The Alone Alternative

by Linda MacDonald

  After the meal, business concluded, he tells Conrad about Jessica.

  ‘And you turned her down, I’ll bet,’ says Conrad, taking a long slow drink from his pint. His ponytail has been replaced by a grizzled mat that is kept in check by his current girlfriend, an ex student from the 1990s who has returned to work in the department as a research assistant. Conrad and his wife Sandra are still not officially separated or even living apart, but continue to do their own thing by mutual agreement.

  ‘You remember Marianne from a few years back?’ says Edward.

  ‘I certainly do. “Fanclub” – of the undisclosed dimensions.’

  ‘Harriet found her on Twitter and we’ve exchanged a few tweets and a couple of emails. It transpires her husband died last year.’

  ‘Ho-ho,’ says Conrad, matter-of-factly. ‘Say no more.’

  ‘So even if I was interested in Jessica – which I’m not – I think it best to steer clear of complications with anyone else. At least until I see if and how things develop with Marianne.’

  ‘Two merry widows in pursuit. When you’ve selected, send the other one in my direction. I have a spare slot on Fridays.’

  *

  When Edward returns home, he finds a curiously brief email from Marianne, completely ignoring the suggestion that she pay him a visit.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 20th March 2012, 17.54

  Subject: Catching up

  Dear Edward,

  You have said nothing about the whereabouts of your children.

  love,

  Marianne

  *

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 20th March 2012, 22.42

  Subject: Re: Catching up

  Dear Marianne,

  James is still with Kate. Both have completed PhDs and are currently working on the effects of wind turbines on marine and bird life. They are based in Cumbria (Maryport) and researching the Robin Rigg wind farm in the Solway – but the job involves other installations around the UK, so they keep moving.

  Rachel is in London, a copywriter for an advertising agency, a slave to deadlines. Christopher is learning to be a chef with Felicity in Italy. Harriet is a biology teacher at her old school in Exeter, still living at home, and looking after me.

  What about Holly?

  love,

  Edward

  *

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 20th March 2012, 23.07

  Subject: Re: Catching up

  Dear Edward,

  Holly is flat-sharing in Guildford, working as a solicitor, still single.

  Marianne

  Another short response. It is impossible to gauge her tone. Over the next two evening there are more emails and more tentative disclosures about dismal topics such as the illnesses and deaths of both sets of parents, the state of flux of their respective lives and whether the current property market makes it an unwise time to downshift. When it seems there are no more life events to catch up on, Edward decides to be brave.

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 22nd March 2012, 20.41

  Subject: Re: Catching up

  Have you given my invitation any further thought?

  Edward

  Harriet would probably tell him this was rash, but he knows Marianne will be cautious and unlikely to take any chances unless she is sure his original offer was serious.

  He is about to take Meg for her last walk when the house phone rings and as soon as he hears the voice, he remembers. With all this distraction, he has completely forgotten about his second and thus far provisional meeting with Jessica which was suggested for this very evening.

  ‘I’m sorry. I completely forgot to let you know. Been extremely busy with work.’

  ‘I’m at the Retreat now. I’ve been waiting for the best part of an hour, feeling like a lemon.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Jessica, but we hadn’t confirmed.’

  ‘I assumed, as I hadn’t heard from you, that we were on. I thought better of you, Edward.’ This is Olivia’s tone. Or Felicity in a bad mood.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ says Edward again. And he is genuinely sorry that she has misunderstood. He had intended to make an excuse.

  There is a silence during which he can hear her breathing. He shifts his weight onto the other foot, unsure of what to say next.

  ‘It’s not too late,’ she says.

  ‘I’ve already eaten, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A drink, then?’

  My God, she is persistent. ‘I’m sorry, Jessica. But I have work to do for tomorrow,’ he lies.

  She is terse. ‘I could have made other plans. My evening is wasted.’ Then a sudden switch of mood. ‘Make it up to me. How about tomorrow, or Saturday?’

  Edward panics. This is the response of a woman who is a little too desperate. He is alarmed. ‘Jessica, much as I enjoyed our previous meal together, as I said afterwards, I’m not quite ready for what I think you have in mind. I have a lot on at present and I can’t afford any emotional distraction.’

  There is another long pause.

  Another switch of mood, this time she is businesslike. ‘When you provisionally agreed to meeting me again, I supposed … Never mind, I’m having a party on the twenty-eighth of April. Put it in your diary. Summer will be on the way and you’ll have had more time to sort out your life. I’d very much like to see you there. It will be a relaxed atmosphere. Mostly locals.’

  ‘Okay,’ says Edward, deducing that this is the quickest way to save face and get her off the phone.

  Afterwards Harriet says, ‘I told you she’s weird.’

  ‘It wasn’t weird, exactly. Something I couldn’t quite identify.’

  ‘You can’t possibly go to her party.’

  ‘There’ll be other people from the village there. I don’t want to cut myself off from the community. Assuming I’m free, I think I should show face.’

