by Della Galton
‘When you say you didn’t do anything – do you mean literally nothing,’ Clara asked, torn between not wanting to pry and yet wanting to understand.
‘One kiss. That was what it was, but I felt as though I’d committed adultery. As far as Thelma was concerned, I had. This woman was someone we both knew, you see. A neighbour. After it all came out, she moved away. I never saw her again.’
Clara felt a tug of compassion for him. In the big scheme of things, it didn’t seem too great a crime. By today’s standards, she didn’t think it could even be considered adultery, yet she could see how much it could have hurt, how much damage it could have done. And how this latest transgression could have brought all the pain flooding back down the years.
She’d once had a friend, Liz, who had divorced her husband because he’d got close to another woman online. They had co-written an erotic novel, with themselves as leads, and sent it back and forth, each of them writing the next chapter. Even though they had never actually touched each other, had never even kissed, Liz had felt totally betrayed when she had found out. Sometimes emotional intimacy could be just as painful as a physical betrayal.
‘But you did get back on track eventually,’ Clara said now. ‘And you’ve had a good marriage since.’
‘We’ve had our ups and downs, but, yes, we’ve had a wonderful marriage. I fell in love with her, you know, from the moment we met. We were at a tea dance – she was the most beautiful girl in the room and I couldn’t believe my luck when she agreed to a dance.’ For a moment, his face brightened. ‘I married your grandmother when I was twenty. I had this vision of everything being lovely and there being this one special person who would make you happy for the rest of your days. We were taught to believe that. It really was until death us do part. And we really did think there would only be one person. It’s so different, today. It’s more acceptable, isn’t it – to have friends of the opposite sex.’
Not friends that you kiss, Clara wanted to say. But she didn’t, because the fact that he was unburdening himself to her made her feel both privileged and humbled. She certainly didn’t want to argue with him.
‘What time are Jim and Elsie picking you up?’
‘They’re phoning me on this.’ He reached into his jacket pocket and produced the mobile he must have summoned her on and he peered at the screen. ‘Ah – I think they might have done. Can you read what that says, love?’
‘Three missed calls. The last one ten minutes ago. They’re probably on their way here. Look, Grandad. We can stop them. I can drive you back. And we can talk some more. Maybe I could even take you round to see Gran… as we’re halfway there anyway?’ She broke off. His face had closed down again and she wished she hadn’t mentioned Gran. ‘OK, we won’t see Gran. But we could talk some more.’
He shook his head. ‘I appreciate it, love. But I think I’ll go back now. There’s nothing to be gained from talking about it any more. Don’t get me wrong. That’s why I asked you to come and I’m glad I did. It has made things clearer for me. The thing is, I’ve made a decision. Thelma doesn’t want me back. She’s made that very clear. I’m going to do what she wants and tell her she can have a divorce.’
‘But I’m sure that’s not what she wants at all.’ Clara gave a gasp of horror. ‘She still loves you.’
‘Did she say that? Because I still love her.’ His voice was suddenly full of hope.
‘No. But she doesn’t need to…’ Why hadn’t she just lied and said yes. The light that had appeared so briefly in his eyes had flickered off again.
The front door of the shop was just opening. Through its misted-up glass, Clara could see Elsie and Jim, coming in.
‘Please. Grandad. Don’t go over there talking about divorce. She might agree. You know how pig-headed she is. It’ll make things worse.’
‘It’s not what I want. It truly isn’t. I love your gran. But maybe it would be for the best. I’ve apologised until I’m blue in the face, but she still won’t let me back in the house. I don’t know what else to do. I miss her so much, but I can’t be living in this limbo for too much longer.’
Elsie and Jim had arrived at the table. Elsie was laden with bags and smiling and Jim was his usual more taciturn self, but undoubtedly just as pleased to see her.
‘Eric didn’t say he was meeting you, love.’
‘It was spur of the moment,’ Grandad said, standing up. ‘I need to pay a visit.’
He threaded his way through the tables in the direction of the door marked Toilet and Elsie put her hand on Clara’s arm. ‘I’m glad he called you. Has he said anything about going back to Thelma? We think they’re close to a reconciliation, don’t we, Jim?’
‘No. In fact he just mentioned asking her for a divorce,’ Clara said, watching the disappointment register on their faces.
A fine diplomat she was turning out to be.
18
As she drove back, Clara was torn between going to see Gran, phoning Rosanna, or phoning their mother to suggest they had an urgent family confab. The first option would probably be the least productive and she wasn’t keen on doing the last because she had a feeling that Mum might feel betrayed that Grandad hadn’t spoken to her instead. She hated being caught in the middle. But she was going to have to do something.
She took Foxy out on the cliff path to think things through. As she walked with the little dog trotting ahead in that strange, slightly crooked three-legged gait she had, she breathed in the salt air and listened to the shrieks of the gulls above and the crashing of the waves against the rocks below and wondered what to do.
The wild beauty of the coastline never failed to soothe her and the emptiness of the vast sky and the rhythms of the sea always helped to put things into perspective. Yet today, as she paused to look out at Old Harry Rocks, all she could think about was estranged families.
