Things went a bit strange, for a while, after that.
I suppose I must have been worrying about you and Maggie again, because I quite subtly pushed her away. We lost the habit of seeing her for a bit, which was a shame, really. As you seemed sadder than usual, I assumed that Maggie’s absence was the reason and evidently that didn’t help things either.
With hindsight, though, I’d say that something different was going on. I think that once you hit fifty, we started to become aware of our mortality. Up until that point we had pretty much carried on as if everything was going to continue forever.
Mum dying was the start of it all, I reckon. That threw the notion of random, unpredictable death into the mix. And then your dad died, and then Iris at work, and then Pete’s wife Sylvia got cancer. The prognosis for Sylvia’s cancer was pretty bad at the time, but it looks like she’s going to outlive me by a mile. I wonder if these things really do just come down to chance or if she somehow led a better life than I did and deserved a better outcome.
Anyway, death was in the air. I don’t think either of us ever put any of this into words. It was just a thing that lurked in the ether around us, a feeling, a slowly dawning realisation, an awareness. But I know that you were feeling it too, because you came up with that hare-brained scheme to move to New Zealand. We watched a couple on some terrible television programme who had done just that and you said you wanted to do one last amazing thing before we got too old for it. The subtext, I’m pretty sure, was ‘before we die’.
We never did move to New Zealand, did we, baby? And though I’m sad that we never managed to have that adventure together, I’m also grateful that we stayed here in Cambridge. Because if we had moved, we would never have had all these people around us when we needed them. And we were going to need them sooner than we thought.
On Thursday evening, when Sean gets home from work, he finds Maggie sitting in her car outside with the windows open. She’s reading something on her smartphone and only glances up when he leans in the window. ‘Oh, hello!’ she says.
‘Hi Mags,’ Sean says, bemusedly.
‘Look, I’m not stalking you or anything. Please don’t think I’m stalking you. I just thought I’d give it ten minutes before I gave up on you because I know you’re always home about now.’
Sean opens his palms towards the sky. ‘Well, here I am,’ he says.
Maggie closes the windows and then climbs out. She looks at Sean over the top of the Fiat. ‘So cold this evening!’ she exclaims. ‘Is now a bad time?’
Sean shakes his head. ‘Now’s fine, Mags. Come in. Have a cuppa.’
Maggie follows him to the front door, saying, ‘I know I should have phoned, only I was driving past and I wanted to congratulate you.’
Sean stands aside and ushers Maggie through the front door. ‘Congratulate me?’
‘On your move!’
‘April,’ Sean says.
Maggie glances back at him and nods. ‘It’s a good job she called me because otherwise I wouldn’t even have known. You secretive devil.’
‘It’s not definite yet,’ Sean says, hanging his jacket over the back of a chair. ‘I’ve just come from Barclays, actually.’
‘The bank? Oh, how exciting.’
‘No, it was pretty boring, actually.’
‘Oh? What did they say, then? Bad news?’
‘No, they’re agreed. In principle. For a bridging loan.’
‘Right,’ Maggie says, her brow furrowing. ‘A bridging loan. Is that when . . . Remind me, will you? I think I know, but remind me.’
‘They lend you money so you can buy a place and then sell yours afterwards.’
‘Right. Of course. I knew that.’
‘Tea?’ Sean offers, gesturing vaguely at the kettle.
Maggie shakes her head.
‘Coffee? Beer? Wine . . . ?’
‘Really,’ Maggie says, ‘nothing. So is it all OK, the loan and everything? Have you made an offer?’
‘Tomorrow,’ Sean says. ‘Once they confirm their agreement in principle. This was sort of in principle, in principle, today. He has to check it with his boss tomorrow morning.’
‘And it’s one of the C.R. units, right?’
‘Cantabrigian Rise? It is.’
‘The one with the “For Sale” sign we saw?’
‘No, that was a two-bedroom unit. I couldn’t run to that one. No, this is another one. A one-bedroom unit on the fourth floor.’
