‘Oh, you know, under the weather. Old age, is all she told us. She was upstairs, lying fully dressed on the bed. Everything was tidy in the house – well, as tidy as it ever was. Almost as if she knew, like an animal. We had a dog like that, who went away and lay down to die …’ Barbara closed her eyes, as if by doing so she could shut off Audrey’s well-meaning babble.
‘… the sad thing is, not a single relative that we know of.’
Barbara asked to be told the date of the funeral and hung up. Not a single relative that we know of. The same would be said of her.
A little later, she went out into the garden to collect the week’s box of produce for the cottage hospital. She found Dexter picking runner beans.
‘Do take some for yourself,’ she said. ‘We seem to have a bumper crop.’
‘These and the gooseberries,’ he agreed. ‘All right if I take a few of those too, Madam? My wife makes a lovely goosegog pie.’
‘I wish you would, Dexter.’
‘Lovely little new potatoes there too.’
‘I can see I’ll have to have a lunch party,’ she said. Then remembered Edith, without whom any lunch party would be unthinkable. ‘Did you hear about Mrs Malmay?’
‘Very, very sad,’ Dexter shook his head. ‘She was a very nice lady. I did her pots for her last year.’ He took a reflective moment, before adding, ‘I’ll put the box on the back step in about half an hour, Madam, unless you’d like me to put it straight in the boot for you?’
‘The back step is fine. Thanks, Dexter.’
Moving away she asked, as if it had just occurred to her, ‘Do you know where Mr Eldridge might be?’
‘He said he was going to thin out those big rhodies, the purple ones on the south side. Lot of dead wood in there.’
‘I’ll go and see.’
She returned to the back of the house, climbing the short flight of steps to the terrace, walking as far as the loggia and scanning the back lawn and the shrubs that surrounded it. On the far side, facing the house, were the purple rhododendrons referred to by Dexter and a dense, flowering rampart between her and the fairway that led to the Salting beacon. Everything was still. A squirrel scampered over the Fort and up the tree at the back, the one where Johnny had perched.
She walked across the grass.
‘Hello …?’
Silence. Was he watching her? She paused, self-conscious.
‘Johnny?’
He appeared from between the bushes, with a pair of secateurs stuck out of his pocket.
‘Here. Come and see.’ He stepped aside, holding branches back as if opening a door. ‘Isn’t this something?’
She was in a twilit cave of green, twisting wooden branches snaked towards the surface. From here, the purple blooms on the outside were only just visible, like lamps in a mist. The ground was a soft carpet of moss and dry leaves. Considering how fragile the wall was between them and the garden, the sense was of complete seclusion. They seemed part of a collective held breath.
Johnny turned on the spot, looking up towards the sun-freckled ‘roof’.
‘I could live here.’
‘Not in winter.’
‘Don’t let’s be practical.’ He looked at her, serious. ‘Please Barbara, don’t let’s.’
She saw how much healthier he was looking than when he’d first arrived. He had filled out a little and his skin, which had always had a bluish pallor, was lightly tanned. The long grooves on either side of his mouth were less pronounced and the twin apostrophes between his brows had all but gone. His hair, though greying at the temples, appeared thicker and less lank. Barbara experienced the tender satisfaction that she, and Heart’s Ease, had brought about this transformation.
She recalled herself to find him studying her as she studied him, with that air he had of being able to read her thoughts.
‘Was there something you wanted to say?’
‘No, not really … I just had some bad news.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘An old friend of mine has died. Old in both senses, so not before her time.’
‘But you were fond of her.’
‘Very. And she was fond of me.’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t—’ she hesitated, not wanting to sound self-pitying. ‘I don’t have many close friends, not these days. I accept that’s my fault.’
‘Why should it be anyone’s fault?’
‘No reason, but I have rather cut myself off down here. Everyone I know in Salting was a friend or acquaintance of Stanley’s, so they’re a bit older. The funny thing is, she was the oldest of them but somehow we always saw eye to eye.’
‘Kindred spirits,’ he suggested. ‘You’re an old soul in lots of ways.’
He’d touched a nerve. ‘Don’t say that!’
‘Why? It’s a good thing to be. You’ll miss her, this friend.’
‘Very much.’
‘Well, for what it’s worth …’ He took out the secateurs and began snipping at the spurs of spare growth that sprouted from one of the branches. ‘I bet she wouldn’t want you to. She – what’s her name?’
‘Edith.’
‘Edith has gone on her way. She’s set you free.’
She was thinking about this when she heard the faint sound of the doorbell over in the house. She would have ignored it but Johnny nodded in that direction.
‘You have a visitor.’
‘I can’t be bothered.’
‘You must. What are you going to do, hide?’
There was the sound of the loggia door.
‘Mrs Govan! Madam?’ Maureen’s voice was calling.
‘Go on,’ said Johnny, continuing to snip. ‘Go.’
As she crossed the lawn, the figure of Phoebe – organiser of the St Catherine’s flower rota – appeared next to Maureen in the loggia, waving energetically.
‘Barbara! I just called in to see if you were all right in the light of today’s sad news …!’
That night in bed, she reflected on what Johnny had said.
