Only after he was home again did Flora think of Viv, but when she telephoned the bookshop there was no reply, even though it should have been open. Flora sent Richard out again, to Hadleigh. When he had left, she wrote down Nan’s numbers from the kitchen telephone and stretched the curled mustard cord of the sitting-room phone tight across the hall and into the front bedroom. When it wouldn’t come any farther, she gave it a yank. It caught on a corner of one of the stacks of books, which toppled. Hardbacks about space and time, paperbacks about love affairs, tumbling together with poetry pamphlets and novellas, knocked the top off another stack and then another, like a line of dominos. She didn’t pick them up. Sitting on the edge of the chair next to Gil, she dialled the bookshop and Nan’s numbers, letting them ring until the answerphones cut in, then trying again and again. She worried she had lost her sister too.
The noise of a car turning onto the drive made Flora jump up and run to the door. It was small and white, not the Morris Minor. A man unfolded himself from the passenger’s seat.
“Jonathan!” Flora said, and ran out of the house and down the veranda steps. He flung his arms wide and they hugged; then he held her away from him and stared at her face.
“Jesus, you look more like your mother every time I see you.”
“I’m so pleased you’re here,” she said into the cloth of his jacket, breathing in the smell of him—cigarettes the colour of wet bark. She was aware of other doors opening, and when she stood back to look around him, she saw Louise, her fingers with polished nails clutching the top of the car door as if she needed the support.
“Hello, Flora,” she said. And before Flora could answer, someone else stood up from the driver’s seat: a man at once familiar and unknown. He raised a hand awkwardly.
“Do you remember Gabriel?” Jonathan said. “He says he met you once, a long time ago.”
Flora was aware she was frowning and her mouth was open.
The man had stubble and long hair, but he could have been the same age as the teenager she remembered. “Gabriel,” she said. “I don’t know whether Daddy . . .”
“It’s OK,” Gabriel said. “He asked me to come.”
“You are expecting us, aren’t you?” Jonathan said. “I spoke to Nan.”
“Yes,” Flora said. “But I didn’t know who . . . I just wasn’t expecting you all . . . now.”
“Is Nan here? I’m parched,” Jonathan said.
“She went out,” Flora said, reversing, blocking the way into the house. “I’m not sure when she’ll be home.”
“But Gil’s in?” Jonathan said.
“How is he?” Louise asked. She slammed the car door shut and came forwards. Flora took two more steps away from them. Her ankles touched the bottom tread of the stairs.
“Tired,” Flora said. “Very tired. I don’t know if he’s up to guests right now.”
“But we’ve come all this way,” Louise said, as if the length of her journey had some bearing.
“He’s fucking dying,” Flora said, and she could see Louise wince.
“Flora, Flora.” Jonathan put his arm around her, turned her away from Louise. Gabriel closed his car door and leaned on the roof, watching. “I know it’s hard,” Jonathan continued. “Harder than I can imagine.”
“Perhaps we should wait until Nan gets back,” Louise said from behind him. Gabriel came out from beside the car, his eyes passing over the house, the writing room, and down to the sea, to the view. She saw the garden with his eyes—the plants run wild, the grass high.
“Why don’t you go in and tell him we’re here.” Jonathan gave Flora another hug.
She tried to think what her sister would do. Invite them in and give them a cup of tea? Perhaps she should do something with the salmon that had been lying in its oven dish all morning. But instead what came out was, “Did Nan tell you that Daddy saw Mum in Hadleigh?” The expressions on their faces made her want to laugh: eyebrows raised, round open mouths. She decided not to tell them about the other things Gil had seen, like Ingrid in the mirror. Jonathan grabbed her by the elbow, pulled her back to look at him.
“Gil saw Ingrid?”
Flora put her hand in the pocket of her shorts and found the toy soldier there. She rubbed its head. “Apparently, Mum was standing outside a bookshop in the rain.”
“What did she say? What happened?” Jonathan said.
“I only meant he thought he saw her; they didn’t speak.”
