The Woman Before Me (11 page)

Rita wanted me to go to university, and she’d worked out that there was only one way for that to happen; I had to go back to Lowestoft to do my A-levels and live with my father. I heard the pleading whispered conversations on the phone and knew she was talking to him.

“But she’s your daughter! She’s so clever, you should hear what the teachers say,” she said. “An education will be the making of her.” Another time I heard her say, “she’ll be all alone when I’m gone, doesn’t that bother you?” and during the final conversation she said, “shame on you! Her mother must be turning in her grave.”

I was glad when she slammed the phone down. I didn’t want anything from him anyway.

When Rita’s breathing became too difficult she was admitted to the general hospital in Ipswich, and put on oxygen. I stayed in the house alone each night, going every morning on the bus to Ipswich, a new magazine rolled up in my pocket. Rita lived in a council house and although the housing benefit was paid for the month while she was in hospital, I knew they’d soon want me out. Rita would never come home, and I’d have no right to live there when she’d gone, and Dad didn’t want me back.

It was a long summer the year I was sixteen, and I spent every day by Rita’s hospital bed watching her slipping away from me. The nurses worked around me, putting watery hot chocolate by my side, and taking it away cold. I wasn’t thinking about food, but each evening Annie would bring over a plate of whatever she’d cooked at the house: chops and carrots, liver and mash. I could hardly get it down but she would watch over me, clicking her tongue if I paused for too long. She didn’t ask how Rita was. She knew it was just a matter of time. But she would rub my hands and ask about me.

Although Annie had known Rita since they were both girls she wouldn’t come with me to the hospital. She just said she preferred to think of Rita at home, that was how she wanted to remember her. It was only later that I discovered the real reason.

When I arrived in the hospital room I heard the grating noise in Rita’s throat and knew it was bad. I pressed the red buzzer and a nurse came quickly. She took Rita’s pulse and then turned to me.

“That noise,” I said, “is she choking?”

“Not choking, love. It’s a rattle – it means she’s going to go soon.”

I took Rita’s hand, and saw that her fingers were swollen. “Look,” I said to the nurse, “what’s happening to her?”

“Her body’s had enough, love. Just sit and talk to her. Make her passing easier. There’s nothing more you can do.”

I sat on the chair, stroking Rita’s puffy wrist, listening to the life caught in her throat. Finally, within the hour, the noise stopped and I knew she had gone.

When I got home that evening Annie didn’t force me to eat any food, but hugged me tight and kissed my forehead. “It’ll be better Rose, in time. You’ll see.” But I didn’t believe her. Rita wasn’t just my auntie, she’d been my best friend. She’d helped me navigate through the last few years, and I’d started to think about my future. With her gone, I was shipwrecked.

For the first two weeks I only left bed to use the toilet or get more smokes. Smoking reminded me of Rita, and it was the only thing that slowed my breathing. I didn’t open the post; it could only be bad news. The council would want me out and I had nowhere to go.

On the third Saturday Annie came calling, shouting through the letterbox until I had no choice but to let her in. She took one look at me and frog-marched me to the bathroom, leaning her ample body over the enamel bath and twisting the hot tap on full. She tipped in a generous amount of Rita’s pink salts, dissolving them with her hand.

“Now, Rose. Rita wouldn’t like to see you moping like this. You need to sort yourself out. I want you to have a bath and get dressed. Quickly, mind. We can’t be late.”

“Late for what?”

“What do you think? It’s Saturday.” And that, of course, explained everything. I knew I had no choice so I got clean and clothed and followed her out of the house to the church hall.

The meeting hadn’t started yet, and the huddle of women turned to greet Annie. When they saw I was standing behind her they hugged and soothed me, sympathising with my loss. But there was an excitement in the room, like before a party, and one of the women squeezed my elbow. “I hope she comes,” she whispered, and Annie smiled back at her.

Soon, Maureen went to her place on the stage and everyone took their seats. I felt the hope and expectation in the bodies around me. And that night I understood the comfort of it.

