Marianne made the various different types of tea, carefully divided the cakes and buns so that all pieces were of equal size and none was more equal than another.
Of Hugh, there was little sign. When he came to pick Rita up for one of her now twice-weekly hospital appointments, Marianne made herself scarce, usually behind the curtains in the drawing room.
‘You can come out now,’ Aunt Pearl said on one such occasion and Marianne had jumped so hard, she banged her elbow off the dado rail and it had throbbed for the rest of the afternoon.
‘I … didn’t see you there,’ she said, emerging from behind the curtain, nursing her funny bone.
‘Don’t worry, he didn’t see you there either,’ said Aunt Pearl with a hint of amusement in her silvery-blue eyes.
‘Who?’ said Marianne, glancing about like a mime artist. She would never get past the first audition at Bartholomew’s amateur dramatics society.
‘He’s a polite young man,’ said Aunt Pearl. ‘You could do worse.’
Marianne was stunned. Polite was the pinnacle of compliments, in the world according to Aunt Pearl.
And it was true. Hugh was polite. There was every chance he would never mention the … episode in his house. Marianne clenched every muscle in her body as she tried not to remember. But she mustn’t have clenched hard enough because there it was, all laid out neatly for her, like numbers down the column of a spreadsheet.
‘I don’t want you to be gentle with me,’ she’d said. ‘I want you to have sex with me.’
She burned with shame. The bang of entitlement off that, Shirley would have said.
But it was nothing compared to Hugh’s response. The way he looked at her. Disentangled himself from her. The way he pitied her. The way he said, ‘No,’ in his gentle voice, his attempt to take the sting of rejection out of it.
Marianne buried her face in whatever was to hand when she thought the thought: a cushion, a towel, the tea cosy and, that day, the heavy, unyielding curtains in the drawing room.
She tried to think the thought as seldom as possible. It wasn’t as seldom as she would have liked.
She tried too not to think about Rita dying.
She never talked about Rita dying.
The Get-Well-Sooners did not talk about it either.
There were things to be done.
‘Listen up, everyone,’ said Rita, clapping her hands to get their attention at the end of tea-break one day. ‘I have a Plan B for our eviction day protest.’
She had their attention. It seemed that Marianne was not the only one who appreciated a good Plan B.
‘Not that we’ll need it, of course,’ said Rita airily. ‘But just, you know, in case, I’ve come up with a plausible back-up plan.’
Even better than a Plan B was a plausible back-up plan. Marianne set the tray on the table and gave Rita her full attention.
Rita looked around, smiling her wicked smile at each of them in turn, which meant that her idea was either dangerous, ludicrous, illegal or all three.
‘If all else fails,’ she began, ‘I intend to take my clothes off, climb onto Shirley’s roof and protest from up there. Bartholomew, you can film me. You’ve got a really good camera on your phone, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes,’ said Bartholomew, struggling to digest the news. ‘But …’
‘You can put it on the internet and I’ll go … what do you call it when everyone likes and shares a video?’
‘Oh, it’s viral, dear,’ said Ethel, delighted with herself.
Rita grinned. ‘So it is, thank you, Ethel.’
Marianne said nothing. She was pretty sure she had heard correctly but there was a part of her – albeit small – that still harboured the hope that she had not.
‘You haven’t misheard me, by the way,’ said Rita, looking at Marianne.
‘Right,’ said Marianne.
‘Any questions?’ asked Rita.
Nobody said anything.
‘You probably want to know why I have to be naked,’ said Rita in her helpful voice.
‘To, eh, attract attention?’ Freddy offered.
‘Exactly, darling,’ said Rita, with emphasis. ‘I mean, one never sees images of women my age – seventy, let’s face it – naked, does one?’
Nobody pointed out that Rita was seventy-eight.
‘So that will garner a bit of attention, won’t it?’ she went on, smiling at them. ‘And I’ll refuse to come down. I’ll chain myself to the chimney pot. I’ll use one of the chains Patrick uses to lock his bicycle. They’d do, wouldn’t they, Patrick?’
‘I … I’d say so,’ managed Patrick.
