Two Lives

16

James Dallon was inflating a tractor tyre in the yard when a man he didn’t know got out of a blue van and asked if this was the Dallons’ house. The man said something about having called in for the raspberries and the last of the peas at James’s aunt’s house, but James didn’t know what he was talking about. Then the man said he had a message. He didn’t smile. He didn’t seem happy. James brought him into the kitchen.

Later that morning Mrs Dallon drove over to comfort her sister. They sat together in the kitchen for most of the day, Mrs Dallon making tea and toast in the afternoon, and poaching an egg for each of them. She wanted to spend the night, but her sister wouldn’t permit that. They talked about the time when they were girls together, before their marriages; about when the men they’d married first came into their lives, and the different lives they’d had because of that. They talked about the birth of their children, how Robert had only just survived. They talked about the existence he had had.

A reference to Mary Louise’s Sunday visits did not fall naturally into the conversation, except that her aunt said, ‘Mary Louise was good to him.’ Mrs Dallon took this to mean in the past, when they were children in Miss Mullover’s schoolroom. The small misunderstanding was neither here nor there.

In the room where her nephew had spent most of his time she was shown his books, and the soldiers in the window alcove. ‘Take some grapes back with you,’ her sister offered at the end of the day, for she had come to terms by now with a death that she had always known would be like this, swift and out of the blue.

‘Oh no, dear, please,’ Mrs Dallon protested, but the grapes were cut none the less.

The Reverend Harrington came to the house, and later the same undertaker who, years ago, had laid out Robert’s father. Robert’s attachment to a graveyard that wasn’t used any more was not known since he had kept that a secret, shared only with his cousin. A grave was to be dug beside his father’s in the graveyard of the country church regularly attended by the household, where the Reverend Harrington offered holy communion once a month and officiated every Sunday at half-past six evensong.

There had been great happiness in Robert’s life, the clergyman comforted in the kitchen. Robert had been amused by all sorts of things, given to laughter and to fun. All that was better than a longer lifetime – sixty or seventy years – passed in grumbling bitterness. The mother who was now alone found it hard to take consolation from this, but did not let it show.

‘You’ll take a bunch or two of grapes, Mr Harrington?’ she offered, and the Reverend Harrington, too, drove off with grapes in his car.

Mrs Dallon considered it odd of her younger daughter to faint when she was told of her cousin’s death since she had hardly known him, except years ago at school. Quite without pain, he’d died in his sleep, Mrs Dallon had been saying, having come into the shop to break the news and to pass on the funeral details. Mary Louise went as white as paper. The next moment her legs gave way and she collapsed in a heap behind the counter.

Elmer came hurrying from the accounting office and he and Mr Renehan – hastily summoned from next door – between them carried Mary Louise upstairs. She came to on the way and struggled to her feet on the first-floor landing. She wept, in front of them at first, before turning her back on everyone and hurrying up the second flight of stairs. Mrs Dallon wanted to be with her and after a consultation with Elmer and his sisters she mounted, in turn, the second flight of stairs. But the door of the room they’d said was Mary Louise’s and Elmer’s bedroom was open and Mary Louise wasn’t in it. In case in her flurry she had misunderstood what she’d been told Mrs Dallon tried the other doors, but again found only empty rooms and a narrow, uncarpeted stairway.

Tea in the meantime had been made, and Dr Cormican sent for. Mary Louise’s sisters-in-law made Mrs Dallon sit down in the big front room, Elmer returned to take charge of the shop and to keep an eye out for the doctor, Mr Renehan offered Mrs Dallon sympathy on the family loss. When she was still explaining to the sisters that her nephew had never been strong and had not, in fact, led a normal life, Mary Louise’s footsteps were heard upstairs.

‘Was she in the lav?’ Rose suggested, and Matilda said something about the time of the month.

But when she’d opened the door to the attic stairway Mrs Dallon had thought, but could not be certain, that she heard the sound of distant sobbing above her. Certainly her daughter had not been in the lavatory, the door of which she’d also opened. It puzzled her that as well as fainting so dramatically Mary Louise had apparently run away to an attic. At the time she hadn’t felt she should ascend the poorly-lit attic stairs, but now wished she had.

‘She doesn’t know I’m here,’ she said when footsteps crossed the landing and continued to descend. ‘Mary Louise!’ she called, hurrying from the room. ‘Mary Louise!’

Mary Louise had reached the hall. She looked up, her face still tear-stained and pale. She’d put a cardigan on over her blue-flowered dress.

‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry about me.’

‘The doctor’s coming.’

‘I don’t need the doctor.’

She moved away. A door banged somewhere at the back of the hall. A moment later Rose called out from the front room that Mary Louise had ridden away from the house on her bicycle. She still held the edge of a curtain between her fingers, and Mrs Dallon approached the window to see for herself. But Mary Louise had already disappeared.

The weather had not changed. The early autumn sky, empty of clouds, had been as pale when they had walked, two days before, through the fields. The sun had abandoned not a jot more of its August vigour, the night-time dews stayed not an instant longer.

The brittle stalks of the cow parsley were as they’d been, the same bird-scare sounded in a field of corn. The woman who’d been clipping her fuchsia hedge was not outside her cottage, but the withered clippings were still strewn on the road. The same dog ran after Mary Louise’s bicycle, a brindle-haired terrier with snappy eyes. On the roads there were the same potholes to avoid.

Yet everything was different. Vitality had drained away from all she passed through, leaving it dull. They had found four mushrooms in the sloping field, and in the kitchen he had laid them in a line on the wooden draining-board: vividly she saw them there.

She went to the graveyard and sat as they had sat, among the Attridge stones. Was this a punishment for their sinning? If so, it seemed unfair, since her living was a greater ordeal than his death. She didn’t want ever to ride away, but to die as well, here in their place.

‘I love you, Robert,’ she whispered, knowing what she had not known in the last hours of his lifetime. ‘I love you,’ she said again.

Her tears came then, fresh tears that flowed more freely than before. And when eventually she wiped them away she thought: might there be some error? Had she stupidly misheard what her mother had said? Was he only ill? Was it her Aunt Emmeline who had died? If there had been some error, if she rode down the grassy avenue now and found him mourning his mother in the kitchen, she would not ever leave his side. She would remain in the house with him and care for him as no human being had ever before been cared for. She would make up for everything, none of it a sacrifice, for all she wanted was to be with him, each of them part of the other.

But Robert was dead. Her mother had clearly stated that. You do not make mistakes when informing about death, and she had not misheard. Robert was dead, and had not suffered. Robert was cold as ice already, his body stiff and useless, the amusement gone for ever from his expression.

Mary Louise remained in the graveyard when dusk came. Shivering, and longing for death herself, she stayed when darkness came too. She thought she might never leave the graveyard, and did not do so until the light of dawn.