Edith’s gone. She’s set you free.
Is that what had happened, then? Did people that you left or who left you by dying grant you some sort of liberty? And if it did so, why did she feel not free, but still trapped and alone. Bereft.
As well as offering sympathy, Phoebe had wanted to discuss church flowers.
‘It’s thee and me again in a couple of weeks and there’s a wedding coming up. I was thinking perhaps we should have a bower of roses – wouldn’t that be lovely?’ Barbara agreed but it didn’t much matter because, on this subject, Phoebe was a force of nature. ‘Will you have enough in your garden by then …?’
‘More than enough.’
There were always plenty of roses at Heart’s Ease. The rhododendrons took pride of place, but there were roses everywhere – clambering over fences and up the side of the shed, rambling around the edges of the fruit cage and vegetable plot. Humble dog roses colonised any sunny corner. Old-fashioned, sweet-smelling tea roses stood in great clouds on the sheltered western boundary, bobbing their heads to the afternoon sun. Barbara picked a posy every few days, to have on the side table in the drawing room, where their scent kept her company for as long as the luscious petals lasted.
Twenty
On the day of Edith’s funeral, when Barbara had just got changed into her dark dress and hat, there was a knock at the back door. When she opened it Johnny was there, carrying an enormous bouquet of roses – white, cream and coral pink – the stems were wrapped in newspaper.
‘Goodness …!’
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I did ask Dexter.’
‘But what—’
‘They’re not for you,’ he said. ‘Obviously, because they’re yours anyway and not mine to give, but I thought you might like them for your friend.’
He saw at once that she didn’t quite understand him.
‘Edith. Her funeral.’
‘I did send some.’
The idea was perfect. That he had thought of it on her behalf was more perfect still; a present in itself. She held out her hands.
‘Thank you.’
‘I’ve snipped the thorns and put some damp sacking round the stalks. You can add something nicer over the top if you want to.’
‘Thank you,’ she said again, taking them. Their hands didn’t touch, but there was something sacramental in receiving the flowers from him. She was enveloped in a soft halo of scent.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said.
She looked down at her black dress, blushed and smoothed the skirt with her free hand.
‘It’s my funeral outfit.’
‘Plain clothes suit you. No need to gild the lily. Or the rose.’
When she’d closed the door, she was trembling.
There were perhaps fifty people in Salting Parish church and at least thirty of them could scarcely have known Edith. To Barbara’s knowledge she had been at best an agnostic, but a service had been organised, by Audrey, along sturdy Anglican lines:
Praise my soul the king of Heaven, Who would true valour see (Edith would have approved of the old words, hobgoblins and all). But Barbara wasn’t so sure about: Lead us heavenly Father lead us. Would Edith ever have wanted to be ‘provided, pardoned, guided …?’
But the final blessing was one for which Edith had once expressed a liking:
Go forth into the world in peace; be of good courage; hold fast that which is good; render to no man evil for evil; defend the fainthearted … Yes, that was Edith.
Barbara wasn’t sure what to do with her roses, among all the formal sprays and wreaths, (though having seen those, including her own, she was glad she’d brought them). In the end, she waited until they moved outside for the burial and laid them on the ground near the neat, baize-lined hole, waiting to receive Edith’s earthly remains. At no stage did she cry, though she had expected to. The proceedings were dignified and respectful, but seemed by and large to have little to do with her wise, eccentric friend.
She stayed at the wake – tea or sherry, with cucumber sandwiches, fruit cake and platitudes, in the same parish hall where they’d watched the Coronation – for about half an hour. She knew the remarks about Edith were sincere, but their tone of rueful pity rubbed her up the wrong way. These were good people who had recognised the good in Edith, but there was something important that they were missing. She had been so much more than the ‘funny old thing’, brusque, brainy but good-hearted, who had lived on her own for too long. To Barbara, she had sometimes seemed the youngest of them all. The third time someone used the phrase ‘a good innings’ Barbara decided she could bear it no longer and made a move to go.
‘Barbara! Hang on a minute!’
She was already out of the door, when an excitable Audrey caught up with her.
‘Barbara … I’ve been trying to elbow my way to your side for the last twenty minutes.’
‘It was a good turn-out,’ agreed Barbara, this being one of the approved sayings of the day.
‘It was, it was, she would have been so pleased. But look, what I wanted to say is, there’s something for you.’
‘Oh?’
‘We popped into the house to do a little, basic clearing up, the fridge and so on, and Paul found a box with your name on it on the bureau. Perhaps she meant to give it to you next time … in any event I knew I’d see you this afternoon and, if you hold on for two ticks, I’ll fish it out of the boot.’
Barbara followed Audrey to the Bryants’ blue Ford Consul and waited while she unlocked the boot.
‘There you are. Signed, sealed and delivered.’
‘Thank you Audrey.’
‘Lovely roses by the way …’
Audrey pulled in her chin, beaming indulgently as Barbara took the white shoebox, the lid secured with a whiskery cat’s cradle of string. Mrs Barbara Govan was scrawled on the lid in Edith’s large, leaping hand. She hadn’t the least idea what it might contain, but was conscious of something inquisitive in Audrey’s manner, as if she expected her to open it there and then, in front of her.
