Authors: Maris Morton
She sounded as if she were about to impart some grim secret, and Mary looked at her with a question in her glance.
‘… why I’m avoiding my husband. If you’ve never been married you won’t understand some of the … stresses that can develop in a marriage.’
Mary realised that Clio knew nothing about her. ‘Clio, I’m a widow.’
Clio regarded her with astonishment verging on disbelief. ‘A widow? You’re so young!’
‘Not so young. I married relatively late. Roy and I were married for eleven years. I have some idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Paul and I have been married for almost thirty years.’
‘You don’t have to explain to me, Clio.’ Although she was interested, she wasn’t eager to hear any intimate matrimonial secrets that might require her to take sides.
Clio must have picked up on her reluctance and changed direction. ‘Your husband died, did you say. What was it? A car accident?’
Mary shook her head. It was difficult to tell this story yet again, knowing how people reacted to it. ‘In a way. He was a soldier, like my father. He certainly wasn’t expecting it, so I suppose it was a kind of accident.’
‘Where?’
‘In a village in Afghanistan. He was there with the UN Peacekeeping Force.’ She paused. ‘It was a much more dangerous place than any of them expected. More dangerous than I expected, anyway.’
Clio digested this news. ‘Is that why you don’t like guns?’
Mary didn’t want this conversation to get too personal and shook her head. ‘No. It was a roadside bomb that killed Roy. What they call an IED — Improvised Explosive Device.’ She readjusted the damp washing and pushed the kettle onto the hot spot on the stove, where its simmer soon accelerated to a bubbling boil. ‘Tea, Clio?’
But Clio was following her own train of thought and didn’t answer. Mary prepared tea for both of them, not unhappy at the prospect of sitting down for a while.
‘It’s strange, isn’t it,’ Clio began, speaking slowly, ‘how we turn our faces away from the thought of death. As if it’s somehow obscene. But it’s not, is it. It’s inevitable, for every one of us, sooner or later. As they say, none of us gets out of this alive.’
‘Mm. It’s not something I think about a lot. With Roy being a soldier, I suppose his risk of dying young was higher than most. But my father’s a soldier, too, and he’s survived unscathed.’
Clio glanced at her. ‘If you’ve looked at Ellen’s diaries you’ll know that four of her children died.’
‘Yes, I read that. It must have been devastating. But most families lost a baby or two in those days. Nowadays if we lose one we’re looking for someone to blame.’
A look of deep sadness settled on Clio’s features. ‘I lost one, too.’
‘Did you? I’m so sorry.’
‘It was a little girl. My firstborn. Ellen Allegra.’
‘That’s a lovely name. Ellen for her grandmother, and isn’t Allegra a musical word?’
‘Allegro means full of life. My Allegra had only a very little life. Six hours. They let me hold her, until they realised she had a problem. Then they snatched her away and hooked her up to life support and when I saw her again she … she’d … she was … she was quite cold.’ Clio’s face was grim. ‘She was a lovely baby; eight pounds ten ounces, with black curly hair just like my father’s. I was so proud of her. She looked big and strong, but they found out she had only one lung, and some part of her heart was missing. While she was being nourished by my blood, she was fine. But she was never going to be able to cope on her own.’
Clio passed her hand down the length of her robe-covered thigh. ‘They said it was because I had a virus during the first trimester. Paul blamed me, of course. It would have been worse if it had been a boy. I always wanted a little girl.’ She tightened her lips as if to stop them trembling. ‘So I had to get used to the idea of death fairly early. My mother, when I was sixteen. Then Allegra.’
Clio turned away to stare out through the bay window, her gaze unfocused. ‘I’m glad I’m not a sheep. The poor ewes will be lambing soon. They live only to die. To make money for us first, but that’s all it is. Birth, eating, being shorn, breeding, dying. But in the end that’s all it is for any of us, isn’t it.’
Mary didn’t know what to say. She stood to top up the teapot, poured two more cups and offered Clio a piece of cake. ‘In between, there are moments of joy, though,’ she said.
Clio absorbed this and gradually her expression lightened. She reached to take a piece of cake. ‘No, you’re right. I shouldn’t be so morbid. There are indeed odd moments of joy.’
