‘And?’
‘Well, I got a lamp cord and hung myself in the closet of my room. Something to do.’
‘Louise –’
‘Oh, I left the closet door open, and the door of the room. They found me, but they didn’t like it. I’m glad you came. I knew you would.’
She put her arm round Lily. Patients kept wandering up to ask questions, or to show Lily something, or to stare. Louise was distressingly at ease in this uneasy room. She knew who to answer kindly, who to ignore, who to tell, ‘Fuck off, Jack. I’ve told you before.’
When Lily left, one of the sentries heaved herself up to open the door. Instantly, a girl with long tangled hair made a bolt for it. The black woman shoved Louise and Lily back into the room with the flat of her hand, and locked the door. The elevator gates clanged. Bells rang in the hall.
‘What excitement,’ Lily said nervously.
Louise shrugged. ‘Something to do. She’s not going anywhere.’
When Lily collected her daughters at Alice’s house, they were both watching television quite happily, lying on the floor among Alice’s children with bowk of popcorn and soft-drink cans.
Cathy said, ‘Hi,’ without looking away from the screen, but Isobel jumped up and cried, ‘Where have you been? I want to go home!’
She tugged her mother down the street, complaining about Alice’s five-year-old, fussing about needing to call her best friend, asking what was for supper, when would it be?
In the house, she said, ‘I’m going to call Jane,’ and started for the living-room. The phone rang before she got to it.
‘Gramps? Hi, how’s England? I’m fine. At school, we’re doing this really neat play, and it’s with some of the parents and Daddy’s going to play the piano and I’m going to sing. What? No, it’s about a sailor who falls in love with a mermaid – well, she’s not really a mermaid, you see, because this other sailor, not the one who’s in love with her – what? Oh. Okay,’ she said flatly, then shouted, ‘Mudder! It’s Gramps. He says it’s urgent.’
‘What’s happened?’ Lily grabbed the phone. ‘Something wrong with Nora?’
‘No. Well…’ – hollow laugh – ‘You could say that, I suppose.’ Her father’s voice was strange. The line was very clear, but he sounded as if he were shut in the cellar. ‘Lily, I – Lily –’ He was on the cracked edge of tears. ‘She’s left me.’
‘What are you talking about, Jam?’
‘She has. With Duggie.’
Dug Manderson – everybody’s friend and asexual neighbour? ‘This is madness, Jam. When?’
‘She got packed up and went yesterday. She said a week ago she meant to go.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I didn’t believe it. I thought I could talk her round.’
‘What about the pub?’
‘Bianca is here. She’s been a brick, I have to say it. Lily, you know about these things. How do people kill themselves?’
‘Now, you stop that, Jam.’
‘What is it, what’s happening?’ The shock and anxiety in Lily’s voice had brought Cathy and Isobel clamouring round her.
‘It’s all right, darlings. Gramps has had a bit of bad luck.’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘Listen, Daddy, you get on a plane and come out here. You’ve got tickets. Change the date.’
‘I couldn’t face the journey. I wouldn’t have the heart for it. Lily, you couldn’t, could you – my darling, I know you’re so busy, but you’re the only one who –’
‘I’ll come,’ Lily said briskly. ‘I’ll make some plans and ring you back. It must be ten o’clock with you. What time are you going to bed?’
‘You don’t think I can sleep?’
‘Lemme talk to Gramps.’ Isobel took the phone. ‘So when it’s their wedding day, and the sailor carries her up the aisle in this beautiful white gown over her fish tail, and the organ plays “O Perfect Love” – that’s Daddy – and the sailor, the good one, his perfect love turns her into a lady. Mud.’ She held the phone away. ‘Gramps is crying.’
*
Martha gave Lily a week off, and Paul’s Aunt Bridget, a widowed good woman, would come and stay. One of the last-minute things was a quiet visit to Louise.
She had managed to stay out of the Quiet Room, and was now a Trusty, free to meet Lily downstairs in the hospital lobby. They went to the cafeteria, and Louise took some papers out of her canvas satchel and spread them out on the greasy, coffee-ringed table. There were bits of her journal, unposted letters to her parents and to Damon, and to that love-hate child, Gerald.
