Eloise

by Judy Finnigan

  Ted’s face turned from sorrow to a mask of cold harshness.

  ‘Juliana and I don’t get on,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I don’t want her poisoning the girls’ minds against me, so I’d rather we both kept our distance.’

  I had been sitting in our little snug, armed with books and newspapers, really glad to be well out of another emotional exchange with Ted. I was relieved that Chris was handling it, even wondering if I could sneak off downstairs to join the kids. But I knew I had to wade in after Ted’s extraordinary comment.

  I stood up. ‘Ted, do you have the faintest idea what you’re saying? Juliana is desperate, devastated. She needs to have her grandchildren near her. What on earth do you mean, that she’ll poison their minds? She adores them, and has nothing but respect for you and your marriage to Eloise.’

  Ted looked at me, and it really hurt to see it, with total contempt.

  ‘I don’t know how much my wife ever told you about our pathetic relationship. I suspect, knowing Eloise as I did, God help me, that she told you nothing that did not portray her in her usual fabulous halo of light. Suffice it to say that our marriage was a travesty.’

  Chris and I stood in our pretty living room, shell-shocked. Then Chris, ever the pacifier, assumed a calm, doctor-like manner.

  ‘Ted, please sit down. We all need a drink, and then we can talk about this without being melodramatic.’

  He signalled to me and I moved slowly into the kitchen, anxious to help this horrible situation and at the same time desperate to run, to dash upstairs and wrap myself up in my duvet. To take a sleeping pill, dissolve into darkness, forget the whole bloody emotional rigmarole and wake up to a fresh clear day tomorrow.

  Instead, I poured Ted a Scotch, and red wine for Chris and me.

  It was Chris who started it.

  ‘Right, Ted, would you like to tell us what’s on your mind, what is making you so unhappy? Obviously you’re in deep shock; your wife has died; you are alone; your children are motherless. Please believe I understand all that, and I also understand that you are feeling very deep anger, however irrational, towards Eloise herself. She couldn’t help her illness or her death, which I know you realise, but you are harbouring a deep grudge against her. I’ve seen this so often, and, believe me Ted, it’s completely natural. What you need to do now is to talk about it, all of it. Cath and I won’t judge you, whatever you say.’

  Chris stopped talking and there was a long, nasty pause. Ted looked at us both as if we were mad. Then he let rip.

  ‘Jesus, Chris, your stupid fucking job! Do you know how you sound, so sodding pompous and sanctimonious? You’re like a fucking Victorian parson, for Christ’s sake. You don’t have any idea about my marriage. It was nothing like it seemed on the surface. We were miserable, OK? Totally fucked, hated the bleeding sight of each other. To be honest, I couldn’t wait for her to die.’

  Chapter Eleven

  It was eight o’clock that same night. Chris and I were sitting opposite each other at a small, candlelit table in the Talland Bay Hotel, a two-minute walk from our cottage. Our hamlet is remote and tiny, with only ten or so houses and cottages meandering down the steep lane to the cove, but all the land had once belonged to the manor of Porthallow, once known as Portlooe, which is listed in the Domesday Book.

  We didn’t have a shop or a pub in our village, and we loved our peace and tourist-free quiet, but we were lucky enough to have the beautiful old Manor House, which for a long time now has been run as a small, independent country house hotel. It’s a Godsend to us, a place to eat and drink in the beautiful gardens with their gorgeous views of the sea, or, in winter, the oak-panelled dining room, logs blazing in the ancient inglenook fireplace. Our cottage is tucked around the back of the old Manor House, and it used to house the steward who managed the estate.

  The evening was cool for June, and we chose to eat inside. Tom and Eve had walked across the cliff path to Polperro, aiming to get a pizza or steak and chips at the Crumplehorn Inn so, for a while, at last, Chris and I were alone. And we had so much to talk about that neither of us knew quite how to begin. Or at least I didn’t. Chris, however, wanted to talk about Ted and Eloise. His analysis, I knew, would be spot-on. It was just that I thought there were things, feelings, irrational emotions playing out in this small family drama that needed a vast vista, a sweeping stage, to comprehend; we needed the Northern Lights here, the Aurora Borealis, to illuminate this sad, shadowy little Cornish tragedy.

