A is for Angelica (17 page)

‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll be quick.’

Angelica follows me upstairs. I open the bathroom door and step inside, lock it behind me. I empty the glass that I keep my toothbrush in and rinse it under the tap. Then I hold the glass
against the door, press my ear to the bottom and listen to Angelica’s footsteps. She’s pacing the landing. She’s humming to herself. I hope she doesn’t sing. It’ll be
too loud. It’ll wake Georgina. When can I open the door? How long does it take to go to the toilet? I’ve never timed it. Another ten seconds maybe. That should do the job. The footsteps
stop. So does the humming. I put the glass back on the corner of the bath in the exact same position. A dark ring to guide me. I put my toothbrush in it, walk back across the bathroom and unlock
the door. I open it as slowly and as quietly as possible. Angelica’s in the spare room. She’s standing next to the curtain looking out across the street. She’s standing where I
stand.

‘Your turn,’ I whisper, but she ignores me. I walk across the landing, wrap my fingers round the door frame, turn the light on with my thumb. Our reflections appear in the window.
She glares via the glass.

‘Turn it off.’ Her arms are folded and her hands are clasped around her shoulder blades. I can see her wedding ring.

‘I said, turn it off.’ And this time I do. I sit on the end of the bed with my head in my hands. Angelica sits down next to me.

‘That’s Benny,’ she says.

‘I know.’

‘What’s he doing?’

‘He’s painting.’

‘With his eyes closed.’

‘Yes.’

She stands up again, turns 360 degrees around the room. She looks up and down the walls. At the single bed and its slept-in sheets. At the empty bookcase. I should have gone to the funeral. I
can hear Don’s pockets rattling, somewhere in the distance. His whistling in the street. Angelica looks at me through the darkness. I can see the whites of her eyes changing shape, getting
thinner as they close. I think she’s smiling. She puts her hand on the curtain.

‘What else can you see?’ she says.

Practice

My father was a ballroom dancer. He took it up when he got made redundant. He said losing his job was the best thing that could have happened to him. These were going to be the
best years of his life. It was time to do something different. He’d been sat in that lorry for far too long. He told us his plans over Christmas dinner, a forkful of stuffing in one hand, a
glass of whiskey in the other. We all laughed at him. Georgina made jokes about his weight. My mother called him a stupid old man. I slapped him on the back and told him he’d never live it
down. We took it in turns to make fun at his expense. All of us except Mary, who said nothing. She smiled politely and sometimes laughed along. But she never joined in. She simply sat in her chair
and drank gin by the glassful, her party hat skewed on her head.

Three weeks into January, she became my father’s dance partner. They had lessons at the leisure centre. It was fifteen miles away, but that didn’t matter. My father loved it. He got
himself a suit fitted and bought a pair of expensive shoes. He polished them every day. I asked him if anyone else wore a suit just for lessons. He said, ‘No, only me.’ They went every
Monday for the first six months, then Thursdays as well after that. He talked of mambos and boleros, quicksteps and competitions. She barely mentioned it at all. Georgina said it was because her
mother was shy. She didn’t like to show off like my father did. ‘That’s funny,’ I said. ‘It never used to bother her.’

When my mother turned sixty, my father threw a party. They had it at home, the house I grew up in. Georgina baked a birthday cake. I helped her squeeze the icing and watched her
place cherries around the edge. Artificial flowers in the centre. The house was full of people, everyone tightly packed into the living room. My mother cleared the furniture especially, pushing the
sofa to the wall to leave a space in the middle. She packed away her ornaments. My father turned the television round. He’d invited most of his old workmates. I didn’t recognise any of
them. Nobody knew who they were. They all looked the same. Large and full of ale. There were five women there. Georgina, her mother, my mother and two of my mother’s friends. One was called
Jackie, the other Barbara. They sat in the corner, chatted away while my father proposed a toast.

‘To my darling wife, happy birthday and God bless.’ He raised his glass in the air. Everyone else did the same. My mother blushed. The man next to me, one of my father’s
workmates, leaned over to me and whispered, ‘Which one’s his piece then?’ and I looked up at him, shook my head and said, ‘I don’t know. I’m his son.’ He
stood and stared at me. Then he laughed, said, ‘Of course you are. I’m just joking with you.’ I nodded and mustered a smile. We stood next to each other and said nothing more
until my father finished his speech. Then he turned to me again, looked uncomfortable, said, ‘Cheers pal,’ and left to get another can of beer from the kitchen.

