Knowing Anna
Page 10
Anna, characteristically, responded with flowers rather than recriminations, and soon they were in touch again by email, exchanging pictures of the children, and cheerful news about their respective lives. By then Anna was halfway through her two-year postgrad training as a music therapist and loving every moment. Tamsin didn’t allow herself to probe either Anna’s feelings or her own. She was just relieved to hear her sounding so cheerful. Feel I’ve finally found my true calling, wrote Anna. Somehow everything that’s happened seems to have been leading up to this.
Only wish I could say the same about motherhood! replied Tamsin. Am all at sea. Wish you were here, mate! Well, whose fault was that, you silly moo? Tegan had recently moved to Sydney, and no amount of well-meaning advice from the Rossi womenfolk made up for the absence of her own mother and her best friend. But she’d made her bed and she was bloody well going to have to lie in it.
And the first year or two with Frankie were good. They had fun together, plenty of laughter as well as the occasional blazing row. It all started to go belly-up when Tamsin decided it was time to go back to work, and Frankie did everything he could to prevent her. He pointed out that Milo was teething and fretful, waking up several times a night. She’d never survive the office if she was dog-tired, and besides, who was going to look after Milo if she went out to work? Her suggestion that she would look into day-care or maybe ask Frankie’s mother or sister for help met a brick wall of silence. When she suggested that she’d be a lot less tired if they shared the load a bit, that he might just occasionally take a shift on night duty, he swore and threw a plate at her. She was so shocked that she laughed out loud, further infuriating him. He slapped her then, and hard.
And so it went on. She abandoned the idea of a return to work (she was knackered, he was right about that) and threw herself into caring for Milo and running the home, telling herself she was lucky to have a man who could provide for them both. She found that she could keep things on a more or less even keel, by cooking and cleaning and ensuring Frankie had ironed shirts for the office, until something – often quite a tiny thing, such as running out of his favourite formaggio Parmigiano – went wrong and he lost his temper again. In between times, they were happy. Well, as happy as permanently walking on eggshells allowed her to be. At his best, he was romantic and loving. It was as if he needed to let off steam from time to time and home was the safest place to do so. Afterwards, he was always contrite. He hadn’t meant to hurt her; it was just that she pushed him to the limit.
Tamsin became adept at tiptoeing around Frankie’s temper. She became a past master at reading his mood by the sound of his key in the lock and bracing herself accordingly. She took to wearing long sleeves to cover her bruises, and large dark glasses when necessary. Her acute shame was harder to conceal, so she increasingly avoided company and kept herself to herself. It was easier that way.
Her main concern was Milo: keeping him safe and out of harm’s reach. Once he was at kindergarten, she started writing for women’s magazines, which she could do almost entirely from home, without Frankie’s knowledge. She even became an agony aunt, a commission that brought with it a certain black humour.
It was easy work, and bored her to tears. But it was sufficiently well paid for her to start building a nest egg. A chunk of the money she used to enrol in a distance learning course so that she could update her skills. Otherwise her training in broadcast journalism was beginning to feel frighteningly rusty in the light of the exponential speed of developments in digital and social media in the years since she’d graduated. The very act of signing up for the course made her feel more in control. The rest of her earnings went straight into an account she opened in Milo’s name for which she was the sole signatory. She never actually referred to it as her running away fund, even to herself, but she took to keeping the pass-book in her handbag, along with her and Milo’s passports.
The point of no return finally came when Milo was almost six, and a colleague of Frankie’s let slip an idle remark about a magazine article she’d read in the dentist’s waiting room, in which Tamsin expounded the virtues of the latest spa treatments available on the Mornington Peninsula. Frankie drove straight home from the office, found Tamsin at work, and went mad as a meat-axe.
Fortunately Milo was on a playdate with a friend and witnessed nothing. Bloodied and bruised, Tamsin walked out of the house in the clothes she was wearing, stopping only to pick up her laptop and bag. She collected Milo from his friend’s house and drove straight to a women’s refuge in Port Melbourne; ironically, in one of her first ever assignments for Frankie she’d interviewed the founder and a handful of grateful clients for a full-page feature. A week later, the swelling around her broken nose and black eye had receded sufficiently for the doctor to declare her fit to board a plane to London on a one-way ticket.
