“Go on with you,” James barks suddenly, and flaps his hand at her. “Let me talk to your mother. Go and have a swim or something. Wash your hands while you’re at it.” Marianne looks at him doubtfully, then at me. “For God’s sake. Promise I’ll behave. Can’t speak for her, of course.”
“Will you be all right by yourself if I go for a swim?” Marianne asks me. I swallow a smile.
“I’ll be fine. Off you go.”
“Wish you wouldn’t keep doing that,” James grumbles as Marianne runs down the beach.
“Talk to my daughter?”
James sniffs. “Wouldn’t exactly call it talking.”
“That’s because you’re an ignorant old man who doesn’t know any better. But never mind, you can’t help it.”
“Suppose you think I should apologise for coming into Lily’s place the other day.”
“Breaking into my place, you mean.”
“Didn’t realise you were there, you see. Didn’t think you’d bother coming, to be honest. Thought you might sort it out from a distance and sell up quick. Bit of a shock to find you there. You look just like her.”
“I look like my ninety-five-year-old dead grandmother? Thanks so much.”
“I’m trying to apologise to you, you stupid woman.”
“I don’t want your apology.”
“You ate my bloody ice cream.”
“That’s because I’m a brat.”
“I said I was sorry about that!”
“No, you didn’t. You bought me an ice cream and said I looked like someone sixty years older than me.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“You sound it.”
“You can’t—” he stops himself.
“Hey, it’s all right, don’t hold back. Feel free to treat me exactly as rudely as you would anyone else.”
He shakes his head and turns away to watch the sea. Marianne is diving for pebbles. When she pounces into the water, I’m reminded of Lily’s little cat. James tugs at my arm to make me pay attention.
“Have the cat back if you want it,” he says, and I wonder if he’s seeing Marianne in the same way I am. “You’re right. Damn thing’s yours anyway.”
“I don’t want the cat, thank you, I’d never get it back on the train in one piece.”
“Bloody nuisance it is. Wanders round looking for her. Think it misses her. Didn’t know cats could. And it meows in the night and tries to get under the blankets. Suppose you’ll be selling the flat.”
His abrupt change of direction startles me into honesty. “I suppose I’ll have to.”
His glance is disturbingly shrewd. “You sure? No second thoughts?”
“What business is it of yours anyway?” I ask angrily, because I don’t like that he can read me so well.
“You’ll have to clear out all her clutter first.”
“I know how to sell a house, thank you.”
“Kept all sorts, Lily did,” he says. “Women always do. Hoarders, the lot of you. Especially photographs. She loved that one you sent her. Of…” He jerks his head towards the water.
“I never sent her—”
“Course you did. Know you loved her really. She loved you too. Both of you. Kept it in her handbag.”
“You used to go through her handbag?”
“Give over, you stupid woman. Trying to tell you something. I cleared out my wife’s stuff after she died. Spent weeks over it. She’d kept all sorts. Letters. Old papers. Photos of people I’d never met.”
He’s trying to make it seem like casual advice, but the tension in his neck and shoulders tells me the truth. This is a warning. James Moon is warning me. It’s suddenly very hard to breathe. I stare at his mouth so I don’t have to look at his eyes, and wish I didn’t have to keep listening.
“Want my advice?”
“See if you can guess.”
“Well, you’re getting it anyway. Don’t go through everything. No point. Only upset you. Lily lived a long time and now she’s gone. Anything you find you don’t understand, don’t waste time worrying. Chuck the lot and get on with your life.” He blinks crossly and wipes at cheek. “Bloody sand gets everywhere – meant a lot to her, you know.”
“What did? Are you going senile or something?”
“The little one. Just knowing she was in the world. Her great-granddaughter. Makes a difference when you’re old. Of course you want to see them, make sure they’re all right and they’ll know you. But even when you can’t, it’s nice to know they’re out there somewhere.”
