Eloise (3 page)

She looked wonderful, even though losing Eloise was, I knew, the greatest tragedy of her life. Tall and slender, she wore ruffled blouses with high collars, long flowing skirts. Her hair was abundant, ice-queen silver, gathered behind her head and then left to flow like a curling wintry river over her shoulders. She was completely beautiful at seventy-five, a graceful Cornish nymph, a dryad who could sit by a sacred well and comb her long hair to charm and enchant, even now in her old age.

She asked if I wanted tea, and one of her remaining devoted servants brought it. We sat in her pretty sitting room, and she talked about Eloise.

‘She seemed so much better, Cathy. The doctors said she was in remission.’

‘But you must know they just meant a sort of reprieve. Seriously, Juliana, you knew she was terminal?’

‘Of course, but she was full of energy, and enjoying her life so much.’

‘OK, I know she was, but we have to accept in an illness like that, things can suddenly accelerate. God knows, Juliana, we’ve talked so much about her pain. That’s why she was taking the drugs. However much we wanted to deny it, we knew what was coming for Eloise.’

She fixed me with a long stare.

‘Cathy, don’t you think it’s strange that I wasn’t there?’

‘What do you mean? When she died?’

‘We were so close. She always wanted to be with me when … it happened.’

‘But … well, you couldn’t have been. It happened so fast. There was no time … ’

‘Yes, there was.’ She gave me an unfathomable look. ‘Tell me, Cathy, when someone is terminally ill, do they die suddenly as if they’d had a heart attack? I don’t believe so. I saw Eloise the day she died, in the morning. We had coffee with the little ones. She was happy, so relieved that the doctors had given her a reprieve. You knew Eloise. She was always so positive, convinced she would beat it. And then, three hours later, she was dead? It makes no sense to me.’

I wasn’t sure what to say. I had my own concerns about Eloise’s death – a barely conscious doubt and unease that I suspected had caused my awful nightmare the other night. But I felt that if I gave in to Juliana’s anxieties, it would send me into a realm of total paranoia. What was she saying? That my dear friend did not die because of her terminal cancer? After all those years of gloomy prognosis? Of course she did. The alternative was utterly ridiculous.

I asked her what she thought could have happened to Eloise, if her death was not from natural causes. There had
been no need for a post-mortem, of course. There was no need to confirm what we all knew: Ellie died from her cancer, which had metastasised throughout her body. Her lungs, liver, spine and brain had been riddled with the hideous disease.

Juliana shook her head in frustration. ‘I don’t know. It’s just an instinct that I can’t shake off. Oh, I’m aware that I sound like a deranged old woman, unable to accept my daughter’s death. Ted told me as much a few days ago.’

‘You’ve discussed it with him?’ I was astonished.

She gave a deep sigh. ‘I tried to, but he became really angry with me. He said he had enough on his plate without having to deal with an eccentric old biddy who couldn’t cope with reality. He even suggested I was going senile.’ Her face darkened. ‘That hurt me a lot.’

‘But you and Ted – you’ve never really got along, have you?’ I asked.

‘Did Eloise tell you that?’

I nodded.

She sighed unhappily. ‘Eloise got a bit impatient with me. Told me I was imagining things.’

‘What do you mean? Imagining what?’

‘I always thought he was a bit hard. To be honest, I thought he was a gold-digger. I never really trusted him,’ she said.

‘And what did Ellie say to that?’

‘She laughed at me. She said she was grateful that I was looking out for her, but I was being ridiculous. She told me that Ted was a really talented artist, and that his paintings were increasing in value all the time. She said collectors were hungry for his work, and they both thought he was going to make a fortune in his own right. She said that what I took for hardness was actually fierce ambition, and a lack of sentimentality.’ Juliana shrugged. ‘She may have been right. She obviously knew him much better than I did. But Cathy, I never warmed to him – and he knew it, though we kept up a front for Eloise’s sake. I’m so scared that now there’s no need for that pretence that I’ll see much less of him and … and the twins … ’

I tried to reassure her that she was simply and understandably hugely upset, that there was no need to worry, and I told her I would think about what she had said, and call her the next day. We were supposed to be returning to London tomorrow, but I had no real reason to go home. Chris had appointments on Tuesday, but I could stay. As I left, I thought about Ted and Eloise. We knew Ted quite well, and on the whole they had seemed happy. They’d had the occasional row, and would sometimes arrive at dinner parties, each of them silently simmering with resentment of the other.

