The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  ‘But why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Because I thought you would have got the letter when you got home.’ He hesitates. ‘I’m sorry, Poll. Would it have made any difference if you had known?’

  Polly stares at her plate, pushing salad around it with her fork. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I’d have been devastated for Stella, but would it have stopped me? Probably not. You’re right, no one wants to listen to cautionary tales. I deliberately avoided letting her tell me what she thought of Leo. But I think it does make a bit of a difference now. Knowing what happened to Stella . . . knowing how that sense of shame affected her. I think knowing that helps . . .’

  *

  Three days later Polly steps out of a taxi at five in the morning and lets herself in through the front door.

  As she walks down the passage through to the kitchen she feels the house enclose her like a safety blanket. My place in the world, she whispers, and she knows that it will be some time before she is ready to leave again. As always she walks through the rooms one by one, savouring the silence, the stillness, the scent of lemons, but wishing too that she had never let Leo in here to this precious space, knowing that it will take time to exorcise the traces of him that seem to hang in the air. In the kitchen she opens the back door to the garden where the last of the roses are still in full bloom, their perfume floating up to greet her. She sits on the verandah, remembering last year, when she came back from Edinburgh and walked through the gate to Stella’s garden to see her sitting there, in her big chair, the pages of her script on the decking at her feet. For a terrible moment then she had thought that Stella was dead, but she had shifted her position, and the sickening dread that had gripped Polly’s stomach had lifted.

  Back in the kitchen she picks up the pile of mail that Joyce has put there for her. On the top is a sealed white envelope, with ‘Polly’ written across it in Stella’s familiar scrawl. Attached to one corner of the envelope is a yellow post-it note from Joyce: Stella is anxious that you read this letter, she forgot where she left it but I found it in the spare bedroom.

  So this is the famous letter. Polly turns it over and carefully peels back the poorly sealed flap. There are several pages of fine lined paper. Dearest Polly, it begins, there is something I need to tell you and if I don’t write it down now I may not remember it later. It stops there and there is a big gap. Then it starts again, this time written with a different pen. I want to tell you about something that happened to me a long time ago, it’s about a man, you may remember him, an actor called Neville Sachs. I loved him, I believed he was the love of my life . . .

  And that’s where the letter stops. The writing goes on but only the occasional word is legible. There is just page after page of spidery scrawls, wavy lines, letters cramped together, not one complete phrase or sentence. Polly folds the pages and holds them to her face, feeling as though she is inhaling the effort that it took to fill them. Carefully, she tucks the letter back into its envelope, takes it through to the bedroom and starts to unpack, to take back the life that had seemed complete when she left Edinburgh, but which now has a Leo shaped hole in it. A hole that she knows will take a long time to heal.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Stella watches as the woman in blue, whose name she can’t remember, bustles around making her bed. She smooths it out nicely, tucks the blankets tightly, just as Stella likes it, then she picks up the empty tea cup from the bedside table, takes it out to a trolley in the passage and comes back.

  ‘Shall I wheel you down to the lounge now, Stella?’ she asks. ‘It’ll be exercises in about half an hour.’

  Stella is finding everything a bit of a burden these days. There is so much to remember, so many people she doesn’t know, it’s all very confusing. She wishes Nancy would hurry up, she’d promised to come again soon.

  ‘I think I’d better stay here,’ Stella says. ‘I’m expecting a visitor.’

  ‘Well we can send your visitor to find you in the lounge,’ the woman says.

  ‘I want to stay here,’ she says. The trouble is you can’t trust people. Nancy might turn up and not know where to find her, and then she’d go away again. ‘Nancy’s coming to get me,’ she says. ‘She’s taking me home with her.’

  The woman smiles. ‘That’s nice,’ she says. ‘I haven’t met Nancy. You don’t mean Polly, do you? Or Joyce perhaps?’

  Stella shakes her head irritably. ‘I said Nancy,’ she says. ‘Nancy, my aunt, she says it’s time to go.’ She rests her head on the back of her chair. The woman’s face has changed, she looks anxious now.

