‘Really?’
‘To and from the long-stay car parks,’ Stephen said. ‘Not very exciting, but the pay’s reasonable. I need to save up for Dubai.’
‘Of course.’ There was a moment of silence, and then she said: ‘What does your father do there? I’ve never asked.’
‘He’s in charge of one of the baggage-handling teams,’ Stephen said. ‘It’s not . . . It’s quite a responsible job, really.’
‘Of course. I can imagine you have to be . . .’ Marmion foundered. Her parents weren’t grand, Stephen thought, in the way Cressida’s were: they were freelance-musicians-turned-teachers. In any case, Marmion was the last person to look down on anyone. But he could see she was distressed that no ready compliment came to hand. It was as if the bountiful spring of love and goodwill inside her had dwindled over the course of this hot summer; as if she was having to pump up supplies by hand.
Their pizzas arrived just then, and with relief they concentrated on eating. Stephen had never had a Veneziana before: its combination of sultanas and capers and pine kernels was rather surprising. Arabic influences, he thought. But North African, presumably, rather than Middle Eastern. As in the Moor of Venice.
‘This is good,’ he said.
Marmion seemed less enthusiastic: she picked half-heartedly at her pizza. The Grand Canal was too much in her mind, Stephen thought. Poor Marmion. Neither of them, it seemed, could think of anything else to say, and as the silence lengthened, desperation drove out of him something he hadn’t meant to mention to anyone.
‘I went to see Fay, a few weeks ago,’ he said. ‘Before I left Cambridge. I thought I’d . . . Well, anyway, a strange thing happened.’
Marmion looked wary. Was this dangerous too? Stephen wondered. But he pressed on.
‘I saw some photographs,’ he said. ‘They were on the mantelpiece in the sitting room, but I’d never noticed them before. One of Fay as a little girl, and one of her with a baby.’
‘Really?’ This was less a question than a polite acknowledgement, but Stephen was happy to take any cue.
‘It looked like her baby,’ he said. ‘At least – she looked like a mother, the way she was holding it.’
‘Really?’ A different tone this time; a spark of interest. ‘Do you think she had a child, then? What can have happened to it?’
Her eyes filled, perturbingly, with tears. Stephen hadn’t meant to say any more – certainly not to divulge his fantastical theory – but he couldn’t bear Marmion to weep over the death of a baby.
‘I wondered if she’d put it up for adoption,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why: just that she’s asked me, a couple of times, about my parents – my adoption – and I wondered at the time whether she might know someone who . . . Anyway, there it is.’
‘You didn’t ask her?’ Marmion said.
‘Certainly not.’ He could imagine Marmion questioning Fay, though, in her artless way. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t mention it to her, will you?’
‘Of course not. What a funny thing, though. Goodness, Stephen!’ She stared at him suddenly, her eyes wide. ‘How silly of me not to see what you meant. Do you think you might have been her baby?’
‘Well,’ Stephen blushed. ‘I did actually wonder . . . Do you remember, the first time we met Fay, she picked up on the fact that my birthday was coming up? I wondered –’
‘Maybe you have the same birthday as her baby? Oh, Stephen . . .’
‘It’s pure speculation,’ Stephen said, wary again now. ‘It might be someone else’s baby in the photograph, or her child might just be living somewhere far away. We never knew very much about Fay, did we? About her private life?’
‘Don’t you want to find out?’ Marmion asked. ‘Have you ever tried to find your birth mother?’
‘No.’
She looked at him for a moment.
‘You’re a good son,’ she said. ‘To your adoptive parents, I mean. You love them.’
‘Yes,’ Stephen said.
It was more complicated than that, much more complicated, but he wasn’t going to explain, not even to take Marmion’s mind off her woes. He did love his parents, of course. But this possibility, this wild possibility, had niggled at him for the last few weeks. His mother must be musical, he’d always thought. And Fay was tall. He’d stared in the mirror every night lately, wondering if he could recognise Fay’s eyes, or her nose, in his own features. But he couldn’t tell Marmion any of that.