‘Hey, Beth-ster, any news from Mr K?’ Tamsin asked. They’d been on the move for half an hour or so and were skirting the edge of a wood on a chalky white footpath. She’d seen an opportunity to hand over the care of Smith into the willing hands of Lucy, Ella and Chloe, which gave her the perfect excuse for a quiet word with her goddaughter.
‘So, he keeps texting? And sending me these silly songs to keep my spirits up,’ said Beth, blushing and quite unable to keep the smile off her pinched face. ‘He’s, like, supposed to be revising, but I don’t think he’s getting all that much work done. I’ve been telling him to knuckle down.’
‘Good on-ya!’ said Tamsin. ‘Keep cracking the whip, girl!’ It was good to see Beth smiling. She’d looked like a bag of bones yesterday after the long afternoon in the rain. Poor kid, losing her Mum at fifteen. It had been bad enough for Tamsin and she’d been twenty-three when her mum died, just six months after her dad. That had been grim, especially at a distance. To be honest (and she did her best not to think about it), she still felt guilty for being the other side of the world and having such a ball in London while her parents were in their last days.
Beth looked so bloody vulnerable. She found herself hoping fiercely that this Matt was going to step up to the plate. If he let her down, he was going to have to answer to Tamsin. She toyed with the idea of sounding out Mary Anne, who probably knew him from school, but there was no way of doing so without arousing her curiosity. And Beth would kill her if she found out that Tamsin was poking her nose in. Quite right, too. It was none of Tamsin’s business, except to be there to pick up the pieces with godmotherly tea and sympathy if it all went wrong.
‘Tell me all about him, Beth. What’s he like?’
‘Oh . . . he’s sweet. And funny. Really brainy too. And, like, totally awesome on the sax. Listen to this.’ She pulled out her phone, and held it up so that Tamsin could hear. O when the saints go marching in . . . ‘That’s him playing. Yesterday it was “Is this the road to Amarillo?”’
‘Sounds like a good bloke. Did Anna get to meet him?’
‘No,’ sighed Beth. ‘I wish she had. But I only got to know him quite recently.’
‘Well, I bet she would have loved him, doll. Do I get an intro? I need to make sure he’s up to scratch.’
‘Um . . . We’ll see. I mean, I’m not actually sure we’re, like, together.’
‘Well, he sounds keen to me. Keep me posted, huh?’
‘So . . . about Mum . . .’ said Beth.
‘Uh-huh?’ Tamsin wondered what was coming.
‘What was she . . . like? When you first knew her?’
‘Why?’
‘Sometimes I just need reminding,’ mumbled Beth. ‘I keep worrying I’ll forget her. The more I know, the better.’
‘Well . . .’ said Tamsin. She thought back to their student days sharing a flat in London. Anna had been at the Guildhall while Tamsin was at City studying journalism. At the time Tamsin had a job in a bar where the music students drank from time to time. Anna and her then boyfriend Laurence (what a dickhead) came in one evening after a session busking on the underground. It was in the days before buskers wer
e licensed and everyone had to take their chances. Laurence was furious that they’d been moved on by a not particularly talented black soul singer. The singer had appeared when they were halfway through a Vivaldi concerto, parking himself uncomfortably close by on a fold-up camping chair. He switched on his boom box, blasted out his backing track, and helped himself to two hours’ worth of their takings, on the grounds that they were on his pitch. When Laurence began to argue, the singer – who was a good six inches taller and several pounds heavier – loomed over him menacingly. Anna, meanwhile, quietly packed up her cello, and left them to it on the grounds that life was too short.
‘How the hell can you just walk away?’ Laurence demanded, following her into the bar.
‘We got to play for a couple of hours in the most amazing acoustic, and our audience loved us,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Let’s not sweat the small stuff.’