‘That’s brilliant, Sean. I could hardly believe it when April told me. They’re gorgeous. We were all so proud of those. And I always look at them when I go past.’
‘I know. Pricey, though.’
‘I’ll bet.’
‘The one bed costs almost the same as this place.’
‘But it’ll do you so much good to move.’
‘You approve, then?’ Sean asks. He feels strangely as if, without Catherine to consult, his decisions are somehow illegitimate.
‘Oh, how could I not?’ Maggie says. ‘You don’t want to be rattling around in this big place, do you?’
‘No,’ Sean says, trying to stop his mind straying to the obvious loss that has caused this new status of rattling around. He opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of beer. ‘Are you sure?’ he asks.
Maggie rolls her eyes. ‘Oh, go on, then,’ she says. ‘Just one. Honestly, you’re like a little devil on my shoulder.’
Snapshot #27
Printed digital photo, colour. A man stands beside a shiny, racing-green sports car. He is smiling but looking vaguely embarrassed at the same time.
Sean studies the printed page and remembers the day he swapped the Renault for the Mazda. He had taken the Mégane in for its yearly service and there, on the forecourt, freshly washed and polished, had been the little green sports car. It was priced at £5,900, which Sean knew was also just about the value of the Mégane (he had looked it up just a few weeks before).
He had handed in the keys at the service desk and then, instead of jumping in a taxi back to work, as planned, had walked twice around the MX-5 before trying the door and lowering himself into the driver’s seat. He had caressed the steering wheel – it was made of polished mahogany. A salesman had quickly appeared and, less than an hour later, he had driven it off the forecourt, imagining how Catherine would laugh, her hair whipping in the wind, when he picked her up that evening. April was long gone from the family nest and it was just the two of them now, ready for a fresh round of adventures. The car seemed, to Sean, to be a symbol of that. Catherine would be thrilled, he thought.
But from the very beginning she had appeared to hold back her joy. It was as if the car was symbolic not of fighting against ageing, but perhaps of ageing itself. Whatever was going on in her head, even before her back pain made the whole thing impossible, there had been something reticent, something determinedly joyless about her reception of the car.
She had teased him about it endlessly, too, to the point where it had started to annoy him. She had nicknamed the car his ‘Mid Life Crisis’ and later refused to call it an MX-5 at all, referring to it endlessly as the ‘MLC’ instead. As in, ‘Can you meet me in town with the MLC so I can bring the shopping home?’ or, ‘Do you want to go to April’s on the train, or are we taking the MLC?’
It was undoubtedly true that the car was a symptom of Sean’s midlife crisis. And the fact that a consequential chunk of that crisis was his desire to seduce his wife anew, to show her they weren’t too old to have fun, to demonstrate that he could still surprise her, only seemed to make the bite of her mockery even harder to bear.
Cassette #27
Hi Sean.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to talk for long today. I’ve just started another round of my trial chemo and it definitely isn’t a placebo. This time around, it has knocked me for six, in fact. It has left me so utterly, utterly exhausted that I barely managed to sit up and talk to you this afternoon. I’m so sorry.
The oncologist came aro
und just after you left and said they were having a case meeting tomorrow to review my progress, and though I’m hoping, for your sake, that it will show it’s working – I know that you’re desperately clinging to that idea – I can’t help but think what a relief it will be if they tell me that it isn’t and that I can stop taking this poison, because poison it is. From the second they hook me up to the IV I can feel it burning my veins. And the tiredness it induces is truly sapping my will to live. How ironic is that?
Anyway, it’s time to get on with these tapes. I’m approaching the end of the photos I chose, and though we’re all still pretending that I’m going to live forever, it’s probably just as well that these are nearly finished.
It’s time to talk about that bloody car.
