by Ellis, T. S.
“I know, I know.”
Instead of going home, I carried on walking into Kingston. Some retail therapy was called for. Except that I didn’t know what to buy. Unemployment made me cautious, even though I was confident of finding another job soon.
I walked around clothes shops, tried on a few pairs of shoes, and browsed in a bookshop. But I couldn’t muster up any enthusiasm. The clothes were either the wrong shade or the wrong cut. The shoes were the wrong colour or didn’t fit properly. And in a bookshop containing thousands of books there wasn’t a single volume that could get my attention.
And it was a much colder day. A cold snap was passing over the country, sending temperatures plummeting. The sky looked full of snow. Snow in April, what a thought.
“It’s true. You wouldn’t have lied to me. You’d have called me the moment you got thrown out of the office. I would have reassured you, we’d have gone to a bar, got drunk and been mocking Polly the whole evening.”
I was getting angry now. “Maybe we would’ve, yes. But that would have been in the early days. If I’d rung you yesterday to tell you the news, I don’t think you’d have suggested doing any of that. And if you had, it would have been half-hearted. I have to live my life in the present. I have to move on. Meeting Carl has been so exciting. Different. Very different. But I have to see where it takes me. So goodbye, Russell. It’s time for you to be quiet. I do miss you. I’ll probably always miss you in some way. But it’s time to move on.”
I gave up on the shopping expedition and got on a train. I travelled to the National Film Theatre on the South Bank. They were running a season of films starring Ingrid Bergman. Today, it was Casablanca. I have the DVD, but I couldn’t resist going to see it on the big screen. I wanted to lose myself in the world of Rick’s. The best part is when the locals stand up and sing the Marseillaise in defiance of the Nazi occupation. It always brings a tear to my eye. The ending, too. It’s a sad ending but so romantic. For years, I never understood why I liked the ending so much. Rick and Ilsa don’t end up together, and yet it’s more romantic than if they did. I used to imagine what had happened after the war ended. Did Rick go off to find Ilsa? Or did he let her live out her life with Lazlo?
I used to believe that he tracked her down and whisked her away. But these days, I wasn’t so sure.
After the film was over, I stopped for a hot chocolate at the NFT’s café. Through the window I watched a busker singing. The glass dampened the sound, but he was singing As Time Goes By. He must have thought that he could make more money if he sang one of the movie’s songs. A few people were tossing coins into his upturned flat cap.
My phone rang.
“Hello?”
There was silence at the other end.
“Hello?” I repeated.
“Fay?” It was Emily’s voice. It was thinner than usual, a little croaky.
“Em?”
“People have been trying to call you. Where are you?”
“I’m at the National Film Theatre.”
“What are you doing there on a weekday?”
I still couldn’t tell her I’d been fired. “I took the afternoon off.”
There was silence at the other end of the line. Then, she spoke. “I don’t know if this is the right thing. I don’t want to tell you over the phone, but I’m worried someone else will.”
“Tell me what?”
“I’ve got some terrible news. Terrible, terrible new. Russell’s died. He died on a company away day. A few of them went climbing up on Snowdonia and the weather turned. I’m so sorry, Fay. I’m so sorry.”
Bad news has never felt real to me. Not when I’ve just received it. It’s as if it’s happening to somebody else. Who was this Russell she was talking about? My Russell wouldn’t have succumbed to a bit of snow in Wales. Not in April. Those were my initial thoughts. It was closely followed by the thought that nobody had ever died on me. It seemed quite a detached thought to have. I was later told that it was common to have these thoughts, that it was the shock.
“Fay, are you all right?”
“Yes,” I said into the phone. “Yes.”
Why hadn’t I burst into tears the moment she had told me? That must have been the shock, too. I wanted to cry. It would have been much more appropriate. But I was just numb, as if a doctor had applied a local anaesthetic to my face.
“I’m leaving the office now,” Emily said. “Do you want to come round to my place, or shall I meet you at mine?”
“I…” I didn’t know what to say.
“I’ll meet you at yours. I don’t want you hanging round in the street, waiting.”
“Okay.” My mouth didn’t want to move. It could barely form the words.
“Are you going to be okay getting home?”
I nodded. But then realised I was on the phone. “Yes.”
“Okay, I’ll be as quick as I can. I’m leaving right now.”
I put the phone back in my pocket, not bothering to check the list of missed calls. Walking along the South Bank towards Waterloo station, I put my hands in my pocket. I never do that. I think it was because my mother used to tell me off when I was a little girl.
Everything around me retreated. The sound of the traffic was muffled. People’s conversations, snatches of which I’d heard on the way here, were now unintelligible. They sounded like they were talking through balls of cotton wool.
Still, I waited for the tears to come. But they didn’t.
At the railway station I walked onto the platform and searched the entire length of the train for an empty carriage. I found one at the end. It was five minutes before the train was due to leave. I spent those five minutes staring at the doors, hoping that nobody else would get on. They didn’t. Three short beeps were followed by the doors closing. I took a deep breath.