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “Why the hell are you telling me all this? Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“Think what you want. If you feel guilty it’s your own damn fault. I’m only telling you what I think you ought to know.” He stands up stiffly, pressing down on his thighs as if he needs to push his feet into the sand for balance, and collects up his damp swimming things. “Tell her she can come and see the cat any time she wants to.”
“Tell her yourself.”
“You never give an inch, do you?”
“Not to you I don’t.” He’s giving me that look again. “If you tell me again I look like Lily I swear I’ll come round in the night and burn your flat down.”
“Won’t do much for the value of your place.”
“I’ve got insurance. Go away and stop bothering me. Do some gardening or something.”
“Lily was the gardener. Thought you’d know that.”
“I do know that! I was exploiting a lazy stereotype to cover up the fact that you actually made me feel better, you horrible old man.”
“Not my problem how you feel. I’m just giving you some advice.”
“Did she really keep that photo with her?”
“You heard me the first time,” he says, and stumps crossly away up the beach.
Chapter Sixteen – Lily
The beginning of my twenty-third summer finds me restless with desire. What I crave is not sex but escape, to clamber on board the first train that will carry me and flee south to Lily. I look out of the air-conditioned office at the dusty sunny afternoon and think, I should be by the sea. I lie awake in the dark with Daniel asleep next to me and think, It’s too hot to share a bed with anyone. I tell myself my longing for freedom is nothing more than the rhythms of my childhood that still refuse to leave me. I tell myself that I love Daniel as much as I ever did. I tell myself that I don’t want to wake and find him gone.
Despite my best efforts, I’ve begun to feel detached from Daniel. The flow of energy has changed. I’m no longer nurturing him, worrying about him, making sure he remembers to eat and has bus fare. I’ve become utterly uninterested in his talk of the people he’s met, the contacts he’s made, the song he’s almost ready to record. I step outside the warm cocoon of our love, where my existence is so entwined with his that I barely have time for anyone else, and think, I wonder what Lily’s doing now? I wonder if I could visit? I begin to notice the existence of other men.
Daniel senses this. Close as we’ve been from the day we met, how could he not? He tries to win me back with words, telling me a hundred times a day how much he loves me. He makes dinner, or at least he begins to make dinner, until I become infuriated by his endless questions about where everything is and how long it should be cooked for, and take over. He recreates the rituals of our university days, rolling back the carpet and inviting me to lie on the bare floorboards to experience the music he’s composing. I take pleasure in refusing, telling him the neighbours will complain. He asks me what he can do to make me happy. I lie and tell him everything’s fine. I feel both pleased and guilty at his confusion.
Why do I feel like this? I consider all the things I love about Daniel, all the reasons I fell for him in the first place. He’s as passionate and full of dreams as ever. He’s as fiercely committed to his music. He’s still spontaneous, impulsive, hedonistic, prone to sudden wild improvisations of weekends away in borrowed tents and cottages or impromptu reunions
with old friends or extravagant feasts eaten nude, in bed, on lazy afternoons. He still worships me for all the ways I’m unlike him. He’s still astounded by my ability to get the bills paid and the shopping done regularly. He still considers my domestic skills an advanced form of witchcraft. He still needs me as much as ever.
We’ve built our lives around the premise that we belong together for ever. We’ve whispered promises to each other in the heady darkness of the dozen beds we’ve shared. He’s put his trust in me, utterly and without reservation, believing that what I said to him (I’ll be earning enough for both of us while you get started, it’ll happen more quickly if you can concentrate on music full-time, no of course I don’t mind, I love you.) would stay forever true. If I left him, he’d be destitute. The thought of tearing myself out of his life makes my heart hurt.
