‘We’ll see,’ she says. ‘Oh, stand still, Kate, stand very still. Quiet. Very quiet.’
About twenty feet away from us, a small bird has emerged from the short, clumped grass, and is rising vertically into the sky. It can’t be, but it looks like the bird is propelled upwards by the force of its own song, which has a sweetness and intensity like nothing I’ve ever heard before. If the loveliest perfume in the world could sing it would make that sound.
‘Do you know what that is, Kate?’ Sally says softly.
Funnily enough, I think I might. ‘It’s not a lark ascending, is it?’
We watch, enraptured, as the bird whirls and twirls, soaring on its own private thermal in an ecstasy of liquid notes.
‘It’s a sign,’ Sally says. ‘I’ve only seen a skylark once before, on the day my dad died. He’s singing for you, Kate.’
‘It’s not a sign,’ I say, and my heart sort of pleats.
‘It’s not a goddam sign. I’m telling you,’ Roy throws in my face.
‘Hey, who asked you to stick your oar in, silly old archivist? Be quiet, please.’
‘The forces of the Universe are not arranged against us. It’s a dumb piece of plastic, not an Old Testament God trying to tell us not to make love.’
‘Yes, Roy, I do remember what Jack said, thank you.’
Lenny and Coco race towards the gate to the car park, but Sally suddenly says she feels a bit wobbly and needs something to eat, so we turn right and drop in at the café. I push open the door and see Emily first. (Emily!) Then Debra. (Deb!) Then Julie. (Julie!) Then Ben, who is filming me on his phone, obviously. Then – oh, I can’t believe it – Candy Stratton, with a smile wider than the Brooklyn Bridge.
I find myself mobbed like a pop star. Arms around me, kisses on my face. ‘Happy birthday, Mum.’
‘Thank you, darling, oh, look who’s here. Look who’s here! Oh my God, what a wonderful surprise. Everyone’s taken time off to be with me!’
Candy stands back a little, awaiting her turn until, finally, we stand there, face to beaming face. ‘What the hell are you doing here, Stratton?’ I say.
‘I wouldn’t miss you getting older than me for the world, Reddy. Hey, what is that foxy garment you’re wearing?’
‘It’s called a fleece.’
‘Honey, you know I love you, but you’re not gonna get laid wearing a sheep.’
The owners have made a cake and there is pink champagne, all arranged by Sally. I blow out the candles – five of them, very tactful, thank you very much – and everyone sings ‘Happy Birthday’. Then Emily and Ben give a joint speech in which they point out that, although their mother is from the past, and always will be, she is actually pretty cool.
‘Mum is a great mum,’ Ben says, his voice cracking, and I feel he is thinking, at that moment, of Richard too. We had been a unit to them for so long – Mum ’n’ Dad – and learning to love us separately would be hard. We will get there, but it will take time.
Back at the house, while the kids are showing Candy and Julie around, Sally hands me a large brown envelope.
‘What’s this? Not another surprise.’
‘If you open the card,’ she says, ‘I believe it will explain.’
It has a painting on the front. A mountain in France, Mont Sainte-Victoire, painted in these vivid blues and purples and soft greens. Cézanne, although it makes me think of the Matisse I saw at Vladimir Velikovsky’s palace. Same sumptuous colours. The card’s inscription is in a familiar hand.
Underneath, Jack has written, ‘While we’re waiting for you to get old and grey, here’s a plane ticket. Totally transferable, front of the bus. Sally gave me your passport details. Lovely woman, by the way. Enjoy the rest of the day with the kids. See you in Provence. Come any time. I’ll be waiting. Hurry. J XXO’
‘I can’t go to him. It’s impossible. The kids and the dog.’
‘That can be taken care of,’ Sally says briskly. ‘I met your Jack. He seems like a very fine person. Pity he’s so poor.’
‘Now is not a good time.’
‘If not now, when? Right, where will I find the cutlery?’
After dinner, while Emily, Ben and Candy are watching Game of Thrones, Julie and I Skype our mother, who seems in high spirits. ‘Can’t believe it’s half a century since I had you, love.’
‘Don’t remind me, Mum.’
