Letter to Sister Benedicta (3 page)

At the Convent School one of the Sisters said to me: “We are none of us alone, Ruby, because Our Lord is always with us. If you feel lonely, think of Jesus reaching out to you as He reached out to the sinner, Mary of Magdalen, and touching you on the shoulder.” And for a long time, until I left India, I used to imagine the Jesus of my picture-Bible with his crinkly hair and his long white robes putting out His hand and saying, “I am here. I am here.” Until one day, I actually felt the weight of His hand on my shoulder and wondered for a while if I hadn't been Chosen. But what I never learned, Sister, was how to be quite alone without Jesus's hand on my shoulder and His picture-Bible eyes comforting me in their expressionless purity and now Jesus is long since gone, unless He does come once in a while to the bathroom.

Leon, now, has never been troubled by lack of self-love and I sometimes wonder whether the whole question of loving oneself may not have a lot to do with the way, when we were children and tried to speak out for the touch and caring of our mothers or of those, such as you, Sister, whom we chose to love, the grown-ups in our world gave us their affection. And if I think for a moment of Leon's mother and of mine, I can so clearly see that – in spite of her miserliness and her whining that God had treated her unkindly by giving her such a colossal bottom that she always felt squashed to bits in a rush-hour bus and by making her family poor – Leon's mother gave him such a grandiose love that in comparison to it my mother's love for me was a little stick of a thing, gone in a minute like barley sugar and leaving no taste at all. It was as if my mother was dry of love, simply found none in her to give. And when she saw that all my life I was going to be fat like my father whom she teased and yet never laughed with and not a bit like her with her pale skin and freckles and narrow waist, she turned away from me with a sigh. Again and again I would tell her things and instead of listening, she'd just turn away. And I would wait for the sigh, almost inaudible but always there, the sighing of her weariness of India and her emptiness of love.

There isn't much time perhaps. When I went to see Leon yesterday afternoon, his right eye was open and I brought my chair very near to the bed and put my face close to his, but he didn't turn his head to look at me. I said his name quite a few times and once before when I did this he rolled his head on the pillow and stared at me. But yesterday I might just as well have said Henry Cooper or Lord Olivier, he could have been either of these and not known it just as he seemed not to know that he is Leon Constad and will die in spite of all the expensive care he's getting unless he begins to fight. I think when I go to see him this evening I shall make a fist like a Black Power athlete and grit my teeth as I do it to help him get the idea of fighting. But if he won't do this and plans to die, then Lord knows how I shall begin on all my days waiting for me, so that I can only hope and hope and even turn Catholic again in my hoping that “he will almost certainly pull through, Mrs Constad, because worse stroke cases than his have rallied – at his age – but of course it really is too early to tell . . .”

Christmas is almost here again. The barrow boys with their dyed greenery are cold and wet; Harrods is lit up. I feel sorry for the men painting the window-sills, swaying on hanging trolleys outside the flat in their white coveralls and so cold out there that now and then I ask them in and make cups of tea for them and we always talk about the weather and this day being more raw than that and will it snow for Christmas but I shouldn't think so because it's years since it did that. And I remember the way we sat, Leon and I, last Christmas Day and ate our Christmas lunch quite devoid of laughter or even kindnesses to each other, sat and were lonely and drank a bottle of claret and slept all afternoon, he on the sofa and I in our bed with the electric blanket turned on. Nobody telephoned us and we can never telephone Alexandra because there is no telephone in the cottage. In the evening, a client of Leon's, one of his co-respondents staying at the Ritz for Christmas with his girlfriend, came for a drink, though why he wanted to when he might have drunk more graciously at the Ritz Bar I really couldn't see. And Leon had also asked the Hazlehursts, who seem to spend their lives going out for drinks, and the Hazlehursts brought Gerald Tibbs, thinking he might like to get out on Christmas Day.