‘Has Gerald been in here with you?’ Lily asked. She had got used to talking about him as if he existed. Louise was far beyond the point of understanding him as fantasy.
She shook her head. ‘He put me in here,’ she said, as matter of factly as if Gerald were a psychiatrist. ‘He wrote these, look.’
She showed Lily some loose pages, disorganized cries of agony, stabbed on to the creased paper in big letters, a few words askew down the page.
‘Psychotic writing.’ She grinned sideways, to see if Lily was impressed.
As she displayed some of what she had written over the years of her illness, her eyes were alive, not hectic, but shining with genuine creative pleasure. She laughed a lot, and told shocking stories about the hospital staff. Silent people at other tables stared glumly. Louise nudged Lily, and giggled and whispered behind her hand. They were like two teenagers in a snack-bar: us and them.
‘Don’t go away, Lily.’
‘You’ll be all right.’
‘Don’t go.’
Lily flew to England to try to comfort her father, and bolster him up a bit to face the catastrophe of his life. At the back of her mind, she also hoped that in some way she might be a go-between. If her mother had done this in a fit of pique – although Nora had never done anything on impulse – Lily might be able to get her to go back home and start again.
That was what Jam hoped too. He was a wreck. Neil met Lily at the airport, because her father did not trust himself to drive. She found him in a hot, stuffy room, sitting hunched into himself like an old man in front of the electric fire, as if in defiance of Nora, who would have marched in and switched it off and thrown open the window.
The first thing he said was, ‘Get her back for me, Lily. I want her back.’
Lily was tired from the overnight flight, but she stayed up all day to be with him. He was a large, bulky man, but he looked smaller, because of this. He wouldn’t stand up straight. He poked his big head like a tortoise. Even his paunch seemed to have shrunk, as if it were deflated.
They had supper at Blanche’s house, with Duffy, which meant not much could be said. Afterwards, Neil played cribbage with Jam, while Lily went upstairs with Blanche, and they talked after they had put Duffy to bed.
‘What are we going to do?’ Lily had laid herself out on Blanche and Neil’s neat double bed, exhausted.
‘Nothing we can do.’
Because Lily had the wobbly indecision of jet lag, and Blanche had already been coping with their parents’ problem, she seemed like the older sister, not the younger.
‘Have you seen Nora?’
‘I’ve been to see her, yes, but not him. He stayed out of the way, like the soul of tact he is, dear old Duggie, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. They’ve moved out of this area, of course. He’ll sell his house and they’re going to start again in Essex, or somewhere.’
‘Do people here know?’
‘Not yet. They think Mum’s gone to stay with Gran.’
‘Will she come back? Blanche, she’s got to come back.’
Blanche kicked off her shoes and lay down beside Lily on the bed. One of the terriers jumped up too.
‘She won’t.’
‘But this isn’t like her. She must be mad. It’s the change of life.’
‘She’s had that.’
‘But not Mum. I mean, she’s always been the quiet, steady, hardworki
ng one, never put a foot wrong, ever since we’ve known her. I mean, she would never –’
‘She did.’
‘I’m going to tell her what I think of her.’
‘Don’t.’ Blanche lay like a stone queen on a tomb, with the dog at her feet. ‘She’s suffering. I know her. Don’t make it more difficult.’
‘She’s suffering! Look at that poor old man down there.’
‘You always take his side, don’t you?’ Blanche turned and put an arm round her sister. ‘He had it coming to him.’
‘Oh, don’t.’
They held each other as they had not done since one or the other of them had been in love and was rejected.
Downstairs, Jam was asleep with his feet on a stool, splayed outwards. Lily left him there and went back upstairs to sleep on the other bunk bed in Duffy’s room.
Nora and Duggie were living in a furnished flat over a promenade of shops in an indefinite place north of London. Duggie’s firm was transferring him to the Chelmsford branch, and they would eventually buy a bungalow.
‘In a village or in the town?’ Lily sat on the edge of an uncomfortable settee like a railway-station bench, discussing practical domestic details with her mother in a calm and rational way that made her think they had all lost their reason.
