Even if you did manage to get it all done without really looking at anything, it was impossible to ignore the smells; sometimes they made her feel quite sick. And that would start her thinking about other things, such as how they went to the bathroom and washed themselves. She seemed to remember there being a sink in the cellar and a drain near the steps at the back. One supposed foreign people, especially if they were poor, might be more accepting of such primitive “facilities,” yet conditions must be unpleasant, inhuman almost. What if one of them decided they would no longer put up with the situation and wanted to leave, would John allow it? How could he stop them? She heard that voice again: “Help us, help us!” “I can’t help you!” Marion wanted to shout. “Please leave me alone.” Then she rapped her knuckles against her temples to chase the cries away.
• • •
BY LATE AFTERNOON when the laundry was all clean and dried, Marion decided to reward herself with some Choc Mint Chip Cookie Melts, a kind of biscuit with soft centers, while she watched her afternoon TV programs. She opened the packet, put several on a plate, and then took them along with a cup of sweet tea into the living room.
The film she watched was about a single mother who had cancer. The woman’s teenage daughter kept getting in trouble for taking drugs and going out with the wrong sorts of boys. Despite the girl’s terrible behavior, the mother, who had lost most of her hair to chemotherapy, stayed calm and serene and wrote a letter to the girl that was only to be opened after her death. At the end of the film the girl read it and then scattered the mother’s ashes over a cliff. She made a beautiful speech asking for her mother’s forgiveness and declaring that she was going to college to study medicine and hoped one day to be able to help cancer patients like her mother.
By the end of the film, Marion had eaten the entire packet of biscuits. Feeling drowsy from an excess of sugar, she went upstairs to her room to lie on her bed. Surrounded by her teddy bears, she closed her eyes and began to daydream.
She imagined that she lived in America in a little white house with a beautiful green lawn. Neil was her husband, and together they had a family of three children. One of these children suffered some misfortune, a rare debilitating illness, perhaps. She saw them receiving bad news from a kindly doctor who was bald and wore spectacles. To tell them the news, he took off the spectacles and rubbed his furrowed brow.
Then she looked into Neil’s eyes and saw fear that exactly mirrored her own, and they grasped each other by the hand. After months or perhaps even years, the doctor with the furrowed brow would tell them that thanks to their devotion as parents and the hard work of the fine doctors and nurses in the hospital, the child was showing signs of improvement. One perfect summer day the child would be allowed to return home from the hospital. Marion and the other children would make Welcome Home banners, then there would be a barbecue in the garden. While the healthier children leapt into the pool, the recovering child, possibly still in a wheelchair and wearing clothes that were rather too warm for the time of year, would smile bravely at his loving parents.
“As long as we all have each other,” Neil would say, “that is the important thing. Of course there will always be troubles along the way, but together we can survive anything.”
In the same way a starving man might swallow rags to stuff his belly, Marion found it was possible to fill the emptiness inside her with daydreams, and for a brief moment before dozing off to sleep, she experienced something similar to the warm, sated feeling of being part of a family, of loving and being loved.
• • •
ONE STICKY, OVERCAST day in the middle of August, Marion was dragging her shopping trolley across the car park of the SmartMart when she saw him. It felt like being shot with an arrow. Of course she recognized him immediately; hadn’t she thought about him every single day for the last thirty-odd years? The strange thing was, real Neil didn’t look at all like her Neil. If anything, he was more handsome. She had given imaginary Neil a potbelly and a balding head. This version had got better with age.
He had to be in his late fifties, but he looked ten years younger, suave like the lead actor in a TV show, someone who might play an ambitious politician who is cheating on his wife. His hair was gingery gray, and he wore neat beige slacks and a polo shirt. With him were a pretty teenage girl and a lanky boy of about twelve. Both the boy and the girl were tall, loose limbed, and had their father’s red hair and freckles that looked like chocolate chips in vanilla ice cream. The children were smartly dressed in shorts and pastel T-shirts. Marion thought they were the cleanest-looking people she had ever seen in her life.
The boy said in a lispy-posh accent, “Dad, you are so embarrassing—I can’t believe you told that guy you used to be in the Olympic rowing team.”
Neil replied in a voice only slightly scratched by the years: “Well, it was worth it to get a discount on that case of Shiraz, don’t you think, matey?”
“And when you actually signed your autograph for him,” the girl squealed, “I thought I was going to pee myself laughing.”
As the three of them were piling groceries into a shiny, plum-colored car, Marion walked past with her head down. Imagine if he saw her in those stretchy black trousers and old jumper with stains on the cuff? She would die on the spot. Just as she was passing, Neil let the trunk slam shut. As he stepped backwards, his warm, strong back collided with Marion’s hunched shoulder.
“Oops, gosh, sorry,” he said, then turning round to face her, “are you okay?”
Marion made an odd moaning sound, then immediately lifted her hands to her face. As she hurried away, she heard the young girl say:
“For God’s sake, Dad, you’re such a clumsy oaf, you nearly knocked that poor old lady over.”