E
LLEN’S ROOM WAS LIKE
a museum exhibit. A collection of ornaments defined its antique style: a brass candle snuffer in the shape of a frog; a pair of tall Japanese cloisonné vases containing moulting plumes of pampas grass; a brass jardiniere filled with ancient pot pourri. Between the armchairs grouped in front of the window was a circular pedestal table, probably mahogany, draped with fringed burgundy velvet. Despite Mary’s energetic cleaning, the room still wore a smell compounded of dust, mildew and camphor; the pot pourri had long ago lost its fragrance.
Now that she was sitting at the piano, Mary was reluctant to strike a note. Would Clio be able to hear her, through the brick wall that separated her room from this one? Her hands felt thick and clumsy, but she made herself place her right hand on the keys, thumb on middle C, ready to play the scale. The old ivory keys looked brittle, and she was almost afraid to press them with enough force to make a sound. Hell, the instrument probably wasn’t even in tune.
Patiently, Mary felt her way back to familiarity with the scales; the major keys, then the minor ones, pausing to remember where the sharps and flats came, trying it out and judging by the sound. Gradually, elation filled her. She’d forgotten how much she used to love the pattern of the notes. When she’d finished all the scales, she opened the music for ‘Für Elise’ and placed her hands into the starting position. All at once the fingers of her right hand began to play without any impetus from her, finishing the downward cadence, and then the left started its upward response: her hands — and brain — were remembering the piece that she’d played so often as a schoolgirl! But the moment she tried to think about what came next, her hands faltered. It didn’t matter: it was amazing that she’d remembered so much and she was excited that now, unexpectedly, she had this chance to rediscover her old friend music. The knowledge that she had no more than a modest talent for it didn’t diminish her pleasure in the least.
C
LIO LAY IN THE DARKNESS
listening to the wind. Interwoven with its growling and sighing was the ghostly sound of a piano. She struggled to make some kind of sense of it: the growling was coming from the never-ceasing pulse of vehicles on the Cahill Expressway that could always be sensed, in spite of the buffer of the Gardens, and the piano’s sounds were coming from one of the cell-like rooms set aside for practice. Whoever was playing wasn’t very good, not good enough you’d think to be studying here, and she felt immensely superior. She was waiting for her own lesson, and Tallis was late. Not to waste any precious lesson time, she’d taken out her instrument and tuned it. She began her own series of scales, drowning out the pianist and filling her head with the glorious music that pushed aside every other fact and detail of living until it was the only reality; the only real, true life.
Clio turned over and inadvertently put weight on a sore spot. She gasped; tears filled her closed eyes.
It was only a dream. The noise was the wind outside and, she remembered, Mary on Ellen’s piano. Her instrument had gone. Tallis had gone. The real, true music was over.
A
FTER THE PIANO,
Mary was too tired to bother with Ellen’s diary. As she lay in the dark she revisited the conversations she’d had with Clio during the day. She was feeling the beginning of empathy with the woman.
It was clear that Clio saw herself as trapped in an unhappy marriage. Although it was possible that she was planning to leave Downe when she’d recovered her health, she could have enough of a masochistic streak to stay here and suffer. There was no explaining people.
Mary let go of Clio and her problems and summoned memories of her own husband. Beautiful, vital, clever Roy, with the world at his feet. But from the album of happy memories, tonight — possibly under the influence of Clio’s sadness — her capricious mind selected an episode that carried no trace of bliss.
It was the expression on his face that had set the alarm bells ringing. His familiar look of happy confidence had, just for a moment, transmuted to arrogance. She’d never thought of Roy as arrogant, or no more so than any bright, ambitious army officer, and she’d seen plenty of them. No, it was when it had become clear from what he was saying that the look
was
arrogance that the shock had started to tighten her stomach, and all the vague unease that she’d been suppressing for — how long? A year, at least — had taken an unmistakable and horrifying shape.
The grin had been an actor’s grin, like a naughty boy’s, begging her indulgence, confident he’d get it.
She’d been waiting for him to give some explanation other than the patently transparent lie he’d offered as he’d come through the door. That there had been a misunderstanding, and he was sorry she’d been so upset. But she knew Roy wouldn’t apologise.
