Greatest Hits

by Laura Barnett

  The sandwiches, the wine, the hushed voices. Cass’s inability to look directly at Ivor, as one might avoid staring directly at the sun. Anna walking quickly and vividly through her mind—the warm, breathing solidity of her; impossible to believe, really, that she was gone. Everything detached, formless, shifting. The wintry light stark, cool. Kim’s arm threaded through hers. The baying reporters outside, beyond the gates, with their lenses, their microphones, their relentless demands.

  Alan had suggested they drown out the noise with readings and music. Tasha, sallow and pinch-cheeked in a fur-collared coat, reciting an E. E. Cummings poem. Jerome, Alan’s son, playing “Jesus Don’t Want Me for a Sunbeam” on acoustic guitar, while his sister, Katie, sang.

  Many other young people Cass didn’t know, milling around, crying in corners. Chris Polarski hadn’t dared to show his face. But Ollie Patterson had come, and Cass had understood, from his stricken expression, how deeply he had loved Anna, even if they had both been too young to recognise that feeling for what it was. Rare. Precious. True.

  That was ten years ago, now. Ten years in which no stream of cars has gathered on the driveway at Home Farm; no music has thrummed from the living-room stereo. No friends and relatives have congregated in this house to drink and eat and talk.

  Ten years since Cass stood before this mirror, in this bedroom, in her black woollen dress, and heard herself cry out—a deep, guttural cry that she did not recognise as her own. Kim had rushed upstairs, held her tightly, and still that cry had welled up from inside her, unbidden, unstoppable.

  They had stood together like drowning women, until the cry had finally died away; and then Cass had put on her shoes, walked downstairs, Kim following behind. She had opened the front door, stepped outside, and climbed into the back seat of the car that would carry them to the crematorium, to the summing-up, to the obscene brightness of those flowers piled up inside their cellophane.

  Ten long, silent, empty years, of which, after her two internments in the hospital, she had made what she could. Her books, her painting. Black-and-white films in the afternoon, soothing voices on the radio, and long drives with no set destination, just the creep of the road beneath the tyres, and the wide, pale English sky.

  She had found a kind of solace in those excursions, and in the small, quiet pleasures of home. Flowers; food; objects found in junk shops and antique stores, bought not for their value but for their ability to invoke in her some feeling, some fractured memory.

  A Nikon camera, thirty years old, its shutter broken: Lily, on the pier at Brighton, red-lipped, her dark hair shining under the sun. A terracotta flour jar, musty with ancient, unidentifiable smells: John, moving around the kitchen, and the cat, Louis, licking his paws.

  A sepia print, age-spotted, its frame sticky with dirt: she and Ivor, stepping up onto the stage in that Lewes pub, back when everything had seemed so easy, and simple, and theirs for the taking.

  A copy of The L-Shaped Room, its pages yellowed, its spine cracked: Anna, hair spread across the pillow, brown eyes following the movement of her mother’s lips as she read. Oh, Cass had stood for such a long time in that dark little shop in Canterbury with that book in her hand, and not known, until she’d stepped out into the sudden shock of the afternoon, that she was weeping.

  TRACK FIFTEEN

  “Gethsemane”

  By Cass Wheeler

  New and exclusive

  I pawned a golden evening

  The sign said

  “Please wait for me”

  I called it a resting place

  You are the shadow of the trees

  Because we always follow

  Up the hill, Gethsemane

  Up the hill in fear

  And dropping to my knees

  Oh save me father

  Save me

  Call me Gethsemane

  I am lonely

  Call me Gethsemane

  I stood with them and watched him

  Garden of Gethsemane

  He held me so tightly

  Evening of Gethsemane

  You are the shadow of the trees

  Eyes burn so brightly

  Told me you’d set me free

  Oh please believe me

  Oh save me father

  Save me

  Save me Gethsemane

  I am lonely

  Call me Gethsemane

  He told me he would set me free

  Set me free Gethsemane

  Love would set me free

  Love would set me free

  Love would set me free

  Love would set me free

  Love would set me free

  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  * * *

  RELEASED 18 May 2015

  RECORDED February 2015 at Home Farm, Kent

  GENRE Folk rock / blues / pop

  LABEL Lieberman Records

  WRITER(S) Cass Wheeler

  PRODUCER(S) Callum Sutherland

  ENGINEER(S) Gavin Bryant

  There were gardens at the hospital.

  A maze, laid out in concentric circles of thorn-sharp yew: this was out of bounds to patients, though several could usually be found there after hours. A walled garden, planted with twenty-five varieties of rose, as the head gardener—a cheerful, ruddy-cheeked man named Dave Yarrow—liked to inform anyone interested enough to listen. And Cass’s favourite: a terraced Mediterranean plot, filled with rosemary and French lavender and fragrant oregano, and bordered by a row of tall cypresses that many said they found inappropriately mournful, but which filled Cass with a sense of . . . What? She wasn’t sure, exactly; she was no longer sure about anything much at all. But she liked to sit on a bench and look at those trees, and breathe in the garden’s heady, scented air.

