The Son-in-Law (45 page)
So from then on we became regular visitors at Flawith Cottage. Freddie loved to sit in a striped deckchair in the long garden, quietly inhaling the life of the place. His grandchildren took it in turns to hang around beside him, nattering about their schools and friends, perhaps pointing out a butterfly or chuckling with him at the antics of the tabby kitten they’d brought home from the RSPCA. The children were our joy—more importantly, they were our hope.
One autumn evening, Freddie and I were sitting side by side as the sky deepened. He was exclaiming at the aerobatics of a swift, while I made a hash of painting a blush-pink rose. Scarlet had plumped herself down on an upturned bucket with a chicken in her arms, and was chatting merrily to us both. The scars on her arms were barely visible now. The air was starting to feel chilly, but I didn’t want to go inside. I was thinking about fetching a sweater for Freddie when Joseph strode out through the back door, carrying two tartan rugs.
‘Here we are,’ he said, and spread one each across our knees.
‘Good God, Scott!’ I protested. ‘D’you think we’re two old codgers?’
He grinned. ‘Can I take the fifth on that?’
It was kind of him, but I felt awkward. I still found it difficult not to bristle in his presence, no matter how affable he tried to be. At that moment Rosie appeared at the back door with a bottle and some glasses, and her calm and warmth set everything to rights. Freddie’s face lit up, and he lifted a thin hand in salute. She smiled, crossing to him with her easy gait.
‘Can you smell the heather?’ she asked, inhaling deeply as she took his hand. ‘It’s in bloom.
So
beautiful. Tomorrow we must go for a drive across the moors.’ She poured us each a glass of wine, and lowered herself into the last empty deckchair.
‘Hello, Stepmother,’ said Scarlet cheekily, as she set her chicken down.
Rosie stuck out her tongue at her. ‘The next time you call me that, I’ll tan your hide. Makes me sound like a witch with an evil cackle and poisoned apples.’
‘Whereas,’ retorted Scarlet, rushing to throw her long arms around Rosie’s neck, ‘you’re actually the tart who snogged my father at York railway station—right by the door so they couldn’t close it—providing free entertainment for the entire Plymouth train.’
The newspapers had a field day when Joseph and Rosie married. They tried to make it a hush-hush affair at a registry office: just the two of them and the children, and Rosie’s brother Tom and his partner, with Abigail and young Akash for witnesses. I am sure none of those people were indiscreet but the story got out somehow. You wouldn’t believe the appalling rubbish that was printed.
WIFE-SLAYER WEDS EX-NUN
!
shrieked one member of the gutter press.
PROBATION, CHASTITY AND OBEDIENCE
?
asked another.
BLACK VEIL TO WHITE: WHY SISTER ROSEMARY GAVE UP HER CALLING FOR A KILLER
.
We coped. We’re used to it in our family; we know all about being in the paper for the wrong reasons.
As we sat in the garden of Flawith Cottage, the sky became streaked with red fire. Rosie and I began to talk about the research I’d been involved in over the years; she had a good mind and she grasped ideas very quickly. After a time, the scents of evening began to call to us and she and I took a stroll down the garden, enjoying the stillness. Joseph and Freddie were listening to Scarlet telling a long and apparently hilarious anecdote—complete with funny voices, gesticulations and dramatic tosses of her head. Rosie watched the three for a moment before turning her steady gaze on me.
‘Do you still think he doesn’t deserve to be loved?’ she asked.
I wasn’t ready for the question. ‘I think . . .’ I looked again at Joseph. He sat leaning forward in his chair, his forearms on his knees, delighting with Freddie in Scarlet’s monologue. ‘I think that he
is
loved.’
‘I’m not sure you’ve answered my question.’
I picked a fallen apple from the ground, turning it around in my hand. There was something that had to be said; something I’d never openly expressed before, even to myself. ‘We didn’t do enough.’
‘When didn’t you?’