Something extraordinary is going to happen. I can feel it, the way you can feel thunder. The summer turns sticky and oppressive. At work, we scurry inside like mice, desperate for the air conditioning. When Daniel rolls towards me and lays a loving hand on my stomach, I want to shrug him off and tell him no, I’m not in the mood, but his need for reassurance is so obvious that I find myself submitting anyway. It doesn’t hurt, after all; it’s just a nuisance that stops after a while. Afterwards I wonder how he can possibly not notice how not-present I am, how I simply allow him to satisfy himself inside my limp body. When I sleep, I dream of train journeys and of the walk up the hill to Lily’s house. Sometimes there’s a child beside me, which makes me wonder if in my dream, I have become Lily.
It comes to a head one night when Daniel, in yet another attempt to reconcile the distance between us, has done the food shopping. To be specific, he’s taken twenty-five pounds from my purse and – ignoring the list of essentials I keep pinned to the fridge – spent it all on red wine and fillet steak. The scent of the rich red flesh makes me want to claw his face. Perhaps I might devour him afterwards. When we’ve eaten, he presses me against the wall and sticks his tongue in my mouth. The sex is quick and frantic and leaves me unsatisfied.
Pleased with his success, Daniel tries to persuade me to join him for an early night, but I tell him I have to do some work. He accepts this and leaves me to sit on the sofa and brood. How much longer can we live like this? There’s a heavy pressure lodged in my chest that starts off bearable but grows as each day goes on, only receding when I sleep. But I’m too tense to sleep.
I go into the bedroom and wake Daniel with a smack on the shoulder and a hand down the front of his pyjama bottoms. As soon as he’s hard I climb on top of him, ignoring his bewilderment, slapping his hands away from my breasts, refusing to kiss him. He glances towards the bedside table where we keep the condoms and I know what he’s telling me, but I refuse to stop, riding him relentlessly until the weight in my chest comes undone and my mind is blank and, in the aftermath of savage selfish pleasure, I can fall asleep, rolled into a tight ball, pushing him away when he tries to fit himself around the unwelcoming curve of my coiled spine.
The next day I come home from work, deliberately very late to minimise the time I have to spend with him, and tell him I’m taking a week off to visit Lily.
“Really? When are you going?”
“Tomorrow. First thing.” Is there even a train? I don’t care, I’ll get there at half past six and camp out at the station if I have to. This must be how the geese feel when the southern sunshine starts calling. Is this it? Am I leaving him? “I’ve booked a taxi, you can have the car while I’m gone.”
“Okay. Um. Do you need me to ring her and let her know? Shall I ring her now?”
“Don’t. It’s late. She might be asleep.”
“Okay, I’ll call her in the morning then.”
“No need. She’ll know.”
Daniel’s hand rests awkwardly on my shoulder. It feels clumsy and heavy, but he doesn’t dare put it round my waist. He isn’t sure any more how to touch me.
“I’ll come too,” he says.
“No! No.”
“It’s all right, I can make the time. We’ve got a gig but I can call someone in to cover. The only thing is I was going to drive the van so it’ll have to be someone with a licence. Only I’m the only one named on the insurance so… God, sorry, what am I talking about? I’ll come with you.”
“No, don’t. You’d hate it.”
“No, I’d like to. Jen, I feel like we haven’t been – I mean, we need to – I think we need some time away. We need to relax. Get a break. I’ll start calling round, get the van thing sorted.”
“Daniel.” I speak very slowly and clearly. “I don’t want you to come with me. I want to go by myself. I’m going to pack now.”
The train station at six thirty in the morning is surprisingly busy. Grey-faced commuters grab five minutes of half-sleep with their heads propped backwards against the waiting room wall. A couple with brimful rucksacks, orange jackets and bobble hats kiss discreetly in a corner over paper cups of herbal tea. The special scent of dust and diesel, hot coffee and sleepy travellers, tickles my nostrils and flips my stomach over. I’m six years old again, standing beside my father, who is an omnipotent giant and whose vast hand engulfs mine. He shows me the line I have to stand behind in case a passing train sucks me under its wheels. When I climb aboard, I glance into the drop to the track below and hold my breath in concentration. It would be a terrible thing if anything of mine – my foot or my shoe or my teddy, or even a sweet wrapper – were to fall into the gap and be lost.