She had started the visit by flinging herself at Nora and bursting into floods of tears, because her mother looked so normal and just like herself in her green crochet top and pleated tweed skirt. Her grey hair was done the same way, and she wore the same pendant round her neck which Lily and Paul had given her on her fiftieth birthday.
‘Don’t cry, pet.’ Nora patted her, while Lily clung to those familiar fat, capable upper arms. ‘It’s all right.’ ‘It’s not, it’s not, you can’t do this!’
Nora continued to murmur, ‘Easy does it,’ and ‘It’s all right,’ so calmly that Lily pushed away from her and said crossly, ‘It may be all right for you, but it’s not for anyone else.’
‘He’s upset, isn’t he? Oh dear, I am sorry,’ Nora said, as if she had overcooked the beef.
‘Upset? You’ve ruined his life, that’s all.’
‘Well, it was either that, or let him ruin mine,’ said this mother, at once so familiar and so strange. ‘Sit down, Lily dear, and I’ll make some tea. Or would you rather have coffee, with your American ways?’
With the tea tray, she brought in Duggie, who had been skulking in the kitchen until he saw how the land lay. Lily had always got along perfectly well with him, as everyone did, and although she had come here prepared to hate and despise him, he was still the same polite, considerate, comfortable Dug Manderson, but there was a hint of smugness about him as he fussed over pouring second cups of tea that made Lily ask him harshly, ‘Why did you do it?’
‘Well,’ he said equably, ‘Nora and I are both fifty-five.’ That was a lie. She was almost fifty-seven. ‘We feel we’re entitled to this last bit of happiness.’
‘That’s immoral.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Duggie said, and Nora said, amazingly for one who had been a regular at the village church and helped Mrs French to deliver the parish newsletter, ‘Morals has nothing to do with it.’
‘You’re a married woman.’
‘Don’t talk to me like that, Lily dear. I did my time with your father faithfully, and made a go of the Duke’s Head. I brought up you two beautiful girls and saw you happily married, and I love my grandchildren. Now I’m going to do my own thing.’ It was worse, to hear her using her inappropriate slang.
‘You could have told us.’
‘You might have tried to stop me.’
‘Could we?’
‘No, but I didn’t want any unpleasantness.’
‘What do you think you’ve got now?’
‘That’s enough, dear,’ Nora said, as if Lily were a clamorous seven-year-old. ‘I’m glad to see you, and looking so brown and well after your Cape Cod sun. I tell Duggie, “You can’t beat a New England summer.” It’s wonderful to have you here, so let’s not spoil it with water that’s already gone under the bridge. Tell me about Paul and the girls. How are they? And the new house? I’m sorry I can’t come this time, but we’ll both be over to visit one of these days, if we may.’
‘Why not?’ Life must go on. Children need their only grandmother. Lily showed Duggie her wallet photograph of the Cape Cod house, and he showed her some pictures of bungalows from estate agents.
‘Why a bungalow, Mum?’ was all that Lily could say. ‘You’ve always gone upstairs to bed.’
Whoops. She expected at least one of them to blush, but they were serene, with placid mouths contemplating the various brick or stucco or concrete toadstools.
‘Lately,’ Nora said, ‘I’ve been having that old trouble with my leg. My nursing veins, I call it.’
‘I didn’t realize that.’
‘Well, I’m never one to complain, as you know.’
No, you just walk out.
‘Any luck?’
When Lily returned to her father, he was hovering about, watching for her car in the garden behind the cottage, pretending to hoe the sprouts; which would go to waste now, since it was always Nora who had gone out to wrench those frozen grey-green balls off the ugly stalks.
Lily shook her head. ‘She didn’t say much, but she made it clear.’
‘This is it, eh?’
‘Are you going to get a divorce?’ Lily asked him when they were indoors, having a drink. James had not gone back to work in the bar yet. Blanche and Jenny and Co. were keeping up the pretence that Nora’s mother was ill and Jam had strained a rib muscle. It was the only thing he could think of, because he had done that before, over the barrels.
