How do you pack for a lifetime? What do you take? Audrey didn’t know. She packed some clothes, her sponge-bag and the sentimental things that were of no value, like photographs of Isla, the pressed flowers she had kept from her funeral and the little prayer book her father had given her as a child. She then sat on the end of her bed and deliberated how best to use the next couple of hours before she had to leave for the airport.
Suddenly she saw two brown ears sticking out from under the window seat. Her heart began to pound as she recognized Leonora’s beloved Saggy Rabbit. As sweat collected on her brow she walked over to pick him up. He looked forlorn and small in her hands, which quite inadvertently began to tremble. She pressed him to her face and closed her eyes as the tears began to push through her lashes and tumble down her cheeks. She began to shake so much that her legs buckled beneath her and she fell into a heap on the carpet, shuddering with sorrow. There was no point pretending any longer. She couldn’t go through with it. Her children would always come first. She had to let Louis go.
When a heart breaks it makes no noise. There are no outward signs, no rash, no bruising. Only a strange calmness that takes over when there are no more tears to shed and no more voice left to howl one’s grief into the silence and a resignation that numbs one’s senses like a drug, for how else would one be able to go on? People survive in spite of themselves.
Audrey sat down at her desk and began to write. Not to Cecil as she had planned but to Louis. She paused, the pen over the paper, and deliberated how to put it, knowing that however it was expressed she would break him all the same. ‘Forgive my weak spirit. I will never stop loving you. Never.’ She then put Saggy Rabbit, damp from her tears, into an envelope with the letter and sealed it. With a grey face she left the house for the airport.
When Louis arrived at the airport he cast his eye across the concourse in search of Audrey. He then looked at his watch. He was early. Fifteen minutes early. He was nervous. He flicked his fingers in agitation then burrowed inside his pocket for a hanky, which he passed over his sweating forehead. After a few minutes he decided to pick up their tickets from the sales desk. Anything to keep busy. As he strode over his eyes darted from face to face, expecting at any moment to see her familiar smile shine through like a sunbeam.
‘Ah, Mr Forrester,’ said the painted lady with scarlet lips to match her silk cravat. ‘Here are your tickets and I have a parcel here for you.’ Louis’ face drained of colour, leaving it at once pale and fearful. The lady handed him a brown envelope. He recognized Audrey’s handwriting immediately. With a palpitating heart he tore it open and pulled out the rabbit and the note. He didn’t need to read it for he knew what it contained. Saggy Rabbit’s doleful countenance relayed more than her note ever could. But with a vision blurred with anguish he read what she had written. ‘Forgive my weak spirit. I will never stop loving you. Never.’ His throat suddenly constricted, but he was unable to contain his grief. The painted lady blinked at him in bewilderment. She had never seen a grown man cry.
Chapter 26
When Cecil returned that night and reached for the whisky decanter, he kissed his wife on her cold cheek without knowing how close he had come to losing her. ‘Where’s Louis?’ he asked, used to arriving home to Louis’ piano playing and his wife’s glowing cheeks and ill-disguised enthusiasm. Only now did Audrey notice the bitterness in his voice.
‘He’s left,’ she replied, picking up a magazine and walking towards the door which led out into the garden. Cecil followed her.
‘What do you mean, left?’ he asked, imagining that he had gone to board at the Club.
‘He’s gone back to England.’ She swallowed and took a deep breath. She had cried all day, on and off. Hoped he’d come after her, then changed her mind and hoped he’d boarded the plane and left. Only after a long bath had she managed to compose herself, ready to face her husband and the first day of the rest of her life.
‘He didn’t even say goodbye,’ he stammered. The alcohol had already begun to corrode the eloquence for which he had once been so admired.
‘Oh, he did. I gave him Saggy Rabbit to take to Leonora,’ she replied, trying to sound casual. Trying to muffle the desperate cry in her voice. She wandered out into the sunshine and began to deadhead the flowers, her face hidden from view.
‘Ah, you found him. I am pleased.’
‘Yes, Leonora will be very happy.’
‘I wonder why he left so suddenly,’ Cecil mused, sitting down on the terrace.
‘You know your brother better than I,’ she replied. ‘He left suddenly last time too.’ Cecil stiffened and narrowed his eyes as he watched her wander sadly about the garden like a shadow.