by Sue Watson
Chapter Nine
The next day at work Anna is worried about being a mum – and I worry Isobel’s worried about not being a mum. Consequently, as their mum I’m now worried about both of them. Being a mother is not just about me, it’s about balance and sacrifice, and Corrine’s rousing speech about me looking after me and chasing those tomorrows fades slightly along with Peter’s ‘inspirational’ speech about my dreams of showing in galleries in NYC. It all sounds very lovely but I’m not sure when I’d have had the time, with nappies to change, hearts to mend and children to love and care for. I have to smile. And to think I believed it had been me who was the naive one who knew nothing about the world.
‘I can’t talk to Emma,’ Anna’s saying. ‘She told me to get out of her grill the other day.’ She shrugs.
‘What’s a grill?’
‘I presume it’s some teen-speak for “get out of my face”, who knows?’
I smile. Emma and Katie’s dialogue is often peppered with words no one over twenty-five seems to understand.
‘I can only imagine what my mother would have said if I’d suggested she “get out of my grill”,’ I laugh.
‘Good old Margaret,’ Anna sighs.
‘Oh, talking of Margaret, I’m meeting the boy she didn’t approve of . . . I’m going to see Peter again,’ I segue nicely. I don’t want to make a big thing about Peter because we’re just old friends, but at the same time I feel I should let the girls know I’m seeing him again.
‘Oh . . . good. Don’t get too carried away,’ Anna warns, in my mother’s voice.
‘I won’t, Margaret, and thank you for your advice, but I’m old enough to look after myself.’
‘You say that but you haven’t “seen” anyone since before you married Dad. I worry it’s too much too soon.’
‘Anna, it’s lunch with an old friend. I won’t be leaping into bed with him or running off to Vegas for a quickie wedding.’
‘I hadn’t even thought of that,’ she laughs, but I know she’s worried I’m going to get myself into some kind of emotional turmoil. Perhaps she’s right, but I’m beginning to realise that to really live your life you have to sometimes step out of your comfort zone.
‘I wish I was your age and could float off for nice lunches,’ she sighs. ‘But when I’m not a taxi service for kids, I spend my days working, shopping, cooking, cleaning and arranging orthodontist appointments.’
‘Yes, being old has its upside. I thought I’d never get used to living without you girls but there are bonuses to having grown-up kids who’ve flown the nest. I can stay home and do just as I please, or go out and not worry about picking anyone up or getting back to cook children’s teas. I’ve seen the timetable on your fridge, and it’s a bloody matrix,’ I laugh. ‘But as much as I like my freedom, you know I’m here when you need me to taxi, cook, take to orthodontists . . . whatever.’
‘Thanks, Mum, but no need for both of us to live like taxi-driving hermits,’ she sighs. ‘You get out there and enjoy yourself . . . but just be careful.’
Later, Isobel calls me. ‘Anna says you’re going out again. Have a lovely time, but if you need a lift back or anything just call me.’
‘Thank you but I think I will be fine.’ I say this kindly but wish they’d stop mollycoddling me.
‘And don’t get into any compromising situations.’
‘As I told your sister, we are merely going for lunch, I’m not going to leap on him, I’m not a panther.’
‘I think you mean cougar, Mum.’
‘I’m not one of those either.’
‘I should hope not!’ she laughs before putting down the phone. I wish everyone would stop telling me what not to do. Peter, Corrine, the girls – has anybody bothered to notice that I have got to the age of sixty-four, which indicates that I am capable of looking after myself? And as for Isobel’s instructions re the compromising positions, I don’t think either of our backs could take it.
Today I’m working on a huge birthday bouquet in pale pinks and blues and find myself staring at a cluster of blue hydrangeas and remembering a date I once had with Peter. We met at the cinema, he was waiting on the steps clutching a spray of them and I thought I might die from sheer joy at the sight.
I held the pretty blue flowers to my chest with one hand, as he offered me his elbow to link my other arm through. I felt like a queen with Peter by my side – that’s how he made me feel, that with him I could be anything, anyone.
