Small Acts of Kindness, page 27
Give Wordsworth a cuddle from me and get ready for the best year ever!!!
K ;0) xxxxxxxx
Kiki Moon [kikikiwimoon@gmail.com]
To: Norton Edbury
Subject: HAPPY NEW YEAR
Dear Ned,
I hope you are well.
I . . .
I don’t know what to say.
I’m sitting here, looking at my laptop, and I don’t know what else to say.
It’s been six months. You’ve been busy I bet, with this new eye computer thing and your wedding to organise. It was nice of you to email me but I’m not stupid – well, not that stupid. I get it. Mrs M comes round on Christmas Eve so you feel you have to send me a Christmas greeting.
But what am I meant to say? Because I’m not about to, what was it, latch onto you again.
I’ll just say Happy New Year to be polite. Because I can’t keep not replying to your emails. But I’m tired. Sue’s been pouring the fizz like fizz pouring is an Olympic sport, and she’s going for the gold. Now she’s having a row with Tommo about whose turn it is to choose the next song and their friends Raja and Tix are in this deep conversation about whether truth means the same thing in every language, and Pete and Maia are showing off a trillion photos of their baby and talking about teething and nappies. I said I needed to send some messages before Sue opened the next bottle. I’m already finding it hard to focus enough to keep the letters still on the screen. In fact the whole room is doing a bit of turning. The cards from Mrs M and Maxwell up on the windowsill are not staying quite where they should.
Just Happy New Year. And best wishes. What else could I say anyway?
Because what difference does it make whether I said goodbye or not? We both know you didn’t want me around. And do you not think I’m too busy to worry about it now anyway, with so much going on, and so much to learn, and being back here, with a different life, so why are we even bothering with this? One of my coursemates asked me out on a date, you know? I said no, because he’s kind of strange. But I’m just saying. New life. Lots happening.
So Happy New Year to be polite. There’s nothing else to say.
What would I even tell you?
Yes, I’ve watched a few more of your YouTube videos, but only to check that you’re OK. So you don’t have to tell me that you can move your eyes a bit more, or your head, just that tiny bit now, just up a bit, and just a bit to the left. I’ve seen it.
She never says anything about it though. On the videos. About your eyes and your head. Your Annabella, she doesn’t say you are making different noises now too, a little bit softer, so that it’s more obvious you’re trying to say something. She must hear it. But she mostly talks about how you’re on your incredible journey and what a hero you are.
And how much she loves you.
It’s great of course, I’m happy for you. You know, congratulations. But it makes me feel – I don’t know – like there’s a big fat lump inside of me. I don’t even know what the feeling is. Just sick, sick, sick. And it’s not just because of what you said about me – or not said, but you know – about me latching on and being crazy and all of that. It’s just maybe because when I look at you, at your eyes, which are just moving that little bit more, and I can see how hard you’re concentrating, I’m not sure that she knows what you’re thinking. And I think, just maybe, if I was there, then maybe I would.
You know, just maybe. But not from here. I can’t tell it from here.
So I think that’s what the feeling is. It’s just a pity.
I should just say Happy New Year. That’s all I need to say – just that and send the email and go to sleep. What I really shouldn’t do is let my fingers keep typing, like they’re doing some Olympic sport too, like they’re winning the gold in tapping out the stupid, drunk thoughts that come along. I’ll stop writing all this rubbish because I’m never going to send it. I wouldn’t dare. You know it, I know it and my fingers know it. Because, I mean . . .
. . . think it’s best if you don’t send any more emails and I know you’re trying to be kind but it’s really better if you don’t. You don’t have to feel sorry for me because there are some people who have songs written about them and who share people’s journeys and there are other people who don’t and that’s fine because they’ve always known it anyway and I’m sorry if I bored you and made you awkward, I’m sorry if I latched on. I didn’t mean to. But the thing is I don’t need the songs and the journey – I just need to not be hurt and I think it’s just best and I hope you understand. You don’t have to feel bad is what I’m trying to say. I don’t need to be your friend. I just need not to be laughed at.
Good luck with the eye stuff. But no more emails please.
Or any more pity.
I love you.
Kiki
Send.
*
The desk is hard as I lower my forehead down onto it. I’m breathing in and out, and my brain feels like it’s, what’s that word, pulsing. And spinning a bit too. And I’ve still got that sick feeling inside. Maybe that’s why it takes me a while to realise what I’ve just done.
Because I’ve just pressed send. I’ve pressed SEND.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Shit.
What have I done?
Bugger.
New email. Now.
Kiki Moon [kikikiwimoon@gmail.com]
To: Norton Edbury
Subject: Don’t read last email. Mistake!
I didn’t mean to say I love you. Stupid typing mistake. I was thinking about something completely different. I meant to write Happy New Year and I wasn’t thinking. Too much fizz. Ignore that other mail!! Didn’t mean to even send. All I meant to say was Happy New Year. None of the other stuff. Just Happy New Year. That’s all. K.
