Songs of Blue and Gold Read online

  ‘What have you got under there?’

  Silence.

  ‘You can put it in, if you want.’

  The stare again. ‘Is Richard here?’

  Melissa shook her head.

  ‘Why not?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘I thought he was downstairs.’

  Clearly disappointed, she wrapped her arms tighter round her thin waist. She and Richard had always enjoyed each other’s company. He had a knack of treating her as a friend, which she made easy, being as little like a mother-in-law as it’s possible to imagine. They even flirted a little, which took Melissa by surprise at first. But there again, underneath the layers of self-containment, and with certain people, Elizabeth had always been rather gauchely young at heart.

  ‘No, Mum. He’s at work.’

  ‘Later then.’

  ‘He’s not coming. He’s in London.’

  Elizabeth looked at her shyly. Her hands were shaking as she unwrapped the object she had twisted into the inside of her cardigan. Then she held it out. It was a book, a hardback with a glossy dust jacket.

  Melissa put it into the suitcase. But this time it was Elizabeth who threw the look of astonishment and pulled it out. ‘You need this,’ she emphasised, and bustled out of the room.

  It was a book of poetry. Melissa barely gave it a glance as she quickly put it on the chest of drawers with the paintbrush and all the other incongruous items. Taking some deep breaths she turned back to the work in hand.

  The words ‘Alzheimer’s disease’ had finally been used. The doctor called it ‘AD’, as though it were a new beginning and not a dreadful end. At first he would talk of ‘the loss of cognitive function’ as though they were at a seminar. Perhaps it wasn’t correct to call it dementia any more.

  In any case it was only ‘probable AD’. He put it this way:

  ‘AD is defined by specific abnormalities of the brain, but these can only be ascertained by direct examination, that is, after death by means of an autopsy.’ He was a nice man, the doctor. He seemed too young though, as if he could not possibly understand the emotional impact of what he was saying. But perhaps that was a misjudgement on her part, yet another one, Melissa conceded silently.

  They had passed through the early symptoms: mild memory loss and occasional disorientation. Clearly these had not manifested themselves worryingly enough. In any case, who was she to judge what was normal? Over the past few months, Melissa had felt like that herself all too often.

  ‘Disorientation, changes in personality and judgement, moving on to anxiety, agitation, pacing and wandering, difficulty recognising family and friends, sleep disturbance,’ Dr Stewart went on.

  Steeling herself, she had asked.

  ‘You have to start thinking about what is going to be for the best – for both of you.’

  Melissa said nothing.

  ‘Try the nursing home for a week.’

  II

  WITH ELIZABETH AWAY – only twelve miles away, but far enough for her to have screamed that she would not go abroad again when they drove past the station at Tunbridge Wells – the house seemed eerily empty, the life sucked out of it.

  Built of rose brick and weatherboarded in white, Bell Cottage was medieval at its heart, a large cottage sunk in a tousled garden. Elizabeth’s daybed vacant by the window, the house hunkered down under the storm-grey seas of the sky.

  Beyond the house, paths and bridleways crossed a landscape of quiet legends: no chalk giants strode over the roll of the hills here; no dragon bones stirred under the fields; nor the swords and cries of clashing chain-mailed battle. This was a countryside of calmer beauties: the medieval house and its royal ghosts; the furry apricots espaliered against garden walls; the blasted oak around which a Tudor queen had once danced; the gentle mounds and dips of cultivation; the skeletons of hop gardens; the confluence of two snaking and babbling rivers far upstream from their eventual grandeur at Rochester and Chatham.

  Melissa stayed on. She told herself it was so that she could visit her mother more easily, which was true. Also that she could not go back to London, which was not, necessarily. ‘I need some time to think,’ she told Richard.

  When she was not sitting with Elizabeth in her room at the home, she worked in the garden, trying to tidy it and cut back as best she could, to imitate what she imagined Elizabeth would be doing this time of year. Or she walked through the countryside, striding out strenuously.

  The soil smelt of decay after heavy rains as the earth closed in on itself. It clogged the boots Melissa had found in the garden shed and weighed them down.