‘Any ideas?’
‘None at all. But thank you – a surprise in store.’
On the short drive home, the box sat on the passenger seat next to her and did indeed feel like a companion, as if it contained Edith’s breath, voice and presence. Even the string reminded her of Edith’s disorganised, long hair that was never quite contained by combs, pins or net.
She encountered neither Johnny nor Dexter and it was that time of day – late afternoon – when Maureen, if she was in, would be in her room listening to the Light Programme and reading her latest instalment of True Love Tales. Wanting privacy, Barbara went upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door. She put the box on the bed and took a pair of nail scissors out of a drawer. Then she sat down on the bed and snipped the string.
Inside, was a mass of tangled, nylon stockings, all in a serviceable forty denier and all laddered. A couple had even been mended, something Barbara hadn’t seen since her school days, when it had been obligatory and considered, like darning, to be character-forming. She found it hard to imagine Edith wielding a needle, but the effortful stitched ridges were there to prove it. The stockings had been stuffed into the box as protective wadding for something smaller and, sure enough, about halfway down she found the real contents.
They took up very little space. Edith must have packed them this way to disguise them. Perhaps a box, which might contain trinkets, was less freighted with importance than an envelope with its air of personal significance.
There was a letter, still in its opened envelope, the paper fragile and old, the handwriting not Edith’s, and a photograph, sandwiched between two squares of cardboard. The cardboard appeared to have been added recently, the cut edges and the sellotape looked fresh. Barbara removed both of these and set them aside, before shaking out the rest of the stockings to check there was nothing else. She half-expected to find a note from Edith herself, but there was none.
She rolled the stockings and for no good reason replaced them tidily, with the string, in the box. Then, well aware that she was deferring the moment of disclosure, she walked to the dressing table and put the box down next to her hairbrush and comb. The central panel of the mirror was tilted slightly upward, so that she caught sight of her reflection; she was surprised to see that her face was a little flushed. When she raised her eyes, she saw Johnny standing between the rhododendrons on the far side of the lawn, his hand on one of the branches. He was looking straight at her. Barbara took a step back.
She moved away from the dressing table and returned to the bed. She picked up the letter and the photograph and held them in both hands, on her lap. Her heart was racing and she closed her eyes for a moment, gathering herself before opening the envelope.
My sweet darling,
I’ve read of hearts aching and breaking, and thought it was just words. I didn’t know that loving someone and missing them could make flesh and blood hurt. But now I do know. There are plenty of things that hurt over here, but none of them cause pain like that of being apart from you. The softness of your skin, of your gentle knowing hands, the expression in your eyes, and your mouth … oh! Your mouth …
Barbara lowered the letter, for a moment, to catch her breath.
… When I’m able to sleep I tumble into dreams of you, I drown in you my darling, my love … I don’t fear danger or wounds or anything, certainly not the poor, wretched enemy who are, after all, just like us. I fear only death, because it would separate me from you for ever. A great black nothingness of not-you. How could I stand it? Please send a lock of hair, a handkerchief with your scent, a spoon that’s touched your lips, so I can sniff and suck and lose myself in you –
So passionate … so unbearably personal, and private … Unable to read on, Barbara put the letter down. A full minute passed before she was able to pick it up and read
the signature.
Your only, lonely, desperately longing for you
K
Kit, who had died – she looked at the date – only a few months after writing those words. The thing he feared and dreaded most had happened. The great black nothingness had swallowed him up.
Yet it was not that – the dread, the nothingness – which struck her most. It was the humming heartbeat of life, the vivid force of memory in every word:
… your gentle, knowing hands … your mouth, oh – your mouth …!
There was nothing elegiac here, nothing stoical or accepting. All was impatient ardour and desire. Hot blood pumped by a young and yearning heart.
She didn’t want to replace the letter in its envelope, not right away. Instead, she left it on the bedspread. The decades-long fold in the single sheet meant that it reverted to a half-open state, like a child’s paper boat or a flower with unfurling petals.
She turned her attention to the photograph, slipping the point of her nail scissors under the sellotape and prising off the cardboard.
She was looking at a postcard-sized print of three people on a beach. The centre focus was of a couple, a man and a woman, leaning back on a breakwater. The day was sunny and they both held hats. Perhaps they had been told to remove them for the picture. Their faces were bright, eyes narrowed against the light and there were short shadows at their feet. They appeared to be in early middle-age and not fashionable, but from the woman’s long coat and bobbed hair, Barbara guessed the period to be the twenties.
She turned the photo to the window to examine it more closely. The woman was Edith, even without the particular circumstances, she’d have recognised the tall figure. She seemed energetic, even in repose, and the fine-boned, long face, with its humorous, enquiring expression rebelled slightly against the requirements of the photographer. She held her hat in front of her, both hands clasping the brim. The man was beaming, no, laughing, open-mouthed, a picture of happiness. He stood with one hand resting on the top of the breakwater behind him – behind Edith – as if just about to put his arm around her. Because of the accompanying letter and his air of exuberant pleasure she might have taken him to be Kit, except that the picture was clearly too late for that.
The Rose in Winter Page 20