The Forever Girl

by Alexander McCall Smith

  Clover nodded.

  “He’s in love with somebody else?” Frieda probed.

  “I don’t know.”

  This brought surprise. “You don’t know? How come? Haven’t you asked him?”

  “No. Not really.”

  Frieda looked incredulous. “What’s wrong with you people? Are you so uptight? Is this something to do with being English?”

  “I’m not English,” said Clover. “My father’s from here originally and my mother’s American.”

  “Then you’ve no excuse for being so English,” retorted Frieda. “Listen, so this guy’s in Melbourne?”

  “Yes. He moved there quite recently. His parents live in Australia now – his mother’s Australian.”

  “But he’s in Melbourne, right? This … what do you call him?”

  “James.”

  “This James is in Melbourne. Well … well, that’s where you need to be, Clover. Welcome to the Old Fire Station.” She fixed Clover with an intent look. “Do you need some help with this? I think you might.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t see how you could help me.”

  “You don’t? Well, you’ll see.”

  The following morning, Frieda showed her a picture of the Old Fire Station. “Friendly building, isn’t it?”

  Clover said that she liked the look of it.

  “That’s where the fire engines came out,” said Frieda, pointing to a large window. “It used to be a door. And we’ve still got the pole inside, you know, that the firemen used to slide down to get to the engines, but nobody slides any more. Somebody did when he was drunk, though. He forgot to hold on. You have to grip the pole quite tightly as you go down, or you go down too fast. He broke his ankle.” She paused. “I can’t believe you’re coming, Clover. It’s going to be great.”

  ‘Thank you.”

  “And that little problem with that boy. We’ll deal with that. We’ll get it sorted.”

  She swallowed. I’ve made a mistake, she thought. She wanted to say: You can’t sort things out just like that, but there was something about her new friend that made her feel almost helpless.

  Frieda reached out and patted Clover’s arm affectionately. “Still sad?”

  Clover shook her head – an automatic response to an intrusive question.

  “I think you are,” said Frieda. “But we can sort that out.”

  She noticed Clover’s expression. “You don’t believe me?” she said, smiling. “You don’t believe I can sort boys out?”

  30

  “Did you think it would be like this?” asked Frieda. “Is this how you saw the fire station? Of course, I showed you that picture, didn’t I – when we were in Edinburgh. But reality’s always a bit different, isn’t it?” She made a face. “Thank God for that too. When I look at a photograph of myself I think: reality’s different, so no worries.”

  Somebody had created a door as well as a window within the large double door at the front of the building. This led into the hall in which Clover now found herself standing.

  “Is this where the fire engines …” she began.

  Frieda lifted Clover’s backpack from the concrete floor. “Yes. That wall over there blocks off the main garage – and it’s all changed, of course. But this is where they parked them. Actual red fire engines – as advertised. Big hoses. Bells – the works.” She was an actress, and it seemed she could not resist. “The calls came through. Big blaze over at the Convent of the Good Shepherd.” She imitated the nasal tones of a telephone voice. “Nuns on fire! Come quick! Girls escaping left right and centre!”

  Clover stared at her.

  “Only joking, Clover.”

  “Of course.”

  “We did a play about those nuns, you see. They took in girls thought to be in moral danger. That was the expression. Girls in moral danger, and I played one of them on stage. Most of them weren’t in real moral danger – whatever that is. Having affairs with boys, perhaps – off to the convent with you. I’d love a bit more moral danger in my own life.”

  Frieda gestured to the stairway behind them. “This way.” They began their ascent of the stairway, which was badly in need of a coat of paint. “This place was converted for fashionable people,” she said. “But the fashionable people went away, as fashionable people are prone to do. It was allowed to go bush and they started to let it out to students. Then they went one worse and let it out to actors. That’s us. Some of us are real pigs – purely in the domestic department, of course. And only the men. They’re the ones who never wash up. Or clean. They spend a lot of time in the shower, though. No problem there. It’s just the kitchen where they show themselves to be a bit flaky. Poor boys – they try, I suppose. Do you think men try, Clover?”

  Clover felt dizzy from the lengthy flight. She shook her head. “I can’t think very much at the moment.”

  Frieda was solicitous. “Of course. You’re jet-lagged. I slept for twenty hours when I came back from Scotland, you know. I was knocked out. I’m still waking up at odd hours.”

  There was a dark corridor that somebody had tried to brighten by sticking colourful posters for long-dead concerts on the walls; at the end of it, an open door. “That won’t stay shut,” said Frieda. “You have to tie it with a bit of string. The string is your key, so to speak.”

  “I see.”

  They reached the door.

  “I warned you it was a cupboard,” said Frieda. “But you can actually lie down – I promise. I tested it myself. I lay down in your cupboard, and it felt perfectly roomy. This is officially a one-person cupboard.”

