Eloise (10 page)

But we slipped immediately into our old rhythms, and it was as strong and passionate as before. And in Chris’s love and warmth, I felt renewed.

I drifted off to sleep, curled up in his arms. Totally relaxed, cherished and happy. All the anxiety and panic of my last stay here in Cornwall had evaporated. I was back in the room and the house of my dreams.

And then she came. She filled my head with her pain and fear, and although she let me stay in my own bed this time, her faded voice was urgent and demanding.

‘Cathy, Cathy, why did you leave me? Where did you go? You must stay here for me. I needed you, I still do. Please don’t go away again.’

I stumbled, slow to respond.

‘Ellie, not again, not tonight. I’ve been ill; this is my first night back.’

‘But Cathy, you must know how important this is. I was ill too, but I didn’t get better. I’m buried now, dead and buried. I can’t do anything for myself, but I need your help. You’re all I’ve got.’

In my sleep, I turned and my leg caught Chris’s. He mumbled and his hand shot out to catch mine. I held on to him hard. He was my lifeline in an insane dreamworld.

And as if she’d caught my thoughts, Eloise hit right back.

‘Cathy, do you really think you’re dreaming?’

‘Of course I am. I’m in bed, asleep, what else could I be doing?’

‘You aren’t dreaming. This is real, important; a matter of life and death. I don’t have much longer, Cath, it’s been months since I died. The spirit fades. And if that happens, if I have to go before you know the truth, then everything I love, everything I care for will be lost. I have done a terrible thing. I am going to be punished for it, not just me, I don’t count any more, but my lovely innocent children … oh, I can’t bear it any more!’

‘Eloise, my love, you have never done a terrible thing.’

‘I have. And I have to prevent what happens next, the consequences of that. And you have to help me do that. We are linked, you see. It is your destiny to help me.’

‘And if I don’t?’

‘Then you, too, will suffer. Do you think your illness, your mental fragility, is just a random accident?’

‘I don’t know what you’re saying. I have depression. It’s pretty common these days. Stress and genetics are what it’s down to.’

‘No, Cathy. You must help me. You have to, or else your mental torture will be so unendurable that you will crash.’

‘Crash?’ I asked.

‘You will go under. And you will take your family with you.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

Her voice almost inaudible, she laughed. It was a horrible sound, sinister and pathetic at the same time.

‘This is about the girls, about Rose and Violet. I know you love them. I trust you to keep them safe. There are things in my past that I have never told you about. It’s all about to come out, and then … ’ Her voice in my dream broke. ‘Then it will be too late. Don’t trust him, Cath, don’t trust him. Keep my babies safe.’

‘No. I can’t help you because you are sending me mad. Leave me alone, for God’s sake, Ellie. Just leave me alone.’

I woke up in the morning, her words ringing in my head. They troubled me, of course they did. But now I thought I knew what this was all about. My own ridiculously doom-ridden thoughts about my friend’s death had trapped me into a silly, supernatural fantasy. Time to distance myself, to grow up, to see Cornwall as it had always been to me; my place, my family’s home. Bury the past and all that. Whatever this mad spirit was trying to tell me, it was time to cut loose.

I got up, pulled on a dressing gown, and went down to the kitchen. As I pottered about making tea, I felt more and more resentful. Actually, I was furious with Eloise. I had been incredibly upset by her death. I had mourned her for months. But, if I was not completely mad, her presence was preventing my recovery. Which thwarted everything I wanted at the moment. I was so angry with her, with her demands, the way she kept invading my sleep.

I decided I had had enough. I had my own family to think about. I was completely fed up with Eloise, her husband, her daughters and her mother. I stood before the kitchen window, staring at the mint and thyme in our little herb garden, and swore at her. Then I made a vow.

‘OK, Ellie. I am now beginning the rest of my life. I miss you, but I am not responsible for you or your children.’

I was exhausted. I found a note that said Chris had taken the kids off to Lansallos Bay. I just wanted to go back to sleep, and for a while I did, until the knock at the kitchen door became insistent enough to force me downstairs.

