Sisteria (24 page)

‘And you love me, too, don't you?' he said softly. ‘Sit there and tell me you don't.'

She said nothing.

‘Oh, God,' she said with a half laugh, ‘here was me only a matter of hours ago convinced I could keep this thing casual, that you were my bit of fun on the side. Talk about a self-deluding twit...'

‘So you do love me, then?'

She took a deep breath and looked into his eyes.

‘Yes, Tom. I love you. I'm mad about you.'

He pulled her on to her feet, held her tight in his arms and almost kissed the life out of her.

‘Look,' he said afterwards, as he stood gently pushing her hair behind her ears, ‘I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want us to bring up this baby together. Please, Beverley. Will you just think about it.'

‘What? Leave Mel?'

He nodded.

‘Tom, don't think I haven't fantasised about being with you, 'cos I have. But I can't, not while Mel's so miserable. He really needs me right now. And I have to think about my kids too. By leaving their father, I'd be breaking up the family. They'd be devastated. I'm not sure they'd ever forgive me.'

‘Of course they would. They'd be angry at first, but they're almost adults. Kids their age understand that relationships break down. What you're forgetting in all this is that you have needs too. You've spent twenty years in this mediocre marriage. Perhaps now is the time to get out. And what about Melvin, don't you think perhaps he needs a second chance too?'

‘Maybe. Never really looked at it that way.'

‘Well, perhaps you should start. Please, Beverley. Don't turn your back on us.'

She took a deep breath.

‘Tom, I do love you and I will think about it. But you must promise not to put pressure on me. Mel's not well. I have to be there for him. Maybe when he's back on his feet.

‘OK. I understand.'

At that moment Beverley's new mobile rang from inside her bag.

‘I'd better get it,' she said. ‘Could be one of the kids in trouble.' She ran off to the hall. By the time she came back into the kitchen, her face was ashen and she was shaking.

‘What the hell is it?' Tom said, helping her to a chair.

‘That was my mum,' she said, struggling to stay calm. ‘It's Mel. He's in hospital.'

‘Christ, what's happened? Did he have an accident? Is he ill? What?'

‘No, from what I can make out, he's fine physically. Apparently he burst into some factory somewhere on the North Circular and went berserk. He kept demanding to be shown the way up to their roof because he wanted to commit suicide by jumping off it. When they tried to get rid of him he turned violent. Apparently the blokes there managed to restrain him until the police arrived. As soon as they got there they carted him off to a bin.' She paused for a moment as the panic started to rise inside her.

‘Tom, they're planning to section him under the Mental Health Act. That means he might have to stay there for months... years, even.'

Chapter 20

One Saturday morning three weeks later, Melvin sat on his bed at the Friary, waiting to go into his therapy session. It was thanks to Beverley that he'd been admitted to the exclusive private clinic in Richmond. Desperate that Melvin should have only the best psychiatric care and aware that the hospital fees wouldn't be a problem, she'd arranged for Melvin's immediate transfer to the Friary from the seedy NHS hospital in Chingford where he had been taken from the roof of the F.R. Shadbolt factory.

As he sat, his thumb and forefinger continued to faff around just inside his left nostril. Although he'd plucked six nose hairs so far, he had to his intense irritation yet to locate the well-spring of this latest bout of nasal itching. By now his eyes were watering so much that the article he was reading in the
Daily Mail
Weekend section on Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's passion for collecting commemorative porcelain thimbles had become nothing more than a blur. As he put the newspaper down beside him on the bed and plucked for a seventh time, he heard loud voices coming from the room next door. His neighbour, a multiple personality named Val, Bernard and Cilla, was bickering among her selves about whether to go for a pub lunch before or after shopping for loose covers.

The worst part about being in a nut house, Melvin had decided - even a private, not to say fashionable one like this, where the names of the resident druggies and piss artists read like the membership list at Soho House - was the noise. When the obsessive-compulsives weren't bawling over whose turn it was to Domestos the loos or clean the ashtrays in the day room, the sexual compulsives were hitting on the passive dependants and the manic depressives were playing the video of Princess Di's funeral at full volume. The only place he could find peace and quiet was in the upstairs lounge among the catatonic schizophrenics.

***

Melvin's psychotherapist at the Friary, whom he saw for an hour each day, was called Wim. He was a humourless but unendingly compassionate Belgian - in his early sixties, Melvin guessed - who wore a wiry Salvador Dali moustache, the kind of arty, funny-shaped glasses beloved of Europeans, and a brocade fez thing with a tassel. Melvin strongly suspected that one day as he sat sharing his misery with Wim, a door would open, Monty Python-style, in the man's forehead, and through it would shoot a giant, hissing and whistling steam train.

Although his sartorial style gave the impression that he was in far greater need of therapy than his patients, Wim had in three weeks brought about a conspicuous improvement in Melvin's state of mind. Slowly his self-esteem was re-emerging.

