Angel Cake (27 page)

‘Let go of my hand,’ I said coldly.

‘You’d better snap out of this pretty bloody quick, Alison,’ Rob shouted after me as I left the kitchen. ‘I’m warning you for the last time.’

‘Two years was all we were granted here, two years and six months to be exact, although the last six months were hardly what you’d call living. Back and forth to the hospital every day when Leonard was poorly, and caring for him day and night when he was home.

‘I still remember, as clearly as if it were yesterday, the day he first had an inkling something was amiss. We were sitting having breakfast over there at the table, a proper breakfast how Leonard used to like it, with eggs and bacon and toast and marmalade and tea. To tell you the truth, I’d hoped I wouldn’t need to do all that any more after we sold the boarding-house. But he’d developed a taste for it, hadn’t he, and I had to keep it up all those years. You know, even now I can’t look a fried egg in the face. For me, an egg’s got to be boiled or come scrambled, not running and jumping all
over the pan. The slightest suggestion of a fried egg is enough to make me think twice.

‘Well, that day I’d put the eggs and bacon down in front of him and I’d gone back to the kitchen to fetch something I’d forgotten, the butter knife or the marmalade, and when I came back into the room Leonard was sitting in that chair; he hadn’t moved an inch, and he was staring down at his plate with this look of horror on his face. I said to him, “Whatever’s the matter?” You know, I thought something was off. And he said, “I can’t eat this.” Just like that: “I can’t eat this,” all surprised and mystified. I came over and took a look at his plate. It looked all right to me. “Why ever not?” I asked. “What’s wrong with it?” “There’s nothing wrong with it,” he said. “There’s something wrong with 
me
.” Well, I took a look at his face then and he did look crook. He’d gone as white as a sheet and his eyes were all staring. I thought, “Heart.” Well, you do, don’t you? But it wasn’t heart at all, as it turned out, but stomach. I helped him upstairs to lie down and get over it, and he was very quiet all day. He confessed to me then that he’d been getting these stomach pains for quite a while, but he’d put it down to indigestion and he hadn’t said a word. Well, I didn’t like the sound of that one bit, so the next day or the day after, I persuaded him to go and see the doctor. It wasn’t that nice Dr Chowdhury then, but a grumpy old English doctor called Greaves. He told Leonard it was most probably nothing but wind, but he’d send him up to the hospital for some tests just to be on the safe side. A few days later, we got an appointment card for the following week and on the day they said, we went up to the hospital and Leonard had the tests. Afterwards, we both felt a lot better. We might even have put the whole thing behind us if, a week or so later, we hadn’t got another card asking us to go and see Dr Greaves. Well, we knew then that something was up and Leonard started to sink before my very eyes. Dr Greaves said there was no cause for alarm, but Leonard had to have this operation and the sooner the better. An operation! You can imagine how we felt. I remember we came home on the bus together and we neither of us said a word, not till we were back in here and I’d got the kettle on. Then Leonard
shook his head and he said, “It’s curtains, Alicia” and even though I was half in tears, I cried, “No, it’s not. You’ve got to fight back!” But he didn’t. He seemed to crumple up inside. He was never really right again after that morning when he found he couldn’t eat his eggs.

‘They said the operation was a success, at first. They
said.
But I’d seen him when he was coming round and I thought to myself, with someone looking so shocking, how could it possibly have been a success? They never fooled me with their medical ways. Anyway, after a few weeks, they let me bring Leonard home. He had pills and a diet sheet and everything had to be just so; he had to take one colour pill at one time and another colour at another time and eat his invalid meals on the dot. After a while, you got the feeling his stomach was the most major thing in the house. It seemed to rule the roost.

‘Still, we had that one summer of grace. It was May or June when he went into hospital and we had a clear stretch until nearly November before his stomach started to play up again. I remember one silly little thing. It’s funny how they’re always what sticks, isn’t it? It wasn’t a specially good summer as I recall, but we seemed to have a lot of ice-cream vans round here for some reason. Lord knows why, because no one much ever seemed to buy any. There was this one chap, especially regular, whose tune was
Greensleeves
. He used to come almost every day I think, and park just a little way down the road. We used to hear him coming and then he’d be at it, tinkling away outside whatever the weather, until he drove us both nearly mad. And ice-cream was one of the things Leonard wasn’t supposed to have.