  ‘Well,’ she says, ‘I’ll keep a look-out for her and bring her to you when she gets here. And I’m going to leave your door open just a bit, Stella, then she can see you.’

  *

  Joyce makes her way down the passage towards Stella’s room. The door is propped ajar and she can just see Stella sitting there in her chair by the window, her head drooping, nodding slightly. She pauses. If Stella is asleep maybe she shouldn’t disturb her. But then Stella jerks suddenly, shakes her head and looks around.

  ‘Hello, Stella,’ Joyce says, pulling up a chair to sit closer to her. ‘I’ve brought you some Tim Tams, I’ll just pop them in this bag.’ And she slips the packet into the cotton bag attached to the arm of the wheelchair.

  Stella looks at her as though trying to remember who she is. ‘Joyce,’ she says. ‘I was expecting someone else.’

  ‘Polly perhaps?’ Joyce suggests. ‘She got back very early this morning and she’s coming in to see you later.’

  ‘Polly, yes. I want to see Polly,’ Stella says, and she grasps Joyce’s hand. ‘Tell Polly she must come soon, come today. Before . . . before . . .’

  Joyce pats Stella’s hand. ‘Before what?’

  ‘Before Nancy comes, she’s coming soon you see, we’re going home, and Annie’s there, we’re going to see her. Nancy came the other day, you know, and she said she’d be back today.’

  Joyce’s heart skips a beat. She nods, holding on to Stella’s hand, while her skin prickles at the meaning of Stella’s words. ‘How is Nancy?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh she’s fine,’ Stella says. ‘She loves what I’ve done to the house. And there’s room there for Annie too, the three of us. That’s nice, isn’t it?’ Her voice is weak, the words beginning to slur.

  A lump of sadness is forming in Joyce’s chest. ‘It’s very nice,’ she says. ‘I wish I’d met Nancy. I am sure I would have liked her.’

  Stella turns her head to look at her, but Joyce can tell that she does not see her. There is something remote, something entirely un-Stella in her gaze.

  ‘You can meet her if you like,’ Stella says. ‘Come back later and she’ll be here.’ And she closes her eyes and rests her head on the back of the chair.

  Joyce sits beside her, holding her hand, until she feels Stella’s grip slacken. Then, sighing, she gets to her feet and bends to kiss her forehead. Then she walks out of the room, out of the building to her car, and sits there for a few moments, sobbing, before she starts the engine and heads for home.

  *

  The first thing Polly notices when she gets to the nursing home that afternoon is that Stella looks exceptionally frail. Has she been like this for some time?, she wonders. Did I simply not notice this before I left? Although Joyce had confided her fears, the sight of Stella comes as a shock. She is sitting, motionless, in her chair by the glass door in the residents’ lounge, watching two doves on a birdbath out on the terrace.

  Polly puts a hand gently on her arm. ‘Hello, Stella,’ she says and Stella turns to her in surprise.

  ‘Oh, Annie, how wonderful! They told me I’d never see you again, they said you were dead. But Nancy said you’d come.’

  Polly thinks she looks as though the effort of speaking has worn her out.

  ‘It’s Polly, remember, Stella? I’ve been away.’

&nb
sp; Stella looks puzzled for a moment. ‘Yes, you’re Polly. I was waiting for you and you didn’t come.’

  ‘But I’m here now. I’ve been to Paris and London. I thought about you a lot while I was there, the stories you told me about the times you were there.’

  ‘Did you see Neville?’

  Polly takes a deep breath. ‘Neville’s dead, Stella, he’s been dead a long time.’

  ‘Good! I’m glad, he deserves to be dead. Good riddance.’

  ‘I got your letter,’ Polly says. ‘I read it all.’

  ‘Did I send you a letter?’

  ‘You did – a letter to help me, with Leo.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Leo, do you remember?’

  Stella looks at her puzzled, agitated. ‘Who’s that?’

  Polly smiles. ‘Oh, just someone I knew.’

  Stella makes a clucking noise with her tongue. ‘I keep forgetting things.’

  Polly takes her hand. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says.

