by Joanna Glen
As I walked towards the pub in cold misty Baker Street, I felt a growing terror about seeing Bridget. I couldn’t imagine a version of her that wasn’t happy.
And then there she was, resplendent in a turquoise and fuchsia dress with a silver fur stole, and when she took me into her arms, she felt as soft and gorgeous as she’d always felt, and she smelled of freesias and champagne and pears. We clung to each other and danced down the street.
Then Bridget said, ‘This’ll be playing havoc with our wedding outfits!’
Then she said, ‘I can’t believe I just said wedding outfits! Who says wedding outfits?’
‘You!’ I said.
And we were crying laughing, like when we were eleven.
Oh, the joy of it – time had rewound.
And she was the happy Bridget that I remembered.
‘You are happy,’ I said. ‘I was so worried you’d be different.’
‘It’s seeing you,’ she said. ‘And maybe a little bit the pills, but today isn’t a day to talk about pills.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’d rather drink champagne,’ she said, ordering a bottle. ‘Though I shouldn’t have too much.’
We glugged champagne.
She said, ‘I’m sorry I’m still so fat.’
‘You’re beautiful, I always told you that.’
‘I’ll never get a boyfriend, Eva! I still haven’t. It’s tragic!’
‘Rubbish. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’
‘If you find me a beholder, I’ll be eternally grateful,’ she said.
‘He’d be the luckiest man,’ I said.
‘What do you think of Naomi?’ said Bridget.
‘She’s great,’ I said very fast.
We glugged more champagne.
‘I think Barny was looking for M, don’t you?’
‘Probably.’
‘I hope it’ll work. Are you still with Michael?’
‘No …’
‘You met someone else?’
‘I did,’ I said, blushing. ‘But it turned out he was engaged.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bridget. ‘But I’m sure they’re queuing round the block for you.’
‘Not exactly,’ I said.
‘Look at the time!’ said Bridget.
She grabbed the bottle, and we ran to Marylebone Town Hall spilling champagne on our toes. When I saw Barnaby, standing alone and not-yet-married at the front, I thought that I could rush towards him, like in a Richard Curtis film, and he would perhaps say, This is the biggest mistake of my life, and he would turn and walk away with me, and we would hail a taxi to Heathrow Airport and get on a flight to, I don’t know, Zanzibar – because it has two zs in its name. I caught Barnaby’s eye, and he looked away.
Should I go over to him? Did I dare?
There was Mr Blue, whose body had been eaten by grief, and whose face looked like a large walnut.
Naomi appeared, on her father’s arm. I couldn’t bear to look at her, but I held my head high and smiled. As Barnaby Blue promised to love her forever, my bangles fell down my arm with a big clink.
At the reception, I never left Bridget’s side.
Naomi came over.
‘Congratulations!’ I said, grabbing one of her sleeves, over-affectionately. ‘Is that antique lace?’
As if I cared.
She squeezed my hand.
‘I love the way you gave all your mothers colours,’ she said.
Let go of my hand, I thought.
‘Barny told me,’ she said.
I wish he hadn’t, I thought, it’s private.
Naomi didn’t let go of my hand, and I really didn’t need to see that great big zigzaggy engagement ring and the gold wedding band up close.
‘And I thought what colour mother would I like to be,’ said Naomi.
Bridget said, ‘What colour did you think?’
‘Red,’ said Naomi. ‘Wild and full of passion. I’m going to be one of those mothers who takes their baby travelling around the world to far-flung places. In a sling. With none of the paraphernalia. Just my boobs.’
Oh, not your boobs, I thought.
They get everywhere.
Chapter 98
At the airport, I wrote Jhazmin a letter, trying a different tack – easy questions such as her favourite food and her favourite colour, like Bridget and I used to ask each other in those paper whirlybirds we made incessantly in Class 4.
When I got back to Córdoba with Bridget, Sister Ana was lying in bed, with a croupy cough.