At midnight, we made my father dance with Georgina’s mother. At first they’d both refused. They said they were too drunk. Not enough practice. Everyone would laugh. But we
wouldn’t let it go. My father’s workmates were remorseless. They teased him and swore in unison. ‘Daft old bastard,’ they called him. ‘Ballroom dancing bollocks. Show
us your fucking shoes.’ My father laughed it off. He was used to it. But my mother wasn’t. She got upset. She grabbed his arm and said, ‘Why not give it a go. It’ll shut
them up. Plus I’ve never seen you dance together.’ Mary still said nothing. She just glared at my father. It was his decision. This was his fault. ‘All right, all right,’ he
said. ‘Give me five minutes.’

My father left the room and went upstairs to get changed. He came back ten minutes later wearing his suit and shoes. He looked immaculate. He stood in the middle of the room and pointed at the
record player. I lifted the needle and everyone cheered as the music started. My father held out his hand. Mary stood up and walked over to him. She let him hold her in his arms. And then they
danced, moved around the room in fits and starts. We watched in disbelief, clutched our drinks and winced. They were terrible. Hopeless. When it was over, we applauded politely. No jokes. No
swearing. It was that bad. Like they’d never had a lesson in their lives.

My father found Mary dead in the garden. She was lying on her front and wearing her dressing gown. It had ridden up above her knees as she’d fallen. Her legs were on show.
They were yellow and blue. The ambulance came quickly, but it was far too late. She’d been there at least forty-eight hours, they said. Georgina blamed herself. She said she should have seen
it coming. Her own mother, for God’s sake.

‘You’re being silly,’ I told her. ‘It’s just one of those things.’

‘No, it’s not, Gordon. It was only a matter of time. We knew everything. We could have done something. So could your father.’

‘There’s no use blaming him. It’s no-one’s fault.’

‘You’re wrong. We should have done something.’

My father stood with Georgina as they lowered Mary’s coffin into the ground. He was devastated. It crippled him. He’s never been the same. Three months after the funeral, he put the
house up for sale. A month later they’d moved. Time for a change, he said. Too many memories. He was right, there were plenty of memories, but they weren’t all bad. I grew up in that
house. He wasn’t the only person to live there. We lived there too. Me and my mother. Birthdays and Christmases. Easter eggs and Pancake Days. It was the place we returned to when we’d
been on holiday. I remember at night, before I went to bed, the way my mother used to sit on the carpet, watching television. She said it was because of her eyes. They needed looking at. I remember
my father sitting in his chair behind her, stroking her shoulders, sighing to himself and playing with her hair. And Sunday lunchtimes after church. My mother’s roast dinners and
Georgina’s parents. All six of us sat round a table made for four.

The drinking. The laughter. The rumours.

I remember everything.

Quarantine

After her first stroke, when she’d learnt to talk again, Georgina said she wanted to dance. She thought it would improve her balance. It would do her some good. Doctor
Richmoor told her she should take things one step at a time, but that she had to have something to aim for. She needed long-term goals and there was no reason why dancing couldn’t be one of
them. He retired last year, moved to New Zealand with his son and his family. Jonathan replaced him. There’s more than forty years between them. He knew my mother and father, treated them for
decades. And Georgina’s parents too. He knew about her father’s lungs, but stayed true to his word when asked not to tell. There was nothing he could do, he said, but wait.

It was Doctor Richmoor who helped Georgina. When she first came home from hospital, he organised everything. We trusted him implicitly. He made sure we had everything we needed, from specialists
and social workers to bath rails and wheelchairs. Whenever someone new came to see us, he pencilled in a home visit. The speech therapist, nurse or whoever else was with Georgina would do what they
had to do while he sat in the kitchen drinking soup from a mug. He never drank tea or coffee. Just like Georgina. And he never interfered unless I asked him to. When I did ask, he always reassured
me, telling me they knew what they were doing. ‘Watch and learn,’ he used to say. When I told him I wanted to take early retirement, he went through my pension scheme and made sure that
we got benefits. When I rang him in the middle of the night and told him Georgina had fallen out of bed, he got in his car and drove round in his pyjamas. When I told him I couldn’t cope
anymore, that I thought it might be best if Georgina moved to a nursing home, he spoke to me for more than an hour. He made his other patients wait, asked me to think about the progress she’d
made, told me to start making lists. ‘Write things down,’ he said. ‘It’ll make life easier.’

