by Anna Hope
‘I wasn’t sure you’d see me,’ Lissa says.
‘I wasn’t sure I’d come.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke?’
Cate shakes her head, and Lissa takes out her pouch and rolls.
‘I went past the old house,’ says Cate. ‘On the way here.’
‘Oh?’
‘It was funny. Looking at it and not going in. Are you still in the basement?’
‘Barely. I can’t really afford it. I think I’ll have to move.’
‘Then it really is the end of an era.’
‘Yes, I suppose it is.’ Lissa lights her cigarette, blows the smoke away from them. ‘How’s Tom?’ she says. ‘And Sam?’
‘He’s good. Tom’s walking now.’
‘Do you have pictures?’
Cate takes out her phone, bringing up a couple of recent photos as Lissa leans in. ‘He looks like a sweetheart.’
‘He is. Sometimes.’
‘How’s Hannah?’ asks Lissa softly.
‘She’s OK, I think. As far as I know they’re still apart. I’m seeing her later. I guess I’ll know more then.’
Lissa nods, turns to look out into the street. ‘I won’t bother to defend myself,’ she says.
‘OK.’
Above their heads, the rumble of a train, the squeal of its brakes. The hiss as it opens its doors.
‘It’s funny,’ says Lissa, turning back. ‘I’ve been thinking, lately, about that audition. That film. Do you remember? Before we went to Greece?’
Cate’s stomach tightens. ‘Yes.’
‘And how I couldn’t forgive you for it. I’ve sort of hated you, I think. Ever since. For not telling me about it in time.’
‘Lissa—’
‘No.’ She holds up her hand. ‘Let me finish. I know you have your own version of events. I just wanted to say that, lately, I’ve come to understand that I’m capable of things I didn’t ever imagine. And I wanted to say that, whatever happened, I forgive you. That I wish you well.’
Cate opens her mouth to defend herself, then closes it again. ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘That means a lot.’
There is the rattle of the train leaving the station above, bound for Liverpool Street, or for the north, for far reaches of the city.
‘Sarah’s ill,’ says Lissa. ‘She has cancer.’
‘Oh God,’ says Cate. ‘How far?’
‘Stage four.’
Cate puts down her cup. ‘I’m very sorry to hear that, Liss.’
Lissa’s hands move to her hair and back down again. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘it’s all a bit shit.’
‘Is she having treatment?’
‘She refused it.’
Cate waits for Lissa to speak.
‘I sort of admire her for it,’ Lissa says, ‘but I’m angry too – I mean, I’m fucking furious actually.’
Cate nods.
‘And …’ Lissa looks up. ‘I know you went through it with your mum, and I wanted to ask you what to expect?’
She has the afternoon to herself, until she needs to be at Hannah’s at six, so she wanders down to the bookshop, where she finds a picture book for Tom. The tables outside the deli are still full. Everyone sitting at them seems terribly young. As she queues inside for salad she watches them, these young people in their summer clothes, the self-consciousness of the way they sit, as though ready to have their photos taken, with their lemon water and their flat whites, starring in the movie of their lives. The way you do, when you are twenty-four or twenty-five, and you only see yourself from the outside in. She buys her salad and takes it into the park, where she sits beneath the old tree at the back of the old house and eats it, and then lies in the dappled sun.
At quarter to six she takes the back route to Hannah’s flat. Hannah buzzes her in and she climbs the three flights of metal stairs to where her friend is waiting at the top.
Hannah looks well – she is tanned, wearing a short-sleeved dress, her hair a little longer. Cate doesn’t know what she expected, some lingering sadness perhaps, but the flat feels lovely, homely, the way the light catches the flowers on the table. Hannah makes tea, which they take out on to the terrace and drink in the last of the evening sun.
‘You look good,’ says Cate. ‘How are you, really?’
‘I’ve been swimming,’ says Hannah. ‘Every morning. It helps. And you? How’re you and Sam?’
‘OK, I think. Good.’
‘That’s good.’
‘I heard from Hesther,’ says Cate.
‘Who?’
