Growing Up for Beginners

by Claire Calman

  Eleanor laughed, too.

  ‘Well, that does sound lovely, but actually… I think my dream house would be a small, weatherboarded cottage by the sea—’

  ‘A cottage! I couldn’t live in a cottage. They’re always so dark and poky. In England, people gush about them in such a preposterous way: ooh, it’s so charming, so cosy – how delightful – how picturesque! For charming, read too bloody small to swing a cat in. There are never enough bathrooms so you spend half your time hopping from foot to foot on the landing in a draught, queuing for the toilet. And with stupid low ceilings – think of Sarah and Mark’s place: I bump my head on that bloody beam every time we go – houses built for midgets. You won’t catch me living in one of those, I’m afraid, darling. You’ll have to elope with a dwarf from the circus if that’s really your secret fantasy.’ He laughed again, tickled pink with the craziness of the idea.

  Eleanor said nothing but focused on finishing the packing. She had always packed for Roger ever since they got married. Sometimes he liked to watch her as she did it so neatly, crossing off each item on a checklist, placing his shoes into cloth bags so that the soles wouldn’t mark his clothes, folding everything with care and precision.

  He would be off first thing in the morning, the taxi coming at 5.30 a.m. to take him to City airport. Usually, Eleanor would get up to make him coffee and see him off, but this time she said, ‘Would you mind very much if I didn’t get up early with you tomorrow, darling? You know I haven’t been sleeping so well since Hannah left and I’m awfully tired.’

  ‘No, it’s fine. I’m meeting Jake at City for breakfast before our flight, in any case. Sleep in the guest room tonight, why don’t you? Then I won’t wake you up in the morning with my “crashing about”!’ This was a teasing reference to the time when, some ten years ago or more, Eleanor had murmured, half-asleep, ‘Oh, please don’t crash about, darling. I’m asleep.’

  Roger found this evidence of his wife’s hyper-sensitivity highly amusing and often referred to it.

  Morning. Although she had slept in the spare bedroom, Eleanor had woken at around five, when Roger got up and showered and then clumped downstairs with his suitcase and clattered off the chain and thunked the bolt across and shouted back upstairs that he was off now and to have a nice lie-in.

  Still, she dozed on and off for a couple of hours, relishing the acreage of crisp, fresh bedlinen all to herself. When she got up, she went downstairs and made herself a pot of proper leaf tea and cut two thick slices of walnut bread to spread with butter and lavender honey. Roger did not like walnuts, disapproved of them even as if they had been put on the planet solely to vex him, so she always seized the chance to have this bread when he was away. And how lovely to have the chance to read at breakfast. Eleanor ran back upstairs to fetch her book, a new novel she had bought in expectation of Roger’s trip away. Now there was a whole hour in hand before she needed to get ready to leave for work. She stretched out on the sofa, snuggled under a soft cashmere throw, and shivered with a frisson of pleasure as she turned at once to the back of the book to read the ending first. She smiled at herself, telling herself it was silly to take so much pleasure in this small peccadillo, no longer sure if her delight was still in reading the end first or in her sense of victory over her husband. Well, it wasn’t so bad, after all. Plenty of women do far worse: shag their personal trainer or the man next door, drink vodka during the day, or spend thousands of pounds on shoes and handbags. As vices go, this one struck her as pretty harmless.

  After an hour, Eleanor went back upstairs to get ready, then set off for work at the Conservation Trust.

  After a busy morning, Eleanor went out to eat her lunch in the park. It was unexpectedly mild for November, and the remaining golden leaves on the trees glowed in the bright sun. She perched on one end of a bench and unwrapped her sandwich. A little way off, she noticed a woman sitting on another bench – actually, not sitting but almost lying, with her legs stretched out in front of her and her head tipped back, basking in the late autumn sun. There was something captivating about this particular pose, a sense of unabashed abandonment, that caught Eleanor’s attention. She set aside her sandwich and dug into her bag to find the small sketchbook she always kept there.

