Cross My Heart and Hope to Die

by Sheila Radley

  I puffed at the cigarette, and coughed as the strong foreign smoke hit the back of my throat. I couldn’t help thinking of poor old Miss Massingham choking over the cigarettes that were killing her, so after a bit I stubbed it out.

  I thought perhaps Kate was asleep, and I ought to leave, but I didn’t want to. Sleeping company was better than none. But she stirred and drew on the cigarette she’d been holding in her fingers.

  ‘Do you know where I’d like to be, right now?’ she said. She stretched her arms towards the fire, smiling at what she saw in her head, oblivious of me. ‘High in the Alps, in a mountain inn with a roaring stove and deep snow outside. Do you know the French Alps?’

  I started to tell her that I didn’t know any Alps at all, but she wasn’t listening.

  ‘French Alps for preference, but in the mountains anyway. I love the mountains – sun and snow and the scent of the pines. The air’s like wine and the wine’s like wine and you’re drunk all day with the joy of it. And instead we’re here, stuck in this bloody city, just existing.’

  It was depressing to find my view of London confirmed by someone who was older, who had a job and a salary and a room of her own.

  ‘You can get drunk in London,’ I pointed out.

  She looked at me sideways. ‘How very literal of you. Vodka. No smell, no headache, and it doesn’t make me weep. Two gins and I’d have been pouring out my life story to you, but when I’m on vodka you don’t have to worry.’

  ‘I’m not worried,’ I said. I was getting uncomfortably cramped on the floor. I shifted to ease my muscles, and tried not to think about the news in Mum’s letter.

  Kate was talking about abroad again. She told me about last year when she (‘we’, she said) had travelled Western Europe in a little car that she described as a corrugated-iron coal scuttle on wheels, working in ski chalets and summer caravan camps. It was interesting, but she smoked too much and the smoke made me cough, and coughing made me think of Miss Massingham, found dead or dying by Tom Billings when he took the milk.

  ‘Cigarette?’ she said, for about the third time.

  ‘No, thanks, I ought to be going.’

  ‘Oh. All right, then, push off if you want to. No, don’t – I’d like you to stay, if you can bear my talking. I’m sorry, but I want to get it out of my system. That was the most wonderful eight months of my life and it’s hard to adjust to reality. I need someone to talk to.’

  I wasn’t entirely enthusiastic. Despite her assurances about the vodka, it was clear that if I stayed I was going to hear her life story. But I could hardly leave now without being rude, so I stayed.

  I offered to make more coffee, but Kate was sober enough to heat some water over a gas ring that was sited perilously close to her bed. I shifted my legs again, refused another cigarette, and heard that the other half of the ‘we’she had talked about was a Frenchman. They had been inseparable during those eight months in Europe, working and playing and laughing and making love. Making love in particular. I boggled over the unimaginable details she casually revealed, but she didn’t notice my discomfort. Yves was, apparently, a fabulous lover, and Kate was crazy about him.

  ‘Can’t you go back to France again?’ I said.

  ‘No, because the bastard’s dumped me. Being French, damn him, he’s under Maman’s thumb, and she has now found him a prospective wife. He’s buckled down to work in the family business, and he’s getting married next month. Oh, he says he still loves me. It’s not that he loves the girl – but he says he’d like to get married and she’s very suitable and both families are happy. And he has the nerve to say he hopes I’ll be happy for him, too!’

  I didn’t know what to say, except, ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Sorry to bore you with it. I needed to tell someone, and you’re a very patient listener.’

  ‘When did you hear about it?’

  ‘End of last week.’

  ‘You must have had a bad weekend.’

  ‘Bad? I’ve had a ball – parties every night. Haven’t slept in my own bed since, though God knows where or who with –’

  I was shocked, though I tried not to show it.

  ‘And now I’ve shocked you.’

  ‘No, you haven’t. I’ve had a lot of experience, it takes a lot to shock me.’

  She looked amused. ‘Been reading books, have you? Then you must have learned that life’s too short to waste. I’m not going to mope over Yves – I feel better already. And soon there’ll be someone else.’

