How long had she been there? It was hard to tell. Mercury Ward was like finding yourself in a hotel you’d forgotten you’d come to. Days and nights trailed into one another like the patients in the lounge, one becoming very like the next and identical to the one before, faces the same, food the same, a menu to look forward to only ‘til she saw it. Tessa didn’t eat except for breakfast and lunch. At night she smoked.
Scott had been in earlier or was it yesterday. He’d finally remembered her slippers. He’d thrown a new packet of tobacco at her, too.
“And a lighter?”
“You can have mine.” He’d taken it out of his pocket.
She’d felt so tired she was hardly able to keep her eyes open.
He’d sat in the chair. “Everyone sends their love.”
“Which everyone?”
“Clare, Brian, Peter, Diane. Everyone.”
“And Ros?”
“Yes, Ros too. Of course, Ros.”
So he was fucking her. Of course he was. She supposed it had started weeks ago, she’d known from the minute Ros had walked into the lounge and let her gorgeous hair fall forward as she’d leant down to touch Tessa’s shoulder. Why else would she have come? No one else bothered. And now, seeing Scott’s face, it was as if he’d come right out with it; an expression like he deserved better, like she’d brought this on herself. So she’d said nothing. She’d lain on her back like a saint in a catacomb, her arms crossed over her chest and ignored his breathing. She’d heard him leave. She’d heard the door click shut. It had started raining again. He’d probably called the police on purpose to get her out of the way. He’d probably planned it from the moment Ros had sashayed into their lives a year ago. Was it only a year? It felt like forever. That woman had taken over.
No one had listened, no one being Clare. Everyone had fawned like she was Christmas and birthday all come at once, everyone’s favourite new person, a breath of fresh air, but she hadn’t fooled Tessa, only a bit but not really, and only because she was famous, sort of, and knew a few famous people and always knew what to say and how to say it and made everyone feel like they were the only person that mattered. Except her. She always mattered most. Tessa hadn’t wanted to do the Harvest Fair anyway, she’d always got it wrong, piled the alter with tins of beans when she was supposed to weave loaves or something. Ros had got Hugh Bonneville to read the service. He wasn’t even religious. Clare had said, jealousy’s a curse and Tessa had felt ashamed.
Rain spattered the window and Tessa got up and shuffled the corridors, a half-built human in leggings and dressing gown, unable to settle, her afternoon drifted like she did, from bedroom to bathroom to lounge. She loitered at the office to get a rise out of the nurses, they teased her for having a husband so handsome, and she said, you can have himmaking one of them squeal. It wasn’t the first time. He’d fucked the doula when Freddy was small; a tense woman with soft hands who’d come to help, too old for Scott but she’d heard them laughing, he’d probably called the police on her that time, too. Well, two could play at that game. She was having an affair with the boy in the room next door. They’d spoken through the grill in the courtyard, she might even be pregnant already.
Tessa drifted to the lounge, it had grown dark outside, the smell of something boiled and something else left too long on a hotplate drifted up to meet her. Even the most afraid found their way into that communal room at night to eat and not eat; they were guests in a strange motel grown familiar from passing each other in corridors, yet bereft of partners, children, friends, and freedom they gathered like debris in the tattered chairs and at the peeling tables, taking up something to keep their hands busy, pretending all the time to not know each other. Ethel, unwashed and unbrushed, a string around her cardigan, made piles of sugar on a table; the white granules tipped from pink packets she’d secreted away in her sagging pockets all day. Carrie, too young to have suffered so much, wandered in and out and in again, each time pausing by the window to look upon the dirty courtyard of cigarette butts and weeds. Roger played Patience. Derek and Clive owned the armchairs like thrones and passed wind and judgement across the room.
Tessa picked up a plastic jug from a table and poured the contents into the yucca plant. Dry earth floated to the top and trickled down the side of the pot. Freddy rushed her thoughts like the kitchen after school. She left the jug on the floor, joined Derek and Clive, picked up a magazine and flicked through it.
“What about this then?” said Derek, easing something from under his backside. He held up a book.
“Where did you get that?” said Tessa.
“Bin.”
“Have you been in my room?”
“Found it in the trash.”
“You’ve been in my room.”
“Saw it when they were about to chuck it out.”
“It’s got your name in it,” said Clive.
“For Tessa love Ros. Come back to us Elvira!” Derek read aloud.
“It’s not mine.” Tessa went back to her magazine. Cilla Black explained how she’d cut down on saturated fat.
“The scene is the living-room of the Condomines’ house in Kent,” read Derek. “The room is light, attractive and comfortably furnished.”
“Could be describing here,” said Clive.
“On the left there are French windows,”
Clive pointed at the plate glass.
“- opening onto the garden,”
“Perfect.”
“On the right is an open fireplace.”
