by Beth Morrey
Kicking off my shoes and stroking Bobby under the table with my foot, I watched my nemesis.
“Just an old friend,” I murmured, passing Bobby a morsel of beef. She reared onto her haunches to snatch it from my fingers.
As if aware of my gaze, Alicia’s eyes roved across the table until they met mine. She inclined her head and raised her glass, and then, after a second’s hesitation, she stood up and moved across to join me.
“I wondered,” she said, “if you’d like to go and see our old rooms?”
We walked along the long corridor together, Bobby trotting at my heels.
“I’ve lived in Cambridge for years and never been back,” Alicia explained. “At least, I’ve been back for meetings and seminars and whatnot, but never gone back to Peile. Cedric, my husband, and I taught at Clare College and—well, there’s been no reason. But seeing you, it made me remember. There might be no one in, I suppose, but it’s worth a try.”
So we knocked on the door of Alicia’s room and no one answered. Then we knocked on the door of mine, and it was opened by a student who was nonplussed to see two old ladies come to visit, but gamely let us in and even went off to the Junior Common Room while we stood in the doorway and looked around.
It was in better shape than when I lived there, but similar enough to spark a blaze of nostalgia—the thin high windows that the gentlemen used to climb out of after curfew, the narrow creaking bedstead, the scratched writing bureau, the smell of furniture polish and old “boring” books. Days and nights spent in this room, shivering and reading under a blanket and lying awake watching the trees and hanging up a ripped dress in the cupboard. That fleeting, explosive period was so intense it seemed a lifetime of formative experiences were crammed into that room. Even after all those years, it still felt like home.
We stood and stared for a while, soaking it in, and then Alicia, looking straight ahead, said, “I was so sorry to hear about Leo. Such a lovely man. Quite brilliant.”
“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t look anymore, so turned and walked back down the corridor. She shut the door and followed, and as she caught up with me, she began to sing:
“Mr. Barman, bring me a drink,
Make it so strong that I can’t think,
Give it two shots, and I’m in clover,
Then keep ’em coming till the night is over . . .”
She finished with the demonic cackle I remembered so well and I found myself snorting with laughter.
“You always were a lousy singer,” I said. “Bloody awful din.”
“You always were a lousy drinker,” she replied. “You could never keep up.”
“No,” I said slowly, “I never kept up with you. You said you and your husband taught at Clare?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s a mathematician. Terribly clever, nothing like me!” She cackled again. “We’re both retired though now. Pottering around Cambridge like a pair of old fogies.”
“So you didn’t marry the viscount,” I mused to myself as much as her.
She glanced at me, confused. “The viscount? Was there a viscount? I don’t remember one. What about you? Did you put that glittering degree of yours to good use? I imagined you as a professor by now.”
I was silent for a second, letting that other life play out. Alicia a viscountess, me an illustrious academic. “Not quite. Children got in the way.”
She laughed. “That happens, of course. And it requires another kind of mental rigor. Here we are.”
We’d arrived back at the hall. The tables had been moved against the walls and people had started dancing, Angela jigging energetically with Otis. She beckoned me over. “Come and dance!”
So I did. I drifted around the room, dancing and talking, for once entirely unself-conscious. Everything had been unpicked, and resewn, and the patterns were clearer, the threads mingling as they should. Every now and then my gaze would fall on Alicia, sitting at a table with an elderly gentleman who must be her husband, Cedric, the mathematician. They kept bending their ears to hear each other over the music. Two old fogies, just like Leo and I should have been.
Angela, Otis and I joined hands and circled the dance floor as Bobby, tied to the leg of one of the tables, waited patiently, enjoying the occasional scrap from a sympathetic guest. Then I retreated to sit with the dog while Angela and Otis danced together. We drank more, and ate wedding cheese, and my hair fell out of its bun, and Otis said I looked like a witch, so I made my fingers into claws and dug out a wand from Angela’s bag and pretended to cast spells and he ran off shrieking with laughter. When we finally tore ourselves away from the party, flushed and disheveled and giggling, it was nearly ten o’clock.
