The Postcard

by Zoë Folbigg

  ‘Casualty?’ asks James.

  ‘A long time ago, my friend.’

  You’re not my friend.

  Maya wonders how long ago it was in the timeline of their lives. How far his star has risen since he dumped her.

  Perhaps I held him back.

  ‘You might mock Casualty, but it’s where many greats have cut their teeth. Winslet, Ecclestone, Bloom…’

  ‘I wasn’t mocking it,’ says James, holding up his hands.

  Prick.

  ‘What’s that fella’s name who plays Charlie Fairhead?’ asks Lenny. ‘Now, he’s a legend.’

  James gives a little laugh into the mouth of his Bia Hanoi bottle.

  ‘He’s Irish,’ Lenny adds, with authority.

  ‘Do you know Our Girl?’

  ‘Ooh, I like Our Girl!’ says Dee, her bracelets jangling again as she claps her hands in a quick and short burst.

  ‘Do I like Our Girl, Dee?’

  ‘Yes, babe, it’s that programme with whatsherface in.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ says Lenny.

  ‘Well, I just had a small part in that, a cameo. I was a major in the field.’

  ‘Oh, tell them about the legal drama you shot in America,’ interjects Maya, trying not to sound keen.

  ‘Canada. Yah, I did this really big-budget legal drama, The Truth. Have you seen it?’

  Dee nods in agreement, love hearts in her eyes.

  I’ve not heard of it, thinks James.

  ‘I’ve not heard of it, pal,’ says Lenny, as he takes a sip of his beer.

  ‘It must be recent if you shot it two years ago—’ says Maya, before stopping abruptly again.

  Dee wonders why Maya keeps checking herself every time she speaks.

  ‘So how do yous two know each other then?’ she asks, her eyes narrowing.

  ‘Uni friends,’ says Maya.

  ‘Ex-boyfriend,’ chimes Jon at the same time.

  Dee looks between Maya, Jon and James and sees the awkwardness of the situation.

  ‘Jon and I went out for a little bit, at university.’

  Love notes in the library flitter through Maya’s mind’s eye, before the image of her crumpled and crying on a bed.

  ‘Wow.’

  The waiter returns with five bundles of cutlery and some dipping sauces as the table goes silent.

  Maya strokes James’ leg under the table with her thumb.

  ‘So, Damian Lewis,’ says Maya, changing the subject. ‘What’s he like then?’

  ‘Yeah, and where’s he eating tonight? He shoulda joined us!’ says Dee.

  ‘Now, he looks Irish…’ Lenny thinks aloud, before slipping into a daydream about the chicken wings he’s going to order when he gets home.

  45

  James puts a contented arm around Maya as they stroll along the riverbank. Paper lanterns rise like weightless pumpkins in the night sky from the edge of the Thu Bon River, glistening against their twinkling reflections as they leap into the air. Maya and James’ eyes take in the spectacle, their tummies full and satisfied.

  ‘Must be some kind of festival,’ he says.

  Lenny’s eyes light up and his top lip beads with a sweat he had worked up eating his chicken noodles. ‘Wow, all this for us? You shouldn’t have!’ he says, with a mischievous grin.

  ‘Well, you know, Lenny, we wanted to send you off in style,’ Maya replies with a wink.

  ‘It looks magical. Doesn’t it look magical, Dee?’

  Dee smiles and nestles into Lenny’s chest.

  Jon walks ahead of them, hands in his pockets, as if the promenade is his stage; the artist’s swagger giving him a confident stride. He keeps his head up, taking in the lanterns, seeing if anyone recognises him.

  Further up the flat walkway hugging the water’s edge, crowds converge, and more lanterns are lit and launched. Gasps rise as each one makes the daring jump, like popcorn popping in a pan, just hitting the right temperature. Children eat chicken from a stick and cotton candy from a bag. Some of the lanterns fail and plummet into the Thu Bon, where they are swept along and bob away like mystical and magical fish.

  James releases his arm and takes his digital SLR out of the camera bag around his neck. This scene is too enchanting not to photograph.

  ‘I’m just going…’ James gestures, pointing to the river’s edge.

