Last Stories Read online

  ‘Death is not something for the telephone,’ Claire says. ‘I hoped you might be here. You are the first to be told.’

  Anita watches her going as she has watched her coming. They have not smiled in each other’s company. At the door Claire does not look back.

  * * *

  * * *

  Anita is less affected by her husband’s death than she was by his saying they had made a mistake in marrying. With terrible tenderness he murmured it and then, regret becoming sympathy, offered his prediction: that for her one day there would be someone else too. There never was. She knew there couldn’t be.

  On a Sunday morning she left the house, his cello heard in an upstairs room, her suitcases in the hall, to be collected some other time. She did not say goodbye but simply walked away, to weep in silent Sunday streets, going nowhere, only wanting to be somewhere else. Why Claire? her single thought was. Why Claire, when Veronica or Tilda would have done, or any of the others? Why was she twice betrayed?

  Canoes, she pencils in. ‘Small boats for strange oceans’ is the clue. Losers are the odd sorels who never win. ‘Classical dance’ is ballet. She puzzles over ‘concentric circles that might be flower petals’, gives up on ‘ski turn’ and then remembers stem.

  Had he as he lay dying whispered her name and wondered whose it was? Had he known why it was Claire who smoothed his pillow, or in the blur of approaching death imagined it was the girl who was still his wife? Had he for one bright moment seen her as she was when she danced and sang? Had he remembered loving her and no one else? What were his thoughts while death reached out, or was there any thought at all?

  * * *

  * * *

  It is a grey, high house on a corner, in a neighbourhood that had been fashionable but no longer is. Flats and short lets and the ground-floor businesses of mortgage advisers and debt-collectors have changed the character of a once-gracious street. Only the house on the corner is as the others in the past have been, a single dwelling, some of the rooms not often used. Its sole occupant now is Claire, her footsteps echoing in a hollow silence, for already the carpets have been taken up and much of the furniture sold. But Claire, as she goes from room to room, hears more: hushed whispers on the telephone are there again, charm-wrapped and secret. Deception is confessed: the attractions of an attractive man come at a price. In the house Claire bore all that Anita could not have. She bears it still and knows she always will.

  His suits hang in the hall, waiting for the charity people to come. Shirts are laid out on a bedsheet on the floor, together with the stripes and dots of many ties. There is a row of polished shoes. On a recessed shelf in what has been the dining room are the carefully typed pages of a novel, begun but not continued with. On the shelf immediately beneath it a collection of objects has accumulated and been kept: a single jigsaw piece, a flattened coin, an inkwell lid, a marbled egg, seashells, a blue-painted stick, a miniature gyroscope, a flint, and things that are part of other things. Claire throws none away.

  His bed was carried down to this room when he said he would prefer it and it was known that he would not walk about the house again. His being downstairs was more convenient for his visitors too, and many came. They brought him wine, confectionery for his sweet tooth, the magazines he liked. They dwindled to a handful, then did not come at all, agreeing that it was better so. He had maintained he was unworthy to be a father and so there were no children to stand around his deathbed, none now to mourn him with a family’s special grief, to keep him for a while alive, as a family can. He called himself a remnant when he felt he had become one. But in his now forever quietened face his languid smile and the amusement in his eyes had still seemed to be there.

  The avenue is long, she reads from the writing that is unfinished. Trees meet overhead, their winter fall of leaves, damp now, cushioning his footsteps as he goes on. The stillness has a quality of its own; the sunshine that has lit the hedge poppies and meadow daisies is lost in the twilight of the trees. No rabbits burrow, no squirrels search; no voices echo. What sounds there are are of the trees.

  His family’s place that once had been, and Claire searches for more about it but finds nothing. She gathers up race-cards and betting slips, begging letters, forgotten uncashed cheques, a passionate note in a woman’s handwriting among them. This too she has not seen before, for he was considerate in his way and carelessness was foolish, so he said.

