In Her Shadow

by Douglas, Louise

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  I glanced at my father. He had turned off the tap and was draining the hose, winding it around his shoulder. Water pooled on the concrete patio stones at his feet. He didn’t like looking back at bad times. He didn’t like Mum thinking about them either.

  I reached over and took my mother’s hand. It was large and dry, knobbly with knuckle, the skin age-spotted. My parents had always been old. I had never known them young.

  ‘Look at you, both sitting there with long faces,’ Dad said briskly. ‘It’s a beautiful day. Why don’t we walk into Trethene and get ourselves a sandwich and a bun. My treat, eh?’

  ‘That’s a good idea, Malcolm,’ said Mum, and she manoeuvred herself awkwardly out of the chair, picked up the teacups, and disappeared into the dark of the house.

  My father rubbed his beard. ‘Your mum don’t like talking about that Brecht business,’ he said.

  ‘I know, Dad, I’m sorry. But—’

  ‘Leave the past alone,’ said my father. ‘No good can come of picking the scabs off old wounds. None at all.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  IT WAS DECEMBER, the month after my seventeenth birthday. The peninsula was fogbound. The air was chill, even in my bedroom, and an all-pervading damp crept into everything – clothing, the walls, dreams, bones. For days there was no end to the fog and I hated it. I felt choked, strangled by it. I wanted to claw my way out, to keep walking until I found a place where I could step through its curtains out into daylight. At Goonhilly, the satellite dishes, smudged and indistinct, turned their huge faces to the skies, seeing through the persistent greyness as clearly as if it were not there, but on the ground the people struggled. The fog disorientated me. I found myself lost, more than once, close to home on lanes I’d known all my life. I didn’t know which way to turn, which path led home, which to the cliff edge. It was easy to imagine murderers in the mist, men with knives and cudgels, slit-throats and vagabonds, and the icy-cold touch of ghost-fingers on my cheeks, lifting my hair, whispering fog-breath secrets in my ear.

  Rather than walking up the hill in the early-morning dark, I waited each morning at the bus stop at the far end of Cross Hands Lane for the school bus and heard the clattering rumble of its engine long before the twin yellow circles of its headlamps materialized out of the gloom. Ellen was always on the bus already, sitting in the seat by the window, second row from the back, saving the space beside her for me. Until the morning when she was not there.

  The day before, Mr Brecht came to the school early to pick up Ellen and take her home.

  ‘You go too, Hannah,’ said our teacher, when she read the message delivered by a younger child. ‘Look after her,’ she said, folding the piece of paper neatly into four, as if it were too important to be screwed up and thrown into the waste-paper basket. Everyone, the rest of the class, looked down, embarrassed, as Ellen and I packed up our things, picked up our coats, and left the room.

  ‘See you,’ Ellen said quietly. There was a murmur of farewells.

  Ellen’s father was waiting outside the main entrance, smoking a cigarette in the fog. He was wearing a long coat and a scarf. He looked like an actor in a film. His breath was clouding around him together with the wreath of smoke, giving him a ghostly shroud. The planes of his face had sunk over the last months. Dark shadows cloaked his eyes, and his demeanour was that of a man on the brink of losing everything. I wished I had some way of letting him know that he was not alone; that I understood how he was suffering and admired him for it. Perhaps he did know. Perhaps one day in the future he would tell me that my unspoken devotion was what had seen him through those terrible days.

  He looked up when the movement of the door caught his eye, and Ellen ran into his arms. He embraced her, hugged her close, and I held back and picked at my nail varnish.

  ‘You have to be brave, Schatzi,’ Mr Brecht was saying. ‘I need you to be strong for the next few hours because God knows how we’re going to get through them.’ He said something else to her, in German. Ellen nodded and stepped back, holding her head high.

  Mr Brecht’s car was parked by the main school entrance, beneath a sign which said Strictly No Parking. Ellen got into the front seat, beside her father. None of the Brechts ever used a seat belt. I sat behind Ellen and strapped myself in. The car was low-slung with leather seats and a hi-fi system that filled the interior with weird, windy classical music I did not recognize but it pulled at the strings of my heart.

