‘I’m sorry to do this, but Albie would have insisted…’ She attempted to order their main courses in French, Cathie frowning as she spoke in stuttered, formal starts.
Albie, you better be right, Maria thought as the waiter emerged soon after with steaming bowls of snails.
Maria looked amusingly at Cathie. ‘He added it to the list so…’
For the first time Cathie really smiled, straight teeth glinting. ‘Why couldn’t he have told us to eat eclairs? Well… Wish me luck!’ She lifted the fork to her mouth, a glistening snail stuck to the prongs, and popped it in, chewing slowly before swallowing and reaching for her water glass. ‘Actually,’ she said, laughing, ‘they’re really quite good.’
Despite their rubbery texture they were delicious, dripping in butter and garlic. Maria couldn’t help enjoying every mouthful. Albie, yet again, had surprised her.
The restaurant was filling up and was now busy with customers breaking fresh bread, perusing the menu, their faces glowing from the tea lights scattered on the tables. The waiters moved back and forth purposefully, the smells from the kitchen clashing, the windows steaming up. Maria felt relaxed and grateful to be in this lively city. A place that only a short time ago would have terrified her. Normally, she’d be at home in the quiet of her apartment, sat in her armchair completing a crossword or a chapter of her book, with just the tick of the clock and the hum of traffic in the distance for company.
‘So, I have a full day planned tomorrow,’ Maria said, bringing her knife and fork together on the plate. ‘I thought we could walk into Montmartre, have a chocolat chaud…’ She attempted the accent, feeling herself flush, and Cathie laughed. ‘Try that café TripAdvisor told me is the best in the city – TripAdvisor was very helpful. And then perhaps in the afternoon we could head to the Louvre, they have a lot of Impressionists and the Mona Lisa, of course. I can’t believe I’m going to see the Mona Lisa in the flesh.’
Cathie had fallen quiet at this and Maria was overcome with worry. ‘Unless you want to do something else…?’
‘The Louvre,’ she repeated, her hand shaking as she raised her wine glass to her mouth. ‘He had always wanted to go there, she had—’ Cathie broke off, blinking rapidly, stopping herself breaking down there and then at the table.
At that moment the waiter interrupted them with the dessert menu.
‘No, non, non merci. Just the bill, please,’ Cathie said.
Maria wasn’t sure what was so wrong with her suggestion. What had gone on between Albie and Cathie? How could it be related to the Louvre? Maria and Cathie had been fine, getting on in fact, and this abrupt change in mood saddened her. The muscles in Cathie’s neck were tense as Maria paid the bill, waving away Cathie’s feeble protests to contribute: ‘Albie insisted.’ Maria knew it must be tied up with the reason she and Albie hadn’t spoken. She went over the conversation, confused as to why a visit to the Louvre would so upset her.
All the way back to the hotel Cathie sat and stared silently out of the taxi window and she barely looked at Maria in the tiny, creaking lift to their floor. Maria bade her a brief goodnight as they stood awkwardly in the corridor. ‘Good n—’
The door slammed shut before Maria could finish the sentence, frowning as she slotted her hotel card into her door and stepped inside.
She had left the windows open and the room was cool, filled with voices, a motorcycle engine, music from outside. Suddenly Maria realised she didn’t want to be on her own, fretting over things going wrong in the restaurant.
She headed next door to a small restaurant, now emptying of people, and ordered a glass of pudding wine. How different this trip might have been if she had come here with Albie, she thought as she swallowed the liquid, syrupy and sweet. She wallowed in these thoughts before pulling out the wish list, now creased in twenty different places and the writing so familiar:
• Make amends and say sorry for not forgiving her
With a last mouthful she knew she had to find the strength to do this for Albie, to get to the bottom of the rift between him and his sister. Clearly, Cathie had loved him once; when she told the occasional story about their childhood she was admiring and indulgent of her brother.
The next day Maria broached the subject almost immediately as they sat having buttery croissants in the morning sunshine in the hotel courtyard. ‘About yesterday—’
‘I don’t want to go to the Louvre, I… I can’t, I’m sorry.’ It was as if Cathie had been waiting. She looked into her café au lait.