A friend of Mel’s called a (dog-friendly) taxi for us, as Otis flopped in his mother’s lap, exhausted. As I put on my coat and gathered my things together, Melanie appeared, Octavia hovering behind.
“I opened your present,” blurted Mel, sounding uncharacteristically embarrassed. “It’s beautiful. I had no idea. Where did you get it?”
“From the attic,” I replied, gratified. Mel rarely expressed approval, least of all to me. “My friend Sylvie has been sorting through a few things.”
“Well, it’s lovely. Thank you. And for coming and bringing your friends. It’s good to see you.” She held out her hands and clasped mine tightly, stilling their trembling. Our previous words still echoed, but I fancied they were a little fainter.
“It’s good to see you too.” I paused, unsure how to say it. “I wish your father could have been here. He would have been . . . very proud.”
She nodded, her eyes glistening. “The speech would have been epic.”
I smiled as I unhooked the dog from the table. “I’m glad I could be here. I’m sorry Bobby was nearly a lawful impediment.”
They both laughed.
“You seem . . . different,” said Mel. “Better.”
“Yes,” I said. “I am better. A bit, anyway.” Her mouth opened again, but I wasn’t ready yet, so shook my head and she stopped. Instead she stepped forward and hugged me awkwardly.
“I’ll come and visit,” she whispered in my ear. “Soon. Mainly to see Bob, of course. I’d like to get to know my new adopted sister.”
“I’d like that too.”
Angela, carrying Otis, said the taxi had arrived, so we made our way to the door. Before we left, I cast one last look around the hall and caught Alicia’s gimlet eye. She raised her hand in farewell; I nodded and we walked out, down the corridor, onto Sidgwick Avenue and into the night.
Chapter 20
Melanie. From the Greek μελανία, meaning “blackness.” I’d had an easy pregnancy—young, healthy and in love, a ship in full sail. Always rather angular, in body and mind, pregnancy plumped me out, smoothed away my corners and suffused me with serenity. During that summer the sun had shone and the days were long and full of expectation.
Everything changed with the birth.
No one warned me how awful it would be. Leo started out in the room with us, but quickly retreated when he saw all that heaving flesh, the midwives holding me down as I writhed and reared, dripping hair plastered to my face. I could see it in his eyes when he came back in to meet her. He crowed and cuddled over his “little hedgehog” and then he looked at me and I felt like he was thinking, “What a fuss she made.” I’d failed an important test; Leo was expecting an A-plus and all I managed was a measly C. He gave me the “regard” ring that was stolen by the burglars. The gems spelled out the word—Ruby, Emerald, Garnet, Amethyst, Ruby and Diamond. It came with one of his Latin notes—Sicut mater, ita et filia eius—“As is the mother, so is the daughter.” I felt deflated. Regard, not love. And “sicut mater” didn’t feel like a compliment.
From the second she came out, Mel was angry—a tiny, fist-waving fury whose mouth was constantly contorted into a scream. There was nothing I could do t
o placate her; she leeched the blood from my throbbing cracked nipples (even following my mother’s advice), pummeled me as I rocked her, glared at me with her shark-eyes as I changed her. She was always cross, a cross I had to bear.
This was not what I had imagined, bustling around our little cottage, readying myself for motherhood. I supposed I would do exactly the same things I’d done before—a walk into town, a museum visit, a leisurely drink in a café—but with a little bundle in my arms. But I couldn’t take her anywhere because of the screams and disapproving stares. Instead I wearily traipsed round empty parks in the driving rain of that endless winter, trying to ignore the bloodcurdling squawks from within the baby carriage.
During pregnancy I bloomed—now I withered, limping through the days and months, wishing my life away and hers. Nowadays I’m sure I would have had some sort of diagnosis, with the necessary drugs and therapy prescribed. Back then it was different. But when my doctor suggested a new pill to prevent pregnancy, I wanted to embrace him, as I was so terrified of doing it all again. Leo, who adored Mel and didn’t have to look after her, started angling as soon as she was toddling, and I agreed because I hadn’t told him about the pill and thought I could just pretend to be as surprised as he was when nothing happened.
