Linda was delighted, no, more than that, she was ecstatic when I told her about it later. It wasn’t often that we travelled back together, but she saw me on the platform and pushed her way through the ranks of commuters to stand beside me.
“Anything?”
For a moment, I toyed with the idea of not telling her; letting it all go. The only harm done would be to the man. I thought of him waiting impatiently outside the Tube and scanning the crowds. Still, if he was married he deserved it, and if he wasn’t – well, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. But then I had a vision of us standing somewhere over the road, perhaps in a doorway, maybe even in disguise, and I felt a rush of excitement. What could go wrong? And we would have such a laugh, and Linda would take me somewhere for a drink and we would laugh some more. It would be like opening another door, a door to a nightlife I had only glimpsed on the few occasions I had been to Oxford Street after work and caught a later train home.
“Yes, he phoned.”
“No! Really? What did you say?”
I told her about the arrangement, affecting a nonchalance I did not feel, and it was clear from that moment there would be no turning back. Linda talked about little else throughout the journey. She even took an envelope from her bag and sketched the junction where the assignation was to take place, marking the entrance to the Tube with a cross and talking through the relative merits of the places we might stand to observe him. It was as if we were spies and he was an enemy agent, instead of a man who had taken a fancy to a young girl he had seen on a train. For a moment it felt like being in a film, unreal but vividly lit. We were on the train but it seemed like a set, with the backdrop of London projected behind us whilst we were stationary, acting out our parts. The other commuters were extras, their briefcases and handbags were props and it would all disappear as soon we had said our lines. They say life is stranger than fiction though, and that certainly turned out to be true.
We had only a couple of days to wait but the time dragged terribly, as I was torn between feelings of excitement and regret every time I thought about it, which was quite a lot. Bob and Sandy teased me about daydreaming and said I must be in love, and the fact that I blushed deeply did nothing to persuade them otherwise. How shocked they would have been if they had known the truth! Seeing it through their eyes made me realise what a rash and ill-advised thing it was to do, but there was no backing out now. Linda’s plans were complete and now the time had come to enact them.
We met as arranged, just down from the entrance to Oxford Street Station. It was overcast and drizzly, and I was cold in my completely inappropriate light jacket and short skirt. I wrapped my arms around myself and shuffled from foot to foot, but I didn’t have to wait long for there was Linda, waving at me as she side-stepped and skipped her way through the throng of commuters and tourists surging down the street.
“My God, what a nightmare!” she panted. “I thought I was going to be late.” But really it was quite the opposite. Her plan had included so many added minutes for unforeseen events that it was a full hour before I was supposed to meet the man. We filled the time by going to a Wimpy bar and eating burgers and chips, but I left half of mine as the excitement was making me queasy and Linda’s last-minute instructions did nothing to calm me down.
At last it was time to position ourselves, so we jumped on the Tube for one stop then walked the rest of the way. I think Linda must have thought I was a bit wobbly, as she took my arm and steered me along, chatting brightly all the time. She was right. I was cold, my meal was lying heavily in my stomach and my feet were hurting; I would have been quite happy to go home.
We were still a good ten minutes early, but Linda ushered me to our vantage point. We stood there in a doorway slightly elevated by a couple of steps, trying to look inconspicuous and waiting for him to arrive. I had a forlorn hope that he wouldn’t turn up but there was little chance of that, considering how much trouble he had taken to get this far.
“Tell me when you see him,” said Linda, about every minute. I nodded, but then my heart lurched for there he was, coming out of the station. He was carrying something, and a horrible feeling of guilt, mixed with something else I could not identify, coursed through me as I saw what it was. Flowers. He had bought me flowers and now what would he do with them? Take them home to his wife? He stood for a few seconds, looking around, but then a bus lumbered along and he was obscured. I closed my eyes, praying that he would be gone by the time it had passed, but no, he was still there. He looked at his watch then to his left and right, but he was an island of indecision in the flow of people coming and going so he moved to one side and waited there.
I took a deep breath. “That’s him, in the brown coat, with the flowers,” I whispered, as if he could hear us from over the road with crowds of people and traffic between us, but Linda had already seen him.
“I know. I knew it would be him. Bastard!”
I looked up at her face – she was quite a lot taller than me – waiting for the laughter to start, but it didn’t. This was supposed to be a joke, a harmless prank at his expense, but her face was twisted with anger.
“I asked my mum about it. Don’t worry, I just started talking about how we keep seeing people we know on the train, so she doesn’t suspect anything – but it’s definitely him. Gordon Carpenter. Lives in Tonbridge. She remembered it because they don’t really do weddings. It was a favour, you know, friend of a friend of a friend kind of thing. We only went along for the free food. Come on, let’s see what he’s got to say for himself!”
So saying, she grabbed my arm and tried to pull me to the junction. The lights were red and we could cross, but I shook her off.
“What are you doing?” I said, my voice rising, but she skipped across just as the lights changed back to green, leaving me standing there. A minute passed, or maybe it was less. Anyway, it was long enough to make me realise that I was alone and adrift without Linda. What would I do if she left without me? So I crossed as soon as I could, then stood there and said nothing as he held out a five pound note to her. His face was bright red.
