After the Last Dance (33 page)

Rose shrugged. She already knew what had happened to her friends. If she could get through an hour without thinking of the three of them, then it was a good hour until she remembered she had no business feeling good and she felt wretched all over again. ‘What?'

‘Your Danny,' Edward said. Oh,
that
friend. Rose had long made her peace with the complicated, conflicted loss of Danny because it didn't begin to compare to the agonising pain of her girls being snatched from her. But when Edward held out the paper to her again, she shook her head. Once she saw the words, black on white, then it was real.

‘Just tell me,' she implored. ‘Do it gently.'

‘Sergeant Daniel de Franco, Aircraft Maintenance Division. A successful bombing crew are only as good as their ground staff but your Danny was never a pilot. He's now back in Newport, Massachusetts where he has a wife and two children.' He paused and made sure to hold her gaze. ‘I know it sounds rich coming from me, but I am sorry, Rose.'

It should have been a shock; in a way it was, but it also made utter sense. Now, with only seconds to parse this new information, it was so obvious, so hidden in plain sight, that Rose felt like the biggest fool. It had just been a game to him to win her heart, her slavish and dogged devotion, and for what? One lousy night in a hotel in Henley-on-Thames.

As she so often did these days, Rose thought about what her girls would have said if they'd known. Maggie wouldn't even have feigned surprise. Phyllis would have been indignant and angry on Rose's behalf and Sylvia – Sylvia would have laughed and laughed as Rose was doing now. She laughed until the tears streamed down her cheeks. ‘Well,' she spluttered. ‘Well… at least he's not dead, I suppose. That's something.'

The worst thing about thinking Danny dead was that it hadn't really mattered, not just because of what he'd done to her but because she didn't have the room to mourn him too. Even the good memories – his beautiful face, the sound of his voice and the way she'd felt when he'd kissed her – were faint and indistinct.

And then there was Edward, her Edward, because Rose realised in that moment that she thought of him as hers. She'd known him now for twice as long as she'd known Danny. Had spent hours and hours with him. So many hours that if she squashed them all together, they added up to days, even weeks. Not just the hours that they spent in the dark, his body teaching her body new shapes and patterns…

‘I knew this would upset you,' he said and he peered anxiously at Rose as she sat on his sofa still shaking with mirth at the utter idiocy of it all, trying to mop up the tears with the back of her hands. ‘You're quite hysterical.'

‘I'm not. I'm just stupid! I'm so stupid I can hardly stand it.'

Edward must have thought she was a lost cause because he left the room but returned almost immediately with a handkerchief and a glass of water. He sat down, dipped the white linen square in the water and began to dab her face with it. ‘You're not stupid. You're the bravest, loveliest, sweetest person I've ever known,' he told her softly.

Rose stilled instantly under his soothing touch. ‘I'm not any of those things.'

‘You're also very young and you've been through so much already.' The handkerchief was discarded but he continued to stroke her tear-streaked face with his hands, tilting her chin so she was bathed in the glow of the lamplight. She'd never been this naked in front of him. Not even when she was actually naked. ‘I was wrong to ask you to —'

‘No, you weren't.' She rested her hands on top of his as they cupped her cheeks. ‘I want to do it. It works both ways, Edward – this finding it impossible to say no. Anything you want me to do, just ask and you know that I'll say yes.'

‘Anything?'

‘Anything.'

Leo was awake when Jane came out of the bathroom next morning. He was sitting on the side of the bed in his shorts looking very sure of himself. He smiled when he saw her. ‘I've decided that I'm going to get through today without crying,' he announced.

Jane paused in the doorway. ‘Let's not get carried away. Until lunchtime maybe, darling?'

‘I've also decided that you're not to call me darling any more.' He stood up and stretched.

Jane had only had her touch to guide her last night, but now she could see he had muscles and hollows where before he'd been soft and doughy. ‘I call everyone darling,' she said absently.