He was so beautiful, his skin like pale honey in the low light of the bedroom. When he was relaxed like that, the big muscles in his arms and shoulders and thighs were as soft to her touch as a cat, until, if she offered any encouragement at all, they’d turn to steel as they wrapped themselves around her and she’d slip once again into that limbo of pleasure that he’d taught her, so ardently, to reach. Lying beside him, aware of his heart beating steadily in his chest, no hint of a flutter, and the scent of him flavouring every atom of the air she was breathing, she could clearly detect the trace of an alien perfume.
His skin had the glow that was so familiar, the heat from recent lovemaking, fucking, sex. Not with her. She could smell it on him, the clean dampness of a recent shower, the wrong soap, when he never showered in the evening. The first powerful cramp twisted her gut then, and she told herself to relax, but while she was lying beside him that wasn’t going to be possible.
He turned to face her, propping his head with one arm and grinning, laying his other hand on her breast, starting idly to tease her nipple.
‘Why did you marry me, Roy?’
He took his hand away and frowned for an instant, then his face cleared. He thought this was a game. ‘Well, you’re not a bad-looking chick and you can cook.’ He paused as though giving the matter his deepest consideration. ‘I asked around and none of the other guys had had you.’ Mary was stunned into silence by this but Roy hadn’t finished. ‘And marrying General Pederick’s only daughter wasn’t a bad career move, was it.’
It was too much. Mary sat up and swung her arm and punched him in the face. The jolt stung her fist and jarred the bones in her arm, and it was a stupid thing to do because from that angle there was never going to be any force to the blow — it didn’t even make him bleed — but still, she felt marginally better for it.
Until he laughed and reached out and pulled her into his arms. ‘I’m glad you’ve got that out of your system,’ he murmured into her hair while she lay rigid. ‘Come on, honey, give us a kiss.’ But he had enough sense not to force matters, and in the end, by a combination of laughter and caresses, he managed to cajole her into a degree of complaisance — enough for her to stay in their bed for the remainder of that night. What choice did she have? Where else was she going to go, in the middle of the night?
Mary could clearly remember the huge effort it had taken, during the long days that followed, to pretend that nothing had changed. When he was out working, she’d agonised. He’d been due to fly off to Afghanistan a week later, and for that she’d been profoundly grateful. His absence would give her time to think.
Through all those days, there had been a black emptiness inside her. The faint suspicion she’d been living with had been one thing; the stark reality of knowing for a fact that he was having sex with other women was quite another. Was he taking the trouble to use a condom? She doubted it.
She couldn’t eat, and lost weight.
As the days had passed, she’d come to believe that the Roy she’d fallen in love with had never existed. Could she — did she even want to — come to terms with this new husband?
Had it been her fault? Something lacking in her? Her own parents’ marriage seemed so happy and fulfilling for both of them that this was the pattern she’d expected to follow in her own, without any striving greater than the exercise of loving goodwill.
She wasn’t a stupid woman. She was an excellent cook and household manager, well-read, could get along with most people and make friends easily. She was pleasant to look at. She was a happy person, finding pleasure in the million details of everyday life, and she should have been regarded as a good catch as a wife, even without her father being a general.
Trust had gone. She’d never again believe that Roy was where he said he was, doing what he said he was doing. Roy wasn’t interested in change or negotiation. What she had now was all she could ever expect from him. Sometimes she fantasised that he was injured and dependent on her, and although she recognised the pointlessness of it, the scenario offered a momentary comfort.
And while she’d still been struggling with the decision whether to leave him, or to stay married and try somehow to make the marriage work, a messenger had come with the news that Major Roy Lanyon, so vital, so beautiful, with the world at his feet, had been blown to bits by a bomb beside a road near some poverty-stricken Afghan village.
The Roy Lanyon she’d fallen in love with, and that other Roy, too, had gone from her life forever.
‘Y
OO-HOO
, Y
OO-HOO.
’
Mary was hanging out washing when she heard the call, rather like the warbling of some kind of pigeon. Janet was peering at her over the dividing fence, grasping the top of the pickets in her chubby hands.