The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy Read Online Free PDF Page A

you want to picture her you need to imagine a stick-thin scarecrow in elasticated purple slacks, a brightly coloured sweatshirt and a green terrycloth turban. She wears scarlet lipstick, and asks Sister Lucy to paint her nails to match. Her eyebrows she draws in, two high orange arches, so she looks permanently surprised. One of the pluses of chemotherapy, she tells the volunteers, is that all her facial and body hair has gone. It’s like a permanent Brazilian for free, she says. One of the minuses of chemotherapy is that all the stuff on top of her head has gone too. (‘What is a Brazilian?’ Sister Lucy asked the other day. Finty gulped and looked for help, but the Pearly King was studying a parcel and Barbara had lost one of her glass eyes again in her lap. ‘It’s a sort of haircut,’ said Finty. ‘Quite short.’)
    ‘Perhaps Queenie’s friend is just going for a long walk,’ said Sister Lucy, ‘and sending nice postcards to tell her about it.’ She was back with her new jigsaw. It is an illustration of the British Isles and it has a thousand pieces. So far she has managed a thin strip of Cornwall anda small section of the Norfolk coast. The British Isles are the shape of an open-toed sandal.
    ‘But why would Harold Fry say he was coming all the way to Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ asked Finty. ‘And why would he tell Queenie to wait?’
    Mr Henderson scowled at his newspaper. ‘Exactly how old is this man?’
    I pretended I hadn’t heard, and he repeated the question, much louder. I held up my fingers very quickly to show a six and then a five. Sixty-five. Mr Henderson gave a laugh. ‘Oh. Just retired, is he? Fed up sitting at home? Harold Fry should try a cruise holiday.’ I felt myself disappear in a blush. It was even in my toes.
    Barbara said she had a man who loved her once. His name was Albert Bates. The Pearly King said he had a lot of women who’d loved him several times and he hoped they didn’t get funny ideas and start walking as well. He is a large man, almost a giant, and the buttons on his jacket glitter like a hundred scales. He doesn’t talk so much as growl. The first time I heard him, I mistook him for a tractor.
    But Harold Fry didn’t love me , I wrote. I hoped that would be the end of it. I hoped they would leave me alone again.
    ‘Maybe Harold Fry is doing a sort of modern-day pilgrimage,’ said Sister Philomena.
    ‘To Berwick-upon-Tweed?’ laughed one of the volunteers.
    Sister Philomena laughed too. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is something he needs to do.’
    ‘I see,’ said Barbara. ‘I see.’
    ‘That’s not strictly true,’ pointed out Mr Henderson.
    ‘Well, I wish some old geezer would walk for me,’ said Finty. ‘Even a stroll to the liquor store and back would be nice.’
    Suddenly the new young woman let out a startled gasp, followed by a series of tiny squeaks. It was as if she’d eaten something and it was stuck in her throat. Her face opened – her eyes, her mouth, her nostrils. Her hands flew out, the fingers splayed. For a moment no one moved, no one knew what was happening, and then the penny dropped and everything was movement. All I could hear was the dreadful curdling sound of her choking, and all I could see beyond the crowd of white and black surplices was the flapping of the young woman’s slipper as she fought to keep the life inside her. The nuns lifted her to help her breathe. Someone called for oxygen. Then the slipper stopped flapping and hung limp. There was a beat of silence. It was all so quick.
    Sister Lucy scooped me up in her arms and carried me away. She had no time for the wheelchair. She said nothing, but her face was set, like custard.
    I didn’t even know the young woman’s name. She must have been in her twenties. The undertaker’s black van was here this afternoon.
    ‘Lightweight,’ said Mr Henderson at tea.
    On each table the nuns had placed linen napkins, and grape hyacinths from the garden.

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