  Stella turns to her now, face on. ‘Are you all right, Polly? I was worried about you, but I don’t remember why.’

  Polly’s first impulse is to pretend but she stops herself. Stella deserves the truth.

  ‘I’ve had a bad time, Stella, a bit like your bad time, but it’s getting better. I’ll be better soon, and seeing you helps. How do you feel?’ she asks. ‘Is there anything I can get you, anything you need?’

  Stella shakes her head, drops her head back against the cushion on the chair. ‘Nothing. I’m waiting for Nancy now. I wonder if Annie will come too.’

  Polly bites her lip.

  ‘We were waiting for you to come home first, Polly.’

  Polly nods. ‘I know,’ she says. She wants to grab Stella by the shoulders, beg her to stay, not to leave her alone. She takes a deep breath. ‘You can stop worrying, darling,’ she says. ‘I’ll be fine, so when Nancy comes . . .’

  ‘I love you, Polly. You are everything to me, sister, daughter, dearest friend.’

  ‘And you to me Stella,’ Polly says, unable now to control her voice, the tears sliding down her cheeks. ‘I love you so much, Stella. The best things in my life, the finest lessons I’ve learned, have all come from you.’

  And she sits there, holding Stella’s hand, for another hour, until Dorothy suggests that Stella might need to sleep in bed rather than the chair. And slowly Polly slides her hand free, gets to her feet, leans over to kiss Stella’s cheek, and walks out of the lounge and into the street where the first drops of rain are starting to fall.

  Chapter Forty

  Late May

  ‘Another year, another funeral,’ Mac says four weeks later as they make their way slowly out of the crematorium. ‘Another beautiful friend lost.’ And he draws Polly’s hand through his arm, and they stroll slowly together past the bouquets and wreaths, towards the car.

  Polly had watched and waited in agony during the seemingly endless days in which Stella refused food and drink, refused to speak, turned her face from anyone who spoke to her. She had sat at the bedside for hours, days, holding Stella’s hand, talking quietly to her of the days when they worked on Neighbours and the ecstatic reviews of the new series of Cross Currents. Sometimes she read her the reviews from her own scrapbook of clippings. And when Polly left to go home to sleep or eat, Joyce or Gemma or Mac had replaced her.

  The news of Stella’s passing has travelled across the country to cities, towns and suburbs, to remote stations and tiny communities where her work brought pleasure to so many people over so many years. Her fans, both young and old, download clips from YouTube, they post pictures, messages and memories on Facebook. And for the first time ever Stella is trending on Twitter.

  ‘She’d have liked that,’ Mac says, ‘she’d have felt it was very modern.’

  Back at the house he makes the appropriate toasts, and watches as the women who loved Stella, and whom he loves, struggle with the weight of their loss.

  Gemma sits on the sofa, pressed firmly into the corner where Stella used to sit. Joyce staves off tears by handing out food and topping up glasses, and Polly, looking grey and cold as death, struggles to make conversation with some of the mutual friends she had shared with Stella.

  ‘Is this how it will be from now on,’ Mac asks Dennis, ‘losing people all the time?’

  ‘Yes and no,’ Dennis says. ‘Our numbers are thinning, mate, but we’ve got a good few years left in us yet. And you and I are going to be grandfathers again soon. I wish Stella had been here to meet the twins, to teach them to misbehave. But that’s new life, Mac. New life, that’s how it goes.’

  *

  The days run on into June and slowly Polly feels that she is beginning to rise once again to the surface, to breathe clearer air. She has worked hard since she came back from London, forcing herself to focus on writing rather than the painful conflicts of anger, hurt and shame that she has brought home with her. As a result she has finished her book, but she is poised now, both emotionally and creatively, in that liminal state between what is done and what comes next. She struggles with the prospect of blank space – nothing captures her imagination, nothing calls to her – and she wonders whether she will ever want to write again, the passion and commitment to start something new has deserted her. Next door, Stella’s house is also an empty space. Still filled with Stella’s things it feels to Polly like a tomb, but she hasn’t the heart to contemplate change. And so a couple of times a week she opens the windows to the sharp morning air, and wanders between the rooms remembering times they spent there together, wondering how to use it now, and what Stella would have wanted.

