Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon

by Linda Newbery

  ‘And Ruth’s project, the walled garden, is making great progress. You should come and see for yourself some time,’ Aidan told Anna.

  ‘On a Sunday,’ said Ruth. ‘We’re always there on Sunday.’

  Just friends, were they? As they told her more about the work in progress, Anna noticed the way sentences passed back and forth between them, and frequent glances at each other. Lucky Ruth, she found herself thinking; clever Ruth, to have found herself this accomplished and, yes, attractive man. Was there a more girlish note than usual in Ruth’s voice as she laughed?

  It felt companionable in the kitchen, the three of them: Anna browning the chicken in a pan and cutting up the pineapple, Aidan making salad dressing and Ruth setting places, Liam drifting in to ask when the food would be ready.

  Anna was bringing the warm bread to the table when they all heard someone coming in at the front door. Ruth looked up, startled. Anna’s first thought was that it must be Martin – did he still have his own key?

  But it was Patrick who came into the kitchen, bleary and dishevelled in a loose coat, saggy jeans and a paint-marked sweatshirt. He looked at the gathering – uncomprehendingly at Anna and Aidan, then, ‘Hi, Mum,’ and ‘’Lo there, bruv,’ to Liam.

  ‘Pat!’ Ruth went to greet him with a big hug, which he returned perfunctorily. ‘Why didn’t you say you were coming? I’d have met you at the station.’

  ‘Wasn’t sure what my plans were,’ Patrick said. ‘God, I’m tired. There were engineering works all over the place – diversions – buses – you name it. It’s taken for ever.’

  ‘Come and sit down, sweetheart. This is Aidan – you haven’t met before, have you? And, er, Anna’s staying for a bit. How long are you home for?’

  ‘It’s not happening after all. I’ve chucked it in.’

  ‘Oh, but what about Rhiannon? You were so—’

  ‘That’s all finished as well. She’s staying on in Edinburgh.’

  Ruth brought another chair to the table and ushered Patrick into it, caught between concern for Patrick and the pleasure of having him home.

  ‘You’re here to stay!’ Liam looked delighted.

  Patrick shrugged. ‘Yeah, till I decide what to do.’

  ‘Oh …’ Ruth’s eyes flitted to Anna and back to Patrick. ‘The thing is, Anna’s in your room. If I’d known, we could have—’

  Patrick hunched his shoulders. ‘No sweat. I’ll sleep on the sofa.’

  ‘Glass of wine?’ Aidan had fetched another glass and now proffered the bottle, but Patrick shook his head.

  ‘I’ll have a beer, thanks.’

  Now what? Anna was all too aware that she could get on a train and be back with Martin in less than an hour. But logistical problems with rooms and beds couldn’t be allowed to determine the course of her life. Briefly she wondered about B&Bs, hotels; but more immediately there was the meal to consider. She looked down at the four pieces of chicken now nicely browned and ready to eat; she’d have to cut them up and make five portions. But Ruth said, ‘It’s OK, Anna. Pat doesn’t eat meat, he’s vegan. I’ll find something in the freezer.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Mum. I got something while I was waiting at Birmingham. Eat yours first.’

  ‘The thing is, sweetheart, Anna’s not just here for tonight. She’s been here a couple of weeks.’

  ‘Why? Where’s Dad?’

  ‘Well …’ Ruth looked sidelong at Anna, who said, ‘Martin’s at home. He’s at the flat and I’m here.’ She felt herself blushing.

  ‘She and Dad have split up,’ Liam said, as if stating the obvious.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Patrick, startled into looking properly at Anna for the first time.

  ‘We’re … spending some time apart, let’s put it like that.’

  ‘What,’ Patrick said, with a knowing smile, ‘is Dad having it off with someone else? So you two are teaming up? That’s a new one.’

  ‘Pat, please! Don’t talk like that. Anyway – let’s eat, and afterwards I’ll sort something out for you if you’re hungry – you must be, surely.’ Ruth sat down again, and Anna served the meal. How crowded the kitchen felt now, the air spiked with unasked questions. As ever, Anna felt unsettled by Patrick: by his cool, dismissive gaze, and his look of a younger and more rumpled Martin, his eyes the same shape, the same hazel-brown. Whatever he thought of this set-up, and of his mother apparently having a new man, he revealed by no more than a sceptical raising of eyebrows. Always he made Anna feel wrong-footed, as if she should have known he’d turn up.

