The Writing on the Wall and Other Stories

by Penny Edwards

  Hans looked around at everyone, reprieved by the conversation of the others, and contemplated his very good fortune. This was his life and he loved it; opening his house to great company, good conversation, he enjoyed every minute. It was sad Stephen couldn’t be among them, but his untimely death had hugely surprised him. Stephen was a man who, despite what he decided to show, had always seemed to have that tragic element that deprived him of the sort of happiness he had known. Contentment, that was it. Stephen harked back. That was never a good way to live.

  But this, to sit here, with all this wonderful food and company, well, it couldn’t be topped. And Helen seemed to be doing OK, better than he would’ve anticipated. She seemed very well indeed.

  He looked at Margot. My god, he’d struck lucky with her. Wonderful wife, wonderful mother and damned fine cook. Unflappable Margot. He knew he was the envy of others and when friends told him so he could only agree. He’d always worked long hours, hadn’t been around much for the children and had cancelled arrangements he’d made with her more times than he could remember. And for what? For some meeting or another that had rarely been as important as it had promised. But stoicism had been one of the many qualities he adored about Margot. And a smile that could be appreciated from the other side of the room.

  He savoured another delicious bite, then picked up his glass of wine and, before taking a sip, offered a private toast. To life, he said to himself, and to Margot. For not one jot of it could he have done without her. He swallowed the wine, which washed down his last piece of pork splendidly.

  This time, they all ignored Margot’s protests and helped her take things back into the kitchen. They were still talking about how they’d enjoyed the meal when they got into the kitchen and laughed with despair as they saw a trifle on the table, with Margot declaring what they could all see: an English trifle.

  When they returned to the table, along with the trifle, the conversation seemed to have slowed down somewhat; maybe they were all getting a bit sleepy, Helen thought, and as she sat back she could see that Hans and Margot had found a way to work in complete harmony, complementing each other’s roles, passing plates, the one prompting the other, exchanging actor and stage-hand beautifully so that they danced in step to the perfection that surrounded them. Rosa was quiet for a while too, content to be another member of the audience watching a couple entertain. They both listened, then, to their hosts talk about their children and how Stephan was spending a year in Thailand and Petra was just finishing her doctorate in philosophy. It was like they danced together, quickstepping through things best forgotten when children are silly or forget things while their achievements were met with a slow waltz, one they didn’t seem to want to finish.

  Then, as if coming out of a reverie, and when they had all had coffee, Hans suggested he take Rosa and Helen to the site of the bakery and smiled at Margot as if this was a pre-arranged idea they’d had and she’d excluded herself from. Helen said she wasn’t sure, it was a bit sudden, and Margot, ever the accommodating hostess, put blame firmly in their corner and said this was something she and Hans should’ve thought of, but Rosa, who’d been before, seemed very keen to see the bakery, as if this would somehow complete the circle of their day together. So, feeling a bit reluctant because she wasn’t sure she should become any more involved in a life Stephen had been unwilling to talk about, she agreed to go.

  The goodbyes took a while, as these things often do, with everyone remembering something important they’d forgotten to say because goodbyes are invariably difficult, even if they are only au revoirs. Margot and Rosa remembered something important about the museum and fell into German to discuss it; Hans remembered to ask Margot to ring the gardener about tomorrow; Rosa remembered she’d left her glasses on the dining room table; and Margot remembered Stephen’s funeral, whispered in Helen’s ear how sorry she was to have missed it and hugged her as if she really was. “Let’s meet up for a coffee,” she suggested and Helen said she would ring her. Finally, Hans opened the front door, they walked towards his car and poured themselves in. Once it was moving, Rosa and Helen turned their heads from the back seat and waved to Margot till they could see her no more.

  As they both thanked Hans again for a lovely time, Helen was processing the shock of realising how little she knew about the young Stephen Thompson and how knowing didn’t really help her much; in fact, it hindered because there was nothing she could do with the information. She wasn’t even sure she wanted to tell her children, as the question on their lips would be why hadn’t he told their mother? – and any questions she had would have to remain unanswered.

