The Scrapbook (14 page)

Thinking of you.

Ivy

Rose,

March 19
th
'54

He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone.

No matter how many times I repeat it, it won't sink in. He's gone. Even though I sit here with his hand cold in mine and the stench from his decayed lungs sticky on my skin I can feel a twitch of fingers against my own. If I lean close that surely was a trickle of breath against my cheek? But he's gone.

I'm writing this to you while I wait for the doctor. I've sent Iris to the neighbours. She doesn't need to see her father like this. It will be a while before Dr Collins arrives for he prioritises the living over the dead, and rightly so. I hope he takes all day. Once he's here, and Edgar's gone, I'll have to busy myself with all of those tasks required of a widow. There'll be visitors, and endless cups of tea to drink, and a funeral to arrange. But for now it's just us. It feels so familiar in this room, it'll be strange to finally go back to the old bedroom, and even stranger to sleep in a bed again. This was supposed to be the nursery for our second child that never was. I can still see the faded jade outlines of an owl, a cat and a boat repeated over and over across the walls. I didn't ever think that the ghost that will now haunt it is to be the ghost of the one person I've loved more than any other.

I thought I'd be relieved when we reached this moment, but I'm not. The end was bad but I'd have it all back again, make him suffer again, to have him with me. I suppose I've always been selfish like that.

He doesn't even look like him any more. His face is withered and sunken as if he's struggled through decades of pain. His lips have disappeared. His chest, which used to be such a great comforting slab of muscle, has collapsed inwards and is now just gristle on bone.

The last few weeks were the worst. When he moved into this room it was only so that I could get some sleep at night but I think he left his soul behind in our marriage bed and he just gave up. I followed him with this chair and made it comfortable with cushions and knew we were in trouble when he didn't argue with me.

It was terrible, Rose, the way the tumour inside him feasted on his body. At first just a nibble here and a nibble there then larger bites when it got a taste for him until it eventually opened its great wide mouth and bared its sharp teeth and swallowed him down. And left me with nothing.

Iris wouldn't even come to the bedroom door in the final days, she was so scared of him. I hit her last week because I caught her holding the neck of her dress to her nose when she was on the landing, her face all screwed up. I hit her as hard as I could across the cheek and then pulled the dress down and made her breathe in huge gulps of air. I was screaming at her and she was screaming back at me and I would have hit her again but he fell out of bed in his agitation to reach us and it brought me to my senses. I went to find her once he was settled back into bed but she wouldn't look at me and she hasn't spoken to me since.

His fingers are starting to claw a little now and there's a peculiar hardness in his limbs as if he's been packed with straw. What was the straw man lacking? The straw man from Oz? It wasn't courage. I can't remember.

I've been fantasising for weeks about visiting that so-called specialist Edgar went to see on the mainland and sliding a knife into his back, right through, until I can see the tip of it poking through his tie at the front. He was fine until he went there. He had a cough, I know he had a cough, but he was fine.

He couldn't say much by the end so we'd just sit together and I'd hold his hand. He stopped eating and then he stopped drinking. He didn't take his eyes from my face. As soon as they opened they'd fix on me and they said everything his mouth couldn't.

He tried not to take his tablets, he didn't want to lose a moment of the time we had left, but I begged him and in the end he gave in. By that stage I don't think they did much for the pain but I have to think that they did something for it.

The sun's high in the sky now and the primroses I've kept on the bedside table are soaked with light. I think he really is gone, Rose. But at least I kept that promise I made him all those years ago. No spells. No charms. They may have helped him to live (and that I won't dwell on because it's not something I'll ever know) but at the cost of betraying his trust.

The friends we've made around here have been wonderful, making sure we don't starve and taking Iris to play with their children. You could never have called us a particularly sociable couple, we didn't need the company of other people when we had each other, but I'm grateful for the support now and reckon I'll be even more grateful over the coming months.

Rose, the reason for our estrangement is lying dead and cold before me and my heart is torn open. It feels as if some wild beast has it between its paws and is shredding it with claws of glass. He was yours before he was mine and in a different world or if you'd had a different sister he might still be yours now. Maybe he'd still be alive if I'd left him alone?

Please think of me. Please think of him. He really was the best man I've ever known.

Ivy

Dear Rose,

March 21
st
'64

Well, another anniversary endured and now passed. I can't believe it's been ten years since he died. Ten years! The primroses I've planted around his grave are coming into bloom and I think they'll do him proud this year.

This insomnia hasn't got any better. Last week my brain was so fogged I miscalculated a lady's change at the post office and she really took me to task over it, as if I'd deliberately set out to rob her of a few miserable pennies! Mr David said I should go to the doctor's surgery and ask for tablets. He's worried that my work will continue to suffer. But the only possible thing the doctor could give me to help me sleep would be my husband back in my bed, and the last I heard he wasn't a miracle worker, (far from it). I'm almost getting used to the sleeplessness now, anyway, it's been so long.

Word has got around that I'm a charmer and when I eye the queues I can tell immediately the ones who are waiting for a book of stamps and the ones waiting for assistance of a more personal nature. A few people have even come to the house but I gave them short shrift. There's been nothing too exciting (the usual water infections, sickly infants and ant infestations), and you'll be pleased to know, Rose, that I refuse to perform love spells.

