Authors: Grace Wynne-Jones
‘
Oh.’ I gulp.
‘I think you’re right: we shouldn’t start a family unless we’re more sure about this whole marriage thing.’
This whole marriage t
hing.
Diarmuid doesn’t say things like that. ‘We’re going to have
to talk about all this properly soon, you know. My family have
been pestering me with questions about us. They’d really like to
see some kind of resolution.’
But it’s our marriage, Diarmuid,
I want to scream.
Why do we
care so much about what other people think of us?
‘And of course we’ll have to make some kind of decision about
the house – about whether we should keep it.’
So we’re back to that again. Maybe we don’t need a marriage
counsellor at all. Just a good estate agent.
‘I’m sorry to bring all this up now, when you’re about to see
Aggie.’ His eyes crinkle kindly. ‘Last night… the second half of
it… was lovely.’ He reaches out for my hand.
‘Yes, it was.’ I smile. There seem to be at least five Diarmuids,
and I wish I knew which one married me.
‘I miss you,’ he says, but not the way he used to. The gap is smaller; the space is being filled with other things.
‘And I miss you too,’ I say, because it feels like I should – and
because I sometimes do. But more often I ache for the idea I had
of him.
Diarmuid stops the car on the winding road beside the nursing
home. From the outside it just looks like a rather large suburban
house. I wish it was. I wish Aggie’s dog Scamp could rush towards
me and plaster me with kisses as soon as she opens the door; I
wish she would come to meet me with a geranium cutting in her
hand and a cake just out of the oven. She is in a place where, though they take her pulse several times a day, they don’t know the heart of her.
But when I get to her room, she is sitting up cheerfully. ‘Sally!’
she exclaims. ‘Have a mint toffee. Marie just brought me some.’
I pull the boiled-cabbage-coloured chair to the side of the bed
and dip my fingers into the plastic bag.
‘I’ve been thinking about DeeDee.’ Aggie’s eyes are bright, e
xcited. ‘She says parts of us are like the back yard, and parts of
us are like the Serengeti or… or Canada. It’s a very individual thing, this mixture. Everyone has their own. What she means is
that parts of us are small and parts of us are big… and I suppose
there must be some medium-sized stuff in there too.’
She’s talking as if DeeDee has just popped out to get a bar of chocolate. I feel like shaking her, shouting, ‘DeeDee’s dead,’ to shut her up.
‘How are the sheep?’ I ask. ‘Are they still floating?’
‘Oh, they’re not sheep, dear.’ Aggie smiles at me indulgently.
‘They’re angels. Big white angels. I saw their wings the other night.’ She chuckles.
‘Sheep,
Sally? Sheep don’t float.’
I allow myself to be gently reprimanded. Angels? Poor Aggie.
‘DeeDee will love the angels,’ Aggie says. ‘I’ll bake her some
marble cake and we’ll all have tea on the lawn.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ I say, in this new voice I’ve learned lately – a
sort of caring, professional voice, slightly detached. ‘Would you
like me to plump up those pillows for you?’
She shakes her head.
‘Diarmuid drove me here to see you,’ I tell her.
Aunt Aggie is crumpling a paper handkerchief in her hand. Her
face suddenly looks sad. ‘June, it was. Hot, too – a proper
summer day. DeeDee was there and everyone was happy.
Laughing on the family lawn.’
‘Diarmuid and I had a takeaway meal on Bull Island last night,’
I say. ‘It was lovely – watching the sunset, laughing, getting away
from it all…’
Aggie is completely lost in her memories. ‘Tilly and Bruno were
there, and your great-grandma, Clarice.’
I sense an opportunity to distract her. ‘Grandma Tilly was your
sister, isn’t that right?’ She always loves to explain the family tree.
‘Yes. And she married Bruno, who was your grandfather. Of course, you know that.’ She straightens a crease on her duvet. ‘I w
onder if DeeDee ever married. We’ll find out when she visits. She might even bring her husband with her.’
‘What was Great-Grandma Clarice’s husband called?’
‘
Jethro. He was my father.’
‘Of course.’ I knew this already, but listing the names seems to
calm her.
‘He was a stern man in many ways,’ Aggie says dreamily. ‘He
used to have awful arguments with DeeDee about her hats.’
I know I shouldn’t encourage Aggie to talk about her lost sister,
but my curiosity gets the better of me. ‘Why?’ I draw my chair closer.
‘He said they were too big. Too extravagant and colourful.
Sometimes they blew off in the wind.’ She chuckles to herself at
the memory. ‘Mum used to argue with her too.’
‘About what?’
‘About being late. She was late for almost everything –
s
ometimes it was just a few minutes, but she was never bang on t
ime. Mum used to say she’d be late for her own funeral.’
I look down at the floor.
‘She and Tilly, your grandma, had disagreements as well. DeeDee had very strong opinions.’
‘About what?’
‘About life. She thought Tilly didn’t think enough about life
and feelings and love. She said she never wanted to discuss things
properly.’