  Maya smiles. She can already envisage the photographs he’s going to take. Children’s faces lit up by lanterns and glee. Old men and women with laughter lines so craggy they are impossible to date. They could be fifty-five, they could be one hundred and five. Lights twinkling on the river and the reflection of those paper lanterns that did make it.

  Maya looks around in the crowd, remembering again that she thought she saw Manon Junot this afternoon, so she scans pockets of people all along the riverbank, hoping she might see her. The disbelief in James’ eyes hadn’t gone unnoticed, and Maya wants to prove she hadn’t walked off in pursuit of Jon. She surveys the throng, feverishly.

  No, it couldn’t have been.

  Jon stops strolling and looks back at Maya, to see if she’ll take his invitation to catch up with him, to enjoy some intimacy among the crowd. It’s what actors crave after all.

  Maya doesn’t notice; she’s searching for Manon Junot.

  What if she’s here now?

  Maya looks around, watching people watch people; seeing James, with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth while he politely takes photographs. She looks at other tourists, at families in their finery. She sees Jon’s hair above the Viet people. Blond and sun-kissed. She catches his eye, then looks back to James crouching by the river, trying to get his shot. She sees Lenny drop to one knee.

  ‘Dee! Oh Dee! I can’t help myself, Dee.’

  ‘What are you doing, ya eejit? Get up!’ she says, cackling with laughter.

  ‘I don’t have a ring, I was hoping to get some Haribo at the airport and propose with a sweet on the plane home. As we took off, you know…’

  ‘What?!’

  ‘But this is too special. These lights are too brilliant. It’s meant to be. Here and now.’ Lenny’s top lip gets sweatier the more he witters.

  ‘What?!’

  ‘Desiree O’Shea. You are the light of my life and I want to make you my wife, to be the mother of my little ones. My partner in crime. Will ya, Dee? Will ya marry me?’

  Heads turn. Silence ensues. People freeze in anticipation. Lanterns almost seem to freeze in anticipation.

  James looks up from his post, crouching down by the sparkling river, and catches Maya’s eye, before hiding swiftly behind his camera. He lifts the lens, poised and ready to catch Dee’s response.

  ‘G’wan then, you idiot. I’ll marry ya!’

  Maya silences her sick feeling with a cheer and some whistles.

  ‘Yay!’ she claps.

  Paper lanterns continue their journey skywards.

  Maya cheers and whoops some more.

  James lowers his camera but keeps his eyes firmly on the back of it, checking his shots on the little screen. His discomfort is eased by how pleased he is to have captured such expressions on faces he will miss.

  Jon saunters back to Maya, warmly clapping and whistling for a couple he’s only just met.

  Friendly strangers – locals and tourists – join in and cheer; some pat Lenny on the back.

  In the chaos and the whirl of congratulations and launching lanterns, Jon leans in and whispers to Maya. She feels his warm breath on her neck and arches her ear to listen.

  ‘When the shoot finishes, when this craziness is all done, come home with me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Come home with me and have my babies. You know it’s what we both want.’

  46

  ‘Weird about Dee and Lenny, eh? I didn’t see that coming.’ Maya looks in the wonky bathroom mirror, swiping emerald eyeshadow and black mascara onto a damp cotton pad; embarrassed by the telltale sign of how much effort she made with her make-up tonight.<
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  ‘I did,’ James says flatly from the bed. Shutting the conversation down. In hindsight he realises he might have sounded cold, so tries to soften the mood as he flicks through his photos. ‘I got a few nice shots though. I’ll email them to Dee and Lenny when we’re next online.’

  There is a silence as Maya methodically washes in the well-worn en suite, staring at her reflection in the mirror; looking deep into her irises and questioning herself as her face becomes increasingly naked.

  James leans his head back against the red velveteen headboard. ‘Plus he’ll have a wedding suit in the morning… maybe that’s what he had in mind.’

  Neither Maya nor James mention James’ own suit, currently being stitched by a proficient hand in a tailor’s warehouse across town.

  Maya knows that marriage – Dee and Lenny’s, or anyone else’s for that matter – is something James isn’t keen to talk about. He wasn’t keen to talk about it in Tuscany; he wasn’t keen to talk about it when people made jokes about them eloping on their travels; he wasn’t keen to talk about it at Jeremy and Priyanka’s wedding back in Udaipur. Every time someone mentions marriage or weddings or anything associated with a declaration of forever love, James does what he did by the riverbank. He avoids Maya’s gaze. He looks away.