  The house is cold. She finds an overcoat among the clothes that wait in the hall, one that’s warmer than any of hers. In the kitchen, where she has mostly lived since so much of the furniture went, she pours herself a drink, adding vermouth to the ordinariness of gin. She lights the gas oven, leaving its door open to warm the air. She sits on the edge of the trestle bed she sleeps on here, her hands held out to the warmth, her glass on the floor beside her. She has always hated the cold.

  * * *

  * * *

  Anita eats lightly in the evenings, often no more than soup and toast or an egg. For tonight she has bought slices of turkey breast and will not cook.

  She didn’t go to the funeral although Claire had sent a note: the day, the time. Instead she went to the cinema, to see a film she’d seen before. Walking to Baker Street, she imagined the mourners gathering, some old friend making the most of the oration, a generosity remembered, and niceness. All that was months ago and there was nothing special about the day, or even about Gervaise’s dying, since he hadn’t been part of her life for so long.

  She slices tomato and cucumber for a salad, shakes together spinach and rocket, scatters olives. When she was first deserted she went back often to be near the house where so briefly she lived and was happy. She stood about where she could not be seen, peered through chinks in lit-up windows when it was dark, seeing nothing but still remaining. She drew back into deeper shadows when there were footsteps; she might well have worn a veil and wanted to, but that had seemed dramatic and unreal.

  She mixes oil and vinegar. Her radio plays softly, music she likes but can’t identify. She doesn’t have television, had long ago decided that television was something for an audience of more than one, to be watched in company and talked about. She reads a typescript she hasn’t finished with while she eats. She couldn’t have managed the funeral, no one but Claire knowing who she was.

  * * *

  * * *

  The death occurred when a July dawn was flickering into life. It is October when Claire finishes in the house. A ‘For Sale’ board is in place but no one comes to see the house, no interest has been shown in it. It’s an awkward size, the agents say, too big, less easy to divide than other houses in this street; being on a corner isn’t in its favour. Without its furniture, neglect is apparent in the rooms, dark areas on walls where wardrobes or tallboys have protected surfaces from the sun. Here and there, wallpaper hangs loose, plaster falls away.

  Oppressed by her surroundings, Claire goes for walks, an activity that hasn’t attracted her before. She finds the river and walks along the towpath in one direction or the other; she comes to know streets and districts she hasn’t known before. Still mourning, lost in her loneliness, she often feels tired almost as soon as she sets out, then hurries back and time hangs heavily. There have been other friendships besides Anita’s, but so entirely did she give herself to Gervaise that these have lapsed and she dreads attempting to renew them, not knowing why she does. One foggy November morning she makes her way again to the Caffè Daria.

  * * *

  * * *

  Anita, that morning, arrives at the caffè later than usual and as she does is at once aware of someone intent on attracting her attention. A hand is raised as if to wave but quickly then is lowered, as if on second thoughts waving is inappropriate.

  How wan she seems, Anita reflects, recognizing Claire, who despite her change of mind continues to look expectantly in Anita’s direction. There is a hollowness about her face, Anita’s thought g
oes on. It was not there before.

  ‘Your cafetière?’ a waitress greets her and Anita nods, gesturing at her usual table, emptily waiting for her. She pauses when she reaches Claire’s.

  ‘I thought I’d come,’ Claire says.

  Anita nods again, as if she understands why Claire is here, which she does not. In her slim black attaché case are the papers she needs for her morning’s work, a newspaper too, the day’s post. She smiles, feeling that she must. She can tell it’s an effort for Claire to smile too, although she tries.

  ‘Well,’ Anita says, not making it a question. Noticing that the cafetière she ordered has been brought to her table, she might say she is pressed this morning and hurry off to it. She wonders why she doesn’t, why she has paused here at all.

  ‘An awful month,’ Claire says. ‘November.’

  Her hair is lank, apparent now as it wasn’t from a distance. Her make-up is carelessly applied.

  Slowly Anita sits down, her slowness intended, denying a willingness to converse. The caffè isn’t full and when she looks around people nod or smile, knowing her well yet not at all. It’s a nice way to be known, Anita has often thought in the Caffè Daria.