Alas, I became rather lax about taking it, placing too much faith in its ability to keep me in my blessed barren state. And I was distracted by the letter from my mother announcing her illness, so didn’t recognize the signs. I was always rather bad at recognizing the signs. I just felt so tired. Then I took Melanie to London to see Mama, and for a few weeks was exhausted by the nursing and cleaning and sorting, even with Sibby there to help. After my mother died, so quickly, I fell into a kind of torpor, back in our messy little cottage, placating Mel with biscuits, both of us growing fatter and fatter. In the end I went to see the doctor again. He looked at my belly and then at me, as if I was dim-witted. I realized that I was almost hoping for a different diagnosis—an illness, like my mother, rather than what it so obviously was.
As my pregnancy progressed I roused myself a little and when we saw the house in Stoke Newington that late summer of 1964 I felt the faint stirrings of life and light for the first time since Melanie was born. And then when Alistair came along, everything changed again.
This time it was easier. I felt more focused, as if my efforts weren’t going unrewarded. He came out quietly, round eyes blinking, arms waving to find me. He suckled immediately, gratefully. The midwives patted and congratulated. Leo stayed with us. I’d got my A-plus on the second attempt.
We took him home to our big new house and Melanie, who was of course outraged. Even she grew to love him though. He was so obliging, so simple. He was the image of Leo, big and golden, with a kind of infant glow about him. He chuckled, babbled, did all the things other ordinary babies did. As the months went by, I could take him to cafés, and little playgroups, and no one stared. Everyone was mourning Churchill, but Ali and I were in our own cocoon, oblivious to the world’s ills. He healed me—my failure with Mel, Henry and my mother dying and other evils best left unsaid—they all ceased to matter so much because I had produced this buoyant, glowing boy. The God I didn’t believe in was smiling on me, after all. Mel was my cross, Ali my balm. It’s wrong to have a favorite, but I felt absolved because for Leo it was the other way around. He found Alistair’s straightforwardness rather pedestrian, preferring Mel’s more complicated, challenging psyche. So they both had a doting parent and a disparaging one, which I supposed was character-building. That was our oikos; the yin and yang, the whole greater than its assembled parts. I made up for Leo’s failings and he made up for mine. But now he was gone, and I was going to have to come to terms with them, and try to make amends . . .
* * *
—
Clackety-clack, clackety-clack . . . The lurch of the train synchronized with my heavy lids on the way back to Finsbury Park that night, suckered in by the city, Otis lolling in Angela’s arms as she drunkenly snoozed, Bobby flat out under the seats, while I gazed at the blackness clattering past. I could see myself reflected in the dark window, the future Melanie—gaunter, grayer, bitter. Of course I found her difficult because I saw myself in her, all my faults blown up in my face, along with all the strengths I didn’t possess. Melanie was the Missy that Leo could love without restraint. She’d tenderized his heart in a way I couldn’t quite manage. Now I was sobering up, entheos fading, I wondered if the brief amity we’d shared on my departure could last. There was always the residue of that terrible day, that terrible fight . . .
At Finsbury Park, Angela lumbered out of the station with Otis over her shoulder, while I dragged Bobby, who developed an infuriating obsession with the urine-drenched lampposts of Seven Sisters Road as we wandered around looking for a taxi. Luckily we found a driver who deemed the dog’s presence acceptable, but I was headachy and despondent by the time he dropped us off on our street. Waving good-bye with her free arm, Angela headed toward her flat as I lugged Bobby home.
When we went in, I saw a light on in the living room but didn’t think too much of it, remembering that Sylvie had said she might pop by briefly to sort out a few things from the attic. She had a key and had probably forgotten to switch everything off when she left. I went into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea to combat the impending hangover. Bobby whined at the back door to be let out and I unlocked it, tutting as her plumy tail weaved off into the darkness of the garden. Turning back to the kettle, I poured my tea and was about to settle at the kitchen table when I remembered the light. Better save the electricity.
