Rosie

Copyright © 2018 Bill Whiting

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1789010 312

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To Bertie

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Epilogue

One

The worst moment for me after my wife Rosemary’s death from cancer did not arrive until twenty days had passed. For nine months we had been expecting to lose her, and together we had coped quite well.

Though we were both frightened, I felt I had to stay calm for her, and I’m sure she felt she needed to put on a brave face for me. Being together in this way somehow saw us through.

Of course, my caring for her under these circumstances was no more than should be expected. But the care she showed me and our two children throughout her ordeal was simply heroic.

After she had gone, there was much to do – people to inform, things to arrange, forms to complete. In particular, our daughter Anne flew in from Germany and our son Alan from America, where they were living and working. I knew they were not only grieving, but also concerned about me. It seemed right to keep a stiff upper lip and at least make these deeply sad times go smoothly. I guess it was applying myself so fully and single-mindedly to all these tasks which kept me stable.

But that all ended the moment I closed the door to my home almost three weeks later, after I returned from the airport, having seen Anne and Alan fly back home.

My jobs were done. My children were gone. There were no distractions. I was alone, and suddenly it hit me like a bursting dam. I broke down in tears. I cried for many hours and did not go to bed that night. I sat in the dark in our living room, overwhelmed by my loss.

Rosemary had been in my life for more than fifty of my sixty-five years. We got off to a very prickly start at a youth club we both attended on Friday evenings. Rosemary was playing table tennis and the ping-pong ball rolled behind me. I stepped back and squashed it flat with my heel. It mattered, too, as it was the only usable ball at the club that night, but it was entirely unintentional.

However, that’s not how Rosemary saw it. I was accused of doing it deliberately, and was labelled a sodding pig. But I lived nearby and popped home to get a ping-pong ball of my own, although when I returned it wasn’t handed to Rosemary – my friend Bob and I took to the table ourselves.

Some minutes later Rosemary took the opportunity to squash the loose ball as it rolled in her direction. The argument over a ping-pong ball had ping-ponged. I threatened her with my bat, but didn’t land a blow.

I never did tell Rosemary, even in later life, that she was also a source of jealous resentment. She was the girlfriend of Neil Tomlinson. Neil was a truly blessed individual. He was captain of the school football team and excelled at all sports. He was popular, immensely confident and a natural leader. And if that wasn’t enough, he was tall and good-looking to boot. That not only made Rosemary look like a prize catch, it also placed her well beyond my reach.

Neil’s exceptional qualities had sprung to the fore some years earlier at junior school. He invented and orchestrated a major event known as ‘shit-dare’. Most lunchtimes, many of us boys would gather in the park opposite the school. There, every once in a while, Neil would climb a tree and sit on a branch with his trousers down. A large group of us would gather below, looking up as he strained to produce a turd. This would produce frantic cries:

Aargh, it’s coming!

It’s a big ’un! Here it comes!Anyhow, the idea was that the last one to run away from the falling turd was the winner. I was never the winner and never the loser – and from memory, only one boy, Andrew Wilson, was ever shat upon; an unpleasantness tempered by his achieving the clear number-one accolade that day.

But on a later wedding anniversary, Rosemary asked me over dinner if I could remember the moment I first knew I was in love with her. I should have been warier, because sometimes women ask seemingly casual and innocuous questions which are actually of a more serious, ‘fishing’ nature.

I made no mention being jealous of Neil Tomlinson, but said, I saw you running on the inter-school sports day and your tits were bouncing up and down.

Of course, I should have invented a special moonlit evening, or a poignant moment of parting, or the last dance at the college ball. This kind of thing would happen many times, but I never quite got the hang of being able to detect when a seemingly casual question held hidden danger.

On another occasion, Rosemary said, It’s a mystery, really, isn’t it – the world is full of people but we fall in love with just one or two.

My answer was along the lines of, I thought about that too. But think about how many people most of us get to meet and know well in our entire lives. I mean, two or three hundred? But let’s say it’s a thousand, and people fall in love with one of them. But there’s seven billion people in the world, so if you work it out there are about three and a half million you could fall in love with. Love isn’t really a one-and-only thing, is it? It’s one in three and half million. They don’t write songs about that, do they?

I genuinely thought this was quite interesting, and might lead to a discussion about the forces of nature. Of course, it wasn’t and it didn’t.

Nonetheless, I did fall in love with Rosemary – and she with me – when we were only nineteen. By coincidence we went to the same university, though not the same college. I didn’t know this until I saw Rosemary at the shared students’ union centre. We were both surprised at this small-world coincidence and got chatting.

And there it started. Within days she became the entire focus of my life. My studies, my mates, my sports and all my other interests were overwhelmed. I’d think about her all day, go to sleep thinking about her and wake up thinking about her. And I became very nervous, too – frightened of losing her to someone else.

It was as if I had taken an extremely addictive drug and was irredeemably hooked. Every conversation with her was the best I’d ever experienced, and every meal the best I had ever eaten. My mind had been hit with huge sledgehammer and it was the best feeling I had ever had.

And what an unimaginable blow it would have been if these overwhelming feelings had been spurned by Rosemary – if she had simply moved on. But to my everlasting good fortune, that didn’t happen.

Of course, the raging fire died down as time passed. But a very warm glow remained, and we grew closer and became inseparable as the bond deepened.

