The Poets' Wives (37 page)

‘You could have done with a trip to IKEA, got some cheap sets of things,’ Anna said as she poured wine into her glass.

‘I quite like it this way,’ Francesca said, slightly altering the placement of some cutlery and then holding out her glass for her sister to fill. ‘What shall we drink to?’

There was a moment’s hesitation and she saw Anna look at the extra chair. She didn’t want to embarrass them any further and so she raised her glass and said simply, ‘To us.’ They leaned across the table and lightly clinked her glass and she saw it kissed by the light as she held it briefly in the air.

‘Your father once asked me what I saw in the fire and I didn’t know what he meant and I said something stupid like “flames”.’

‘I hope he didn’t do that terrible snorting noise he did when I told him my English teacher’s favourite book,’ Anna said.

‘I don’t remember but he said something about me being a literalist and I think he was probably suggesting that I had no imagination.’

‘You certainly did have an imagination because you were able to see something in him,’ Francesca offered in a way that made her defence seem sincere but somehow childish.

‘Although he didn’t meet my parents’ approval he was seen as a great catch by my friends and sometimes even by complete strangers who would sidle up and tell me how lucky I was.’

‘I can imagine strangers would think he was quite the catch,’ Anna said. ‘Might have changed their opinion if they had to live with him.’

She looked at the snowy-white globes of petals that were tinged pink at their tips. She didn’t want them to talk of Don any more.

‘So what culinary treats have you in store for me?’

‘Well now, that’s for us to know and you to find out,’ Francesca said. ‘But I wouldn’t get too excited about it in case we disappoint.’

‘I blame you, Mum, for our very mediocre cooking skills,’ Anna said. ‘You always did everything in the kitchen. You should have trained us up.’

‘You always seemed so busy with school stuff and your social life. And I don’t recall either of you showing much enthusiasm or inclination to learn.’

‘First term at college was a real shock,’ Francesca said. ‘The realisation that you had to feed yourself. It was really sink or swim.’

‘You phoned me up once to ask how you made gravy,’ she said, smiling at the memory.

‘A couple of Oxo cubes and boiling water, Fran. Even I knew that.’

‘Proper gravy, Anna, like you get with Sunday roast. Not that in student digs we ever had Sunday roast.’

‘At least you both didn’t have these terrible fees and ending up with all that debt.’

‘It must be awful,’ Francesca said. ‘To be starting out on some career with all that hanging over you.’

‘If they’re lucky enough to find a job at all,’ Anna said as she sat down at the table. ‘And the paper’s full of young people working for nothing. Calling it an internship doesn’t hide the fact that it’s just a form of legal slave labour.’

Francesca went into the kitchen and returned with the starter. ‘A kind of retro prawn cocktail. Very fashionable,’ she said, smiling at her own joke.

‘Let’s face it, Francesca – it’s just a prawn cocktail. Like something out of
Abigail’s Party
. And anyway why do you always have to see everything in terms of fashion?’

Francesca pulled a face at her sister and joined them at the table. Something in the fire sparked and they all turned their heads to look.

‘I did the starter and Anna’s doing the main. And the dessert is contributed by Costcutter’s freezer.’

‘It’s very nice,’ she said, holding up her fork as a kind of testimony. ‘It’s always nice to have something made for you, don’t you think?’

They both nodded. Anna poured her more of the white wine. The vein of red in her hair seemed at first to have been absorbed by the subdued lighting but from time to time when she turned her head it glinted again. The corners of the room were folded in shadows and all the light seemed pulled into the centre about the table. One of the four candles they had found was scented and although she knew it was only in her imagination it reminded her of the almond blossom she had been given in the village. They never spoke of him unless she found some way to engineer it. Perhaps they would have if they had known how much it pleased her to hear his name on their lips. Their young brother who should have been at the table with them, teasing them as he liked to do and talking of where he’d been or where he was just about to go. Talking as if going to some far-off destination was nothing more than a stroll to a local park and never once in the lightness of his voice or in the quickening spark of his eyes was there even the most fleeting premonition or awareness of death’s possibility. She drank more of the wine, stared at the candle flame, the hollowing, trembling scoop where the wick had burned. She heard the words,

I find you as always in the most distant fields

Where the spirits have their own stars and sun.

She wanted above all things to bring him home. To have him safely home from those distant fields to be with her and his sisters. Not to be in the earth in his father’s suit.

‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Francesca asked.

‘Yes, I was just thinking of?. . .?thinking of tomorrow.’

Her daughters looked at each other and Francesca nodded a forceful encouragement to her sister.

‘Look, Mum, Francesca and I have been talking and we think that maybe tomorrow might be a big strain on you and that we should just do it on your behalf. What do you think? We’ll get up early in the morning and do it and then it’s over. We’ll do it properly, “Lark Ascending” and all. What do you say?’

She glanced to where the urn sat. It was almost absorbed into the shadows with only one little pinhead of light on its dark surface ensuring its presence remained a reality. She couldn’t let them. Couldn’t let them for reasons that she could never hope to explain but she sipped her wine as if she were considering the suggestion, before saying, ‘That’s very good of you, girls, very kind, but I need to do it. It wouldn’t be right.’

‘It’s not as if he’ll come back to complain,’ Anna insisted, holding her arms wide in a way that suggested her indifference to her father’s wishes.

‘I feel I have to do it, Anna. Do this one last thing. And I know I can get through it fine with both of you there to support me. That’s why I’m so grateful that you were willing to come.’

