Oh Dear Silvia (14 page)

‘Let him always walk beside me’

And she tried not to hate Claude standing there in front of her, conducting her even though her eyes are clamped shut

‘Let him take my hand and guide me’

Yes, let him guide her away from Claude and his cheating nastiness

‘Let me live in the light of his love’

That’s God’s love Claude, not yours, you idiot

‘’Til I reach that great tomorrow’

Ah, tomorrow, Winnie can lie in, with a plate of bun and cheese and a cuppa, pure bliss

‘Where there’ll be no pain and sorrow’

Yes Claude, the kind of pain and sorrow you could so easily bring

‘Let me live in the light of his love’

Yes, let Winnie live in the light of God’s love and let her always be strong and hopeful, and let this young couple always love each other and be nothing but kind.

Yes Lord.

All of the weddings went well and Pastor Saul didn’t miss the opportunity of three different, new congregations to point out the problems with the church building when the collection plate was about to make its rounds.

‘Now, I know dese are tuff times for all us. We all havin to
tighten the belt, the purse strings and the grip on di coffers but brothers and sistas, dere is no greater glory than to praise your Saviour, the Almighty the Holy of Holies, and where bes’ to praise ’im but in his very own house. Dis house. The Word of God Church. Which is your church, people.

‘But how you gonna do dat when de house, it fall dung about yi head? Look ’pon the cracks in di styain-glass. Look fe decay in di mullions and filials, whatever dey may be. Look ’pon de rot in de roof wood from parasite death-watch beetle, and look ’pon decay in di sandstone, from the sufferation of pollution and acid rain. The Lord God askin us to save it, so we mus’ save it. Unless we no fear de wrath of Hell. I will lead you h’anywhere, people, H’ANYWHERE. But I will not lead you into Hell. No sir, I will not have dat on mi conscience. Ya hear me now? I will allays keep my compass dial set to Heaven, and mi no deviate for no man.

‘So, h’unless you want to feel the licks of the fires of Satan, you mus’ dig into your pockets and purses to help with dis almighty task God has set us. Don’t you worry, Jesus, we are up to it. Can I get a h’aymen?’

‘Amen,’ came the solid but solemn reply from the congregated gatherings of mostly non-churchgoers, realizing this was the moment they would pay the costs of not attending the church for ages. They knew it would get them eventually. This was that eventually.

Winnie felt compelled to dig into her own purse and put ten
pounds on the plate the first two times it came past that day. Twice. Twenty pounds. Her wages for the day, other than the ten pounds for the last wedding. She didn’t mind. She thought it was the right and only thing to do.

In the short break between the second and third wedding, there was a minor but supremely opportune crisis when Odine felt a little bit faint. The delays between the weddings meant that no one could get out to grab a bite to eat, and ironically Odine, the queen of refreshments, had counted on a break between the last two, when she had planned to pop into her mother’s house nearby and share a quick plate of ackee and saltfish, her favourite treat. Odine’s personal protest was to go a bit dramatically wobbly at the knees when she realized there would be no break. Odine could never be accused of underplaying any moment, and she certainly garnered plenty of attention at this one.

Winnie was trying not to believe that Odine was also suffering from a bad case of ‘there are three brides in a row getting more attention than me-itis’, but Winnie was failing to dissuade herself of the unkind notion. Odine is the sort of team player who flourishes when all focus is pulled to her.

As she started to waver, Brother Claude had to help her towards a bench outside. For the first time in the day, he reluctantly looked directly at Winnie when he had to ask her to take care of Odine’s handbag whilst he supported her. Winnie obliged and sat quietly at the back of the church, guarding the bag whilst the rest of the choir were clucking around Odine.

Winnie had been sitting with Odine’s bag for about ten minutes when she realized this was her only chance to nip to the loo before the next, final, and no doubt lengthy ceremony was about to start. She had no option but to take Odine’s bag with her and so it sat on the floor of the cubicle while Winnie went about her toilet business. As she sat there, Winnie’s eye was drawn to an open and bulging envelope on the top of Odine’s bag. Winnie could see that it was stuffed with banknotes, which arrested her attention immediately. Claude and Odine didn’t seem like the kind of couple who would flash their money around like this, and goodness, it looked like an awful lot. Despite her best attempt at willpower, Winnie couldn’t help but take a closer look at the envelope.