‘Do you fancy going to the British Museum after lunch?’ he asked instead. ‘I feel I ought to make the most of London, before I leave.’
‘Me too.’ Marmion fixed him then with a brighter, a more purposeful expression. ‘I’m going abroad too. I wanted to tell you. I’m going to New York. To the Juilliard, to study singing.’
‘Really?’ That was a big step, he thought. A long way to go to be away from Bill. ‘That’s terrific,’ he said. ‘Really terrific.’
‘I hope so,’ Marmion said.
Stephen looked at her, taking in the doubt, the hope, the bravery.
‘I’m very pleased, Marmion,’ he said – and then, after a little hesitation, ‘I felt very sorry for you, up at High Scarp. You deserve to be happy again. I hope you will be.’
October 1995
Cressida
It had been strange coming back to Cambridge alone, and with the different perspective her new status gave her. St Anne’s graduate hostels were on Madingley Road, a fair way from the college, and in the first few days Cressida felt as though her map of Cambridge had been flipped over as she cycled to the University Library and the Sidgwick site from what had always been the far side.
The change was welcome, though. High Scarp had undone the blandishments of nostalgia, and she worked hard at making a new life for herself. She bought a standard lamp and a swivel chair for her room, befriended the Chinese economist and the German engineer who lived on her floor. She ignored the old haunts and found new ones – a coffee shop on Bridge Street that had opened over the summer, and the Grad Pad in Granta Place, where the view of punts stacked by the bridge below gave her a pleasing sense of elevation.
It was impossible not to think occasionally about the others, but the only person she’d heard from was Marmion. When she’d arrived back in Cambridge there’d been a postcard from Marmion, explaining that she’d decided to accept the Juilliard scholarship and give up her place at the Guildhall. Cressida could hear Marmion’s voice as she read it, striving for common sense and for candour. The picture on the front was of John Keats listening to a nightingale on Hampstead Heath: she could hardly bear to think about the care with which it had been chosen.
So Marmion was off to America, and Stephen to the Persian Gulf, and she didn’t expect to see either of them again before they left. Judith and Bill would both be in London, but Cressida suspected that neither of them would come back to Cambridge any time soon. Perhaps after all this was the safest place to escape the past.
One person who kept drifting into her mind, though, was Fay. They’d all parted awkwardly, but before that, beyond that, were all the happy times they’d had together. She and Fay could go on being friends, surely. Fay might think it was odd if she didn’t get in touch, in fact. Newnham wasn’t part of her daily orbit, but one afternoon when she left the library she turned right rather than left, and ten minutes later she was at Fay’s front gate. The house looked exactly as it always had – like a dress rediscovered at the back of your wardrobe, Cressida thought, more familiar than you can credit. She parked her bike at the side and rang the bell.
For a long time nothing happened. Fay’s car was there, but there was no sign of life inside. On the point of turning away, Cressida rang again, and this time there was a sound from deep in the house. It was Fay who opened the door, but she didn’t look like the Fay Cressida knew. Shrouded in shawls, her hair was unbrushed and an odd smell hung about her. Camphor, perhaps. Something chemical and old-fashioned.
&n
bsp; ‘I’m so sorry,’ Cressida said. ‘You’re ill. I shouldn’t have kept ringing. Shall I . . . I’ll come back, shall I, when you’re better?’ She hesitated. ‘I’m back at St Anne’s, in one of the graduate hostels.’ Another pause, more alarming than the first. ‘Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you? I could go to the chemist, if you like, or –’
‘No,’ said Fay. She looked as though she was attempting a smile – or was she? It was hard to tell. She must be drugged up, Cressida thought, on some powerful painkillers, or one of those flu remedies that make you drowsy and a little high.
‘Are you sure?’ Cressida lingered for a few more seconds, but Fay didn’t speak again. She didn’t shut the door, though; she just stood, looking at Cressida as though waiting for something. ‘Go back to bed,’ Cressida said. ‘You look terrible. It must be a really nasty bug.’ Still Fay didn’t move. ‘Go back to bed,’ Cressida said again, in the cheery, bossy sort of voice Fay herself might have used in these circumstances. ‘Get some rest. I’ll come back another day. Get well soon.’