  ‘The house is bleak,’ Claire says. ‘My God, how bleak it is.’

  The words mean something else, Anita knows, and imagines more: childless women as they are, they might turn to one another now. But pretence’s truth is shoddy, without a heart. And the past is too far off, its laughter does not echo, its flimsy shadows fall away.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Claire says, the useless words whispered as if they deserve no more than that.

  ‘Why have you come?’ Anita repeats her question of months ago, precise and cold, as it was then.

  ‘Perhaps I’ve come to beg you to forgive me. You bear Gervaise’s name and I do not. Gervaise has died and we and it are left.’

  ‘But we are as we are, not as we were. Death exorcizes nothing. I was a passing fancy in a spoilt man’s life and you were everything. It’s that that’s left.’

  Anita stands up, and Claire does too. In silence she begs again, a pleading in her eyes.

  ‘Gervaise did not know about being faithful,’ she says before she goes. ‘He never was. Nor was I everything.’

  But Anita’s unforgiving resolve does not weaken and the conversation ends in silence.

  The lunchtime waiters come, passing through the caffè to have a coffee at the back. The empty tables are cleared, reservation cards put out on some. Anita arranges her papers, begins to make her notes.

  * * *

  * * *

  The towpath is becoming familiar territory now, the sluggish traffic on the water, the stunted winter growth, the runners, the walkers. Are they curious, Claire wonders, about a solitary woman dressed more formally than they, a woman who was not here before and is so often now? She’s unacknowledged by these more serious people of the towpath; there is no nod, no smile, no suggestion of affection, as there is for Anita in the Caffè Daria. Claire hurries when it’s cold, as if she, too, is here for a purpose. One of a modest lunchtime crowd in the Marquis of Granby, she makes time pass when she reaches it, whisky warming her, the counter newspaper claimed. The December twilight is darkening when she walks back to the house, through streets alive with Christmas decorations. The news items she read earlier are repeated on the television. The house remains unsold.

  When the ‘For Sale’ board first went up Anita often went to see if it was still there. She has done so since; it always is. She tells herself that casual curiosity is the reason for her returning to this quiet street; she knows it isn’t. The house is where she was loved, where alone with Gervaise she was happier than ever she had been before or ever has been since. The house was hers as much as it was his, he used to say, for in its rooms they belonged to one another and promised they always would. ‘You stay,’ he said when they did not. ‘I’ll be the one to go away.’ In her dreams she haunts the house. In her dreams it is still hers.

  The winter of that year passes. Snow whitens London’s parks, clings everywhere to what it can. Piled up, it turns to grey and then to slush. Spring comes as a relief. Anita’s mornings at the Caffè Daria, discontinued during the worst of the weather, are resumed. Claire does not again appear there, and Anita supposes that she has at last come to terms with the death. In time she will find someone else, why should she not? Behind the quiet windows and the faded, trim front door she’ll make a life again. Some other man will pay the debts, the house will not be sold.

  But when a warm May has come and almost gone Anita sees that the red-and-blue ‘For Sale’ sign is still there, bright against the grey façade. She has always known that her skulking in this street is undignified and no doubt a source of comment. But still she comes, to pause for a moment, for a moment is enough, then to go on as other people do. One evening, quite late and dark already, she notices that the front door doesn’t seem quite closed. It isn’t when she tries it.

  Her instinct is to walk away and she obeys it, telling herself when later she experiences pangs of doubt that a door left open in error, or for a purpose, is not unusual. Living there herself, she had often left her keys upstairs and when she was going no further than the shops had not trudged back up for them. But doubt is still not satisfied and she goes back.

  No light shows in a window, the house’s blankness making it seem another of those that are offices by day. Anita touches the door with the tips of her fingers and feels it yielding. Keys hanging in it rattle. She rings the bell. She pushes the door open when nothing happens.