  Eleanor quickly sketched in the principal lines of the bench, then concentrated on the woman – that dynamic diagonal of her body with her feet out on the path, her head and neck stretched back. It was funny, she rarely included people in her drawings, other than in the background. She usually drew trees, houses, landscape, occasionally intimate fragments of an interior – a windowsill with a jug on it, a table set for breakfast – but the urge to draw this woman had proved irresistible. Eleanor loved this feeling, the absolute focus on what you were doing as if nothing else mattered any more. The rest of the world – your worries, doubts, fears – all receded into the background instead of gnawing at you all the time.

  After work, Eleanor decided to walk home rather than take the bus. The woman in the park appeared in her head again. Perhaps it would even make a good subject for an engraving. She found herself reimagining those lines and shapes, how she would stylise the drawing as she worked into the woodblock. Her mobile rang then. It was Hannah, bubbling up with everything she’d seen and done since they’d last spoken – how friendly the people were, how the children wanted to touch Georgia’s hair because it was blonde.

  ‘And is Dad behaving himself or is he being annoying?’ Hannah asked.

  ‘He’s fine. Actually, he’s in Jersey again till Saturday.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad you’re getting some time off.’ And then she asked if her mum could send her out some of her favourite erasable pens plus refills, because she’d given all hers away as they didn’t have anything like them out there. They chatted happily all the way until Eleanor was home.

  Every other Thursday, Eleanor sang in a choir. As a child, she had sung in the school choir and always loved it, but she’d only found her way back to singing a few years ago. It was odd, because at home she only sang if she was alone – just as she had when growing up. Back then, if she had a solo to practise, it was impossible: her brother, Benedict, had always made fun of her, doing warbling impressions of her and singing a completely different tune much louder so that she couldn’t hear her own voice, and her mother told her off for provoking Benedict when surely she could practise at school.

  In recent years, she sometimes sang softly while she cooked, but then once too often Roger had come in and clicked on the kitchen TV for the news or the weather while she was singing; it wasn’t that he was trying to shut her up, of course, it was just that it made her feel that her singing was surplus to requirements.

  Choir was enjoyable as usual, but demanding as they had just embarked on a challenging new piece and they were struggling with it. Afterwards, Eleanor allowed herself to be persuaded to go to the pub for once as Roger was away so wouldn’t be impatient for her return to keep him company.

  Several of them squashed in round a table in one corner.

  ‘And how are you, Louise?’ Eleanor asked one of the other women.

  ‘Only so-so. My husband’s away for a whole fortnight.’ She took a sip of her glass of wine. ‘You know what it’s like. Your husband travels a lot for work, too, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, yes, he does. He’s away now, in fact.’

  ‘Aw.’ Louise pantomimed a sad face with downturned mouth. ‘What are we like – missing our lovely hubbies, eh?’

  ‘Spare me, please!’ Stella chipped in. She was recently divorced. ‘I wish my husband had travelled for work. It was spending so much time with him that I couldn’t stand!’

  Stella offered Eleanor some more wine.

  ‘So tell us, Eleanor, are you pining for your absent spouse or – sssh! – secretly enjoying the time without him?’

  Eleanor sensed everyone was suddenly looking at her and she could feel herself flush. She hated being the centre of attention.

  ‘He’s only awa
y for three nights and we have been married for over twenty years so I’m just used to it, I suppose. I really don’t give it much thought.’

  Was that true, that she really didn’t think about it?

  ‘Hmm, nicely side-stepping the question, I notice. I’ll winkle it out of you, though. Let’s order another bottle and make a night of it, shall we?’

  Eleanor was tempted to expand and say, OK, since you’re so nosy, yes, I do think about it. Not only do I think about it, sometimes I flick forwards through my diary, counting the weeks until his next trip – happy now? But that would sound mean-minded, maybe even a little mad. Anyway, it would only be misinterpreted. It didn’t mean that she didn’t miss Roger when he was away, it was simply that she enjoyed her own company, that was all.