Wim had finally made Melvin accept what Beverley had been telling him for years: that the pharmacy had failed not because he was intrinsically stupid or lacked ability, or because God had it in for him, but because his obsessive need to get back at his father had got in the way of his business sense.

‘You know, Melvin, in Belgium we have an old saying to describe what you did,' Wim said, smiling and twisting one end of his waxed moustache. ‘You buried your waffle to spite your stomach.'

***

Beverley visited most days. Melvin always looked forward to seeing her. She arrived with newspapers and magazines, and foil containers of Queenie's home-made strudel. Food was the last thing he needed, but he didn't have the heart to tell her. Firstly, he had no appetite. The weight had fallen off him since he'd been at the Friary. Secondly, what little hospital food he'd tasted had been superb. He wasn't alone in this view. In a recent survey of the world's most sought-after psychiatric hospitals,
Tatler
had bestowed upon the Friary's chef the coveted Golden Straitjacket Award.

Apart from bringing food he didn't need, Beverley sat and held his hand, told him how much better he was looking and put him back in touch with the real world by telling him about the kids, the revision Benny should have been doing for his GGSEs and wasn't, and the jungle-effect wallpaper Rochelle was trying to persuade her to buy for the hall.

It wasn't until he started to get better and slowly emerge from his psychotic miasma that he noticed his wife had developed a new and intensely irritating habit. She'd started to gabble. She arrived, sat on the bed, yammered uncontrollably for an hour or so, barely letting him get a word in, and then left. He also noticed she was avoiding making eye contact with him. He began to perceive in her a distance, a remoteness which he couldn't explain. When he tried to discuss it, she bridled and told him he was imagining things. Melvin was certain there was something she wanted to tell him but couldn't. On the few occasions he'd caught her off guard and looked into her eyes, he almost got the sense that he'd lost her.

‘Physically she's still here, but I know that in her mind she's somewhere else,' he'd said to Wim. ‘Who could blame her? Twenty years she put up with varying degrees of my madness. She was only doing what she thought best for me and the kids when she agreed to have her sister's baby, but my ego just couldn't cope.'

He paused for a few moments.

‘The odd thing,' he went on eventually, ‘is that although I feel sad at the thought of losing her, I don't feel devastated - not like I thought I would.'

He explained about the years of going through her underwear drawer looking for signs of her infidelity. Wim didn't say anything for a few moments.

‘So, Melvin... tell me, who is it you really love?'

‘What on earth makes you think there's anybody else?' Melvin said, taken aback by Wim's insight.

‘I don't know,' Wim said slowly. ‘It's a feeling I get from you sometimes - a sense of bereavement, almost.'

***

From then on, Melvin spent each session talking about Rebecca and asking how it was possible for him to be in love with a woman he hadn't seen for over twenty years.

A week ago he'd taken Rebecca's now battered and stained Christmas card from his wallet and explained how he hadn't been able to throw it away. He unfolded it and passed it to Wim.

‘That's the first time in twenty years she's included a hand-written message,' he said excitedly, leaning forward in his chair. ‘Take a close look, you can still just about read it.'

‘Melvin, I really don't think this is a very useful exercise. The fact that you have kept this card is simply more evidence of your obsessive nature.'

‘Please, Wim,' Melvin said, virtually pleading, ‘indulge me. Just for a moment. Go on, take a look at it.'

Sighing, Wim pushed his comedy spectacles on to his forehead and read the message.

‘You see,' Melvin said, warming to his theme, like a detective, ‘it says “Militant”. She called me that because when she knew me I was twenty and a Marxist. You're the shrink. What do you make of that? I mean, don't you think it's a bit bloody familiar after twenty years?'

‘Melvin, Melvin,' Wim said slowly, his tone verging on exasperated, ‘you said yourself, it was what she called you. What should she write - “Dear Mr Littlestone”? Come on...'

‘OK, OK,' he shot back. ‘So maybe I got that wrong, but what about the “thinking of you” bit? I had no idea she thought about me. Clearly I still mean something to her. And what do you make of “always”? That was the clincher for me. It means she must have been thinking about me all this time and never dared say anything because we were both married. Come on, Wim, you have to admit, it's a bloody strange thing to say. I mean...'

‘Melvin. Stop,' Wim said, raising his voice slightly and pushing the glasses back on to the end of his nose. ‘Just stop and listen to me.'

Melvin knew what was coming. Embarrassed by his naive stupidity, he lowered his head and refused to meet Wim's eyes.

‘After all these years,' his shrink said gently, ‘you are in love with a bittersweet memory. Nothing more. She is unattainable. You told me yourself. She's married. She has children. She lives thousands of miles away. Not only that, she is now rich and famous. Wanting what we can't have can drive us crazy. Let her go, Melvin. Don't let another obsession take you over. This one could destroy you.'

The shrink held out the Christmas card towards his patient. Melvin didn't move. Neither did Wim. They remained locked in this mental stand-off for a few seconds. For Melvin, taking the card back meant acknowledging that Wim was right.

