Part 8 (2/2)

Her tears came then, fresh tears that flowed more freely than before. And when eventually she wiped them away she thought: might there be some error? Had she stupidly misheard what her mother had said? Was he only ill? Was it her Aunt Emmeline who had died? If there had been some error, if she rode down the gra.s.sy avenue now and found him mourning his mother in the kitchen, she would not ever leave his side. She would remain in the house with him and care for him as no human being had ever before been cared for. She would make up for everything, none of it a sacrifice, for all she wanted was to be with him, each of them part of the other.

But Robert was dead. Her mother had clearly stated that. You do not make mistakes when informing about death, and she had not misheard. Robert was dead, and had not suffered. Robert was cold as ice already, his body stiff and useless, the amus.e.m.e.nt gone for ever from his expression.

Mary Louise remained in the graveyard when dusk came. s.h.i.+vering, and longing for death herself, she stayed when darkness came too. She thought she might never leave the graveyard, and did not do so until the light of dawn.

17.

Her flowerbed has always been for him. Being in the house has permitted that, no questions asked, the slow establishment of the chosen plants, the trial and error of their cultivation, buds breaking into colour, the cl.u.s.tering of petals.

'Oh, I expect it'll disappear,' the gardener grumpily replies when she asks about the flowerbed's fate. He's not the man whose arm was broken by Sadie swinging a pickaxe. Youngish, unsuited to the place in any case, that one went at once. This man is old; he has been here all her time; no wonder he's aggrieved. He says the house will become a hotel.

'My flowerbed is in memory. I hope they'll keep the garden.'

'I hear it said they'll have it up for a car park.'

Slowly she walks about, imagining the cars drawn up in rows, the different colours. Tessa Enright visited her once, Tessa Hospel as she became, mother of four children, wife of an oyster merchant. They strolled these same paths in the heat of an afternoon and suddenly her friend said: 'I am in love.' She had not told another soul and never would. 'No one except for you.' She wept into a lacy lilac handkerchief. She said she was ashamed that Mary Louise had been in the house for sixteen years before she visited her. She was in love with an Englishman whom she'd met when she and her husband, with all their children, were on holiday by the sea in France. Her husband was rich; there was a girl for the children. The Englishman had said he could not live without her. 'Imagine that! To say that so soon! He hardly knew me.' Tessa Enright hadn't changed. As thin as fuse-wire, high cheekbones, hair like sun-bleached silk. Her eyes had always had a startled look, her lips still lazily pouted. She would never have visited the house if she hadn't been desperate for a confidante: here, of all places, her secret would be safe.

Alone in the garden fifteen years later, Mary Louise recalls precisely the shade of lilac of the handkerchief. It was lighter than that of the outfit that accompanied it, the blouse that b.u.t.toned to the neck, the very short skirt, the chic little shoes. She recalls being told that the oyster merchant had been met at a party. The Englishman was a person who had to do with boats, who delivered them from one harbour to another, acting for other people. Mary Louise imagines this man, as once she imagined Jeanne d'Arc and later her cousin's father, and later still the people in the novels her cousin read. She sees the children of her friend controlled by a calm nursemaid; she sees the husband. She places the family in a hotel dining-room, among waiters calling out to one another in French and expertly pouring wine. The Englishman approaches, flannels and a blazer with an emblem on it, brown as a nut, a smile lazing through his features. At some later time, when they are private, her friend puts her arms around him, slipping her hands beneath the blazer with the emblem on it, her fingers touching the muscles in his back.

Mary Louise stoops and lifts a rose petal from where it has fallen. Under no circ.u.mstances is it permitted to pick the flowers. Brid Beamish did so once and was not allowed to enter the garden for seven months, seven being the number of flowers she filched. The petal has no scent, but in the palm of Mary Louise's hand it seems as beautiful as anything she has ever touched, crimson streaked with white. Roses mostly are what she has planted in her flowerbed, with a border of lily of the valley. She's glad it was not she who married the oyster merchant and had four children. She's glad she never had to turn with her intimacies to a childhood companion who is safely locked away and would not, anyway, be believed.

18.

