The Water's Lovely (2 page)

I wish you were, thought Edmund. So it was ‘Irene' now. Last time she was here they had still been on ‘Mrs Litton' terms. Marion's hair was redder and darker than
it had been at the beginning of the week and her little marmoset face more brightly painted. He had never known a woman be such a fidget. She couldn't sit still for five minutes but was up and down, bouncing about on her little stick legs and her kitten heels.

‘You mustn't think you have to come with me,' she said to him when she had served and cleared away the coffee. Another first time.

‘It's no trouble,' said his mother as if she were doing it herself. ‘Suppose something happened. He'd never forgive himself.'

She smiled. She made a conspiratorial face at Marion, a sort of can't-you-see-he's-longing-to-go-with-you face. And then he knew. Marion was intended for him. His mother's chosen present for him. Not from the first probably, not from when they first knew each other a year or two years back, but for perhaps six months. Like a fool he hadn't seen it coming. He saw it now. She was older than he but maybe by no more than five or six years. She was to be his girlfriend, then his fiancée, in a year or two his wife, a wife who would happily share a house with his mother.

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. He walked Marion down the hill, listening with only half an ear to her prattle about his mother's arthritis and her courage (as if Irene were ninety instead of sixty-two), then the latest doings of old Mr Hussein and old Mrs Reinhardt. All the while he was thinking what steps to take. Outside the station, as she thanked him for his escort, she lifted her face quite close to his. Did she expect a kiss? He stepped back, said goodnight and left her.

‘Such a sweet woman,' said his mother. ‘Girl, I should say.' She paused to let this sink in. ‘We've got a new neighbour. I saw him move in today. A Mr Fenix.
Marion says he paid over a million for that house and she should know.'

Next day, at the hospice, he reviewed his fellow nurses. The women were all married or living with a boyfriend. At his mid-morning break he went downstairs to the catering department, for a slice of gingerbread or a piece of strudl to go with his coffee. The Jean Langholm Hospice was known for the high standard of its food. As Michelle, one of the cooks, said, ‘Let's face it, folks come here to die. The least you can do is make their last meals cordon bleu.'

She was helping Diane prepare vegetables, cleaning broccoli and scrubbing carrots. Heather, the chef, was making wafer-thin pancakes for lunch. Edmund went up to Heather, as he sometimes did, to ask her how she was and tell her about Mr Warriner, a cancer patient on his ward in whom she had shown an interest. She simply smiled at the first enquiry and nodded at the news of Mr Warriner. She was a quiet girl and plain-faced, calm and reposeful, sturdy and full-bodied without being fat. She always looked as if she had just had a bath and washed her hair. Her eyes were the blue of willow pattern china and her beautiful thick fair hair cut in a short bob with a fringe. She asked him if he had come for his cake and could she offer him an almond slice or a piece of Battenberg. Edmund chose the Battenberg cake, then he said, ‘Would you like to come out for a drink one evening?'

She was surprised to be asked. He could see that. ‘All right,' she said.

‘Well, this evening?'

She didn't have to think. She stared at him. ‘If you like.'

‘What time do you finish here?'

‘Six.'

‘I'll come down for you at six.'

It would mean hanging about upstairs for an hour but never mind. He could have a chat to Mr Warriner about his son and his dog and his once-splendid stamp collection. However awful the evening might be, however many long silences and glum stares, it wouldn't be Marion and her blether. It wouldn't be a step into the trap his mother and Marion were setting for him.

‘What do you think,' said Ismay. ‘Heather has a boyfriend.'

Andrew, pouring wine, was so astonished that he let the glass overflow. Ismay ran and fetched a towel from the bathroom. He laughed and kissed her. ‘Who is this hero?'

‘Oh, Andrew, that's not kind. She
is
my sister. I love her if you don't.'

‘I'm sorry, sweetheart. I suppose I judge the way she's likely to treat other guys by the way she treats me. She's a mistress of the persistent silence. It would matter less if she didn't live with you.' Andrew handed her a glass, sat down beside her and lit a cigarette. Ismay disapproved of everyone's smoking except Andrew. He smoked, she thought, with the elegance of an actor in a Hollywood film of the thirties. ‘D'you know,' he said, ‘I think I deserve some credit for actually sticking around once I'd learned that little gorgon I found ensconced on this sofa
was your
sister and
your
flatmate. All right, don't be hurt, you know I love you. Who is he? Tell me about him.'

