The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy (33 page)

The following day I was at my desk when I heard one of the secretaries mention your name. Mr Fry had rung in sick was what I heard. You’d never rung in sick in your life.

David had walked from my flat and hanged himself in your garden shed.

Final absolution

S
IP, SIP
.

Are you all right, Queenie? Can you hear us? Can you lift your hand if you’re in pain?

Sip, sip.

I slept.

The horse is back. So is the lady with the grapefruit. The dog has his stone but he has given up bringing it to me. The dog just watches the stone, with his head tilted, one ear poised, eternally patient.

Once I had a pair of ballroom (?) Ballroom (?) What are the things that go on your feet? I can’t remember. I had them anyway.

Little beauties. I loved those things.

Sister Mary Inconnue glances up from her typewriter.

‘You know it was not your fault?’

I have no clue what she is talking about.

‘All those years you blamed yourself, but David’s death was not your fault. You couldn’t have stopped him. People do as they want.’

I begin to cry. It is not with pain. It is a sort of relief. Now that I have shaped the songs in my head and placed them on the page, now that my pencil has turned them into lines and tails and curls, I can let them go. My head is silent. The sorrow has not gone but it no longer hurts.

Sister Mary Inconnue smiles. ‘Good,’ she says. ‘That’s very good.’

Beyond the window, light flows through the leaves in the tree and sends silver ripples that lap the whitened wall. It is a new day.

Exit pursued by a nun

‘W
E HAVE
a visitor,’ announced Sister Philomena, opening my door wide and appearing to wish to flatten herself against it. ‘How exciting.’

Twenty years of waiting. Twelve and a half weeks in a hospice. And when you finally arrive, what do I do? First I almost fall out of the bed and then, just at the climax of the scene, I nod off.

You hovered at the threshold to the room, peering in beside Sister Philomena. Your face was so wind-weathered that your eyes shone. (I was wrong about the irises, Harold. The blue poppies caught you.) No hint of the beard apart from a paler stain to the skin around your mouth, and one or two stray tufts. On your feet there were no yachting shoes, there were only socks, and through one of them your big toe appeared, swollen and bruised. The straps of your rucksack hung loose around your stooped shoulders. There was no sign of my letter in your hands. The sight of you was too much. I had to look away before your eyes found mine.

I kept my head towards the window, hoping you would not see me. I wondered if Sister Mary Inconnue had showed you my letter. I wondered if you hated me. My heart was banging inside the bone basket of my ribcage.

‘But she’s not here,’ I heard you say. And from the quick, light tone in your voice, I could tell you were relieved. I thought, Go now. It was enough to see you at the door. It was enough to know that you would do this for me.

Sister Philomena laughed. ‘Of course she’s here.’ She said something
else but I did not catch it. I heard only the rattle of my breathing.

I remembered the opening words of my letter and the promise to tell you everything. No lies.

As Sister Philomena’s footsteps receded down the corridor, you began to creep forward. I could sense your progress even without looking. I was too afraid to move. One soft footstep, another. Then your eyes must have hit my face, and despite yourself, perhaps, you gave a low groan: ‘No.’

I turned my face to meet yours but I tried to keep the worst of me away from you.

Oh, and I saw it all, Harold. The look of shock. Horror. Pity too. And the guilt that the sight of me aroused such feelings. You walked all that way and you believed I’d be pretty? I am sorry, Harold, for the way the truth lies. By now you had tugged your rucksack from your back and were holding it against your stomach as if it might protect you. I tried to move my hand to spare you any more, but I’m sorry, with all the writing, I couldn’t lift it.

‘Hello, Queenie,’ you said. All brave.

Hello, Harold, said I. No words.

‘It’s Harold,’ you said. ‘Harold Fry. We worked together a long time ago. Do you remember?’

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways
. A tear pressed its way from my closed-up eye.

‘Did you get my letter?’ you said.

Do you have mine?

‘Did you get my postcards?’

Can you forgive me?

