Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon

by Linda Newbery

  It was the kind of remark Anna had come to see as typical of her: exasperating but true. Anna thought how cocooned Rose was here, if she could be cocooned and at the same time exposed to the Atlantic – so removed from cities and commerce and the need to earn a living; because surely, unless Rose’s paintings were far more successful than Anna had reason to suspect, she couldn’t support herself by her earnings or contribute a great deal to the family finances. Yet Anna did agree.

  ‘I don’t know how to live in London, either.’

  ‘Why do you, then?’

  ‘Well – because it’s convenient, I suppose. Has been, anyway.’ Anna paused; she would have to abandon the fiction that she was living happily with Martin, and wished now that she hadn’t mentioned his name. Then she saw that Rose wasn’t listening, wasn’t really curious. Convenience had never been much of a priority for Rose: her own, or anyone else’s.

  Time was running out. They had lunch at a pub in the next bay before walking back, gusted and buffeted, the wind behind them now; Rose called a warning to Euan not to go too close to the cliff-edge. Anna had spent very little time alone with Rose and saw now that she wasn’t going to; that Rose had, possibly, engineered the windy walk and the pub lunch with other people around them precisely to prevent Anna from confronting her with things she preferred not to examine.

  ‘You must come again, and stay longer,’ Michael said. ‘You and Martin.’

  ‘Oh yes, do,’ Rose echoed; but already Anna knew that if they met again it would be at her own or Michael’s instigation, not Rose’s.

  It was Michael who drove Anna to Penzance station. Outside the cottage, Rose hugged Anna and said, ‘Thank you for coming.’ She seemed to mean it.

  ‘Do you still paint, Anna?’ Michael asked, in the car. ‘You were so good.’

  ‘No, I … gave up.’

  The truthful answer would have sounded feeble. I stopped because of Rose. I haven’t painted since the sixth form. Rose was always ahead of me. Always better. Always showing me what I couldn’t do. I could only copy, and fail. To avoid explaining, she said, ‘What about you? Why physics?’

  ‘Study it or teach it?’

  ‘Well, either. Both.’

  ‘Because the laws of physics are the foundation of the universe,’ he said. ‘The laws of matter and energy, time and space. Physics explains everything.’

  ‘Can everything be explained?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘If only we knew what questions to ask.’

  On the train Anna leaned against the seat-back and closed her eyes. Rose was receding faster than the train could travel, growing smaller and smaller as if seen through the wrong end of a telescope. Much farther, and Anna knew she would doubt that she had met Rose at all. In her bag the small turnstone painting, cushioned in its bubble-wrap, signed with Rose’s new name, was the only real evidence; she had to restrain herself from taking it out and tearing off the wrapping to convince herself.

  How did Rose do it? – inspire such devotion in the men who loved her? First Jamie Spellman, openly declaring his love; then Michael, shaping his life and career around her peculiar needs, commuting to Plymouth each day so that Rose could stay in her remote sanctuary with sea and birds for company. Rose seemed to command unquestioning loyalty, and love far more extravagant than Anna felt she would ever have or deserve.

  I’ve made such a mess of my life, Anna thought. Failed at everything.

  Pale moorland rose now on either side, flashes of farms and church spires, a river; already the countryside looked less distinctively Cornish, and Rose was left behind. As soon as Anna had a signal for her mobile she tried calling, got voicemail, and left a text message instead: Found Rose. On train back to London.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Sandra, 1968

  At the technical college Sandy met Donny Taverner, a mild-mannered, industrious boy who was studying electrical engineering on day-release. They first spoke in the cafeteria when, passing, he jolted her table, sloshing a puddle of coffee across the Formica top. She snatched away her pencil case and shorthand notebook; he apologized profusely and scurried about with paper napkins, mopping up. A week later, when she met him again, in the lift, he asked her name, and told her his. He was tall, dark-haired, with a rather beaky nose – nothing special, she thought at first, but she liked the way he looked at her with frank admiration. What she noticed was his hands – long-fingered and expressive like Roland’s, hands that might have been made for playing the guitar or piano.

