The Last List of Mabel Beaumont(74)

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘It’s me, it’s Mabel. I’m here. I’ve come to tell you something.’

I laugh nervously, but there’s a rattle to it. It’s a laugh that’s knocking on the door of a cough. Cancer? You question everything, at this age. Could this be how it started, for Dot?

‘I found out about Dot, about her being gone. Is she there with you, Bill?’

At twenty-two, I spent every spare moment with Dot and Bill and Arthur. If I close my eyes, I can smell Dot’s perfume. Like a summer meadow. That day when we went walking, just after Bill died, when all we could do was cry, and we needed to be out of the house, because Mother kept talking about how Bill would have proposed to Dot, and although we all knew that was true, it was just too desperate to think about an engagement that was never going to happen because the man in question was dead at twenty-five.

We went out of town, into the hills where we stood less chance of running into anyone. I needed to be out there with all that space and air, and her. There was nothing to say, so we were quiet, just walking, putting more and more distance between ourselves and our homes. After a couple of hours, we sat down under an enormous oak tree for a breather, and Dot lit a cigarette and when I tried to light mine, I saw that my hands were shaking. Clumsy with grief, I suppose. Dot reached across and lit it and the heat of the flame was like a call back to Earth and I wondered where I was, where I’d been, before that call. I waited for Dot to move away, and she didn’t.

There’s a sparrow on the fence a few feet away. I tilt my head, look at it. Its eyes glassy and small. Then it’s gone, and I’ve fallen, or have I just dropped? I’m on my knees, anyway, my tights laddered, no doubt. And I’m crying, too, great sobs ebbing and flowing, like waves.

‘I got it wrong. I got it all wrong. When Arthur said we should get married, it just seemed like the most obvious thing to do. But that didn’t mean it was the right choice, did it? I knew in my bones it wasn’t, and yet, you held my hand, Mother, and said it was lovely to have something to look forward to, after Bill, and who was I to take that away?’

Dot, that cigarette, that closeness. She leaned closer still, and the cigarette was forgotten, and all I wanted to do was touch her soft skin. She kissed my cheek, and it felt like a test. She was waiting to see if I would pull away, if I would be shocked, horrified. But I was burning. I felt dizzy and a bit drunk, and like I’d just been born. Her lips, so close to mine. She curled her hand around my waist and I thought I would die, there and then, from wanting her. And then her lips were on mine and she tasted of honey and smoke, milk and that particular rain you get in April. And I knew with a clarity that shocked me I didn’t want to live a single day, a single minute, without her. I wanted to hand her my body and my heart and ask her to carry them, to keep them safe. But she was pulling away, just as I was reaching forward. Hungry, so hungry.

And then her hands were pushing me, her head was dipped, and I saw what she’d seen. A man, out walking. I couldn’t smile at him when he wished us a good afternoon. I no longer lived in the same world he occupied. When he was gone, surely we would return to it. To that raging bliss. She looked at me, her eyes full of questions, and I tried to answer them all with mine. Yes, yes, always.

‘Do you know who that was?’ she asked.

‘No.’ I’d barely glanced at him.

‘Reg Bishop,’ she said. ‘Bill knows him. Do you think he saw?’

I didn’t know, didn’t care, really. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘We should go back,’ she said. ‘There’s so much to do.’

Back. To the house my brother haunted. To our friendship. To a time before we’d touched fire and survived.

‘Dot,’ I said.

It was a plea, and she knew it. But she pretended it was something else.

‘Yes?’

I could have asked her a hundred things. To stay, to kiss me again, to be my everything for all time, but she was pretending that we hadn’t just set our lives on fire, and I was hurt.

‘We’ll go back,’ I said, and I set off without looking at her. Walked ahead of her all the way back to the house, where Mother was making bread and the kitchen was full of yeast and flour and tears. The window open to let the sunshine in and the grief out.

When Dot said she had to get home, I followed her to the door, my mouth full of questions. Did you love him? Would you have married him? And what am I, to you? I didn’t let them out. Couldn’t.

The next day, when I called round, her mother said she wasn’t well, couldn’t see me. The next time I saw her was at the funeral. Her the grieving widow, though she wasn’t. Me the grieving sister. We stood side by side and we did not touch. She wore a simple black dress, her blonde hair pulled back off her face, her lips bare. We had giggled at times, over thoughts of being brides, but we had never imagined this. Standing in the weak spring sun while damp shovelfuls of earth thumped onto a coffin containing a man we loved.

All day long, I willed her to look at me, to give me some sort of sign. To let me know whether what had happened on that hillside under that oak tree was about the madness of grief, or something else. But she kept moving, always off to talk to someone or get another drink. She avoided me so studiously. And that was an answer in itself, I suppose.





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