You got very busy with the contents of your rucksack. ‘I have some small souvenirs. I picked them up as I walked. There’s a hanging quartz that will look very nice at your window. I just have to find it.’ You produced various items, and I think you mentioned honey and pens, but all the time I was thinking: Give me a sign. Tell me you forgive me. You pulled a crumpled paper bag from your rucksack, and when you peered inside your face brightened. You placed the bag a little to the left of my fingers like a small stepping-stone between you and me and then you stood back again. I did not move. Your hand dived forward and you gave the bag a friendly pat, as if to say, Don’t be frightened, little paper bag. This is OK, really.

It dawned on me. Maybe you’d not been given my letter? Maybe you’d missed Sister Mary Inconnue? Maybe you still did not know the truth? I felt a terrible throbbing in my head, because that was the deal, remember. That you must know everything.

I tried to point my hand at the suitcase of pages beneath the bed but my stupid body began to slide sideways. I couldn’t stop. And the panic on your face. You lifted your hands as if to help, but by now you were pressed right against the window; there was no helping to be done from way over there. And I felt nothing but my love for you, because I saw how hard it is to visit a person and discover you would rather leave. I remembered how you used to glance away when I got into your car as if you were afraid I would embarrass myself. More than anything I wished I could sit upright like any dignified human being.

‘Excuse me! She’s—’

You called for help, softly at first and then more violently. And here came dear Sister Lucy, only I could tell she was flustered too because
she had turned a heavy pink colour and she kept talking nonsense about morgues and visitors. I thought: Any moment, the poor girl will offer to paint your nails. She lifted me up to sitting with her thick arms. I’ve never heard her talk so loud. In her consternation, a small moustache of wet sweat appeared above her upper lip. She also seemed to have temporarily mislaid your name.

‘Apparently Henry has walked. All the way from— Where are you from, Henry?’

(You know this, Sister Lucy, I thought. You do know this.)

You opened your mouth as if to answer and then shut it again because Sister Lucy was already remembering. ‘Dorset,’ she said with triumph. We really have to hope that no one asks Sister Lucy to lead a walking expedition.

Now you were shouting too. You seemed to be agreeing that yes, you lived in Dorset, and that yes, your name was Henry. By this time Sister Lucy was so frazzled she asked if we should make you a cup of tea. In fact what she suggested was a cuppa. I’ve never heard her call it a cuppa before. ‘There have been so many letters and cards,’ she yelled. ‘Last week a lady even wrote from Perth.’

(She meant Penge.)

‘She can hear you,’ said Sister Lucy, pointing at me. She bundled herself out of the room. And we were alone again. You and I. You took Sister Mary Inconnue’s chair and sat. You slotted your hands between your knees, tidying yourself into a neat profile.

‘Hello,’ you began again. ‘I must say you’re doing very well. My wife – do you remember Maureen? – my wife sends her best regards.’

At the mention of her name, I felt made of air. She forgives me, I thought.

But you were still talking. You glanced back to the door, and I knew you were longing for Sister Lucy and an interruption. After that you got very busy digging something out of the paper bag. Then you sprang to your feet and rushed to the window. For a long time you seemed to remain there, and I watched you lift your hands to the windowsill as if to steady yourself. You looked out over the green-cloaked tree towards the garden and softly, softly you began to cry.

Twenty years of exile slipped away and I saw everything that has brought me here. Something pink spangled at my window. Once again you turned to look at me and I lifted my face to meet yours. I did not hide.

This time there was no snow between us. No street. No window. See me, Harold, I said. And you did. You looked and looked and you saw me. You didn’t step away. You didn’t gasp. You came closer.

You took your place beside me on the edge of the bed. Without words, you reached out your hand and took up mine. And I would say I felt prickles of electricity but they were not attraction; it was something far deeper now. I closed my fingers around yours.

There you were, sitting to my right and staring ahead, while I sat to your left. You in the driving seat, and me at your side. I could picture the sun through the windscreen. I heard you reach for your driving gloves. I smelt the lemon-coffee scent of you. I tasted mint sweets from my handbag. ‘Where to, Miss Hennessy?’ As you put your key in the ignition, I felt a swelling in my heart.

