by Maeve Haran
Claudia shuddered. She’d always said retiring was something you did before going to bed, not with the rest of your life. On the other hand, could she stomach Drooly Dooley easing her out of her own department?
She could think of a number of extremely rude French slang expressions to describe the little toad, much ruder than those on the Internet, of which pauvre mec was by some way the tamest. What if she protested to Stephen, the head teacher? He was almost her own age. Would that mean he would support her or take his deputy’s part? Claudia knew she had a bit of a reputation for arguing. No doubt Stephen would remember it. Besides, the days of mass early retirement for teachers was long gone. Too expensive and too many teachers, worn out by classroom confrontation, had already opted for it. Still, they might be open to negotiation . . .
She’d have to make herself more troublesome.
One thing she knew. She didn’t feel ready to bury herself in the sticks. ‘But I don’t want to keep bloody chickens! And I don’t want to move to bloody Surrey!’
‘It’s only twenty miles down the motorway,’ Don placated, his eyes still shining dangerously and his missionary zeal undimmed. ‘Half an hour on the train, max.’
‘What about me?’ demanded a voice quivering with outrage. ‘Surrey is the home of the living dead.’ Gaby, their daughter, stood in the doorway, her face ashen at the prospect of a rural retreat.
Claudia, who’d grown up there, quite agreed.
Gaby, at twenty-eight, still lived at home. Claudia loved having her. Her daughter was terrific fun and often filled the kitchen with her friends. But she also worried that Gaby really ought to be finding a job that paid enough for her to be able to move out. Gaby’s response was that due to the greedy depredations of the generation above she was too broke, but Claudia sometimes feared it was because she wasn’t a sticker. She had a perfectly good degree in geography but had thrown herself, in swift succession, into being an actress, a waitress, the receptionist for a vet, a call-centre operative, a circus performer (only two weeks at that), and an art gallery assistant. Recently she had decided she wanted to be an architect. Claudia and Don had exchanged glances and not mentioned the extremely lengthy training. Currently, she was at least working for one, albeit in a very junior capacity.
‘We could help you with the rent on a flat,’ her father announced, as if the solution were obvious.
Gaby brightened perceptibly while Claudia wondered if Don had lost his mind. ‘Somewhere in Shoreditch, maybe? Or Hoxton?’ Gaby named perhaps the two hippest areas in the now-fashionable East End.
‘I’m not sure about that,’ Don began.
‘Neither am I,’ Claudia agreed waspishly. ‘More like in Penge on what our income will be if I leave. But that’s because this whole idea of moving is ludicrous.’
‘Why?’ Don stood his ground for once.
‘My job is here. I like London.’
‘But as you say yourself, you may not want to go on with your job. What happens if Dooley gets Head of Department?’
Claudia ignored this hideous prospect. ‘What about the culture on our doorstep?’ she protested. ‘Theatres, galleries, restaurants?’
‘You never consume the culture. You’re always saying theatre tickets are priced so only Russian oligarchs can afford them.’
‘Art galleries, then.’
‘When did you last go to an art gallery?’
Claudia moved guiltily onwards, conscious that, living in the middle of one of the world’s great cities, she rarely consumed its cultural delights. ‘And then there’re my friends! I couldn’t move twenty miles from The Grecian Grove!’
‘Don’t you think you’re being a little selfish?’ Don demanded.
‘Don’t you think you are?’ Claudia flashed back. ‘You’ve never even mentioned moving before and now it’s all my fault because I don’t want to live in the fake country.’
‘Surrey isn’t the fake country. Anyway, we could move to the real country. It’d probably be cheaper.’
‘And even further from my friends!’
‘Yes,’ Don was getting uncharacteristically angry now, ‘it’s always about the coven, isn’t it? The most important thing in your life.’
‘How dare you call them the coven?’
‘Hubble bubble, gossip, gossip. Sal bitching about her colleagues. Ella moaning about the son-in-law from hell, Laura judging every man by whether he’s left his wife yet.’
