But obviously it can’t be as big a deal as it is to my mum, who went completely fucking ballistic when I told her. How dare he, he’s so selfish, cradle-snatching dickhead, etc. Then she moved on to what does it say about her that she was ever involved with him, how is it possible he didn’t even mention this girl to me before, and so on. When she gets to the last bit, she gives me a filthy look, like I knew all along and just kept it from her out of spite. Like I’ve just made up this email for some mindfuck purpose of my own. And that’s when I lose it and tell her to go fuck herself, because really, she fucking can. I’ve had it up to here. It’s like dealing with a child.
It’s not like she hasn’t been seeing someone herself, either, because she’s been seeing that freak from her work for months now. Even though he’s a cunt who hates me because he blames me for being ill over the summer and keeping her away from him. Like I caught a major ear infection on purpose. I hate him. But it’s fine for her to have a thing with him, it’s just not fine for my dad to do the same, right? Talk about being a total hypocrite.
She’s so busy making it all about her that she doesn’t even think to ask how I feel about my dad getting married – and to someone who’s only a bit older than me, which is creepy as fuck. She doesn’t even ask. Anything he does has to be about her, because she can’t imagine that he might not think about her from one month to the next. Why would he? If he gave a shit about her, they wouldn’t be divorced, would they? She is completely fucking pathetic. Actually, they both are.
About two weeks after term began, once the Festival circus had left town and taken all the clowns, mimes, actors and jugglers with it, Robert took me out for dinner. The waiter at Ciao Roma looked pathetically grateful to see customers, now all the tourists had disappeared. I was still taking off my jacket when the bread appeared. Robert explained that we would need a few minutes before we’d be ready to order. But to keep the bored staff busy, he considered a Chianti, then settled on a Valpolicella, demanding black olives to accompany it.
‘Now, Alex,’ he said, after he’d tasted the first sip of the screw-top wine with an expression that suggested he was considering sending it back as corked. ‘Now, Alex.’ The cue was unmistakeable. I leaned in.
‘Did you have a good summer?’ he asked. ‘It was quite a strong year for the Festival, was it not?’
‘It was. Yes. I saw some good plays. Nothing earth-shattering, but plenty of good stuff.’
‘Were any of your acting chums in town?’
I hadn’t answered their texts, hadn’t gone to their shows. I’d avoided Bristo Square to avoid bumping into them. I had hidden from my old life, sticking with shows that had originated in other parts of the country, scurrying in at the last minute before the lights went down, and rushing out as soon as the cast had finished bowing. If I ever wanted to be a theatre critic, I’d polished all the necessary skills.
‘Yes, a few,’ I said. ‘Though we didn’t really manage to catch up.’ To my surprise, he didn’t start in with a lecture about keeping in touch with my friends and my former profession. If anything, he looked relieved.
‘Is it possible, Alex, that you are happier here, in Edinburgh, than you would be in London, where all your friends are?’
‘It’s more than possible. It’s true. I left London because I couldn’t face being there. But now, I don’t want to go back. It’s not that I can’t face it. I just don’t want to. I prefer being here.’
‘So you would consider a proposal that involved you staying here?’
‘What kind of proposal? Are you about to get down on one knee?’
‘Too late. I already have,’ he admitted, and smiled.
‘You and Jeff are getting married?’
He nodded, suddenly shy.
‘Congratulations.’ I reached over and squeezed his hand. ‘We should have ordered champagne.’
‘We still can.’ He summoned a waiter and asked for two glasses of Prosecco. ‘Near enough,’ he said. ‘It’s not like we’ll be doing a whole white-dress thing.’
‘When did this happen? I’m so pleased for you both.’
‘About a month ago.’
‘Why didn’t you…’ I tailed off. I knew exactly why he hadn’t mentioned it. I shook my head, and raised the glass which the waiter had just brought over. ‘To you and Jeff.’
‘To me and Jeff,’ he agreed, and our glasses clinked together.
‘Speaking of which, where is Jeff?’