‘Freddie and I knew in our hearts that Zoe was ill again. We had the knowledge and experience, we’d seen it all before—and we could feel the storm clouds gathering. I did try to talk to her about it, but she became angry and I didn’t want that. We told ourselves we’d end up alienating ourselves if we interfered. Perhaps . . . if I’m really going to be honest, perhaps I even felt it was Joseph’s turn to go through the mill. So we stuck our heads into the sand, and went along with her life view.’
‘Joseph didn’t ask you for help?’
‘No, he didn’t. But we should have offered it. To that degree, at least, we too are culpable.’
‘Nobody could have seen it coming,’ said Rosie gently. ‘What happened, I mean. Zoe’s death.’
I straightened my arm, holding up the apple. It made a circular hole in the fiery sky. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘I think I did see it coming. I always felt that her life wouldn’t run its natural course.’
Scarlet was still entertaining her father and grandfather. She’d stood right on top of the bucket now, and had begun declaiming.
‘Of course Joseph deserves to be loved,’ I said. ‘But Zoe died at his hand. Please don’t ask me to forget that.’
Suddenly, Freddie levered himself out of the chair. He stared around confusedly, probably looking for me. Then he began to stumble off into the darkness, towards the hen house. Joseph leaped to his feet.
‘Can I help, Gramps?’ called Scarlet. ‘Where are you going?’
‘It’s all right,’ I said quickly, running to take his arm. I turned him around and led him towards the back door of the cottage, staying close beside him right into the bathroom. It wasn’t something I’d ever imagined I’d be doing, but I really didn’t mind.
It was both my horror and my privilege—and yes, sometimes my drudgery—to walk beside my soulmate as his body, his dignity and his mind crumbled.
I hate to admit this—really, I hate to—but perhaps it was a good thing our grandchildren weren’t living with us towards the end of Freddie’s life. Dying isn’t a cheerful business. Even Freddie couldn’t make it so, though heaven knows he tried.
They weren’t there the night he fell heavily between the loo and the bath and dislocated his shoulder, and I simply couldn’t lift him up, and he was in such terrible pain. They weren’t there when he asked where Zoe was, and wept inconsolably when he remembered. They didn’t see him wandering off along Faith Lane, demanding to ‘go home’ (go where? The home of his childhood? Demolished in the 1970s, to make way for a motorway). They didn’t catch me crying when, for the first time, he asked me who I was.
Those last days weren’t the most glamorous he and I ever had together; they weren’t the sexiest, that’s for sure. Yet I treasured them. Just Freddie Wilde and me, living in our shambolic home, somehow finding a path through each moment. Together.
The children had been gone for over a year when—kneeling carefully to examine a ladybird among our spring flowers—Freddie suffered that final stroke. The one that blew out the candle.
Scarlet
It was only the second funeral I’d ever been to. They persuaded Hannah to hold it in the Minster, because Gramps was distinguished and adored, and so many people wanted to be there to give him a send-off. He had glowing obituaries in both
The
Times
and the
Guardian
. Beat that.
Ben and Theo were wearing brand-new suits, bought for the occasion. Ben looked cute in his. I’m sure he’ll always be cute. He’ll always trade on it, too, because he is a spoiled little brat and we all dote on him. Theo’s still a miniature version of Dad—except he has that lanky, slightly spotty look boys get when they’re about to have their growth spurt. His nose isn’t a button anymore; it’s starting to be more of a hooter. He’ll be hot one day soon, and I plan to vet his girlfriends. Bitches and bimbos need not apply. Ditto the cool gang.
Hannah had been like a tissue-dispensing machine for days, because we three grandchildren had been bawling our eyes out. She was totally dignified but she looked wrong without Gramps at her elbow. She looked like a half-person. He had always, always been there, even when he was slow and jumbled; and now suddenly he wasn’t. All that week, besieged by undertakers and vicars and relatives and weeping friends, Hannah must just have wanted him back, but I hadn’t seen her shed a single tear. I don’t know how she did it.
