by Jane Shemilt
I’d never done that before. It must have been because he kept using my name, like a reprimand.
My hands were still full of socks. I stood up and opened the top drawer of Ed’s bureau to put them away. I had to hurry in case he came back. He would hate me being in his room. Why had he lied about the gala? What had he been doing the times he said he had been rowing? The drawer already bulged with socks. He must have been pushing the dirty ones back in, then. I pulled them out to make space. My hands met something small and hard. I pulled it out of the folds of a tie where it had been hidden. It was a little glass vial with tiny black writing on the side, and a yellow ring around the neck where it could be filed open to access the opiate inside.
Chapter 24
DORSET, 2011
THIRTEEN MONTHS LATER
On New Year’s Eve, Ted’s sleeping presence disturbs the morning. Bertie paces restlessly around my feet; let outside in the field, he pushes his nose into the wet hedge and sneezes. Briars attach to the curled hair of his thick spaniel ears and he stands patiently to be unhooked. Back in the cottage I make the first coffee of the day and he lies at the foot of the stairs with his nose on the bottom step, whining softly. Returning to the shed, I find the silver dollar plants that Mary gave me yesterday. I had seen them growing by her front door.
“Take the whole lot—glad to be rid of them. Here,” she had said, handing me a bucket of corn, “while you’re about it, feed the hens for me.”
The dried seedcase of a silver dollar in my hand is veined and opalescent, sheathing the arrowlike seeds inside. My thoughts, planted a while back, grow quickly. The triptych will have fluid boundaries, or perhaps be painted as if on the inside of a cut globe, showing seeds becoming flowers becoming fruit, then seeds again in a flowing circle. I sketch the outline of a plan.
It’s noon before I stop and go back to the house. Ted is in the kitchen. He has found the dressing gown that Sam left; its soft black folds hang loosely. His face is greasy with sweat; his hair has fallen forward in separate wet strands.
“I feel awful.” His voice judders as his teeth hit together. “Must have picked up a bug somewhere. Jesus. I’m going to be sick.” He stumbles to the toilet and I hear him retch repeatedly. He climbs the stairs shakily and I follow him up, then he falls back into bed. I turn his pillow over and open the window, but he shivers and pulls the duvet around himself, so I close it again and pull the curtains together.
“Headache? Abdo pain?” His pulse is fast, his skin is burning.
“It’s not meningitis. Or appendicitis.” For a moment his lips are tugged into a smile, and then he closes his eyes. “Thirsty . . .”
The weight of his damp head is familiar. After a few sips he settles back with a sigh. The dark afternoon passes slowly. I take up more water, slices of apple, sweet tea. He wakes briefly; once he holds my hand and won’t let it go for minutes at a stretch, mutters, then falls asleep again. I hear voices later, and assume he is better, talking on his cell. When I go into the bedroom, he is sitting naked in the chair, staring at the curtains. His eyes are unnaturally bright and his hands shake as he points to their stripes.
“She’s in there,” he says.
For a second I think he means he has seen Mary across the road through the lit window of her kitchen.
“She’s behind those bars.” He points to the stripy curtains and his voice gets louder. “She wants our help. She’s in prison.”
I feel his forehead: blazing hot. He grasps my hand with his sweaty one.
“Help her,” he says and his voice shakes. “It’s my fault.”
He is ill. There is no need to feel frightened by his wild voice and hot hands. I give him acetaminophen and water. He holds my hand tightly, his eyes burn.
“It was my fault. I wasn’t there. She’s calling me, listen.”
Part of me, the unreasonable part that believes in magic and ghosts, wants to ask him what she is saying and how her voice sounds. Instead I say as calmly as I can, “The temperature’s making you hallucinate. She’s not there, Ted.”
“You don’t understand. It was my fault.” His voice gets quieter. He is whispering now. I have to bend close to hear. “She told me, but I didn’t try hard enough.”
“Told you what, Ted? Try hard enough to do what?”
