From a Distance

by Raffaella Barker

  Luisa was indignant. ‘Great. Is that what you want Mae to find? A stalker? Why does she have to have a boyfriend anyway?’

  Dora patted Luisa’s arm, and squeezed her hand. ‘Calm down, Lou, I was only teasing, Mae’s great, and you know it.’

  Mae and Maddie waved from across the street.

  ‘Here they come,’ Luisa straightened herself. ‘I know you think I’m daft, but wait till Maddie’s this age. It goes like a flash and then they’re almost adults.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Dora shrugged. ‘You know, I sometimes can’t believe Maddie’s my child, she’s so grown up and I swear I only just had her.’

  ‘Ellie didn’t have a proper boyfriend until she was seventeen,’ mused Luisa. ‘God, if only she’d gone travelling with him instead. He’s on a nature reserve in Costa Rica feeding baby turtles.’

  Dora looked at her affectionately. ‘I’m no psycho­logist, Lou, but that sounds like what you’d be doing if it was your gap year. Given the choice, I’m with Ellie: I’d be hitching round India, smoking opium in a nice den any day.’

  Luisa shot an annoyed look at Dora, who was leaning back with a teasingly smug smile on her face, and was just about to say how she was sure Ellie wouldn’t know what an opium den was, let alone hang out in one, when Mae and Maddie were upon them.

  ‘Look, we bought these to take camping. In case I get lost in my sleeping bag.’ Maddie waved a green neon stick and a whistle on a string.

  ‘Perfect’ said Dora, ‘you’re all set now, aren’t you? Come and sit down here, we’re wondering what Ellie’s up to.’

  Mae slid back into a seat and begun tapping at her phone. She looked up again, directing her question at Dora. ‘Can you catch a disease of fancying people? Because my friend Lola’s started saying she fancies everyone. Literally everyone. Even really rank people. She doesn’t have a filter. It’s gross, I think.’

  Dora laughed, winked at Luisa. ‘God, I’ve definitely got it! I even quite liked the man who was in here a minute ago.’

  ‘What man?’ Mae and Luisa spoke at once and bust out laughing.

  Dora bit into a biscuit and leaned forwards, demanding conspiracy. ‘Didn’t you see him? He was at the till when I came in. They were wrapping up a huge coffee cake for him. Probably his wife’s birthday.’

  ‘I reckon his daughter’s,’ said Luisa. ‘I can’t imagine a man buying his wife a cake.’

  ‘Probably actually his own birthday,’ said Mae, still half-looking at her phone. ‘Men are obsessed with coffee cake. When I was worked at the tearooms in the Easter Holidays it was always the men who ordered the coffee and walnut and the millionaire’s shortbread. Women, ’specially your age, Mum, always say they don’t eat wheat, and then have brownies or carrot cake anyway, it’s so funny.’

  ‘Really? What about ice cream?’ Luisa was diverted. ‘Do they choose different flavours?’

  Mae rolled her eyes. ‘Mum, ice cream is ice cream. You are the only person who could ever think that there are male and female flavours. If I—’

  ‘No! She could be right, Mae.’ Dora butted in. ‘And if she is, we can make our fortunes on the back of her.’

  ‘Yeah, I bet you, it’ll be coffee ice cream for guys.’

  Dora bit her lip. ‘I’m going to ask the girl at the counter, that way I can find out about the man I saw as well.’

  ‘What was he like?’ It seemed suddenly that Mae was nearer Dora’s age than she was. Luisa didn’t want to be left out.

  ‘Tallish, dark hair, nice voice. Nice shirt, and it was definitely a coffee cake,’ said Dora.

  ‘Yeah? You noticed all that?’ Mae teased. ‘You’re ill, Dora. But in a good way. There aren’t many grown ups like you.’

  Luisa sighed, content. The afternoon was warm, there was no urgency, the cafe table was littered with teacups and cake crumbs, Maddie was drawing a picture in a tiny notebook, Dora and Mae laughing over a text. This small absorbing world belonged to the four of them. Mae leaned against her, and she felt complete. Her family made her whole. Not family the Italian way, all singing, all dancing and drama, the pitting of strength a constant force, and Gina’s iron-willed dominance. This version with Dora, Mae and Maddie, the idle hour after school, no plans and nothing much to do, was the family life she would never have known had she not met Tom. Less intense, less strident than she had grown up with, but no less potent.

  Maddie was patting her hand, ‘Auntie Lou did you really have ice cream every day when you were little? Mae says you did.’