You could tell as soon as Gerald Tibbs walked in that he was lonely. His wife hadn't come back, hadn't even come to take her furs or the gilt-framed pictures of the children, so he said, and not a word had he had from her so that it had crossed his mind she might have been blown up on one of the chemical factory explosions you hear about in Milan. And after he'd said this, he began to drink and drink, obliterating the idea of his wife's body being blown to pieces in Italy and his hands stopped shaking and turned themselves into gesturing hands so that with his pale face he looked like a bad mime artist. Then he suddenly walked out of the room and I could hear him being sick in the lavatory, where he stayed, lying down on the floor, until I could persuade the Hazlehursts to stop drinking and take him home. Flecks of his vomit were everywhere in the lavatory, as if in his gut a bomb had exploded.

The co-respondent and his girl stayed on. The co-respondent talked to Leon about the case and the girl-friend who had left her two daughters for the bed of this man said almost nothing, as if she was killing time until she got back to the Ritz. Then, as they were leaving, she turned to me and said: “It's awfully strange, don't you think – Christmas without children?”

Leon, who had been full of professional noise while all the drink was being drunk, returned to silence as soon as the door had closed on the guests. I cleared away the glasses and the dirty ashtrays and Leon sat motionless on the sofa with one of his small cigars.

“Thank God the day's nearly over!” he said, and about ten minutes later he said this again with such loathing for all that he could see and feel and hear that I thought, oh Lord why aren't I somewhere else, why aren't I in the sunshine in the Bahamas where I've never been, only read about, sitting by a pool with my dark glasses on and an iced cocktail stuck with bits of fruit waiting for me on a cane table? Quite alone, I would go in and out of the pool all day, exercising my body and then resting it. I would talk to no one, only nod to the waiters. I would listen to some singing. Natives on a beach singing or chanting. I would watch the sun glint and glare on the water and then flame red-gold, still warm but casting long shadows, shadows of palm and beach house and of the natives still there singing on the beach, some with their brown legs calf-deep in the gentle lapping water. I would absorb all this into me, sight and sound, and then make my way to a cool room with louvered shutters, lie down on a bed and feel the burning of my skin against the cool sheets. I would lie very still on the bed, quite undisturbed and at peace.

This reminds me that when Leon was strong and full of fight and knew he wasn't Henry Cooper or Lord Olivier I now and then wanted to be rid of him, finding his miseries oppressive. That Christmas – last Christmas – he chose to be in mourning for Noel and his mourning was a dreadful thing to be with because it was so black and deep. I almost wished Leon's mother could have returned from her wide grave to make messy kosher meals for her boy and to raise her eyes to heaven now and then and say: “Sons, oh my Lord!” which was a thing she often said to me when Leon was disagreeable and I would agree, thinking of Noel with his noise and boasting. She might have made us both laugh and forget that our children had chosen not to be with us. But as it was, Leon's misery began a slow seepage into me so that I thought more and more of being in the Bahamas and away from London and from Leon, even envying Alexandra her cottage with the comforting chicken noises and its log fire, thinking anything would be better than this when Leon is never comforted by me, however hard I try.

What I didn't know was that during that Christmas it began. The shape of my family changed. And ever since, voices, some in my head such as my mother's genteel voice, and some simply whispering in my ear have said to me: “Of course, Ruby, you never should have let this happen!” And if I reply – which I seldom do, thinking to myself, why should these bossy, busy people concern themselves with my family which is so acutely a part of me and so little a part of them – I say: “‘Let' is idiocy, ‘let' is irrelevant. I wasn't there.”

I was in London with Leon's mood fouling my air. By the end of Boxing Day, I could
hear
the singing of the natives on the beach and see the sunshine on their bodies and on mine, so much did I want to be away. I think I even talked to Leon of going to the Bahamas but he didn't listen and the day after Boxing Day when he should have gone back to the office, he didn't go and instead stayed in bed the whole day, not sleeping though he said he felt tired, but going through all the photograph albums, huge leather albums filled with his own snaps of the children, their whole lives caught there, faces changing and growing, pictured numberless times.

Leon is very fond of the albums. When he started to become rich from the river of the famous and adulterous that began to flow through his office, he bought himself a very expensive camera and with this camera at his sharp brown eye tried as hard as he could to become Cartier-Bresson. But Leon is a very bossy photographer, always telling you where to frame yourself and how to have your hands, whereas Cartier-Bresson doesn't seem to be bossy at all, so that his subjects turn out just the way they are in their panic or their joy. And it's quite difficult to believe that Cartier-Bresson didn't build himself deerstalkers' hides all over Paris, because no one in his pictures ever seems to know he's there, “and this is the way you should be, Leon,” I often said, “if you want us all to be the way we are, you have to become invisible.”