The mists of autumn came, clinging to the houses of Bridge Street, smudging the shop windows with drips and rivulets. The smell of the town was of turf smoke mainly, acrid in the damp air. The shortening days were caught between the seasons until November arrived, claiming them for winter.

By the middle of that month, for Mary Louise, the funeral seemed an age ago. She had stood in the small church with her family, in the front pew, across the aisle from the solitary presence of her aunt. There were all sorts of people there neighbours mainly, a few from the town, Miss Mullover, the Edderys, relations from the other side of the family whom the Dallons had never seen before. In the churchyard the coffin was lowered; the Reverend Harrington intoned; a handful of clay was thrown on the brightly varnished surface. Afterwards n.o.body knew what to do: the occasion was sad, people felt, so brief a life, too sad for a funeral spread. Yet in the end some of the mourners returned to her aunt's house.

Ever since the death of her cousin the first thought that entered Mary Louise's waking consciousness every morning was that the death was a fact. Robert, thin and wiry in the cla.s.sroom, was no longer there. Robert, smiling in the untidy room he was so fond of, was now a figment in her mind. A shadow pointed at the heron and bent to pick the mushrooms. A shadow kissed her twice. The fading images were not as good as photographs would have been, but she had no photograph of her cousin.

It was because of that that Mary Louise, on a Sunday afternoon in mid-November, cycled again to her aunt's house. She didn't quite know what she would say when she arrived, nor what she'd find there. She wondered if she'd be particularly welcome.

In fact she was. Her aunt was in the garden, rooting out her finished runner beans. She wore gum boots and an old mackintosh coat. A fire was smouldering near where she worked.

'Mary Louise!'

'Am I interrupting you?'

'No, no, you're not. I'm on the last row.'

She pulled out what remained of the row and threw the stalks on to the bonfire. A job she hated, she said, leading the way to the back of the house.

'I've wondered,' Mary Louise began in the kitchen.

'Oh, I'm managing all right.'

In the kitchen Mary Louise made tea while her aunt pulled off her boots and hung her mackintosh above the Esse to dry.

'It's good of you to come over, Mary Louise.'

'I was never able to offer you my sympathy.' She paused, pouring the boiling water into the pot. 'I needed it all for myself.'

'Nothing in the world is a greater consolation than that you and Robert were friends those last few months.'

'I was very fond of Robert, Aunt Emmeline.'

Her aunt had moved to the sink to wash her hands. She ran the taps, scouring her palms and fingers with a brush. Mary Louise poured their two cups of tea.

'Robert was fond of you too, Mary Louise.'

That was all that was said. The depth of the relations.h.i.+p had clearly not been guessed by her aunt. Nothing about it had worried her in her son's lifetime. She had seen no reason why a harmless affection should not be permitted in a life that was emotionally deprived.

'There's a cake your mother sent over. Your mother has been nice to me.'

An uncut fruitcake was placed on a plate. Mary Louise had hoped she could confide her feelings, that her aunt would understand and listen. But instead she cut slices of the fruitcake, and Mary Louise sensed that the subject should not be pursued. That she and Robert had been fond of each other was one thing; condoning love was quite another.

'Whenever you feel like it,' her aunt said, 'come over and see me.'

The invitation softened what might have seemed like harshness, but being in the house again was painful and Mary Louise knew she would not easily return. The abandoned graveyard and the ruined church through which the rose rambled in high summer were easier places. They were without distractions or voices that did not belong; they did not demand politeness.

'Might I have a drawing of Robert's, d'you think?'

'Oh, of course. Let's go and see.'

The three books were open on the table, as he had placed them. The French and German battalions were engaged in a conflict he must have arranged after she'd left. The room had been tidied a bit, but not much.

'I'm getting round to it,' her aunt said, her tone betraying her failure to find the heart for the task. 'I don't come in here much.'

Mary Louise wouldn't have changed the position of a single thing, not a book or a scribble or a drawing. She wouldn't have moved by an inch his armchair by the fire. In winter she'd have lit the fire again and kept it going every day.

'It's nice you want one,' her aunt said when a drawing of winter trees had been chosen. 'Have anything else you'd like.'

Mary Louise looked about her, and the urge not to disturb returned.

'Maybe these,' she reluctantly suggested, indicating the three books.

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