Secrets (45 page)

Oh, but it's not Joe at all. It's a woman.

‘Hullo – is Tess there? Or Joe?’

‘
Laura?
Is that you?’

‘Tess – yes, it's me. It's me. Oh, love – it's Mary. Is Joe there? She's had a stroke. A big one. Is Joe there?’

‘Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh, shit. Oh, shit.’

‘Is Joe there, love?’

‘No – he's not, Laura, he left for France again yesterday.’

‘He needs to know. I could phone him – but perhaps you should?’

‘Of course. Of course. I will. That's fine. But Laura – how is Mary?’

‘She's very very poorly.’

‘But is she going to be OK?’

‘I don't think so, Tess. No – I don't think she is.’

Tess had kept Laura on the phone long enough only for the essential details. Then she phoned Joe.

Chapter Forty-one

‘What a day, Tess, what a day. She's gone – and I keep saying to myself that I'm pleased for her sake that she's gone. They said she wouldn't pull through. I'm pleased for her that she didn't have to live with further decimation of herself. And, selfishly, that I didn't have to experience it or cope with it. They told me she wouldn't have known a thing really – and that's the way to go, isn't it? After all, she always seemed unhappy in this life, Tess, and that's no way to live, is it?

‘I'm very tired and totally poleaxed, really – but underneath the rawness of the more immediate, reactive emotions I reckon a sense of relief will be what lasts. My sense of relief both for her and for myself.

‘Today was the day I watched my mother die. This time yesterday she was alive – in fact, let me see, just four hours ago she was alive. And now she'd gone. I saw my mother alive – and I saw her dead – all today. This morning I was in a hotel in France, this afternoon I was in a hospital in Middlesbrough and now I'm back home in Saltburn, in the house I grew up in, sitting next to you in the garden of my childhood home. I used to have dens in this garden. I'd spend hours in those dens – they were just glorified spaces amongst the shrubs. But they were my boltholes.

‘It all seems a bit unreal. When people ask me from now on, I'll have to say my parents are not alive, they are dead. Does that make me an orphan, Tess? Or am I too old to be an orphan?’

‘I don't remember feeling like this when my father died, though. No sense of relief back then. I had my mother to cope with – I remember having to do a lot of tongue-biting as I mopped up all her displaced grief. I don't know if it was guilt or a twisted love that had existed between them but she did take his death badly. Predictably, she took it out on me too. She was very embittered, poor old thing. What a life, hey, to be weighted down by so much that was so negative. She never really got over it. It certainly didn't bring us closer. Nor did her illness – her first stroke. All that brought closer was senility. We've always been – distant. We remained that way until the end. No last words, Tess, none at all.

‘It's silly. It's daft. It's stupid – but do you know something? As I was driving to the hospital I was imagining what if, what if I go in there and I take her hand and she stirs from her state and for a moment there
is
recognition? While I drove, I spun it out – and that tiny what-if became the stuff of Hollywood in my head. I saw myself going into the room and everyone would leave and I'd be by her bedside and I'd say, “Mum, Mum, it's me, it's Joe.” And suddenly her fingers would twitch and I'd take her hand and she'd close her fingers around mine and she'd murmur, “Joe, Joe, is that you? Is that Joe? Oh, son – oh, son.”

‘Something like that. Stupid, really, isn't it.

‘But it enabled me to drive, to get there in one piece and in time.

‘But she wasn't in a room; she was on a ward – a small one – with the curtains drawn right around her bed. I sat and I touched and I spoke – I did say, “Mum, it's Joe” – but there was nothing. The doctor told me when I arrived there was nothing to be done; whenever a nurse came in they'd put a hand on my shoulder with a kindly “not long now” expression. I know that stuff about hearing being the last sense to go but I don't think she was there at all, Tess. And when she died, it wasn't just her and me; there were two nurses too. And there was a bizarre wait – a sort of hiatus between life and death during which I thought, has she? hasn't she? My heart started to race a little at that point. They did lots of checking of pulses and then they gave me a long, sympathetic nod and some more shoulder touching and then they left me alone. I don't actually know precisely when she went.