  I get the message. I don’t want to either. Honestly.

  As Maya looks in the mirror and wonders what James would make of what Jon whispered to her – whether that might change his feelings, his ability to talk – she replays Jon’s words in her mind and how they felt as they tumbled into her ear, making goosebumps rise in her neck; making her yearning to be a mother fly down the river and scream back in her face.

  How could he say that to me?

  Maya swipes the last trace of potion-green glitter from her lashline as her eyes fill with tears. She splashes her face with cold water, wishing the feeling would pass; wishing she too were going home tomorrow.

  47

  April 2016, London, England

  ‘It’s so wonderful of you to remember her like this,’ says Bertie Baxter, with a shaky hand and a tear in his eyes as he stands on the chequerboard tiles of the Savoy.

  ‘It’s our pleasure,’ coos Charmaine McCourt, head of Children’s television. ‘It’s an honour to celebrate Betty, to celebrate you, and to celebrate everything you have done for the millions of children you have entertained over the years.’ Charmaine steadies Bertie’s hand by cupping it in hers. Bertie Baxter, a man with the face of a perplexed dinosaur, a man who looks like he used to be tall but has shrunk into his brown suit, is unsteady on his feet, but flanked by Charmaine on one side and Tom on the other, he’s standing tall. They’re waiting in a line-up of the big players in Bertie & Betty’s current format. The photo call with Bertie and every living presenter has already been done. They stand under a balloon arch in front of a huge wrap poster with the Bertie & Betty logo on it – the one that’s been made to look modern with edgy lines and zingy colours. Hugging in for the photo is current series editor Louise and presenters Kezza and Billy. Tom, with his arm politely around Bertie’s shoulder, is mindful that Kezza and Billy’s shouty voices and Camden-cool clothing might be a bit overwhelming for a man who is almost ninety, so he creates a protective shield for him with his tall and reassuring body. Like Rosa, Kezza and Billy didn’t stick to the 1950s theme, but Charmaine and Louise did; their attempts to be elegant waning after a long afternoon.

  Photos were taken. Kezza Instagrammed the shit out of it: the balloons, the children’s choir, the sit-down dinner… all with her face in them, and Bertie & Betty was given a fitting celebration for a show of such esteem.

  Bertie Baxter was born in 1927, making him only minutes too young for conscription for the Second World War, which he spent much of looking after his siblings at their grandparents’ house in Carmarthenshire. After the war ended and the children returned to London, Bertie went to Cambridge, where he met Girton College student Betty Ward at the university lawn tennis club. Betty was one of the first women to receive her degree at Cambridge, wearing college gowns men had worn for hundreds of years and not just quietly receiving a certificate in the post. Betty continued being an accidental pioneer. For women in the workplace. For women in television. For women who always knew that they didn’t want to have children, even though they knew they were supposed to want to. It was a question she answered with confidence and a polite smile every time it came up; every time someone said, ‘But you’re so good with children,’ or, ‘You’ll change your mind.’

  When they graduated and returned to London, Bertie took a job at the BBC in Alexandra Palace and told Betty about the many female engineers the corporation had recruited during the war.

  ‘That sounds jolly,’ said Betty, who used her economics degree to take a job in the finance department, so she soon joined Bertie on the morning commute from their flat on the Finchley Road to Ally Pally. As austerity gave way to prosperity, Bertie and Betty would spend Sunday afternoons taking high tea at the Savoy. They became so attached to eating cucumber sandwiches under the elegant glass atrium of the Thames Foyer, they decided to have their wedding celebration there in 1951. And it’s where, in early 1956, as they ate scones and watched children reading politely at tables, they came up with the idea of a television programme for children.

  Over the years, Bertie & Betty invited schoolchildren, authors, naturalists, politicians and animals into the studio – the Harrods lion famously ran amok after chewing through a camera cable in the 1960s, making the programme go off air for fourteen minutes. It was the most popular children’s programme for decades, chock-full of ideas of things to make and bake, stories from around the world, and ways in which children could rule it, all of which were ahead of their time. Wednesdays at 4 p.m, Bertie & Betty was always reliably on air. Always presented by Bertie and Betty Baxter, who aged as children grew up and their children started watching.