I was shocked by how tiny she looked.
‘Are my flowers still alive?’ she whispered, coughing into her handkerchief.
‘Your flowers are looking more beautiful than ever,’ I said.
‘Can I go and see them?’ she whispered, and speaking made her start coughing again.
‘You can go out there tomorrow,’ I said. ‘It’s dark now.’
I sat holding her hand.
She made circles with her forefinger around my palm.
‘Round and round,’ she said. ‘Round and round.’
I liked the feeling of it, and I wondered if she’d done this when I was a baby, and I chose to think she had.
‘We’re in the circle,’ she whispered. ‘With Sister María Soledad.’
She smiled.
‘What is the circle, Sister Ana?’ I said.
‘Round and round,’ she said in a fading voice. ‘Love love love.’
I sat up with her through the night, putting flannels on her forehead, watching her shrink before my eyes.
She did go out to the patio the next day. She went out on a trolley, being pushed by the ambulance driver, a slim man, with strikingly thin arms, like Lorenzo, like Billy.
‘Could you pause here?’ I said to him.
‘Open your eyes,’ I said.
‘My flowers,’ she whispered.
I knew that she would never see her flowers again, not in this life.
‘Lorenzo!’ she whispered to the ambulance driver. ‘Will you let my birds out?’
Carrie, Bridget and I opened the cages, and the yellow birds flew in circles around the courtyard. Sister Ana lifted her thin right arm, and one of the birds swooped over her, grazing her forefinger with its wing.
It was a fragment of a second.
I took her hand.
I could see the imprint of swept feather on her finger.
I didn’t try to explain it.
Because not everything needs an explanation, she’d taught me that.
She was softening into death.
And this isn’t an explainable thing.
‘Bridget, I’m so sorry not to be with you today,’ I said, holding myself together. ‘But I have to go to the hospital.’
‘That’s totally what you should do, Eva,’ said Bridget.
‘She’ll be safe with me,’ said Carrie, taking Bridget’s arm.
It felt so good, looking at them together – spindly Carrie, with her wispy plaits, blond again, and her too-big kimono, arm in arm with beautiful Bridget, her pale porcelain face, her dark hair, falling in waves around her shoulders, her lovely balanced body, curving in and out like a Greek vase, bare feet flat on the stone floor.
It is, surprisingly, possible to feel deep joy inside deep sadness – like Mr Blue said, they all run together.
The budgerigars flew back into their cages.
I climbed into the ambulance with Sister Ana’s bag and her globe.
‘Do you have my clock?’ she whispered.
I took it out.
‘Wind it up!’ she said.
‘I thought you didn’t want the clocks wound up.’
‘I do.’
I wound it up.
‘Look at the time,’ she said.
It was the last thing she ever said.
‘Are you the granddaughter?’ said a nurse, when we arrived.
I nodded.
Because I wanted to have a family.
Just for a f
ew moments.
As I sat holding her disappearing hand, her globe trembled back and forth with the swish of nurses’ aprons.
‘It’s pneumonia,’ the doctor told me. ‘Your grandmother’s very weak.’
Sister Ana was falling slowly out of this world.
The day seemed motionless, but for the tick tick tick of Lorenzo’s clock.
I kissed her forehead.
‘I wish you remembered it all,’ I said. ‘My life with you all. I wish you could have told me about it.’
She said nothing, but her eyelids trembled.
‘I wish I’d known Lorenzo,’ I said.
Her face was set with a tiny hopeful smile.
‘I wish I’d known Sister María Soledad. And all of you. My first family.’
Carrie and Gabriel and Bridget brought food in Tupperware boxes for me to eat, and they kissed Sister Ana’s forehead, which was turning into tracing paper.
I said that life was a very sad thing, and Carrie told me it could be happy too, but Barnaby Blue was on honeymoon with Naomi Blue, who was his wife, and Sister Ana, who was the closest I’d ever got to the beginning of me, was nearing her end.