That’s when it all made sense.

On the front of the crammed packet were the words ‘Brother Claude. SATURDAY. 3 WEDDINGS x £300 = £900’.

Winnie sat completely still, on the toilet, with her M&S pants around her ankles, and stared at those words and that money, to try and process what she’d seen. SO. HANG ON. Claude was charging £300 per wedding for the choir’s services. He told them it was half that. He told them everyone, including himself and Odine, received £10 each per wedding, and that, after the ten choir members were paid, there was £50 over to put into a fund for overheads. Winnie had always wondered what those overheads might be but had never felt it was her place to question. She had always been desperate to
believe Brother Claude was honourable. But now, sitting here, with all this money in her hand, and the incontrovertible evidence of Brother Claude’s lack of moral judgement during the week, Winnie wasn’t desperate to believe any more. She simply felt compelled to put it right.

Without another thought, Winnie counted out half of that money, and put £450 in her pocket. She had a plan for that. The envelope now contained the amount it was SUPPOSED to, and Winnie slipped it back into the top of Odine’s bag, pulled her big, demure, wholesome, God-respecting pants up and went back into the church, where the guests for the last wedding were dribbling in. Odine thanked Winnie for looking after her bag and Winnie graciously accepted those thanks, with a broad fake grin.

After Winnie had sung her heart out during her solo, fuelled by the fact this could very well be her last time, she sat down to listen to Pastor Saul’s impassioned pleas for help with the refurbishment of the church. Winnie smiled a very broad, very real grin when the collection plate passed in front of her and she proudly placed £450 on there, eyeballing Brother Claude throughout, and joining in loudly with a chorus of ‘Mi glory glory, mi hallelujah, as I lay my burden down’.

He was baffled, as were the rest of the choir, by her remarkable generosity, but it went unspoken.

Winnie kept her eye on Brother Claude for the remainder of the service, and she watched as the cogs in his head whirred
and whirred. As the third happy couple were repeating their vows, Winnie could tell that Claude was finally working out what must have happened. Winnie saw him looking at Odine, and Odine also working hard in the head to come to the only conclusion that was right. They all knew what had happened, and they all knew that they would not speak of it. Claude and Odine wouldn’t because they would risk revealing themselves as frauds, and Winnie wouldn’t because she is a decent, honourable woman who took the proper steps to put things right.

At the end of the third wedding, Brother Claude thanked the choir, and everyone received their £30 each. He even added an extra tenner for everyone.

‘Just becaa ya work so hard, an’ sound so sweet.’

‘Yeah,’ thought Winnie, ‘and becaa ya feel so guilty.’

Winnie went home that night, exhausted and amazed at everything the day had revealed to her. She hugged up her beautiful boy and told him all about personal honour and how it matters so much.

She slept well, and woke up on Sunday to find a handwritten note on her front doormat from Brother Claude, explaining that her services in the choir were no longer required. She knew it was as unjust as it was inevitable, and she felt unbearably sad.

Monday 2pm

Ed sits on the chair next to Silvia’s bed. He has been sitting there with his coat on for fifteen minutes now, saying nothing. He is lost in thought and looking at his dirty boots, with the fresh clods of earth still clinging to the soles. He forgot to bring a different pair of shoes for visiting Silvia, so he has been forced to wear these. He twists round to check the floor where he has walked in, and all the way from the door to the chair there are, indeed, big soddy footprints.

He looks at his hands, stained from digging and chopping. There is earth under his fingernails and rough calloused skin where new skin has formed over old wounds. The bottoms of his old trousers are also crusted in brown dirt. Ed reaches down to the fabric by his soggy ankles, squeezes the hem of his work jeans and brings his hands straight to his nose. He can smell the ground in his wood and, faintly, he can even
sense the essence of forest foliage. The bark, the sap, the leaves, even the musk of mammal droppings is contained in the scent. He loves it, and he is glad to get a whiff of it in this stale clinical fug of a room.