  When Betty died of a heart attack in 1986, Bertie decided to retire: his grief too much, his heart too broken, and feeling too old to interview a new wave of guests he didn’t connect with. Betty had always been happy to evolve. She was funny and bold and always had a mischievous glint in her eye. She would have known what to say to soap opera actors, sporting sensations and Australian pop stars. Bertie was lost without her; he still is, although he gamely turns up to Camp Bestival or industry parties so Betty is remembered.

  Kezza and Billy are the twenty-second and twenty-third presenters respectively, hosts who are more comfortable around children of the digital age. Now those children have gone to bed and the party is winding up. Bertie is back in his apartment on Portman Square. Charmaine has left to get the last train to Manchester. Louise is giving Tom a kiss on each cheek.

  ‘We MUST get you and Nena round for Sunday lunch. I’m going to die if I don’t meet that baby of yours.’

  Tom blushes. ‘Sure thing – give me some dates, Nena and I are pretty free!’ he laughs, as he rubs the five o’clock shadow on his chin.

  ‘Will do. Before Ava’s sixteen preferably.’ Louise is clipped and purposeful; her curtness veiling her warmth. ‘Lovely to meet you, Rosa, good luck with your show – we’ll have to get you on B&B when you launch.’

  Rosa, slinking low in a red leather booth in the American Bar, smiles gratefully, but doesn’t stand up. ‘That would be wonderful – thank you.’

  Louise waves her hand as she throws a boxy coat over her shoulders and heads out to her car. Tom sinks back into the booth and looks at Rosa, her champagne glass tilted elegantly in her hand; hoping she’s not on call or about to start a shift tonight. He doesn’t say anything, he just looks at her as he smooths down his pale blue paisley Liberty tie.

  ‘Gosh, Tom, you knew everyone here. That must feel pretty amazing.’

  Tom feels puzzled not amazed. Knowing everyone isn’t something he usually puts a successful evening down to. He’s just relieved the sixtieth anniversary party went well and that Bertie hung on and made it, even just for an hou
r or two. Just as importantly, he’s relieved that they got great shots of it for the press.

  He laughs it off.

  ‘Yeah, I’d rather not know those two clowns right now—’ Tom gestures to Kezza, rolling on top of the grand piano while Billy tinkles ‘Like A Virgin’, badly. ‘I think they might regret that in the morning.’

  ‘But isn’t that wonderful?’ purrs Rosa. ‘Their youthful abandon. Ripping up the Savoy in their ripped jeans.’ She gives Tom a sideways glance. ‘I’d like to do something I might regret in the morning.’

  Rosa moves in closer and Tom feels her leg press against his thigh through his suit. Her cream wrap dress plunges between her small breasts and is right up against the fabric of him. She puts a hand on his knee and strokes his inner thigh under the table.

  Tom doesn’t move. He’s tired. Ava has drained him too and now he just wants to feel good again. He looks at Kezza, being told by the night manager to get off the piano, and he feels fatigue, not shame.

  Rosa’s hand moves to Tom’s crotch.

  ‘You’re so fucking sexy, I want you inside me so badly.’

  Tom looks at Rosa. He wants to kiss her so badly. Make it all go away.

  48

  April 2016, Bangkok, Thailand

  ‘London, this way, Luang Prabang, that way,’ says Dee authoritatively, crossing her arms in different directions.

  James concurs as he looks from the gate number on his boarding pass back up at the signs in the international departures lounge. The ever-evolving itinerary has changed again, and he and Maya decided to skip Ho Chi Minh’s mausoleum and leave Vietnam for Laos. Jon seems to have that effect on James, making him want to move on entirely.

  ‘Come on, Desiree, let’s go find some Haribo.’

  ‘Erm, or better still, a proper ring,’ she says, elbowing Maya to point out the row of Tiffany, Cartier and Chopard shops Lenny seems not to have noticed.

  Maya smiles and there’s a pause. It’s one of those pauses when people realise it’s time they should say their goodbyes. Time for Dee and Lenny to fly home for Aidan’s wedding with an announcement of their own. Time for Maya and James to board their flight to Luang Prabang, before heading to Indonesia and the last part of the Southeast Asian leg of their world trip. After that: Australia, Central America, home.