Closure (21 page)

JACQUELINE CLARKE
THE DRAW

Lynden Hall dozed next to his wife, Cora. Recently she had taken to nudging him in the side whenever
Strictly Come Dancing
came on. It vexed him to have his little sleep interrupted, especially when his snoring made no difference to her reaction to the judges' comments.

He looked at her as she sat on the edge of the sofa, arguing with the panel.

“You see that,” Cora glanced at him. “Stiff like I don't know what.”

Lynden frowned and straightened up as the credits rolled. In a few minutes it would be his turn. He felt for the ticket in his trouser pocket, but did not take it out. He always chose the same six numbers. They carried no sentimental value, theory, or luck. He had won ten pounds twice in the eight years of marking the draw.

“You want a hot drink?” Cora got up and puffed up a cushion.

Lynden shook his head. The National Lottery had begun.

“What about some cocoa then?”

Every Saturday night she did the same – fidget around him while his programme was on. “No,” he said, without looking up at her.

Cora placed the cushion back on the settee and eyed her husband. The older he got the less he spoke to her. She'd learned to interpret his frowns, grunts, and sharp looks. Still, it irked her that the only time he showed any animation was when the numbers were called out on
his
favourite show.

“I'll get some toast then.”

Lynden softened in the chair when she left the room, relieved that he could now concentrate. He wanted the song to be over and for the small talk to end. He needed no delaying tactics to manufacture an anticipation he had never got used to. The first number came up – eight. Then the second ball – four.

Cora came back in with a tray. “Here, take your cocoa.”

Lynden glanced at her. “I told you I didn't want…”

“Take it.”

Lynden took the cup and drank; it was too sweet. He glared at the screen. The third number had been picked and called. His wife offered him buttered toast from the plate balanced on her lap. He refused it and turned up the volume with the remote. The fourth and fifth numbers came and went.

Cora picked the crumbs off her skirt, putting them back on the plate. She hated wasting food. She knew that when she was nice and comfortable on the settee he would ask her where his supper was. She took out the tray, covered the toast with a clean tea-cloth, ready for later. She returned to the sitting room.

“You won again?”

Lynden looked at her, then slowly nodded.

“Ten pounds? What will that buy, eh – a pack of Guinness?” Perhaps the win might loosen his tongue. It did not. He turned back to his programme as if he hadn't heard her. Cora reached for a cushion to puff up, sucked her teeth and left the room.

Lynden slumped back in the chair. It was on his lips to tell her when she returned, but he could not find words for that amount or what it meant. If she had been fussing less, then maybe he would have said something. She was the one who jumped to conclusions, and he was in no mood to put her straight. Let her think he could only afford Guinness. Tomorrow she would know different.

Cora woke and gazed at the sunlight flickering on the wall. It was rare for her to sleep right through. Usually she found herself too hot or too cold, or the pillows full of lumps, or the bed gritty. She sank deeper into the warmth of the blankets. She heard a cough and turned over, taking in the outline of the back lying next to her, the dark-blue pyjamas stretched too tightly over the bulk of his frame, his hair thin and patchy, greying at the nape of his neck and behind his ears. He stirred and his soles touched her. She moved away a little. His feet sought her out again and rested on her skin, as if used to combat and capitulation.

She got up and went to the kitchen while he slept on. She made herself a cup of tea and drank it, then fetched four eggs from the fridge, boiled them in a pot of water and began making porridge in another pan. He came downstairs in his dressing gown and sat at the table. She gave him coffee in a mug, snatching glances at him, taking in the way he held his cup and drank, his hunched way of sitting and his gaze at nothing in particular.

All through breakfast Lynden tried to figure out how to tell Cora about his win. He had said “Morning” with a determined cheerfulness. She continued cooking with her back towards him. The one time he caught her gaze she swung away to stir the porridge, then sat down in the chair opposite and ate without looking his way. He took his cue from her and was silent.

