Chapter 16
Melvin couldn’t sleep either.
All the lights were off in his modest cottage at the edge of Rydal Water.
He navigated his way in the dark, used to the touch of the furniture and the walls, and familiar with wandering round in the middle of the night when the memories were the most upsetting.
He went from room to room searching for Ursula.
Acorn stayed close to his side, and he looked down at her, realising she needed to eat.
‘I’m sorry, old girl,’ he said, bending down to stroke her.
He forgot what he was doing and flicked on some lights, finding himself in the kitchen. Then he searched for a packet of food for Acorn and filled her water bowl.
‘Now, where was I?’ he asked himself out loud. His disease was progressive, irreversible and untreatable, or so he’d been told.
It was at night, when it was silent like it was now, that he was at his most lucid and he remembered where he was.
He recalled the conversation by the lake with Paul, and he recalled the female detective marching in like she owned the place.
It made him chuckle because Ursula had been like that once. Bossy, powerful. Beautiful.
He walked into the sunroom, which was Ursula’s favourite, and gazed out of the large window, overlooking where he knew the lake to be.
It was in complete darkness now and all he saw was shadows but it wasn’t unusual for him to steal moments like this when he was alone to assess his deterioration.
They’d spent their life savings on the place.
It had been a hovel. Doing it up had been a dream.
Their project. They’d imagined a refuge away from the madness of the world and when they found it they thought the rest of their lives were sorted out.
Until Ursula began to forget things. She’d sleep late.
She burnt herself on pans. She forgot his birthday.
He’d paused the renovations while she got better.
But she never did.
This half of the house, facing the lake, had been completed, and he lived in here with her. He had a bed moved into the lounge and they spent their days in the sunroom if it was summer or winter. It was the view. It was mesmerising.
The fuss over at Heron Hall had been a welcome distraction in the least salacious way.
It wasn’t the death, the brutality or potential journalistic interest. It was simply that it gave him something to do other than look after Ursula.
He overestimated how much she needed him.
She did just fine on her own, but her silence made him feel guilty that he’d spent so much time away from her.
He remembered he’d made a cup of tea and he found it on the side, switched off the light once more, and took it to the window and gazed out at the blackness for a few minutes.
Then he pulled a chair up to an occasional table and removed the potted plant off it.
He sat his MacBook Pro on top of it and opened it and sat down.
‘You look like you’re looking for a conspiracy, Melvin Stone.’
He looked up, thinking he’d heard his wife. Her voice was smooth like the caress of wearing a cashmere scarf for the first time.
‘I am, my love. You know me. I was there, Ursula. I saw him. He was only twenty-nine.’
When Melvin was twenty-nine, he’d been serving in Bosnia. Jamie Robbins was dead on a slab somewhere and he had no chance to grow old. It made Melvin melancholy suddenly and he reached for Ursula’s hand.
He loved her more than the first day he met her, three decades ago.
He grinned at himself, recalling some half-baked memory of them in Cyprus together.
They were posted close to the green line in Nicosia.
The war with Turkey had finished but hatred remained, like in all war zones, and the great city was a gateway between right and wrong.
But nobody knew which was which. It was the same with his illness.
His mind felt like a broken city, sliced in two.
One minute he was Melvin Stone, veteran, husband of Ursula and retired, living his best life on the shore of Rydal Water, like Wordsworth.
Every spring he took Ursula to see the daffodils across the lake and remind her how to live.
‘I’ve got so much to tell you,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’m almost there,’ he said. An imaginary shaft of sunlight warmed his face and he closed his eyes and sat down in his favourite seat close to the window.
He imagined Ursula standing before him, willing him to live, or die, but to at least make a decision and he grinned. He was terrible for procrastination. Bourbons or custard creams, he could never decide.
‘I really need you now, Ursula my love,’ he whispered again.
Going back to the MacBook, he settled down to write finally, adding notes to a Word document that was already fifteen pages long.
An alarm sounded on his phone, and he went to the kitchen to prepare Ursula’s potions for the morning.
A bird sang outside and a new day was creeping across the lake above the trees.
It was this time of day that the coffin bearers carried the dead to Grasmere for burial a hundred and fifty years ago because the ground at Rydal was rocky and unsuitable.
He imagined strapping lads, about the age of Jamie Robbins, with coffins digging into their shoulders, perhaps with a pony for company, making their way come rain or shine, across the rugged terrain to respect those who passed on.
He walked Acorn along it most days looking up at Nab Scar and Loughrigg keeping a watchful eye on those below as they had done for centuries.
Ursula used to come too.
He looked down at the bottles and packets in the emerging light and felt an urge to read the labels of all the drugs she was prescribed but he got himself into such a muddle and dropped a few of the packets.
Then he turned to the chair Ursula always sat in and realised that she wasn’t there.
It was too early for her and she spent most of her time in bed now.
He saw that some pills had scattered across the floor and got down on his hands and knees to pick them up. Dust and cobwebs clung to his fingers and he worried about his knees. A spell of dizziness gripped him and he sat down for a rest.
What had he been thinking about?
Paul Burlington. Jamie Robbins. The young man’s face, full of youth and ambition.
Why did he feel he knew him? Perhaps Ursula would know.
Thinking of her now, guilt piled onto the emotions he already felt and he sat quietly contemplating what they’d sacrificed.
He’d been told that the drugs prolonged her life, but for what?
So she could gaze across the water and see what she couldn’t achieve for the rest of her life?
He couldn’t really tell if she was happy.
But she’d trusted him like a small child trusts a parent.
They’d come here together happy and fit.
They’d taken the money, built a life, thinking their futures made.
Had Jamie Robbins made the same mistake? Who had he trusted? Did that faith kill him like it killed his wife?
The realisation hit Melvin like a rocket and his cognition collided with reality. He looked at one of the bottles on the floor and saw that the use-by date had expired years ago.
Ursula was no longer with him. There was no bed. No favourite chair and no walks along the coffin trail.
He slammed his hand into a cupboard and red-hot pain cut into it and he cried out because he now remembered with vivid clarity that Ursula was dead.
She’d passed a long time ago. His habit of forgetting was a side effect of the treatment but the lapses in and out of certainty took their toll on him and he lowered his head into his hands.
The one he’d injured throbbed in agony but at least it reminded him of the truth.
Now the long loneliness hit him and he realised he’d rather forget.
He’d prefer to be somewhere else most of the time.
Even though Paul had looked at him curiously as if he were a mad man and he repeated and embarrassed himself.
Which was better? Presence and incurable torture, or blackout and perpetual confusion?
They’d taken her away and she left an abyss in their home.
This space was different but the same and it would be forever hers.
As the light crept across the floor and illuminated the small kitchen, he cried and wished she was here with him.
Nothing was the same.