Meeting Lydia

by Linda MacDonald

  “Oh Mari … you are an infuriating woman these days! Just let me shower.”

  “No … it’s okay … the moment’s passed … no problem. You’re not in the mood … that’s fine.” Back in control; applying psychology. Attagirl!

  “I am now … I’ll be two minutes,” he said, smiling, disappearing from the room.

  Marianne settled back into the pillows, placed the book face down and closed her eyes.

  Dear Edward … love Marianne.

  Three minutes later Johnny returned fresh and warm and damp, the ends of his hair wet and darkened and water splashes still glistening on his nose.

  Marianne shuddered with a primeval ache and longing.

  Johnny turned out the main bedroom light, then made a display of ravishing her which she felt was just pretence.

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 18th July 2002, 21.29

  Subject: August

  Hi Marianne,

  Just arranged a quick trip to Cumbria in August before the preparation for the Scilly excavations kick in. Am lecturing in Maryport at the Senhouse Museum at 7.30 on Tuesday 6th. Will you be in Allonby at that time?

  Edward

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 19th July 2002, 22.12

  Subject: Re: August

  Hi Edward,

  I shall be in Allonby from the 31st July to the 8th. Are you thinking we might meet?

  Marianne

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 20th July 2002, 12.14

  Subject: Re: August

  Perhaps we could meet in Allonby late-afternoon of 6th? You’re welcome to come to lecture too … Will need to eat first though!

  Need address, and contact details. Will be in touch on 5th.

  Ted

  She gave him her parents’ address, phone number and her mobile number and said how much she looked forward to meeting him. How cool and calm it looked written down, when in her heart she was overfull of nostalgic emotion at the prospect of such a reunion.

  Do you ever watch the swallows dart

  Above the dunes?

  Do you ever sit and listen to the swooshing Of the sea?

  And the lazy call of birds, And the shrieking of the gulls, And the traffic humming by?

  Do you ever study Scotland’s shape

  Beyond the mists?

  Do you ever taste the tangy salted air With hints of hay?

  And hear the village wake And drift into the day

  And feel the wind caress your face?

  I see this place through London eyes

  Yet my soul is here.

  Amid the grasses on the banks, Between the pebbles on the shore My past is interwoven,

  But I cannot stay.

  A life elsewhere is mine.

  A heart elsewhere awaits.

  But I will ever in my dreams see the swallows, Hear the sea.

  I will ever feel the peace and the Raw tranquility.

  And the timelessness and joy Of a thousand yesterdays

  In Allonby.

  32

  The End of the World

  No one goes to Cumbria for their holidays, yet thousands flock to the Lake District every year; a paradox of modern life. The Lake District is elegance and refinement, picturesque and expensive; grey-slate cottages tucked cosily in the hillside next to bubbling streams; up-market, classy, well-to-do, like the Italian Lakes or the Norwegian fjords. Cumbria is sheep and farmers and rough isolation; a beauty of a different kind. Near the coast, dull back-to-back terraces line the streets of towns and villages, a relic of mining and hardship; and for the last half century, there has been the spectre of Sellafield with its metallic spherical reactor glistening benignly in the sun. Who would say they were off to Cumbria for their romantic midsummer break?

  But it was the place of Marianne’s roots. A place that ran through her veins; a place she loved. It was also the place where Brocklebank Hall loomed dark on a hill and where Edward inadvertently cast his spell.

  In Cumbria it was often cool, even in the height of summer. And the rumours about it being the wettest place in England were true, stair-rods from the heavens slicing through the air and bouncing on the roads. But when the cities were cloaked in a stultifying and oppressive heat, and carbon monoxide and other pollutants filled the atmosphere with menace, where better to escape?

  It was the end of July and Marianne was on her annual pilgrimage to stay with her parents. She called it her Retreat. Of course she visited for a few days at Christmas time or Easter with Johnny and Holly, but this was different. It was the only time in the year that she was ever away alone, and always she savoured these moments to reflect on her life and make decisions for the year ahead.

