Sally (24 page)

Something's missing, something's changed.

Sally was most noticeable by her absence. Catherine was struck by how alone Richard looked tinkering in his kitchen. He looked wrong, awkward somehow, minus his shadow, his Sally; getting in his way, sticking her finger in this and that, sniffing and fiddling and tasting, her eyes never leaving him. Catherine had watched her well; she had recognized something, a vestige of herself in Sally. She had seen her gaze at Richard's forearms, she had seen the smile spread as Richard wielded his Sabatier with gay abandon along the length of an unsuspecting cucumber. Catherine had watched Richard too, observing how he gently guided Sally away from his path with a tender push at her waist, his hand, inevitably, lingering.

It won't be long
, Catherine had thought,
before he's proposing to her
. Whether it would happen in the kitchen she could not know, but she hoped that it might. A good omen, a good beginning.

But of course, Sally's not here.

Catherine returned, somewhat reluctantly, to the day at hand and wondered instead just what it was about a man expertly slicing cucumber that solicits utter admiration from a woman, inspiring a flutter both to heart and groin. Here she was, Catherine Woods-née-Daniels, married and pregnant and blissfully happy, being handed juice in an elegant wine glass by Richard Stonehill who drew up a chair and sat astride, cowboy style, opposite her.

‘How's the morning sickness?' he enquired, matter-offactly.

‘It's evening sickness and it's terrible and I love it!' she hooted, consequently snorting into her grapefruit juice and finding much mirth in the mess.

‘Want a bib, Catherine?' Richard laughed, handing her a piece of patterned kitchen paper. ‘I'm so chuffed for you both. I hope it goes without saying that I'll be godfather. I mean, who else could you trust to show your child
the way
? I'll teach him/her the Stonehill Statutes; I'll ensure that my morals are engraved at the very centre of their being. What better start in life, hey?'

‘Lord help the little thing!'

‘Seriously, Catherine, Bob's utterly thrilled. Thrilled to the extent that he's becoming a domestic bore.
I'm going to be a dad! I'm going to be a dad!
' Richard mimicked, then took a contemplative sip and continued, nodding earnestly. ‘Seriously, though, it's great news. What names have you decided? When is it due? Do godfathers have to be at the birth? Phew! Can you start thinking about names now? Or does one buy the pram and nappies and decide when the thing arrives?' Richard was manic and Catherine laughed. He carried on in two voices:

‘
Mmm, looks red and wrinkly to me, must be a Roger
.'

‘
Nonsense, his name's Bert, it's written all over his face!
'

‘
Have you got a pram?
'

‘
No, but I have a baby in my womb called Janet-if-it's-a-girl and John-if-it's-a-boy
.'

‘Stop, stop!' Catherine pleaded. ‘If you split my sides there won't
be
a baby! But to answer your question, we'll call
her
Sally, or we'll call
him
Richard.'

Richard jerked. His face was startled and the sparkle in Catherine's eyes eluded him. She reached forward and placed a hand on his arm. ‘Joke, it was a joke,' she assured him, ‘but I'm sitting here with curiosity enough to kill a pride of bloody lions let alone a humble cat, wondering when on earth you're going to tell me how it went!'

‘It?'

‘Rich-
ard
!' The silence was excruciating but Catherine held her ground as she held Richard's gaze. She felt well within her rights to expect a not-too-ambiguous response and she was rewarded as Richard began to smile and cast his eyes downwards, coyly even. Chuffed, to be sure.

‘Sally?' she prompted.

‘I think,' he faltered, ‘that the definitive happy-ever-after is on the horizon.'

He raised his head and looked at Catherine directly; the light of the still relatively new year streamed through the elegant sash windows and struck his eyes with an aesthetic ferocity to add drama and impact to his words.

‘She needs some Time with a capital “T”. But the signs are there. In her eyes, in her confusion, in her willingness to listen, in her need and request to think. I never thought that I'd want someone, actually really
want
someone. I don't need her, I just want her, plain and simple. And I've told her what I want. You see, Cath, I can see through her veil and behind her outer reserve. I know they're there for her protection and self-preservation and I understand, I respect that.

