Losing Nicola

by Susan Moody

  She looks younger than I had expected from seeing her hunched figure along the front. Her hair, once jet-black and cut like a boy’s – like Nicola’s – is still very short but now a becoming silvery grey. She strokes the dog again, turns her head and speaks to someone else in the room, and a man suddenly moves into my range of vision, white-haired but handsome. He stoops and tenderly kisses Louise’s cheek then moves across the room towards the window outside which I stand. I shrink away, my heart racing and continue rapidly down the street, hoping my snooping into someone else’s life has not been noticed. Again, a thought strikes me: do the people round here know that Louise Stone is not her real name, or was the investigation into Nicola’s murder conducted under the pseudonym she had adopted?

  I was afraid I might be lonely, away from the vigour of London, and indeed, occasionally I do find myself possessed of solitude. I am flooded by the remembrance of things long past. That blackberry summer. That grief. A shock so intense that even now, so many years later, it still stabs like a knife edge between my ribs.

  But in the general course of things, I am very far from lonely. My work occupies me. The telephone keeps me in contact with friends both here and abroad, And this particular weekend, Erin is here. She is still my closest friend, a Californian, beautiful and wild, who sometimes spent summers with us, while her archaeologist parents worked in Africa. Currently living in London, she is attached to the American Embassy in some capacity I’ve never quite understood. She has a State-Department-owned flat in Sloane Street, four times the size of mine, furnished in Scandinavian minimalism, with a few startling canvasses on the walls, painted by Erin herself. She eats out nearly every night, and when she’s at home, opens tins of baked beans, a taste she acquired years ago after enjoying the subtleties of my mother’s post-war cuisine. This is her first visit since I moved in.

  She settles into a corner of the big Chesterfield I bought from the auction rooms over in Sandwich, and spreads her arms across the back of it. Her sandy hair springs around her head like a lion’s mane. On her elegant feet are gold sandals with the thinnest of high heels. Her toenails are painted a rich chocolate colour which precisely matches the short skirt she wears. She is tanned and lithe, far too exotic for this provincial town. She is beautiful, and knows it, but that hasn’t spoiled the sweetness of her character. Men follow her with their tongues hanging out, but she is still waiting for Mr Right, who is proving surprisingly elusive.

  ‘You do realize that you’ll go nuts here, don’t you?’ she says.

  ‘How do you figure that?’ I say.

  ‘For one thing, sweets, just take a peek out the window.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘There is no one out there. Not one single person.’

  ‘I can see at least four fishermen. And a woman on a bike. And two people walking dogs.’

  ‘I mean no one you’d want to spend time with,’ Erin says. ‘What are you going to do down here for God’s sake? Who’re you going to talk to?’

  ‘Give me time.’

  ‘I’ll give you all the time in the world and you still won’t find a kindred spirit down here. Jeez!’ She springs to her feet and strides across the room, her calf muscles bunching, to sit beside me on the window-seat I found a local carpenter to build for me.

  As so often, she’s wrong. The fishing-cottages at the north end of the town have become bijou weekend retreats for jaded Londoners. Although I don’t tell Erin this, I’ve already met a few of them, through the people who own the flat below mine. Most of them are not fishermen, but nor are they people I’d want to spend a lot of time with. One or two are people whose company I enjoyed. And there’s Julian and his wife. Already I’m planning a supper party, enjoying the thought of getting out linen and silver, of buffing up furniture, unpacking Aunt’s dinner service for the first time, polishing glasses, preparing food.

  ‘Actually,’ I say, ‘my bank manager turns out to be someone from the old days.’

  ‘Who?’ She presses a finger to her cheek. ‘No, let me guess . . . that Jeremy kid with the pudding-basin haircut, I’ll just bet. He was born a bank manager, poor kid.’

  ‘Not Jeremy. Julian.’

  ‘Julian? The tall pimply one?’

  ‘He’s still tall, but luckily the pimples have gone.’

  ‘I’d never have put him down as a future bank manager. He was rather dishy in his spotty way. I’d have thought he’d have gone a bit further afield than two yards down the road from where he grew up.’

