The Things We Know Now Read online

  Keep moving, keep moving, I told myself, as I angled the tray in order to push past him, out the door, back to where other people waited, surrounded by their meaningless words of comfort.

  His response surprised me. ‘Then when?’ he said. His tone had a sharpness to it that took me aback. I think it startled him, too. I stopped, the tray of sandwiches between us, and our eyes met – really met. I was surprised by what I could read there. There was a perceptiveness in his watery gaze: he knew that something unresolved still lingered between us, more than two decades later. But I couldn’t go there, not that day. In the event, Sophie came into the kitchen and the moment passed. We daughters spent the rest of the afternoon and evening making tea, pouring drinks and moving around one another, each in a separate orbit of grief.

  We did not speak of it again, my father and I. Not that day, not since. Sometimes, I regret the missed opportunity, if only for my mother’s sake. She’d spent her life trying to keep him happy.

  Adam and I stayed over that night, occupying my old room.

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay to stay?’ Frances had asked me earlier, as we loaded the dishwasher together.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘I don’t think he should be on his own, not tonight.’ She glanced towards the conservatory, towards the table where Mum had been sitting when it happened.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said. ‘It’s too late to drive home, anyway.’

  Frances gave me a strange look. In fairness, once the words were out, they had a quality that I had not intended. A harshness. I had merely meant that Frances should not worry about my being inconvenienced; Frances always worried about others. But, once spoken, the words fell into that pit of misunderstanding that so often yawned between us. Why should you not be inconvenienced? I could almost hear her ask, he’s your father, too. Or: I wasn’t worrying about you; I’m worrying about him.

  As usual, we let it slide.

  Earlier, both my sisters had disappeared up the stairs together. I caught sight of them just as they went into the master bedroom. Sophie took me aside afterwards.

  ‘We’ve changed the bed,’ she said. ‘We thought it might be better.’

  I felt an unaccustomed shock of sorrow for my father. Now even Mum’s imprint was gone: he would retire to sterile, cold, detergent-smelling sheets. He wouldn’t even have her scent to comfort him. But Sophie looked so earnest, so miserable, that I didn’t have the heart to say anything. The girl still had the glazed eyes of someone not yet fully conscious of her new and terrible surroundings. ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ I said, and squeezed her hand. It is never difficult to be gentle with Sophie.

  My father, Adam and I sat up together until four in the morning, long after Frances and Sophie had gone home. From about midnight, once the house had settled into its new and uncomfortable silence, I wanted to be alone. I needed the solace of an empty room where I could start to unravel this pain that had not relinquished its grip since Sophie had phoned me three days earlier, giving me the news that I still could not comprehend. But I could see that my father was reluctant to go to bed. And so we stayed, sipping whiskey, watching the fire burn down, sharing memories of my mother.

  When we finally retired, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake until dawn, weeping silent, cleansing tears, while Adam snored softly in the single bed beside mine. In those lonely early-morning hours, I felt sorry for my sisters. They lived so much closer to my father than I did – geographically and in every other way – and I knew that trouble was in store.

  As my sisters so rightly pointed out – both at that time and so often since – our father was a man of his generation. He neither cooked nor shopped nor in any way took part in the normal domestic chaos that is the warp and weft of other people’s daily lives. His gesture towards equality had always consisted of cutting the grass, putting out the bins and collecting the dry-cleaning. My mother had seemed to think it enough, although it had made me furious on several family occasions. He’d sit at the head of the table, carve the joint, rhapsodize over the wine, tell all those stories that showed him in a good light.

  ‘Rebecca, your dad and I have worked out our arrangements; you and Adam have yours. Just accept that men your father’s age are different. That’s all.’ I can still see my mother’s expression: that mix of defensiveness and affection that used to set my younger self alight. ‘I’ve forgiven him – why won’t you?’ she’d asked me once, out of the blue, years ago. She spoke very quietly, after he and I had had yet another row and I’d slammed upstairs to my sixteen-year-old’s bedroom, full of rage and hormones.