“It’s okay,” a voice said. It was Russell. The Russell in my head. Where else could he be? Now was not the time or the place to be doing this. Or perhaps it was.
“You died?” I wasn’t sure if it was a question or a statement that I’d formed.
“Yes, I did. Sorry.”
“I don’t suppose it was your fault.”
“Maybe I walked off towards the cloud-enshrined mountains on my own because you wouldn’t get back with me.”
“No. No, no, no.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. Of course I didn’t. You know me, I’m competitive. I would have gone for that extra peak, one more mountain to conquer. That’s what would have done for me.”
I bowed my head.
“Hey, don’t look so glum,” he said. “It’s going to be tough. You’ll look back at all the nice bits. You’ll remember our favourite beach on Ibiza. The lazy Sunday mornings eating eggs Benedict while reading the newspapers, the effortless way we get on in the early days. Well, not just the early days. It will be painful. It’ll hurt. But I, for one, will be glad we had such wonderful times. Very glad.”
It was my imagination making up these words, and it was my imagination that enabled me to see him sitting on the seat next to me. But what struck me was how clear the image was this time. Perhaps it was the grief.
I put my head in my hands and began to cry.
23. Memories
PEOPLE AT THE funeral were a little confused. A lot of them didn’t know how to treat me. The ones who knew that Russell had moved out six months ago didn’t know if consoling me for my loss was entirely appropriate. But they had to say something. So they came out with a “I’m very sorry”. I heard that line repeated a hundred times. Yet, in their eyes, I could see the confusion.
They weren’t the only ones. It wasn’t that I didn’t know my own feelings. I was heartbroken. But I couldn’t decide if it was right to be heartbroken. Russell had rejected me. Then he had tried to win me back, and I had said no. So the feelings of sorrow were mixed with feelings of guilt and bewilderment.
I decided not to analyse it too much. I concentrated on the memories of our life together. There were seven years
of those memories. Each time I recalled one it made me cry.
Russell’s parents were lovely, as always. They wanted me at the front pew of the church, alongside them, as if I were the grieving widow. I think they wished their son had been married before his death, and this was a way of pretending that he had.
My parents hadn’t known what to do. They kept returning to the fact that Russell had left me. In the end, they decided not to come to the funeral. It wasn’t because they were being vindictive, it’s just that they couldn’t decide on what was the “proper” thing to do. It was a shame. I would have liked them to come.
Emily went with me and was a great support. She squeezed my hand when they lowered Russell into the ground. It didn’t stop my tears, but it was reassuring to have my best friend beside me.
It was Emily who suggested we hang around at the graveside to let everybody else go.
“I thought you could do with a bit of time away from everybody,” she said.
“Thanks.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” But I said it quietly and without much conviction.
When I looked up, I saw a figure in the distance. He was near somebody else’s grave, but he wasn’t paying any attention to it. He was looking at me. Although he was a little way away, I had a good idea who it was.
“Em, do you mind if I have a few moments alone.”
“Of course not. I’ll be in the car. Take as long as you need.”
“Thanks.”
Emily walked away. It was a couple of minutes before the figure decided he could approach me. Even then, he took his time walking over.
When he reached my side, I didn’t look up at him. My puffy eyes were aimed at the ground in front of me, not at the coffin, but at the freshly upturned earth waiting to be returned to its rightful home.
“I hope you don’t mind that I turned up. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Thank you, Carl.”
I didn’t know what else to say to him. Out the corner of my eye, I could see how handsome he looked in his long black coat and black tie. I didn’t feel guilty for thinking that, because it wasn’t accompanied by any lustful urges. It was just an observation.
This was the first time I’d lost anybody. I’d been very lucky so far. I even had a complete set of grandparents.
He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder, but that only set me off again. I wanted him to hug me, and I think he wanted to, but I thrust my hands into my pockets to stop myself. Instead, he put his arm around my shoulders.
I couldn’t overcome the guilt. Yes, Russell had suggested the separation in the first place. But then he had gone and died on me. And that trumps everything.
I can never work out if I’m religious or not. I want to believe, but I know there isn’t any scientific evidence to back-up any belief. Then I tell myself that it probably isn’t something that can be proved by science. If I think about it, I just go round and round with these arguments. And so I haven’t thought about it much, only really since Russell died.
But if there is such a thing as an afterlife, and such things as ghosts, I wondered what Russell would be thinking as he looked down on me. People would say that Russell would have wanted me to get on with my life.
But that was easier said than done.
I was standing next to this handsome man, a man who had transformed my life recently. He had stopped me feeling sorry for myself, stopped me worrying about being single and made me just enjoy myself. But now he was standing right next to me, and I couldn’t feel the same way.
I turned to him. “You’ve been through this,” I said. “Not the same. But similar.”