  She needed to sleep and Frieda left her with the promise that she would be somewhere in the house when she woke up. The cupboard was really a room, Clover thought, as it contained not only a bed but a small wardrobe and chest of drawers as well. There was a window looking out over a yard outside, and beyond that to the backs of neighbouring houses. She gazed out of this window for a moment, taking in the details – the red Victorian brick, the corrugated iron of the roofs, the shabby guttering with its blistered paint; and above it a cloudless sky, washed of colour as the sky can be in the brief transition between day and night. She was struck by the thought that this was Australia; that in spite of its distance from where she had started her trip, the things about her, the brick, the earth, the sky were of the same substance that she had left behind her in Scotland, but were at the same time so different.

  The following morning Frieda said to her, “I am that great cliché – the resting actress. I’m resting today and tomorrow, and working the day after that. So let me show you Melbourne – or at least let me show you our local coffee bar and the supermarket at the end of the road. There are other things – arts centres, museums et cetera – but you know how it is.”

  In the coffee bar, Frieda looked at her with mild curiosity and asked her what she wanted to do in Melbourne. “I’m not sure you can find two weeks’ worth of things to see,” she said. “You could look at the river, I suppose. There’s something called the Yarra. You could look at it for hours, I imagine, but I’m not sure what conclusions you’d reach. It’s a great place just to be, though. There’s a difference between seeing and being, I think. This is a great place to be – not to do anything in particular – just to be.” She paused. “But you’ve got your friend to see, haven’t you? Have you made any arrangements?”

  Clover shook her head. “No. He doesn’t know I’m here. Not yet.”

  Frieda sipped at her coffee thoughtfully and then put down her cup. “You should have told him,” she said.

  “I didn’t want to. I wanted it to … to look natural, I suppose.”

  Frieda’s eyes widened. “To look natural? Oh, hello, I just happen to have dropped in from the other side of the world! That sort of natural?”

  Clover did not answer. Frieda was right, of course.

  They sat in silence for a few moments, and then Frieda said, “Invite him round. Tell him you’re here, visiting friends, and then invite him r
ound. Simple.” She paused. “I take it you’ve got his e-mail address?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then invite him round for tomorrow. Dinner. Seven o’clock. There’ll be five of us altogether. You, me, him. Two of the other inmates are in residence, I think. Three are out for good behaviour.”

  Clover agreed.

  “Tell me a bit about him,” said Frieda. “Good-looking?”

  “Seriously.”

  “I see. That’s good. But it’s also bad, isn’t it? Good-looking boys often know it. They take advantage of it.”

  “He doesn’t know it. Or he doesn’t act as if he does.”

  Frieda said this was perfect. But she needed to know more. “Funny? Does he make you laugh?”

  “Yes.”

  “It gets better. Tall?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh my God, this is Adonis we’re talking about. So what’s the problem? Likes girls?”

  “Yes. He’s had girlfriends.” It caused her pain to say it.

  “But not you?” said Frieda. “You and James haven’t been a number?”

  She looked down at her hands. “He refers to me as a sister.”

  Frieda was silent for a moment as she absorbed the admission. “Oh, my God, that’s terrible,” she muttered, reaching out to Clover in instinctive sympathy. “What a terrible thing to say. His sister!”

  Suddenly, and at the same time, they saw the humour in the situation.

  “My sister,” said Frieda, with exaggerated concern, “my poor sister, to be his … his sister!”

  “I’m making a fool of myself,” said Clover. “I know it.”

  Now Frieda became serious again. “Send him that e-mail,” she said. “I can’t wait to see him. And then I’ll be able to advise you, as long as …”

  She left the condition hanging in the air.

  “As long as what?”

  “As long as you don’t behave like a sister when he comes round here. You see, that might be the problem. He’s been treating you like a sister because that’s how you’ve been behaving towards him.”

  “But …”

  “But nothing. But nothing. Think sex, Clover. Act – don’t think about reasons for not acting.” She smiled. “That’s the way some people go through life. They sit about and think about the consequences. Make the consequences happen. Embrace consequences.” She drew back. “Do you know something? I’ve just said something really profound. I think I’m going to write it down before I forget it. Make consequences happen. How’s that for a really … a really important aphorism? Make consequences happen.”

  You’re talking about my life, thought Clover. You’re not on the stage.

  “What?”

  Clover shook her head. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Well, don’t think it, then. Act. Do you want me to dictate the e-mail for you? No? Yes?”

  “I can write my own e-mails.”

  “You sure?” But there was a quick retraction. “I’m sorry – of course you can. God, I’m pushy! But go ahead and do it – because you’re never going to be happy, Clover, until you take control of your destiny. That’s another aphorism, by the way. I’m so full of them today I’m going to make myself sick.”

  James replied almost immediately. He was surprised, he said, but “really, really pleased” to hear that she was in Melbourne and yes, he would love to come round the following evening. He was going to play squash but he had been looking for an excuse to get out of it because the particular squash partner with whom he was due to play was a bad sport. “He’s a mathematician,” he wrote. “Not that that has anything to do with it, but he seems to want everything to work out neatly in his favour. That’s the way his mind works. I don’t like playing with him any more, but it’s hard to get rid of him. I find myself wanting to lose so that he doesn’t get into one of his bad moods. And that’s not the point of squash, I think. Anyway, that’s my problem – not yours. I’ll be there tomorrow. And is it really a disused fire station? I’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose. And Clover … thanks for coming all this way to see me!”