He closes his eyes and his head dips low. He shrugs and mutters. I run a cool bath and help him in. His body is gaunt; his penis curled small in its nest of gray hair. His ribs jut out; his back is pale and sweat beads the vertebrae. The wings of his scapulae look like knives. I cup water against his skin and let it flow down his back. “With my body, I thee worship.” Did we say that? Did we promise it would be forever? I can only remember the warmth of his hand holding mine. I thought promises were irrelevant.
Back in bed he murmurs words, and among them I catch “Naomi” and “stop” and “please.” He rolls his head from side to side. Every half an hour I try to give him water, I sponge his forehead down. Later I change the soaking sheets. He sits in the chair, head drooping, jerking up, falling again.
“Sorry . . . sorry,” he mumbles.
I help him back into bed and he lies down again with a little groan of relief, the kind he used to make when he came home and settled into his chair after a long day. But I don’t live in his home anymore. I’m not his wife. The promises were more fragile than I thought. His eyelids drift down, and he sleeps.
In the kitchen I see Michael has sent me a message for New Year’s; he is on his own, missing me. I text back that I miss him too, and tell him that Ted is here, ill.
The high-pitched voice of the broadcaster on the radio announces that it’s midnight in Trafalgar Square. Big Ben tolls slowly against a background of explosions and screams. In the silence of the dark garden the champagne cork flies into the air with a hollow pop, then falls with a quiet rustle in the wet grass. I raise the bottle.
“Happy New Year, sweetheart.”
The cold lip of the bottle bumps my teeth and the champagne tastes sour. She can’t hear me. I tip the rest on the grass. Another year begins.
IN THE MORNING Ted’s temperature is down. He eats toast and Marmite, drinks cup after cup of tea, and sleeps again. The painting evolves. The narrow seeds glow black in their silvery envelopes, their future forms hidden. What secret is Ted guarding? He said it was his fault, but what did he mean? There’s a leathery rose hip lying with a pile of twigs on the bench. The cut I make with my penknife reveals the pyramidal seeds packed in rows, fur-tipped, unripe.
At night Ted sleeps on. I pull back the curtains in his room and open the window. It has stopped raining and the air feels fresh. I dream of black seeds falling, rosebuds cut before they have bloomed.
The next morning, as I come back into the kitchen from the shed, the air smells warmly of toast and coffee. On the table, Mary’s plum jam spills down the side of the jar in swollen drops. Ted looks strangely large in the kitchen; his legs stretch to the other side of the table, hairy ankles and huge feet. For a second he is a stranger, and then he smiles.
“I feel great. My temperature’s gone and I’m starving.” He gestures toward the toast crumbs on the table and laughs. “I couldn’t wait.”
My face feels too stiff to smile. My space. My kitchen. My food. Then I feel ashamed. “I’m glad you’re better.”
“What have you been doing this morning?” he asks as he butters toast thickly and spreads jam. Does he really think we can go back a year in an instant?
“Working.”
“Working again?” He speaks with his mouth full, sounding surprised. “In Bridport?”
“Painting, I mean.”
“Ah. That kind of work. Sounds fun. Can I have a look?”
Fun? I can see the corner of the shed from the kitchen window. It contains almost everything that pulled me back into the world. I sense him realizing he has overstepped a
line.
“Okay. Maybe later,” he says and stretches luxuriously. He has shaved and his face looks fuller. “Thanks for looking after me. I’ll take you to lunch. Is that Beach Hut place still there?”
I cross my arms more tightly. “Two nights ago you said it was your fault,” I tell him. “What did you mean?”
“Did I?” He looks wary and hunches forward to sip his coffee, watching me.
I carry on, although his closed face doesn’t want me to. “You thought you could hear Naomi calling beyond the curtains.”
“Christ. I must have been ill.” His laugh sounds forced.
In that instant I know he is hiding something. I want to spring at him and claw out the truth. Though it will be old truth, too late coming, I have to know.
