The Memory of Us: A Novel (29 page)

I’d prepared myself for the worst, based on the comments of the train passenger, but Bootle Home looked relatively untouched. Now that I knew to look, I could see a slight discoloration on the left wing, but I might not have noticed without her commentary.

I walked up the familiar steps, ten years estranged. Before I could open the door, a couple of the residents came out with an orderly. All three were laughing, bundled in their winter coats, with cherry-red noses and cheeks. One resident was a little girl, just about the age that Lily would be. She wore a knitted pink hat with matching mittens, and I thought I might make one in time for the next November package, Lily’s eighth. I stared longer than I should have and wiped away a cold tear that escaped.

I turned away and looked up at the intricate carving atop the threshold. Complexities immortalized in lacquered wood. I sighed and entered. The hallway was the same, as were the sofas, which looked as untouched as when I was here before.

A young woman with dull brown hair pulled into a frighteningly severe bun sat behind the desk. Her eyes widened when she saw me, but then she looked down and shuffled her feet beneath the metal chair.

“Where is Miss Ellis?” I inquired.

“Miss Ellis?” She put a well-chewed pencil into her mouth and looked up into nowhere. “I’m not sure. I replaced Mrs. Hainsworth. But I think Miss Ellis was before that. She left to live with her daughter or something.”

“I don’t believe she had any children.”

“Or maybe it was her sister. I don’t know.” The pencil came out of her mouth, but she held on to it. I saw a deck of cards lying next to her, displayed by suit in a setup for Patience, or some other useless diversion. “Anyway, what do you want?”

“I’m here to see Charles. Charles Westcott. Is he here?”

“Yes. Charles. Are you a relative?”

“I’m . . . I’m a friend.”

“You have to be a relative or get special permission.”

“I have permission. From his sister.”

“I didn’t know he had a sister.”

“He did. But she died. In the Blitz.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t let you in without permission.”

I had not come this far to be dismissed by such a mindless little twit. I leaned in so that she could get a good, hard look at my face. I saw her quiver a bit.

“Look. It was his sister’s dying wish that I come here and check in on him. Surely you wouldn’t deny a dead girl’s final request?”

“No . . . I suppose I wouldn’t.”

“I didn’t think so. Now, where is his room?”

She pulled out a register and pushed a pen toward me. “Here. You have to sign in first.”

I sighed but went through the little charade. Helen Bailey. It came naturally now. It had taken almost a year not to start my name with a
J
, longer than it had taken me to write my married name without thought. She looked at my name and appeared satisfied. “He’s in room 203. It’s just down the hall, on your right.”

The same room as before. It was comforting to think that there were some things that didn’t change, even if they were insignificant ones.

I walked to Charles’s room, and it felt as if it could have been just yesterday since I’d been there. I found it empty, but it was unchanged. The bed linens were still the stark white ones, but it wasn’t as if that were likely to change. The same brocade curtains lined the windows and looked over the same gardens, still well tended by someone other than a McCarthy.

Only one thing was different. The colorful pots still lined the windows, but like the memory of the gardener who had brought them here long ago and stolen my heart with his kindness, their contents were withered and brittle, covered by a canopy of spiderwebs. I traced my finger along one of the sinewy strands, pulling it like taffy.

“Excuse me.” I wiped the cobweb on my skirt and turned around. An orderly—a thin, young man with the beginnings of a mustache—had peeked his head in. “Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Charles.”

“All right. He’s just coming now.”

I held my breath, and then I heard his plodding footsteps.

He hadn’t changed a bit. He appeared to have been frozen in silent time. As the orderly walked Charles to his chair, I stepped back, almost afraid to touch him. This had been a bad idea. What right did I have to come back here, to disrupt the little part of the world he occupied?

I turned to leave but stubbed my toe on the corner of the bed frame. I put my hand out instinctively to catch myself, and it landed on Charles’s arm. Seeming not at all surprised, he reached out to my hand and squeezed it, three times in rhythm.

I was too startled to move. Our little form of communication. But he’d done it first. Did he recognize me? Was he able to sense that I was here?

He kept holding my hand, stood up, and walked me to the windowsill. He felt around until he could touch the pots. He patted them and frowned.

“That’s amazing.”

I turned to see that the orderly was watching us. “What’s amazing?”