20 MARCH 2020
NED
Norton Edbury [call-me-ned@gmail.com]
To: Kiki Moon
Subject: Thank you
Dear Kiki,
Many thanks to Mary Malley and yourself for the tablecloth and napkins. Such a thoughtful gift. No doubt Bella will send a thank you card in good time, but as I could not contain my excitement I am jumping in first.
I am certain that you are opening my emails despite the fact you are not replying to them, so hello Kiki Moon. By the time you read this I will be married. Bella is furious as most guests have pulled out and her director friend is not bringing the TV crew that she was expecting. Bella believes that the world is overreacting and that the best thing we can do is to let as many as possible catch this virus to build up immunity. Maxwell disagrees. He thinks we are about to have the same catastrophe as Italy. I had a slight temperature yesterday and he wanted to cancel the wedding. Or have it in the hospital with nobody else there.
I shall let you imagine Bella’s reaction to that.
I wish you could be here but I suppose that would have been difficult now in any case. My mother has not made it over either. I hope that you are staying safe.
Please stop ignoring my emails. I don’t know what you think I did but I would very much like us to be friends. I am sending some words I wrote for that tune you helped me to compose. You might remember it. Perhaps you will give them a listen – well, a read at any rate.
Right. Better go. I have somewhere to be.
N
With a glance toward the top of the tablet, the screen offers up the option: Send this email to KIKI (kikikiwimoon@gmail.com)? Confirm? I blink.
The technology really is quite incredible. There is a noise like a Disney wand being waved as it is despatched.
9.42. This one has only taken fifty-odd minutes to write.
So here I am. If I were able to turn my head to the left I would see a hospital bed in the place where the vintage red Chesterfield used to be, the one on which I proposed to Bella two years ago. If I were to look to the right, the oak table where we were sitting when I told her we should go our separate ways has been replaced by a new metal cabinet, full of various medical delights, along with my motorised pedal machine and a mobile hoist.
Instead, around the edges of the tablet which is positioned a couple of feet in front of my face and attached by a rod to my chair, my view is of the window and the green field beyond.
Am I really going to go through with this?
It was raining earlier but now the sun has come out and a breeze is playing with the willow by the stream. When I was younger, I used to catch frogs in jam jars or buckets.
In sickness and in health? Until death do us part?
I’d let them go afterwards, of course. After I’d watched them breaststroking in confusion from one curved wall to another. I’d pour them back into the water where they’d wriggle out of sight into the weeds. There were newts too. With orange bellies. And dragonflies, who used to attach themselves to each other mid-air.
The thing is that this is as good as it gets for me. It is this or talk to the ceiling for the rest of my days. Besides, Bella loves me. Imagine how devastated she’d be. And humiliated. She wants this. She wants me.
I’m just nervous. It’s a big day. Normal, I suppose.
Soon, there will be a new voice function too, for me. Bella was disappointed the new software wasn’t ready for today. I can already make speech, though it doesn’t quite feel like me yet, and it’s slow, of course. Bella kept asking me to try out different options for saying my vows with my synthesised voice. In the end, I told her thank you, but maybe I’d rather just do it the old low-tech alphabet grid way.
She and Maxwell have shared my old videos with a company that says it can clone my voice. They say one day I’ll even sing again, though I might have to wait for the technology to catch up a bit. We’ll see.
Bella is smart and kind. She loves me and I love her. I do. She’s beautiful, too. And she moves so perfectly. She can make even this sad body perk up. No doubt there will be plenty of that in Toby’s best man speech. It will be one long running joke about how one part of me is not quite so paralysed as the rest.
Well, so what? I can’t run. I can’t dance. My food is piped into me still. Mikey swears he’ll have me chewing one day but I’m not sure I even want to try again after last time.
And now, the world is going crazy too. It’s not just my life that has taken a turn into the Twilight Zone, it’s everything. Why shouldn’t I gather what rosebuds remain? We’ll probably all be dead this time next month.
But it’s not what you want.
This voice I hear in my head has an antipodean accent? It is like a wagging finger just out of sight. And I have this sudden image of Kiki Moon, at the end of the field, in her frog wellies and short green dungarees, leaping into the stream and making the water go splash.
‘So, mate, ready for this?’
I didn’t hear Toby come in. But here he is, crouching in front of me. Staring up. His waistcoat is the same grey as mine, with a white rose in his buttonhole.
What now, Toby? A rendition of ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’? Something about the bells tolling?
But no. He’s moving the tablet out of the way so we can see each other better.
‘You all right, Ned?’
I blink. Yes.
‘Good. Good, mate. Listen.’ Look at him, running his finger under the neckband of his cravat. ‘I want you to know how much I’ve always admired you.’ Glancing away from me, to the corner of the room. ‘And how proud I am, you know. Bel’s the most amazing woman. Fantastic. Really. Beautiful, clever, lovely, funny – one in a million. You’re so lucky. Both of you, I mean it.’
I’m not sure I’d know what to say to this, even if talking was still as easy as talking.
‘You do love her, don’t you, Ned? I mean, really? She deserves that. You know that?’ He’s tugging at his collar again.
The eyes come back to mine and there is a look in them that I do not recognise. Hilary and the children have not come today. Paranoid about this coronavirus, Toby said.
