Authors: Laura Elliot
T
ears roll
down Eleanor’s cheeks when she sees me.
Her mouth moves but she’s unable to speak.
She’s silent for the first time since I’ve known her.
Helpless, silent and scared, my poor, bewildered mother-in-law has suffered an ischemic stroke.
Hopefully, there’ll be no lasting damage but looking at her lying there it’s hard to equate her with the woman she was.
I want her back: whole, healthy, bossy and insufferable.
She’s a warrior and that determination will bring her through.
I tell her this as I sit beside her bed.
The need for Jake to be on standby in case of a crisis has passed but I’m only allowed a brief time with her.
I’m not sure she recognises me or, if she does, how quickly she will forget me when I leave.
He met me at the airport.
He was exhausted, older looking, his hair greying.
When did that happen?
He opened his arms to me.
I ran towards him and we hugged like old friends, not lovers, but it was good to feel his familiar embrace.
He’d parked the Shard band wagon on the roof of the car park.
I noticed the logo.
Designed by Feral’s wife, he said.
It lacks the eye-catching power of the previous one but neither of us make mention of this fact.
‘How long will you stay?’
he asks when we leave the hospital.
‘Until Sunday.’
‘I appreciate that.’
We are once again on the bridge, holding our breath in case it cracks beneath us.
We stop to shop in The Pavilions.
This is the first time we’ve shopped together since we moved into Sea Aster.
But we’re not really together, as our separate shopping trollies signify.
We head off in different directions but keep meeting in the same aisles, exchanging strained smiles and making a ‘fancy seeing you here’ jokes.
We queue together at the check-out.
I take sneak peeks into his trolley to check if his taste buds have changed.
The contents look familiar, the usual staples.
Nothing that suggests his appetite has been influenced by her.
Karin.
My teeth clamp on her name but we never speak it.
She
or
her
, that’s our reference point.
When we return to Sea Aster I read the feature in
Core
.
I remember Jimmy French.
Weasel eyes and fingers stained with nicotine.
He was a cypher for this sensationalist piece of journalism, nothing more than that.
Jake makes our evening meal and talks throughout.
This loquaciousness is new.
It worries me.
He never talked for talking’s sake, and, now, he skirts around the main subject.
He drinks too much wine and it allows him to finally show me the drawings she did for First Affiliation.
When I was seven months pregnant on the twins I went into premature labour.
The urge to save them was the most primal emotion I’ve ever experienced.
They were born after an emergency caesarean section and, afterwards, looking at them in their incubators, I was filled with the same joy and unconditional love I experienced when Ali and Brian had been laid in my arms.
That same protective love surges over me when I pick up my phone and ring Karin Moylan.
She doesn’t seem surprised to hear my voice.
Has she been waiting for this moment, knowing we’d face each other sooner or later?
She suggests we meet tomorrow and take afternoon tea in the Westbury Hotel.
What a novel idea.
Business affairs are sorted out over lunch.
Affairs of the heart belong to candle-lit dinners but afternoon tea is a civilized ritual and, so, we will behave accordingly.
But I’m a lioness whose cubs have been threatened and civility is a luxury I can’t afford.
E
legant armchairs are arranged
around tables laden with tiered cake stands and plates of finger sandwiches.
She’s seated when I arrive, her legs crossed, her hands joined and resting on the white tablecloth.
Demure is a word that comes to mind until I look into her eyes and see the glitter.
It’s hatred, disguised under a cataract of guile.
But I recognise it, embrace it.
The past does not heal.
That’s the cruellest myth of all.
It lies in abeyance until time pulls the trigger on memory.
Three six nine, the goose drank wine
… the words beat a rhythm in my brain.
I remember us kneeling on my bed, hands clapping, challenging each other to be the first to miss the beat… our hands moving faster, faster… frantic and furious like the beat of my heart.
I resist the urge to run and sit down opposite her in a soft armchair.
My neck is damp and the flush that rushes to my face is, I hope, invisible behind the layer of makeup I applied before I left Sea Aster.
‘I’ve already ordered,’ she says.
‘I hope you don’t mind.
I’ve an appointment in an hour.’
As if on cue a waiter arrives with the afternoon tea selection.
The clinking of cups and plates makes conversation impossible for the next few moments.
Jake has told me about the van.
My teeth water as I imagine the gouging she did with her dainty hands.
I hear the screech of a knife on metal, the hiss of tyres imploding.
Here, in this muted atmosphere where footsteps are silenced on thick carpets and conversations murmur, I want to scream and shatter the illusion that we are having coffee and a catch-up chat about old times.
‘How is Eleanor?’
she asks when the waiter departs.
‘I heard about her stroke on the news.’
She pours tea but does not attempt to fill my cup.
I do likewise.
‘She’s making good progress.’
We both choose a sandwich from the selection.
The thought of eating makes my stomach churn but I will play this game to its final move.
‘I’m relieved to hear it,’ she says and sinks her teeth into tuna and sweetcorn.
‘I’m sure you
are
relieved,’ I reply.