Another disappointing thing about Leon's photographs is that they all tend to be of people eating, because a lot of the time he forgets about trying to be Cartier-Bresson and only remembers it on picnics or on holidays in France so that hundreds of the pictures are framed by café awnings saying things like
Au Cheval Blanc
or
Chez Jacques
or by glades where the family has spread its ancient groundsheet to tuck into cold chicken and salami sandwiches. And really, going through the albums, you can imagine that all the Constad family ever does is eat or learn to ride tricycles and occasionally walk up mountains in Wales wearing anoraks, and you certainly wouldn't believe that any of us lived in London, for there's hardly a snap of it or that Noel had ever had acne because Leon never photographs anything ugly like blocks of flats or spots.

By the end of Leon's day in bed with the photograph albums he had cheered up. He smiled at me when I went in with his cold supper on a tray and the albums were in a neat pile on the floor.

“I've been through them all, Ruby,” he announced, “and there are quite a few Christmases we all spent together. I dare say next year they'll both decide to come to us, especially if the cottage is cold.”

“They've got a fire, Leon,” I said.

“Well a fire, yes. All those old cottages have open fires, but what about the bedrooms? Ice on the window panes, I wouldn't wonder.”

“I've often tried to imagine the cottage,” I admitted, “I'd like to go there one day.”

“I wouldn't bother, Ruby. Norfolk's a long way.”

“I'd still like to go. I'd like to meet Sue and the chickens.”

Leon laughed. “What the devil Noel wants to be there for I shall never know!” he said.

The following day, with Christmas well and truly over and not to be thought about any more, Leon put on his suit and went back to his office. The flat became very quiet. I cleared away all the signs of Christmas, even the teasels. Towards the end of the morning I telephoned Gerald Tibbs but no one answered. I hoovered the flat and dusted it and then got into bed with the electric blanket on and thought to myself, I can't remember how long it is since Leon and I made love; it must be months and months and no wonder if each of us feels so sad now and then because we've lost each other. We're fifty and afraid and Lord alone knows what happens to us now.

D
ECEMBER
8

There was a wedding at the Oratory today, Sister. I thought they wouldn't let me in to light my candle for Leon, but they did. I crept to the candles because all the wedding guests were kneeling and silent as I walked in. I waited for them to start rustling with a prayer. Over their heads, I could see the bride in all her white net, kneeling beside her new husband who seemed to be dressed up like a soldier, just as in India all the young men I ever met when I left the Convent School were soldiers in my father's regiment and thought themselves born to rule. They kissed like rulers. They even played tennis like rulers and were never gentle or silent in anything they did and no wonder India heaved such a sigh and wanted to be rid of them for ever and always. And I thought in the Oratory, poor Catholic bride with your guardsman; better to be like you, Sister Benedicta, with a gold ring on your left hand, bride of Christ who never touched you, chaste all your life, than lie in a soldier's bed and hear his shouting. I crept out of the Oratory and walked past all the limousines waiting to take the bride and her soldier and all their soldier friends and mothers of soldiers to a big hotel for champagne and speeches and then I began, quite unaccountably, to weep, so that as I passed down Knightsbridge people stared at the tears making lines through the make-up that I still put on and I knew that on this occasion I wasn't weeping for Leon but for my daughter and all that has happened to her since the day Gerald Tibbs was sick on to the wall and I waited for Christmas to end.

I should have gone from the Oratory to the nursing home to see Leon and make my Black Power salute to rally him, but I didn't go. It is now several days since he wrote “the aforementioned Richard Mayhew Wainwright” and each day since then he has looked less and less capable of writing words like “aforementioned” and it's hard to believe there's any stirring of thought in his mind at all, so absolutely uncomprehending does his eye look. So today I thought, let the nurses run in and out and he won't notice if I'm not there, and if he should die, then the telephone will ring and he can die while I'm there or while I'm walking down Knightsbridge, it makes no difference.