The Winter House

by Unknown

  And later, sitting over their dinner (duck breast with juniper berries followed by an Italian apple and cinnamon ice cream), each wearing a paper crown from their pulled crackers, Marnie said, ‘Have you seen Ralph or Lucy recently?’

  ‘He came to see me a week or so ago.’

  ‘Are they still together?’

  ‘Yes. Although…’

  ‘Although?’

  ‘Although nothing. He was very frenetic. Talking nineteen to the dozen, as if something terrible would happen the moment he stopped. You know how he can be.’

  ‘I certainly do. Was he all right, do you think?’

  Emma hesitated. ‘I don’t know. Bright and electric with unhappiness, I’d say. Thrilling with it.’

  ‘Oh. I see. D’you think –’

  ‘What I think is that it’s not for you to concern yourself with any more. That’s over.’

  ‘I know. It’s just –’

  ‘That’s over,’ repeated Emma. ‘Let him go. Give him a chance… and yourself.’

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘In this case I am, yes.’

  Later, over coffee and their game of patience before bed, Marnie took one of her mother’s hands and held it.

  ‘You’re really OK?’

  And Emma replied: ‘You’re not to worry about me for a single second. I’m really, really fine.’

  She wasn’t OK, of course; she wasn’t really fine. Why hadn’t Marnie understood? There were enough clues – the photo album, the newly gaunt face, the tiredness, the insistence with which Emma had sent her back to her life in Italy, her determination that Marnie should strike out on her own, the brief hard hug she had given her at the airport, the cheerful, unwavering smile as she raised her hand in farewell, then turned and walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Emma’s funeral was the last time that Marnie had seen Ralph – until now, of course, as he lay dying himself.

  She came home a few days before Emma died; in Florence all the blossom was out on the trees and the heady glory of an Italian spring had unfurled in the surrounding countryside. Young lovers lay in fields and walked hand in hand along the slow river, feeling the sun beat down on them. But in East Anglia it was still cold, the last sharp nip of winter in the air.

  ‘At least I was there at the end,’ she said to Ralph’s immobile form.

  She couldn’t tell if he heard any of the words she spoke any more, or felt her hand holding his. His breath rustled like dry grass in his throat. ‘At least she didn’t die alone.’

  People say that all the arrangements that have to be made after a death help the bereaved. They give them something to do, see them through the first few days of loss. But Marnie moved through the myriad tasks – the bureaucracy of registration and form-filling, the phone calls to distant family and to friends, the meeting with lawyers and organization of the funeral, the cremation – in a state of numb sadness. She couldn’t comprehend that Emma had left her, that she no longer had a mother and was alone. It wasn’t possible and couldn’t be true that she would never speak to her again, never sit in their kitchen peeling potatoes with her, or walk along the beach, or work alongside her in her shed, not needing to speak. Who else could hear Marnie when she didn’t speak? Who else understood her when she didn’t even understand herself? When she was sad, who would she turn to? When she was glad, who would she tell? If she did well, who would be proud of her, and if she failed, who would still believe in her? Who would comfort her? Who would ever smile like that at her again, understanding her and loving her and seeing right into the heart of her? Nobody would. Her mother was dead. She was no longer a daughter.

  She sat by the body in the undertaker’s parlour. The body. It wore Emma’s clothes – Marnie had chosen an old skirt and a soft woollen jumper because they looked comfortable, and they reminded her of all the times she’d seen her mother in them; she had wrapped the Italian scarf in blues and greens round her neck – but it wasn’t Emma. Emma had gone from her.

  She put one finger out and touched the cheek and it was cold and unyielding. ‘Mummy,’ she said. ‘Mummy?’

  When she had been in Italy, she had relished her aloneness – the way she was finally unencumbered and free. She had felt blithe with the sense of her disconnectedness from people and from the past; it had made her feel light-headed, light-footed, almost as if she could fly. But now it dazed her with terror. She had no father or mother, she had no son or daughter, no lover who would stay, no family at all. Nothing held her in place; she was a link with no chain, no before and after; a floating speck of humanity in a vast and lonely world.