Hundreds of people turned up for the funeral, including a crowd of what Gramps used to call ‘luvvies’. To them it was obviously a giant reunion, and they were delighted to meet up with old friends. I have never seen so many air kisses on one day. Jane Whistler was there, looking fashionable but sad. Mr Hardy was too, and I’m pleased to report that he’d given the purple shirt a miss. Aunt Marie came along, of course, though there still wasn’t much love lost between her and Dad. Rosie sat with our family, in the front row of seats. She and Dad looked lovely together. They fitted.
Gramps planned his funeral not long before he died, in one of those precious moments when the mist of his confusion seemed to part for an hour. He wasn’t a revered theatre director for nothing, and it was the most glorious service. He especially wanted to choose the six people who would carry him out of the Minster at the end. He asked Hannah to write down the names of these honoured pallbearers, and got her to promise that she would invite them all. Four were very dear friends of his, all from the theatre world. The fifth was me. The last one was Dad.
As we lifted the coffin from its stand, the organ struck up so loudly that Ben covered his ears. The music made me feel as though I could fly, as though I could take off and soar as high as the vaulted ceiling. It was like a thousand trumpets sounding. They were sounding for Frederick Wilde: brilliant director, funny storyteller, kind listener, lover of lichen and tiny things. Frederick Wilde, who adored my mum and forgave my dad.
The coffin was heavier than I expected. Hannah had someone lined up and ready to take over if I couldn’t manage, but I was almost sixteen, and practically as tall as some of the men, and I was bloody well going to do this last thing for my grandfather. We walked slowly, pacing down the long aisle of the Minster while the choir joined in with the organ and sang the most beautiful music I have ever heard. There were tears streaming down my face, my nose was running and my tissue was in the pocket I couldn’t reach, so I must have looked a sight. Dad was walking in front of me with his strong hand curled around the handle. I’m pretty sure he was trying to take on extra weight so as to make my job easier.
Breezy sunshine met us outside, and the pavement was strewn with pink blossom. It made me think of confetti at a wedding. We carefully laid Gramps in the back of a car, and the undertaker began to replace the wreaths. People in dark funeral clothes were streaming out of the Minster, while tourists in anoraks queued to get in.
Theo nudged me. ‘D’you think Mum’s here?’ he gulped miserably.
I tried to imagine Mum standing beside us, green eyes in a laughing face.
‘I’m sure she is,’ I fibbed. ‘And Gramps as well. I can feel them.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
Hannah had drawn a little apart from everybody. Endless people kept stopping to say kind words and she replied graciously to each one, but she seemed utterly alone. Nobody stayed with her for long; they moved on to jollier companions. She was wearing her special emerald earrings, the ones that Gramps had given to her. As I watched, she rested her hand on the coffin. I knew exactly what she was doing.
The next moment, Dad was beside her. He didn’t say anything at all, and neither did she. I don’t think either of them needed to. He put his arm around her shoulders. They stood side by side, quietly saying goodbye. I hoped Gramps could see them; he’d be turning cartwheels. I imagined him and Mum, and Dick Turpin, and Elvis Presley, and a metal-skirted Roman soldier and a couple of dazzling angels, all drinking a toast in their heavenly café.
‘To absent friends!’ they yelled, and tossed back their glasses of nectar.
It was a blue and gold morning, and a million daffodils rippled beneath the city walls.
Charity Norman was born in Uganda and brought up in successive draughty vicarages in Yorkshire and Birmingham. After several years’ travel she became a barrister, specialising in crime and family law in the northeast of England. Also a mediator, she is passionate about the power of communication to slice through the knots. In 2002, realising that her three children had barely met her, she took a break from the law and moved with her family to New Zealand. Her first novel,
Freeing Grace
, was published in 2010 and her second,
Second Chances
, in 2012 (published in the UK as
After the Fall
).
The Son-in-Law
, her third novel, was published in 2013.