Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

Lucia has already opened a bottle, but I have brought my Chianti with me. Tonight I shall celebrate my letter by drinking two bottles of good red wine… I feel warmer now, less sorry for myself.

Good. Fritti misti, and a fine dressed salad gleaming red and green under the candelabra Lucia lights for me every evening. Life in Venice is not so bad. I think Lucia would miss me if I went home. That enormous table, just for the padrone. The salad glowing like a vegetable garden on its field of immaculate white linen. The breathing bottle of Amarone. Ah, my delectable Amarone. Forget the Chianti, push it aside…

And it lurches and tips across the white linen, pale bluish-purple as it soaks underneath, a terrible, garish red in great lagoons around my plate, going quickly darker, it’s everywhere, I dab and squeeze with my linen napkin but the task is beyond me, I must ring for Lucia, spreading, staining, I have to help…

I tried to clear up but I wasn’t very good at it. In the hospital, I held the baby — Penelope let me hold the baby — while the midwives sponged and washed and scoured.

Penelope cut her wrists nine years later, in the office one Friday evening, when everyone had gone home for the weekend. It had taken her a very long time to die. There was blood on every scrap of paper. She wrote a letter which was brief and competent; Penelope was always competent. She’d astonished me during our divorce by the coolness with which she refused custody of the children. ‘I’m not going to be a single parent. I’m not going to wreck my life for you.’ Her affairs were all left in perfect order, but the mess in the office was indescribable. Her secretary, who had been with her for a decade, took pleasure in telling me all the details.

‘Lucia! Help!’ For it was on my letter. The top pages looked splotched with blood, I would have to rewrite it, all that work… but women are never there when you need them, and when she comes she will only scold.

Will Mary write?

Will Susy forgive me?

A letter came from Christopher Court. Beautiful writing, black italic. The first time he’s ever written to us. I was struck by how like the man the writing was, the thick black strokes like his thick dark hair. It was — dashing. Elegant.

Though his hair can’t be black any more. Last time I saw him was in the half-dark. He looked like death, pale and stricken, but even then he was handsome. I was furious with him, but he was still handsome. My heart still knocked in my chest to see him.

Stupid, all that should be in the past, I’m sixty-two years old, a grandmother, but nothing changes, my heart’s still young. It beat faster just to see the name and address on the back of the envelope. Christopher in Venice; that seems right for him too. He wouldn’t go to ground in Zurich or Brussels.

The letter itself was — what shall I say? I don’t want to complain, but it was… elusive. I love getting letters, and they’re so rare now, with everyone glued to mobile phones, the ring-tones shrilling all day and all night. I have a mobile, but I hardly ever use it. The most civilised people still write letters. I always answer the same day.

I sat down with the letter and a huge cup of tea, licking my lips at the thought of it. I didn’t tell Matthew; it makes everything so slow, he’s nearly blind and he won’t wear his hearing aid, I meant to give him a précis of it later, but the more times I read it, the less there was in it.

It was affectionate. Warm. Very warm. But there was nothing to get hold of. No news, for heaven’s sake, and I love news. Just the one passing mention of Alexandra. No mention of Isaac, or Chris’s time in prison. Perhaps he thinks we don’t know about all that.

When I read it again, it seemed a bit empty. Urbane and charming, like Christopher. But sentimental, just remembering the good bits. Frankly, that river-trip on Jessica’s birthday was a nightmare. Alexandra was over-excited — well, drunk; I seem to remember she took her clothes off, or flaunted herself in some outlandish way, and Matthew’s eyes were out on stalks, and Christopher looked smug instead of stopping her, and the children and I wanted to sink through the floor.

— That’s how she was. I suppose she couldn’t help it. Matthew always said, ‘But she’s so alive…’

Now he’s dying, slowly, he’s been dying for ages, it’s painful and messy and unglamorous, there isn’t enough money, the basement is leaking, and London seems a very long way from Venice. Chris asked for our news, but would he want to hear it?

‘So many of my memories are bound up with you.’ I wonder how much he really remembers. He’s clearly forgotten Dan’s name, for example. Does he remember when we last saw each other? I doubt it; men aren’t fond of mess. He flew straight back to Alex. That hurt my feelings. He didn’t bother to contact us. I’d have thought he’d have wanted to hear my story –

— No, I know he wouldn’t want to hear my story. I only know about real things, and he’s spent two decades escaping them. I cleared up the mess. It’s what women do.

I should still be angry with him, but I’m not. I couldn’t help feeling excited when I read that he was ‘thinking of coming back to London’. ‘Perhaps we shall meet before too long’ — my cheeks were hot; I’m not too old to flush.

After all, Alexandra is out of the picture. After all, Matthew’s only got a few months left…

— Oh God, I’m mad, I’m pathetic, forgive me. These terrible thoughts seem to think themselves, you get so exhausted when someone is dying that part of the brain has to plan an escape…

As if Christopher Court would ever look at me.

I’m ‘good old Mary’. He thinks I’m ‘kind’. He says so in the letter; I was ‘kind to Susy’. I’m a woman, as well, but he never noticed. He doesn’t know how often I pretended it was him when Matthew was making love to me. Sad little secrets. He’ll never know.

Once I nerved myself to the sticking point and told him I thought he was very attractive. The Belsteads were having a party, and Alexandra was showing off, as usual, doing limbo dancing with a beautiful black boy, back to back, dipping down, two bows, their two arched bodies nearly touching at the head, her flaming hair hanging down to the carpet, and from a distance she looked as young as the boy, who was actually the boyfriend of the Belsteads’ daughter.

Christopher sat on the sofa watching her. I’d come to sit beside him. ‘Amazing, isn’t she, Mary? I sometimes feel a lot more than fifteen years older than her… I sometimes feel an old man, watching Alex.’

I wanted to take his head in my hands. ‘You don’t look old. You’re… very attractive… I think you’re very attractive.’

‘How kind.’

— He didn’t notice how my voice shook, he didn’t know how hard it was for me to say it, he didn’t see I was sweating. He didn’t see me, in fact; he was looking at Alex. Always at Alex, never at me.

Forget all that. Doesn’t matter any more. I answer all my letters the same day. In any case I have some good news for Christopher (I do believe he cares about Susy deep down; I suppose I blame Alex for most of what’s happened).

— It seems to me Susy’s on the mend. I feel more hopeful about her than I have in years. I think she’s going to be OK.

She asked me to lunch the other day. Jessica said she would sit with Matthew so I could have a rest from the sickroom.

It was a typical blazing late-October day. We ate in the kitchen, which was cool, as always — how often I had sat there with Alex and Chris, half-watching our children playing in the garden, sunlight, shrieks, happiness — and as I listened to Susy I realised how far she’d come from the pink-cheeked child who used to doze on the lawn; I’d always thought of her as an overgrown child, but at last that day she seemed adult. And after all she is nearly thirty-seven, as she was to remind me later that day. There were roses from the garden in a yellow jug, and a yellow table-cloth. ‘How splendid… can’t be just for me.’