Forever Autumn

I spoke to Monty about this. "But Monty, how can she do these things to me and claim to know nothing of them? Carole told me once that she sometimes forgot things when drinking but I can't see how. Apart from being drunk she seems to be functioning okay."

Monty gave me a sympathetic smile. "She was most likely in blackout."

"That's just an excuse, surely," I protested, "Nobody could be like that and not know what they're doing."

"Alcoholic blackouts are different from normal forgetfulness," Monty said, "I'll tell you a little story, Sarah, a true story. Years ago when I was still working and drinking at the same time, I pulled off a most fantastic deal which involved a couple of days of tough negotiation. The upshot was that I made several clients fairly wealthy and earned some massive fees for myself and my company. I can't now—and I couldn't at the time—remember a single thing about that deal. The only reason I knew anything about it was from the minutes of meetings and the subsequent contracts and the praise and recommendations from the clients. I did the whole thing in blackout and if anyone ever mentioned the business later I had to bluff my way through. So yes, Carole could seem to be aware, do those unpleasant things and not have a single memory of them. Think about it, Sarah, even people who aren't alcoholics and never likely to be may still forget what they've done after a boozy session.

"Another thing, Carole knows what buttons to push and she probably attacks you in the hope you'll retaliate. If you do, then she can blame you, saying she drinks because you're nasty to her. Unfair and illogical but that's how an alcoholic's mind works."

Learn something new every day...

And so it continued...

An evening in late November 2015...

...was my kick in the teeth evening. It was cold and rainy out and it was very quickly cold and rainy in my heart. I arrived home and almost fell over the pair of packed suitcases lying just inside the flat's doorway.

"That you, Sarah?" Carole called from the sitting room.

"No, it's Bill the Burglar. Who did you think it was? And what's with the suitcases?"

Carole stepped into the hall. She was fully dressed for outside—coat, scarf, woollen beany, thermal gloves sticking out of one pocket. Her eyes were slightly reddened as if she had been weeping. For a moment I wondered if she had been drinking after all (an echo from Monty's AA talk: never trust an alcoholic, they will always let you down) but I didn't think so. As I've already said, I learned to tell from her eyes and voice whether or not she'd been at the stuff. Apart from the signs of recent tears, Carole looked to be okay. "What's with the suitcases?" she echoed me, "I'm leaving you, Sarah."

"What? You're leaving me? What do you mean?"

"Simply that. I'm leaving you and I think it's better if we don't see each other again. I just thought it would be less cowardly to wait and tell you to your face rather than leave a note or texting you."

"You're leaving me? Why?" I felt in shock. "What have I done wrong?"

"You've done nothing wrong, Sarah. I've realised what I've done over the past months, what I'm doing. I didn't have a drink today because I wanted to face you sober. I know how badly I'm treating you and you deserve better so I'm going. Inside I'm screaming for a drink. I thought I could beat the booze but at the moment I can't—it's beating me."

"Please, don't do this Carole, I love you."

"And I love you Sarah, far more than I can tell you, which is why I'm leaving. You should have a better life than I can give you. Believe me, in the long term I'll do nothing but hurt you." She added bitterly: "If there's one thing we alkies excel at, it's causing pain to the people we love."

"But Carole, we can get through this thing together," I protested.

Carole shook her head. "You still don't get it, do you Sarah? People who are normal drinkers just can't grasp what it means to be an alcoholic because they can walk away from it; an alcoholic can't. If you open a fresh bottle of booze, you'll have one or two drinks then put the bottle away. Alcoholics can't do that, I can't do that—once the bottle is open, we have to finish it. I love you with all my heart Sarah. I'd do almost anything for you. I'd die for you if necessary and yet I can't stop drinking for you. And if that sounds insane, it is. You've met old Monty from AA. Monty's been sober for thirty-five years or so. You'd think he'd be okay with a drink now, wouldn't you?"

Shrugging, I said: "I guess so."

Carole smiled sadly. "And that's one reason I say you don't get it. Monty's been sober all those years but he's still only one drink away from disaster and he'd be the first to tell you that. If he took just one drink tomorrow, it wouldn't be like starting out with a first drink for him. Alcoholism is progressive whether you're drinking or not. Within days he'd be as bad as if he'd been drinking non-stop all through those thirty-five years. That's why he still comes to AA meetings, because he's scared of what he might do without them. Right now I can't resist that first drink and you've heard me say this before: one drink is too many, a thousand is not enough. So that's why the best thing I can do for you is leave and not look back."

