by Liz Byrski
‘What do you think?’ Julia asks, putting a cup of tea down beside Hilary. ‘Does everybody start looking back as they get older?’
Hilary, dozing in her wheelchair by the lounge window, blinks and straightens her shoulders. ‘Well, I’m old enough to be your mother, and I can’t say I have much enthusiasm for unpicking my past.’
Julia would have liked a robust conversation about different generations, the sort of conversation they have had over more than thirty years of friendship, but for which Hilary no longer has the energy.
‘My mother,’ Hilary continues, ‘would have said that going back over the past was pure self-indulgence. She’d have said that about therapy too.’
‘So would mine.’
‘She’d have recommended a dose of Epsom salts.’
‘Mine would have gone for a large gin.’
‘She did like a drink, didn’t she?’
‘Didn’t she just,’ Julia says with a dry laugh. ‘Used to start about eleven in the morning. We had a walk-in pantry and she always had a bottle of gin hidden behind the bottled fruit; she’d be in and out of there all day topping up. I don’t think Dad ever really knew the extent of it, but he was a big drinker himself.’
‘Surely he must have known.’
Julia shrugs. ‘Maybe, but she rarely seemed drunk. She used to get rather red in the face and glassy-eyed, though, and I do remember hearing some shouting matches between the two of them. Although we were never supposed to know about that.’
Hilary reaches out a trembling hand for the cup, and Julia resists the urge to dart across and hold it for her. She knows that Hilary hates fuss; having to have so much done for her causes her as much distress as does the cancer itself. But she is the least demanding of patients and Julia is determined to postpone the move to the hospice for as long as possible. In the seventies, when she had made up her mind to leave Paris, she and Hilary had moved back here to England, to this house, together. They had started the business from here, Hilary giving French lessons, Julia teaching English to overseas students, until they decided to make it into a proper language school with its own premises. So, it matters to her that Hilary is cared for here and that it is she who does the caring.
Julia thinks now that perhaps watching someone you love dying slowly is what focuses the mind on the past.
‘Do you remember when we met?’ she asks suddenly.
Hilary frowns. ‘Not really,’ she says after a moment’s thought. ‘Not the very first time. I know it was at one of those Sunday afternoon tea parties Eric and I ran. I loved those Sundays, you students and au pairs, all desperate to make English friends and speak English, just the opposite of what you were supposed to be doing in Paris.’
Julia nods. ‘The relief of not having to struggle with the language for a whole afternoon. I was so miserable au pairing but Mum and Dad said I had to stay and learn French. Mum said I should go to the British Embassy church and find myself some friends. So I turned up one Sunday morning and as I was leaving, this hand descended on my shoulder and it was yours.’
‘Sounds like a citizen’s arrest,’ Hilary laughs.
‘You gave me a card and said you had these Sunday afternoons for young people alone in Paris, and maybe I’d like to come along. Honestly, Hil, at the time I thought it sounded deadly dull.’
Hilary nods. ‘I never found a way to make a tea party run by the vicar’s wife sound very attractive, but I did take comfort from the fact that most people who risked it once kept coming back.’
‘It was wonderful,’ Julia says, leaning forward. ‘I so nearly threw that card away, but I was desperate to get out of the house on my day off, and it seemed better than nothing. And then, walking into your place was like being back in Tunbridge Wells.’
‘Mmm. Well, that doesn’t sound too exciting, but it was the familiarity, I suppose, that was what you all needed.’
‘Too right. Those Sunday afternoons were little oases in the miserable desert of my week. And, of course, I met Tom there, and Simon.’
‘I do remember that,’ Hilary says. ‘You lot were like bees round the honey pot. Understandable, I suppose; Simon was very good looking, and everyone knew the family had pots of money.’
‘Well, Simon virtually ignored me that day and that’s when I spotted Tom. I was taking round one of your huge plates of sandwiches and he was looking for something in Eric’s big bookcase. He looked sort of different and interesting.’
She can see him standing there as if it were yesterday, dropping the book he was holding as she thrust the sandwich plate in front of him.
