Eloise

by Judy Finnigan

  I felt awkward and brutal but I had to say it.

  ‘Juliana,’ I asked abruptly. ‘Who is Arthur?’

  Chapter Eight

  She froze. Completely shocked. She looked stricken.

  I asked again. ‘Juliana, tell me, who is Arthur?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. Arthur? I’ve never heard of him.’

  Her reaction surprised me. She sounded jumpy, her voice uncharacteristically sharp.

  ‘Well, OK. But Ted mentioned him and he sounded pretty fraught when he did.’

  ‘Ted mentioned him? What did he say?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘He said something about a huge betrayal.’

  Juliana laughed awkwardly. ‘What utter rubbish!’ She sighed. ‘Look, Ted’s not always – reliable. He gets bees in his bonnet. And, to be honest, he was always ridiculously jealous about Eloise. He watched her like a hawk. Eloise came to see me so often in despair about his ludicrous suspicions that she was having an affair.’

  ‘And she wasn’t?’

  ‘Of course she wasn’t. Do you really think Eloise would do anything to harm her daughters? She’d never risk a breakup with Ted. She knew how vindictive he could be.’

  ‘What do you mean? Did she think he might try to take the girls away from her?’

  Juliana looked annoyed, as if she knew she’d said too much. She leaned forward fiercely.

  ‘My daughter was, more than anything else, a devoted mother, you know that, Cathy. She adored her children and she put them first, before anything else. Everything else in her life came second.’

  ‘Including Ted?’ I asked, then immediately thought better of it. Juliana looked at me, almost pleadingly.

  ‘If you knew, Cathy. If only you knew.’

  ‘Knew what?’

  But Juliana had said everything she was going to. Her expression was cold, steely, completely different from the warm woman I knew. I had gone too far. It was none of my business; I had no right to pry into her mind. I would never normally dream of being so pushy, so ill-mannered. It was as if my dreams of Eloise had changed me, taken me over.

  I felt disorientated, shaken and on dangerous ground. Juliana was obviously not telling me everything. I hated that. People creeping around shiftily, professing to be utterly truthful, while withholding information they wanted to keep to themselves. I knew I was over-reacting, that I was being paranoid, but since my breakdown I had become increasingly aware of lies and evasion. Not normal for me; I had always been open and receptive, happy to welcome people into my life, to accept them with warmth and lack of judgement.

  But no longer. Now I withdrew like a snail into its shell whenever I scented duplicity or evasion. I felt sorry for Juliana, but if she did not intend to be honest with me then I didn’t want to risk my own vulnerable state by confiding in her.

  So, out of self-protection I began to retreat from Juliana; I felt alienated from her, which was intensely distressing. I had always admired her; and over the last twenty-four hours I had become dangerously close to regarding her as a surrogate mother.

  She wasn’t, of course. She was Eloise’s mother. Her daughter was, rightly, the only person she cared about, and her maternal loyalty was absolute.

  I needed to disengage.

  ‘Juliana,’ I said, standing nervously, hesitantly. ‘I don’t want to let you down. I know how much you are grieving for Eloise, as am I, but I don’t think we can help each other at the moment. I need to go home. To be honest, I need to be with Chris and my family. I thought I could help you, and you could help me, because there’s no doubt we both feel there’s something terribly wrong about how Eloise died. But I don’t think I’ve got the strength now. I need to go home and get some rest.’

  I felt agonised. Again, I was letting Juliana down. Just as, I thought bitterly, I had let Eloise down by not being honest with her about her fanciful attitude toward treating her cancer.

  Yes, I thought. Here I go again, backing away at the first sign of trouble. I’m not a very admirable human being, but I desperately need to get away from this. To get away from ghosts, and dreams of disturbing clifftop encounters with my dead friend, whose spirit seemed so troubled, but whose body was now irrevocably consigned to the sacred ground of the graveyard at Talland Church.

  I was fed up. Tired, lonely and desperate to retreat. I would call a taxi to take me back to our cottage. And I would call Chris. Lovely, loving, cross, disapproving Chris; my lifeline, my anchor, the love of my life.