‘She says she doesn’t care. She and that man are content to live together. In sin, Lily. How do you like having a mother who’s so up with the times?’
‘I hate it.’
The sedative atmosphere in the furnished flat had stifled and choked Lily’s distress. Coming home, angry thoughts had driven with her, and Jamspoon picked up enough energy from her to boil up some belated rage himself.
I shall divorce her,’ he told Lily, over his second whisky. ‘Drag her through the courts. Who knows, I might want to marry again myself.’
‘Oh, Daddy, come on.’ Then Lily looked up quickly. ‘Anyone in mind?’
‘I wasn’t going to tell you.’
Oh, my God, what kind of a mess was this?
Blustering and colouring up, her father told her a little about this woman friend, who seemed to be some kind of film agent. ‘A colleague. We work closely together. Don’t think badly of me, child. Try to understand.’
Take it with a grain of salt, Dear Doctor Lily. He’s still sticking to his pathetic act of being a dashing philanderer.
But she asked, ‘Did Mum know?’
‘Of course not.’
If it were true, she must have. But he would not admit that to Lily; either because it wasn’t true, or because he had to cling to his version of Nora’s illogical mid-life madness.
‘I’ll divorce her and marry Evvie. That’s what I’ll do.’ He perked up, and looked round for applause.
‘How old is she?’ Lily’s heart sank.
‘About forty.’
‘Don’t do it, Daddy.’
‘I want you to meet my little Evvie. I’ve told her all about you. You’ll like each other. She needs a decent man, poor wee bird, and Nora’s lost her chance with me, serve her right. Yes, yes, that’s it. Let’s have a drink.’ His eyes, which had been watery with tears since Lily arrived, were glittering now under Nora’s crinoline lamp.
Jam tried several times to get his Evvie on the phone, but could never reach her. He left messages at her office, but she did not ring him back.
‘That’s show business. Here and there, all over the place. She flies to Germany. She’s going to get me work there.’
Lily went home, still not sure whether he was really having an affair with this unlikely-sounding woma
n: ‘Brilliant. Built up her own business. Highly respected. Stunning looker. Knows all the stars.’
Her father… her mother. The background of Lily’s life had reeled and turned upside down with a hollow lurch. She could not depend on her parents any more. They had gone off the rails. She was the parent now, and they were the children.
Usually, when she first got back to Boston, it was too fast, too crowded, too shifting, too American, and she felt one of her pangs for the dependability of England. Now England was like a loose tooth, a conquered country, an island adrift and sliding into the sea.
‘This is security,’ she told Paul, as they manoeuvred with a throng of other cars to get into the needle’s eye of the harbour tunnel mouth. ‘I’ve never been so glad to get home.’
Next day, after Isobel and Cathy had gone to school in their new British sneakers and the sweaters with sheep and lambs spiralling round them, Lily went straight to Crisis before she had finished unpacking, or cleaning out the army of tiny left-overs that Aunt Bridget had arrayed so thriftily in the refrigerator.
‘Hi, Lily,’ Chuck said, when she went into the telephone room to greet the volunteers. ‘You heard about it, then?’
‘About what?’
‘Shit, man.’ Chuck put his hand with the bitten nails over his bearded mouth. ‘Better let Martha tell you.’
‘What’s happened?’ Lily ran upstairs into the office.
Martha spun her chair round from the desk. ‘I didn’t know you were back yet. Now listen. I don’t want to hear you say, “I shouldn’t have gone.’”
‘It’s Louise.’
Martha nodded.
‘Where is she?’
‘Nowhere. She’s dead.’
Lily sat down on the hard chair by the door, and began to cry. Her eyes were sick of it. She had cried with Jam, with Nora, with Blanche, and with Paul at the airport, because she was so glad to see the dearly beloved safeness of him.
Louise had done so well at South Side that Dr Reed had transferred her, not to St Clement’s, who would not take her back, but to the psychiatric unit of another Boston hospital. Because of her history, she was on suicide precautions until she settled down. She was supposed to have a nurse with her all the time, or to be checked every fifteen minutes when she was asleep, to make sure she had not cut herself or taken pills.
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