I twist a paper handkerchief around my fingers. ‘Would you like
me to open the window a bit? The heating is very warm, isn’t it?’
‘That day on the lawn, DeeDee was saying she wanted to be an
actress. We all laughed. She did, too. She was forever saying she
wanted to be this or that – an opera singer, a nurse… a nun, even.’
Aggie smoothes the duvet again. ‘That’s what we were laughing at.
Not at her wanting to be an actress, but…’ She stares at me earnestly. ‘But at the way she kept changing her mind.’
‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ I say. ‘It must have been –’
‘DeeDee always behaved as if her life might start off properly
at any moment,’ Aggie interrupts. ‘As though she was only filling in time until it did. A number of nice young men wanted to marry
her, but she didn’t want them. She was waiting for some grand passion. She said an ordinary marriage would trap her; she wouldn’t be able to stand it.’
The paper handkerchief is fraying in my hands. Hearing these
things is dreadful and fascinating and almost unbearably sad –
because Aggie thinks DeeDee may walk in here any day now, but
I know she won’t.
‘She used to say that what she needed was someone she could
really
talk to.’
I get up. ‘Excuse me. I have to go to the toilet.’ I flee the room
and walk down the lino-covered corridor; I stand by the window
and stare at the yellow summer roses blowing in the breeze. I take
deep breaths. I don’t have to stay here much longer. She’ll stop
talking about DeeDee when I get back. I’ll get her onto the angels.
‘She was working in that fancy hat shop,’ Aggie says as soon as I return to her room, ‘and every day she’d go to the same café
for lunch and meet Alistair.’
‘Alistair?’ Despite myself, I am drawn into the conversation
again. Every new detail about DeeDee seems shiny and strange,
and some of them are preposterously familiar.
‘Yes. He was the one who kept giving her those fancy ideas. He
worked in the theatre; he was a costume designer or something. That’s why he kept coming into the shop. He was married.’
‘Oh.’
‘She didn’t love him.’ Aunt Aggie answers my unspoken question. ‘But she loved the world he suggested. More like the
movies… you know, where things could change suddenly. Where
you might find yourself in the south of France because some fancy
film director liked your smile.’ She sighs. ‘DeeDee wanted more than ordinariness. She hated all the repetition, the way the bus to
work always took the same route. Laundry. Remembering to buy
things to eat.’
I find myself smiling, but then I notice there are some tears at
the corners of Aggie’s eyes. ‘That’s why we shouldn’t have
laughed that day,’ she says. ‘That day on the lawn… But she was
so much younger than us, and she looked so pretty.’
I don’t quite get the logic of this last sentence.
‘What she can’t have known was that we were laughing
because we loved her. It wasn’t like a joke… but… a celebration.’
Aunt Aggie’s face is creased with regret. ‘She left us soon afterwards.’
‘But she was laughing too, you said.’
‘Yes, but it wasn’t real laughter. It couldn’t have been, in the circumstances.’
‘What circumstances?’ I say quickly, sensing a secret.
Aggie glances at me quickly, sharply. ‘I don’t want to go into
that now, dear. We don’t talk about that.’ She looks fierce and frightened.
I feel like screaming,
Why don’t we talk about it?
But I don’t.
Maybe I can prise it out of her another time. Or maybe someone
else will tell me. I recall Marie’s words in my parents’ kitchen about DeeDee breaking Aggie’s heart.
‘DeeDee didn’t feel loved, you see, even though she was. That happens to some people, Sally.’ Aggie is looking at me carefully.
‘They’re loved, but they don’t feel it. Something’s happened to the
part of them that would know it.’
Suddenly I can’t stand talking about DeeDee any longer. The
room is incredibly hot. I get up and open a window. I look at my
watch: it’s past lunchtime, and I said I’d meet Erika and go to
a film.
‘When will you find her?’ Aunt Aggie’s voice is pleading, desperate. ‘I need to see her. I need her to know I love her.’
I stare at the floor. If I’m not careful, I will cry.
‘I’m sure she knows you love her,’ I say brightly. ‘Of course she
does, Aggie.’
‘No, she doesn’t. I didn’t make it clear at all. Not afterwards.’
‘After what?’ I say gently. Aggie just stares blankly at my face.
‘What if…’ I look at her guardedly. ‘What if I find her, but she’s
far away and doesn’t feel up to the long journey to Dublin? I could get her address. You could send her a letter.’
‘It wouldn’t be the same,’ Aggie says flatly. ‘I need to see her.
I’d go to her instead.’
I don’t tell her that this is crazy. I can’t tell her so many things
now.
‘I’d very much like to find DeeDee for you, Aggie.’ It’s a
neutral, friendly thing to say. It seems to be enough. I smile at her,
and she smiles back.
Chapter
Fifteen
Erika and I are
walking along a leafy path in St Stephen’s
Green; the rain has gone and it’s a nice, bright Saturday
afternoon.