My Candlelight Novel (20 page)

At Samarkand, the lights were on. Maggie Tulliver met me at the top of the stairs. The hospital had rung and wanted me there at once.

Whichever way I write it, no matter how many times, the ending is still the same.

Lil died.

Becky Sharp drove me back to the hospital, and then took Hetty (still sleeping, exhausted from crying) back to her cot, and stayed the night with her in my room.

It seemed I didn't need to speak to Lil. When I asked her, silently, in my mind, if it had all been worth it, if
life
had been worth it, all the sorrow and loss, the pain of dying, she opened her eyes for a moment and said, ‘I've had a wonderful life. You and Katie, and Alan …'

A little while later (her bed shielded with curtains, for the privacy of dying) she seemed to be unconscious. I walked, almost in a dream, to the far end of the ward, and saw through the window that it was still night. I had heard that most people die in the night, and had some idea that if she could make it through till dawn she'd be all right for another day. I thought that if I stayed with her I could will her to live.

When I came back, I took her hand and held it, and with her eyes still closed, she put up her mouth for a kiss. I bent down and kissed her tenderly on the lips, the way she had always kissed me when I was a child at bedtime. I had thought then that I was merely taking her kisses and keeping my heart for my mother, but I saw now that that had never been true. How can you take love and not give back?

I kissed her mouth again, and then again, very softly.

Soon her breathing became more laboured. She struggled to say, ‘Tell Katie…'

I knew that she couldn't wait for Kate.

‘I know,' I whispered. ‘I'll tell her. It's all right. It's all right to go now.'

She died an hour later. By the time the sun came up, she had gone.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

B
ECKY
S
HARP MET
me in the lobby of the hospital, Hetty on her hip, and it was dawn when the green car pulled up at Samarkand.

Maggie Tulliver was in the hallway. ‘I can stay if you like and…'

‘I'd rather you went,' I said. ‘I'm closing the place up for a while.'

She left in an old car with Jack Savage, as Becky and I were going to the airport to pick up Kate.

The house was very empty when we got back. Kate went at once to Lil's room and I left her there by herself. I wrote on a piece of A4 and put it up at the entrance: CLOSED TILL FURTHER NOTICE.

I slept all day, and spent the night sitting in Lil's kitchen until I fell asleep with my head on the table. At some stage I was aware of someone coming in (I could tell it was Becky Sharp) and placing a shawl around my shoulders, but I didn't acknowledge her. When I woke in the morning, Kate was sitting at the table, watching me.

‘I want her brought home,' she said. ‘We can look after her ourselves, and prepare her for burial. Bathsheba says you
can
.'

And so we brought Lil home.

Covered by a sheet, she was carried through the house on a stretcher by two men. Bathsheba went before them, leading the way to Lil's room, where she flicked a protective covering over the bed and lowered the blind to half-mast. The room dimmed.

Lil's former bulk had diminished. For a moment I felt I didn't know her, with all the life gone out. Then Kate hurried across the room and bent down to kiss her on the forehead, and the cheek. She stayed there with her forehead pressed to Lil's, and suddenly she was my Lil again, home again at Samarkand for the last time.

And now, we must wash and dress her. At first I was anxious and afraid, but then I saw that after all, this was Lil, just Lil. And I mustn't cry. It was no time for tears, but for forbearance and love. I remembered her alive: her lap, which we had sat on as children, and leaning back into her bosom. Her hands, impatiently tugging knots from my hair. Her plump, dimpled thighs beneath a bath towel as she laboured down the hallway from the bath. She had once seemed apparently made from dough. Now she had withered and shrunk. The bones of her feet stood out, and the skin stretched over them was mottled and cold.

Kate and I had no experience of such things, but Bathsheba had, and under her supervision, we worked with tender, increasing confidence. We spoke little. I've always known that the body is a leaky thing. I myself am constantly prone to inopportune seepages, so it is only to be expected that after death the body continues with various dribblings which must be staunched and stopped.