‘I'm not everyone,' Leo said and that had to be a precursor to a talk about where they were going and what they were going to do when they got there, but he just scratched his head and padded to the bathroom. ‘I won't be long. Are you going downstairs? Could you stick the kettle on… or actually, I should probably check, see if there's any change…'

‘We'd know by now,' Jane said. ‘If there was anything to know.'

Rose had slept through the night, Lydia told her in awed tones, as if Rose were a usually fretful baby.

Neta, who'd arrived for the day shift, was with Rose when they took the trunk up to her room. Today was very, very different because Rose was lying flat in bed, waiting for Neta to arrange the mound of pillows to her liking, a silk scarf covering her hair. Maybe Jane hadn't noticed her gradual decline, had never seen Rose in her prime, but suddenly, in the space of twenty-four hours, she looked as if she was dying.

Her skin was yellow now rather than simply having a yellowish tinge and her skin hung on her bones as if she were slowly deflating. Rose's eyes were closed, her breathing uneven like a record jumping and one hand plucked at her belly, which was distended enough to be visible even under the bedclothes.

‘Let's make you comfy, Ms Beaumont,' Neta said and Jane was pleased that there was still that thin veneer of dignity in place.

Rose slowly opened her eyes as Neta asked her to lean forward. She closed them again as the pillows were placed behind her as if even that tiny kindness caused her undue suffering.

Once a pillow had been placed underneath Rose's feet for ominous reasons that Neta said they didn't need to know about, the nurse folded her hands and backed out of the room. ‘I'll be with Miss Liddy if you need me.'

Jane and Leo looked at each other and she wondered if he knew how helpless she felt. Then he touched her arm as he walked to the bed, just a simple brush of his fingers, but it signified something had changed between them. Jane pulled up a chair alongside his.

‘So, we went to Lullington Bay, got the things you wanted,' he said and Rose's eyes opened.

‘Did I ever tell you about my friend Mickey Flynn?' Even her voice was different today, barely more than a croak. ‘He used to say that I owed him so many favours that I'd have to live to be a hundred before I finished paying them off. Do you think he'll take an IOU?'

‘I'm sure he will, darling,' Jane said. ‘Though he's probably forgotten by now.'

‘Forgetting is easy. It's remembering that's hard. One wants to remember only the good times but the bad times have a way of staying with you too.'

She lapsed into silence. Leo glanced at Jane, his eyebrows raised, because neither of them knew if these were her last profound words or just jumbled thoughts brought on by the morphine that was being administered by a pump on the other side of the bed, which cheerfully whirred as it went about its business.

They sat there. Jane listened to the pump and stared out at the naked treetops she could see from the window. She really wished she'd brought up a cup of tea and a magazine to flick through. Weeks ago, Jane had had a hazy notion that because Rose was old and had cancer she'd go to bed one night and simply not wake up. She hadn't expected that death might involve long stretches of sitting around, waiting, having to pretend that you were lost in thought when actually you were quite bored.

‘Did you get my things?' Rose asked and Leo gave a little start as if he'd been dozing.

‘Yeah, I already said. Everything on the list.'

‘How is Lullington Bay? My roses?'

‘The garden looked beautiful,' Leo said, though the garden had been a shadowy cluster of trees and bushes when they'd visited. ‘The house was exactly as I remembered it.'

Rose smiled and the rigidity of her limbs eased as Leo talked about Lullington Bay; of those endless days on the beach and sunburned, sticky nights. The stray cat they'd taken in and called Mr Bobbins, who'd turned out to be a Mrs Bobbins and had given birth to a litter of kittens in Rose's bed.

Leo talked, his voice hoarse, until Dr Howard arrived. For Rose to open her eyes and dare to admit that the pain was ‘quite bad', was something else that was very, very different.

They went down to the kitchen, where Lydia was in the middle of a baking frenzy. Gingerbread, scones, shortbread, a fruitcake ‘but only sultanas. Rose hates dried fruit. Always used to say that mixed peel and chopped dates ruined a perfectly good sponge.'