“Those old pots. He usually refuses to touch them. But whenever we try to take them away, he screams bloody hell. So we just leave them there, sad as they are.”

I looked at Charles. He still held me with him and touched the pots.

“Yes, Charles. They’re still there. But everything must have died. We’ll have to plant some new ones.”

I walked him back to his chair, took off my jacket, and rubbed my hands together. I picked the pots up, one at a time, and dumped their lamentable contents into the nearby waste bin.

“Now,” I said and turned to the orderly, “what must we do to put something new in here?”

“I’m on my break in fifteen minutes,” the young man said, eyes shining. “I could go find some soil and some cuttings and see if that will work.”

“Perfect. We’ll see you back here then.”

I stayed two nights at Bootle Home, using the dying wish bit as long as I could stretch it and securing an empty room for sleep. Charles seemed happy, as far as I could tell, when we watered the plants and stroked their soft leaves. But this was not a permanent solution. I had to leave before he became used to my presence, and the place held too many memories for me, exactly the kind I was trying to escape.

But before I left, I swiped the handbag of the secretary and found enough money for train fare. I had no plans to pay her back.

The next train was leaving for Birmingham, so I bought a ticket for that one.

Chapter Twenty-Six

We’d been traveling for about two hours when the conductor ran through each car, asking if there was a doctor on board. I looked around at the other passengers, whose reactions ranged from panic to disinterest. When no one seemed to be able to answer the call, I stood up and volunteered to help. Looking me up and down with a suspicious eye, he shrugged, as there was no better offer. He guided me down the narrow corridors to the first-class cars, where an elderly woman had fallen.

Hastening to her side, I saw that her leg was broken and badly swollen. I called for a dowel or a strong stick—anything I could use to set it—but nothing could be found. At my recommendation, we made an emergency stop in the next town, Stone.

The train left us behind after we disembarked, eager to bring the rest of its passengers to their destinations on time. With a porter’s help I created a makeshift bed on the bench at the station and placed her on it. Taking a blouse from my bag, I tore it into strips and used it to secure a thin board that the stationmaster brought to us. The woman cried out as I set her leg on it, and I fumbled in her handbag to retrieve the aspirin she’d begged me to find. A call was made for a doctor to come from Walsall, but by the time he arrived, the work had been done.

After she had been transferred into the backseat of the doctor’s motorcar for the trip to the neighboring town, she grabbed my shirtsleeve.

“Thank you so much. You’re an angel.” She smiled beneath her pain-furrowed brow.

“It’s what anyone would have done if they knew how to.”

“Here, I want to give you something.” And she pulled three pounds out of her purse. “It’s all that I have with me except for what I will need to finish my journey. But here is my address in Birmingham. Please write to me of your whereabouts, and I will pay you properly.”

“You really don’t have to. It wasn’t anything.”

“I insist.” She pressed the money into my coat pocket, and then the doctor closed the door.

Watching the car recede in the distance, a new idea formed in my head. Maybe the big cities were not where I should be going to look for employment. With no license, I would be able to find only menial work there. But these small towns might be different. The services of a nurse and midwife might be appreciated, and it would certainly cost less to get by in them.

So the traveling nurse continued, visiting towns too small to have a doctor, staying for months at a time, tending to the ill and delivering babies. I found success most often by speaking to a local chemist, who was more often than not glad to have the help. I became used to the stares that I would receive upon my arrival, but I quickly won them over with my work. I stayed only as long as my restlessness would allow and always left before I could make any lasting friendships. My sentence was to journey through this world alone, perpetually atoning for my sin, patient by patient.

I sent chocolates to Charles every time we shared a birthday, through the lanky young orderly who had been so kind to him. I’d leave an address and wait for an update before moving on to the next town. He was doing well, I was assured. But he had let the plants die once again.

Six more of our birthdays passed—and six more of Lily’s. She was fourteen now, so the gifts became more appropriate to her age. A lipstick and compact. A hat that I smartened up with a little embroidery.

It was around this time that I found myself in a tea shop on the far outskirts of London. I picked up a
Sunday Times
and saw a photograph of Abigail and Roger in the social section. Roger was running for office, and informed opinions saw him as the favorite. How distinguished he looked; how different my fortune might have been if my heart had loved him as my mother would have wished. But that was not the life I wanted to live. Beautiful, brash Abigail was at his side, playing the role she was born for. I envied them nothing.