‘He's a nurse.'

‘You're joking. You mean a male nurse?'

‘Of course he's a male nurse if he's a man, Andrew. He's a nurse in the Jean Langholm Hospice where Heather works.'

‘That figures. Have you met him?'

‘Not yet. He's called Edmund Litton and apparently he's got about as many nursing qualifications as you can get. He lives in West Hampstead and he's thirty-three.'

‘Just how do you manage to get all this info out of a brick wall? I can barely get a word out of her. Quite a contrast to how you prattle on. Frankly, I sometimes wonder if she really is your sister. Maybe she's a changeling. You're so lovely and she's no oil painting, is she?'

‘No
what
?'

‘Something my grandmama says. I rather like it. It's so graphic. There's just one more thing I want to know. Will he marry her? Will this courageous paramedic marry her and take her away from here so that you and I can move in together as I've been trying to do this past year?'

‘Oh, Andrew, I shouldn't think so,' said Ismay. ‘He lives with his mother.'

It was quite a big house, of mid-thirties vintage. Irene Litton would never have expected her son to live with her in a flat or a small place. Or so she told herself. But surely, when you had a four-bedroomed house at your disposal, it was simply imprudent not to occupy it – well, prudently. Edmund might have all those certificates and diplomas but he didn't earn very much. Now if he had been a doctor, as his father and she had wanted … As things were, it would have been simply foolish for him to take out a mortgage on a flat on his salary. Of course, ignoring how much she loved the house in Chudleigh Hill, how it had been her home for thirty-six years, her home she had come to as a bride, she could have sold it and divided the proceeds with Edmund. He would never have allowed that. He had too much respect for her feelings and her memories.

Besides, she wouldn't live long. She wouldn't make old bones. She had always known that from the time Edmund was born and she had had such a dreadful time, thirty-eight hours in labour. They had gone to her husband and asked him whom they should save, his wife or his unborn child. Of course he had said his wife. As it turned out, after a nightmare of agony, when she thought she was dying, the child was born and she was still alive. But from that moment she had known her constitution wasn't strong. It couldn't be when she had so many things the matter with her: migraines that laid her low for days on end, a bad back Edmund said was neither arthritis nor scoliosis – but he wasn't a doctor – M.E. that made her perpetually tired, acid indigestion, a numbness in her hands and feet she knew was the start of Parkinson's and, lately, panic attacks that frightened her nearly to death.

She hadn't expected to live to fifty. By a miracle she had and past that, but it couldn't go on much longer. When she died, in two or three years' time, the house and everything in it would be Edmund's. Marion's too, she had hoped, but that was not to be. Well, young people had to make their own choices. And their own mistakes. She hoped, for his sake, Edmund hadn't made a mistake in picking this Heather. He had brought her home to Chudleigh Hill. She couldn't exactly say he had brought her home to meet his mother. No doubt he was shy of doing that, the girl was gauche, to say the least, and with a disconcerting stare out of over-bright blue eyes. You could say she had
rude
eyes, thought Irene, pleased with the phrase. Irene had met the pair of them coming downstairs. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon, so there was no question of their having been upstairs doing anything they shouldn't have been. Edmund wouldn't do that. Not before he was married.
Or not perhaps, Irene thought bravely, moving with the times, before he was engaged.

‘This is Heather, Mother,' Edmund said.

‘How do you do?'

The girl said ‘Hello, Mrs Litton' in the sort of tone too casual for Irene's liking.

Nice hair, thought Irene, but otherwise nothing much to look at. ‘Can I get you some tea?'

‘We're going to the cinema,' the girl said.

‘How nice. What are you going to see?'

‘
The Manchurian Candidate
.'

‘Oh, I'd love to see that,' said Irene. ‘Nicole Kidman's in it, isn't she?'