In the end Melvin leaned forward, snatched it from Wim's fingers and folded it in half, along the ancient fold. As he shoved it in his trouser pocket he could feel tears stinging his eyes.

***

As Beverley flip-flopped into the bedroom in her slippers, she took her watch out of her dressing gown pocket. It wasn't yet twelve. She'd told Melvin she'd get to the Friary at about four. She had ages. It would take no more than forty-five minutes to drive to the bin. Bin, strange how such an alarming word has eased its way into the family vocabulary. After three weeks it had become as mundane and familiar as ‘socks' or ‘Ready Brek'. She supposed it would have been the same with carcinoma or persistent vegetative state. Even the children, who had been devastated when they were told their father was in a psychiatric clinic, had, now they knew he was on the mend, stopped lolling aimlessly about the place and started going out with their friends again.

Beverley decided to lie down for a couple of hours. Not only did she have time to kill, but for once the house was empty. More to the point it was silent. There was no Benny demanding cinema and Burger King money and no Natalie standing wailing in her bedroom because each of the fifty-six outfits she'd just tried on, and which were scattered all over the bedroom floor, made her look gross.

Natalie had gone shopping. Benny, who had bought a guitar last week, had gone to his first lesson, and Queenie had gone to Brent Cross with her friend Millie from the day centre to catch a sale at Smith's and bulk-buy condolence cards (‘Listen, at our age it makes sense.').

Beverley was particularly glad to see the back of her mother for a few hours. Ever since her reunion with Naomi, Queenie had been wandering round the house looking like a wet weekend in Frinton. Beverley knew the occasion hadn't lived up to her mother's fantasy.

‘Oh, it was fine. Very nice,' Queenie had said afterwards, doing her best not to let her disappointment show. Then, a few days ago, Queenie's sombre mood had suddenly changed, but not for the better. When it dawned on her that Naomi hadn't been in touch about the day centre story, she started to fret. If Beverley had been asked once for her opinion as to why Naomi hadn't phoned, she'd been asked fifty times.

‘I mean, she promised to call,' Queenie had said yet again last night, on her way up to bed.' “Just give me a couple of weeks”, she said. It's been three now and still no word. What do you think I should do?'

‘Mum,' Beverley said, on the verge of exasperation, ‘I keep on telling you. She's a busy woman. Two weeks was just a figure she plucked out of the air. Listen, if she promised to phone, she'll phone. You have to be patient.'

‘Do you think maybe I should phone her? Or would that look too much like nagging?'

‘I tell you what,' Beverley said finally, ‘give it another couple of weeks and then phone. Then it will have been well over a month since you met. I don't think she'd see that as nagging.'

‘OK, Bev. If you think that's the best bet, I'll wait.'

Queenie had carried on upstairs.

***

Lying on the bed next to Beverley was the latest edition of
Marie Claire
. Having finished with it, Natalie had left it when she came in to say she was going clothes shopping with Allegra.

‘You know I'll always love you, Mum,' she'd whispered, bending down to kiss her mother, who was still fast asleep.

Without opening her eyes, Beverley had kissed the air and mumbled, ‘Yeah, love you too, sweetheart. Don't forget your keys.'

It was only now, flicking through the magazine, that her daughter's exact words hit her. Natalie often told Beverley she loved her, particularly when they were making up after a row or when Beverley gave her money, but it was always a casual ‘Love ya, Mum.' Beverley had never known her add the ‘I'll always' bit. There was, she thought, something oddly ominous about it. In the end, assuming it was nothing more than Natalie showing daughterly affection and concern for her lone, pregnant mother, she shrugged and went back to the magazine. But she couldn't concentrate. She tossed it on to the floor.

Beverley didn't know it was possible to feel such guilt. In the three weeks Melvin had been in the Friary, hardly a night had gone by when she didn't lie in bed and promise herself she would finish it with Tom. After all, Melvin's breakdown was her fault. Through Wim, with Melvin's permission, she now knew all about Vlad the Impala, the shedding toupees and the unfortunate business of the anti-snoring devices. More to the point, she knew Mel had been driven to make these dodgy deals because he saw them as a last-ditch attempt to prove himself as a provider.

‘Of course, when the scams failed and at the same time you became the family's financial saviour,' Wim had explained on their first meeting in his office at the Friary, ‘he saw himself not simply as a failure. By usurping his role as provider so spectacularly, you had virtually emasculated him. But I must emphasise this, Mrs Littlestone - it wasn't your fault. Please, please don't punish yourself over this. You became a surrogate for your sister for the best of intentions. You simply weren't to know Melvin would react in the way he did.'

Naturally, she hadn't stopped punishing herself. There were even times, when her feelings of self-loathing were particularly acute, that she saw Mel's breakdown as her punishment for allowing herself to even think about leaving him for Tom.

Most of the time, though, she was merely furious with herself for having been so insensitive, for her lack of perception and tact. She knew Melvin's self-esteem had been at rock bottom and all she'd succeeded in doing was rubbing his nose in his failure.