  Rosa distracted her by fumbling around for something in her bag. She picked out a purse, then produced an old photo, which she showed to Helen and said it was her father. “Erich,” she declared proudly and Helen looked at a man as he would’ve been years after Stephen had helped him escape. A slim face with fine bone structure, it showed determination or stubbornness, she wasn’t quite sure which, tempered by a smile in his eyes that accepted he wasn’t always right but more often than not he was. She liked the look of him, not an easy man perhaps, but an interested one, a man who looked around him and wondered why. She said what a lovely man he seemed to her companion and Rosa told her how he’d discussed politics with her as long as she could remember and how once, when she just wanted to be young and carefree, she’d dared to tell him she wasn’t interested, to which his stormy reply had been, how could she not be, she was politics, she was a human being.

  “Just a minute,” Helen said and after her own grappling with belongings, as if to reply in kind, she showed Rosa a photo of Stephen.

  In contrast to Erich, Helen could see an uncertainty in this face, and more conservation in spirit, as if challenging was not something that caused it much comfort or reassurance. She realised she hadn’t quite seen this before. His legal persona had always struck her as being very sure of itself, but, she supposed, it was within boundaries written and fought for long before, established thought that he just had to ensure was carried out.

  When Rosa and Hans told her they’d arrived at the place where the tunnel was, she felt surrounded by the monochrome world of all the films she’d watched about the East, with its eerie menace and a claustrophobic heaviness that barely allowed you to breathe. Government buildings flanked one side and faced a bleak-looking park, mostly stone and dry mud, where a few teenagers played football and shouted frantically at one another, as if missing the ball was almost as desperate as anything previous generations had felt. The bakery was no longer there. Hans and Rosa could produce only a tacky newsagent’s, but that didn’t matter. They all stood there for a few minutes without saying a word; then Hans suggested they go to the café over the road. It seemed a good plan.

  8

  Audrey couldn’t remember the last time Kenneth looked at her as if he was pleased to see her. She wasn’t a fool. She knew romance went out of the window to a lesser or greater degree over the years and she wasn’t expecting any grand gestures or anything. Leaping up the wisteria and declaring his love through their bedroom window would put his knee out and that kind of stuff had always seemed pretty desperate, even to her more romantic way of thinking. No, she wasn’t wanting that sort of thing; it was just that when he said “lovely to see you” after he’d been out seeing to the car or whatever else he’d been doing, she wasn’t really sure how exactly lovely it was for him. She often suspected it was lovely for him to see the garage mechanic or the woman behind the till in the supermarket, as they were a freedom she couldn’t give him, so, unlike the time he spent in the house, he’d probably merrily chat away to them to his heart’s content. And she wondered if he put “the” instead of “my” in front of “wife” whenever he talked about her like those blokes do on TV quiz shows.

  “So, Len, what will you do with the money if you win?”

  “Oh, that’s nothing to do with me, Kevin; the wife’s got
plans for it.”

  Ha bloody ha. Why not just be honest and say the marmite jar’s got plans for the two grand?

  Before she was sixty, she’d gone to work a bit, doing this and that. In fact, she used to be the woman behind the till, so she damned well knew what the buggers used to say. How many times had she heard that the wife had sent them out shopping, but they’d probably got it all wrong and she’d see them again before long? “Hopefully not,” she’d reply, smiling politely and they’d laugh, while never really catching on to what she was saying. Oh well. Thank goodness for friends. Over the years they’d been a real godsend, although one or two had waned off. She didn’t really see Gloria much these days, even though she was only a few miles away, mainly because Gloria was offering what seemed to be like residential care to her grandchildren a lot of the time. Poor kids, they never seemed to see their parents, from what she could gather, but Gloria was always saying that people need two incomes nowadays. Well, personally, she was never quite sure about that one and had said as much to her friend the last time she saw her, who seemed to be almost passing out with fatigue on that particular afternoon. And so, over a cup of tea and against screaming children in the background, they’d debated how their generation had accepted you had to be a bit more frugal when children came into the world whereas nobody seemed to want to give anything up in this day and age. It was all about the stuff, as Gloria put it, and to her friend she’d agreed as Gloria had a very attentive husband whose needs, she could see, would be a pleasure to meet and preferable to trekking out to work every day, but, on the other hand, she didn’t think many women these days would put up with being called “the” anything.