But nothing about the human body disgusts or surprises me.

Together, Kate and I ritually sponged her. She was a much-loved territory, which for years had meant home for us, and covered by landmarks – scars, blotches and wrinkles. There was not one part of her that we did not tenderly observe.

Kate went to the wardrobe and chose a dress for her – the red one, of course – and we found her best underclothes, so that she would not go naked into that good night. And then Kate painted her face, kneeling next to her to apply foundation, powder and blusher. She chose the reddest lipstick, and outlined Lil's mouth, working with the intensity of an artist, moving away every so often to appraise her work. I wondered what Kate was thinking, and how she felt. Perhaps, like me, she found comfort in being with Lil one last time.

There was a coffin for her to be buried in, but for now we left her lying on her bed. I fetched Hetty and allowed her to pat Lil's face and crawl around and over her. Kate lay next to them, propped on one elbow, occasionally tweaking the folds of Lil's dress, or gently brushing back strands of her hair. Eventually Hetty fell asleep with her head on Lil's breast. I went to the window, and peered out through a gap at the side of the blind. Outside, the day was absolutely ordinary.

We celebrated her life that afternoon, on the broad grassy area in front of the house, with the closed coffin resting on a table.

As well as talking about former loves, it turned out that the rip-roaring conversations she'd had with her friends had also sometimes been about what they wanted done with them when they died. Lil had said she wanted a short gathering with a celebrant in front of Samarkand, followed by burial, and a party.

At Lil's request, there were no speeches, but Kate and I agreed to recite poetry. We both chose Yeats.

I chose ‘A Prayer for My Daughter', which wasn't about old ladies or death. But it reflected the ties that bind people, and all our hopes and fears for them. I looked at Hetty as I recited. She sat on Bathsheba's lap and watched the proceedings, her palms pressed together and her mouth open, prepared to clap at any moment.

When it was her turn to recite, Kate walked to the front and stood for a long time without moving. Her downcast eyes and closed, pale face said
I deny funeral, I deny funeral
, but just when we thought we should continue without her, she lifted her face and recited the end of ‘The Song of Wandering Aengus', in a strong, clear voice:

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands,

I will find out where she has gone,

And kiss her lips and take her hands;

And walk among long dappled grass,

And pluck till time and times are done

The silver apples of the moon,

The golden apples of the sun.

At the cemetery she knelt, staring down into the grave when almost everyone else had departed, with an expression of absolute loss on her face, but no tears. I had to take her by the arm and lift her to her feet and walk her away.

It wasn't until the day after the funeral that Kate and I started sorting through Lil's things. Bathsheba and Mavis had offered to do it, but this was something Kate and I needed to do ourselves.

That wardrobe full of dresses! I pulled them out and stuffed them into garbage bags. The same with what Lil called her ‘smalls' (though they were rather large, those underpants like bloomers – she'd been a stout old thing). Then all her make-up. ‘I'll keep that,' said Kate, tipping it unceremoniously into a box.

The personal things! Letters, postcards, odds and ends. We decided on a bonfire later.

Then there were her son Alan's things, which Lil must have kept ever since his death. His suit, which Kate had worn to the school formal only a year ago. ‘I don't want to throw it out,' Kate said. ‘Lil never did.'

She took it for herself, though I doubted she'd ever wear it again.

While Kate was out at the loo, I went through a box of Alan's stuff, obviously sent back home after his death. His passport was there, and a pile of small notebooks, all labelled
Ideas for Stories
. I looked inside, and saw that they'd been mostly written in shorthand. On one of the flyleaves, something was written in a child's bold handwriting. I remembered writing it.

I didn't have time to read the notebooks now, so I set them aside for later.

I also found an old Polaroid photo of Alan, with a girl. The colour was so washed out they looked like ghosts. I knew that I should show it to Kate. When she came back, I handed it to her without saying anything, and she said after a while, ‘She looks a lot like you.'

