And so it is that this morning Gary, undaunted by his previous experience of chauffeuring me, picks me up at eight-thirty, together with Venetia, whose mother seems to think me an entirely appropriate person to chaperone her daughter, and Micky, whose parents seem not to be much bothered about what he gets up to, and we set out on the hour’s drive to Carlisle airport. The teenagers in the back don’t talk much, devoting themselves to their phones, and Gary and I say just enough to each other to be polite, no mention made of the bloodshed and threatening behaviour we encountered on our last trip. It is a very peaceful hour, entirely free from the turmoil and personal drama that I generally carry around with me.
We arrive early, having allowed for heavy traffic which didn’t materialise, and I pay Gary and send him home; there will be two cars here and we can arrange the drive back one way or another.
The airport, as we walk in, strikes me as assertively, if not aggressively, bright and bouncy. There are huge plate glass windows everywhere, colourful paintwork and a medley of bright chairs and tables in the Departures café bar. Offered a drink, Venetia and Micky say they will wait for the others, so I buy myself a Guardian and start reading the book reviews. Not long afterwards Eve arrives with her foursome, and there is much exclaiming, laughing and hugging. Eve and I settle ourselves at our own table.
‘I’m nervous,’ I say.
‘Don’t let her get to you.’
‘Easier said than done.’
‘She’s a teacher. She can’t put all the blame on you. She knows what thirteen-year-olds are like.’
‘Year Nine syndrome?’
‘Exactly.’
At this point Ellie and Freda arrive. Freda heads straight for the gang and Ellie stands uncertainly just inside the giant sliding glass doors. Eve gives me a meaningful look. Go on, it says, don’t be a wimp, so I get up and go towards Ellie. ‘Hello darling,’ I call, and she looks straight past me to Eve.
‘I’m going back to the car, Eve,’ she calls. ‘Will you tell Freda I’ll be there when she’s ready to go?’
Then she turns back and the glass doors open for her and close behind her.
‘Silly girl,’ Eve says as I return to our table. ‘She needs to get a grip.’
‘She’s been terrified,’ I say.
‘But it’s all right now. Is this supposed to be her version of PTSD?’
‘Perhaps it is.’
‘Well she ought to take account of your trauma too. Not to mention Freda’s. Come on, there are delicious-looking things on the counter over there. I’ll buy you cake.’
We go and order cappuccinos with chocolate sprinkles and an apricot Danish each, and before carrying them back to our table we distribute money to the young for food and drink.
‘Forget Ellie for the time being. She’ll have to come round in her own time,’ Eve says. ‘Is Ben a sensible chap?’
‘He’s a sweetheart.’
‘Well, leave it to him then.’
We devote ourselves for a while to enjoying the effects of caffeine and glucose, and then Eve says, ‘There’s news of Susan. She’s conscious and I can take the girls to see her tomorrow.’
‘Does anyone know what he did to her exactly?’
‘It’s all rumour. One of the people who found her by the lake thought she’d been strangled. But the hospital is talking about head injuries and broken bones.’
‘Maybe he half-strangled her trying to get her to tell him where Ruby was and then battered her in frustration.’
‘Maybe. Anyway, she’ll survive and Ruby has decided she’s not doing the audition. She’s staying here to be with her.’
‘She’s not sorry to miss the glamour? I didn’t see the school under the best circumstances, but it’s a pretty fantastic place.’
‘I don’t think she ever really wanted it. She just needed to get away from him. She is a clever girl. Colin says she’s bright enough to do medicine if she wants to.’
‘So he’ll be back to the chemistry coaching.’
‘He will. And if she’s coming to the house, that means I’ll be able to make sure she’s coping. I’m afraid she’ll be Susan’s carer for a while.’
‘And in the meantime you can mother-hen the girls to your heart’s content.’
We are alerted by a commotion among the young, who have decided to make a move. The hugging happens all over again, Milo and Fergus come to hug Eve, looming over her in their lanky adolescent way, and then they lope off, holdalls hiked over their shoulders.