  ‘Not for me, thanks, as I’m driving.’ She put down her glass, though it was still half-full. ‘I ought to be getting off home anyway. Enjoy the rest of your evening.’

  That night, she read in bed until her eyelids were drooping. It was lovely to let the book slip from her hands onto the bed beside her rather than having to put it away properly again.

  25

  And Don’t Call Me Madam…

  1979

  Perhaps Conrad and Marcia’s marriage would have trundled on well enough on its tracks, their two lives parallel and apart, if he had been either a minute earlier or a minute later that day over thirty years ago now, a day in July when the sky was so blue it dazzled his eyes, and the sun was warm on his hair and shoulders, and the soft, green grass beckoned him to forget his work and come and lie down.

  Backing out of an angled parking space near the British Museum, he feels the sudden jolt and metallic crunch as his car hits another. He swears and gets out, only to be confronted by a rather small but extraordinarily angry woman who seems not the slightest bit daunted by confronting such a tall and imposing man.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ she shouts at him, apparently oblivious to the passers-by pausing and turning round to stare. ‘Are you blind?’

  He might very well ask her the same question but he stands erect and simply waits for her to run out of steam.

  ‘Madam.’ His tone is calm, authoritative. ‘You reversed. I reversed. Clearly, neither of us was paying sufficient attention. I do not believe it was my fault.’

  ‘Well, it sure as hell wasn’t mine–’

  ‘Madam, I—’

  ‘And don’t call me madam. It makes me feel about seventy-three.’

  ‘I apologise for that. Sincerely.’ Conrad takes out his business card, with the Museum address on it and his title and direct line.

  She doesn’t have a business card but scribbles her name and number on a scrap of paper from her bag with the stubby end of a pencil. He looks down at it: Pauline Barnes. The name – down to earth, ordinary, rather flat – seems unlikely for this fizzing firework of a woman. She looks as if she should be called Zenobia or Titania or some name he has never even heard before.

  ‘I know,’ she says, although he has not voiced his thoughts. ‘I hate it. It sounds as if it’s been moulded out of mud or hewn from granite. No one calls me Pauline, other than my mother, and she only does it to annoy, of course. What’s yours?’ She looks at his card. ‘Good Lord. Assistant Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.’ She covers her eyes with her hand for a moment. ‘I ought to be worshipping the hem of your garment, not crashing into your car.’ Unabashed, she looks him up and down as if wondering whether to purchase him. ‘You certainly look the part. Academics, museum bods – you have no idea how to dress, do you? Even the ones like you whom you’d expect to be more arty. It’s practically a uniform – the tweed jacket, the faded cords, the shiny brown brogues. Jesus, woollen tie – you really are clad according to the Museum manual. You must be boiling in all that. Why not live dangerously and remove your jacket? Look – sunshine!’

  Conrad, unusually, is speechless. He is tempted to say something cutting about her clothes. After all, she is wearing a most peculiar lime-green dress, jewellery of the sort that might diplomatically be described as ‘bold’, and glittery shoes in the daytime – as if she is about to step out on stage.

  At that moment, she turns slightly and her hair is caught in the sun. It seems spun from red gold, lit from within. He swallows.

  ‘And are you… you are… what do…?’ He gestures around him towards the Museum, the park, the pavement, as if her job title might be found there.

  She smiles suddenly then, and it is so unexpected and such an astonishingly generous smile, that he is silenced once more. Her broad lips curve with pleasure at – what? He couldn’t say; he only knows that he would like to see it happen again, and he would happily stand here on the pavement all day, waiting for it, if needs be.

  ‘If I had a business card, I suppose it would say – Jesus – I hate calling myself an artist. Makes me feel like a fraud. I’m an artist! I don’t know. I don’t have a grown-up normal job like other people, if that’s what you mean.’

  He forces himself to speak.

  ‘You paint?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Rarely nowadays. I make large ceramic pieces that, apparently, no one wants to buy.’ That smile again. ‘And, in the interests of eating more than once a month, I teach clay sculpture evening classes and pottery to anyone who will pay me. I take a class near here, actually, should you ever have the urge to learn to throw a pot.’