‘Hesther. From Oxford. I wrote to her to ask for Lucy’s address. A while ago. In the winter. She wrote back. Sent me her contact.’
‘Oh Jesus, Cate. Really?’
Cate looks out, at the sun, setting now in the trees. She thinks of the days after the email – the letters composed, scrapped, written again. And then waking one morning in early summer, dressing Tom, dropping him off at Alice’s, cycling through the morning to work, and knowing, or understanding what she had known, really, all along. There was nothing to be gained from writing. There was much to be lost.
‘I didn’t get in touch,’ she says lightly, ‘in the end.’
She hears Hannah exhale. ‘That’s good.’
She turns to Hannah. ‘I did see Lissa, though.’
‘Lissa?’
Cate sees the momentary shock on her friend’s face. ‘We met up this afternoon.’
‘To talk about me?’
‘Actually, no. Not really. Although she asked about you. She seemed different. Sad. We talked about Sarah.’
‘Sarah. Why Sarah?’
‘She’s dying. She has cancer. Lissa asked to see me, to ask me about it. About how it might be.’
‘Oh,’ says Hannah. ‘Sarah? Oh no.’ For a long while she is silent, then she leans forward and puts her face in her hands.
‘Han …’ Cate puts her hand on Hannah’s arm, worried she has punctured her frail bubble of happiness, but when Hannah looks back up her face is unexpected, shining.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she says, quite quietly.
‘What?’
Hannah laughs, puts her hands to her face.
‘Oh my God,’ Cate says. ‘Who—?’
‘Nathan. He came to the flat. To collect some things. It was quick. So quick.’ She shakes her head. ‘All that time, and then …’ She makes a gesture, her palms upturned, and Cate sees the surprise still, on her face.
‘Does he know?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know. Not yet.’
‘You have to tell him, Han.’
‘I want to wait. Wait to see if I’ll manage to keep hold of it. If it will stay.’
‘How many weeks are you?’
‘Eight, or nine. I’m not sure. I’ve got a scan booked at the end of the month.’
Cate watches her hands move to her abdomen, rest there. ‘Can I come?’
‘To the scan?’
‘Yes. Can I come with you?’ Cate reaches across, takes hold of her friend’s hand.
Lissa
It was suggested that Sarah might want to move downstairs, to the old study at the back of the house, but she has refused. I’ll die in my own bed, thank you very much.
Laurie has moved in, taking the bedroom beside Sarah’s, the one that faces out on to the street. They have established an easy rhythm, Lissa and Laurie; they are solicitous with each other, taking turns to sit with Sarah while the other cooks or cleans, or sleeps.
Sarah is a surprisingly easy patient – whatever pain she is in, and Lissa knows it must be great, she rarely complains.
Sarah’s friends visit. Some of them Lissa hasn’t seen for almost thirty years: June and Caro and Ina and Ruth. They congregate round Sarah’s bed. Lissa leaves them to it. Sometimes the laughter is raucous and wild. Sometimes they sing.
While Sarah sleeps they gather around the kitchen table. They take over. They make Lissa sit and drink wine, or t
ea. They take Lissa’s face in their hands and cry and kiss her cheeks and tell her how much she looks like her mother, and when they hug Lissa to their chests in their embrace, she knows that they have lived through illnesses and lived through children and lived through no children and that they are a tribe, these women, with their battered bodies and their scars.
She is awed by them, these women of her mother’s generation; they appear to her shining, like a constellation that is setting in the west. These women, these caretakers. What will happen to the world when they have gone?
When they are gone the house is quiet.
She cycles back along the canal to Hackney in the summer sunshine, and packs up the flat into boxes, which she loads into a rental van and drives to a storage facility on the North Circular. She goes back to the flat and cleans the oven, washes the windows. Has a last cigarette on the wide stone steps. She posts the key through the letterbox of the house of the estate agent in Stamford Hill then she takes a taxi to Tufnell Park with three small bags of her stuff.
