The Last Day

by Claire Dyer

  I’ve never thought of this before or wasted time remembering all these last days; what would have been the point? It wouldn’t have changed anything.

  He’d said he’d leave and I hadn’t asked him to stay, it had been the easiest of the options available to us at the time. Without him in the house, there weren’t the daily reminders of what we’d lost and I could pretend everything was as it should be without him there. I’d not wanted him to be able to see my pain or to see his, which he’d worn like a cloak he hadn’t seemed able to take off.

  It’d been as though we’d never shake off the grief; how was I to know that even though it’s obviously still there, it’s been – and can be – overlaid with the day-to-day, the small joys of seeing a magnolia in full bloom, hearing the pouring out of birdsong, mixing just the right shade of paint? These tiny blessings can’t erase the enormity of my grief, but they can – and do – soften it a little. But even so, how can Boyd now say he’s done his grieving, that it’s over completely? I don’t think I will ever be able to forgive him for that.

  Maybe if we’d been more patient, with ourselves as well as each other, we wouldn’t have ended up like this, with me in the back of the car, Boyd and Honey in the front, all of us going to visit his dying mother on a morning when I woke up in another man’s bed. Maybe we would have come to an accord, understood each other’s grief better. After all, grief is ever-changing, but he and I would have had to be living together to know this, wouldn’t we? Doing it all from a distance: him in his flat, me in the house, each of us pretending nothing mattered any more – had this all been one huge mistake?

  Maybe if Boyd hadn’t come back to live in the house, hadn’t brought Honey with him, I wouldn’t be in this situation now either. Maybe him doing so had been one huge mistake too.

  ‘You OK in the back there?’ Boyd asks as we reach the A31. He looks back at me briefly, raising his left eyebrow in that way of his.

  ‘Of course I’m all right,’ I snap.

  Boyd stares ahead once more and I rest my chin on my fist and gaze out of the window.

  I really have no idea why I decided to stay over at Colin’s last night. I’d got home from another bloody visit to another bloody woman with a stupid yappy dog to find Trixie in the lounge having made herself a hot drink, and she’d told me about Honey’s accident. The walls of the house had moved in a foot or two, like they were squeezing me out, or so it seemed.

  But then Colin had called round. We were going to the cinema in Aldershot to see a live screening from the Royal Opera House. Maybe it had been then I’d decided that it was time to come clean in the only way I knew how, by staying out overnight.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Boyd says now, as we merge on to the A3. I can tell he’s nervous, he’s never really been comfortable around his mother. And then he looks across at Honey and says, ‘You doing OK? Not in too much pain?’

  I want to throw something at him.

  I don’t hear Honey’s reply because I’m gazing out of the window again, thinking about last night and Colin.

  ‘Enjoy that?’ he asked as we left the cinema.

  ‘Mmmm, yes, thank you.’

  ‘Back to mine? I’ve got some of that Epoisse cheese you like. Thought we could have some with a glass of port before you go back next door.’

  Or perhaps it had been then that I’d decided.

  Or perhaps it had been after we’d eaten the cheese and drunk the port and had sex and bizarrely I’d felt like weeping.

  In any case, there’d come a point in the evening when it was obvious Colin was expecting me to slip out of bed, get dressed and leave as I always did.

  ‘OK if I stay?’ I’d said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ He raised himself up in the bed and looked me squarely in the eye. His skin was caramel coloured in the diffused light from the landing; it was smooth and silky.

  I was lying with my hands behind my head, revelling in being naked, of having just come and, for that moment had felt defiant, the opposite of victim, and I remember wondering why it was I’d never told Colin about William. He’d traced the faint stretch marks on my belly but had never commented on them and this was yet one more thing I was grateful to him for. He’d also never asked why Boyd and I had split but had taken it as a given. As I’ve said, Colin is the most undemanding man I’ve ever known; I don’t like to think this is because he doesn’t care enough to be demanding, but that he respects my space, much as I respect his. And also, I didn’t want him to know the broken, tragic me. I want to be this Vita, this strong, sure island of a woman who makes no demands and expects nothing in return.

