by Alyson Rudd
Saturday. She paused, waiting for her brain to play catch-up. Saturday. Nothing stirred.
‘Saturday, Dad?’
‘Oh, my, I did mention it, didn’t I? The service for Peter Stanning. It would be his fiftieth birthday so there is a memorial sort of service in the church for him.’
For the first time since waking up on the sun lounger, Lauren felt no sense of disconnection. Peter Stanning was still missing. It was about the only thing that felt solid, non-contradictory, ordinary. She scowled at her selfishness, that she was, in effect, celebrating that a perfectly pleasant and harmless man had probably died a lonely death.
‘Of course, of course, but I don’t think you did mention it. Simon’s mum is still in hospital and I can’t ask his dad so maybe Debbie can watch the children. Or Simon might not want to go. What time is the service?’
Bob went into the detail while Lauren recalled the way the village had been gripped, how she had turned the mystery into an art project. There had been other church services but none for a few years now. She was sure they were well attended because people liked to take a peep at the reclusive Mrs Stanning, forever rumoured to be engaged but who never did remarry, who was from titled stock, some said, although no one really knew for sure. The cold facts of it were that she never shopped in the local store or drank in the local pub nor appeared at the local hairdresser’s. The warmer facts were that if anyone in the village was ever ill, she would send over her homemade jam or bake a cake for them. She did not take them in person, but still, she made an effort to be kind.
And she had not sold the house, that too was in her favour. It made her appear sentimental. Some people would say she was still hopeful Peter would turn up one day and she wanted to be there when he did. Others would speculate that the large house with its land and stables for her horses was too lovely to dispense with. One or two others would suggest she had buried her husband on the land and needed to stay put to prevent a property developer from one day digging up his corpse. But, as Bob would argue, the police would have searched for signs of disturbed soil or new flagstones at the time. Mrs Stanning was never a suspect, not really. She did not need the money.
Simon was disconcerted by Lauren’s enthusiasm for the service.
‘Do you want me to go?’ he said. ‘I mean, it might be easier if I stay with the kids.’
She hardly heard him. The more she thought about Peter the happier she felt. This was perhaps the start of belonging and the end of unsettling isolation.
The church was three quarters full and bursting with flowers. There had been a wedding earlier in the day and the bride had insisted the memorial attendees share in her joy, given that the event was not supposed to be sad but a celebration of a man’s life.
George stood to speak and Lauren nodded enthusiastically. She knew George at once. She did not wonder at the length of his hair or even which son he might be. She knew him. She recognised him instantly. It was a remarkable feeling and, elated, she felt she might break into song earlier than the service wanted her to.
The late-afternoon sun illuminated the simple stained-glass windows, making the church feel almost cosy and not at all its cold formal normal self. Lauren looked over her shoulder and too late realised she was looking for herself. This was not something she had ever done before or heard of anyone else doing but it was the knee-jerk response to the almost suffocating sense of déjà vu she was experiencing. Yes, she knew this church, but she had the overwhelming sensation that she had cried and loved and loved again and disappeared there. She looked down at the heavy grey flagstones and breathed in slowly and deeply and knew she did not want to lift her head, to see the stained light.
There was shuffling and a low murmur as Mrs Stanning stood to address them all. She had never done so before.
She was impeccably dressed in a cream suit and pale pink silk shirt. Her jewellery glinted as she cleared her throat.
‘I just want to thank you all for keeping Peter, my husband and George and Harry’s father, in your thoughts. We miss him every day, and today, his fiftieth birthday, we would have planned a party, done nice things together, maybe,’ she smiled, ‘had an extra party, and we can’t do that. Many of you will have lost loved ones, I know, but while we know we have to accept Peter has gone forever, part of us will always hope for a miracle. Knowing you care and perhaps wish for a miracle too, helps such a great deal.’
There was an appreciative gentle hum and then a group of choir boys sang ‘Ecce Panis Angelorum’ which the order of service informed her meant ‘Behold the Bread of Angels’ and had been a piece Peter Stanning had once heard in a church in southern Italy and rather liked. It moved her deeply and as it drew to a close the sunlight pierced its way across the nave and spread into a fan of narrow sunbeams. Lauren gasped. The pews around her began to spin and the music became a shriek of pain. She clutched at her seat and closed her eyes determined not to faint and spoil the service. Slowly the sounds returned to normal and she risked opening her eyes. The sun was behind clouds and the church was almost monochrome as a result. She breathed a sigh of relief and wondered if she had eaten too little at lunch or if the weight of a sluggish memory was starting to make her weak.
As the vicar led them in prayer, Vera turned to smile at her daughter and Lauren noticed, for the first time, a tiny mole on her left cheek. The smell of the church with its excess of flowers prompted images of her mother in a hat, trying not to cry, of her father in a shiny silver tie, a white rose in his lapel. Her heart opened with happy memories, of Simon placing the ring on her finger, of the very same vicar beaming as if he had engineered their love. Lauren smiled. It had been such a strangely beautiful day, she was too young to be walking down the aisle but by the time she did so everyone connected to her and Simon was sure it was the right thing to do and both sets of parents had been true to their word, helping with childcare so that she could attend college part-time and then go to work.