  Juliana took my hand, nodding her understanding. She sat me down again, found Annie and asked her to call a cab. Twenty minutes later I was off, curled up on the back seat, my mobile phone clasped to my ear as I waited, weeping gently, for a signal, so I could talk to Chris.

  I fell asleep in my bed at home in Talland. I couldn’t reach Chris, even through the landline, and I quickly gave up. I was disabled by the familiar torpor of depression. There was no point talking to him anyway. What could he do? The world was lost; nothing could be changed. I was way, way back, deeply submerged in the old trough of despair, without hope, without anything except a deep desire to sleep, to escape.

  And so, armed with Nytol and my Virgin Airlines eye mask, I sank down beneath my beloved, snuggly duvet and prepared to – what? Surrender to the horrible but irresistibly overwhelming impulse so familiar to anyone who is depressed? To end the torment? No, let’s not be melodramatic. I wasn’t suicidal, although I had been in the recent past. What I wanted was oblivion, if not for ever, at least for as many hours as I could force my brain to switch off.

  My head turbulent, but with no perspective, no proportion, only a heady desire for self-annihilation, I sank into a deep sleep …

  If I had wanted peace, lack of torment, a brief time-out from anxiety and dread, I was to be horribly disappointed.

  Eloise came back with a vengeance during my longed-for rest, filled with fury and reproach.

  She snatched me up from my bed, hurled me a long way from Talland. She put me in a strange rock formation on a most godforsaken wild stretch of moor. I couldn’t believe that something happening to me in a dream could seem so real. I could feel the cold, smell the mud, see the stars. I was wearing my Gap pyjamas and the stones hurt my bare feet. Her outline glimmered angrily before me.

  ‘What now, Eloise?’ I asked her wearily.

  ‘What now? What do you think? You’ve run away again, haven’t you? Typical of you, isn’t it? Just when I need you, all you can think of is yourself. I genuinely thought you would help me, but you’ve let me down. Cathy, you’re useless.’

  Cathy, you’re useless. Those words which had haunted me for so long. Of course she was right. I was, as my mother used to say, neither use nor ornament.

  I rallied slightly before Eloise’s indignant shapelessness.

  ‘Do you know what, Ellie? I may be no good to man or beast, but at least I’m alive. Yes, I’m a mess, but one day I’ll get better. And you won’t. You’re dead, Ellie. You are buried in Talland Churchyard. Stop bothering me. Especially if you won’t even tell me about Arthur. Ted told me about him, but you’ve never mentioned him, not once.’

  Then there was such a wail, such a surge of heartbreak, that it blasted me off my feet.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Don’t ever … ’

  And she was gone. And I was locked deep into a troubled, thrashing sleep.

  There was someone bending over me. My head was cloudy, throbbing painfully from my artificially induced sleep. I tried to open my eyes, succeeded only enough to see a blurred form hanging over my head. I shrieked. It was Eloise, surely, come to claim me, to bear me off to her ghostly lair on Bodmin Moor.

  ‘Cathy, Cathy, it’s all right. It’s me, darling, just me.’

  ‘Chris?’ My mouth was full of cotton wool. ‘Chris? Is that really you? Why – what – are you here for?’

  ‘For you, of course. What else?’

  ‘But you’re in London.’

  ‘Nope. Here, ready to tak
e you home. I arrived a few hours ago and saw you were deeply asleep, so I kipped down in Sam’s room to get a bit of down time before driving back. You OK to go now?’

  I sat up. I felt groggy and my head swam.

  ‘Sweetheart, I’ll make you some tea. Just get your things together and we’ll drive back. The traffic’s really light.’

  ‘Chris? Eloise. It’s really bad, you know.’

  ‘I do know. I talked to Juliana. That’s how I knew you’d come back to Talland.’

  ‘What did she tell you?’ I was immediately defensive.

  ‘Just that you were very upset.’

  ‘Yes, I was upset. She was being so … odd about Eloise. She started lecturing me about what a marvellous mother Eloise was. I know that, but Juliana was just trying to avoid my questions. She pretended not to know who Arthur is, but Ted told me she definitely does.’

