by Unknown
‘I have tidied it,’ I’d say.
‘Well, it doesn’t look like it.’
And so it would go on. It seemed to me that I had spent days and days dealing with my affairs, sorting out Greg’s stuff, generally getting things ordered, but as I saw my bedroom, the junk room and the spare bedroom through Fergus’s eyes, I had to admit that it didn’t look like it. If there are stages of mourning, there are also stages of tidying. The first stage is your basic untidiness. The second stage is deciding to do something about it. The third stage involves getting everything out of the drawers, cupboards and shelves so you can see what you have to deal with it. The third stage necessarily looks much worse than the first. I wasn’t sure about the fourth because I hadn’t yet got to it.
There were piles of Greg’s clothes in the bedroom. The spare room functioned as a sort of office. It had a nice view over the garden towards the plane tree that stood next door. We had never made it a proper office because we’d been going to make the junk room into an office and turn the spare room into a nursery, put up silly wallpaper with clowns on it or something like that. The spare bedroom and the landing were piled high with files, papers, folders and books, some of which were connected with Greg’s work. ‘It looks bad, I know,’ I said. ‘I’m in the process of getting it sorted.’
There was so much I couldn’t say, starting with the supposed excuse that one of the reasons I hadn’t cleared up the house was that I had been down in Camberwell, sorting out Milena Livingstone’s office.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘I’ve already heard about this from one of my spies.’
‘Who was it? I bet it was Mary. If I live to be a hundred and spend the entire time doing housework, I’ll never live up to her standards of cleanliness.’
‘I’m not saying,’ said Fergus. ‘I’m not able to reveal my sources. What I can do is tell you the plan.’
‘The plan?’
‘Are you at home today?’
‘I hadn’t thought of going anywhere.’
‘Good. You might have some visitors.’
‘Who are they? What are they going to do?’
‘I think you’ll recognize them. What they’ll do, basically, is help you deal with this. Some of it they’ll do on site, as it were, but mainly we don’t want to be in your hair. We can take things away, sort them out. If you trust us, that is.’
I stepped forward and put my arms around him and my face into his shoulder, the way babies do when they’re held. I couldn’t see his expression. It might have been horror, for all I knew, but I felt his arms go round me. I stepped back.
‘This is lovely of you,’ I said, ‘lovely of you all. But it’s something I should be able to do myself. And it’s not just that. I want to sort this out, Fergus, obviously I do. But what I don’t want is to have Greg surgically removed from my life. I want his stuff around me. Not necessarily in piles on the floor. But for me to move on, I don’t need to have all this stuff taken out of the house and dumped in a skip.’
‘That’s not what it’s about. We just want to help you deal with it. If it’s a matter of privacy, if you don’t want us nosing through your things, then just say so and we’ll back off.’
‘That’s not what I mean. There’s nothing I want to hide from you guys. It’s too late for that. It’s just that I should be able to deal with it myself. It feels wrong.’
‘It shouldn’t,’ said Fergus. ‘Let us do it for you. When Jemma finally gives up on me, you can do the same for me.’
A horrible thought occurred to me. ‘Is there anything you’re not telling me?’ I asked. ‘Do you all think I need help? I mean psychiatric help.’
Fergus laughed and shook his head. ‘Just us. Honest.’
It still felt uncomfortable to have been talked about, as if a conspiracy had been hatched against me. An hour later Joe, Gwen and Mary arrived, looking a bit sheepish. I told them I felt terrible. This was their weekend. Didn’t they have obligations, people to be with? They hugged me and made apologetic sounds. I wasn’t sure whether it was more difficult to receive help or to give it. I made more coffee and we went upstairs to survey the chaos. There was some discreet muttering.
Joe gave me a friendly nudge. ‘It’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘Just think of it as some decorating that needs doing and we’ve come round to hang wallpaper and paint.’
‘Do you want me to show you what everything is?’ I asked.
