Raking the Ashes (17 page)

‘No, no,’ I told him, suddenly curious. ‘Something’s been cancelled, so I’m coming home.’

What had I said? ‘So long as everyone down there is perfectly happy’? Well, perfectly happy they did seem to be. For the simplest of weddings, it looked pretty fancy. I pored over the very few photographs Minna had dared send up to us (the perfunctorily mothballed guests), pointing out clues to the nature of the occasion. ‘Everyone looks very dressed up. And isn’t that a yew-lined path?’ I glanced at Geoff. ‘Did you know the ceremony was to be in church?’

Geoff didn’t answer. He, too, had fallen into
private
-detective mode. ‘That’s bloody thick canvass for “a tiny marquee in case it rains”.’ He held the print closer. ‘Tilly, this photo’s grainier than the others. I reckon someone’s cut half of it off, and tried to disguise it by getting what’s left enlarged.’

I took it from him. ‘They’re hiding the wedding cake.’ I pointed. ‘See? Right at the edge there. That tiny rim of white.’

‘You think that’s icing?’

‘I’ll bet it is. And see where Minna’s looking? If it’s at the top of the cake, the bloody thing must have been the height of Mount Everest.’

Depressed enough for suspicion to have taken full hold, Geoff stabbed the next print with a finger. ‘Why would there be a silver gravy boat on the edge of this table if it was all just sandwiches like she said?’

I passed him the next one. ‘Look, here’s another give-away. I take it she couldn’t resist sending us this one so that we can join her in admiring the wonderful Elise—’

‘Saint Elise of the Free Barn.’

‘But see that puff of pink just behind?’ He squinted where my finger rested. ‘I reckon that’s a bit of bridesmaid.’ I put the boot in. ‘And there
were
proper speeches – unless this bloke simply stood up to fart.’

Geoff pushed the photographs away and made a stab at humour. ‘Good thing we didn’t go. Her
father
-in-law’s new suit would have put mine to shame.’

I didn’t answer since it seemed so cruel to remind him we hadn’t been invited. And I felt equally forlorn. That very morning I had looked at the calendar and noticed it was four months to the day since I had packed my bags. Four months of Harry so unhinged he made no sense. Four months of biding my time. And what had happened? Here, right at the end, as if to snuff out not just her father’s hopes and dreams but also mine, came Minna, carelessly tossing the two of us out in the same basket. For, for the first time ever, Geoffrey and I had been cast out together: a fully equal pair.

And what did I feel? Disappointment, pure and hard – as if an almost certain passport to freedom had been snatched away at the last hour. Once more I would be forced by circumstance either to whistle as I packed my bags the moment Harry came back to his senses – cruel and hard-hearted Tilly –

Or look for yet another excuse to leave.

HARRY MADE PROGRESS
. Those who have been through this particular wringer will know how time and again, and even in retreat, this sort of illness snatches back the days of hope till everyone involved is quite as raw and limp as in the worst times. But as the drug dosage lessened, Harry’s weepiness subsided and his concentration began to return. Soon, even his hands stopped shaking, and he was pretty well back to his old self. ‘A most optimistic prognosis,’ one of the doctors admitted cheeringly. ‘This could turn out to be a one-off, if he’s lucky.’

‘And if he stays away from all that crap that set it off in the first place,’ I said tartly to Geoffrey, ripping his neatly written
Tod rang
off the telephone message pad and dropping it straight in the bin. A few days later, Harry came back from an appointment with the
specialist
and thundered up the stairs to the small room I’d recolonized since he moved back where Minna used to be. ‘Tilly, where’s Dad?’

‘Carlisle. Some of that paper he delivered yesterday turned out to be the wrong sort.’ I looked up from the installation sheet I was studying. ‘Why? Everything all right?’

‘Better than all right. That hospital bloke just said he doesn’t want to see me again. I’m to make one last appointment with my regular doctor, and then I’m free.’

‘Really? You mean, not just off their outpatient list, but really free not to go back for more check-ups?’

‘What he said was, “See how it goes. Let’s just give it a whirl.”’ True to the specialist’s word, Harry stepped in the room to seize the back of my swivel chair and give it a celebratory spin. He took the first appointment that they offered him, a cancellation on the very next day, and came back on cloud nine. ‘Tilly, she’s wonderful!
Wonderful
.’