  ‘Of course you must have your own room,’ she told him. ‘I can sleep on the sofa.’

  ‘No worries. You can stay there. It’s no difference to me,’ Patrick said, unsmiling. He fetched a second beer from the fridge, flipped open the ring-pull and drank deeply.

  Anna caught Ruth’s eye. What now? Everything had changed in the last half-hour; she couldn’t stay on here, that much was obvious. Even staying for one more night was making herself a nuisance. Meanwhile, the conversation was skirting around everything that was important. Aidan asked Patrick how he’d liked Edinburgh, which he apparently knew quite well; Ruth tried to find out what his plans were, but got only brush-off answers. When Ruth found vegetarian sausages in the freezer and cooked them with tomatoes and oven chips, Patrick ate ravenously; as soon as he’d cleared his plate he said that he had phone calls to make, and went up to Liam’s room for privacy. His rucksack, a large shabby one studded all over with badges and with bed-roll attached, squatted in the front hall, reminding Anna that she was the squatter, that if she wasn’t here Patrick could take over his own room, unpack his things and no doubt present Ruth with a quantity of dirty washing.

  Anna made coffee, and Aidan left soon afterwards. Ruth went to the door with him, and came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, a little flushed.

  ‘You’re a dark horse, keeping him to yourself,’ Anna teased Ruth, to avoid the trickier subject of Patrick.

  ‘Aidan? But I’m not, and I haven’t. We’re good friends, that’s all,’ Ruth said, running water to wash the glasses. ‘No, I don’t mean that’s all. We’re good friends, and I want to keep it like that. Real friendships are so important.’

  ‘I suppose.’ Anna had never been much good at holding onto friends. ‘They come and go.’

  ‘No, Aidan won’t go. He’s a constant in my life.’

  ‘Ruth, about Patrick,’ Anna said uncomfortably. ‘You must be pleased to have him back – but I’d better leave, hadn’t I?’

  ‘I don’t know what to suggest,’ Ruth said, after a pause. ‘Only – Anna, why don’t you go back to Martin? That’s by far the best thing for everyone. I mean, it’s great having you here, I’m not trying to push you away, but you need to sort things out. You know Martin wants to. And surely you do, too.’

  ‘No. I can’t go back.’ Anna turned away, stacking plates in the dishwasher. ‘It’s too easy. It’d feel like giving in.’

  ‘Giving in to what? I can’t believe you seriously want to end it.’ Ruth’s eyes met Anna’s; Anna looked away.

  ‘I can’t stay with him just because it’s convenient.’

  ‘Is that all he is to you? Don’t you love him?’

  ‘I don’t think I know what that means.’

  ‘So you don’t,’ Ruth stated.

  Anna searched for words, reasons. ‘I don’t know what people mean by it – love, luurve. People talk about it all the time, as if you either love someone or you don’t. Like passing your driving test, or getting a certificate that no one can take away from you. But it’s always changing – you’ve got to be with someone, or you can’t stand the sight of them, or they make you laugh, or irritate the hell out of you – that’s what it’s really like.’

  ‘All that, of course.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t love him as much as you do.’ Anna surprised herself by coming out with it; Ruth too, who looked at her open-mouthed for a moment before turning away. I’ve offended her now, Anna thought; I’ve c
alled her bluff.

  ‘I can’t make out what you want,’ Ruth said, after a pause. ‘And I don’t think you really know.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t. It isn’t that I want anyone else,’ Anna said. ‘I only want …’

  ‘Mm?’ Ruth waited, expectant.

  The phrase to find out who I am had come into Anna’s thoughts; she stopped before saying it aloud, and said tamely, ‘Oh, nothing.’ The truth was that she was being greedy, as well as impractical; she wanted the situation held in suspension for as long as she chose, with Martin ready to have her back or be discarded, at her whim. She wanted Ruth as well, wanted their friendship to grow; she wanted Ruth to say, ‘Anna’s a constant in my life,’ the way she had spoken of Aidan. She wanted a real, lasting, grown-up friendship for once, even if it sprang from the unlikeliest of beginnings.