Marion managed to keep all her emotion tucked inside until she had reached the safety of her attic room. When she finally let go, the sobs came out in big shuddering waves that shook the bed and sent many of her friends bouncing onto the floor. She imagined the mother of those perfect children was probably some manicured beauty, the type that never had a hair out of place. She could see them all at home now standing around some very clean and modern kitchen, hugging one another and laughing while a healthy meal of whole wheat pasta and organic vegetables simmered on the cooking range.
After she was done crying, Marion went to Mother’s room and sat in front of the big dressing table. The girl had called her an old woman. She knew she didn’t look good for her age—she hadn’t looked good at any age—but it cut deeply to hear it said out loud. Putting on her reading glasses (her distance glasses were practically useless; she badly needed a new prescription), she examined her reflection. What the girl said was true. In Marion’s youth, her face had been a pillow of featureless pink flesh, not pretty, perhaps, but firm and robust; now the skin had become coarse and gray, and her flesh sagged. Could anything be done? Perhaps she should wear makeup like Judith suggested or go on a diet, but food was the only pleasure she had, and would it really make much difference? If she bought some new clothes, she might look better, but she hated going clothes shopping; the assistants were always so rude to her.
She had always been plain, but now she was old and plain; it seemed doubly unfair to have aged prematurely when so little had happened to her. How had she got worn out so quickly? She felt like a little girl inside, and yet she was an old woman on the surface, an old woman with the experience of a child. Most old people at least had memories, they had been married, had children, gone on holiday with their families, danced at parties with their lovers, had successful careers, while she had done nothing. But was it really her fault? Try as she might, she did not see what she could have done differently.
Marion went back to her own room, scooped up the teddies that had fallen, and lay on her bed. She tried holding the bears in her arms, but that only made her feel worse, an old woman comforting herself with children’s toys. It was too pitiful for words. She imagined Neil and his beautiful children seeing her like this.
If anyone knew what her life was, they would turn away in horror. Another person would kill themselves rather than endure her life. If only she had been able to break out, but it seemed she was surrounded by an invisible barrier that separated her from the rest of the world, and no matter how hard she struggled, she could never fight through.
She could find out where Neil lived, go to the house, then wait until they were all asleep and burn it to the ground. This thought, like a shot of strong spirits, gave Marion a measure of comfort, but the feeling was soon replaced by self-revulsion. No, I mustn’t think things like that, she told herself, Neil is a good man. He deserves to be happy. If she didn’t have a loving family, it was her own fault for being stupid and lazy and ugly, for being the sort of person other people didn’t want to be around.
When she tried to bring into her mind the old Neil, the one that had lived in her head for so many years, it suddenly occurred to her how silly that was. If she hadn’t locked herself away in a world of fantasy, might she have had the courage to go out and find someone and have children of her own? A real man, even if he was someone plain and dull like her?
When it was time to get up to make dinner, Marion could no more move than if she were trapped in the sinking sand on Northport Beach that Mother used to warn her about. Just after nine o’clock there was a knock on the bedroom door. John came in holding a glass of cordial.
“Marion, love, what’s up?” For once his voice was full of concern.
“I don’t feel well,” she said.
“Do you need the doctor?”
“No, not like that.” She turned over so he could see her swollen eyes.
“Oh.”
He set the cordial on the bedside table and sat down on the edge of her mattress.
“You get that from Mother, you know. Remember how she used to lie in her bed for days on end? Perhaps you do need to see the doctor. They make special pills that can help.”
Mother had taken the pills to create a pillow around her, but in the end that pillow had smothered her.
“No, I don’t want pills.”
“But they might make you feel better, Marion.”
“But things wouldn’t actually be better, would they? So wouldn’t feeling better be a sort of a cheat?”
“Does that really matter so much?”
The pills had made Mother limp and drowsy all the time. All it took was one too many of those little white disks and she dozed off in the bath, her head slipping beneath the warm lavender-scented water. Before she could manage to wake herself, she drowned.
John put his hand on Marion’s arm. Perhaps he meant to comfort her, but it felt as though he was holding her down. She froze, then pushed her brother to one side and jumped out of bed.
“No, I don’t want to be like her, lying there all day doped up, like something floating in a tank. I don’t want that! I’d rather have anything than that!”
• • •
IT WAS ALMOST twenty years since Mother had been gone. Marion found it hard to believe how quickly time had passed—especially since so little had happened in that period. Twenty years. Some women had raised a child to adulthood in that time.
Marion could never have organized Mother’s funeral by herself; all those stressful phone calls to make and confusing forms to fill in. How she feared forms. It was so hard to get the letters in the tiny little spaces, and then nervousness at getting something wrong would cause her to make mistakes over the simplest things, such as spelling her own name. She would have to keep starting over with a fresh one until a pile of crumpled error-filled paperwork lay in front of her.
What would she have done if John hadn’t been there to deal with everything? Of course everyone assumed Marion to be incapable of handling all the arrangements because she was so distraught, but in her heart she knew this wasn’t exactly true. Marion couldn’t say that she had loved her mother or even that they had ever gotten along particularly well. Yet her death created an unsettling emptiness.