I sense him watching me closely. “I’ve tired you out already, Jenny. When I saw you the other morning, you looked so well. It’s my fault.”
What exactly had been his fault? My heart is beating hard.
“I’m fine.” I will have to be careful. My glance encompasses him as I look out of the window. If I question him further now, he’ll clam up. I’ll wait, pick my moment.
“I’ll have a bath and get dressed, then we’ll go, okay?” He sounds cheerful again.
“Okay.”
Later, we walk along the beach, our feet crunching on shingle. Ted stoops to pick up pebbles as we go. He looks at each closely, collecting the light-colored ones that shine like fat pearls veined with gold.
“When I was in South Africa I went to a stone market.” He shakes the little pile in his cupped palm as he speaks, and the stones knock together. “At the back of some sheds were lumps of gray Kalahari picture stone. There were piles at each stage of being ground down; all the time the stones were getting better, brighter, losing the edges.” He looks at me for a second, looks away. “Like us.”
“I don’t buy that.” I take a flat white pebble from his hand and skim it hard across the water. “Suffering doesn’t improve anything.” The stone jumps three times, white against the gray, then disappears into a wave. “It makes you sad; it makes you bitter.”
“You’ve changed, Jenny. What have you learned here on your own?”
“I’ve learned to survive.” The gulls wheel above our heads, screaming into the wind.
It’s crowded in the Beach Hut. A Christmas tree still stands in the corner. The lights and tinsel look tawdry in the clear gray light that comes off the sea through the windows. Ted leads the way to the same table where I had sat with Michael before, and I think about Michael’s eyes and his hands as I watch Ted walk to the counter, organize food, and return with a bottle of wine. He pours for both of us and takes a long drink from his glass, in the way someone thirsty might swallow water. He breathes out heavily and looks at me.
“Well, I suppose we survived in different ways, didn’t we?” Ted says. He begins to talk about South Africa, the hospital where he had initiated research, the drought, the wasted children, the rare brain tumors. He doesn’t mention Beth.
I look at him, at the thin shoulders and the new lines between his nose and his mouth. It hasn’t been easy for him either. I pour him another glass and he drinks again. When the food comes, blood from the thick steaks is seeping into the potatoes. I can’t manage anything, but Ted eats as though he is starving; at the end he wipes his plate with bread, and leans back with a sigh. He smiles and raises his glass, nodding at me.
“I needed that. Cheers, Jenny.”
“So,” I speak slowly, “do you want to tell me what Naomi told you?”
“About?” He puts his glass down. His eyes narrow slightly.
I have to be careful. I think back to all those counseling courses and the language we were taught to use as trainee GPs.
“When you were delirious, you said Naomi had told you something; that you didn’t try hard enough and that it was your fault.” I make my voice unemotional. “It’s obviously been on your mind. Do you want to tell me about it now?”
Ted stares at me a moment, then his face relaxes slightly.
“The thing is,” he says and takes a quick sip of wine, “I did tell you. At least—”
“You told me?”
“Yes, you and the police.”
He is defending himself already and that makes me frightened.
“What are you talking about?”
“Naomi taking drugs.”
I want to laugh. After all that, he’s got it wrong. “That was Ed.” It must have been the illness, perhaps he is still ill. I say again more carefully, “Ed took drugs. That’s why he went to rehab.”
He replies, speaking more slowly, “That was later. Naomi tried drugs before that.”
I stare at him and he continues. “Well, you remember I told you that Naomi took drugs once with friends? We were on our own; I think the boys were away. It was hot—”
“That? But that was nothing.”
Summer. Eighteen months ago. The windows were open and the warm air had come in carrying the scent of barbecues and the faint tang of rubbish from the garbage cans outside. The boys were camping in Cornwall with the school. Naomi was playing tennis with friends. We had been drinking iced coffee after supper when he told me.
