Читать книгу Postscript - Cecelia Ahern, Cecelia Ahern - Страница 14

Rage has returned and it rushes through me. I am angry, I am seething. I want to scream. I need to shout it off, cry it off, exorcise it before I cycle home. My bicycle could surely not take the extra weight, couldn’t cope with the ever-shifting emotional imbalance. I cycle out of sight of Joy’s home, dismount, lazily discard the bike on the ground, and hunker down, leaning against a painted white popcorn wall that digs into my back. The PS, I Love You Club are not Gerry but they do represent him, his journey, his struggles, his intent. I always felt in my heart that the point of Gerry’s letters was to guide me, and yet the motivation for these people is fear of being forgotten. It breaks my heart and makes me furious. Because, Gerry, my love, how could you ever feel that I’d forget you, that I could forget you?

Perhaps the root of my rage is that I lied to Ciara about not still feeling his presence. I could never forget him, but Gerry is blurring. Though he lives on in the stories we share and in my memory, it is becoming harder to summon the vivid living, moving, fluid, animated Gerry to mind. I don’t want to forget him, but the more I move on and the more new experiences I have, the more the old memories get pushed aside. Selling the house, moving in with Gabriel … Life won’t let me stay still and remember. No. I made a decision that I wouldn’t allow myself to stay still and remember. Waiting … waiting for what, a reunion in death that I don’t even know will happen?

‘Hi.’ I hear a voice beside me and I jump to my feet, startled.

‘Ginika, hi, you gave me a fright.’

She examines my bike, where I’m standing, the way I’m standing. Perhaps she recognises a hiding place when she sees one. ‘You’re not coming back, are you?’

‘I said that I’d think about it,’ I reply weakly. I’m pissed off, I’m agitated. I don’t know what the hell I want.

‘Nah. You’re not. It’s OK. It’s all a bit weird anyway, isn’t it? Us lot? Still, it gives us something to do. Something to focus on, thinking about our letters.’

I exhale slowly. I can’t be angry at Ginika. ‘Do you have an idea of what you want to do?’

‘Yeah,’ she adjusts her grip on Jewel’s thigh as the baby sits on her hip. ‘But it’s not, like, smart the way the others’ ideas are.’

‘It doesn’t have to be smart, just yours. What’s your idea?’

She’s embarrassed and avoids eye contact. ‘It’s a letter, that’s all. One letter. From me to Jewel.’

‘That’s lovely. It’s perfect.’

She seems to prepare herself to say something and I brace myself. She’s firm, strong, shoots from the hip, a hip loaded with a baby she made.

‘You weren’t right in there, what you said, about everyone remembering us when we’re gone. She won’t remember me.’ She holds her baby tighter. ‘She won’t remember anything about me. Not my smell or nothing of the things you said. She’s not going to look at anything and think of me. Whether it’s good or bad. Ever.’

She’s right. I hadn’t considered that.

‘That’s why I have to tell her everything. Everything from the start, all the things about me that she knows now but won’t remember, and all the things about her as a baby, because there’ll be no one to tell her. Because if I don’t write it all down about her, then she’ll never know. All she’ll have of me is one letter for the rest of her life, and that letter has to be from me. About me and her. Everything about us that only we know and that she won’t remember.’

‘That’s a beautiful idea, Ginika, it’s perfect. I’m sure Jewel will treasure it.’ These are feathery kinds of words in response to the weight of her reality but I have to say something.

‘I can’t write it.’

‘Of course you can.’

‘No, I mean. I can’t write. I can barely read. I can’t do it.’

‘Oh.’

‘I left school. I didn’t, couldn’t keep up’ She looks around, embarrassed. ‘I can’t even read that sign up there.’

I look up at the road sign. I’m about to tell her that it says No Through Road but I realise it doesn’t matter.

‘Can’t read my baby bedtime stories. Can’t read the instructions on my medication. Can’t read the hospital paperwork. Can’t read directions. Can’t read buses. I know you’re so smart and all, you probably don’t understand.’

‘I’m really not smart Ginika,’ I say, with a bitter laugh. If I had been smart I wouldn’t have gone to Joy’s house today, I wouldn’t be in this position now. If I was smart, if I could think clearly through the mush and the fog, then I would know exactly what to do next, instead of standing here, feeling completely emotionally incapacitated, this supposedly experienced adult facing a teenager, unable to aid or guide. I’m reaching out and grasping for golden nuggets of advice and inspiration, but my hands flail uselessly in the emptiness. Too wrapped up trying to clean the shit off my own wings instead of helping a younger woman to fly.

‘I don’t ask for help,’ Ginika says. ‘I’ve always been able to do everything myself. Don’t need no one else.’ She shifts Jewel’s weight to her left hip. ‘But I need help writing the letter,’ she says it as though she’s pushing it out through her teeth, it’s that hard for her to say.

‘Why don’t you ask somebody in the club to write the letter for you?’ I suggest, trying to weasel myself out of the equation. ‘I’m sure Joy would be wonderful. You can tell her exactly what you want to say and she can write it down, exactly as you want. You can trust her.’

‘No. I want to write it myself. I want to learn how to write this letter for her. Then she’ll know that I done something good for her, because of her. And I don’t want to ask any of them. They mean well, but they haven’t a clue. I’m asking you to help me.’

I look at her, feeling stunned, frozen, by the magnitude of this request. ‘You want me to teach you how to write?’ I ask slowly.

‘Can you?’ she looks at me, her large brown eyes deep and pleading.

I feel that I should say yes; I know that I shouldn’t.

‘Can I …’ I begin nervously, then shut down my emotions, the desire to protect myself is too great. ‘I’d like to take some time to think about it.’

Ginika’s shoulders drop instantly, her demeanour slackens. She has swallowed her pride and asked for help and, selfish coward that I am, I can’t bring myself to say yes.

I know it’s prosaic, I know it’s tedious to say this after so much time has passed, when everything is OK, when I am more than a woman in grief, but sometimes something sets me off and everything gets tilted. I lose him all over again and all I am is a woman in grief.

The smashing of his favourite Star Wars mug. Discarding our bedsheets. When his clothes lost his smell. The broken coffee machine, the sun we’d rotated every day like two desperate planets. Small losses but huge. We all have something that unexpectedly derails us when we are motoring smoothly, blissfully, ardently. This encounter with the club is mine. And it hurts.

My instinct is to move inward, recoil, curl in a ball like a hedgehog, but never hide or run. Problems are excellent hunters with their flaring nostrils and sharp teeth; their special sensory organs ensure there is no place they can’t find you. They like nothing more than to be in control, on top, predator to you the prey. Hiding from them gives them power, even feeds their strength. A face-to-face meeting is what is required, but on your own terms, in your own territory. I go to the place where I process and acknowledge what is happening. I ask for help; I ask it of myself. I know the only person who can ultimately cure me is me. It’s in our nature. My troubled mind calls out to my roots to dig deep and steady myself.

I cycle away from Ginika, my heart pounding, my legs feeling shaky, but I don’t go home. As if I’m a homing pigeon, an inner compass takes over and I find myself at the graveyard staring at a Columbarium Wall. I read the familiar words of one of Gerry’s favourite phrases, and wonder just how and when the past started chasing me, when I started running, and the moment it caught me. I wonder how on earth all that I worked so hard to build up has so suddenly come crashing down.

Damn you, Gerry. You came back.