Chapter 28 28. Maureen and the Visitors

Maureen had been preparing for Harold's return for several days.She took the two photographs that Harold kept in the drawer beside the bed and put them on a frame; painted the best room a pastel yellow and hung light blue velvet The one I chose here is still very new, and it can be used by cutting it short.She also baked cakes and kept them in the freezer along with a pile of pies, aubergines, fettuccine and goulash, dishes she used to cook while David was around .There were jars of chutney made with runner beans in the cupboard, along with pickled onions and pickled beetroot.She posted to-do lists in the kitchen and bedroom, and there was so much to do.But sometimes, when she looks out the window, or opens her eyes and listens to seagulls chirping like a child, she still has a feeling that although she has been busy, something just doesn't come alive, as if something important has been missed by her .

What if Harold came home and told her he was on the road again?What if in the end, he still entered the next stage before her? A doorbell called Maureen downstairs early in the morning.Standing outside the threshold was a young girl with a sick complexion, her greasy hair limply stuck to her scalp, the weather had warmed up, and she was still wearing a black duffel coat. "Excuse me, may I come in, Mrs. Fry?" Over a pot of tea and a few apricot pancakes, she told Maureen that she was the girl who warmed Harold's burgers a few months ago.He sent her many chic postcards, although because of his sudden fame, some very unwelcome reporters came to the gas station.In the end, the boss told her to leave the gas station for her health and safety.

"You lost your job? That's too bad," Maureen said. "Harold will be upset to hear that." "It's all right, Mrs. Fry. I don't like that job that much anyway. The customers come in all the time shouting and rushing. But I said something to your husband about the power of faith, I've been very upset about it." She does look anxious and upset, and keeps pinning the same locks of hair behind her ears, though they don't fall out, "I think I'm giving him the wrong impression." "But Harold is very inspired by you. It is your belief that inspired him to walk." The girl huddled in her coat, biting her lips so hard that Maureen was worried that she might tear her lips .She pulled an envelope from her pocket, took out a few pages and handed it to Maureen, her hands were shaking slightly. "Here," she said.Maureen frowned: "Salsa dance lessons for people over sixty years old?" The girl took the paper back and turned it over: "The letter is written on the back. Letters from your husband, send to Gas station. My friend told me before the boss saw it."

Maureen read in silence, weeping all the while.The tragedy that pulled them apart twenty years ago is still vivid in her mind, tearing her heart so hard that she couldn't understand it.After reading the letter, she thanked the girl at the gas station, folded the leaflet, ran her fingers along the creases over and over again, then put the letter back into the envelope and continued to sit there without moving. "Mrs. Fry?" "I have something to explain." She told the girl about David's suicide, and the pain of losing a child drove Harold and Maureen further apart. "For a while we were all yelling at each other. I was blaming him and saying he should be a better father. Then we just kind of had nothing to say and moved into different rooms. I was pretty much That's when I started talking to David."

"You mean, his ghost?" asked the girl.Apparently she's been watching too many movies.Maureen shook her head: "Not ghosts, not those things. It's more like a presence. I can feel David, and that's my only comfort. At first I said very short things like 'Where are you? ''I miss you' and stuff like that. But as the days go by, I talk more and more. Everything I can't tell Harold I tell him. Sometimes I even wish I hadn't started it, But I was worried that if I stopped talking suddenly, it would be like abandoning David. What if he was really there? What if he needed his mother? I said to myself, if I wait long enough, I will Maybe you can see him. It's often reported in the magazines in the hospital waiting room. I want to see him so badly." She wiped her eyes. "But not once. I looked and looked and looked and he Not once."

The girl buried her face in the handkerchief and cried loudly. "Oh, God, it's terrible." When she put down her handkerchief, her eyes were swollen to a slit, her cheeks were flushed, and a few strands of saliva stuck to her nose and mouth, "I'm such a big liar, F Mrs Leigh." Maureen reached out and took the girl's hand. Her hand was small, like a child's, but surprisingly warm.She squeezed hard. "You are not a liar. You started his journey, and you inspired him when you mentioned Auntie. Please don't cry." The girl sobbed again, and buried her face in the handkerchief again.When she raised her head again, she blinked her pitiful eyes and took a deep breath tremblingly. "That's the thing," she said at last, "my aunt is dead. She left years ago."