‘That’ll show them that we mean business, won’t it?’ Rita’s cheeks were flushed with – premature and unlikely, Marianne felt – success. She did not look like someone who had cancer. Who was dying. Who would die.
‘Yes,’ said Marianne loudly. She was amazed at the conviction in her voice. Perhaps she was wrong and she would be granted admission to Bartholomew’s amateur dramatics society after all? ‘It will indeed.’
‘I knew you’d love that idea,’ said Rita.
‘Really?’
‘Well, I knew you’d come round to it,’ said Rita. ‘Eventually.’
Marianne couldn’t help smiling at her mother. She seemed like her old self again, buoyed up with enthusiasm that was as infectious as a tropical disease.
Chapter 35
It was nearly April and, while the mornings and nights remained cold and clear, the days were often bathed in bright, warm sunshine, lifting the temperature into unseasonal double digits.
‘That’s because of climate change,’ said Sheldon in a disapproving tone, during the second week of good weather.
‘Yipppeeee,’ shrieked Harrison, doing a lap of the garden, with George trying his best to keep up.
Harrison and Sheldon took this meteorological improvement as an opportunity for Rita to make good on her promise to teach them to swim. They arrived at the Get Well Soon meeting the following Saturday with wetsuits under their football kit, and bright orange armbands, inflated fit to burst, clamped around their skinny arms.
‘Ne’er cast a clout e’re May is out,’ Aunt Pearl intoned at them. The boys looked at her, confused, then attached themselves to either side of Rita like limpets.
‘Please can you teach us today?’ begged Sheldon, training his long, navy eyes on Rita and smiling his dimpled smile.
‘Pretty please with fairy buns on top?’ shouted Harrison, pumping his arms around his head like he was already in the water, attempting the butterfly stroke.
Rita looked at Shirley, who, right on cue, rolled her eyes and shook her head.
‘I did promise them,’ said Rita.
‘They promised to put away their Lego yesterday and they still haven’t done it,’ said Shirley.
The boys got down on their muddy knees and pressed their palms together, raised them towards their mother. ‘We promise we’ll do it later,’ said Sheldon.
‘Or tomorrow,’ added Harrison, with his adorable grin, which even Shirley couldn’t resist.
‘Oh, fine then,’ she said. ‘If it’s okay with Rita.’
In the end, they all walked down to the beach. Bartholomew and Freddy headed the posse, which meant progress was slow as Freddy negotiated the treachery of the moss-slick steps. ‘Oh, come on,’ snapped Bartholomew, holding out his hand. ‘I’ll help you down.’
Freddy hesitated, then slipped his long, narrow hand into Bartholomew’s short, fleshy one. ‘Your hand is freezing,’ Bartholomew huffed.
‘Yours is lovely and warm,’ said Freddy. Each of them seemed as surprised as the other by the admission.
‘Hey! Mills and Boon,’ Shirley shouted from behind them. ‘Either get a room or get a move on.’
Bartholomew and Freddy managed to ignore her – a small triumph for both of them – and continued their careful way down the steps.
‘Thank you, Bartholomew,’ said Freddy when they reached the bottom. Hi
s voice was quieter than usual. Formal.
‘My pleasure, Freddy,’ said Bartholomew, in a similar tone.
Rita was herded down the steps by Harrison and Sheldon. Patrick placed himself in front of Rita and matched her pace without seeming to, ready to catch her if she fell.
Even Aunt Pearl came, wearing her usual high-collared blouse, A-line skirt, thick flesh-coloured tights, and sturdy brown leather lace-ups. To this she had added her outdoor apparel of a scarf around her head, tightly knotted beneath the point of her chin and her grey gaberdine coat that ended exactly one inch below the hem of her skirt.
‘Do you really think you should be swimming in your condition?’ Pearl said when she reached the bottom of the steps.
Rita laughed. ‘Of course not,’ she said.
Pearl nearly smiled.
Ethel put one tiny foot on the first step, hesitated, then managed to lift the other one on. She stood there, swaying in the gentle breeze. Marianne couldn’t bear to watch. ‘You should probably link somebody,’ she said.