"But where will you go?"

"My old flat of course, where else? That'll do for the moment. Don't try to stop me or follow me, Sarah. It won't do any good. I've put the keys to this flat on the kitchen table. I can't see me needing them again. Find somebody else, Sarah, somebody worthwhile who'll treat you right." I noticed she didn't ask me for the spare key to her place. Perhaps subconsciously she saw me as some kind of insurance.

She left me standing there with my tears pouring. She was the only woman I'd ever truly loved and now it looked as if I'd lost her. She didn't look back.

Spring 2016

I was lonely after Carole went. Despite her drinking I loved her so much and was bereft without her. Several months had passed and I hadn't heard from Carole in all that time. I'd tried contacting her quite a few times after she left but to no avail. Texts and phone messages went unanswered. I tried her flat but she never opened the door, if she was there that is. I did have my key but didn't use it for that could have been seen as an invasion of her privacy. I spoke to Susie on a number of occasions but that was no good either. Carole had resigned from the company within days of leaving me and did not respond to any approaches by Susie or her other friends. She seemed to have cut off contact with her family, too, for Josie and Liv visited me three or four times hoping for information.

One wet evening in early Spring I arrived home quite late. I'd had some urgent legal research to carry out and prepare a briefing paper from and had worked until well after nine in the evening. I couldn't even be bothered to make myself any supper. I just threw down my coat and collapsed on the sofa, closing my eyes to rest them. I think I must have drowsed a little for I seemed to dream, drifting away slightly and imagining that Carole had come back to me. I could see her standing there in front of me, I almost felt soft lips pressed to mine...

My reverie was shattered by the loud rasp of the front door buzzer. I leapt up and dashed down the hallway to tear the door open, mind and heart filled with a forlorn hope, triggered I think by my half-waking dream. She'd changed her mind at last! Carole had come back to me! We were going to beat this thing!

But it wasn't Carole. Two police officers were on the doorstep, one woman and one man.

"Ms Rackham? Sarah Rackham...?

* * * * *

They said the driver wasn't to blame. He was in a deep state of shock and in need of treatment. Much later I was to write him a letter begging him not to carry guilt for something not his fault. But that was for the future.

It was dark and it was raining hard and Carole was wearing a black coat. It seems she just dashed out of the corner shop near to her flat where she'd been to buy a bottle of vodka and into the road from behind a parked lorry without pausing to check for traffic. I reckon she was rushing home to open her bottle, desperate for her next drink. The police told me that she must have died almost instantly. They had come to me because the only ID they could find was a business card in Carole's coat pocket with her name and on the reverse my name and address—it was as if she wanted to maintain some connection with me. The young policewoman held me for long minutes while I wept, perhaps not very professional of her but I was grateful for her compassion. Her companion found the kitchen and made me some tea. When I had myself under control I was able to give them the address of Carole's flat together with that of her parents.

I was devastated, feeling a pain that was almost physical. The terrible effects wrought by alcoholism are like a rock tossed into a pond: the ripples spread and spread, not much caring who they touch. In time there were two memories like an itch I couldn't scratch. The one was Carole saying that she'd do anything for me including dying but she couldn't stop drinking for me. Well, she'd died for me sure enough, or for herself, or for the booze.

The other was old Monty who'd come round to express his condolences and we had a long talk, or I talked and he listened. I was feeling such dreadful guilt with a sense that somehow I'd let Carole down. Surely I could have done more to save her, to force her to stay with me where she would have been out of harm's way.

"I don't want to play down your grief," the old man said, "so grieve all you want.. It's normal and healthy and hopefully it will get easier in the long run. What you have to stop doing, Sarah, is blaming yourself, so throw away the guilt. You could no more have stopped Carole drinking than you could have stopped the sun in the sky. Even watching her 24/7, if she'd wanted booze she'd have found a way to get it. Drinking alcoholics are very cunning. Only Carole could stop Carole drinking. Maybe she would have made it in time, maybe not, we'll never know now. There used to be a joke in the military about the honours system: they said that the MBE stood for 'My Bloody Efforts" while the higher-ranking OBE stood for 'Other Buggers' Efforts'. Carole would have needed to be an MBE."

As Monty left my flat, he patted my hand and told me: "Try to think of it this way, Sarah, Carole's safe now. We sometimes say when God sees alcoholics aren't going to make it by themselves, He reaches down and brings them home."

