My Candlelight Novel (19 page)

Natasha often had men in her room. When she did, Allegra came to me. We slept many nights squashed into my bed. I talked in my sleep and Allegra often woke with night terrors, so we disturbed each other all night. ‘I'm so glad I know you,' she'd say, snuggling up to me. Otherwise, I don't know where she'd have gone when her mother had men in her room. Stayed there with them both, I imagine now.

When her mother wasn't entertaining men, Allegra and I used to hang around in their room, eating lollies and trying on her mother's make-up, while Natasha smoked and read books. I was very happy then; I imagined how good it would be if I still lived with my own mother. I missed her desperately, and thought Allegra was so lucky to have a mother. I told her so.

‘What happened to your mother?' she asked me.

‘She died.'

‘How?'

‘She got very, very sick, and had to go to hospital and everything.'

I felt momentarily important as I said that, as though it was a very distinguished thing. It was the first time I'd voiced it to anyone.

It was down near the river, hidden in the long grass and weeds, where Allegra showed me what her mother and the men did together. She lay on top of me and wriggled around, and panted, and she pressed her mouth onto mine with her lips firmly closed. It felt like someone shoving something into my face, and I said to her, ‘You don't do it like that. You do it like this.' And kissed her softly and tenderly, so I could taste the inside of her mouth (it was like raspberry lollies). And I did feel very soft and tender towards her.

But she got to her feet at once and ran away.

It wasn't long after that that she and her mother left. I heard Lil saying to Natasha that she didn't want Samarkand turning into ‘a house of ill repute'. Natasha retorted scornfully that the place was falling apart and didn't have much of a reputation anyway.

They left without saying goodbye. In the room they'd occupied was left a clutch of lolly wrappers, an old black bra, a few newspapers, and a book. I later found one of Allegra's socks under my bed, covered in balls of fluff. I threw it in the river.

I kept the book, though, because even at that age I liked collecting books, even if I didn't yet understand them, and that one was incomprehensible. I've just searched it out. It's a book of philosophy by Ludwig Wittgenstein, called
On Certainty
, and inside is scrawled the name Natasha Jones.

I wanted Allegra to live with us forever, and I hated Lil for ages after that.

part two

C
HAPTER
O
NE

A
LL
I
CAN
think as I write this is that Lil is dead.

She died before I began writing this…whatever it is that I'm writing. Memoir or novel? It doesn't matter.

I remember months ago, when I began to write. I sluiced my face with water and examined it in the mirror. I had recently lost one of the people that I loved most, and at the same time, I was
in
love. How contradictory life was! The face that looked back at me was little different. And yet inside, how I had changed. I decided to write my story.

Beginning was the hardest thing. I found that the only way was to jump in.

So I lit a candle to gaze at, and sat down. And now I have come this far, and I find that in order to go on, I need to begin again – or at least, I need a change of tempo. I need to come to grips with what comes next.

Well,
No paper ever refused ink
, as the saying goes.

As though writing is merely the running of a pen over a page, which will suck up words as a thirsty woman does water. If only it were so simple!

I would like to be able to say that I'm writing on thick white paper with a beautiful fountain pen in black ink, but I'm doing it on a computer, a very old Mac that was being thrown out in a council clean-up. I came along just as someone was putting it out on their grass verge and said, ‘Does that thing still work?'

The man told me that it did, so I plucked Hetty from her pram and gave her to him to hold, and put the computer and all its bits into the pram, and pushed it home triumphantly with Hetty on my hip. And it works perfectly!

Someone once told me that I had a beautiful Irish face, but he was drunk. My name may be O'Farrell, same as Kate's, but that was
her
father's name, not mine. ‘Sophie' is my only true name, and is supposed to mean ‘wisdom' in Greek. In my dictionary it says ‘sophism' is a false argument intended to deceive. Contradictions! But after all, contradictory aphorisms were Oscar Wilde's stock-in-trade.

But I am procrastinating. What I am trying to say, what I am trying not to say, is that Lil is dead.