‘And when I was alone in there, I kept wanting to say, “Mum?” out loud – just to check. But I couldn't do that, could I? That would have been crazy. And not fair on the other poorly people around. But I did put my hand over hers and I was pleased it was warm still. I found that surprisingly comforting. I also liked it that her face was actually peaceful too. Like I've never seen it before – not once. Peaceful that it's done, it's over. She looked happy to go.

‘Wolf made her happy, though. And do you know something – well, I'm sure you do, I hope you do – Emmeline brought her happiness too. When I went to Swallows last time – Christ, was it really so recently as that – she didn't know you when I asked her but she volunteered information about the baby the beautician brings with her. And her eyes did brighten, Tess, and her smile lasted. And she referred to Emmeline by name.

‘But God, Tess, the time she spent with Wolf or with Emmeline – it could only amount to a handful of hours. That's not a lot of respite from seventy-five seemingly miserable years, is it?

‘I didn't think she'd go. Not this year. Not next. I didn't really think about it or wonder. I was used to my image of her as a steely old battleaxe.

‘My father looked dreadful dead.

‘My mother looked good – she looked better. As if death had released her and had made her feel better.

‘I hope so.

‘What a life. A sad, complicated one.

‘I've seen, first hand, that where there is no love, there's only loneliness and discontent.

‘I don't want that for myself.

‘I'm glad that my life is nothing like hers. I hope she'd be glad for me too.’

Tess and Joe are sitting on the backless bench in the garden. Joe is facing one direction, Tess the other. Their bodies are close, side by side, their arms are linked. He's talked and she's listened, her head sometimes resting against his shoulder.

‘And you, Joe,’ Tess ventures, ‘how are
you
doing?’

The light is failing now but they both feel they could sit here all night. They might do just that.

‘I think I'm OK, Tess. I think so. When I was a kid I used to fantasize about them dying, then I could go and live by the Golden Gate Bridge. It wasn't so much the bridge that captivated me as the name – I heard the words “golden gate” as symbolic for the way through to a new life. When I was a teenager I used to think darkly, “I won't be sorry when you two are gone.” Then when I left home, it was a struggle to remind myself to visit, that they were getting old.

‘So here I am and how do I feel? How do I feel on the day my mother died? I don't know. I don't know. I think I'm still pumped with adrenalin. My mother – Mary Saunders née Holt – died today. Aged seventy-five. On the twentieth of June. Born December sixteenth. Died June twentieth. Rest in Peace. Peace on earth is certainly something she didn't have, Tess. Mostly, when I saw her, I was aware of that fact. I found the times when she was away with the fairies easier – even though it was less real and pretty depressing.

‘But to answer you straight? I feel sad – I feel a little lost – because I'll be burying my mother next to my father and what I'll mourn for my mother is what I mourned for with my father – for what they never were to me.’

On the day of the funeral, Tess went to Swallows as usual in the morning. Joe asked her if she'd mind leaving Emmeline with him.

‘I could stay too,’ she told him, ‘if you'd like the company.’

‘You can't do that,’ Joe said, ‘they're expecting you. They'll want their nails nice – for this afternoon. For my mum.’

‘She was a funny one, wasn't she,’ Mrs Corper said to no one in particular as Tess buffed her nails. ‘But she did love Emmeline,’ she said to Tess.

Laura caught up with Tess as she made to leave. ‘Joe all right – for this afternoon, like?’ she asked. She looked troubled, which was an expression Tess had never seen in Laura. ‘Tess – I wish I could say that she left letters and diaries and whatnots, but she didn't.’ It was as if Laura felt it was she who'd failed in some way.

‘Silly,’ Tess said soothingly.

‘But she did, once or twice, say something about Joe.’

‘Oh?’

