Sixteen, Sixty-One

by Sixteen, Sixty-One- A Memoir (epub)

  27

  ‘Am I speaking to Natalie Lucas?’ an officious voice blared from the wall-mounted telephone beside Arrivals.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, feeling as if I’d done something wrong.

  I’d arrived at Heathrow an hour early and waited by the Arrivals rail for Rob’s delayed flight. I’d then watched all the passengers file out of baggage claim and into the arms of friends and relatives until the corridor was empty and I was standing alone on the fluorescent-lit waxed floor.

  ‘And are you here to meet Robert Evans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Finally, as I was pacing and wondering what to do, watching the next flight’s passengers file through the corridor, an announcement was made: ‘WOULD ANYONE WAITING TO MEET ROBERT EVANS PLEASE CONTACT THE ARRIVALS INFORMATION DESK.’

  ‘Natalie, I need to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘Okay. I mean, is Rob okay?’

  ‘Robert’s fine, Natalie. We’re just a little concerned about his motives for visiting the country, so our immigration officers are conducting an interview with him.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Natalie, how old are you?’

  ‘Twenty.’

  ‘And could you confirm how old Mr Evans is for me?’

  ‘Uh, thirty-nine.’

  ‘And can you confirm you are in a relationship with Mr Evans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And how did you meet?’

  ‘Um, when I was travelling last summer.’

  ‘Where were you travelling?’

  ‘All across America.’

  ‘And was Mr Evans travelling also?’

  ‘No, he was the trip guide and driver.’

  ‘Right. So, how long have you been in a relationship with Mr Evans?’

  ‘About six months.’

  ‘And would you say it’s serious?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Would you consider your relationship with Mr Evans serious?’

  ‘Uh, I don’t know, I guess.’

  ‘Are you engaged?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you have any plans to marry while Mr Evans is in the country?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, because I have to inform you, Natalie, that it would be against the law for you to become engaged to Mr Evans or to marry without first contacting the embassy.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yes, it could result in deportation and a fine.’

  ‘Okay, he’s just here to visit me, though.’

  ‘How long does Mr Evans intend to stay?’

  ‘One month.’

  ‘And where will he be staying?’

  ‘With me. I mean, we’ve got a hostel in London tonight and tomorrow, but then we’re going back to mine.’

  ‘Okay, thank you, Natalie. I’m going to return to Robert now and ask him a few more questions. Please could you wait near the information desk where you are now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Thank you for your help.’

  Forty-five minutes later Rob trudged through the Arrivals corridor with his giant backpack slung over one shoulder and his hat pulled beneath his eyebrows.

  ‘Hey!’ I smiled, relieved and excited.

  ‘Hey,’ he replied in a monotone. He accepted my kiss with half a smile, and then looked me up and down with a frown.

  ‘I’m glad you got through. How ridiculous, just for a holiday,’ I burbled.

  ‘Yeah, well it wouldn’t have been a problem if I’d been able to give them the address of where I was staying, but as you wouldn’t tell me the name of our hostel …’

  ‘Oh,’ I swallowed guiltily. I hadn’t wanted to email Rob the details of the booking I’d made as a final insurance against him possibly having a crazy wife who might follow him to England. I’d told him it wasn’t about trust, but that the woman had known details about me that she shouldn’t have, so I was worried someone might be hacking into our correspondence. ‘Couldn’t you have given them my Durham address?’

  ‘I didn’t know it. I didn’t think I’d have to write to you while I was with you,’ Rob snapped, and then looked away.

  ‘Sorry.’ I took his hand and moved into his eye-line. ‘Hey, I’m glad you’re here.’ I stood on tiptoes and kissed him again.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ He pulled away. ‘I’m just tired, I guess.’

  It took an hour and a half to get to our hostel, which was dingy and small. I’d paid an extra £20 for a private room that was little more than a double mattress crammed into an oversized closet. Rob dropped his bag onto the one patch of carpet, leaving us only the bed.

  ‘D’you want to get food?’ I asked as he flopped onto one of the two flat pillows.