‘He’s giving us space,’ Robert explained. ‘So I could talk to you.’
‘Oh, OK. Wait. What about?’ Jeff surely couldn’t think I wouldn’t be happy for him.
‘My retirement,’ he said, frowning.
‘Really?’
‘He won’t stop going on about it.’
‘So, you’re definitely going to leave?’
‘At the end of this academic year. I’ll leave next June.’
The room tilted slightly to one side. If Robert left, how could I carry on at Rankeillor? I was more than halfway through a one-year contract now, and his successor would want to bring in new people. Then what would I do? Could I get another job up here? I supposed Robert would write me a reference for something. Perhaps I could get a front-of-house job at the Traverse.
‘Alex?’ Robert was waiting for me to say something.
I started gabbling. ‘That’s great. It’s what Jeff wants, isn’t it? Will you travel?’
‘So I’ll need to find someone to take over from me at the Unit,’ he continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. I couldn’t blame him.
‘OK.’ Perhaps he was going to ask me who I’d recommend. But I didn’t know anyone who would apply.
‘And I was wondering if that person might be you, Alex.’
‘Oh.’ Had I always been this bad at interpreting subtext? ‘But I’m not qualified.’
‘Nonetheless, I think you’d be the perfect candidate. And I think the governors might see things the same way. You have experience of working at our unit. You know the staff and the students. And unlike some, you don’t hold rancorous grudges against other colleagues.’
‘But I have no experience of running anything bigger than a cast of eight.’
‘But that’s not because you can’t, it’s because you haven’t. You’d be terrific, Alex. You like the kids we have at Rankeillor. And that’s the secret truth about education. Academics and think-tanks and God knows who else spend years of time and millions of pounds trying to work out how to keep children in schools, how to improve test scores. And the one thing they never stop to consider is: do the teachers like the kids? Do the kids trust the support staff? Does the head like his colleagues? You can announce as many directives as you wish, but in the end, it all comes down to this. I honestly believe it does. It’s as true at Rankeillor as it was at the University. It’s all about wanting people to succeed.’
I nodded, sipping the Prosecco, trying not to feel hopeful when there were so many obstacles in the path of Robert’s plan. ‘But the governors will want someone experienced, surely.’
‘They’ll want someone who wants the job. Rankeillor is not exactly Fettes, is it? They don’t have people hammering at the door to be allowed a chance to work with children who are often difficult and sometimes violent. They’ll want someone who knows the work of the Unit already, and they’ll want someone younger than I was, when I took over, so they don’t have to worry about anyone else retiring. They’re not going to want someone in their fifties again, are they?’
‘I don’t know. They might.’
‘Yes, they might. But I’m sure I can prevail upon them to see reason. It’s the perfect fit, Alex. I’m sure I can get them to agree. But I won’t try if I can’t get you to agree first. I don’t want you to answer now. I don’t even want you to think about it now. I want you to put it from your mind, look at your menu and order your dinner. We’ll discuss it again in a week or so, when you’ve had time to think it over properly. And you can’t do that on an empty stomach. So�
�’ He reached over and jiggled the menu I was holding, forcing me to look down at it. Robert never lost anyone’s attention for long.
* * *
Now I’m writing this down for Lisa Meyer, I realise I don’t know when the kids found out I was considering a permanent job at Rankeillor. They knew that their original art therapist, Miss Allen, had gone on maternity leave, and that she had been gone, by now, for almost nine months. I don’t know if they knew that her child had been born with a minor heart defect which caused her to reconsider her planned return to work and become a full-time mother.
When I first came to Scotland, at the start of the year, I thought that Rankeillor was a temporary measure. And then when Robert asked me to consider something permanent, I didn’t know what to make of it. I was afraid of making a decision. If I took him up on the offer, I could stay in Edinburgh. But I would also be giving up on directing, the only thing I had ever really wanted to do. And I didn’t want to become one of those people who haunts amateur dramatic societies, muttering about how I could have gone professional if only my life had taken a different path, in between storming out of rehearsals of Hedda Gabler because no-one knows their lines.
