Walking Alone

by Carolyn McCrae

  “Yes, it’s going to be a fun afternoon, lazing around in the garden, eating hamburgers and hot dogs, drinking wine, doing whatever you like.”

  Everyone I wanted to come accepted, except Dani. She said she had a houseful of guests and couldn’t get away but she wished me luck and said she’d send a parcel of a dozen pasties ‘just in case’.

  The second day I built the barbecue, copying as closely I could the design of Dani’s in Polperro. It wasn’t the best built structure but I reasoned it only had to work once. I tested it out, producing a sausage and a hamburger. It took over an hour but it worked.

  I did ask Monika’s advice on which shops to go to, though I resisted her offer to do the shopping with me. I accepted her insistence that she peel the potatoes for the potato salad. But everything else I did myself. By the Saturday I was exhausted, but buoyed up with anticipation for the next day. I watched the television weather forecast with trepidation.

  After a Sunday morning putting out croquet hoops, setting out the tables and chairs around the garden, getting the barbecue running, setting out the food, I sat back with a glass of lager. The weather was good and I was exhausted. But I had done it.

  Even if no one but Max and Monika turned up I felt I had achieved more than I had ever done before.

  Susannah’s children along with several of their friends shepherded by the aged nanny arrived first, as arranged. I wanted to overcome the problem of the first guest arriving to an empty garden, and awkward conversation. I thought if the children were there, playing croquet or French cricket, they would make the garden feel alive. I spent a difficult ten minutes persuading the nanny that it was perfectly OK for them to run around shouting and enjoying themselves. Usually when they visited us they were kept under strict control, having been firmly warned that they must be on their best behaviour, but now they were enthusiastically taking advantage of their unusual freedom to be children.

  When Carl arrived full of adrenalin having driven up from Cambridge that morning he immediately joined the children, organising them into teams and diverting their boundless energy into a competition. Carl seemed to be enjoying himself with Susannah’s children. I wondered at first whether he knew which were hers, but then I saw Josie shyly introducing her three younger brothers Jack, Al and Bill. “I just said I was a friend of yours.” He explained to me later.

  I had never met the Forsters though, of course, I had heard about them from Ted. As I sat down with them with a jug of Pimm’s it was they who were putting me at my ease rather than the other way around. Linda soon left to join Carl with the children as Pat and Jeff asked me about my time in Cornwall, how I had come up with the idea of the barbecue and how my writing was going as if she was genuinely interested. I had the feeling they didn’t think much of wasting time simply making polite conversation. I found I was telling them some of the things I had hoped to be able to tell Max and Monika about my months away. They were relaxed and comfortable people to be with and I found myself jealous of Carl for the years he had spent with them.

  When the Ecclestons arrived I was surprised that Holly and her parents didn’t immediately join us. “Linda and Holly spend such a lot of time together, it’s probably no bad thing” Pat Forster commented as she watched them settling down at a table on the other side of the garden. “We’ll go over later.”

  Trying to be a good host I went across to the Ecclestons and said hello to Holly. They seemed a family in complete contrast with the Forsters. Where the Forsters interrupted each other’s conversations and rarely stopped smiling the Ecclestons were quiet and it was all I could do to get Holly to answer any question with more than a monosyllable. They seemed tense with me and with each other. Matt Eccleston barely spoke a word, he simply sat staring through me, never meeting my eyes. I wondered how two friends could come from such different families.

  Other guests arrived and were welcomed, but my job was chef and I spent most of the rest of the afternoon cooking behind the charcoal. I worked on the principle that my guests could see the food, the drink and they could help themselves.

  I began to enjoy myself watching my guests as they moved around the garden as if in a relay race.

  Carl and Linda eventually left the children to their games and went to join the Forsters. As he remained with their parents, Oliver and Crispin went to talk to Holly. As they approached the table Holly’s father went inside the house.

  I noticed Max following him. Remembering Graham at the funeral, less than five months earlier, I left the heat of the barbecue and followed just in time to seem Max ushering Matt into his study. In those few moments they stood together I began to understand something. There was a similarity I couldn’t define. There was something in Matt’s movements that reminded me of Max, as he had been years before.

  I knew if I was in the dining room I could overhear their conversation in the quiet house.

  I heard it, but I didn’t understand it.

  “Why Mr Eccleston, of course.” Max was being polite and affable though he sounded a little offended. Matt didn’t answer directly but spoke shortly and sharply in German. I had no idea what he said but the words and the tone made me immediately think of a war film.

  Max’s response did not surprise me. He spoke firmly and in English. “I do not speak in German. I prefer English now, and have for 30 years.”

  “As you wish. You know of course who I am.”

  It was some time before Max answered. When he did he sounded relaxed and at ease. “Of course. I have been expecting you to make yourself known for some time.”