  ‘Me too. But . . . I guess things happen. Anyway, it’s peaceful here,’ I say mildly. ‘And frankly, after the last few years, I can do with quite a lot of peace.’

  ‘Peace is for geriatrics,’ she says.

  ‘I can get on with my work,’ I say. ‘I’ve got everything I want here. A reasonable library, which will order anything I need. Bookshops. Marks & Spencer. Even two department stores.’

  ‘Selling old ladies’ corsets,’ she says scornfully. ‘And I’ll bet they’re the same darned corsets they were selling twenty years ago when we were kids.’

  Corsets . . . a memory shudders inside me of Miss Vane’s frozen expression after receiving what she had assumed was a gesture of friendship. ‘And there’s access to London,’ I add quickly.

  ‘Sure, if you don’t mind sitting in a filthy train for two and half hours. I could walk there quicker. On crutches!’

  ‘And apart from all that, I like it here,’ I say.

  ‘Why? Can you just explain to me why?’

  I think about it. I realize that in fact I can’t say what it is that attracts me here. A sense of coming home, perhaps. The deep calm bestowed by the sea, easing my turbulent heart. ‘The air,’ I say. ‘The light.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll grant you the light. In fact . . .’ She gazes at me with a grin. ‘I was even thinking we might look around for a weekend place for yours truly. A studio apartment, if such a thing exists. I’m posted over here for at least four years, so I might as well take advantage. I could bring my gear down, become a genuine Sunday painter.’

  ‘Erin! That would be absolutely wonderful.’ I am mostly delighted at the thought that I might see more of her. A tiny alien part of me, which I hardly recognize, wonders if she will interfere too much in the new life I’m trying to forge for myself. I am astonished at my own ingratitude. Erin has always been there when I needed her, has always provided a shoulder for me to cry on.

  ‘God!’ She sits down again, this time in the high-backed oak chair, which once belonged to my father, and slumps against its thick wooden slats. ‘I can’t believe how long it is since we were here. And you know what’s bizarre? The entire world has changed but this place has stayed exactly the same. Exactly!’

  ‘Not quite.’ I gesture at the pier.

  ‘Oh, Alice. So they made a few cosmetic changes, a sop to the fact that the war’s long over. But the mindset’s still the same.’

  ‘Just like it would be in any small place in the States.’

  ‘True.’ She smiles at me. ‘So, now I’m here, what are we going to do with the day?’

  ‘What would you like to do?’

  We settle for a walk into the town, a trawl round the estate agents to see if we can find a weekend property for Erin, and if not, we’ll drive over to Canterbury, which does at least have some decent shops, according to Erin.

  As we’re about to leave, the telephone rings. It’s my former husband.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Hi, Allen.’ I glance at Erin, who grimaces back.

  ‘How’s it going, Alice?’

  ‘Just fine. How about you?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ he says.

  ‘I don’t, actually.’

  ‘Germaine’s decided we aren’t going to work out, so she’s moved on.’ He speaks in an offhand way, as though it scarcely matters. Knowing him so well, I can tell that it does.

  ‘Where’s she moved on to?’

  ‘She’s joined an ashram or something.’


  ‘For such a cutting-edge person, isn’t that a little passé?’

  ‘I know what you mean.’

  ‘Is she signing up with a friend,’ I wonder, rather meanly. ‘A like-minded soul whose karma matches hers? Or is it all on a high-minded level of brown rice and beautiful thoughts?’

  ‘God, you can be vicious,’ he says cheerfully. Cheerfulness is Allen’s defining characteristic. ‘And actually I think there is someone else, though that’s just a suspicion.’ His voice brightens. ‘Say, I’m coming over to a conference in Manchester next month, and wondered if you’d be interested in meeting up.’

  ‘In Manchester?’

  ‘No, dumbo. Either in London or . . . well, I could come down to see you, check out your new apartment, take you out for meal, whatever.’

  ‘What does “whatever” imply?’