Despite herself, Claudia giggled at the accuracy of his description.
‘Thank God for that,’ Gaby breathed. ‘I thought you two were heading for the divorce court rather than the far reaches of the M25. You never fight.’
‘Anyway, what about your friends?’ Claudia asked Don. ‘You’d miss your Wednesdays at the Bull as much as I’d pine for my wine bar.’ Each Wednesday Don met up with his three buddies to moan about their head teachers, Ofsted and the state of British education. But friendship, it seemed, wasn’t hardwired into men as it was into women.
‘Cup of tea?’ offered Don as if it might provide the healing power of the Holy Grail. ‘Redbush?’
Claudia nodded. ‘The vanilla one.’
‘I know, the vanilla one.’
She kissed Gaby and went upstairs. He knew her so well, all her likes and dislikes over thirty years. They were bonded by all the tiny choices they’d made, each a brick in the citadel of their marriage. But citadels could lock you in as well as repel invaders.
Claudia undressed quickly and slipped into bed, her nerves still on edge.
Don appeared bearing tea, then disappeared into the bathroom.
Two minutes later he slipped naked into bed, the usual signal for their lovemaking. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung it on you like that. It was really unfair.’
‘Telling me.’
He began to kiss her breast. Claudia stiffened, and not with sexual anticipation. How could men think you could use sex to say sorry, when women needed you to say sorry, and mean it, before they could even consider wanting sex?
Ella got off the bus and walked along the towpath where the Grand Union Canal met up with the Thames. It was a moonlit night and a wide path of silver illuminated the water, vaguely swathed in mist, which reminded her of one of the holy pictures she had collected as a child at her convent school. These holy pictures often featured the effect of light on water as a symbol of supernatural peace. But Ella didn’t feel peaceful tonight. It was one of those nights when she missed Laurence.
Any religious faith she’d had had long deserted her. It might have been a help, she supposed, when Laurence had died so suddenly, without her even being able to say goodbye, a random statistic on the News, an unlucky victim of a rare train crash. The safest form of travel. Ha. Or maybe, if she’d had faith, she might have lost it at the unfair nature of his death, away on a day’s business, standing in for a colleague, not even his own client.
She thought of Claudia, and Claudia’s question. What were they all going to do with the rest of their lives? It was a good question. Work, she knew, had saved her then.
It had only been her job that had got her through the grief when Laurence died. Without work to go to she would have pulled the duvet over her head and never got out of bed again.
Of course, she’d had to be strong for her daughters, but they were grown-up now, thirty-two and thirty, no longer living at home. In fact, another reason Ella had had to be strong was to prevent Julia, her eldest and bossiest daughter, swooping down on her and treating her like a small child incapable of deciding anything for itself.
Cory, her younger daughter, had been harder to console because the last time she’d seen her dad they’d quarrelled over some silly matter, and she couldn’t believe she’d never see him again so they could make it up.
That had been three years ago; Ella almost had to pinch herself. The imprint of his head on the pillow next to hers had hardly disappeared. The bed felt crazily wide and every single morning she woke, she heard the empty silence of t
he house and had to put the radio on instantly. Jim Naughtie had proved no substitute for Laurence but he was better than nothing.
A tactless colleague, whose own husband had left her, insisted that death was better than divorce because at least you had the memories.
But sometimes the memories were the problem. She could still walk into the house, put her keys on the hall table next to the bunch of flowers she’d picked from the garden, and listen, expecting to hear the sound of sport on the television.
Her job as a lawyer had been doubly useful. She had fought the train company for an admission of guilt, not just for her but for the others. And then, when she got the admission, the fight had gone out of her. As soon as she’d hit sixty, she’d retired, just like that. Everyone had been stunned. Perhaps herself most of all.
Now she was crossing the square in front of her house. Even though it was in London it had once been a village green where a market was held, and archery contests. Now it was gravelled over but still felt more a part of the eighteenth century than the present day.
Ella stopped to look at her house, the house on which she had lavished so much care and love, the house where she had spent all her married life.
