I have dug up the big patch of lupines that grow beside the long-suffering willow, so ancient that it must be staked against collapse. I’ll put them on the bonfire. I have never cared for lupines. Named for the wolf because they suck the goodness out of the earth. I’m annoyed to see them prosper.
Gloria came out for a chat while I watched them burning.
“But I love lupines,” she said. “How can you burn such beautiful things?”
“Eye of the beholder.”
“Even so, Betty. They could have gone to someone in the village. Lots of people like them, you know.”
Her cheeks are flushed, she has a tendril of silky hair falling just so, and the soft cushions of her lips are rose pink. Lovely, lovely Gloria, step into the fire, why don’t you?
Henry is planning a trip for Gloria’s birthday. Three luxurious days in a child-friendly, country-house hotel in the Wye Valley. On-call babysitters for Noah, a romantic dinner for the two of them, and a lovely walk through the Forest of Dean. He has bought one of those front-pack things to carry Noah so that the child can look ahead and enjoy the walk, too. Noah can walk all by himself now, but his legs are short, and he gives up easily. Henry says Gloria deserves a break, and he wants to spoil her.
At last, something for me to look forward to! Their absence, and Pipits all to myself. I think of changing the locks, boarding up the windows, seeing them off with a gun when they return. Kids’ stuff, I know, and none of it would work anyway. Ridiculous thoughts. But they occur to me because I am sick with the longing to win, to have my way.
18
I WOKE THIS MORNING HUGGING my new scheme to myself. What joy. I have a plan, a wonderful, brave plan. For some days now I have despaired that a good enough solution might never occur to me. And then it came, unforced, gracefully giving form to what had previously been just fragmented notions. It came in a series of images, like stills from a film, a picture board of the story from beginning to end. I see so clearly now what must, what will happen. And what with Henry and Gloria soon to be off on their little trip, the timing couldn’t be better.
They have driven me to it, but that hardly matters anymore, since I am so entranced with the idea. I know now that from the moment Pipits and I found each other, we were destined for this ending, entwined together at the last, the one never to be parted from the other.
After it is done and there is no going back, Gloria and Henry will understand at last the true value of what they stole from me. There will be worthless regrets and futile tears.
I cannot claim originality. It is an age-old solution for star-crossed lovers; Cleopatra and Mark Antony come to mind, Tristan and Isolde, Pyramus and Thisbe, and, trite though it may be to include them, Romeo and Juliet.
If I cannot have Pipits, then no one can. We will go down together, House and me, become the story Cold-Upton people will tell their children. They will remember the beauty of the Stash house, search in our ruins for an answer to the disaster. There must always be an answer, mustn’t there? I will be the heroine, and Gloria will be pitied. The tragedy will damage her, wipe from her face her white-toothed smile.
No matter what comes after, Stash land will forever be a shrine to love. There will be no grave, no stone to memory, but people will pass by and think to themselves, Elizabeth Stash. They will make up stories about me, imagine, perhaps that I haunt the land where Pipits once stood.
The ancient Greeks had it right. They did not shy away from tragedy as a solution to their problems, and neither will I. I do not see it as a tragedy. In fact, I am in a sort of ecstasy, buoyed up with anticipation. Very few humans are capable of committing murder; it’s the same for suicide, but I have the strength for both.
As I sat in Alice’s bath, the water cooling to tepid, I thought of how bad luck has followed me all my life. It has been a constant, defying the law of averages, the rule of chance. Despite my efforts, Henry is alive and well, back to good health, and Gloria is still a nauseatingly contented wife and mother. And I think of Bert, who so easily gave up getting a fair slice of our cake but now has a whole other one all to himself.
I have begun to wonder if luck is born in us. Is there a gene for it, perhaps? Or is it the soul that determines our fortunes, preordained by some outlandish force? I don’t like that idea; it would mean that we have no power to act for ourselves, that our will has no point or purpose. In any case, it is hard to believe there is such a thing as a soul, a phantom in our bodies that exists without weight or form. Science informs us that within our bodies, swimming in our blood among our organs, there is not even something the size of the tiniest bean unaccounted for.
