Now he went straight out into his small garden at the back of his ground-floor flat, put a cigarette into his mouth, lit a match and cupped his hand around it. The first drag made him feel dizzy and slightly sick. The tip glowed in the darkness, brightening, then fading. In the garden next door, a woman was calling her cat and banging a fork against the side of its bowl. ‘Here, Skit, Skit, Skit. Here, Skit, Skit, Skit.’ On and on. She didn’t see him over the fence, hunched inside his coat. It wasn’t snowing as it had been in Gloucester, but there was a stillness to the air, as if it might at any moment.
He smoked two cigarettes in a row, then went inside. He brushed his teeth as if she might be able to smell him over the phone and use his weakness against him, then made the call.
‘It’s me, Mal.’
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said.’
‘About Madrid?’
‘Yes.’
‘And?’
‘Of course I can’t stop Mikey and Bella going, you all going, if that’s what you want and feel is best for them.’
‘Oh, Mal, if you only knew how –’
‘But I want to see more of them before you go. Mid-April, you say?’
‘Yes. And of course you can see as much of them as you want.’
‘And I want to see them regularly when they’re away. We’ll have to work something out. Have a system, a structure.’
Even as he spoke, he felt the hopelessness of it. They would get swept up into their new life and he would be just a memory, a figure from the past, receding from them. Loneliness washed over him, a wave that almost took his breath away.
‘I appreciate this.’
‘OK.’
‘I know this isn’t easy for you.’
‘No.’
‘But you won’t regret it.’
After he had put the phone back into its holster, he went and poured himself a stiff whisky. It was a drink he associated with Frieda. He pictured her watching eyes and the way she held her chin high, as if she was waiting for battle. He pressed the tumbler against his forehead. If he’d been a weeping man, he would have wept.
Soon he would come. He had said he would come and she had to believe him. Unless something had happened. But, no, he would come. She would hear him rap out their code on the hatch and she would lift it up and see him silently swing his way down into the boat. He would hold her by the shoulders and look into her eyes and she wouldn’t even have to tell him – he would know she had done well, that she had kept faith, that she had never wavered. He called her his soldier, his loyal one. She wouldn’t let him down.
She was running out of basic things. Not water, which was the most important, because there was a tap down the path near the rowing club and she could go there at night with her two plastic containers. She had a bucket that she filled from the river, as well, when she wanted to scrub the decks or flush the toilet. But her food supplies were almost gone, and candles, toilet rolls, soap. She had no deodorant left, and she didn’t like that, and her razor was blunt now. She should make a list to give him when he came. Nothing expensive: matches, washing-up liquid, more milk powder, toothpaste, and plasters because there were cuts that kept opening up on her legs. And perhaps some cordial.
Elderflower cordial. She got so thirsty; her mouth was dry and it had a nasty taste in it that she couldn’t get rid of. Water on its own doesn’t really quench your thirst. She allowed herself to think about freshly squeezed orange juice, in a tall tumbler; sitting on a lawn with bare feet and the sun on the back of her neck.
Because the gas was nearly gone, she decided to cook all the remaining potatoes. She could eat them cold over the next few days. There were tins of tuna and sardines she could add to them, and she had stock cubes as well. Sometimes she just poured boiling water over a cube for a meal. She put the potatoes in the sink, which had a crack running down one side so didn’t hold water, and found the knife. The potatoes were large, knobbly and grimy; some of them were beginning to sprout. When she was younger, she used to dislike potatoes but he had shown her you couldn’t be fussy. It was like being in a war, in the trenches or hiding behind enemy lines. You had to remember why you were there, your purpose and your solemn mission. He had held her very tightly when he’d said that and his eyes had shone.
She peeled the potatoes with slow precision and cut them into small chunks so that they would boil more quickly and use less gas. She put them in the pan and added salt. She must put salt on the list. There was so little left. Everything was running out. She thought of sand trickling through an hourglass, the way it seemed to speed up at the end. That was how it felt now. There were lights behind her eyes and her heart was beating like a drum; sometimes she couldn’t tell if it was inside her or out, like distant thunder gathering and coming nearer. Time running out.
Twenty
Although she had gone to bed late, Frieda got up early the next morning, vacuumed the house, washed the kitchen floor, laid a fire in the living room for when she returned, showered and left the house shortly after nine. She had been to River View Nursing Home twice before, but both times by car. This time she took the overland train and got out at Gallions Reach, then walked past lines of apartment blocks, light industrial units and a down-at-heel shopping mall until she arrived at the nursing home, which was far from the river. Its windows were covered with metal grilles. She pushed open the front door, went past the Zimmer frames and wheelchairs that seemed as though they hadn’t been moved since her last visit, and went to Reception, where a young woman in a uniform was thumbing through a magazine.
‘Is Daisy here?’ asked Frieda, remembering the woman who had accompanied her last time.
‘Left.’
‘I wondered if I could see June Reeve.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m a doctor,’ said Frieda. ‘I visited her last year. I’d like to talk to her.’
The young woman looked up and Frieda saw a flicker of interest animate her features. But she shook her head. ‘She’s on a ventilator.’
‘What’s wrong with her?’
‘Pneumonia.’
‘Will she recover?’
‘I’m not the one to ask,’ said the young woman.
‘Could I talk to someone about her? The manager, perhaps?’
‘Mrs Lowe’s around,’ said the young woman. ‘You could talk to her.’
Mrs Lowe was about fifty and she had a bright, high voice, a merry face, a brisk and bouncy style of walking. Everything about her was designed to lift the spirits. Frieda found it difficult to stand close to her or even to look at her. But, then, how else did you get through day after day, working somewhere like this?
‘Do you want to pop your head round her door?’ she asked. ‘Poor dear. Come along with me.’ She tucked a friendly arm into Frieda’s. ‘It’s just down here.’
She led the way along the corridor that Frieda remembered so well, past an old man in slipping-down pyjamas, and stopped at a door.
‘She’s not her usual self,’ announced Mrs Lowe, and pushed open the door on to a small, bare room: same bars over the window, same picture of the Bridge of Sighs on the wall, same bookshelf holding only a leather-bound Bible, same vase empty of flowers. Frieda looked for the framed photograph of Dean and saw it had been removed. June Reeve was no longer sitting in the armchair, but lying in bed with an oxygen mask over her mouth. Her skin had a leathery look to it and was the colour of tobacco leaves. Her chest rose and fell unevenly. Her eyes were closed.
‘Not long for this world,’ said Mrs Lowe. She had white, strong teeth.
‘Does she ever speak?’
‘Not now.’
Frieda looked at Dean and Alan’s mother, her small mean mouth and her folds of dying flesh. She had abandoned Alan when he was a baby without caring whether he lived or died; she had helped Dean snatch Joanna and turn her into Terry; and she had never exhibited anything but self-righteousness and self-pity. But she was beyond any kind of reproach now, or hatred. Frieda wondered what she was dreaming of behind her collapsed face.