  She picked up her mother’s stone hand and fiddled with the gold ring on the fourth finger. She had thought of taking it off and keeping it for herself but it didn’t seem right somehow. It was Emma’s; Paolo had put it there.

  ‘Lucy? Lucy, Emma died.’

  They had spoken since Lucy and Ralph had become a couple, but briefly. Lucy had written her a letter about it, which Marnie had got before she went to Italy. It was long, rather formal, as if Lucy was asking for her blessing, or even her permission. Marnie had sat for a long time with it on her lap, staring at the words, ‘so happy… you know how I’ve always felt… my dearest friend… no awkwardness between us…’ and then she had phoned Lucy and told her, with formal enthusiasm, how glad she was for both of them. No, of course she didn’t mind; yes, of course she wished them well; and, yes, she firmly believed it was the right thing and that they could bring each other joy and contentment. And between the lines, as they both well knew, she was promising, I won’t ruin this for you; I won’t get in the way of your happiness.

  ‘No! Oh, Marnie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes. It was quite quick at the end. At least I got back in time.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I wanted you to know. She was so fond of you.’

  ‘She was like a second mother to me,’ Lucy said simply. Then: ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Me? I don’t know. I can’t answer that question. I don’t think it’s quite sunk in yet.’

  ‘Of course not. You were so close to each other.’

  ‘Yes. We were.’ The past tense brought tears to her eyes and she wiped them away.

  ‘Is there anything I can do? Do you want me to come and be with you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. I feel a bit – I don’t know. At sea.’

  ‘If you want me to come, I’d feel honoured.’

  ‘Thank you. Can I think about it? If it were to be anyone, it would be you.’

  ‘When’s the funeral?’

  ‘Next Monday. Just a few days’ time. I wanted to get it over with quickly. Will you be there?’

  ‘Of course! How could I not?’

  ‘There won’t be many people. But Ralph,’ said Marnie, ‘I’d like him to be here as well. It would feel all wrong if he wasn’t. Will you tell him for me?’

  ‘Yes. He’s in Cambridge and I won’t see him until tomorrow.

  ‘Maybe I should tell him myself. He and Emma – you know how he felt about her.’

  ‘I do,’ said Lucy. ‘But you’re not to worry about Ralph, do you hear me? I’ll break it to him.’ Her voice was stern. That’s my job now, she seemed to be saying, and Marnie understood with fresh clarity how everything had changed. In the past, with the three of them and then the four, it was she who had kept the group together, the one to whom everyone turned. But the old allegiances had shifted and broken. Oliver had gone, keeping in touch only with Ralph, and Ralph was involved with Lucy. She was on the edge of their world when she had once been at its centre – and now, hearing the involuntary note of warning in Lucy’s voice, she felt a spasm of pure panic: even with her closest friend and her once most unconditional lover, she did not come first. She was no one’s dearest, then. Self-pity sluiced through her, before she gave herself a mental shake, nodding at the phone. ‘You’re absolutely right, Lucy,’ she said.

  ‘I tell y
ou what.’ Lucy reverted to her tone of warm affection. ‘Unless I hear otherwise, I’m going to get the train down first thing on Saturday and stay until the funeral’s over. I can’t bear to think of you going through this alone. We can do it together. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ said Marnie, both relieved and resistant. She wanted to ask if Ralph would be there as well, so that they would make up the familiar trio one more time, fill the house with their old intimacy – an impossibility that she desired and dreaded – but she found herself unable to. Her relationship with Ralph was no longer direct: Lucy stood between them, mediating everything. ‘Thank you,’ she added.