It was so cramped in the cinema our shoulders were touching, and I was overcome by the intoxicating aftershave warmth emanating from him. I’d never been this close to a real man before – my brothers and Dad didn’t count – this was something quite different which came with new sensations. Still holding the hydrangeas I gripped the stems as his arm snaked around my shoulders during the film. It stayed there for ages and I desperately hoped this was a prelude to a kiss. My dress was sleeveless and as his hand moved down to my arm and rested on my bare skin I had to catch my breath. After a little while he slowly, gently, began to caress my arm, running his fingers up and down my skin, causing my stomach to flip and my flesh to prickle with delight. Then just when I thought I couldn’t take any more he leaned into me, his breath hot on my neck. My chest went into spasm as the dampness of his lips brushed against my collarbone and I was overwhelmed, wanting to scream with pleasure at this strange and wonderful magic. I ached for him to kiss me and turned my head towards his, our lips almost touching, when the man next to me stood up and asked if he could get past. Peter pulled his arm away as the man climbed over us, almost knocking over what was left of our popcorn and ruining a beautiful moment. After that, Peter took out a cigarette and left my shoulder naked and unloved and I was so frustrated, just longing for him to touch me again.
But, too soon, the lights went up and I dreaded having to move apart and end any chance of being kissed by him that night and I think he felt the same. Everyone was moving around us but it seemed like we were the only two people there, groggy from the warmth and the dark and a mutual, unquenched desire. I couldn’t tell you what the film Oliver! was actually about, I’d thought only of Peter’s hand on my arm. I have never been able to watch that film without recalling the erotic intensity yet simple innocence of that moment between us.
Today, Peter and I meet in Albert Square. It’s his idea to go to where the Kardomah Coffee House once stood. The name is still on the side of the doorway and we touch it and remember the way we were and I appreciate the romance of it all. He hands me a large head of blue hydrangeas, as he did all those years ago, and I’m moved – he remembers the little things. For a while we are lost in time, standing in the middle of Albert Square, the centre of our swirling past and our gentle present. Our then, and our now.
‘I used to tell Margaret I was knitting with Anita when really I was meeting you,’ I laugh later at lunch as we stay on safe ground talking about the happy times. ‘I got away with it too – though she did scrutinise me on the intricacies of the purl stitch when I left the house in my new dress.’
‘You were quite a rebel,’ he says.
I think of the constant tussle between Margaret and me during that time, and what used to make me mad with frustration now makes me smile. ‘That’s a bit short to go knitting in . . . ’ was her opening remark as I’d tried to leave the house without an inquisition.
I was always so uptight and excited about meeting Peter I just wanted to escape. I wished I could have told my mother I was going out with a boy – after all, I was seventeen. Some girls could share things like that with their parents, but Margaret wasn’t one of those mums who smoked or danced to music on transistor radios in the kitchen. No, Margaret was a God-fearing 1930s matriarch brought up on bread and dripping and no sex until you’re married – and probably never again after you’d conceived. I knew if I told her about Peter, she’d want to control the relationship in some way, she couldn’t leave anything alone.
‘Do you think she knew you were lying
to her?’ Peter says, opening the lunch menu.
‘Oh God, I hope not. I feel bad now just thinking of the awful way I spoke to her – she couldn’t do or say anything right as far as I was concerned. I still feel guilty about that even now.’
‘Stop blaming yourself. Your mother wasn’t easy. You gave her a hard time, but she did you too. She never let you out of her sight and everything you did was met with suspicion. No wonder you lied to her.’ He makes me feel better about myself, my behaviour back then; he is gently erasing the guilt I’ve lived with.
It’s nice being with someone who’s known you for a long time, before life changed you. I miss the shared history I had with Mike and take comfort in Peter’s easy references to Margaret and the girl I used to be. I don’t have to explain anything to him, and I love that he knows my story and the people from my first few chapters. He knew me then and knows me still.