And I couldn’t bear the thought of the world without her in it.
I trusted God had someone precious lined up for her on the other side of death, the way there’s always a mother waiting on the other side of birth.
I hoped it would be Lorenzo.
With a red rose.
Chapter 99
Sister Ana’s funeral was at the Mezquita.
As we came out wiping our eyes, on 5 January, the wise kings came into the city on camels, bearing gifts, and the children laughed and leapt and caught sweets.
I saw a young man with a sling, and inside was a tiny baby in a pink hat. When I asked how old she was, I started crying again.
‘Tres días,’ he said.
Three days since Sister Ana died, and three days from death to resurrection – she’d have metamorphosed, grown wings. Maybe. Who knows?
So many threes.
Though threes aren’t always popular, Carrie, Bridget and I were turning out to be one of the best.
Three in one, one in three, the priest said at the funeral, a circle of love.
God can’t be one, he said, because God is love and love doesn’t work on its own.
Like Mr Blume said.
Love has to be between.
We walked past the Belén – the little stable scene, set up for Christmas, the clay Jesus under the Moorish arch, with his clay mother and his clay not-father, Joseph.
Three kings carrying gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Myrrh to embalm him.
Next to the manger.
Because death always stands over life.
The homeless men came to our party. And a few nuns. And the woman with no teeth. And the kind woman with the hijab and soft hands who’d given me her jewelled pen. And my not-father, whose hair was thinning, and who looked not-strong-as-an-ox. We ate roscones de reyes, the special ringed Epiphany cakes, decorated with dried fruit, and the cats snaked around people’s legs begging for crumbs. Then everyone left. And it was too quiet.
I wandered around our beloved house, my beloved house – my not-father had transferred it into my name, but it would always belong to Sister Ana and the nuns. I ran my hand along the old white walls, and saw her shadow around corners.
‘It’s weird to think of me here as a baby being bottle-fed by down-and-outs,’ I said to Carrie and Bridget.
‘It’s beautiful, your story,’ said Carrie. ‘The way you’ve ended up where you started. Like a circle.’
‘I still can’t believe that in all those boxes I never found a baby photo of me with Sister María Soledad. I so wanted to see her face.’
Bridget took my hand.
‘At least you found your real blood mother,’ she said.
‘But all she does is write me boring letters about Tooting,’ I said. ‘With too many commas and no full stops!’
‘I like commas,’ said Carrie. ‘The way they race along. Full stops feel a bit final.’
‘What’s your favourite punctuation mark, Eva?’ said Bridget.
‘Obviously the question mark,’ I said.
‘I always loved the way you asked so many questions,’ said Bridget.
Gabriel was clearing up – we could hear him clinking and crashing in the kitchen.
‘The Angel Gabriel!’ said Bridget, laughing. ‘And it’s exclamation marks for me!’
‘They always seem as if they’re trying too hard,’ said Carrie.
‘But they’re so jolly!’ said Bridget. ‘Though really far too thin for a girl like me! Too easy to lose down the bottom of the bed!’
Carrie laughed.
‘There’s something else I’d like to lose down the bottom of the bed,’ said Bridget.
More clinking came from the kitchen.
‘Don’t ever leave Gabriel, Carrie!’ said Bridget.
‘I don’t think I will,’ she said. ‘And I never thought I was the sort of person who’d say that.’
‘I think everyone has the potential to be that sort of person,’ I said. ‘Don’t you?’
‘Another question mark,’ said Carrie, smiling, and she went to join him in the kitchen.
Bridget and I sat on the sofa close together.
‘Perhaps I don’t need a man,’ said Bridget. ‘Now I’ve got you again. Forever Eva.’
‘It’s like that summer,’ I said, looking at our interlinked white and brown fingers. ‘Sitting waiting for your mum to come and say good night.’