She moves into the attic, where she sleeps on a futon on the floor. She likes it up here, though it is hot at this time of year, at the top of the house. The old chair is still here, and she sits in it and reads, while Sarah sleeps downstairs. She roams her mother’s bookshelves, reading at random – Carson McCullers, Zola, Katherine Mansfield. Many of the books have her mother’s notes in them; some from her time as a teacher, some from earlier, from her university degree. There is something moving about reading like this, alongside her mother, feeling the youthful energy in her mother’s scrawl, keeping her company while she sleeps downstairs.
One afternoon, as she sits there reading, an idea comes to her, a surprising one, and she lets it settle in her body, feeling its contours, trying it out for size.
In the early mornings she takes the battered old hose and douses the garden – It must be early when it’s hot like this, Sarah tells her, so their leaves don’t burn. Lissa stands in the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden inhaling the musky tang of the tomatoes and green growing things, and looks up at the house, at Sarah’s bedroom, where the curtains are still drawn and her mother sleeps. She is starting to have her favourites: the lady’s mantle, which cups the water like mercury; the sweet peas, racing up their trellis. Sometimes she bends and takes the tendrils in her fingers and strokes the ends of them, watching them reach out for life. She attempts to cut the lawn with the ancient mower, whose teeth are rusted and saw at the grass.
In the long, light evenings, they sit in Sarah’s room and read to her. She loves to be read to; poetry mostly – more bang for the buck, she says, no time for The Brothers Karamazov now. She sends Lissa and Laurie to the bookshelves over and over again – knows where each book stands on the crowded shelves, knows its neighbours, can direct you to a volume in the dark. She treats poems like medicine and knows what she needs.
She asks for Shakespeare, and Lissa and Laurie take it in turns to read the sonnets. One sunny Sunday, Lissa calls Johnny, who comes to join them, arriving freshly shaved, bringing flowers and pastries and good coffee and wine. They read Antony and Cleopatra all the way through, taking it in turn to read the parts. It takes all day, and is one of the nicest days she can remember. Sarah has her eyes closed for most of it. Sometimes Lissa sits beside her, takes her hands, which Sarah squeezes now and again.
Later, Johnny helps to carry Sarah down to the garden. It is the first time in a week since Sarah has left her bed. When Lissa and Johnny make a hammock with their hands and lift her, she is noticeably lighter. Laurie disappears into the kitchen to roast a chicken, waving them all outside.
‘Fetch my sketch book, would you?’ says Sarah, when she is sitting in the chair. Lissa does so, bringing it, and her tin of charcoals. Then she retreats to the bench behind her, watching her mother’s charcoal move over the paper, the garden spring to life beneath her hand: Johnny dozing in a deckchair, Ruby stretched belly up in the sun.
Later that evening, when the chicken has been eaten and Sarah is asleep in bed and Johnny has departed, Lissa and Laurie stand by the sink, clearing the last of the plates.
‘Is he your lover?’ says Laurie.
‘Who?’ Lissa looks up, startled.
‘Johnny?’
‘No.’
‘He’d like to be. He’s a lovely man.’
‘I don’t need a lover,’ says Lissa. ‘Not now.’
Laurie nods.
‘And he’s complicated.’
‘We’re all complicated,’ says Laurie. She stows plates in cupboards, wipes down surfaces. It is the tidiest the kitchen has ever been.
‘I’m giving up acting,’ says Lissa. ‘I realized that earlier, when we were reading. I don’t want to do it any more.’
‘That’s a shame, Liss,’ says Laurie softly.
‘No,’ says Lissa. ‘It’s not. I never want to go to another audition again.’
She feels this land, the certainty of it. The relief.
‘Do you know what you’re going to do?’
‘Sort of.’ Outside, the light lands in the pear tree. ‘I’ve been thinking. I’d like to train to be a teacher.’
‘Really?’
She nods. ‘An English teacher.’
‘Like your mother.’
‘Like Sarah, yes.’ She turns to Laurie. ‘But I’m not sure. I’m going to go away first. To make up my mind.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know.’
It is hard, hard to think of a destination that does not seem contrived – she does not want to find herself. Or perhaps she does. Perhaps that is exactly what she wants.