  That night, in Patrick’s bed for what she decided would be the last time, Anna couldn’t sleep. Alternatives chased themselves through her head, pursued by but, but, buts. And something else slipped into her mind: the face of the physics teacher, Mr Sullivan, seen in profile as he stood, hands in pockets, looking intently at something. She fretted and fretted at this memory until it came back to her, teasingly, threatening to blur and fade if she looked too closely; but at last she placed it. Her last year at school, the sixth-form art exhibition. Some of the teachers, as well as students’ parents and friends, had come to the celebration evening; she’d been surprised to see him there for no better reason than that he was a science teacher and she hadn’t expected a scientist to be interested in art. He’d been studying her painting, Shore, and when he saw her standing quite close he’d made some vaguely complimentary remark about it, she couldn’t remember what, and had seemed embarrassed to be caught examining it so closely. She wondered briefly if he’d make her an offer – teachers sometimes did buy student art – and, if so, whether she could part with it. But she hadn’t spoken to him again; hadn’t, in all probability, so much as thought of him between then and the conversation with Christina, not knowing of Rose’s interest. Still his face refused to come into clear focus, and she couldn’t make the two incidents – this, and the leavers’ ball – add up to anything significant.

  While she was puzzling about this, a different answer came to her: so perfect a solution that she almost got out of bed to ask Ruth immediately. She would suggest moving into Rowan Lodge. For a while, at least, till Ruth was ready to sell.

  ‘Is that really what you want?’ said Ruth, surprised, in the morning. ‘It’s a bit out of the way, and you haven’t got a car. You’d need to get to the tube station every morning.’

  ‘I’ll get taxis, or walk. Or buy myself a bike. I can finish the sorting, even do some painting for you, if you want. I like painting. And tidy up the garden.’

  ‘It’s not a bad idea. It might stop you from doing anything drastic. And I don’t like the thought of the place being empty.’

  ‘I’ll pay rent,’ Anna offered. ‘I’ll be your tenant. Do it properly.’

  ‘No, you needn’t. Especially if you’re making a start on the decorating. You can be caretaker.’

  Anna felt exhilarated by this new plan, thinking about it as she sat on the Underground train; it was in her mind all day at work. She saw herself chopping logs in the garden, and sitting by a fire’s blaze with the curtains drawn.

  ‘You’ll be lonely,’ Ruth had warned.

  But loneliness was what Anna wanted. She would invite Ruth round for dinner, maybe with Aidan; she would cook wonderful meals, de-clutter the place, transform it with light plain colours and vases of budding twigs. She could play at having a home of her own. It was a ridiculously cosy vision, she knew, more Ideal Home magazine than real life, but irresistible nonetheless. And, she decided, she would paint – not only walls, but pictures. With space and time to herself, she would retrieve her brushes, buy new supplies. She felt herself stretching and expanding into this new vision of herself.

  In a quiet moment at her desk she entered Jim Greaves and James Greaves into Google, but nothing on the list pointed to Mr Greaves the art teacher, who must have retired long ago and was perhaps of a generation not to use the internet. She tried Michael Sullivan. There were more than eight million references, the list beginning with an author, a lawyer, an attorney in Massachusetts, links to Facebook and Wikipedia. She tried again with Michael Sullivan Science, limiting the search to UK websites.

  There it was, on the tenth of many pages, on the website of a school in Plymouth. Head of Science: Michael Sullivan, B.Sc. M.Ed.

  July 1991

  ‘I’ve booked us a holiday,’ said Anna’s father. ‘A week in Norfolk.’

  Anna saw from the tightening of muscles around his mouth that he expected opposition. He was just home from work; Mum was preparing dinner, and Anna, ravenous, was looking for something to eat without being told off for ruining her appetite. She stood by the open fridge, a wrapped slab of cheese in her hand.

  There was a silence, as if he’d said something blasphemous. Anna glanced at her mother. Holidays were Rose: didn’t he know that? How could they even think of going away without Rose?

  ‘What do you mean, a holiday?’ she asked.

  Her mother only stared, frozen in mid-movement, saucepan lid in her hand, releasing a steamy potatoey waft into the already hot kitchen.

  ‘A cottage, a nice little cottage in Norfolk.’ Dad produced a brochure from his briefcase and leafed through the pages. ‘Here, see? Blakeney, the Crow’s Nest.’ He held it out towards Mum, then, in the face of her obvious hostility, showed Anna instead. ‘This one here. Won’t it suit us down to the ground? It’s perfect.’