  Six years earlier, her parents had retired a dozen or so miles from Derwentbridge to a cottage by the sea in the village of Allonby a few miles up the coast from Maryport. It was a village full of memories for Marianne: bucket and spade memories, with kites and castles and fishing nets in rocky pools; squidgy sand between cold bare toes, and pretty pebble collections from the beach. She remembered being seven, running madly on the grassy banks in the ferocious wind, flapping her arms wildly, sure that she could fly. She remembered her uncle’s tales of the witches that roamed the shore; Maggie Oggi and Zib-Zab who made spells for good weather and the appearance of chocolate. She remembered the tweenage years when she joined the team of pony-girls at the riding school for weeks of savoured respite between the grim Brocklebank terms.

  Allonby wasn’t a pretty picture-postcard village, but a wild and windblown narrow strip of assorted dwellings behind the dunes and marram grass that edged the north Cumbrian coast. Summer brought trippers, walking their dogs or eating ice cream cones, or pigging-out on extravagant concoctions heaped upon large slices of melon, dotted with strawberries and parasols.

  There were ever-changing views across the Solway that often seemed from other lands. The Scottish hills of Galloway formed a graduated backdrop of ever decreasing size, and vast tracts of empty sands beckoned invitingly when the tide went out. But in the winter time it was like arriving at the end of the world. The wind blew with some ferocity, the banks were deserted and the residents breathed a sigh, enjoying the peace.

  Marianne always used to say she was going home when she went to Cumbria. Not any more. It was different from when she used to go home to the house in Derwentbridge. Here in this cream-painted cottage, in the charming guest room with its magnolia walls and flowery curtains and none of the paraphernalia from her schooldays, she would always be a visitor. But it was good to see her parents again; to check they hadn’t aged too much in her absence; that they were still coping. Seeing them again, now grey and ever slower, she felt the chill of the unknown future whispering in her ear.

  “Dah-ling,” her mother said on the doorstep when Marianne stepped from her father’s car. “Dah-ling,” with the emphasis on the second syllable, “I think you are not yourself. You have a faraway look in your eye. Are you sad?”

  “Oh, not especially. Just an age thing …” They hugged and walked inside, her father, Roger, following; thick white hair, slightly hunched now, carrying her bags. She knew he still wanted to do this, despite his age, and she let him because she knew it was a matter of pride, and each time she visited, she purposely travelled lighter.

  Marianne’s mother Daphine was half French and had been brought up on a vineyard in the Rhone valley. She was proud of her ancestry and nowadays often wore her hair combed back in a chignon. She hated being called Daphne by well-meaning friends and still served moules marinières and coq au vin to her guests at dinner parties. When she was younger she even plucked her eyebrows to nothing and painted them back on in stark brown pencil a millimetre or two above their natural line. She had looked permanently startled, but it somehow suited her garrulous nature. Marianne’s mother had style in bucketloads. Even now in her mid-seve
nties she tottered around on high heels when she was in the house, because she said once you stopped, that was it; you could never start wearing them again. She despaired of her daughter’s frequently casual dress and shook her head and tutted at the sight of denim.

  They went through to the quaint little kitchen with its sunny yellow walls and pine furniture.

  “Ah, you have the menopausals,” said her mother, knowingly, filling the kettle.

  Marianne smiled. Daphine had her own vocabulary – a relic from the days when English had been her second language – and even when she knew what the correct word was, she often chose to use her own version instead.

  “It happened suddenly. Not gradually like I thought it would. Thought I was too young. Seemingly not.”

  “In Japan, they don’t have menopausals. Not like we do. They eat soy and beans and sprouting things.”

  “What? How can you not have a menopause? It’s biological.”

  “They have no word for it in Japan. It is a socially manufactured concept.”

  “My hot-flushes are very real, I assure you.”

  “All in the mind, and all in the diet. However … you do look peaky.”