A few days later, when Sarah is dozing and Laurie has gone for an evening walk on the Heath, Lissa goes downstairs to feed Ruby. While the cat is busy at her bowl, she fills the old watering can in the dim kitchen, goes outside and drenches the beds with water. The garden is full of the smells of evening – the jasmine, the honeysuckle and the lavender – and the low humming of the bees. As she makes her rounds, she feels how her mother loved her garden – easily, simply, without rancour or friction or pain. She feels her mother’s choices, her mother’s care, her mother’s subjectivity, like a veil hovering over this small patch of earth, merging with the night. Perhaps, she thinks, this is what remains.
She thinks of smoking a cigarette but does not. Instead she goes back into the house, puts the kettle on the stove and makes herself a cup of tea. She takes it back up the stairs, her eyes adjusting to the lack of light. As soon as she enters the room she senses it. She puts down her tea and walks slowly over to where her mother lies in her bed. She lifts Sarah’s hand, which is cool, and she rubs her mother’s thumb with her own. At first she wants to rub and rub, to rub the life back into her mother, the way you would rub warmth back into someone who is cold, but then she understands that she cannot – that the time for that is passed – and so she stops, and holds her mother’s hand instead. She reaches over and brushes her hair gently from her forehead. Someone has shut the window – it must have been Laurie – and Lissa stands and opens it. Then she comes back to sit beside her mother, to hold her hand.
The morning after Sarah’s death, Ina arrives. She is a hospice nurse and knows what to do. Lissa watches as Ina unpacks her bag beside Sarah’s body: small brown bottles with stoppers, scissors, string, muslin squares. Ina is small and steady and purposeful. ‘Can I watch?’ she asks her.
‘You can help,’ says Ina. ‘If you like.’
First Ina straightens Sarah’s limbs, then takes her head in her hands and moves it gently from side to side, placing it down on the pillow, placing another pillow beneath her jaw. ‘We’ll clean her now,’ says Ina.
Lissa fetches boiled water from the kitchen, and Ina adds lavender oil and sage, and soaks swabs of muslin in the fragrant water. The women clean Sarah’s armpits, her chest, her legs. Ina swabs in between her legs. She takes a fresh square of muslin and folds it, placing it in a pair of clean knickers.
‘She might
leak,’ she says matter-of-factly. ‘We all leak.’
These bodily fluids, this defilement, this shit are what life withstands, hardly and with difficulty, on the point of death.
She misses Hannah. She wants to talk to Hannah.
‘Here,’ says Ina, moving around Sarah’s body. ‘We need to wrap the fingers, to take off her rings. The fingers will swell and then we can’t.’
Lissa watches as Ina wraps Sarah’s fingers with cotton thread, massaging in oil, moving the fluid gently down towards her mother’s wrist so the rings might ease off. She does the same for the rings on her mother’s left hand. ‘That’s it,’ says Ina approvingly. Then, under Ina’s instruction, they place Sarah’s hands gently on her chest. ‘It’s better that way, so the blood doesn’t pool.’ She is like a midwife, thinks Lissa, in her gentle, certain ministrations; a midwife for death.
‘Can I have a moment?’ she asks Ina.
When Ina steps outside, Lissa takes her mother’s hands. She lifts her fingers to her face, as though her mother might read her – read the Braille of her daughter’s features, even now, even beyond death. Then she slowly places the hands back down on the sheet.
Hannah
Cate is waiting for her outside the hospital. Hannah sees her scanning the car park, watching for her.
‘They’ll think we’re together,’ says Cate as Hannah approaches, and she laughs. Her hands move like birds, unsure where to land.
‘Well,’ says Hannah, threading her arm through hers. ‘That’s all right.’
They are the first couple there and they do not have to wait to be seen. A sonographer in jeans and a T-shirt calls them into a small dark room.
She gets up on to the table. The monitor faces away from her. Her heart. Her breath coming quickly.
The sonographer glances at Hannah’s file, then turns to Cate. ‘And you’re the partner?’
‘No,’ says Cate. ‘I’m just a friend.’
‘Well,’ says the woman gently, ‘why don’t you go and sit down there.’ She gestures to a chair at the head of the table.