  It was the only time she’d ever directly alluded to that long-ago, long-significant Christmas Eve, and I’d been surprised at her question. But I realized even then that she was right. The truth of it was, that in my eyes, my father did not deserve to be forgiven.

  Watching him the afternoon of my mother’s funeral, I wondered how my sisters would be able to deal with all of his learned helplessness.

  I hadn’t long to wait.

  Patrick

  A FEW MONTHS into my relationship with Ella, she gave up her consulting room in the city. The drive was too much, the cost was too much, the time spent in coming and going was too much: everything conspired against her. ‘I have plenty of room at my house,’ she told me, ‘and more clients than I can cope with. It’s time for me to make a choice.’ And so she began working from home, a good two hours’ drive from where I was living, in my old family home. We no longer had the occasional stolen hour or two for a leisurely lunch in the city, or a visit to the gallery, or a walk on the beach. All of that stopped overnight.

  When it did, I missed her dreadfully.

  Thrust back upon my own devices, I could feel myself begin to descend once again into that slough of despond from which I had so recently emerged. The rooms of my house – no longer my ‘home’, without Cecilia – felt suddenly vast and barren. Visits from Frances and Sophie notwithstanding, I felt very much alone there. My footsteps seemed to echo, their empty sound feeling like a reproach. In my mind’s eye, I saw Cecilia everywhere, preparing dinner, filling cupboards, moving easily around the confined space. She loved her quirky, old-fashioned kitchen. She refused to update things, saying she liked them just as they were.

  ‘What would you like me to do?’ she used to say, in response to our daughters’ urgings to modernize. ‘Rattle around a huge empty kitchen during my declining years, bumping now and again into your father?’ And she’d grin over at me. ‘I don’t think so.’

  How prescient those words seem to me now. Except that, by then, I was the one ‘rattling around’ the empty house on my own. I was the one, on more than one occasion, who felt as though I was bumping into my own past. Too many memories, too many.

  However, I do believe that I eventually learned to come to terms with what I had lost. No: that is not quite true. I don’t believe that such a tidy reconciliation is ever possible. But I had managed to reach some sort of shore, some littoral place that felt firmer underfoot. Pain no longer ambushed me. My sadnesses became quieter than before. And, as the pain dimmed somewhat, I knew with certainty that I did not wish to live alone.

  Cecilia’s death had made me fully conscious of my own mortality. It was only the second time in my life that I had had such heightened awareness around death and dying. The first time was when I lost my friend and business partner, Matt.

  Matt and I had set up our company together as soon as we had been awarded our degrees in structural engineering. ‘No one else will have us,’ he’d said, cheerfully, ‘so we might as well look out for ourselves.’ It felt like an adventure. Our partnership was sealed on one heady evening – fuelled by equal amounts of optimism and alcohol. Matt and I had met on our first day at university and that was it: an instant, enduring friendship was forged. One that saw us share flats, resources, youthful triumphs and disappointments – and even, on one memorable occasion, a girlfriend.

  Matt had just the right amount of reckle
ssness. I was more cautious by nature. His energy and his work ethic were extraordinary. Very early on in our partnership, his ‘can-do’ spirit netted us an initial contract in Kuwait, followed by another in South Africa, and yet another in Bogota. All on a wing and a prayer.

  Our thirties were frantic times. For the first few years, though, I’d held the fort at home – after all, I was, at that time the ‘family man’. I don’t know if Matt ever learned of the irony. If he had, I think he’d have appreciated it. The ‘family man’ pursuing his ‘tawdry little affairs’ while the singleton – is that really a word these days? – looked after the business of getting his hands dirty thousands of miles away. And then the singleton met Olivia. A whirlwind romance, a wedding, a baby – all in the space of a scant nine months – changed our working landscape for good.

  I still remember the day Matt told me. ‘We’ll have to regroup,’ he said, from behind his famous wreath of smoke. ‘We’ll have to share the away time. I’m a family man now, too.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another.