  ‘Still got that sharp English tongue, I see.’

  ‘Not really surprising. After all, I am English.’

  ‘So . . .’ I can almost see the goofy chipmunk grin on his face which once I thought as cute as he does himself. ‘. . . can I come visit with you?’

  ‘When are we talking about? I’m frightfully busy just now.’

  Although he can tell I am reluctant, he presses me to name a date, and as I always do, I submit.

  ‘Just make sure it’s a weekend when I’m not here,’ says Erin, after I’ve hung up.

  ‘Maybe he’s your Mr Right.’

  ‘No way, baby.’

  ‘Just as a matter of interest, what kind of man do you want?’

  ‘I don’t know, but when I meet him, I’ll know at once.’

  ‘He’s not going to be a garage mechanic, is he?’

  ‘He could be, you English snob.’

  ‘But what on earth would you talk about? I mean after he’s fixed up your car and put new tyres on and given you an oil change, what then?’

  ‘You could say the exact same thing about a brain surgeon.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you want him to be a bit arty?’

  ‘Not necessarily. Or maybe a bit but in a different field than painting.’

  ‘An actor? A violinist? A sculptor?’

  ‘Any of the above. Or none. It’ll be love at first sight, I’m sure. But not necessarily. Maybe it’s someone I’ve already met, but haven’t even considered as a potential mate.’

  ‘Like . . . like Orlando?’

  ‘Orlando?’ She seems genuinely shocked. ‘Are you kidding?’

  ‘What could be nicer for me than to have two of my best-loved people united?’

  She wrinkles her nose. ‘I don’t think I’m Orlando’s type, for a start. I’m far too independent. And besides, I fairly sure there’s already someone in his life.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’ The thought is unsettling. Why hasn’t he told me?

  ‘Anyway, Orlando’s too clever, too self-contained for me,’ continues Erin. ‘I like emotion, passion, a sort of feverishness about life.’

  ‘So not an Englishmen then.’

  ‘I think not. If I had to choose between the two of them, I’d take Allen every time, even though I don’t dig sandy men with freckles.’

  ‘I don’t either. Often I look back and wonder how on earth I could have married him.

  No. That’s not quite true.

  I know precisely why.

  The grass on the green is yellow, like straw, parched and dry. For once, there is a light spattering of rain against the windowpanes, but it lasts no more than twenty minutes or so, and provides no respite from the heat. The vulnerable moon rises early tonight. Years ago Orlando taught me about the eight distinct phases of the moon, and I recognize that it is in its waning gibbous phase. Bookish children, we had always thought that gibbous meant with long thin clouds drifting across it. Even more surprising was the information that it also means humpbacked, like Aunt.

  Across the Channel glimmers the ghost of France, the cliffs at Cap Gris Nez scored by the same stark vertical furrows as those at Dover.

  Erin has gone back to London. I pour myself a glass of white wine and settle into my armchair. On the side-table are the pages I found in the music-stool and I pick up the first one.

  I must practice my English. I must write every day, even if it is necessary for to use a dictionary for words I do not know. According to my cousin, from now on I should forget the past and become like an Englishman. I do not know if I can do this. How should I cut out the past from my heart?

  How can I forget my mother? I see her endlessly, night after night, long dreams in my head. I see her on the floor of our hallway, her legs spread, the white shine of her pearls scattered on the carpet around her head. I see things I do not wish to see, things I shall never, all my life forget. Spread white legs, the dark hair at her thighs, her bared breasts, things no son should know about his mother.

  Mutti . . . She was such a proud and beautiful woman. She would not cry out, because of the girls, though she must have been terrified that it would be their turn next. As the filthy soldiers come in turn and take their disgusting pleasure with her, I can see in her eyes, half-turned towards my hiding place, that she is calculating how to save her daughters who stand shrinking away from the men who hold them, faces white with fear. She is wondering whether to kick out at them, to hurt them, launch herself on them, allow herself to be shot, while screaming at the girls to run, or whether, if she submits, she can shame them into leaving without further damage to her violated family. My gentle Mutti.