  ‘Ted’s obviously in a really bad state,’ said Chris. ‘I want to help him but first he needs to admit he’s got a problem.’

  I swallowed my irritation.

  ‘He just did. His wife has just died of cancer, and he told us he wanted her to die. I mean, he couldn’t have been plainer, could he? Do you really think that’s normal?’

  ‘Of course it is, Cathy. Bereavement sends people into torments. He’s so angry he doesn’t know what he’s thinking right now.’

  Yeah, I thought cynically. Well I had a strong idea. He hates Eloise, and not just because she’s died and left him with two little girls to bring up alone. There was something terribly wrong with Ted and Eloise, and it wasn’t all down to her illness and the strain it had put on their marriage. I wished I could have just shrugged and consigned it to fate – other peoples’ fates; their business, nothing to do with me.

  But Eloise had made it my business too, and I knew with a weary spirit that I had been bound by her to find out the truth.

  Oddly, I didn’t hear from her that night. It seemed she had acknowledged I had had enough. That I needed some respite from her demands. That I actually just deserved some rest.

  What a fool I was. That she, tormented soul, would ever think I needed a break. Really, I was nothing to her other than a means to an end. All that was left to her was a moral imperative; and that concerned her children, no one else. Not her mother, her husband, and certainly not me. She didn’t care about anyone other than those to whom she had given birth. She certainly wasn’t remotely worried about me, and the mental torment her ‘visits’ had caused me.

  I no longer liked Eloise. Oh, I knew this was all about her children, a mother’s fierce and natural determination to put them first at all cost. But that cost now included me. And I had children too. They had already suffered because of Eloise’s hold over me. They had seen me ill again. Of course there was a desperate craving, a real cry for help in her invasions of my dreams, I was sure of that. But I was just a medium, a cog in a complex supernatural equation aimed squarely at channelling my fragile mind. She was using me. I had no idea what this was all about, the big picture, as they used to say in Hollywood. But as much as I revered the memory of my dear dead friend, I had no wish to be involved in a ghostly mission for justice that might destroy my stability and the happiness of my own dear children.

  So there you go. Your kids or mine, Ellie? No contest.

  On Sunday, Chris and I went to church. The children stayed in bed, but, wordlessly, we knew we wanted to visit St Tallanus, our beautiful Celtic chapel. The church was the spiritual centre of our tiny hamlet. The very name Talland meant, in Cornish, the Holy Place on the Hill. It was built, as were all Celtic sites of worship, by running water, a tiny stream trickling down the slope beside the graveyard wall. The entire edifice had a powerful aura of mystery; it was said that the altar was built on a place where two ancient ley lines intersected. And it is true that to kneel and worship there was to experience a profound sense of awe and belonging. We had had our wedding blessed there ten years ago. We originally married in a Register Office, and neither of us had thought we were particularly religious, but the absolute calm we felt in Talland Church moved us to seek a blessing on our marriage four years after we moved into the cottage. This ancient place proffered a secure and holy roof, protecting the commitment we had made to each other, transforming it into a sacrament: we shall love each other, in sickness and in health, ‘til death us do part.

  We walked through the grav
eyard, past yearning, tragic headstones bearing witness to infants and young mothers who had succumbed to the carnage of death in childbirth. Past the more romantic and adventurous tributes to smugglers cut down by the Preventive Men as they brought their booty ashore on Talland Beach. And, inevitably, past the still-rounded mound that marked the passing of Eloise less than five months ago. Eloise had worshipped here, too, when they stayed over, and loved the peace and tranquillity, so it had been her choice to be buried here, with the endless sea before her and the gentle sound of the stream only feet away. It was too early yet for a gravestone to be erected – the earth had to settle first – but on my friend’s still-fresh resting place lay a forest of flowers: tumbling towers of faded roses, garlands of pink clematis. I stared at it, seeing the sweetness of the flowers, thinking of the body of my dead friend in the casket below. Oh Eloise, why couldn’t you rest in peace? Why, in this beautiful country churchyard, couldn’t you give yourself up to eternal quiet, your tasks complete, your work done? And, after all your pain, sorrow and fear, sleep softly in this gentle bower, knowing that you had done your best, and your trials at last were over?