  Luisa bit her tongue not to laugh. The felt-tip pen dripped a blue pool from Maddie’s blue mouth onto the notebook and the table beneath it.

  ‘Oops, a bit of clearing up needed.’ She dipped a napkin in a glass of water to wipe Maddie’s face. ‘It’s true. My granddad had an ice-cream van, and I used to go with him sometimes in it.’ Amazing how forgotten memories could flood in with a word or sound. Apple cinnamon ice cream with a knot of purple bubble gum concealed in the scoop was the big flavour the summer Luisa was eighteen. Her holiday job on the ice cream vans had seemed like the ideal way to earn pocket money, until she spent three days of a rare heatwave stuck in the van. The hours crawled, and her best friends cavorted near by in the sea with Matt, otherwise known as The One. Seeing The One giving piggyback rides to Olivia Riscali and racing through the surf with Debbie Marco were low moments in what she had assumed would be the Summer of Love for her and Matt. On autopilot, Luisa had accidentally double scooped glistening balls of Apple Cinnamon Bubblegum ice cream for the queue of garrulous pensioners outside her van, parched after a day on the Great Yarmouth pier. Her inattention, as her grandfather never failed to remind her, had consequences. Even in the ice-cream queue. A gurgling noise penetrated the chatter on that memorable afternoon.

  ‘What did you put in this? It’s not just ice cream, is it?’ A flustered man waved a half-melted cone at her then bobbed out of sight. Craning reluctantly, Luisa peered out at him, he was bending over a women who had clamped a handkerchief across her mouth. Out of the corner of her eyes Luisa saw The One throw a towel around his shoulders and walk away down the beach with Olivia and Debbie. Her future was vanishing like their three sets of footprints in the tide.

  The man bobbed up again, Luisa recoiled. His face in the opening of the van was wild, his hair fizzing crossness, spittle bubbling up from the corner of his mouth. ‘She’s got her teeth stuck in the ice cream,’ he wailed. Luisa contemplated vaulting through the window and sprinting to join her friends. She might have done it, or so she thought, but as she mustered her strength to spring, Olivia reached up a hand and The One caught it, and held it. She didn’t let go. Luisa turned her back and dug a handful of ice from the fridge. ‘Maybe she can get it out if you cool her down a bit?’ she suggested to the hot-faced man.

  The scene had bleached in her memories, and the departing backs of her friends had assumed a nostalgic glamour worthy of a Californian teen movie.

  ‘We actually had six ice-cream vans,’ she told Maddie. ‘And they were all different. They even had names. My favourite one was Lucky. I thought it was real.’

  ‘Mum, it was real, we’ve got pictures. It was striped and there were cones for the wing mirrors.’ Mae rolled her eyes. ‘And you’ve got a Miss Havisham version of it at home. You know, that old wreck you bought off eBay.’

  ‘It’s gone to the garage, actually,’ said Luisa. ‘I mean real as in alive. I didn’t know you knew about Miss Havisham, darling?’ Always a thrill when one of the children mentioned anything cultural, and even though Tom had told her not to mention it for fear of spoiling it for them, Luisa couldn’t resist.

  Mae’s grimace was perfectly pitched to show disdain. ‘We were doing a thing about unrequited love. I hope I don’t get it ever.’

  ‘Lucky, lucky, lucky,’ chanted Maddie. ‘Mummy, can we have an ice-cream van?’

  Dora agreed without listening. ‘What? Yes, later, we’ll get one on the way home. Come on, time to go everyone.’


  Gleeful, Maddie skipped at her side, planning a new life. ‘We need to make sure it has the right song playing,’ she said. ‘Something like Jingle Bells, but for summer.’

  ‘Too right,’ agreed Mae, linking arms with her mother. ‘None of that cheesy piped music. I think it should be rave music, really, that’d wake everyone up.’

  On the way to the car, Dora’s phone rang. The shadows were mauve, lingering and soft as a shawl. Luisa remembered she had to pick up Luca on the way home.

  Dora waved her arm and rolled her eyes at Luisa as she spoke into the phone. ‘What? Did he ask you anything? How old is he? D’you think so?’ She laughed. ‘Well I’m not convinced. I’ve just had a very bad experience. That’s not the kind of thing I’m interested in.’ She laughed. ‘It’s still bound to be a disaster. I’m not desperate yet, you know!’

  Dora ended the call. Luisa raised her eyebrows in a question.