  Like Helen, for instance. She wasn’t all that younger than her, but they could’ve been born a million years apart because she would look at her and think that that woman had a different kind of life altogether. Or she had done until Stephen had died and then, instead of slightly envying her, she’d found herself in that tricky position you find yourself in where somebody’s tragedy has made you appreciate what you have all the more. Even if that was Kenneth. There was nothing like a death, she was finding ever more increasingly in recent years, to make her want to cook Kenneth’s tea more than she did the day before. And then she’d feel a bit lousy.

  She missed Helen and Stephen, which was strange because there was nothing that particularly bound them, apart from the fact they were neighbours, so maybe that was it. A shared interest in the street they all lived in and the comings and goings. Sometimes, she supposed, it doesn’t have to be any more than that. But she was surprised how she found herself gradually becoming more concerned about them and they’d shown her and Kenneth one or two kindnesses over the years, like the time her husband had been rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack. They’d given her lifts to the hospital a couple of times – why oh why had she never learnt to drive? – and Helen had popped round after Kenneth had come home.

  It hadn’t been his heart, just a problematic digestive system, which had made her a bit cross with him because she was always telling him off about the way he devoured too many biscuits and liked rather too many brandies. It had been embarrassing telling their neighbours what it actually was, after all they’d done, but they’d been very gracious and said no problem, they were glad he was OK. She was sure, though, with their busy timetables – they were forever rushing in and out of their cars – that it had caused them considerable inconvenience.

  She particularly remembered conversations they’d all had about the house opposite, which, after old Sally had died, had remained empty for years. Stephen, being a lawyer, assumed there had been some kind of family dispute; then she and Helen had speculated on this, but really it was all thin air because neither had got to know Sally well enough to know with any degree of certainty whether this was the case. But what they did know was that a lot of building work went on year after year, without much sign of progression. All Kenneth said on the matter was that the family were mad not selling it and putting the money in the bank. Her own conclusion was that it was probably a bit similar to her not being able to take her mother’s scarves to the charity shop after she’d died. She loved to open the plastic bag she kept them in and smell her mum’s perfume.

  Yes, she was sorry when Helen and Stephen had decided to move and sorrier still that they’d lived in their new house only eighteen months before he’d died.

  9

  She couldn’t understand why Stephen hadn’t talked about his bravery and she hated not understanding people’s motivations and actions, if they were dissimilar to the ones she would’ve chosen. It was frustrating but also demanding because it required a tolerance of something she couldn’t quite relate to and that had to be one of the most difficult things asked of anyone. But when it came to someone so close, it indicated some sort of blemish, a tear, perhaps, in the piece of paper that was their marriage licence, and she didn’t even know of the mark or realise the paper was cut. So any pride she might have felt was scarred itself by an anger she couldn’t quite articulate yet. Time had to help her do that and, hopefully, would one day offer either understanding or peace of mind.

  She was walking towards Peter’s door because she just wanted to see if he was about. She’d had a lot to process and felt like having an English conversation with someone who hadn’t known Stephen. As she got closer to his door she could hear muffled sounds and was relieved he was in, but, although she knocked several times, no one answered. She quickly got a little piece of paper from her handbag, found a pen right at the bottom and wrote a little note, just saying how much she was enjoying the flat and his city. It was an odd thing to do, a reminder to herself, perhaps, that she was unused to holidaying alone. After bending to reach underneath the door, she slipped it inside his house and walked away.

