Simply Heaven (61 page)

‘Which was?’

‘Go to Tassie or stay in the water while they chucked buckets of chicken giblets over the side of the boat.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah,
oh
.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Course you didn’t, Princess. We all believe you.’

‘Andy, I didn’t. As far as I knew, you’d cleared out your stuff by the time I got back and that was that.’

‘Yeah, right.’

‘Well, you
were
always threatening to do it …’

‘Oh right, so now it’s
my
fault.’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Fuck it,’ says Andy. Ever the articulate.

‘Would it help,’ I ask, ‘if I said I was sorry?’

Silence.

‘Well, I am,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Big whoop,’ says Andy, but he doesn’t sound quite so hostile.

‘They always interfered,’ I say. ‘You know that. And you know I didn’t know about it most of the time till it was too late.’

‘Your ma was always a serious buttinski,’ he says.

‘Still is, if it makes you feel better. Well, would be if she was talking to me.’

‘She’s not talking to you?’ he sounds amazed.

‘Long story.’

‘That must be a relief,’ he says. And unexpectedly, we’re both laughing, remembering one of the running gags we used to share back in the days when we were complicit.

‘If you want,’ I offer, ‘I’ll call them and tell them to take the curse off. You don’t have to stay in Hobart, you know. I’ll make sure of it. You can come back to Brissie, even, and they’ll stay off your back, I swear.’

‘Ah, well,’ says Andy, ‘I dare say I’ll survive.’

‘I thought—’

‘Well,’ he says, ‘It’s not
so
bad. You sort of get used to it, you know?’

‘You
are
joking.’

‘Well … and besides. I sort of got married?’

I gulp. ‘Sort of?’

I can hear him scratching the back of his neck, the way he used to do, and suddenly he’s standing right there in front of me, clear as daylight, Andy, shirtless in his baggy shorts, one hand cupped over his right nipple. ‘Yip,’ he says.

‘I … wow. Who to? Not a local?’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Christ,’ I tease. ‘What’s her name? Charlene? Raelene?’

‘Alison.’

‘Alison?’

‘Has she got both eyes in the right place?’

‘Yeah,’ he says, in that don’t-go-there voice of his. ‘Yeah, she has. And we’ve got a nipper on the way and all.’

‘Snap!’ I say. ‘I don’t believe it! You and me both!’

‘No! No way!’

‘Yes way, babe! Can you imagine?’

‘I can’t see you pregnant,’ he says. ‘Your tits’ll get so big you’ll topple right over.’

‘Watch it, fella. Jee-zus. Can you credit it? You and me, popping out twelve-toed triple-nipple babies at the same time?’

‘I never thought I’d see the day,’ he says. And we both fall silent, remembering.

‘So what is he,’ he says eventually, ‘this fella of yours?’

‘Rufus,’ I say, and I feel a glow inside when I say it.

‘What sort of show pony name is
that
, Lady Muck?’

‘A family one.’

‘Wow. He knows who his father is?’

‘Aw,
Andy
.’

I don’t believe this. We never got on this well. Not after the first couple of years. This is like we were in the early days: teasing each other, making each other laugh. It feels good. But boy, it feels distant. It’s like looking through a photo album.

And he says: ‘So are you doing OK, babe?’

And I can’t stop myself heaving a sigh. ‘Not so good for a while. It’s been hard. But I think I’m getting there.’

‘He treating you OK?’

‘Yeah. Yeah. There’s other stuff, but not him. He’s great.’ And I’m thinking: if only you could see where I am while we’re having this conversation. If only you knew the half of it.

And he says: ‘It was the fact that we never got to sort it out. Between us, you know. That was the worst thing about it.’

And I say: ‘I know, kid.’

‘It wasn’t all bad, was it?’

And flashes of when it was good – the jokessextickling-talkingkissingholding – unfold in my brain like a film on rewind. You never forget the people you’ve loved. You never do.

‘No, babe,’ I say. ‘It wasn’t. Some of it was good.’

And he says: ‘I’d better go, now,’ and I say: ‘Yes, babe you’d better had.’

‘Take care of yourself,’ he says.

‘Yeah. Yeah, you too. Really. You enjoy that kid, won’t you?’

‘Bloody ankle-biters,’ he says. ‘It’s all downhill to hip replacement from now on.’

