Virtue (46 page)

Farewell, Godiva, and flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. A light passed from the world on Tuesday. We will never see its like again.

©Daily Sparkle, 1985

We’re still clinging to the fantasy that we’re going to live healthily, have vegetables in the fridge and so forth, so I’m carrying four plastic bags full of salad and mineral water when I come home to find Harriet sitting on the floor streaming with tears, tiny Henry, still small enough to fit upside-down in the palm of your hand, clamped to her shoulder. She’s on the floor because the vet’s bills after we found him, poor blood-covered little mite, came to more than the cost of the glamorous Knowle sofa we’d been saving our tips for, and we’re still trying to decide whether to save up again or just buy second-hand. So there they are, in the middle of a slightly singed Persian rug from Belhaven, Henry with his ragged ear and his broken nose and his half-closed eye, the burnt-off whiskers just beginning to sprout again, and Harriet crying like she’s never going to stop.

I drop the bags, rush over and sit beside her. I’ve never seen Harriet cry but the once before, when she’d cut me down from the hook in my bedroom, and it’s a sight that alarms me, makes me want to cry myself. Tentatively, I reach out to stroke her hair, which makes her both bawl even harder and duck her head to try to hide the fact that she’s doing it. A great big tear plops off her cheek and lands squarely on Henry’s head. He shakes it off, ears rattling, then stretches his neck, eyes closed, to rest his chin on her collarbone. Less than three months old, and he’s already learned that cat thing of knowing the difference between crying and anger and taking the appropriate action.

‘What’s wrong? Darling, what’s up?’

‘There’s nothing wrong, honestly, I’m fine,’ she sobs.

‘Well, why are you crying? You can’t be crying if there’s nothing wrong.’

‘Well, I
am
,’ she wails, and collapses against me. Henry, mildly confused, transfers himself onto my jumper, clambers up with needle claws to stand on my shoulder. He starts licking my ear, tiny rasping tongue giving me such a nice tickling that, under other circumstances, I would burst out laughing.

‘So what’s with the tears?’ I put my arm round her and our little family circle is complete.

Harriet gulps. ‘I was thinking,’ she said, ‘how wonderful it all was. I came home, and Henry came galloping to the top of the stairs to meet me, and I picked him up and gave him a cuddle, and then I was thinking about how brilliant everything was. We’ve finally got this place, and it’s you, and me, and Henry, and I’ve never felt so – so – so
safe
before, and I never had any friends before, not really, just people one knew, not people who actually minded. And now I’ve got you, and Mel, and Dom, and Lindsey, and we’ve got this house where we can be anything we want to be, and I don’t want it all to
end
.’

I shush her, lean my chin on her hair and stroke the back of her neck. ‘Why do you think it’s going to end, honey?’

‘Because
everything
ends!’ she wails. ‘Everything!’

‘But I’m not going anywhere, Harriet. You’re my friend for life.’

And then she flops about a bit, and looks up and puts her hand on Henry’s poor bashed-up little head.

‘Look what they did to him,’ she says. ‘That’s what. Look. He’s only tiny and he never did anyone any harm, and look what they did! He’s little and trusting, and they used him like a football and they shut him up in a box to die!’

My own eyes start to brim with this, and I begin to gulp along with her. ‘But he’s okay now,’ I blubber, ‘he’s got us now. There will never be a cat in the world who’s as loved as Henry Tudor.’

We both know we’re not just crying over Henry, though I’ve shed many tears in surgeries up and down the city. You know, you suddenly find yourself responsible for something so small, so damaged, and your defences crumble one by one. The first time Henry came voluntarily out from behind the kitchen unit where he spent most of his time hiding and rubbed his scrappy little cheekbone along the length of my extended finger, I fell besottedly in love. I can’t bear the thought that someone could hurt my baby.

But we’re crying because, if you’re damaged yourself, you can’t bear to see someone else go through the same thing. That’s the tie that binds the two of us together. Don’t think we’re so unaware that we don’t know that.

‘But what if …?’ she says. Now that I’m crying, she’s slowed down herself.

‘Don’t do what ifs, Harriet. We can’t do what ifs.’