I do not blink. Not once. Not twice. We look at each other, until Toby jumps up with a grin and says, ‘Right, mate. Enough sentimental nonsense. Let’s get this show on the road.’
MRS M
O
NE MIGHT HAVE KNOWN that they would choose lilies. Such an obvious flower for weddings and funerals and those ghastly magazine features where celebrities boast about their homes. Though St Mary’s does look beautiful, with the sun coming through the stained glass and those vases on either side of the lectern. The organist is so much better than poor Marigold, too. Marigold has destroyed Pachelbel on more occasions than I care to remember.
I think perhaps I shall not tell Kiki quite what a lovely bride Annabella makes. I shall say simply that she looked very nice, without further detail, but, really, that hush of admiration as she walks past. The pairing of silk with the lace is – well – exquisite. One can hardly take one’s eyes off her.
Goodness, but how life goes by. Sixty-five years. How can that be? Such a disagreeable heat, and I was so uncomfortable. Terribly unfortunate timing. Harriet used to say that sanitary belts were instruments of torture – terribly crude of her and some things should remain unspoken. She was right, however. One always felt one was being sliced in two by the dratted things. The towels twisted and chafed and never stayed put, and with every step one was damp and worried. Standing in front of all of those guests, in white taffeta. And such an irony, of course. Because stupidly I’d begun to think . . .
Though not the most ironic thing, as it turned out, because of course we couldn’t, or I couldn’t, or one of us couldn’t, or at any rate we didn’t.
Roger never did ask why I agreed to marry him so suddenly. He simply assumed that it was because of his letter. What was it that he called me? Contrary I seem to recall.
Twice I have asked you in person. Now I am putting pen to paper to humbly request your hand in marriage, one final time. Four years is unnecessarily long for a courtship, and while I have indulged your wish to complete your secretarial training and to put your skills to use in the workplace, I am sure you will be equally happy as a wife and mother. I have admiration for your character, Mary, but the time has come to stop being so contrary and to agree to marry me.
I await your positive reply.
He signed it Yours Faithfully, Roger although Yours Sincerely would have been the correct form for a letter which started Dear Mary.
Had it not been for the touch-typing contest in Cheltenham, I should have replied to Roger that, grateful as I was, I was sorry but I must still decline. But, of course, I did go to the contest and finished as the runner-up – I do kick myself over that misspelling of contingency – and attended a celebratory tea dance where champagne was served.
I suppose I drank too much. I was feeling rather buoyant. I should never have agreed to dancing with a stranger otherwise, far less to a nightcap in the hotel lounge since he happened to be staying in the same one as the other typists and me. One might say that I was terribly naive, which of course I was, but he had such lovely manners. And when I said I was tired and it was time for me to turn in, he asked me if I should permit him to kiss me goodnight.
I should have said no. I was not that sort of girl. My shame was not so much that I did not say no, but that the kiss made me feel things I had never felt previously and have never felt since.
He had told me that his name was Lawrence Hamlin and that he worked for a medical supplier and was passing through Cheltenham visiting clients. After he kissed me, he said that he could imagine himself falling deeply in love with me. He asked me to come back to his bedroom for one more drink. Of course I refused. One did not go back to a gentleman’s bedroom. However I did tell him that I would be taking breakfast at eight o’clock should he like to join me. I hardly slept all night.
He did not appear for breakfast, however. At a quarter to nine, I asked at the desk, and was told that no Mr Hamlin was staying at the hotel.
Later that day, I took the train back home, where I wrote to Roger to accept his proposal and to ask that it be as soon as the church might fit us in.
Sixty-five years.
We were married seven weeks later. I did not feel it necessary to tell Roger about Lawrence – if that was his real name. It was one unimportant kiss. Besides, Roger and I had not been engaged and my intention had been to break things off. Nor did I tell Harriet. The only person who knew of my drink in the hotel lounge with a handsome young man was Mrs Ryle, who ran the typing pool and who had been in Cheltenham that day, so it was something of a relief to hand in my notice in advance of the wedding.
Sixty-five years.
When my monthlies did not come that month, I did not worry about an immaculate conception. I knew babies were not delivered by storks – I was not altogether ignorant. And yet, as the days passed, I began to feel somewhat fretful. In those days nobody discussed the actual ins and outs, as it were, of reproduction. Such subjects didn’t crop up on Woman’s Hour as they seem to do nowadays. And I confess I had a passing notion that perhaps there was some aspect of the whole thing that had eluded me, and that the kiss had been somehow more than a kiss.
Very foolish, yet one does allow one’s imagination to run away sometimes. But three days before my wedding any such doubts were put to rest. ‘On the rag’, was how Harriet used to describe those days of the month. Such a detestable expression.
Sixty-five years. How can that be?
Roger, gone, and here we are in a world where young people jump into bed with each other at the drop of a hat, where hygiene products are advertised willy-nilly and one can write E’Mails on one’s Lap Top or smart tablet with one’s eyes. And yet we find ourselves leaving a space of an arm’s length between each other in our pews, and Annabella is gliding past, looking like today is everything she has ever wanted.
