Don't Be Afraid (19 page)

 

Isabel

The second he stepped into the house, he held me tight, tight. There was something in his embrace – a sort of need, or sense of relief – that melted me. My Angus. He was barely back, but tomorrow he would be gone again, to Glasgow. It was sad and wonderful at the same time – sad because I was going to miss him so much, wonderful because he was so much more relaxed about leaving me. He could see I was slowly, slowly climbing up.

“Show me!”

“Okay. Okay.” I steadied myself and led him to the conservatory door, holding his hand. Clara stood in the background, quiet and discreet.

The grass felt soft under my feet, and Angus's arm was strong and steady.

“Come. Let's go and see the roses . . .”

But I froze. It was too soon. He stroked my cheek.

“One step at a time,” he whispered, beaming.

When we walked back in, Clara was gone.

I went upstairs for a few minutes, leaving Angus downstairs to potter around. I heard the phone ringing, and after a short while Angus came back up.

“Will I make you a packed lunch for the plane?” I said with a smile as he stepped into the bedroom. I was expecting him to smile back, but the look in his eyes was bleak.

“Bell, Gillian called . . .”

I felt cold. His face told me it was not good news.

“Gillian? Is she okay?”

“Yes, she's fine. It's your dad.”

And then I knew. I let myself sit on the bed heavily, as if my knees had given way all of a sudden. The world spun.

I studied my slippers. One of them had a little rip. There was an almost imperceptible stain on the carpet, right beside my left foot.

“It was quick, he . . .”

Two parallel scratches on the left slipper, the scuffed toe of the right one.

“The funeral is going to be at the end of the week, but she was hoping . . .”

I moved on to my hands. Short, white fingers, the white-gold wedding band.

“If you want to, we can just leave now. We can be in Galway by tonight . . .”

My father was dead. And we hadn't spoken for years.

He was dead.

“Bell?”

“Have you packed enough warm clothes? Clara met Inary at the shop and she said it's freezing in London right now . . .”

“Bell?”

“Yes. Have you?”

“Have you what?”

“Packed warm clothes.”

Next thing I knew, Angus had taken me in his arms and I had my face buried into his neck. I was shaking with shock, my eyes dry. We stayed like that for a long time, I don't know how long, until he spoke.

“Don't worry. I won't go anywhere. I'll stay with you. Gillian was asking if we can make it to the funeral . . .” Angus tightened his hold on me, as he felt me trembling. His words resounded through me and shattered me.

The funeral.

My father's funeral.

And so it was finished. Without a word of forgiveness from either of us.

 

Isabel

Every day was a silent day, in our house. Not before the accident, of course – but after. Before, when my mum was alive, there was warmth, and tenderness. After, there was cold – cold and silence. This was what a three-year-old had felt, without the maturity to actually
think
it, or put it into words – warm versus cold, lively versus silent, sweet versus hard. And my father was all that – cold, silent, hard.

And still, as we were growing up, Gillian and my father fitted together like two well-oiled cogs. My sister worshipped him, and he, in turn, approved of her – which was a lot more than could be said about what he felt towards me.

When I was a little girl I tried to gain his approval in every way I could – but I was always too noisy, or too daydreamy, or just
too much
. Gillian was composed, quiet, tight – I was imaginative and loud. She was a world in itself, barely opening up for my father and, later on, Maura; I was clingy, always needing reassurance, emotional in a way my father couldn't stand. I didn't understand it at the time, but as I was growing up and could decipher more and more of the situation, of my father's reasons to belittle me, I realised why it was: I was too much like my mum, and he couldn't stand it. Because he hated her, because he'd loved her too much, I don't know. Or maybe because he was afraid I would follow in my mother's footsteps.

And I did. In more than one way.

After she died, my father purged her from our home, from our lives, to the extent that I knew nothing about her. My passion for art came from within me, independently of anybody's words or influence. My father wasn't happy about me pursuing something so unlikely to earn me a living and did all he could to discourage me. I thought his hostility towards my art could not be justified by his concern over how I would support myself, that it was just too much. And then, years later, on the day of my graduation, I discovered something.

I was standing in front of my work, displayed together with that of my fellow classmates, when my sister came to me. Both she and my father had decided to attend the graduation, my father very reluctantly. I believed that Gillian had convinced him.

“Our mother loved art, you know? She had a collection of books and a few pictures she'd drawn and had framed around the house. She was very talented.”

I couldn't believe my ears.

So that's where it had come from. My passion, seemingly unconnected to anything, was actually in my blood. I was so overwhelmed by emotion, my eyes filled with tears.

“Where are her pictures now?” I asked Gillian, fearing the answer.

“Dad gave them away. It really wasn't appropriate to keep them,” she said, and her face was hard once more.

Still, I never forgot that brief exchange. I never forgot that on the day of my graduation, she had decided to share that precious memory with me.

 

Angus

Bell was curled up on the sofa, her face pale and her eyes still dry. She would not cry. Which worried me even more than if she'd burst into tears.

Just what we needed: more heartache, and now, when she was making such headway in everything. I gazed at her beautiful features, her head leaning against a pillow – she was playing with her hair, as she always did when she was anxious. Suddenly I heard my phone beeping from the hall and I went fishing for it in my jacket pocket.

 

One
more day and we can catch up, you and me.
Bibi x

 

I'm sorry, I've had to call
in and say I can't go to London. My
wife's father died. I can't leave her right
now.

 

That's terrible news. I'm so sorry.

 

And then,

 

When will I see you again? Maybe
you can get away at some point, before next week?

 

Was she suggesting we meet up alone? All of a sudden I wanted to throw my phone away.

And still, I clutched it.