Two more birthdays brought me to the town of Alcester, and the country saw the intervention of British troops in the Suez Crisis. I sent a Union Jack brooch to Lily for her sixteenth birthday in a show of patriotism and tried to keep myself from thinking of when Kyle had fought in the same part of the world. To keep myself from thinking of where he might be now. It was another life.

One more year saw me in Oakham and brought the unveiling of a plan to allow women to join the House of Lords for the first time. These events caught the attention of the people in the countryside, but most other times they were focused on the daily tasks of living and farming and surviving. I liked that about the country. The hardworking people were not easily swayed by fashions and politics. I had become such a simple person, such a different person from the girl living in luxury next to Newsham Park.

The people paid me for my work in different ways. When they couldn’t afford money, I was compensated with clothing, food, lodging, or whatever else they could muster up.

In Bedworth I was paid most unusually for an equally singular task. I had been there for two months, after the departure of their doctor for bigger opportunities. I heard a knock on my door and opened it to find a small boy, no older than five years. I recognized him as being the son of a farmer down the road.

“Are you the doctor?” His faced was scrunched and his head tilted.

“No, I’m a nurse, but I might be able to help you. What do you need?”

“I need you to come with me.”

His look was so pleading that I couldn’t help but follow him. “What is your name?”

“I’m Arthur. I live over there.” And he pointed to the house in the distance.

Arthur led me past the house, though, and into the nearby barn. “She’s in here. I hope you’ll be able to help her.”

I looked around for a woman but didn’t see her. Then he opened the door to a stall. I erupted with laughter, a rare thing for me, at the sight of a border collie lying on her side. I thought it funny that a child had called me in to deliver puppies. Until I noticed the dog’s distress and realized that something was wrong.

I ran my hand along her black-and-white coat, damp with sweat. Two puppies had already been delivered, but she seemed to have given up. Her breathing was heavy, and the white fur around her nose indicated an advanced maternal age.

She seemed to be suffering from uterine inertia, in which her muscles weakened and could not push without assistance.

Arthur kept his back against the stall, equally repulsed and fascinated as one by one, four more puppies emerged from his beloved pet. I released each one from its sac, making the labor happen manually, and laid them by the teats of their mother. She licked them clean, and it was the happiest sight I recalled seeing in a long time. I washed my hands at the nearby pump just in time for Arthur’s father to return from the fields.

“What do we have here?” He looked at me, then at his son, and back to me.

“Needa had her puppies! There’s seven of them!” Arthur was full of the news, and he recounted every detail. “Can we keep them?”

“Well, son, we might be able to keep one or two, but we’re going to have to find homes for the rest.”

The boy looked at me. “Do you want one?”

I hadn’t yet been offered a puppy for my services, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted one just now, as I didn’t intend to be in this town much longer. But Arthur was so enthusiastic that I couldn’t turn him down. I heard myself say, “I would like that.”

Without asking my opinion, he selected the runt of the litter for me, a black-and-white bundle. “What are you going to name him?”

I hadn’t named my own child, and now I was on the spot to pick one for this little mutt.

After some consideration, I said, “I think I’ll name him Ellis.” Maybe he would love me like my old friend had.

Ellis kept me in Bedworth for a few more weeks, as he grew stronger on the milk of his mother. Arthur delighted in bringing updates to me every day, and a few times I went to see him for myself.

As soon as he was weaned, I left without saying good-bye to the boy.

Ellis was a delight, though I was reluctant to admit it. Wherever we lived, he found a corner to make his own. He greeted me enthusiastically when I entered and licked my otherwise untouched face. No one had shown me such affection in decades, and I welcomed it, even though it was from a dog. Sometimes I brought him to the bedside of patients and was intrigued at the difference that his attention made in their demeanor.

Besides Ellis, my one indulgence was the television. Of course, being always on the move, I did not own one, but I was fascinated every time I had a chance to see it. By the end of the decade, most of the people I visited had tellies in their homes, save for the poorest of them. I imagined my father must have a number of them. We had owned several telephones long before most households had even one.