I felt bad about bringing it up. Because he had more grounds for feeling guilty. I can’t imagine how much guilt a person feels when two of his partners commit suicide. I wished I hadn’t mentioned it, but I’d hoped that he’d be able to shed light on the grieving process.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to…”
“No, it’s okay. You’re right. But there’s nothing I can say that will help. There’s nothing anybody can say that will help. It’s a curious thing, grief. Over the coming months you’ll find people crossing the road to avoid talking to you. They know there’s nothing they can say to help matters, so they avoid conversation altogether, which is even worse. Kind of cruel. I don’t think they mean to be. They tell themselves that they’re helping by not making you talk about it. But that’s bullshit. What I’m saying is, it’s good to talk about it. Not to everybody. That won’t help. But to those you can trust and that love you.”
“Is that what you did? I can’t imagine you talking about it.”
There was a regretful smile. “But you’re not me. I’m just saying that it might be a good idea not to bottle it up.”
I wanted to know more about what he’d gone through. “But how did you deal with it?”
“I painted… I painted a lot. I didn’t eat much, I didn’t sleep much. I painted.”
“Did it help?”
“I don’t know. The critics said it did. Apparently, I created my best work during those times — according to the critics.”
“You don’t think you did?”
“It’s not for me to judge.”
“Did it help you grieve?”
I waited for an answer but none came. He just shrugged his shoulders. I wondered if he couldn’t bare the idea that some of his best artwork came out of the death of his two partners.
I couldn’t talk about death anymore. It was too painful. I had to change the subject. “How’s the painting coming along?”
“It’s not. When I heard about this, I stopped painting you.”
I turned towards him. “That doesn’t sound like you. I thought the work was the most important thing.”
“Yes. Yes, you’re right. Of course it is.”
I looked at his face. Those dark eyes were so fixed on my own that it felt like they were burrowing inside me, searching for something.
Finally, he spoke. “You take care, Fay. You take care.” He leant forward and kissed me on the cheek, then turned and started walking away, walking in the opposite direction from where the rest of the mourners had parked.
I took another look down at the coffin. My shoulders shook, my mouth trembled.
“Don’t cry, hon.” Russell was standing next to me.
I shook my head. It was one thing talking to my imaginary Russell when he was alive, but it didn’t seem right to talk to him now he was dead.
“Come on, talk to me,” he said. “It might help.”
I thrust my hands into the pockets of my black raincoat. “How could it help?”
“There’s no need to feel guilty. We just didn’t work out.”
“But you wanted to get back together and I’d had my head turned by Carl.”
Russell puts his hands in his pockets, too. “And why wouldn’t you have your head turned by Carl? He’s an incredibly intriguing man. Almost as good looking as me, too.”
This reminded me of the old Russell — the Russell I’d met, the one who would make light of even the most awkward situation. He lost a lot of his sense of humour when he began to rise in the corporate world.
“I wish it had lasted forever,” I said.
“Yes, so do I.”
I took another tissue from my pocket. I’d brought three packets with me to the funeral and had already gone through two of them.
“But it didn’t,” he said. “We had some good times. Lots of good times. Do you remember that holiday to Zante? That karaoke singer. She wouldn’t let anybody else have the microphone.”
I didn’t want to say anything else, so I started walking. I stared down at my feet and listened to the crunching sound of my shoes on the gravel.
Emily was waiting for me at the gates to the crematorium. We got into her car and drove away. I looked over my shoulder and watched the gates recede into the distance.
Emily spoke first. “Was that Carl R
ask I saw talking to you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?” Emily’s voice had a sharp edge to it, but only because she wanted to protect me, I think.
“He wanted to see if I was okay.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised.
24. The big opportunity
IT WAS A couple of months later that I received a phone call.
“I’ve been trying to leave you messages on your direct line at work but not having much joy.”
It was Anna. Nice little Anna. She was calling me on my mobile. I hadn’t had any connection with the world of modelling since I’d left the agency. Anna’s call made me wonder if I’d missed it or not. I didn’t really know.
I’d been trying to shake myself out of a stupor ever since the funeral. But it hadn’t worked. I’d lurched from day to day, unable to make career plans, unwilling to think too far ahead.
After about a month I did make one decision: I decided to sell the flat and move in with Emily as her lodger. It was an idea she’d floated. Her flatmate had moved out, and instead of advertising for a stranger, she thought it might be a short-term solution to my depression.
It was a good idea. I didn’t want to live in my flat anymore. Too many memories.
There was no shortage of potential buyers and a deal went through very quickly. I made a healthy profit, which was good. But it also encouraged me to try less hard to return to the working world.
I hadn’t had a single call from anybody at the agency, none of my supposed friends there. Nobody enquired to see how I was coping. I didn’t even receive a leaving card. It was as if I’d never existed there, never devoted several years of my life to it.
So it was a surprise to receive a call from Anna.
“I’m glad I’ve got hold of you now. It’s great news, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“Didn’t Polly tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“I’m going to be on the front cover of Vogue.”
I felt a smile stretch across my face in an instant. “Anna, that’s terrific news. I’m so pleased for you. Oh, that’s just fantastic. Well done. It couldn’t happen to a better person. I can’t tell you just how pleased I am.”