Sorrow and Bliss(86)

I accepted another cup of tea. Watching her pour, I told her I could not imagine how hard it must have been. Winsome said well, nevermind and I decided one day I would ask her about it, but not then because there was more sadness in the way she said those two words than could be managed by either of us, sitting at her garden table, having afternoon tea.

‘Forgotten is forgiven.’ For whatever reason, Winsome said it again.

I repeated it after her. ‘Forgotten is forgiven.’

‘That’s right. Difficult but possible. Unless you want it, Martha, I might have this last biscuit.’

*

Even with four under fucking nine, Ingrid is still Ingrid. Attached to every text she has sent since Winnie was born is a GIF called Sad Will Ferrell. He is sitting in a leather recliner that is vibrating at its highest setting, trying to drink wine and crying as it bounces out of the glass and runs down his chin. It is figuratively her though. It has never stopped being funny.

*

Patrick and I left the hospital after Oliver arrived with Jessamine and the Rory she is about to marry. Nicholas is in America now, working on a special farm.

My parents wanted us to go back with them, to Goldhawk Road, for dinner. Arriving, my mother asked me to come out to her studio because she had a thing she wanted to show me beforehand.

I said, ‘Am I allowed to? Nothing is on fire.’

She flicked her hand, refusing to be mocked, and once we were across the garden, she held the door open and ushered me in. The sensation of being somewhere I had been vigorously discouraged from entering for most of my life was still strange. I sat on a crate in the corner. It was crusted with globs of something white.

In the middle of the room, hidden under a dirty sheet, was some object that at its highest point touched the ceiling. My mother went over and stood beside it, crossing her arms and cupping her elbows with opposite hands in a way that made her look nervous.

She coughed and said, ‘Martha. I know you and your sister tease me for the repurposing but all I’ve been trying to do, all these years, is take rubbish and turn it into something beautiful and much stronger than it was before. I’m sorry if that’s a bloody metaphor for everything.’ She turned and dragged off the sheet. ‘You don’t have to like it.’

My lungs went hard. It was a hollow figure, woven like a cage from wire and what looked like bits of old telephone. My mother had melted and poured copper over the head and shoulders. It had dripped down, into the torso, running over a heart that was suspended somehow in empty space and glowed dully under the lights. She had made me eight feet tall, beautiful, and stronger than I was before. I told her I was fine with the metaphor. And in the shed, before we went out, I told her she was right – the things she had said on the phone and in her letter. I have been loved every day of my adult life. I have been unbearable but I have never been unloved. I have felt alone but I have never been alone and I’ve been forgiven for the unforgiveable things I have done.

I can’t say I have forgiven the things that were done to me – not because I haven’t. Just because, Ingrid says and it is true, people who talk about how they’ve forgiven others sound so arseholey.

*

My mother’s sculpture is too big to be in a house. Supposedly, I am being sniffed by the Tate lot.

*

Patrick and I are not living together.

The same day we’d said goodbye to each other in a corridor surrounded by our own furniture, Patrick turned up at Goldhawk Road and said, both of us standing outside the house, that he wanted me to move back into the flat.

I rushed forward, expecting that he would hug me but he didn’t and I withdrew my arms.

He said sorry. ‘I meant, and I will live somewhere else.’

I asked him what he was proposing in that case, if he wanted me as a tenant.

‘No, Martha. I’m just saying if we’re going to do this, I feel like we have to be careful. Two people who have ruined each other’s lives shouldn’t get a second go at it. But while we’re trying to –’

‘Please don’t say trying to make things work.’

‘Fine. Whatever we’re trying to do, while we’re doing it, I don’t want you to have to live with your parents.’

I told him his idea was weird. ‘But okay.’

I went inside, got my things and Patrick drove me home.

Winsome invited him to stay at Belgravia but he rented a studio. It is non-depressing, two streets away in Clapham, and most of the time he is here. We talk about various things: if the hinge on the dishwasher door can be fixed or not; how two people who have ruined each other’s lives can be together again.

When people discover that you and your husband were separated for a time but have since reconciled, they put their head on the side and say, ‘Clearly you never stopped loving him deep down.’ But I did. I know I did. It is easier to say yes, you’re so right, because it is too much work to explain to them that you can stop and start again from nothing, that you can love the same person twice.

*

Patrick woke up when the shit remake had finished and started looking for his shoes. I did not want him to go. I said, ‘Do you want to watch Bake Off with me?’

We watched the episode with the Baked Alaska. He hadn’t seen it.

At the end, I told him that Ingrid still thinks the saboteur took it out of the fridge on purpose. Patrick said there was no way. He said, ‘She just made a mistake because the pressure is so extreme.’ I smiled at him – a man who can work all day in intensive care, then characterise the pressure on a contestant in Dessert Week as extreme. He asked me what I thought. I told him I had been on the fence but now I could see it was no one’s fault.