For the first time since falling asleep in the sun she felt at peace and she wished Simon had accompanied her after all so she could link his arm and lean on his shoulder and tell him everything was all right, that the déjà vu was not sinister but a mark of the depth of their love.
Bob squeezed her hand as the last hymn was sung and the sun reappeared to light up the church and Mrs Stanning’s jewellery. At that moment Lauren’s heart unfurled. She frowned in astonishment. This was not déjà vu at all, it was an almost physical sensation, akin to discovering she really did have two hearts and double the amount of love she thought possible. It was similar to how she had felt when Toby was born, how instantly she felt herself capable of a double dose of love for two children where she had been concerned she would find her love for her daughter diluted by the new arrival.
This, though, was much stronger. Her heart was so swollen that it needed to open a second set of double doors and through them she did not so much see as feel another wedding. The same church, her parents the same or almost the same, and a curiously familiar soreness in her knee, a sense of being older, more mature, the same vicar, and there, turning his head to peek at her, another groom, less handsome but intelligent and intense.
And then George tapped her arm. She had been ignoring his presence by her side for several seconds.
‘You look pale,’ he said. She knew then she had to speak to him, alone. First, she would have to work out why.
‘I’m fine, thank you. Really lovely service.’
George moved on. After all, he barely knew her.
* * *
Miriam had drawn the curtains against the sun. It was a cloudless late-August day, Toby and Rosie were with Lauren’s parents and Lauren was fearful that talking about her memories was not quite the unburdening she had hoped for.
‘That is very common,’ Miriam said. ‘As we make progress, the pain increases and it feels as if we are making it worse, but it is a journey and it often hurts to get there and find a place where you can be content again.’
&nb
sp; Lauren was, briefly, irritated by Miriam’s serenity and wondered what it would take to make her break down or throw her out.
‘Well, I had a dreadful time in church. No, actually, it was great for a while, I had no problems at all. I felt normal and in tune with everything and then it all went weird, much weirder than it has before.’
‘That’s good news, Lauren, we have to be patient, and you must tell me every detail.’
Lauren was not sure this was possible.
‘I don’t think the words exist to explain what happened. I’ve never read about it or felt anything like it. And, if you want me to be honest with you in all this, then I have to tell you that I’m not even sure this is an emotional thing that is happening to me. It feels external, not internal.’
Miriam nodded, paused, and suggested that Lauren sit in the armchair, that they chat more informally.
‘I’ll make us some tea.’
‘Thanks,’ Lauren said, and as she waited and waited, because it seemed there was no quick way to have a cup of tea, she scoured the room hungrily. It was so impeccably furnished. Antique chairs, intriguing tiny sculptures, elegantly framed paintings. It smelled of expensive furniture polish and there was a crack in the deep red velvet curtains which allowed through a gentle sunbeam that hit a small polished mahogany table.
Miriam arrived back to find Lauren peering at the sunbeam close up and sliding her fingers through it.
Looking at her, Miriam felt as if she were holding a newborn chick she could kill if she held it too tightly or too loosely.
‘I once had a patient who killed herself,’ she said. ‘I was much less experienced back then and did not grasp that the obvious problem is not always the one that matters.’
‘What went wrong?’ Lauren asked.
‘I encouraged her to open up about abuse she had suffered as a child but she had been so heavily schooled by her abuser that she was the one who was disgusting and to blame that she found the telling of it too much to bear. I gave up work after that until my husband, my very wise, late husband, said that I should carry on in order to make her death mean something, that I should learn from my mistakes and use what had happened to be a better therapist. I tell you this because I want you to know I do not ever think I know it all or that I can anticipate an outcome. I am here only to offer an objective, sympathetic ear, to guide you to finding out why you feel as you do. If it gets messy or complicated or bizarre I don’t want you to stop trying because you think I will judge you or not believe you. All that matters to me is that you participate more happily in life when you leave me than when you arrived.’
Lauren fiddled with her wedding ring.
‘I don’t know what is happening to me. I don’t know what are important clues and what are dreams or fears. I could spend half an hour telling you something that will not help at all.’
‘OK, that’s a fair point. Let me ask a few questions instead. Since you woke up in the garden what has been the most frightening thing to have happened, the most frightened you have felt?’
‘Oh,’ Lauren said. ‘I’m not sure I’ve felt frightened at all really. Maybe in the church when I thought I might faint and everything was spinning.’
‘Do you know why you felt poorly?’
‘The sun came out,’ she blurted.
‘The sun?’ Miriam asked.
‘Yes. The church was full of sunbeams.’
Tim
He took the baby and would not let go of her even though Vera was desperate to hold her. It was not that he was ignorant of the grief of others, but he knew if he handed her over then he would begin to sob and he did not want to do that here in the Cheshire church where he and Lauren had been married.
His half-sister had insisted she be allowed to address the congregation and she stood up in an expensive black coatdress that her mother had bought specially.