‘Anyway, he was right as rain, more or less, until November. I remember it was November, because there were all the little boys doing “Penny for the Guy” out on Shepherd’s Bush Green. I’d been up to the shops one afternoon and when I came back, I saw Leonard sitting by the window watching for me. I shouted out, “Hello, dear!” as I unlocked the front door, but he didn’t answer me. I hurried in to take a look at him and he was sitting all stiff, like this, with his hand held out, and he said to me in a funny, croaky voice, “Penny for the Guy? Penny for the Guy?”

‘Well, that didn’t seem to me a very normal thing to do and, sure enough, a few days later he was doubled up again and it was back to Dr Greaves. That time, they didn’t shilly-shally. They whipped him into hospital quick as could be and he had had another operation before you could say Jack Robinson. That was his first Christmas in hospital, the first time in forty years of marriage that we’d had to spend Christmas apart. Of course, I was at his bedside the minute the doors opened for visiting hours, but it wasn’t the same. I shouldn’t say it, but I think he had the better Christmas, because at least he was surrounded by people, all those hale and hearty nurses, and all that to-do. He didn’t have to come home to an empty house.

‘They let him come home some time in January, but he wasn’t himself any more, I suppose literally, since he had so much missing by then. He used to sit around all day, just staring, and if you tried to talk to him, sometimes he would just sigh and look straight through you as if you weren’t even there. And all he thought about was the past, things which ought to have been long dead and buried. For instance, I might say to him something perfectly harmless: “D’you fancy some Welsh rarebit for your tea?” and he’d say, “Clara Willoughby was always very partial to Welsh rarebit, wasn’t she?” Clara Willoughby was an actress who once belonged to our company. I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned her, but she was a dreadful woman. She and I never saw eye to eye. I can’t think what Leonard saw in her. So I’d say to him, a bit crossly, “For goodness sake, forget about Clara Willoughby and answer my question, would you?” But he’d go on, “Remember when we were doing
The
Age
of
Youth
in Liverpool, and she used to make it on her little bar fire until all the other girls complained that the smell of it made them so hungry they couldn’t concentrate on their lines?” It drove me mad. I suppose it was only natural, mind you, with him thinking that the future didn’t hold very much for him, that his thoughts should turn towards things past. But it did upset me. He used to remember all the old quarrels and torment himself with them. He was always going on about Harry Levy, for instance, and saying how the memory of him had been a thorn in his flesh all those years. Sometimes
I’d get so depressed, I’d just have to go out and leave him there. I couldn’t bear to sit and listen to him dragging up all those old troubles which I prayed to God I’d heard the last of.

‘He stayed in that state pretty well until the summer. One day, maybe, he’d be a little better and he’d perk up a bit. But then, the next day he might be back to square one. It was no sort of life for either of us really. It was like being a threesome, you know; Leonard and me and his cancer. Leonard used to make quite a thing of it being like a third party. He’d say he was being unfaithful to me, carrying on with his cancer. And when he had to go up to the hospital for his treatment or for tests, he’d get at me by saying he was off to a rendezvous. Even though I took him up there every time. Yes, you’re right, it was only a joke, but it upset me no end. I used to weep buckets.

‘In the autumn, he started to go downhill. You might think he was that far gone, he couldn’t go much further. But at least, most of the time, he was still himself. Of course, sometimes he said things which were quite out of character, cruel and cutting, and then you knew it wasn’t him; it was his cancer talking. But round about October time, he started to change for the worse. Half the time, he didn’t know any more if he was coming or going. He’d come up with these impossible statements and when you took him to task, he’d deny all knowledge of them. It wasn’t only eating away his body, you see, it was eating away his mind too.

‘They took him back into hospital at the beginning of November. We didn’t have to go through “Penny for the Guy” again, although by then he looked much more of a guy than he had the year before. He was only skin and bones and his hair, his lovely hair, was all falling out from what they were doing to him up at the hospital. In fact, I couldn’t bear to walk past the boys on the green any more. I got a lump in my throat. Their guys reminded me so much of my poor dear Leonard. He’d gone a funny colour too. And if any of them had the nerve to come up and ask me for money, I’d give them a piece of my mind. I’d send them packing. I’ve still got no time for them even now. They’re not to
know it, but they turn the knife in the wound. They remind me of my loss.