Did Daniel ring Lily after all? I forgot to ask. She’ll know I’m coming anyway. She’s been calling me home all summer. Am I leaving Daniel? Is this what leaving feels like? He wanted to wave me off but I refused, afraid that he’d talk me out of going. Or am I making too much fuss? It’s only a week away after all. The tears have arrived at last, and I stand behind the line on the platform and feel them pour down my face.
After a minute a hand touches my hand and – without making eye contact – a woman my mother’s age puts a packet of tissues into my fingers, pats my wrist gently, then withdraws. I mop at my face until the train arrives, and climb on board with the packet clutched tightly in my hand. When my weeping stops as suddenly as it began, I still have three tissues left. Another thing I remember well about train stations; the extraordinary kindness of strangers. I lean my head against the window and surrender to the journey.
After the first change, I sleep until the guard shakes me awake and warns me my station’s coming up and I need to change trains again. The platform is full of students in shabby black clothes, their hair dyed pink and blue and scarlet. They’re only a few years younger than me but I feel shy and conspicuous. Daniel would look at home among them, but not me.
Onto the final train, and I have to force myself to stay awake. The carriage is warm and soporific, and the rhythmic rocking is comforting. When I reluctantly leave my little nest, the hill that leads to Lily’s house seems to have grown very tall.
She’s waiting for me on the doorstep, a tall gaunt figure with her thick white hair pinned into its immaculate chignon. She looks as if the sun is shining through her, and I feel ashamed of running to her like this, as if I’m still a child and she’s still young enough to bear my burdens for me, my unconquerable grandmother, the matriarch who is always strong and right.
“How was the train?” she asks, completely unsurprised by my unannounced arrival, and takes my case from me as if I’m still a six-year-old girl. “I’ve made chicken for dinner.”
Beneath Lily’s roof I find a blissful temporary shelter. I savour every minute of the time I spend with her, wrapped tight in the clinging embrace of nostalgia. Lily is so much easier to live with than Daniel. She resolutely resists all my attempts to contribute, treating me like the honoured, indulged guest I have always been, or perhaps like an invalid in need of extra nurturing. Little gifts – a box of chocolates, a bouquet of moonpenny daisies, a slim book of short stories that unfold in my mind for days, a bright lipstick, a g
reen cotton dress that looks like nothing until I put it on – magically appear in my room. My favourite foods are stealthily posted into the oven before I can even think about lunch or dinner, and after our traditional tussle over the washing-up (the one battle she allows me to win) I’m eerily free of responsibility. I’m aware that the phone rings often and that letters arrive for me with every morning’s post, but I can’t hear the phone calls and choose not to read the letters. Instead I wander dreamily around the garden and along the beach, drowning in memories. When the soft dusk descends, Lily – a roguish gleam in her eye – presses her house keys into my hand and shoos me out to enjoy myself. I go out to make her happy, but I quickly discover that it’s fun to be out in the dark in a town where nobody knows you. Neither of us ever mentions Daniel.
It’s only as my blissful timeless week closes that I briefly glimpse another reason why she may want to send me out every evening. I’m a little drunk with my shoes in my hand, and my stockinged feet slip on the steps as I tiptoe up.
I open Lily’s door to the sense that someone else has been here. The kitchen is immaculate and the sofa cushions plump and undented, but there’s an unfamiliar scent of soap in the air, a warmth greater than a single body would produce. Who was it? It’s late, so late it’s early, and Lily’s friends never call round in the evenings anyway. They like to get home before dusk and close the curtains, put the chain on the door and seal themselves away from the gathering night. These days even Lily herself rarely ventures out after dark. She isn’t in the sitting room. She isn’t in the kitchen. She isn’t in the bathroom. I creep down the corridor towards her bedroom. Her light’s on.
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