‘Sorry,’ Tom had said. ‘I was in another world. Music and books; the vicar has a number of full scores. Thanks, I’d love a sandwich.’ His northern accent was a stark contrast to this roomful of cut-glass Oxford accents and was rather endearing.
‘You’re in the choir, aren’t you?’ Julia asked. ‘You sang the Twenty-third Psalm solo the other week.’
He nodded, his mouth full of sandwich.
‘You were awfully good. Are you a musician or something like that?’
‘Nothing at all like that, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘My name’s Tom Hammond, I work for Barclays Bank.’ The bank, he’d told her, was opening new branches in Europe and he was a specialist in aspects of international banking regulations. Julia wondered how old he was – older than her, of course; older, in fact, than most of the others in the room. ‘I’ve known Eric and Hilary for years,’ he said, as though he knew what she was thinking. ‘As a teenager, I was in the choir when Eric was rector near where I lived in Liverpool, so it was terrific to meet up with them again. But what about you, what are you doing here in Paris?’
Julia had explained about being an au pair to the Le Bons’ ghastly children, and the fading grandeur of the family’s apartment in the Rue de Fleurus near the Luxembourg Gardens. Later she and Tom had walked together back to the Left Bank; a walk that Julia, all these years later, still remembers as the start of everything that has mattered to her.
‘I met the three most significant people in my life at your tea party,’ she says now. ‘I wonder how many other people found their spouses and lifelong best friends there.’
‘I wonder,’ Hilary says wearily, reaching for her cardigan before it slips from the arm of her wheelchair. ‘Is Tom picking Richard up from the airport?’
‘Yes,’ Julia says, getting up. ‘They’ll be back soon. I’ve made soup for lunch and I’m going over to the bakery to get some baguettes.’
‘That’ll be nice,’ Hilary says, closing her eyes and disappearing swiftly and silently into one of the troughs of exhaustion that overwhelm her quite suddenly.
Julia slips out through the back door, and strolls through the churchyard and across the square to the bakery, where the tantalising smell of fresh bread wafts out onto the street. She’s looking forward to seeing Richard. Their mother died years earlier, their father is locked in his own private world of Alzheimer’s, and her best friend is dying. Richard and Tom are all that are left from the old days. Losing those few people who knew you well in youth is not just painful, it’s strangely disturbing; as though your youthful self might cease to exist with the death of its last remaining witness.
Back in the kitchen the jam has cooled, and Julia seals the jars with cellophane discs and screws the caps into place. She is on the kitchen steps putting the jars on the top shelf of the pantry when she hears the car pull in.
‘An apron?’ Richard gasps in mock horror from the open doorway. ‘And is that homemade jam? Amazing.’ He turns to Tom, who is following him in through the door, ‘Is she getting domesticated in her old age?’
‘She is always the angel in the house,’ Tom says with a wry grin.
‘Shut up, you tossers,’ Julia says affectionately, coming down the steps. ‘How was the flight?’
‘Tedious as ever but, thankfully, on time,’ Richard says, dumping his bag on the floor. ‘How are you, Jules?’
‘Okay. Sad, tired, bu
t okay.’
He hugs her. ‘I’m so sorry about Hilary. Tom says she’s going downhill fast.’
Julia nods. ‘She’s in the lounge, asleep at the moment. But she’s looking forward to seeing you. How about you? You look a bit seedy.’
‘Just tired,’ Richard says, taking off his jacket. ‘I’ve been all over the place in the last few weeks and the older I get, the more I dislike the travel and feel . . .’
‘That you want to give it all up and settle down with a good woman,’ Tom cuts in with a laugh, drawing the cork from a bottle of wine.
‘I wish. But I have to say, it doesn’t seem to be in my stars. You know how it is, I make a dazzling first impression and within a few weeks I’ve managed to totally piss them off. Plus ça change!’
‘Many men would think you have an enviable life,’ Tom says. ‘After all, look at me, in thrall to a compulsive jam maker.’
‘Don’t start,’ Julia says, looking at Richard. ‘You’ve only just got here and you two are ganging up on me already.’
