Five Things They Never Told Me

by Rebecca Westcott

  Martha picks up her notepad, a frown on her face. It’s a long message and it takes her a minute or so to write the words with her left hand. When she’s done she rips the page out and thrusts it across to where I’m sitting on the bench. I read it and then it’s my turn to frown.

  Forget happy endings. Better to look for a new beginning

  I think about what she’s written. Forget happy endings? How am I supposed to do that? I mean, I know that ‘happy ever after’ doesn’t always work out, but surely I can hope that some things will end up OK? If Martha thinks that I should just accept my rubbish life then she doesn’t know me very well.

  ‘Are you telling me that I should just give up?’ I ask her, my voice betraying how hurt I feel.

  I should have known better than to think that she would understand.

  Martha shakes her head.

  ‘Then what are you saying?’ I’m trying not to sound cross but it’s so frustrating. I just want her to tell me. I can’t be bothered to second-guess what she’s thinking. I read the note again and feel anger rising in me.

  ‘Forget happy endings? That’s not a very grown-up thing to say, is it? And I should just look for a new beginning? How does that help? That’s exactly what Mum’s done but it isn’t a new beginning for me, is it? Or Dad. We’re left with the old, miserable ending while she starts again with a brand new once upon a time. I don’t want a new beginning! I want my old story back.’

  I stand up, stuffing the note in my pocket. Martha is looking at me and I can see that she’s upset – her left arm is reaching out for me and her right hand is jerking free of the blanket that tucks it by her side. I need to leave; she can’t help me right now if she hasn’t got words to make it better.

  But I can’t go. I can’t make the same mistake twice. I’ve been given a second chance to start afresh with Martha, I can’t get it wrong again. Mother Theresa wouldn’t walk away right now. I sink back on to the bench and stare at the water fountain, Martha’s words rolling around my brain. I think about Dad and how unhappy he’s been. It’d be much better for him if he could have a new beginning. But how many times are you allowed to start again? You can’t just keep on reinventing your life every time it doesn’t go the way you want it to.

  ‘Surely you have to commit to seeing something through to the end eventually?’ I mutter. ‘Everyone must get to have at least one happy ending?’

  Martha makes a small noise in her throat and I look over at her. She hunches one shoulder in a kind of half-shrug and looks down at herself, her eyebrows raised. Then she does her weird smile and nods at me, and her eyes are telling me things that she can’t say with words.

  And I sort of get it. Maybe it’s OK to look for as many new beginnings as you need to, because when the end finally arrives, when your time is up and you’re old and tired, there is absolutely no stopping it. Although I’m not sure that it can accurately be called a happy ending. There’s nothing happy about being ancient, is there?

  New beginnings. I suppose it isn’t the worst idea I’ve ever heard. Beginnings sound a lot more exciting than endings, that’s for sure. Less final.

  I reach across for Martha’s hand at the same time that she reaches for mine and we sit together until Beatrice comes back. When Martha has gone I miss the feel of her hand holding mine and making me feel like there’s at least one person in the world who understands.

  Martha

  When I was a girl I spent hours planning my life. How I would marry Tommy and we would have two children – one boy and one girl. We would live in a cottage in the country and grow vegetables and I would collect eggs from our own chickens. I would grow old with Tommy beside me.

  Those hours were a waste of time. Happy endings only happen in fairy stories. Real life is about starting over, again and again, and hoping each time that maybe this will be the fresh beginning you were waiting for.

  But I am a hypocrite. It is not a fresh beginning if you continue to make the same mistakes. I left Tommy in the woods that day when we were children and three years later I would do it again, all the time believing that I was searching out a new beginning.

  It was the spring of 1945 and I was sixteen years old. Tommy and I had been courting for three years and I thought we had a whole lifetime ahead of us. He had already secretly proposed to me and I had accepted. We decided not to tell our parents until he turned eighteen in the autumn of that year but there was no doubt in my mind that Tommy was the love of my life and that I was the love of his. He bought me a wedding ring (I’m not sure how he got his hands on it and I thought it best not to ask) and it was tucked away at the bottom of my gas-mask box, ready for the day I would wear it with pride.