“Oh, Flora.” Jonathan sounded as if he thought she’d made it up.
“What?” Flora said. “Why shouldn’t she be in Hadleigh? It’s as sensible as anywhere.”
The four of them stood, none of them looking at each other, until Louise said, “Shall we go in? I think it’s starting to rain.”
“Jesus, what happened here?” Jonathan said, looking into the house. Half-fallen stacks of books lined the walls, but the earlier landslide had left the narrow passageway rocky with splayed books piled up and blocking the way to the kitchen. The telephone wire was still stretched tight across the gap—a tripwire set to catch unwary visitors.
Flora led the way into the bedroom. Rain was beating against the seaward windows and thrashing the tin roof, and the air inside was stuffy and stale. Gil opened his eyes. She thumped her father’s pillows like she had seen Nan do, efficient and nurse-like. A sickly smell of persimmon came off his pyjamas, and she worried that she was supposed to have washed him. He raised his eyelids slowly; even this an effort. It was Gabriel he stared at first, taking him in, and Flora saw each cleft chin, the same square jaw; one man healthy and handsome, the other a decaying mirror image. Gabriel and Jonathan stood at the end of the bed with Gil’s emaciated body—his death’s head on the frame of a stick man—reflected in their expressions. Only Louise was able to hide her shock.
“Would you like something to drink, Daddy?” Flora said. “I could make you a cup of tea.”
Gil slid his eyes towards the beaker of orange juice on his bedside table, and she held it up to him so he could suck from the straw.
“Gil,” Louise said, stepping forwards, putting her hand on his. “It’s so lovely to see you.”
He turned his head. “Always a sight for sore eyes, Louise.” His tongue made sticking noises in his mouth. He moved his focus back to Gabriel.
“So,” Jonathan said, filling the silence. “What’s the story? How are you feeling?”
“Fucking awful,” Gil said, each word drawn out. “Dying isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Only Gil smiled, thin lips and a mouth with too many teeth.
Jonathan took a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches out of his pocket. Louise caught his eye and shook her head. Reluctantly he put them both back. “It’s bloody hot in here,” he said, taking off his jacket and laying it across the bed. “Do you mind if I open a window?” He didn’t wait for a reply but went to the one facing the veranda. He wiggled the catch until Flora followed.
“Don’t you remember, there’s a knack to it,” she said. “The frames have warped. You’ve got to give it a tug before you can turn the handle.” The window opened. A torn and folded beer mat fell out—Ridley’s 1977—and the brown smell of wet earth came into the room.
“Shh,” Gil said and cocked his head. They were all quiet. “Can you hear it?”
There was the sound of the rain falling on the roof. “The carpenter’s plane,” he said. “He’s making the coffin outside the window.” Gil’s shoulders shook and he made a haw haw haw noise, and it took Flora a moment to realise he was laughing. “He shouldn’t bother.”
Gil closed his eyes and they stood waiting, watching, and Flora listened for his breath’s rattle again, or another car on the drive.
“Perhaps I should make some tea,” she said, but didn’t move.
“I thought we could have a party,” Gil said, paused, breathed, looked up at them without moving his head. “For old times’ sake; for Ingrid. She always liked a party, didn’t she, Jonathan?”
The visitors
looked from one to the other.
“Did she?” Jonathan said, and as if realising this was the wrong answer, continued, “Of course she did.”
“Dancing, whiskey,” Gil said.
“Daddy,” Flora said. “I’m not sure Nan would let—”
Gil lifted the fingers of his hand that lay on top of the cover, stopping her. “She’s not here . . . I decide.”
“Gil—” Louise began.
“Whiskey,” he said to Flora. “You know where.”
Flora hesitated, wondering still if she should put the kettle on instead. She hovered by the door. Gil paused, gathering strength and willpower. “Think of it like a wake, one where the corpse is still sitting up and talking.”
“I, for one,” Jonathan said, “could do with a whiskey.”
“And what’s a party without music, Gabriel?” Gil said. Gabriel was gripping one of the bedposts with both hands, holding the fish with the open mouth.