“Just once,” he’d said. “At a party.” He’d put his hand on mine, warm, reassuring. “All kids experiment with their friends. It’s what they do. It’s not a big deal. She’s promised never again. Don’t tell her that you know, or she won’t trust me anymore; she doesn’t want you to worry.”
“You said it was just an experiment.” I stare at Ted now.
He flushes and looks away while my mind races back to that moment. Experimenting wasn’t the same as taking drugs, I’d decided. Naomi would be safe, because she was Naomi, my bright sensible daughter just doing one of those things kids do when they are growing up. Michael had asked me about drugs early on, one evening while we were waiting for Ted to come home from work, and it had seemed irrelevant then; I’d even worried he might think she really took drugs and would waste time looking in the wrong places.
“Jenny, did Naomi smoke?”
“No.”
“Drink?”
“Not really.”
“Drugs?”
“No. Well, actually she did, once.”
“Yes?”
“A few months ago. Just that once, with friends at a party. She told Ted. It was just kids experimenting with weed. Not since. I’d know.”
“I’ll need the names.”
I hadn’t known the names. In the end Michael had asked her friends, and then all the kids in her school. No one owned up. It had all petered out.
The waiter appears and stretches strong brown arms over the table, collecting plates and cutlery; a few spots cluster at his hairline but otherwise his skin is smooth. About sixteen, seventeen, he looks as if he swims in his spare time, and wouldn’t touch a cigarette. Ted asks him to bring coffee; he nods seriously and leaves.
“Why were you thinking about drugs when you were ill, if they were so unimportant?”
He smiles briefly. “I was ranting.”
“Why, Ted?”
As he looks away from my gaze, his mouth becomes tighter. He starts to stroke his right eyebrow with his fingers, back and forth.
“I kept coming back to it in Africa. There were kids hanging around on the street corners in the township where the clinics were, or lying on the sidewalks, completely stoned. Children. It began to haunt me that I’d taken her word and not followed it up more.”
“But just weed, only once, Ted . . .”
The color creeps into his cheeks again; he shifts in his seat and looks down.
“Weed was before, Jenny. It was ketamine.”
I hear the clinking of glasses and the clatter of knives faintly. It was as though a blanket had fallen between us and the
other people in the restaurant.
Ketamine. My face feels hot with shock.
“Fuck. How is it possible that you didn’t tell me?” My voice is rising and the young couple at the table next to us cough quietly and stare straight ahead.
“I told the police.” He glances at me quickly, then looks down again. “It was when I went to see them to tell them about . . . about Beth.” He pours some more wine, tips it quickly into his mouth. “I told them about the ketamine then. They didn’t think it was relevant, but they said they’d look into it.”
“They?”
“Michael left me with a couple of policemen on duty. They took the details. I can’t remember their names.”
“And . . . ?”
“Nothing. No one got back, so I assumed it wasn’t important.”
“Anything could have happened to that information—they might have thought it wasn’t relevant, they could have forgotten to file it or not filed it properly . . .” Inside my head it is hot and black; the blackness is swelling and filling my throat so it’s difficult to speak.
“Policemen are professionals,” he says.
“Professionals make mistakes.” He looks away at that, tapping the table with his fingertips.
The boy comes back, bringing the coffee. He places the tray very carefully in front of me and unloads the little jugs of milk and coffee. He smiles and leaves. Pouring coffee, I remember Michael’s advice: one step at a time, unravel each thread from the beginning.
“How did you find out in the first place?” I ask.
“It was when she did the internship with me in my lab. The summer holidays before her last term. Remember?”
Of course I did. I was the one who had encouraged her.
“Good for your CV, darling. It’s a chance to find which it’ll be, acting or medicine. You can go on ward rounds with Dad if you go in early with him. Ed did it.”
She had jumped at the idea. She took pride in working at Ted’s hospital. As the days of the internship wore on, she’d gotten up earlier and earlier, spending hours putting on makeup, getting ready, looking the part.