It was a handsome four-storey building of red brick with square twelve-paned windows and large stone steps going up to the front door. It was this entrance she loved the most, with its elegant portico and delicate fluted columns. Once it had been lived in by weavers, now only the substantial middle class could afford to live here.
She stopped for a moment as she put her key in the door and looked upwards. A jumbo jet was just above her, on its descent into Heathrow. It seemed so close she could reach out and catch it in her hand. Incongruously, these triumphs of Queen Anne elegance were right beneath the flight path. The area where she lived was a tiny enclosure of history surrounded on all sides by towering office blocks benefiting from their nearness to the profitable M4 corridor. The square was one of those little unexpected revelations that made people love London.
Inside the front door she could hear a radio playing and stood stock still, frozen in memory. But it wasn’t Laurence, Laurence was dead. It was probably Cory, who had the disconcerting habit of turning up and staying the night if she happened to be nearby. In fact, once she’d got over the shock, Ella was delighted to have her younger daughter there.
‘Cory!’ she called out. ‘Cory, is that you?’
Footsteps thundered up the wooden stairs from the basement and a coltish figure flung itself at her. Cory was a striking girl, slender, with skin pale as wax against a waterfall of dark brown hair. But it was her eyes that arrested you. They were a quite extraordinary bright dark blue. Sometimes they were dancing with light, yet, more often, Ella saw a sadness in their depths that worried her. Cory had so much to feel confident about – an ethereal beauty, quick intelligence, and a job she enjoyed as a museum administrator – but it had only been Laurence who had the capacity to make her believe in herself. When Ella tried to praise her daughter she somehow got it wrong – and Cory would shrug off the compliment, whether to her good taste in clothes, or an acute observation she had made – with a little angry shake, like a duckling that is eager to leave the nest but can’t quite fly unaided. Today, at least, she seemed in an effervescent mood.
‘Hey, Ma, how are you? I was at a boring meeting in Uxbridge and thought you might love to see me.’
‘Did you now?’ laughed Ella, taking in the glass of wine in her daughter’s hand. She was about to ask, playfully, ‘And how is that Sauvignon I was saving?’ But she knew Cory would look immediately stricken, so she bit the comment back. ‘Don’t worry,’ Ella shrugged, ‘I’d join you but I’ve been out with the girls already.’
‘Speaking of girls, your next-door neighbour is popping back in a mo. She’s got something to ask you.’
‘Ah. She and Angelo probably want me to water the cat or something.’
‘Are they going away?’
‘They’re always going away.’ Her neighbours, Viv and Angelo, shared the disconcerting energy of the prosperous early retired. They were both over sixty but had arrested their image at about twenty-six. Viv had the look of the young Mary Quant, all miniskirts, sharp bob, and big necklaces. Angelo had well-cut grey hair, almost shoulder-length, and was given to wearing hoodies in pale apricot. They drove around in an open-topped Mini with loud Sixties music blaring. If there was a line between eternally youthful and weird and creepy, they were just the right side of it. Though, looking at them, Ella sometimes wondered if anyone admitted to their age any more.
It was a constant source of surprise to Ella that Viv and Angelo also had an allotment. And this, it transpired, was the source of the favour Viv wanted to ask when she rang the doorbell half an hour later.
‘Sorry it’s so late. Cory said you’d be back. It’s just that we’re off at the crack of dawn. And I just wondered, Ella love, if you could cast an occasional eye over the allotment for us. Once a week will do, twice at the most.’
‘How long are you away for?’
‘Only three weeks. Diving in the Isla Mujeres.’
‘Where on earth is that?’
‘Mexico, I think. Angelo booked it.’ Viv and Angelo went on so many holidays even they lost count. Their pastimes always made Ella feel slightly exhausted. Paragliding, hill walking, white-water rafting, cycling round vineyards – there was no end to activities for the fit and adventurous well-heeled retiree.
‘And what would I have to do?’
‘Just keep it looking tidyish. The allotment police are a nightmare. Keep threatening to banish anyone who doesn’t keep their plot looking like Kew Gardens.’