“I didn’t bring my guitar.”
“Shame,” Gil said, not taking his eyes from him. “Fetch the turntable from the sitting room. You’ll know what to put on. Jonathan, help him.” Gil closed his eyes, resting, but still none of them moved. “Go,” he said, and crooked an index finger to call Louise to him.
Flora picked her way across the books in the hall, like the unstable floor in a fairground fun house. In the kitchen she took the bottle of whiskey from under the sink. She could only find three tumblers. She knew there were more, but with Nan gone only a few hours already things seemed to be missing or in the wrong place. She rinsed out a couple of teacups.
Louise stood in the kitchen doorway, her high-heeled shoes dangling from her hand; she must have taken them off to clamber over the fallen books. “He wants your mother’s dress,” she said.
“Don’t come in.” Flora flapped her away.
“He said you’ll know what he means.”
“Broken glass,” Flora said, nodding towards the floor.
“Where exactly is Nan?” Louise looked around the kitchen. Streaks of white were sprayed out across the wall with long drips running from them, ending in a globule of sour cream where they had slowed and congealed. The salmon, its one upturned eye now dull, was still flopped in its dish. A half-eaten sandwich lay on the counter without a plate, and dirty knives and cups filled with grey tea littered the surfaces.
“Why does he want the dress?” Flora said.
“He said something about acknowledging his responsibility. I didn’t understand completely. Something else about how he should have said sorry properly, behaved better. Anyway, he made me promise to get it.”
Flora passed Louise the glasses, picked up the cups and the whiskey bottle, and went into her and Nan’s room. The dress was on the floor where she had let it fall after she’d last worn it.
In the sitting room, Jonathan had shifted the record player out from against the wall and was clearing a space so it could be carried into the bedroom. Gabriel was holding the album with the picture of the man sitting at the kitchen table—Townes Van Zandt.
Gil lay as Flora had left him in the bedroom—propped up on the pillows, his eyes shut. Louise crept forwards, Flora behind her. “Don’t worry, I’m still alive,” Gil said. “Have you got the dress? We can’t have a party without a dress.”
“I think he believes Ingrid is here,” Louise whispered to Flora, and louder, “Is the dress for Ingrid, Gil?”
“Of course it’s not for fucking Ingrid.” Gil’s eyes were open now. “It’s for me. It was the last thing she wore.” He fumbled with the top button of his pyjamas.
“Oh, I don’t know, Gil,” Louise said, looking at Flora, who thought that the old Nan, the pleasant, agreeable version, would have disagreed on principle with anything Louise thought.
“Of course,” Flora said, and went around to kneel on the bed. Gil’s hands dropped to the cover while Flora brought the loop of his arm sling over his head and undid his pyjama buttons.
“Couldn’t we put it over the top of them?” Louise said.
“Do you wear your dresses over your pyjamas?” Flora said. “No, I didn’t think so.”
The skin on her father’s chest followed the outline of his ribs, dipping in the cavities, stretching over bone. The beating pulse of his heart knocked against the thin membrane, and Flora had to look away. She pulled his pyjama collar over his right shoulder and helped him bend his elbow to get his arm out of the sleeve.
Jonathan and Gabriel carried the speakers and the record player into the bedroom and plugged it in. An acoustic guitar started, a man’s voice.
“Louder,” Gil whispered.
“Turn it up,” Flora said. Gabriel increased the volume and this time she remembered the music, not from when she’d put it on after she came home but from years ago: a boy of about Nan’s age sitting on the veranda teaching her the lyrics.
Gil’s skin was mottled, the inside of his arm bruised. She pulled the pyjama top out from behind his shoulders and inched his other arm out from the sleeve, being careful with his still-bandaged wrist. His eyes were screwed shut, his jaw working.
Louise held out the dress that Flora had draped over the chair. When Flora looked up, Gabriel and Jonathan were watching. “Why don’t you pour the whiskey?” she said.
“More,” Gil said.