The day she died, I came home from the hospital and the house felt empty. I slept all day. Late that night I went to the kitchen and sat at the table, my face propped against the palm of my hand.

She was all I could think of.

I remembered the way she'd prepare vegetables. Potatoes would be peeled hours before she needed to cook them, and sit dwelling under water in a pot like strange pale creatures from another world. She'd zip the vegetable peeler quickly down the sides of long green beans and then slice them neatly on an angle. They'd spill one after the other into a bowl like green arrows, each exactly alike. And against my advice that all the nourishment was in the skins, she'd flay carrots with swift movements, and slice them into neat rounds.

Then she'd boil the hell out of everything.

Oh, all the old-fashioned, overcooked meals we'd eaten in that kitchen! The room was exactly the same as it had been when I'd arrived in the house, except that the pale green of the walls had faded even more. The coloured glass in the windows made the room feel like a place of worship. Only the worn linoleum had been replaced by newer stuff in an ugly modern design. And Lil had painted the chairs lavender, her favourite colour. She had an old lady's taste in everything.

Her hair was very thin. She always insisted on dying it black. It was soft, like the hair of a baby. She had that old-lady smell, too, for as long as I'd known her.

Lil and I were so alike.

Though it was true that no amount of instruction could teach me to cut beans into that elegant shape, and I was slothful and slatternly in my habits whereas Lil was a powerhouse of efficiency, we were true soul mates. Both of us had been mothers without the benefit of a man around (if, indeed, benefit it be!). Both of us loved cake, and could sit replete in that kitchen together with a cup of tea and crumb-filled plates in front of us for ages. I can't remember what we spoke about. Nothing in particular, which is a sign of the deepest intimacy. And we loved to read. I believe now that it was Lil who made me into a reader, which has been one of the greatest comforts in my life.

The night after she died, I stretched my arms out across her kitchen table and fell asleep with my head on the wooden surface.

Being alone in Lil's kitchen was the only thing I wanted to do. I couldn't see what lay ahead of me, or what I would do now. I only knew that I wanted to live in that house forever, and cook meals in that kitchen, and become an old lady there, with old-lady habits, and an old-lady smell.

Life changes so suddenly. If that is a truism, if it's what many people say after a great personal loss, then it's a cliché exactly because it is true.

I came home from my morning walk with Hetty (a fine day – a day that promised to be sublime) to find an ambulance pulling away from Samarkand. Maggie Tulliver, who stood on the verandah watching it leave like some attendant harpy, told me that Lil had collapsed on the kitchen floor.

I called a taxi and went to the hospital, and stayed by Lil's side for almost the rest of her life.

‘She's my grandmother,' I told the nurse, and they finally let me in to see her. She was in Intensive Care, unconscious, and hooked up to tubes and monitors.

I went to the public phone and tried to call Kate, but her mobile was switched off.

All day, Lil drifted. I held her hand, hoping for a sign from her. Hetty bounced around on the edge of the bed, crawling up close to put her fingers in Lil's mouth, as she used to do in bed with her in the mornings, until one of the nurses suggested I put her into casual care at the crèche down the road. She howled when I abandoned her there, but the truth was, I didn't have the energy to watch both of them.

In the afternoon, Lil opened her eyes. ‘I think I must be dying,' she said to me, her eyes wide.

‘No,' I said, putting my hand on her arm, ‘the nurses say you're stable now.' That was the truth.
Serious but stable
, I could have said, but it sounded worse.

I'd called Kate again, but still no answer, and no message bank.

Lil slept, and I had to pick Hetty up by six. The nurses told me I should go home for a break and come back later.

So I went home, fed us both, and finally got onto Kate, who rang back later to say that the next plane didn't leave till six the following morning, but that she'd be on it. Kate was in tears, and kept insisting that I tell her
exactly
how Lil was. No lies, she said, knowing how I could tweak the truth.

Serious but stable
, I told her. And what was wrong with her? she wanted to know.
Her heart
. Her big heart was giving out.

Then, because Maggie Tulliver offered to babysit, I left Hetty asleep in her cot at Samarkand, and went back to Lil.