  Ferns were already rusting under the trees, the acorns browning. The throaty sawing of pheasants croaked from the undergrowth. At every turn on Melissa’s solitary marches there was evidence of other lives and incidents: a soggy woollen glove hanging from a branch at chest height by the path, lost and waiting to be claimed; the disembowelled badger which sprawled across the woodland path; the flurry of feathers where a struggle had taken place.

  To the rhythm of her steps as she walked, old conversations, transcripts of arguments with Richard, filled Melissa’s head. The words were lodged there, primed as always for any chance to demand a rerun.

  ‘I can’t un-know what I know!’

  ‘Relationships change; you could change your perspective!’

  ‘See it from my point of view!’

  ‘It’s like an ache that won’t go away . . .’

  ‘You can’t let go, you mean.’

  One afternoon she stopped under the arch into the churchyard. On its crumbling plaster ceiling was a treasure trove of pencilled graffiti, some dating back to the nineteenth century. Much of it was dated from the last war, though. Land-girls had once been billeted in the Guild House (an article in the parish magazine had stuck in her mind). It was a rickety construction with its origins in Tudor times, now dark and derelict. Scraps of dirty cotton curtains sagged at the diamond-paned windows. Plaster had fallen off leaving the skeleton of lath clearly exposed. Even a creeper growing up from the forgotten patch of garden to the side had died, suckers holding fast to black wormholes in the timber.

  ‘Roll on a long time’ implored one message dated 16 September 1939. Whose stories were these, and what happened next?

  By nightfall she was often physically tired, but that did not always help.

  ‘Imagine you are lying in a wooden boat on the sea, feeling it sway, feeling the pull from the currents in deep water underneath . . .’ Elizabeth used to murmur, lightly stroking her forehead.

  The child Melissa would float in blue, above and below: all shades of indigo and cobalt, turquoise, sky and aquamarine.

  ‘Imagine all the blues, catching the sunlight, changing and lightening. Feel the warmth on your skin. Feel yourself sinking down into the blue and the sun. Feel how magical it is, how your arms and legs seem to float . . .’

  Melissa could visualise the scene so vividly she could make the mattress rock with the waves and feel drowsy in the heat. It would not take long before she fell asleep.

  In the past weeks, it was a technique to which she had returned more and more often in the sleepless reaches of the night.

  ‘It’s like being in no-man’s-land – I can’t go forward and I can’t go back.’

  Leonie listened, kindly, intently, head bent over the teapot. She filled their mugs again. It was Saturday afternoon, in her creamy, stone-flagged kitchen. Sunlight slanted in through floor-to-ceiling windows, brushing bronze and copper through her thick brown hair. Elizabeth had settled well enough for Melissa to allow herself a trip up to London.

  ‘I’m dragging my heels,’ said Melissa. ‘But how can I make any decision about Richard when Mum is so ill?’

  ‘So you would go back to him then?’

  ‘Part of me wants to,’ Melissa said slowly. ‘We were together a long time – ten years, married for six. It certainly wasn’t all bad.’

  Leonie put cling film over the salads they had assembled in Mediterranean bowls for dinner with
friends. A vast potato gratin sat on the counter ready to go into the oven.

  Outside was a patchwork of suburban gardens overlooked by the backs of other substantial Victorian houses in the comfortable grids of Fulham. Leonie’s husband and six-year-old daughter were in the garden raking leaves. Autumn was already tightening its hold on the senses as pervasively as smoke from bonfires.

  ‘Marriages do survive affairs,’ said Leonie carefully. ‘But you need to be sure that you are taking him back for the right reasons.’

  Melissa reached out for another biscuit. It fractured into grainy crumbs between her fingers.

  ‘Make certain you aren’t just going back into a situation where you’re suspicious and on edge every time he’s a bit late home. Every time he mentions another woman’s name. That’s what will destroy you, it’ll be even worse than before.’

  She was perceptive as usual, thought Melissa. She has an instinct I lack. Even at university, when we were young enough not to be taking very much too seriously, Leonie had a knack of understanding, of seeing underneath the surface to what was really going on.

