Don expected me to be just as interested as he was in how the boat’s engine might have malfunctioned. He was in a passion about the possibility, asking me if I understood how vital such information was. He said that if he could prove that one of the parts was not properly made or not properly checked, or fitted, or that part of the engine was corroded, then we would have cracked it. I asked what it was we would have cracked. ‘Why it happened, for God’s sake!’ he shouted. I asked if that would make him feel better. He raged at me, saying that feeling better was not the point, it was establishing the truth of what happened that mattered, exposing shoddy workmanship and calling to account those who were responsible for it.
It was painful and somehow embarrassing, listening to him rant like this. I had an image of him in some enormous factory where row after row of men in overalls were standing in assembly lines fitting screws to – what? I hadn’t the faintest idea. All I realised was the clear impossibility of tracing the workman who made or checked or fitted some tiny part wrongly – if indeed they had. If it hadn’t been so sad, it would have been ludicrous. And the coroner had stated clearly at the inquest that there was no proof of engine failure.
Don discovered nothing of any importance or use at that factory in Sweden. I don’t know how they put up with him. He came back despondent but not defeated. He never even mentioned bunking off to Finn.
*
Lynne rang just then. She was in John Lewis, looking for a wedding present for a friend. She suggested that I should meet her in the café there. ‘It’ll do you good,’ she promised. The idea of sitting in a café in John Lewis doing me good … But I knew Lynne didn’t mean that. It’s seeing her that always does me good, for the time I’m under the influence of her energy and confidence. I quite enjoyed getting ready to go, changing my clothes – Lynne is always immaculate and we all try to live up to her (and fail) – and putting on some lipstick. Lynne, when she came to comfort me, always concentrated on my appearance. I would feel better if I let her wash my hair. I would feel better if I got out of those awful trousers. I would feel better if I did some yoga exercises with her. I would feel better if I straightened my back and walked tall … ‘Walk tall’, when I could hardly crawl, but she pushed me, and for the time she was with me, I let her. When Lynne left, her energy always left with her, and I collapsed again.
The first thing she said to me, as I walked towards where she was sitting, at a table in the window overlooking Cavendish Square, was ‘Louise! You look wonderful!’ She insisted on standing up and holding my face in her hands. ‘Lovely!’ she said. ‘Those pretty plump cheeks are back, the lines have gone …’ I told her to stop it at once, she was being absurd, but I liked her enthusiasm all the same. She has so much of it that she carries me along and I feel buoyed up for a while. Don found her totally exhausting – if he knew she was going to visit, he always made sure he was out of the house. He wondered, aloud, how on earth she could have become my friend. Afterwards, he dreaded Lynne descending upon us – he didn’t want to see anyone at all, no relatives, no friends, but most of all no Lynne taking charge of me. I don’t truly know how I felt. Did I want Lynne? She didn’t ask me if I wanted her. She just came, and held me, and answered the phone for me, and made food none of us ate. But she only ever stayed a day and a night each time. Don made his hostility towards her quite obvious and she withdrew, respecting his right to exclude those towards whom he felt such antipathy. I remember that once when she left, she said, ‘He frightens me, Lou. Don’t let him frighten you,’ which at the time, in my numb state, I thought strange – what did she mean?
Lynne’s life, since we were all together at teacher training college, hasn’t been entirely happy, but nobody would think so. She is absolutely determined to see a good side to every misfortune. This annoys some people – Pat, for example – but I find it touching. I admire her for it. She can’t have children, but she doesn’t moan about it, though she adores children. Once she knew for certain that there would be no children for her and Eric (after the hysterectomy to cure her endometriosis), she concentrated her maternal instincts on nieces and nephews, and godchildren, and became a popular aunt, never forgetting a birthday, regularly appearing to offer treats. My three love her, especially Finn.
