The Feast of All Souls
Page 36
And then her voice worked again, when it was too late to drown out the news, and she howled, and even as she did it Alice marvelled at the sound, the agony of it, as if made by something whose guts were being torn out of its body. But it was her who made it, just as she had on the riverbank before. And she fell to the bedroom carpet and curled up around the pain, howling again until she thought her throat was bleeding. And Andrew dressed, then laid her clothes out and stood and waited until she was ready to go.
She’d already believed their marriage would be dead if Emily had died, but hadn’t realised until that moment that she’d still nurtured some tiny embryo of hope that she might be wrong, that somehow they would get through it, survive, repair – maybe even, maybe, somewhere down the line, have another child. That hope died the first time she looked up to see Andrew waiting by her neatly-laid-out clothes, his hands behind his back, his face like stone. Waiting with an executioner’s terrible patience for her wailing to stop and for her to come with him. Because no entreaty on her part would prevent his demanding her presence, witnessing the consequences of her inattention. He would make her. Not because he needed her support or because it would in the long run be best for her to see the body and be sure that it was their child, but because he would suffer and wanted her to suffer alongside him.
And it was only just, she decided, that she should.
She climbed off the floor and stood. Her joints felt stiff and achey, as if she’d grown very old lying on the floor. Andrew just stood and looked at her. Unable to meet his eyes, she took off her nightgown and began to dress.
March 2015
“WELL?”
Sat at one end of the table, hands clasped tight in a bony knot, Alice glared at Andrew.
If she’d expected any real reaction from him – shock, fear, anger, contrition – she was disappointed. He just looked down at the pair of black lace panties on the table, said “Well what?” then took his jacket off and hung it on the back of the kitchen door, turning his back on her as he did so. He cared that little. He was that indifferent to her now. Her heart cried out for the sweet, long-haired boy she’d married. But he was gone; long gone.
Andrew sat down at the other end of the table. He loosened his tie, took it off. “Go on, then. Say what you’ve got to say.”
Alice pointed at the panties. “Those aren’t mine.”
“I know they’re not.”
“Who is she?”
“You don’t know her.”
“From Amberson’s?”
“No.”
“Where, then?”
“I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
“Not my –” she fought for words, as if for breath. “Not my business, Andrew? Not my fucking business? I’m your fucking wife.”
He just looked at her and breathed out.
“Is that all you can say?”
“I met someone. Yes. And yes, I care about her. I could actually sleep in the same bed as her given the chance, instead of the spare room. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Want? No. I don’t want any of this. I suppose I was at least hoping it was just fucking, nothing else. Going off and getting your oats because you’re not getting them here.”
“You make it sound like it was you who cut them off. There’s a reason it’s me sleeping in the spare room, Alice. I was the one who chose to –”
“Then why are you still here?” Alice heard her voice shake. She knew the best thing to do right now was to stop talking. Throw the panties in the kitchen bin, end the conversation and pretend it had never started. Then they could carry on as they had, presenting at least the semblance of a marriage to the outside world. But she knew as well that she wouldn’t, that neither of them would or could stop now. The machine was in motion and it wouldn’t halt until the last of their marriage was in ashes.
Andrew sighed, then shrugged. “Habit,” he said at last. “Less trouble this way, isn’t it?”
True, of course; they both knew everything between them but the appearance of being a couple had died with Emily. She had thought, more than once, about leaving, about divorce. Why hadn’t she? Because she didn’t want to be the one who left, who abandoned her grieving husband? What a heartless cow, people would say. Because some part of her had still refused to give up hope that there was something to be salvaged? Because her pride rebelled against her sneaking home to Mum and Dad with her tail between her legs – because honestly, if it was comfort she wanted, if it was love, where else had she to go? Or, like Andrew, because it was just less effort to keep on going through the motions, maintaining appearances? It might have been any of these, or all of them at once.
It didn’t matter now. She’d had one last illusion to cling to: that it would be her decision what happened, that she’d choose whether and when to stay or leave. Now even that was taken from her.
“You bastard,” she said. It was his blank, tired indifference that hurt most of all, the way he’d confessed to the affair as if it was nothing much. She wanted to break that, to hit him with something that would hurt. “You rotten, adulterous bastard.”
“I was going to let you know soon,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. “The next few days. She’s asked me to move in with her.”
“You bastard.” This time it came out of her in a scream. Alone, abandoned, only Emily’s ghost for company. “You fucking bastard. You’re just leaving me?”
“Yes, I am. Come on, Alice, it’s time, we both know –”
“I need –” She needed him? For what? “You can’t leave me on my own,” she said. It sounded weak and whiny and she hated the words and herself for saying them as soon as they were uttered. It made her sound like a victim, and she had never wanted to be a victim. More to the point, she refused to accept she had a right to call herself one. Her single, cataclysmic fuck-up lay at the root of all that had happened: this was just the latest consequence. For Alice to call herself a victim was an insult to the dead.
And by the look of it, Andrew felt the same way, because she saw anger and maybe even loathing on his face then, and he got up. “Can’t I?” he shouted. “Why not? You left her!”