  But there could be no repose for you, my Ellie. Not yet. Maybe not ever, unless I could fulfil your wishes. And I was not prepared to do that. You had frightened me too much, overplayed your hand.

  I looked up. From Eloise’s grave you could see a vast expanse of glittering sea, green hills swooping down to sand and rock, astonishing colours of blue, gold, purple and silver. It was a place of rest to be desired, to be devoutly wished. Paradise. But for the lonely spirit trapped below, Paradise was truly lost.

  The service was calming. We took Communion, and when I settled back into the pew I felt a genuine sense of peace. If Eloise really was wandering about at night along the clifftop, scaring me to death with her dire predictions of doom, then I felt here, in this holy place, I might find the strength to resist her.

  Afterwards the congregation, such as it was, gathered in the porch. We said goodbye to the vicar, a lovely woman with a marvellously confident pulpit voice, and various neighbours milled around exchanging gossip and invitations to Sunday drinks. An old lady I had not seen for nearly a year approached and eagerly embraced me.

  ‘Winnie,’ I said, happily returning her kiss. ‘How are you? Have you got over that terrible flu?’

  Winnie Wharton had been confined to bed for weeks with not just flu but a frightening lung infection at the time of Ellie’s death. One of her neighbours had said darkly, at Ellie’s funeral, that she might have to go into the hospital in Plymouth, and we all knew what that implied at her great age. She was well into her eighties and pneumonia was not a welcome diagnosis. But Winnie, always doughty and courageous, had clearly recovered from her illness.

  ‘Oh goodness, yes,’ she said. ‘Fit as a fiddle I am now, though it took until May, and it’s so grand to get back to church. First time I’ve been since January.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, Winnie. If you come next Sunday, maybe you and Wilf can come back to our house and have a sherry with us and a few friends?’

  ‘Ooh, we’d love that. I must say it’s been a bit quiet for us while I was poorly – hardly seen a soul in months. I’d like to have a bit of a knees-up again.’

  I laughed. ‘I’m not sure a few sherries on a Sunday lunchtime qualifies as a knees-up, but I’ll do my best.’

  ‘That will be lovely. Will Eloise be there?’

  I was staggered. Surely she knew Eloise was dead and buried. Maybe I had misheard.

  ‘Eloise? No, of course not.’ Not exactly tactful, but I felt stunned.

  ‘Oh, that’s a pity. I’d like to talk to her again. Such a lovely young woman.’

  I breathed again. Winnie, for weeks marooned in her sickbed, was clearly unaware that Eloise had died. And since Ellie had kept her illness secret from all but her closest family and friends, why should an elderly lady of the parish know that the lovely, glamorous, vivacious star of south Cornwall now lay buried just a few feet in front of her?

  Winnie burbled happily on. ‘I tried to speak to her this morning when I saw her outside church, but I don’t think she heard me. And then I thought I’d see her at Communion, but she didn’t come. She looked lovely in her red swishy skirt.’

  I stared at Winnie. ‘You … you must be mistaken. Eloise isn’t here. Hasn’t been for months.’

  I couldn’t bear to say the words: Eloise is dead.

  ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’ Winnie was beginning to bristle, in the way old people do when they think their memory is being questioned. ‘All I know is that Eloise was here this morning when I arrived at church. She was standing right there.’ And Winnie pointed to Ellie’s unmarked grave.

  ‘She had someone with her as well. A young boy, about sixteen or so. Lovely-looking young man he was. They were both looking at those gorgeous flowers on that poor soul’s grave. Don’t know whose it is, but someone’s been taking good care of it.’

  I was dumbfounded. I stared at the grave, saw nothing but heaped earth and tumbled blossoms. I really didn’t have the heart to remonstrate with Winnie, but before I could say anything, she let out a cry.

  ‘There he is. That’s the lad. He’s on his own now, but before she was with him. And the way she looked at him, you’d have thought the sun shone out of his eyes.’

  And wandering slowly among the graves, reading headstones avidly as he meandered from tomb to tomb, was the young man Chris and I had seen coming out of the Talland Bay Hotel. Evie’s beautiful boy, pale and unearthly, haunting the sacred ground where so many Cornish lay dead.

