The Forever Girl

by Alexander McCall Smith

  She wondered what he meant. “Why the future?”

  “You haven’t heard? Sorry, I thought you knew. My folks have left Cayman. Two months ago.”

  She felt her world slip further away.

  “Where to?” Her voice sounded strained.

  “Australia. My mother’s from there originally, you know. She wanted to go back, and I think my dad was a bit fed up with Cayman. He wanted something new. He’s got a job in a medical practice in a place called Ballarat. It’s not all that far from Melbourne. I’ll be going to see them over Christmas.”

  Clover struggled to keep herself under control. This was the end. It was what she had decided she wanted, but it was still an end.

  James was still looking at her. “I don’t think you’re happy,” he said quietly. “Boyfriend trouble?”

  She shook her head vigorously.

  He reached over and placed his hand on hers. “Are you still with the same guy? The Irishman … what’s his name?”

  “Padraig.”

  He took his hand away. “I hope he makes you happy.” And then, after a brief pause, “That’s what I want, you know.”

  She thought: I have to tell him now. If I don’t, I’m going to have the rest of my life to regret it. There’s a chance – just a chance. I have to tell him.

  But instead it was he who spoke. “You see, I never had a sister and I suppose you’re the closest thing I have to a sister.”

  She struggled with the words. “But I don’t want to be your sister …”

  He drew back, in mock apology. “Sorry! I don’t mean to burden you.”

  “It’s not that …”

  But he interrupted her. He had remembered something and looked down at his watch. “Oh God, I’ve forgotten.”

  “Forgotten what?”

  “I have to get a book back to the library by nine. And it’s still in the flat. I’m going to have to run.”

  She could not say anything.

  He wiped the foam off his lips. “I’ll see you sometime,” he said, and added, “Are you going home for Christmas?”

  She nodded.

  “I envy you.”

  She stared at the surface of the table, at the crumbs of something – a croissant, perhaps – that had lodged in a crack in the wood. She did not want her misery to show, but the thought struck her then – the strange, unexpected thought – that misery was not just in ourselves – it was in the things about us in the world.

  “Then you’ll see Ted,” he continued. “Tell him to come up to Scotland and see us both. Either Edinburgh or Glasgow.”

  “I will.”

  “Good.”

  He waved to the assistant behind the counter, who waved back. Then, as if it were an afterthought, he blew a kiss to Clover. She blew the kiss back.

  27

  She went home for the full three weeks of the university’s Christmas vacation. Amanda met her at the airport, accompanied by Billy, who was himself at boarding school now but had come home earlier. He was full of news of his soccer team, and regaled her for the whole journey home with his accounts of their last match. His goal, in the final minutes, had saved the match, he said, and had been mentioned at school assembly – enough to turn any head.

  Her room was just as she had left it, but, and she found this curious, it was no longer her room: the things it contained were hers, but seemed like relics – exhibits in a museum of what had once been but was no longer. And it seemed strange, too, that her parents were leading the lives that they were: everything seemed so small, so limited; even people’s conversation seemed to be stuck in a groove from which there was no escape. Her father still talked about the office; her mother about the tennis club; Billy about soccer and the doings of his friends; and Margaret about the people she knew at church, who, like everybody else, were doing, as far as Clover could work out, much the same things that they had always been doing.

  A Christmas party had been planned, to take place a week before Christmas itself, and Amanda suggested that Clover could invite her friends too, or such of them as were on the island. “Ted’s here,” she said. “You’ll know that.”

  Clover had yet to see Ted, although she had spoken to him on the phone. She would invite him, she said; he did not always like parties, but she would invite him.

  “I thought everybody of your age liked parties,” said Amanda. “I did.”

  “Ted’s different. Not everybody’s the same, you know.”

  “Ted’s a nice boy, though.”

  She nodded. They were sitting together on the patio, on the edge of the pool. The water was cool and inviting, although neither had swum that morning.

  Her mother glanced at her, and then looked away. “It’s a pity that James isn’t here,” she said.

  Clover reached down for a leaf beside her chair and twisted it in her hand. “Yes, it is.”

  “Because he’d be company for you. I’m worried that you’re going to be bored, with all your friends in the UK now and nobody left here. Except for Ted, of course. And that Edwards girl – the one whose name I always forget. Her mother, by the way, has put on an immense amount of weight. She’s as large as a house now. As large as a hotel, actually.”

  “That’s a bit unkind. And she’s called Wendy.”

  Amanda smiled. “Maybe. But if you’re too worried about being kind to people, you end up saying nothing about anything.”

  “Possibly. But still …”

  “People lose control of themselves,” Amanda continued. “They see food and they eat it. They lose their capacity for self-control. Look at the cruise ships.”

  “What about them?”

  Amanda took off her dark glasses and polished them with the hem of her blouse. “The cruise ships that call in here … the ones that come over from Florida. Look at the people.”

  “What about them?”