‘Yes. Geoff said she was good when he—’

‘No, not her. Not the doctor. Tara! The girl who’s helping out for a few weeks in the dispensary.’

I stared at his soppy, smiling face. ‘I hope for your sake she was just as smitten with you.’

‘I made her laugh,’ he said, the same way I’d have said ‘I built a rocket’ or ‘I went to Mars’, and launched
into
the story he told again to his father over supper, and then a third time after that, about helping this beautiful young woman shift a few boxes filled with patients’ case notes taken out of the old cabinets across to the glossy new filing units she had arranged to be delivered. One of the doctors had stepped in the room and, seeing a stranger with armfuls of confidential records, asked sharply, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Oh, don’t mind me,’ it seems that Harry had responded airily. ‘I’m just helping out with a cabinet reshuffle.’

Small enough joke. But it was Harry all over – the old Harry back again – and Geoffrey was thrilled. So he was predisposed right from the start to take to Tara. And take to her he did. When I came back from Aberdeen the following week, he told me excitedly, ‘I’ve met her, Til! We all went out for pizza. I liked her enormously, and you can tell she’s going to be so good for Harry.’

Perhaps, with things as they were, it wasn’t surprising I felt the need to remind him that women aren’t put on earth simply to serve some useful purpose for men. ‘That’s as may be. But what’s she
like
?’

He scoured his brain for some way of describing her. Then out it came. ‘She’s very pretty and she’s very nice.’

‘Is that it?’

You could tell from the look on his face he realized he’d failed some test that left him baffled. So he thought some more. ‘Oh, yes! And she’s a Christian.’

‘Meaning, exactly?’

‘You know. She actually prays. And attends special church meetings and things. Oh, and when she opened her handbag, I saw a badge pinned on the inside flap.’

‘A badge?’

‘Yes. In the shape of a dove. It said,
I am a Christian, clean and clear
.’

‘Curtains for Tod and the druggies, then. If it lasts …’

It lasted. No one could slide a sheet of paper between the two of them all through the summer. Tara wasn’t just pretty and Christian, she was bossy too. In the short time she worked in the dispensary, it seems she changed not just the cabinets but the computer procedures, the appointments system, and most of the doctors’ schedules. ‘My Christ, they’ll be relieved when she goes back down south,’ I whispered to Geoffrey after an hour of hearing Harry sing his girlfriend’s praises. ‘And I can’t understand why she is going back to Business School when, left to herself, she could already run the whole bloody planet.’

‘Her first degree isn’t enough. She wants to get her Masters.’

‘God help poor Harry,’ I muttered, though it was plain that he was blooming under the strict new regime. His hours of wakefulness snapped back to being those of normal people. He shyly crossed the name of his usual sticky cereal off our shopping list and asked for crunchy granola. One day I even caught him reading a book. By the start of September, he was firmly back on track with his studies. I took him to be one of Tara’s little projects – something to pass the time before her new course began. But I was wrong. It seemed the three-year age gap was of no significance to either, and Harry’s plans for a little break from his studies in the middle of term suddenly included a trip down to Sussex.

‘It’s to meet Tara’s mother,’ Geoff explained.

I grinned. ‘A-
ha
? The smoking widow?’

Geoff glanced round nervously. ‘Don’t say that, Tilly. It really isn’t funny. This problem with the circulation in Gloria’s legs is getting worse, and really worrying Tara.’

My sweet pink
arse
. As far as I could tell, Tara was simply peeved that her mother wasn’t following her regular strictures about the evils of smoking with the same bovine keenness Harry had shown to kiss the rod of good health. My stepson was reduced to the odd snatched cigarette and lashings of toothpaste. What did I care? Each week that passed, he was a stronger,
fitter
and a happier person. Even his new beloved’s organizational skills seemed to be brushing off on him. One day I found him at the kitchen table, poring over a map.

‘Where’s Torbury Bay, Til?’

I laid my finger on the little coastal haven into which Minna had vanished.

‘It’s not so far away from Sussex, then.’

‘No. Only five counties and about two hundred miles.’