Was it possible to make a choice which didn’t cut off the other option entirely? Could I stay at Rankeillor in the short-term, and then go back to directing in a couple of years? I thought about it for a day or two before acknowledging that I could not. I couldn’t treat these kids as a fill-in, biding my time till what I really wanted came along. Even as I thought this, guilt prickled across my scalp. I had already seen them as exactly that. I had gone into their unit because I needed an escape and even now, nine months later, I was still thinking about what I wanted instead of what the children needed.
So I can tell Lisa Meyer one thing I remember: that night in September was the first time in over a year that I really thought about the future, mine or anyone else’s. It was also the first time I thought about the kids and what they might want. Not just Jono and Mel, Annika and Carly, but all the children I taught. It was the first time I really, properly thought about someone who wasn’t me, or Luke, since he died.
4
The 14th of October was the first time I’d travelled down to London since before the summer holiday. It was my mother’s birthday. I took the same train I used to get to King’s Cross, then the Underground to Waterloo, which was so crowded it made me gasp for air, then another train to Walton-on-Thames, to my mother’s parish. Luke used to tease her about the number of poor and needy people she could find in Walton-on-Thames, which she cheerily admitted was one of the wealthiest parishes in the country. Being my mother, of course, she saw a bright side to this. Certainly the designer clothes and bags which appeared at her bring-and-buy sales were enough to sustain her soup kitchen, her Sunday school refreshments, and plenty more besides. She maintained that fashionistas would trek down from the capital just to trawl through her stash of high-end frocks, all of which she priced up in the belief that charity began at the church hall, right next to the tombola.
When I arrived at the station, she was waiting for me, dog-collar on, dog-lead in hand. Pickle went crazy: I have never been greeted by anybody with even half the enthusiasm Pickle could generate for the postman, let alone a long-lost friend. I tried to hug my mother before dog saliva made the whole process gummily untenable.
‘Here you are, darling,’ said my mother. ‘At last.’
‘Happy birthday,’ I said, trying not to stiffen at the implicit criticism. We walked down a leafy side-road and past the church to reach her red-brick house, smaller and squatter than the old vicarage, which had been sold to a banker of vast fortune and indeterminate moral fibre some years before.
Her house smelled exactly the same as it had a year ago. Potpourri, dog hair and flowers battled for supremacy. I dropped my bag at the bottom of the stairs, noticed Pickle eyeing its rope handles, and picked it up again. I put it on a chair instead, and dug out the card and the wooden dog, the latter now wrapped in bright turquoise tissue paper, with a navy raffia bow adding a celebratory touch. I kicked off my boots, which were far too hot now I wasn’t in Edinburgh, and padded through to the kitchen.
‘Happy birthday,’ I said again, giving her the card and the present. I’d forgotten how slowly she opened things, as if there was a prize for coming last. No wonder the dog was so excitable: she must have a seizure every time she watched my mother spend three minutes opening a can of dog food.
‘Oh darling, it’s lovely,’ she said, tearing up a little as she finally burrowed her way through the tissue paper to the small wooden statue. ‘Wherever did you find it? It looks just like her.’
‘It’s from the craft fair they hold in the churchyard at St John’s,’ I told her. ‘Carved by a lady who lives up in the Highlands. She had birds and horses and things, but I thought you’d like the dog.’
‘I do, very much,’ she said, and gave me a hug.
We spent a while catching up, drinking coffee and eating cake. But there was too much space between us: I tried to explain my Edinburgh life to her, and I knew I was failing. I tried to follow the ins and outs of her assorted parish squabbles, but I couldn’t keep up. We weren’t just living at different ends of the country, we were living in parallel universes.
‘You look tired,’ she said, suddenly, and I knew she had noticed I wasn’t really listening. ‘I thought we’d go out for dinner,’ she added. ‘There’s a new Italian around the corner: I’ve only been a couple of times, but it’s very nice. Breadsticks, you know. Like the old days.’
