Jenny claps her hand to her mouth. ‘OMYGOD! How terrible for you, Elle! He did not want to sleep with you on a first date. Oh, write him off, he has got to be gay!’
‘Oh, shut up!’
They both burst out laughing. ‘So, how is Tom? Have you had a good leave?’
‘Great.’ Jenny sighs. ‘It’s gone so quickly.’
‘Back to Iraq?’
‘Yes. After that Afghanistan.’ Danielle hears the tight note in Jenny’s voice.
‘Tom can look after himself, darling.’
‘I hope so. Is quiche and salad OK for supper?’
‘Flo and I will disappear. You will want Tom to yourself.’
‘He’ll be ages. I’m pretty sure he’ll grab an Indian or something with the guy he’s with.’
After a minute Danielle says, twisting her glass in her hands, ‘You still love Tom as much as ever, yes?’
Jenny looks up from the sink. ‘Afraid so. More than ever.’
Danielle sighs. ‘Marriage amazes me. What is there to say, to do, to feel that is new every time. How do people keep the mystery of each other? Of course,’ she adds drily, ‘it is a little different for you, Jenny, because Tom is away so much doing dangerous things.’
Her voice holds a veiled sarcasm that Jenny has learnt to ignore. It always surfaces when Tom is home. She tosses the salad. ‘I guess the first excitement changes into something of more depth. I suppose life for most people is mainly mundane and routine, Elle, but the comfort and warmth of getting close to someone more than makes up for the loss of mystery. I haven’t spent enough time with Tom to be bored or irritated yet, but I often wish I had. Sometimes it feels like living life in the fast lane and I long to pull over to a steady pace; to live a more ordinary life and have Tom come home safely every night.’
‘Maybe you have the secret. Do not daily live together. Do not make a conventional marriage.’
‘No fear of that with you, Danielle. Hey, you could marry a long-haul pilot! That’s a good idea. Maybe you wouldn’t get bored then?’
‘No! I do not think that I will ever marry.’
‘Don’t you sometimes feel you want a close or permanent relationship? Someone who doesn’t care about the size of your bottom or that you forgot to shave your legs? Someone who cares about you because you’re you? Don’t you get tired of the effort of attracting different men all the time and never really getting to know them?’
Danielle laughs. ‘You do not have to know a man to have good sex with ‘eem.’
Jenny raises her eyes to the ceiling. ‘You can have amazing sex with a man you do know.’
Danielle sits at the table playing with her glass. ‘Anyway, no one could put up with me on a permanent basis so I make sure it never happens.’
Surprised at the tone in her voice, Jenny stops chopping tomatoes. ’Whatever do you mean? Why do you say that? Don’t be silly.’
‘Not silly, Jenny. You know perfectly well that I am promiscuous. Are not promiscuous people supposed to have a very low opinion of themselves? Is this not what they say?’
Flo has come back into the room and stands quietly listening.
Jenny stares at Danielle, upset; this is unlike her. ‘Why should you have a low opinion of yourself? You are beautiful and talented and successful. You are practical and funny. You have everything going for you.’
Danielle gives a hard, short laugh. ‘Except my sharp tongue and bad habit of going for the jugular, darling. Men don’t like to be laughed at; their egos are too frail.’ She smiles over at Flo. ‘I am tired and the wine is going to my head. Take no notice of me. Let us change the subject, please.’
Flo gathers up cutlery from the drawer. ‘My dear girl, don’t let a wretched childhood fuck up the success you’re making of your life.’
Danielle is startled at the f-word coming from Flo. ‘How do you know that I have a horrible childhood?’
‘The signs are unmistakable. Exorcise it. I was considerably older than you before I was able to do so and it spoilt many years I can never have again.’
Danielle and Jenny stare at her in silence. Flo has never, ever mentioned her past.
Flo laughs at their faces. ‘Old as I might seem, I did have a childhood, you know. I even had a life before I arrived here. Come on, where’s my supper? Let’s talk of cheerful and important things like work schedules for tomorrow.’