  I heard the scrape of chair legs against the wooden floor. I thought that quite clever, it was like the interrogations in war films where officers moved slowly, performing some mundane action such as moving to a chair and sitting down, in the few moments between the asking of the question and the answering of it, creating valuable moments in which to work out an answer. I had always admired those skills. My father had learned them as a barrister. He had had that same ability to think fast without showing any sign that that was what he was doing, the ability to give nothing away by the look on his face, and, most importantly, the ability to analyse all options and select those that were most likely to succeed.

  Max didn’t lead the conversation, he said nothing that would help Matt who obviously couldn’t think of anything to say. Perhaps he had expected Max to cry out, to ask questions, at the very least to be shocked and angry. Instead Max was quiet. I imagined him sitting authoritatively at his desk, Matt, still standing, awkward and ill at ease.

  I was just thinking I should return to the barbecue, realising I shouldn’t be listening but intrigued, when Max broke the silence. “Mattieu, for you could only be Mattieu, your brother would have been more clever, you fall into the trap of youth, though you are no longer young. You see life only from your own perspective. You believe that what you do is everything and that what others do is nothing. When I met Holly at Alicia’s funeral I saw immediately the resemblance to the family. I saw things, not of you, for you are an oaf, but of your Mother. You will know that I have returned to our home village each year and was intrigued to find that an American had been there asking questions about me. You have no subtlety. So, yes, Mattieu, I do know who you are.”

  “What are you going to do then?”

  “About what?”

  “About fulfilling your family responsibilities.”

  “What responsibilities would those be? Ah.” Max spoke as if the answer had only just come to him “it is money you want.”

  “Of course. You owe me Uncle Maximilian.”

  “I do not think so. I owe you nothing and I need do nothing.”

  “But what about your other family?” Matt spoke as if producing a trump card.

  Max again was quiet while he thought what exactly Matt knew to say that.

  “That Graham’s a sharp boy. He spotted something at that funeral and came to me. He nicked a photograph, it could have been my Holly, but it wasn’t, the ph
oto was 40 years old and it was in that desk, that drawer. We both know now who I am, and that Holly is your flesh and blood, but what about your housekeeper?”

  He must have known that this would be harder for Max to deal with.

  “What about her?”

  “That photograph was of her. Only she wasn’t called ‘Monika’ then was she?”

  A chair moved, creaking against the wooden floor and Max said something I could not hear above the slight scraping, rather like a clicking of heels on the parquet flooring.

  “I will do nothing. I will wait and see. A very English habit you would do well to learn.”

  I wanted to hear how the conversation was concluded but they seemed to be moving towards the door and I had to return to my cooking before either of them could suspect I had overheard their conversation.

  I wasn’t sure which I should be more afraid of.

  Josie, Susannah’s eldest child, took the plates of hamburgers, sausages and salad around. She seemed very adult for her 7 years, perhaps too adult. I noticed Linda talking to all the children, bending slightly forward but never condescending. Even from a distance I could see they liked her, liked talking to her and liked the way she talked to them. She seemed to be treating them just like equals and I noticed they all laughed a lot when they were around her. The three boys, scarcely more than toddlers, were shepherded around by their nanny who didn’t seem to be enjoying herself at all.

  In a lull in the demands for food Linda came over to the barbecue. She sat down on a stool next to me. “You’ve changed.” She said with no preliminary. “Possibly.” I replied. “But then you probably don’t really know me do you?”

  “You were an old fogey, you’re not now.”

  “How?”

  “Your hair’s a lot longer, you’re much more casual, you’re smiling and you’re actually quite attractive.”

  I ignored the compliment “You wouldn’t expect me to wear shorts at a funeral would you?”

  “You know what I mean. You wore formal clothes as if they were the only things you ever wore.”

  “They were then.”

  “So I’m right,” she proclaimed triumphantly, jumping down from the stool and returning to her parents, and Carl. I wondered what all that had been about.

  As we had been talking I noticed Matt leaving the house. I wondered if he had been inside all that time.

  He didn’t go back to Holly who was sitting on a tartan rug laid out on the grass with Crispin and Oliver, nor did he join his wife who was standing alone by the wall looking out across the estuary. He stood for some moments on the terrace looking around the garden as if trying to remember every detail of who was there, as if making sure that everyone would see him. He had seen me watching him as we held each other’s gaze for a few long moments before turning to march down the short drive and away. He was making sure I realised he wasn’t skulking away as if found out doing something wrong and been shown the door.

  He was leaving as if he wanted me to see he was leaving of his own free will.

  A short while later Linda came down the garden again.

  “Crisp and Oliver, my brothers, want to know why you don’t get a proper job.”

  “No they don’t, you do.” I wondered what I would have replied if I hadn’t had those months in Cornwall.

  “OK. Maybe. But they’d like to know, as well.”

  “I don’t see why I should tell you but I do. I do as much as Carl does.”

  “No you don’t, you’re never on the television, you don’t teach all the time.”

  “True. But I’m going to be learning all the time.” I’m not sure why I thought I should tell this pushy young woman anything but I did feel the need to justify myself. I was never comfortable when compared with Carl. “I’m doing a training course. The magazines are fed up with my writing so they’ve told me to learn to type. So that’s what I’m going to do.”