‘You’ll always be my baby.’
Then, Julie and I take our drinks out into the garden, wrapped up in coats, so Jules can smoke.
‘So happy you’re here,’ I say.
‘’Course I’m bloody here. Where do the years go, Kath? Not that long since we were leaving our teeth under the pillow for the tooth fairy. Now it’s only a few years till we put our teeth in a glass on the bedside table.’
‘That’s a cheerful thought. By the way, how’s Steven doing?’
She grins. ‘Oh, he’s brilliant, no trouble at all since your American friend got him sorted.’
‘What American friend?’
‘Jack. He said to our Steven that the City of London is full of gamblers, you just have to learn how to play the odds. And he was the man to teach him. He could open a few doors if Steven was willing to smarten up his act. Well, Steven’s that good at figures just like his Auntie Kath, so Jack got him a position as a junior trader. Since Jack came we haven’t had any more bastard loan sharks at the door, any road.’
I’m speechless.
‘I’ll get a rocket for telling you. He said not to mention it. Sworn to secrecy we were. He’s bloody lovely, isn’t he? Mum thought he was great.’
‘Mum met Jack?’
‘Yes. He said he’d pay back what Steven owes in the form of a loan, but Steven’s got to give Jack something every month from his wages. Thank God he’s sorted it.’
‘How did he find you?’
‘Rang round all the Reddys in town. Said he’d always wanted to visit Yorkshire. Interested to see “the place that made her”, that’s what he said. “The place that made her.” Lovely way of speaking, doesn’t he? Is he your boyfriend, then?’
‘God, no.’
‘Well, I’d get in there quick if I was you, love,’ says Julie with a filthy cackle. ‘You’re fifty now, you know. Not many drop-dead-gorgeous rich guys going to be forming a queue, are they?’
‘Thanks, sis. I’ll bear that in mind. More wine?’
After they’ve all gone up to bed, I let Lenny out in the garden for a final wee. The full moon casts a lake of light on the garden and the dog’s inky shadow bounds across it. I breathe deeply. So, that was my fiftieth, I think. Nothing to be feared, plenty to be happy about, not the unbridgeable Rubicon that Calamity Girl was so scared of. I am still amazed by what Julie told me. So kind of Jack to go all that way and help Steven and not take any credit for it either. Julie said he’d sworn them to secrecy. Still, my heart did whisper that he’d done it for me.
A few weeks after my birthday, when both kids had sleepovers with friends and Lenny was in doggy holiday heaven with Coco and Sally, I took my plane ticket out of its brown envelope and booked the flight to Marseille. I texted to say I was coming for the weekend.
Jack to Kate
What kept you?
On the flight, I have the luxury of time to think. For once, it’s just me and my thoughts and Roy, of course, to help me review the twists and turns my life has taken in the months since the belfie.
My marriage has crumbled but, miraculously, my spirit has not. I think back to my surprise party at the café, nearly all my lovelies gathered together in one place, the joy of seeing Candy IRL instead of online. Food for my soul. Emily and Ben at my birthday dinner (lasagne, chips, salad, ice cream, After Eights) so grown up, so pleased that they were cooking for me for a change. Looking at Emily, enchanting in a red-silk dress (my dress, Madam!) I thought: ‘I will probably take years to recover from what she did to herself. We mothers are forever entangled with the people we created.’ I feel Emily’s pain in the body she
sprang from, always will till the day that body is no more, but kids are more resilient than us. Already Em is putting it behind her, starting to look at universities, thinking of her future. Luke is helping. After he came on the scene, the selfies stopped almost overnight. Nothing like seeing your image reflected in the eyes of a besotted boy to remind you that you’re desirable and worthy of love. When someone loves you, really loves you, the opinion of the world doesn’t mean a damn.
Emily and Ben are seeing Richard regularly now and gradually overcoming their instinctive aversion to Joely. After all, she is carrying their baby brother and sister. I was a good wife to Rich, I hope, but I was sleepwalking through life, lulled into that state of spousal somnambulance, not unusual among married couples. You just keep on doing what it is that you do, trying to take up as little space as possible in your own life to make room for everyone else.