You came out to the shelter to pick me up one Thursday evening, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The first thing I thought of was Jake’s MG. It was even the same colour. So if my initial reaction was a bit off, that will be why. My back had been hurting all day too, and the second thing I noticed was how difficult it was to clamber in and out of. That made me feel not younger, as intended, but older. And then you asked me, for some reason, if I wanted to drive out to Brampton Wood and I said no but couldn’t explain why. You seemed put out by that and suggested dinner in Grantchester instead, and I spent the whole drive out there wondering if you had somehow found out about what had happened with Jake; if this was all some elaborate scheme to take the mickey, or to be more like him, or just, perhaps, to let me know that you knew.
So we didn’t get off to the best start with the car, did we?
You were as excited as a three-year-old with a brand-new tricycle, so I did my very best to be enthusiastic. I just don’t think I was very convincing. I was too busy trying to decode the subtext; too busy fighting my own guilt, no doubt.
It was a cool, damp September evening, but you insisted on having the top down and the music on – you were playing Van Morrison – and by the time we got to the Rupert Brooke my neck was so stiff that I could barely turn my head.
We went through a difficult patch after that, and it was largely to do with the car, though I’m sure, if we had seen a shrink, it would have turned out to be symbolic of something much bigger. You believed, I think, that I had invented my back pain as some kind of protest about the car, and to counter this I did my best to pretend that I loved the damned thing, even when I could barely lever myself out of it. We ended up acting out this dodgy drama of half-lies and unspoken truths, all revolving around the subject of my back and that stupid, stupid sports car.
The pinnacle of this idiocy was, of course, the trip to Edinburgh. Even the question, when you asked me, was a trick one.
‘How do you fancy a romantic weekend in Edinburgh?’ you asked. ‘Or will it be too hard on your back?’
There was no way I could say no to that, was there?
By the time we got there, I was virtually paralysed. I literally couldn’t move for pain and you had to lever me from the passenger seat and almost carry me, whimpering, to the hotel room. The hotel organised for a doctor to visit and he prescribed some very strong painkillers that left me feeling woolly and stoned, but which still didn’t completely dull the pain. And then on Sunday night, like a piece of clunky origami, you folded me back into the car, and drove me back home. I took a double (entirely prohibited) dose of painkillers for that, along with a double dose of Scotch at the hotel bar, and I’m happy to say that I don’t remember a thing.
I was never quite sure whether you thought that I was actually lying about being in pain just to piss you off about the car, or if you thought that the pain was real but psychosomatic. Either way, it amounted to pretty much the same thing. You were annoyed with me and, knowing that it was unreasonable, you did your best to hide it. And because you knew it was unreasonable, you lied, and denied being angry, the only time I ever tried to discuss it with you. Isn’t that amazing, though? Isn’t it incredible that as well as we knew each other after thirty-something years together, there were still things we simply couldn’t discuss.
Your anger didn’t fade either, did it? As you ferried me back and forth to Addenbrooke’s for X-rays and CAT scans and God knows what else, none of which came up with anything, it was all just grist to the mill. It was all proof that, other than car-envy, there was nothing really wrong with me after all.
You know the way they say that dogs and cats can smell cancer on people? Well, I’ve often wondered whether we don’t have the same gift. I’ve often wondered whether on some subconscious level you’d realised that I was dying – whether that was the reason you felt so angry. And whether that was the real reason you felt so desperate for us to go whizzing around in a sports car while we still could.
Eventually, about a year after you’d bought it, you gave in to the inevitable and swapped the MLC for something you were actually able to lift me in and out of, and around the same time, in desperation, I tried yoga with Maggie, which actually seemed to ease my pain, for a while.
I’m sure that even this coincidence you saw as some kind of victory lap on my behalf. My brief little pain-free celebration that I’d finally made you get rid of your beloved car.
So, secretly, you stayed resentful towards me, and I towards you for not believing me. And it wasn’t until the real cause of the pain was found that the whole problem went away. Though I have to say that, in the end, I think I preferred it when we didn’t know, even if that did mean we were angry with each other. Because even when we were angry I loved you. The loving never stopped.
Sean is eating a tuna sandwich in the landscaped gardens of Nicholson-Wallace. It’s nearly the beginning of October, but it’s a beautiful sunny day. An Indian summer, everyone keeps saying, and every time someone mentions it, Sean resolves to look it up and find out where the term comes from, before promptly forgetting all about it.