  I whipped around, trying to spot Eloise among the small congregation in the churchyard. But of course she wasn’t there.

  I grabbed Chris’s hand and set off to talk to the boy. Chris wasn’t happy. He’d been in deep conversation with the vicar, about a psychotherapy self-help group they were trying to set up in the parish. But, with his usual patience and stiff upper lip, Chris allowed himself to be dragged away.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he hissed as I pulled him down the slope toward the place where I had seen the boy.

  ‘We need to talk to him, Chris. I just know he is really important in all this; he’s a clue to why I keep dreaming about Eloise.’

  ‘Talk to who? And what on earth do you mean, a clue to your dreams? Are you still imagining all that rubbish about Eloise? You’re not making any sense. And not for the first time,’ he added.

  I froze. Stopped and turned to him. ‘Look, Chris. I’ve just about had enough of this. You keep implying I’m mad. I know I’ve been disturbed, depressed, but actually I am perfectly well at the moment. Something is going on here about Eloise. You heard what Ted said yesterday. Did that sound normal to you?’

  ‘Absolutely normal behaviour after a bereavement. Cathy, look. I can’t stand much more of this. Can’t you get it into your head that there was nothing strange or unexpected about Eloise’s death? Last time we came down here you started obsessing about it. You were fine back home in London, back to your old self, but now it’s all starting again. I can see the signs. Look at the way you were staring at her grave just then. As if you’d never seen it before. For God’s sake, she’s dead. It’s all over.’

  He looked stricken, genuinely upset.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do about you any more, Cath. God knows I’ve tried. And I don’t think you understand what you’re doing to me. I couldn’t have been more supportive or understanding. I’ve put everything on hold for you. My work, my research. I was supposed to publish my book on schizophrenia this autumn, but there’s no way I’ll finish it now. And that won’t go down well with the Faculty.’

  I interrupted him. ‘Are you saying you can’t work because of me? Because you know that’s ridiculous. I’ve never stopped you doing your research, or writing your bloody book.’

  Suddenly Chris looked furious. ‘God, Cath, you don’t understand anything, do you? You’re so obsessed with yourself you can’t think
about anyone else. How do you think I can work when I’m worried sick about you all the time? You’re so damned selfish, acting as if all that matters are your warped emotions. And I mean that. They are warped and twisted. Eloise died from cancer, for Christ’s sake, no big mystery there, but you just can’t let it go, can you? Jesus, I spend all my professional life dealing with mental patients. How do you think it feels to come home to one as well? You’re my wife, not another sad case at the hospital. Don’t you think I need some care and affection when I come home? Instead of which all I get is your stress and ridiculous delusions. I can’t stand this much longer.’

  He stared at me, his face contorted with anger and misery, and then wheeled round and stalked back to the church. Everyone was looking at us. They obviously knew we’d had a row. I was stunned at Chris’s outburst, at the hostility and venom he had hurled at me. He had never spoken to me like that before, but I knew he was telling me the truth. He had had enough of me.

  I walked away, downhill past the church. I no longer looked for Evie’s gorgeous boy, or for Eloise herself. I suddenly knew I was on my own. Chris was at the end of his tether. He had tried to help with my depression, and then with my fixation about Eloise’s death. But he could no longer go along with an obsession he regarded as stupid and misguided. He thought I was being self-indulgent, attention-seeking. Was I? No. My dreams felt real enough to me.

  I felt dreadful. Everything around me was dead, over. Without Chris, how could I ever ride over this nightmare, this horrible thing that visited me almost nightly?

  I walked up the hill, past the hotel, down our drive, past the fence wreathed with clematis, and down the steps to our cottage. The children were still in bed. I made a cup of tea and carried it out onto the terrace. I was suddenly seized with an impulse to visit our wildflower meadow and orchard, which we had reclaimed at eye-watering expense when we bought the house. The bills were frightening, but we never regretted it. The paddock was huge, around three acres, but had been completely overgrown with Japanese Knotweed, impenetrably neck-high, and impossible to hack through to get down to the very pretty pond which sat at the bottom of the valley. The landscape gardeners who at last transformed our paddock into a kind of wonderland also enlarged the pond, so that it now has a little wooden pier, and a skiff on which you can lazily boat among the water lilies and reeds.