The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy

by Rachel Joyce

  And then I met your son.

  Yes, yes, yes

  A BAD NIGHT. The wind charges at the streets and the sea. It rattles at the window and roars through the tree outside. I see David. All night he is shouting at me. He shakes the framed print, and as the blue birds fly out he snaps off their wings. He asks for all the items he ever stole from me, only he doesn’t ask, he screams. I open my mouth, but no sound comes. There is nothing. The words cannot rise beyond my throat.

  A tenner! he shouts.

  Yes, I grunt.

  Another one!

  Yes.

  A bottle of gin!

  Yes.

  Another!

  Yes, I honk.

  Blanket! Beer! Biscuits!

  Here. Here.

  Your egg whisk!

  My egg whisk? Why, David? Why do you need my egg whisk?

  I want it! I want your egg whisk!

  My throat feels carved with a knife. YES, DAVID. YES, DAVID. YES, YES, YES.

  This morning I didn’t make it to the dayroom. During the morning rituals, the nurse said she’d heard a volunteer was coming with musical instruments. ‘Sometimes people think they can’t play music but they can, you know. It’s always a good day when the music volunteer comes.’ I requested to stay in my room. Later I heard the other patients playing bells and drums, but it was like me being in one land and them being in another. After thirteen days of writing, my hand felt skewered. In the dining room I couldn’t pick up my fork to eat. My head throbbed. Twice I was sick. I could not eat. I could not even take my nutritional drink.

  Dr Shah examined my neck, mouth and eye. ‘There is some swelling in the parotid gland.’

  ‘A little,’ said Sister Philomena.

  ‘And what’s happened to her hand?’

  I tried to pull it away, but I wasn’t fast enough. Dr Shah caught my right hand and turned it for a better look. He saw the blister between my thumb and forefinger where I’ve been holding the pencil. My thumb was hot and inflamed. The palm was pulsing. ‘That looks infected. What’s she been doing?’

  Dr Shah is a good man, but I wish he would talk as if I can hear.

  Sister Philomena folded her arms. She smiled at the pages scattered all over the floor. ‘Queenie has been keeping busy. Haven’t you, Queenie?’

  ‘You need to take better care of yourself,’ said Dr Shah. And he placed my hand very carefully on my lap, as if it were something precious to him, so that I felt wrong for criticizing him in my mind only moments before.

  Later the duty nurse came to dress the wound. She punctured the blister and drained it of pus. She dabbed on antibiotic gel and wrapped my hand with a gauze dressing. When she was gone, Sister Lucy sat beside me.

  ‘Why don’t I paint your nails?’ she said. She concentrated so hard, she breathed through her nose. The room seemed to lift and fall as she sat working.

  My nails are now the colour of the dawn sky over the sea at Embleton Bay, when the day is so new it is almost white.

  The nun and the peach

  ‘YOU HAVE been overdoing it, dear heart.’

  When Sister Mary Inconnue entered my room this morning, she was bearing her typewriter in its leather bag high above her cornette, like a tray. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘Look what I have for you on this fine Tuesday.’ (It was raining.) She lowered the bag. She showed me a plate with one soft, amber peach.

  I shook my head to remind her I can’t eat. If I am honest, I felt angry. As if she and the letter had become one and the same thing. I showed her my bandaged right hand.

  She said, ‘Well, what do you expect? You push yourself too hard. You are always writing. On Sunday you hardly stopped. You wrote about Harold and the drives all day.’

  But this letter was YOUR IDEA. My pencil stabbed the page.

  ‘I didn’t tell you to do it the whole time. Waiting is about being still. You can’t keep busy every minute, otherwise you’re not waiting. You’re just throwing things around to distract yourself.’

  Sister Mary Inconnue set her typewriter bag on the foot of my bed and drew up the chair. ‘It’s time to concentrate your energy on other things. Like this lovely peach.’

  And how exactly was a peach going to help me or Harold Fry? I didn’t write that for her. I just thumped the bed.

  I shouldn’t even think these things, because Sister Mary Inconnue swoops in with an answer as if she’s just stepped inside my head and heard me. ‘It won’t make any difference whatsoever,’ she said. ‘But it will make you less anxious. The peach is here. It’s in the present. Whether you can wait for Harold Fry is not something you will influence by working hard or getting upset. We behave these days as if we can have everything the moment we think of it. But we can’t. Sometimes we just have to sit and wait. So take the peach. Don’t be so cross. Go on.’