I wander through Alice’s deficient house, counting down the hours until I will take my leave from it. I go from bathroom to kitchen, through all the rooms that are dim now in my self-imposed twilight. Lately, whatever the time of day, I keep all the curtains drawn, the doors locked. I know that I am being spied on by that dog creature. If I so much as open a window, he is there trying to catch my eye. And I’ve noticed people in the village staring at me lately. They are too curious for my liking.
It hardly matters now, though. None of the old concerns matter now. Nothing is forever, after all, not for any of us. People are scared to focus on their own deaths; the end of the world might come before then, and they will be saved.
People are fools.
I would rather sacrifice my life in a grand design of my own making than wait for death to tag me. I will cheat fate out of whatever ending it had planned for me. It would not, I think, have been a kind one. I choose to fast-forward, to take my own route to sweet oblivion.
Gloria doesn’t call in on me much these days. She prefers me to visit her at Pipits. She says I keep the woodstove so low at Alice’s house that it’s too cold for Noah.
“And why are curtains drawn?” she sighed at her last visit. “Why not let the light in? Are you sure you’re all right, Betty?”
“I’m fine, never better. I’m just fed up with looking out at that bloody dog.”
“He’s obviously decided you’re the one for him. Why don’t you give him a chance, let him in, feed him up, get to know him?”
Her advice blows through me, a mean little wind that leaves a twinge. Who does she think she is? I will not change my way of life to suit Gloria. I won’t house the dog or fire up the bloody boiler. The cold helps to lift the fog in my head. In fact, the cold helped to clear my mind, so that my beautiful plan just floated in on my shivers. It was wonderful how it took root, grew stems, flowered.
“I hope you know that you can talk to me about anything,” Gloria said with her therapist’s hat on.
She implies that I am drinking too much, that a little intervention might help. There is, as always, a down-to-earth practicality in her voice, but I hear the criticism in it.
Henry is not much better; he makes no genuine effort to be nice to me. He is a touch tart in his comments, and there is usually something he must urgently attend to in his studio when I am around.
It’s all to do with their guilt, of course. Without my presence reminding them that they have stolen my inheritance, they wouldn’t need to feel guilty. They could revel in their ownership of Pipits, indulge themselves in knocking it about, without me hindering their plans.
Fate has shoved me into a corner, but it is not in my nature to squirm there while it prods at me. I am a practical person, I take note of the facts, and the facts are clear: my hunger for Pipits will never be satisfied while Gloria is allowed to play at being its mistress. I must, and I will, take action.
Gloria and Henry will get nothing of mine. My will, safely lodged with Poppy Jordan, has seen to that. In it, a stroke of luck for my old college; to Girton, the college of Queens, I leave both my money and my properties.
I have decided on Gloria’s birthday for the event. It is fitting, I think, and the little Bygone family will be on the break that Henry thinks Gloria so deserves. Of course you have guessed that it will be a fire. A magnificent
fire. A burning that will leave the clean ashes of my bones melded with those of Pipits. It will be more transformation than death, a lit candle to a pool of wax, alchemy. The thought of it makes me moan a little.
Gloria and Henry will never understand the majesty of my deed. They will, though, be sorry for it. Its reverberations will have an afterlife. She will accuse him of turning me out. She will say it never would have happened if I had been allowed to live in our family home. Henry will feel aggrieved at the criticism, insist that she wanted me gone, too. Oh, the guilt of being a bad sister, a critical brother-in-law. They will discover how it feels to live as I have lived, to show the world an accepting face while the grit of loss chews at their guts.
* * *
I AM EXPERIENCING PAINS in my chest, fisted-up knots of it that whip at me when I inhale, so that I have to breathe shallowly to resist them. At Gloria’s insistence, the GP ordered a blood test, but no inflammation was found. He says, with surprise in his voice, that my chest sounds clear as a bell.