Lynden's first thought had been to avoid Sam's corner shop in case the newsagent already knew the winning ticket had come from there. His apprehension proved unfounded. Sam sold him his cigarettes and Sunday papers without inquisition, mentioning only that Cora had left behind the bread and sugar she'd bought the previous day.

Lynden dropped the groceries back at the house, then went to the florist and ordered six yellow carnations and seven pink roses, to be sent to Cora. It was the first time he had given her flowers. He felt awkward and left for his allotment, the card unsigned.

Lynden hacked at clumps of soil until his fingers went numb. He went inside his shed and warmed his hands over the paraffin heater.

It had taken Cora until late morning to find again some of the details of her life with the man who shared her home. She knew they had children together. How many and whether they were boys or girls she could not say. They were married, of course; the ring on her finger told her so, but for how long? It had taken all her effort not to ask him his name and she had chosen silence rather than risk conversation. At lunchtime the word “Lynden” burst from her mouth and her relief surprised her. All her life there were times when she muddled or forgot names, even of those closest to her. It meant nothing.

Cora busied herself with the ironing and clung to the ease that came as she pressed a dress, then his shirt. But as she ironed a pair of his trousers something nagged at her. She stopped. The moments when she did not know her husband had begun to lengthen. Hours would pass without recollection of the things she had done.

There were times when every detail of her girlhood rose to overwhelm her and everyone she knew and loved surrounded her once more – as if death and departures had not yet come. She remembered the laughter of her four sisters dressing for church; the scent of nutmeg on her mother's fingers; Shaun, her brother, letting her smoke his cigarettes with Carver Milton, his best friend – who gave her a look that made her toes warm…

The doorbell rang. Cora unplugged the iron and went to the door. A smiling courier handed her flowers. Did he have the right address, 22 Valance Estate? She made him recheck his list of destinations. How could they be meant for her? The tag was nameless. She was used to cards on Mother's Day, and when she got ill and was in hospital that time
.
No one had given her flowers before… except… except… She thanked the courier and cut away the cellophane wrapper from the bouquet. There was no vase. She had never found a reason to own one until now. She sat down. He always did know her favourite colours. She closed her eyes and hummed a song from her youth. He had come back for her.

Lynden walked from the allotment, restless. He slowed down, resisting home. He had been hasty in sending Cora a gift like that. She would see right through his foolishness and become suspicious. She would want to know where the money had come from and he was not yet ready to reveal it. What would such wealth do to his family? His children would come round more often and not just settle for a Sunday evening phone call if they felt like it. He could see the four of them becoming helpful again, biding their time, hovering in wait for their share. His friends would be no better. Every pub night he would be expected to pay for their beers without hope of getting anything in return.

Cora would demand more from him too, not just a new home in Hampstead or Knightsbridge, but afternoons having cream teas in County Hall and evenings out in restaurants, serving tiny food on big plates.

He would not admit it to himself, but more than this, he feared her old liveliness would return. Even now, as he remembered it, he felt a wave of envy. It was the way she had of telling stories, drawing friends in, her ability to make even changing a bedpan sound as if you wanted to be there.

In their marriage he had succeeded in curtailing her – and then later the children's exuberance – with his own silence. He just had to walk into a room full of their laughter and noise and they would be subdued, tidying up in minutes and withdrawing to the kitchen and their bedrooms, leaving him to his chair and the television news. He enjoyed the mastery, the seclusion of it, and the pleasure of living in a family where his own powerlessness only emerged when he left home for the morning shift.

Lynden knew Cora had been an odd choice of partner. He had settled on her long before she chose him. There had been no active pursuit, proposals or fanciful promises, despite the other men who courted her. Instead he had waited, not for love to fade, but for disappointment to arise, for her to become weary of sweet but empty words. It was only then that he spoke to her. Unadorned and straightforward, he offered her the steadiness of an ordinary life and when she accepted his proposal it was quietly and without fuss.