  Marianne made a face, yet she liked the way her mother pulled no punches and told it how it was. But she would never admit it, blaming this overt honesty for some of her insecurities.

  “Thanks!”

  Peaky … that’s all I need with the meeting imminent.

  Dear Edward,

  In Cumbria now, breathing the air that we both once breathed, feeling the same cool breeze, seeing the same patterns of the light.

  I find my parents well, but inching almost imperceptibly towards the inevitable. The future is always uncertain but none of the options is comfortable to contemplate …

  Here I revert to ‘daughter’ mode, accepting being ordered around in a way I never would in London. Does this happen to you, Edward, or is your status sufficiently elevated for them to treat you like a king?

  I am both excited and terrified of our pending reunion … Not long now …

  Later, when she went out for her evening walk, a round orange sun was setting in a darkening sky behind the Scottish hills. The imposing and familiar hump of Criffel melted into purple-grey lines of gentle hills, stretching out behind a millpond sea. It was like a Japanese painting in the Ukioy-e style: a picture from the floating world; and everywhere, a silence. The weather was silent; no gusting wind or stinging rain. The waves were silent; not even the faintest ‘shushing’ on the sands below. And all the gulls and geese had gone home to roost on the other side of the sea, so there came no crying from the skies.

  Peaky! She couldn’t extinguish the thought from her mind. Three days to lose the shadows, find the glow …

  Allonby was as quiet as it could ever be. The slightest sound travelled from one end of the village to the other and all but the faintest murmurings could be heard quite clearly. Not a time for sharing secrets or speaking words of passion.

  “Ant-y Jean! Look at me! Watch this!” exclaimed an enthusiastic boy of about seven as he kicked a football hard along the grass. Then he ran after the ball as fast as he could, shorts billowing in the breeze, not a care in the world, his aunt and uncle following with a black Labrador limping arthritically close by.

  Marianne was reminded of the fifties or sixties – before Torremolinos and Benidorm seduced the average Cumbrian with cheap package tours and promises of wall to wall sunshine and egg and chips. Being in Allonby was a regression to a time when buckets and spades and building sand-castles were the entertainment, and bright lights and all-night discos were a distant dream.

  On the sand and on the banks, a couple of dozen people lazily strolled or stood and watched this magical moment on England’s doorstep, costing nothing. Some hand in hand – the young romantics. Some elderly couples, companionably quiet, and families chirruping. And then there were those like Marianne who watched alone.

  Swallows dived and darted, a final feasting above the dunes like little Messerschmitts in the half-light. Dogs barked in the distance and a small gathering of teens lurked as only teens can lurk, in the bus shelter by the swings, as they had always done, sharing the latest gossip about who fancied who and what they might do if Billy or Sandra, or Chris or Trudy would only give them a chance. It was just the same thirty-five years ago. Only the ponies were missing now.

  Allonby … such an unassuming little place. Once a thriving fishing village till all the herring mysteriously went away; once a seaside resort, favoured by Dickens and Wilkie Collins, where Cumbrians came to take the waters in the Bath House and stroll along the shore in the bracing salty air. And once, not long ago, it was a place where ponies from the riding school roamed along the banks with the setting sun behind.

  How things change. Now this tiny outpost seemed so inconsequential in the scheme of things – except to those who know. Those who know are not seduced by Greek islands, Italian piazzas and The Gambia. Those who know are entranced by the ever changing views and the simple timeless pleasures from a forgotten era. They look beyond the dusty cobbled lanes and empty streets and out to sea. Beyond the banks is where the magic lies. A tiny speck bobbing on the waves might be a boat or a surfacing porpoise. They watch flocks of seagulls congregating on the sands, rising in telepathic unison when dogs approach. They see the V-formations of geese that fly across the darkening Solway skies to their nesting grounds on the Scottish coast.

  Still a place of space and peace; still a place to drift and dream; a haven, even heaven, and some people call it home. In another hour or so Marianne might watch the stars, twinkling brightly in the blue-black sky. City children don’t see stars competing in the orange-neon nights with the lights from air traffic. City kids don’t feel those moments of wonder at the vastness of the universe beyond.

