a little girl, she hadn’t even wakened.’

  ‘Stop crying, it’s over, you’re all right, Eleanor.’ He held her tight, but she went on crying, shaking in his arms, sobbing. He held her, waited.

  When he thought she could speak to him, he said, ‘When was this? When did it happen?’

  ‘Five … more than five years ago.’

  He did not reply at once. When she was still, exhausted, leaning against him, he said, ‘It’s long enough. You should stop now.’

  Eleanor moved away a little, reaching for the box of tissues, and blew her nose. She felt cold, out of his embrace.

  ‘Don’t look at me,’ she said. ‘My face – all that crying.’

  ‘You look at me,’ he ordered her. ‘Come on. Look at me.’ But she could not. So he sat up with her, and took her hand. Her other hand squeezed the paper tissue, soaked with tears.

  ‘It’s long enough,’ he repeated. ‘Five years. You should stop now. Stop hanging on to all that pointless guilt.’

  Easy enough for him to say, who seemed to carry no guilt at all. Still, something had eased, though she hardly knew what. Just the relief, the emptiness, after such a bout of crying, was something.

  ‘You don’t hate me?’

  ‘I said let it go. All that guilt – what does it do, except mess up the life you’ve got now?’

  Eleanor lay back, cold tears sliding over her cheeks. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I don’t deserve to be happy.’

  ‘Crap,’ he scoffed. ‘Even if you’d been stone cold sober he’d have had the heart attack, and it must have been a pretty massive one. Something like that – if the guy was going to cop it, he’d have done it anyway.’

  ‘But that’s not the point! I should—’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Eleanor, we’ve all got things we should have done.’

  She saw, her heart beating fast and hard, that he really did not take the view she did. He did not think her to blame. He had not been there, of course, and so could not share the horror, as David had. It was a relief, that he looked at it so differently, even though he was wrong. Even Eleanor, so used to being in the wrong herself, knew that. But she would not argue with him. It was
enough to know that someone else did not think her to blame.

  It would not last, this thing with Gavin. How could it? Why should she be happy? She did not deserve it. And yet, for the first time, she did begin to think it possible.

  In the early hours, she woke and felt the weight on her again, of the grievous past. Then, like a cloud from the moon, it lifted, and she moved closer to him, sharing his warmth. Unconscious, he murmured, changed position, laid one heavy arm across her body, pinning her to him. Outside, a shadow seemed to pass across the window, fleeting and black.

  17

  Faith had come at once, on the first train there was after New Year.

  ‘Who will I get, who do you want?’ David had asked Eleanor when she called him from the hospital.

  ‘You’ll have to give Claire her breakfast,’ she said. ‘She likes banana on toast.’

  ‘I know that,’ he told her. ‘It was my idea.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, right.’

  ‘Eleanor, will I come to the hospital? I don’t want you to be on your own. I’ll ring Barbara, she’ll take Claire, she won’t mind it being early. I’ll come to the hospital, will I?’ His voice rose, trembling.

  ‘It’s all right. I’m all right.’

  She was very calm, standing in the sister’s office in Accident and Emergency, looking through glass at the rows of plastic chairs filled with the waiting injured, casualties of other New Year celebrations gone wrong, with their black eyes and possible fractures. They sat brooding, vacant, looking the way people must in Purgatory, if such a place exists, Eleanor thought, hardly aware yet that she had entered its gates herself.

  Ian was still in one of the cubicles, covered by a sheet. They had given up trying to resuscitate him, so the noise and panic were over, the cubicle empty, the trolleys and equipment removed. In a little while, they would take him down to the hospital mortuary. Eleanor was very calm. Soon, she would wake to find herself in bed at home, Ian still breathing beside her, the nightmare over. When it happens, she told her mother later, you do not believe it. It cannot be true, so you do not believe it.

  ‘Mum,’ she said to David on the telephone. ‘Get Mum.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No, you’re right, you’re right. It’s the thought of telling them, telling everybody.’

  ‘I’ll do it then,’ Eleanor said. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  ‘No – Christ, it’s the least – I’ll ring Mum and Dad.’

  Eleanor longed for her mother. If anyone could put things right now, it would be Faith.

  In the days between Ian’s death and the funeral, Eleanor went on being calm, letting her mother guide her through the registration, funeral arrangements, dealing with the bank, the solicitor, the business of death. She sat with Claire on her knee, or close by her, holding her daughter, neither of them weeping. Then Faith arranged to take Claire to Barbara’s house every afternoon. Barbara gave her tea, and she played with Hannah, not thinking of death, or her father.

  ‘Children are protected by being young,’ Faith said. ‘Let her play – keep things as normal as possible for her.’

  ‘I will. I am trying.’

  The funeral director had asked Eleanor to bring some clothes for Ian – whatever she liked. Some people, he said, wore suits, others casual clothes. This was the only thing which brought Eleanor to the edge of hysteria.

  ‘What will I do?’ she asked David. Their mother was in the kitchen, preparing a meal; Claire was helping her. David and Eleanor sat in the living room in front of the gas fire, he with a tumbler of whisky in his hand.

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter, does it?’ David shrugged. ‘I mean, if he’s going to be cremated, who the hell cares what he’s wearing?’ He laughed. ‘It’s bizarre – dressing up the guy in his best suit in a bloody coffin.’