  ‘Then you need to assume she will throw herself at you.’

  10

  Panic

  Edward’s second invitation to stay at the Deer Orchard sends Marianne into analysis overdrive, not because she doesn’t want to see him, but because she is frightened of becoming more involved while still unclear about his intentions, or indeed her own. Felicity’s disappearance changes the order from his perspective and she is so crushed by loss that she balks at risking the potential for further hurt. He is a very different person from Johnny and she is not like Felicity. It could be a disaster.

  Taryn says over the phone, ‘You’ll never discover his intentions if you don’t meet. He probably doesn’t know what they are after five years. And you don’t know either. You have to give it a chance.’

  Marianne is very familiar with the midweek version of Edward. She knows him as a tidy, suit-wearing individual who likes ironed shirts – which he does himself – and polished shoes. He shaves and showers every morning and appears for breakfast pressed, clean and coordinated with a well-tied tie. He is more soap than aftershave, but now and then she caught a hint of something expensive wafting in his wake through Beechview Close, usually after Christmas and on days when he was meeting university big-wigs or lecturing in some other institution.

  She knows he rises at the same time each day, always the first one up. He likes fruit, cereal and toast for breakfast, or a bacon sandwich if time permits. He will also eat eggs of any persuasion if anyone else is having the same, and he drinks decaf tea at all times, saying he has no need for any extra stimulation. He was livelier and more talkative than she or Johnny and as Radio 4 was usually on in the background, he often picked up on current affairs and tried to engage one of them in conversation.

  In the evenings he reappeared slightly more dishevelled but still conservative, respectable, hair more wind-blown ruffled, the beginnings of an evening shadow. And he liked to collapse in a chair and read th
e paper he had bought at the station, or listen to the news. She and Johnny shared evening cooking duties depending upon their school and college commitments. If they were both out, Edward brought something microwavable for all of them to eat when they returned home, if they wanted.

  Most evenings, after supper was cleared and the dishes were done, often by Edward, they each had their own routine for working and preparation. Edward would disappear to his room, tapping away on his laptop, occasionally reappearing if there was a programme on television that they had all said they wanted to watch. University Challenge was a particular favourite and all three of them were extremely competitive when it came to answering questions. Thankfully their specialist areas were mostly different so they each had an opportunity to shine. And very occasionally Edward would go with Johnny across to the Jolly Woodman for a pint and a chat. According to Johnny, this was usually about politics or the environment. He had only once gone out with Marianne alone since they had walked in the park after the mugging incident, months before he came to lodge with them. And she can only remember a couple of times when the three of them went out to the pub together.

  Taryn says, ‘What is there not to like? Predictability may not be the most exciting trait, but the variety he lacks in routine behaviour is more than compensated for by variety in action and thought. You know he’s always off doing something interesting work-wise. You’d never be bored.’

  But Marianne hardly knows the weekend Edward at all. A glimpse of him in photographs where he seemed to favour jeans and a casual style, and the few days after he came out of hospital when he stayed with them to recover before Johnny drove him part way to Devon to meet up with Felicity. Then it had been jeans with an open-neck shirt or sweater. The weekend Edward is most probably sartorially acceptable, but one can never be sure with academics. She remembers Tweedy Tom from when she was at college who dressed like one of the hunting set, and Derek Yard who wore red jumpers (her mother had warned her not to trust such men), and Alan Cooper who had a taste for slacks and V-necks, even though he was only twenty at the time.

  She doesn’t know if Edward gets up early when he’s off work, or if he likes to laze in bed. He is so lively in the mornings she has always suspected him of being a lark. And she is an owl, so straight away their body rhythms are incompatible. Not serious if neither is an extreme version of their bird, but in some cases it can be grounds for divorce.

  Taryn says, ‘If dating agencies took biorhythms into account, the human race might miss out on some of its most exciting unions. In any case, if you’re taking early retirement, you will be more adaptable.’

  The more Taryn tries to convince, the more Marianne resists until she has no arguments left other than a natural pessimism borne out of the previous few difficult years, and a dented self-esteem from having become even more invisible than she was when she hit midlife and menopause. She has lost her bounce, her sense of humour, her enthusiasm. Perhaps meeting Edward would reinvigorate and inspire.

  She reflects on their last meeting; the day he left. That hug! She blushes at the thought. A hug that betrayed emotions as deep as the Grand Canyon, as turbulent as the Inga rapids on the Congo. Oh, to see him again … To be able to share thoughts and feelings without the shackles of their previous interactions. It could be sublime; it could be a new life adventure, new hope and new joys. Or it could be a disappointment far worse than the one she feared before she first met him. Yes, their parting betrayed passion; the potential for passion. But that was five years ago. He will have changed. She has changed. She feels dull: a monochrome shadow of her former self, lacking verve and wit and all the things she believed captured his interest before.