  It was a handsome place, the hospital, as such institutions went. Private, expensive, beyond the reach of most: for this, Cass knew, she must be grateful.

  A rambling old manor, its central portion Jacobean, its other wings added haphazardly through the centuries, and its interiors recently redecorated in a neutral, blandly calming scheme. Only the entrance hall had retained its original grandeur: a wide staircase of polished wood, portraits of long-forgotten aristocrats staring glumly down from the panelled walls.

  There had been a fracas, not long after Cass’s first admission—a young schizophrenic, becoming agitated as she passed the huge oil painting that presided over the first-floor landing. She had, so the story went, been convinced that this armour-clad, moustachioed viscount had crept out from his ornate gold frame during the night, stolen along the corridor to her room, and interfered with her.

  But Cass had only been dimly aware of this event, as she had been only dimly aware, during the early weeks of her first incarceration, of everything: of her room—large, magnoliapainted, facing the front drive; of the cool sensation of her pillows, pressed against her face; of the doctors who came and went; of the slow passage of the sun across the sand-coloured linoleum.

  “Incarceration,” perhaps, was too strong a word. She was free to leave if she wished, as she had been free to come. It was Cass herself who chose to keep to her room; to speak as little, as infrequently, as possible. How precious that silence seemed to her: how new, how rare, how special. It had closed over her like an ocean: she was swimming in its depths, down in the darkness, where no light could penetrate. The doctors wanted her to talk, of course—they spoke of group therapy, individual therapy, therapy, therapy, therapy—but she would not talk, not yet.

  And then, one warm afternoon—who knew how long she had been here—she had risen from her bed, dressed, and stepped out along the corridor, down the back staircase, and out into the gardens.

  Nobody had stopped her, though she had assumed her movements were observed. Past other patients—not seeing them; not wishing them to see her—and along a gravel path. Past the walled rose
garden, across a stretch of lurid green grass. How bright the colours seemed, after the pale whites and creams of her room; how vivid the syrupy shafts of sun. And there, silhouetted against the pale blue sky, the feathered plumes of trees: cypresses, she thought. Tall, slender cylinders, casting their tapered shadows across the close-clipped lawn.

  She followed those shadows, and found, beyond them, a garden. Raised beds chaotic with plants and flowers; a sundial; a bench. She sat on the bench, looked across at the cypresses. She closed her eyes, and tasted the pungent flavours of herbs on her tongue.

  In her mind, she saw the garden at Rothermere. She saw Jonah at Atterley, lit by the flickering glow of candles. It seemed like years since she had thought of Jonah. It had been years. Where had Jonah gone? Where had everybody gone?

  Her mother, Margaret, lying alone on her bed in the vicarage, diving to the farthest depths of her unhappiness. Her father, holding her in his arms, reading to her in the low, soft voice that, in her childish imagination, had seemed like the voice of God Himself.

  Irene, whom she had loved, and Irene’s mother, Alice, whom she had, perhaps, loved even more.

  Stephen Lomax, the sad-eyed scientist, who had once loved her.

  Kind, clever, handsome Uncle John, with his drawings and his unruly blond quiff; and Lily, drawing a fine skein of smoke in through her red-painted lips, arm resting lightly on the open window of her car. If you’re going to smoke, you might as well do it properly.

  Ivor at twenty-two—the Ivor with whom she had sat for hours in John’s attic office, absorbed in the discovery of music; and with it, the discovery of each other.

  Anna. Their child. Their baby, whom Cass had not truly known that she desired, loved, until she had held her in her arms. Just as she had not known, until they had stood together on that Scottish beach, that she must somehow find a way to say goodbye to her; that her own love, her own longing, would not be enough to keep her in this world.

  All of them—gone. And yet here she still was, still breathing, alone under this same sun, before this row of slender trees.

  After a time, Cass had got to her feet and walked slowly back to her room. There, she had drawn the covers over her head, and fallen into a deep, dreamless sleep.

  The next day, she had risen earlier than usual, showered and dressed before breakfast, so that she was already sitting quietly in her chair, waiting, when the doctor came.

  A breakdown.

  Nobody—not her doctors; not Alan; not Kim—ever used this word, but it was the one that Cass preferred. For something, it truly seemed, had been broken. Her sense of self had shattered into fragments. She grasped for them, and cut herself on the shards. She was untethered, falling. She was floating loose in a cloudless sky.

  There had been an evening, a month or so after the funeral, when she had driven to Ivor’s house on Hampstead Grove.

  She would not remember the drive: she might have flown there; might have killed someone, herself included, though at the time, that would have seemed a blessing.

  Ivor’s high black security gates had remained resolutely closed. She had screamed into the intercom so loudly that lights had blinked on in the grand, solemn houses on either side, and a man passing with a dog had approached to ask her, none too politely, to quieten down. She had turned on the man—God knows what she had said, or how Alan, later, had persuaded him not to go to the police, or—even worse—the papers. But eventually, the gates had opened, and there had been Ivor, barefoot in his grey jeans.