We swapped teaching news at first. Lynne is the headmistress of a primary school in Surrey and is in her element. It’s a different school from mine – no immigrants, no black or mixed-race children – but we have a lot of the same problems to do with all the wretched testing and assessing that goes on these days. Then Lynne showed me what she had bought for the wedding she was going to, and we discussed what kind of shoes and bag she would need and whether a hat was, or was not, necessary. But all this was only a preliminary. Lynne never ducked the questions others feared to ask. On our second cup of coffee, she took my hand across the table and fixed me with what Ruth used to call her ‘ancient mariner stare’ and said, ‘So. How are you managing without Don?’
‘Fine,’ I said, trying to withdraw my hand, but failing.
‘Really fine, or doing-as-well-as-I-can?’
‘I think really fine. But I worry about him.’
‘Do you still love him? Is that why you worry?’
‘For heaven’s sake, Lynne.’ I looked round the now crowded section of the room we were in. The tables are very close.
‘Nobody is paying us any attention,’ Lynne said, firmly, ‘and I want to know. It’s important. Do you still love him?’
‘I’m not going to answer that.’
‘There you are then.’
‘Where am I? It’s just that I don’t like him. I don’t like who he has become.’ I was whispering, head down.
Lynne put a finger under my chin and lifted it up. ‘I can’t hear properly, you’re muttering,’ she said.
I wasn’t going to repeat it. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting on with your present buying?’ I said.
‘Why don’t you come on holiday with me?’ Lynne suddenly said. ‘In the spring half-term. Somewhere in the sun, somewhere different.’ She’d suggested it before. Afterwards, about a year afterwards, she’d suggested we went to Madeira. I wasn’t even vaguely tempted, to Don’s relief. But now, I was. She could sense it in my hesitation. Things had changed.
‘I’ll organise it,’ Lynne said, ‘and if there are any money problems …’
‘There aren’t,’ I said, quickly. ‘That’s one problem I don’t have.’
‘Good. Then we can be extravagant?’
‘I’m not sure about that.’ Lynne was renowned for her extravagance.
We tried to have a holiday about six months afterwards, before Molly went to Africa. It was partly a way of avoiding the horror of Christmas and New Year at home. Don was against the idea – the thought of anything as frivolous as a holiday appalled him – but I pleaded with him, saying that we needed to be together, going on a normal family outing, and he finally agreed, if still reluctantly. There was some pleasure in choosing the destination, a village in Austria, and in packing, but I think I knew before ever we arrived that the holiday was not going to be a success.
The trouble was, we were not together. Going away as a family hadn’t made us as together as we had once been. We each remained in our own little, painful world, hardly communicating in any real sense at all. Everyone skied except for me, but they didn’t ski on the same runs. Don was a competent skier but now it was Finn who chose the black runs while Don held back. As for Molly, she was not much better than a beginner. Miranda had been the skier. But we should all have been able to enjoy each other’s company in the evenings. The hotel we stayed at was perfect – enormous log fires, hearty, nourishing food, comfortable sofas to sprawl on, and plain but spacious bedrooms. The other guests were families like us. And yet not like us, not as we were then. We withdrew, every evening, into a corner where we sat silently nursing our glühwein, eyes lowered, avoiding all overtures to friendship. There seemed to be a competition to see who would say goodnight first and retir
e to bed. We all kept announcing, how tired, how exhausted we were, the skiers because of the strenuous skiing, me because of the tough paths I’d walked, trudging through the hard packed snow. On Christmas Eve, scarcely able to bear the festivities, Don and I were in bed at nine o’clock. On New Year’s Eve we all, except Finn – I don’t even know what he did – went straight from dinner to our rooms. Don was asleep, or feigning sleep, it comes to the same thing, before I had undressed.