I laugh again. ‘God, you could always make me laugh,’ I say.

‘We screwed it up, didn’t we, Mel?’

‘Royally.’

‘I’ve hated you a lot over the last couple of years …’

‘Back atcha,’ I start, and then I realise that this was only the beginning of a sentence.

‘But you know what?’ he continues, ‘I don’t know why, but now I’m talking to you, all I want to do is say sorry. I don’t know what happened, but I know I hurt you a lot at the end, and I’m really, really sorry.’

And I let him this time, because not all the fault was on my side.

‘It’s OK. I’m sorry too. I wasn’t exactly – you know.’

‘We were as bad as each other.’

‘We were, Andrew. We were.’

‘Do you think,’ he asks, ‘if we hadn’t, if they hadn’t, you know, we would have been able to sort it out?’

‘What do you think?’

‘Mmm,’ says Andy. ‘No.’

And I shake my head in the dark. ‘No.’

‘I did love you, though.’

My eyes fill with tears. This was my first love, my first real love, and you never forget. You always carry a bit of them around inside you, even when you’ve ended as badly as we did.

‘And I loved you, too. Very much.’

He sounds reluctant. ‘I’ve got to go now, kid. I’ve really got to.’

‘Me, too.’

‘Have a good life,’ says Andy. The last words he’ll ever say to me.

‘And you too,’ I say, trying to find the right words to part with. ‘You make sure you do. Be happy.’

We hang up together and I put the phone down on the coat. Bring my hand up to cover my mouth and let a couple of tears slide down my face.

I hated you.

I loved you.

I wanted you so, so much.

And I want Rufus.

The clock on the phone reads 10 a.m. I’ve been in here twelve hours, more or less, and my skin feels tight and dry.

Will he come for me?

Does he love me?

Will we last for ever, when Andrew and I failed so spectacularly?

If it’s so, he’ll be looking for me right now. Tilly will have tripped him over my phone, shown him the clothes and the books and the face cream, and he will be looking for me. Pounding down the corridors, banging on walls, calling out my name. He’ll have Django running ahead and Tilly hustling along behind, and he won’t know that the tension in her face is because she knows what she will have to see behind this door.

What is he thinking?

Let him love me
.

Have we pushed it past bitterness, has it gone beyond?

Is he looking for me from love or duty, hunger or curiosity?

Let him love me
.

I think of Andy, half a world away and half a lifetime, getting ready for bed and probably thinking of me. My God, is love really like this? The madness of wanting, waiting, wishing, the ache of missing someone daily, hourly, every moment, so easily replaced? There was a time when Andrew was all I could think of, the only thing I saw. I believed that that was love. Was it the same? I can’t remember, now. Did I feel this raging, gnashing, immolated emptiness at the thought that I had lost him?

Let him love me
.

It’s cold. I crawl back under my makeshift bedding, wrap my arms around my stomach and wait.

He is everything. He is my delight and my darkness, my food and drink. He is the savour of salt and the sweetness of honey; he is colour, light, touch, taste, smell. He is my strength and my weakness, my pleasure, my pain. I have lived to be with him, waited to find him. He must want me. He
must
want me. For now that I know that he exists, my own existence is nothing without him.

Let him love me
.

I close my eyes. Feel the corners of my mouth turn down as I think of him. Send him my thoughts through the crumbling house: Rufus, come to me. Find me. Love me. Please love me.

And then, as before, I hear muffled sounds beyond the door, voices, urgent and confused, the sound of the barrier being pulled back. And then his voice: calling, desperate and afraid, through the door. ‘Melody! Melody! Oh my God!’

And despite myself, despite the fact that I’m supposed to stay put, lie here pale and suffering, on my deathbed, passively waiting for my prince to rescue me, I am unable to hold myself back. I scramble from the bed, hurl myself through the darkness, catch myself on the chair and stumble, heavily, against the door. Flail at it with my fists and shout his blessed name.

‘Rufus! Rufus!’

And he’s inside, in the dark with me, and he’s saying my name over and over and over and over, hands in my hair, tears streaming down his face, and his kisses and my kisses fall upon our eyes like rain on the desert.

And he passes through the house like a storm, thunder on his countenance and a hurricane in his heart. The last heir, the chosen one, going prepared for war. And the house, as though it were responding to his rage, groans and shudders as he passes, cries out in pain and age and misery: the generations who have suffered for its continuance wailing their despair. It knows he is leaving, that the last of the Wattestones is taking himself away. It knows it is over, but the end will not pass unmarked.