Not unhappy is not the same thing as happy. (‘Thank you for the reminder, Roy. Was it Sally who said that?’)
Candy actually. Oh, of course it was. Typical Cand, always insisting, in that American way, on giving yourself permission to be happy or something. For crying out loud, I’m British. I apologise if someone bumps into me. I really thought that, at my time of life, Not Unhappy would do.
I pushed Jack away because I thought he was a threat to my life when, all along, he was my best shot at a happy life. I think of him that afternoon at the hotel, every single thing I have ever wanted in a man plus cucumber sandwiches without the crusts. And work. Going really well at last. Meeting with the chairman the other day, he said that Troy was sacked for bloody screwing things up with Palfreyman, Jay-B was being moved across, and might I consider assuming temporary leadership of the fund while they assessed the situation? I said I would be absolutely delighted to take on my old job, but not on a temporary basis. (That is the kind of thing a desperate woman looking down the barrel of irrelevance would agree to, but not this she-phoenix, not this revenant revived.) Chairman said he’d get back to me. You know, I thought there was no way back to that person I used to be. I thought it was all over for me.
‘Not for you, Kate. It’s not over for you.’
‘Oh, Roy, that was Sally, wasn’t it?’
The first time we spoke. Imagine if I hadn’t gone to Women Returners and met Sal. So indispensible to me now. And Sally’s letter about Antonio, the great love she forfeited: one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, I’m on this plane today. Maybe the Jack thing isn’t so impossible after all? Him in the US mostly, me getting the kids through the last bit of school and university; meeting up, getting the kids used to the idea of him gradually. As the plane begins its descent, the thought still isn’t quite formed. Something like, if I have to save everyone else, I need to start by saving myself first. How hard can it be?
I was expecting Jack to meet me at the airport, but instead there’s a driver holding up a placard with my name on it. We drive north towards Aix then veer east where the land rears up from the bushy green earth. The massive limestone ridge – I recognise the mountain from my birthday card – is our constant companion. It’s so warm here compared to home – like an English summer. ‘Yes, what is it, Roy?’
‘A place in Provence with its own micro-climate where you can sit outside in just a T-shirt in winter. Jack told you about it the first night you had dinner.’ So he did.
We pull up outside some old, peeling iron gates beyond which is a house with a tumbledown tiled roof. A mas, is that what you call it? Still no sign of Jack. A walled garden. My God, look at that. How old is this place? And who does it belong to? Ivy on weathered stone. Dusty skeletons of lavender past. An actual peach tree. (For the first thirteen years of my life, I didn’t know peaches grew on trees. They grew in tins.) My only slight concern is that, much against my will, an image flickers into my mind: of watching Beauty and the Beast, the Disney version, with three-year-old Emily, no more than, oh, fourteen times on successive days when she had chickenpox. Primed by this, I have a genuine fear that I may be welcomed not by a dashing American gent with a large portfolio and kind eyes, but by something angry with a pelt and hooves, and tusks sticking up from his lips. Oh well, you can’t have everything. Cracks in the windows, crumbling edges of bricks: this place needs work. Someone should buy it and love it back to life. Not exactly what I had in mind for a romantic weekend.
A doorway, open, into the cool of a kitchen. I take my shoes off and feel the worn, uneven floor under my feet. On the table is an envelope propped up against a jam jar, containing stalks of lavender. Inhale. Addressed to Kate Reddy. Inside, a card, which says: ‘Belated Happy Fiftieth, Period Gem in Need of Restoration’. Oh, very bloody funny.
‘Hello.’
I run at him, absolutely confident as I kiss the face off him that, this time, I know what I want. Never wanted anything or anyone more. Never will.
I can tell he’s surprised by this new certainty in me, but he doesn’t put up any resistance. ‘Hey, Happy Birthday for six weeks, two days ago.’
‘Thanks.’ Long pause, long gaze around me. ‘Nice place, bit of a wreck, though.’
‘Yes, I thought so.’
‘I was expecting a talking teapot.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘So you do watch children’s cartoons. I knew it.’
‘My guilty secret.’