Chapter 100
We gathered Sister Ana’s books, her blankets, the worn mat where she used to pray, her folding chair, her three grey dresses, her two grey cardigans, her old black shoulder bag, her few pots and pans.
There it was, in three rubbish bags: a life.
I folded her wimple and put it in my drawer.
I kept the globe and put it on my windowsill next to the photo of us singing hymns.
I picked up her bible.
In the front cover, it said Sor Ana in black ink.
It had a brown leather cover, and the spine was cracking.
I let it fall open, and there was the white back of a photo.
Could it be?
A baby photo of me and Sister María Soledad?
It said Gracias.
I turned it over.
It was thin-armed Lorenzo.
With Sister Ana.
At the Batalla de las Flores.
Flower-covered carriages processed down the street, and people threw white carnations.
Thank you for what?
I’d never know.
Lives stop with frayed ends.
Dirty washing still in the laundry basket.
I threw her dirty washing, the last vestiges of her livingness, away.
When I should have been writing an essay, I started to read her bible, beginning with the Gospel of John, where the angel, who might be Rafael, stirred the waters in the pool of Bethesda, where the sick and frail gathered.
Bridget and Carrie came in.
I put the bible into Sister Ana’s oak box.
‘Bridget, I’m sorry I’ve been so miserable,’ I said. ‘It hasn’t been much of a holiday for you.’
‘Death is miserable-making,’ said Bridget.
‘I’ve got a plan,’ said Carrie. ‘And it’s all booked.’
‘All booked?’
‘And paid for.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll see when we arrive. Pack for three nights. And beach.’
On our way out of the door, I saw that a letter had arrived from Jhazmin.
‘Oh no!’ I said to Bridget and Carrie. ‘More commas from Tooting.’
I put it in my pocket, thinking that she would probably rain Deborah and double shifts on me forever.
It was hard to feel she loved me in any meaningful sense.
But love wasn’t o
nly found in blood-mothers, that’s what I’d realised.
Love wasn’t only found in romance with men, though I wouldn’t have been averse to some romance with men. By which I mean, obviously, man. Unlike Barnaby, I was opposed to the plural.
No, love was here in the yellow van, as we drove south, with Carrie map-reading, as love had been in the courtyard with Sister Ana and the angel, and at the top of the hill with Blue Mother and the picnic.
Once we reached the coast road, I saw the signpost to Alvera – so strange to see the name in real life. We climbed up a winding road, craggy hills to left and right, paused to gasp at the sea below, at the birds of prey hanging on the air currents.
I tried not to think of the cancer bird waiting to pounce.
We parked outside Hostal Playa, and were shown to our room by Luisa and Elvira, two cousins from Seville. It had three single beds with iron bedheads, and three glass jam jars full of wild flowers.
When we went for a walk through the hamlet of white cubed houses, we took the path along the back of the beach. And there it was – it had to be – the beach house, with its blue gate and its rows of two hundred palms swaying against the purple dusk sky, planted by my not-father for my not-mother, before I arrived in their life and made everything worse.
Cherie loomed into view in my mind: a desperate young woman who’d kind of stolen me, thinking she would love me and I would love her, but finding that we didn’t quite, that you couldn’t force it. Free will risky risky risky, isn’t that what Sister Ana said by the olive tree?
‘I feel really odd,’ I said. ‘Imagining myself arriving here, such a tiny thing, with two strangers. I wonder what was going on in that little mind of mine.’
The dogs went crazy behind the wall.
Bridget started to make a barbecue on the beach.
She always knew how to do things like that.
Carrie had brought champagne.
Bridget opened it.
The cork flew off and landed in the sand.
Carrie ran after it.
She took a penknife out of her craft bag and made a space to put in a five-peseta coin.
She handed it to me.
‘To you, Eva!’ she said. ‘For coming through!’
We clinked glasses.
‘To the holy trinity of us three!’ I said.
‘To the beach house!’ said Bridget. ‘And skinny-dipping later!’