Old Harry Rocks were three giant chalk stacks that marked the most eastern tip of the Jurassic coastline. They loomed up out of the sea, great white rocks that had once been part of the headland itself but thanks to the sea’s erosion were now completely separate from it.
Legend had it that Old Harry was a devil that had once slept on the rocks and the smaller white chalk stack alongside him was his wife. But today all Clara could see in the small stack was Grandad, pulling away from his family, cutting himself off from three generations of love and stability. How could he do that at this late stage of his life? Surely there was some way back for him and Gran?
She couldn’t bear to think of them at the end of their lives, each living alone in separate houses. It was too sad. And she was sure that deep down it wasn’t what either of them wanted. Grandad was clearly depressed and Gran wasn’t happy either, despite the brave face she was putting on
By the time Clara had got back to the bungalow again, her hands and legs were tingling from the sea breeze and the exercise and she’d made up her mind to call Rosanna. With a mug of coffee warming her hands and Foxy crashed out on the rug, she sat in the lounge and dialled. It was teatime. Her sister would be cooking, or maybe Ed would if he was home.
Rosanna’s phone went straight to voicemail, which meant she must be in a no-signal area and then Clara remembered that they had gone away for the weekend. They had a caravan that they occasionally towed up to the New Forest and plonked in a park. It was a cheap break for them and the children. Rosanna had said something the other day about doing that. She’d forgotten.
Suddenly she was relieved that Rosanna had been in a no-signal area. Clara definitely didn’t want to spoil her nice family weekend with talk of divorce. Had there ever even been a divorce in their family? Clara couldn’t remember one. She knew that was pretty rare these days. Something like one in four marriages ended in divorce, but the prospect of her own grandparents doing it, after nearly sixty years, for goodness’ sake, really hurt. She couldn’t let it happen.
She paced back into the kitchen. She was hungry. Aside from polenta cake, she hadn’t eaten today. Her mobile r
ang when she was in the middle of this tumult of thoughts and she ran back into the lounge to answer it. Maybe Grandad was phoning to tell her he had come to his senses. Then she wouldn’t have to do anything at all.
‘Hello.’ She snatched it up hopefully.
‘Hello,’ said Adam.
‘Oh. Hi.’
‘You were expecting someone else. Sorry if it’s bad timing. I’ve just found a missed call from you on my phone.’
‘No. I’m sorry.’ She gave a deep sigh. ‘It’s not bad timing. I’m just having a few family issues.’ She remembered that he was too. ‘How’s Nick? I heard that he was in hospital.’
‘He’s out again now. I picked him up this morning. But thank you for asking. That’s kind.’ His voice had warmed up. ‘How are you, Clara? Long time, no speak.’
‘I’m all right. No, I’m not,’ she said. ‘I seem to be stuck in the middle of a family drama and I’m not quite sure what to do about it.’ That had all come out of her mouth unedited and she wasn’t sure why she had told him. Then he provided the answer in the next thing he said.
‘Might it help to talk about it? I’m a very good listener.’
‘Despite the fact that you prefer plants to people.’
‘Despite that fact. Yes.’ He sounded as though he was smiling. There was a beat where he neither tried to persuade her nor retracted his offer and it was this that made up her mind.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘Thanks. Are you not busy then?’
‘Sadly I am not. I have a full staff on duty and a half-full hotel of contented guests, so if you don’t have pressing Saturday evening plans I can be there within the hour.’
It was a shock to realise that she was actually looking forward to seeing him – maybe because a problem shared is a problem halved, no matter who the listener.
The doorbell rang just inside the hour and Clara went to let Adam in. She had got changed out of the clothes she’d gone to see Grandad in and had freshened up and touched up her make-up. But wearing jeggings and one of her least favourite tops she wasn’t dressed for a night out.
Neither was he, in old chinos and a sweatshirt which was a deep maroon. The colour suited him. They were both two shades down from dressed up, she thought, although he had recently shaved and she could smell his aftershave in the hall. It felt fleetingly odd – the owner of their nearest competitor in Kate’s hall. She wondered if Kate would mind and then discounted the thought almost immediately. Once again, her instincts had told her that she could trust him. There was something very grounded about Adam.
‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d want to stay here – or whether you’d prefer to go out,’ he said. ‘To more neutral territory – or am I reading too much into this? Plants are so much simpler than people.’
‘You’re so right. No here is fine. Would you like some coffee? You’ve met Foxy before, haven’t you?’ She felt flustered. How could he be both things at once –relaxing to be around and yet also unnerving?
Foxy, was eyeing him warily from beneath the kitchen table. She clearly felt the same.
‘She’s probably wondering if you’ve got a pair of secateurs in your pocket,’ Clara said.
‘There’s a joke there somewhere,’ Adam quipped, before holding out his hand to the dog. ‘Hello, girl. You’re quite safe. I’m unarmed.’
Foxy regarded him suspiciously; she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him then.
Clara made them a pot of coffee and they went into the lounge to drink it. She sat on the sofa and he sat on the armchair beside her, and as the evening wore on she knew she had made the right decision accepting his offer to listen.