  Lucy told Ralph and Ralph apparently contacted Oliver, who was in America, and also Oliver’s parents, who promised to come; his mother sent a sympathetic letter and said that Ollie sent his sympathy and heartfelt best wishes, an old-fashioned phrase that made Marnie wince. Marnie rang Eric and held the phone to her ear while he wept. She phoned Diane, her mother’s oldest friend, who lived in France now but who had obviously been waiting for the news and promised to fly over. She went through Emma’s address book – the same battered moleskin one she’d had all of Marnie’s life, full of crossings-out and doodles – and invited a few people, but only those she knew Emma had still been in touch with. She didn’t want the funeral to be large and dutiful, but neither did she want there to be just a handful of people barely filling the front row at the crematorium while taped music played and the queue for the next dearly-beloved waited outside, stamping their feet in the unseasonable chill.

  The life had gone out of the house; it was like ash after the fire had burnt down. Marnie paced from room to room, sitting on each bed and folding her hands in her lap, waiting, although she didn’t know what for. She spent hours in her mother’s bedroom, hardly daring to breathe and feeling as if she was invading her secret space. Does a person have a right to privacy after they have died? She took out each item of clothing and held it, feeling the material, putting her face into it and sniffing her mother’s smell, which was clean and sharp, like lemons and bergamot, absolutely distinct. She held up dresses, remembering the time when she’d done so before, and imagined her mother wearing each one. She was trying to see Emma as a solid, separate person from herself – not just her mother, flesh of her flesh, but as a woman who had lived and who had died. She slid her hands into each of Emma’s shoes. She even opened the drawer containing her underwear – all white or black, some a bit faded; she sat on the floor with a bra in her lap and stared at it for several minutes.

  She sat in the kitchen by the empty grate, and listened to the sea in the distance and the wind in the trees, the sounds of her childhood. Sometimes, she forgot and, seeing the albino blackbird that had returned to their bird table, or watching the way a certain shaft of light penetrated the thick cloud, she would turn to speak to her mother.

  She opened the fridge and examined the contents. There was almost nothing in it, of course, and what there was was long past its eat-by date: soured milk and fermenting yoghurt, half a melon in cling-film, coffee beans. Everything neat and attended to. She pictured her mother’s life after she had left home: she wouldn’t have pined; she would have kept herself busy and made herself proper meals, evening after evening, sitting at the table to eat. She pulled open the drawers of the filing cabinet and saw that everything was filed under subject and date. She thought there might be a letter for her, but found nothing. And, anyway, what was she expecting? Some kind of last blessing, some revelation that would make final sense of her mother’s life and her own? No, it was just that she didn’t want Emma’s words to stop; couldn’t bring herself to believe that she had heard the last of them and her mother’s story was over.

  She wandered into the garden and looked at the neat vegetable patch, where Emma had already planted the broad beans and the onions; at the coiled hose and the pruned roses, the grass that would soon need its first mow of the year.

  She made her way to the work-shed, unbolting the heavy door and pulling it back with a slow creak; stopping dead on the threshold, almost unable to bear the baked and clean smell of the kiln, the clay, the paint and varnish. So familiar that she could close her eyes and feel her mother standing at the bench in her thick grey apron, her hair tied back, her feet slightly apart and her capable hands pushing into the doughy clay, opening it out into a bowl, drawing it up into a vase, folding it into shapes. She could hear her asking her to lift down this teapot, open that door, stand back a little. Emma had tidied everything up. Pots ready for painting stood on one shelf, others that she had finished on another. A beautiful set of glazed plates was stacked on the table. Marnie picked one up and ran her fingers over its silky surface, traced its asymmetrical outline, examining it as if she might find a secret there.

  It was better when Lucy came. They did things together. They bought food for after the funeral and made lemon cake, smoked-salmon sandwiches, salads. They talked – but they didn’t really talk about the things that were in their hearts, but chose to remember incidents from their shared past instead, which were all carefully chosen, cheerfully undisturbing, and usually reaching back to the years before Ralph had appeared on the scene. Only on the evening before the funeral did Marnie break their unspoken pact.

  ‘Is everything OK with you?’ she asked.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Lucy! You know what I mean – OK with Ralph?’

  ‘It’s fine,’ Lucy repeated. ‘You’ll see him tomorrow, anyway.’

  ‘How did he react to the news of Emma’s death?’