Down the Tudor landing, where panelling gapes, split like tinder. Through the Long Gallery, where suits of armour, shaken from their stands, slump like the fallen of Agincourt. We wheel, the three of us, away from the sagging remains of the tollbooth stair, stride together through the Chinese music room, where a beam has broken free and smashed its way through three of the grand pianos and left the spinet miraculously intact. In the game larder, glassy eyes have turned to milk and maggots spill between raddled feathers. And on we stride, the three of us: the future confronting the long-gone.

The older generation are in the big drawing room off the Great Hall, because the ceiling collapsed in the breakfast room while I was locked away. The morning is half-gone, but no-one has thought to leave. They stay on, immobile, paralysed. As though awaiting some great event.

Beatrice, querulous and suddenly aged since last night, huddles, tiny and nervous, in the corner of one of the sofas. Mary, despite the obvious futility of the activity, despite the plaster spitting in starbursts from the hammer-beam ceiling, stands, turned out for a coffee morning, in a mint green two-piece, at a pedestal table, arranging winter peonies in a blue glass vase. Edmund sits bolt upright in the night porter’s chair, hands gripping the arms, staring ahead of him with sightless eyes. They have their faces turned away from us; don’t notice us come in.

The past, frozen in place, unable to change itself; the future approaching on angry feet.

‘They’re coming,’ says Beatrice.

‘Who’s coming?’ asks Mary.

‘The ghosts. I feel them. The house is moving and the dead will show themselves,’ says Beatrice solemnly.

‘I do wish you’d stop going on about ghosts,’ says Mary. ‘You’ve turned into a pair of ghouls, you really have. It won’t do.’

‘I will go to hell,’ says Beatrice.

‘Nonsense’ says Mary. ‘Wattestones don’t go to hell.’ She says this with the certitude of one who knows without doubt that birthright passes beyond the grave.

‘No,’ says Edmund. ‘We live in it.’

Mary lays down her scissors in a gesture of ladylike impatience. ‘What on earth has got into everyone today? You sound like something out of Edgar Allan Poe.’

‘It’s over,’ says Edmund. ‘Can’t you see?’

‘Oh,’ snaps Mary, ‘pull yourself together, for heaven’s sake. We’ve got a lot to do today.’

Somewhere in the house, the thunder and crash of falling masonry.

‘We must leave,’ says Edmund. ‘Can’t you see that? We have to leave today. Don’t you see, Mary? There’s no more we can do. The house is collapsing. If we don’t leave today, we will
die
.’

I see her turn her head and throw him a look of unspoken contempt.

‘No one,’ she says, ‘is going to die. Not today, not ever. Today is a good day. Today is the day when it all begins again.’

I’m not sure when the screw came loose in Mary’s head. Whatever, it looks like it’s dropped right out now.

Edmund shakes his head.

‘It is all,’ she says shrilly, ‘going to be fine. Rufus is back. My boy is back, and everything will be all right from now on.’

Mary’s boy steps boldly forward. Stands, with folded arms, and waits to be noticed. The three of them turn, see him, see his sister and see – gaping mouths and indrawn breath – me standing at his shoulder, and each reacts in a wildly differing manner. Beatrice is clearly terrified. Clearly still thinks I’m a ghost, thinks she’s the only one who sees me. Edmund’s face lights up like a Belisha beacon: a huge, beaming smile spilling across his features like sunshine. ‘Why, my
dear
,’ he says.

Mary looks – appalled. So many emotions register on her face: anger, astonishment, fear, loathing, disbelief. Appalled is the only word for it. And then she sees the expression on Rufus’s face, and everything is overwashed by despair.

He speaks quietly, firmly, with a tone that brooks no argument. ‘We’ve come for our father,’ he says.

I step out from behind. Give everyone a sunny smile and say, because I never can resist a touch of bathos: ‘Oh, and I’ve come for my car.’

She is distraught. Her face is wild, desperate; skin waxy, eyes wide, mouth pleading; the shiny hair tangled where she has clutched at it in her agitation. She pants between words, casts about for something –
something
– that will change his mind.

‘But – but – it was for
you
, Rufus! I did it for
you
!’