  ‘I’m sure,’ I said.

  So maybe it had been then I’d decided to stay.

  Whenever the decision had been made, what I hadn’t bargained for was walking into my house this morning and finding Boyd standing there looking at me the way he was, the air between us stitched tight.

  * * *

  When we get to the hospital, it’s like we’re in some kind of farce.

  We park and Boyd strides off to find a wheelchair for Honey.

  ‘I’m not having you hop all the way there on your crutches, you’ll be exhausted,’ he says as he gets out of the car. ‘You’ll wait here with her, won’t you, Vita?’

  ‘Sure.’ But I don’t really want to, I want to get going, get it over with.

  With Boyd gone I don’t know what to say to Honey. Should I make polite conversation? Could I? I’ve never really been alone with Honey anywhere other than the house or the studio and it’s odd being here, in public, away from the security of what’s normal. It’s like I don’t know how to behave or what role I’m supposed to be playing.

  But then Honey says, ‘I feel such a fool, you know.’

  ‘Why?’ I snap again. Honey’s comment has taken me by surprise.

  ‘Falling over the way I did. I mean, I’m a grown-up, I shouldn’t be falling down steps.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ I try a more conciliatory tone. ‘Trixie told me some of what happened, but can you remember anything?’

  ‘Not really; I was going down into the storeroom and then I was falling and it went black for a while. I knew I’d broken something as soon as I came to. After all, it’s what Elizabeth had predicted.’

  ‘Elizabeth?’ Who the fuck is Elizabeth, I think?

  ‘Yes, you know. The medium I went to see. She said I’d have an accident so I’m presuming this is it.’

  Honey’s voice quavers as she says this, which I find odd. After all, Honey had seemed to be coping so well with everything. She’s been so bloody pleasant and amenable and hasn’t made a fuss that I’m surprised by how she says this and how she’s nervously tapping her fingertips on her knee as if to try and steady herself.

  There’s a gap in the conversation which I feel honour-bound to fill, so say, ‘Ah, yes, Elizabeth.’ And then I gaze out of the window and at last see Boyd making his way across the car park with a hospital wheelchair.

  Thank God. Now at least we can get on. I am, I realise, stupidly nervous about seeing Belle. My visits to Queen Anne’s have mostly been an act of bluff and bluster.

  Boyd opens Honey’s door and leans in and I say, ‘You took your time.’

  ‘Charming,’ he replies. ‘Next time you can go and find the sodding chair then.’

  ‘Boyd?’ Honey says, looking up at him. ‘It’s OK. We’re OK, aren’t we, Vita?’

  I harrumph and get out of the car. ‘Come on,’ I say, ‘let’s get Honey into it then.’

  Together we help Honey into the chair and Boyd pushes her along the path to the hospital entrance. His shoulders, I notice, are tensed and hunched up almost to his ears. I wonder what he’s thinking. After all, this is where I gave birth, where we’d come to try and find out why William had died, where we’d endured a litany of doctor-speak and the words ‘rare’ and ‘tragic’ said far too many times into the space that was beginning to grow between us.

  I stride ahead, leaving Boyd and Honey to foll
ow in my wake. It is starting to rain: cold, penetrating rain. ‘Bloody brilliant,’ I mutter under my breath as I take shelter in the doorway. God, I hate it here.

  We manoeuvre Honey into the lift and then out of it again; we tramp along long, winding corridors until we reach the ward his mother’s in.

  ‘No,’ says a short, squat nurse who is as round as she is tall. ‘Absolutely not. You can’t visit until Visiting Time. That’s why it’s called Visiting Time and, in any case, there are only two visitors per patient and…’ she stares at Honey’s wheelchair with her beady eyes, ‘it’s best not to bring that on to the ward.’

  ‘Fine,’ Boyd says, his mouth set in a firm line. ‘We’ll wait until Visiting Time. Honey’ll hobble on her crutches and only two of us will see my mother who, by the way, I only learned this morning is actually dying, at any one time. Does that work for you?’

