Easy Peasy (29 page)

I am ashamed. I have been forgetting her pain. I squeeze my eyes tightly shut, try to squeeze away what I have learnt. ‘Shall I help you upstairs?'

She shakes her head. ‘I
am
knackered, but I'm not going up stairs without Stan.' She looks up at the wedding photograph and the ghost of a smile passes across her face. Then she looks back at me. ‘Sure you're all right? I feel bad letting you …'

‘Wanda, don't …'

‘That might
not
have been Vince … that might not have been human meat at all …' she says.

‘I'm sure it wasn't … and if it was …'

‘That wasn't his fault.'

‘No,' I say, ‘and anyway … that's not the point.'

‘But in his dreams … well you know what dreams are like.'

My nails are sharp smiles in my palms. ‘Yes,' I say, ‘yes, I do know what dreams are like.'

Upstairs in the cold, cold room I open the chocolate-box to replace the letter, and take out a slippery handful of photographs. On the bed I sort them into two piles, those that feature Daddy and those that do not. Then more slowly I browse through the images of Daddy – the man I knew and did not know at all. Here in his shirt-sleeves on some beach with Vassily grinning beside him; here with his arm slung casually round Wanda – a happy couple; here gazing into some unspecified distance, one hand shielding his eyes from the sun.

And here, young Daddy in his uniform, not a father then, young Ralph in his uniform, smooth face, eyes big and lustrous dark behind his spectacles. A smooth and hopeful face looking forward into a future he could not guess.

I stare into the bright darkness of his eyes. Twin points of light in each one.

I swallow, gorge rising in my throat. Poor Daddy. With all that inside him. So horrifying, so … there is no word for it … and yet…

I am taken aback to discover – now that I
know
– that I had thought it would be worse.

How worse?

What could be worse?

What worse than the killing and eating of a friend?

But what could be darker than imagination?

What could be worse than guilt?

And whatever could equal forty-five years of nightmares and the shattering of sleep?

What possible equation could there be?

I want to ask Wanda what they said after she'd read the letter. I go downstairs to do so but she is so tired she cannot speak. I will not bother her any more. I feel a curious looseness inside, as if something has given, though I am not sure what.

Wanda will not go upstairs no matter how I urge her, so I draw the curtains, bring a pillow downstairs and she curls up on the sofa, the shawl covering her. I change her sheets and put the stale ones in the washing machine, tidy up the kitchen. In the bathroom I wash my face and pick a shred of ham from between my teeth, meeting my own mirrored eyes with a shudder and a flinch. I take my toothbrush and scrub my mouth minty fresh, spitting white froth over and over into the turquoise basin.

I change into my own crumpled clothes, odd with the boots but it can't be helped – a little pang of regret for the Italian shoes. I retrieve my stockings from down the side of the sofa, and I bend over Wanda for a few moments watching her sleep. Her face is very smooth and blank, the lashless lids waxy as petals, above them one of the green eyebrows rubbed off. The light glints on the rings in her ears. I kiss her very softly on her forehead, hardly a kiss, a brush of the lips. I catch the bitter breath of her disease. And I know I'll never see her again.

I wait, as I promised, for Stan to get home. When he arrives – rough, stubbled, donkey-jacketed – she is still sleeping. He greets me gruffly, goes straight to her, scared of what he will find. He kneels down beside the sofa and with his thick gentle oily finger strokes her cheek. I go upstairs and collect my things.

I leave before she wakes again.

10

Wanda's funeral. Foxy beside me in a little netted pill-box hat. ‘I don't think I could bear to lose you,' she said when I got back, four months ago, on a freezing February night. ‘Funny,' I said, ‘because I've just realised that maybe I
could
do without you.' She was quiet for a moment, thinking before she spoke. ‘Well,' she kept her voice calm, but I saw the flare of her pupils, felt the small intake of breath, ‘that's good, that is healthier, don't you think?' And she's still with me, though whether forever I really do not know. What is forever? How can one contemplate forever standing by an open grave?

I wear just what I wore for my father's funeral nine months ago. The day is as bright as that day, hotter, more golden; the fat green and gold of early June. Many more people present than at Daddy's funeral. Vassily, of course, with his daughter and his wife, a tiny dark woman who looks up at him with eyes that are both loving and critical. Who looks sideways at me. She's sharp. What does she know about me? Vassily's daughter, rosy and dark-eyed, noisy in the church, singing her own song. Stan dressed in his wedding-suit, wet-eyed and reeking of whisky. Many strangers. In the graveyard, in front of my mother, in front of everyone, Foxy holds my hand.