‘Yes, but,’ she says, ‘this can’t last. Something will come along that will destroy it all. We could get ill, or we could start to hate each other, or you’ll go and settle down with some man—’

I interrupt. ‘What the hell are you on about? I’m not going to leave you for some man, Harriet.’ And then, because I’m more of a realist than that, I correct myself. ‘Do you think I’d ever swan off with some man who didn’t understand what you meant to me?’ And as I’m asking it, I’m thinking about all the times Godiva did just that: called from New York to cancel an access visit because luurve took precedence. ‘My daughter
wants
me to be happy,’ she would crow to the press. ‘She understands how hard it’s been for me.’ And Harriet, on the payphone from her boarding school, would echo her, ‘That’s fine, Mummy,’ she would say dutifully, ‘you
know
I want you to be happy’.

‘You think that now,’ she says, ‘but men always get in the way. You love them. You’re bound to want to be with one some day.’

And I say, ‘Harriet, let’s not think about that now. Let’s just enjoy ourselves. We’ve finally found somewhere where no one can touch us, where no one can come in without our say-so, where we’re totally safe. Just try to be happy. Don’t spend your life waiting for it to end.’

Henry, finished with my ear, emits a little peeping miaow – he still talks baby-talk – and hops from my shoulder onto hers. She puts a hand up and wipes her tearstained face on his coat, something he doesn’t seem to mind.

‘Besides,’ I add, with that sunny optimism borne of friendship, ‘we’ll probably end up a pair of mad old cat ladies quarrelling about your art supplies when we’re seventy.’

She sniffs, gives me a watery smile. ‘We’ll never get a Stannah up the stairs,’ she says.

And I keep crying. There’s nothing I can do to control it. All the tears I haven’t shed come bursting to the surface and won’t be stopped. I cry myself to sleep, I wake up and cry at the bathroom mirror as I’m brushing my teeth, I cry in front of the TV. She doesn’t come in to work again, and two or three times a night I have to take off for five minutes or so to hide in the cellar and let the tears roll. I stop going out, and instead I cry as I prepare my solitary late-night suppers, I cry when anyone calls to see how I am, and I lose it every time Henry climbs up and pushes his worried, mournful face into mine.

I stop answering the phone because I don’t want to run the risk that I might pick up and find it’s her, then I cry some more because whenever the machine clicks on, it never is. It’s as though she’s vanished off the face of the earth. It’s as though she’s died: one minute she’s there, filling up my life, irritating me and entertaining me and giving me worry and hope, and the next minute: nothing. Only, dying’s not a betrayal. If someone dies, it’s not stupid pride that takes them away from you. If someone dies, you can’t blame yourself.

And nobody seems to be on my side. Shahin says, ‘Anna, you are motherfuckin’ stupid bastard. You are family. She is like family to you. How can you do this? Why you are so angry? It’s only a man, after all.’

Oh, yes: they all know about
that
.

And I say, ‘You don’t understand, Shahin, it’s not about a man, it’s about the lies. Everyone has lied to me, my whole life. Until I met Harriet, there wasn’t a single person who told me the truth, about anything. And now I find out that she’s the same as the rest of them, and I can’t trust her any more either.’

And Shahin clears his throat and makes a spitting noise, and says, ‘Anna, you are crazy woman. I know all weemens are crazy, but this is really crazy. You think you’re only person ever got lied to?’

‘No, of course I don’t. But this is different.’

Shahin makes a roar of Middle-Eastern frustration. ‘Of
course
is not different! What makes you so special? I lie all the time. Everyone lies, all the time. Where I grew up, you had to lie, every day, every minute, because that was only way you stayed alive. Lying’s not the worst thing you can do. Sometime it’s the
only
thing you can do.’

And I say, ‘It is to me, Shahin. How can I ever trust that someone loves me if they don’t tell me the truth?’

‘Many time,’ says Shahin, ‘people tell lies
because
they love someone. Are you really so blind you don’t even know that?’

And then he says, ‘You been lying to your mother for, what? Ten years? I hear you all the time, on the telephone. Yes, Mother, library, Mother, being good girl, Mother. Without shame.’

And I say, ‘My point exactly.’

Mel comes over. She says, ‘Anna, Harriet’s in an awful state. Why won’t you talk to her?’

I roll over on the sofa, wrap myself tighter in my blanket because I seem to be cold all the time nowadays, even though it’s only September, and I say, ‘Mel, you don’t understand. Harriet’s got what she wants. She doesn’t give a damn what it does to anyone else.’

Mel says, ‘No, she rang me the other day and she could hardly speak, she was crying so much.’