Laurence angrily abandoned Anna, taking his sense of grievance off to the pool table. Anna apologized to Tamsin for his rudeness, and stayed at the bar to chat. And that was the start of their friendship. Most Friday nights Anna would try her luck somewhere on the underground, and afterwards she slaked her thirst with Tamsin. Sometimes Laurence joined her, sometimes not. After a week or two, Tamsin managed to persuade Anna to play the piano in the corner; a month later she had a regular gig, which livened the place up no end. And when Tamsin mentioned she was looking for a new place to live – she’d had more than enough of her rugby-playing Aussie flatmates in Earls Court – Anna mentioned the box room in her own flat, recently vacated by a violinist called Sophie who’d unexpectedly thrown in the towel and gone home to Hong Kong. She and Neil, a student pianist, would be delighted to have her.
‘She was always generous,’ Tamsin told Beth now. ‘Saw the best in people. A glass half-full person. And great fun – I remember lots of laughter. Bit of a cliché, but she had a smile that lit up a room. You must remember that.’
‘Yeah . . .’ said Beth in a small voice. ‘Except . . . then.’
‘Fair dos. Except then. People often get sick when sad things happen, you know. But back then in London . . . well, she was a blithe spirit in those days. And it was music, music, music, always her music. She even used to sing in the shower. Drove me nuts!’
‘Why?’ asked Beth.
‘Not a morning person. At least not then,’ said Tamsin. ‘Too busy burning the midnight oil, I guess, what with the bar, and clubbing when I had a night off, and the occasional lecture. But you could set your clock by Anna and her bloody practice timetable.’
‘So . . . how long were you flatmates?’
‘Couple of years? Then she went on the road with the quartet and I started work. And then she met your dad and . . . the rest is history, I guess.’
Beth plodded on, at her side, saying nothing. ‘That any good?’ asked Tamsin. ‘Help at all?’
‘Yeah. I guess. Thanks . . . Lucy’s waving at me. Think I’d better, like, catch up? Laters.’
At least she was talking about her mum, thought Tamsin. She wondered about Theo. Did he have any idea how Beth was doing? Or Sam for that matter? She looked around, and located Theo at the front of the line of walkers, head down, his long-legged frame set against the rain. He wore no hood, and his dark hair was slick against his head. He was striding ahead purposefully, apparently blind to the fact that he was setting a pace just too fast for the rest of the group. An increasingly lonely gap was opening up between him and the other walkers. Even from behind she could tell that he was he was lost in his own world, unaware of his surroundings. It was as if he was punishing himself by the exertion. Well, if it helped him to walk out some of the grief, that was up to him.
The rain persisted all morning, just as forecast. Glancing around the group, Tamsin thought everyone looked pretty fed up. The boys were dragging their heels and grumbling. Ella, Lucy and Chloe had the sleeves of their waterproofs pulled right down over their hands. Were they really going to be able to keep this up for the next six days? It was only Tuesday, for heaven’s sake – and they weren’t scheduled to arrive in Canterbury until Sunday.
‘How’re we doing as far as the route goes?’ she asked Tom, who she found at her side. ‘I’m beginning to lose the plot here.’
‘It’s the rain. It makes you so cold.’
‘Too right. It’s dreary as hell. How much further today, do you think?’
‘Did you see the milestone earlier? Dad pointed it out. We’re in Kent now, at least. Sixty-five miles to Canterbury, it said. By tonight that should be down to under sixty.’
‘And that’s meant to make me feel better?’ said Tamsin. ‘Mind you, if Anna could walk three hundred miles, I guess we can manage sixty. But what’s all this about you bunking off?’
Tom grimaced. ‘I know. I feel bad. But I’m in the middle of trying to tie up an important contract. I’ll only be gone a couple of days. Back on Friday. Saturday at the very latest.’
Tamsin looked at Tom appraisingly. He took after William, whereas Anna most definitely favoured Ruth. But he had his sister’s blue eyes. There was an older brother too, James, but he and his family lived in the US. ‘What was it like, having Anna as a sister?’ she asked. ‘When you were growing up, I mean?’
‘Infuriating, wonderful, annoying . . . Everything you’d expect from a big sister,’ he said. ‘She was bossy and liked to keep me in order. But of course I couldn’t imagine it any other way. You know how it is.’