  Half a dozen twiggy stems of red carnations wrapped in florist’s paper lay on the back seat of the car beside me. They had a sickly, peppery scent and seemed sad, desperate flowers. I picked them up and held them on my lap, for something to do.

  Mr Brecht drove fast through the fog but I was not afraid. I would have trusted him to drive me anywhere. Ellen sat still in front of me, with her hands folded together, staring straight ahead.

  ‘Will it be soon?’ she asked her father and Mr Brecht nodded and said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘I hope it’s not today,’ Ellen said. ‘Mama doesn’t like the fog.’ She began to cry, silently. This was not like her. I could see the tears running down her cheeks and falling into her lap. I put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed through the thick material of her padded coat, but Ellen did not react at all.

  It was strange driving along the roads that I knew so well, and everything grey and blurred or altogether disappeared. I couldn’t see beyond the wire fence that enclosed Culdrose but I knew the aircraft hangars and the helicopters and the fuel tankers would still be in there, doing their work. Somewhere behind that fence my father would be sitting in his plain office with the notices squared up and pinned to the board, his uniform shirt straining at the buttons; a functional desk lamp, a metal waste-paper basket, a telephone. He would be organizing the movement of personnel and equipment, ticking off tasks on the schedule in front of him, being jolly and bossy. He wouldn’t know that his daughter was driving by on the road beyond on the back seat of a low-slung German car. He didn’t know that Ellen’s mother was about to die, any time now.

  At the traffic-lights we were caught in a jam and that felt even more strange, all the other people in all the other cars going about their business as if this were just another normal day and not the day when Anne Brecht would die. We drove very slowly past an accident – a car shunted into the back of a milk-float. People were standing around, blowing on their hands, shaking their heads. Shards of glass lay amongst the milk-pools. The milkman was still wearing his cap over a woolly balaclava. A tiny little Christmas tree with tiny little twinkling electric lights stood on the dashboard of the milk-float. I wondered what Mrs Brecht was thinking and what it felt like to know that, in a few hours, there would be no more life. Was she afraid? Was she praying, right now, for grace – hoping to live long enough to see Christmas, or the swallows returning for one last time and the primroses opening up their little yellow faces in the banks at the side of the road? Was she thinking about the things she would never see, or those she had seen already? Was she thinking at all?

  I thought that if I were in her position, I would not allow myself to die. I would keep myself alive through willpower. I would make myself take one more breath, and then another. I would not let go of life, not give it up, never. Surreptitiously I unwrapped a fruit gum from the packet in my pocket, prised it loose from its partner with my thumbnail and put it into my mouth. It tasted dry and acid, a taste I always associated afterwards with that long car journey.

  Mr Brecht must have forgotten I was in the car, or else he wanted to keep me there, because he didn’t take the road through Trethene, but the one that led directly to Thornfield House. He pulled the car into the drive. Mrs Todd’s small black car was parked outside, along with Adam Tremlett’s Ford van and another green hatchback.

  Mr Brecht stopped the car aggressively, dragging on the handbrake before the wheels had stopped turning. He said something under his breath, climbed out, slammed the door and strode towards the
front door.

  I got out of the car and passed the flowers to Ellen, who looked pale and scared.

  ‘I’d better go,’ I said, and Ellen asked, ‘Don’t you want to come in and say goodbye to Mama?’

  No, I did not want to go into Thornfield House, and no, I did not want to see Mrs Brecht again – it had been bad enough last time. I wanted to go home and curl up in front of the fire and read Flowers in the Attic, which was inside my school bag, and chat to Jago, but Ellen’s face was so expectant, so pleading, begging me not to leave her to go into that house alone, that I did my best to smile and I said, ‘Yes, of course.’

  A pair of large, muddy boots was lined up square on the step outside the front door. Mr Brecht, on his way in, kicked them viciously.

  I’ll never forget the atmosphere inside the house that afternoon. It felt as if it were waiting for the death. It was eerily quiet, so quiet that as we took off our shoes in the hall I could hear the ticking of the clock on the landing. Mr Brecht had already gone upstairs and there was some commotion, hushed voices, banging. Ellen looked up, and then took my hand and led me into the kitchen.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  Ellen shrugged. ‘I expect Adam’s brought more flowers for Mama. Papa doesn’t like it.’

