The Other Half of My Heart (21 page)

It's all right, she'd said, I'm going by train. It's only going to be the family.

And it wasn't really a lie. Bettina's first impulse had been to make the funeral a family-only event. When her father had died, she had insisted on this. The thought of returning to Missingham had been bad enough, without the possibility of unexpected or unwanted additions from the Randolph family past coming along. Alice, subdued by illness, loss and medication, hadn't objected. She had been serene until they reached the graveside, when she had started to sob and wail and cling. Bettina had let herself be clung to, and watched her father's coffin join her brother's and thought: when it's me, what will I do? Where will I go? Pragmatically, she didn't much care, or at least that's what she told herself. She had thought about her choices: here, in a place that made her heart hurt, that she dreaded even the name of, with her family: or somewhere else – where? – alone.

Earth thrown, they had turned away, and as they did so Bettina had thought she heard her name called, and that she could see someone waving. But it couldn't be anyone she wanted to see, and so she had kept on walking. When she thought about it later, she became sure that the wave and the shout were imagined, and the person she had seen was just another mourning pilgrim, laying flowers in the sun.

But now, for Alice's funeral, there isn't a lot of family to call upon. The thought of standing by the grave as the sole mourner, the orphan outnumbered by the three dead members of her family, had struck Bettina as being needlessly melodramatic, and exactly the sort of thing that her mother wouldn't have wanted. So she had extended a general invitation to the care home for anyone who wanted to be present. ‘Staff and residents,' she carefully added to the email, ‘but otherwise this is a private affair.'

She goes by train to Missingham, a messy journey south with changes at Reading and Guildford. She's carrying a basket full of bread, which she takes to the Green Dragon before making her way to the church. She checks the cheese and wine, and makes sure that there are turning circles for wheelchairs, straight-backed, high-seated chairs for those who struggle to sit down and get up, as well as sofas for the more sprightly. Cups and saucers stand ready next to wine glasses on the table at one end of the function room. There's nothing for Bettina to do. So she makes her way up the hill to the church. She goes to the graveside first, just to test how she will feel at the sight of her brother's and father's names, and thinks of how the three of them will soon be lying side by side, her the odd one out. Her mother's grave, freshly dug, waits with an unseemly hunger.

The service is brief. Most of the small congregation trills valiantly through ‘All Things Bright And Beautiful', although Bettina's vocal cords will not loosen and allow her to join in. The wake is cheerful. Most of the guests are old women. They line up to tell Bettina how much her mother liked to watch everything that was going on, whether she remembered it or not; how she liked her food; oh, how that woman snored! The staff who came with them have similar stories, but add, carefully, that they believe that Alice was happy. Bettina nods. She believes them, knowing she could choose not to but not seeing the point.

Once everyone has said what they need to her, she finds a sofa, takes Brie and grapes and baguette, and watches as her guests chirrup and smile about her mother, happy to have known her, unsurprised by the way – and the fact – that her life has ended. She supposes that everyone here is used to death, and sees it as natural, inevitable, and maybe even welcome.

For Bettina, deaths have been, for the most part, shocks, wrenches. She thinks she might be able to manage this one better, and twists Alice's ring, which still sits on her own wedding finger. Every time she thinks of putting it away, she can't decide where to put it. She doesn't have enough jewellery to justify a jewellery box and nowhere else feels safe enough. She wonders whether it's too late to be happy, and, if it isn't, where she will find her happiness. When she isn't with Rufus, it feels as though he would be just right for her. When they are together, she feels as though she is wearing the wrong shoes all the time, although he does nothing to make her feel that way. It's probably her, with her unrealistic expectations, her shrivelled heart. ‘Are you all right?' Rufus asks, often, in the evenings that they spend together.