In the end she almost pushed Fay back inside the house, caught between a desire to be useful and embarrassment – both at her ill-timed intrusion and at the oddness of Fay’s demeanour. She recalled the abrupt shifts of mood in those final days at High Scarp; the sudden stop in the road on the way home. Had Fay been ill then? Perhaps even . . . going mad? Was she . . . But then she checked herself. Too much time alone this last fortnight had given her a taste for melodrama. She’d make a joke of it, next time she saw Fay: You gave me quite a scare, last week. You looked like death, you poor thing.
Even so, as she cycled back up Queen’s Road, Cressida felt the taint of the encounter clinging to her, a faint nagging voice accusing her of getting things wrong once again. She began to think up treats for herself – a pizza, a film, a cocktail in the chic new bar up Castle Hill. It was Saturday evening: she deserved some fun.
There was a phone in the hostel’s entrance hall that took incoming calls, and as Cressida came in she saw a note propped against it with her name on the front in large letters. Before she could pick it up, Gerhardt, the engineering student, appeared on the landing above her.
‘Your friend Bill called,’ he said, consternation thickening his accent. ‘You need to call him, straight away. I am afraid that it is bad news.’
October 1995
Judith
They met in a pub in London; nowhere they’d ever been before. Judith wasn’t sure who’d suggested it, nor exactly how the news had spread: she hadn’t spoken to Bill for months, not since the end of June, the awful formality of their farewells on graduation day. It was Cressida who’d called her, last night, and since then Judith had sat in her bedroom, paralysed with dread and disbelief.
They were all there when she arrived, sitting in the furthest corner behind a small pub table. The first thing that struck Judith was that someone was missing – and then she felt a drenching, deafening flood of realisation. Those words, that voice down the phone, made suddenly true: Marmion’s dead.
‘Hello,’ said Stephen, and Judith made some kind of movement with her face – a slight pursing of her lips that was nowhere close to a smile.
They all looked smaller and paler than when she’d last seen them, diminished partly by the Sunday-afternoon dinginess of the pub and partly, she surmised, by shock. None of them had drinks: she wondered whether she should offer to buy some, then thought better of it.
‘Have a seat,’ said Cressida, pushing a chair out, and Judith took it. It was only a few weeks since her cast had come off, but she knew that wasn’t why her legs felt unsteady. She still hadn’t made eye contact with Bill, but when she looked up she caught his gaze, and she was sure she felt the others’ eyes on them. Christ, she thought, could they not deal with one thing at a time? Could they not all be in this together, just for the moment?
‘Is anyone going to have a drink?’ she asked, at exactly the same moment Stephen said, ‘Shall I get a round, now we’re all here?’
Even that tiny social stumble seemed to floor them. She and Stephen stared at each other for a moment, and then Judith said, ‘Let’s both go. What does everyone want?’
At the bar, Stephen put a hand on hers, the gesture of a doctor or a priest, and Judith thought she had never been so grateful for an act of kindness in her life. Her hands shook a little as she picked up Cressida’s gin and her glass of wine. She’d have liked to say something to Stephen, but it felt wrong to speak to him alone: too risky, somehow.
‘Cheers,’ said Cressida, when they’d sat down again. ‘What are you supposed to say? Long life.’ Her face folded, and then she recovered herself and gave Judith a thin smile. To reassure her that nothing would be said, Judith thought, no repetition of her accusations earlier in the summer. Judith felt a flash of relief, and then of shame. None of that mattered the tiniest bit compared to the horror of an aeroplane falling from the sky. She felt herself trembling again.
‘They’re saying it was a terrorist attack,’ Stephen said. ‘No one seems to know who.’
‘Does that make it better or worse?’ Cressida’s voice, Judith thought, was shriller than she intended. ‘I can’t see that it makes any difference how it happened.’
‘It might to her parents,’ Judith said. She meant the suddenness of it, the difficulty of believing in a death on the other side of the world that left no trace apart from what could be salvaged laboriously from the sea. But that wasn’t the only difficulty, of course. ‘Quakers and terrorism don’t . . .’ she began.