‘Oh, thank you, my dear,’ said Ethel, hooking her narrow arm around Marianne’s. ‘It would be such a nuisance if I broke my other hip.’
Marianne tightened her grip.
On the beach, the boys tore off their football shorts and jerseys, used their toes to push down the backs of their runners, then kicked them off their feet.
‘I’ll untie my laces later, Mam,’ said Harrison before Shirley had a chance to roar at them. They ran for the water’s edge, their arms and legs pumping like pistons. They shrieked at the shock of the cold water, retreated, ran in again, jumped over the waves, Harrison making sure he jumped as high as his brother each time.
Rita was already in the water, in her polka-dot bikini with matching swim hat. She was floating on her back. Marianne tried hard not to think about what happened the last time.
She tried hard not to think about how sick Rita was. She had said little about it because, Rita insisted, there was little to say.
She was sick.
She would stay at Ancaire for as long as she could. She had one of those brilliant morphine dispensers, she said. Easy as pie, she said. ‘And then,’ she said, ‘when I feel like it, I’ll go to the hospice.’
When she felt like it. As if it was a matter of choosing the day.
She had already spoken to the nurses who would attend to her.
‘There’s something very special about hospice nurses,’ she told Marianne after her visit. ‘I’m nearly looking forward to it. Also, the food is to die for.’
She chuckled at her gallows humour.
Rita was using George to teach the boys how to swim.
‘Look how George does the doggy paddle,’ she told them.
‘He’s very good at it,’ said Sheldon.
Marianne, dodging waves at the water’s edge, agreed. She could feel the warmth of the sun on her shoulders, how it sparkled across the surface of the water, lighting the top of the waves, curling towards shore, to a brilliant white.
‘Look, Marnie,’ shouted Harrison, standing on his toes and waving his arms to attract her attention. ‘I can swim underwater now.’ He bent down and dipped his face in and out of the sea.
‘Did you see me?’ he shouted, his eyes still clenched shut.
‘Yes,’ Marianne shouted back. ‘That’s … good.’
‘Good?’ said Shirley, appearing at Marianne’s side, her ferocious eyebrows knitting together, thick as one of Rita’s homemade Aran jumpers.
‘I mean … that’s great, Harrison,’ Marianne shouted again and Shirley whacked Marianne’s arm, a thump of camaraderie Marianne now knew, even though it smarted quite a bit. She pushed Shirley away – another of Shirley’s ways of communicating camaraderie – and Shirley stumbled backwards and fell over Ethel’s fold-up stool, which she took everywhere now. ‘I used it in the post office the other day,’ Ethel told them last week. ‘The queue was ever so long.’
Shirley face-planted into the sand.
‘Shirley?’ Marianne ran over, kneeled beside her. ‘Sorry, I … I didn’t mean to push you so hard.’ Shirley’s shoulders were shaking. Marianne put her hand on her shoulder. ‘Shirley? Please don’t cry, I’m really sor—’
‘Did your mother never tell you to play nice?’ said Shirley, laughing as she sat up and spat sand out of her mouth.
‘There was never any need, to be honest,’ said Marianne.
‘I find that hard to believe.’ Shirley held out her hand and Marianne took it, pulled her up, brushed sand off her face.
‘Come in, Marnie,’ shouted Rita, waving at her. ‘The water is so clear today.’
‘And freezing,’ said Marianne.
‘Exhilarating,’ corrected Rita. ‘And don’t worry about not having togs, darling,’ she added. ‘I brought that pair I got for you. They’re in my basket.’
Harrison and Sheldon appeared, dripping, on either side of Marianne. ‘Marnie, come and see us doing the doggy paddle,’ said Sheldon.
‘We’re even better than George now,’ said Harrison, gazing up at her, his small head tipped back. ‘Will you come into the water? Pretty please with chocolate milk on top?’
Marianne shook her head. ‘Sorry, boys,’ she said. ‘I can’t swim.’
They looked at her with shocked faces.
‘But you’re an adult,’ Sheldon eventually said. ‘Adults can do everything.’
‘Not all of them,’ Marianne felt duty-bound to explain, even though it felt like she was letting the boys down in some real way.
‘My mam can do everything,’ said Harrison.