He missed the sarcasm. ‘So Tara’s right. We might as well arrange to visit while we’re down there anyway.’

Thinking of all the times Geoff’s hints had fallen on deaf ears, I muttered, ‘You’ll be lucky,’ at the door Harry had let swing behind him. But lucky they were. Indeed, the suggestion that they drive along the coast for the weekend was snapped up eagerly. Minna was thrilled to show them her brand-new baby, and the sainted Elise apparently greeted the two young people as if they were long-lost family. Presumably with no extra barn in hand to offer the happy pair, she had to make do with bestowing her blessing – and going as far as hinting to Minna by the Sunday night that the only thing standing between Tara and the role of perfect godmother at little Pansy’s coming christening was the fact that she wasn’t yet married to Harry.

‘Strange that this Tara even gets to see my baby
granddaughter
before I do,’ Geoff groused, serving me notice with the unthinking little ‘I’ and ‘my’ that, now both his children appeared to be settling nicely after the troubles of the year before, I had gone back to being the invisible woman. It suited me. Invisibility can work two ways and, when you choose to let it, the habit of ignoring a partner’s claims may prove profitably catching. Within the last month, Mother had taken a definite turn for the worse. To me she looked the same: grey, curled and silent in her long barred cot. But one by one the nurses who popped in on me as I sat watching let drop sufficient hints to make it clear the end was coming fast. Ed made the noises but he didn’t book the flight, even after the final news came.

He did at least apologize. ‘I feel a bit bad, Til, leaving all the arrangements to you. But, as you know, it is my busiest time. And, after all, if you look at it sensibly, what’s the point?’

‘So I’ll just get on with it, shall I?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

And, if I’m honest, I preferred to sort things out alone. But what are you supposed to do with half the things in that last cardboard box? Spectacles still bearing fingerprints from the last time she made the effort to try to read a paper. Greetings cards that survived the last clear-out. The crucifix she never wore but couldn’t bring herself to throw away. And photos. Photos of
dogs
and Christmases, nephews and holidays, babies and gardens. All the detritus of a life that really finished years before. As quickly as I could, I rooted through for any official-looking papers I might need, then slammed the cardboard flaps down on the rest. Instead of setting off for home, I made excuses to Geoff (‘Just one or two more things to wrap up here’) and drove off the other way. It took a couple of hours, but finally I was back where I had driven in such a rage so many years before. The weather-beaten sign to Folly Leap still hung precariously from its post at the last fork in the road. From the outside, the small hotel looked just the same, but this time I didn’t stop. Instead, I took the car as far as I dared along the old dirt track that used to lead to Lartington Tower before the cliff crumbled. The place seemed very different without the comfort of moonlight. The last hundred yards were still fenced off for safety. I didn’t even bother to lock the car. The dark was so deep, even the most sharp-eyed thief would not have noticed it, hard up against the starless wall of black above the ocean. Lifting the box off the passenger seat, I rested it on the top of the
DANGER
!
DO NOT VENTURE BEYOND THIS POINT
sign as I climbed the gate, then carried it, step by careful step, over the ruts and tussocks of grass, to the cliff edge.

And there I hurled the very last things over. The
chain
of the crucifix swirled away into darkness. The greetings cards took wing for a moment as the night wind lifted them, then they too were swallowed into black. I heard the tinkling of the spectacles as, tumbling, they caught a few feet down the cliff. Over it all went – mother’s vaccination certificates, the last school report card of which she was so proud, even the tiny vase I filled with daisies once when she was sick. Over they went: comb, nail clippers, hairbrush, scissors, leftover shampoo – even the half-empty box of someone else’s tissues that happened to be beside her bed on the morning she died. Over and gone, all of it, everything useless and valueless, into the dark, down to the rocks on which waves crashed.

The rest of it I took back home with me. If you’re not stupefied with grief, all the procedures after a death seem remarkably simple. The terms of the will were clear – a simple brother and sister two-way split – and, making a fairly informed guess at the final amount after the bills were paid and taxes cleared, I realized I was quite grateful that Geoff had once again hoisted his personal flag over his own family. Indeed, I was pretty well sitting there waiting for the moment he brandished it, ready to pounce.