‘No, I don’t,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m an only. Like Milo. Sad, maybe.’
‘Well, I guess the grass is always greener. It was certainly busy – noisy and chaotic – with three of us. There was always someone having a drama. When she was a teenager she spent hours on the phone to her friends, which used to drive the rest of us mad because she tied up the line. Mum used to nag about the cost. It’s so different now everyone’s got their own mobile. But the main thing I remember is the music. The hours and hours she spent playing the piano and the cello.’
‘You played, too, didn’t you, Uncle Tom?’ Tamsin hadn’t noticed Beth walking alongside them. She now had charge of Smith, who was trotting surprisingly obediently beside her.
‘Yeah. The trumpet. And James apparently played the cello at one stage, too, but he gave up when Anna overtook him. It made him furious.’
‘Why?’ asked Beth.
‘Well, it was before I was born. But the story your granny tells is that James started learning when Anna was really quite little. She begged to be allowed lessons, but Mum said she was too small and her hands weren’t big enough. So she sat in a corner and listened to him practise. One day when he was out in the garden, she picked up his cello and started playing. She could read music almost before she could read words.’
‘So what did Uncle James do?’
‘Oh, he sulked,’ said Tom. ‘Stuck it out for a couple more terms, then got so fed up with being outclassed by his little sister that he thought he’d stick to football.’
‘But he still loved her, didn’t he?’ asked Beth anxiously.
‘Too right he did,’ said Tamsin. ‘We all did, doll.’
‘You know what we need, Father Steve?’ said Tamsin. ‘A break from the rain for our lunch.’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Stephen. ‘There’s a church just a few hundred metres off the path. If it’s open we could shelter in there for a bit.’
‘I was thinking more in terms of a boozer. Not suggesting that we go on a bender, mind. But it would be good to dry off a bit, don’t you think? Maybe get some hot chocolate or chips for the kids?’
‘What’s this?’ said Tom. ‘Is the lovely Tamsin leading you into temptation, Father?’
‘Just a suggestion, mate. No biggie.’
‘No, I think it’s a good idea,’ said Father Stephen, getting out his map. ‘Looks like there’s a village in another half-hour or so, with a couple of pubs. Now Tom, just an idea. How about you go on ahead with Theo, and look at the options?’
‘Milo – you and Sam go,’ urged Tamsin. ‘They’ll be eating out of their hands,’ she explained to Beth. ‘And actually it’s a good chance for me to get some audio.’
She ordered a beer, and then did the rounds. It was amazing, the sound quality you could get with a smartphone; it was broadcast standard. With practised charm, Tamsin worked the room, explaining about Anna and telling the story behind the pilgrimage. She gave anyone who’d take one a purple #walkforanna card. Aside from grunts from a couple of old-timers, her powers of persuasion appeared to do the trick. When Ruth arrived, Tamsin grabbed the moment to talk her into doing a phone interview for the afternoon show.
‘Result!’ she told the clutch of walkers at the bar as she returned to claim her beer. ‘Some quality audio and a good few quid in the box, I’d say.’
‘Don’t you ever stop?’ asked Theo, half smiling. It was almost the first time since setting out that he’d spoken directly to her.
‘Not when I’m on a mission, no,’ she replied, meeting his glance and holding it till he looked away. She lifted her beer glass and smiled. ‘Here’s to Anna!’
‘To Anna, God rest her,’ echoed Father Stephen.
‘Anna!’ the others joined in.
‘Now, boys,’ said Tamsin. ‘Who’s for a bowl of hot chips?’
After that, the day improved. Having dried off and warmed up with hot food and drink, they emerged out of the pub to find that the rain had stopped and there were signs of watery sunshine. Father Stephen steered them down the lane, out of the village, but then shepherded them away from the Pilgrims’ Way, down a steep track through the woods in the direction of the ancient church he had earmarked for the day’s reflection. They emerged out of the trees into a vast, green valley. First Milo, then Sam and George spread out their arms and hurled themselves down the grassy slope, aeroplane style.