Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘I can’t believe they’re going,’ I said.

  She gave my arm a reassuring squeeze and shook her thin neck. Me neither,’ she agreed. ‘But we can visit. Though what a dreadful, bone rattling coach journey that’ll be! I shall probably have to travel without my dentures. Ah,’ she continued. ‘And this must be Leonard. What a joy to be able to meet you at last.’

  My father smiled engagingly. Feeling suddenly sentimental, I told her he made the best jam in Britain.

  ‘Ah!’ she said. ‘There’s a sweeping assertion if ever I heard one! But if you’re talking preserves, I’ve the very thing for you. Jams, Jellies and Junkets - just bought it. It’s in its seventh edition, you know.’ She gave him a wink. ‘Rose has just finished with it. Like a borrow?’ she asked.

  ‘Rather!’ said my Dad, allowing himself to be swept back inside.

  Rather? Rath-er? What was the plot here?

  Alone again, I slopped a gloopy slug of punch (plus brown apple slices, miscellaneous citrus membranes, bits of twig etc.) into my glass and knocked it back, cossack style, through a colander fashioned from loosely gritted teeth. When I had finished choking on the twig (rosemary/ rosebush?), I flipped my head back up to find Adam Jones beside me. Doctor bloody Adam bloody perfect bloody smoothie bloody Jones. A man so infuriatingly friendly and functional that there should have been a law against letting him out without a leash. A man also infuriatingly married to Davina Jones, my boss. So I had to be pleasant to him.

  Not that you’d ever want to be less than pleasant to a guy so disarmingly good looking and decent and thoughtful, even if he did exhibit a rather shaky taste in wives. Davina was good looking too, certainly, and undeniably successful, but in her case, the words decent and thoughtful sprung rather less readily to mind. I had worked for her Estate Agency firm for several years now, and the only area so far where she’d gained my unqualified approval was in having had the good sense to marry such a man.

  He looked down at me now with his brows slightly knitted.

  ‘You okay?’ he enquired. ‘Want a back slap or something?’

  ‘’s all right,’ I spluttered. ‘It was only a stalk.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said, raising one eyebrow and smiling. ‘So. Daniel get off to Med school all right?’

  Drat. The D word again. I waved an arm in an extravagant arc and to my astonishment, nearly over balanced. Adam Jones put out a warm downy forearm to steady me.

  ‘Gone,’ I said. ‘Flown the nest. Flown the coop. Flown the....um. Whatever. Anyway. Yes. Gone.’ I peered distractedly into the sediment at the bottom of my glass.

  ‘Uh huh. As they do,’ he said encouragingly, patting me. ‘ He’ll be fine.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Probably having a ball.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Best years of his life. Mine certainly were.’

  ‘I know. So they say.’

  ‘No, really.’ He spread his arms to illustrate the point. ‘One big round of parties and drinking and hah, hah..... and, er... Are you all right?’

  No no no no no no. I’m not. Oh God. Here we go again. What’s happening to me? Why do I keep bursting into tears all the time?

  ‘Fine, fine..erm. Just got to. You know. Well.’ And I plunged off through the french doors and into the house.

  Where a posse made up of Rose, Aunty Jenny, Phil and my father were waiting in ambush in the kitchen to bar my way to the toilet and to Express Grave Concern.

  ‘Ah! There you are! Oh! Charlotte! Are you all right?’ Etc.

  ‘Rather, Dad!’ I twerbled. ‘Just a pip in my eye.’

  ‘A pip?’ Phil advanced on me. ‘How did a pip get into your eye?’

  I rubbed, but fruitlessly. Piplessly. Everyone’s face (bar Phil’s, of course; his had gathered itself into a grimace of concentration) was taking on that tell-tale expression. That one which says, we know you haven’t really got anything in your eye and that you’re actually crying, but we’re far too polite to make reference to it and will simply await further cues.

  ‘A tomato pip,’ I expanded, furiously. ‘It must have been stuck on the back of my hand while I was trying to deal with the twig.’ I slapped Phil’s questing finger away. ‘There’s a lot of acid in tomatoes, you know.’