Alice opened her mouth both no words came. Andrew, please, no. Don’t say it. Don’t.
“My little girl’s dead because of you,” he said.
She screamed something, looked for things to throw, found nothing. Andrew had already thrown open the kitchen door and was striding down the hall. She screamed after him, telling him to fuck off and never come back, calling him every ugly name she could think of, but he didn’t turn around, never even slowed down. Just opened the door, flung it shut behind him and by the time she got it open his Audi’s engine was already roaring into life. He tore down the drive and off onto the main road as she stumbled through the exhaust fumes, coughing between obscenities.
The car’s roar died away. Silence returned. A bird trilled somewhere. Nature: the Green Machine. Mindless, indifferent, chugging along through its endless, millennial cycles. Emily was dead and the Machine ground on. A huge mindless mechanism that worked and turned without a mind, and what did it matter in that great schema if one tiny mote, one little pattern of energy that had appeared to be matter and appeared to be alive and conscious, had changed its form and behaviour? It was grist to the mill. Emily’s ashes had been scattered and would be assimilated into the ecosystem, would make new organisms grow. That was all. None of it had a point; none of it meant anything.
The bird trilled again. Across the road, a hedge rustled as some small creature moved in it.
Alice turned and went back inside the house. She shut the door. She went up the stairs. She went into the bathroom and she opened the medicine cabinet. She took out the two packets of paracetamol she found there and sat on the edge of the bath looking at them for quite some time.
THE BLUE AND white void of energy and light heaved and writhed. Faces swam before her. Before it had been the ogre’s, Old Harry’s, Arodias Thorne’s, but thi
s time they were the children’s, baying and snarling. Children taken too young, lives snuffed out like Emily’s had been – but by design, not accident.
Arodias Thorne had plotted the children’s deaths: not out of sadism or perverted lust, but merely as a means to an end, for him to attain the immortality he’d sought. Her crime? Her guilt?
She was guilty of imperfection. She was guilty of being flawed. She was guilty of a moment’s distraction. How many parents were guilty of it? All might be: it was only ill-luck or blind chance or the casual cruelty of whatever power did preside over this world that had caused that brief distraction to coincide with a moment of life-threatening danger to her child.
It was so easy to say it – so much so that it sounded glib to her own ears – but it had been hard, the work of months of therapy, to say it with anything that even approached belief. It would be years before she truly believed that, assuming she ever did. But she had managed to say it, and would again; had begun the slow and tortured process of self-forgiveness.
She remembered that moment, and reached for it, held fast to it through the raging of the sea.
MY DEAREST ALICE,
I hope this email finds you well – as well as the circumstances permit, at least. It seems an obscenity to hope somebody is ‘well’ in a situation like this. I’m sorry, but I’m at something of a loss for words. I’m used to being clever and witty, and none of that is really appropriate here.
I should have sent this email a long time ago, and I’m sorry for that as well. Stefan and I were busy settling in, and we’ve rather lost track of our friends in the UK. But even before that, I hesitated – we hadn’t spoken for some time before this awful tragedy happened; I was afraid you might have come to think of me more as Andrew’s friend than your own. As excuses go, that seems decidedly pathetic now – but of course, the longer I left things, the harder it was to write.
My darling, I cannot express how sorry we both are for your loss, and nor can I even begin to imagine the pain you must be suffering at this moment. I’m trying to find something to say, but I can’t. I’m trying to think of something amusing, or wise, or kind, or healing, something that will make you feel better, but I know that there are no such words. I wish only that I could hold you in my arms and let you cry, but I can’t even do that. Things being what they are financially, I have no idea when we’ll next be able to come over to Blighty – I would love to tell you that I’ll be on the next flight across, but unfortunately that’s something only characters in a Hollywood movie are able to do – or perhaps, the kind of people who write, direct or star in Hollywood films, as they can afford to jet off anywhere at the drop of a bloody hat. I’m sorry; I’m trying to be clever again. I will be there in person as soon as I have the opportunity. In the meantime, please get in touch. Whatever has happened, whatever you feel yourself to be guilty of, you are still my friend.
Stefan also sends his fondest wishes.
With love,
Teddy
April 2016
“WAS IT MY fault? Yes. But on the other hand... I don’t know, can anyone, ever, say there wasn’t a second when they should have been looking and weren’t?” She dabbed at her face. She was crying freely.
“Probably not.” Kat, her therapist, looked back at her. There was no judgement in her face, only kindness and warmth and acceptance. That was how it worked: she wasn’t there to judge, she’d told Alice at the beginning, or to guide or to advise, only to listen to Alice and help her see her way to a solution. Always assuming one existed, of course.
“That’s what I thought,” said Alice.
“How does it make you feel to consider that?”
I don’t know, she wanted to say, but didn’t. It was a sort of unwritten rule of their sessions, although Kat had never actually stated it. In fact, Alice had a feeling that the rule was of her own invention, because she knew she’d get nowhere unless she made herself answer. “It hurts,” she said, “of course it does. If I could go back and change things... but I can’t do that, can I?”