  That same afternoon he was waiting for her as she left for her bus. Shyly he asked if she’d go to the cinema with him. She agreed, thinking Well, why not? That Saturday they went to see The Graduate; he insisted on paying, walked her home afterwards and asked if he might kiss her. He took her nervousness for inexperience, and was so tentative and gentle that she wondered if he’d ever kissed anyone before. It felt like playing the part of a girl with a nice boyfriend, rather in the way she’d played mummies and daddies as a child.

  They went to the cinema again the following week, and soon Donny invited her home. His family was an extended one, with aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins always round at each other’s houses for Sunday dinner or tea, games of cards and Monopoly. Gusts of laughter broke out about nothing in particular; there was much teasing and reminiscing and showing of photographs, and everyone was plied at intervals with tea and home-made cake. Sandy looked on in astonishment; never had she met people with such a gift for making celebrations out of the stuff of everyday life. From her first visit, she was accepted as Donny’s girlfriend. He was touchingly proud of her, protective, as if the hardships of life might be too much for her to bear alone.

  ‘Have you got brothers and sisters, Sandra?’ his mother asked – Donny always called her Sandra, considering Sandy to be a boy’s name.

  ‘I had a brother,’ she said flatly. ‘He died last year.’

  Teacups were lowered, faces aghast. ‘Oh, no! You poor lass. What a terrible, terrible thing. Awful, unbearable.’ Mrs Taverner’s eyes filled with tears; one of the aunts got up and enveloped Sandy in an ample, perfumed hug. ‘Donny, you be sure to treat her kindly, poor little thing.’

  Sandy resisted bringing Donny to her own home. When at last she did invite him, she felt embarrassed for her parents, for their stilted attempts to put him at ease. The Tonbridge house still felt like temporary lodgings; there were too few people in it, too little laughter, too much silence while every remark was weighed and assimilated.

  ‘You’ve found a nice boy there,’ Sandy’s mother said, when he had gone home. ‘You hang onto him.’

  On Thursday evenings, when the Taverner parents went to a ballroom dancing class, Sandy and Donny had the house to themselves. They would watch TV or listen to music, cuddled together on the sofa. Donny’s kisses became more searching; his hand groped with her buttons or felt its way up her thigh. He said that he loved her: not as a great declaration, but as if it proceeded naturally from spending time together. He was so uncomplicated, so easy to be with, that she could find no reason not to love him back. He didn’t expect sex, just a progression, step by step, of fumbling and exploring; she let him think he was leading her where she hadn’t been before.

  ‘We could get engaged, if you want,’ he told her, breathing heavily.

  Sandy’s mother saw this coming. ‘You haven’t told him, have you, about – you know? You wouldn’t be so silly? You’ve got a good chance here, to settle down with a decent boy. Don’t go throwing it away.’

  She was in a Thomas Hardy novel. Before, she’d been Fanny Robin, dragging herself to the workhouse. Now, as Tess, she was offered a chance of happiness. In the story, the natural world seemed to throw all its energy into uniting Tess with Angel Clare; it was early summer, there were dewy mornings and long-shadowed evenings, cows in the pasture and fresh milk for breakfast. Tess tormented herself with the secret that she had lived with Alec Stoke d’Urberville and borne his child. The novel was subtitled A
Pure Woman, a subject on which Sandy had written an essay: Hardy’s championing of a fallen woman had been considered outrageous, but even now people talked about living in sin.

  She thought of telling Donny about what she now thought of as her past: but how should she broach the subject? Shouldn’t she have told him already? They couldn’t plan a life together with such a huge silence bulking between them like an iceberg. The guilt of concealment added to the guilt of the secret itself. She must find a way; he would have to know.

  Donny spoke of getting engaged in the summer, but surprised her, one Thursday evening at his parents’ house, by presenting her with a small cube-shaped box. ‘Open it!’ His arm was round her; he smiled at her hesitation.