Each time he visits, he finds it more stifling. For him, it’s not just the room, it’s how stifled the dynamic of the whole situation has become. Even though it is barely a week since Silvia came off that balcony, the family and various friends already seem as locked into their roles as Silvia is locked into her body. He feels that unless there is a change soon, stagnation will set in and everyone, including Silvia, will start to reek. Ordinary life is carrying on and ordinary change is happening everywhere else, except in Suite 5.

Ed has had to force big change upon himself in the years since the split with Silvia. He feels as if he is a totally different man now, he even feels a little bit like he wishes Silvia had known this man he has become. Perhaps she wouldn’t have found him so easily dismissible.

He looks at Silvia closely, searching her face and her body for clues to any change in her condition. He would love to spot something, to hear a difference in her breathing, or see a change in colour in her skin, or a flicker in her closed eyes. He realizes that he probably didn’t ever scrutinize her this closely when she was conscious.

He struggles with his tortured imaginings sometimes, and thinks that perhaps when they were together as a couple, they
weren’t entirely real. In other words the real Ed he knows himself to be, and the real Silvia which only she truly knows herself to be somehow came together to make a third thing, a new entity called ‘EdandSilvia’ which neither of them knew themselves to be. A new thing, which they became familiar with, but which never felt wholly right. He certainly felt trapped inside EdandSilvia a lot of the time, so she must have too. What a shame, he thinks, that they couldn’t rectify it, couldn’t speak of it. Why not? Maybe because it would force them to unravel and analyse in a way both of them feared? Yes, maybe.

One thing Ed knows is that he will not put himself in such a vulnerable position ever again. He can’t afford to. He would break if he was felled in such a brutal way again. The sure route to protect himself from such pain is never to love again. Not another woman anyway. He does love. He loves his mum after a fashion, he loves Jamie for sure and he loves Cassie hugely. And now, now, he has an astounding new love in his life, one who has stolen his heart in its battered and bruised entirety. Willow is the new commander of Ed’s love, and Ed is bursting to tell Silvia all about it.

He has resisted talking to her too much about Willow because he knows it was such a sensitive issue before this accident. Silvia refused to have anything to do with her, from the moment she was born, and didn’t like to hear or know anything about her. But now, looking at Silvia lying there so
still and devoid of fight, he wants her to hear some Willow stuff.

‘Hope you don’t mind the woody smell too much Silv, but ’fraid I can’t help it. Today was an important day up there, because today was the day Willow planted her first tree. NOT a willow, I hasten to add, can’t be doing with them, the Marilyn Monroes of the tree world, exquisitely delicate yes, but shameless show-offs, and high maintenance. Not right for Foy Wood. No, she planted a copper beech,
Fagus sylvatica purpurea
. We spent quite a lot of last week poring through the nursery brochures to find the right tree. I hoped she would choose a beech, but I told her it was absolutely up to her. She did hover around the bonsai selection at the back for a few unnerving minutes, but thank God, something drew her back to the beech section in the end.

‘I have her three days a week, Silv, to give Cassie a chance to work. Tia and I split the babysitting between us as much as we can. Blimey, I’m still calling it “babysitting”. She’s hardly a baby any more. She’s … four … yes four. Wow. Where has that time gone?’

Ed rummages in his pocket and fishes out his phone. He fiddles about until he finds the photos and puts it into ‘slideshow’ mode. Every picture is either of a tree or of Willow, or of Willow and a tree, the final photo being taken this morning, of Willow hugging the sapling she has just planted.

‘There she is. Know you can’t really see these, but maybe,
who knows, somehow through your eyelids … you might … osmosis … dunno … anyway, thing is, she is standing there in her red duffel coat with the hood, but she doesn’t like the hood, she prefers this hat with the monkey head on it, and she wears green wellies with frogs’ faces on the toes, and gloves with lions on them and a knapsack with a raccoon’s head on it. She is a walking menagerie, honestly!

‘What’s so funny is she genuinely believes that all the animals would kill each other if they’re too close, so she keeps everything very separate. The gloves can’t be near the boots, the knapsack can’t meet the hat. She’s hugely vigilant about it. She’s the zookeeper. Each animal is spoken to separately, and calmed in order to keep the peace. She strokes them and murmurs in their ears, it’s a full-time job, animal wrangler. I had to wait a full fifteen minutes this morning whilst she separated and negotiated with them before she got out of the truck.