On the way to the car park, I manage a quick word with Freda.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask.
‘Except for Mum,’ she says. ‘She’s driving me nuts.’
‘She had a bad shock.’
‘So did I. So did Grace and Ruby. So did you. But we’re over it.’
‘I think it’s worse worrying about someone you love.’
‘Well she doesn’t act as though she loves me. I think she’d like to put one of those ankle tags on me.’
I laugh.
‘And she hates you,’ she says.
‘I’m afraid she does.’
‘And I’m beginning to hate her.’
‘Well don’t, because she loves you more than anything in the world. That’s why she’s so angry.’
‘She’s being ridiculous.’
‘Then you’re going to have to be the grown-up, aren’t you? Try to be understanding. Being a mother is a rotten job. No-one gets it right even half the time.’
Chapter Twenty-One
IF YOU PARDON WE WILL MEND
December
I feel I have to apologise for this epilogue because it has nothing to offer in the way of surprises or revelations, but I feel that I left a lot of loose ends in my telling of this story and, like Puck, I need to restore amends. So here is what I know now, in case you are asking yourself what happens next.
Ellie’s malaise does not abate. Call it PTS if you like, or vendetta, or punishment for damage, real or imagined, I inflicted on her in her childhood. Whatever it is, I can’t budge it. I have reasoned, I have grovelled, I have mea culpaed, and now I am just pissed off. And I am inclined to blame the Brexit war – excessive overreaction, hysterical rhetoric, entrenched attitude, emotion trumping reason, refusal to compromise – who can blame Ellie for lapsing into unreason when all about her are losing their heads. And I suspect Annie of fanning the embers of resentment, but Ben, I know, has tried to make peace, and Freda, I suspect, has sulked and slammed doors a lot, but the bottom line is that Freda and I have not seen each other since early August. The proposed week in London at the end of the school holiday didn’t happen: they stayed on in Italy and then Ellie claimed that they had too much to do getting ready for the start of term, though this seemed to boil down to buying a new school skirt and a few files. Then at half-term they went off to a Center Parcs (why is it spelt like that?) for a week, though they have never done anything of that kind before, and Freda, who can’t at least be prevented from communicating with me by phone, sent me a text which read:
‘Trapped with my family in the middle of a forest in the rain. Imprisonment without trial. What happened to my human rights?’
In early November Ellie phoned me, which I took as a good sign until she announced that they were going to Italy for Christmas, so the family Christmas would not be en famille with me. I said that was perfectly fine as David and I had been thinking of going away somewhere for the festive season, then put down the phone and threw some plates at the kitchen wall. Over the next few weeks I was well over the tops of my wellies in the Slough of Despond, until Eve rang. She listened patiently when her routine, ‘How are you?’ elicited a torrent of misery and fury, and said, ‘I think I have a plan.’
Susan Buxton, out of hospital and recovering nicely, though still with some paralysis down one side, had invited Freda to
come up to stay after Christmas. After their shared ordeal, her two girls had been in regular contact with Freda and they were dying to see each other. Appealed to, Ellie had no objection except that she wasn’t going to let Freda travel from Kent to Cumbria on her own. Eve had been enlisted to talk to Ellie – to suggest that if she or Ben escorted Freda to London and put her on the Penrith train no harm could come to her. Her arguments failed to persuade, but having learnt in passing that I was being excluded from the family Christmas, she proposed a Plan B. How would I like to come up and spend a few days with her after Christmas? And then how could Ellie refuse to let me travel on the train with Freda? I embraced the idea, of course, but felt certain that Ellie would refuse to allow me to pollute any railway carriage in which Freda travelled. I was not hopeful, heard nothing from Eve and was up to my thighs in Despond by the time she eventually called back.