She could tell Anna was going to try and persuade her and so was glad when Francesca stood up and at the same time as she reached for the bowls told them both that the matter was settled and they’d do it together in the morning, ending with the words ‘all three of us’. Anna nodded but she could see the traces of exasperation in her face and that she was thinking of saying something more when Francesca reminded her from the kitchen doorway that her course was almost ready and she needed to see to it. She strained to hear what they were saying to each other in the kitchen but their words were lost amidst the sounds of serving and the opening and closing of drawers and cupboard doors. She wondered if they needed any help but thought it best not to offer and so she sat in the candlelight and stared at the fire that consumed a little by its earlier vigour had collapsed in on itself but which still offered a bright brace of heat.

Her daughters reappeared and Anna served her glazed salmon on a bed of rice and vegetables. There was a bowl of salad and a dish of olives, sliced ciabatta bread and another bottle of wine appeared.

‘We couldn’t find napkins,’ Francesca said, handing her a square of white paper, ‘so we’re making do with kitchen roll.’

‘It’s all beautiful,’ she said as she took in everything on the table. ‘You’ve gone to so much trouble.’

She saw how her praise pleased them and then was sad to think how often they had gone without it, how often they had to find some other approbation for themselves. How even now in adulthood it still mattered. What did he want of his children? She presumed it was that they should achieve something he would consider worthy of himself, but she understood him well enough to know that even if they had been able to do that his pride would eventually have been consumed by jealousy. She told Anna that the salmon was lovely and asked her if she cooked much at home.

‘Mostly just at weekends. It’s sometimes easier during the week to stick something in the microwave. Cooking takes so much time when all you want to do is flop down and stare at the television. Sometimes, though, I make something at the weekend and freeze part of it to use later.’

They chatted about food, about restaurants, both of them comparing notes on places in London that did good-quality take-away for lunchtimes. They asked her why she didn’t try to get tickets for the Chelsea Flower Show in May and come and stay with one of them. The idea appealed to her – it was something she had always wanted to visit. She felt the future opening up with them in a way that previously didn’t seem possible. She didn’t say anything but perhaps when she made her trip to the village in the mountains before the end of the year she might stay with one of them for a night before coming home. She didn’t want to impose herself – it would have to come from them and she would be grateful for whatever they found themselves able to give. And she knew that a great deal of time had passed and the patterns of their lives had become established without her deep involvement. She wasn’t entitled to expect that suddenly to change.

Anna put more coal on the fire and opened the second bottle of wine. They each had a slice of the supermarket chocolate cake and Francesca made coffee, apologising for the fact that it was only instant. After she had served them she moved her chair sideways to the hearth saying she had forgotten how nice a real fire was.

‘When you stayed here as children you used to squabble about who would get the closest seat and, Francesca, you used to sit so close you’d get your legs all measled.’

‘I remember how Don made us all gather driftwood and pile it up behind the kitchen and then some nights he’d make these great bonfires with sparks flying everywhere – you can still see where the carpet was burnt,’ Anna said, pointing at the marks with the toe of her shoe.

They sat on, in part it seemed to her because there wasn’t really anywhere else to go and in part because of the warmth of the fire, but also because she wanted to believe that it was the three of them together. From time to time one of her daughters would say something about their father and then her own eyes would turn to the urn as if to confirm its reality but even having done so it didn’t always prevent his image, his voice, some memory drifting out of the thickening folds of shadows that appeared to be slowly enveloping the room. She looked at the empty chair beside her and saw him in the courtyard of the riad down below her seated at the small round table with the mosaic tiles, writing in his Moleskine notebook, pausing only to sip from the mint tea one of the young women had brought him. Writing out his grief, writing out his loss, writing her out and everything inside her that threatened in those moments to render her asunder. She thought too of the new love poems he had written – his final legacy – blind to the irony of his praise for ‘the unbroken constancy of love’.

Her daughters chattered, the second bottle of wine and the pleasure of having carried off the meal loosening their tongues as if to make up for the long periods when there had been silence between them. She listened to the timbre of their voices, recording and preserving every inflection; the places where their accents diverged from what she had known when they were growing up. She wondered how many other things their lives now possessed that ran counter to the identities she had attributed to them in the past. She wasn’t sure but she thought Anna might smoke. She had smelled the slightest trace of it in their embrace at the station, perhaps on her clothes but more likely on her hair as they brushed cheeks. She wondered if Francesca wanted a child – she had seen the way she had looked at the toddler in Morelli’s, her eyes flicking again and again in the child’s direction.

They had slipped into a kind of competition now, an adult echoing of a teenage habit, with Francesca telling her sister that although she made wedding dresses and hats she too encountered life in all its forms and when her sister emitted some sound that was clearly an expression of doubt, Francesca insisted, ‘It’s true, Anna. It’s not all ribbons and bows – I get all kinds of trauma.’

‘Like someone doesn’t like their dress or some stitching unravels,’ Anna said.

‘No, like the woman who came for a dress last month who’s terminally ill and has less than a year to live. Like the women who come to do their final fitting or even to collect their dress and then cry their eyes out and you don’t know what to say to them.’

‘So why are they crying?’ Anna asked.

‘Sometimes because they’re frightened. Once because she knew she was making the worst mistake of her life.’

‘So why was she going to go through with it?’

‘Because it’s complicated and sometimes there are other reasons and other pressures than are obvious. Things aren’t always as simple as they seem.’

‘I don’t know why anyone would want to be with a man they didn’t love,’ Anna argued but then stopped abruptly. Francesca said nothing in reply but glanced quickly at her. The silence lingered too long.

‘When I married your father I loved him. I believe he loved me equally,’ she said.