They all looked at Bill then, realising that he must have spoken to Marmion’s parents; that he might still be Marmion’s boyfriend, in their eyes. How much would she have told them, Judith wondered, about what had happened at High Scarp?
She met Bill’s gaze again, and seeing the anguish in his face, pity shot through her – another emotion that felt not quite pure enough for the due process of mourning. None of them had said how dreadful it was, how shocking and sad and barbarously unexpected, and she felt that in other circumstances, in simpler circumstances, they would have done. But how could she know that? How could any of them know anything, faced with this devastating transformation? They were lost without Marmion, she realised. Marmion would have known so much better than the rest of them what to think and say and feel.
Bill cleared his throat.
‘The funeral is on Friday,’ he said. ‘At the Quaker meeting house in Camden.’
‘Do they want us to sing?’ Cressida asked.
Bill shook his head. ‘There’s no order of service,’ he said. ‘No – well, it’s just silence, unless people want to – are moved to – speak, or anything.’
‘Christ,’ said Cressida, and then she blushed. ‘I mean – not even a service to hang on to.’ She looked at Judith. ‘Whatever you think of the words.’
Death ought to unite, Judith thought, but instead it divides.
‘It’s such a terrible shock,’ Stephen said then: winding the conversation back to where it should have started, Judith thought.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s impossible to believe she’ll never be here again.’
Bill nodded. ‘I really can’t take it in.’
Each of them, Judith thought, taking a turn now on the tightrope, saying something obvious and foolish so that it would have been said.
‘It’s not just . . .’ Stephen began. ‘It’s such a freakish thing to happen to someone you know, isn’t it? Being blown out of the sky. That’s what makes it so hard to accept.’
Judith glanced at Cressida, waiting for her to add her phrase, to seal the circle, but there were tears streaming down Cressida’s face. And then Judith realised that she was crying too, almost without feeling anything – as though what she felt was too enormous to be either eased or exacerbated by weeping. Stephen had put an arm around Cressida’s shoulders, and Judith wished he’d do the same for her. Every bit of this was intolerable, she thought; every aspect of it.
She didn’t think she could bear to stay much longer, though God knew what she’d do when they parted.
‘But we’re all invited, are we?’ Stephen asked. ‘To the funeral?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Bill. ‘They want – the Hayters are very keen that all her friends should be there. It’s on Regent’s Park Road. At three o’clock.’
Cressida dabbed her eyes on her sleeve and nodded – as though a time and a place was something to hang on to, Judith thought, even if there were no funeral sentences in prospect. Stephen pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. Judith felt a rush of affection for them all, and then – quite unexpectedly – its opposite. Almost an electric shock, warning her off. A thought came to her suddenly: that she didn’t see how their friendship could survive this.
*
The week that followed felt both preternaturally ordinary and dizzyingly unreal, almost as if Judith herself had died, and had been transported to a realm where everything looked deceptively normal, but nothing was the same any more. She did her best to stay away from the television and the newspapers, but the air crash was a national cause célèbre and the topic of conversations all around her, between strangers and fellow students and talking heads on the radio. Among the dead was a pair of newborn twins who became the totems of the tragedy, their pictures everywhere and their names on everyone’s lips. Judith never heard Marmion mentioned, but she kept expecting it, and the strangeness of that, of knowing she might hear her name at any moment but would never see her again, was hard to endure.
She kept coming back to what Stephen had said in the pub about the freakishness of it. Of all the people to be blown up by terrorists, Marmion was the very last you would imagine: too ordinary, too solid – too good. It made no sense for her to be a scapegoat for the shadowy extremist cell that had at last claimed responsibility for the attack. And it made no sense that their little drama at High Scarp was somehow connected to an act of global terrorism; that the two had become part of the same tragedy. It made that scene on the side of Nag’s Pike seem absurdly trivial, but at the same time distorted it, magnified it, as if it were the beat of the butterfly’s wing that had reverberated across mountains and oceans and galvanised evil into being.
Every Secret Thing Page 18