It was Ted. Not just him but the little girls as well. Rose and Violet, the adorable twins, golden haired, gorgeously dressed in Oilily cotton frocks and little white socks.

I wanted to cry at the sight of them. Ellie’s babies, still here when she was so very far away, so permanently removed from them; when they were so devastatingly no longer hers. And despite my furious vow to Eloise that morning, I knew I could never abandon them to the fate she hinted lay in wait.

‘Ted. Hello.’ How inadequate, I thought. Especially when I knew that he was the last person I wanted to see, although I was overwhelmingly happy to see the girls, wanted to drink them in, carry them upstairs to bed, tuck them in for a lovely safe sleep. Mother them, make up for the loss of Eloise.

‘Cathy. The girls wanted to see you. They’ve been talking about you and Evie for days. James at the café told me you were here.’

The girls bounded towards me, flung their tiny arms around my neck. ‘Auntie Cath. Where’s Uncle Chris? And Evie? We want to see her. And is Tom here? And Sam?’

Overwhelmed by emotion, aware that the last time I’d seen these girls was with their mother, on Talland Beach, eating pasties bought at the little café, Eloise sounding certain that her latest treatment regime would work wonders, I swallowed my tears and held my arms open to them both.

‘Well, my little darlings, how gorgeous to see you both. Let’s go inside and I’ll find you some sweeties. Eve and Tom are both here, it’s just they’ve gone to Lansallos Bay with their dad. They’ll be back soon. I know they can’t wait to see you.’

The twins rushed into the sitting room, whooping around, picking up the little wooden figures of sailing boats and fishermen that lay around the window ledges, playing with them as if they were dolls. In fact they preferred them to the Barbies Eve had shown them, kept as childhood relics in her bedroom.

They hadn’t been at the funeral. Juliana and Ted both agreed it would be too traumatic for five year olds. But I wondered. Where did they think their mummy had gone? And if they hadn’t seen her grave, how could they accept she had gone to her final resting place? I suppose children can understand that their mummy’s gone to heaven. But, surely, at some point, they need to find a place to sit and commune with her. And a grave can be comforting, a small grotto of peace, to contemplate your loss, and talk to the beloved person it commemorates. I decided to ask Ted if he would
take the girls up to Talland Church soon; if he would explain to them that this was where their mummy now lay; that, yes, she was in heaven, but part of her rested here in Cornwall, somewhere they could always come and peacefully remember her.

But before I could screw my courage up to broach something so personal, the kitchen door opened and Eve, Tom and Chris poured into the room, laughing and wafting a sharp smell of ozone in with them.

Rose and Violet were beside themselves with joy to see Tom and Evie; especially Evie, because they saw in her the big girl they hoped they would become. My two took the little ones downstairs to play with Eve’s old dolls and to watch cartoons. Which left Chris and me warily facing Ted.

Chris was his usual warm and sympathetic self. He’d dismissed what I’d told him about Ted making a pass at me as a fantasy conjured out of my confused mind, so he crossed the floor immediately and put his arms round Ted.

Ted’s eyes grew wet. He leaned into Chris’s body, allowed himself to be held in my husband’s embrace. Because we hadn’t been down in Cornwall since February, it was the first time they’d seen one another since Eloise’s funeral

‘I’m so sorry, Ted. Christ, it’s so horrible she’s gone. Are you OK?’

‘Dunno really. Holding it together I guess. I could really do
with someone to talk to. I mean there’s no one really. My parents are good, but they don’t really get it. How could they? And I’ve got no brothers or sisters. And, actually, precious few friends. Apart from you and Cathy, they were mostly her mates, not mine. I don’t come from round here. And in the end, if you weren’t born here, you’re always an outsider.’

‘What about Juliana? I know from Cath, who spoke to her on the phone only last week that she is still completely felled by grief. And she feels very isolated,. She needs you, Ted. You and the girls.’

Ted’s face turned from sorrow to a mask of cold harshness.