  Eleanor started to laugh too. ‘But it’s what he wore,’ she said. ‘He was happy wearing a suit. Work, that’s what he liked best. Work. Not me, not Claire. Oh God.’

  She was shaking, her hands were shaking as if with some terrible palsy. David was off his chair and on the floor next to her, his hands gripping hers, his hands warm and strong on her cold ones, making her still again.

  ‘Don’t talk about it,’ she warned, her hand touching his face, his mouth. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  So they did not talk.

  Later, it was to her mother that Eleanor said, ‘I could not have managed without you. I could not have got through it.’

  ‘It was a terrible thing,’ Faith said. ‘A terrible thing to happen.’ Faith did not say, then or ever, you are young, you will recover, knowing better than to offer this cheap comfort. But Eleanor knew her mother believed she would marry again, and indeed ought to. Though they were so close in the weeks after Ian’s death, Eleanor did not once confide the reason why this was impossible. She wanted her mother to think well of her. Once, longing for a reassurance she knew she could not have, she said, ‘I feel it’s my fault. I should have known something was wrong, realised sooner.’

  Her mother had scotched this swiftly, looking up at her tall daughter, smoothing her hair back as she had done when Eleanor was a child, ill or fretful. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘don’t torture yourself with that. Sudden death always makes us think of the things we should have done. No one’s perfect, but you were a good wife to him, Eleanor.’

  Eleanor accepted the comfort, submitted to the falsehood, for her mother’s sake, her mother’s good opinion. She and David, not talking about it, shared the truth, and the guilt.

  At Ian’s funeral, the crematorium was packed. He was local; his parents were still active in the community; he worked for a large company. And he was young.

  ‘Did Daddy know all these people?’ Claire asked, her hand held tight in her mother’s, feeling the slippery stuff of the glove next to her own woollen one.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘Do you know them all?’

  ‘Some.’ Not all that many, she realised. This was Ian’s home – his place, not hers. Soon, they were coming out of the crematorium, without the coffin, without Ian, to stand by Ian’s parents and sister, shake everyone by the hand, and thank these strangers for coming. Suddenly, it occurred to Eleanor that she did not have to stay on in the house she now owned outright, but did not love. She did not even have to stay in England.

  After everyone had gone home, Marion and Fergus first, then eventually her mother, David offered to stay on, but she did not want him. They were edgy with each other; he irritated her. The guilt she had been able to keep at bay (because her mother was there), invaded further each day, and David’s presence made it worse. ‘I’ll go,’ he said, and she thought he meant back to London. It was months before she heard from him again. Eventually, meeting a friend of his at Victoria Station, quite by chance, she heard that he was somewhere in the Middle East, working for a multi-national company. The friend did not know what he was doing, and had no address.

  Eleanor was in limbo. The friends and family who had surrunded her before and after the funeral no longer telephoned or called round every day. They all went back to their own unchanged lives. She had gone on rearranging and tidying the flowers, but now the last vase, the last florist’s basket, had been emptied. Pale and modest after the extravagance of lilies and carnations, a few early daffodils were coming into bud in the garden. Eleanor did not cut them. Ian’s parents, stiff with grief through the early weeks, had their routines to return to: bridge, golf, the brisk and undemanding tasks of the newly retired. These kept them going. Eleanor, who had liked Ian’s family without ever feeling connected to them, was increasingly reluctant to visit, even to ring them up. They had nothing now to talk about together except Ian. There was Claire of course, it helped that there was Claire. They showered her with presents, gifts of money. Then, in March, they went on a long-planned visit to their other son, James, who lived in Australia with his family.

  I will never see James again, Eleanor thought,
remembering the breezy man at her wedding, eight years older than Ian, coarser-featured, but with the same blue eyes, thick-lashed. Ian had often said they would go to Melbourne one day, on a long visit. Eleanor, who had not much cared whether they ever did, now felt cheated of the trip.

  She was full of irrational, contradictory emotions. They beat about inside her like trapped birds, uncomfortable and frightening. She had no defence against them, since she had not even a routine to go back to, as everyone else had. When the other women got in their cars and drove to the station to meet their husbands, Eleanor and Claire stayed at home. Their days did not begin and end in the same way now.

  In early Spring, the lightening and lengthening of the days, the thin daffodils, and the orange specks of opening crocuses along the edge of the garden path, did not give her hope, as she knew they were supposed to do. It will never end, she thought. Spring after Spring without him, and no chance, ever, to put things right, to make him love her as she had longed to be loved, no chance to love him back.

  Then, at Easter, Marion came down again, to stay for a few days with the children. ‘I wish we lived closer to each other,’ she said. ‘Phone calls aren’t enough – especially now.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking of moving back north.’ Eleanor spoke tentatively, wondering what Marion would think about this. Her sister’s face lit up at once.

  ‘Aberdeen? Or were you thinking maybe the Highlands?’

  ‘Well, yes. Near you. What do you think?’

  ‘I would love it,’ Marion said. She turned her head to look out of the French windows. In Eleanor’s suburban garden, gay with daffodils, Claire was pushing Eilidh on her swing.

  ‘Yes,’ Eleanor said, ‘I was thinking of them.’

  She was thinking too, that in another place it might not matter that she was single. Here, in the spreading housing estate, lived complete families, with working men and young mothers. In the summer, she would be the only woman who did not have a husband out washing the car on Sundays, or trimming the hedge.

  ‘Well then,’ Marion said, ‘I’d better start looking for a house for you.’