  Melissa was formulating a reply when a small, muddy tornado whirled into the kitchen, scrappy plaits flying.

  ‘Emily!’ cried Leonie. ‘Look at the state of you!’

  ‘We’ve been doing archaeology at the end of the garden. Look!’ She held out a short stick. ‘Dad says it’s a clay pipe.’

  Leonie raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Let’s see,’ asked Melissa. ‘It is as well. It’s clogged with earth, but there’s the hole in the middle. Did you find it?’

  ‘I did, while I was helping. But I got bored. And there are some bits of smashed plate too!’

  Through the window, Ted was heaving two bags of garden waste up the side path.

  Leonie followed Melissa’s gaze. ‘Don’t be too impressed,’ she said. ‘First time since June he’s been out there with anything more useful than a can of beer.’

  She acknowledged that with a warm smile, then turned to Emily. ‘You know that book I kept forgetting to give you? I managed to remember today. It’s on the hall table.’

  ‘Thanks. Did you know that a banana isn’t yellow?’ said Emily.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No, it’s red and green. It’s your brain that makes it seem yellow.’

  ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Oh, it was on the Internet.’

  ‘She asks so many questions,’ said Leonie. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many questions, all the time.’

  ‘Fantastic questions, though.’

  ‘Well . . . not always. I was trying to get something done the other day when she interrupted, just would not leave it for a moment. I had to stop what I was doing . . . and the question was, “Mummy, who invented the bread bin?”’

  They all laughed.

  ‘You still didn’t tell me,’ said Emily. She grabbed a biscuit and wandered off.

  ‘You are lucky,’ Melissa told Leonie.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Melissa, you are going to the christening, aren’t you?’ Leonie asked. ‘Mattie was worried you hadn’t replied to the invitation.’

  The cream card casually and belatedly forwarded from London and left in a pile. Melissa realised, mortified, that she hadn’t even read it properly.

  ‘Oh, God, I must call them. How could I have forgotten? I’m godmother! At least I hope I still am . . .’ said Melissa, flustered. ‘They asked me as soon as Tamasin was born. I wouldn’t miss it, no matter what!’ She was indignant anyone would doubt that.

  ‘Call them now,’ said Leonie.

  After the cosiness of the afternoon, it was harder than she’d anticipated when the guests began to arrive.

  ‘Still living in Victoria?’ asked Paul, a medic she had once shared a house with for six months. He was studiously not mentioning Richard. Either Leonie or Ted must have told him.

  ‘I’ve been in Kent. At my mother’s house – she hasn’t been well.’

  He was saved from any comment on that by the arrival of a couple who looked vaguely familiar. ‘Melissa, you remember Johnny and Caroline?’

  ‘Oh, yes . . . yes, of course. Hi!’

  ‘Great to see you! What have you been up to?’ said Caroline. She was short and big-breasted, dressed in a matronly flowered ensemble.

  ‘Still working in that library?’ asked Johnny, ruddy-faced from the first glasses of wine.

  ‘Archive,’ Melissa corrected automatically. ‘No . . . bit of a career break at the moment.’

  ‘The party at the Hurlingham,’ Caroline reminded her. ‘Some idiot trod on my dress and ripped it. You mended it with one of those hotel kits. It was so clever of you. Do you remember?’

  So that’s who she was.

  ‘And where’s your lovely husband?’ she asked, craning round.

  ‘He couldn’t make it.’

  They all agreed it was a shame.

  Don’t ask me any more polite questions. That was all she could think after about an hour. She was raw with smiling. There was a sweet moment when Andy Temple, an old flame from college, grabbed her from behind and whispered in her ear, ‘Still got it.’ She took it in the spirit it was meant, and wiggled her hips. But apart from that, all seemed sacred to the concept of the couple. Most of the guests had children now. Emily was busy handing around bowls of nuts and crisps.

  Jools arrived late as always, and alone.

  She shrugged off her coat. ‘It’s more off than on with Ben at the moment. For a man who can’t commit even a dinner party is scary.’ She tried ineffectually to smooth down her head of curls, a style (in the loosest of senses) she had had as long as Melissa had known her. ‘What about you?’