  ‘Yeah, I’m pretty hungry. I need a shower too.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I read while he showered, then we found a cheap Italian on the other side of the roundabout to our hostel. I asked Rob about his flight and the movies he’d watched, who was covering for him at work and what his Christmas was like. He answered in monosyllables and eventually we grew quiet.

  Jetlagged, Rob didn’t sleep well that night or the next. We paced around London, dutifully visiting the tourist spots and taking photos of each other standing by famous buildings. We had moments of laughter, chasing each other along the South Bank and kissing over the table after Rob’s first full-English, but most of the weekend was strained. We made polite conversation and avoided talking about Matthew. We trudged exhaustedly through the whole of the V&A and perched in a patisserie with my mum and her new boyfriend, all smiling inanely and pretending to have fun. By the time our train pulled into Durham and Rob and I had sat for three hours reading separate newspapers instead of chatting to or holding the person we’d sent trans-Atlantic ‘I love you’s to since September, it was clear we needed to talk.

  My housemates weren’t back from Christmas yet, so we had the whole house to shout in. It wasn’t a fair fight, of course: Rob was battling on my turf, aware he needed somewhere to stay for the next three and a half weeks. We yelled a little, then cried a lot. We went back and forth, telling each other we were still in love and still wanted what we had had over the summer, but that something had changed. He said he’d known it since I made that phone call, but he’d decided to come anyway, just to make sure. He held me while I cried.

  He stayed for two weeks, before booking himself into hostels in London and Oxford. We slept side-by-side, but did our own thing during the day. I went to seminars while he walked by the river, watched films and photographed the city walls. A few times, I rubbed his back and tried to unbutton his shirt, but was always shrugged off or pushed away by a roll to the other side of the bed. My housemates were nice enough not to say anything about our whispered fights and my tear-stained cheeks, and Rob cooked a meal to say thank you for their hospitality before he left. I walked him to the bus stop and he hugged me goodbye but didn’t wave out of the window. I sat on Millennium Bridge and sobbed for what felt like days. We had been over since he’d arrived, but it was only now that I was alone.

  There was a letter waiting for me when I returned to the house.

  Thy beauty shall no more be found,

  Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

  My echoing song; then worms shall try

  That long preserv’d virginity,

  And your quaint honour turn to dust,

  And into ashes all my lust.

  Andrew Marvel ‘To His Coy Mistress’

  Little Meg and I spent the weekend looking at houses in Bath. I’ve convinced her to do her nursing there instead of Durham – ‘It’s too cold up in the North,’ I said. ‘More like she’s too cold,’ she replied. She’s not stupid. But she’s happier being far from you. Perhaps I will be too.

  Did you have a nice time with your bus driver? I hope, for your sake, that you are right about him. I can’t help but worry. Even if you don’t care. I haven’t spoken to Carson, so I don’t know what’s going on with the wife, but your mother hasn’t told me about
any scandals, so perhaps all has gone quiet. Or perhaps you’re dead and raped in a ditch somewhere and your cold housemates haven’t even noticed your absence. I’m sure I’d be the last to know.

  Your former Uncle

  *

  My play was turning into a disaster. My lead actor had been cast in three of the nine plays scheduled for the term and had started to waltz into rehearsals forty-five minutes late and stop run-throughs to quiz me about his character’s motivation or ask whether I really thought this blocking would work. The other actors began to follow suit until I felt like a kitten crawling into a lion-pen each afternoon. These six-foot boys with their gym-worked muscles and their experience of standing before an audience reminded me, with their playground rebellion, that I was just a five-foot girl pretending to know something about directing because a professor a few thousand miles away had told her she was talented.

  I was also in the middle of my Post-War Italian Cinema module and trying to grapple with middle-class alienation in Antonioni’s ‘trilogy of feeling’; final papers would be due in the third term, but essay topics were to be handed to tutors by Friday of the eighth week of this term. Plus, one of my housemates had seen a mouse and was demanding a deep clean of the entire house this coming weekend, the department secretaries were being wholly unsympathetic to my claims that transferring a 3.92 GPA into three grades of 68%, 71% and 73% wasn’t entirely fair, and my bank balance was flirting shamelessly with its overdraft limit.