  I sit with the paper resting on my knee. My hand shakes and my heart feels hot. I let myself think of Sasha. Where is he, what is he doing? Does he ever think of me? Why did he never get in touch with me again in Paris?

  I know what star I should have followed.

  I pick up the page again.

  I think of my little sisters, one dark like me, one fair. I loved them, their lithe young bodies in my arms, kissing their soft heads. I loved them. Here, I have nobody to love.

  I should leave this place, but would it be any different if I had ended up in London or Manchester or Oxford, the city of dreaming towers, as my father used to say? Ach, that already my memory of him fades. Already I am forgetting him, them, my pale sisters, my beautiful mother.

  Tears fall from my eyes. The papers lie on the arm of my chair. I bite my lips to stop the tears, the vicarious pain, and pour another glass of wine which I drink rapidly. If I’d known, maybe I could have done something for him. But what? I was only a child. What could I – or anyone – have done for him? You can’t, however hard you try, erase memories.

  THREE

  ‘Hi, honey.’ It’s Allen.

  I try to suppress my irritation. He should not be using endearments to me. Especially since we’re divorced and he has a new partner, even if she’s decided that they aren’t going to work out. He no longer has any rights where I’m concerned. But of course he has. We shared our lives for a number of years, and that in itself confers certain rights, on both sides. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Just about to leave Charing Cross. We arrive at 12:42.’

  ‘We?’

  He sighs. ‘Me and the train.’

  ‘I’ll meet you.’

  ‘It’ll be great to see you again.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I say, non-committal.

  I’m not sure how great it will be to see Allen again. We were together for eight years, seven of which were uneasy. We were never unhappy, but never really happy, either. We remained the good companions we’d always been, but increasingly I felt as though I was living only half a life.

  I met him in Paris, where I was working as a translator for a big international cosmetics industry. Twenty-one years old, in my first job after getting my degree in Modern Languages – French, Spanish and German – earning good money. I had a flat in the Fifteenth arrondissement, a single big room with its own bathroom and kitchen attached. The fact that the bathroom was a cupboard into which, by some miracle of engineering, a shower and a toilet had been installed, di
dn’t bother me. Nor did the so-called kitchen, a series of narrow shelves upon which stood a two-burner electric hob and an electric kettle, a fridge big enough to house a half-litre of milk and three slices of ham, plus a sink attached in some mysterious way to the toilet so that I often found coffee grounds or vegetable fragments floating around in the bowl. Luckily, the traffic never went the other way.

  I loved the place. It was like living on the set of La Bohème. There was a real view, over the roofs of Paris. I could see the Eiffel Tower, and in the far distance, the roundels of the Sacré Coeur. I bought Bernard Buffet prints and put them up on the walls. I wore black tights and ballerina shoes, black polo-neck sweaters. I became more Parisian than the natives. Sometimes I looked like Juliette Greco, smoky-eyed and waif-like. Other times I put my hair up in a French twist, wore demure little white blouses with full skirts. I bought baguettes and paté, I spoke accentless French, I did French things. I passed for French. Parisians are notoriously insular and unwelcoming, but because of my language skills, I found myself totally accepted.

  One evening I went to a concert with a couple of girls from work. Nathalie and Marie-Claire were both Parisiennes, and Nathalie, who worked in the press office, had been given free tickets. We bought glasses of white wine at the bar, before the concert started, and drifted about, watching the audience gather.

  ‘That guy’s certainly interested in you,’ Marie-Claire remarked.

  ‘Which guy?’

  ‘Over there, by the pillar. Quite dishy, don’t you think, Nathalie?’

  ‘Pas mal. He’s been staring at you for at least ten minutes.’

  I shrugged. Laughed. ‘Either you have it, or you don’t.’ After a moment or two, I gazed casually in the direction she’d indicated. And gasped. ‘Good Lord!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I . . . I know him,’ I said. My voice was unsteady. ‘’Scuse me, girls, but I better go over and speak to him.’