  She put it in my hands. Look at the skin, she told me. Look at the colour. The shape. What a beauty. Touch it. The room was very still. Just a peach.

  I stroked the velvety red blush of its skin. I felt the give of its flesh as I pressed it with my fingertips. I traced the well-defined crease. The dimple at its centre where once the fruit was attached to a stem, a tree, and grew there. This may sound strange, but I forgot briefly that you could eat a peach as well as touch it. Sister Mary Inconnue lifted the fruit to my nose, and the smell was so honey-sweet my nostrils began to zing.

  ‘Let’s cut it open now,’ she said. She took up her knife.

  I watched everything. The glint of light on the blade, the nick in the flesh as the knife pierced it, the sudden overspill of sticky amber juice down her fingers and then on to the plate. After she had eased the knife once round, she put it down and held the peach between her two hands in order to prise it open. She twisted the top half away from the lower and pulled her hands apart so that the peach emerged in two glistening halves, one bearing the stone like a wet nut, the other showing a soft naked bed with pulpy ruby strings. My mouth began to flood.

  Sister Mary Inconnue cut the flesh into quarters, then into smaller pieces. She mopped her fingers before offering me the plate.

  ‘Have a try,’ she said.

  I shook my head. I pointed to my throat. I’ll choke.

  ‘You can spit it out if it’s too much.’

  I lifted a bit of the peach between my fingers. My chin was already soaked. I slipped the fruit between my lips and felt it nestle on the floor of my mouth. I tipped my head to the left, a little to the right, in order to move the fruit from side to side.

  ‘You don’t have to swallow if you don’t want to,’ said Sister Mary Inconnue.

  The thick sweet juice spilt past my larynx and towards my belly. I trembled with hunger. Throwing up my chin, I jumped the fruit into the back of my mouth. If I die choking on a piece of peach, I thought, at least it won’t have tasted of cardboard. Then it was gone. I had eaten it.

  ‘You see?’ laughed Sister Mary Inconnue. ‘You ate some peach. You said you couldn’t, but you could.’

  I felt happier than if I’d grown wings and learned to fly. We ate another piece and then another. We were the peach and the peach was us and there was nothing more.

  ‘You should rest now,’ she said.

  When I woke, Sister Mary Inconnue had gone home. I picked up my pencil and held it very carefully so as not to rub the blister. I began to write about the nun and the fruit, taking small breaks in between each paragraph. It has taken me two days.

  I hope you are resting too, Harold.

  How are your feet?

  Three cheers for Martina

  ‘OH, I FUCKIN’ love that Slovak gal!’ yelled Finty from her chair. ‘I want to snog her, I do!’

  Sister Catherine had just read out the long message on today’s postcard. The one with a picture of the castle and ‘Greetings from Taunton’. Did the young woman really rescue you? Did she really offer you a bed for the night and repair your shoes? Did she actually massage your feet?

  ‘I love Harold Fry an’ all!’ shouted Finty.


  Today Finty received a voucher for free dining at thousands of quality restaurants in the UK. She says she is saving the voucher for you. ‘I reckon that poor bugger is starving,’ she said.

  ‘I’m glad Harold Fry had a day of rest in Taunton,’ said Sister Catherine. ‘It must have been hard. Walking and walking for two whole weeks. I’d be in agony. It’s my flat feet.’ She lifted her hem. Her black shoes poked out like two liquorice sticks.

  ‘But if Harold Fry is in Somerset,’ said Barbara, ‘that means he’ll reach the Midlands soon.’

  Sister Lucy bit her lip. ‘Is Somerset not next to Newcastle, then?’ More pieces were removed from her jigsaw. The Pearly King gave a kiss to his fingertips and blew it into the air.

  ‘A woman washed his feet?’ said Mr Henderson. ‘Who does Harold Fry think he is? Jesus Christ?’

  I smiled, and I am not sure but I think Mr Henderson smiled too. Perhaps it was acid reflux.

