The Wisdom of Sally Red Shoes

by Ruth Hogan

  Mr John Paddington is a high-profile barrister whose ruthlessness and proficiency, both in and out of the courtroom, are feared and respected in equal measure by all who know him. He commutes to London every day and works punishingly long hours at a job he loves and takes enormous pride in. He comes home to a delightful wife, four boisterous young sons and a cherished baby daughter, all of whom he adores unconditionally, and spends every minute of each precious weekend being a good father and husband. And that is why, once a week, for one hour only, Mr John Paddington comes to see me. This is his one self-indulgence; his oasis of peace and quiet. He asks nothing more of me than my silent company, and the use of my comfortable room (the tea and biscuits are Helen’s treat, because she has a bit of a crush on him) where he can sit and read Winnie-the-Pooh without fear of intrusion or ridicule.

  When he first came to me with his rather strange request, I was a little hesitant. ‘Why not go to the library?’ I asked. He explained that he wanted somewhere more cosy and homelike, and company, but not too much of it. He did not require interaction, only physical companionship. I asked him why he had chosen me, and he replied that I was in the business of helping people to live their lives in the best way possible for them. This one hour a week does exactly that for him. It is his safety valve. It dissipates the stress and pressure he accumulates, and enables him to live the life he chooses without burning out. It’s a service that I am more than happy to provide, and more reciprocal than I care to admit. Sometimes, as he reads, I watch his handsome features slowly relax. The frown lines on his brow grow smooth, and the outer corners of his eyes crinkle as the beginnings of a smile softly steal across his face. Sometimes he catches me watching him and smiles at me before returning to his book. By the time he leaves he always looks much younger; more like the boy who first read about the bear of very little brain.

  A little before his hour is up, Mr John Paddington checks his watch and reluctantly closes his book. He replaces it carefully in his briefcase, and struggles to escape the warm embrace of the squishy sofa. He puts on his jacket and, without a word, takes my hand and kisses it with tenderness and gratitude. And then he leaves. Each visit is the same. He is my favourite client.

  Chapter 36

  ART

  The owner of the second-hand bookshop is a very kind man. Either that, or he believes that I am a madwoman whom it is safest to humour. When I took him two carrier bags full of books about death this morning, he behaved as though it was the most normal thing in the world. I am making room in my life for living and so I have been clearing out my books about death. Some of them came from his shop in the first place. But I do remember one that even he was unable to procure. The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying by Bishop Jeremy Taylor (first published in 1651) was probably one of the earliest self-help books. These days we can buy books to help us do pretty much everything. You name it and someone somewhere will have written a book about it. There are even books about how to write self-help books. But in 1651 you could buy a book that taught you how to die properly – or rather how to die in a proper manner. Bishop Taylor was a sort of Lady Troubridge of death. His book was one of a particular genre of contemporary literature known as ars moriendi – the art of dying.

  Back then a sudden death was unfortunate for the deceased in more ways than the obvious. Preparation for death was paramount and so a protracted demise was infinitely preferable because it gave one time for all the essential preliminaries. The deathbed was no place for slackers and its occupant was encouraged to pray, atone for past misdeeds, issue sage advice to kith and kin, pose for a final portrait and make his or her fond farewells. Of course, nowadays you’d probably be able to get a deathbed planner to do most of it for you. The planner could issue printed farewells and poignant advice to friends and family on tastefully designed mourning stationery, organise a personal shopper for your deathbed outfit, post your final selfie on social media and email a selection of contrite prayers to the god of your choice. You would simply have to turn up on the day looking fabulous, and die gracefully.

  The approach to the entrance of my cemetery is a steep slope that becomes an unnerving hazard to hearse drivers in icy weather and is a strenuous walk in today’s bright sunshine. The wrought-iron gates form the centrepiece of the redbrick gatehouse whose arch proclaims, in carved stone, that the cemetery was opened in 1855. As I pass beneath the cool shade of the arch, my footsteps echo through the silence. Even though the cemetery was built more than two hundred years after Bishop Taylor’s book was first published, the Victorians buried here would still have made use of it as a handy reference on death etiquette and I’m hoping to weave all this fascinating information into my cemetery tour commentary. I’ve spoken to the person who is responsible for organising the tours. Brenda Smiley is the chairperson of the Friends of the Cemetery General Committee, and she isn’t. Smiley. She’s a stern-faced woman who wears cord trousers, a wax jacket and an habitual scowl. She didn’t seem very pleased when I offered my services. She told me that being a tour guide was a very sought-after position, and one was usually only entrusted with such a hallowed responsibility (my sarcasm, not hers) after earning one’s stripes litter-picking and weeding. I get the impression she doesn’t like me much. One of the other committee members told me that they are in fact crying out for tour guides, but no one likes to contradict Brenda. We’ll see. She doesn’t scare me.