  I remember that I had packed a picnic. It was Tommy’s suggestion that we cycle out to the woods and it was a warm day for early April. I was wearing a dress that I had made out of an old pair of curtains. We used to do that kind of thing back then. We saw possibility and opportunity in everything. I was very fond of that dress – I thought the cut of the material showed off my slim waist rather well. It wasn’t the most practical item of clothing for a cycle ride but I was far too vain to worry about tiny details like that.

  The woods were beautiful. I’d packed a picnic rug and when I threw it on to the ground it all seemed so perfect. My hair was auburn in those days and the sunlight streaming through the branches caught the red highlights and made me look like a film star. So I told myself, anyway. Tommy settled himself down next to me and I was just reaching for the picnic hamper when he ruined it all.

  It was his duty, he told me. He was needed on the front and it was his duty to go. I laughed at first and told him that there would be plenty of time for fighting when he was a man. I wasn’t particularly worried. The war made life difficult but other than the occasional nightmare about my German pilot I hadn’t felt its effect on my life. Not really. This was a war about other people, not Tommy and I.

  I stopped laughing when Tommy stood up. He had a quiet determination about him that day that I had not seen before and it made me uneasy. I told him to sit back down and stop being a fool and did he want a ham roll? ‘I’m going,’ he said to me. ‘I’m going to help win this war.’

  I started to feel angry then. Looking back now I can tell that I was scared but at the time I just felt cross. He’d never be allowed to fight without his parents’ permission, I told him. And his mother would rather fight the Nazis with her rolling pin than let him out of her sight. That was when he told me his plan. He was leaving today. Our trip to the woods was a goodbye picnic. He would lie about his age, he said, and I knew they’d believe him. Tommy was strong and broad but he was just a boy. A boy who had no right to be fighting with grown men.

  I stood up too and faced him. ‘Don’t do this,’ I told him. He tried to take my hand but I snatched it away. ‘If you leave now then you leave me,’ I said. ‘I won’t wait for you while you go off to be killed.’

  The look on his face nearly broke me but I meant every word. And I thought it would be enough to make him stay. But it was not.

  ‘I promise I’ll come home,’ he told me but I had heard enough. Abandoning the picnic rug and hamper I stormed out of the wood and across the field to where we had left our bicycles. I turned just once and saw Tommy standing beneath the trees at the edge of the wood. He raised his hand at me and waved but I ignored him. I left him there, all alone, and the whole way home I told myself that I was doing the right thing. That I refused to be made a war widow before I was even married.

  Tommy broke his promise but it wasn’t really his fault. I don’t blame him anyway. He didn’t even make it as far as the front line. They said the bomb killed him instantly, as if there was supposed to be some comfort in that fact. For myself, I would have preferred to know that he had one last moment of knowing. Knowing that he had been; that he had happened.

  Those children that I dreamt of never arrived but if they had I wouldn’t have read them bedtime stories of happily ever after. I would
have told them that if they couldn’t find a happy ending, then they needed to put in some effort and search for a new beginning. As many times as necessary. Because you have to write your own story and it might not be a fairy tale.

  The Persistence of Memory*

  I’ve decided to introduce Frog Boy to Martha. After all, if he’s going to help me come up with a solution to the Martha Problem then he needs to know what we’re dealing with and he told me that he’s never really met her properly, apart from that horrible day when she fell out of her wheelchair and he came to the rescue. I ask Beatrice to bring Martha to the water fountain in the afternoon and we’re waiting for her, sitting side by side on the bench when she arrives.

  Beatrice leaves and we sit in silence until I realize that it’s probably my responsibility to do the talking.

  ‘Er – so, this is Martha,’ I say, gesturing towards Martha where she is sitting in her wheelchair with an amused expression on her face. ‘And … er … this is Fro–’ I stop, mid-word, horrified with myself.

  Frog Boy looks at me quizzically.