  ‘I don’t know. He went very quiet. He didn’t say anything at all. And then I came here.’

  ‘Oh. Have you called him since then?’

  ‘No. Well – yes, I called but there wasn’t an answer.’ Lucy hesitated, biting her lip, then said in a rush, ‘Tomorrow, Marnie, when you see him –’ She stopped, her face red.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I mean, he’s quite volatile at the moment, and I’m worried about him going off the rails – oh, never mind. I shouldn’t have said anything.’

  ‘You haven’t yet. What do you mean? Tell me, now you’ve started.’

  Lucy lifted her head and met Marnie’s eyes. Her face took on a cool expression and she said, in a clipped, pedantic voice, ‘If you really want to know, I’m always scared that he hasn’t got over you. That I’m a poor second best.’

  ‘Oh, Lucy, I’m sure that’s not true!’

  ‘You don’t know that. It’s always been true in the past. And he only came to me because he was so sad about you. I got him when he had no resistance.’

  ‘But he stayed with you.’

  ‘Ye-es. Or, at least, he hasn’t left.’

  So what are you asking me to do?’

  ‘Just don’t be too – too warm and intimate with him. Don’t encourage him or lead him on.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marnie. She felt as though Lucy had thrown a bucket of cold water over her. ‘I see. Well, don’t worry, of course I won’t lead him on.’

  ‘I knew I shouldn’t say it. Certainly not now, when you need to be supported. I can’t believe I did. Sorry. Sorry.’

  ‘Oh, God. Listen, Lucy, Ralph is my friend, you’re my friend. I want you to be happy together, I really do – but do you honestly think that if you’re right, which I’m sure you’re not, that the best way to deal with it is by keeping me at a distance, out of his way? What – for ever? I mean, is that really the way of –’

  ‘I know, I know, I know. You’re right. It was stupid. I’m stupid.’

  ‘You’ve never been stupid in your life.’

  ‘Yes! About this I am. I’m scared of losing him. He’s going to leave me, I know he is.’

  ‘You have to have more confidence in yourself.’

  ‘Easy to say.’

  ‘No, you do. You can’t keep someone by hanging on to them. He’s with you because he wants to be.’

  ‘You make me sound abject.’

  ‘I hope you believe that I’d never do
anything to harm you.’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything,’ said Lucy, soberly.

  He arrived after the service had already started, pushing a grinning, drooling Grace, the wheels of her chair clattering over the floor. Everyone turned to look. Marnie saw his red-rimmed eyes and hollow cheeks; his black suit. For a moment, the years rolled away and she was back at that other funeral, looking at him in his ill-fitting black suit, with his stricken face. Then she faced the front again: she didn’t want to have to think about Ralph today.

  But he surprised her and was on his best behaviour. He didn’t cry at all during the service – not that Marnie had anything against anyone crying, but she had half expected him to hog the grief, and force her attention away from Emma and towards him. The opposite was true. He sat with his arm round Grace, silent and attentive; he waited for everyone to file out before he left the building, then stood awhile talking quietly with Oliver’s parents.

  When Lucy approached him, he kissed her lips, then both cheeks, and let her lead him by the hand to Marnie. He told her very simply that he was sorry for her great loss and that he knew how very sad she must be feeling. He said that they were all lucky to have known Emma. He stood quite still and his voice was quiet, but nothing about him seemed at rest. His dark eyes burnt like coals as he looked at her. His thin shoulders twitched under the jacket. Marnie could see a vein pulsing in his temple. When he put a hand on her forearm and leant forward to kiss her, very quickly, on the cheek, she could feel him quivering – it was as if his entire body was vibrating, like a tuning fork. His lips were hot and dry.

  ‘Thank you, Ralph,’ she said, conscious of Lucy beside them, watchful as a cat. ‘And I’m so very glad you’re here. She loved you a great deal, you know.’ For a moment their eyes shone with tears. There was nothing she wanted so much as to put her arms round him and be held; only his loss understood hers. No one else’s came close.