“Look, it was a moment of madness,” he said. “I don’t know what came over me. I’m sorry if I scared you.” He looked at me – then back to Linda. “Why don’t you two have a night on the town, on me? You won’t hear from me again, I promise, and it’s the last time I’ll do anything like this, believe me!”
“It had better be,” said Linda grimly, as she took the note and balled it into her fist. “I know your name and I know where you live, so go back to your wife and kid and stop pestering my friend!”
She grabbed my arm and propelled me off down Charing Cross Road. I don’t think she had any idea where we were going, and her anger seemed to be burning my arm. Eventually we went into a bar and she ordered cocktails – something sickly and sweet – which we drank in an atmosphere far from that she had described to me just a few days ago. After a while, she put her drink down on the glass tabletop and leaned back, arching her fingers in front of her mouth.
“You’re cross with me, aren’t you?”
“No, not cross, not really, but I suppose I am a bit surprised,” I said, feeling on the defensive although there was no reason to be.
“Look, it just got to me, that’s all. His wife sitting at home looking after the baby and him out chasing after you. Suppose you had been interested? Suppose you’d fallen in love and he’d decided to leave her? You’ve got no idea, have you, how difficult it is bringing up a kid on your own. Everyone pointing the finger and saying you’re an unmarried mother. All the kids in school teasing your kid and saying ‘where’s your dad’?”
It hit me then, that this anger wasn’t some sort of empathy for abandoned wives in general. She was speaking from experience and I blurted it out, before I’d had time to think about whether it was a good idea. “Is that what your dad did?”
“Yes, if you really want to know, it is. But don’t think you can start feeling sorry for me. We are perfectly fine,
thanks very much. Better off without him.”
She picked up her drink and made quite a performance out of extracting the pieces of fruit and deciding whether to eat them or not, so I drank the rest of mine and concentrated on looking around the room instead of at her. Clearly I had hit a nerve, but at least it explained what had happened. Now we could put it all behind us, enjoy the rest of the evening and there would be no real harm done. Five pounds was nearly half a week’s salary to us, and it would take some spending.
Unfortunately, that isn’t how it turned out, but that’s what I was thinking as we stood up to go. She had been to the ladies and not returned for a while, but when she did, she was all smiles again.
“Come on, let’s hit the town, courtesy of your sleazy friend. And if he thinks that’s the end of it, he can think again!”
So that was the start of it, but it was also the beginning of the end of my friendship with Linda. I didn’t say anything at the time as I was afraid she’d revert to her sullen and angry mood, especially as part of me was still clinging to the picture of us having a great evening together, but I was really uncomfortable about taking his money. I was positive that it must stop there, but not so Linda. She didn’t say much until we were on the train home, both of us a little drunk, but then she could talk of little else. Oh no, this wasn’t going to be the end of it at all, this was just the beginning, and if he didn’t like it, he should have thought about that when he started chasing young girls.
I hoped she would forget about it once she had sobered up and reflected, but she had another plan all worked out by the time I saw her on Monday. This time we were going to wait at Charing Cross until we saw him board the train after work, stay on until his station, follow him until he was nearly home, then stop him. Would he like us to come home with him, explain to his wife what he had been up to, or would he prefer to pay for us to have another night out?
I may have been the junior partner in this friendship and I may have looked up to Linda, but I couldn’t go along with this and I told her so. To her credit, she didn’t get angry, nor did she try to change my mind, but there was a different feel to our relationship from that point. She started to catch a later train sometimes, or she would rush onto the platform just as our usual train arrived and jump into a different carriage. We had already changed our regular seats, not wanting to see the man, but if we did travel together the atmosphere would be strained and we never discussed that evening, not once. I noticed also that she often wore new clothes – decent clothes, not the cheap and cheerful stuff she had worn before. Was she simply earning more or was the money coming from somewhere else? I couldn’t ask her, and when I complimented her on the new shoes or new jacket she would merely say ‘thanks,’ so that didn’t throw any light on the subject.
It was only a couple of months later that I met Andy, and then my whole life started to revolve around him. That’s what it was like then; girls tended to fit in with their boyfriends’ social circles, not like now, when they still go out with their mates and boys have to fit in with them. Andy was a year older than me, and he was in a band – just some local lads practising in the village hall, but it seemed so glamorous to me – and pretty soon I hardly saw Linda at all. It wasn’t as if we had often been out socially anyway, and if I saw her once a week on the platform we might exchange a few pleasantries and that would be that. I didn’t mind too much, although it did feel rather sudden. It seemed that the relationship had run its course.
That’s probably why it was such a shock when I heard. My parents were full of it when I came down to breakfast one Saturday in October, about seven months after the incident with the man. He was always that: ‘the man,’ even though I knew his name. Using it would have been too personal. They shooed a protesting Wendy out of the kitchen so they could talk to me and I was still wondering what had happened, who had died, when they told me. Linda was missing – hadn’t been seen for two days, and there were posters going up everywhere. It had been on the radio, but Mum had also been talking to someone from the WI who knew somebody who knew the family, so it must be right.
