“So, I’ll just read it. Not all of it, but the bits of interest. It answers a few questions we had. I know what some of you had been thinking about him. Maybe thought he’d, you know... Ian Ventham. Anyway.”
“You take your time,” says Ron. He places his hand on hers for a moment.
Joyce begins to read, with an unfamiliar waver.
“‘Dear Joyce, I am sorry for the nuisance. Don’t try to come in, I have bolted the door. First time I have used that bolt since I moved here. You will know what I have done, and I suppose it’s nothing you haven’t seen before a thousand times. I will be lying on the bed, all things being well, and perhaps I will look peaceful, but perhaps I won’t. I would rather not take that chance, so I’ll leave it to the ambulance men to decide if I look in a fit state for you to say good-bye. That is if you wish to say good-bye.’”
Joyce stops reading for a moment. Elizabeth, Ron, and Ibrahim are completely silent. She looks up at them. “They didn’t let me see him in the end. I’m sure that’s policy, when you’re not family. So he got that bit wrong, didn’t he? And they were both ambulance women.”
She gives a weak smile and her three friends mirror it. She continues reading.
“‘I have the pills by my side, and I have a Laphroaig I had been saving for a rainy day. I see the lights turning off around me, and it will be my turn next. Next to the bed are the beautiful flowers you bought me. They are in amilk bottle, because you know me and vases. But before I go, I suppose I should tell you the whole thing.’”
“The whole thing?” says Elizabeth.
Joyce puts a finger to her lips. Elizabeth does as she is told, and Joyce continues reading Bernard’s final letter.
“‘As you know, Asima’—that’s his wife—‘died shortly after we moved to Coopers Chase, which was a spanner in the works. You don’t talk about Gerry very much, Joyce, but I know you understand. Like someone reached in and took out my heart and my lungs, and told me to keep living. Keep waking up, keep eating, keep putting one foot in front of the other. For what? I don’t think I ever really found an answer to that. You know I would often walk up the hill and sit on the bench Asima and I used to sit on when we first moved here, and you know I felt close to her there. But I had another reason for climbing that hill, a reason for which I feel profound shame. A shame that has become too much for me to bear.’”
Joyce pauses for a moment. “I wonder if I might have some water?”
Ron pours her a glass and hands it to her. Joyce drinks, then returns to the letter.
“‘You will know that many Hindus have their ashes scattered on the Ganges. These days, other rivers will do, but for a certain generation it’s still the Ganges, if you have the wherewithal. This was Asima’s wish many, many years ago, certainly a wish that our daughter Sudhi had grown up hearing about. Asima’s funeral is not something I wish to think about or write about, but two days afterward Sudhi and Majid’—that’s the daughter and son-in-law—‘flew to Varanasi in India, and scattered Asima’s ashes on the Ganges. But Joyce, and here’s where the pills and the whisky come in, I’m afraid. They weren’t her ashes.’”
She pauses and looks up.
“Well. Goodness,” says Ibrahim, and sits forward as Joyce reads on.
“‘I am not a religious man, Joyce, as you are aware. But in her later years, Asima was not a religious woman either. She shook off her faith slowly, likethe leaves from a tree, until nothing remained. I loved that woman with everything I possess, and she loved me. The thought of her leaving, being placed in hand luggage, Joyce, and then floating away from me... Well, that wasn’t something I was able to comprehend two days after saying good-bye. None of this excuses my actions, but I hope it might explain them. I had the ashes at home for the first night. Sudhi and Majid weren’t in my spare room; they had preferred to stay in a hotel, despite it all.
“‘Many years ago Asima and I had been browsing at an old antiques shop and she had picked up a tea caddy in the shape of a tiger. ‘Well, that’s you,’ I said, and we both laughed. I called her Little Tiger, and she called me Big Tiger; you know the drill. I went back a week later to buy it for her as a surprise Christmas present, but it had already sold. Anyway, that Christmas, I opened my present from her, and there it was. She had obviously gone straight back and bought it for me. I have kept it ever since. So, I took the urn, and poured the ashes from the urn into the tiger tea caddy, then placed the caddy back in the cupboard. I filled the urn with a mixture of sawdust and bonemeal, it’s surprisingly convincing, then sealed it shut again. And that’s what Sudhi took to Varanasi, and that’s what she scattered on the Ganges. Bear in mind I wasn’t thinking straight, Joyce; I was paralyzed with grief. I would have done anything to stop my Asima floating away. I had forgotten, of course, that she was Sudhi’s Asima too. The next day, as soon after dark as I dared, I took a spade from the allotment shed and walked up the hill. I cut the turf from underneath the bench, I dug a hole, and I buried the tin. Even then I knew it could only be temporary, but I wasn’t ready to let her go. The turf settled back in, nobody ever noticed a thing—why would they?—and every day I would go and sit on the bench, say hello when people walked by, and talk to Asima when they didn’t. I knew then that it was wrong, I knew that I had betrayed my daughter, and that I could never make amends. But the pain was so very great.’”
“Some people love their children more than they love their partner,” saysIbrahim, “and some people love their partner more than their children. And no one can ever admit to either thing.”
Joyce nods absentmindedly and begins a new page.
“‘The immediate pain goes, however much you might want it to stay, and I soon came to understand the enormity of what I had done. The awful selfishness, the entitlement. I started to think of plans and plots, something to put it right. Maybe I would dig the tea caddy up, I would take it on the bus down to Fairhaven, let some of her go, and keep some of her with me. I could never tell Sudhi what I had done, but at least her mother would be in the waves, returning to wherever Sudhi imagines we return to. I knew it wasn’t enough, but it was the best I could do. Until one morning I climbed the hill to find workmen laying a concrete foundation for the bench. They had dug down, not far enough to find the tin, and filled the hole with cement. They had the job done in half an hour. And that was that, I suppose, so silly when you look at it, but I had no easy way of digging the tea caddy back up. So I would continue to walk up the hill, and continue to talk to Asima when no one was listening, telling her my news, telling her how much I loved her, and telling her I was sorry. And honestly, Joyce, for your eyes only, I realize that I have run out of whatever it is that we need to carry on. So that’s me, I’m afraid.’”
Joyce finishes and stares down at the letter for another moment, running a finger across the ink. She looks up at her friends and attempts a smile, which turns in an instant to tears. The tears turn to shaking sobs and Ron leaves his chair, kneels in front of her, and takes her in his arms. The thing Ron is so good at. Joyce buries her head in his shoulder and flings her arms around him, weeping for Gerry and for Bernard and for Asima, and for the ladies who went toJersey Boysand drank G&Ts out of cans all the way home.
89.
It is too late to be in the Fairhaven police station, but Donna and Chris have nowhere else to be.
Chris kneels and unblocks the paper jam in the photocopier. He finds it hard to kneel without cramping up these days. He isn’t sure what that is. Too much salt, or not enough salt? It’s one or the other.
“Fixed it,” he tells Donna.
Donna presses “Print” and makes a series of copies of the reports she’s been sent by the Cypriot Police Service.
“I’ll bind them all together for you,” she says. “It’ll take a while, but it’ll be easier for you.”
“Very kind, Donna,” says Chris. “But you’re still not coming to Cyprus with me.”
She sticks out her tongue.
Chris has a very interesting interview lined up. One that should tell them once and for all where Johnny Gunduz is.