In bed, Danielle lies awake thinking of Flo. The most unlikely people have secret pasts. She thinks of the few men she has really liked as well as fancied. Tom, for instance? She closes her eyes tight against the memory of his cold rebuttal many years before. I am destined to that no man’s land, to the lonely half-light of a stranger’s back.
She thinks of Rosie with the doll. Her secret longing for children is a physical ache in the pit of her stomach. Pity you need a man to create them. How wonderful if you could create a child out of your own love and longing.
Flo lies in the room below Danielle. Maybe one day she will tell her how she wasted twenty naive, childbearing years of her life on a man who, in the end, never left his wife. When the children are a little older. When they have finished their exams. When Betty is a little stronger. When the children leave home…When hell freezes over.
She had settled for second best because it was what she believed she was worth. Her parents’ voices had dominated her young life. Florence will be lucky to get a man. Face as plain as a pikestaff. What man is going to fall in love with Florence?
A married man, that’s who; but not quite enough. Florence Kingsley decided she would place a Mrs in front of her name anyway, like a Victorian housekeeper.
All those Christmases and bank holidays alone. Until she came here. Maybe one day she will say to Danielle, Your young life is precious. Don’t throw it away. Happiness has a way of surprising you. Look at me now.
I lie entwined with Tom, sleepless again. A wind smelling of rain moves the curtains and rattles the windows. There is going to be a storm. It seems a waste to sleep. Tom holds me, one leg thrown over my hip as if I might escape. Lying skin to skin I burn the moment into me. Loving the weight of him, I breathe him in.
Rosie wakes twice in the night crying and when I pick her up she clings to me, sobbing. I rock her in my arms. Perhaps it is the wind that is gusting outside making the old casement windows rattle. The second time Rosie wakes I take her back into our bed. It’s fast becoming a habit that is going to be hard to break.
I lie holding her trembling little body, listening to the wind tearing the leaves off the trees before they are ready. We are safe in this strong old house and it feels wonderfully secure and settled around me.
I wonder if our house in St Ives is being battered by the same storm. I find myself straining, as I did in childhood, for the sound of the maroon going up for the lifeboat. I remember the shiver and wriggle down the bed as I listened for the second firing, which meant the lifeboat had been launched safely. For a moment I can almost hear the swirl and crash of the sea outside the window.
Rosie is hot. Maybe she got too excited over the doll. She turns over and burrows into Tom’s back, draws up her legs in a foetal position, like a small animal. She reaches out to touch Tom’s back with a small crab hand, and sticks the thumb of her other hand into her mouth and sleeps again with a little shaky sigh. I curl up next to her and try not to go on and on doing a countdown. One more whole day together. I wonder anxiously if Rosie is getting to the age when she can sense when Tom is about to leave us again. What nebulous unformed horrors can a child of two have that make her cling to me and scream out in such terror?
FIFTY-FOUR
When Adam had gone to school I would go and walk on the estuary in autumn sunlight. There was an old heron who sat on a rotten log all day and the gulls and crows constantly mobbed him. They would circle and dive-bomb him, crowd and jostle him like playground bullies who instinctively zoom in on the weak. He was old and scruffy, with loose feathers hanging like a tattered coat. I was worried that he
had given up and the other birds knew it, although Adam told me that was not scientific.
It was so peaceful with the tide creeping in over the stones in little sucking movements. I wondered how I could have contentedly spent so many years in a city.
My days here with Adam began and ended with the birds. Adam’s enthusiasm was catching. It made me appreciate all that was around me in a special way. Until I lived in London, I took everything that I had on my doorstep for granted. Adam gave me new eyes. I began to view the world with a wonder at all the small things I had missed.
I carried a small pack on my back with my sketchbook and pens, pencils and binoculars. I had started to draw again, just for my own enjoyment. I jotted down the colours and textures I saw each day. I collected small pieces of driftwood and seaweed, and carried bags of pearly pink shells home from the beach.
I could sit for hours in the shelter of the sand dunes, watching the wind catch the top of the waves in a white mist. Ideas began to come to me thicker and faster than I could get them down.
