Wearing Purple

Chapter 33

‘Why d’you have to do the bloody washing at six o’clock on a Saturday evening, love? Why the hell didn’t you leave it for me to do when I got back?’

I tried to be angry with her, there in the room which the kind-hearted, sad-eyed attendants had prepared for us, but my heart just wasn’t in it. My childhood sweetheart, my wife, my soulmate, lay there on her bier, eyes closed, her mouth slightly open, not rising to my bait at all. I looked at the wall-clock and saw that just over twenty-four hours had passed since. . it. . had happened.

Her skin was pale and translucent and her hair had lost its lustre: but she was still my Jan. For all the world she looked as she had less than three days earlier, when last I saw her asleep in the night. They had clothed her in a white gown, and her hands were folded across her chest. She still wore her wedding ring, and I promised her there that she always would.

They had given me a chair, and had told me that I could stay for as long as I wished. Nice people: chosen well for their awful job. I sat for half an hour, weeping for most of the time, speaking to her between the tears; telling her that I loved her, telling her that she had been all the life I wanted, telling her that I wished it was I who lay there, not her. All of them useless, empty words, all of them vain wishes, but every one straight and true from my heart.

At last, I had talked myself out. I sat there in the silence, all the more awful for its lack of the sound of Jan’s breathing, and the thing which had niggled at my mind when I had spoken to Dylan earlier that same day came rushing back to me.

She had died, Mike had said, just before six. . or just before seven in Barcelona, the moment at which I had experienced that strange, unprecedented attack of dread and panic. ‘Was that it, Jan?’ I asked her. ‘Were you calling out to me? Was that your cry for help?’

I felt my heart racing as I tried to deal with the possibility. I leaned back in my chair, let my head fall forwards and closed my eyes. I sat in that position for at least a couple of minutes. Gradually, my heartbeat slowed down, and as it did, I felt my mind clear, settling slowly like the surface of a pond after a rock has been tossed in, ripples gradually dying away.

As it did, I felt a strange, light pressure across my forehead, just above my eyebrows, as if something tangible was passing into my brain. It lasted for ten seconds or so, and then it faded. I opened my eyes, and I smiled; I felt a strange, inexplicable easing within me, and a surge of a kind of contentment.

I was full of a great certainty; that Jan had spoken to me, not to tell me that everything was all right, but that everything was as it was, and as it should be, and to tell me also that however lonely I might be through the rest of my life, I would not be alone.

I stood, and I looked at her body once more, and I saw it for what it was; a remarkable vessel, designed for the containment of something miraculous. Already, her face seemed to have taken on a different aspect. A transition had taken place; Jan just wasn’t there any more. I thought of a term which had been in my mind earlier: soulmate. Now I knew, truly, what it meant.

I left the makeshift chapel, thanked the attendants, signed a formal identification, and rejoined my father who was waiting in the corridor, outside.

‘Let’s go back to Fife for tonight,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll bring you back down in the morning.’

‘No, Dad. You go back and look after Mary; she needs you. I’ll stay at the flat tonight, do what I have to do tomorrow, then come across.’

‘Christ son, you can’t stay there,’ he protested.

‘Of course I can. It’s our home and I belong there. I’m not afraid of it.’

He took me back there, but he wouldn’t come in. I understood that, so we said our farewells in the street. ‘Tell Mary I’ll be with her as soon as I can,’ I told him.

I waved him off in his trusty, beloved Jaguar, and went inside. I was pleased to see that the police had made my front door secure after the Scottish Power breakin, and that my electricity supply had been restored.

The hardest part was going into the kitchen. Our lethal washing machine, a German-made monster, had been taken away. I was glad about that, yet disappointed too, for I had been entertaining thoughts of taking my heavy hammer and reducing it to its component parts.

I had eaten two aircraft meals, so I wasn’t hungry, but I made myself some tuna sandwiches and a coffee, just to be doing something, and opened the first of what I intended to be several lagers. I was halfway through my second, and the dishes were in the washer, when I phoned Susie Gantry’s number. The annoying BT woman answered, so I left a message asking Mike to call me.

I was playing a Jacqueline du Pre CD, one of Jan’s favourites, when the phone rang. I assumed it would be Dylan, but in fact it was Prim.

‘How are you doing?’ she asked, sounding like a little mother hen.

‘I’m doing okay. I’m playing music, and getting slightly drunk. I’ve been to see Jan, and I feel better, in a way that I can’t explain to you. Did you do what I asked?’

‘Yes,’ she said, quickly. ‘Jerry came through the surgery well. I spoke to the doctor who admitted him. He said that they removed a piece of metal, but that they were puzzled by it since it seemed to be covered in leather.

‘He’s suffered damage to the base of his right lung, but nothing that’s going to leave him disabled. He’ll probably even be able to wrestle again before the end of this year.’

‘Did your doctor say anything about the police being involved?’

‘The hospital didn’t call them in, so I don’t imagine that they are.’

‘That’s good. That means that Everett stays in control of the situation. Now that we’ve rumbled the guy Leonard, his crisis should be over.’

There were a few seconds of expensive silence. ‘Where are you now?’ I asked her.

‘At home. I’ve got work tomorrow, so I’m having an early night. What do you have to do next?’

‘I’ll have to go and see the police tomorrow, then make funeral arrangements — if it’s okay with the Fiscal.’ As I spoke I heard a ‘call waiting’ bleep, but I decided to ignore it. ‘There’s a guy up in Fife, a patient of my dad’s. He’s a good man; I’ll ask him to take care of everything.’

‘Mmm,’ Prim murmured. ‘I think I’d prefer the personal touch too, at a time like this.’ I could sense her hesitating. ‘I saw Shirley Gash tonight, down at Miguel’s,’ she went on. ‘Out of the blue, she asked if I knew how you were doing, so I had to tell her what had happened. She was just appalled, as you’d expect.’ I knew Shirley well; she was a pal from my days in Spain.

‘She asked me to give you her deepest sympathy, and she said that once the funeral’s over, if you wanted to get away for a while, you can have her summer-house for as long as you like.’

I smiled, as if she could see me. ‘Jesus, Prim, kind as it is of big Shirl, that summer-house is just about the last place on earth I’d want to stay.’

‘I thought you might say that,’ she said, ‘so here’s an alternative. Would you like to come out here, to the apartment? I wouldn’t be here, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘I’d bugger off for a couple of weeks, maybe back to Auchterarder to see my folks, or maybe to the States, to visit Dawn and Myles.’

I closed my eyes and I was back on the beach below St Marti, lying on top of the old Greek wall. The idea of going back there should have been appalling, yet somehow, it wasn’t. It was comforting; it gave me a feeling of belonging. ‘I’ll have to think about that, Prim,’ I answered, slowly. ‘Let me get past the funeral, and see that the family’s okay, then I’ll think about it. I’ll have to consult, too,’ I added.

‘One thing I know already; every decision I make in my life from now on, everything I do, will depend on the answer to one question. “Would Jan approve?” That’s the way it’ll be.’

‘And quite right too,’ she said. ‘For now, just you carry on getting slightly drunk. I’m sure she would have approved of that.’