‘There aren’t really allotment police, are there?’ Cory demanded.
‘No,’ Viv admitted. ‘That’s what we call the committee. They used to be old boys in braces and straw hats. Now Angelo suspects they’re all LGBT.’
‘What is LGBT?’ Ella asked.
‘Mu-um!’ Cory corrected, looking mock-offended. ‘Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender.’
‘Good Heavens!’ Ella didn’t often feel old but she did now. ‘Well, that’s pretty comprehensive.’ In fact it probably said more about Angelo than the allotment holders.
‘You just need to do a bit of deadheading, sweep the leaves, look busy. We’re always being reminded of what a long waiting list there is – of far more deserving people than we are. Here’s the key.’
Viv kissed her three times. ‘Oh, and by the way, we’ve had a burglar alarm fitted next door. Angelo insisted.’ She handed Ella a piece of paper. ‘Here’s the code if it goes off. You’ve got our keys anyway, haven’t you?’
‘Yes,’ agreed Ella, beginning to feel like an unpaid concierge.
Viv was already down the garden path. ‘Off at six. Angelo hates wasting a whole day travelling so we have to get the first flight out.’
‘You have to admit,’ marvelled Cory, ‘they’ve got a lot of get up and go for oldies.’
‘Too bloody much, if you ask me. They’re trying to prove there’s nothing they’re too old for.’
Ella double-locked the door and dragged the bolt across, then began drawing the heavy silk curtains, undoing the fringed tiebacks with their gold gesso moulding. This was a job she especially liked. The old house with its wooden floors and oak panelling always seemed to emanate a sigh of satisfaction and embrace the peacefulness of night-time.
‘You know, Mum,’ Cory’s thoughts broke in, ‘you really ought to do the same.’
‘What? Deep-sea diving? Or paragliding?’
Cory smiled ruefully, laughing at the unlikely idea of Ella throwing herself out of anything. ‘Get a burglar alarm.’
‘I hate burglar alarms,’ Ella replied. She almost added: ‘You can’t forestall the unexpected, look at what happened to Dad’, but it would have been too cruel. ‘You’re beginning to sound like your big sister Julia. Come on, time for bed. Do you want a hottie?’
Cory shook her head. ‘I think I’ll stay
up and watch telly for a bit.’
Ella went down to the basement kitchen and made tea, thinking of Laurence. It was the little habits that she missed most, the comforting routines that knit together your couple-dom. And here she was still doing it without him. Now all she had to look forward to was babysitting her neighbours’ allotment while they swanned off living the life of people thirty years younger. Except that people who were actually thirty years younger couldn’t afford to do it.
Ella turned off the light, listening for a moment to the big old house’s silence. It had been a wreck when they’d bought it, with a tree growing in the waterlogged basement. She had coaxed the house back to life with love and devotion, steeping herself in the history of the period, studying the other houses in the square so that theirs would be just as lovely.
‘Good night, house,’ she whispered so that Cory didn’t think she’d finally lost it. ‘We’re all each other has these days. Too much to hope anything exciting is going to happen to me.’
She shook herself metaphorically as she went upstairs to bed. She’d tried so hard to resist self-pity during the dark days after Laurence’s death, she was damned if she was going to give in to it now.
Sal stood in the wastes of Eagleton Road hoping a taxi would come past. She shouldn’t get a cab, she knew. It was unnecessary and not even something she could charge to expenses, as one could in the heyday of magazines, when staff just charged everything they liked and The Great Provider, aka Euston Magazine, paid up without a whimper. Now the publishing landscape was getting as bleak as Siberia.
Sal began walking desultorily towards the tube station, playing one of her favourite games which decreed that if a cab went past before she got there, fate intended her to jump into it, and who could argue with fate? Sal realized she was stacking the odds by walking particularly slowly in her unsuitable high heels. The thing was, these shoes were made for taxi travel and no one, especially their designer, had envisaged a customer schlepping down the uneven pavement of Eagleton Road.