Of course her bitch of a mother blamed me. If I hadn't forced Carole to become an alcoholic, then she'd still be alive. If I hadn't forced her to become a lesbian, then she'd still be alive. As always she was wilfully deaf to the facts that Carole was a recovering alcoholic when I met her again in adulthood and had always been gay, coming out to her family long before she and I renewed our friendship. Perhaps I was a handy scapegoat so that Mrs Vernon wouldn't have to face up to the way her control-freaking behaviour affected her family. In her own way she was as much an addict as any alcoholic, she was addicted to her own self-centred sense of righteousness. Anyway, I was blaming myself pretty much without her help.

(It was to come out later at the inquest that Carole's maternal grandfather and great-grandfather had both been chronic alcoholics so it's possible that there was a genetic predisposition in Carole's addictive drinking. Mrs Vernon was just fortunate that the problem had skipped a generation as it often does. Of course, she continued to blame me and anyone else in the firing line.)

I assumed that I'd be sitting in solitary splendour at the funeral and resigned myself to being an outcast. My parents would have been there for me but Grandma Myfanwy was very ill and they had gone to Wales to care for her. However, Susie and Joanna turned up with Vicki and Niamh as did a number of Carole's friends and former colleagues. Old Monty and Momma and Poppa Massarella all came too and their presence lifted my heart a little. Then Carole's sisters came to me in the crematorium chapel and hugged me and sat down next to me, one on each side holding my hands.

Carole's mother glared from the opposite side of the chapel. "Get back over here, girls!" she demanded.

"Oh do be quiet, Mother!" snapped Josie, "You're not the only one who's hurting." Mrs Vernon looked shaken. Her mouth opened and closed several times as if she meant to say more but then decided against. It was probably the first time one of her younger daughters had stood up to her in such a way. Ray Vernon looked across and there was sympathy in his eyes. I think he might have come to me to offer comfort but his wife dragged him into the front pew.

When the time for it came, I was able to get up and say a few words. Out of consideration for Mrs Vernon I didn't mention my intimate relationship with Carole although most people present knew of it. The woman was an obnoxious homophobe but I could afford to be magnanimous and spare her that. I doubt, though, that she would have been as sensitive to my feelings. Towards the end of my short eulogy I said: "One of my first assignments at university was to write a critique of a passage from Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse. Much of it's gone from memory now, along with a lot of years, but I've never forgotten the first words: 'She bore about with her...the torch of her beauty' nor the last, 'She had been admired. She had been loved'. Carole, these words are for you. Sleep well." Under my breath I added: "Girl of my heart."

I remained dry-eyed through the remainder of the service. I don't know what others thought of me and frankly I didn't care. I was all cried out before the funeral, on the surface that was. Inside I was howling with pain. I'm sure Josie and Liv understood for they stayed with me, holding me. I did feel a tear sliding down as the casket disappeared behind the heavy velvet curtains.

Mrs Vernon had tried to exclude me altogether from the funeral arrangements but with her family's support I'd had my way over a Christina Rossetti poem called Remember and the exit music for which I'd chosen 'Venus: The Bringer of Peace' from The Planets Suite. I chose that music as fitting because Carole was at peace now. People began to file out from the chapel's side door and I felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up to see Ray Vernon. He squeezed my shoulder then bent to give me a brief hug. "Thank you for those lovely words," he whispered. His wife glared again but for once she kept her mouth shut. I think she realised, for the moment at least, that it was better to say nothing.

I sat there with Carole's sisters to the end, allowing the beauty of Holst's music to flow over me. But as the final notes of 'Venus' drifted away we stepped out of the chapel to a panorama of sun-drenched beauty. The crematorium was situated on the edge of countryside and before us were, firstly, extensive gardens filled with a variety of rose-bushes and flower beds and shrubs, beyond which lay rolling grasslands and trees with low hills in the background. It was a lovely place to go from. And then a totally different piece of music crept into my mind, the last verse of a song which I'd always loved, a song which now took on a whole new depth of meaning, a song about lost love. I have often wondered how such a beautiful song could also be so heart-wrenchingly sad.

"A gentle rain pours softly on my weary eyes/As if to hide a lonely tear..."

That was the moment cathartic tears began to flow as the final two lines echoed and re-echoed:

"...My life will be forever autumn/ 'cos you're not here... 'cos you're not here... 'cos you're not here..." **

The End

** Song 'Forever Autumn'

Written by Jeff Wayne, Gary Osborne and Paul Vigrass 1978

Sung by Justin Hayward and the Moody Blues