  Silence fell around us like a batch of badly tossed drop scones, onto which, thankfully, Rose soon stepped. ‘They’re those vine-ripened ones,’ she said. ‘Sharp as a lemon. Matt makes a big hoo-hah about their superior flavour, but he really only buys them because they have a stalk on and he thinks he can fool people into thinking they’re his - come on,’ she pressed a warm hand into mine. ‘Let’s hit the bathroom and salvage your make-up.’

  As we left the kitchen I could pick out my father’s voice. ‘It’s the change,’ he expounded. ‘Had the same with her mother. Thank goodness I’m around now to jolly her along.’

  By midnight, the party had divided itself neatly into two. One half drinking coffee and being sensible in the house, and the other drinking everything else and being legless in the garden. Phil, typically, was doling out instant in the former while Rose and I, on the grass, were in very much the latter. Supine, in fact, on her picnic rug.

  ‘Look at that arse,’ she observed, sitting up.

  I propped myself on my elbows and focussed. It was the property of a young guy in combats. I considered. ‘Nine point five. Whose is it?’

  ‘Keiran’s.’

  ‘Who’s Keiran?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t know him. New head of IT at school. Phew! How I shall miss that arse.’

  ‘There’ll be others, in Canterbury.’

  She lay back on the blanket again and twiddled her glass stem.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. This is a brilliant career move for Matt and everything, and I would hate to think he even had an inkling about it - he’s so excited about it being so rural and the size of the garden and growing bloody brassicas and potatoes and leeks...Oh, and chickens! Did he run that one by you yet? The kids will love it, of course, but, God, right now I really wish I wasn’t going.’

  Rose and Matt’s two were both still in Primary School. Rose was right, they would love it. ‘You don’t mean it...’

  ‘Oh, yes I do, Charlie girl. Nothing like having all your best friends in a glut to remind you just how much you’ll miss them when you’re gone.’

  ‘It’s not so far.’

  ‘It is. It might as well have been Brussels.’

  ‘I know. But we can visit, and...’

  She sat up and gestured. ‘Look at him, for instance.’

  ‘Who? David Harris-Harper?’ David Harris-Harper was new to the area, but had already established himself as Cefn Melin’s resident hunky conveyancer. And was managing to exude androgens even through cords.

  She nodded. ‘How could there possibly be anyone in Canterbury as shaggable as that?’

  ‘I’m sure there must be.’

  ‘Yes, but you won’t have seen them, will you?’

  ‘So you’ll have to describe them for me, won’t you? We can exchange our shag lists via lurid letters - emails, even, come to that. You could take furtive photographs and send them down the computer to me.’

  The idea of the shag lists - our secret top ten of local blokedom - being committed to print and zapped along land lines like an urgent DX bag, struck me as not only funny but strangley appealing. Rose laughed. ‘Excellent idea! Which reminds me...’

  She disappeared inside.

  She was back moments later, swaying slightly, with a present.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘For you, silly.’ She proffered the slim package. She’d wrapped it, very beautifully, as always, in tissue.

  ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have. What is it? Should I open it now?’

  She nodded. ‘If you like. You might want to change it. When I bought it, I thought it was a book about Everest, but when I got it home I realised it was actually about a peak in the Andes. And then I thought, well, no matter. It’s still
about mountains. I thought it might prove an inspiration while you’re planning your trip. But then I read it. Well, not read it, but read the captions with the photos. And read some of it, and then thought it wasn’t really what I’d wanted. It looks a bit harrowing.’

  It was called Touching the Void. ‘So?’ I shrugged. ‘You know me.’

  ‘Well, pratting about in Timberlands is one thing, and I know you love all this stuff, but I wondered if harrowing is what you really need right now. Do change it if you like -’

  ‘Nonsense, Rose! I can be harrowed with the best of them!’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘Don’t be so sure of that, Charlie girl.’

  We watched Phil approach, bearing mugs and two cushions. ‘Damp grass,’ he said.

  ‘Therefore, damp arses,’ Rose countered, dismissing the coffees.

  We then laughed uproariously, clutching our tummies, despite us both knowing that, at least for the moment, life wasn’t particularly uproarious at all.

  Phil looked disdainful and re-proffered the mugs.

  ‘We need wine, Phil!’ Rose told him firmly.