Maria paused for a second before reaching to place a hand over Cathie’s. ‘That’s quite alright, and you don’t have to explain, but…’ Maria took a breath.
Be brave, Maria, for once.
‘…Please don’t doubt if I am here as your friend. I want to get to know you better.’
Cathie exhaled and sat back in her chair.
Maria, her whole body tense, waited.
‘It’s just… that was their place. Albie and her. I can’t…’ Cathie dabbed at her mouth with a linen napkin.
Maria tipped her head to one side, holding her breath, wanting her to continue.
‘Our mother loved art, was a brilliant artist herself. Albie inherited her talent. I can’t draw a thing, not even stick men, but I always loved watching her draw and paint. And she taught both of us. I was hopeless, but Albie fell in love with it all too, was the willing student…’
Cathie was staring out across the courtyard now, eyes somewhere else, rooting through a past only she could see.
‘I remember she saved an age for this enormous glossy table-top book, thick with pictures of her favourite paintings. She knew everything about Monet, Degas, she could tell you how long it had taken to paint the sunflowers, what colours were used and how, the brushstrokes, everything. And she dreamt of going to art galleries, seeing those paintings first-hand. Albie, Albie always said they’d go. Even after her diagnosis, breast cancer, he still said it to her, but he was never around, too busy with his damn business…’ Cathie’s voice had changed, hardened, her eyes focused somewhere over Maria’s head as she replayed moments from her past. ‘He made excuses, and she was always so damned accepting of them…’
Maria frowned, not recognising this Albie who could let people down, who would put a business first, not without good reason.
‘I should have stood up to him but he was my big brother… I… and then when I didn’t… when I…’
Maria was leaning forward, willing Cathie to explain more.
‘I couldn’t… God, he never forgave me…’
Couldn’t what? Maria was lost. What did Albie never forgive? What could be so terrible that it caused him to never speak to his younger sister again? She was desperate to know but Cathie had already moved on and she didn’t feel confident enough to interrupt and ask.
‘And now, trying to send me there without him, well––’ Cathie came to an abrupt halt, her chest rising and falling.
Maria calmed her with a hand. ‘The Louvre was my idea, it wasn’t on his list. It had been my thought, I knew Albie loved art. But we don’t have to go, we can go anywhere else. He just wanted you to experience Paris. We could go to that wonderful bookshop, the Shakespeare something, I saw it in that film Julie & Julia.’
But something had changed and she couldn’t seem to fix things.
Cathie swiped at her eyes. ‘He should have brought me here, he should have forgiven me years ago. What I did was hardly worse than how he drifted in and out of our lives in those last months.’ The anger in her voice was unmistakable, betraying years of the same thoughts eating away at her.
Maria felt her shoulders sagging, hope sinking. What had she imagined? That she could fix a long-running feud with one trip away? That the magic of Paris would heal the hideous rift that had opened up? That she, a perfect stranger to this woman, could sweep in and be the great heroine? She didn’t have the power to fix anything, she was foolish to even try. She didn’t even know what she was trying to fix. And a
nyway, some things couldn’t be fixed, she thought, shaking her head, not wanting the memories to flood in, the familiar lurching pain that accompanied them.
‘He never forgave me, and god, I was so sorry, I was so sorry. And I hated him for not forgiving me, and now I can’t even tell him that I forgive him. He’s robbed me of that. We messed up, we both messed up. I should have been there… I didn’t get back in time…’
Time for what?
Maria froze in horror as Cathie started to cry, and looked over her shoulder for someone else, someone who could comfort to take over. There was of course no one: an idling waiter and two men playing backgammon, lost in their game, not remotely fussed by a weeping woman nearby. Just Maria. She felt helpless, believing for a second that this was too much for her to handle. Then she found her confidence, unstuck herself and rubbed Cathie’s back. ‘There, there, it’s alright, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s alright, I’m sorry.’ She left her hand there as Cathie juddered to a stop, shoulders still, face hidden, her breathing slowing.