I thought of her listening to me without judging, without an agenda. Without the weight of past history, like there was between me and Torcuil.

I typed a few different replies and deleted them all. I switched the phone off and slipped it back into my pocket, and I went to take my place beside Bell.

 

Isabel

With shaking hands, I called her – my sister. The first phone call I'd made in months. Even in my anguish, I couldn't help noticing that I had just overcome another fear of mine. I couldn't even remember how long my sister and I hadn't spoken. The absence of her was a thorn in my side, though I would never admit it.

Then, more than ever, I could feel how we'd never really understood each other – how we kept missing each other like two ships at night, close and yet so far, coming from the same place but going in two different directions. Two routes that would never intersect.

Her voice resounded in my ear. Her voice, so familiar to me. One I'd heard since I was born.

“It's me,” I said.

“Isabel.”

It squeezed my heart to hear how tired she sounded, how devastated. The loss of our father had broken her, I could feel it. They had been so close to each other.

They were not close to me.

Years of solitude rushing back to hurt me, to harden me.

“I'm sorry, I can't come to the funeral.” My voice came out steelier than I wanted it to.

“Yes, well. I never thought you would.”

I breathed in. That was unfair. I would have gone, if it weren't for my illness.

Would I?

Gillian snapped, “You never understood him, Isabel.”

“Yes, well. He hated our mum.”

“He
loved
her! When she died, it broke his heart. You always assumed she was so unhappy because of him, but you were wrong. Our mother had her own demons, and they had nothing to do with Dad.”

“If he treated her like he treated me—”

“Why do you think he was so hard on you? He wanted you to be strong. To have faith in yourself. Our mother—”

“Mum.”

“Mother, Mum, whatever . . .”

“When you call her Mother it sounds like you stopped loving her,” I said, and I realised, embarrassingly, that I sounded like my ten-year-old self.

“Here we go again! Nobody loved her, nobody understood her but you! You didn't
know
her, Isabel. You were tiny when she died. Of course I loved her. I had ten years to love her before she left me. She left me with Dad off his head with grief, and you so small. She didn't think of us at all when she threw herself off that boat, did she? Do you remember that? Or have you forgotten that she decided to die
on a
family holiday,
Isabel? You were too small, but I remember every little detail of that day!”

“You blame her!” I shouted down the phone. “You blame her because she was sick! But you don't understand what she went through.”

“Oh, and you do?”

“Yes. Because I'm sick like she was.” My breath was coming out ragged with rage and pain.

A moment of silence. “Well, let me tell you this. If you do what she did, Angus is going to hate you. Hate you, Isabel.” Were they tears, in her voice?

Tears for me?

“Gillian—”

“And yes, I blame her for what she did!” She interrupted me and broke the spell. “I blame her for it and I hate her more than Dad ever did. She left me. She left us. Through choice.”

“Fine. Hate her if you want. Hate Mum, hate me, hate the world. See what good it does to you. Because this hate you have inside, I promise you, Gillian, it will consume you.”

“Oh, really? Because, out of us two, it's me having a life. It's me having a job and children. So much for being consumed.
You're just like our mother
—”

That killed me.

I put the phone down. I couldn't listen any more. I was left shaking and full of tears, and in spite of the people who, I knew, loved me, I felt alone. So terribly alone.

Gillian was right. Not about our mum, but about me.

And I had been right too: what I'd believed through the years was not a reflection of my paranoia and insecurity – it was true.

My sister didn't care for me at all.

 

Angus

Once again, I was away. And my thoughts kept going home, where Bell was mourning her father and fighting her battles. Fighting hard. I wasn't talking much. I had no energy to talk. I barely had energy to play.

“Hey. How are you?” Bibi said, and her words sounded strange. Strange because usually what I heard was “How is Isabel?”

“I . . .” I needed to say I was fine. I was okay. Everything was okay.

But the weight, that night, was unbearable.

“I'm not so good,” I replied, and immediately I was horrified at my admission of weakness. And the intimacy of the conversation that would follow. I wanted to turn away and go back to my rented flat; I wanted to stay and finally offload some of my worries.

“You need a drink. Come,” she said, and took me by the hand. We hurried down the road under the pouring rain – an average night in Glasgow – and sat in the pub down the road. With a whisky in my hand in the warmth of the pub, I felt myself relaxing a little.

“So. I'll ask you again . . . How are you?” she said in a low voice, and slipped her hand in mine under the table. It was too much. I took my hand away gently, without making it look too abrupt.

“I'm exhausted, I suppose.”

“You look it . . .”

“Thank you!” I laughed feebly.

“Are you sleeping at all?”

“Not much. I'm juggling my work and Bell and travelling up and down and being everything to everyone. That pretty much sums it up. I'd like to lie down and sleep for a week. Even just an hour without constantly worrying about my wife would be good.”

“I'm sorry. You know I'm here for you.”

“Thank you.” I took a sip of my whisky, and the warm liquid down my throat, together with the softness of Bibi's arm rubbing against mine, went to my head. Her hair shone under a spotlight – one side of her face was in shadow, the other shone just like the moon.

“Why don't you come to my flat for a drink?” she said, without looking at me. Her eyelashes shadowed her blue eyes.

“Sure. Why not?” the whisky said for me. It sounded wrong, and I tried to stop and find some excuse, but I didn't know how. I knew I was making a mistake, but alcohol and tiredness and a sense of exhaustion – a desire, just for once, to let go – were going to my head.

The sky was white and heavy, a promise of snow. I stepped into the street, following her as she walked quickly in front of me, up two flights of stairs in a red sandstone tenement, across the threshold of her home and into a shift in my reality. And then the door closed behind us, and we were alone.