Remember Me... (74 page)

‘It isn't like that, Helen.'

‘Why not? It is for me.'

‘I have to see them.' Her accusation had felled him.

‘Well, do it.' Helen paused. ‘But I'm not walking back by myself.'

As they went more slowly along the cliff edge and it curved inland on a path that would eventually loop them back to the hotel, it began to rain. Neither of them was dressed for it. Neither of them complained or even commented. Joe was fast in himself. Helen knew she could not reach him.

‘I heard your mother that day,' he said to Marcelle. ‘I can still remember it clearly. Such things had happened once or twice before in my life when I was young but they were long buried in embarrassment and anxiety at their over-strangeness. “Heard” will have to do although I know it summons up ideas of ghostly voices and mediums bringing messages from beyond the grave. But it is certain sure. As soon as I began to walk on that morning I felt that I had to go to your mother. There are many ways to explain it away and of course sometimes I believe that it was all my invention and not Natasha's intervention but all that I can tell you is that thinking on it again and again it will not be easily explained away and in the end what I experienced was your mother's calling me, calling me back. It was also physical, her hands reaching out to mine to pull me to her; I was consumed by it, it was as real as the rain, Marcelle. I offer it for what it is. But I did not go.'

They got to the hotel later than they had intended, still not a word spoken, and Helen went directly to one of the two bathrooms along the corridor. Joe undressed and perched his soaked clothes on the radiators. He dried himself down with a towel which he then tucked around his waist. When Helen returned he was asleep.

‘We'll just be in time for dinner,' she said when she woke him, later. She had covered him with a blanket. ‘I'll go ahead.' She held up the small travelling chess set. ‘Shall I take this?'

Joe looked at her. She was calm, grounded, fresh-faced from the walk, her blonde hair shampooed. It was time to surrender to the fact that he was in love and unthreatened.

‘Best of three,' he said.

‘There was a period of time, towards the end of our marriage, when we wrote letters to each other by the score,' he told Marcelle, ‘two or three times a day. As if speech had failed us or we did not trust it or we did not want to see on the other's face the effect of what we said.

‘In France, Natasha began a frenzy of writing, sometimes poems or fragments of poems, mostly letters, all unposted. These are a few excerpts, fragments even, that might explain . . .

‘She wrote to Ross's wife, Margaret, who had become more of a close friend to her since her return to Kew. “I am in France partly because I am so tired, my back, but mostly because in London I cannot bear people to know how much I love Joseph . . . I feel that it is only by accepting the idea of getting to the core I mentioned earlier that our relationship can be accepted again and the point is whether or not Joseph can bear it or doesn't want to chance it. It is also perfectly clear that unless I do extreme violence to myself, I could not stop loving him in a million years. Also I have to face up to the fact that my love for him is extraordinarily demanding as it goes on pursuing the deepest of his self as the most important part of him. This pursuit is rather obsessive perhaps, but I do not see myself pursuing much else with the same conviction as far as he is concerned. I would like to think that this doesn't make me a loser in other aspects of him. At the moment it seems to be so . . .”

‘That was handwritten, clearly, neatly, early on. This, later, to me (only a small part of a “piece” which covered thirty-four pages), was much more loosely written . . . “I want to tell you how sorry I am about this time apart and how sorry I am too about all those hurtful things that have been between us. I wish I had never hurt you, that I had never failed you, that somehow I had been able to give you only happiness and good but I know I have not done that. I love you deeply, I miss you. I feel that everything I do is connected with loving you well, loving you badly, and somehow my mind and soul go in circles around you straining somehow to find answers, to stop asking questions, to love you and be your love. You have given me so much, you have given me life. I long to see our hands join in trust . . . ”

‘Quite abruptly the writing changes again and dwindles into a still neat but cowed small script. “I have not been well for a few weeks and I think it would be much better if I had a rest for two or three months . . . Perhaps we could meet then in a much calmer way. You are so upset and angry with me. My ambitions in life are to write and paint, mother my child and be with the man I love.”