‘Only because we love you, darling,’ Tom says, pouring the wine. ‘Now, what about a nice glass of red before lunch? That bread smells bloody marvellous; do you think two baguettes are enough? I could probably eat a whole one myself. I might go and get some more.’ He pours the wine and raises his glass. ‘Cheers. I’ve been sorting through some stuff in my study, Rich, and I’ve made contact with a bloke in Prague who’s sending me some more material.’
‘More!’ Julia groans. ‘It’s already like a library archive in there. Hasn’t there been enough written about nineteen sixty-eight?’
‘Not the way we’re going to do it,’ Richard says. ‘And this will be different because it’ll be specially written for the fortieth anniversary.’
‘I’m not sure I’ll survive another nine years of you two farting about with yellowing posters and newspapers, and all the rest of those crappy old boxes of stuff you’ve been hoarding,’ Julia says.
‘You’re referring to my extensive collection of memorabilia,’ says Tom, gasping in mock horror.
‘I thought I might try to get a US cable channel interested in a film to go with it,’ Richard says, ‘it would make sense.’
‘Bloody good idea,’ says Tom. ‘I’ll need to start collecting film clips for that, probably have to start storing them in the spare bedroom.’
They clink their glasses, grinning at Julia like naughty schoolboys. Tom has been toying with this idea for ages but Julia knows it’s more likely to happen now that Richard is involved. Tom’s tendency to procrastinate is legendary, whereas Richard gets things done, and he can also write accessibly. Tom still tends to write like a banker: passive voice; lengthy, convoluted sentences; long words that lurk on the margins of most people’s vocabulary. His study is piled high with reference books, tatty newspapers and box files. Despite Julia’s apparent cynicism about them, those torn posters and handbills he collected in Paris pluck the strings of memory for her.
‘I’d like to go and see Dad while I’m here,’ Richard says now, breaking her train of thought. ‘Maybe tomorrow morning?’
‘Good idea. He’s more alert in the mornings than he is later in the day.’
They talk for a while before Tom, who has slipped across the square for more bread, reappears in the kitchen. The top quarter of one loaf has been torn off.
‘You have no sense of restraint,’ Julia says, taking it from him. ‘I got mine home all in one piece.’
‘That, Julia, is because you are a model of rectitude,’ Tom says. ‘I, on the other hand, am a terrible old reprobate who needs to seize the day.’
‘And I am the one who needs to seize a second glass of wine,’ says Richard, reaching for the bottle and refilling his glass. ‘And then I’ll go and have a chat with Hilary before we eat.’
THREE
Tunbridge Wells, Kent – September 1999
There is something about the south of England that grips Richard’s heart every time he comes back here, and on this beautiful Sunday morning, as he and Julia drive from Sussex into Kent, he feels the pull of home more strongly than ever. In the seventies, when he returned to London after several years as a war correspondent in Vietnam, he was anxious to move on, to find the action elsewhere. He found it in Washington, and later in New York. But he’s always known that this part of England is home, not that he actually has a home here now. His parents sold Bramble Cottage, where he and Julia grew up, when they retired to Spain in the early seventies, and made their London flat over jointly to himself and Julia. Richard had lived in it with a friend, and stayed on there when he got married and until he went to Vietnam. These days, Julia manages the flat’s letting and they share the rent.
‘Everything okay at Craven Terrace?’ he asks now, as they approach Tunbridge Wells. ‘How are the tenants?’
‘Fine. Such nice people, they’ve just signed up for another six months,’ Julia says. ‘But, unfortunately, they’re going back to Canada next April. Anyway, I’ll worry about that when the time comes.’
‘You might not have to,’ Richard says, turning in his seat to look at her as she drives. ‘I was wondering about moving back there myself.’
‘Really?’ She swings the car into a parking bay. ‘Let’s go and have a coffee and you can tell me about it. I always need caffeine before I go to the nursing home.’
Crossing the worn paving stones and covered walks of the Pantiles, they find a café so close to the spa they can hear the trickling water.