  *

  I used to take the Taunton bus out of Kingsbridge. I never went as far as Taunton. I got off at Totnes and went dancing every Thursday. For a while, Harold, your son came with me.

  I will get to this story. It’s especially important and you must know it. The story may bring you pain, and for that I’m sorry. But we are on this path now, Harold. You must hear everything.

  There can be no more writing today, however. My hand is sore and I have learned my lesson. You don’t get to a place by constantly moving, even if your journey is only one of sitting still and waiting. Every once in a while you have to stop in your tracks and admire the view, a small cloud and a tree outside your window. You have to see what you did not see before. And then you have to sleep.

  Soon I will tell you.

  A taste of well-being

  ‘HAT? SHAWL? Slippers?’ Sister Catherine pulled a baseball cap on to my head and scanned me up and down in my wheelchair as if she had just made me all by herself. She gave a nod of approval. ‘It’s a beautiful spring day. So here we go. The garden.’

  Sister Catherine wheeled me out of my room and along the corridor. There was no one in the dayroom. The doors to the terrace were already open, and the air smelt sweet and sappy. I closed my eyes as we approached the dazzling square of light on the carpet. But then I felt the prickle of sunshine on my hands, my wrists. I gripped my fingers into a ball and dared to look.

  The Well-being Garden had exploded. Everywhere I turned, it fizzed with spring. Greenery cracked from the bare branches. In places the growth was so new that the leaves were pale crumbs, and in others they verged on yellowy acidic, as if nature had not yet got the colour mix right. Daisies, buttercups and celandine threaded the grass. There were unfurled white buds on the magnolias and long tassels of leaves drooping from the willow. I thought of the girls I knew at Oxford with their long silky hair. I wonder where they are now? Sunshine flowed through the trees in spangled spokes, and the waxy leaves of the evergreens – the holly, the laurel, the viburnums – blinked where they caught the light.

  ‘Everybody’s outside today, Queenie,’ said Sister Catherine.

  It was true. On the terrace a volunteer was playing cards with Mr Henderson in his wheelchair. Sister Lucy read Watership Down to Barbara. The Pearly King was dozing. There were several patients with their friends and family, and children playing hide-and-seek behind the wooden pagoda. Down by the pond, Finty lay spreadeagled on a mattress. When she saw me she sat up. She waved.

  ‘Feel them rays, Queenie Hennessy!’ she yelled. ‘I’m topless, gal!’ No one minded. Her torso was milk white, small as a child’s. Her ribs stuck out above and beneath the flat currants that were her breasts.

  Sister Catherine showed me the last of the primroses and daffodils. She pointed to the blue haze of forget-me-nots beneath the sycamore trees. Soon the yellows of a spring garden will be replaced by white. There will be blossom on the hawthorn, banks of cow parsley. Peony buds sat tight as marbles. I would love to see them flower.

  ‘Do you want to smell the mint, Queenie?’ said Sister Catherine. She snapped off a stem and crushed the leaves between her fingertips. It was as good as drinking summer.

  I wanted to describe my sea garden, but I had no notebook. I thought instead of the rock pools and flowerbeds. I remembered the first driftwood figure I made from a bleached branch that I found on the shore; it was tall, you see, about six feet in all, and washed-out fawn in colour. When I erected it at the centre of my garden, it was like bringing something of you into my exile. I made many more of those figures over the years, and sometimes, if they looked sad – by which I mean, I suppose, if I felt sad about them – I hung them with garlands of seaweed or holey stones. When the flowers died back in the summer, the stones and figures took over. A garden should never seem shut down in winter. And all the while I thought these things, Sister Catherine smiled as if she understood.

  ‘I wonder where Harold Fry is today?’ she asked the air. And a little later she said, ‘One day, I’d like to walk to Santiago de Compostela. But it’s my feet, you see. So I don’t suppose I will.’

  Tonight the Well-being Garden is still. It is not quiet but it is peaceful. From inside I hear Barbara singing in her room. Someone coughs. There’s a television, and an exchange between the night staff that ends with laughter. The wind ruffles the North Sea, and a pearl-white moon shines above the tree.

  I wait.

  I remember.

  The slant of a smile. The scuff on a shoe. A spilling of sunlight.