It was different from their previous meeting. There had been a lot more flirting last time, it had felt more like a date, although of course it wasn’t – it had simply been a casual business meeting. But she didn’t see that side of him now. He was, as he had said, a good listener. He didn’t interrupt when she told him about her grandparents’ situation. He just nodded and listened with his whole body, not just his eyes. He leaned forward slightly in his chair, his chin on his hands. In the slowly fading light of Kate’s lounge his eyes were soft.
‘Our family had made a group decision not to interfere,’ Clara said. ‘It seemed the right thing to do. Gran is so stubborn and contrary and tends to do the opposite of what anyone else thinks she should. We thought that given enough time they’d find a way through this themselves.’
‘They still might. There are years between talking about it and actually getting divorced.’
‘Yes. I suppose you’re right.’
‘And it is their decision, isn’t it? Not anyone else’s.’
She knew he was right about that too.
‘Before anyone else gets involved, you could try talking to your Grandad again. Ask him about his plans. Go through it all. Sometimes it takes talk of divorce and divvying things up for people to realise how much they have to lose. Not just materially – I don’t mean that. But the practical reality makes the emotional reality kick in too.’
‘Yeah.’ She could feel the huskiness in her voice. ‘I don’t have any experience of this. Divorce or marriage, come to that. Everyone in my family got married young except for me. It’s funny how things work out. When I was at school, I thought I’d be the same. I had other dreams too – I always knew I wanted to go to catering college – but I had this dream of maybe running my own B&B by the sea. There’d be a smallholding too with goats and chickens and home-grown veg and maybe a couple of free-range children running about.’ She smiled, feeling totally disarmed. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
‘Like I said. I’m a good listener.’ He picked idly at a loose thread on his chinos. ‘It’s a pity you didn’t meet my brother at catering college. That was his dream too. The B&B bit anyway.’
‘What about you, Adam? Did you have a dream?’ The light had almost gone from the lounge now and although their eyes had adjusted it was still dark enough for an intimacy that electricity would have most likely vanquished.
‘I had different dreams.’ He paused briefly before going on. ‘They didn’t involve getting married, funnily enough. My main aim was to make a million before I was twenty-five, then retire early somewhere abroad where you can still live cheaply. Maybe Africa – there was a time when I saw myself being the owner of a tea plantation.’
‘Really?’ She was amazed.
‘Yeah, I know. Mad! But it was a boyhood dream, inspired by photos my parents had shown us. Their holiday of a lifetime was to Africa before we were born and they’d visited a tea plantation. It was just miles and miles of green stretching off into forever, the sky was this perfect blue and the sun shone permanently. Mum described it all to us; what it was like being totally surrounded by the fragrance of tea out there in the midday sun with exotic lizards, the colour of rainbows running about And I thought, wow. Just wow!’
A note of wistfulness crept into his voice as he added, ‘I’m sure the reality would have been very different and I wouldn’t have made a good employer. I wouldn’t have been exploitative enough, but it wouldn’t have mattered because I’d have made my fortune already, you see. The tea would have just been a hobby.’
Clara had never heard him say so much at once and she had never heard him talk so passionately. ‘How would you have made your fortune?’
‘Oh, I had that all planned out too. I would go into I.T. You could make a real killing in those days. There weren’t so many people doing it. Contractors could make a lot of money. I was very pragmatic, intensely materialistic and very focused. My whole career path was based on what made the most money.’ He sighed. ‘Isn’t there a saying, “If you want to give God a laugh, tell him your plans.”’
‘I believe there is. Yes.’ She held her breath, willing him to continue.
‘Instead of doing all of that I got married young. I think I told you. I was twenty-one and Shona was twenty.’ Another pause. ‘We met at uni. She was an I.T. student, same as me. She was inc
redibly bright, incredibly beautiful, very career-orientated. Settling down wasn’t on either of our agendas.’
He shifted in the armchair. Clara could no longer see his eyes, but she knew that he wasn’t in the room any more anyway. He was looking back into some far distant point of his past.
‘But we fell in love. We fell hard. We knew that we wanted to be together, have children, do the whole thing. But Shona came from a deeply religious family, so living together wasn’t an option. We decided to get married straightaway. We figured out a way of how it would work. How we could still complete our degrees. Suddenly we had a whole new set of plans.’
There was such a long pause this time that Clara thought he wasn’t going to say any more. But finally he did go on, in a voice that was bleaker, more detached, and as far away from the tea plantation passion as it could be.
‘Clearly, God didn’t think much of those plans either because exactly six weeks after we got married Shona was in a car accident. She was driving home and a woman coming the other way swerved to miss a deer and hit Shona’s car. The woman was in a BMW. She got off with cuts and bruises. Shona didn’t. Her car spun off the road, hit a tree and ended up on its roof. She died at the scene.’
‘Oh my God, Adam, that’s awful. I’m so very, very sorry,’ Clara could feel tears pricking the back of her eyes, drawn there in response to his obvious pain, and suddenly she was intensely glad of the dark.