  ‘Don’t stand with the fridge door open, Anna,’ said Mum, in a tight, strangulated voice.

  Surreptitiously nibbling at a piece of cheese she’d broken off the wedge, Anna bent to look. The brochure page showed a selection of holiday cottages, each with a brief description. The Crow’s Nest was sandwiched between two others in a terrace, with a blue front door that opened in two halves like a stable; there were checked curtains at the windows, and a jug of wild flowers on the windowsill. She thought of the carefree people who might stay in such a place, a family trailing in with sand on their shoes, and pieces of seaweed to hang from the window-hooks. There’d be a dog that surged indoors with them, beating its tail against their legs. A happy, whole family.

  ‘You needn’t think I’m going anywhere,’ said her mother, draining the potatoes with much clattering of lid against saucepan.

  ‘But I’ve paid the deposit. We don’t want to lose that.’

  ‘You can go, you and Anna. I’m not budging from here.’

  Anna saw her father’s compressed lips, her mother’s eloquently turned back. She hated it when they were like this.

  ‘Where is it, where’s Blakeney?’ she asked, to break the deadlock.

  ‘North Norfolk. Blakeney, right up near Cromer.’ Her father was turning the pages, finding a map. ‘See? It’s not that far to go but it’ll give us a proper break. We could all do with one.’

  Mum said nothing, but lined up the three plates and slapped a slice of pork pie on each. ‘Help yourselves to salad and potatoes,’ she said tightly. ‘Oh, I forgot the mayonnaise.’

  ‘You can go out on boat trips from Blakeney Quay,’ Dad continued, as if nothing was wrong; he took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair before sitting down. ‘Sometimes there are seals on Blakeney Point. And there’s the bird reserve at Cley Marshes. Lovely, that bit of coast. I went on holiday there as a boy.’

  Anna piled potatoes and salad on her plate and started eating; her father cut up his slice of pie, but Mum sat opposite him, not even picking up her knife and fork.

  ‘Will there be television?’ Anna asked.

  ‘Yes, look.’ Her father pointed to the row of symbols underneath the photograph. ‘But there’ll be better things to do than watch the box. We’ll take binoculars and—’

  Anna saw that her mother was weeping
silently, tears running down her face, her shoulders shaking with suppressed sobs.

  ‘Oh, now, love!’ Dad reached across the table to take her wrist, but she jerked away. ‘This was meant to be a nice surprise.’

  ‘I’m not going.’ Mum jolted the words out between juddering breaths. She got up to snatch a tissue from the box on the windowsill, and stayed standing. ‘What if – what if she comes back, and no one’s here? What if there’s news?’

  ‘We won’t be far away. It’s not like leaving the country. Three or four hours and we can be back home if need be.’

  ‘No. No.’

  ‘We’ve got to do things,’ Dad said gently, and he pushed his plate away. ‘Got to at least try.’

  Anna saw how red and puffy her mother’s eyes were; she gave way to a storm of weeping, as if the tears had been stored inside her, waiting for release. ‘I – I – can’t.’ The words croaked out of her. ‘I won’t. I can’t go on holidays without her and have Christmas without her and birthdays without her – I can’t stand it! I won’t.’

  ‘But, love.’ Dad got up and took her elbow and put his other arm round her, guiding her back to the table. ‘What choice do we have? We can’t do nothing for the rest of our lives. We’ve got to get on with things. Annie needs a holiday, don’t you, love?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Anna, thinking of the pretty cottage, and wondering whether some of the happy familyness might spread itself to everyone who stayed. She hated it when her mother cried. It meant that her parents weren’t able to put things right, not for her, not for themselves. She’d taken only one mouthful of pork pie and her stomach craved more, but how could she go on eating, with the kitchen suddenly full of raw grief?

  Rose, always Rose, she thought savagely. What about me? Don’t I count for anything? Sometimes she hated Rose for doing this to them. Like an evil fairy she had them under her spell, a curse that said, You’ll never enjoy anything again. If you ever catch yourself laughing, you’ll think of me and feel guilty. Always. For ever and ever. You’ll never be free of me.

  They went to Blakeney. It was Anna and Dad siding against Mum, so they won. Anna was used to these sidings and alliances, shifting according to need. In the past there had been more flexibility: Anna and Rose against both parents, or Rose with Mum, or Rose with Dad. Always Rose had been on the winning side, instinctively knowing who to choose as her ally.