  ‘Shush, Cathy. You get up; I’ll get some tea. We can talk about all of this later.’

  I knew he was humouring me. I very much wanted to argue my case, that everyone was conspiring against me, even Eloise, and she was dead, for Christ’s sake. But I was exhausted, and pathetically glad that Chris had come for me.

  We got into the car. It was warm, snug. I fell asleep again almost immediately, and didn’t wake up until we reached our house in Chiswick four and a half hours later, in the early hours of the morning.

  I was still sleeping, in our bed, when Chris left for work next morning. When I woke up, it was nearly midday. This didn’t surprise me. The inability to get out of bed, to rejoin the land of the living, was a hallmark of my illness; and yet I had been so much better, more positive and energetic before we went to Cornwall, before Eloise’s ghost had overwhelmed me. I shook myself. Ghost? What was I thinking? She was a dream, not a ghost. Just a nightmare, one of many that disturbed my troubled nights. But she felt so real, and what she said to me was so coherent. She was always trying to tell me something urgent. The dreams I’d had when I thought Evie might die were nothing like my night-time visions of Eloise. When I had my breakdown, I dreamed of a baby in a matchbox, tiny dead kittens, gruesome severed heads. None of it made any sense. But Eloise, as she appeared to me, seemed to be trying to have a rational conversation.

  And yet, trying to be sane about it, what had actually happened? My friend had died of the cancer she had suffered for five years. It was not unexpected – just the opposite. And because my state of mind was still fragile – though I had hoped and believed I was better – I had allowed myself to be drawn into some Gothic fantasy, fuelled by Ted’s surly anger and Juliana’s obsession with Wuthering Heights. No. It was nonsense. This mad conviction that Eloise’s spirit was unquiet, that her death needed to be avenged and I was her chosen weapon of retribution was utterly unhinged. I had read too much Daphne du Maurier in Cornwall. I had let myself become darkly obsessed by Manderley and the malevolent image of Rebecca, stalking her little cottage on the beach, desperate, even in death, to ruin her husband, Max de Winter. So who was to be Eloise’s Mrs Danvers, I thought? Who was the one who was determined to suppress the truth? Eloise was begging me to find out.

  My head whirled. Was she a ghost? Or just a dream?

  I closed my eyes in despair. I was going mad. Chris was right. I was very ill again.

  Chapter Nine

  It was June before I went back to Cornwall. Some of that time was a blur. Lots of hugs from my darling Evie and concerned faces from my sons, upset that their mum was once again drowned in a sad landscape they could not begin to imagine or share. Thank God.

  Chris was wonderful. I had to have treatment again, and pills; but he never made me feel I was going mad, that I was a lost cause; an embarrassment as a wife or mother, which of course I believed I was.

  Normal life gradually returned. My sleep was untroubled and I was, at last, completely better.

  So, when Chris suggested we should go back to Talland in late June, I agreed in a spirit of defiance. I was going home to my lovely cottage, to my healing refuge in Cornwall. I was no longer afraid of ghosts. I would take Evie, who was tired after sitting her GCSEs, and Chris who was due a much-needed holiday, and we would have a wonderful break. It would be like the old days; lots of walks on wild empty beaches, Cornish pasties and cider consumed with gales of laughter on the steep fields leading down to Lantic Bay.

  I couldn’t wait. The boys had finished their university exams and had other fish to fry. I, meanwhile, needed to embrace my lovely county again, fresh and full of ravishing blossom and luscious green meadows, with my husband and beloved daughter in my arms; swaddled in bedclothes dried on the line and smelling of grass, lavender and honeysuckle.

  On the first day back, Evie sat at the wide oak kitchen table, head in hand, staring out of the window at the clematis winding round the railing of our little patio.

  ‘Mum,’ she said dreamily. ‘Can you fall in love when you’re sixteen?’

  ‘You can fall in love however young you are,’ I said with a smile. ‘Look at Shakespeare’s Juliet. She was only thirteen when she met Romeo and was instantly besotted. Mind you, look where that got her.’