But so did every married couple. Chris and I certainly did. And Ted made Ellie laugh. He could be very witty.

I found Chris outside, mesmerised by the beautiful garden. I told him what Juliana had said and he sighed. Chris was kind, but like most men he wanted solutions, not problems.

‘Look,’ he said. ‘She’s her mother and she wasn’t there at the most emotionally significant moment of her daughter’s life. What she’s feeling is natural. Not to have been with Eloise when she died makes her feel incredibly guilty. She feels she should have prevented it – and that if she’d been a better mother it would never have happened. You
know
all that stuff, Cathy. Comes with the motherhood territory. If it had been Evie, you would have felt exactly the same.’

Evie was our sixteen-year-old daughter. A flash of pain tore through me as I imagined losing her.

Then I felt furious. How dare he shift a mother’s grief into something that ‘comes with the territory’? Yes, of course, for a child to die before her is beyond the worst realms of a mother’s imagination. But Chris spoke so glibly, as if he were explaining something to me that I was too stupid to understand. As if he had a paternal overview which was quite naturally superior to a mother’s instinct.

I did feel strongly, at that point, a sort of tribal alliance with Juliana. We were both mothers. We were both, in different ways, deeply uneasy about Eloise’s death. I decided
then that, however irrational, I was on Juliana’s side. Something was wrong. And whatever Chris said, I was staying put in Cornwall until I had fathomed out what was troubling me.

Monday. I woke feeling worried and oppressed. I had to do something and I really didn’t want to. Then I remembered. Ted. We hadn’t called him yesterday.

‘Will you phone him today?’ I asked, drinking tea on our little sun-drenched patio.

‘Right. And what am I supposed to say?’

God. Men.

‘Jesus, Chris – you’re supposed to be his friend. You’ve always said he’s one of the straightest guys you know. Can’t you just talk to him about losing his wife? Then maybe we
can talk to him about Juliana’s concerns. And we have to check on the girls. See how they are. They must be so bewildered and sad at losing their mummy.’

‘All right. Shall I ask them to lunch?’

‘Yes. If they can make it.’

As it happened they couldn’t. They were staying at Ted’s parents’ house in Manchester. They wouldn’t be back in Cornwall until tomorrow.

‘Well, I guess that’s it,’ Chris said when he ended the call. ‘I’ve got to go back to London tonight, so we won’t see him.’

Not ‘we’ – but I could, I thought. I didn’t have to go anywhere. I would stay here until I had sorted things out with Ted and Juliana. For Eloise. But I wouldn’t tell Chris for a couple of hours, until I thought of a way to convince him that I had to, that I needed to do this.

The weather turned on Tuesday. As I had waved a slightly surly Chris goodbye on Monday evening the sky was clouding over. Now the rain was hurling down in the relentless sheets that Cornwall throws at those of us who fondly hope for sun. It mocks us, really. ‘Call yourselves lovers of Kernow?’ the wind howls. ‘What do you know about what living here really means? The hardship and bleakness?’ And yes, Cornwall can be far from a paradise. A beautiful haven for family holidays for a few months of the year; a relentlessly
harsh and difficult place to make a living for most of it. And so dependent on the weather. Every winter, every spring, the locals’ eyes focus anxiously on the coming summer season. Will the sun bless the beaches? Will the holidaymakers flock to Looe, Polperro, and Penzance?

On a day like today, with the rain lashing down, and the wind thrashing the plane trees, it makes even the most devoted lovers of this beautiful, mystical county question their sanity. What was I doing here in this godforsaken, isol ated place, so far from the shops, so shrouded in mist, rain and loneliness?