  The sun is warm on my back and as I stand, debating which way to go, I remember Sally lying asleep on the grass and wonder if I will see her today. I hope I shall. I was so struck by her uncomplicated capacity for happiness that day that I bought a print of Millais’s Ophelia and hung it in my office to remind me. The original model for Ophelia was the young Elizabeth Siddal, whom Millais required to pose lying in a bath of water in his converted greenhouse studio. The water was heated, not very efficiently, by oil lamps and candles placed under the bath. Mr Millais, untroubled in those days by health and safety regulations and an employer’s ‘duty of care’, continued painting, day after day, well into the winter, oblivious to the fact that Miss Siddal’s goosebumps had goosebumps, and her complexion had taken on an alarming blue tinge. One day the lamps and candles went out, and Mr Millais, in his artistic fervour, did not notice. Miss Siddal, in her stoic professionalism (or perhaps because her lips were frozen together) did not complain. Unsurprisingly, she contracted pneumonia, and her father successfully sued Mr Millais for the alleged sum of fifty pounds. She subsequently suffered from poor health until her early death aged just thirty-two. Historians attribute her demise to a variety of causes, including a then-fashionable addiction to laudanum. But some allege she suffered from tuberculosis, which Mr Millais could undoubtedly claim some credit for after the freezing-bath-in-the-greenhouse affair. Tuberculosis was the perfect prescription if a lengthy deathbed was required, and therefore Mr Millais could conceivably be accredited with at least compensating his model for her devotion to duty by providing her with the opportunity to die ‘a good death’. I doubt she saw it that way, however.

  I wonder if Lily Phyllis Phoebe died a good death. Today, bathed in dazzling sunshine, the white marble of her headstone glints in the light, and a bunch of lavender laid beside it is pungent in the heat. Lily was the first member of my Family on the Other Side. According to her memorial stone she had a long life and died an old lady, having been widowed twenty years earlier. Lily has an angel standing at the head of her grave with folded wings and one arm raised towards the sky. In her other arm she holds a bunch of lilies. Her nose has been smashed by vandals and she has several fingers missing but she still looks heavenly.

  The Victorians believed that the state of the individual’s soul at the exact moment of death was crucial – the heaven or hell moment when a snap decision about one’s afterlife destination was made. But it does seem horribly unfair. Imagine if, having struggled through all the praying, apologising, farewells and giving wise advice to your family and friends, despite the fact that you’re dyi
ng and would rather just have a lie-down and a nice cup of tea, at the very moment of death you have a saucy thought about George Clooney. There’s nothing you can do about it. It simply pops into your head just before you pop your clogs. That’s it – you’re off to hell in a handcart.

  The cemetery is full of life today. Squirrels are chasing up and down the trees, blackbirds are rooting in the grass for worms to feed their hungry chicks, and the crows are loitering aimlessly. Hidden songbirds chirrup and whistle, and magpies cackle in the tall pines. Seated on a bench near the chapel I see a familiar figure. Sally is enjoying the view and basking in the warmth of a late-summer afternoon. She waves and beckons for me to join her. She is looking well. Her cheeks are rosy and her face is tanned and sprinkled with freckles. Her speech is coherent, but we sit in companionable silence. A fat, black crow with something in his mouth is sitting on a headstone a few yards away, watching us. His feathers are somewhat dishevelled, a little dull, and here and there flecked with grey. He, like the summer, has lost the freshness of youth and is looking a little tired and raggedy around the edges. The grass in the cemetery is mottled with sunburnt rusty patches, and the air smells like hay. The leaves on the trees are still green and hanging on, but with less conviction, as though the anticipation of autumn has weakened their grip. The scent of lavender, baked by the sun, is carried on the breeze from the purple bushes tinged with brown that are scattered down the hill. The change of season is waiting in the wings.

  Sally reaches into her frayed canvas bag and pulls out a couple of crusts that she tosses to the scraggly crow. He hops off the gravestone and swaggers jauntily across the grass. Almost at Sally’s feet he drops what he has been carrying in his mouth and snatches one of the crusts. Sally picks up the object and turns it over in her palm. It is a brass button.

  ‘Thank you, kind sir!’ she says to the crow, and throws him another piece of bread.

  She turns to me and smiles. ‘It’s a gift,’ she says. ‘People think it’s just magpies that like little treasures, but crows do too. They often bring me things; buttons, bits of ribbon, bottle tops. I think it’s to thank me for the bread.’

  I tip my head back and watch the huge, fluffy clouds sailing across the flat, blue sky like cotton-wool galleons. There is no hope of a storm today.

  After a while I feel, somehow, that I am being scrutinised. As I look up, I realise that Sally is studying my face intently.

  ‘You have lost your joy.’

  She says it matter-of-factly as though it were a glove or some other everyday item, but immediately I feel the tears pricking the back of my eyes. I am trying so hard to change; to let go of the grief that hobbles me. And sometimes I can. But grief is not a linear thing. It re-boots unexpectedly at a certain smell or sight or sound, and some days I still feel as though my world is like a patchwork quilt that’s coming unstitched. But how can she know that? How can she tell that some nights I wake in a cold sweat because I can still feel the brush of feathers in my hands and the fury that I could do nothing and no one will be punished; that I am terrified of growing old alone and at the mercy of strangers? Can she see that despite all my efforts to change, I’m afraid I might not be strong enough? That eventually my son’s death may defeat my life? I have a feeling that Sally can see a good many things that other people miss. She is waiting for my answer, but I have no words. I nod.