  “ But you’re a man.”

  “I’m glad you’ve noticed.”

  “But learning to type?”

  “What’s wrong with that? With computers and things everyone will have to type.”

  She didn’t leave this time, she sat helping me with the food, handing it down to Josie to take round to her friends.

  Eventually, the sausages exhausted, it was time to let the barbecue die down. Still Linda didn’t leave me. “Come on,” she had jumped up on the wall and sat down with her back to the garden dangling her legs mischievously inches above the heads of trippers walking along the coast path. I climbed up next to her.

  I couldn’t resist asking whether she thought I was like Carl. I probably shouldn’t have asked but I was curious.

  “Pretty much.” Her answer told me nothing.

  “What does that mean?”

  “In January you seemed 30 going on 50, more like Carl’s father than his brother.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But,” continued Linda firmly ignoring me “now you are very alike. You’re both really lovely…” she must have seen the look on my face she added swiftly “…and interesting.”

  “Thanks, I think I’d rather be ‘interesting’ than ‘lovely’.”

  “You’re both interesting.”

  “But there are differences. Firstly Carl’s good at something people are interested in and I’m good at something that most people find incredibly boring.”

  She smiled at me and mouthed the word ‘true’.

  “Carl’s younger, knows far more people, had a far more interesting life, and….”

  I don’t know why I told her so much. Perhaps she was a good listener. Perhaps I just felt relaxed in her company. She seemed rather like Dani in some ways.

  I told her how I had thought I had been happy but now I realised I had only been avoiding making any decision that might cause risk. I had been so averse to unhappiness that I had avoided doing anything that might lead me away from his comfortable safe home. I told her how my world had changed in the past year and, surprisingly, I was glad. I finished by looking at her “The changes have only just begun.”

  As Linda talked to me through the afternoon I noticed Holly watching us. I thought they were friends yet I didn’t see them talk once through the afternoon.

  Holly had spent a long time talking to Carl, perhaps Linda was jealous and that was why she paid me so much attention.

  I’m not sure the afternoon was entirely a success. People seemed to enjoy themselves, the children certainly had a lot of fun, but the afternoon was over long before I had expected. I suppose I had thought it would be like the afternoons in Polperro that had lasted long into the evening. The children were rounded up by their nanny before six o’clock and ushered away, the other guests seeming to take that as a sign to go themselves. They were all very polite with their thanks but as I was left in the garden alone I felt a depressing sense of anti-climax.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake, perhaps I should have stuck with the traditional dinner party. At least then not having had a good time would not have been such a disappointment.

  Monika helped me clear the detritus of the party as Max and Ted watched from the table on the terrace.

  “I think everyone had a good time.” She said, in a voice that seemed more intent on cheering me up than saying something she really believed to be true. “All your hard work was worth it.”

  “The children certainly did. I’m not so sure about some of the others.”

  “Max and Ted have always enjoyed your birthday evenings. It is a time for them to think that perhaps the world hasn’t changed as much as they fear.”

  In an hour you could not have known there had been a party in that garden and Monika and I sat down with Ted and Max.

  “Did you get anything to eat yourself?” Ted broke the uncomfortable silence “I noticed you cooking for all you were worth but I didn’t notice you eating anything.”

  “I had bits and pieces.”

  “It is easy for the cook to go without.” Monika was teasing
me “I’ll go and get something for supper.” and she left us on the terrace in the warmth of the early evening.

  “Well, my boy, was that what you expected?” Max asked as if he thought he knew the answer would be ‘no’.

  “I hope people enjoyed themselves.”

  “I don’t think people know how to. They sat around and talked to each other much as they would any other day. No one spoke to anyone they wouldn’t normally speak to, the family groups barely broke up. There was no sense of occasion.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted, informality, relaxation.”

  “But people don’t go to parties for ‘informality’ and ‘relaxation’ they go for something special. Something out of the ordinary.”

  Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it had been a mistake. Perhaps I was trying to be something I was not. Perhaps it was best if I just accepted I was never going to have friends my own age, never going to be anything other than what I was. The legacy of Polperro had been an illusion. I wasn’t cut out to have a life with people my own age. I had tried, and I had failed. I would just now revert to type.

  “Perhaps you’re right.” Was all I actually said, but Ted must have seen something in my face that said more.

  “You were right to try. It is important not just to accept oneself as others see you but to try to be something different.”

  I was reminded of the evening before my Mother’s funeral and the view of Ted I had had then, of someone who had spent a lifetime being what he had fallen into rather than what he had wanted. He had loved my Mother but, because of the way she and others saw him, he could never be what he wanted to be with her. He had become the respectable, reliable, dull dogsbody for my parents when he was about the age I was now.

  “Did you ever want to rebel Ted? Did you ever want to say ‘the person you all think is me isn’t. I am someone different.”