He took an age to okay the prescription of my sleeping pills on his screen, and seemed loath to let me go. I was too thin, he insisted. How much did I drink in a day, he asked. The man is persistent, I’ll give him that.
“As much as I want,” I snapped. “Some days nothing at all.”
“Well, if it becomes a problem, I could refer you to someone who could help.”
“My sister offered the same,” I say. “But you’re both wrong. I can stop drinking anytime I want to.”
“Have you tried, Elizabeth? Have you tried?”
I don’t recall giving him permission to call me Elizabeth. I do not even know his Christian name. As we part, he reminds me again about the counseling.
“The pain you’re experiencing is stress, most likely,” he says. “Have you thought any more about seeing someone?”
Honestly, such airy-fairy ideas from a clinician. Physical pain is just that, physical. You might as well say that the stomach is responsible for feelings of happiness. You might as well say a counselor can cure cancer.
When I leave the surgery, the dog is there. He follows me to Pipits, where I am to have lunch with Gloria. I walk briskly up the drive, and he trots determinedly behind me. I attempt to shoo him away, but he follows me to the door and plonks himself down on the grass, looking offended.
“Stress is more powerful than you think,” Gloria says. “You’ve been through a lot, what with the divorce, and Alice, of course.”
She doesn’t mention seducing Henry, stealing Alice, or the befriending of my ex-husband and his absurd new wife; she never mentions what she has put me through. My sister prefers not to look at the thoughtless side of her nature. That would make her unlovable, wouldn’t it? I let Gloria’s barb pierce deep and remind myself that soon she won’t matter, nothing will matter.
After lunch she pours me a coffee and hands me a paint chart. “For the landings and halls,” she says. “What do you think?”
What I think is that it will never happen, but I feign interest in the colors.
“What are you thinking of?” I ask as I look at the samples.
“Well, Henry likes the Russian red, but I want yellow. Yellow like the sun.”
“Yellow is good,” I say. “Choose the yellow.”
Noah is in his high chair, his face plastered with his lunchtime puree.
“Avocado and beef,” Gloria says, attempting to wipe it off while Noah struggles.
I am about to remark on what extraordinary combinations she feeds to her child when I feel the floor shudder beneath my feet. Seconds pass as I try to work out what the shaking means. I see Gloria’s puzzled face, watch her grab for Noah. Then a great rolling roar like the loudest thunder ever fills the air, and I look in amazement as the kitchen wall buckles, and the room darkens.
Suddenly I am no longer sitting in my chair but on my feet. Dust is filling up the room, the window glass is exploding, and everything is on the move. There is something hot and wet on my feet; the coffeepot has fallen over, and its contents have spilled onto the table and leaked to the floor in a small lake. My blood has stilled and I cannot move. I think of earthquakes, of the ground opening up and swallowing me whole.
It takes an age for things to settle, for the creaking, whooshing sound to stop. Through a huge hole in the kitchen wall, I see the great trunk of the copper beech tree leaning at a strange angle against what is left of the wall; a couple of its branches reach rudely into the kitchen, and one has crossed the room and smashed into the dresser, cracking it in half. There is broken china on the floor, and Noah’s high chair is in bits.
My racing heartbeat slows as I realize what has happened. The copper beech has lost its grip on the earth and fallen into the front of the house. It is huge, bigger now than it ever looked when it was upright. Its longest, thickest bough lies across the kitchen, dividing the room in two. Gloria and Noah are on one side of it, and I’m on the other. Extraordinary that it has missed all three of us.
Glass is still loosening from the windows, chinking onto the floor, the sound of ice cracking. Some of the stone flags have lifted, so that I can see the joists and the earth beneath them. Outside, a tribe of crows screeches in outrage.
Henry appears at the kitchen’s back door.
“Oh my God,” he yells. “Is everyone okay?”
He takes a wailing Noah from Gloria and guides her around the trembling branches to the outside of the house.
“Betty, are you coming?” he shouts. “It’s not safe to stay inside.”
