Sometimes Connie would wake in the night in tears. The grief of someone we love is terrible to see but Connie’s sobbing was entirely animal and abandoned, and I wanted more than anything to make it stop. So I’d hold her until she fell asleep again, or we’d give up on sleep and watch the window together — it was summer, and the days were cruelly long — and during those dawn hours I would repeat a solemn promise.
Of course the promises we make at such times are all too often nonsense; the athlete swears that he will win this race and comes in eighth, the child promises to play the piano piece perfectly and fumbles in the first bar. Hadn’t I sworn, in the delivery room, that I would look after my daughter and make sure no harm ever came to her? My wife and I had exchanged vows that had been broken within six months. Be kinder, work harder, listen more, tidy up, do what’s right; perpetual resolutions that always crumble when exposed to the light of day, and what was the point of one more broken vow?
Nevertheless, I made the promise to myself. I swore that to the best of my ability I would look after her from now on. I would answer the phone and I would never hang up on her. I would do everything I could to make her happy and certainly I would never, never leave her. A good husband. I would be a good husband and I would not let her down.
Time passed. I returned to work and endured the sympathy, Connie stayed at home and sank into something that we hesitated to call ‘depression’, or perhaps it was simply grief. ‘Blue’ was our rather winsome euphemism: she was ‘feeling blue’. I’d call her from the lab, knowing she was there and knowing that she would not pick up. On the rare occasions that she did answer, her replies would be mumbled and monosyllabic, or irritable, or angry, and I would find myself wishing that she’d let the phone go on ringing. ‘You feeling blue?’ ‘Yes. A little blue.’ I’d try and carry on with work, sick with anxiety, sit silent and unhearing in departmental meetings, then at night I’d climb the stairs to the flat, hear the television playing far too loud and I would hesitate, key in hand. There were times, I must confess, when I contemplated turning around, walking back downstairs and out to … anywhere, really, other than that room.
But I never did. Instead I’d take a deep breath before opening the door to find her in old clothes, eyes red, lying on the sofa. Sometimes a bottle of wine would have been opened, sometimes emptied, or I would find that some mania had seized her and that she had embarked on a purifying task — painting all the cupboards yellow, clearing out the loft — the project abandoned halfway through. I’d repair the damage as best I could, cook food, something healthy, then join her on the sofa.
Here, I wish I could transcribe some speech I made to bring her out of this awful state, something about coming back to life or learning to live again. Perhaps it would have ended with a flourish — I could have thrown open the windows, perhaps, or found some inspiration in nature. Perhaps a good enough speech might have brought about some ‘closure’. I tried to compose it, many times, lying awake at night; poetical variations on banal ideas, about optimism or seizing the day, something about the seasons. But I am not a maker of speeches, I lack the eloquence and the imagination, and after twenty years we have not come close to experiencing anything as simple and neat as closure. Even if it were available, I’m not sure if closure is something we have ever craved. Stop remembering or caring? To what end?
But I did sit and wait with her through the great unhappiness. We returned to life eventually and our marriage as I think of it now began around that time. We straightened our backs and began to leave the house, to go to films and exhibitions together. Ate dinner afterwards, began to talk once more. We didn’t really laugh, not to begin with. It was enough to be able to answer the phone. Some of our more frivolous friends fell away during our seclusion, but that was all right. Other friends had started families of their own, and were wary of flaunting their good fortune. We understood, and we were happy to stay away. We would live a smaller, simpler life from now on.
Still finding herself unable to paint, Connie changed careers. The commercial gallery had never really pleased or satisfied her, and instead she began a part-time course in arts administration, which she loved. Alongside, she found work in the museum, learning the ropes of the education department, which she runs today with such success. In the autumn, a year after the day that we walked round and round the Serpentine, the two of us took a sleeper train once more to Skye, a place with no particular significance except that it was somewhere we both loved and somewhere we might have taken Jane. We woke early one morning, walked from our hotel to the shore in a steady rain, and scattered her ashes there.
