Chapter 19
19
‘A nyway…’ Caro rose, walked across to the window and unlatched it. ‘Things haven’t worked out so brilliantly for Helen either,’ she said, easing the window open an inch. It was stiff and she had to cup both hands underneath the rail and jerk it up, but instantly a wave of fresher air swept in, cooling her cheeks and her mind. What was the point of trawling over the hot coals of painful memories? The shame she felt at having let her mother down, at not having the courage to speak up, would stay warm, Caro knew, until the end. Slipping it away under a thousand other thoughts, she turned back to where her mother lay. ‘She’s getting a divorce,’ she said, and looked at her hands, sticky with flecks of paint and dust. ‘From Lawrence.’ And she walked across to the basin and turned the tap on.
‘You probably won’t remember her husband,’ she continued, rubbing her hands together under a trickle of water. ‘They met at uni… well, we all did, so he was at graduation too. Very tall. Good looking. He came over and said hello but…’ Caro shrugged. ‘It was very brief, and I can't imagine…’ Caro stretched her hand out and turned the tap off, holding it there in place. She looked up, and in the small mirror above the sink her reflection looked back. ‘Very brief, under the circumstances,’ she murmured, watching as her mouth turned up at one corner. It wasn’t a smile, more a belated acknowledgement of the outstanding unimportance of something that for far too long had pretended otherwise. A recognition, finally, of just how trivial it had all been and how far away from it she was now. The privilege of maturity of course, with its top-floor view. And looking at herself, for a moment, Caro had no idea who had come to this conclusion first. Herself, or her mirrored reflection. ‘Here’s a secret, Mum,’ she said, smiling for real now. ‘I’d lost my virginity to him the week before. She turned to her mother. ‘Are you shocked?’ she whispered.
Her mother was silent. Her eyes stayed closed, and her mouth gaped open to accommodate the ventilator tube. Against the white of the pillow, her thin curls lapped like sad grey waves.
Caro tore a square of paper towel. Twenty-nine years had passed! Twenty-nine years in which she had never dared breathe those words out loud. Decades of scientific progress, of technological wizardry increasingly at her disposal, undreamt of back then, and yet she had never dared ease this self-imposed burden, had allowed instead these words to nestle in her conscience, stone-heavy, dull, immovable. She tipped her head back to the ceiling and laughed out loud and the stones rolled free, smooth and soundless as bubbles on a stream, and all she could think was how ironic life is. How ridiculous that the first time in twenty-nine years she’d felt safe enough to make this most mundane of confessions was in front of her mother, the one person in the world whom she absolutely couldn’t talk to. She pressed the towel against her wet hands and held it there. ‘Three years at university, Mum,’ she whispered, shaking her head. ‘Supposed to be having the time of my life, watching Helen actually have the time of her life, and even Kay – she had her share of liaisons… And me?’ Caro smiled. ‘All I had was headaches and 2:1 essays which I never did get up to a first.’ Pressing her foot down on the pedal of the bin, the lid flipped open. ‘So,’ she sighed. ‘It could have been anyone really, and with hindsight…’ Her hands worked the paper towel, folding and crushing it, as she stood staring at a point across the room. ‘In fact, it should have been anyone… anyone but Lawrence, because I was in love with him and sleeping with him only made me think there was a chance that he might be in love with me. God!’ Dropping the towel in the bin, Caro whip-turned back to the mirror. ‘What an idiot,’ she mouthed. ‘What an absolute idiot, Caroline Hardcastle!’
Behind, the orchestration of her mother’s life support continued. Bleeps and chimes… chimes and bleeps, and always the percussion of mechanical breaths.
Caro shook her head. ‘What a bloody waste of time and energy!’ She walked back to the chair, falling into it as if it were water. ‘It’s actually embarrassing, Mum. I can’t count how many times I’d go over and visit Helen. See her perfect home and her perfect kids and then go back to my flat and cry. Over what? An AGA cooker and sash windows?’ With a swift movement, she thrust her chin forward to rest in her palm, elbows on knees, as she looked at her mother and said, ‘Lawrence is a prick – to use Dad’s favourite word. He’s the most selfish man I’ve ever met, and I’ve met more than a few. How Helen’s put up with him all these years, or what they’ve actually talked about, I have no idea. She can’t have been happy. She can’t… You had to look close though,’ she murmured, ‘to see the cracks. I mean, even I… I was probably looking closest of all, and I didn’t see.’
And thinking this, she leaned her head against the back of the chair and closed her eyes. ‘I'm glad she’s leaving,’ she said. ‘She’s my friend and I just want her to be happy.’ Her hand came up to her chest and she breathed in, a raggedy forced inhalation that barely reached her neck. ‘And I’d like to be happy too, Mum. That’s why I did what I did. I thought it would be the solution and now…’ Her voice broke. She forced another breath and filled her lungs and stayed silent.