‘Juliana and I don’t get on,’ he said abruptly. ‘And I don’t want her poisoning the girls’ minds against me, so I’d rather we both kept our distance.’

I had been sitting in our little snug, armed with books and newspapers, really glad to be well out of another emotional exchange with Ted. I was relieved that Chris was handling it, even wondering if I could sneak off downstairs to join the kids. But I knew I had to wade in after Ted’s extraordinary comment.

I stood up. ‘Ted, do you have the faintest idea what you’re saying? Juliana is desperate, devastated. She needs to have her grandchildren near her. What on earth do you mean, that she’ll poison their minds? She adores them, and has nothing but respect for you and your marriage to Eloise.’

Ted looked at me, and it really hurt to see it, with total contempt.

‘I don’t know how much my wife ever told you about our pathetic relationship. I suspect, knowing Eloise as I did, God help me, that she told you nothing that did not portray her in her usual fabulous halo of light. Suffice it to say that our marriage was a travesty.’

Chris and I stood in our pretty living room, shell-shocked. Then Chris, ever the pacifier, assumed a calm, doctor-like manner.

‘Ted, please sit down. We all need a drink, and then we can talk about this without being melodramatic.’

He signalled to me and I moved slowly into the kitchen, anxious to help this horrible situation and at the same time desperate to run, to dash upstairs and wrap myself up in my duvet. To take a sleeping pill, dissolve into darkness, forget the whole bloody emotional rigmarole and wake up to a fresh clear day tomorrow.

Instead, I poured Ted a Scotch, and red wine for Chris and me.

It was Chris who started it.

‘Right, Ted, would you like to tell us what’s on your mind, what is making you so unhappy? Obviously you’re in deep shock; your wife has died; you are alone; your children are motherless. Please believe I understand all that, and I also
understand that you are feeling very deep anger, however irrational, towards Eloise herself. She couldn’t help her illness or her death, which I know you realise, but you are harbouring a deep grudge against her. I’ve seen this so often, and, believe me Ted, it’s completely natural. What you need to do now is to talk about it, all of it. Cath and I won’t judge you, whatever you say.’

Chris stopped talking and there was a long, nasty pause. Ted looked at us both as if we were mad. Then he let rip.

‘Jesus, Chris, your stupid fucking job! Do you know how you sound, so sodding pompous and sanctimonious? You’re like a fucking Victorian parson, for Christ’s sake. You don’t have
any
idea about my marriage. It was nothing like it seemed on the surface. We were miserable, OK? Totally fucked, hated the bleeding sight of each other. To be honest, I couldn’t wait for her to die.’

It was eight o’clock that same night. Chris and I were sitting opposite each other at a small, candlelit table in the Talland Bay Hotel, a two-minute walk from our cottage. Our hamlet is remote and tiny, with only ten or so houses and cottages meandering down the steep lane to the cove, but all the land had once belonged to the manor of Porthallow, once known as Portlooe, which is listed in the Domesday Book.

We didn’t have a shop or a pub in our village, and we loved our peace and tourist-free quiet, but we were lucky enough to have the beautiful old Manor House, which for
a long time now has been run as a small, independent country house hotel. It’s a Godsend to us, a place to eat and drink in the beautiful gardens with their gorgeous views of the sea, or, in winter, the oak-panelled dining room, logs blazing in the ancient inglenook fireplace. Our cottage is tucked around the back of the old Manor House, and it used to house the steward who managed the estate.

The evening was cool for June, and we chose to eat inside. Tom and Eve had walked across the cliff path to Polperro, aiming to get a pizza or steak and chips at the Crumplehorn Inn so, for a while, at last, Chris and I were alone. And we had so much to talk about that neither of us knew quite how to begin. Or at least I didn’t. Chris, however, wanted to talk about Ted and Eloise. His analysis, I knew, would be spot-on. It was just that I thought there were things, feelings, irrational emotions playing out in this small family drama that needed a vast vista, a sweeping stage, to comprehend; we needed the Northern Lights here, the Aurora Borealis, to illuminate this sad, shadowy little Cornish tragedy.