Neither Jane or Leo needed to point out that it had been days, maybe even weeks, since Rose had eaten anything as substantial as a piece of cake, because there were so many things that didn't need to be said any more.

Though Dr Howard had lots to say when he came into the kitchen twenty minutes later.

He talked about Rose's kidneys most of all. About how they were in danger of shutting down and that if Rose would agree to a catheter, she could be put on a rapid drip.

‘If Rose doesn't want it, I'm not sure I could persuade her,' Leo said.

‘Someone will have to make decisions for her if she's not capable of making them for herself,' Dr Howard said. Today he didn't even attempt to be smooth and dapper. ‘That's going to happen sooner rather than later.'

‘But she's not like she was yesterday,' Leo said, as they walked the doctor out. ‘So that has to be a good sign, doesn't it?'

‘A temporary respite, I fear. There will come a time when you might decide that it's best for Ms Beaumont to keep her sedated until she passes.'

‘But she wouldn't be hurting, would she?' Jane asked, because she couldn't imagine how awful it would be for Rose to be trapped between worlds, with nothing but the pain to keep her here. ‘How much morphine can you prescribe without her overdosing?'

‘I'm not a punitive man.' The doctor paused as he put on his hat – he was one of those men who still wore an old-fashioned trilby. ‘I don't believe in unnecessary suffering and sometimes if the drugs do their work before the body fails, well, then it can be a blessing.'

When he was gone, Leo sat down heavily on the bottom step of the stairs. ‘Fuck.' He rubbed his face with the heels of his hands, but when he took them away, his eyes were dry. ‘Fucking hell. I don't know if I can do this.'

Jane stroked her fingers through his hair as she stepped past him. ‘This is why you came back. To do what's best for Rose, so yes, you can.'

 

Rose slept for the entire day and when Agnieska arrived to take over from Neta, Leo and Jane gave up their vigil. They still hadn't talked about what had happened the night before. Leo wasn't going to mention it first. Not a chance in hell. Because if he did, then Jane would laugh it off, call him darling, become flippant rather than admit that she was perilously close to actual real feelings and emotions. But it turned out neither of them needed to say anything.

Jane stroked her hand slowly and deliberately against Leo as she walked past him into his bedroom. Without thinking, he immediately had her pressed up against the wall, soft where he was suddenly painfully and achingly hard. It was a clumsy dance to the bed where they spent the night rediscovering the taste and texture of each other. Leo supposed he should have felt guilty that he and Jane had picked now, this moment, to stumble towards something that resembled happiness, but he didn't. It could have been another strategy, another feint in Jane's master plan, but Leo needed to lose himself for hours and hours that all bled into each other and Jane had the means.

Afterwards, Jane fell asleep before Leo did. Sleep didn't smooth away the strains of the day, because she wasn't still. Her eyelids twitched as if she was dreaming hard, her teeth worried at her bottom lip as she shifted first one way, then the other. Leo watched until he couldn't bear to watch any more. She'd kept the true heart of herself locked away and watching her now felt like an intrusion; as if he were reading her private papers, rifling through her drawers. In the end, he retrieved the pillows that they'd tossed on the floor and placed them in the middle of the bed again, so they were separate, apart, and then it was easy to fall asleep.

 

It was past eleven the next day when Neta came into the kitchen to tell them that Rose was awake and asking for them. ‘Did you go to Lullington Bay?' Rose asked as soon as they walked into the room. ‘How were my roses?'

Leo took a step back, but Jane pushed him forward. He could do this. He had no other choice. ‘Your roses are fine. Beautiful. No greenfly on them.'

‘Good.' Despite sleeping for almost twenty-four hours, Rose's eyes were bloodshot. She had another gaily-patterned scarf tied around her head, which made a mockery of her sunken cheeks and parched lips. ‘Where are my things? Did you come across a small wooden box?'