I sat down heavily, my stomach churning. Linda missing. It didn’t seem possible and I tried to remember when I had last seen her, but I couldn’t pin it down to a particular day. I wasn’t even sure if it was last week or the week before as we had barely spoken; a quick “How are you?” and “Oh, I’m fine thanks, and you?” and it had been over. The train had arrived, but we didn’t even pretend that we were more than acquaintances by that time, and we had both turned and walked to different carriages with nothing more than a goodbye smile.
I had to take some decisions very quickly, there and then, at the kitchen table. The stark ordinariness of the scene – the box of cornflakes, the yellow teapot, the crumbs of toast on Mum’s plate standing out like something from a Warhol print – made what had happened seem even more unreal. I’d like to say that I sat down and took the decision advisedly, considering all the issues, but actually I pushed it all to one side as if it hadn’t happened at all. When I finally spoke I explained that I didn’t see Linda much nowadays and that we didn’t travel together. No, we hadn’t fallen out – we had never been friends, not real friends – and now I was so familiar with the journey we had just drifted apart, especially after I started to go out with Andy.
I’m pretty sure they were disappointed when they heard this, especially Mum. I think she had this vision of taking me down to the police station where I would provide a critical piece of information leading to Linda’s safe return. I don’t know how she could have thought this. Wouldn’t I have missed her if we had still been close? But maybe the thought was too compelling to allow reason to interfere. Some thoughts are like that. Anyway, I got a bit of a grilling – surely you must remember when you last saw her – but that bit was true. I really couldn’t remember, and if I was feeling guilty it either didn’t show or guilt is easily mistaken for shock. I didn’t eat any breakfast, but went back up to my room with a wan smile in response to their sympathetic looks.
I shut the door behind me and sat on the bed. What had I done? I had said nothing about the man, but he could turn out to be the cause of her disappearance. Linda may have been continuing her campaign against him all this time – hence the new clothes – and he may have decided to silence her. I couldn’t keep this to myself. But then I thought of my parents sitting downstairs, of their faces as I told them what we had done, and I couldn’t do it. They idolised me, especially my dad; they would never think the same of me if I told them. And what about Wendy? How would she live it down at school? Your sister’s a blackmailer!
There was another reason too. It was quite possible that Linda would turn up in a day or so – she was a bit wild, after all. She could be having a great time with some boy, then she would come back and find out that I had spilled the beans and we would both be in trouble – big trouble in her case, if she had carried it on. And the man’s wife would find out and have to bring up the child on her own and the child would be teased at school … No, I wouldn’t say anything yet. I would wait and see what happened.
If only I’d had a little longer, maybe I would have changed my mind and told them. However, it seemed my mother’s desire to help, to be involved, was too strong to resist and she had already told a number of people about my friendship with Linda. This led to my name being added to a list and it was only the next day when the police arrived to interview me. Actually, it was just one policeman, not a whole lot older than me, and my parents were there in the lounge with me as he wrote it all down in his notebook. How Linda and I had seen a lot of each other a few months ago, had travelled to work together, been out socially a couple of times. How we had gone our own ways recently – no, we hadn’t argued, we were still on good terms. I had a boyfriend now and we didn’t always get the same train these days.
He was very interested in our last meeting, but although I had genuinely tried, I still couldn’t pin it down to a particular day. It was certainly well
before the last day her mother saw her, which was Wednesday, as she left to go to work. Yes, she had seemed fine; perfectly normal. Nothing different in her manner. No, she hadn’t said anything about going away – hadn’t said anything much at all. I told him everything I knew with the one major exception. My only lie was one of omission, but I felt sick afterwards and had to get out of the house, dragging the poor old dog down to the park and willing things to be different. If I could only stay out for an hour, the news would be waiting when I returned. Linda would be back, safe and sound, and my action would be vindicated. I did stay out an hour, but there was no news when I got back and my parents were almost as concerned for the dog as they were for me.
I waited the next day and the next. Each day I was definitely going to tell someone the day after if she didn’t turn up, but then we got the call from the hospital and they had to fetch Paul, with all the trauma that entailed. Also, at about the same time, there was a story in all the papers about a girl who had gone missing and been found in a commune in Wales, and I persuaded myself that Linda would have done something similar. I imagined her in a big old house somewhere, with people who sat around playing guitars into the night. Or maybe she would be in London, sitting on the floor in a squat, listening to someone reading poetry or posing whilst a long-haired man with a beard sketched her half-naked.
As it turned out that wasn’t the case and, looking back, I don’t know why I allowed myself to think any of those things. Linda had never shown the slightest inclination to embrace an alternative lifestyle. She was strictly mainstream, devoted to fashion and looking her best and certainly unlikely to be interested in poetry. But I suppose it must have suited my purpose to believe it at the time, and my parents were so wrapped up in caring for Paul that they hardly mentioned her again so it wasn’t that hard to file it all away.
The Art of Forgetting Page 2