‘I don't think so.' Heather turned from Edmund to face her with a smile. ‘Will you excuse us, Mrs Litton? We have to go. Come on, Ed, or we'll be late.'

Ed! No one had ever called him that. She couldn't help thinking how different Marion would have been. For one thing, Marion would certainly have asked her to join them when she had said she would like to see the film. It was only polite. Come to that, Edmund might have asked. A twinge gripped her in the region of her waist and she tasted hot bile in her throat. She wondered if she could possibly have gallstones. When Edmund came home she would ask him and he would know, even though he wasn't a doctor.

Waking in the night after Andrew had gone and unable to go back to sleep, Ismay lay alone in the dark thinking about her sister. Was there a chance this man might marry Heather? She hadn't even considered the possibility until Andrew suggested it. Edmund and Heather had been going out together for less than a month. But Heather seemed to like him, to be always out somewhere with him. Ismay had never known her
to be absent from the flat so much since they came to live here. And though Heather had had a boyfriend or two while at catering college, nothing, as far as Ismay knew, had been remotely serious.

She got up to go to the bathroom. Dawn had come and with it the grey light that is the precursor of sunrise. Heather had left her door open and Ismay stopped to look into the room at her sister lying fast asleep. Her beautiful hair lay on the pillow like a gold silk cushion, her strong and capable right hand spread out beside it. It was early days to think about Edmund marrying her but on the other hand, there had never before been a situation like this. Ismay admitted to herself that she had somehow taken it for granted that Heather would never have a serious relationship, let alone marry. When she asked herself why, she came up with an unsatisfactory answer. Because she was Heather, because she's not like other girls, because she's not attractive to men. Yet she must be attractive to Edmund.

Of course, she had never committed herself to staying with Heather, the two of them sharing for ever. There would have been no point in that. Heather was an independent person, quite capable of looking after herself, living alone or, she supposed, being a wife. She shouldn't even be thinking about her the way Andrew did, as someone vaguely incapacitated. She could separate herself from Heather and they could be like any other normal sisters who loved each other, of course, but weren't bound together …

It was the night, that was what it was, five o'clock in the morning, a mad sad time. She went back to bed and lay there, her eyes open in the pale-grey light and seeing at last that this was nothing to do with the time of day or wanting to live with Andrew or Heather's temperament. It was to do with what Heather had
done twelve years ago. Must have done, surely beyond a doubt had done.

No one knew but the three of them, herself, her mother and Heather. The knowledge had driven her mother over the edge into the shadow world of schizophrenia. They had discussed Heather's involvement, Heather's guilt, she and her mother, but between themselves, never with Heather. Guy might still be alive, be on the other side of the world, lost or vanished, for all Heather ever spoke of him or his death or even, it seemed, remembered him. But he was dead and due to Heather. Sometimes Ismay felt she knew it as if she had witnessed the act and sometimes that she knew it because there was no other possibility.

If Heather married Edmund Litton, should he be told? That was the great question. Could she let this apparently nice, good, intelligent man – or, come to that, any man at all – take on Heather without knowing what she had done? But if he knew would he take her on? I love my sister, she whispered to herself in the dark. Whatever Andrew says, she is lovable. I can't bear to hurt her, deprive her of happiness, cut her off from life, like they used to shut girls up in convents, just because … But, wait a minute, because she
drowned
someone?

She heard Heather get up and move very softly into the kitchen. Should she hand over her stewardship of Heather, half-hearted though it had been, to Edmund? It's early days, she told herself, but she couldn't get back to sleep.

Unless you are very young, it is difficult to have sex if you haven't a home of your own or the money to provide a temporary refuge. Edmund had had no sex for five years now. The last time had been with an agency nurse at the hospice Christmas party in a room full of washbasins known as the ‘sluice'. And that had been a one-off. Since going out with Heather he had looked back on his largely sex-free twenties with shame and incredulity. Those were the best years of a man's life as far as desire and potency were concerned, and he had let them pass by because he balked at telling his mother he was bringing back a girl for the night. Regret was pointless. It wasn't too late and he intended, this evening, to tell his mother he would be going away for the weekend – and why.