‘No, don’t mind me dear; I’ll be all right in a tick. You might imagine it was a relief to have Leonard off my hands. Well, it wasn’t. As soon as he was back in hospital, I knew in my bones it was for good. I would have done anything then to have him back here, even ranting and raving and calling me names like he did. But it wasn’t to be. He sank fast. I went up there religiously at visiting hours every day, come rain, come shine. Some days he knew me and called me by my name and some days he hadn’t a clue, especially towards the end. He slept a lot and, of course, I didn’t like to wake him. And even when he was awake, what with his drugs and everything, he didn’t always make much sense. I lost him long before I lost him, if you get my meaning. Those last weeks, when I used to go up to the hospital and sit beside him, he wasn’t really there any more. However much you’ve seen it coming and dreaded it, you’re never really prepared when it happens. I’d stored up the things I wanted to say to him at the end, things to do with past problems we’d had. But they were troublesome things and I knew they wouldn’t be easy to get out. So I was saving them up for the very end. And without even realizing it, I left it too late. Because although Leonard didn’t actually pass away until the first week of January, he never completely came to his senses again. It was terrible, sitting there beside him with all of it left unsaid. I did try and tell him some of it, but he gave no sign of having heard.

‘The end came on a bitter January night. I’d only been back from the hospital a little while. I’d sat with him all afternoon and he’d given no sign of what was around the corner. He seemed, you know, no better and no worse than he’d been since Christmas. I was just sitting down with a cup of tea when the telephone rang. It was the Ward Sister and she said I should come back as fast as I could. I still remember the phrase she used: “The doctor doesn’t like the look of him.” Well, between you and me, dear, he’d not been much to look at for weeks. So I knew something was up.

‘I hurried on with my coat, grabbed my bag and I rushed out to the bus-stop with my hat on any old how. The Sister
met me at the door of the ward. They had moved Leonard out into a little side room, she said. I followed her in there, hardly daring to breathe. I thought he must be dead already. You certainly couldn’t tell, to look at him. But apparently I’d got there in the nick of time. There were two nurses in with him, but the Sister told them to leave the two of us for a bit and she went out after them.

‘I sat down by his bed and I looked my last on him. I longed to take his hand, but I didn’t dare somehow. It seemed not quite right. Plus he looked so awfully solemn. So I just sat there, wishing he’d open his eyes if only for a minute, so I could tell him what I wanted. But he didn’t stir. The minutes went by and he gave no sign of life and I was getting desperate. I couldn’t let him pass away without having my say, not after all those years, not after all I’d been through. At last, I leaned forward and I whispered, “Leonard?” No response. I tried again and I gave him the tiniest tap on the back of his hand, just like that. He seemed to give a quiver and he made a choking sound, as if he were trying to get something out too. He rolled his head a little way back as if he wanted to look up at me. Then he lay quite still with this look on his face, I’ll always remember, straining, trying to hear me. So I bent right close to him and I whispered, “Can you hear me? Leonard dearest, can you hear me?” He didn’t bat an eyelid. Just then the Sister came back in. She hadn’t left us that long, it seemed to me, so I looked round at her a bit annoyed. She only had eyes for Leonard. Of course, they all doted on him, all those nurses. I saw her face fall. “Oh, Mrs Queripel,” she said. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t get her meaning straight away. “Couldn’t you give us a little longer?” I started to say to her, when I suddenly understood. I looked down at Leonard. I hadn’t realized it, but he had already died.

‘They buried the best part of my life when they buried Leonard. We might have had our moments. I’m not saying it was a bed of roses all the time. But in his own way he was the very best of men. Oh yes, they broke the mould after they made Leonard Queripel. He was always fine and upstanding, always true. He always did right by me. I never had cause for complaint on
those
grounds. It was like the curtain
coming down on one of our plays,
Lilies
or
Lavender
, or
The
Tender
Passion
. “Happy Ever After”. He was my leading man and I followed him gladly all the days of my life. Many people would say we had a perfect marriage and, for all I know, they’d be right.’