  Marianne watched the setting sun along with all the others, wondering whether in this idyll she would finally get to meet with Edward in three days time as they had tentatively arranged. She felt the mobile in her pocket, hoping he would get in touch as he had said. They might at last converse in sentences, first one, then the other, developing a thread rather than the sound-bites of email. Oh how she longed for a proper conversation. When they met she would hear the voice behind the words; the hidden talk of tone and gesture, and the language of the eyes. Lydia’s eyes …

  Next morning she sat on a large piece of washed-up tree trunk on the shore, the wood bleached a creamy brown with the hot summer sun and the salty sea. She played with fronds of hair that escaped her ponytail and were being blown across her face by the persistent breeze. She kicked at the pebbles with her sandals and slapped the flies when they landed on her bare legs.

  Three oyster catchers caught her attention making an awful din of squeaky-toy noises. Up and down the sand they strutted and every now and then two would mob the third and wings would flap. The one being bullied held its ground. This is my sand too. Minutes passed and still it didn’t give way.

  Good on you, bird, thought Marianne. That’s what I should have done all those years ago.

  Allonby was a world a million miles away from the city hubbub, family angst and the day to day stresses of teaching.

  It was ten o’clock and she was amazed at the numbers of people already gathered in this normally quiet stretch of the coast. They were getting practised in ‘beach behaviour’ as the unusually hot and settled weather conditions continued, and they had staked out territories with umbrellas, windbreaks and deck chairs; all brightly coloured and reminiscent of yesteryear. Dogs bounded with unrestrained joy, not an inflatable banana in sight.

  She watched a youngish man with short dark hair, wearing only navy swimming trunks, who could have been Edward ten years ago, carefully plastering himself with sunscreen. Just when she thought he might be on his own like her, two little girls with blonde ringlets ran towards him, arms outstretched, begging him to run with them to the sea. Somewhere near the waves their mother stood and waited in turquoise
swimsuit and sarong, smiling fondly, and Marianne felt a momentary but overwhelming poignant feeling drift over her.

  It wasn’t that she wanted to turn back time, but when she had been a young mother, she had found it so very hard, constantly questioning her role, never belonging with the other mums at the mother and toddler club, always having a mind that was contemplating bigger concerns than whether her child was sitting or crawling, or standing or walking. She had never wanted what they had. But sometimes she had wished she was like them, wished it was what she wanted. It would have been so much simpler being like everyone else. It was hard feeling out of step with the human race.

  She wondered if the new Marianne, the post-Edward Marianne, the Marianne with lightness of being, would have felt differently; had an easier time. And then she thought of Johnny back in London, saying farewell to her with a bewildered expression, largely oblivious to the current crazy chatterings in her brain, as he had always been. He had never fully known the internal battles, the false confidence.

  One day, you’ll make me dance again, she thought, as she left her tree trunk and walked back across the pebbles, watching her step carefully, sandals slipping on the stones where the green algae glistened still wet from the tide. It isn’t all lost; it hasn’t all gone; I will never give up dreaming …

  Then she thought of Edward, dear sweet Edward whose presence in her life had meant so much.

  Only two more days of waiting left. Tick … tock, the pendulum seemed to swing so slowly. How would it be? The gateway to friendship, or disappointment, followed by decline? This was not the meeting she had planned in London amid the bustle of a busy station and the constant noise of trains and information spewing from the tannoy.

  Might they walk across these firm brown sands along which she had walked since she was five? Might they watch a setting sun in all its majesty? Might they understand each other without the need for explanations; cut to the real issues without too much exchanging of peripheral information?

  Oh Edward, she thought. Here in this place that is as close to my heart as any place in England; here you will see the woman that I am and always have been; a woman without the trappings of urban pretensions and metamorphoses. Here you will know the real me and my potential. Here, Edward, you will see my soul as I once glimpsed yours.