  I can also remember my response. Inside, I had a sick feeling: part apprehension, part shock, part resentment. I had a comfortable niche: I ran the home front efficiently, made sure the books balanced, kept the clients happy. Now I feared that I might be found wanting. I wasn’t sure whether I had the panache to deliver the goods when forced to operate so far away from the familiar. Matt’s stories of managing disputes or making sure workers ‘stayed in line’, as he put it, or manoeuvring his way around local bureaucracies: these were all his strengths, not mine. As it turned out, I loved being in the field. However, I digress again. That is yet another story, for another time. In Matt’s late forties, just when he had accumulated enough to retire – we both had – he was stricken with lung cancer.

  I bought him out of the business, of course. His treatment was lengthy and expensive. I was not ungenerous during our negotiations. Soon afterwards, I sold the business. I’d had enough. Over the years, work had expanded to the point that the weeks ran into one another without any discernible definition. Holidays together with Cecilia were an aspiration, rarely a reality. Weekends no longer existed and travel consumed much of my life. We had money, certainly – more than enough. But I’d become aware of a new restlessness, a growing discontent. And that restlessness had little to do with my wife’s more frequent, more plangent, complaints.

  Instead, it had to do with the nagging question that kept on repeating itself, often at the most inappropriate times. A small, internal voice that whispered ‘Is this it? Is this all there is?’

  I found that when Matt finally died, I didn’t want to work any more. Everything, everyone I knew, suddenly became more precious to me. Cecilia gave up her job as a music teacher, we bought a bigger sailing boat, spent months at a time away from home and had some intensely happy days.

  ‘This was such a good decision, Patrick,’ Cecilia said to me, on several occasions. The one I remember best is when we’d arrived at a tiny fishing village on the south coast of Greece. The sailing that day had been exhilarating and challenging. We’d worked as a team – fluidly, fluently, with hardly any words exchanged at all. We both knew what we were doing. After we’d berthed and were sitting in the sunshine, Cecilia turned to me, her face glowing. ‘We’re so lucky to have this time together, Patrick. Thank you so much for making it happen.’ And she kissed me.

  I have wondered since whether Cecilia had any inkling of the future that lay in wait for her – for both of us. I’ll never know, but I am content that we shared those rich, memorable days between us, for – what? Two years, three years at most? That was what we had together at the end. It was not enough, not nearly enough. But I am grateful for it nonetheless.

  Remembering all of this in the now silent kitchen of my empty home, I knew at once what I needed to do.

  Whatever time I had left, I wanted to spend it with Ella.

  The first night I spent with Ella in the sanctuary of her home was a very special time for both of us. That is how I felt about her home back then: it charmed me. I loved the location, the way the garden sloped away from the house, down towards the bright water below. A curved wooden bridge drew the eye with it into the woodland beyond the stream. Japanese maples dotted the lawn, and that same week, some magnolia stellata had exploded into flower just outside the conservatory window. It seemed to me then to be a serene and peaceful refuge and I felt instantly at home there.

  That occasion, and all that went with it, is a memory that has become even more luminous with time. It was a warm and tender evening, although not without its apprehensions beforehand. I need not have worried: Ella’s and my developing intimacy was such that no physical awkwardness could disturb it.

  I have never been able to understand the modern compulsion for vulgar frankness about sex; all I will say is that I know Ella and I did not disappoint each other. In the welcoming glow of her bedroom, we were easy and relaxed and loving. It was an emotional time for both of us. We spoke of Cecilia that night, too, and of the future and of my daughters. I was content. I felt that all the waiting was at last beginning to come to an end. The past had had its due, and we were able to look forward. It felt good to be, once again, making plans. Later, as we sat in the conservatory, sipping wine and looking out at the falling light, Ella said that she had something to tell me.

  She looked so grave, so intent, that I became immediately consumed by the need to hear her, in the way that she had so often heard me: unravelling the unspoken, acknowledging the painful. She spoke softly, music playing in the background.