  ‘What were you about to call me?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing!’ I say, my voice sounding squeaky.

  ‘Yes, you were,’ he says. ‘You were introducing me and you said “This is fro–’ What’s “fro”?’

  ‘You misheard,’ I mutter. ‘I was telling Martha that your name is –’

  I stop again and close my eyes, wishing that I could start this all over again. I am not doing well.

  ‘My name is …?’ questions Frog Boy. He’s not going to let this go. ‘Oh, wow! You can’t actually remember my name, can you?’

  I open my eyes and look at him with the best apologetic look I can muster.

  ‘I am SO sorry. I couldn’t remember it after we first met, and it hasn’t come up since. And then I forgot that I didn’t know.’

  ‘So what have you been calling me, then? You know – in your mind,’ he asks. I look at him and try to feign confusion, but I know exactly what he means. We’ve spent hours together – he knows that I must have been referring to him as something in my head.

  ‘Er …’ I say intelligently, looking at Martha and hoping that maybe she’ll do something amazing and distract him from this topic of conversation. No luck there, though – she looks like she’s thoroughly enjoying every moment of my discomfort and has absolutely no intention of breaking up the entertainment.

  ‘I’ve been calling you Frog Boy in my head,’ I say miserably, mentally waving goodbye to a beautiful friendship that will now be over before it even began.

  ‘Frog Boy?’ He sounds confused. ‘Why would you call me that?’

  ‘You know. The frog. The weird, warty one that you thought was so fascinating, the day we met. I thought you must have a thing about frogs, so I called you Frog Boy …’ I tail off, sounding pathetic.

  He looks at me, utterly bewildered for a moment, until suddenly a short laugh bursts out of his mouth. It’s followed by another, longer laugh and it’s so infectious that Martha joins in. Her laugh is totally silent but her body is shaking and her eyes look happy. I’d join in too if I wasn’t feeling so awful.

  Eventually they calm down and he turns to me.

  ‘But, Erin, it wasn’t even a frog!’ he says, and bursts out laughing again. ‘It was a toad,’ he splutters, leaning across the bench and grasping Martha’s shoulder for support as laughter wracks his body, making him shake.

  ‘All right, whatever,’ I say, feeling a bit grumpy. It’s not that funny, or if it is then I don’t get the joke. ‘Toad, frog – they’re all the same thing.’

  ‘No, they’re not,’ he tells me, sitting up straight and obviously trying to get a grip. ‘But the point is, you should have been calling me Toad Boy all along!’ This starts him off again and I look away in disgust. I’m glad he isn’t upset but we’ve got serious business to get down to here, and I don’t like being laughed at.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says to Martha, taking a deep breath. ‘Let me introduce myself to you. My name is Frog Boy and I’m very pleased to meet you!’ He holds out his left hand towards Martha’s left hand and she shakes it, her eyes dancing and her mouth grinning widely. She obviously thinks he’s completely fantastic, which is good – as long as they don’t both forget who introduced them in the first place.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say to him. ‘What IS your name?’

  Frog Boy leans back on the bench. ‘Frog Boy,’ he tells me.

  ‘No! Seriously. Just tell me and we can forget about this whole, stupid conversation.’

  He grins at me, a wicked grin that makes me feel a bit nervous. ‘I think Frog Boy really suits me. You can always call me Frog for short, if you feel it’s a bit of a mouthful.’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, shrugging my shoulders and looking past him to where Martha is sitting. ‘Just remember this is your choice.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he says firmly.

  ‘And I think you’re completely weird,’ I add.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ agrees Frog.

  ‘Fine, then,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ he says, nodding at me.

  I have lost any control of this ridiculous situation and feel the need to change the topic of conversation as quickly as possible.

  ‘So, what shall we talk about?’ I say breezily, while mentally kicking myself. What shall we talk about? How is that ever going to be a conversation starter?

  ‘Er … I don’t know,’ says Frog. ‘What do you normally talk about?’