  She would remember nothing, either, of what had been said: only the white noise of her own voice, screaming, screaming, and the blows she had landed on him, on his face, his arms, his chest. But she could imagine her words: the desperation of them, their rage, their utter uselessness. It should have been you, Ivor. Or me. Not her. Not our daughter. Not Anna. Why couldn’t we save her? Why couldn’t we keep her safe? How are we meant to go on living?

  Ivor had not hit her back. He had cried, and held her, and when she was spent, whimpering like a child on his kitchen floor, he had called Alan, and Alan had called Kim, and together they had come to get her.

  Voices whispering in the darkness, beyond her closed eyes, beyond the cool comfort of the floor-tiles pressed against her face. The hospital. Yes, the hospital. Just take me somewhere quiet, please. Take me somewhere I no longer have to hear this dreadful music. This music, this music. No more of this music, please.

  She hadn’t cared at all, in that moment, who knew—hadn’t cared about anything but diving down to that quiet, empty place on the ocean floor. But Alan and Kim—and yes, Ivor too—had cared. Together, she would understand later, they had forged a plan.

  The hospital they chose was famed for its discretion, its seclusion. A number of very well-known people had been patients there, and they were used to handling such matters. Ivor would not say anything about it; he was selling the house in Hampstead and moving to California. A new country, a new start. His neighbour—whoever he was—would be persuaded to say nothing.

  It would be announced, publicly, that Cass Wheeler was taking some time off, to grieve for her late daughter. Her need for privacy at this difficult time would be respected. Those who did not respect it would be pursued to the farthest limits of the law.

  She would come to see, eventually, that they had all believed her withdrawal—her breakdown—would be temporary; that she would, with time, and the best psychiatric care her money could obtain, be restored to full health, and continue to do what she had always done. To write. To sing. To play. To live her life under the glare of those hot stage lights.

  And she, perhaps, had believed this, too. For it was true that when she left the hospital for the first time, on a warm May afternoon, sinking into the passenger seat of Kim’s car, she had felt restored, almost whole. Almost herself.

  And yet, reinstalled at Home Farm, she began to realise that what she loved most, now, was silence, not sound. She would not write another song, or listen again to those she had written; she could not bear to comb over all those endless attempts to make sense of a life that did not, in the end, seem to offer any sort of sense at all.

  And so, then, she had called Alan over, told him that she wanted to call off the plans for the next album, pay Hunter and the musicians what they were owed, and close the studio. That face, looking at her with such love, such tenderness. I will make it happen, Cass. I will set you free.

  To Kim, she said, “You’ll stay close by, won’t you? You’ll still look after everything for me?” Adding, embarrassed, not meeting Kim’s eye, “Alan will sort it all out, of course. There’s enough money. At least, I think there is.”

  Kim had taken Cass’s hand, and said, “Please. We don’t need to talk about that. Of course I’ll stay on. How could I not?”

  After a long moment, she added, “You don’t need to do this, Cass. I know it might feel, on some level, like some kind of penance. But it won’t bring Anna back. Nothing will.”

  Cass had looked down at her plate, at the last, congealing remnants of the lasagne Kim had brought over with her. She remembered, now, the glass dish she had taken from the fridge a few months before—the day she had later driven up to London to confront Ivor with her raging grief—and had smashed on the flagstones. Shame welled up inside her.

  It was a shame, she knew, that she would have to learn to live with, along with the other greater, impossible shame: the shame of not having managed to save her daughter. Or, even worse, of having brought Anna into this world in the first place, and then forced her to endure her parents’ unhappiness. That artwork Anna had made: her face on the video screen, eyes impassive, implacable. Birth: In Reverse. The slow erasure of her body, head to toe.

  No. Cass’s silence, her withdrawal from the intolerable mess she had made, wouldn’t bring Anna back. But it was, she told Kim—she told herself—the only way that she could think of to go on without he
r.

  And so on she went.

  Day followed day, week followed week, year turned upon year. She was fifty-six. Fifty-seven. Milestones passing more or less unnoticed along a road that was not empty, exactly, but quiet, unremarkable. A freeway spooling across endless prairie: she remembered such a road, in America. Iowa, perhaps, or Kansas. Fields of waving golden corn, and a wide, blank white sky; miles of bare tarmac between each homestead and the next.

  She was not entirely alone, of course. No man is an island. No woman, either. Who had said that: was it Keats or Donne? And Paul Simon, later, had asserted its reverse.

  There was Kim, who came three mornings a week to spend a few hours in the office, answering mail, catching up on what little correspondence Cass still received. Many evenings, she returned with a meal and a bottle of wine: alone, or with Bill, with Tasha, with Alan and Rachel.

  There was Simone, the new cleaner, whom Kim had found through Sally Jarvis in the shop, and who lived out on the new estate on the farthest fringes of the village. A small, trim, attractive woman in her middle thirties, with a neat black bob, and sharp varnished fingernails that she protected under yellow Marigolds. Three children, and no husband—well, there had been one once, but she’d been glad to see the back of him.

  Simone liked to talk. Sometimes, when her shift was finished, they would sit together at the kitchen table, drinking coffee, Simone unburdening herself of the issues of the day—her son was eleven, and troublesome; her twin daughters were eight, and horse-obsessed. Cass listening, offering a response only when one was required.