  Still, Sally waits. Her silence invites explanation, but I don’t know how much I can give. I am looking into the abyss.

  ‘My little boy, Gabriel. He drowned. He died.’

  She sits quietly for a moment, giving my words the respect that they command, and then she replies with infinite tenderness, ‘But you didn’t.’

  ‘And I feel so bloody guilty for still being alive!’ I blurt out angrily. The long unspoken truth that is the foundation of my perpetual mourning and the anchor that keeps me chained to my grief. ‘Why the hell do I deserve to be happy when I let him die?’

  Sally takes my hand. ‘Was Gabriel a happy boy?’

  I remember his ready smile and his constant laughter.

  ‘Would he want you to be sad?’

  He hated it when I cried. If I cried, he cried too.

  ‘Did he love you?’

  I remember all the hugs and cuddles, and the sloppy kisses he used to plant on my cheek.

  ‘What would Gabriel want you to do?’

  The answer comes immediately and from nowhere.

  ‘He would want me to dance.’ I can’t quite believe that I’ve said such a ridiculous thing out loud, but Sally simply smiles and nods. And then I think of all those times when he jiggled around on his unsteady, chubby little legs, squealing with laughter and clapping his hands. Whenever he heard music he liked he would dance, but the thing he loved best was for me to dance with him.

  ‘Mama dance!’ he would command, holding his arms up towards me. Perhaps it’s not so ridiculous after all. It’s almost as though Sally has asked the questions because she already knows the answers. After a moment or two she stands up and starts singing a tune that is vaguely familiar. And then she begins to dance. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry when she reaches for my hands and pulls me up to dance with her. Me and a bag lady waltzing round a cemetery to ‘La Vie en Rose’. Sally looks at me and smiles.

  ‘When the music ends for someone you love you don’t stop dancing. You dance for them as well.’

  We sit back down on the bench, Sally a little breathless from her exertions. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, which she carefully unwraps. Contained in its crumpled folds is a small, delicate gold ring engraved with flowers and some initials that are too small for me to see. She hands it to me.

  ‘It was my mother’s and I want you to have it, because you helped me and you didn’t have to. I’ve been looking for it for ages, and finally I found it. I’ve been keeping it in my pocket until I saw you again.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  I slip the ring onto my little finger. Whether it’s the dancing, the ring, the company or all three I don’t know, but I’m feeling lighter.

  ‘I should be getting back. Haizum will be ready for his walk.’

  ‘Your dog. The grand, big, hairy fucker.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  We wander down the hill together, passing little Marie on the way. As we turn to walk through the gate, I stop to pick up a tiny white feather that is lying on the grass. I do it without thinking. I once read somewhere that a white feather is the sign of an angel. It’s ridiculous, of course, but I still pick them up. As did Gabriel.

  ‘It’s an angel,’ I say to Sally, who is watching me curiously. ‘I’ve got a pocketful of them.’

  Sally shakes her head at me and laughs.

  ‘You can’t keep angels in your pocket. You have to let them fly.’

  Chapter 37

  ART

  Alice

  Consider the full consequences of even one mortal sin. By it you lose the grace of God. You destroy peace of conscience; you forfeit the felicity of heaven, for which you were created and redeemed, and you prepare for yourself eternal punishment.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been twelve years since my last confession . . .’

  The words chased round and round in Alice’s head, but she couldn’t bring herself to say them out loud. It had been too long, and perhaps her sin was too great. But if, as she feared, she was dying, atonement was her only hope of salvation.

  The harbingers of doom had been the boxes of tissues and the pair of nurses. Sitting in the waiting room for over an hour, she had had plenty of time to work out which was the good room and which the bad. The first contained a lone consultant whose patients filed briskly in and out at fifteen-minute intervals. The woman who had gone into the second room hadn’t come out yet. But one of the nurses had, to fetch a plastic beaker of water, and Alice had seen the boxes of tissues on the table through the open door. When she was finally called in (after the previous pati
ent had left with a blotched face wet with tears, and a nurse at each elbow), she was greeting by a smiling Asian doctor who shook her hand and invited her to sit down. She half expected to see his black hooded cloak hanging on the coat stand and his scythe propped up against the wall. The nurses quickly rejoined them and the doctor consulted the file spread open on the desk in front of him. His words fluttered round the space above her head like windblown sparrows, before they settled inside it in a sensible order with a plain meaning.

  ‘I’m afraid you have cancer.’

  Alice didn’t know why he was afraid. She was the one who had it, not him. And she’d known in her heart for weeks – from the moment she’d first discovered that small, hard lump. But still she’d ignored it, hoping it would go away of its own accord and terrified to admit to herself what might happen if it didn’t. The nurses watched her, anxious at first and then puzzled. She didn’t cry. The tissues poking out of their boxes like meringue peaks were redundant. The tumour was fast-growing; a grade 3 (like a music examination, Alice thought). She would need surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. And then they would see. The nurses, and even Alice, waited for tears, but still they did not come. The nurses looked worried; as if they thought that she was not taking it seriously enough. They needed tears for proof, but none came.