  “They eat too much. Those boats are vast floating kitchens.”

  Clover shrugged. “It’s the food manufacturers. It’s the people who put the corn syrup or whatever it is in the food. They’ve made people into addicts, haven’t they? It’s not the fault of people themselves.”

  “So nothing’s our fault? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No, I’m not saying that.”

  They lapsed into silence.

  Then Amanda said, “You have to make your own life, darling. You don’t just accept what you’re given …” She left the sentence unfinished.

  Clover waited, but when her mother did not continue, she asked, “Given by whom?”

  “By life, I suppose. The cards we’re dealt. Call it what you will.”

  Clover dropped the leaf she had been fiddling with. Her fingertips were now stained green by the sap. “Some people may not find it all that easy to do that.”

  Amanda agreed. “Of course not. Of course it’s not easy.” She looked at her daughter. “I’d never say it was easy.” She closed her eyes. “It can be very hard.”

  There was a silence between them now that lasted for several minutes. Clover was conscious of the sound of her mother’s breathing – and the sound of the water lapping at the edge of the pool. There was a rustle, too, in the undergrowth at the edge of the flower beds – a lizard or a ground bird pursuing its prey. Then Amanda said: “My darling, I know that you live with a big disappointment in your life. I know that because a mother can tell these things. You don’t have to tell me that it’s there because I know exactly what you must feel. Parents can put two and two together.

  “And this disappointment isn’t necessarily going to go away. It may get to hurt a little bit less as the years go by, but it may never go away entirely. So what you have to do is to get on with life and try to fill the place that one person once occupied with another. That may not work entirely, but it’ll help. It’s the only way of getting through life. You stop thinking about the things that haven’t happened and think about the things that are happening, or might happen.”

  Clover was staring fixedly
at the pool as her mother spoke. But she heard every word. “That’s what I’m trying to do,” she whispered.

  “Good. I’m glad.” And then, “Me too.”

  Clover turned to her mother. “You too?”

  There was a moment of hesitation, but it was brief; the admission may not have been intended, but now it was made, and it could not be left where it was. “You must have wondered why Daddy and I spent that time apart. I know you never asked, and we gave you a very vague explanation about people not always getting on – that sort of thing. But you must have wondered.”

  Clover gave no confirmation.

  “There was fault on both sides,” her mother went on. “Your father seemed to lose interest in our marriage because he worked so hard. Men do that. It’s nothing unusual. And then I discovered that I was becoming fond of somebody else. People do that too. Men and women. Everybody. It’s terribly easy to do – particularly in a place like this.”

  She studied the effect of her words on her daughter. Clover was paying attention; she was not looking at her mother, but she was listening intently.

  “I don’t know what to say about what happened,” Amanda continued, “and I’ve often thought about it since then and I’ve tried to be rational about it.” She laughed. “It’s the one thing, though – the one thing – that you just can’t be rational about. And I think that’s because love is fundamentally irrational – so how can you be rational about something that doesn’t make sense?”

  She paused, as if expecting Clover to answer, but she remained silent.

  “It was as if a whole lot of colour had suddenly been injected into my life,” Amanda went on. “You know those films where black and white suddenly becomes colour? The mood changes – everything lifts. Well, that’s what it was for me. I found somebody I wanted to talk to, somebody who made the world about me seem different. I thought at the time that it was something special – that feeling – but of course it’s the commonest thing in the world. It’s what everybody feels when they fall in love. They just do.

  “But it wasn’t to be. Sometimes love simply isn’t to be. It’s as straightforward as that.”

  Clover spoke quietly. “So you had an affair anyway? Even if it didn’t work out?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “But that’s what it sounds like to me.”

  “Well it wasn’t – at least it wasn’t in the way in which most people would use the word affair.”

  Clover felt relieved – but puzzled too. Did her mother mean that she fell for somebody but failed to take it any further? That must be it. In which case …

  Amanda provided the answer. “It was maybe a bit like what happened to you. I became fond of somebody from a distance. It never went further than that.”

  Clover made a face; she could not help herself. But suddenly aware of what she was doing, she stopped. Amanda, though, had noticed. “I suppose it disgusts you. And I can understand that. Parents aren’t really flesh and blood, are they? They’re never quite the same as we are ourselves.”

  She rushed to apologise. “I’m sorry, Mum. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I shouldn’t have talked to you about this. It’s my fault.”

  “No,” insisted Clover. “It’s mine.”

  They exchanged glances, tentatively, but feeling, rather to the surprise of both of them, fonder now of one another than at any time before, now that the transition to an adult relationship had been made. It had not taken much: just the admission of defeat, of disappointment, of human failing.

  “Are you going to be all right?” asked Clover.

  Her mother reached over and touched her arm gently. “Of course.”

  “Though it must be sad for you.”