“No,” said Kat, “it only goes one way.”
Alice took a deep breath. “If I’d looked away at any other moment, it would have been a near miss, or nothing at all. I...” Deep breath. This was so hard to say. “I made a mistake anyone could have made. At the wrong time. Can I forgive myself? I...” Don’t know. “I’ll try. Maybe – I mean, after Andrew left, I took the pills, yes. But then I changed my mind. I rang the ambulance. I could have just given up and laid down and... you know, gone. So even then, part of me still wanted to live. Maybe even thought I’d deserved to.”
Kat nodded, waited, but Alice couldn’t think of anything else to say. After a minute or so, the therapist asked, “So how are you feeling right here and now?”
“Here and now?” Alice blew out a long breath. “I’m not sure how to describe it. I can’t say I’m happy or at peace or any of that bollocks... any of that... stuff... you probably want to hear.”
Kat smiled.
“I still miss Emily more than I thought it was possible to miss anything. Every day I see something that sets me off again. A toy, or a flower or an animal – she loved animals, you know, used to beg us to buy her a dog. Nature as well, wild animals, all of that. All of that, any of it, makes me think of how Emily would have loved it, and that can just send me over the edge. Or seeing parents with their kids – mums especially. Mums and little girls. Sometimes I end up watching them like a bloody hawk. Just in case the mum’s concentration slips. Just to spare her what I went through.”
Alice stopped, thought for a moment, then went on. “No,” she said, “I’ve got to be honest here. Haven’t I? It’s not about them, it’s about me. If they fuck up, if their kid’s put in danger, then if I’m watching I could save the child. That child would owe me their life; to that mother, I’d be a heroine, a saviour. Be nice to see myself like that. Like a superhero with a special power.”
Kat laughed. “Yeah, it would.”
Alice snorted, her own smile fading. “Wouldn’t make much of a film, though, would it? Not really. This mad woman who hangs around on footpaths or in supermarket carparks, almost wanting someone to make a mistake and endanger their child’s life. When I saw myself that way – when I realised that was what I looked like, not some sort of heroine – you know, I realised I couldn’t just... it was just another way of trying to make the pain go away with a magic wand.”
“Do you still think you’re mad?”
“No. No. Just in pain. I probably always will be now. I’ve accepted that. It’s just letting it become... manageable. People live with chronic pain all the time, don’t they? And they still manage to have lives. I’m not there yet, but... you know.”
Kat nodded. “And what are your feelings now about Andrew?”
“Andrew?” She shook her head. “I just realised this morning, before I came here, I didn’t really feel anything much. Nothing bad, anyway, for him. I felt sad for him, and I remembered a few things, like when we got married. It was sad, but I could still remember the good times, and that they were good. I didn’t feel any more anger, or bitterness – I suppose I just realised that I’d forgiven Andrew ages ago. He was in pain and he was blaming me – we both were.”
“What do you think will happen between the two of you now?”
“Nothing. It’s too late for anything like that. I don’t think we ever had a chance of staying together after...” After Emily died. “After what happened.” She was stumbling through language like a newborn foal; words were a shifting, treacherous rubble. “Never mind getting back together again.”
“Do you think you’ll stay in touch? Maybe stay friends?”
“No. No, I don’t think so. Things went too far. Things got said, done... no.”
“So what has been achieved?”
“The hate’s gone. Or it’s going anyway. We’re just ending things and walking away” She shrugged. “I think that’s as good a result as we could have hoped for.”
“Somewhere important, I think. I’ll try to forgive myself, if I can. God knows how that’s going to happen, but I’ll get there.”
“Are you still planning to go back to Manchester?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing left for me down here now.”
“Do you want to arrange further sessions before you go up?”
“I don’t think so, at least not for now. I think I need to – you know, just go off and try get on with things. Have a life. You know?”
“Yeah,” said Kat. She scribbled something down on a piece of card. “Well, if you ever feel you’re struggling and you need to talk to someone, you can get in touch with me and we can arrange something. Or if you need something a bit more local, these are a friend of mine’s contact details. Same line of work. She’s based round Manchester and she’s very good. If things get bad, you could contact her. Or me, if you want.”
“Thank you.”
“Right, then.”
“Yeah.” Alice stood.
“Good luck.”
WHEN THE TIME came to go back up north Alice insisted on driving herself. Her parents begged her to let them come and pick her up, but she said no.
It was a small thing, but important to her, that she made the journey under her own power; drove herself back, out of choice, rather than be picked up and carried away like a broken, helpless, crying little girl. Perhaps somewhere there’d been a faint memory of leaving John, of Dad loading her things into the car. Daddy coming to sort things out, because she couldn’t any more. Take me home, Daddy. Wrap me up in blankets and cotton wool, and coddle me from the world.
That wasn’t her. She would not admit to being so weak, so broken. Nor would she accept such comfort when it was undeserved. She was not the child; the child was dead.