Cathie lifted her head, reached for a napkin and dabbed at her eyes and nose. ‘I missed her funeral, I missed our own mother’s funeral,’ she explained, ‘and I didn’t even have a good reason, not really. I was away with a boyfriend. I can’t even remember his name now, so meaningless…’
Cathie had missed her mother’s funeral. That was what she had been alluding to, the reason Albie had been so furious with her.
‘But I was angry and she’d gone and he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t done what I’d done, looked after her, he hadn’t seen what I’d seen, how ill she got right at the end, when the cancer had spread through her body…’ Her voice trailed away.
A nearby waiter approached and then turned quickly on his heel.
‘How awful, I… I’m so sorry,’ Maria said, knowing that even after all this time, the hurt never really went away.
‘We never spoke. He wouldn’t listen to me, didn’t want to hear it. He was so stubborn, suddenly the virtuous son…’
Maria flinched at this description of the man she so admired: a different man then, someone who had made mistakes.
‘And that only made me angrier, the times I’d begged him to get back home, to be with us, to see for himself.’
Maria bit her lip, forced herself not to defend Albie.
‘I trained to be a nurse, maybe after Mum I was trying to… I’m not sure,’ the words were spilling out now, Cathie lost somewhere in the past. ‘He was still off being a big shot, waiting for me to apologise, but I… couldn’t. Then the years just… passed. So many years. And then the letter came. From the solicitor.’ Cathie’s chin dropped to her chest and she sat there, balling up the napkin in her hand.
There was a long period of silence and Maria felt her heart go out to this woman, the pain etched on her features. She found it difficult to reconcile herself with the new knowledge: that perfect, unblemished Albie could ever have been at fault. And yet here was his sister with their sad story. A whole life he’d missed out on: his baby sister. She swallowed down words, just realising she needed to sit there, to be still and listen.
* * *
They had a quiet day. They walked to the bookshop, enjoyed the smell of the second-hand books, browsing the shelves, settling themselves in enormous armchairs and sipping coffees. They wandered through the streets, idling in parks, simply taking in the city with no real aim. It was better than Maria’s busy itinerary.
Perhaps the breakfast had been a release as Cathie seemed more relaxed, laughing at Maria as they walked past Cartier.
‘How can you never have heard of it!’ she exclaimed.
Maria, glad to be teased, simply shrugged.
They ended up boarding a Bateau Mouche on a whim, moving over the blue-grey water of the Seine, feeling the wind whip their clothes against them, push and pull at their hair. Watching people walking past on the paths next to the river, stopping for selfies, sitting on benches. They saw couples kissing, people walking dogs, the tips of cathedrals, apartment blocks, hotels. The sun played hide and seek above them, turning the water varying shades around each bend. Maria closed her eyes and felt the rays on her face.
They stopped in a patisserie to order the most delicious light macaroons in pastel shades and exclaiming at the taste, Maria insisting on buying more to take back with them. How could she have got to her eighth decade and only now be tasting something so delicious? She paid for them with another note, handing the bag to Cathie.
‘Albie always said he had a sweet tooth,’ Maria said as they left the patisserie, thinking of all the marble cake they shared.
‘How long were you together?’ Cathie asked as they stood on the pavement, about to plan their next move.
Maria felt the macaroon sticking in her throat as she swallowed. ‘We weren’t, we weren’t together. I used to see him, once a week, on Thursdays.’
Cathie frowned, two lines appearing between her brows. ‘On Thursdays.’
Maria nodded. ‘In a café. We shared a pot of tea and a slice of cake every Thursday for four years.’
‘You weren’t his partner? But I assumed, all this…’ Cathie waved her arm around, the patisserie bag dangling from her fingers.
‘It was what he wanted to do with you. To make amends. He had written it on his list, he was working his way through it. I’m still not exactly sure why. But he died before he could take you—’
‘Did he give you the list when he died?’
‘No, I found it. He left me his apartment and it was on his bedside table, half-complete.’