  Chapter 3

  Monday. Sixish. Exceptionally stressed.

  The unholy trinity of my current working life consists (in no particular hierarchy of tedium) of a) the property from hell, Cherry Ditchling, b) the delightful but mad pensioner, Minnie Drinkwater, and c) Estate Agency not being remotely connected with anything I ever really wanted to do.

  Thus Mondays, particularly, throw most sharply into relief the huge gulf that exists between Charlie Simpson, intrepid sort of explorer-mountaineer / geology enthusiast / right-on anthropological and Everest expert etc., and Charlie Simpson, Willie Jones Jackson (Independent Estate Agents) negotiator.

  Thus it is that my first utterance on returning from work is a heartfelt ‘sod that,’ albeit in mime.

  Among my Father’s many and varied parts, lies an incongruous fondness for syrupy sentiment. Thus a side effect of his residence has been the arrival of a small clutch of little heart warming books about the place, which he seems to consult on a regular basis, in an attempt, I presume, to lend thoughtful profundity to his daily routine. Opening the one on the hall table tonight at random, I was, I noted, instructed to be especially kind and courteous to older people. Hmmm. The word Sod seems understatement indeed.

  Why, oh why, oh why did I do it? My brother, God bless him, has about eight million bedrooms. And a Jacuzzi bath. And a hectare. And a shed. And a Mediterranean style verandah-type thingy. And an antipodean address. And patience. So why? Why? Someone tell me, before I burst with the pressure of the terrible injustice I have done to myself.

  My home was once an unpretentious but cosy Georgian semi; not a palace, but certainly a comfortable refuge, a place that was me, that I could bring people to. But no longer. Not now my father has filled it with strange and terrible smells. Today’s is reminiscent of the bat cage at Bristol Zoo. And this is simply an overlay. Beneath it, the date chutney poo smell still lingers, competing with the stale-vomit quince-relish stench. I live now, like that fictional nursery rhyme woman, in one enormous Branston pickle jar. Or was it vinegar bottle? Whatever. Every room seems to sag under a fog of malevolent molecules. Every piece of clothing is infused with noxious fumes. No wonder we need windows with one hundred percent air containment integrity. Or people would talk, no question.

  My father is driving me mad mad mad.

  ‘You’re driving me mad, Dad.’

  There. I’ve said it. He smiles indulgently as I throw down my handbag and keys.

  ‘Tsh! Good day, dear?’

  Dreadful. Depressing. Unproductive. Sad.

  ‘All right. I’ve had better. What are you making?’

  He herds a heap of pips and slime a little further away down the worktop and returns to stirring the vat of bilge he has on the go.

  ‘Jam,’ he says, smiling happily, clinking sterilised coffee jars. ‘It’s my own adaptation. Windfall Surprise!’

  Sounds gross.

  ‘Sounds entertaining.’ I say, scanning the debris for clues. ‘This wasp an escapee?’

  ‘Tsh! Don’t be daft, dear.’

  My kitchen has become a malodorous hobbit hole. ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘Tsh! Before dinner, Charlotte?’

  Oh, Christ. ‘Before dinner, yes. I generally do.’

  I bang around stroppily, lobbing pots at the sink as I go. ‘Like one?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Shepherd’s pie’s bubbling up nicely. There. Get yourself sorted. I plan to be straining at seven-o-five.’

  I return to the hallway and kick off my shoes.

  ‘By the way,’ he calls out. ‘Your friend Rosemary telephoned. Says they’re in now, but in chaos, and she’ll try to call later. I told her to make sure it’s not after eight thirty. There’s a preserves programme - Bottle it! - on BBC2.’

  I return to the kitchen and open the wine. Which is already three days into changing to vinegar, but my taste buds have now lost the power to tell.

  So this is my lot for the foreseeable future. I am missing my son, I am missing my space, and my best friend is now two hundred miles away. In exchange for these losses, what compensations do I have? A father who inflames me, a man friend who doesn’t and (and I checked at the cashpoint on the way home from work) a scant forty pounds for my Everest trip.

  Chapter 4

  Evening. Calmer.