  Mrs Todd was in the kitchen, sitting in a chair by the window, knitting. Her face was pinched with fatigue and anxiety. She greeted us and put the kettle on to boil. A tray was already laid with teacups and saucers.

  ‘You’d best wait here for a few moments,’ she said. The voices upstairs grew louder, two angry, subdued male voices – Mr Brecht cursing in German – and then there was banging, the sound of something rolling down the stairs. Ellen and I opened the kitchen door and looked out. Flowers were scattered all over the stairs and hallway. Mr Brecht was gathering armfuls of them from the room where his wife lay dying and throwing them down the stairs. They bounced off the portraits on the wall, leaving wet smears. Loose petals stuck to the frames and floated in the warm air. Vases and jars littered the carpets; there was more broken glass. Adam Tremlett galloped down the stairs in his thick, grey gardener’s socks. His face was racked with anger. He gathered up the flowers as best he could, and walked through the hall and out of the front door, which he slammed shut behind him. Ellen and I looked at one another.

  ‘Do you think it’s all right to go up now?’ Ellen asked Mrs Todd.

  ‘I should give it a few more minutes,’ said Mrs Todd. She opened the door to the cupboard under the sink, took out a dustpan and brush and a cloth, and went wearily into the hall to clean up the mess.

  Time slowed down. The air seemed heavier, more condensed, every action assumed a significance. After for ever, Mrs Todd reappeared in the kitchen and nodded to us. We left the red carnations in their paper on the kitchen table. I followed Ellen up the stairs. The carpet was damp beneath my feet. Mrs Brecht was being nursed in the bedroom beside Ellen’s, at the front of the house. It was a large room but it felt like a cave, illuminated only by a standard lamp in one corner, and a small bedside lamp that had been covered with a red scarf to mute the light. A recording of piano music was playing, softly; it wove through the room like the fog outside, insinuating its way into me until it was integral to me as drawing breath. Flowers would have softened the room, brought some life into it; without them it felt bleak. Emptied of adornment, the room resembled a bridal suite, only reversed.

  Death’s bride, Mrs Brecht was tiny in the bed, her body so wasted that it barely made an impression beneath the bedclothes. In death she maintained her glamour. Her hair was still shiny, her nails polished, and the lovely face that had been distorted by pain the last time I saw her was now relaxed, the skin smooth. She seemed childlike, not quite human. A drip that fed a tube connected to the back of Mrs Brecht’s hand clicked behind the bed. She lay on white pillows, dressed in oyster silk pyjamas, a patchwork coverlet pulled up to her chest. Her eyelids flickered when Ellen and I came into the room. The heater had been turned up high; the air was cloyingly warm. Mr Brecht sat on a chair close to the bed, holding his wife’s hand and staring into her face. Ellen sat carefully on the bed. I went to stand by the window. I pulled the curtain back a fraction. Outside I saw Adam Tremlett standing by the gate in the fog. His hands were cupped around a match. He was trying to light a cigarette but his eyes caught mine. He was looking straight up at the window and I noticed that his boots were unlaced. I let the curtain fall back and turned to watch the bedside tableau.

  ‘Not long now, my love,’ Mr Brecht said softly to his wife. ‘Soon it will all be over, the end of pain, the end of everything.’ He leaned over Mrs Brecht, her hand clasped between his, his lips so close to hers that they must have been sharing the same breaths. It seemed, to me, a shockingly brave and wonderful thing to say. If my parents had been in the same situation, the one who wasn’t dying would have tried to reassure the other that everything was really all right. They’d have said something positive about getting better or made a joke or talked about something trivial and inconsequential like the weather or a programme they’d watched on TV. My heartbeat quickened for Mr Brecht.

  ‘Shall I change the music?’ asked Ellen.

  ‘No.’ Mr Brecht shook his head. ‘It’s not time for that yet.’