  Rachmaninov. Second Piano Concerto. My chest had constricted for a moment when Ella chose the CD. Cecilia had played this on our piano, often, for just the two of us. I now put that memory quietly aside and directed all my attention to listening to Ella’s words.

  ‘Four years ago,’ she began, ‘my father was taken ill. Overnight, he changed from an active eighty-five-year-old, fiercely independent, a good cook and a great gardener, into someone who could no longer tie his own shoelaces.’

  ‘A stroke?’ I hazarded.

  She nodded. ‘Yes. He was almost completely paralysed, apart from his right hand. But he was grateful that his mind stayed alert and that his speech wasn’t as badly affected as it might have been. A miracle, I think. Caring for him taught me to appreciate the smallest of mercies.’

  I wondered, for a moment, how I would have fared had I been called upon in that way to look after someone I loved – someone who demanded all of my selfless devotion. I was honest enough to feel that I might not have come up to the mark. ‘That must have been a difficult job,’ I said.

  She nodded. ‘It was physical, yes, and demanding – but not tough in any real way. In fact, I think it probably saved me.’

  I looked at her. ‘What do you mean?’ I began to sense that we were about to traverse some old and precious territory: including, no doubt, some painful places.

  ‘Before Dad got ill, I had been in a relationship for three years with a man called Fintan MacManus. I met him when I was twenty-seven, he was a few years older. We were both students on the same psychotherapy diploma course.’

  I had to quell an irrational stab of jealousy. I hated the thought of her having been with anyone else. I hated the younger man whom I had never met.

  Ella looked suddenly thoughtful: that careful, considered expression that I knew so well. ‘I know now – and I think I knew even then – that I was ready to meet someone, ready for marriage and children.’

  She stopped. ‘I think, because of that, I believed that Fintan and I were right for each other. I believed that I could have what I wanted with him.’ She reached for the wine bottle and refilled both our glasses. Even I understood that this was a displacement activity; her face had become shaded with emotion. ‘After about a year, we moved in together. We were spending all of our time with each other as it was, and it made sense on every level.’ She paused. ‘I moved into Fintan’s place as it was much bigger th
an my small flat. Not as convenient, but there was a study we could share and—’ she shook her head, dislodging some memory.

  ‘What?’ I asked, as gently as I could.

  ‘Nothing really. I remember having a kind of shadowy feeling that giving up my own place and my independence might not have been such a good idea. It was a warning bell: a distant one. But I didn’t listen: I didn’t want to listen. I truly believed that Fintan and I had a solid future together.’ She smiled at me. ‘You have to remember that I am telling you this now that the relationship is over. Hindsight, and all that. Twenty-twenty vision.’

  I nodded. I understood.

  ‘I was very happy,’ she continued. ‘I believed we both were.’

  ‘What happened?’ Watching Ella’s expression, I felt guilty all over again. I did not know then – nor was I even able to imagine – that her past had contained anything remotely as painful as mine.

  ‘A year or so later, I became pregnant. It wasn’t planned, but Fintan and I had discussed having children, and it was something we both wanted. When I found out, I was thrilled. I was so excited that nothing felt like an issue. Not the fact that we weren’t married, or that we hadn’t planned this baby, or that we were still working on our professional qualifications: nothing. I believed we could overcome all obstacles.

  ‘At first, Fintan seemed to be as happy as I was. Then, after the first few heady weeks, I began to notice a difference in his behaviour. He became withdrawn and he refused to talk.’ Ella shook her head. ‘He’d turn away from me in bed, leave the apartment each morning without a word. It was very painful – I was bewildered by what seemed to be a complete change of heart. It just wasn’t like him.’ She stopped for a moment. When she spoke again, she sounded different: almost brisk. ‘I’m going to give you the short version here.’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere, Ella.’ I sat forward on the sofa, leaning towards her. ‘Make the story as long as you like.’

  She smiled, but I could see the strain across her eyes. ‘As it happened, the pregnancy turned out to be ectopic. I was rushed to hospital one Monday evening – I collapsed during a lecture and the college called an ambulance. I’ve never felt agony like it. Never, before or since.’