‘There are poems. Mostly unfinished, lines slashed with corrections and changes. This, I think, is the last, written in a scrawling tormented script.

‘Bewildered,

Blinded by the lighting of grief

Debreasted

Neutralised

I lay on the sand where heat had warmed

Where earthy grain had never failed

Even there I lost the last touch

The ability to go to sleep.

I saw you walk over the sky

I saw you had gone.'

The surge of acceleration took Natasha by surprise and pressed her into the pit of the seat. Her back hurt but only a little: Alain had prescribed well and given her ample supplies to reduce the pain over the next few weeks. She looked at Marcelle who had the window seat and was nose-pressed to it watching every moment of the earth sinking beneath her gaze. She had grown even in the two months in Provence, Natasha observed. She was practically self-sufficient now. Natasha did not look at her too intently or for too long. Tears were too near the surface for that.

When the No Smoking signal was gone she lit up. Véronique had tried to help by introducing certain disciplines – the most persistent and public of these was her insistence that Natasha give up smoking. The number of cigarettes she consumed was way beyond reason, she argued, and the ghostly pallor of her skin showed that those cigarettes had a visible effect on her health. Besides, Véronique argued, if she could exercise willpower in this matter, she could do so in others. Natasha had tried her best to go along with it, fearing to antagonise Véronique, even seeing in the diktat a kernel of real concern which moved her. But now she smoked, and ordered whisky.

The plane droned north. Her tiredness was beyond sleep. But the cigarettes and the alcohol, the presence of Marcelle and the security of the aeroplane brought to her tortured mind an interval of relief. And Joseph would be at the airport, waiting for her, she was sure of that. She had written to him. And then who knows? Who knows?

Soon the plane would pass over Paris and then swing west, over Brittany, and across the Channel to England to which she had fled so long ago now, too tired to work out how long ago. And met Joseph. And others. But Joseph who had loved her from the beginning and still loved her, she knew that, but it was difficult for him as it was difficult for her. Soon those difficulties would diminish and they would meet again and he would bring flowers.

When they came through Customs she restrained herself. It would not do to seem too eager. It would not do, and yet her heart beat faster and she could not wait until their suitcases arrived and they went into Customs and out the other side where Joseph would be waiting. She was so very tired now but the break would have restored his mind, of
that she was utterly certain, as she had told him in the unposted letter. She knew him so well, she knew him because she loved him and he undoubtedly loved her.

There was a small crowd waiting for the passengers. It was not easy to pick him out. She must not be impatient. She stood for some time while the greetings and the welcomings went on all about her.

Finally when she was all but alone, she looked for directions to the train into London. Oh, Joseph . . .

Margaret had gone to the house once a week and though rather cool it did not have a neglected air. The mail was piled neatly on a small table in the living room. There was a loaf of fresh bread and some fruit. She phoned Margaret to thank her and Margaret said she would come round.

Marcelle sniffed around the house to resettle herself and then went into Natasha's bedroom where there was a small television. Natasha was too weary to go upstairs. She shuffled through the post hoping: but there was nothing. She put on the electric fire and waited . . . A plane went over low, screaming, and she looked up, startled. What would it do? She waited. Another came, just as low, and she put her hands to her ears. It was such an apocalyptic sound.

She reached for the phone but before she dialled the number, she steadied herself. It took great effort. It would not do to seek pity. She sipped from the neck of the half-bottle of whisky she had bought on the plane. Then she dialled.

‘Yes?'

‘It's Natasha,' she said, and waited.

‘Are you back?'

‘Yes . . . Yes I am.'

‘Good.' He turned to Helen and mouthed ‘Natasha'. ‘How's Marcelle?'

‘Marcelle?' Natasha could find no reply. ‘Joseph. You do think I am a good mother, don't you?'

‘Yes. Of course you are.'

‘You wouldn't lie, would you?'

‘No. You're a wonderful mother.'