‘I wasn’t very nice to Lauren when I met her because I was jealous. I thought she would take Tim away from me. But Lauren was such a lovely person that she put up with me and was kind and then asked me to be her one and only bridesmaid. She was…’
Lottie made the mistake, at this moment, of glancing at the coffin and realising for the first time that Lauren’s body was actually inside it. A dead body. Lauren’s dead body. Maybe it was a funny colour, maybe her eyes were wide open, maybe a cockroach was crawling across her face. She gasped for air, unable to speak any more and her mother rushed to be by her side.
‘Lottie wanted to say how much she and all Tim’s family loved Lauren, how blessed we all feel to have had her in our lives,’ she said and then guided her daughter, not back to her seat, but out of the church. She closed the heavy door behind her but the congregation inside could hear the muffled howls of Lottie’s despair. She had only just comprehended the finality of it all and all she could do was scream.
The vicar felt he was losing control of the service. Not that this occasion could in any way be a good one. He had seen her parents pray in thanks that she had survived her accident in Cornwall; he had conducted her wedding ceremony; and now there was a motherless two-week-old baby in the front row and a teenager outside who had broken down. He looked at the card in front of him and saw that an Estelle McGinty was due to read a poem.
‘Estelle will now read “But Not Forgotten” by Dorothy Parker,’ he said which only made his sense of unravelling worse. There were plenty of religious poems they could have chosen, he thought. And here was a young woman, the same age as Lauren, with a crystal-clear voice about to reduce anyone left still composed to snivelling wrecks.
Estelle, so touched by Lauren’s embrace at the wedding, had begged Tim to be allowed to speak. She had practised the poem over so many hours that the church could have burst into flames and she would not have lost her place or her intonation.
‘You still will see me, small and white,’ Estelle recited.
‘And smiling, in the secret night.
‘And feel my arms about you when
the day comes fluttering back again.’
Vera unleashed a wail of pain and buried her head in Bob’s chest. The organist played an errant note before even the first hymn had been announced and Debbie fled the church, her brother Simon wondering if he was supposed to go with her given she had persuaded him she needed him there in the first place. Only Alfie, frail but sitting bolt upright, did not flinch, and the vicar noted that he had a peaceful, faraway look in his eyes, an expression he would often see on the face of his more elderly parishioners when they contemplated their mortality and the existence of Heaven.
Tim had written what he would have said if capable of speaking and had asked a humbled Gregory to deliver his words for him. Tim stood, still holding his newborn daughter, in front of the snivelling crowd.
‘My friend Gregory will speak now,’ he said. He was clearly hoping to add one more sentence but his legs were wobbling so he sat down.
‘Tim has written a letter to Lauren which it is my privilege to read to you all,’ Gregory said.
There was the sound of rustling as the congregation prepared for the worst. Women looked in their handbags for extra tissues, men patted their breast pockets. Tim stroked the velvet cheek of his sleeping child. Lydia sat up straight, feeling like a drama teacher who had coached a pupil through a difficult part of a play just as the live performance beckoned.
George Stanning, at the back of the church, lowered his head. He had not had the chance to tell Lauren his news nor thank her for her part in it.
‘My darling beautiful Lauren,’ Gregory said. Lydia had told him he had to find a balance. He knew he would remain composed if he read Tim’s words in a monotone, as if listing the ingredients on the back of a jar of mustard, but Lydia, the writer, had insisted he find a way to add more light and shade to avoid insulting Tim and Lauren’s parents. He took a deep breath. He would try, but the second he felt his voice crack, he would return to autopilot.
‘I saw your art before I saw you and I expected you to be
a little arrogant given you were so talented. But you were modest and sweet, a listener, unaware of how clever you were and unaware of how attractive you were. Even so, I found it tough to ask you out and you always maintained I never really did. I remember thinking, if this goes badly, I’ll pretend it was a business meeting.’
Gregory paused and those who knew Tim well laughed gently.
‘We fell in love. We were married in this church and I gasped when I saw you walking down this aisle with Bob. You were even more beautiful when you fell pregnant with Amber and I want to promise you that our daughter will be loved as you were loved by Bob and Vera. I miss you. I love you.’
There was, briefly, the silence of breath being held as Gregory slowly sat down next to Lydia who only just stopped herself giving him the thumbs-up.
The rest of the service passed in a haze for most. The hotel that had hosted Lauren and Tim’s wedding breakfast served food and drink and at last Vera could hold Amber. Tim spoke to everyone there, thanking them for their condolences, before leaving with his immediate family and Vera and Bob and Suki for the interment. Amber came too. It became Tim’s style of parenting. Wherever he went, his daughter came too. He worked from home as much as possible, and when unable to, his mother or a babysitter would bring her along to lunch.
Vera and Bob travelled down every Tuesday, stayed in the new spare room, and left every Thursday. George valued Bob at work but offered him a part-time role which he grasped with gratitude. George would have liked to discuss his father’s disappearance with Bob, but decided to bide his time. He had waited so long already, he thought, that waiting a little longer did not really matter.
Lauren
Lauren could not sleep for worrying at her lack of empathy with Miriam. The poor woman had counselled someone who had killed themselves and she had lost her husband. Have I become so self-absorbed and selfish? she thought.