Yet that day, I’d felt hopeful. I’d walked to Inner Alpbach on the back road, as far as I’d ever gone, and as I turned to retrace my steps three people came out of a farmhouse onto the balcony and they lifted trumpets and blew a fanfare which echoed exuberantly all around. They saw me and waved, and one of them shouted something – I think it was the German word for ‘practising’. The sun was brilliant and hit the snow-covered waves of mountain peaks with such glittering force that I couldn’t look back at them even wearing sunglasses. Everything seemed so clear and clean and immaculate, that my spirits rose in response to my surroundings – and I’d arrived back at our hotel smiling. One by one, when the others came to join me, I tried to explain to them how the scenery and the weather and the laughing trumpet players had made me feel, but I was met with dull-eyed boredom and blankness. Molly struggled to be interested, but not for long. Don said he was glad I’d had a good day, but in a voice so funereal that it sounded like a mournful comment. Finn said he couldn’t imagine enjoying such a dull walk – it sounded pathetic to him, and he felt sorry for me.
In the morning, New Year’s Day, I felt sorry for myself. I woke early, dressed, and then slipped out of the hotel. It was still dark but there was an early-morning mass in the church so it was lit up and the light spread across the churchyard warming the bleakness of the ice and snow. The graves had little lights on them and I saw black-dressed women with shawls over their heads standing in front of some of the stones and crossing themselves before hurrying into the church. I wanted so badly to be with them.
*
We are buying a goat to send to Africa. By ‘we’ I mean our school, of course. Each class has to fundraise to find the money to do it. ‘Where is the goat?’ Paige wanted to know. ‘Can we see it first?’ The aim is to send twelve goats. ‘Will they be friends or relations?’ asked Paige. Dutifully, I explained what had been explained to me: the goats will be sent through an organisation called Farm Africa. The families who get the goats will be very grateful because a goat will provide sustainable support. I didn’t tell my class that bit, since ‘sustainable support’ would be meaningless to them. Easier to say that a goat can be milked. ‘So can a cow, and a cow is bigger and the milk is nicer,’ said Sophie, who has an uncle with a farm. That led on to a discussion about which animals can stand the heat. They all know Africa is hot. I said that my daughter was in Africa, in a country called Zambia. I told them that she was living in a grass hut and helping the villagers to build a mill. Paige asked if she had a goat. I said no, but she had mentioned that she had seen some goats and some chickens and a pig. Then Sita suddenly asked if my girl’s skin had turned black with the sun. I said no. She kept out of the sun as much as she could, but anyway her skin would not turn black. ‘Or she might die,’ Paige said. No, I said, she wouldn’t die. And then we began drawing goats.
*
Every time I see, or hear, from Lynne I seem to hear from Pat and Ruth. I don’t think this is a conspiracy. Maybe at first, afterwards, they discussed me with each other – in their place, I would definitely have rung the other two – but not lately. I like them phoning now I am living alone. Before, with Don there, I felt uneasy, in case he thought either that I was shutting him out or that I was telling my friends what I might not be telling him. I couldn’t really enjoy their calls if he was around, and they could tell that I wasn’t relaxed. The calls went on for ages, another thing that exasperated Don if he was within earshot. He would remark that for the last forty-five minutes I had repeated myself endlessly, and that what I had repeated was trivia. He said if the other end of the conversation was as banal as this end then he doubted the intelligence of both parties. He used to say this indulgently, finding my chatter quite amusing, rather liking this image of me as a fluffy empty-headed female when he knew I was nothing of the kind. But afterwards it annoyed him. He became contemptuous. ‘It’s Lynne,’ he’d say, when he’d answered the phone (or Pat, or Ruth). ‘I’ll go to my study, I’m sure you’d rather be private.’
Ruth is the one I hear from least, but in many ways she is the one I am closest to, even after all these years, when ‘close’ doesn’t mean the same. She isn’t at ease on the telephone, always sounds hesitant, and I seem to do most of the talking. She listens, carefully. Sometimes there is a long silence when I’ve finished unburdening myself, and then she will come up with an opinion, or a comment that surprises me with its insight. Ruth didn’t phone, afterwards. She wrote. At the time, I hardly read her letters – they meant no more than any of the others and I couldn’t be bothered with any of them. But I kept them, and when I finally read them, preparing to reply, which I felt was a duty, I was struck by how Ruth had expressed her grief and sympathy. There was not a cliché or a crass remark in the pages she wrote, and I appreciated her sensitivity.