  I have rarely seen Boyd so angry and my heart tips a little in my chest. Of course, he’d been angry with me when he’d said he was leaving and I’d heard an echo of that anger when he rang last night to talk about Colin and in what he’d said to me this morning when I came home, but this kind of frustrated rage is something new and has, I think, everything to do with his mother.

  ‘Of course,’ the nurse replies, all sweetness and light now she knows what Boyd’s dealing with. ‘That’s fine. And I’m so sorry about your mother. You can wait in the family room down there,’ she points to a doorway just past the entrance to the staircase, ‘or go to the restaurant. They do a mean panini.’

  When the nurse has bustled off, Boyd looks firstly at Honey and then at me. ‘I …’ he says.

  ‘You need to go and get some answers, don’t you?’ I say.

  He nods. ‘I need to try. There must be a doctor here somewhere who knows what’s going on.’

  ‘We’ll be fine. Just go.’

  I don’t mean this. I want to go with him; the urge to do so is like a stabbing pain in between my ribs but I know I can’t. It’s not my place to, not any more.

  He bends and kisses Honey on the lips. I turn and get ready to march off before remembering that I’ll have to wheel the bloody chair when Boyd has gone.

  Honey says, ‘Take care. Try not to worry too much. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Boyd replies. ‘Thank you, for being here.’

  I really can’t bear it much longer. How can Honey have the fucking right to be here? However lovely and bird-like and kind and quirky she may be, however much she may love him, and he think he loves her, she’s only been around for five minutes, hasn’t gone through what Boyd and I have gone through. She hasn’t even met Belle yet for fuck’s sake!

  But, I reason, there’s nothing I can do, nothing I should do. Not now, not here. Here and now is about supporting Boyd through this ordeal, so I march back over to the wheelchair and say, ‘We’ll be in the restaurant having one of their world-fucking-famous paninis then. Come and find us when you can?’

  And I kick the footbrake and begin to wheel Honey away. I don’t look back at Boyd but concentrate instead on the way Honey’s hair tapers at the back of her neck and tell myself to remember this when we have our next sitting. There is something unbearably fragile about Honey’s neck; her skin is creamy-white.

  Hours pass, or what seems like hours. Honey and I eat our paninis, drink coffee, say the occasional thing to one another but otherwise we stare out of the window or check our phones. I’d texted Colin to tell him what was happening and he’d replied, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that. Take care. Speak soon.’ Another clear, clean answer from him: no ambiguities there.

  ‘I’d better see how Trixie’s getting on,’ Honey says, getting ready to dial the office.

  ‘I’ll get us some more coffee then.’

  As I’m waiting to pay, I stare at the display of chocolate bars and, for some strange reason I’m young again and back in Belle’s monster of a house with its dark furniture and huge windows. Belle’s sitting in an armchair, holding the ridiculously small handle of a ridiculously small cup between her perfectly manicured fingers. I feel like Gulliver in Lilliput next to her. It’s the first time we’ve met.

  ‘So,’ Belle is saying, squinting a little in the afternoon sun flooding through the French doors at the back of the room, ‘you’re Vita.’

  The room’s cluttered and filled with a pervading sense of disappointment. Without being told it, I know I somehow don’t come up to scratch. Maybe I should be broad-hipped and domesticated, a cake-baker and expert flower-arranger. But then maybe even if I had been, I wouldn’t have met with her approval.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I’m Vita.’

  Boyd is in the kitchen refilling the pot. I wish he’d come back; the room is an unfriendly place without him in it.

  But when he does come back, he and his mother continue the dance they’d played on the doorstep and in the hall and as she carried in a plate of biscuits. It is a kind of dance I’ve never experienced before. It is evident that there’s something between them that’s massive and unspoken and unforgiven.

  After that first visit, relations had thawed a little. Not much, but a little, and Belle didn’t come to our wedding.

  ‘I haven’t done everything I’ve done to see you get married in a Registry Office,’ she’d said.

  However, when at last I fell pregnant, it was as though a cloud had lifted.

  We’re back in the sitting room of the huge house but this time Belle is fussing over me. ‘Come now,’ she’s saying, ‘you must rest. Put your feet up on this stool. Have a Garibaldi.’