  I knew the music Ellen meant. Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude was to be the soundtrack to Mrs Brecht’s death. Ellen’s father had told her the brain remains in a state of almost-consciousness for a while after physical death. When Mrs Brecht stopped breathing, when her heart no longer beat, she would not be able to open her eyes, or talk or feel or taste or smell, but her ears required no physiological stimulus to function. She could still listen to music. Her husband wanted Chopin to be the last thing she heard before her final synapse expired. Chopin was the music with which he had wooed her; Chopin would take her into death. That was his wish.

  I couldn’t help wondering if, given the choice, Mrs Brecht mightn’t have preferred something a little more cheerful, but I was sure Mr Brecht knew best.

  Mrs Brecht moved her head slightly, turning towards Ellen. Her lips parted.

  ‘She wants to stop the music, Papa,’ Ellen said.

  ‘Put something else on then. The Debussy. She loves the Debussy.’

  ‘No, not the Debussy. She doesn’t want that.’

  ‘I said, put the Debussy on,’ Mr Brecht demanded in a tone of voice that brooked no argument. Ellen frowned, but she stood up and obeyed him. I was watching Mrs Brecht’s face. I saw an emotion cross it – it wasn’t sadness, it was more like fury. Death seemed to make everyone angry. Mrs Brecht closed her eyes again. I lifted the curtain the tiniest fraction. Mr Tremlett was still outside, scowling and staring up at the room. I wondered how long he would stand there.

  Her cleaning finished, Mrs Todd came in and took her place in an upright chair in the far corner of the room. She sat straight-backed in the pool of light cast by the standard lamp, knitting, her needles clicking. The wool was in a bag beside the chair. I wondered if she stayed in that room the whole time, guarding Mrs Brecht. Not the whole time. She hadn’t been there when we arrived back in the car, when Adam Tremlett was in the bedroom.

  We remained there silently in the room, for an hour maybe, perhaps a little longer, with the piano notes winding amongst us, settling on our skin, slipping through our hair, skimming the dry lips of the dying woman, moving on again. I began to feel sleepy. I went to sit beside Ellen and she put her head on my shoulder. I stroked her hair. Then the nurse, who had been resting, came into the room. She looked at us all, the man draped on the pillows beside his dying wife, Mrs Todd, still knitting, the dark, slim schoolgirl and the larger, fair one both still in the black tights, pleated skirts and jumpers we wore to school in the winter months, holding one another, and she said, ‘Take a break. Get changed, have something to eat, rest for a while.’

  ‘I’m not leaving my wife,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘Not now. I’m not leaving her for another second.’

  ‘She�
�s sleeping. I’ll be here with her. You need to prepare yourselves. This will be a long night.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Brecht. ‘I’m not leaving.’

  My heart almost broke with the tragedy and romance of it all. Still, I was glad to be told to leave the room. I didn’t want to stay there for another moment. There was something bad about the room where Mrs Brecht lay dying. Something was wrong and it wasn’t just the dying.

  I kissed Ellen goodbye at the front door, and she stood there, a slight, mournful figure, one hand on the frame, waving to me as I left Thornfield House and made my way back home. Adam Tremlett’s van was parked outside the church. The light was all but gone now, everywhere prematurely darkened by the winter evening and the heavy fog. It was easy to imagine the wraiths of dead people weaving through the gloom, the sea fret thick with the spirits of the drowned.

  Afterwards, always, I remembered every detail of that evening. I remembered Jago being rough and boyish with me, trying to cheer me up or at least distract me, but I couldn’t forget what was happening in that room in Thornfield House, I couldn’t stop thinking about Ellen and wishing I was with her, at the same time as being relieved and glad that I wasn’t. Waiting for someone to die, I thought, is a terrible thing. In the end, Mum told Jago to leave me alone and sent me upstairs for a bath. I came downstairs in my pyjamas and dressing-gown and Mum dried my hair for me with the dryer and a brush. She was very gentle. After that, we ate supper. Nobody spoke much at the table. Dad said something about putting the Christmas decorations up but nobody was interested. After we’d eaten, Jago wrapped up and took the dog for a walk, Dad watched television in the living room, and Mum and I prepared meals that Mrs Todd could warm up during the coming week.

  When Jago returned, he and I played cards for a while.

  ‘Do you remember what it was like when your mother died?’ I asked.