I am shaken, it’s true. Still, I cannot keep the smile from my face. My copper beech, my beautiful tree, my ally has started the process, sacrificed itself. It is on my side, preparing the way for Pipits and me. We will do the job together.
“Why is she smiling?” Henry shouts at Gloria.
“It’s shock,” Gloria says.
She has tears streaming down her cheeks, and her face is covered in dust. Henry starts to rock Noah, who is squalling hysterically. Gloria touches his cheek, then comes back into the ruined kitchen, climbing over the branch to get to me. I hear her skirt rip against the rough bark and can’t keep myself from laughing.
“For God’s sake,” Henry exclaims.
“She’s in shock,” Gloria repeats, putting her arm around me. “It’s all right, Betty. We are all all right.”
Henry can’t resist putting me in my place. “I told you,” he crows. “I knew the bloody thing wasn’t safe.”
Two days later and a crew of men are in. Chain saws are buzzing, transforming my beautiful, brave tree into a hill of logs. Drifts of sawdust powder the ground. Soon there will be scaffolding that will go from ground to roof, past the kitchen, past my bedroom, past the attic. The front of the house must be shored up, made safe. I console myself with the knowledge that their efforts are pointless. Soon, very soon, there will be nothing left to shore up.
* * *
THERE HASN’T BEEN AS much damage as we first thought,” Henry says. “No reason to miss out on our break.”
“No, you should go,” I say. “You deserve it.”
“Three days, three wonderful days,” he says. “And the forecast is good. A little sun, and dry. What more could we ask for? In any case, it’s too late to get our money back.”
“Well, reason enough,” I say encouragingly.
They have been cooking in a borrowed microwave, boiling their water on a little camping stove. “Real food,” Gloria says. “Can’t wait.”
On Friday morning, I start putting what I will need into one of Alice’s shopping bags. Candles and a box of those extra-long matches, fire lighters, and a cigarette lighter just in case the matches are not up to the job. I put out the flask I will fill with my cocktail of tea, and the Temazepam I have been hoarding, my lovely sleeping draught. I add a square or two of chocolate to take away what is sure to be the bitter taste. Then I slip in the card I bought for Gloria’s birthday, unsigned. My reason for going to the house if, by chance, someone shou
ld be there. She will never see it, but a nice touch, I think.
The Bygones are to leave this afternoon, but the workmen plan to work through Saturday until the light has gone, so I intend to be with Pipits on Sunday morning, Gloria’s birthday. I have decided not to spend Saturday night there, too much time in love’s company, and my resolve might weaken.
What a nice homecoming it will be for Gloria and Henry. Such a pity that I won’t see their faces when they turn into the drive and view my handiwork; I picture shock and disbelief, a satisfying panic. They will be lost for words, until the words they never thought to speak will surface from somewhere deep inside them, words hard enough to bruise the soft palates of their fickle mouths.
I’m so excited, I can hardly wait now. Sleep escapes me, but I scarcely seem to need it. The occasional snooze in a chair, a moment or two of dozing fills me with energy. If it weren’t for the pains in my chest, I would be feeling better than ever.
I am up and about on Sunday morning before the St. Dubricius bells get going. Mother was a regular attender at our village church. She sang in the choir and was part of the flower-arranging rotation. Gloria still goes. She says the congregation is down to ten or so these days, and that’s on a good day. Henry accompanies her sometimes, although he claims that he is not a believer.
“I am a spiritual person, though,” he insists.
I notice another fracture in Alice’s bedroom ceiling. It is deeper than the others, a thick black mark and widening by the hour. Just as well that I am getting out.
I take special care with my appearance. I wash my hair, apply a deep red lipstick, and select the green dress that Bert bought for me in a different life. Slipping it over my head, I feel his presence, remember him sliding the zip, saying that the color looked good on me. I hardly know the person that I was then, hardly remember the life I used to have, the life that is Helen’s now. For a moment I am flooded with an overwhelming sense of loss. I take one of Alice’s ugly flower vases from the kitchen shelf and hurl it to the floor. The wire inside me unwinds. I feel better.
The Beloveds Page 18