‘We’ve done it,’ she said. ‘I had to get the combined forces of Ben for sweet reason, Susan for the sympathy card, and Laura for robust common sense, but she finally agreed. Ellie will bring Freda to Euston and meet you there, and the reverse on the way home. Susan had to assure Ellie that Freda will be spending all her time with them while she’s up here, and barely get a glimpse of you, but at least you’ll get two long train journeys with her – and I shall like having you here too.’
‘And I shall like it. Eve, you are a love. Thank you. I think I may be going to cry.’
‘Not you,’ she said. ‘Balls of steel, you.’
*
So here I am. David and I didn’t go away but we did spend Christmas Day together and managed not to argue even about television programmes. I was determined to be able to say defiantly that we had had a lovely time and David had the sense to know how fragile my defiance was and came up to the mark. So, we exchanged presents of books, ate an M&S game pie, played Yahtzee and watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which I think David hated, but he said not a word.
Now, on December’s penultimate day, I am standing by the departures board at Euston station, waiting for Freda. I almost don’t recognise her when she appears. This is partly because it’s not Ellie but Ben who is with her, and partly because she seems to be several inches taller and at least two years older. The height can be put down to heels on the boots she is wearing, and the age to the hair and make-up; the ponytail has been replaced by sleek, smooth locks, and the eye make-up is visible even at some distance. The air of maturity is dispelled, though, when she rushes towards me – slightly wobbly on her heels – and throws her arms round me. Ben hugs me too and looks sheepish when I hand him a bag of Christmas presents – books as usual.
‘I haven’t…’ he says.
‘Don’t worry about it. I’ve got my present here.’ I take the opportunity to give Freda another hug before she remembers that she is too old for that sort of thing.
The train ride feels like a rerun of our summer journey, except that we hardly read our books at all. We get them out, at the ready – The Testaments for me and another quasi-historical tale for Freda – but we have a lot to say. I have bought her The Catcher in the Rye because it tackles the agony of growing up head-on, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go for the horror factor, as well as the growing up. She gives me two framed sketches of the set she helped to design for her school’s production of Twelfth Night last term. Georgia Wade had been in charge and she had enlisted Freda, who waxes lyrical about the design and its effects.
‘Miss Armitage, the director, wanted it to be autumn and winter time,’ she explains. ‘She said that at the beginning of the play everyone is sad, and it’s all about dying – Olivia’s father and brother, and Viola thinks her brother is dead, and even Feste the clown is getting old and sad. So we started with these bare trees and fallen leaves, and then in the interval we swapped them for trees with fake snow on them – we made it from foam wadding – and though you might think that made it even more wintry, actually the light bounced off the white, so it all felt brighter. And we made that snowman for the scene in the garden where Malvolio is reading the letter he thinks is from Olivia, and put a top hat on him, like the one Malvolio wore – the costumes were Victorian, you see, to make the audience think of Dickens and Christmas Carol and then Twelfth Night. And then in the very last scene lights started to come on on the trees. We’d put strings of tiny lights in among the fake snow, and they came on very gradually on a dimmer, so that in the end it was just beautiful and joyful.’
‘What about Malvolio?’ I ask. ‘He doesn’t get a joyful ending, does he?’
‘Oh I’ve got no sympathy for him,’ she says, with surprising callousness. ‘He deserves it. Olivia’s way out of his league and he ought to know it. And he doesn’t love her anyway. He just wants her money and status. He’s a fake.’
I laugh. ‘I think you’ll like Holden Caulfield. His favourite word for people is “phoney”.’