  I was shocked again. ‘But you said how much you loved him. If I loved someone, I couldn’t get over it just like that.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, of course you could. You’d be a fool if you didn’t. Cigarette?’

  ‘No, thanks. And you’ll get lung cancer if you go on smoking like that.’

  ‘My point exactly. We’ve all got to die, so we might as well make the most of every experience that comes our way. And I’ve certainly done that …’

  When I’d asked Mrs Bloomfield’s opinion on the subject, I hadn’t known about Mum and the Americans. I had some views of my own now. ‘I think promiscuity is disgusting,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a loaded word for a start.’

  ‘Well, you said you didn’t know whose bed you were in.’

  ‘Exaggeration, love. I knew, but I don’t much want to remember.’

  ‘It’s still disgusting. And supposing you had a baby – nice for her, not even knowing who her father was!’

  ‘Agreed. But I’m on the pill so it’s no problem.’

  ‘Well, anyway –’

  I was sickened by the conversation. I closed my eyes, unable to think of anything to say but too lethargic to make the move back to my own room (and poor old Miss Massingham, coughing out her lungs alone).

  ‘God, I’m a selfish bitch, aren’t I?’ Kate suddenly moved from her patch of floor to mine and knelt beside me, suede skirt and silky shirt and a breath of stale Gauloises.

  ‘I’m sorry, Janet. You’ve kindly listened to my troubles, and all I’ve done is nauseate you. I really am sorry. How old are you? Eighteen? You stick to your principles, love, don’t take any notice of me. Come on, cheer up. Have a cigarette – no?’

  ‘No. Someone I know just died of it.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Lung cancer. I’ve just had the letter this evening.’

  ‘Oh, no – I’ve been boring you with my problems, and all the time you’ve had this sadness of your own.’

  I nodded. Couldn’t trust myself to speak.

  ‘And you’re not happy here, are you? I knew that when we met on the bus. I really did mean to ask you in for coffee later, but I was too much occupied with my own affairs. I’m hopelessly selfish, I’m afraid. But I did realize that you were lonely – you are, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Any minute I was going to howl and there was no point in trying not to.

  ‘Was it a relation who died? A great friend?’

  ‘No, just an old lady I knew. She didn’t mean anything to me. It was just, sort of, the last straw –’

  ‘Tell me.’

  Kate sat with her arm round me and I told her everything.

  And she listened, and she lent me her shoulder, and relief flowed warmly into me as the words came hiccuping out.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said, when I told her about Mum. ‘Don’t think too badly of your mother. It’s very easily done, you know. Saying “No” is the most difficult thing in the world.’

  ‘But she didn’t even love him. She didn’t love any of them …’

  ‘You don’t know that. Perhaps she really did love this particular one, but their relationship didn’t work out, so she pretended she didn’t just to save her pride. As long as they loved each other at the time, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?’

  ‘No. No, that’s not real love.’

  Kate gave me a small shake. ‘Oh come on, wake up. What’s “real love”, for goodness’ sake? A magazine concept for disappointed women, that
’s all. You can’t spend your life hanging about waiting for someone to come along labelled Real Love Guaranteed Mothproof. Love comes in all kinds, you know. Sometimes it lasts faithfully for ten days, and sometimes unfaithfully for a lifetime. Who’s to say which is the more real?’

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to believe her.

  ‘You’d better push off, then,’ she said, taking away her arm.

  I didn’t move. I made my own decision, and I decided to stay. She sighed. Uneasy? Reluctant? Just tired? I didn’t know, but I stayed.

  ‘Not so lonely now?’

  ‘No …’

  ‘No need to be, now.’

  I don’t remember what conclusion we came to that evening.

  Well, I do, of course. But the trouble is that I can only describe it in such corny images: dark tunnels, shafts of sunlight, elusive butterflies.

  I could spend half an hour sitting here trying to make up something more original and less like the lyric of a pop song. But what would be the point? Thinking it over, I’ve decided that the fact that I have a derivative imagination doesn’t invalidate the experience, so here goes.