‘I don't know what it's been like for her in the past, the way she's felt, other men. It's always been nothingy for me, as you know only too well. There's something private and guarded with Sal, yet I have no desire to pry. I want her to realize that that's her past and it's passed. And that my only request is that she unwind herself and lay herself bare, that she accept me and my true desire to make her happy. She's a steel butterfly, my Sal, a steel butterfly. Beautiful and strong, fragile yet determined. Awesome! I think, Catherine, no, I
know
… I know she's going to come around. She just has to shake off her fears and greet herself with honesty and courage. Like I have. And I feel happy. I'm a happy man. I'm in love and it's the best thing in the world. Funny how I ridiculed Bob all those years ago when he talked about you, and him and you. He said to me once, “The time comes when you know,
you just know
.” And the funny thing is, you
do
, you just do!'

Richard knocked three and a half minutes off his best time on his run half an hour later.

Catherine returned to Bob, threw up the grapefruit juice, thought,
Shit, morning sickness
, and told him that she thought she could hear bells. Bob didn't understand, he thought perhaps it was a vagary of pregnancy and made her a cup of tea. But two days later, when he saw Richard who slaughtered him at squash, he understood. He could hear bells too. Faint. Distant. But there.

Diana heard bells, phone bells.
Sally!
she thought intuitively.

‘Of course I'll come over, of course it's not a problem. No, it's not inconvenient. Will you
hush
, dear girl, I don't have anything planned. And even if I did, you silly old thing, nothing takes precedence over my Sally! You'd be the same for me, wouldn't you? 'Xactly! 'Bye-bye, I'm there already.'

Sally had been morose all morning. She had dithered and shilly-shallied and had been thoroughly incapable of pulling herself together. In fact, subconsciously and somewhat perversely, she had made a concerted effort to keep herself entrenched in her low ebb. There was something rather cathartic about being maudlin; Samuel Barber's ‘Adagio for Strings' filled the flat and she even read the closing pages of
Black Beauty
.

‘
My troubles are all over, and I am at home
,' she wailed out loud with a good sniff.

Well, they've only just started and I wish I was far away.

Sally bumbled her way through Saturday morning half-doing only half the jobs she'd earmarked. She was continually, uncharacteristically, distracted. With half a shirt badly ironed she hurried to her bedroom to change the bed-linen but did not manage the pillowcases because the bath implored her to scrub it instead. She even heard herself calling ‘Mummy, Mummy' out loud yet her mother was the last person but one that she wanted and she had never called for her before. So why now? Sally heard her voice. It was worryingly quiet and feeble.

Sal! Get a grip!

Phone Diana.

I'll phone Diana.

Lifted a little by the anticipation of her friend's imminent knock on the door, Sally charged about her flat collecting debris and retrieved a piece of crockery from every room. On each, the remains of some food or other lay forlornly: a piece of toast, a boiled egg, a portion of corn flakes. Spasmodically half-eaten, the egg was now cold, the toast bendy, the cereal soggy. No time to feel guilty chucking them all away, there was so much to do: the ironing, the cleaning, the thinking …

What thinking?

The Richard-Thing thinking. He wants you, remember – the whole shebang? Remember?

Gracious Good Lord, I can't even think straight, let alone have the time to think at all.

Of course you do. You may have relegated it to the furthest reaches of your mind, but it is still there.

Well, I'll take down the net curtains to wash instead. Yes. No, no! I must empty the Hoover and oil the wok. Diana will be here in a mo'.

Knowing she was soon to be saved by the bell, Sally continued her chores humming the theme to
Love Story
.

As Diana wriggled her arms through her red duffel coat and jostled with the mittens (black) attached playground-style to elastic, she thought how fragile Sally sounded. Not desperate as she had done on Other Woman Day, just frail and feeble. Half an hour later, Little Voice Lomax welcomed Diana in to the warmth of her relatively tidy Highgate home and the knots of her troubled soul. Initially, Sally was still falling over her grammar and sentence construction but Diana tried her best to sift and make sense of the bits and drabs offered. Soon Sally was pouring out the details of the previous evening, in a veritable torrent. Out came Richard's proclamation, the balloon boy, the milk man with the beautiful hands. Diana had an idea for a painting, no, maybe a lino cut, so much more emotive.