  She dwelt on his last sentence. When she first read it, she had been aghast at the thought that he must somehow have guessed that her purpose in coming to Australia had been to see him. She felt the nakedness of one whose secret motives are suddenly laid bare; the shock that one has been seen through. But then she realised that he was joking; nobody would travel to Australia just to see a friend with whom contact had more or less been lost – nobody in her right mind, that is.

  But at least he had accepted the invitation, and the general tone of his message was welcoming. Of course he had always been like that – apart from one or two moments when they had been much younger and for a short time he had seemed to lose interest in her company. For the rest, he had been friendly and interested in what she had to say. And that brought her back, as it inevitably did, to the thought of his kindness. It was like love, really – a kindness that grew from love; it must have, because things cannot come from nowhere – but it was not actual love, not love of the sort that she wanted him to feel and that he had given to others, but never to her. Could you make do with kindness rather than love? What if you were to lead a life in which you were never given the love that you craved, but found friendship and the kindness and consideration that went with that? She could not imagine that this would be enough, although she knew that there were people who had to make do with just that.

  She offered to make the meal the following day and Frieda was quick to accept. “I was hoping you’d offer,” she said. “We love our guests to do the cooking. It’s why we have them. No, I’m not serious about that. We have them to defray the rent. No, I’m not serious about that either. We have them because we like them.”

  She went to the Victorian market and wandered about the stalls, returning with fish, fennel and wild rice. She realised that she did not know whether James had a favourite dish, and this led her to reflect that although she had known him for years, she still did not know all that much about him – the details of his life, the likes and dislikes, the music he liked to listen to, the books he read, what he liked to drink. Those things she thought, were the context against which a life was led, not the life itself. The person himself was something quite different from the surroundings of his life: he was a disposition, an attitude, a way of looking at other people, and as far as all that was concerned, she felt that she must know James better than any of his more recent acquaintances. It did not matter that she did not even know whether he liked fish.

  She spent the afternoon worrying. It now occurred to her that although she wanted to see him, she did not want to hear about his life in Melbourne. She had only been in Australia for a couple of days but already she understood the attractions: the warmth, the spaciousness – even in a city; the high, empty sky; the sense of being on the edge of something that was just beginning. Surely this would be just as seductive for James as she suspected it would be for her, and he would be creating for himself a whole new life in which she would have no part. I am his past, she thought; I am not even his present, let alone his future.

  Frieda was auditioning that afternoon and was not back until six. She thought she had not been successful. “They hate you if you look a day over eighteen,” she said. “Let me warn you about casting directors.”

  Clover said, “But I’m not an actress. I don’t know any.”

  “Look out anyway,” said Frieda. She picked at an olive from the bowl that Clover had just prepared. “Nice. Olives are so … I don’t know. How would you describe an olive?”

  “Small and round.”

  “Exactly. Small and round.” She popped the olive into her mouth and looked at Clover thoughtfully. “A small round man is probably the answer, you know. He’d never stray. He’d be so appreciative of everything you did for him because small and round people usually are.” She paused. “Small, round and maybe a bit rich.”

  Clover laughed.

  “It�
�s no laughing matter,” said Frieda, reaching for another olive. “I can’t even find a small and round man. Not in the theatre.” She looked at her watch. “This man …”

  “James.”

  “Yes, James. Leave it to me.”

  Clover felt a surge of alarm. “Listen, Frieda, it’s not that I’m ungrateful, but I thought …”

  Frieda affected hurt. “You think I’m going to be tactless? Do you really think I’d say something unhelpful?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You looked it. There are some things you don’t need to say; you just look them.”

  Clover made a soothing gesture. “I’m sure you understand how I feel.”

  “Nervous?”

  “Yes.”

  Frieda put an arm about her shoulder. “No need. We’re pretty relaxed round here. It’ll be a really easy evening. And you know what? I’ve had an idea. I’ll suggest we go out to this bar round the corner – have you seen it? The Atrium. Then I’ll suddenly remember that I have to be somewhere else so that the two of you can go together. It’ll be very natural.”

  “Very.”

  Frieda made a face. “Don’t be so pessimistic. That’s the trouble with you people – you just give up.”

  Clover was unsure what people Frieda was talking about: the British? Everybody who happened not to be Australian? People who weren’t actors? People like her, who could be said to have given up because they allowed boys to think of them as sisters?

  They were both in the kitchen when the doorbell rang.

  “That’s him,” said Frieda. “Go and let him in. And Clover …”

  “Yes?”

  “When you see him there on the step, kiss him. Okay? Kiss him.”

  She looked away, resentful of the advice. She felt her heart thumping within her; a shortness of breath. Her palms would be moist, she decided, and she wiped them against the side of her jeans. Frieda saw her and smiled.

  “I know what it’s like. I sometimes feel like that when I go on stage. Some people use talc, so that when the romantic lead takes their hand he doesn’t think Oh my God: dripping with sweat!”