Laura shrugged unhappily. ‘Once or twice she talked about him. And those times she called him “Joe, dear little Joe”. She looked ever so sad, though.’

‘What did she say – do you remember?’

‘Both times she said something like, “What a life he's made.” I'm pretty sure those were her words – or very close. I wish now I'd drawn a little more out – but you know me, always bustling about for smiles and happy stuff.’ She paused. ‘I feel I've let Joe down, now.’

‘Don't be daft, Laura.’ ‘Do you think he'd like me to tell him? What do you think, Tess – you know him best.’

Tess stood on the steps of Swallows thinking about Joe. Joe currently at home with Emmeline and Wolf. She thought back to all he'd said that night on the bench after Mary's passing. It seemed to Tess that actually, here was a man who'd somehow been able to rise above resentment or cynicism to become positive about the role of love in life. All the unhappiness and loneliness he'd experienced he'd overcome to be accepting of a sorry past and that it needn't sour his own future. So, did she think Joe would want to know that once or twice his estranged mother had referred to him as ‘Joe, dear little Joe’, that she'd all but acknowledged the life he had made all by himself? That in spite of the impression she gave to the contrary she was actually very proud of him?

‘I don't know, Laura.’

They thought about it quietly.

Laura looked at her feet. ‘I hope Mary wouldn't mind me saying so, but she had ample opportunity to call him “dear” to his face – and to give the compliment to him herself.’

Tess touched Laura's arm. ‘Joe said something really moving on the night Mary died. He said how he'd seen, first hand, that where there is no love, there's only loneliness and discontent. He said how he does not want that for himself.’

Laura nodded thoughtfully.

‘If you're asking me, Laura, I would probably say that Joe would not benefit from hearing about what Mary said to you. I think he had worked her out and he worked out how he felt about their relationship. To me, he's a very grounded man because he's figured out for himself that it is best to have something good, something happy, come from something not so good.’

‘We put manure down for the roses,’ Laura said, looking out at the bushes full of fat creamy roses in the garden. ‘See – that's something lovely that comes from plain shit.’

Tess burst out laughing. ‘Oh, Laura, I do love you,’ she said and she really meant it, Laura could tell.

‘See you this afternoon, pet,’ Laura said. ‘We'll give Mary a good send-off.’ She became teary. ‘She was an awkward old mare, but I did like her.’

‘Dead and buried, hey,’ Joe says, ‘gone but not forgotten.’

The funeral had been straightforward; dignified, not too long and quietly sad. Laura was there, as was the matron of Swallows. Four of the residents came as well as a few elderly people from town.

Joe and Tess are home now. He is surprisingly hungry, even after the sandwiches and the cakes at gone tea-time after the funeral. He's polished off the sausage, mash and beans that Tess has made him and she's passing her plate over for him to finish.

‘It was a nice service,’ she says.

‘Do you think I should have spoken?’

‘That's personal, isn't it?’ says Tess. ‘I wanted to speak at my grandma's funeral but everyone said it was for my mother to do, not me. Only she ended up not saying anything. And I had so much to say. But I liked the vicar today. And he knew your mother well. It's a lovely church too. I love it that they have those two resident sheep to keep the grass down.’

Tess goes to the fridge and finds yoghurt and fresh fruit and she brings these over for Joe. She cuts a slice from the sponge cake they found on the doorstep when they came home. Lisa had left it, with a sympathy card for Joe that was now with the others, on the Welsh dresser on the shelf below the KL and SOS photos.

‘God, what a week,’ he says, ‘what a week.’ ‘Can you take some time off work? Will you?’ ‘I suppose so,’ Joe spoons yoghurt thoughtfully. ‘Actually, do you know something, Tess, I'm going to. I'll take a week – maybe longer. I'd just really like to have a rest, actually. Do the walks and the picnics and the ice creams and the weekly shop and the bath-times. To be right here – with you and Wolf and Emmeline.’