Maureen felt something disappear.There seemed to be a sudden jerk in the room, as if she had stepped on the wrong stairs and rolled down. "Her what?" The words froze in her mouth.She opened her mouth, swallowed, and swallowed again.Then she said hurriedly, "But what about your faith? I thought your faith saved her? I thought that was the point?" The girl bit the corner of her upper lip hard, her jaw tilted a little: "If the cancer determines you, there is nothing you can do." It felt like finally seeing a fact that I had known all along.Certainly nothing beats terminal cancer.Maureen thought of the many people who believed in Harold, and thought of Harold.While they were talking, he was still plodding forward.A shiver ran through her body. "Just tell you I'm a liar," said the girl.

Maureen tapped her forehead lightly with her fingertips, and she could feel the truth emerging from the depths of her heart, which was darker than what she just said.She opened her mouth slowly: "If anyone here is a liar, it's probably myself." The girl shook her head, obviously not understanding.Maureen began to tell her story, very softly and slowly, not looking at the girl, because she had hidden the words for so many years, and it took all her concentration to pull them out of that most hidden place.She told her that Queenie Hennessy had come to 13 Forthbridge Road to see Harold twenty years ago, after David had committed suicide.She was pale, with flowers, and she had a very ordinary, but very noble quality about her.

"She asked if I could take a message to Harold. It was about the distillery and she had something to say to him. After she told me, she gave me the flowers and left. I think I was the one before she left. The last person I saw. I threw those flowers in the trash and never told him about the message." She paused.It's too painful and embarrassing to go on. "What did she tell you, Mrs. Fry?" the girl asked.Her voice was so soft, as if it was a comforting hand in the dark. Maureen stuttered.It was a tough time, she said.That doesn't excuse her not saying or doing anything, and she wishes she had chosen a different path.

"But I was so angry at the time. David died. I was also very jealous. It was Queenie who comforted Harold when I couldn't treat him well. I was afraid that if I sent her that message, he would I was comforted. I couldn't do it. I didn't want him to be comforted because I didn't get any comfort." Maureen wiped her face and continued. "Queenie told me that Harold broke into Nabil's office one night. It was driven by grief, which, she said, made people behave in strange ways. In her words Harold was self-destructive. When he Smash those Murano glass clowns to pieces, he's deliberately challenging Nabil at his worst. Their boss is a vengeful man, so Queenie takes the blame for him. If it's a simple woman, It wasn't that complicated, she said, and Nabil couldn't do it too hard. The little girl laughed when she told him she was cleaning, but she cried again: "You mean, it's all because of you What glass clown did the husband break?Are they expensive? "

"It's not like that at all. They belonged to his mother. Nabil was a hard-nosed bastard who had three wives, three of whom he beat up and one in the hospital with broken ribs. But he loved His mother." She smiled bitterly, and the smile lingered on her face for a moment, then she shrugged and took the smile back, "So Queenie stepped up and helped Harold take this responsibility, and Nabil took the responsibility. She fired. She told me everything and told Harold not to worry. She said he had been good to her and that was what she was supposed to do." "But you didn't tell him?" "No. I let him keep blaming himself. Then it became one more thing we couldn't talk about, and it put us a little further apart." Her eyes widened, and any Tears fell drop by drop, "So you see, he was right to leave me behind." The gas station girl said nothing.She took another pancake and seemed to be absorbed in savoring the pancake for a few minutes without thinking about anything else.Then she said, "I don't think he left you. I don't think you're a liar, Mrs. Fry. We all make mistakes. But I know one thing." "What? What is it?" Maureen buried her head in her palm, shaking her head and moaning.How could she possibly undo a mistake made so long ago?Their marriage is over. "If I were you, I wouldn't shut myself up here making cookies and talking to little girls. I'd make something." "But I've already driven to Darlington and it doesn't help at all." It was all so low that Maureen looked up her head.The girl's face was still pale, but suddenly there was a reassuring clarity.Maureen gave a start, maybe a cry, because the gas station girl laughed. "Go to Berwick at once."