*
Once I have delivered Freda into the embraces of Ruby and Grace, I see hardly anything of her, but I enjoy my three days with Eve and Colin, though Colin is drinking more than seems sensible, and we all have to take a vow of silence to prevent us from harping endlessly on the Tory landslide and the prospect ahead. Eve still coughs alarmingly at times. She won’t talk about it, talking instead about other people. She is an information hub, so I learn about the afterlives of the major characters in the summer’s tragi-comedy. Neil Buxton pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder, GBH and sexual assault. There is a trial date in February and Eve has promised to be there for Susan and her girls, who will all have to give evidence. Freda has made a statement about events at Alcott Park and may not need to take the witness stand – which disappoints her as she would like her day in court. Milo and Fergus were ticked off by the police, as were Micky and Venetia, but no further action was taken in the light of Ruby’s reasons for disappearing. Grace is back at Alcott Park, where she had some explaining to do, and Ruby is making progress with her chemistry, though Colin is outraged at the poor quality of her school’s science teaching. She watches her mother anxiously, but Susan, though still wobbly and needing a stick, is determined that Ruby won’t become her carer. It turns out that sales of Neil’s glass have accumulated a tidy sum over the years, and Susan will get access to the money once the court seals his fate. We went to the Carnmere Manor hotel for fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and there was Dumitru, carrying trays of hot punch around. He got his place at the art college and seems to have got away with the pilfering from the hotel, since they are still employing him when they need extra staff. He will always land on his feet, I think.
*
On our train journey back to London we are much quieter than when we were outward bound. We are both conscious I think that we may not see one another again for quite a while; but instead of making us use this time together fruitfully the consciousness seems simply to weigh on us. We browse a bit over the friends we have left behind and I ask some desultory questions about her expectations for the coming term, but by the time we get to Euston we have been silent for quite a while, and we proceed in silence to meet Ben at our appointed spot. But it is not Ben who is there to meet us – or rather not just Ben. Ellie and Nico are there too. And they are all smiling. Nico rushes to hug me, Ellie gives me a quick peck on the cheek, and Ben, as he embraces me, whispers in my ear, ‘New Year resolution.’ My immediate reaction is to take this as an instruction to me – I am being enjoined to behave myself in the coming year – but he is smiling still, and I understand that his words are an explanation: Be nicer to my mother is Ellie’s resolution. I look at her again and see that she is carrying a gift bag, as are Ben and Nico. For me? My no-longer-expected Christmas presents?
Dizzy with the prospect of things looking up, I say boldly, ‘Do you have to dash back or shall we have lunch at Cucina Nonna?’
They accept with such alacrity that I realise that they were expecting something of the sort and it would have been a s
erious error not to have offered. ‘I’ll treat us to a taxi,’ I say. ‘Come on.’
Alessandro, the proprietor of this small Italian restaurant just round the square from my flat in Bloomsbury, is overjoyed to see us all, and comments (rather pointedly I think) that he has not seen all of us for a long time. While he is taking our coats and stashing Freda’s and my bags, he has a conversation in Italian with Ben, too rapid for me to understand, but I have the feeling that, man to man and Italian to Italian, Ben is explaining that there has been trouble among the women folk – ‘dispute tra le donne’. I may be wrong, but Alessandro gives an expressive shrug and then gives a quick, slightly anxious glance at me. He has reason to be anxious as I have form: David and I once had a disputa here that was ferocious enough for Alessandro to decide that we couldn’t be trusted to share a pudding. In the interests of harmony, he offers us complimentary prosecco ‘per il nuovo anno’.
While we are waiting for our antipasto misto I am given my presents – a copy of The Second Sleep from Ellie, a miniature rose plant, brought back from Italy, from Ben and from Nico a photo of his birthday party featuring him cutting into his cake with great concentration (this I take as compensation for my having been excluded from the birthday celebrations). I am genuinely pleased with all of them and everyone can be happy.
The meal is perfect, as always, we manage to steer the conversation off contentious matters, Alessandro beams beatifically on us all as we depart, and I walk with the family to the Tube, where we bid farewell with hugs and must seem, to the naked eye, like any normal family. I watch them disappear into the bowels of the Underground and then I walk home, trundling my suitcase like a tourist. It is already turning to dusk and the square feels empty and quiet.
Descending the steps to my front door, I feel as though I have been away for more than three days, though there is very little mail on the mat. I frugally turned the heating off when I left so the place has the damp chill of winter abandonment, and as I close the door I am enveloped in the deep silence of a place that is not expecting anyone else to enter it any time soon.
Where Everything Seems Double Page 19
