Not until the night of the party twenty years later.
ChapterFifty-Two
Chelstead Cottage Hospital, Chelstead
December 1962
Hope
No matter how hard Hope tried to open her mouth to speak, not a muscle moved. In her head she was screaming at the top of her voice that she knew who was sending the anonymous letters – it was Arthur, she was sure! But not a word would come out. She was as inert as stone.
She had overheard enough from the whispered comments amongst the medical staff to know that the worst of her injuries was a bleed on the brain, and that while they knew her brain was showing signs of activity, it was if the wires had disconnected and it could no longer instruct her body to move.
She constantly willed her limbs to do her bidding; just an inch would be enough, or a flicker of an eyelid, but her body refused point blank to obey her. Sometimes she felt her body was deliberately mocking her, teasing her into believing she had succeeded in regaining mastery of it and that her hand or foot had moved.
Listening to Romily and Evelyn she had been so sure that she had managed to twitch her fingers in response to what they were saying, but when they hadn’t reacted, she was forced to accept that any movement she believed she was making was nothing more than wishful thinking.
There had been a moment when she had been lying in that ditch with only the wind and rain for company, that she had been certain she was about to meet her maker. With the acceptance that her life was over, she had felt herself slipping away, as though falling over the edge of a cliff. Down and down she fell. Weightless. Not a terrifiedscream-filled hurtle towards the end, but a slow descent, like a piece of delicate blossom caught on a spring breeze floating gracefully to the soft pillowy ground.
With that sensation came the relief that no more would she have to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders. No more would she have the worry of Edmund no longer loving her. Of him loving another. Of him leaving her.Shewas leaving him. He would now be free to be with whomever he wanted. This, like the car with which she had surprised him, was her gift to Edmund. Her final gift.
In the endlessly long days she had been lying here in a state of purgatory – with a tube down her throat to help her breathe and a drip feeding God knows what into her – her mood had swung from one end of the pendulum to the other. To live or not to live. As if she had any choice in it!
Some days when Edmund was with her, when her mood was so low and she saw this permanent vegetative state as her future, she willed him to do the decent thing and put a pillow over her face. ‘Just do it!’ she longed to say. ‘Put us both out of our misery.’
Other times when he was with her and holding her hand, telling her how everyone was rooting for her to get better, she pictured his face. His caring compassionate face. And it made her want to weep and beg him to put his arms around her. He repeatedly apologised for arguing with her, that he wished he could turn back time and make everything right again.
‘I’m sorry I’ve been such a poor husband to you,’ he’d said, ‘that I don’t seem able to make you happy in the way I once did.’
She could have wept when he told her he loved her. But was that remorse in his voice she could hear? Remorse for also loving another? Evelyn had just said her brother would never have an affair behind Hope’s back. Was she right?
The silence in the room told her that she was now alone. The nurses had finished doing whatever they came to do and had gone. Where were Romily and Evelyn? Why hadn’t they returned? She wanted to hear more of what they had to say about the anonymous letters. She wanted somehow to point them towards Arthur. He was just the sort of person who would enjoy stirring up trouble for the sheer hell of it.
Tormenting people was what he did best. He had done it as a child when he’d pulled the wings off butterflies. Or the time one hot summer’s day during the school holidays when he trapped a field mouse under a jam jar and put it in the sun so he could watch the animal slowly die.
Beyond the quiet confines of her room, Hope could hear the sound of a trolley being pushed along the corridor. It was the trolley with the irritating wheel that needed oiling. Was she the only one who could hear it squeak, the only one to be annoyed by it?
On the whole the nursing staff were competent and did their job well. She wished though they wouldn’t prattle on so much, telling her how much they’d enjoyed her books when growing up. They were familiar with Edmund in his capacity as a doctor, of course, and fussed over him whenever he visited, bringing him tea and shortbread.
It was all a far cry from her many dealings with the hospital in the past. For years she had helped withmuch-needed fund raising and every Christmas she would attend the children’s parties to give out free copies of her books. For the children too sick to get out of bed, she would go to them with a book and a pat on the head. What she never told anyone, not even Edmund, was that immediately afterwards she would have to wash her hands thoroughly, then rush home to change out of her clothes. She had a horror of germs, of catching something from a sick child which would prevent her from working.
Edmund had read out a letter from her agent, as well as several cards from her various publishers. They all wished her well. Flowers had been sent, too. She hadn’t been able to see them, but their cloying perfume had been too much. It was a relief when they died and were removed from her room.
Thinking of her agent and her publishers, she supposed they were already totting up the loss of future sales from her. The golden goose that stopped laying. Was somebody also writing her obituary?
She remembered reading her father’s obituary inTheTimesand theTelegraph. It had made impressive reading, but hardly reflected the man she had known. Would that be true of her? Probably. After all, the face she showed to the world as the renowned children’s author was not the real Hope.
Lying here she’d had a lot of time to reflect on her life. It wasn’t her achievements she dwelt on, but her failings. She had failed as a wife and as a mother to Annelise.
Annelise visited her every day. Sometimes she barely spoke; she just sat very still and held Hope’s hand. The silence was oddly comforting. It was a rare moment of calm when Hope didn’t have to listen, or think of something else to block out the flow of banal chatter.
Once more she heard the sound of the trolley with the squeaking wheel passing the door to her room. This time it was accompanied by the laughter of a couple of nurses.
She suddenly thought of something. Kit knew about the first letter she had received! She had told him about it the night of the party at Meadow Lodge. How had she forgotten that? Romily and Evelyn believed Hope had received only the one letter, but she’d had two. But then what did it matter how many letters she had been sent? Or that she’d told Kit and sworn him to secrecy?
Just as her head began to ache with the effort of trying to make sense of it all, she heard the door open followed by the sound of someone coming into the room. Listening hard, she could make out the noise of a coat being taken off. At the same time the distinctive sharp smell of a cold winter’s day mixed with a slightly sulphurous odour permeated the sterile air of the room. The same smell had met her nostrils when Romily and Evelyn arrived.
‘Hello Mums, it’s me, Annelise.’