‘It would be a heavy burden to carry if you were responsible for her death.’
She finishes the sandwich and dabs her mouth with a white linen napkin.
‘Her death?’
she says.
‘What exactly are you suggesting?’
Her head tilts, inquisitively, and her expression implies that what I have to say is of the utmost importance.
‘I’m not suggesting anything.
I’m stating facts.
You gave that information about Jake to Jimmy French, either directly or through Liam Brett.
You’ve had your revenge and Eleanor almost died because of it.
Jake has told me everything.
This has to stop
now
.’
The bracelet on her wrist slides forward as she takes an éclair from the cake stand.
She bites daintily into the pastry, no crumbs or splodges of cream on her lips.
She could always eat with style, nothing dribbling on her chin as she nibbled sandwiches oozing with mayonnaise and tomatoes on Monsheelagh Bay.
‘I’ve read that article.’
She lays the half-eaten éclair on the plate.
‘Did Jimmy French write one word that was untrue?
Your mother-in-law believes in perception.
No wonder she collapsed when she was forced to confront the truth.’
Her composure is intact, her legs crossed at the ankles.
She takes another bite of the éclair, her throat hollowing as she swallows.
‘You’ve just made an appalling accusation with absolutely no foundation.
Jake told me you were neurotic and I believed him.
Not because he said it, men always blame neuroticism when their wives step out of line, but because I saw it at first hand when you were young.
It seems that nothing has changed.’
I’m afraid to reach for a cake in case my hands tremble and, so, I link my fingers and rest them on my lap.
‘If you attempt to contact any member of my family again I’ll ―’
‘
Your
family?’
For an instant I think she will lose her composure.
An image of glass shattering comes to mind but she smiles, as if amused by a joke she’s no intention of sharing.
‘What about
my
family?’
she asks.
‘Did you think I’d forgotten?’
She places the half-eaten éclair on the side plate.
Her teeth have made indents in the soft choux pastry and she now intends to savage me.
‘You were responsible for everything that happened on that holiday.’
Jake said she’s mad and I believe him.
Mad with revenge and imagined lesions.
‘How could I possibly have had anything to do with… with…’ After all those years I still can’t bring myself to speak his name.
‘Max,’ she says.
‘Your lover.’
She lifts her handbag from the floor and snaps it open.
‘We all have our own versions of the truth, Nadine.’
She flings an envelope on the table.
It’s small, letter-sized, no address.
She stands and brushes imaginary crumbs from her skirt.
‘Don’t ever threaten me again with groundless accusations.
A betrayed wife is pathetic but one with a history like yours has even less credibility.
Go to the police if you want to make a fool of yourself.
I fucked your husband senseless and you could charge me with that.
However, last time I checked, adultery was not a criminal offence in the statute books.’
Her words rebound off me.
They are visceral and should hurt but all I feel is fear.
I open the envelope after she leaves and draw out a photocopied sheet of paper.
I see the replication of the original, the dark squiggle of the serrated spiral-bound journal I once used to spill out my heart.
I should flitter it, allow it to be swept away with the remnants of bread and half-eaten cakes but I read it, knowing, as I do so, that the contents will bring me face-to-face with my fifteen-year-old self.
D
ear Max
This is the first love letter I’ve ever written.
It will never be seen by anyone but me.
I’d die, simply die a million deaths if Karin found out or Joan or you… God!
That would be so embarrassing.
I’m all mixed up and so excited.
Like I’m on a swing swooping high and low.
T
he words blur
.
I can’t read any more.
The waiter hesitates then removes Karin’s cup and saucer.
The stain on the rim of her cup matches the lipstick stain she imprinted on Jake’s cheek.
She stole my love letters, searched my room in Cowrie Cottage, my clothing, my books, my backpack, searched every corner until she found them pushed deep into the lining of my anorak.
What possessed me to write such reckless letters?
I try and connect with the teenager I once was.
So beguiled and naïve, so utterly self-absorbed, a sylph transiently innocent and dangerous with it.
Yes, I’ve seen Ali’s play.
A satirical tale of good against evil.
The eternal struggle.
She still has the original.
I stare out the window and count the pedestrians passing below.
I note the clothes they wear, and how a man on crutches, his leg in plaster, stops to light a cigarette.
Finally, she appears, striding briskly towards Grafton Street.
The wind tosses her scarf, blue, of course, and fluttering like a pennant in the midst of a battle charge.
When all evidence of her presence at the table has been removed I order a fresh pot of tea and continue reading.
My handwriting slanted to the right in those days.
I tended to add flourishes to the letters at the end of my words, and a small circle, rather than a dot, over my ‘I’s.
T
his morning
you watched me on Monsheelagh Bay.
Just you and me alone on the beach.
We saw the dawn rise.
I wasn’t in love with you then.
Just kind of embarrassed and unable to think of things to say.
You were sitting on the rocks.
I had to walk past you.
You were still Karin’s father then.
The air smelled briny and there was a haze on the sea.
I was going to sketch the kittiwakes.
I’d seen them from the bedroom window flying against the cliff.