  ‘I imagine people are always telling you you look as if you’ve stepped out of a Rossetti painting.’ The words are out before he is even aware he is thinking them. He is not in the habit of flirting – flirting! – with strange women on street corners. He must stop looking at her.

  ‘Nonsense!’ She dismisses the idea without the usual attempt at polite agreement one might expect from a stranger, though the corners of her mouth twitch slightly, easy to miss unless you were looking at her closely. ‘That’s a lazy assumption, because of my red hair. I’m nothing like a Rossetti really. Nose too short, insufficiently defined cheekbones.’ She launches into an analysis, at once passionate yet incisive, of the typical Rossetti subject.

  He calls her the next day, making himself wait until the afternoon. He wastes almost an entire hour staring into space and instructing himself not to phone her until the following day, then countering this – using an entirely logical sequence of arguments – and telling himself that, in fact, the judicious course of behaviour would be to call today, as his insurance company would no doubt wish to resolve the matter as soon as possible. The Keeper of P and D is away at present, so Conrad borrows his office and shuts the door. Dialling her number, his hands are trembling as he looks down at the scrap of paper she gave him.

  The sense of disappointment when her answering machine cuts in is overwhelming. He tries to sound calm but upbeat, slightly jokey, as he doesn’t want to come across as a stiff, tweedy ‘museum bod’. She picks up halfway through his opening sentence, saying sorry, sorry, she had been working, her hands were covered in clay, hang on, hang on a sec, don’t run away. He waits, swivelling in the chair this way and that like a kid until she returns a couple of minutes later. They briefly talk insurance, scraped paintwork, dents, while thoughts swirl through his head. He doesn’t want to talk about his car. Fuck the car. He wants to… say… to ask her… he wants… what? There is a silence. Now she will say she must go, no doubt the insurance company will be in touch, goodbye then. Another two or three seconds pass, feeling like an age.

  ‘Oh,’ she says at last, ‘I knew there was something I meant to ask you. The exhibition of Blake engravings at the Royal Academy? Have you seen it yet?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He curses himself for being the stupidest idiot on the entire planet.

  ‘But I have to go again. Definitely. I wonder if perhaps…’

  ‘Yes. Tomorrow. One-ish?’

  ‘One o’clock.’ His heart is thudding as if he has run up ten flights of stairs. �
�Ish,’ he adds.

  And then it is the next day and he finds himself shaving with special care, showering for longer than usual, squaring his shoulders as he combs his hair in the mirror. All through the morning he feels as if his skin is alive, as if he can sense the blood thrumming through his veins. He is brimming with charm and bonhomie, greeting every assistant, every security guard with warm camaraderie. His colleagues laugh at his quips.

  At last, at last, it is time, nearly time – but early, in fact, too early – feeling like a teenager, rushing through the rooms, berating himself for not specifying a particular spot, just somewhere in the exhibition, moving from room to room, looking for her, telling himself she wouldn’t be there yet but still, still, scanning the darkly lit space for that brilliant flame of her hair.

  And then he sees her. She is not looking round for him. In fact she seems unaware that there is anyone else in the room at all. She is leaning over a display case, utterly absorbed in its contents. Today, her hair is in a thick plait, which curves forward over her shoulder, its glorious colour lit up by the illuminated case below. He comes and stands beside her, somehow knowing not to break the spell with clumsy words. In silence, he rests his hand on the edge of the case near hers. She looks up sideways at him, smiles without speaking, then lightly brushes the top of his hand with her own.

  After another few seconds, she straightens up and turns full on to face him. He is lost – completely, hopelessly lost – in those extraordinary glittering green eyes, flecked with points of amber. He can hardly breathe. He wants to speak, to say the wild, crazy things in his head out loud, he wants to reach out and touch her pale cheek. And yet he dare not speak in case he breaks this magic thing that is outside everything he has ever known or understood. How could he explain it to her, this woman he barely knows, when he cannot begin to explain it to himself? Her lips slowly curve into that smile.