They both eyed the yucca plant.
“At the back there are double doors leading to the hall, the dining room, the stairs and the servants quarters.” Derek glanced over his shoulder at the serving hatch and door to the kitchen. Clive laughed.
“When the curtain rises it is about eight o’clock,” Derek checked his watch, “on a summer evening. There is a wood fire burning because it is an English summer evening.”
“It means it’s cold,” said Roger, turning over a queen of spades.
“The doors are open…blah blah blah…curtains partially closed. Ah, Edith comes in from the hall, who’s going to play Edith?”
Carrie appeared and scurried to the window.
“Perfect,” cried Clive, clapping his hands. “Fucking perfect. Carrie, you’re it.”
“I’m what?” Carrie gnawed her fingernail.
“We need a Ruth,” said Derek. He turned the page. “Ruth-Edith-Ruth-Edith, and then Charles. Lots of Charles.” He flicked further through the script. “That’ll be me, I think.”
“What about me?” said Ethel, leaving her sugar and standing over Derek.
“Madam Arcati,” said Derek.
Ethel returned happily to her sugar.
“You shouldn’t go through my stuff,” said Tessa.
“It says here that you’re Elvira.”
“I’m not Elvira.”
“We need an Elvira.”
“I’m not fucking dead.”
“Ruth, then, be Ruth. Clive will be Elvira.”
“Suits me,” said Clive.
“Noel Coward didn’t approve of cross-dressing,” said Roger.
“Knew him, did you?” said Clive.
“Saw a production in Eastbourne,” said Roger. “You need a Dr. Bradman.”
“And a Mrs. Bradman. You can be both Roger.”
“Perfect for a schitzo,” shouted Ethel.
“I’m Dissociative Identity Disorder,” said Roger, leaning hard on each word.
“Schitzo,” said Ethel.
“We don’t use such words now, do we, Ethel,” said Nurse Ratchet, crossing the lounge with a tray. On it were six small plastic petri-dishes holding pills in varying quantities, shapes and sizes. Beside them were paper cups, like cheap shot glasses, half-filled with water, their sides concertinaed into pleats.
“What’s it about?” said Carrie, chewing another nail.
“It’s about a dead wife and a live wife and a man who sees things,” said Roger.
“Like Derek,” said Clive.
“It’s about a woman who takes over,” said Tessa.
“Isn’t it about sightseeing?” said Ethel.
“You mean soothsaying,” said Clive.
“You’re going to hold a seance,” said Derek.
“Now, now.” Nurse Ratchet whipped the script out of Derek’s hands. “We’ll have none of that, thank you.”
“Come on, Tracy, don’t be a spoilsport. Give it back.”
“Have you had it passed?”
“Derek shat a script!” shouted Ethel.
“I found it in the bin,” said Derek.
“We’ll see about that.” Nurse Ratchet slipped it into the large front pocket of her tabard.
“Come on,” said Derek. “Give it back. What else have we got to do?”
“It was a hit in’41,” said Roger.
“He was there,” said Clive.
“Were you?” said Carrie.
“Stupid girl,” said Roger.
“It’s just a bit of fun, Tracy. Give it back.”
“Dr Patel can decide in the morning.” Nurse Ratchet held out a petri-dish and shot glass to Derek.
“I think I’ll take the red pill tonight, Morpheus.” Derek tipped the pill into to his mouth and chased it with water.
Within half an hour the lounge was quiet, and everyone had gone to bed, Tessa to her single room in which to dream contrition. The sedative washed over her, the sense of it calming before the pill kicked in, she would sleep, and she would rest, and for ten blissful hours she would be somewhere else where she was well. This place that held her was a home of sorts, a family of like-minds; she knew the walls, the rules, the rivulets of time that would deliver her, half-baked back into the real world where her husband didn’t love her anymore. She knew she was doomed.
The lights dimmed and the members of Mercury Ward slept, while ten miles away the party was just beginning. Clare stood in front of her bedroom mirror and wished she didn’t see what she saw. Peter ironed his trousers while Diane ran a bath. Scott sniffed a shirt and threw it in the laundry basket. Brian rubbed pomade into his hair and combed it flat, as Ros, in her sweet little cottage on the edge of Petworth Park, put the Beef Wellington in the oven, looked at the clock, said fuck it to no one in particular, and poured herself another cocktail. They’d all be there in half an hour. And it was her birthday. If anyone deserved a night off it was her.
Agreeing with Dr. Kate, I love that last paragraph's bird's eye of all the players. Feeling a bit half-baked myself, lately, I wonder if Mercury Ward has an opening? I feel certain I could do a better Madame Arcati than Ethel. 🔮👳🏻👁️
That last paragraph brings it together with so many sensory details. I feel like I'm THERE, looking in the mirror as well...