Maggie Gee - Where are the Snows

But as the blare of the fiesta faded away, I was left alone with the new normality, I walked into the horror of the empty flat and slipped my fingers under my blouse, feeling for the thing I had not imagined.

I thought I had only been out half-an-hour, but somehow two hours had rushed past. I had the sensation of time speeding up. Certain things became clearer, more certain.

I would die if I didn’t talk to him.

(And yet the lump was so little, so dainty, tucked so demurely under my armpit. And I knew most lumps weren’t cancerous; why should I be among the unlucky few? — But I had never been one of the many. I had always been one of the few.)

I hardly ever used my mobile; the problem was I could never find it when I really needed to make a call. I wasted another hour searching and cursing; I had used the bloody thing only that morning… By the time I found it I was on the edge of tears, and the certainty I’d felt was leaking away.

It was nine o’clock in Mexico City. I pressed for the time in faraway London. Four o’clock. What an English time. It would be tea-time in England now.

— After all these years, the house would be sold. That was why Susy hadn’t answered my cards, it wasn’t because she was angry with me. As I dialled I already knew what would happen; the little lapse in time for a trip round the world, the twenty-first century hadn’t changed that, my hunger to hear him wouldn’t change that; then the long despairing howl of Number Obsolete . Or the bell would ring in the familiar house, disturbing a stranger eating toast in the garden, I would gasp out my name, I would ask for Chris, and an unfamiliar voice would say ‘Sorry, wrong number.’

The little lapse in time seemed longer than usual. I imagined my hope running under grey oceans where everyone I’d ever known was drowned, and the wire just missed him, floating face downwards, while a nightmare version of Susy screamed ‘He’s rotten, you fool. He died years ago.’ Someone picked up the phone. My heart thudded.

The ‘Hallo’ that followed was curious, hopeful, but still recognisably Susy. But I wasn’t sure. I asked her, terrified, deferring the moment when I had to say my name and explain what my business could possibly be; in any case I no longer knew, in my guilt and fear I knew nothing clearly except that I badly wanted to ring off before she started to abuse me.

‘Is that Susy Court?’

‘Speaking.’ A long silence. ‘Hallo?’

‘Yes. It’s… Alexandra. Alexandra, your stepmother.’

Then it was her turn to be silent. ‘Oh… I got your postcard. Congratulations.’ She sounded as apprehensive as me.

‘What do you mean, congratulations?’

‘You were just about to adopt a child —’

‘Never mind that, it’s not important. I mean — never mind what I mean. Do you know — I suppose you don’t know — do you have a phone number for your father?’ I said ‘your father’ to propitiate her, to say I acknowledged her prior claim.

Another long pause. I could hear her breathing, I could hear our breathing, my chest had tightened, I prepared myself for her refusal.

‘Well — as a matter of fact he’s here… with Mary Brown. Do you remember her?’ — and I swear her voice had an edge of anger; I swear she knew she was punishing me — ‘She’s a widow now. She’s going out with Dad. He’s very well and very happy. We’re all all right, you know. I’ve got a baby. Things are going well —’

— She didn’t say it, but I heard the conclusion; so don’t upset us. We’re doing fine without you. She didn’t need to say anything, actually; I was poleaxed with grief and jealousy.

Mary Brown. Mary Brown! She was always sly; she had always wanted him, pretending to be so demure and kind. And all the time she was after Chris. I was fighting to breathe and to speak without crying.

‘Oh. That’s — lovely.’ I said it was lovely! ‘I’m — glad to hear you’re all OK. I’m glad to hear you’ve had a baby.’ The tears were coming, but not yet in my voice, pouring down my cheeks, the world was dissolving. ‘Actually I won’t bother Chris. If he’s busy with Mary. But send my regards. Say — say — I thought about him. I’ve got to go now. Goodbye, Susy —’ My nose pricked; my sinuses gushed, but the words came out with hardly a tremor, thank God to be fifty, and not fifteen –

She broke in, alarmed. ‘You should speak to him. I really think you should speak to him —’

What did she want? She wanted me to suffer, they wanted me to suffer, I was dying, dying, they wanted to rub my nose in my loss — ‘No, it’s OK, another time, there’s someone at the door, I’m just going out —’ There was no one at the door, everyone had left me, I would never be asked to go out again.

‘Alexandra, don’t be ridiculous. You know he’ll blame me if you just ring off —’

‘This is too expensive, I’m in Mexico City —’ But she knew I never worried about expense. ‘There’s no point, I’m leaving for Europe soon…’

‘Give me your number! Stop playing with us!’ She was suddenly furious, the same old Susy who had glared at me at the funeral; perhaps she did think I was playing with them; I no longer cared what Susy thought, I only cared about finding some tissues and getting off the phone before I sobbed. I was safe enough. I had withheld my number.

Yet Christopher might be only inches away. With Mary Brown. With that ugly old cow.

‘Goodbye, Susy.’ I cut off the call, and fell on my knees in a passion of sobs. I clutched myself, I rocked myself. There was no one else to comfort me. But the hands that hugged me with such hopeless strength could not keep still, had not forgotten; as I knelt on the floor and howled at the darkness my fingers were feeling for the lump.

They say the best doctors are still in Europe.

Happy man; lucky man. Christopher, beloved of the gods. After the years of hell in a New York prison and the years living like a rat in Venice, waiting to go down when the city did, I’ve been forgiven; I’ve been reclaimed. I wake up unable to believe it’s true. I wake in my sun-drenched basement bedroom, so clean and light with its pale new wood, look up through the windows at the dancing blackthorn and behind it the shimmering columns of the poplars, silver green in the morning light, and the gross black fingers of the monkey-puzzle tree, and the nodding roses, such pinks, such creams — the sights of home. I’ve been allowed to come home. I’m clean again. I’ve been forgiven.

But more than that, I am loved, loved. Loved by my daughter, loved by my granddaughter. (I have a granddaughter! A grandfather at last!)

— I’m a real grandfather. I’m useful. A working grandfather, not honorary. I babysit for Susy whenever she needs me. I can change nappies. I can give bottles. (Penelope took charge of the nappies and bottles, and when she was working, the nanny did it; I’d never changed a single nappy.) The child gurgles when she sees me coming, my darling girl, my little Becky, perhaps she has seen the resemblance between us, for she is pure Court, she’s exactly like me. Susy has given me a granddaughter.

And then there’s Mary. Sweet Mary Brown. Just as I had wished. Just as I had dreamed! — Not quite as I had dreamed, but marvellous.

I came back to Matthew’s funeral, desperately nervous, expecting nothing, but homesick, so homesick I had to risk it, I knew everyone who mattered would be there, Mary and her family, Susy — Perhaps not everyone who mattered.

For one mad moment I thought she was here, I saw a ghost in an elegant veil with Alex’s mouth and stick-thin figure — but it was Madonna, Susy’s friend. Why is the brain so predictable? — I have sighted Alexandra a million times since the last day I saw her in that echoing prison, when a fly landed on her crimson shoulder, and she swatted it, and it slowly died there. I’ve seen her escaping down Venetian alleyways, waving at me from distant gondolas, flitting down the side of a foggy canal — it was never her. It’s never her. Now I’ve found a way of controlling the ache — but enough of that. It’s too early in the day. Don’t think of that, don’t spoil things. Reality is enough for me; I’m happy, so happy; be grateful for that. It wasn’t her, it was a trick of memory.