I shout, ‘Don’t you think I’m crying? Do my tears matter so little to all of you? Why are you so concerned about Harriet’s tears? What about mine?’

Mel leaves, and Lindsey comes round the next day and sits on the futon with her arms round me for an hour while I cry. And she says, ‘Anna, Harriet never meant to hurt you. You must know that. It’s the last thing she’d do on purpose,’ but I can’t listen to her. All I know is that everything is spoiled now, that nothing will ever be good in my life again.

You think I’m exaggerating? Live in my shoes. I’ve nothing left. Oh, for God’s sake, this isn’t
about
a man. It’s about something important. It’s about trust and respect and deceit, it’s not about some poxy man.

Dom calls, all awkward, says, ‘How you doing, mate?’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, good,’ he says. ‘So maybe you feel like coming out on Saturday after work? We were going to go to that new place on Greek Street where you get free drinks all night if you guess the weight of the bouncer.’

‘No, thanks,’ I say.

‘You sure?’ he says, all concerned.

‘Positive.’

He’s a bloke. He’s relieved, though because he’s a nice bloke he tries not to show it. ‘Okay, then,’ he says. ‘But if you change your mind …’

‘I won’t,’ I reply. ‘Thanks anyway, Dom.’

After he hangs up I hug a cushion for an hour before I fall asleep.

Roy says, ‘For Christ’s sake sort yourself out with that posh bint. This place is going to go down the tubes without her. Let alone the rent I’m not getting on the flat upstairs.’

I say, ‘Thanks, Roy. I’m doing my best.’

He shakes his head, tuts. ‘Well, it’s not bloody good enough. You’ve got a face like a wet Tuesday and it’s scaring off the punters.’

And I go down to the cellar and have a cry where he can’t see me.

On the eighth day, she sends me a letter.

Annie,

Please talk to me. Please don’t walk away from me. I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart I’m sorry. I haven’t told him anything about this. He has no idea. He never did. I love you. Please talk to me. It’s killing me, having you be so angry with me. I know you have reason, and all I can say is that I am truly, truly sorry. I’ll finish it with him, if that’s what you need; I just don’t want to be estranged from you like this. I never meant to lie to you. I was going to tell you, I swear. Please, please talk to me, let me apologise to your face. We can’t leave things like this.

I don’t know what’s got into me. Maybe I’m not my mother’s daughter for nothing. I read it, and I miss her so much. It’s like having had a limb amputated. I feel her presence all the time, turn to tell her something and remember that she’s not there. And then the anger returns, and I screw the letter up, throw it into the bin. Then I get it out and read it again, and cry, and then, ritualistically, I put it in the ashtray and set fire to it, Henry crouching down in a corner, looking nervously at me like I’m going to set fire to him next.

So I think: maybe I’ll go to Australia. Maybe I’ll just bugger off to Australia and live on the beach and never come back, and that’ll show them. So I dial Nigel at three o’clock in the morning and he picks it up at seven o’clock his time. ‘It’s me,’ I say.

‘Annie!’ His voice is happy, relaxed, full of beach life. ‘Annie, how are ya? I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so soon!’

‘I’m fine,’ I lie.

‘Really?’ he asks. ‘And how’s the stalker?’

‘Arrested.’

‘Well, thank God for that. And how’s Harriet?’

‘All right, as far as I know,’ I tell him, and burst into tears.

A worried, kindly voice on the other side of the world says, ‘Annie, what’s wrong? Why are you crying, Annie? What’s going on?’

So between sobs I stammer out my story – well, the edited highlights, obviously, about the safe house and the loneliness and the fact that she’d been holed up with Mike all that time without telling me, not the bit about how I’d wanted him for myself, and Nigel listens like the sweetie he is, only saying the odd ‘Aouh yeah?’ and ‘Go on’ to encourage me. And when I’m done, he sighs and says, ‘Poor old you. You’ve been having a rough time, I reckon.’

‘Yes,’ I sob, ‘I have.’

‘Guess you need a spot of the old TLC,’ he says.

‘Yes,’ I reply, then, suddenly shy, I ask hesitantly, ‘So is it all right if I – you know – if I come out and see you? Like you said?’

‘Well, sure,’ says Nigel, ‘I can’t think of anything nicer.’ And then he pauses, adds, ‘Once you’ve sorted everything out.’