Lynden opened the door. The sound of Sam Cooke's “Wonderful World” filled the flat. Cora was in the front room, dancing with her eyes closed, a rose in her hand. She looked radiant.
She had wanted a plain life hadn't she?
A few hours earlier he would have said, yes, but now –

Cora's eyes opened. Her smile faded and the dancing stopped.

“You didn't…” Lynden faltered. The record came to an end. “You didn't hear me…” He stood in the doorway waiting for something in his wife's expression to invite him in.

Cora put down the flower on the coffee table. “I'll get dinner.”

She passed him by. Against his instincts, he found himself wanting to salvage that moment, for her to stay with the delight his gift had helped to make. He needed to see her more like that. It would be easy. Every day for the next week he would send her something, secretly. Then on Saturday, before the next lottery, he would tell her everything and show her that he, too, had depths.

At dinner Cora spoke more than usual. The old ease returned and she found herself tolerating his lack of response. She felt giddy and full of an anticipation that couldn't be quelled by having Lynden near her. She wondered what Carver looked like now: grey-haired, skin lined, girth widened, a tooth missing perhaps?

Yet how could he have known where she lived? He was probably still living back home. It was foolishness to think it could be him; more than likely it had been her son or one of her daughters surprising her like that. In the morning she would call her children and get to the bottom of it.

As Cora got ready for bed, she decided she would not allow herself to be taken over by the forgetfulness that had marked her day. She wrote Lynden's and her children's names on pieces of paper. She jotted down their relationship to her, the meals they liked, and the interests they had. She screwed up each sheet, rolled it into a tight ball, placed some in her dressing-gown pocket and the others in drawers and cupboards around the house. Tomorrow, if her mind should wander, she would be ready for it.

She slept until Lynden came to bed and rested his cold feet on her warm skin. Any other night she would have put distance between them, instead she let his feet stay on her until he began to snore. Slowly, she eased herself out of bed, bothered by her own quickness to lay her marriage aside for an assumption that Carver was back. It had been more than forty years since she had seen him and couldn't someone else, including Lynden, have given her the flowers? But her husband was not a man given to trivial things, though Carver…

She left the room, avoiding her children's empty bedrooms; she wrapped herself in a blanket from the linen cupboard and slept on the settee downstairs.

Another gift came late morning whilst Lynden was out, perfume this time, blue in an oval bottle, wrapped in tissue paper, boxed with a message left unsigned. She knew the presents could not have come from her children. They would have phoned, impatient to know if she had received anything. It had to be Carver, playful again, as if the years hadn't passed. She laughed, spraying a little of the scent behind her ears.

Over the next few days Cora found herself perfectly able to remember the names and details of her husband and children. She began to suspect she was being overcautious in keeping the paper balls about the place. By Wednesday afternoon she had gathered together all but one of them, when Lynden arrived home from the barbers and asked her why she was wearing her skirt inside out and her slippers on the wrong feet. Cora joined in with the laughter. As the tears gathered in her eyes she left to change. What was remembering anyway? Sure, her recollections came and went, but wasn't that true for everyone? She doubted if there was a person alive who could say they never forgot a thing or could even bring back to mind all their thoughts from five minutes ago. No. She was fine.

Two hours later she came downstairs, having adjusted some of her clothes and put all her shoes in precise rows, as if defying anyone to tell her she didn't know left from right.

Lynden felt relieved when Saturday came round again. Choosing presents had become trickier as the week progressed. He had wanted to give her earrings but couldn't recollect whether Cora's ears were pierced or not. In the end he had sent her a bracelet and then wondered if a necklace would have been better. He had thought that having money would lead to an abundance of ideas. Instead he looked back on the week with some disappointment. Bunches of flowers, scent, and jewellery seemed a little too dull and predictable now that he was a man of wealth. Besides he wanted to do more practical things with his money. They needed a new bed, of course, then his wife could sleep without being restless, or absent from him each night.