  When Kate kissed me that evening, I really felt that I was approaching the end of a long dark tunnel, coming out into a shaft of sunlight. Silhouetted at the end of the tunnel was an intricate wrought-iron gate that opened on to a beautiful garden. A butterfly fluttered ahead through the bars of the gate, just out of my reach, but I knew that I could go through into the garden and catch it if only I could find the key.

  I didn’t find the key that evening, or enter the garden to catch the butterfly. But at least I’d made the discovery that it was there.

  Chapter Twenty

  I hitched down to Dover. I’d never hitched a lift before, never thought of doing so, but that was one of the two hundred and fifty-six things Kate had enlightened me on since we’d been together.

  I took a Green Line bus to the outskirts of London, as she’d told me, and hung about near a main road filling-station. The first motorist who noticed my bashful thumb was going only as far as Maidstone, but I accepted the lift for practice. Kate was going to join me at Dover after work, so I had all day.

  The driver was middle-aged, pale and paunchy. He asked where I was going, and I told him I was on my way to France.

  ‘Lucky you! Student, are you?’

  ‘Sort of.’ I didn’t quite know whether I was still a student or not, couldn’t make up my mind.

  The driver sighed. The back of his car was piled with boxes of greetings cards, and slipped down beside his seat was a clipboard with a list of names and addresses. ‘Marvellous to be young,’ he said enviously.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ I said, and I meant it. I didn’t know when I’d been so happy. In fact I’d never been this happy before in the whole of my life. It was a cold day in early December and the car heater didn’t seem to be working properly, but I was so warm inside that I didn’t care.

  From Maidstone I got a lift in a timber lorry. The driver was going down to Dover docks, but I asked him to put me off in the town. Hours to wait before Kate would arrive so I holed up in a coffee bar for the afternoon.

  There were still two days to go before the end of term but I’d had my last tutorial (my painstaking essay carelessly shredded by the tutor) and no one would know if I were in college or not. I still hadn’t got round to telling Mum that I wouldn’t ever be going home again, but I hadn’t told her the date term ended and she wouldn’t be expecting me this early in December. It would be easier to break the news to her from France.

  I’d have been perfectly happy to stay in London. London was wonderful, with Kate. But she had a better idea.

  ‘Let’s travel! Come on, love, we’ll get you fixed up with a passport.’

  ‘But what about your job?’

  ‘The hell with that. There’ll be plenty of other jobs when we get back.’

  ‘But I can’t afford to go abroad.’

  ‘Of course you can! We’re not going to sit in the sun at St Tropez, we’re going to clean ski chalets in the French Alps. The pay’s terrible, but we’ll have a great time.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Does it matter? For as long as we want. We’ll hitch down to Chamonix and be in the mountains in time for the start of the Christmas season. I know a couple of chalet owners who’ll give us some work.’

  ‘But what about college?’

  ‘There’s a month before next term starts, isn’t there? That’ll give you time to make up your mind whether you want to come back. But once you get to France you’re certain to want to stay there. It’ll be marvellous fun, being there together. We can move higher up the mountains until April and then find work on a caravan site for the summer. You do speak French?’

  ‘I don’t know, I’ve never really tried.’

  ‘Then it’s high time you did. You’ve been stuck in that Suffolk mud for far too long, young Janet. From now on, you’re going to live.’

  I gave Mrs Dooley a week’s notice, as Kate instructed. ‘We’ll find

  somewhere to share when we finally come back,’ she’d said. ‘Don’t

  keep worrying over details, just let things happen.’

  Mrs Dooley puffed and grumbled when I told her. Even Libby felt aggrieved. She couldn’t afford to pay double for the room and she didn’t like the idea of having someone else foisted on her.

  ‘Why don’t you get Ed to share with you?’ I asked nastily.

  ‘Mrs Dooley would have a fit.’

  ‘You’ll have to move in with him, then.’

  ‘How can I? His bed’s only two foot six; sleeping with him gives me a terrible crick in my back.’