‘What we want,’ said Gwen, ‘is for you to go out and do some shopping or have a swim, anything, and we’ll go through everything, and some of it we’ll put in boxes and take away. In a couple of days we’ll bring it back and then, at least, we’ll have been able to sort out one bit of your life. We hope.’
I thought for a moment.
‘I feel I should say no to all this, or feel resentful, but really it’s such a relief.’
‘Then go away,’ said Mary, and I did, though not before I’d rolled up Milena’s chart-in-progress and put it into my bag. There are some things even friends shouldn’t know about.
I swam in the public pool, washed my hair in the showers afterwards and put on some clean clothes. I found a café, ordered a pot of tea and read the newspaper. I walked up Kentish Town Road and bought vegetables and salad. When I got home, they had left. I went upstairs and it was miraculous. Almost everything was gone and everything that wasn’t had been arranged neatly on a shelf or a desktop. Someone must have found the vacuum-cleaner as well, made my bed and done the washing-up. There was nothing for me to do but make myself a salad, then clear up thoroughly after myself, in case someone came back to check.
The next morning Joe rang. He’d gone through Greg’s work stuff and most of it could be dealt with at the office. Anything personal he would drop back later in the week. There was nothing urgent. In the afternoon Gwen came round with a pile of files under her arm, all household papers. She had gone through them, reordered them and, on a piece of paper, she had written a ‘to do’ list: people to be phoned, bills to be paid, letters to be written. She had drawn a star next to the ones that needed to be dealt with immediately. She was being Gwen to me in the way that I was being Gwen to Frances, but I couldn’t tell her that.
I didn’t check my mobile phone the entire weekend. On Sunday evening I phoned Frances and told her I wouldn’t be in on Monday. I wasn’t sure I would ever be in again, but I didn’t say so. On Monday morning I went into the workshop, put on the CD player with something baroque, and began to attend to that man’s rocking-chair. I sanded it down with far too much care, not because I wanted the job to be perfect but because I found it reassuring to be doing something so physical and precise that I couldn’t think about anything else. Almost automatically, in a dream, I continued with the job, and when I woke from the dream, the chair was there, finished and perfect, almost too beautiful to part with.
When I got into the house, I rang the owner of the rocking-chair and said that, after all, I had found time to mend it for him, and he could collect it whenever he wanted. Then I had a long bath and afterwards I remembered I hadn’t checked my answering-machine, as if I’d wanted to keep the world away, just for the moment. There was a message from Fergus. I rang him.
‘Are you home?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘For the next ten minutes?’
‘Yes.’
He hung up. I’d barely got dressed when the doorbell rang. It was Fergus, but he was different from when I’d seen him in the same spot on Saturday morning, distracted, not meeting my eye. He walked straight past me and into the living room. He sat on the sofa and I sat beside him. Without speaking, he took something from his pocket and placed it on the low table in front of us. It resembled a large narrow playing card.
‘I think you should look at that,’ he said.
Chapter Seventeen
It’s funny, the things you notice. Your brain can’t stop working. When I picked the card up and turned it over, my hands were shaking but, even so, I saw it was a menu
with the date – 12 September – scrawled across it. There was a choice between goat’s cheese and walnut salad or watercress soup for starter, followed by either sea bass with roast Jerusalem artichokes or Welsh lamb with mashed sweet potato and steamed baby vegetables. Then, for dessert, chocolate fondant or fruits of the forest. I saw all of this, even as I was reading the bold handwritten message across the top. ‘Darling G, you were wonderful this evening. Next time stay the night and I can show you more new tricks!’ I didn’t have to read the signature to know who had written it: I had spent days looking at the handwriting on bills, receipts, business letters.
I laid the menu back on the table, face down.
‘Ellie,’ Fergus began.
‘Wait,’ I said. I stood up and went to the chest where I’d put the chart. I took it out, unfolded it and examined the grid for 12 September. An hour and twelve minutes was unaccounted for. At first I thought this was an amazing coincidence but quickly I realized it wasn’t a coincidence at all, because that’s the way reality fits together. I folded the chart and put it back in the drawer, then came to sit beside Fergus again.