  ‘Oh, it was a friend,’ said Dora. ‘She’s just got a job in town, and she’s been going on about this guy there. Anyway, she says she’s going to set me up on a date.’

  ‘Another one? You’re so brave,’ Luisa marvelled.

  Dora shrugged. ‘All I know is you have to kiss a lot of frogs,’ she said.

  ‘Mum!’ Mae swung round to face Luisa. ‘You sound ancient. What’s happened to you? It’s like you and Dad are from another world. When you went on dates they probably didn’t even have mobile phones.’

  ‘They didn’t,’ agreed Luisa, laughing.

  ‘How did you know where to meet? How did you get out of it if you didn’t like each other?’ Mae shuddered. ‘It’s a miracle anyone in your day got it together.’

  ‘I think we are a miracle,’ Luisa agreed. ‘It’s been more than twenty years now.’

  Shops were closing. From the allotments near the car park, the scent of cut grass wafted towards them, while over a wall, the thwack of a ball sounded the beginning of a game of tennis. Blythe settled with audible contentment after a good day. No passion afoot, no teenage love matches for Mae or dates for Dora tonight. This was the beginning of a family summer. A moment to savour. Luisa wished she could capture the essence of now and paint it or bake it or write it. Just do something with it before it was gone. She reckoned her ice-cream van, if she got it going, might just be the living embodiment of this timeless feeling.

  Dora pinched her. ‘Hey look, Lou, there’s the guy I saw earlier.’

  ‘What? I thought you said he went back to Newcastle?’

  ‘No,’ Dora whispered. ‘Not him, I mean the cake man. From the cafe. Look!’ she nodded towards a doorway just ahead.

  ‘Where? I can’t see,’ hissed Luisa. ‘God, that cake box is vast. He must be having a party.’

  Her eyes travelled from the cake box held under one arm to his linen shirt, ink dark and crumpled, its sleeves rolled back. His forearms were tanned, he wore a plain watch and was reading the screen of his phone as he walked. Then he looked up. Luisa met his gaze. She was so close she could smell him, and the tang of lemons and hay was fresh and exciting. She walked on, the thin fabric of her skirt gentle as a breath on her skin.

  Chapter 5

  Accidental or deliberate? Chance or choice? The questions thrummed with the rhythm as the train as thundered west on the Southampton to Exeter line. Michael smoked in the corridor with a couple of sergeants from the 14th and a lad not more than seventeen years old with bitten nails and a sharp Adam’s apple, who’d fired his first shot from a clean unused gun the day peace was declared.

  ‘Where’re you headed?’ The taller of the two sergeants tapped a cigarette on the pack, hunched himself around the flame, until the tip glowed and he breathed out a feather of smoke.

  His friend returned the lighter to his breast pocket. ‘Back home to the folks in Liskeard. Gotta farm to run, the wife’s been doing it with a couple of land girls.’ The words burst out of him, loud across the roar of the train. His lips were wet and red, excitement shaping this first glimpse of his future. Repeatedly, he lifted his hand to his face and swept his palm from jaw to brow, like a magician wiping away all thought and knowledge.

  He flipped the open window closed and the ensuing quiet was tangible, warmer and soft. ‘My dad’s arthritis took him hard just around when I was called up. Reckon Jenny’s well worn out by it now, with the little ’uns as well.’ He rubbed his fingers in his eyes. ‘Don’t suppose I’ll have as much as a day off before I’ll be back to the milking. But you know, I’m glad of it, glad to have something to come back to.’

  The listening men nodded, the other sergeant spoke. ‘Yeh, it’s like that back home for me, I’ll be back on the round as soon as I’m outta this uniform. The missus has done it for me, been postmistress of four villages since I was away. I thought she’d like a rest, but she reckons she’s off to work in the draper’s shop in town. Wrote her she can have her feet up now I’m home, but she’s having none of it. Says she likes to be out of the house, so I’ll be cooking our tea most nights now.’

  The men smiled and fell silent, aware of unease it would be disloyal to share.

  ‘How about you, sir?’ The soldiers turned to Michael, an easy camaraderie was established halfway down a burning cigarette, and they looked at him as if from one pair of eyes.

  Michael held his breath for a long moment. ‘I don’t know yet,’ he said finally.