Before he left for New Zealand, Doctor Richmoor came to visit. Georgina boiled the kettle and poured him a cup of soup. She did it all on her own. No bother at all. ‘I’d love to
learn to dance again,’ she said. I smiled at her and thought about our parents. Doctor Richmoor smiled too. ‘There’s no reason why you can’t,’ he said. ‘Just
make sure you send me the photos.’ We talked about the future. He was looking forward to the weather and spending time with his grandchildren. He said he didn’t know if he’d ever
return. I said I might go back to work, even though I didn’t want to. And Georgina, after eighteen months of pain and rehabilitation, she just wanted to dance. To do something new. Something
different. She was walking and talking, almost back to how she used to be. She made jokes about my files. She said they took up too much room. She was going to have a bonfire while I was out. We
laughed about it. I said the files kept me sane and she laughed even more. But she never read them. She couldn’t make out the words.

Only six weeks after Doctor Richmoor left the country, Georgina had her second stroke. He has no idea. Jonathan neither. He just checks me over and writes me her prescriptions.
He reads her records, but he’s never spoken to her. He asks me how she’s doing, but he never comes round to see for himself. Jonathan is not like Doctor Richmoor. But he is a doctor. So
I believe his every word. Sometimes, when he’s checking my blood pressure or I’m reading his notice board, I think about telling him my secret. I wonder what would happen if I asked him
for his help. I think about shaking him, shouting ‘Why? Why has this happened to my wife? Why has this happened to me?’ But there’s no point. The damage has been done. I know the
answers. I’ve heard them all before. It’s because something stopped the blood supply from getting to her brain. It’s because the same thing happened to her mother. It’s
because of the HRT. The menopause. The depression. Our failure to have children. It’s what the Lord has chosen. There’s nothing I could have done to stop it. Nothing I could have said
to make a difference. I’m just here to pick up the pieces. And keep faith.

Doctor Richmoor sent two postcards. One was addressed to me, the other to Georgina. Mine had a map of New Zealand on it. Cities and towns marked out with pictures next to them. They’d
arrived safely. The weather was terrific. They were all doing fine. Even the dogs. Georgina’s postcard had a rugby player on the front. His hands in the air and a grimace on his face. He
looked gigantic. ‘New Zealand Tourism Board’, it said in the top right hand corner. On the back, in gold marker pen, it said, ‘Dear Georgina. Is this what you had in mind?’
She’s not read it yet. She’s not smiled and shaken her head. She’s not had chance to reply.

It arrived a week too late.

I’ve filed it away for when she gets better.

Revelations

Angelica has confided in me. We are definitely friends.

It happened yesterday morning. She knocked on the front door while I was in the bedroom. I’d just finished bathing Georgina. ‘There’s someone at the door,’ I told her.
‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ I walked downstairs with my flannel. My hands were wet and soapy. As I reached the bottom I saw Angelica’s fingers. They were inside the house,
poking through the letterbox. She was holding it open from the outside and crouching to look through the hole. I could see the bridge of her nose and one of her eyes behind her hair.

‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think you were home.’

I opened the door and Angelica barged past me. There was nothing I could do to stop her. She took off her coat and hung it over the banister. I followed her to the kitchen and tossed the flannel
into the sink. I turned on the tap and washed the soap from my hands.

‘What have you been up to?’ she said.

‘Cleaning,’ I replied.

She plugged the kettle in at the wall, took a mug from the cupboard and a slice of cake from the fridge without asking. Chocolate sponge cake. Georgina’s favourite. I’d made it for
her as a treat and a test. But she didn’t want to eat it. I thought she might have been ready. But apparently not. Angelica ate with her hand beneath her chin like a plate.