‘Where was it?’ I asked him. My voice sounded quite calm. My hands were no longer trembling.
‘Inside one of his running books. I was going through them this afternoon. Jemma said I shouldn’t clutter up the house. I feel dreadful, Ellie. Was I right to show you?’
I gazed at him, although it was as if I was trying to see him through a fog. ‘You were quite right.’
‘I’m so sorry, Ellie.’
‘Thank you,’ I said politely, and folded my hands in my lap. I looked at the fingers laced together and thought I would be keeping my wedding ring off my finger after all.
‘You were wonderful, the way you trusted him.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’
‘At least you know now.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’
‘No, thank you.’ He looked so wretched that I forced myself to make an effort. ‘This must be really horrible for you, Fergus. But I’m glad you told me. It would have been terrible not to. I’m grateful.’
‘He was a fool. An idiot. But he loved you, Ellie, I know he did. You mustn’t forget that.’
‘It’s nice of you to say so. If you don’t mind, I’d quite like to be alone now, Fergus.’
He stood up, and I remained where I was, so that he had to bend down awkwardly to kiss me on both cheeks.
‘I’ll phone later,’ he said.
After he had gone, I continued sitting on the sofa with my hands clasped together. I don’t know how long I stayed like that, or what I thought about. Perhaps those words: ‘I’ll show you more new tricks.’ What kind of love note was that, with its tacky and teasing suggestiveness, as if Greg was a circus pony and she the ring-master with the whip and black boots? I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to stop the images that were flooding through me. Perhaps I thought how extraordinarily, stunningly and flawlessly good he had been at keeping it secret from me, like a professional spy. Perhaps I thought it didn’t make sense, or that it made perfect sense, at last.
Finally I stood up and pulled out the chart again, staring at the gap in the schedule that I could now fill in: Greg was with Milena. I unrolled her much less filled-in chart as well. Nothing for 12 September there either. So. She had wanted him to stay the night next time. Had he? I couldn’t see when he would have done, but neither could I see why it should matter any more. I had the evidence I’d been searching for and dreading. As clearly as if she was in the room, I heard Mary’s voice: ‘Now you can get on with the rest of your life.’
Right. I stood up abruptly and went upstairs into our bedroom; into my bedroom. I opened the wardrobe and pulled out Greg’s handful of smart shirts, most of which I’d given him over the years, and his jackets. They would do for a start. I had been going to share them out among friends but now that didn’t feel right. On my way downstairs, I grabbed his old towelling robe from the back of the door. I wouldn’t be snuggling up in it on a cold evening any more.
In the garden, I bundled them into a pile and put a match to them. You’d have thought clothes would burn easily, but not those. It was nearly dark, and it was drizzling, which didn’t help matters – and the neighbour on the right, who had once complained to us about our loud music, was looking at me inquisitively while he put vegetable peelings on to his compost. I went into the shed, took paraffin from the top shelf and splashed a bit over the damp pile. I didn’t even need to add another match; an ember must still have been glowing in the folds of a jacket, because there was a bang, a ‘Whoa!’ from over the fence, and a violent orange flame roared several feet into the air. I could smell burning and realized my hair was singed. Who cared? Who cared what the neighbour thought, or his wife, who had now been summoned to watch the scene that was taking place? Who cared that acrid clouds of smoke were now rising from my fire, and petals of ash were floating in the air? Not me. I threw on his lovely leather brogues. They made a terrible smell. As I watched them blacken, I had a sudden picture of Greg buffing them with a soft cloth, that look of concentration on his lovely face, and wanted to rush forward and rescue them, but it was too late for that.
The elation had drained away and I felt empty, bleak, grim, defeated. Tired of the whole sorry business, of being angry, being ashamed, being sad, being lonely. Being me.