I had sloughed off the city like a dusty discarded coat, now I drank in the changing luminous sea and sky as I had done in childhood.
In the evenings, if the tide was out, Adam and I crunched along the shoreline, and over the old quay where the locals fished in the evenings and on to the beach. St Ives lay shimmering in the distance, haloed in a cloudy lustre of pink light.
‘In the summer we could bring one of those disposable barbecues and cook sausages up in the dunes as the sun sets,’ I said to Adam.
‘Cool,’ he said. He could watch the windsurfers for hours. They seemed fearless, flying behind their huge colourful kites in a gale and sometimes having to be rescued.
When Adam was in bed I thumbed through my fashion books and my books on the V & A. I drew ideas for dresses and skirts the muted colour of seabirds. I made lists of materials for accessories. Belts of shell and leather and rope, and bright canvas bags beaded with shells: summer seaside clothes.
I was suddenly full of ideas. They tumbled over themselves in my head. It was strange; I had given up work because I was empty and just living, and being here had released something inside me as if it had been waiting to burst out of me.
I had no plans to show my work to anyone. I was doing this for myself and for Tom. I used to show Tom my rough drawings for designs. I would fix small pieces of coloured material to the sketches so that he had some idea of what I did and I could hear his voice saying, Wow! I really like that and that one. Stunning. Not sure about that…and that one is a bit over the top, for me. That evening dress is fantastic. How come someone so talented and trendy married a boring old army man?
I had no idea if what I was experimenting with was any good. I only knew that it released something in me, some fundamental need to make something out of each day. I thought it might be a little like writing a poem; bleeding a small piece of yourself into each line or stitch in order to feel alive.
I felt as secretly excited as I did before a collection. In the hospital I thought I had lost every creative urge. I thought it had died with Rosie and Tom. Being with Adam had rekindled it like a miracle, a rebirth. It made going to bed alone a little easier. It made waking without Tom manageable.
I knew that soon I would have to tell Adam about the day Tom died and I dreaded it. I had to relive it to tell him. I knew it was necessary for both of us. Adam wanted every small detail of our lives. I knew he stored all that I told him carefully to make a patchwork of my memories, of our lives and the way we had lived, Tom, Rosie and I.
I think he squirrelled these details in a special separate part of himself, carefully building up the life of a man he had thought about all his childhood.
When we were sorting out photographs, Adam would sometimes place his finger on Tom’s cheek, his face eager, full of longing. It hurt watching him. I wanted to pull him to me and rock him as I used to do with Rosie.
One evening, as the wind blustered and blew outside the house, I carried the parcel of photographs that Danielle had sent from London into the sitting room.
Adam looked up from his book. ‘Are you OK?’
‘It’s time I opened this up, Adam. These photos need to be out of their box and around the house, full of the happy times. I’d rather do it with you here and I will try not to get upset.’
‘Doesn’t matter if you do,’ he said gruffly. ‘It is…upsetting.’
We sat on the floor, and I cut the tape from the padded envelope and pulled out a large and a small box of photographs. I felt sick. I wanted, but dreaded, to see Rosie photographed over and over in black and white, in vibrant colour. I quailed looking down at the markers of her short life: photographs taken on her birthday; summer in Richmond Park; Christmas in St Ives. We had all taken hundreds and hundreds of photographs of my indulged but not yet spoilt little girl.
I was frightened of the horror I fought to keep at bay when I had to face, admit, accept her innocent terrible end in the car seat behind Tom. I held hard to the memory of how they had been together, Tom and my sweet Rosie. Close as close. My two women, Tom would whisper. My two lovely women.
Adam touched my shoulder. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Wait a moment.’
I heard him in the kitchen and he came back with some red wine in my favourite glass.
I smiled, touched. ‘Thank you. This will help, darling.’
I opened the boxes and together we fanned out the photographs on the floor, in a sweep like a pack of cards: Tom throwing Rosie up into the air in the garden; Tom, asleep in the chair holding her as a baby, with Rosie peeping out curiously at the camera as if to say I think I should the one who has fallen asleep.