‘I can handle it. You should see mine.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘Julie told me. What you did for Steven.’
‘I didn’t do it for Steven. Purely selfish. One big worry off your back, more time for you to give to me.’
‘If you say so, but it was a wonderful thing to do. I’m really grateful. Can’t thank you enough.’ I go over to the sink under the window, well, the place the window would be if there was glass in the panes. Jack follows, wraps his arms around me from behind, and I lean back, enjoying the feeling of being held.
‘That mountain, it’s the one on my birthday card.’
‘Vraiment.’
I turn the tap, which judders and jolts. Eventually, water of some description comes out coughing, rusty. I run my hands and wrists under the flow. Take it easy, Kate. Heart is pounding.
‘Don’t drink it,’ Jack says, ‘there’s bottled in the fridge. I also have wine. Quite a bit of it: enough for a couple of hundred years.’
‘Sounds good. How long will we be here, or are we going to stay somewhere with a ceiling? You do realise I packed for the Four Seasons – heels, silk dress. Wish you’d told me we were camping, I’d have brought my fleece.’
‘Mais non, Madame, we have zee four seasons right ’ere. There’s spring outside, voila!, summer in zee aircon-less conservatory, autumn leaves clogging up every single drain and it’s winter all year in zee freezing bedrooms.’
‘Genius. Who owns this place, anyway?’
‘Oh, it kind of belongs to this couple I know.’
‘They must be mad.’
‘Yeah, they kind of are. She’s nuts about doing up old houses. Or maybe she’s just nuts all over. Yeah, maybe that’s it. Completely crazy. I hear she goes and rides horses with the widows of dead rockers. And she lies about her age and cheats at mince pies.’
I shake the water from my hand and turn round.
‘Jack, no.’
‘No what?’
‘Please tell me you haven’t done what I think you’ve done.’
‘I haven’t done anything. Yet. I was going to get you a scarf, but then I saw this over Christmas, when I was driving by, and I thought that we, you and I, us, we could maybe take it on. Work on it together. Beautiful older broad with terrific bones, just needs some care and attention to bring her back to life. A project. Something for us to invest in. I’m not a great fixer-upper, but I can take instructions from a woman who is.’
‘You cannot be serious. When am I going to find the time to live in a bloody French ruin and do it up?’
‘Hey, if you don’t like the idea I can call the agent, say we’re not int
erested and get the scarf instead.’
I can feel my eyes roaming around, seeing what could be done here. If you opened up the back of the house and put in big windows, the view of the mountain would be spectacular. Piotr could come and help. Paint the shutters that perfect blue-grey that I love. Suddenly, Roy is back from the stacks, bringing something he wants me to remember. ‘Not now, Roy. Can’t you see I’m busy?’ But he hands me the memory anyway – a piece of piercing wisdom from my dear friend Sally: ‘If I had my time over, I would make the leap and choose life and love, not duty and convention. Only you can decide what’s right for you, of course, but I want you to know that you will have my full support if you do make a life with Jack.’
‘Jack?’
‘Yes, Ma’am?’
‘You’re not paying for this, you know. It’s going to be fifty-fifty, right down the middle. But only if I get my promotion. Only if they give me my fund back.’
‘That’s a yes.’
‘No, it’s not a yes. It’s just not a no.’
‘Not a no is British for yes. I can work with that. Kate darling, for your birthday I wanted there to be a kind of joint present, for the two of us.’
‘Very thoughtful, Mr Abelhammer. Let me guess, a tandem? A see-saw? A tennis court? A game of snap?’
‘Well, snap comes into it. Quite a lot of snap. Matching cards, over and over again.’
‘So, what is it, this surprise gift for both of us? Jack?’
He takes my damp hands in his, leans close, then closer, then closer still, and says to me:
‘Time.’
28
AFTER ALL
Sixteen months later.
Barbara died towards the end of summer. We were celebrating Emily’s exam results in a pizza place when Donald rang to tell me that the children’s grandmother was gone. The last time I’d visited them up in Yorkshire he got upset because Barbara was taking part in a musical afternoon at the care home.
How Hard Can It Be? Page 41