From my seat at the kitchen table I can see Iris standing by the garden gate, dressed up to the nines and swinging my old sequined handbag, the one that Edgar bought me when we were first married. She's not even wearing her cardigan. She's waiting for her gentleman friend, though how she ever knows he's coming I just can't work out. More hope than actual information, I suspect. As far as I can gather (and she tells me nothing) she has no direct way of contacting him, so either they have a ‘drop' (I knew I shouldn't have let her watch those spy movies at the theatre when she was a young girl) where they exchange notes, or she simply decides on any random morning that today will be her lucky day and gets herself ready and waiting. It's starting to spit with rain now but she won't come inside, not even to fetch a coat.

I have my own theories about this man of hers but she won't so much as mention his name to me these days. I met him last month and it only took one good look at him to know what his game was. My eyes are still sharp enough to spot a married man a mile off! He was very polite, I couldn't fault his manners, but he smelt funny. He's from the mainland and said he travels here to meet clients. He works for a pharmaceutical company and tried to make it sound very exotic but he's just a jumped up travelling salesman from the sound of it. He reeks of wealth and is certainly handsome, but he's got to be fifteen years older than her. And she won't let poor Tommy have a look-in no matter how he moons around her.

He, the oh-so-flash one, became very shifty when I started asking him questions. He's very clever at not actually answering anything asked of him, whilst making it seem as if he's as open and honest as the next man. He was itching to leave after about half an hour, I think he knew I had his number, and he hasn't been back inside the house since.

I want to sit Iris down and tell her that he's married but fear that'll just make her hate me the more. She was always a dissatisfied girl, but it was only after Edgar died that things between us really broke down. I was so consumed with my own loss that I didn't allow her a moment to express her own grief and now I think it's too late. I guarded my widowhood and my memories too jealously. I still do, if I'm honest.

She's turned eighteen now and shows no interest in getting a job or doing anything much at all. There's always work at the soap factory but she turns her nose up at the thought of it. I know she believes this man will be her knight in shining armour and sweep her off to exotic lands, but even a fool can see that he wants her to stay right where she is.

She's still waiting out there, and it's starting to rain hard now. I'll take her a coat. Not that I'll get thanked for it.

With love, as always.

Ivy

Dearest Rose,

11
th
Dec '66

I'm a grandmother! Oh, and she's beautiful. I held her in my arms before anyone else and in that instant it was as if my heart had come back to life. She's going to be called Fern, at my insistence. She would have shared a birth date with my own lost Fern, if my Fern had survived to be born, and so the parallels couldn't be overlooked. Iris says she doesn't mind and I can call her what I like.

Who would have thought that there would be such a happy ending? If you'd told me five months ago that I would fall in love with the child I would probably have turned you out of the house. It makes me ashamed to think how difficult I made things for Iris when she was pregnant.

Needless to say,
he
hasn't been to visit his daughter, though as there's no way she can get a message to him I suppose we shouldn't expect him. But she does expect him, I know she does, and she called out for him throughout the birth. Poor Tommy, who came to collect us, looked sick with worry. It was as if he were the father. He carried Iris up the hospital steps and kept her in his arms even when a wheelchair was brought. I think he would have carried her all the way into the delivery room and stayed by her side if he'd been given a chance.

She's upstairs resting at the moment; the labour really took it out of her. She barely stirs even when Fern starts up for a feed. I should really speak to her about weaning Fern off the breast and onto bottles so that I don't have to disturb her every time my little one needs a feed.

I do wonder if she's depressed, or maybe pining for him. It's been a couple of months since I heard his car in the lane outside. But what did she think was going to happen, for pity's sake? A man doesn't leave the wife just because the mistress has his child. And besides, he may well have half a dozen legitimate children for all we know, and not be overly impressed at the thought of adding another baby to his bloodline. But it's not even as if she's ever shown an interest in finding out. If I were in her position I wouldn't rest until I knew everything there was to know about his life away from me. Everything.

So, this may well be the last we see of Mr Flash Suits, and I for one won't shed a tear at the thought. There was a time, last year, when I actually considered casting a love spell to bind him to her and I came very close to doing it as well. But despite her misery and my longing to make her happy something stopped me. I'm so glad now that it did. If I had, and it worked, they'd be together somewhere away from here and I wouldn't have the joy of raising Fern.

So you're a great-aunt now, Rose, as well as an aunt. How old we're getting. My hair's more grey than black these days, and my knees creak when I stoop down. But I don't mind any of it really. I've had my youth, and I had Edgar, and now I have Fern. I just hope that things can be easier between Iris and me in the future. I'm determined to try my hardest with her and she's going to need me a lot more than she realises.

The warmth from the stove is releasing the scents from the dried fruit and spices I've got piled on the table, and the kitchen smells like the gingerbread cottage! It's even weaving its way into Fern's dreams, she's starting to stir and snuffle now. I've hung a muslin bag from her crib and filled it with chips of tourmaline, to keep her safe. There's also a small chunk of amethyst under her mattress, by her feet. I was worried that Iris would scoff and insist I take them away but she hasn't even noticed.

I promise to think of you on Christmas morning, with much love. I might even take a walk after lunch so that I can see Sorel and feel closer to you all. Of course, that will depend on whether Fern allows me an hour to myself.

With lots of love,

Ivy

Dearest Rose,

July 8
th
'71

So, mother's dead.

In a way I'm glad that it takes three days for the ferry to spit out Sorel's Evening Post on Spur's shore. If I'd known in time for the funeral then maybe I would have considered travelling over. Maybe I would have thought I should have. And that's not how I ever imagined a return home to my island.