  The proverbial straw arrived on a Wednesday morning. I opened it with a mouthful of toast.

  Are you content?

  I call on Uncles to judge what I have done. Infirm and aged I might stay, but my meditation was always on the supreme theme of Art and Song.

  Art and Song, do you remember it? When all your other lovers are estranged or dead, Natalie, you might. You sat in my kitchen laughing at me and calling me an old man, but I never saw you as a young girl. You are an old soul and we are both young and old, old and gay, O so old. We were everyone before us, remember? Thousands of years. We loved each other and we were ignorant. We sang in our bridal sleep in Kew, where you told me you loved me and spoke of marriage. Remember?

  Well, man runs his course between extremities I suppose. You’re devolving, Natalie. You already struggled with your mind, in my study and at my kitchen table, reading Hesse in your mother’s house and arguing with me about what was right. But now here you are again: all alone in the frozen North, waging fights against your heart and mind. (And perhaps your body too? You’ve looked like a boy every time I’ve seen you with daft haircuts, and no doubt you sit in the bath trying to scrub away my ankh – or have you had it removed already? I hope it hurt.) Well, sorry to be the one to tell you, but you’re going to lose. Better men than you have tried and failed. You’ll be left with clouds about a fallen sun and no one to help you pick up the pieces.

  You’d like it if I said I’d arise and go now, leaving you to enjoy your loneliness. But it’s not just about you, Natalie. This is my life too and I can’t bear the hypocrisy. I’m sick of hearing your mother blather about you and your silly play and having to make excuses as to why I can’t come, because you’ll have a conniption if you see me in the auditorium. Annabelle’s sick of it too. It’s making me ill. It makes her want to move. I can’t stand it any more. I’m going to tell Heloise what her ungrateful, selfish, slutty daughter is really like. I’ll tell her I tried to give you poetry and love and you threw it back in my face, that as you can’t pay me, she owes me for all the rubbish I’ve been put through. Yes, I know I said I’d call off the lawsuit, but I’ve been thinking about it and it’s just not fair that you should get off scot-free for all the lives you’ve ruined. We’re having your Ma over for dinner on Friday. I plan to tell her everything. I’m cooking shepherd’s pie. We’ll have trifle for dessert and we can work out a payment plan over coffee.

  You’re more than welcome to come if you can descend from your icehouse up in Durham.

  On second thoughts, I’d rather you didn’t. I’ve had enough of you and your whining.

  I want this sorted. Now.

  I was okay. My blood had turned cold and my hand was screwing up the envelope, but I was okay. I had a counselling session at eleven. I felt a wetness on my cheek, but I was okay. In any case, in two hours and thirteen minutes, I would be okay. I would shower and dress and walk down to campus. I could go early and get a coffee, be around people, not curled up in my room. Trish would make things better. She would help me work out what to do. She would tell me it would be okay.

  I pushed back my chair and carried my plate to the sink. I climbed the stairs and placed the letter in the shoebox beneath my bed labelled ‘Fuck Off and Die’, then locked the bathroom door and removed my pyjamas. I stood in the shower before switching it on and endured a blast of ice before the water turned scorching. I dried myself, then pulled on jeans and my oversized Rosella hoodie. I tied a bow in my Converse and drew a defensive line of kohl beneath each of my eyes. I took a deep breath, opened the front door and directed my feet towards the counselling centre.

  Everything would be fine. Trish would help and a coffee in a crowded place would calm me down. Matthew couldn’t get to me here. I was safe.

  As I queued for a drink, my phone rang. Number withheld.

  Deep breath.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘May I speak to Natalie please?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘Hi Natalie, this is Rebecca from the university counselling service. I’m afraid I’m calling to cancel your appointment this morning. Trish is unwell and unable to come in. Would you like me to reschedule you for next Monday?’

  I hung up the phone, put it back in my pocket, and walked out of the café.