‘No,' she will say, then, ‘Yes,' and she will remind herself that she is not herself, and that she can't be easy to be around right now, and she will smile and reach out to him, and he will smile and touch her hair. She suspects that they both, separately, remind themselves that these are not easy times, and that making a relationship work, like working through grief, is a job that needs to be done. She can see how much effort he is putting in, and she hopes that he can see hers. She's noticed that he has photographs on his fridge now. There's one of Rufus, Bettina and Daisy and the horse, and one of Kate and Daisy, looking not at the camera but at each other, Daisy's finger on Kate's nose, the two of them laughing. There's one of her and Rufus smiling for a stranger they had asked to take their photograph on a Sunday walk, although she doesn't think either of them look very happy in it. When she'd said so to Rufus, he'd said, well, we will just have to pose for more photographs, until we get better at it. They seem to have gone from not-even-dating to settled with very little in between. Bettina thinks perhaps that's best. She doesn't want to be swept off her feet. She likes the ground, which she trusts. And this is the closest she's had to a relationship for a very long time.

The door to the function room opens. Bettina glances up, wondering whether there's a latecomer that she'll need to go and talk to.

And there is Roddy Flood, as real as this morning, as smart as an extended trot, looking around the room. She's not sure whether she gasps aloud but her whole body seems to grab for breath, for purchase. It's been fifteen years. Since the moment she'd discovered that Roddy had been to see Alice, Bettina has turned over the possibility of him coming to find her, too; but she hasn't been able to get past her memories of Roddy, striding, swinging a leg over a horse as he dismounts, wrapping his legs around hers to stop her from getting out of his bed. Whether she has thought about Roddy or deliberately not thought about him, for the last fifteen years he has been the background to everything, becoming more myth or dream than man.

As soon as he sees her he starts to cross the room towards her, and she's glad that she thought about wheelchairs, although anyone from the nursing home who needs help to get around is using walking sticks or wheeled frames. As he makes his way, with a series of ‘excuse me's and ‘thank you's, Bettina gets to hear his voice before he reaches her: remembers how soft it is, a dark-brown voice, her mother used to say. ‘Roddy's on the phone,' she'd call, and then, as she handed over the receiver, ‘lovely voice, that boy.' He still has the same physical confidence, moving his wheelchair the way he could make a horse move, tight inside turns and perfect aerodynamics. But then again, he has had fifteen years to get used to it. His hair is as dark as it always was, but cut close to his head now. He's almost upon her before he looks full into her face.

Bettina knows she should have got up and gone to greet him, but she has no feeling anywhere except in her heart, which is a fish on a hook, and her eyes, which are taking in every last bit of him, soaking him up. His broad shoulders, his solid body, his still legs, his feet in cowboy boots. His eyes. His smile, that twists, and twists a smile from her in answer.

‘Tina.'

‘Yes.' She starts to nod and can't stop. Her mouth is dry. Her hands are hot. Her heart – oh, there are no words for all that's happening in her heart.

‘I know I wasn't invited. I wanted to—' He holds up his hands, a gesture that says, I'm just going to say it. ‘I wanted to see you.'

Bettina nods. She knows that she can see him, hear him, but she's waiting for it to feel real.

‘I'm sorry about your mother,' he says.

‘Yes.' Bettina can't seem to find another word. Her hands have found some feeling now, though, want to move; to touch his face, hair, hand, mouth. She makes them go to her lap instead, where they worry at each other.

‘It was good to see her still enjoying her birds.'

‘Yes.' Roddy's ten words disrupt a fragile heap of memories. Her mother's excitement at the yellowhammer's occasional visits, the elaborate seed-and-lard concoctions she used to make, slice and put out on the lawn on frosty mornings. Roddy's face as he struggled to hold a conversation about sparrows and tits. She smiles, and tears come to her eyes for the first time today. She feels her head nodding. She can feel that Roddy is watching her, although she has turned her face away.

‘Aurora told us your mother was in a home, and we called everywhere until we found her,' Roddy says. ‘I hope you don't mind.'

‘Of course not,' Bettina says. He nods. There's the smile. There's Bettina's own smile, reflecting back, like an old dance step never forgotten.

‘It's just that—' Now Roddy looks away, quiet.

‘What?' She wants to touch his hand. Even after all this time, even with his chair and her limp and the fifteen years and the room full of elderly ladies, it seems wrong to sit this close to Roddy and not to touch him. He still looks good in a five-o'clock shadow.