Even as I approached, it was clear something had changed. The light itself was different—a softer, warmer glow than usual emanating from the room. Pushing open the door and registering the transformation, I stood rooted, gripping the doorknob in astonishment. Sylvie had worked her wonders, and I no longer lived in a mausoleum.
As a child, I used to read A Little Princess avidly, over and over again until my copy fell apart. I was entranced and appalled by it, taking delight in the lavish descriptions of Sara Crewe’s life, her papa’s extravagance, then gleefully recoiling at her subsequent fall from grace. I was struck by the notion that life can turn on a sixpence—that one moment she could be tending to a doll as sumptuously dressed as she was; the next, bedraggled on the street, feeding buns to a beggar.
But the episode that intrigued me most was when the sympathetic gentleman next door decides to refurbish Sara’s room in secret. While she is asleep, he sends his servant across the roof and in through her window, and one morning she wakes to find her bleak attic transformed into a magical boudoir, filled with exquisite home comforts. As I looked around the living room that night, I felt like the Little Princess, dazzled by the bounty and overwhelmed that someone cared enough to do it.
There was the Aubusson rug, back in front of the fireplace, its vivid red echoing the twitching embers of the fire. The writing desk was in the corner, along with a carved wooden chair upholstered in soft sage chenille. Green-flowered linen had been used to make new curtains and matching cushion covers, my paisley throw washed and rearranged along the arm of the sofa. Another lamp had been unearthed and set on a low table by Leo’s chair. Alongside it, the Murano vase filled with anemone. Anemone for the lost Adonis.
Photos and pictures everywhere, on the walls, on the mantelpiece—every surface had its own memento. Some were works of art I’d forgotten, including a fine oil portrait of my father, painted just before he went off to war. I paused under it, looking at that sensitive, thoughtful face. William Jameson. He had been a pacifist, though too scared to say so. My mother rarely spoke of him, except to say he was the finest man she had ever met, and I was sad that I didn’t remember him at all, just knew that he was the reason I was called Missy, ever since my brother mispronounced my name in his hearing. After he left, Fa-Fa picked up on it and it stuck, though he and my father were the only ones to ever use it, before Leo
came along. The letters to my mother that I’d read up in the attic had signed off: Love to all, esp. Henry & Little Missy.
What was it Sara Crewe said? “The Magic that won’t let those worst things ever quite happen.” They do happen though, don’t they—fathers go off to war and don’t come back, loved ones get sick, grandchildren move away, and much worse besides—the worst things that you can’t even think about. But then there are life’s pick-me-ups: lunch invitations, dog beds, pretending to be a witch at a wedding.
What an email the tale of today would make! But as I turned to go back to my laptop in the kitchen, I changed my mind and decided to write a good old-fashioned letter instead. After letting Bobby back in, I settled myself at my old bureau, all handily stocked with the necessary equipment, and found piece of paper and a pen. The newly installed clock on the mantelpiece chimed one in the morning, but what I had to say couldn’t wait. With Bobby snoring on the rug, I started to write, knowing the words would flow easily for once.
Dear Melanie, I began.
Chapter 21
It’s strange how quickly things can change. Just a few months ago it was so cold, frozen grass crunching underfoot, sky leaden with unshed snow, an arctic whistle in the wind, a few solitary flakes refusing to melt on the pane. Whereas in early June I looked out and could feel the heat of the sun on the glass. Under the blazing periwinkle, tarmac softened on the scorched streets, commuters gradually shedding their clothes as they marched to and from the tube station.
In addition to Bobby’s twice-daily walks, my days began to be taken up with other activities—coffee with a dog walker who happened to be free, another lunch at Sylvie’s, a trip into town to see a cheap matinée Angela had recommended. I regularly babysat in the mornings for Otis, who was a delight. He came on walks with me and we’d go to the playground, Bobby waiting patiently at the gate while he went on the swings and the long slide and hid in the bushes waiting for me to find him.
