The Forget-Me-Not Sonata(58)

‘Nelly, that is no way to talk about your father,’ chided her mother frostily.

‘You’re a hopeless example, Mummy, the names you call him are much worse.’

‘That’s not the point. There must be someone you can dance with.’

‘No one,’ she stated firmly. She glanced around at the chinless young men her mother deemed fit for her to mix with and rolled her eyes in despair.

Audrey was contented with Cecil. He was cheerful, charming, attentive and generous. But they had so little in common. Audrey loved literature, poetry, music and nature while Cecil enjoyed business, politics, economics and people. He wanted the house full of friends all the time while Audrey longed to be alone among the trees and flowers, to ride the gentle waves of her dreams and bring to life those she had loved and lost. Audrey was aware that her husband didn’t understand her, that a large part of her was relegated to the shadows of her personality to emerge only when the room was bathed in candlelight and her fingers danced upon the keys of her piano. But Cecil had given her a secure home, she wanted for nothing, and he tried desperately to please her. But one can’t teach a blind man how to appreciate a painting and Cecil was blind to Audrey’s emotional needs.

Cecil was also content but he longed to recapture the happiness he had enjoyed in those first intoxicating months of their engagement. Now Audrey seemed lost to him, in her own distant world, surrounding herself with an invisible, impenetrable shell where he was unable to reach her. When she played the piano, those sad melodies in the minor key that she would invent for hours and repeat until his head swam, she reminded him of his brother. The same expression would descend upon her face and her skin would drain of colour and glow with the same strange translucence. He had spent his life trying to understand Louis and now he spent much of it trying to understand his wife. But as much as he endeavoured to take an interest in her poetry and her music, converse about the transience of nature and debate the meaning of life and death, the struggle was a useless one. At times she seemed to be talking a completely different language and there wasn’t a textbook in the world to teach him the vocabulary. He often felt more at home with Rose and Henry than he did with their daughter.

Rose adored Cecil with the devotion of a mother who has lost a daughter and gained a son. She admired him and looked up to him. He reminded her of Henry when she first met him, the straight back, the square shoulders, the handsome nose and the formal air that she found reassuringly predictable. She enjoyed the way he would sit up with Henry until the early hours of the morning, puffing on a Havana, discussing the sorry state of the economy, berating in hushed voices the dictatorship that both felt would come to a sticky end. Cecil was everything they had hoped for in a son-in-law. Not only had he brought their daughter much happiness but he had also brought happiness back into their lives. She was filled with pride that Audrey had made such a good match although she had never ever doubted her. Audrey had always been the sensible child.

In order to escape the continuing pain of Isla’s death Rose had to keep busy, so she cleaved to Audrey and Cecil, Edna and Hilda, Henry and her young sons. Busy busy busy, so that she didn’t have time to dwell on the loss. Then Audrey announced one evening in late summer that she was expecting a baby. Never before had Rose been so aware of the cycle of life that continued in spite of Isla’s death. It was then that she found peace of mind, in the certain knowledge that birth and death are two sides of the same coin and that one had to think of the future, not dwell on the past. Rose’s future was now assured, her sons would grow up and fly the nest but Audrey and Cecil would remain close and fill her days with grandchildren.

Cecil hoped that the birth of their child would give them a common ground on which they could restore their marriage. He also hoped that motherhood would anchor Audrey’s mind and cease its dreamy wanderings.

Alicia and Leonora were born in October 1954 in the hospital of The Little Company of Mary where their mother had come into the world twenty-four years before. Audrey gazed in awe upon the two creatures God had entrusted into her safekeeping. They blinked up at her with the eyes of strangers in spite of the nine months that she had carried them and felt them moving and kicking inside her belly. Holding them close she studied their little faces, so full of innocence, so heavenly it broke her heart to think of the painful journey of life that lay ahead of them. Alicia was alert and strong with damp blonde hair that clung to her scalp and a voice that already struggled to communicate her opinions while Leonora made a frail mewing noise and clung with all her might to the towel that she had been wrapped in. Audrey was too moved and too exhausted to speak. She cuddled both babies to her breasts, kissing their wet faces and sniffing their skin as animals do. For the first time in years her heart didn’t ache but throbbed with a new energy and a new purpose. The weight of such a responsibility shook her from her dreams. Louis retreated to the back of her mind, taking with him her sadness and her regret so that in the years that ensued she rarely touched the piano except to play jolly songs and nursery rhymes which they would all sing together in the sunny sitting room with the French doors open onto the leafy terrace. Audrey felt Isla’s presence throughout the birth as she watched with excitement from the world of spirit, separated only by the intangible wall of vibrations. Audrey felt happy inside, a warm feeling that filled her whole body as if her blood had turned to golden honey. When Cecil entered he was immediately struck by the change in his wife. She reminded him of that first night at the theatre, glowing with exhilaration and optimism. She smiled up at him.