‘But as a mother now I can see Margaret’s side of things. She was just trying to protect me,’ I explain when the waiter brings the wine. We both choose the same meal, a roast vegetable wrap with guacamole and sweet potato chips on the side.
He’s now looking at me. ‘She did everything out of love, in the same way my parents did, but sometimes it was hard to swallow. I came to your house a few months after, you know. Your mother told me you didn’t want to see me again.’
I am shocked at this revelation. ‘Really? I had no idea . . . I often wondered if you’d write . . . ’
‘I did,’ he says.
‘I never saw any letters,’ I sigh, feeling tears spring to my eyes. He wordlessly hands me a napkin and I discreetly wipe them away. I am upset that Mum would do that, knowing how much I’d loved him. I thought he’d just given up on me, that everything we’d had together had meant nothing. To hear that this was not the case upsets me now after all those years of hurting.
‘If you’d seen them, would you have written back? Called me? I included my contact numbers.’
‘I honestly don’t know what I would have done. I wish I’d known because I would have thought better of you over the years, realised that I meant something to you, but in other ways it could have been disastrous. I was a mess for a while . . . and then I met Mike. I think if I’d seen a letter when I was first married, it would have been terrible for me and him. It would have been unsettling at best – and who knows, I was so mixed up I may even have tried to find you and where would that have left me?’
‘Perhaps with me? Together again . . . a happy ending?’
‘I had my happy ending, eventually with Mike. After you I needed someone I could rely on and who I knew wasn’t going to run out on me at the first sign of a problem.’
‘You must have hated me.’
‘I did – but I loved you too.’
Margaret was so supportive of my relationship with Mike, she didn’t want Peter coming back and causing me pain. She knew I’d be torn and if I was married and pregnant when he wrote, it would have been so distressing for me to read the letters, to see him. In a funny way she knew me better than I knew myself. She kept me safe from Peter and instinctively knew that Mike was right for me at the time.
‘You thought that I’d simply forgotten you?’
‘I did for a while,’ I say, ‘but my new life was happy and that wiped away much of the hurt and resentment.’
‘Yes, but you may have chosen a different life if you’d known I still loved you.’
‘Perhaps – but I’ve no regrets. We get what we deserve in this life and our fate was sealed that day, when I told you . . . ’ I can’t finish the sentence, can’t bear to hear myself say it. He seems to understand.
‘I thought you hated me, resented me.’
‘I did, for a while . . . quite a while,’ I say.
I see the regret in his eyes. I know now he’s suffered as much as I have – but perhaps it’s been worse for him because he was the one who caused the break-up. It’s probably the wine but I can’t help it, I reach out and touch his hand.
‘Don’t do that,’ he says.
I flinch and pull my hand away.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean . . . it just brings back memories and makes me want what I can’t have, what I threw away.’
‘Now it’s my turn to give you advice – let’s just enjoy the now. I think you and I are about good times – the minute there’s a problem you panic and leave.’
‘Do I?’
‘Yes, you always have, but that’s okay because this is just a friendship, no strings, no blame.’
He looks at me and nods slowly. I need to lighten the mood, there’s no point having lunch with an old lover if we’re just going to bicker and make each other feel bad.
‘Hey,’ I say, resting my head on my hand, ‘remember our first kiss at the bus stop?’
He smiles and we wander back together, to a bus stop years ago in the soft, relentless Manchester rain.
About two months into our friendship he walked me to the bus stop, put both arms around my waist and gazed into my eyes. ‘I can’t wait until tomorrow, it’s at least ten hours before I’ll see you again,’ he’d said, his breath on my face, his cheek touching mine. I swear anyone passing must have heard the pounding of my heart as he leaned in and kissed me with those soft, warm, smoky lips. Suddenly there was no rain, no dirty pavements, no graffiti-decorated bus stop. I was on a beach, the waves lapping around me as his mouth gently opened mine. My legs almost gave way, and I wanted to sink into that imaginary sand with him. My heart was stuffed with candy floss and I glittered with love and lust and happiness – and standing at that bus stop in the rain, I knew this was what I’d been waiting for all my life.