Her mother lay still, the machines whirred and bleeped, and the world, of course, went on… As she would, too. She looked down and smoothed the fine rayon of her shirt. ‘Helen is a grandmother now, actually. Her daughter, Libby has just had a baby.’ Caro shook her head. ‘She's twenty-one. Or twenty-two? I’m not sure. But it wasn’t what anyone expected… Anyway,’ she said and turned to the window. ‘She had a boy. Eight pounds seven ounces, in two hours. As easy as that.' Smiling, Caro brought her hand to her eye and rubbed it. ‘I’m happy for her, Mum. Really, I am… I mean, what does it all matter in the end? It seems to me that the things we think we want were never real in the first place. So, yes. I’m happy for Helen… and for Libby. But …’ Caro’s hands fell to her lap. 'I'm so sorry for you, Mum. There’ll be no grandchildren from me, and I wish you could hear me, because I want you to know how sorry I am. It wasn’t what I intended, and I don't really understand how I got here…’ Caro turned to look again at the window, the blue triangle between the slate grey rooftops. How did she get here? At what blind corner in the maze of her past did she make the fateful turn that would lead her here, to her dying mother’s bedside, fifty-one years old, destined to spend the rest of her life alone. The current of regret that swept over her was irresistible. It coursed through, all the white water of past decisions churned up and re-hashed. If she could go back, if she could pinpoint that particular day the die was cast, she would. Caught in the flow of the moment, Caro felt that she’d change it all, let everything she’d achieved slip away, if only she could go back and stop this stain of loneliness from spreading in her heart. Because how could she have known? How could she have known at twenty-two, or thirty-two, how lonely it was possible for life to become? ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘it wasn’t what I intended. Then again, does anyone end up with the life they intended?’
From behind came a low and discreet cough, interrupting her reverie and filling Caro with a cold fear. She turned. She hadn’t even heard the door being eased open, but there was her brother, Sean, standing on the threshold. Her face coloured. ‘I know she can’t hear me,’ she said defensively.
Sean shrugged. ‘I’ve been doing the same.’
‘You have?’
He nodded.
‘Actually…’ He cleared his throat again. ‘It’s probably the only way I can talk to her. You know… properly.’
Caro opened her mouth to respond, but anything she might have said evaporated in the searing honesty of the moment, the like of which she hadn’t shared with her brother since they were the smallest of children. She tried to smile, but it stuck, and tears flooded her eyes. All these years and she’d had no idea. No idea that he too might have found the familial web as difficult and treacherous to navigate as she did. She turned back to her mother, the heart monitor and the ventilator and the IV unit. The tubes and the pipes and the needles. Her mother had been such a strong person. At eighty-two she’d never had a serious illness in her life, didn’t need or have help. In fact, the overriding feeling Caro took from her childhood was that her mother didn’t need anyone. Not her, not Sean and certainly not their father. So it was a surprise bordering on shock to understand that Sean, in some way, had felt the distance too. And then to realise how, with his frequent visits home, he had kept trying, whereas she had, to all intents and purposes, given up.
He gave her a small sad smile, and she gave him one back.
‘Why don’t you eat with us?’ he said. ‘Before you go back?’
‘I will,’ she said, and she meant it. ‘But I can’t tonight. I’m driving home to prepare for a work thing on Monday.’
‘OK.’
‘But –’ and there was a sense of urgency to her voice now – ‘after that, I’ll be back and… I thought I’d stay, for a while… Well, at least as long as I’m needed.’
Sean looked at her. ‘Won’t that be difficult with your job?’
‘Not really. I’m due some time.’ Caro threaded her hands together and looked at them. Not yet. She didn’t have the words yet to explain all that had happened, or what for a while really meant. Not when she didn’t know herself. ‘But I mean it, Sean,’ she added as she looked up. ‘I’d like to come.’ This much, she was sure of.
‘Good. Well… When are you leaving?’
‘This afternoon but –’ Caro turned to look at her mother – ‘I thought I’d take a trip first. I was looking through some of Mum’s old photos. Us at Stonehenge.’ The idea that she might re-visit the scene of that strangely happy photo hadn’t formed until this moment in which she gave it voice. And although she was almost surprised to hear the words, she didn’t doubt them. If she was to try and anchor herself, to reconnect with that little girl and, eventually, her mother, this was exactly where she should start.
‘Stonehenge?’ Sean chuckled. ‘Well, it’s changed a bit,’ he said. ‘There’s a lot of rope nowadays. You can’t get so close any more.’
Caro smiled. ‘That's OK. I’ve changed too.’
And for a moment they looked at each other, brother and sister, almost strangers.
‘I just have to let the nurse know I’m here,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back in a moment.’
The door swung shut, and looking at it, Caro whispered, ‘I can try, can't I? I can try and get close again.’ She stood up and walked across to her mother, leaned forward and pushed a lock of her hair clear from her brow. ‘Of course you could have done it,’ she whispered as she bent and kissed the paper-thin skin of her forehead. ‘Of course you could have gone to a university and earned a degree. It’s all stardust and pretence anyway and I hate myself… I hate that it’s taken me all these years to tell you that.’