  ‘Too bad.’

  Libby gave me a suspicious look. ‘You’ve been very pleased with yourself lately. What are you up to?’

  ‘Minding my own business,’ I said airily. I was so happy that I felt quite sorry for her, lumbered with Ed and his stupid sideburns. I cleared my things out of her room, packing my warmest clothes in my grip and leaving the rest in my suitcase in Kate’s room. Kate was going to sub-let, without telling Mrs Dooley, to someone from her office who commuted from Reading and wanted an occasional bed in London.

  ‘Sorry I can’t hitch down to Dover with you,’ said Kate, ‘but there’s a hell of a lot to do at the office before I leave. I’ll come down on an evening train. Meet me at the central station, and we’ll have a meal in the town before catching the night boat. Can’t say which train I’ll catch, but I should arrive somewhere between eightish and tennish. Mind how you go darling. Take care.’

  I’d promised that I would. Now, safely in Dover, I passed the late afternoon and early evening in a cinema, watching a Frank Sinatra thriller. I didn’t enjoy it much, he should have stuck to singing. Afterwards I went back to the coffee bar for another cappuccino. At a quarter to eight I was at the station entrance, scanning the times of arrival of the trains from London.

  Kate wasn’t on the first, nor the second, but I hadn’t really expected her to be. To keep warm between trains I walked briskly round the station yard, and up and down the road outside, lugging my grip.

  The train I knew she’d be on arrived just after ten. I stood eagerly by the barrier as the passengers streamed through, thinking that every bright brown head was hers. People were meeting people off the train: ‘Had a good day?’; ‘Frightful journey?’; ‘Hallo, darling!’ Taxis drove up to the station entrance and away again, cars nosed out of the car-park. The train pulled out, the last car door slammed, and the station went very quiet.

  The ticket collector left his box, and looked at me through the top half of his bifocals. ‘Waiting for somebody?’

  ‘Yes. From London.’

  ‘Last train from London gets in at eleven-thirty.’ He motioned me through the barrier. ‘Might as well go to the waiting-room, no point in standing about in the cold.’

  The waiting-room wasn’t a lot warmer, but I was thankful to be able to put down my grip. And at least I c
ould sit down and read. Kate had lent me a French paperback, Les Fleurs du Mal by Baudelaire. She said I’d find the poems interesting, but I couldn’t make any sense of them even with my pocket dictionary. So I just sat and willed her train towards me, hurtling it along the track as in that speeded-up old film, London to Brighton in five minutes.

  The last train came in, crowded with people who’d been to London theatres and concerts. I knew that Kate would be somewhere among them. I stood right by the barrier, standing on tiptoe to search for her face, but she wasn’t there.

  ‘Missed it, has he?’ said the ticket collector sympathetically. ‘Sorry, dear, but that’s it. Station’s closing now. Try down at the docks, there’s a train due there to connect with the night boat.’

  Well, of course! That was it. Kate must have been held up so late at the office that she’d decided to go straight to the docks. And she’d expect me to use my common sense and join her there.

  The ticket collector directed me and I ran through the dark streets with my grip bumping against my legs. I heard the blare of a diesel engine crossing a viaduct above me and I paused a minute, gasping, to look at the lit-up train snaking through the night, hurrying Kate to the docks before me. But when I got there, with aching feet and a terrible stitch in my side, there was no sign of her. The last passengers were humping their luggage through the gateway marked ‘To the Boats’, and when they had gone there was no one.

  I wandered back up the road, dazed and lost. Perhaps Kate hadn’t been able to get away from the office at all. Perhaps she’d had an accident and was lying critically ill in some hospital … I didn’t know what to do.

  It was after midnight, freezing, and everywhere was closed. When I was too tired to walk any further I took shelter in the entrance to a small department store. The windows were decorated for Christmas, their coloured lights and golden metallic fir trees giving an illusion of warmth. The doorway was screened from the road by a showcase of glittering party clothes, so I pitched camp there, sitting on my grip and leaning back against the doors.