“More whiskey?” Flora whispered, looking into his eyes, and he raised his to hers.
“More music,” he said, as she pulled the pink dress over her father’s head, smoothing it around him.
Gabriel turned the music up again so that it swamped them and the room, overwhelming the noise of the rain and Gil’s laboured breathing, which sounded like the last gasps of the mackerel on the road. Jonathan passed around the glasses and the two cups. And Gil, with a tumbler gripped in his fist, held up his shaking arm and, one by one, Louise, Jonathan, Gabriel, and lastly Flora chinked against it and drank.
Chapter 42
THE SWIMMING PAVILION, 1ST JULY 1992, 5:00 AM
Gil,
Yesterday evening Jonathan and I were the last customers in the bar of the Alpine Hotel in London. At the bar Jonathan ordered a whiskey. The woman who served him was stuffed into what the management must have thought was traditional Swiss costume: an apron and dirndl, the tight-laced bodice forcing her breasts over the top like risen muffins. Her hair was plaited and coiled around her head, and I wondered if they only hired barmaids with long blonde hair and whether that was legal. I asked for a glass of white wine, but Jonathan bought a bottle. We sat opposite each other on uncomfortable wooden chairs, a punched-out heart in each backrest.
“Happy birthday, again,” Jonathan said, and we chinked glasses.
Over dinner we’d talked about how he was still single, how his writing was going, and how he had to get up at six the next morning to catch a flight to Addis Ababa. I told him about the death and burial of Annie and we’d raised our glasses to her memory. There was only one subject left now.
“You need to decide,” he said. “Take him back or get divorced and move out. That house has always felt like Gil’s to me, stuffed with his mother’s old furniture and all those books. I remember being surprised there was even room for you and the girls, when they came along.”
“That’s because your oversized body was always hanging off either end of the sofa.” We drank. A wash of nostalgia for those months when I was pregnant with Nan swept over me. “Not to London, though,” I said, imagining you with Louise at that very moment in the same city, in her bed, in her body. I banished the image. “I don’t think the children would be happy moving. Nan wants to go into nursing, and we couldn’t leave yet, anyway, not until after her exams, and God knows about Flora. I’d have to suggest the opposite and then she might do what I wanted. I had to pay Nan more than the going rate to get her to babysit her sister tonight.” I drank again.
“You could come and live with me.”
I choked on the wine I was swallowing. “But you don’t even have a house, Jonathan. You
’ve been sleeping on people’s sofas for the whole of your life.”
“I do, in Ireland.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know.” He let go of his glass and rubbed both his hands through his hair so it stood up from his head. “Just that I want something better for you, that you deserve something better.”
“That’s what you’ve always said, but none of this is your fault. Everything that’s happened I’ve let happen. There’s no one else to blame except myself.”
“That’s not true and you know it. Gil had the affair,” Jonathan said. I glanced at him and then away. “Affairs,” he corrected. “And he chose to include that dedication; he wrote that book. Gil, always the risk taker.”
I stared at my glass, didn’t dare look him in the eye. “But I knew what he was like,” I said. “You warned me that first night at his party, remember?”
“Did I?” Jonathan waved his empty whiskey glass at the woman behind the bar. She clasped the top of her bodice and pulled it upwards with both hands; it didn’t move. She came over with another whiskey on a silver tray.
“If you can’t blame Gil,” Jonathan said, “then you should blame me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I reintroduced them, Gil and Louise. At a party he invited me to. I brought her along. They didn’t like each other much before that, did they? God, remember your wedding? I never thought the two of them would turn into something serious. He’s an idiot. I’m sorry.”
“I have to make myself stop thinking about them. What they’re doing, where they are.” I rolled the stem of my glass between my fingers. “It’s torture, even after all these months.”
“But Ingrid,” he said, and he reached out his hand to still mine. “He’s not with her anymore. I thought you’d heard.” I could see the shock on my face reflected in the surprise on his. “I haven’t seen him since we argued, but I spoke to Louise. She left him weeks ago. She told me she was going to phone you.”
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