There were her first wobbly steps on the polished floors, in one of the little dresses I made for her, arms raised to balance herself, looking anxious because her small chubby legs were proving unreliable. There were all the photographs of me and Rosie that Tom had taken; our wild curly hair dominating each picture. We were so alike, she a tiny version of me, a vital, fundamental part of me.
How many times can a heart break? My hands trembled. I could not speak to Adam as I turned the photos over on the floor one by one. The happiness of those lost days filled the room, staring up at me; my child’s life in lucent memories. All that I had. All that I lost.
It could never heal, this loss, it would live on and on in me for ever, making all I did pointless, just an exercise in diversion. How could I have thought my urge to create again was anything but a diversion, a manic grabbing of straws? How could I?
Adam whispered, ‘Jenny, Jenny, please don’t cry. Don’t cry. We can put all the photos back in the box.’
I looked at him. I did not know I was crying. He was very pale. I opened my arms, and he came and wrapped his arms round me on the floor and I smelt his young schoolboy scent. We rocked for a moment and I felt his emotion fighting for control in his chest. I knew he wanted to say something comforting but could not find the words.
I held him away. ‘I’m so sorry. I should not be putting you through this, Adam. I’m going to bed now. We’ll talk in the morning.’ I kissed his forehead. ‘Goodnight.’
I leave him with the kaleidoscope of my life. I don’t put the light on, I don’t have a bath. I throw off my clothes and pull on old pyjamas and climb into bed in the dark. Once I let go I cannot stop. I muffle my crying with a pillow. I lose all sense of time as my body heaves around the bed. Now I have started I cannot stop.
I want to feel and touch and smell and hold Rosie and Tom. I want to hear their laughter and their voices singing around the house. I want them back. I want my life and all I had back. I want this to be a terrible mistake. I want to wake up and find this is only a nightmare and I will laugh with relief, laugh that I could have such a dream. I want my life back.
FIFTY-FIVE
Adam sat among the sea of photographs on the floor unsure what to do. He did not feel he had the right to touch them or to return them to the box. He let his eyes roam slowly over them,
peering down at the laughing faces. Everyone looked so happy. Everyone in that London house seemed to laugh all the time and yet he knew that no one took photographs of sad or angry people. The camera caught the special times. Lives could be distorted by what you saw, not what was actually being lived out.
He wished he could have been part of the life in that house. He wished he had known the time when Jenny was happy and carefree. He did not know how it would ever have been possible for him to share in lives that had not been linked to his own. But he knew that reunions did happen, usually when you were grown up. Estranged or adopted children did walk into their parents’ lives. It was too late for him. He had always planned to do it, but now it was too late.
What if his mother had given him little pieces of information about Tom that he could have followed up years and years ago? Like with the Salvation Army or someone. Then he could have made contact secretly, could have got to know Tom and they would have talked and talked, and he would not have been a stranger any more. Jenny and Tom would have told him how glad they were that he had found them. He might have been a part of all that he now looked down on. If only his mother had not made a secret of Tom.
Dimly through her closed bedroom door Adam heard the sound of Jenny’s weeping. It went on and on and on like a disturbing Gregorian chant. He knelt in the still house where the curtains were not yet drawn and black night deep and violent gathered outside. There was only the sound of Jenny crying and the curlews calling out an alarm into the windy night, adding to the long lament that filled the house.
Adam got up and drew the curtains against the dark. He had a shower and then listened outside Jenny’s door. She was still crying. Somehow he had to stop her. She would make herself ill again. She might even have to go back to hospital.
He went into the kitchen and switched on the kettle. He made a mug of tea and added milk and sugar. Sugar helped in a crisis, he seemed to remember. He knocked on Jenny’s door then, without waiting for an answer, opened it and went in. The room was in darkness and Jenny was huddled in the double bed, her head buried in the pillows. ‘I’ve brought you some tea.’ He stood awkwardly in his pyjamas by the side of the bed. At least she had stopped crying. Carefully, he placed the tea next to her and tiptoed out of the room in case she was asleep. He turned off all the lights and checked that the doors were locked, then he went to bed.
Come Away With Me Page 24