‘Well, maybe she can get in with you,’ said Marianne.
‘She’s got her periods,’ Sheldon said.
‘I used to call them my ladies,’ piped up Ethel. She picked off a piece of fluff that had attached to her lip from the woollen scarf, wound several times around her neck.
‘Please, Marnie?’ The boys looked at Marianne with their endless, pleading eyes. Marianne wanted to tell them that she had her period too, except she didn’t, and also she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘period’ out loud in public.
Instead, she said, ‘I’m scared.’
That seemed to shock the boys even more than her admission that she couldn’t swim.
Flo hadn’t been scared of anything so Marianne had been scared enough for the both of them.
‘Come in, Marianne,’ Flo used to say. ‘The water’s lovely.’
‘I prefer it here,’ Marianne always said, standing at the edge.
It was easier to remain vigilant on dry land.
‘I’m not scared of anything,’ declared Harrison.
‘You are so,’ Sheldon told him. ‘You’re scared of the lollipop lady.’
Harrison looked worried. ‘She has witch hands.’
Marianne looked out to sea. The water was calm today, the surface like a mirror, reflecting the innocent blue of the sky dotted with small white clouds, like drawings of nursery rhyme sheep. And Rita, beckoning her in.
‘It’s not cold,’ she called, ‘once you get used to it.’
The boys looked up at Marianne. One more ‘No’ would do it, Marianne thought. They were on the verge of giving up on her.
Instead, she said, ‘Okay.’
The boys cheered and raced back into the sea to tell Rita.
‘Those fellas would make great scientologists,’ said Shirley, as Marianne rummaged in Rita’s basket. ‘They’d persuade anyone to do anything.’
Marianne changed into the pale pink togs Rita had brought for her.
‘They’re so pretty,’ Ethel told her, pouring soup from a flask Rita had brought.
‘You’re a bit white and hairy,’ said Shirley, looking Marianne up and down, ‘but apart from that, you look … quite nice. For your age.’
‘Careful Shirley-girl,’ boomed Bartholomew from his vantage point up the beach where he and Freddy appeared to be collecting shells. ‘You don’t want to give her a big head.’
Freddy
laughed.
‘You want to come over here and say that?’ said Shirley, and they stopped laughing and moved further up the beach.
Marianne inched into the sea. Rita had been wrong. The water was not exhilarating. It was freezing. The shock of it took her breath away. Not just took it away it but reefed it out of her mouth, pitched it into the air. She worried that she might hyperventilate. Or get hypothermia. She wondered if any of them would know what to do if that happened.
Further down the beach, she saw Patrick lifting a clump of seaweed, feeling it, smelling it.
She was somewhat reassured. Patrick would know what to do.
She looked down. The water was green. Clear. Marianne could see her feet, planted and solid, white against the dark sand.
A crab scuttled up to her and she curled her toes in case it attacked her foot with one of its long, lethal claws. But it moved past her, heading out to sea with a dogged type of enthusiasm.
Marianne stepped a little further out. The water was up to her knees now. She struggled to get her breathing under control.
‘Go on, dear,’ Ethel, wrapped up like a pass-the-parcel, called from the perch of her fold-up stool. ‘You can do it.’
Marianne tried to smile, but her features were frozen in place. She waved instead. Ethel waved back.
Marianne steeled herself and took two long strides. The water was surging around her thighs now. Further out, she could see the boys and George, playing a complicated game of fetch, which George was winning. He really was an excellent swimmer.
Rita was watching her. ‘Are you all right?’ she yelled.
‘Of course I’m not all right,’ shouted Marianne.
‘What’s taking you so long, Marnie?’ called Harrison, he and Sheldon bobbing on the surface like buoys.
‘I’m coming,’ she called back, taking another tentative step out. To her left, she could see the island, Rockabill, the sun glinting against the white of the lighthouse perched there. The water was swirling around her waist now and her blood pounded around her veins, thumped at the back of her throat. She swallowed hard. She bent her knees and let the water reach her shoulders, then shot up again, gasping with the shock of the water. ‘It’s baltic,’ she shouted.
Make Yourself at Home Page 28