  I assume I am less stressed due to a blood supply re-route; I’m still digesting a half ton of massacred mince. I feel as if I now live in parallel universe version of my previous home. I decide to hole up in the least smelly region with hardware and hummy noises and blinky lights and modem and a very large glass of restorative wine.

  Two very large glasses of restorative wine later, I decide that I must make some serious lifestyle changes. I have simply no-one to send an email to. I spend a few consoling minutes visiting various pages at the BBC, but soon realise that it’s a strange sort of grown up that pores over Blue Peter Summer Expedition reports. So I re-activate the search engine with buzz words ‘tectonic’, ‘mountain’, ‘Everest’, and ‘summit attempts’. But bring up, depressingly, George Mallory’s body, plus an in depth account of recent Himalayan deaths.

  Frozen mountaineers are not greatly uplifting so I make the search a touch more pedestrian instead. End up (as one does) at the Sainsburys website, which at least gives me the opportunity to send a terse little email regretting their removal of French Vanilla polish from stock. After which, well - what to do? Who to email? And then I remember. You silly cow, Simpson! Of course you can send email! You can send one to Rose!

  griffith@cymserve.co.uk

  Dear Rose,

  Tra la! Tra la! Found your address, and here I am, at last. Many, many thanks for Touching the Void. I’ve read the whole thing, cover to cover, and feel one hundred percent more confident that if I come across a void of any sort (physiological or otherwise) on my trip, I’ll know just how to deal with it. Though doubt whether I’ll look as fetching in bobble hat. And hey! How about this! Simpson on line finally! Impressed, or what? Doubtless you’re knee deep in packing cases and cleaning, but, as the principal leavee in your life, I have simply nothing to do but wail and weep and wonder what the hell I’m going to do without you. What am I going to do without you? In fact, I have an inkling I will be spending a lot of time in this study - which my father insists on calling the dining room, despite that fact that no-one’s dined in it in a decade, bar flies. I think it’s a rearguard action towards re-instatement, actually. He doesn’t approve of eating in the kitchen. Which is rich considering he’s the one causing the stink!!

  Great party, by the way. I know I looked like I’d rather be pulling hairs from my nipples most of the time, but I was in a real emotional nadir last week, having lost a big chunk of all the stuff I hold dear, and having, it seems, picked up an early seventies daytime cookery programme for a lodger instead.

  Bless him, but God, Dad is sending me nuts
!

  Email back soon.

  Love Charliexx

  I have not, as yet, any sense of the cyber-space-time-logging on and off again-continuum, but am still somewhat surprised that I have not received a response by the weekend. I imagined that happening people dealt with cyber-mail daily. But apparently not. Or else mine got lost.

  But I do remember that moving house is not only busy, but is also the most stressful thing on the entire planet after shopping for trainers, and decide instead to phone again. I’m greeted, however, by a jocular ansafone message by Rose, reinforcing that ‘hey, we’ve just moved. Think we’ve got time to chat?’ followed by much family guffawing down the phone. Return to computer and send another email instead.

  Dear Rose,

  Guess you’re pretty busy!

  And it’s all happening this end. We already have our invite to the Stableford firework night barbecue party. A record? And that’s we as in me, Phil, Ben and Dad. Though as Phil is on a Brontë awareness (or whatever) coach trip that weekend, and I will therefore have to trail around flanked by offspring and parent like a novelty wallflower, don’t know if I’ll bother to go. It’ll only be the same old crowd, and much as I love Caroline, you know how I feel about what she puts on her skewers.

  Still a bit fed up without Daniel/with Dad. Uncharacteristically fed up, in fact. Can’t remember feeling like this since Felix and I decided to file for divorce. Though I guess I do know where a lot of it stems from; not quite being able to quite believe that I am less than a year from my birthday and haven’t even come close to fulfilling my one big ambition. Which is ridiculous - I could have started saving five years back! And it’s not as if I want to climb the wretched mountain even! Just stand at the bottom - how hard can that be? Ditto the new kitchen, come to think of it. The one that I didn’t inherit. The one that doesn’t have cat claw trails up the cupboard fronts and wodges of brown stuff in the cutlery drawer corners. The one that I went into a shop and chose. The mythical, mystical, X-files, Star Trek Voyager kitchen of my dreams.