  *

  Elsa quite often looked at Peter and said, “Who are you?” because being roughly twenty-eight or nine, she had no idea who the old man was standing in front of her. The man she’d married only a few years ago looked nothing like this old codger who, for some reason best known to him, insisted he was her husband, which was an unbelievable cheek.

  So Peter could see, quite obviously, why getting his wife ready for bed was less than easy. He saw it only too well the first time he understood that her demented mind had rolled itself back nearly fifty years and he’d carried on understanding it for a good long time. But there was only so much understanding within any one individual, wasn’t there, or did others have an infinitesimal amount, because now, for him, it was tedious. He wanted to fix it like he fixed his TV or computer, or at least he wanted to take her to someone who could fix it. But there was no medical equivalent of an engineer or IT expert. The illness had foxed everyone and it remained, like cancer, on their to-do list.

  Yet again, she’d hit him and hit him hard. Why wouldn’t she, given the circumstances in her mind, engulfed as they were in a story in which a strange man was trying to undress her? What about him, though? He almost dared not ask that question, even if it was only him who heard it because of its selfishness. It was there, though, and he found himself crying a little because he was in a lot of physical pain, but he’d also raised this question.

  He held the pain that was the side of his face with his right hand and looked at Elsa, his attacker. Her eyes were full, watery pools that understood something sad had happened to Peter, so that amongst the maelstrom, all the jumble, all the re-arranged memories, a spark of something received had torn a little at her. But she could do nothing about it for nothing in her mind could organise itself well enough for her to help in any way. She was exhausted and, with it, calmer now, but in a private world of grief no one fully understood, least of all her.

  There was silence for a minute or two while they just stared, both at each other and into space, as if the one had no more meaning than the other. There was often silence these days. He’d had to learn to get used to it, which w
asn’t easy for someone who enjoyed the sound of music, but he’d been told by their doctor to limit noise as much as he could as this was confusing for Elsa. So whereas he used to leave the TV on while he went to make some coffee, now he put it off as the noises from the kitchen merging with those of the TV could send her into a panic. It was all change and none of it for the better. He took a deep breath and, while still holding his face, he took the brave step of asking her to take off her cardigan. It was more of a plea because he wasn’t sure if he could cope with another refusal. He then said nothing. She had to think about this simple request without being bombarded with any other conversation. Instead, he thought again about his face and how it smarted. Then slowly, Elsa began to unbutton her cardigan, sweet as anything, like the most contrite of his former pupils who’d caused mayhem in the classroom and who was beginning to realise that everyone was fed up with them because nobody was laughing anymore. He smiled at her and she did too because this was obviously the right thing to do and she wanted to do the right thing.

  When Elsa was asleep and he was turning off all the lights, he passed by the front door and noticed a piece of paper. He picked it up, then unfolded it. “Oh God,” he said wearily when he’d read the English hand.

  10

  Helen went to the museum because finding out more about the wall had become something of a priority since it offered clues to a dead husband. It wasn’t that she felt betrayed exactly. He had a right, of course, to a former life, but she wasn’t sure if he had a right to one he never wanted to talk about. It confused her and she’d started to think about the things she hadn’t told him, like the sleazy colleagues who thought working with someone meant sleeping with them and though she wasn’t sure if you could liken this to international politics, she began to think there’d been times when an equivalent bravery had been required. But she didn’t think Stephen would’ve been particularly inquisitive, once she’d told him. He certainly wouldn’t have been interested in staring at them across a crowded room and quietly analysing them. But she was. So she found herself, amongst many others, gazing into Stephen’s past and a wall that had been built and had fallen. Photos of distress and misery abounded, with two in particular gnawing away at her and making her think about a life beyond the quiet neighbourhoods that had always been her experience, where a careless word was merely embarrassing.