by Patrick Gale
From the path, all Lawrence could see was the long, narrow window set at a curious angle high in the sloping roof so that guests could stargaze from bed. It was still alight and he prepared himself for a frustrating wait. As he drew closer, however, he heard the door open and Lala’s deep voice saying,
‘Good night, dear,’ as she might to a woman.
There followed the sound of footsteps as someone walked briskly down the stairs and away along the path to their room. The main lights were turned off soon after that and the only thing visible was a flickering pattern cast by the burning logs in the grate. He could make out the thin trail of smoke from the chimney, grey against the purple-black sky. He climbed the stairs, made to ring the bell then remembered her saying to come straight in rather than risk waking the baby. He pushed open the door and stepped in.
The room was far wider and higher than one would have judged from outside. By the light of the glassed-in fire, he made out smoothly curving plaster walls, a granite bar, a huge sofa, an even bigger bed. He noticed the bed linen was turned back. There was no sign of the baby. Perhaps he was sleeping in the room downstairs, away from the noise of dinner. He noticed the light was on in the bathroom and could hear the bath filling. He felt a familiar hunger, like something uncoiling in his belly.
‘Hello?’ he said softly, his mouth so dry all of a sudden that his voice croaked. ‘I waited till the lights were off. Are we alone now?’
There was a sudden rush of bare feet on polished floorboards and something struck him a staggering blow on the back of his head. He fell to his knees and just registered the separate pain this caused him before the room was swallowed in blackness.
‘Lawrence? Lawrence? Bloody hell. Lawrence! Oh Christ. Can you hear me? Wake up. Lawrence!’ Someone was patting his cheek, cradling his head in their hands, his head which felt like a block in a vice. He opened his eyes, winced at the brightness of electric light, saw Bonnie and opened his eyes rather wider. Their gaze met for an instant before she jumped up, letting his head crack on the floor, causing the vice to tighten by several rapid degrees. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’
He lay with his eyes closed, mentally cursing Lala, until the pain lessened a fraction. He tried to sit up but it was beyond him.
‘I work here,’ he said quietly. ‘I thought you were someone else. Lal– She said this was her room. You almost fractured my skull.’
‘You almost gave me a heart attack. I’d just got into the bath. I thought you were– Is it very bad?’
‘It’s quite bad.’
‘Here. Try this.’ He felt her hands raise his head again to slide a cushion beneath it. ‘How’s that?’
‘Better.’ As he opened his eyes again, she stepped back abruptly as though in fear. She was naked and very thin. ‘You’ve got very thin,’ he said. She swore and ran to the bathroom to re-emerge knotting a bathrobe about her.
‘It’s the stress,’ she said. ‘You’re not exactly plump yourself.’
‘I don’t drink like I used to. The beer’s like fizzy water and the wine’s – well the good wine’s alright but I can only afford the bad stuff. I’ve given up meat too. The staff canteen’s vegetarian so it’s eat beans or starve.’ Watching him warily, she sat at one end of the sofa, dislodging a poker which fell heavily onto the rug. ‘Is that what you …?’ he began. ‘You could have brained me.’ Opening his eyes wide caused his head to throb all the more painfully. There was a time when she would have apologized, instinctively appeasing him. Instead she only continued to stare, inquisitive rather than nervous now.
He remembered Craig and tensed himself defensively. He was younger than the American, fitter too, probably, yet he found he feared him. He dreaded him as one dreaded retribution. It could be argued that Craig had stolen his wife, which gave Lawrence the moral high ground, but now that husband and spouse were reunited, Lawrence could look in her eyes and know it had been rescue, not theft.
‘Where’s …?’ he began, trying to lift his head from the cushion. ‘Are you alone?’
‘I’d hardly be prowling round the place with a poker if I wasn’t,’ she said wryly. ‘He’s driven up the coast to visit some clients near Monterey.’ He saw the way she pulled a cushion to her as she spoke, seeking warmth by proxy. ‘They want him to build them a house. He built this place, you know. Well. Designed it.’
‘I hadn’t realized. He did a great job.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Fuck it, Bonnie!’ he swore suddenly, incensed that they were reduced to courtesy. She flinched, as though his exclamation had stung her cheek.
‘Please don’t shout.’ She clutched at a second cushion as she said this; it was protection she sought, not warmth.
Ignoring the dizziness in his skull, he sat up, supporting himself on the granite coffee table.
‘We’re making small talk here,’ he shouted. ‘I don’t want this.’
‘So go away.’
‘I want to hear about your father. Jesus! What was all that about? And– ’
She cut him short, holding up a white hand as if trying to halt traffic. One of her cushions fell to the floor.
‘Please,’ she gasped and looked down, unable to return his gaze. ‘Sorry. Please. Listen. I’m just not really ready to deal with that right now.’
Lawrence stared at her incredulously.
‘Are you on pills? Has that bastard put you on pills to stop you– ’
Again the hand went up. Her voice was tight, her anger barely controlled.
‘No. Damn you. I’m just not … I took some stuff for a while. Just Prozac.’
‘I knew it.’
‘But I stopped. It was stopping me feeling.’ She snorted bitterly. ‘Which I suppose is the general idea.’