All these years, Harold, I have waited to tell you that I loved you. All
these years I thought a piece of my life was missing. But it was there all along. It was there when I sat beside you in your car and you began to drive. It was there when I sang backwards and you laughed or I made a picnic and you ate every crumb. It was there when you told me you liked my brown suit, when you opened the door for me, when you asked once if I would like to take the long road home. It came later in my garden. When I looked at the sun and saw it glow on my hands. When a rosebud appeared where there had not been one before. It was in the people who stopped and talked of this and that over the garden wall. And just when I thought my life was done, it came time and time again at the hospice. It has been everywhere, my happiness – when my mother sang for me to dance, when my father took my hand to keep me safe – but it was such a small, plain thing that I mistook it for something ordinary and failed to see. We expect our happiness to come with a sign and bells, but it doesn’t. I loved you and you didn’t know. I loved you and that was enough.

‘It seems a long time since I found you in the stationery cupboard,’ you said at last. You gave a Harold Fry laugh.

CANTEEN, I thought. We met in the CANTEEN.

But what did it matter? I wrote at the beginning of my letter that you must know everything. The need to confess the truth has been with me so long it was an illness in itself. But now that I have waited here and told my whole story, I no longer see the waste. I see only the different parts of my life as if I were a child on the banks of a river and setting each one to drift, small as flowers on water.

I pressed my fingers tight around yours and closed my eyes. I smiled. I hope you saw that. I smiled so deeply I was filled with it. Even inside
my bones, I smiled. And then all I wanted was sleep. I was not frightened any more.

Rattle, rattle
. Here came dear Sister Lucy and her cuppa. I have an awful feeling that she went and called you Henry again. She had difficulties with the tray and the door, so she banged it first with her elbows and afterwards with her behind, and finally with the tray itself.

‘Do you mind if I leave the tea?’ you said to no one in particular. ‘I have to go now.’

I opened my eye long enough to find your tall profile at the door. The room began to melt, and when I looked again, you were gone and so was Sister Lucy.

You have walked far enough. Please, my friend: Go home.

The happy ending

S
ISTER
M
ARY
Inconnue sits in my chair. She has not used the door. She has no typewriter.

I make notes but I am slow. I find it hard to lift the ? and I keep losing words.

I remember that she is supposed to help and I point to her lap.

‘But we’ve finished now,’ she says.

It is hard to find her face because all I can see is the lamp at the window. The walls are gone and I smell the sea. I hear the leaves in the tree and the buzzing of the fly.

Sister Mary Inconnue says, ‘Are you in pain, dear Queenie?’

I remember that I have been in pain in the past. But there is none of that now – or if there is, it no longer hurts.

She says, ‘I can wait as long as you like. If you want to finish your page.’

I nod. There is a little more to go and it is as small as breathing. The next time I look, she is standing beside the window. I would like to touch her.

‘You have done it,’ she says. ‘People think you have to walk to go on a journey. But you don’t, you see. You can lie in bed and make a journey too. What’s funny?’

I can’t help it. I am listening but I am laugh laugh laugh.

Tree, I say. Do I say that? I am not sure. After all there is no need. She already knows.

‘Oh, yes.’ Her smile shoots into a happy. ‘Tree!’ She grips her stomach. She howls.

I see Sister Mary Inconnue and I see other things. The hospice. The Well-being Garden. The water that is the sea. And so many people going about their lives, millions of them, being ordinary, doing ordinary things that no one notices, that no one sings about, but there they are nevertheless, and they are filled with life. I see my father, my mother. I see David. I see Finty, Barbara, the Pearly King, and Mr Henderson. Patients whose names I never knew. On the beach I see you, I see Maureen. I see the dayroom and Sister Lucy rushing down the corridor, towards my door. I see the undertaker fetch his keys for the van and his wife hand him a packed lunch.

See you later, he says.

Have a good day, she replies.

I feel the wind in my sea garden and I hear a thousand shells chime. It is all, all inside me.

Queenie? Where are you? Where is that girl?

Here I am! I’m here! I was here all along. From the very beginning here I was.