Looking up at me, she said, ‘It's
her
, isn't it?' When I didn't reply, she slipped it into the pocket of her shirt.

It was past midnight by the time we'd finished sorting Lil's things.

‘What now?' said Kate.

I grabbed the two bags of dresses, and carried them out. She followed me. ‘Sophie!
Say
something to me!'

I hauled them down the steps and along the dark street, with Kate running behind. The metal walkway of the bridge gleamed under the streetlights as I made my way across. In the middle of the bridge I set down the bags. I looked right, to the dark shape of Planet Music and left to the Winsome Hotel (some soul possibly still awake in a single lit-up room on the top floor), and then down into the water. I ripped open the bag and started throwing the clothes over the side.

‘Sophie, don't!' Kate tried to grab hold of each dress as I pulled it out like a rabbit from a hat, but I was too quick for her. Over the side it went, and floated like a shadow on the water.

‘Sophie!'

Kate's taller than I am, and she tried to physically restrain me, but like a lunatic I kept breaking free and dancing beyond her grasp. ‘You
always
throw stuff into the river when you want not to be reminded of things!' she said. ‘And I
won't
have you throwing Lil away!'

I stopped. ‘Do I? Throw stuff in the river when I don't want to be reminded?'

‘Yes, you know you do.'

I hadn't known she'd noticed me do that. But my blood was wild and hot, and I felt compelled to toss away the dresses until the bags were empty. The water below the bridge was littered with frocks, some billowing, some waterlogged and beginning to sink. I tore open the second bag.

Kate whipped the Polaroid out of her top pocket and held it aloft. ‘If you keep on, I'll rip this up and throw it in as well!'

Two pedestrians excused themselves, and edged past us, hands in pockets.

‘You wouldn't.'

‘You don't know me.'

I looked into her eyes. She was right. I didn't know her.

‘Give it to me.'

‘No. Stop, or I'll tear it up!' she said excitedly. And without more ado, she ripped the picture in two – just like that – and let it drop into the river.

We both looked down into the water, but it was so dark and the picture so small it wasn't visible.

Kate's lip began to quiver, and she stepped forward and pounded me on the chest, with her clenched fist, four times. I counted.

‘So!' she said.

‘So.'

She heaved a sigh.

‘Look,' I said. By that stage I was calm through and through. It felt odd after my bout of madness. ‘I'm
not
throwing Lil away. I think she'd have wanted this. What are we going to do with these dresses of hers otherwise? Keep getting them out and poring over them at intervals till we're old ladies? Give them to an op shop? Do you really want to walk down the street and see old women, or worse, girls
our
age, kitted out in these? They're awfully old and musty and desirable.'

Kate pulled Lil's ancient op-art shift from the bag and put it to her nose.

‘It smells of her,' she whispered, a tear running down her face.

‘I know.'

She regarded it for ages, and then put it up to her mouth and kissed it, and dropped it over the side of the bridge.

We took it in turns to ceremoniously remove each dress from the bag, shake it out and admire it, then close our eyes and put it to our faces briefly, before tossing it away. It became a graceful balletic dance, as each dress flew out over the side of the bridge and seemingly paused for a moment like a dancer in a spotlight, before descending into the water.

Kate got the last turn, and I could see that she couldn't let the dress go. ‘We can keep just one,' she said pleadingly.

‘Yes. It's a pity it's such an ugly one.' It was the silver sheath Lil used to wear to weddings and funerals, all glittery with real metal thread like chain mail.

It went the way of the others.

Thus unburdened, we picked up the empty plastic bags and walked over the bridge in the direction of the Winsome, to go the long way home.

C
HAPTER
T
HREE

L
IL'S SON
A
LAN
only ever visited us once. Lil said he'd travelled from Overseas (such an important place: it needed a capital letter even as you spoke of it). He'd come to see her and to go to a wedding, and Kate and I went with them (dressed in new identical dresses, except that Kate's was green and mine rose-pink). We stayed overnight in a family room at a motel.