The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, Marianne Cronin [top fiction books of all time txt] 📗

When I’d finally gathered the energy to draw the curtain the rest of the way round my bed, I drank almost a whole jug of water. I didn’t want to lie back on the bed because I didn’t want to be comfortable. Being comfortable would mean giving in. I didn’t want Jacky, who definitely couldn’t see me, to think that I was now at peace with her decision or my detention.

And I sat there for perhaps an hour or two trying to decipher the reason for my tears – was it the fact that I had my plans thwarted? That I didn’t get to see Arthur? The fact that Jacky didn’t care that I am dying? Or the fact that I’m dying? Or perhaps, I realized, I was crying because I live in a place where dying doesn’t make you special.

Then, a voice on the other side of my curtain whispered into the silence, ‘Lenni?’

‘Father Arthur?’

‘It’s Father Arthur,’ he whispered back.

‘Father Arthur?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come in!’

He crept into my cubicle as though he were on some sort of parody Second World War mission.

‘Sunny came to see me,’ he whispered.‘You know Sunny?’‘I do. We met at the hospital’s interfaith barbecue last summer. He’s a lovely young man, don’t you think?’‘I do.’‘Anyway, he came to see me because there was a patient from the May Ward who was upset because she wasn’t allowed to visit the chaplain.’ He hovered awkwardly near the edge of the bed and smiled. ‘I think there’s only one person in the whole hospital who would be disappointed if they didn’t get to see me; and it’s you, Lenni.’

‘I just wanted to talk about the Harvest Festival.’

‘The Harvest Festival?’ His brow furrowed.

‘I’ve been reading about it.’

‘But the Harvest Festival is in September …’

I looked down at the cover of Christian Today, which was on my bedside table. He must have spotted it too, because he reached over and picked it up, checking the date on the cover.

‘So it’s not September?’ I asked.

‘No,’ he said slowly, looking concerned for me.

I laughed, and he laughed. But then, and without enough time to stop them, more tears began to fall.

‘Lenni,’ he said, ‘what is it?’

‘I don’t even know any more.’

He held out a yellow handkerchief for me. I’d never seen anyone use a handkerchief in real life, only in films. It hung in the air between us like a springtime ghost.

‘It’s clean,’ he said, ‘I promise.’

I took it and opened it up into a perfect square, and then I buried my face in it. It was absorbent and smelled of church. It was like crying onto the hem of the pope’s best dress.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said, though it came out muffled.

‘I do believe that’s what friends are for.’

Margot and the Bottle

MEENA IS NOTHING like I imagined her. Margot found a photograph in the latest bag of things they brought over from her care home. She’s ethereal. Her blonde hair is brighter than I imagined, her skin paler, her eyes rounder. There’s something elfin about her ears.

Margot kept the picture on the desk between us while she painted the greenest bottle you ever did see.

London, March 1960

Margot Docherty is Twenty-Nine Years Old

My father died in the winter. It was dark and cold and cruel outside. And yet, within days of meeting Meena and sheepishly moving into her bedsit while her now ex-flatmate Lawrence furiously packed up the last of his things, it was summer. It had been summer since the day I met her.

We were getting ready for a house party. I was sitting on the carpet, trying to apply mascara in the mirror that had fallen out of its frame and was now propped up against the fireplace. This gave us a spot on the floor to do our make-up and also blocked out the draught from the broken fireplace. There was a pigeon who occasionally cooed down the chimney.

Meena was playing a record and the needle kept getting stuck. Michael Holliday could only get so far as singing, ‘Every time I look at you, falling stars come into view,’ before there was a scratching noise that made him fall quiet. As the track skipped, I slipped and scratched my inner eyelid with the mascara brush. As I blinked frantically and tears welled in my eyes, rivers of black mascara ran down my cheek. I sighed.

‘Margot, when was the last time you had fun?’

Meena asked me that about a week into my tenancy. And I’d been unable to answer. The first memory that came to mind was running with Christabel. Just running. I couldn’t remember where we were going from and I couldn’t remember where we were going to, I just remembered running and laughing until I couldn’t breathe. Our sandals clattering on the pavement.

‘Are you having fun?’ she asked me now. I turned to her and my face must have given me away. I always got nervous before the big parties. Though I knew a lot of Meena’s friends, I didn’t know all of them, and I had this feeling that I had wandered into someone else’s life. That I was supposed to be in Glasgow in an empty church hall attending a meeting for bereaved mothers, crying into a handkerchief and clutching my Davey’s bear.

‘Here.’ A bottle floated before my eyes. ‘Have some of this,’ she said.

I took it from her. It was a thin bottle with fruit modelled out of the glass, a label in Spanish, and inside was the brightest green liquid I had ever seen.

‘What is it?’

‘No idea,’ she said.

‘Then why did you buy it?’

‘I didn’t. The Professor gave it to me.’

The Professor was Meena’s boss. She worked as a typist for a medical school. It was her fellow typist friend at the university who had recommended me for my new job at the London Library. Meena told me she worked for The Professor