I can’t think of anything useful to say, so keep silent and push my verbal autopilot firmly away.
He wipes a shaking hand over his brow, pushing wet hair away. “It’s raining.” He looks around, then hugs his arms around his chest.
He doesn’t seem ready for the long walk back, but there’s no shelter here. Of course, the west wing has an entrance from this end, but it’s locked because this is the retirement home and they have separate keys.
One of the rooms nearby has a bright pink curtain caught in the French windows. I know this, it’sPhilomena’sroom. She’s one of the Squadwho movedawaylast week to live withher grandchildren.
“Let me try this.” I leave Osian by the wall and go over to try the handle. The door opens.
“Come on, let’s go in here,” I call to him. “I’m sureRaffwon’t mind.”
Inside, it’s nice and toasty. I know Raff has a separate heating system which is on a higher setting because older people feel the cold more. So Osian and I walk into what feels like a warm hug. The room smells faintly of Diorissimo, a perfume my great aunt always loved.
Osian all but falls into the two-seater sofa by the windows.
I switch on a small side lamp, weak as a candle, and look around the tidy but very feminine room. In the far corner there’s a small kitchenette with a kettle and various tea caddies. Also a long bar of Toblerone that must have been left behind when Philomena moved out. I’ll get Raff a big box of teabags to make up for this liberty, but for now our need is greater than my worries about unlawful entry.
I fill the kettle and find a couple of mugs and some UHT milk sachets.
“What’s this?” Osian looks up when I hand him a steaming mug.
“The good old British solution to all crises,” I say, laughing.
We sit side by side – there’s nowhere else unless I want to sit on the bed – and drink hot restorative tea. Small triangles of Toblerone melt in our mouths. When Osian’s mug is empty I go and make him another. He still looks pale and there are dark rings around his eyes.
He must see me watching him. “Don’t worry, I’m okay,” he says, taking the tea from me. “Strangely, I feel much better.”
“The benefits of a good cry.” I sit tucking myself as far as possible into the corner so I’m not all over him. “Any woman would agree. We cry all the time.”
He takes a gulp of his tea. “I never have.” He pauses, then, pushing his head back until it rests on the wall, he looks up at the ceiling. “Not even when Kirsten died.”
The forbidden subject. The one he’ll never talk about. Or did he say he’ll never answer any questions about?
Whichever. I had promised to never ask, so I’m not going to. It’s him who seems to be in a confessional mood.
“At the time,” Osian starts. His head is still back, eyes on the ceiling. “All I felt was rage. The kind of rage that turns its sharp points inwards and cuts you to shreds. Why did she have to die? That beautiful, shining, happy girl, like the star in your poem – the brightest one in the sky. Everyone loved Kirsten. She had this smile that lit up the room. Such a bright future. And then a doctor made it all disappear with one word.” Osian’s hands, flaton his thighs, suddenly clench into fists. “I never wanted to hit a man so much, but in that instant, when he said the word cancer like it’s a normal word, I could have punched him hard enough to send him flying into outer space.”
He seems to notice his fists and deliberately loosens them, takes up his mug and makes himself drink his tea.
“I went into denial. Blaming the punishing tennis schedule which made her tired. So we gave it all up and moved into a small house in a tiny seaside village in Maine.” He makes an odd little chuckle. Bitter and derisive. “What was your poem? ‘Lived by a mossy stone, half-hidden’? That’s what we did. We lived on organic food, planted our own vegetables, and I tried every natural cure I read about. From Navajo apricot kernel oil to blueberry juice, from yoga to mindfulness to hypnosis. I made myself an expert. For two years an—” He swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as if around a lump.
“I couldn’t save her,” he says at last, as if confessing a shameful secret. “I tried to say positive things. In sport you have to visualise success. So that’s what I tried to give her, keeping up the mindset that she was going to recover. And when I no longer believed it, I lied to her and maybe she lied to me too, pretending to believe it.”
I take his hand without thinking or planning it. I just… reach over, take his hand and hold it between both of mine. He lets me.
“We used to go for walks along the shore and watch the waves coming in. When she got too weak to walk, I sat her in a big wicker chair out in the garden where she could watch me plant medicinal herbs and organic kale. And I watched her. Watched her wilt and dwindle. Everything that made her Kirsten just drained out of her. Her smile faded, her eyes lost their gleam andshe lost interest in everything. Nothing left but the vicious pain. By the end, even her own parents prayed for her to die.”
I stroke his hand back and forth, my heart aching for him. What had he been, twenty-two, twenty-three? Only a boy.
“Didn’t you have help?”
He shakes his head vehemently. “I didn’t want it. Help would have attracted attention, interference. We managed to live almost invisible in our little cottage by the sea. What did it say in that poem? ‘Among the untrodden ways’? That was us.” He stops and just stares at the wall opposite.
“Was it the poem?” The question just flies out of my mouth before I can stop it. “The reason these memories came up?”
“No,” he starts, then, “Yes, the poem. But also the legend. The bride who died. You think of marriage as the start of a wonderful journey, not the end of it. When people found out, after Kirsten… went… they would say stupid things like ‘the two of you were happily married, you had the perfect love,’” Osian mimics bitterly.
“Did we? I don’t know; we never got the chance to find out. We went from our wedding breakfast straight into the crazy merry-go-round of training, championship, training, another tournament. Hardly had time to draw breath. And we went from that to the other merry-go-round of chemo and side effects. She never had the chance to be a wife. To have a marriage, a life.”