Hush now! Listen to Sally, help her through.

‘So, have you thought about it?'

‘Di-anarr! It's only the next day. But I have thought about it quickly, and quite frankly I don't know what I think. It's like I'm trying to think of so much but there isn't the space. I feel so
bewildered
, like I don't know what's going on. Like I have no control. What is happening to me? Why don't I feel overjoyed, over the moon, high as a kite? I don't know, Di, I just feel sort of low and overawed and overwhelmed and not very happy. I thought, if and when I fell in you-know-what, that I'd be singing from the roof-tops and floating and smiling and feeling invincible. Instead I feel rather vulnerable and utterly confused.'

‘What about? That you're not sure of your feelings?'

‘No!' Sally retorted. ‘Yes?' she furthered. ‘I don't bloody know!' she wailed.

‘
Are
you in you-know-what?' Diana ventured.

‘I am deeply and irrevocably very much in love,' proclaimed sad Sally, ‘with Richard,' she sighed, ‘who is everything I thought no man could possibly be. I love him totally, with my body and with my Self. The point of no return is way back there somewhere,' she continued, gesticulating wildly at nowhere in particular. ‘It's gone from the safety of my view,' she concluded, down, dejected, diminutive. There was silence, an initially awkward soundlessness which eerily metamorphosed into a graceful and welcome peace. Only Sally broke it. Giving Diana an almighty shock, she shrieked an urgent and most un-Sally-like: ‘Fuck!' Slapping her hands flat, smack, against her soft cheeks, ‘Shit!' she fulminated, her eyes wide and darting, her hands scratching and pulling her face. ‘Bugger, bugger, what am I doing! Get me away. I don't want
this
! I'm not nearly ready. I can't, I won't!'

Everything fell; tears, her hands away from her red cheeks, her shoulders, her head, everything tumbled down.

‘Cope,' she whimpered, ‘I can't cope. I want to be like before, by myself. It's just too much.' Sally crumpled to the floor of her sitting-room and sobbed.

She was broken yet it was she who had broken herself, and though Diana rushed to her side and crouched beside her and laid a hand of comfort and support upon her shoulders, she knew and Sally knew that only one person could help. She lay broken and smashed about herself yet it was she who had wielded the metaphorical hammer. So she would have literally to pick herself up. Of all the King's horses and all the King's men, none would be able to help her; she was the only one who could put herself together again.

‘What should I do, Diana?' But Diana couldn't find her own voice, let alone offer Sally constructive advice of any merit. Still Sally sobbed, on the floor in an embryonic hunch, her face contorted with the frustration of it all, the salt of her tears reddening her eyes and stinging her cheeks. Diana looked on and saw for the first time that Sally was noticeably thinner; her face had a new gauntness that threatened to overpower its former prettiness. Her shoulders looked a little bony, making her head seem a little too large. With a degree of horror, Diana conceded to herself that she looked quite pathetic.

‘Why not go away for a little while?' she ventured. ‘To your Mum's, to Lincoln?'

Sally gave her a don't-be-so-stupid look.

‘Paris?' Diana suggested. But suddenly J-C, his bedroom, his bathroom, his smell, his taste, rushed uninvited into Sally's mind and she shuddered until she had quite shaken him away.

‘I can't. School, silly,' Sally whimpered.

‘But you seem awfully poorly to me,' Diana cooed, stroking her hair. The maternal connotations of the word ‘poorly' coupled with the action of hair-stroking caused Sally to crumple down again. This time she let Diana soothe her, huddled in a muddle on the floor.

Sally made it through Saturday, Sunday too, on the steel of her butterfly wings. Just. She avoided thinking about that which she knew she had to; she just looked after herself and made sure all was neat and tidy, spick and span, safe and sound, comfy and cosy. Her voice remained silent. It was unwanted, untrusted. Her self-constructed mute world was a safe one. She mooched around in her snuggly socks and her tatty dress and her Aran-knit cardie, she darned four pairs of socks and finished off the skirt she had been making. The clacketing of her sewing-machine lulled her into a settled state and she was pleased with the finished item.