Marion’s adult life had always revolved around Mother’s demands and wishes:
“You need to go to the shops to buy me some new nylons, the sixty denier so my veins don’t show through, not the thin ones. Call Dr. Dunkerly about my prescription. Remind Mrs. Morrison to clean the brass door handles. Today we should go to Stowe’s for a cream tea.”
And now that Mother was gone, she hardly knew what to do with herself other than lie on her bed, aimlessly sorting through the contents of her mind as if it were an old sewing box full of tangled threads, foreign pennies, and rusty needles. No matter how many times she went through these odds and ends, she couldn’t find any grief. There was plenty of worry for what the future might hold, sorrow for the missed opportunities in her life; but apart from that, nothing but useless nonsense. Was there something wrong with her? She had cried buckets when Katie-Lynn Tavish had been wrongly accused of smothering her baby in Prayers for an Angel and had wept when Jerome the blind boy had to go live in a home because his grandfather died in No Memorial of Love, so why couldn’t she cry for her own mother?
The body was cremated at Northport Crematorium. Apart from John, herself, and Mrs. Morrison, the only other guests were the members of the spiritualist church. During the service Bea had wailed rather than sung a jazzy lament that went on for nearly thirteen minutes, by which time the minister was looking at his watch. When finally he was forced to put a stop to the performance because other people were waiting outside for the next funeral, Bea collapsed in hysterical sobs. Marion thought it was strange that Bea should be so upset, since presumably Mother could still attend the Thursday-evening meetings if she wanted to.
After the funeral everyone had gone back to Grange Road for tinned salmon sandwiches and tea prepared by Mrs. Morrison. Miss Anderson appeared veiled in black lace, with a plate of some glazed swirls of confectionery that were hard as plaster of Paris when you bit into them. Bea and Jean Page showed an inappropriate degree of admiration for the grandeur of the house and kept picking things up and scrutinizing hallmarks as though they were professional auctioneers.
At one point Mr. Bevan ushered Marion into the kitchen, saying that he wanted to have “a quiet word alone with her.” He told her she should treat Northport Spiritualist Congregation as if it were her family and that they expected her to continue attending meetings. Marion had always liked Mr. Bevan, yet the way he held her hand while stroking the inside of her wrist with his thumb made her uncomfortable.
“I’ve always been very fond of you. It’s a mystery to me why no man has ever made you his wife,” said Mr. Bevan.
As he spoke, little bits of spittle escaped his toothless mouth. Then he reached out and tickled her under the chin. Marion moved away from him slightly, just enough, she hoped, that he would realize that she did not like being touched by him, yet without hurting his feelings.
“You know you don’t need to hold it all in, love, all that emotion. You don’t need to be brave in front of us. You can have a good cry if you want to.”
“I don’t feel like crying. Really I don’t,” she protested.
This didn’t stop him.
“Go on,” he urged, “just let it all out, let it all out, girl.”
Then, as the old man pulled her into a hug, she felt his hand reach around and press her bottom against his hips. Mr. Bevan’s eyes were closed, and his tongue lolled out from between toothless gums. As she turned away, her left breast was gripped by a bony hand that squeezed hard. Marion felt as if the old man were trying to milk her.
Hot and nauseated, Marion rushed away and locked herself in the guest bathroom. While the other mourners were still gobbling sandwiches, she fumed at herself for ever being nice to him, getting anxious when the spirits failed to turn up for his sessions and pitying his little flat in the Senior Shelter that had an alarm in the bathroom so he could get help if he fell. Had this kindness led him to think she would be interested in some kind of romance? He must be at least twice her age, and to behave like th
at at Mother’s funeral made it all even worse.
Marion waited until everyone had left to go back downstairs. Mrs. Morrison was in the kitchen cleaning up sandwich crusts and dirty teacups left by the mourners. As she rinsed the brown sludge of tea leaves from the great Royal Doulton pot, the housekeeper declared she would be retiring. “I kept going as long as I could, for your mother’s sake, but I’m not a young woman myself. Ken and I are buying a flat in Málaga.” Ken was Mrs. Morrison’s new beau, whom she’d met salsa dancing after Mr. Morrison finally succumbed to the surgeon’s knife. “I’d rather be lying by the pool drinking a cold Heineken than spending my old age as a nanny for two grown-up children.”
THE ENVELOPE
Marion was lying on her bed reading The Tale of Pigling Bland. The story made her feel so sad. Those little pigs being sent off to market by themselves and then poor Pigling Bland having to deal with that nasty farmer who wanted to eat him; really it was just awful. She hoped that things turned out well for him and Pig-wig when they ran over the hills and far away. Pig-wig did seem rather foolish, though. She worried that silly girl might end up leading Pigling Bland astray.
As she put the book back into the little shelf by her bed she heard John’s heavy footsteps up the stairs. He was calling her name angrily.
Marion froze. What had she done wrong? What could have got him so worked up? Then he hammered on her bedroom door so hard, it must have chipped the paint.
“Yes, John, what’s the matter, love?”
The door opened and a single eye and livid slice of her brother’s face appeared in the gap.
“Where’s that bloody envelope?” The words came out hard and fast like machine-gun fire.
“What envelope?”
“I left an envelope on the dining room dresser. It’s gone.”
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