  Rebel child

  IT’S JULY in Kingsbridge and there’s a sudden downpour. I am walking down Fore Street with my shopping basket. The quay is hidden behind the veil of rain. The water plashes my face and shoulders. It drops in solid sploshes from the shop awnings, and it gushes in rivulets down the street. I bow my head. I have to place my steps carefully in order not to lose my balance and slip. It’s a weekend, so I’m wearing sandals, a loose dress, a light cardigan. My hair is soaked and so are my feet.

  ‘Why can’t you watch where you drive?’ shouts a male voice. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ With my hands to my eyes, I glance up.

  The fuss is coming from a young man outside a pub on the other side of the road. He’s pointing at a driver in a car. I quickly understand that the motorist has pulled into a parking space beside the young man and splattered him with water from the gutter. It’s all over the young man’s coat, his big boots. His hair is so wet it sticks flat against his head like black streamers.

  ‘And what are you in a sportscar for, anyway?’ the young man shouts. ‘What’s your problem?’

  The driver gets out of his car and locks it in a hurry and tries to pretend the young man is not bothering him. But the young man won’t give up. He waves his arms at the grey street, the shopfronts, the rain.

  ‘This is Kingsbridge,’ he shouts. ‘Not Monaco.’

  I am not the only person who’s noticed. Other people have stopped too. They tell the young man to calm down. Move away, they say. So he starts shouting at them as well, calling them names, only the ones he chooses make him laugh. Capitalist! Golfer! Bank manager!

  ‘Walker of small dogs!’ he shouts. ‘Reader of Tory newspapers! Drinker of Rotary Club port!’

  Someone calls out that there is no need for this sort of behaviour in a nice place like Kingsbridge, though as I look at the crowd around the young man – the corduroys, the waterproofs, the golfing umbrellas and blazers – I see that he is speaking the truth. I can’t help smiling. He laughs too, and then his face falls and he looks nothing except incredibly bored. ‘Oh, fuck you,’ he says, turning away. Only it isn’t as if he is saying it to the passers-by or even the driver. It is as if he is saying it to the whole world.

  He has a narrow face, very pale, pointed at the chin. He is tall, too tall; his legs and arms poke out at the ends of his trousers and sleeves. I’d know that profile anywhere.

  ‘What did you say? What did you say to me?’ The driver has had enough. He hops from one foot to the other. ‘
Did you hear him?’ he shouts to the crowd. He looks far more out of control than David. In fact David is very still, watching the growing rumpus with amused detachment. The rainwater streams down his face.

  Bursting out of the pub comes a thickset man with a bottle in his hand, and behind him is the slight figure of Napier. Our boss keeps to the back, dancing from one foot to the other, but he has several other men with him. David doesn’t seem to hear, but they are calling him names. Gay boy. Wanker. It’s hardly imaginative. As soon as David turns, they will grab him and shove him down an alleyway. Their hands are already fists. Their chins jut forward. Nobody’s going to stop them.

  My arm shoots up. I yell, ‘Here I am! Here I am!’ I am already charging into the road, though I have no idea what I am going to do when I get to the other side. ‘David Fry!’ I am pushing through the crowd. ‘Yes, he’s with me!’ I am calling. ‘Excuse me!’ Spotting me, Napier’s henchmen slink into the shadows.

  The sodden lapels of David’s overcoat are pinned all over with coloured badges. FASCIST LEMSIPS. THE SEX PISTOLS. DON’T BLAME ME I VOTED LABOUR! FREE NELSON MANDELA. But also, strangely, a picture of Paddington Bear. David smells of damp and patchouli and cigarettes. ‘Come along or we’ll be late,’ I say, steering him past the crowd. I talk very loudly, as if no one else is present, and then I march him down the street. He doesn’t resist. We walk fast though I can feel him looking at me. I think he’s even smiling. In a detached way. The way he watched the crowd earlier, as if he likes unexpected adventure.

  Once we’re down by the quay I slow my pace. We stop under the awning of the newsagent’s. The rain pop-pops above our heads. It dimples the skin of the estuary and beats at the little boats so that they bob and sway.

  ‘What was that about?’ David brushes his wet sleeve. His hands are very fine. He seems to be removing my touch from his coat.

  I know your father, I tell him. I work with Harold Fry.