Ruth is an English teacher, head of department in a big comprehensive. She works very hard and has little spare time so we hardly ever meet. When our children – she has two, both boys – were young we used to make the effort to get together at weekends and try to talk above the chaos of five children playing. Now, it tends to be only about three or four times a year, and I go to her more than she comes to me. She was calling to suggest that, for a change, she should come to me after an appointment she had at the Eastman Dental hospital, which is only a bus ride from me. She’s coming tomorrow. Another excuse to stop this.
*
Ruth’s face was numb – she’d just had root canal treatment. She looked worn and tired, and I don’t think this was all due to her dental troubles. It felt good to be concerned about someone, extending instead of receiving sympathy for a change. I enjoyed fussing over her, though she didn’t want me to. There are never any searching questions from Ruth, à la Lynne. She just waits, and because she waits I eventually fill the chasm with the sort of confessions Lynne longs for.
‘I miss Molly,’ I found myself saying. ‘I want her to stay where she is, but I miss her.’
Ruth nodded.
‘She had to get away, it was the right thing to do, I encouraged her, and she loves it there, but …’
‘You need to see her, to check she’s managing as well as she tells you she is,’ Ruth said.
‘Don was appalled that she was going.’
‘He didn’t see he was part of the reason she needed to leave?’
‘No.’
Then I told Ruth that Don had not forgiven Molly for going off to Africa. There had been such an awful scene when she broke the news that she was going ahead with her original plan to work, unpaid, for a charity in Zambia. Don hadn’t liked the idea anyway, when she first came up with it, but then, afterwards, he was shocked that she still intended to go. He couldn’t understand how she could even think of going so far away. He asked if she didn’t realise what she would be putting us through – the worry, on top of everything else we were suffering, would crucify us. She wouldn’t be safe, he said, she’d fall ill, with malaria or typhoid, or some other tropical disease. Molly said she wouldn’t. She would have all the vaccinations, take all the preventative drugs, be very careful what she ate and drank. Don said that wasn’t the point, surely she understood how we would feel. She didn’t reply. I told Ruth that I’d never forget how she turned and looked at me, so beseechingly, and I’d told Don I thought she needed to get right away and that we should not try to prevent her. She was old enough to make her own decisions. ‘Dad,’ Molly said then, ‘I have to get away. Somewhere completely different.’ ‘It won’t help,’ Don said, ‘you can’t run away from what’s happened. Yo
u’ll take it with you, it will be worse on your own with no one near you to understand.’ Molly said that was what she wanted, no one knowing about her. She said she had to believe she could start again, and be happy. He said she could learn to be happy again with us, and then I told Ruth how he’d added, ‘If happiness is possible, which I doubt,’ and Molly said, ‘Exactly, Dad,’ and left the room.
There were other scenes, though, mercifully, I couldn’t remember them in detail. Don kept on and on at Molly, telling her how she was disappointing him, and that he would have thought that she, of all people, would have wanted him to establish the truth of how Miranda was murdered. Molly couldn’t bear the word ‘murdered’. She told him that he was the only one who couldn’t accept that the whole tragic thing had been an accident, with no one to blame except Miranda herself. When she said that, Don was so furious he trembled with rage. I told Ruth how frightening it had been to have to witness these exchanges before Molly left.
I’m sure she had no idea how upset her father was during them. All she saw was his anger, not his distress. But I knew that Don’s rage hid the real depth of his emotion – he was simply terrified of losing another child. So was I, but I at least knew there were more ways than one of losing them. He had turned Molly and Finn against him through his obsession with discovering what he thought of as ‘the truth’. They didn’t want to hear him any longer. They thought he was mad.
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