  One hour and £57 later, I was sat on a train destined for Sussex. I rummaged through the rucksack I hadn’t repacked since yesterday’s classes and found my Italian cinema notebook and a green biro. I tore a sheet of lined paper from the back and, placing it on the plastic fold-down table before me, began:

  Dear Mum and Dad

  I had an affair with Matthew.

  PART THREE

  28

  Some things that happened in March 2005:

  Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown delivered his ninth Budget.

  Approximately 1,300 people were killed by an earthquake measuring 8.7 on the Richter scale off the west coast of Northern Sumatra.

  Sixty-six people went on trial for child sex abuse and prostitution in Angers, France.

  Martha Stewart was released from prison.

  The UK became the first country to officially recognise darts as a sport.

  Changes to the capital punishment system in the United States made sentencing someone to death for a crime committed before they were 18 unconstitutional.

  Paris Hilton appeared on the cover of Playboy.

  London police claimed to have foiled a £220 million attempted bank robbery.

  NBC’s version of the British comedy The Office premiered in the United States.

  And I told my parents the worst possible thing I could imagine, thus beginning my third life.

  My dad sat beside me on the sofa in his office reading my letter; my mum stood in her kitchen and tore it up unopened, requesting with tears in her eyes that I say whatever it was to her face.

  My dad said he’d hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with people like that until I was much older; my mum said she wished I’d told her sooner.

  My dad said he’d been suspicious of Matthew, but chalked it up to his own warped mind; my mum said she’d had no idea.

  My dad said he felt sorry for not preventing it; my mum said she felt betrayed by both Matthew and Annabelle.

  My dad said he wanted to go over to Matthew’s house right away; my mum said she didn’t know how it would affect her friendships, but she was glad she knew.

  My dad said he was really angry – but not with me; my mum said the affair was one thing, but it was much worse tha
t Matthew wouldn’t leave me alone.

  My dad said he’d been to counselling a few times and hadn’t found it much use; my mum said at least I’d find it easier to come home now.

  My dad said he didn’t mind that I liked girls, because he’d had a threesome once; my mum said she’d once had a fling with a married man and it had made her feel horrid.

  My dad said I could always come to him; my mum said I was her little girl.

  My dad said he’d protect me; my mum said she loved me.

  29

  On the day Durham ejected me from its student body, shut off my email account and threw me into the world of alumni, I dyed a bottle of wine blue.

  The bottle clunked in my tote next to the back-up red as I paced past Sam’s door three times.

  On the fourth approach, I knocked. I put my jacket on the peg and pulled the blue bottle out of my bag before we walked into the kitchen. It was only then that I saw the pans and the chopping boards, the meat marinating and some fancy starter bubbling on the stove.

  It was June and we were almost graduates. In two months I would be moving to Chicago to begin a Masters degree and Sam would be staying in England to write scripts. We were theatre kids and these outings that we’d jokingly labelled ‘HOT dates’ were no more than play. Sam had already donned a medallion and I spiky heels for a Posh & Becks picnic, and we’d both worn suits and cardboard FBI badges for a Mulder & Scully coffee morning.

  With no further word about a lawsuit from Matthew, I’d tentatively begun acting like a normal student. After handing in my final essay, I’d frivolously spent the remainder of my student loan on a trip to Barcelona with a girl in my seminar group. Upon landing in Newcastle on our return, my mum had phoned to tell me Matthew had stopped her in the street to shout red-facedly about how pathetic it was that I couldn’t confront him. She thought it was a sign he was panicked and losing control. I’d sat on the train back to Durham scanning the lines of my book, absorbing nothing – He’s shouting in the street now? Does he want everyone to know? Does he think he has nothing to lose? Might he get violent? – but I’d stepped off at the station and walked straight to Sam’s house to smilingly present him with the (‘extra hot’) chillies I’d brought back from Barcelona, hopefully like any carefree twenty-year-old might gaily give to a friend. Days later, Sam had brought a homemade apple pie to the bar one evening, telling me I was ‘sweet enough to eat’.