Leo squatted down and opened the trunk. Inside were bundles of letters, some yellowed with age like Rose, others tissue-thin and edged with blue and red airmail chevrons. There was a small rosewood box that Leo passed to Jane who passed it to Rose. Her fingers fumbled with the catch, then stirred up the collection of books of matches, cocktail sticks, menus from nightclubs and restaurants. At the bottom was a small, tattered piece of cardboard with a photo stuck on it.

‘It really happened. I was really there,' she said, as she tried to close her fingers around it.

Jane reached over and plucked it out of the box, then held it up so Leo could see it. It was a membership card for Rainbow Corner. Staring back at them was a teenage Rose; hair elaborately rolled, her smile dark with lipstick. ‘Gosh, darling, you look like a movie star.'

‘Hedy Lamarr.' Rose crooked her fingers. ‘Where are the photos? They're in a album.'

Leo carefully rifled through old birthday cards and theatre programmes until he unearthed a dark green leather-bound book. Rose took it with a tiny sigh, but before she opened it she patted the bed beside her.

‘Come here so you can both see,' she said and once Jane was settled precariously so she wouldn't jostle Rose and Leo was on his knees, elbows resting on the edge of the bed, Rose started flicking through the book.

There was Rose as a tiny baby swathed in an enormous frilly christening gown. School photos: gap-toothed and freckled. Then a sullen teenage Rose on a seafront, arms folded, chin tucked down, a ferocious frown on her face. She looked, though it pained Leo to admit it, a lot like he had during his own sullen, teen years. And then…

‘Oh! You're in London now!' Jane said gleefully, as they looked at Rose standing in Trafalgar Square with another girl, skirts hiked up, legs in a showgirl pose, flanking a short man with a pencil moustache, a sharp suit and an ingratiating smile. ‘Who are you with?'

‘That's Mickey Flynn, the old reprobate.' Rose's croak couldn't disguise her delight. ‘I don't know who she is. Mickey's lady friends would come and go. Go, mostly.'

Leo perched on the other side of the bed and watched the two women, their heads together, as Jane exclaimed at Rose all gussied up in her finest and posing for the camera.

They came to a Christmas celebration: a spindly, sparsely decorated tree in the background, three children kneeling in front of the adults who were arranged on and around a sofa. Rose tried to trace each face but her fingers wouldn't obey her. ‘My other family. This used to be the lounge downstairs and that's Yves, Jacques, Madeleine not crying for once, Gisèle and that's Thérèse and Hélène on either side of little Paul. Nineteen forty-five. That was a hard Christmas. But Phyllis's mother sent us a chicken and a plum cake. Every year until she died. She was far more terrifying than I ever was.'

‘I doubt that.' Leo rolled his eyes. ‘You're next-level terrifying, Rose.'

Rose managed to snort. ‘If I were feeling better, you'd get a clip round the ear for that.'

Leo had been worried that this would be too much for Rose when even opening her eyes the day before had been a Herculean task, but this morning Rose was happy, or what passed for happy when she was so close to the end. Jane also seemed happy to pore over someone else's family photographs because she didn't have any of her own. Whether her parents were really dead or not didn't matter. She'd still chosen not to have a family.

Leo hadn't had too many family photo ops over the last few years either. He was just a blurry face in other people's photos.

Who's the drunk-looking dude?
 

Oh, a friend of a friend. Can't remember his name but later that night he puked in the swimming pool
.

Leo shook his head, turned his attention to the photo that Rose and Jane were looking at. ‘Who's
that
blonde girl?' He tried to sound eager and interested. ‘She looks all kinds of fun.'

‘It's Sylvia. My honorary big sister.'

Leo leaned over to stare at the laughing girl in black and white, hands on her hips, head thrown back, but Rose was already turning to the next page, then she said with quiet satisfaction, ‘Ah, there we all are.'

She pointed to each of them in turn: Phyllis, who looked earnest and slightly anxious; next to her was Maggie, her angular face wreathed in smoke from the cigarette she was clutching in her right hand and Sylvia and Rose with their arms around each other. All of them smiling, all of them wearing the same red lipstick in the hand-tinted photograph.