‘OK.’
‘Why don’t you have a lie-down?’ she asked.
I went upstairs, not to sleep but just to rest from the effort of talking. My head was thrumming softly, and I lay down on a bed that wasn’t mine. My childhood home was long gone, my flat with Luke must have new tenants, my place in Edinburgh was on loan from a man who was avoiding Scotland as if he were a wanted criminal. But it certainly wasn’t mine, and he might come back and reclaim it any time, I supposed. I wondered if I should be worried about this, but all I found was a sense of relief that I didn’t have to be anywhere I didn’t want to be, at least not for long.
Pickle was never one to miss out on a prone body: it almost always meant she would be petted by someone who couldn’t be bothered to get up. She nosed her way round the bedroom door, then hopped up onto the bed. I scritched her between the ears, until she reached that Zen state that only dogs and Buddhists can achieve.
Even Pickle would know where home was, if she raced away from my mother in the park. And if a spaniel could acquire a sense of permanence, it shouldn’t be beyond me. I thought again about Robert’s offer, before dozing off.
* * *
Dinner with my mother started badly and grew worse. Her opening gambit was to ask when I was moving back to ‘the real world’. As patiently as I could, I explained that Edinburgh was as real as anywhere else. But that wasn’t what she wanted to hear. She wanted to know when I would move back to London to reconnect with my old friends, and with Luke’s, to go back to working in the theatre, to give up on ‘children other people are better qualified to work with anyway’. Obviously, she was right about this, but it didn’t make it any less crass to say it.
Then we progressed to the ‘time-to-move-on’ conversation, which my mother felt compelled to have, now it was over a year since Luke died. Even more so, since she had started seeing someone over the past few months, who I would meet tomorrow, and who she was certain I would really like. Again, I tried to explain that while she was ready to move on from my father’s death several years earlier, I was not yet ready to consider doing the same thing myself.
The trouble with grief is that once people have survived it, they can develop a hardness, like rough skin: they made it through, so why can’t you? And the only honest answer is that you don’t know why, or even if you can’t move on. You just know you haven’t. The nadir came when she reminded me that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger
, and I replied that this was not a very Christian idea. Arthritis won’t kill you, it only makes you weaker. What if grief works the same way?
By the time we got home, we were barely speaking, and we both went straight to bed. Even the dog ignored me. I got up on Saturday morning and told her I would be leaving a day early, because I knew that things couldn’t improve if I stayed. She started to cry, because I wouldn’t meet Andrew, and he was looking forward to meeting me. And I started to cry too, because I knew the visit had been a disaster, and that I wouldn’t return any time soon.
We hugged as I left, but with resignation rather than warmth.
DD,
Alex hasn’t been going to London this term. She’s been at Rankeillor on Fridays, and when I asked her why she came in on Fridays now, she said she has a couple of classes in the morning. Like that was the only reason, the only thing that was different from before. I went to the station and checked to see if she was going on Saturday a couple of times, and then on Sundays. I had to keep telling my mum I was going to the shops, even though she knows I don’t have much money. Lucky she’s too self-absorbed to think about me for very long. Then I thought I’d check Friday again, the day we broke up for mid-term. Just in case. And there she was, just like before.
So I followed her. Fare-dodging was easy. I recognised the guard at Waverley, and I know how he works: he starts at the back of the train and moves forwards. He likes to treat himself to First Class at the end. And he never starts till after Berwick, because otherwise he has to check everyone again after Newcastle, and he can’t be bothered. I just hid in the toilet when he did my carriage, and he never came back through again. Like I said, easy.
But nothing else was easy. It was fucking peculiar. Alex didn’t go the way she always goes when she gets off the train. And she had a bag with her, which she doesn’t normally have. A bigger one, I mean, a tote. She went to the Underground station. I tried to follow her, but she has one of those blue card things, and I didn’t have one, and the queue to buy a ticket was about a thousand people long.
The Furies: A Novel Page 21
