Chapter Forty-Six
One never knows when a story will start or when it will end, Daphne thinks, as she sits next to her bed in the bedroom she has occupied all of her married life, holding Hector’s lifeless hand.
This morning when she woke, she couldn’t wake him although he was still breathing.
She called their doctor, who came as quickly as he could.
‘I think he’s had another stroke, Daphne,’ he said gently. ‘Would you like me to call an ambulance?’
He’d looked at her in such a way that she understood he was saying one thing and asking her another with his eyes: Do you really want to prolong this?
No, she did not. Janet and Noel didn’t either.
They had discussed it when Hector started failing and luckily they were all in agreement, not just about Hector but each other: none of them should have to suffer any more than necessary. Life could be prolonged but not at all costs.
Hector had stopped being himself a long time ago.
They weren’t able to ask him what he wanted, but they all believed he wouldn’t have wanted to be kept alive when he couldn’t enjoy life.
He’d enjoyed food and drink and seeing friends.
He had enjoyed being capable. What he would not enjoy was being completely reliant on others, and that had already gone on long enough.
So when the doctor gave her the option, Daphne said no, don’t call the ambulance.
‘But is there something you can do for him?’ she asked. ‘To make him more comfortable?’ That innocuous question which, toward the end of a life, can mean so much more.
The doctor said yes, he could make Hector more comfortable, and set about doing it.
Then he stood, put his hand on Daphne’s shoulder and said, ‘Not long now, I think.’
She had nodded.
‘Would you like me to stay?’ he said, and she shook her head.
‘Call me when you need to,’ he added before he left.
Call me when he’s dead, that’s what he meant. So he could come back and pronounce her husband dead. To make it official.
So Janet has made the call and Daphne is holding Hector’s hand while they wait. It seems like the thing to do – to see him out.
She knows he isn’t in his body any more; she saw both of her parents die and thought she could sense the exact moment at which they left. A last breath, a stillness, the air in the room changing. A soul is gone and a body remains.
It is such a strangeness, death, yet so uneventful when it happens like this. Hector the spirit, the energy, the man she knew, is in the ether. This is how his story – and theirs together – ends.
The story of their marriage was mostly a good one – or so she thought, right up until the point when she found out about his affair. It’s a long time to not know one is living with a lie. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever get over it.
For today, however, she will honour the father of her children. And the father of Adelaide’s child, she supposes.
She will need to let Adelaide know what has happened. They are to be bound together in this death.
The doctor comes, does what he needs to do, expresses his condolences, and leaves. It is not the first time in her life that Daphne has been grateful for the quiet dignity afforded her by medical professionals, and she doubts it will be the last.
‘Mum,’ Janet says as she closes the door on the doctor, ‘I’ll call the funeral home.’
Noel is already on his way; Daphne called him as soon as Hector died. So she’s not alone on this day when the story ends – but Adelaide will be, unless Daphne does something about it. Unless she decides to start a new story.
When Noel arrives he and Janet start making a list of everyone to call.
Daphne remains with Hector, and picks up the phone in their bedroom.
Adelaide answers on the second ring.
‘Hello,’ Daphne says.
‘Daphne.’ Adelaide sounds unsure.
‘I need to tell you …’ She stops. The next thing she says is going to change Adelaide’s life and she takes that seriously.
‘Yes?’
‘Addy, Hector’s gone.’
Silence. A noise.
‘He died this morning,’ Daphne goes on. ‘I wanted you to know.’
‘Oh, Daph.’
Daphne hears a sob on the end of the phone, and feels it too.
‘He’s still here,’ she says. ‘Would you like to see him?’
She has thought through this suggestion. There’s not much time to make sure the business of the dead is completed. They have to act now.
‘You don’t –’ Another sob. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I know.’
Daphne feels as if she’s being pulled into a liminal space, where the choices of her life, Adelaide’s life, Hector’s life, are mixed together and could go in any direction.
‘But it’s important, Addy. Isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Adelaide half-whispers.
‘I’ll send Noel to pick you up.’