  If he wanted only to be friends and if she were to fall in love, or vice versa, imagine the pain for either or both of them. She believed she couldn’t take any more; that her heart was held together by the weakest glue. And even if they did start a relationship, what if they didn’t gel when it came to romance or sex or simple day-to-day living?

  It is with these doubts in mind that she sends an email that again ignores his invitation.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 22nd March 2012, 21.22

  Subject: Re: Catching up

  Dear Edward,

  Remember I wrote to you once about my reservations about tagging and tracking animals? I’ve come across a report on the net that says it is probable that radio tracking kills some of the animals because of the effects of electromagnetic radiation. There is no scientific proof of this, but an increasing amount of evidence is stacking up suggesting that though the negative health effects of such devices have yet to be proven, we are surrounding ourselves with ever increasing problems.

  love,

  Mari

  He will be astute enough to realise her deliberate omission is a need for more time to adjust to his reappearance.

  11

  More Invitations

  Mari.

  How casually we often write a word, how carefully the recipient might read it. Edward read and re-read this word as if he was expecting the letters to give him clues as to her current feelings. Mari: a resumption of intimacy and friendship, or a mistake? Yet no mention of the invitation. The content was the old Marianne; the Marianne that liked to expose him to whatever thought was on her mind on any particular day. He took it as a compliment that she believed him to be a worthy beneficiary of her musings. And it was true that he appreciated receiving an email that contained more than just an update on health, family, work and weather. But sometimes at the end of a long day, he preferred not to have to think; to deal with facts rather than theories.

  Before he has time to contemplate a suitable reply, he receives an email from Patrick Shrubsole, Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Stancliffe university and famed for his dynamic presentation on a couple of Channel 4 series of archaeological flavour.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Patrick Shrubsole

  Date: 22nd March 2012, 21.25

  Subject: Our Fragile Earth

  Edward,

  Remember the idea we had about the Isles of Scilly as a model for sustainability across the globe? Time for it to be revived! 2012 is the year of planetary realisation. Weather-related catastrophes everywhere – never mind the debt crisis. The current drought and the reported state of groundwater reserves suggest we may be in for some food shortages later in the year, or in 2013.

  Suffice to say, wheels are in motion again. There’s a belief that because of soaring prices, the TV viewing public will see the relevance. I have an interested contact at an independent production company that specialises in this type of documentary. If we go ahead with them, it will be their responsibility to negotiate with the major networks.

  Ideally we need to meet. Do a bit of brainstorming. Fancy a trip to London? I see you’re not due to lecture here again until October. Next Friday morning would be good for me.

  Cheers,

  Patrick

  Much of Edward’s recent professional life has been wrapped up with the Isles of Scilly. In 2002 he discovered the original Troy Town maze on St Agnes. This led to a book about labyrinth mazes and participation in an exhibition with lectures at the British Museum. Soon after, he completed a lecture tour round the islands and was subsequently invited to excavate there every summer with his Stancliffe students. During these visits they had made considerable progress in uncovering burial sites, leading to further material for talks and papers. Since leaving Stancliffe, there were proposals in place for his Devon uni students to explore the now-flooded expanse between Tresco and Bryher, possibly in 2013.

  The idea Patrick refers to concerns a conversation in September of 2003, immediately before Edward was attacked, when they had been supping beer and idly discussing how the ravages on Scilly in the 1800s could be used as a model to predict what might happen to the UK as a whole – and even the world – if population and economic growth were allowed to continue unchecked.
More recent practices of sustainability on the islands could also be used to shape a potential future for the UK. Their discussion had led to a proposal to the BBC regarding a documentary series. Much interest was expressed at the time, but after a few initial meetings, the plans had been abandoned. It was this idea to which Harriet referred during their walk a couple of weeks earlier when she said that it was time he pursued one of his academic interests with the zeal of old.

  How coincidental that the machinery has started to whirr again even before he has had a chance to decide what to do.

  The historical records suggest that in the early 1800s, the Isles of Scilly were thriving. Potatoes and fish were abundant and there was no problem with hunger. Then in 1825 there was a drought from May to September and the famine began. In those days, the law of primogeniture did not apply on the islands and ever decreasing portions of land were shared between offspring to a point where they were unsustainable in feeding a family.

  In 1834, the new Lord Proprietor of the islands, Augustus Smith, re-allocated the land so each farmer had enough to be economically viable. This then succeeded to the eldest son while other children had to find employment elsewhere on the islands, or relocate to the mainland. It was a harsh solution which split families and caused much heartache, but the prosperity that ensued was justification for such drastic action and the islands have continued to operate in a similar fashion.

  The email from Patrick excites Edward’s professional juices. He has already done a considerable amount of work on the project so would not be starting cold. It is also a new challenge and a doorway into television; a launch-pad for disseminating his books to a wider audience. He calls Patrick and arranges a meeting at Stancliffe. Then in an unusual fit of spontaneity, he emails Marianne.