Now it was he who reached for a cushion and the relative security of mere conversation.
‘So,’ he said with something like brightness. ‘You’re living in Chicago now.’
‘Yes. Craig wants us to marry. And you’re working here, of all places?’
She snatched at the fleeting chance for conversation too. For a few desperate seconds they exchanged rapid, safe information. They clicked the words into place as an ineffectual screen to block out the truth neither would confront. New lives, new homes, new addresses piled up like bright building blocks between them and the undiscussable.
‘Yes,’ he told her. ‘I– some people on the cruise were friends of Scott and Jules. They hired me as a kind of forester.’
‘You’ve got a work permit?’
‘I have dual nationality. I was born here, remember.’
‘I forgot. Do you like it here?’
‘It’s quiet out of season. It’s healthy. I think a lot.’
‘What do you think about?’ she asked.
She had broken the rules of the fragile game by asking the wrong question. It brought the building blocks clattering down and for a hideous moment she remembered, and he imagined, their daughter’s corpse. Then each began to talk at once but they were doomed now, building on swamp mud.
‘No sorry.’
‘After you.’
‘You first,’ he said. ‘Christ!’
‘Does your head hurt?’
‘Stupid question. You crowned me with a fucking poker.’
‘You crowned me with your fist.’
‘Don’t lie. I pushed you. You fell. You hit your head.’
‘So?’ she snarled. ‘You didn’t punch me. I hit my head. But you left me on the kitchen floor. You left me for dead. She found me lying there covered in blood. She had heard us shouting then she found me. She drew her own conclusions.’
‘I was so scared,’ he said, mentally retreating. ‘I remember. I– ’ He was going to apologize but that now seemed crassly pointless. They each fell silent and, as the wooziness from the concussion was driven aside by the clear pain of the lump swelling on his scalp, his senses sharpened and he became aware of Lucy standing to one side, watching them both, her small eyes glitteri
ng with accusation in the firelight. He shut his eyes to make her leave.
‘I should have come to Miami,’ she began, her voice high with the effort of holding back tears. ‘I should have come to tell you myself. I’m sorry about that. I thought I’d find the strength and then I didn’t. Then we lost track of you. We all did. Then there was – you know-the trial. I didn’t go to that either. I thought you’d go back to Barrowcester and I could maybe visit you there to … It was too late and we lost you.’
‘Craig could have hired a private dick.’
‘You don’t have to spit his name out like that.’
‘You should be surprised I can bring myself to say his name at all.’
‘He loves me, Lawrence. I love him.’
‘So? Did she? Did she love him?’
‘She was starting to.’ She faltered, gulped back grief. ‘He loved her. He made her very happy.’
‘And I didn’t?’
‘No. Yes. Well of course you did but… You can’t just sit there, and– ’ she spluttered then lost words for her anger.
‘Tell me how she died,’ he asked quietly.
She sighed, ran a hand through her hair then pulled her cushion tight against her.
‘You know how. Dora told you.’
‘No but how? How exactly? Was it at his– his house or in hospital? What was her last meal, her last words? Was it day or night? Did she suffer? Did you bury or cremate her? Where the hell is she?’
‘Lawrence, I can’t!’ she sobbed. He was relentless, however. He had to be now.
‘Did she suffer?’ he insisted.
‘Of course.’
‘And– ’
‘What?’
‘I need details. Facts.’ He defied the pain in his head, lurching over to lean on the sofa near her feet. ‘Don’t you see I need to know to make it real.’
‘She’s dead. Lucy is dead.’
‘Please, Bonnie. Just– ’ He flinched at a stab of pain, breathed in sharply. ‘Please tell me. Then I’ll go. You’ll never see me again.’
She told him everything then. She sat on the sofa, hugging her legs, curled in on herself about the cushion. She was good. She understood what he needed and missed out nothing. She described her new home in detail, even telling him which district in Chicago it was in, which he heard now without interest. She described how she and Lucy could wave to one another from their beds. Hesitantly at first, then with more assurance when she saw how calmly he was taking it, she described how she began sleeping with the architect and how the child was dead when she found her.
Watching her talk he found himself seeing her afresh, as a stranger might, and being entirely uninterested in her. She was attractive, but in a way that touched him not at all. It was inexplicable that they could ever have been married. Madness. He supposed she was feeling the same about him.
She did not spare herself. Tears bathing her cheeks, she said that Lucy had not used her inhaler, which was to hand with the drugs at the bedside.
‘I thought she was happy there, with her new nursery and new friends and the house and Craig, but now I think she was protecting me, mothering me, the way I mothered Dad. I think she needed me and saw I wasn’t there or she saw … Actually saw me in bed with him.’
‘No,’ he said, appalled. ‘Don’t do this to yourself.’
‘It’s possible. It was a bad attack but she could have stopped it. She’d had bad ones before. That Easter she nearly had to be hospitalized, remember?’
“Course I do,’ he said, remembering his blind panic at Lucy’s heaving shoulders and colourless lips and his daughter’s amazing fortitude, amounting to a kind of poise in the face of annihilation.
Bonnie’s voice dropped to a dull near-whisper.