  I hate Garibaldi biscuits, but take one as Boyd comes back into the room from the garden where he’s been propping up a bit of broken fence.

  ‘Thank you, Boyd,’ Belle says. ‘Now have some tea and look after this wife of yours.’

  Boyd winks at me and I nearly choke on a bit of the bloody Garibaldi.

  On the way home in the car, I’d turned to Boyd and asked, ‘What is it between the two of you? You and your mum? You ever going to tell me?’

  ‘It’s complicated,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I think it’s too complicated even for me to understand. I really don’t know if I could explain it to you.’

  But he tries and so I learn about his father and the visit Belle has never forgiven him for.

  And then William is born and Belle is in her element.

  She fusses and knits and interferes and says, ‘He looks just like you did, Boyd, when you were born. You were such a handsome chap then.’

  And then William dies and Belle’s grief has become mixed up in the thing that lies unforgiven between her and Boyd and in the fact that I let him leave me and that he went.

  I’ve only been to visit her at Queen Anne’s a few times but enough for it to seem like a habit.

  Belle had been hostile at first. ‘What do you want?’ she’d asked in a beaky sort of voice. I’d been quite surprised by the change in her since William’s funeral. She’d shrunk and her voice had become more tremulous, less certain.

  ‘Just thought I’d pop by and see how you were,’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m fine, as you can see.’ She obviously wasn’t. ‘Have you heard from Boyd?’ she added.

  ‘We’re in touch, now and again.’

  She made a kind of snorting noise, a mixture of disapproval and disgust and I remember looking out into the garden, at the lawn sloping away into the distance. There were a few white plastic tables and chairs on the patio but it was November and so no one was sitting out there. Rain spattered against the window.

  I felt compelled to say it, even though I didn’t really want to. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘What for?’ She turned her laser-beam eyes on me.

  ‘That it didn’t work out, between Boyd and me.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ she replied. And then in a rare move she reached out a hand and said, ‘It was an awful time. I can’t imagine how you must have felt.’

  I didn’t know whether to believe her or not but most of all I thought it’s not how
I felt but how I feel. The loss is still fucking there. All of it: losing William, losing Boyd, losing the chance to be a parent, the future my child should have had, the person I could have become. But all I actually said was, ‘It’s good we’re friends, at least we have that.’

  When I told her about Boyd’s request to come back and live at the house, she’d been incredulous, even more so when I told her about Honey.

  ‘How can you countenance it?’ she asked.

  And so the bluff and bluster kicked in and I said, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine. It’ll be cool.’

  I pick up the tray and carry the coffees back to where Honey is sitting, telling myself that, after all, whatever happens, the woman in the nursing home, the woman in the bed in a ward in this hospital, is still – and always will be – the grandmother my son would have had, had he lived.

  ‘Thank you,’ Honey says. ‘Trixie was on the other line so I’ll call her back in a bit.’

  ‘Mmmm,’ I reply, stirring my coffee vigorously. I’m not really interested in what Honey’s just said. Trixie and I were close once, but obviously weren’t so nowadays, we didn’t need to be. All that water, all those bridges, again.

  But then I notice that Honey hasn’t touched her coffee, her hands are in her lap and she’s shaking.

  ‘Did you see him?’ Honey asks.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man, standing under the trees at the end of the road earlier as we drove away. He was watching us.’

  I tap the stirrer against the side of the mug and then put it down on the table top. An uncomfortable feeling of dread fills my chest. You know, that knee-melting, ear-burning thing again. But I say, ‘Nah, I didn’t see anyone.’

  ‘Oh, OK. Perhaps I was imagining it. I always get a bit freaked out about hospitals and while I was here yesterday I saw a broom leaning up against a bed and that always means death and so maybe I was distracted by that and imagined it.’

  I have no idea what to say to this. After all, wasn’t there going to be a death now anyway? I choose not to reply but take a sip of my drink and notice that when Honey eventually picks hers up, her hands are still shaking. I put my drink down and sit on my hands to stop myself from reaching out to touch her.