  That is a good question. What do we usually talk about? What did we talk about yesterday? Oh yeah – I had a mental moment at Martha. I feel myself going red at the memory but fortunately, Martha has written a note.

  Dancing

  Unfortunately, she has chosen my least favourite topic of conversation.

  ‘We do not normally talk about dancing!’ I tell her.

  ‘I don’t mind if that’s what you like talking about, Erin,’ says Frog, grinning at me.

  ‘I don’t!’ My voice comes out in a squeal and I take a deep breath, trying to get it under control.

  ‘I quite like dancing,’ he continues. ‘As long as nobody is actually watching!’

  ‘Yes, well, I don’t,’ I state. ‘Now someone suggest a sensible topic of conversation.’

  Cue another note from Martha.

  Jitterbug

  I groan. ‘Martha, we are so not talking about dancing. If that’s what jitterbug even means. Sounds like some weird kind of insect to me.’

  ‘You aren’t very cultured, are you?’ says Frog and I elbow him in the ribs.

  ‘And I suppose you are?’ I ask him as he doubles up dramatically, clutching his side.

  ‘I’m cultured enough to know that the jitterbug was this type of crazy dance people used to do in the nineteen forties and nineteen fifties. Am I right?’

  He looks at Martha, who nods and smiles. Encouraged, Frog keeps talking. ‘It’s really energetic, lots of swinging around and jumping and moving your feet really quickly.’

  ‘Well, I can tell you right now that I would be terrible at it,’ I say. ‘I do not have any dancing ability whatsoever. In fact, I have this recurring nightmare where I’m dancing on a stage and everyone is watching me and pointing and laughing.’

  ‘Do you have any clothes on?’ sniggers Frog and I round on him.

  ‘What sort of a question is that? Yes, I have clothes on. Jeez – what is with you today?’ I huff and turn to Martha. ‘Anyway, as I was saying, in my dream I –’

  I am rudely interrupted by another note, which is thrust in front of my face.

  Nobody cares if you can’t dance well – just get up and dance!

  ‘Yes, well, thanks for the motivational quote. It’s easy for you to say,’ I start, and then I realize what I’ve said. ‘Oh no, I didn’t mean it was easy like that; I mean, I know you can’t dance now or anything and …’ I trail off. I am just making it worse. I need to shut my big, fat gob before I do any more damage. Or create a
diversion, maybe.

  ‘So,’ I say, ‘anyone fancy taking my dad’s van for a spin?’

  There is silence, only broken after a few humiliating moments by the sound of Frog swallowing loudly.

  ‘Did you dance the jitterbug, Martha?’ Frog isn’t looking at me so the weapons of mass destruction that I am firing out of my eyes miss him by a mile. It’s kind of hard to imagine Martha dancing, when her legs obviously don’t work.

  I tense, waiting for Martha to get upset, but she surprises me, though – she sits up straight and nods.

  ‘Do you miss dancing?’ asks Frog quietly. I glare at him – that’s kind of an insensitive thing to say to someone who will never dance again. And can’t he tell that I’m trying to change the subject? But Martha turns her head, stares hard at him and smiles a sad little smile, before sinking into her wheelchair and lowering her head so that her chin droops down on to her chest.

  I elbow Frog in the ribs. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to dance again, one day,’ I tell Martha. ‘If you work on your exercises. Those ones that Beatrice is always telling you to do.’ Frog frowns and opens his mouth to speak but I don’t want him doing any more damage so I interrupt him. ‘You could show us how you used to do that dance. The jitterbug, wasn’t it? I’d love to see that.’

  I’m keen to cheer Martha up by any means possible, even if it does mean telling the odd little white lie.

  I rattle on for a few more minutes, with Martha ignoring me, and Frog watching us both, with a funny expression on his face. It’s a relief when Beatrice walks round the corner to take Martha back to the house. I am not skilled at social chit-chat.

  I round on Frog the second that Beatrice disappears along the path.

  ‘What did you say that for, you big idiot?’ I ask him. I’m really cross. I wanted him and Martha to get along and everything was going fine until he opened his huge mouth and upset her.