Perhaps that was why I returned to Frances’s the following morning. Because there, for a time, I wouldn’t have to be me. I could be Gwen: practical, calm and in control, helping other people sort out the mess of their lives. The previous night I had gone to bed early, without eating anything and hugging a hot-water bottle because although it was not a particularly cold evening I felt chilly and shivery. I lay there, wide-eyed, in the darkness. I wanted to cry, in the same way that sometimes, when I feel horribly nauseous, I want to be sick, but the tears didn’t come, wouldn’t. Several times, I had heard the phone ring and voices leave messages: Fergus, Gwen, Joe, Gwen again. They must have heard on the grapevine. Soon everyone would know.
It took me a long time to choose what to wear. I tried on skirts, tops, different shoes. I stood in front of the mirror, examined myself critically and didn’t like what I saw. I was pale; there were tired smudges under my eyes; my hair hadn’t been cut for months and was long and wild. In the end I put on a dress that looked a bit like a pleated chocolate-coloured sack, ribbed tights and my only pair of boots, although one of the heels was a bit loose. I put an amber pendant round my neck, because Greg hadn’t given it to me, and tied my hair back into a messy bun. I put on muted eye-shadow, eye-liner, mascara, lip-gloss. Finally, when it was after eleven o’clock and a pale sun had come out from behind the clouds, I looked enough like somebody else to venture out of the house.
For a moment I thought Frances was going to hug me, but she contented herself with a hand on my shoulder and a warm, relieved smile.
‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Sorry about yesterday.’
‘I’m just pleased you’re here now. Come downstairs. Johnny’s made us a pot of coffee.’
‘Johnny?’
‘Yes. Listen, I need you to do me a favour. Anyway, it’ll be more interesting for you than just trawling through the papers.’
‘What is it?’ I asked. Trawling through the papers was exactly what I wanted to do: I hadn’t finished with Milena Livingstone yet. Her chart was incomplete. My need to know about her had not been extinguished by that single coarse message scrawled so carelessly on the back of one of her menus. Now I wanted to know why – why had Greg fallen for her? What did she have that I didn’t?
‘I’ve got to dash out.’ She waved her hand vaguely in the air. ‘Crisis. But I’d promised Johnny I’d go to sample some of his suggested dishes, make the final choices. You can go instead of me.’
‘Wouldn’t it be better if Beth did it?’
Frances frowned. ‘Beth isn’t here yet. Besides, she doesn’t deserve it.’
‘I don’t know anything about food.’
‘You eat, don’t you?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Then it’ll be a treat for you. Are you hungry?’
I tried to remember when I’d last eaten a proper meal.
‘Good. That’s settled, then,’ said Frances, as if she had read my mind.
Johnny arrived with the coffee. He kissed me on one cheek, then the other, and said I was looking lovely. I stammered something and caught Frances’s amusement and something else. Tenderness?
Johnny’s restaurant was in Soho, down a little side alley. I knew it must be exclusive because it was almost impossible to spot from the street. The dining room was small, maybe ten tables, only one of which was unoccupied as we came in. With its low ceilings and deep-red wallpaper, it had the air of being someone’s private house rather than a public place. There was the hum of conversation, the chink of cutlery on china; waiters padded through, hovering deferentially over diners, pouring the last of the wine from bottles into glasses.
‘Nice,’ I commented.
‘They’re all here on expense accounts,’ Johnny said dismissively. ‘They don’t even taste what they’re eating. Why do we bother?’
‘Shall I sit here?’ I gestured to the single empty table.
He shook his head and whisked me through the door at the back and suddenly I was in an entirely different world, a brightly lit space of gleaming stainless-steel surfaces and scrubbed hobs. It was like a laboratory where men and women in white aprons bent over their work, occasionally calling instructions or pulling open vast drawers to reveal ingredients. I stared around me in fascination. Johnny pulled out a stool and sat me down at the end of a counter. ‘I’ll give you some things to try.’
‘Am I meant to choose the menu for Frances?’
‘No, I’ve already decided it.’
‘Then what am I doing here?’
‘I thought you were sad. I’m going to look after you. Wait.’ He disappeared through a small swing door and returned holding a large glass with a tiny amount of gold liquid in the bottom. ‘Drink this first.’