Michele Forbes - Ghost Moth

A porter arrives with a wheelchair to take Katherine to the Radiology Department, and with the porter is a friendly young nurse. When the results are examined by Mr. Kentworth, he will make a particular visit to Katherine and explain to her that, in his opinion, operating on the cancer is not an option. He will suggest radiotherapy and chemotherapy as a way forward. He will not inform Katherine to what extent the cancer has spread, but he will tell George. He will tell George that Katherine has, at most, six months to live and his lips will fall in a slight pout, as though he is about to say “Sorry.”

George had come from the room and had joined her on the veranda of the little hotel, wrapping his arms around her body and kissing her lovingly on the side of her face. They had stood together, watching the evening close in. In the gentle light of the sky, a stark white swollen Mexican moon had appeared, as though it had been switched on. And as the moments passed, they had stood and watched the sky grow darker and the milky rays of moonlight grow more intense, until their shadows were black and their skin was painted in lines of wet silver. Our honeymoon. I have never seen anything like this before, she had thought to herself.

And so it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to do.

She had turned her body around to George and had looked at him with the openness of a child. The long sigh she had given had signaled that she had felt within easy reach of herself. She had stroked the side of George’s face with the back of her hand and then, smiling at him as though she were slightly drunk, she had talked quietly and sweetly to him.

“George,” she had said. It had all seemed so perfect. “George, I want to tell you something.”

George had raised his eyebrows softly to indicate that he was listening to her.

“George, I want you to hear what I have to say. I want you to understand. I. .”

“I’m listening.”

Their faces had remained close. They had held their gaze on each other and the swollen moon had continued to bathe them in its generous light.

She had smiled. The moment to redeem herself had come.

“George, while we were engaged. . I have to tell you that. . well. .” It had felt as though there was a bubble of air in her throat. “Well, you see. .” The bubble broke. “Well. . you see, George — I was in love with someone else — I had fallen in love with someone else — I—”

George looked puzzled. “What did you say?” he asked as though he had misheard her.

“George, it’s important that you understand that this has nothing to do with us now, with what we have together now,” Katherine said, trying desperately to compose herself.

George remained silent, watching her. His face still held a questioning look.

After a few moments, Katherine spoke. “It’s something that has passed, is over,” she insisted. “It’s something that had meaning, but I know now. . it doesn’t mean. . ” With this, she slowly ground to a halt. She looked up at George. For a moment, George stared back at her and then he said quietly, almost imperceptibly, “Fallen in love? While we were engaged? Engaged to be married? In love with who?”

“I want to explain. .” she continued, hardly knowing what to say.

George slowly repeated his words in a feeble attempt to assimilate what he had heard. “What in God’s name—”

He rocked slightly back from her, his face fixed in a grimace, his arms still enclosing her, his eyes searching her face. But from the polite, quiet way in which he had spoken, from the way in which his words had been hinged with disbelief, she realized instantly that she had made a dreadful mistake.

“In love with who?” he insisted. She could feel his body tightening beside her. “What — Katherine — in God’s name do you mean?”

“George — it’s not what you think. It’s—”

“And what am I supposed to think? While we were engaged? What kind of thing is that to say?” George loosened his hold on her. “So what does that make me, then? Eh? What does that make me? Some kind of — bloody — some goddamn — bloody — fucking — joke! What have our years together meant!” George eyes blazed. “Who was it, for Christ’s sake?”

She began to backpedal then, tears streaming down her face, talking fast, trying to dilute the effect her words had had on George, and it was all ugly, every syllable of it. She was not even sure what she was saying anymore — gushing apologies, thin explanations, trying to make George understand. She shook her head in complete despair, more tears coursing down her face. “Someone I met — a tailor who — when I was playing Carmen — he died — he died George — he drowned — I couldn’t stop thinking about him — I’m so sorry — I tried, but I just couldn’t stop — but we’re married now, George — we’re married and it’s all different and—”

“Are you over him?” George’s voice had a vicious edge to it. “Are you?”

“Yes, George,” she said weakly, “of course I am.”

“I doubt that.”

It was an impulse she should have checked. An unguarded moment she herself should have understood. Rooted in the selfish desire to release herself from her guilt and eased forward by the heat and by the gentle thrill of her new surroundings, she had sensed a new beginning. She had wanted to put everything behind her. She had wanted to forget Tom. She had felt herself opened and lightened and, as a consequence, had foolishly thought that George would somehow understand all that and see something new in her to love.

And she could not undo what she had done. She could not unsay it. What had she been thinking? How was it possible that she had thought for one instant that George would not be decimated by her words? How cruel to cause him such pain. If she could have had that moment back again, she would have sealed it all in. She would not have opened her stupid mouth.

They stood for a few more moments on the veranda of their hotel, both of them silent and altered, and the night sounds surrounding them — a shutter being noisily closed, the complaining bark of an old dog, the clicking of some insect somewhere.

But George had understood, he said, he had understood what she had said to him, and he did not want to hear anymore. Then he turned away from her and walked slowly back into the bedroom.

Don’t walk away from me like that.

It had been the casualness of her impulse to confess that had hurt him deeply. She knew this. The terrifying ordinariness of her opening tone, she knew, had crushed him beyond belief. It was as though she had been telling him about what she had just seen, a lizard in the courtyard below, among the bougainvillea, under the swollen moon.

Elsa has never been inside a hospital. She had only ever been in the hospital car park at the time when Stephen was born. Stephen had developed jaundice, and so Elsa, Maureen, and Elizabeth hadn’t gone into the hospital, they hadn’t even gotten out of the car, but instead had pressed their faces against the car’s back window, waiting expectantly for their new baby brother to appear. George had gone into the hospital to tell Katherine that the girls were out in the car, and moments later, although it had seemed like an age to Elsa, mother, baby, and father had stood framed in the hospital window. The girls had waved excitedly at the vision. Mother was mother in a white robe. Baby was a little yellow Pope in knitted skins, his face the size of a yo-yo. Father had his arms proudly around them both.

Now Elsa has brought a comic with her. It is an old edition of Twinkle but there are at least two stories in it which she could certainly read again. She likes the story about the vet’s daughter. She would like to be a vet when she grows up. That’s why, Elsa is saying to her father as they walk together from the car park, the hospital will be an interesting place to visit, because doctors are a bit like vets, only people can talk to them and tell them what is wrong with them and animals can’t, and that really means that to be a vet, you’ve to be even cleverer than a doctor, because you have to work out what is wrong with the animal yourself.