Chapter 9
CHAPTER 9
Sophie approached Olive’s door on the dot of 7pm and, acting on her earlier instructions, opened it and walked in.
‘Hi!’ she called out. ‘It’s Sophie.’
It was odd being in a house that was an exact mirror image of her own: the same but completely different. The hallway walls were covered, floor to ceiling, with paintings, just like at their old house. Sophie’s walls were still mostly bare, apart from a few family photos.
‘In the back, darls,’ Olive called.
Sophie found her standing at a range and Agata sitting at an old farmhouse-style table.
‘Grab yourself a glass,’ said Olive, jerking her head in the direction of a pine dresser, which was crammed with stuff.
On her way to get it, Sophie passed Agata. ‘How lovely to see you,’ said Sophie, kissing her soft cheek. ‘I didn’t know you were coming.’
‘Oh, me and Olive,’ she said, ‘we always have dinner on Saturday, if we have nothing else on. Which is every Saturday.’
She was wearing a yellow hat, which reminded Sophie she’d never seen her without one. And she’d never seen Olive in anything except those dungarees. She wondered what her uniform would become over the years.
‘And usually here,’ Agata continued, ‘because I can’t cook.’ She threw her arms up in the air as she said it, as if making a great announcement, the light flashing off her bracelets.
‘She’s not kidding about the cooking,’ said Olive. ‘Agata’s food could poison a dog, but sometimes she gets in a big old tin of caviar and I make the blinis and we have them at her house.’
‘With iced vodka,’ said Agata. ‘You’ll see...’
‘That sounds wonderful,’ said Sophie, sitting next to her at the table.
Olive came over with a bottle of wine and filled Sophie’s glass, then picked up her own, holding it high in the air. ‘I propose a toast,’ she said. ‘To the West Hill Widows.’
‘The West Hill Widows!’ said Sophie and Agata and they all clinked glasses.
‘We’re both so glad you bought next door,’ said Olive, after plonking a large earthenware pot in the centre of the table and filling three bowls. ‘Obviously because you’re nice, but we were worried it could be another care home. Nothing against them, people have to live somewhere, but there’s already one down this road and two in the next street. It’s getting a bit institutionalised.’
‘All those old people,’ said Agata. ‘Nightmare!’
Sophie laughed and then took a mouthful of the stew on her plate. ‘This is delicious. Is it Elizabeth David?’
‘Spot on,’ said Olive. ‘Well, it started with her, when I first made it a hundred years ago. I kind of do my own thing now.’
‘It’s mutton, isn’t it?’
‘Hogget,’ said Olive. ‘Salt-marsh hogget, at least a year old. More flavour – and I don’t like eating the really little ones.’
‘You can get that down here?’
‘Absolutely. I know the farmer. I also know a great butcher. I’ll take you. And if you’re buying fish, there’s only one place to go – Rock-A-Nore Fisheries, bloke called Sonny.’
As Olive refilled her wine glass Sophie realise how quickly she’d emptied it. She was having a bit of a party night after all. Good.
‘So tell us your story, Soph,’ said Olive. ‘I know you’re a widow – and I’m genuinely sorry for your loss – but that’s all I know. When did he cark it?’
For a moment Sophie was too surprised to answer, but then she smiled. Olive’s blunt approach was such a blessed relief after all the simpering stuff.
‘January,’ she said. ‘January fifth.’
‘Shit!’ said Olive. ‘That’s only six months. You’re barely hatched. Are you telling me you’ve sold your house and moved down here since he popped off? How did you manage that?’
‘We’d already sold our London house before he died. We’d exchanged contracts the day before the accident, actually, so it could all go through quickly.’
‘And you’ve done all those renovations as well,’ said Agata. ‘Which is also very stressful. This is why I haven’t done any since the early seventies.’
‘I’ve never done any,’ said Olive. ‘But seriously, Sophie, if you put all those things into one of those stress measure things, you’d be off the scale. If you were a US marine, you wouldn’t be allowed shore leave.’
Sophie looked down, her eyes pricking with tears. Hearing it put like that brought everything home. She’d just got on with it all. She hadn’t felt she had any choice about it. And Olive and Agata didn’t even know the whole of it. No one did.
She looked up and saw the two of them watching her with great compassion. Agata was smiling gently. Olive had tears in her eyes.
‘Ah, babes,’ she said, getting up from her chair and folding Sophie into a big warm hug.
To her horror, Sophie found she was weeping onto Olive’s Breton-striped shoulder.
‘Let it out,’ she said, patting Sophie’s back gently. ‘No one ever got better holding tears in, they turn rancid inside you. Let it go. You’ve been through a lot. A hell of a lot. But you will survive it – you just have to look at us two to know that. It’s a shitshow to get there, but you’ll do it. You’ve got us, you’ve got your beautiful sons and you just need to be kind to yourself. You’ll be right.’
She gave Sophie a squeeze and then sat down again.
Sophie wiped away the tears with her napkin and blinked up at her neighbours. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘it’s so great to be with people who know what it’s like. Who’ve actually been through this. It’s made people so weird with me.’
‘What happened?’ asked Agata. ‘It’s painful, but it’s good to tell it. My husband dropped dead in our back garden from a heart attack, digging his precious roses. I found him when he didn’t come in for his cocktail. That’s my story.’
‘Mine drank himself to death, the stupid sod,’ said Olive. ‘Well, it was liver cancer that took him off, but drink did the damage.’
They were so straightforward about it, Sophie felt able to just launch in herself. Normally she dreaded telling people what had happened; she couldn’t bear seeing the horror on their faces.
‘Mine was on a very busy road on his bicycle and he got run over by a texting truck driver. He was killed instantly. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, because he was a vain idiot and didn’t want to spoil his hair.’
She was slightly taken aback by the venom she heard in the last words as she said them. She saw Olive’s expression change.
‘Did you like him?’ she asked, in her usual blunt tone.
Sophie paused and sighed, loudly. ‘I thought I did,’ she said, which was as near to the truth as she could get. ‘We were married thirty years, very happily, he was an amazing man, a wonderful father, but in the end, I don’t know... It could have been avoided, all this change and trauma. If he’d just worn a helmet.’
If he hadn’t betrayed me .
‘It is normal to hate someone you love for dying,’ said Agata. ‘I hate my husband for what he did to me. Why didn’t he die at work? Why did I have to find him in our lovely garden? I don’t go out in it now. I thought about moving, but thank God I didn’t, because the next year, this one moved in.’ She patted Olive’s hand affectionately. ‘I know he didn’t do it on purpose,’ she continued. ‘But I’m still angry he died before me. I loved him dearly, we had a great marriage – as good as someone as damaged as me could expect to have – but he was not supposed to die before me and leave me. I’ve been left too much, so for that, I hate him. It’s not rational, but it’s the truth.’
Sophie turned to Olive. ‘Do you hate your husband for dying?’
‘I hated him before he died,’ Olive said. ‘It’s no fun living with an alcoholic. But I loved him too. He was the best before the booze got him and even when he was fully into that he was still great before he got ugly drunk. He was the love of my life, but in the end I was glad when he died because I couldn’t bear to see him, the state he was in at the end.’
Sophie rested her chin on her hand and tried to take it all in. Agata loved her husband but hated him for dying before her. Olive loved hers but was glad he had died.
She had loved hers, but hated him for what he’d done before he died. And was there a tiny little part of her that was glad he’d died rather than go off with another woman?
Once again, she wondered how she would ever be able to come to terms with all the different sides of it. It was too much. But here were these women, who seemed content in themselves, at peace with life, and they’d both had complicated bereavements too.
It was a lot to take in, but it gave her hope.