  Still, there’s no sound of movement, no sudden glare of light. Could Claire have gone to bed, forgetting that she hadn’t closed the door? But Claire in all her life has not been one to go to bed early, nor did she in the past often forget things. Anita waits in the unlit hall, wanting to go away and unable to make herself. She turns the stair lights on, remembering where the switch is. ‘Claire,’ she calls out, and there is no response.

  In the kitchen there is a trestle bed, its sheets and blankets folded. An unwashed glass is on the table, bottles in a row beneath the sink. Food, not cooked, is wrapped in plastic, ready to be thrown away. Papers have been burnt, their feathery black embers in a fire-grate. Unopened letters are in a pile.

  Anita senses desperation in all this, a hurriedness in what’s done and what is left. The thought comes from nowhere, but remains and then is more than first it was. Had there been desperation in the sunken features, the careless make-up and neglected hair? Had desperation ordered each unexpected return to the caffè, inspired the longing that was not articulated? Again Anita wants to go away, to leave all this and whatever else there is. She saw the suffering, she knew that it was there. She punished, she didn’t hesitate. She knows she didn’t: it was her due.

  Upstairs, in other rooms she turns on lights. Clothes fill a wardrobe that her own once did. She opens drawers and finds them empty. She reaches into shelves for what might be at the back. There is no handbag, no purse. There is no note: the open door said all there was to say.

  What happens, Anita wonders, to people when they walk away? What then do they become? Their absence is a kind of death; is it death, too, for them? Or in some distant place can memory be closed down and guilt assuaged? She calls Claire’s name again but still there’s silence.

  She turns the upstairs lights out and, descending to the hall, imagines Claire standing there, having just come in, her handbag that moment put down. The image is held when Anita pauses on a landing. She listens for a rustle, a footstep muffled, hardly there. She looks again in rooms in case she has overlooked one, or any sign that tells her something. She waits a little longer, then slowly continues on her way downstairs. In the hall she takes the keys out of the door she found open and turns out the last of the lights.

  The street outside is quiet and she waits there too for the sound of footsteps coming. She goes away a
nd then returns and waits again, the night becoming empty all around her. She locks the door and pushes the keys through the letter-box, and hears them clattering on the floor.

  * * *

  * * *

  In the Caffè Daria there are new faces, and others that were often there no longer are. The older of the two coffee machines has been replaced; one Sunday the ceiling was repainted, the same light shade of blue.

  At her usual table, Anita reads of violent crime and difficult love, of human frailty and of redemption, of anguish and its healing. Sometimes she looks up and there is Claire come back, to be Claire for another moment, until she’s someone else. Anita’s greeting, already enlivening her features, is put away and she is left to wonder and to wait. Claire is somewhere. If Anita prayed she would pray to know where. If she knew the secrets of telepathy she would employ them.

  The sales board has been taken down. Other people live in the house. Claire cherishes in her lonely solitude what Anita, in hers, too late embraces now: all that there was before love came, when friendship was the better thing.

  Taking Mr Ravenswood

  Belonging to her time on the counters – before they moved her upstairs to Customer Care – Mr Ravenswood’s easy smile stirred in Rosanne’s memory, the paisley handkerchief tidily protruding from the top pocket of a softly checked jacket, the tweed hat on the counter for the duration of whatever transaction there was. Stylish in his manner, Mr Ravenswood was friendly in a way the other men who came to the counters never were, and always asked her how she was. The cheques he regularly lodged were dividends, unearned income from inherited means, and you could sense from his manner a faint disdain of money’s self-importance.

  On the screen in front of Rosanne a mass of further material gathered: Mr Ravenswood’s address – 81 Radcliffe Square – hadn’t changed in the years that had passed; the balance in the current account – as carelessly large as she remembered it had always been – at present stood at £44,681.29, with £300,050 in his deposit account. The current account had been a joint one in the past, when Mr Ravenswood’s wife was alive, but that was before Rosanne knew him. Not that she did know Mr Ravenswood, not that she had ever thought of him like that. She’d been astonished when he invited her to have dinner with him.