Inseparable, of course, until that day, so many years later, when Rosemary died.

It was a crushing blow, but one that didn’t hit me, or wasn’t allowed to hit me, until that moment when I arrived home from the airport.

In the days that followed, I wanted to be alone. I received phone calls from my children and others, and a few unwelcome visits from kindly people. Through them all, I managed to pretend that I was bearing up and there was nothing for them to worry about. I even added a few lies to embellish my case, such as yes, I’d been shopping, and yes, I was getting out for exercise, and yes, I was eating properly.

The truth was, I had been to the shop once to buy several bottles of whisky, and had eaten very little. The whisky took the sharpest edges off the pain, helped a little to separate me from myself, and banished memories I was desperate to send away. It also sent me to sleep.

But the next morning, I was all the worse for it. The grief and anxiety returned, together with a headache and feelings of nausea.

I had retired from work four months earlier, so none of this mattered much. In fact, nothing mattered much because everything felt empty. Until this time there had always been something to strive for, someone else to consider, some future goal to reach, or simply some tedious task or unpleasant duty to undertake. Now the career was over, the children had been brought up well and were independent and prospering, the mortgage was paid and there was more than enough money in the bank. It could have been a bright new beginning, but suddenly, with Rosemary gone, it felt like the end. I didn’t need to be here for anyone except myself – and at that time, I didn’t want myself to be here.

Like most people, I had lived largely working for tomorrow’s happiness – continuously striving and looking forward to the promised rewards. And whenever a goal was reached and the promised happy day arrived, somehow there was always the next one – the new, even happier day to labour towards. But in this process we all too often miss the moment which is ‘now’.

Rosemary had been with me for over forty years and our relationship was never seriously challenged. I had never once stopped loving her; nor, I am sure, did she ever stop loving me. But it was only now, the moment when she had gone, that I truly realised how much she meant to me. And now that I was alone, what wouldn’t I give for just one more day with her – or just one more moment? And why, I asked myself, didn’t I live in that joyous moment when it was there before me every day for so many years? Why didn’t I wake up every single morning, gloriously happy because Rosemary was here? When she was dying, the miracle needed to save her was far beyond reach. But I had squandered a million miracles in a million moments when she was with me, but I was too busy or preoccupied to even notice.

As the days unfolded, my thoughts wandered, but the darkness didn’t. I would have angry hours thinking back to the funeral. I am an atheist, but Rosemary was always a believer and so a religious ceremony was appropriate, not just for her but for many others who attended. There’s no denying that the church rituals and the associated beliefs and customs seem to help many people. But not me – and especially not then, with Rosemary dead and gone.

At that time, the very idea of a loving god convulsed me with anger. That all-powerful and all-knowing being took the credit for all things bright and beautiful, but not, it seemed, the blame for all things dark and ugly. Why did Rosemary have to go in her early sixties, and why in such a slow and painful way? Why should she be obliterated when so many evil people are allowed to live on? Why, as her coffin slid away and into the fire, would people sing to worship the bastard who had taken her?

On one occasion, while quite drunk, I threw my whisky glass across the room and shouted, Fuck you, God! It smashed into a mirror, which crashed in pieces onto the hearth. Later, while cleaning up and cutting my hand in the process, it went through my mind that He was making me pay a price for my blasphemy. I said, Fuck you – you can’t frighten me into loving you. As I cursed, I don’t believe for one minute that God was there, but obviously the idea of God certainly was.

I still had Rosemary’s ashes. She had not said what she wanted to be done with them and, though it did occur to me to ask, I simply couldn’t do so. It was a thought too far and, in a way, too soon – because somehow, there had always been a tiny glimmer, a trillion-to-one chance, that good news would arrive from out of nowhere and the nightmare would end.

As much as I knew Rosemary would die, I was still in shock when she did. Even while terminally ill, she was still here. I could still talk to her and touch her. But when she died, she was gone, and gone forever. She had always been filled with thoughts, with memories, with emotions, fears, dreams, love, hate, joy and imagination. A few weeks before she was conscious and aware; a unique, living personality. How could all that be gone? How could it all dissolve into ashes?

The world carried on, but she wasn’t in it and never would be again. She had no thoughts, no memories, no emotions and no awareness of anything. They were all gone.

I put her small casket of ashes in a cupboard. Looking at it haunted me. Ashes were just ashes. Like everything else and all of us, they were just a heap of quarks and electrons and all that micro stuff which makes everything from people to brick walls to car steering wheels. Trillions of them had gone up in the heat and the smoke, and the trillions which were left went into the casket. The quarks and electrons lived on, but the magical creation they had made was gone.

I recalled being scolded by Rosemary over dinner one evening when I said that love was just evolution’s way of getting us to procreate and pass on our genes, and we were all governed by chemicals. She got even more cross when I said I was going to write a song called I Love You Because of My Chemicals and Genes. She said I should stop reading books about physics and try Mills & Boon. I told her that it wasn’t necessary as my love for her was infinite. This brought about a moment’s softening, until I explained that the new science of quantum physics indicated that there is an infinite number of universes and not just one. That meant there was an infinite number of universes in which I loved her as well as an infinite number in which I didn’t. What did she make of that?

I have no idea because she went to the toilet in a huff.

But putting the ashes out of sight did little, of course, to put