Rita didn’t come, and neither did Mum, but Annie had a message from her dead husband. I found out why she hated hospitals; he’d gone in for a hip replacement, but caught a virus there and never came home. She’d vowed never to set foot in a hospital again. But those sessions gave her comfort. She laughed when he told her she’d gambled too much on the dog race that Saturday. Another woman was asked not to forget her sister’s birthday and that she wanted yellow flowers on her grave. Another had her new haircut complimented by a lover. Even the ones who didn’t get a message weren’t crestfallen; there was always next week. And what they’d witnessed reassured them that the dead are with us always.

Later, when the messages started coming from Rita and occasionally from Mum, I knew that I wasn’t really alone. I also learned not to fear death. Rita could now smoke to her heart’s content and she’d never cough again.

One Saturday Annie was chatty as usual, taking my arm as we walked. “Now Rose, I’ve done a bit of checking around and there’s a job going at The Grand.”

“The hotel on the seafront?”

“That’s it. It includes a room and I think you should go and see about it. You need to look forward now, duck.”

Annie helped me a lot after that, and she never forgot to call for me on Saturday evenings. I took the job at The Grand and forgot my dreams of going to university. The pay was poor, but included board and lodging. They started me as a waitress but after customers complained that I didn’t smile, they switched me to being a chambermaid.

I’m so grateful for that time now, for all I learnt. Everything was new. I even had a new home in the staff quarters, a room filled with Rita’s furniture and my most prized possession: the birds nest, carefully stored in a drawer.

I sometimes think back to the faded grandeur of The Grand: the Edwardian brickwork, the large staircase that swooped down into reception, the steel kitchen with its pots and pans hanging overhead. The fizz of water boiling over, the sizzle of chips in oil, the reek of kippers each morning. And I think of you, Jason. How you smiled like you’d just woken, the graceful movements of your long, lean body. How your hair was always tied back, golden-red curls escaping.

You came into my life and changed everything.

16

Survivors recognise damaged people and the first time I saw your face I knew you were hurting.

My heart was beginning to mend. Mum’s death was still very sore, as was the loss of Rita, but I comforted myself with the thought that they were with me always. Sometimes I forgot that they were spirits, and set out extra plates or two coffee mugs. Death didn’t stop me talking to them; in fact, I was closer to Rita and Mum in the spirit world than I was to my father and brother who lived just an hour up the coast. I’d never returned to Lowestoft, but I knew that Peter now ran the shop. I wondered if he still stuffed his hand into the glass jars of sweets, or if he’d outgrown his love of sugar. Dad and Mrs Carron had a bungalow close by, and helped out when needed. Peter was married. The wedding was a small affair, he explained on a scrap of notepaper. I was invited to the party afterwards but I didn’t go.

I don’t want to bore you. The part of the story before you arrived into my life must be so tedious for you. But it’s all necessary, Jason. So many things have to be told, I shouldn’t waste time. Let’s move on.

At The Grand I’d become a permanent fixture. If people thought I was sullen or rude, it didn’t matter, as I was good at my job. I never took a single day off sick, and I didn’t mind working on Christmas day. I was a good chambermaid; I liked the work, making the rooms neat and tidy, seeing different clothes swinging in wardrobes and wondering about the guests with all their strange and unknowable lives. I never took anything, but sometimes squirted a bit of perfume from the dressing table on my wrist, or had a little look through a suitcase. Just curiosity really, who wouldn’t have? Sometimes guests complained about jewellery cases being moved or underwear being mislaid, but no-one took the complaints seriously. All chambermaids snoop – it’s only natural. And I liked looking at guests’ jewellery, their bits and pieces. It was an innocent enough pleasure.

You get to know a lot about people when you clean up their mess. Mrs Stokes was someone I knew well, though we never had a conversation. When I cleaned her room she would be in the dining room, wolfing a full-English breakfast, before trekking down to the beach hut she’d hired. I knew this, because it was what she wrote on the postcards, half-finished on the dressing table, each one scrawled with the same message. She visited every summer for three weeks, but only brought two dresses and one summer raincoat that she would drench in Yardley’s English Lavender. The bath was always dry, the soap still wrapped, as if using perfume meant she didn’t have to wash. Half way through her holiday she would rinse her knickers in the sink, leaving them dripping on the radiator, drenching the carpet. They crunched like stale crisps when I folded them back into the drawer. She should have bought more it wasn’t like she was hard up. She had two hundred pounds stashed in her suitcase, and she was hardly going to spend all that on postcards and cream teas.