  There was no need for preamble.

  ‘Richard says he’s sorry. He wants to try again.’

  ‘It’s all over with . . . her, then?’

  ‘Seems so.’

  ‘And what do you want?’

  ‘Part of me thinks, Right, that’s the end. There are no children involved. I’ll never be able to trust him again.’

  Jools rested her chin on a defiantly ring-less hand. ‘And the other part?’

  ‘Maybe I’m just angry with him. I can’t help but worry what will happen next. I mean, what happens to a woman coming up for forty—’

  ‘Forty’s a while off yet!’

  ‘Believe me, it doesn’t feel like it. You think you’re settled – you never plan for this one. Do you ever meet anyone else? And if you do, might it not end up even worse?’

  ‘You can’t think like that. It’s just not the right basis for a good decision. Of course you’d meet someone else.’

  Melissa sighed.

  ‘But you’re gorgeous!’

  ‘Be serious.’

  ‘I am,’ said Jools. ‘I still remember that party you arrived at, first year at college. Blonde hair. Great legs. You stood in the doorway . . . and there were tongues on the floor.’

  Melissa shook her head.

  ‘Obviously I thought you looked like a stuck-up cow and I would sooner have stuck nails up my nose than make friends with you,’ said Jools, dead-pan.

  ‘Now you tell me. . . .’

  A burst of raucous laughter across the room seemed to make her serious, suddenly. Jools leaned in.

  ‘What?’ Melissa asked.

  ‘Don’t do it, Mel. Don’t take him back. You’re worth more than that.’

  The directness took her aback.

  ‘I know you. I can sense that underneath it all you want to be won round.’

  ‘I don’t know – I—’

  ‘Just be careful, that’s all.’

  Melissa nodded.

  ‘I’ve said enough. Let’s have another drink.’

  They put the world to rights over several.

  III

  ‘I HATE IT here, I want to go to France,’ Elizabeth said when she woke up the next afternoon.

  Melissa, sitting with her, waiting for her to come round, felt an uneasy
mixture of empathy and frustration. According to a friendly and patently capable nurse, Elizabeth had been sleeping for hours on end every day.

  ‘They don’t talk to me,’ went on Elizabeth. She squeezed the words out and started to cough.

  Melissa took her hand, feeling agonies of guilt, wondering how she would cope with her back at home. ‘I don’t know, Mum. Perhaps we should see what Dr Stewart thinks. He said this was a good place.’

  A shake of the head and a blaze of the eyes in response seemed to exhaust her. Elizabeth’s head sank back on the pillows. Her cheekbones stood out prominently. The sight of her greying hair and pale cosmetic-free complexion cut Melissa to the core. Up until six months ago, her mother had always taken such care of her appearance, carefully replicating her old hair colour and discreetly painting her eyes and mouth. Despite the feathered lines, she was still beautiful. It was hard to think of her as prematurely old, the glowing outdoor cheeks faded to milk white.

  ‘I’ll see what the doctor says,’ whispered Melissa.

  She seemed to have slipped further away in the day Melissa had spent in London. It was hard to know how long the disease had been there. When did the connections in her brain weaken and begin to fail? What had been normal forgetfulness in a person who was getting older, and what was more sinister? Melissa felt guilty for not knowing, for not sensing before. Perhaps it could have been halted. Perhaps she could have realised in time and done more to slow the decline. Was it too late now?

  ‘I brought something for you.’

  Melissa passed her a couple of photographs – from the same stack they had looked at in her bedroom: pictures of sea and rocky beaches, the colours gaudy under the glossy membrane. If they had sparked her interest so clearly before, perhaps they might do so again.

  She stared down at them with no sign of recognition. Melissa sat quietly, giving it time. There was a worrying wheeze in Elizabeth’s chest as she began to cough again. But after the fit had passed, she seemed to rally.

  Astonishingly, Elizabeth nodded enthusiastically at the sunny pictures and said, ‘Lovely . . . Corfu.’

  Corfu? Melissa had never heard her talk about Corfu before. Was that where the photographs were taken?