‘All right.’
Daphne hangs up and goes downstairs to ask her son to retrieve the woman who not long ago had brought them so much pain. But before that she was Daphne’s great friend, and a death has a way of changing the stakes of all interactions.
When Adelaide arrives, Daphne goes to the door to greet her.
‘He’s upstairs,’ she says, showing her in.
But Adelaide doesn’t ascend the stairs straightaway. Instead she faces Daphne, who sees in her face the girl she met when they were so very young. She wonders if Adelaide sees that in her too, or if she sees only an old lady, marked by time and circumstance.
‘I don’t know how I managed to make all of this so messy,’ Adelaide says.
‘We don’t ever know.’ Daphne smiles sadly.
‘I think …’ She closes her eyes briefly.
‘Any one of us can make a decision in a flash and we don’t know what effect it will have.
I decided to marry Hector because he asked.
What if I’d said no? My children wouldn’t exist. I can’t fathom it.
And yet … It was one word that decided they would.
I said yes. Not no.’ She shakes her head.
‘Our lives turn on nothing, Addy. Nothing but a whim.’
Adelaide nods, then leans forward and kisses Daphne on the cheek.
‘I’ll go up,’ she says.
Daphne goes back to the kitchen, where her children are sitting around a pot of tea and some biscuits. They each take one of her hands and she sits with them, waiting for Adelaide to join them. For the business of this death to be done.
After a few minutes – Daphne isn’t counting how many – they hear footsteps.
Daphne looks at Janet then at Noel. She stands and walks to meet her at the foot of the staircase.
The woman facing Daphne is not the woman who ascended those stairs: she looks as if someone else has taken residence within her.
It seems strange that Adelaide could be so shocked that Hector is gone – but then, Daphne and her children have been watching him leave for years.
They’ve become used to him not being here, not the way they knew him.
To Adelaide he would probably still have been the Hector she knew. Her idea of him wouldn’t have changed.
‘You must be devastated,’ Daphne says. As their eyes meet she can see that this is true.
‘I can’t …’ Adelaide turns away and brings her hand to her eyes, as if she wants to erase what she has just seen.
Then her hand drops and she says, ‘I am devastated, about what I did to you. I’m devastated by how much one decision can affect so many people so badly.’ She gulps in a breath and puts a hand to her chest. ‘And it’s not over. His death doesn’t mean it’s over.’
‘No, it’s not,’ Daphne says, and she knows there are two roads for her to take now: the one where she maintains her froideur with Adelaide, knowing she can’t trust her again; and the one where she accepts that the past can’t be changed but the future can be, and it’s in her power to change it.
Her own life is mostly gone. The road she chooses will determine how she travels through the rest of it.
So it is also a question of which sort of person she wants to be in this last part of her life.
Such questions should probably have been answered long ago.
But this has been one of the harder lessons of old age: for every answered question gone past, there is a new one about to arrive.
She sighs quietly, feeling the responsibility of this moment, this friendship, of all her connections, all of her life.
So many times she has hoped someone would take some of that responsibility from her, that she wouldn’t have to be the one to take care of so many people and situations.
But that is not her lot. It’s time she accepted it.
‘It’s not over because your son is alive,’ Daphne says softly and puts a hand on Adelaide’s arm. ‘He’s not a bad outcome. He’s a person. He wants a relationship with you. And I think my children should have a relationship with him too,’ she goes on. ‘If they want one.’
Noel and Janet have expressed some curiosity about their half-brother, so she knows this isn’t an unreasonable suggestion.
‘Oh, Daphne,’ Adelaide says, her voice breaking. ‘Really?’
She nods. ‘We’ll talk about it another time, though,’ she says. Enough has been done for today and she feels exhausted now, her jaw aching suddenly, her shoulders tight. ‘I need to get back to them.’
Adelaide sniffs and smiles quickly. ‘Thank you.’
Daphne offers her a quick smile in return. ‘I’ll see you out.’
She walks Adelaide to the door, closes it gently behind her and makes her way back to her children and the changes that lie ahead of them all.