‘I didn't know that I'd be welcome,' Roddy says. ‘I know she thought it was all my fault.'

‘She thought it was my fault too. And my father's, and her own.'

Roddy shrugs. It's a gesture that says, I know I'm right, but I'm not going to argue with you. ‘She seemed pleased to see me. I don't think she knew who my mother was. I felt as though we had gone,' he thinks about his words, ‘a long way back.'

‘The last thing she said was that you'd been, and that you're a lovely boy.' Bettina's left hand reaches for his hand, squeezes it.

‘Really?' Bettina had been hoping to comfort, but Roddy looks stricken. He closes his eyes, opens them, and using his left hand moves his chair, just a fraction, so that she has to let go. She sits her hand back in her lap, her fingertips and palm slighted.

The wake, excited for a moment by the new arrival, has gone back to talking among itself.

‘My mum still bakes her own bread.'

‘Does she?' Bettina isn't good at conversational gear changes.

‘They live in the main house, still. I live in the grounds. A converted barn, but converted to a bungalow,' he gestures towards his wheels, ‘obviously.'

He laughs. Bettina doesn't. She has a sensation of watching herself from above: sees her shoulders tight, the pulse of her breathing at her breasts instead of her stomach, her hands holding each other.

Roddy looks around. He indicates the table, where a few baguettes, breadsticks, small plaited rolls and half a soft sage loaf sit. ‘Did you bake those?'

‘Yes.' Her first plan had been to provide cheese and baguettes. Then, last night, she'd thought of false teeth and old, tired jaws, and gone back down to the shop kitchen in her pyjamas to mix up some plump, white dough to bake plump, white bread from. It had sat, still warm, next to her on the train, and she'd pulled the basket on to her lap and felt it comfort her. She thinks, after all this time, we are talking about bread. She still wakes from dreams where all she can remember is that she was dreaming of Roddy and her body is hot and longing.

‘Is your leg all right? Your pelvis?'

‘Yes.' Somehow, on this more dangerous ground Bettina is more free to speak. Perhaps it's because this is closer to the conversation she thought they might have. ‘It hurts sometimes, I limp sometimes, when I'm tired. It's – it's the place where my stress goes.' Roddy is looking down at his hands in his lap. Or maybe at his own legs. ‘I have no right to complain,' she adds, shamed.

He looks up. ‘Because you're alive? Because you're not in a wheelchair?'

Bettina can't read his face. His face was never unreadable to her, before. Even when she woke up before him, in the farmhouse, she could tell whether he was dreaming. When he rode back into the stable yard, she could see whether he was pleased with the way he'd ridden and whether he thought he had done justice to himself, his mount, his father. But now, there's nothing she can make sense of in his almost-smile, his eyes looking down at her hands. She wonders whether she is unreadable to him, or if he can see what she's feeling. Is this what happens, her heart is asking, when the thing you've been dreading finally comes to pass, and it turns out to be like this? Unleavened. Changing nothing. When you admit that what you say you have been dreading might really have been what you were hoping for, and it turns out that it was just a stupid waste of hope.

‘We trained two horses that went to the Olympics, and two to the Paralympics,' Roddy says. His tone is light, conversational, but Bettina hears: you gave up. People worse off than you, people who have been through worse than you, are riding still.

‘That's good,' she says.

‘Yes,' he says. She wants to touch him again; doesn't dare.

Rebecca is standing behind Roddy. When she sees that Bettina has noticed her, she explains that the minibus is here, and they need to be getting back.

Bettina stands and smiles, bracing for the last round of her duties today. Her legs are steady enough but her heart is shaking in her chest.

‘I'm sorry to interrupt,' Rebecca says.

Roddy looks up at her, and says, ‘You're not interrupting anything.' He shifts his glance, and seems to look worlds at Bettina, but ‘Goodbye, Tina' is all he says before he turns more or less on the spot and starts to head back to the door.

Bettina is only just starting to understand how much she has been waiting to see Roddy again. She panics, flails.