‘You were my first kiss,’ I say now as we order coffee.
‘I remember it so well,’ he sighs. ‘Your hair was damp and your eyelashes had raindrops on them.’
‘Looking back it was all so intense: you were too handsome, too clever and far too much for my young and fragile heart,’ I say with a giggle. ‘I was all over the place.’
‘Ah, but we were teenagers and that’s how love is when you’re young – it’s a vivid swirling of emotions you can’t harness. I felt it too, I was just better at covering it up – I swaggered around a lot in those days.’
We drink our coffee and I think of that kiss and I swear I hear the rain on the plastic roof of the bus stop and feel his lips on mine all over again. The years have faded the memories, like sunlight on silk, and I can’t always remember what I was wearing or what was said, but the strength of those feelings will always be imprinted on my heart. I’ve come to imagine that time in pale watercolours on thick, white paper. Soft, gentle strokes of the past, muted pastel shades of the blossoming of spring, first love, now faded and patchy in parts, but the picture is still there.
By the time we’ve drunk our coffee the mood has lightened, and I’m starting to enjoy reliving the lovely moments we shared. If I don’t there’s no point in doing this, no point in us meeting up and being miserable.
‘Shall we have another glass of something?’ he says, a sign he wants to make our lunch last longer – and I’m glad, because I’m having a good time. We’re only having a drink, just two old friends, it’s nothing.
‘I hope you’re not trying to get me drunk, Peter Moreton.’
‘I can’t believe you’d think that of me, Rosie Draper.’
‘Carter . . . my married name is Carter. And I have no intention of climbing into the back of your Morris Minor like I used to, so don’t get any ideas.’
‘Damn, and it’s parked outside, waiting for the moment. Okay, Mrs Carter – I shall keep myself to myself as your mother would wish.’
He orders us some drinks and I scold myself. Why would I even say that . . . about climbing into the back of his car? I’m the one saying ‘just friends’. The alcohol is talking; I must stop now.
‘Talking of Margaret, I think you said your dad died – did she ever remarry?’ he asks.
‘Oh no. There was only ever my dad
for Margaret.’
‘Oh that’s sad, did she pine for him?’
‘Pine? Margaret? No, I meant there was only my dad who’d put up with her. Margaret never pined for anyone.’
He laughs.
‘Except Princess Diana. She never quite came to terms with “Poor Diana’s death” . . . you’d think she was related to her. First there was that tell-all book with the “wicked” revelations,’ I say in mock horror. ‘Then the candid TV interviews, the “Squidgy” tapes, the tragic death, followed by all the conspiracy theories. Margaret never got over it.’
He laughs, his eyes dancing, enjoying my silly story. My family have heard all my silly stories and it’s nice to have a new audience.
I feel my eyes prick with tears as I think of Margaret now. She was so loyal, always a staunch supporter of those she loved, she was there when you needed her and there when you didn’t. And it never fails to take my breath away at how much I miss her.
‘I always say to the girls, thank God your nan never lived to see Prince Charles marry “that woman”.’ I say this mimicking Margaret’s ‘outraged’ voice and he laughs loudly. I like that I can still make him laugh.
‘One can only imagine the hand-wringing scenes,’ he joins in, adding in mock seriousness, ‘Makes one think God may have a plan after all.’
‘Don’t you dare talk about God in a wine bar,’ I say in Margaret’s voice and we smile at each other. He gets me, he always has.
I don’t know what will happen next, I don’t even know if it will involve Peter, but meeting him again has reminded me I had a life before. I had a ‘me’ once . . . and despite my greying hair and sagging flesh I’m not so different to the girl he once loved. Here with him I feel like we’re slowly morphing into the people we were. Or perhaps we never really changed.
‘So what are your plans?’ he suddenly asks.
‘You mean tonight?’
‘No,’ he laughs. ‘I mean for the rest of your life.’