After the church we make our way to a pub on the seafront where Vassily has booked a room, a small glass extension with wicker chairs and puffy Roman blinds. Not at all suitable for a funeral, but Wanda would have liked it. It is blazing hot, greenhouse hot inside, despite a whirring fan, and open windows through which come shouts from people on the beach. There's the occasional thwack of a beach-ball hitting the glass. Caroline wears white, not black. She's the only one who looks cool. Stan's drunken face seen too close, open pores, a flake of puff-pastry caught in the corner of his mouth. Mummy is very quiet. She has come with her friend John. I look at the two of them and wonder. They sit very close together sipping sherry.

Naomi trips over and bangs her head, she screams, unbearably piercing in the little room. At a sign from Caroline, Vassily scoops her up and carries her outside.

Despite the fan and the windows there is no air in the room, it's suffocating. Foxy has fallen into conversation with an elderly woman in a black straw hat. I see her fumble in her handbag for her notebook and pen. I follow Vassily out. I need fresh air, the grief and the sherry and the hot June sun through glass are too much.

I find them on the beach. Naomi has recovered from her bump. She's barefoot, her dress tucked in her knickers, splashing about at the edge of the sea. Vassily has loosened his tie, rolled up his shirt-sleeves. He sits on a breakwater watching Naomi, her little shoes and socks beside him. A few couples sprawl on rugs, some teenagers throw a beach-ball from the beach to the sea and back, brown skin, dripping limbs, shouting as if with joy.

In this heat the sea itself seems almost too lazy to move. It makes contented sounds, softly sucking and sighing, just the occasional refreshing plash when it summons the energy to send a small wave washing up. The child is singing again, I can't quite hear what, just a soft high note now and then, sweet. But Vassily can't hear the sea, or Naomi or the sound of my feet scrunching on the shingle as I approach.

I touch his arm and he jumps, turns round.

‘She's lovely.' I nod towards Naomi. I sit down beside him on the rough concrete of the breakwater. ‘Vassily, I'm so very sorry about Wanda.'

Sitting so close to him, looking at the long brown hairs on his forearms where he's rolled his shirt-sleeves up, I'm suddenly hit by a humiliating memory: a drunken kiss. The sun on the sea makes me squint.

‘Daddy look,' Naomi, limping up on the shingle on her wet pink feet brings him a stiffened starfish. ‘Is it deaded?'

He nods. ‘Yes, sweetie, it's dead.'

‘Poor lickle star.' She goes back to the sea, cradling it in her two hands.

Vassily is a good father I can see that. I am glad for the little girl. The bottom of her dress has come down and is dark and wet from the sea. But it doesn't matter.

I touch his arm. ‘Vassily, I'm sorry.'

He nods.

‘I mean … when we were children.'

His face hardens. He has not forgotten. I thought maybe the game, the childish game may have been forgotten. His eyes are just the green of his mother's, small tobacco-gold flecks round the pupils which are tiny in the brightness. The skin on the back of my neck is hot and itchy, this sun would burn you in an instant. Tears come into my eyes.

A little muscle twitches in his jaw. I cannot know what he is thinking.

‘Do you forgive me?' I ask. The tears spill.

He watches my face for a long moment. His face is quite inscrutable. Then he puts his index finger on my cheek and catches a tear. He holds it in front of his eyes and examines it there on his finger-tip, a bright bead of wet reflecting the sun, reflecting too minutely to see the shape of his own head.

The child runs up the beach dragging behind her a giant ribbon of wet brown weed. ‘Look Daddy, it lasts for
miles.'

Vassily licks the tear from his finger before he smiles at me.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Ernest Virgo for the loan of his POW diaries, and both Ernest and Olive Virgo for their generosity and help during my research for this novel.

About the Author

Lesley Glaister (b. 1956) is a British novelist, playwright, and teacher of writing, currently working at the University of St Andrews. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Society of Authors. Her first novel,
Honour Thy Father,
was published in 1990 and received both a Somerset Maugham Award and a Betty Trask Award. Glaister became known for her darkly humorous works and has been dubbed the Queen of Domestic Gothic. Glaister was named Yorkshire Author of the Year in 1998 for her novel
Easy Peasy,
which was shortlisted for the Guardian Fiction Award in 1998.
Now You See Me
was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2002.Glaister lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with her husband, author Andrew Greig.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Lesley Glaister

Cover design by Connie Gabbert

ISBN: 978-1-4976-9411-8

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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EBOOKS BY LESLEY GLAISTER

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