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

Sometime between Humphrey leaving and me getting out of the bath, Meena had hand delivered the envelope. I stood in the August sun with the water rolling down my shoulders and I wondered if I was going to throw up. Into the silence, I wanted to scream.

I rushed to the back of the house in case she and Jeremy had gone to see the chickens.

Audrey was alone, sitting in the grass with her eyes closed against the sun, her feathers tucked neatly beneath her.

Meena had gone. I had missed her. It was her cruellest trick.

Above us in the unending skies the planets were aligning, but we could never quite align, Meena and I.

I took the photograph from the kitchen floor. I didn’t want her to mock me from the corkboard so I slipped the photograph in between the pages of one of Humphrey’s big books, the Fifth Annual Astronomy Conference, Calgary, 1972. It slid in between the thin white pages effortlessly. So effortlessly you wouldn’t even know it was there.

She could stay there among the stars.

Let Us Celebrate the Happy Accident of Your Birth

‘SHARP SCRATCH,’ THE nurse said. But I knew it wasn’t a scratch – it was a needle and it was going into my skin.

It felt like lightning.

‘Good girl, stay really still,’ the doctor said.

I felt some sneaky tears slither down my cheeks.

‘I used to be tough,’ I told no one in particular.

Margot placed a hand on my hand.

‘Look at me, Lenni,’ Margot said.

‘Another sharp scratch,’ the nurse said.

‘Lenni,’ Margot said, ‘do you want to go somewhere?’

I nodded.

‘You can’t go—’ the doctor started to caution, but then Margot began her story, and she took me back. To a farmhouse somewhere in the Midlands, where I’ve been before. And where I sometimes visit in my dreams.

West Midlands, March 1997

Margot James is Sixty-Six Years Old

The note was resting on the pillow where Humphrey’s head should have been. In ink that had smeared across the page were the words: Let us celebrate the happy accident of your birth.

I read it several times. Was it a quote from something? Quite possibly. He was often trying to convince me, though I know he’d have been disappointed if I’d relented, that I should really try to get into Shakespeare.

It was a bright March morning. There was a light frost in the corner of the window that had caught the light and was twinkling. Clinks and clanks in the kitchen made me smile. He was down there, tinkering away at something.

I pulled the quilt from me and slipped on my dressing gown and one of my many pairs of slippers – the flagstone floor was forever freezing. If I ever stood in the gap between the bits of carpet that covered the living room, it was like a shot of ice in the tips of my toes.

The smell of bacon and cake rose up to meet me.

I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched Humphrey in the kitchen. The egg timer was going off as he pulled the cake from the oven. While he flapped at it with a tea towel, he stirred something in a saucepan. Whatever it was, it was creating a lot of steam. The radio jazzed in the background and then he dropped a spoon and swore. This should have been nice. But it was something other than that.

On the table were three balloons, a messily wrapped pink present, and a card addressed to me.

I went quietly into the kitchen.

‘Humphrey?’

‘Ah,’ he said, turning round with a smile, ‘the woman of the hour!’

I searched his face for something, but I couldn’t find it.

‘What’s all this?’

‘It’s not every day your young lady turns sixty-six!’ He laughed at this as though it were particularly funny. He started whistling along with the radio.

‘You know when my birthday is, don’t you?’ I asked gently.

‘Of course,’ he said, tapping me on the nose.

‘When is it?’

‘The eighteenth of January.’ He gave me a baffled smile as though I were behaving rather oddly.

I was lost for words.

‘I made you rum and raisin,’ he said, flapping the oven mitt at the cake resting on the kitchen counter.

The thing in the saucepan looked like it was in the early stages of becoming jam. He pushed at the raspberries with the wooden spoon.

‘But we already celebrated my birthday,’ I said, going to turn off the oven for him. ‘We went to the botanical gardens. We had lunch with your sister. In January.’

‘We did?’ he asked.

I started crying.

The doctor had a stain on his corduroy trousers. It was just above his knee and it was distracting me. It was yellow against the green. Curry sauce, perhaps. Or lemon jelly.

His hands were moving as he explained something. I dragged my eyes up from his trousers and tried to concentrate.

‘I just got confused,’ Humphrey said. ‘It can happen to anyone.’ He’d said this several times every day since the birthday party. The gift was a soft silk scarf with butterflies on it. ‘There’s no need for a fuss, I really am fine.’

The doctor nodded, but I don’t think he agreed.

‘These things can happen,’ the doctor said, and he glanced briefly at me. ‘However, based on what your wife has told me, I think it makes sense to do a few tests just to be on the safe side.’

Humphrey nodded. And he looked small. And old. And scared.

‘It’ll be a blood test first,’ the doctor said, as my attention journeyed back to the stain. I wondered if some white wine would work in getting it out. ‘Then some simple memory tests.’ Perhaps bicarbonate of soda would do it. I could take a dry toothbrush and scratch the stain off. ‘And we’ll go from there.’ The doctor was holding out his hand to Humphrey, who shook it. And then to me. As we stood, he brushed briefly at his green corduroys and I had to look away.

‘I really am fine,’