He’s just picking up the second half of his sandwich when his phone, in his pocket, starts to vibrate.
‘Hello, Little Daughter,’ he says, on answering.
‘I’ve told you to stop calling me that,’ April says. ‘I’m going by a new handle now. I’m calling myself The Blob. I’m on my break so I can’t talk for long, but I was just wondering if there was any news on the flat front?’
Sean laughs. ‘You must have a sixth sense or something,’ he says. ‘I just upped my offer, like, a minute ago.’
‘They refused you then?’
‘They did. But I did go in a bit low so I was kind of expecting it.’
‘And what about this time? If they refuse, are you going to carry on haggling or is that it?’
‘I was just debating that,’ Sean says, watching a robin eyeing his crumbs from the far corner of the bench, ‘and I think I’ve decided to stop. To sort of leave it in the hands of the gods. I could go higher, but things would start to get tight. And I’m a bit too old, I think, to be worrying about how to pay the electricity bill.’
‘Sounds fair,’ April says. ‘But I hope you get it.’
‘Do you really?’
‘Yes. I think it would be great.’
‘Well, good. Let’s cross everything. And how’s the baby?’
‘Oh, kicking like crazy. He’s all elbows and knees at the moment. I think he’s practising to be a gymnast.’
‘It was basketball last time.’
‘Maybe he’ll do both,’ April says. ‘Simultaneously. Gym-ball or basket-nast or something. A whole new sport.’
‘I’d like to see that,’ Sean says distractedly. His phone has begun to vibrate again, so he pulls it away from his ear to check the screen. ‘Sorry, I’ve got another call. Hold on a second, will you?’
‘Is it them? Is it the estate agent’s?’ April asks.
‘Yes,’ Sean says. ‘Won’t be long.’
Two minutes later, when Sean attempts to recover the call, it’s not April he finds on the end of the line but Maggie.
‘How did that happen?’ he says.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I was talking to April. I didn’t phone you.’
‘Ooh,’ Maggie says, with mock distaste. ‘Don’t sound so keen, Sean. Just tell it like it is, won’t you?’
Sean laughs. ‘It’s not that I don’t love talking to you, Maggie. It’s just I was on the phone to April. I put her on hold and suddenly I’m talking to you. I don’t see how that happened.’
‘I phoned you, Sean,’ Maggie says. ‘Do you want me to bugger off?’
‘No, you’re OK,’ Sean says, glaring briefly at the screen of the phone. The call with April seems to have been dropped. ‘Was it for something specific?’
‘Not really. I just wanted to know what the news was. About the flat out at C.R.’
‘Did April call you?’ Sean asks.
‘No. Not at all. Why?’
‘It’s just . . . that’s weird, that’s all. You both calling me.’
‘Why, is there news?’
‘I just found out. Literally ten seconds ago.’
‘You found out what?’
‘They said yes. The sellers, that is. They just accepted my offer.’
‘Oh, gosh!’ Maggie exclaims. ‘Gosh, that’s brilliant news, Sean.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. You’re not having doubts, are you?’
‘I’m not sure,’ Sean says. ‘I’m just a bit shocked, I suppose. Look . . . it’s . . . lovely chatting, Mags, but would you mind terribly if I phoned you back this evening? I was on the line to April and I lost her. She’ll be wondering what happened.’
‘Of course,’ Maggie says. ‘Kids come first. How about a pint somewhere? To celebrate? This evening?’
‘Maybe at the weekend,’ Sean offers. ‘I need, I don’t know, time to digest it all, I think.’
When Sean tells her the news, April shrieks. ‘I’m so excited!’ she says.
‘Are you?’
‘Yes! Of course. Aren’t you?’
Sean swallows with difficulty. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘That’s the truth. It suddenly feels very . . . I don’t know . . . symbolic. Final. Do you know what I mean?’
Things We Never Said Page 25