‘Marcelle is like you. Even Isabel says so.' She paused. ‘What are you writing?'

‘Still the film.'

‘You always wanted to write films, didn't you, when we first met? And so you have.'

‘Natasha?'

‘Yes.'

‘Can I come to see you both tomorrow?'

‘Tomorrow?' Not . . . now, now.

‘Whatever suits you.'

‘Yes.' She waited. ‘Tomorrow.'

Another plane went over.

‘Tomorrow, then.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Thank you.'

She put down the phone gently and sat very still. Joe said to Helen,

‘I should go down to see her now.'

‘You should,' Helen said.

‘Yes . . . I should.'

But he believed tomorrow would be fine, would even be better. Yet he should have gone. Her life would have changed, would it not? If he had gone. And just to see her again. To be with her, her love, her great self, their unity again. He should have gone. For the rest of his life he should have gone.

He did not go. He does not go. He does not go.

Before Margaret left she said, two or three times, ‘Why don't you come round and spend the night with us? It's always such a bother when you come back to a cold home at this time of night.'

But Natasha's mind was incapable of accepting such simple, kind help. Joseph would call back. And besides there were thoughts clouding her mind, thoughts or intimations of thoughts or echoes and calls and imprints from other times which she wanted to let possess her, be immersed in, float and fathom.

‘Tomorrow,' she said, and Margaret kissed her cheek and went out, reluctantly.

Marcelle came down and ate some bread and half an apple and
then, cross at her mother's silence and tears, went off to bed by herself.

So at last she was alone. This was it then, this everything, this nothing. Particles of dreams, splinters of nightmare, colours of happiness, here, there, the slow swirl of it all so full of life, and that was all, that was everything, it was done. It was finished. The swirl quickened and became a tightening spiral pulling her down as she wept without feeling the tears and knew less and less, heard no calls of love, gone now. She went to her room and shut the door. There was no lock. She put a chair under the door handle and jammed it tight. That was for Marcelle, that must have been for Marcelle. And finally the fury.

‘It's Margaret.'

‘No!'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘No. No! Please. No!'

Margaret closed her eyes and forced herself on.

‘I'm afraid . . .'

‘No. Oh, please NO. Don't say it. Please God. Don't. No!'

‘Natasha's dead.'

‘NO. NO. Please say she isn't. Please say that. Say she isn't. Please.'

He took Marcelle into Kew Gardens later that afternoon. Margaret had given her bread and they went to the big pond to feed the ducks. It was here that he had imagined he would tell her what had happened. She had given no indication that she knew even though when Margaret had gone round in the morning she had found the bedroom door ajar. Joe watched her carefully but there was no sign of distress. Margaret had taken her away and she had spent the day with her children. Now the little girl stood at the edge of the water unafraid as the ducks crowded around her and clacked their hard beaks for the morsels she distributed: she liked to spin it out.

Joe sat on a bench. What would he say to her? It had seemed right, this open familiar place, and as he had anticipated there were not many people in the Gardens at this time on a weekday. But there were a few and even the few seemed to undermine his will. Another plane went over, the ducks clacked loudly, this was not the place after all, he decided, and when the bread was finished he took her hand and they walked towards Kew Green to the church which was empty and, after the outside light, quite dark. They walked together down the nave towards the altar. Now that he was here, now that there was no way out, Joe felt such a pressure of weariness that when he sat down he needed it, his life had drained away.

Marcelle wanted to explore but he put his hand on her shoulder and she stayed. The silence of the church crushed him.

‘Marcelle,' he began, but at the mere mention of her name he thought he would crack. He could not stop now. ‘Mummy has not been well. She's kept it secret because she did not want to upset you, or to
frighten you. She's, your mummy, is, I'm afraid that she died during the night. She's dead now, Marcelle. That means you won't, we won't, neither of us, ever see her again.'

The little girl looked up at him. She saw her father's face tremble against sorrow and her own face began to imitate his. It was too much for her to imagine, he thought. He let the silence be.