Mrs Stokes liked to read, those thick books with a woman on the front in jodhpurs or a skimpy nightdress. When she’d finished with one, she’d throw it away and start another. I would spy them in the bin, like a gift left just for me, but would resist the urge to hold the book until I’d finished my job. I built up quite a collection that way. I also had an assortment of shampoos and expensive shower gels that guests had left behind, some hardly used.

Another guest I got to know well was Miss Talisker. She would only stay for one night at a time, and it was always a last minute booking. She’d arrive early. Sometimes I wouldn’t have finished cleaning the room from the previous guest. She only ever brought one piece of luggage: a leather vanity case, postbox red and very classy. Even if I were still polishing she’d start to unpack it. I’d dust the dressing table, watching her in the mirror as she took out her gold lipstick, her silver cigarette lighter, the white and purple box of cigarettes: Silk Cut, her favourite brand. She’d place a skimpy nightdress, sometimes still with its price tag, on the pillow. Then she’d go downstairs to wait for the man, always the same one. He would come much later, and when she returned with him to the bedroom I’d be long gone. The next morning, while she was at breakfast, I’d clear away the empty champagne bottle from her room and put the flowers into a nice vase. She never bothered to take them home, which I thought was a waste.

Sometimes, if I was ahead of schedule, I’d slip between the sheets and close my eyes. Miss Talisker’s perfume smelt of pine forest, or maybe that was her lover’s aftershave. The sheets had the sweet aroma of burned fruit, so I thought that must be what sex smelt like. I thought about it happening to me, in that bed, and wondered what it would be like.

One morning I was paired with Hannah, a new girl. She was pale with dark hair and a stud in her nose. I was nearly 20 and she was a few years younger, and they put us together so I could show her the ropes. We started off in this woman’s room who we all knew as Kiki. She was a regular guest, as she sang at the Spa Pavilion during the summer season, and at Easter too. Of course, we thought Kiki was very glamorous, going on the stage every night, and she smoked these thin cigarettes that come in a cream tin. I took a tin from the waste bin once. I kept it for years. All her dresses were long and sparkly, and I showed them to Hannah. We took a few out, holding them against us. Hannah was shorter than me, and slim, so when she held a red cocktail dress against her I could tell it would fit like a glove.

“Try it on.” I urged, knowing she was itching to.

“I daren’t, Rose. What if Miss French finds out?”

Miss French was the housekeeper, a dragon of a woman who scared most of the staff half to death. She was always kind to me though.

“She won’t know. Go on. I bet it’d look great on you.”

Hannah quickly threw off her uniform, a white blouse and navy skirt, revealing frayed knickers and a grubby bra.

“Help me, then.” she said, and I eased the red satin over her body, tight as a second skin. My hands shook as I tied the thin strap around her neck, an imperfect bow at the nape. I pulled the zip, watching her pale flesh being closed in by the silver teeth.

We both watched her reflection in the mirror, astounded at her transformation. She looked wonderful.

“Wait!” I said, rushing to the bedside cabinet. At the back of the drawer, behind her dirty laundry and the mandatory bible, Kiki hid her jewellery in a pink leather box. I pulled it out and unclasped its gold fastening. I knew exactly what to choose and it took just moments to hand the sparkling earrings to Hannah, who pushed the silver wire through the pierced hole in her neat lobes. I watched her swishing her head to the pleasing jangle of the diamante.

“I look beautiful,” Hannah said. I wondered why she was surprised.

The room was hot with our excitement, our daring, and in the impulse of the moment I reached for Kiki’s makeup bag on the dressing table and took out a lipstick.

“Rose, don’t. What if someone sees?”

“You can wipe it off afterwards. It’s just for fun.”

But I was deadly serious, and I concentrated so hard I bit my own lips when putting the glossy red stain on hers. The lipstick, which had a perfume like hot plastic, stretched her mouth. I made her lips bright and glossy, and as red as the blood on my own. I reached behind her head, tugging the elastic band that was holding her hair trapped, and it fell loose around her shoulders. She didn’t look in the mirror, but at me, and I felt a surge of pride that she wanted my approval.