  Somehow, since she got back, she has not been able to bring herself to tell Joyce and Mac what happened in England. She had intended to tell them straight away, but Stella’s almost immediate decline and then her death have paralysed her. She feels broken, shamed; a foolish old woman duped by the prospect of love. Her friends, she thinks, all saw Leo for what he was. She alone was blind and deaf.

  ‘How was it?’ they have all asked. ‘What did you do? Did you and Leo get on all right? Did you have a really great time? It must have been wonderful to be in Paris together.’ And she has deceived them by saying as little as possible. It was good. Paris was great. We did all sorts of lovely things. Yes we were fine together. But she can see that they suspect something is wrong and her own deception disgusts her. She remembers how when she felt disappointed or uneasy about Leo she had reassured herself by remembering the man she had met in the hotel passage, the strong, compassionate man who came to her aid while everyone else was fighting their way out. She remembered the man with whom she walked in silence the following morning, and whose company she had so much enjoyed in the next couple of days. But now she knows that this was illusion; that she saw what she had wanted to see, and had clung to that image. Leo never was that man in the passage and she had refused to let herself see that.

  One morning as she sees the students making their way home past her front window, Polly realises that Joyce will now be back in her own house, and she wanders through the back gardens and sticks her head around the door.

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘Of course. I’m making coffee, want some?’

  ‘Please.’ She hauls herself onto a stool by the worktop. ‘Anything happening next door? Have you seen anyone?’

  Joyce shakes her head. ‘No and it’s not for want of trying. I had a good old stickybeak before class this morning. The furniture arrived ages ago, Marla saw it. Jennifer heard that the people who bought it were living overseas. Moving back sometime soon.’ She pushes a packet of biscuits towards her. ‘Could you open these and put them in the tin for me?’

  Polly picks up the packet. ‘Oreos? What, no Tim Tams?’

  Joyce laughs. ‘Between you and me I’m a tiny bit sick of Tim Tams. I think Arnotts’ profits must be on the decline now.
’

  Polly thinks Joyce looks unusually stressed and anxious. Balancing her work with looking after Gemma and preparing for the babies is taking its toll.

  ‘Is there anything I could do to help, Joyce? With the students, or with the preparations for the babies?’

  Joyce hoists herself onto a stool and pushes a mug of coffee towards her. ‘Thanks, Poll, I could do with some help in the classes. Just helping to facilitate the conversation groups. Marla’s very good with that, but just half an hour now and again would be great.’

  ‘Count me in,’ Polly says. The prospect of something new and distracting is more than welcome. ‘Every day if you like.’

  ‘Really? You’re sure? That would be a life-saver. I’ve got so many more students now and I’m finding being an expectant grandmother quite stressful at the moment. Gemma tries to pretend she’s laid-back about it all – you know – mother of twins at forty-two – but I know she’s anxious. We’re all a bit tense really, getting on each other’s nerves. The house suddenly seems really small! Anyway, enough! How’s Leo, when are you going to see him again? You haven’t mentioned him much recently.’

  ‘Ah, Leo,’ Polly says, picking up the mug of coffee. ‘Um . . . well . . .’

  ‘You can tell me to mind my own business.’

  ‘I want to tell you, Joyce, it’s time.’ Polly swallows some coffee and begins her story.

  Joyce listens, watching her closely, reaching out at one point to take her hand across the worktop. ‘But you never said anything,’ she says. ‘I remember asking you when you got back and you said you’d had a good time in Paris, but you’ve been struggling with all of this alone.’

  ‘Not entirely alone. I told Alistair and Steve when I stayed there. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell you, Joyce, because I felt so stupid and gullible. The way he treated me when I confronted him was so shaming. I felt small and worthless and it’s taken me all this time . . .’ And she pauses, realising that she does feel different from when she related this to Alistair and Steve. Something has shifted; she can now separate the grief for what might have been from the shame that has crushed her.