When I arrived Lil had opened her eyes. She wore an oxygen mask, but she dragged it aside to kiss me hello.

I'd brought some of her nighties, and a dressing gown, which I stowed away in her bedside chest. I put a bottle of lemonade and the grapes I'd brought on top of it.

‘Is it night?' she mouthed.

I nodded. ‘And Kate will be here in the morning.'

A shadow passed over her face. ‘So far for her to come,' she tutted, ‘when I'm going to be all right.' A tear ran down her face. I wiped it away.

‘Would you like a sip of lemonade?' I asked. She shook her head. ‘When I get out of here,' she wheezed, ‘I'd love a whole bottle of red. And a big steak.' She smiled. ‘Gawd, I could do with a ciggie.' But of course, I'd not brought any, and anyway, she was in full view of the night nurse.

She told me that her friends had been, but only a few had been allowed in. ‘I'm glad,' she said. ‘Too tired for anyone but family.' She closed her eyes and I thought she'd fallen asleep. I held her hand and watched her slow, laboured breathing.

A pressure on my hand made me lean closer. Without opening her eyes, she said, ‘…always wanted you both.'

Lil fell asleep, peaceful and composed. The nurse told me that I could go home if I wanted to. She would sleep for ages, and I could come back tomorrow. They'd ring if there was a change.

Anxious that Hetty might have woken and found me gone, I went home. There were lights on, on the verandah, and in the kitchen. I presumed that Maggie Tulliver must be in bed. We had no guests, having turned a couple away that day because Lil was ill.

When I got to my room my nightlight was still on, and Hetty lay awake in her cot. She whimpered when I walked in, and I saw that her eyes were wet. Her face was red; she looked as though she'd been screaming and had at last given up without hope of ever being heard. I never allowed her to do that.

She sat up and almost leapt into my arms, and I fed and changed her. I walked with her down to Maggie Tulliver's room and knocked. There was no one there. We returned to my room; Hetty fell asleep beside me on the bed, but I lay there until I heard footsteps on the stairs. Then I went out, switching on the outside light. Looking down, I saw Maggie Tulliver and Jack Savage, their arms round each other, just arriving at the first-floor landing. Maggie Tulliver stopped, and my eyes held hers with the force of my will. I had not undressed, and gathered my cardigan around me as I descended to where they stood.

‘How long have you been out?' I said. ‘When I got back Hetty looked as though she'd been screaming the house down.'

‘I was only out for a while.' She made to continue on her way, but I took hold of her arm fiercely.

‘You offered to look after my baby and you left her alone.'

‘She's okay, isn't she?' said Jack Savage. ‘House didn't burn down or anything?'

‘
You – never – leave – babies – on – their
–
own!
Everyone
knows
that!'

I stormed back up the stairs and paced restlessly around my room. I wanted to go to Maggie Tulliver and hit her so hard it would draw blood.

Instead I threw some of Hetty's things into her pram and took it down the steps. Then I lifted my sleeping baby and carried her to her pram. In fury, I strode through the midnight streets. A car crawled beside us for a while, and hooted. I gave it the finger. The streetlights were small universes with circling moths. I crossed the black, oily river; the Winsome Hotel was dark and shuttered.

I walked instinctively and purposefully towards Becky Sharp's place, though I had no idea why, or what I would say when I got there. I simply
needed
her.

The door of her shed was shut, and I knocked urgently and called out. Light was suddenly thrown through the side window onto the bushes outside. The door opened, and she stood there in T-shirt and knickers, frowning and still half asleep, her eyes adjusting to the light.

‘Sophie?' she said. ‘What's wrong?'

It was only then that I was able to cry. I blurted out something about Lil, and about Maggie Tulliver and Hetty, and I sobbed and sobbed, with her arms around me.

Then I stopped. ‘Look, I need to get back to the hospital now.' It suddenly seemed the most urgent thing in the world. ‘Can you take me there and then go back to my place with Hetty and look after her?'

It seemed so long ago, the last time I'd ridden in her car, because I'd not seen her since. It was the night I'd gone to her room. So much had changed since then, but between us, nothing had.