  ‘Yeah, I know. But that’s just drama. I mean, things can have a happy ending when you’re just a teenager, can’t they?’

  I looked carefully at my sweet girl.

  ‘Why? Have you met someone you really like?’

  ‘God no, Mum. You mean like all those idiots at school like Josh and Harry? Do me a favour.’

  I felt slightly disappointed at her dismissal of Harry. He was, in his gauche way, actually rather charming.

  Eloise and I often talked about the kind of boy we’d like to see our daughters marry. We wanted so much for them – men who were successful but kind, ambitious yet sensitive, intelligent and funny. How strong the matchmaking instinct is. Ellie and I wanted the best for our girls – love, passion, happiness – the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

  I sighed. Eloise would never see her twin girls married, never play with her grandchildren. I must be there for Rose and Violet, I told myself, I must try to make sure those motherless little girls grew up happy. Never mind that Ted and Juliana would look after them. I, too, would do my best. I was their godmother, after all. I would try to make sure that, somehow, Eloise’s hopes for them did not die.

  And then I remembered a conversation Eloise and I had. So many years ago, before she married Ted.

  I had asked you if you were tired of being single, Eloise. I was long married by then, with three children who defined everything about me. You were only a few months younger, and you seemed sad. There were many days I sat beside you and watched your lovely face sink into a soft despair, especially when you watched my little ones squabbling, cuddling and wrestling their baby days away.

  ‘Tired of being single?’ you said with a weak smile. ‘Devastated, more like. I long for what you have with Chris. That wonderful bridge of love and companionship. But I won’t have that, I think. I lost it a long time ago, and it won’t come back.’

  I was shocked. What were you talking about?

  ‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve never heard about this. Christ, Ellie, this sounds important. Tell me what’s wrong.’

  You smiled and shook your head.

  ‘I can’t. It’s far too painful and only my … ’

  You suddenly sat upright and became your usual gay, sparkling self.

  ‘Sorry, Cath. I’m an idiot. Can’t help myself. Once a drama student, always a drama queen.’

  Eloise and I had met when we studied drama at Bristol University. It had affected us both very strongly, but in completely different ways. She had loved the whole thespian culture; she was a classic exhibitionist, dressed in the New Romantic fashions and totally at home on the stage. She was a good little actress too, although it was clear this was always going to be for fun. Eloise, with her trust fund and stately home, was never going to need a serious career.

  I, on the other hand, did. But I knew by the end of our
first year that I was never going to make it as a professional actor. I so loved the poetry and the prose; was totally carried away on the waves of those gorgeous cadences, swellings and sighings of words; the sad sudden plunge from high romance into deepest tragedy; but I couldn’t deliver the words at a level they needed. I never resented it. I was stoical. Acceptance was my lot. I just got on with it, got my mediocre degree, took a typing course and ended up at the BBC in London as a ‘graduate secretary’, working on the venerable science programme Horizon. Hoping, with all the other girls in those hallowed establishment offices, that I would somehow leap over the rest of us ‘graduate’ girls and get a job on the creative side. As a researcher. That’s all I, and we, asked for.

  And it might as well have been for the moon. You grew up fast in those little rabbit warrens at the BBC, full of testosterone and fear that a young girlie from the typing pool will make it onto the next rung, depriving an earnest Oxbridge graduate of his birthright; his admittance into the ranks of the fantastically pensioned and revered great and good of the BBC.

  But I was never really that ambitious. I just wanted an interesting job. And then, in my early twenties, I met Chris, and that was it really, as far as my career was concerned. I fell in love with him straightaway and my entire focus changed. I knew that all I wanted out of life was to marry him and have a family. I know that’s pretty old-fashioned, but I didn’t care. Once we were married, children came along quickly, and it made sense for me to work from home. I left the BBC without a backward glance. I’d always wanted to write, so I settled for a low-key career in freelance journalism, mostly writing for women’s magazines. I never made much money, but at least I felt I was contributing to the family income, especially when I was contracted to write a regular column on a weekly.

  I was very, very happy.