‘I think she killed herself. I think she woke in the night, needing me, had a bad dream or something, and looked across the courtyard and saw my bed was empty. Oh God. Maybe she even left her bed and came across to look! And then I think she looked the other way and saw me in bed with him. Not just in bed. Making love. We made love very late that night. I remember. He came to bed late and couldn’t sleep and woke me. We’d had a bit to drink. We made quite a lot of noise.’
‘This is crazy, Bonnie.’
‘No, no. It’s not.’ She pulled her hands away from his, which were seeking them in comfort, and let out a harsh, choked laugh. ‘I see it now. I haven’t told anyone this. Not Dr Marcus. Not Craig. Nobody. But I see it now. We were making love and I think she saw us and I think she was shocked and afraid and probably felt utterly alone and rejected and she started to have an attack. She had a good supply of drugs at her bedside and the inhaler was there. I checked. She killed herself.’
‘No.’
‘She decided not to use her inhaler, Lawrence. Lucy killed herself.’ She laughed again only now it was closer to a sob. ‘I should have stayed in my room. I should have stayed in England. I should never ever have– ’
‘Stop it. Listen!’ Lawrence seized her hands in his, seized them hard so she had to snap out of the dangerous curve she was sliding down and focus on him. ‘You were right to leave,’ he said. ‘I was bad for you, which means I would have ended by being bad for her. And if he loved you and if he loved her, you were right to sleep with him. You’re not a monster. If anything, you’re too obsessed with not hurting her. I’ve seen– ’ he broke off abruptly, stumbling on the cruelly erroneous tense. ‘I used to see you snatch food from her hands to read the ingredients on the packet. I used to see how closely you watched whatever she was watching on TV in case it was bad for her.’
‘You noticed that?’
“Course I did. I know the kind of mother you were. I know you won’t have gone to bed with him on a whim. I bet you havered, and worried, and weighed up the pros and the cons and even thought about asking her permission before you so much as kissed him. You say she loved him. She was starting to love him?’ Bonnie nodded, biting her lip.
‘She’d started to run to meet him when he came back to the house. She’d started to hang around his neck burbling on about things. He made her very confident. I think– ’ She stopped, then continued judiciously. ‘I think she liked him for the effect he had on me.’
‘Then this blaming yourself is stupid. It’s self-centred. She had an asthma attack worse than anything she’d had before. It killed her before she could get her inhaler. Nothing to do with you.’
‘But she was sitting up.’
‘Maybe she was sitting up when the attack started. Maybe she couldn’t sleep.’
‘She’d heard us making love. She woke up and she saw.’
‘Listen.’ He squeezed her hands between his now, his hold gentler than it had been. ‘If she had started to love him, she’d have been happy at what she saw. She might have laughed at how silly you looked but it wouldn’t have scared her or– You can’t blame yourself. You can’t. I’m as much to blame as you are.’
‘No.’
‘I drove you away. Maybe the flying affected her. Maybe the new house or the new water. There are so many maybes. Follow them back far enough and we end up not having her to start with.’
‘I know.’ Now she was holding his hands, gravely touching their scarred surfaces. ‘It’s just – I miss her so much.’
‘I know.’
‘And all this time, in Craig’s house, in Dr Marcus’s office, driving around the place, trying to get back into some kind of life, I knew that you were the only one who could understand because you were– ’
‘I know.’
He saw her surprise as he began to cry. She had never seen this. He had never seen this. He had meant to comfort her, to steady her mad, self-lacerating thinking but now he staggered back, sat on the coffee table and wailed. It was a terrifying noise, beyond his control. It was as if all the pains and frustrations and dark nights of anger and grey hours of remorse he had ever experienced were now dragged from him in a single, concentrated agony. It had begun as a lament for Lucy but it became a cry for hims
elf, for his childhood, his marriage, his mother, his failure to connect, truly connect, so that chances for real happiness slid from him. Lala and her baby, Laurie on the porch, even sweet, determined Bee grasping joy with both hands on her island. It seemed to him now that he was tasting undiluted despair like black bile and that it lay in his having no future, merely an unvarying, loveless, denatured present.
Perhaps the concussion had disoriented him, but he found he was hearing the sounds coming from him as though they were not of his own making and he was beside himself as a man possessed. Similarly he found that a part of him could register Bonnie’s consternation. She was like someone with a malfunctioning car alarm on a quiet suburban street. She tried to shush him and glanced about her anxiously. She even closed the sliding door onto the balcony as though fearful his noise would draw the attention of neighbours. Finally she sank to her knees on the floor beside him, touched his shoulder gingerly, then, weeping too by now, took him in her arms and held him tight against her toughly bony chest.
Her touch soothed him, his howl became a low moan then merely jagged breathing as he leaned into her neck and smelled the soapy, almond scent of her skin that he remembered. She stroked his back, held the nape of his neck and rocked him slightly, wetting his hair with her tears. At last she scrabbled for a box of tissues and blew her nose heavily. He sat back to do the same. At the sight of one another’s tear-blurred faces they snorted with wretched laughter and held each other again, each hiding from the shocking mirror of the other’s grief.