It was a day for staying in. I lit the fire and turned on the lamps although it was still morning. My little VW sat outside on the drive, but I had no intention of driving anywhere, so it was fortunate that there was enough food in the fridge to tide me over for a few days. Milk, eggs, bacon, cheese. And bread, fruit and salad. I made a cup of Horlicks and sat in my favourite place – a little yellow sofa tucked into a corner window, which made me feel warm and secure. I watched the fire – we could see it from everywhere in the big, open downstairs space; from the living room, kitchen, dining table and the little snug, which is where I sat now.

I loved this place, this cottage with its simple warmth, its big windows, the honey colour of the wide oak floorboards, the white, grey and blue of the walls and woodwork, the
roaring fire and red and gold rugs. Sometimes I thought I could curl up here with a book and never feel the need to leave.

The afternoon passed slowly. The rain turned to hail, thundering down on the roof and windows. I put my book aside and sat on the little yellow sofa, immersed in memories of the lovely days here in Cornwall when Chris and I would meet up with Ted and Eloise, all our children in tow. Little Rose and Violet, the gorgeously beautiful twins, and our own kids, Eve, Tom and Sam, much older than the little girls but still young enough to enjoy the beach and demand ice creams. We would go to Polzeath or Daymer Bay, on the north side of Cornwall, far removed from our gentle southern coves. This was surf-land, all crashing waves, tanned public school boys and waif-like girls whose parents hired houses in trendy Rock at vast expense every year. Personally, I despised it, but Ted and Eloise were more forgiving, and, to be honest, quite relished the social vibe there. I suppose it’s exciting up in north Cornwall, but I much prefer the gentle, cradling south.

We had some wonderful times, our two families. Chris and our eldest Sam would hire wetsuits and attempt to look convincing with surfboards, though they couldn’t compete with Ted, a brilliant surfer, revered as a bit of a legend by the eager kids who holidayed on the North Coast and thought everything to do with surf was über-cool, while Juliana,
Eloise and I sat on the beach with the younger ones, feeding the tiny twins frozen yoghurt, laughing as the damp sand seeped up into our underwear. Soggy bums are very much part of the picture if you have small children in Cornwall. Photos of us all, raincoats on, umbrellas up, are among my greatest treasures. Lovely days. Full of the joy that having little children brings, as if you can believe, for a few fleeting moments, that life goes on for ever, that you can glimpse an extraordinary vision of bliss that will somehow endure. From here to eternity.

I felt achingly sad for those days now. With Eloise’s death, that was all over. All that joy, that exuberance as you watch your children hold out the promise of eternal life – all snuffed out in an instant as your best friend, just forty-five years old, dies and shows you the true reality of your silly, ephemeral hopes for happiness, and the emptiness of what lies ahead for all of us. Oblivion. Darkness. That extraordinary god-like link with our children vanished in a moment, leaving them to their uncertain fate, alone and motherless.

And us, the mothers. What happens to us in the void? Do we stop caring, watching? Or do we suffer eternal grief as we see our children grow up without us, knowing that however well their lives turn out, they will never be the same? Never be as happy, as secure as they would have been if death had not cleaved us cruelly apart?

And that, I knew with absolute certainty, was how Eloise felt now. I shuddered. Something had shifted inside my head. I could feel myself hovering close to the dark pit of despair that had engulfed me during my breakdown. I must, must not let that happen to me again, I told myself.

The phone was ringing. I had fallen asleep. My head was muzzy, and I was tempted to let the call go unanswered, but as ever I envisaged disaster. What if Chris had had an accident? What if one of the children was ill or in trouble or down at the local police station accused of some teenage carnage? That’s the way you think when you’re a mother. So I staggered to the kitchen and picked up the receiver.

‘Hi, Mama.’ It was Eve. ‘I was just wondering – when are you coming home? I’ve just got back – it was brilliant, the whole trip, by the way – and I’ve spoken to Dad at the clinic. But why are you still in Cornwall? Dad says it’s because of Eloise, that you’re sad. Please don’t be sad, Mama. Come home and I’ll give you a big hug.’