It was in 1961, Abertillery, the old ironworks town, that I received a package from Bootle. I read the note from my faithful correspondent that accompanied it:

Dear Miss Bailey,

I am sorry to have to write this to you. Charles suffered a heart attack this week, one that I’m afraid was fatal. He appeared to have been having chest pains for several weeks and may have had a congenital issue that went undetected. His belongings are being sent to his parents, but I was able to sneak away this little pot for you. I hope that it arrives without damage.

Respectfully, Andrew Bosch

I opened the package. It contained one of the blue pots with small green dots painted along the top edge. It was split on the side, but just a hairline fracture that didn’t jeopardize its purpose. I clutched it to my heart and cried. It was the first time I’d cried in as long as I could remember, and the tears poured not only for Charles but also for everyone else that I’d lost. He’d been my last tie to Julianne. Now I was truly alone.

I threw the pot at the wall, startling Ellis, and breaking it into large pieces. It was ruined now, just like me.

I set the fragments on my table. And went to buy the pills.

They sat there for days, weeks. I’d hold them in my hands, the dye staining my skin a sickly ochre color. I’d take one but spit it out. It had an awful bitter taste. But they were the means to my end, and I was determined, sooner or later, to swallow them all.

One night I laid out fourteen of them, about twice what it would take to do the job. Surely, twenty years of penance was enough. Ellis looked at me with his big brown eyes, and I think he sensed that something was awry. He laid his chin on my knee as I sat on the bed, hunched over in despair. We looked at each other for what felt like hours. Every time I moved, his tail wagged along the floor, only to settle again when he realized that I was only shifting my position.

I followed the first one with a large drink of water, forcing it down my throat. One down. I thought of Charles and of Lucille. I wanted to see them again, but I was heading in a different direction. They had been angels on earth. I was not.

One more drink of water, and the second one was finished. Two down. I thought of my parents. I wondered how they reacted when they learned of Charles’s death. Was it with sadness? Regret? Did they think of me?

Three down. It wasn’t getting any easier. God, they were awful. I didn’t feel anything yet, but maybe it was too early.

What would happen to Ellis, I wondered? He was a good dog, though. Someone would take him in.

I opened the drawer of my nightstand and pulled out a picture. It was the one I’d sneaked of Kyle, taken from the window in Bootle. I was already in love, and we’d spoken only a few times. The silver frame had tarnished through all of my travels. I hadn’t looked at it in a long time, other than to stuff it in a bag before moving again. But I wanted to gaze at it one more time.

This was how I wanted to remember him. Whistling, working in the gardens that he loved. I showed it to Ellis and then set it on top of the nightstand.

This was going to take too long. No need to draw it out, make a ceremony out of it. I picked up three more pills, sighed, and reached for the water.

There was a knock at my door. Ellis barked madly. I couldn’t see the clock in the dark without my glasses, but it had to be late. Very late.

Let them knock.

Ellis quieted, and I thought whoever it had been had given up. I washed down another of the pills and was about to swallow the next when the knocking picked up once again, more urgently now. Ellis erupted again, and as I reached for him, the pills fell to the floor. He was frantic now, as the knocking continued. I set the water on the table and brushed the picture frame with my arm. It tottered, then fell back faceup.

This wouldn’t stop until I answered the door.

“What’s the damn hurry,” I said in a low voice that no one could hear. I flipped the light and ran my hands through my hair, a habit of a long-ago vanity. I avoided the mirror that came with the rented room. I already knew that my blond hair was paled by many grays. I knew that the years had rounded my figure. And that the scars on my face, though having mellowed over the years, still gave it the look of splotchy leather.

The knocking at last stopped. Whoever it was must have heard me coming.

It was one of the Campbell kids. Thomas. Tommy. Timothy. Whatever. There were so many of them.

“Miss—”

“What do you want at this hour?”

“It’s my mother. She’s sick. Bad.”

“Is it the baby? It’s not her time for another few weeks.”

“I guess God thinks differently. It’s coming. But something isn’t right with Mum.”

“God has nothing to do with it.”

He ignored my blasphemy, as most did when their need for my services outweighed their shock at it. But they were not being punished by a God that I had long since expelled from my life.

“I brought the truck.”

I told him to wait while I got dressed, then came out with my carpetbag of tools. The pills would have to wait.