  ‘Oh, what—?’ She knew, of course, that it would be an engagement ring. She’d imagined that some time in the future they’d go and choose one together, after they’d had serious discussions, made plans. In between was a large and comfortable buffer of time during which everything she needed to tell him would naturally emerge. But here it was: a small single diamond, sparkling at her from its nest of satin, promising security, the status of being loved and wanted. Its small circle would enclose her with Donny where no one else could reach them.

  ‘I had to guess the size. I was going to wait, but I saw this and knew you’d love it. Here, let me.’ Donny reached for her left hand and slid the ring onto her finger. She extended her hand, turning it this way and that; the ring was so delicate, so pretty. She could be like other girls at college, talking about her fiancé, her wedding plans.

  Donny lifted her hand and kissed it. ‘You do like it, don’t you? I wish I could afford a better one. But it fits all right, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, yes, it’s gorgeous.’ She twisted the ring off her finger and handed it to him. ‘But … Donny, I can’t get engaged. We can’t get married. You’ll have to take it back.’

  ‘What are you on about?’ He looked at her in bemusement. ‘What’s all this about?’

  ‘I can’t marry you, because—’

  ‘Because what? Come on.’

  A tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Because I—’

  The words wouldn’t come; they dried up in her throat. How could she spoil this moment, this little tableau he’d staged? He was so trusting, so good; he wanted nothing more than to please her. If she told him now, if she brought out the black box of her past and thrust it in his face, how would that help? It would mean anguish and tears; it would be punishing him for something he hadn’t done. Wasn’t it kinder to go along with his wishes, accept the security he offered?

  ‘Because I’m scared.’

  Donny let out his breath. ‘Is that it? Oh, Sandra, you silly, silly thing – come here.’ He took her in his arms, kissed away her tears. ‘What is there to be scared of, you and me together? I’ll look after you, I promise. I love you. I only want you to be happy.’

  They were married soon after Sandy’s nineteenth birthday. The week before, Neil Armstrong had stepped onto the surface of the moon, and the world seemed to have entered a new era.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Anna woke to cold dawn light showing through the curtains, and the silence of the back bedroom at Rowan Lodge. She clicked on the radio, the events of the weekend slowly coming back to her.

  Rose.

  Rose was alive. Rose had a life.

  It was the culmination of all Anna had wanted, but she felt no sense of exultation; only flatness, as if she’d lost something, rather than found it. The Rose she’d found in Cornwall, Rosalind Owen, Rosalind Sullivan, wasn’t the girl who had been her sister; she would never get Rose Taverner back. The Rose of her memory was bigger and louder; she was cleverer, more beautiful, more ambitious, more talented than the woman Anna had met.

  Ruth had driven her here last night, having phoned in response to Anna’s text message, offering to meet her at Woodford station. Their last conversation had been huffy, but Ruth had listened, and exclaimed, and asked questions, while Anna told her about Michael, about Rose, about the life they had made for themselves.

  ‘When are you going to tell your parents?’

  ‘Soon. But I’ve no idea how. I’ll have to go home – I can’t do it on the phone. It’s too complicated.’

  Now, stirring, feeling chilly air against her shoulders as she emerged from the cocoon of duvet, Anna noticed the shabbiness and bareness of this room in the early light, and thought without relish of the journey to work, the uneventful day ahead, and her return here alone.

  It’s a start, she told herself, a new start. That’s how to think of it. There’s no point looking back. It’ll be spring soon, and everything will look different.

  Ruth had mentioned that Martin would be at a conference in Norwich from Tuesday to Thursday. He didn’t tell me that, Anna thought, but saw an opportunity to clear her things out of his flat. She hired a car for Wednesday evening, and did the job briskly, not letting herself linger. Books and CDs, clothes, shoes and toiletries: her belongings didn’t amount to much, and it was easy to remove all trace of herself. There were a few kitchen items and some bedding and tableware she and Martin had bought together, but she left all those, not wanting him to think she’d taken anything that wasn’t rightfully hers. After a final check round she took her door-key off the ring and placed it on the table.

  She considered leaving a note, but couldn’t think of anything worth saying.

  Cassandra is at the hatch, speaking to a patient about physiotherapy. ‘Yes, Mr Goss comes three afternoons a week. Here’s his card – you can contact him directly. He’s very good, people say.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll give him a call.’