‘Remember when Mum used to bring us here for afternoon tea?’ Richard asks, after they’ve ordered coffee. ‘It used to be such a treat, and you were a whiney little pest.’
‘Charming! And you were the perfect child, I suppose?’
‘Naturally! I was older and needed to dissociate myself from this little monster who kept demanding éclairs, and getting chocolate in the most ridiculous places.’
Julia smiles. ‘It seems so long ago,’ she says. ‘And it all looks a bit faded and dreary now, doesn’t it?’
‘Not to me. And it was a long time ago, almost half a century. I’m getting nostalgic goosebumps.’ He sits back savouring the silence. There is something wonderfully reassuring about being in childhood places, he thinks; something that reminds you what really matters.
‘So, what’s this about coming back?’ Julia asks as their coffee arrives.
‘I think I may have done my dash in the States; I love New York but I sort of feel it’s time to come back to London.’
‘Would they transfer you back here?’
‘Probably, and I’m considering reducing my work with the BBC anyway. Martin and I have a couple of film projects we’d like to do together. We’re thinking of expanding the production company, so having one of us here and the other in the States would be ideal. I haven’t made up my mind yet; I just wanted to mention it, see how you’d feel if I wanted to live in the flat. I’d pay you your share of the rent, of course, or buy you out, if you prefer.’
Julia shrugs. ‘Sure,’ she says, ‘whatever you want. But I have just signed them up for six months.’
‘That’s fine; if I decide to do it, the timing would be perfect. And you don’t think Tom would mind?’
‘Tom would feel it was between you and me. But no, he wouldn’t mind in the least. In fact, he’d be over the moon to have you back here, and so would I.’
‘Thanks,’ he smiles and tastes his coffee. ‘This is cold,’ he says, pulling a face.
‘But it is caffeine and it’s better than they’ll give us at the nursing home.’
‘There is one thing that might make me stay in the US.’
‘Carly?’ Julia says, ‘Of course, you wouldn’t get to see much of her, I suppose.’
‘I don’t see much of her now. She’s still in California, working on the Oakland Tribune, taken to journalism like a duck to water.’
‘Or like father like daughter.’
He shrugs. ‘Not too much like me, I hope. No, I was talking ab
out Lily.’
‘Lily? Why would she stop you?’
Richard looks away, awkward suddenly. ‘I’ve been wondering . . . well . . . whether we might be able to get back together. Probably just wishful thinking on my part but Carly’s moved out of home, Lily’s on her own . . .’
‘But Lily gave you your marching orders in no uncertain terms. Has she said anything to –’
‘No,’ he cuts in, ‘nothing at all, we’re friends still, always have been, but I was hoping . . . after all, we are still married.’
‘And you’ve been separated for nearly twelve years.’ Julia leans across and puts her hand on his arm. ‘It’d be great if you two got back together, but do you really think it’s a possibility?’
He shrugs. ‘I haven’t seen her for a few months but when we do meet we always get on well. And we’re both pushing sixty now, it seems such a waste to be apart.’ He leans forward, playing with his teaspoon. ‘Look, I know I have a disastrous record with women and particularly with Lily, but surely there has to be one time in my life when I get it right. Maybe this is the time.’
‘Well, if it’s what you want.’ She takes another sip of coffee and grimaces. ‘You’re right, I don’t think I can drink any more of this. Maybe we should just get moving, get it over with.’
‘Sounds good,’ Richard says and slips money under the bill.
‘You do know it’s most unlikely that Dad will recognise you?’
Julia says as they walk back arm-in-arm across the Pantiles. ‘He hasn’t known Tom or me for months now.’
‘I know,’ he says. ‘I’m prepared for that.’ And as he says it, he really believes it. He has thought about it quite a lot, talked with friends who have been through it. But it’s only at the nursing home, when his father turns dead eyes on him and looks away without any flicker of recognition, that Richard realises how totally unprepared he is.
‘Why don’t you wheel him around the garden?’ Julia suggests, ‘He likes that. I’ll wait here.’ And she finds herself a seat in the visitors’ lounge and picks up a magazine.