  Beyond the carriage the world went by, fields, hedges, a river dotted with geese, a few more on the bank, scattered like white roses. Then the grey rooftops of a farm framed by pale trees. A cart laden with sacks moved slowly up a hill as the train flashed past with the sudden shriek of the whistle. Darkness, a tunnel. Sooty blackness jolted his nerves. Daylight, a cottage garden, laundry dancing on the line. None of it had any relevance to Michael. The momentum of the train was enough, staying on it was all he had to do for now. He set his shoulders, braced to fend off further questions. None came. The conversation shifted to a rumour that the German population was not so happy to receive its defeated heroes home again to the Fatherland.

  ‘So they’ll have to join the circus, or something, to keep themselves on the move,’ said the tall sergeant and spun a coin as if in illustration of a trick they might try.

  ‘Just let ’em try coming near my house asking for money,’ said the young lad, his swagger implicit in his tone. In the laughter surrounding his comment, Michael slipped back to his seat.

  A plan, that was what he needed. It wasn’t enough to have got on the westbound train, no matter whether he had done so deliberately or not. He should have got off again at the first station. By now he would be on his way to Norfolk. Going home. It was the reality that had stopped him. There was too much of it. He was used to being part of a unit, marching. Marching into war. A number, a uniformed cog in a giant machine.

  ‘Onward, christian soldiers, marching as to war.’ It was the marching out again he couldn’t imagine. He was lucky. He kept being told this, he must be. The ticket collector on the train, a woman wiping the counter at the station cafe, a voice in his head, all shared one message: ‘You are alive, the rest are not.’

  Being alive didn’t make him fit to become a husband. He tried to picture himself married to Janey, living in a little house somewhere, wearing a suit and kissing her on the top of her head as he went off to work each morning, returning in the evening, kissing her again. The thoughts pelted him. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t marry her and have lunch on Sundays with her mother and father. He wasn’t fit for it. He held up his hands in front of him. There could be no small talk, no fabric of domestic life when his palms and fingers were scarred with wounds caused by weapons, and his nights were drenched with sweat, his sleep interrupted by nightmares.

  The woman opposite in his carriage was staring at him, a wobble of unease puckered her chin. He shoved his hands back in his pockets and crossed his legs. She averted her eyes, folding her handkerchief into smaller and smaller squares until it was a tiny cube of pale blue cotton. It looked to Micha
el like a sugar lump, he wondered if she might pop it in her mouth.

  The train began to shunt slowly out of the station and Michael settled against the bristly carpet bag fabric and sighed. The only thing he knew was that he didn’t know what he was doing. That had not changed in the hours since. His companion had not eaten her handkerchief, instead she had taken out a ball of wool and some needles and begun to knit. Her wedding band moved along her finger as she drew in the wool, and the shadows under her eyes made Michael feel protective of her. She undid her coat, and only then did Michael notice that she was pregnant. He wondered if her husband was alive. A rush of heat stung the back of his eyes and he pressed his thumbs into the sockets to stop tears springing. Lulled by the rocking motion of the carriage, and the quiet click of knitting needles, he drifted into sleep.

  At Liskeard Michael woke. The knitting woman had gone and his carriage was empty. He looked out at the platform, disorientated, and saw the tall sergeant jump off the train, dropping his kit bag next to the stiff bulk of his army greatcoat on the platform as he bent down, then cautiously opened his arms to receive the rapturous greeting of a small girl with pigtails. She had had hurtled down the platform towing a reluctant toffee-brown puppy on a lead.

  ‘Daddeeee! You’re back! Look at Pinkerton, she’s my very own puppy! Mummy let me bring her. Come on, I’ll show you how she shakes you by the hand!’

  ‘Let him be, Sally, come on now.’ A short, bulky woman bustled up behind the child, restraining her with a hand on her shoulder. A sob burst from the woman as the sergeant stood up. The train shunted off, shooting steam around them, wrapping the three of them in a cloud with the puppy and the future, the past and now all tangled up.

  Michael should be teaching children like that now. He would have gone to university if things had been different. He had a place. He would have become a teacher, he had a career and a life planned for himself in Norfolk. It no longer seemed possible for that to happen. He could scarcely remember the person he was before the war, he still hardly knew the person he had become. He would not go to university now. His brother Johnnie had never seen the point of it anyway. ‘Too much learning can damage your brain, kid,’ he said. Michael squared his jaw. Johnnie only ever read adventure stories at school. He farmed with his father from the age of fifteen and he had a motorbike and fixed it himself. He never spent a moment indoors he didn’t have to, and Michael, two years younger, looked up to him.