  ‘Lucky thing,’ Jilly mutters when the young woman has gone. ‘I’d lie down on his couch any day.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you, Jill,’ says one of the nurses, in the office to collect blood test results, ‘but he’s gay. He lives in Westerham, plays for the same cricket team as my Geoff.’

  ‘No!’ says Jilly, eyes wide. ‘Are you sure? He wears a wedding ring.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. His partner’s called Adam – he’s an anaesthetist. He plays sometimes as well.’

  Cassandra stares down at her keyboard, feeling her face hot and burning to the tips of her ears. Pauline has noticed; they’ll giggle about her after she’s gone, Pauline and Jilly, like a pair of fifteen-year-olds; they’ll joke about starchy Sandra, so buttoned up, so conventional that she’s horrified by the mere mention of homosexuality. ‘What century does she think we’re in?’ she imagines them saying.

  That’s all right. Let them gossip. There’s not a chance they’ll ever guess.

  Don meets her from work today, in the car; they’ve arranged to have lunch at the garden centre and look for a white clematis she had admired in her magazine.

  ‘Anna phoned,’ he tells her, as she fastens her seat belt. ‘She’s coming tomorrow evening. Wants to stay the night – that’s OK, isn’t it? On her own, she said. I had the impression she’s got something to tell us.’

  She looks at him in surprise. ‘Really? Does it mean she’s – you know, after all—’

  ‘No, no. It’s not that. She wouldn’t say. I don’t know – when we spoke the other day I got the impression something was wrong between her and Martin.’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think so. Martin’s so reliable.’

  Don sighs. ‘I know, love. Is Anna, though? That’s the thing.’

  ‘Of course she is! What a thing to say!’

  Cassandra falls silent, briefly wondering, before her thoughts turn back to Philip Goss. What if he changes his hours, or arrives early one day? He might call at reception for his messages, come face to face with her, in front of the others. What then? Will he pretend not to know her? Maybe he’ll see only a dull, respectable woman well into middle age. She tries to comfort herself with that. He probably won’t look closely enough to recognize.

  But to live from day to day with the threat of that – no, no, it’s more than her
nerves can stand. What, then – what can she do about him?

  Maybe it isn’t the same Philip Goss. She’s thought of that, tried to convince herself that it can’t be. It’s not an uncommon name; there are probably hundreds of men who share it. But now, with the news that he’s gay – her mind is full of what that means. Or might have meant, back then.

  One leaves, another returns. Zanna came that day, so Rose left. Now Phil is here because Zanna’s gone. There’s a strange logic to it, if only she could work it out. But Roland – Roland will never come back. She knows that. Because of her, and because of him. Because of Phil.

  The damage words can do! A few misplaced words. Zanna, on the phone in tears, saying she’d done something terrible, something she didn’t mean. A quick look, she said, that’s all I wanted. Just to see the house and garden, a glimpse of your life. I’d have gone away quietly. How could I know she’d—

  A phone call to add to her stash of secrets. Don must never know. It’s part of the pattern. Something said, something done, small actions or remarks that weigh so heavily and can’t be unsaid.

  But it’s not fair that she should carry all the blame. Always, always, that’s how it’s been.

  She firms her resolve. Tomorrow. She’ll watch out for him in the car park; there are plenty of shrubs there for cover. She knows what time he arrives. She has to be sure it’s him – or, better by far, confirm that it’s not him. She feels trapped, clasped by her seat belt, guarded by Don. She is held at bay. They’re like phantoms, the people in her life, in a complicated dance, of changing patterns and formations. They grab hold of her and whirl her round and release her so that she loses all balance and spins off giddily. She can’t keep hold of herself, can’t be sure who she is.

  ‘You’re quiet, love.’ Don is looking at her with affectionate concern. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Oh, just thinking.’ She smiles back at him, amazed at how easy it is, as if she’s looking down at herself from some way above, wondering what she might do; he has no idea. ‘About the best place for that clematis. Feet in the shade, head in the sun, that’s what they like.’