  Amanda looked thoughtful. “Yes. I suppose it is.” She hesitated. “But don’t you think that sadness like that has … well, I suppose, a special quality to it.”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Well, I think it does. You’re studying art history. You look at paintings, don’t you? Some of them must have that in them – the sadness that goes with something being just out of your reach. Something unattainable.”

  “Maybe. I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well, think about it now.”

  She had a question to ask her mother, and she was debating with herself as to whether she should ask it.

  “There’s something on your mind,” said Amanda.

  “Yes, there is. This person …”

  Amanda looked away. The easy intimacy of the previous few minutes was suddenly no longer there. “I don’t think I should talk about him. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “You know about … about me and James.”

  “Yes, I know that. But I’m your mother. It’s not surprising I should know.”

  “And shouldn’t a daughter know about her mother’s …” She was on the point of saying lover, but Amanda said it for her.

  “Her mother’s lover? That depends. In this case, there wasn’t one. I told you: he never became my lover.” She started to get out of her chair. “I think we should have a swim. Then we can go over to the tennis club. I know you say your tennis is rusty, but I’ll play with one hand behind my back.”

  “You’ll still win.”

  Amanda laughed as she reached down to give Clover a hand up. “Mothers have to win something. They lose a lot as it is, you might as well allow them to win at tennis.”

  Their party, planned to be held at the poolside, was threatened by rain. Heavy thunderclouds, towering cumulonimbus stacked high into the sky, built up in the afternoon, and by early evening were discharging sheets of rain. The tables, already laid out with linen – the bar, wheeled out on a trolley – were all quickly moved under cover by Margaret and her helpers. But then, their burden discharged, the clouds disappeared, and everything was moved outside again in time for the guests to arrive at seven.

  Clover knew just about everybody, although there was a sprinkling of new friends that her parents had made amongst the shifting expatriate community. The old friends she had known all her life – her father’s colleagues from the office, the same as they always were but slightly more worn-down; the dentist and his wife with their flashing smiles, walking advertisements for the benefits of cosmetic dentistry; the American dermatologist from over the road and his Colombian wife, smothered in gold jewellery; the Jamaican accountant, with his air of sad acceptance, and his stories of the times they had in Port Antonio before – and this with a shake of the head –“it all went wrong”.

  Ted was her guest, and she sat with him by the pool after they had filled their plates at the buffet.

  She said to him, “You’re going to come and see me in Edinburgh – remember?”

  He nodded. “After you come to see me in Cambridge. I asked you first.”

  “Maybe.”

  She looked at him. His hair seemed a bit different, but it could have been ten years ago, and they could have been sitting in the tree-house.

  Ted looked over at the knot of guests around the buffet table. “Look at them,” he said.

  “What about them?”

  “Don’t you find it hard to believe that they’re … that they’re still here?”

  She laughed. “Yes, I do. Just like when I arrived at the airport and saw that it was still there. And when I think of other airports where there are thousands of people and you walk through tunnels and so on and there’s no sky, nothing, and here you can pick flowers when you get off the plane and walk over to the building.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  “And then there’s everybody doing the same thing – and saying the same thing.”

  He had noticed too, he said. “I don’t think I could ever live here again. Not permanently. Visits, maybe, but that would be all.” He looked at her enquiringly. “What about you?”

  “Probably the same.”

  He looked thoughtful. “Do you think that it’s odd that here we are at our stage in li
fe – we aren’t exactly ancient – and we’re already thinking about our past with a sort of nostalgia? Do you find that odd?”

  She did – to an extent. “It’s probably because we spent the earlier part of our lives in this rather peculiar place. It’s like being … well, it’s like being born in a garden, I suppose. And then you get a bit older …”

  “And you step out of the garden,” he interjected. “Yes, that’s absolutely right. That’s what it is.”

  “But we find a life on the outside,” she said. “And we like it. It’s more exciting. There’s more of everything, not just the same old, same old.”

  “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I feel.”

  She smiled. “We always agreed – you and I.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  She thought: we were made for one another – except for one thing. For that reason, and then because I can’t get over James. James. James.

  She looked at Ted. “Are you happy?”

  He nodded vigorously. “Seriously happy. I think I told you that.”

  “You did. You sent me a nice e-mail. Just reading it, I felt really happy for you.”

  “I love Cambridge,” he said. “I love the buildings. I love the sense of history. I love the gentleness of it all.”

  “Gentleness?”

  “Yes, it’s very … very civilised. People treat one another in a way that’s very different from here. It’s money here, isn’t it? That’s what really counts. Money.”

  She happened to see her father as Ted said this. “My father counts money,” she said. “So do most of the people at this party. Or they do things for people who count money.”

  Ted laughed. “Very funny.”

  “That’s the way it is.”

  She raised the subject gently. “And you’ve met somebody?”

  He was slow to answer, and she wondered whether she had intruded. But he had told her about it first and so he must be ready to talk about it.

  “I have,” he said. “And I’m pretty pleased about it.”

  “Just pleased? That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”