‘His apartment,’ Cathie said, eyebrows shooting up. ‘He left it to you?’
‘Well, he left me everything…’
A car roared past, almost blocking out her words.
‘He left you… everything,’ Cathie interrupted.
Maria stopped, about to explain more about the things Albie had put on the list, about all the good he had done, at her determination to continue what he’d started. She realised she hadn’t told Cathie a great deal, that she might have assumed the list had been instructions about Paris and this trip.
‘Everything…’ Cathie repeated slowly, ‘…to someone he saw once a week.’
Maria nodded, smiling at the madness of it without thinking.
‘But the business, the apartment, he must have been wealthy.’
‘He was…’ Maria nodded. ‘It was such a shock.’ As she spoke, she had a fleeting worry that she was being insensitive. ‘I had no idea,’ she added hurriedly, concerned that the topic of money could be a sticky one. Certainly, Cathie’s face had changed. Her expression stony, arms folded over her chest: ‘I can’t believe it. Everything.’
Maria felt herself tense. She now saw that the words contained another meaning, that Cathie’s eyes had been narrowing. ‘Well, I suppose, I’m not sure…’ Maria felt wrong-footed, her tongue too big for her mouth.
‘And I’ve been brought along on this all-expenses trip to rub it in, I imagine. His gold-digging girlfriend showing off, in her fancy clothes, splashing his cash about, paying for meals and boat rides and—’
Maria felt as if she’d been slapped, took a step backwards, blinked rapidly. ‘No, that’s not what—’
Cathie’s fists had curled up, her voice high and fast, ‘When he knew how we struggled, he… to a total stranger. To…’
Maria couldn’t speak, too shocked at this burst of anger.
‘God, I have to get home!’ Cathie said, sticking her hand up for a taxi, stepping off the pavement so that a motorcycle had to swerve round her. ‘I want to leave.’
Maria nodded, devastated, not sure whether to follow her into the taxi as it pulled up, but not wanting her to just leave. Eventually she got in the car, gulping at this sudden turn of events.
They sat in silence back to the hotel and in the cramped lift to their rooms. Heavy-hearted, Maria packed her suitcase and left her room, not knowing if Cathie would even wait for her. But she was there, sat in the foyer of
the hotel, determinedly reading her book.
‘You’ll be wanting to pay the bill,’ Cathie said waspishly.
Maria stood there, not sure what to do, what to say. She didn’t have the words, didn’t know how to fix things, and felt a mixture of emotions: confusion, anger, pity. She paid the hotel bill wordlessly and waited for the taxi to the station sat on the other side of the foyer. This was ridiculous and yet she couldn’t seem to cross the floor to mend it.
Cathie didn’t meet her eye as they made their way to the train station. Maria sat alone all the way back to St Pancras, as Cathie had moved the moment she had been handed her ticket, heading straight to the second-class carriage without a word. Maria watched her go, wondering how it had all gone so wrong, the memories of their shared time together already fading. If the money had been left to her just to fritter away, she might have understood, but she didn’t want the money, she wanted to do what Albie had been doing with it. A small part of her felt angry at Cathie’s accusations: she didn’t want to have to explain things to her. Why should she? Why should Cathie call her a gold digger? It wasn’t right. Or was Maria angry because there was some truth in it? Did she enjoy this new role? Her new-found freedom? Had she been splashing the cash? She bit her lip and stared out of the window, the darkness of the tunnel reflecting her hopeless mood.
She didn’t see Cathie in London as she alighted the train and walked away from the station onto the tube escalator. She pictured the list in her handbag. After all this, could she really tick this trip off the list?
‘Whatcha doing, Mum?’ She was standing balancing on one leg in the balcony doors, a Walkman tucked into her stonewashed jeans, headphones around her neck, her hair tied back with a bright pink scrunchie.
‘Nothing!’ I laughed in suspicion. ‘What do you want?’ I asked, opening one eye from my deckchair in the corner and realising she was still there, still balanced on one leg.
The Wish List of Albie Young (ARC) Page 20