Meeting Lydia

by Linda MacDonald

Marianne backed away from her chopping board and covered her head. His words felt like physical battering, each one touching an old wound from when she was young.

  “Stop … please stop this.”

  Johnny waved his arms at her, mimicking. “What’s with all this fucking drama queen nonsense? Eh, Mari?”

  She backed further into the hall. “You never shout at me like this. This isn’t you. We don’t do this. I don’t want to row.”

  “Bit fucking late for that now! Sort yourself out. I’m off!”

  Johnny pushed past her, grabbed his jacket from the living room chair and left.

  Later, Marianne sat on the bed, red eyed, surveying their room and all its familiar objects; her cluttered dressing table and the chair on which Johnny layered his discarded clothes until he couldn’t find anything and was forced to tidy up.

  She had never told him about the Brocklebank demons, so he was not to know why she went all prickly about Charmaine. When she was younger she managed to hide her insecurities. Now she felt that she could never match up, no matter what.

  And with the resurgence of all the angst from the past came a feeling that her earlier happy married life had been one long game where she had acted a part rather than been herself. It was all a charade, a play in which she trod the boards of domesticity and spoke the words of a dutiful wife. She couldn’t be herself because herself was flawed and damaged from a long-lost time when the bullies reigned.

  No one knew how different she felt from the human race. She saw other women with their husbands and children doing the family thing as if it was the most natural way to be. But for her it had always felt strange; it was pretence. She was a fraud masquerading as wife and mother when she was undeserving of the role. And Johnny didn’t know all this. Didn’t know about the early pain and insecurity that was rooted in a time so long ago, and that he had been living with an imposter for over twenty years.

  She had never told him how unworthy she felt of his love. How she didn’t understand why he thought she was beautiful and why now that she was getting old, undeniably old, all the doubts that had been containable until now, resurfaced and fuelled her jealousy.

  How do you take away the pain of a lifetime? How do you stop feeling invisible and becoming ever more so with the M word hovering like a spectre? Long gone days of never being good enough were flickering through a cobweb curtain casting shadows on the here and now. She had forgotten about Abi and Susannah and Edward and The Rivals and the times later on when she was confident and secure. Only the hurt remained, snapping away under cavernous rocks in the deep. She knew it was this that was behind the crisis they were having, and it was time to face it; to tell him; to be free from it all. But she didn’t know how to begin.

  14

  Missing Lydia

  Marianne walks into the form five classroom in Brocklebank’s main house, hoping to see Edward. It is the first day of the new academic year. The September sun is shining through the window and for once the wooden desks with all their criss-cross etchings look welcoming.

  The drama of The Rivals has long since passed, but she hasn’t lost completely that sense of awe and total admiration that she feels for he who was Lydia.

  He would never guess, for she keeps it under wraps, making no approaches beyond an occasional ‘hello’. It is enough that he is there, an intellectual yardstick against which she measures her performance.

  Although everything at Brocklebank is familiar now and she has little of the dread of old, she is still somewhat apprehensive on this particular morning because Sally Mainsford has left and she wonders if she will once again be the only girl in the form.

  Seeing Edward again will keep some sense of continuity.

  But as the morning wears on and the little classroom fills with old familiar faces, and a new girl too, there is still no sign of Edward. At first she is concerned that he is ill, but soon discovers he has gone forever. And she never said good bye.

  Edward had moved up to Waterside Grammar School some thirteen miles away, following the footsteps of many exBroklebankians, including Sam Rycroft and Susannah Colquhoun.

  Marianne had spent her whole school career to date perpetually losing people who mattered. She had forged relationships with one friend after another only to find that a year or two later, they would be off into the world beyond Brocklebank and she would be left to make the effort all over again. It was a fact of her life. Indeed she thought perhaps this was the way things were – would always be – and each time it happened, she learned to keep a bit more of herself back in self-protection.

  She shed no tears at the loss of Edward – carrying on with the business of getting to know Christine Trapp who already had breasts and attracted the attentions of the boys in ways unfamiliar to Marianne. But Edward would never be forgotten and somewhere in the deepest recesses of her heart there would always be a place reserved for him.

  A new teacher contributed to making it a year of exciting educational challenges. Mr Ottoway taught them Greek myths once a week in Latin lessons, produced a fortnightly school magazine, Narrat, and wrote a play in French called Le Trésor de la Pont de Derwent for them to perform out of doors in various locations in front of a mobile audience. Although very young, he had all the makings of a fine teacher and was some compensation as a replacement for Jenky who had left at the end of the previous year.

  Meanwhile Mr Russell – who was always full of ways to make maths relevant and interesting – organised the bi-annual traffic census down on the main road, the fifth formers working in one hour shifts in pairs, sitting among the long summer grasses on the verge. He also masterminded a decimal currency survey throughout the town, requiring pupils to deliver questionnaires door-to-door and then collect them the following day. Both provided a mountain of data to use in lessons, in addition to making the pupils feel important and giving them a sense of responsibility.

  Marianne taught Christine how to make Hawiian leis with fallen rhododendron flowers, and in June they walked the grounds garlanded with pink, purple and magenta blossoms, showing off in front of the boys. It was a time far removed from those early years of fear.

  Towards the end of the summer term, Marianne was even chosen to play tennis for the Ospreys in the school house matches. She was drawn against Ian Dangerfield of Falcon House and Mrs Malaprop fame. Edward had been a Falcon. Perhaps if he had still been there, she might have played against him.

  Boys gathered on the upstairs balcony outside one of the dormitories that overlooked the court, Barnaby Sproat among them acting as umpire. Ian Dangerfield stood on the baseline on the side of the net by the rockery and with the cricket field beyond, yellow hair and glasses shining in the sunlight. Although quite small, he was very sporty and was expected to annihilate Marianne in two straight sets. An air of confident nonchalance seemed to emanate from him as he took position to serve.

  But tennis was Marianne’s game. She may have struggled against the boys in hockey and athletics, but she had been honing her tennis skills since the age of five when she and Alice tried to keep the ball alive for as long as possible on the small concrete square next to the main court. When she graduated to the grass, she quickly adapted to the surface. She had a natural double-handed backhand long before such was made acceptable by Bjorn Borg and Jimmy Connors. It made the ball spin low over the net and brought gasps of disbelief from those watching.

  Against all expectations, she took the first set from Ian Dangerfield.

  The watching Falcons started to jeer and hiss and Ian Dangerfield woke up to the fact that he was being beaten by a girl, raised his game and just managed to secure the second set despite Marianne having two match points.

  In baking sunshine the third set was played out to a balcony that was full of schoolboys, crammed together in an impossibly small space like baby swallows just before they leave the nest. Each game was closely contested and several of the rallies went into double figures.

  “Come on Hayward!” half of them sh
outed. It was strange listening to them urging her on, calling her by her proper name for a change, even if they couldn’t quite manage ‘Marianne’.

  Teachers began to show interest, popping out of the main schoolhouse and hovering by the sidelines. This was to be Marianne’s downfall. Suddenly more self-conscious, she started making errors. The serves were less well placed; the low backhands became less accurate and in the end Ian Dangerfield squeaked a win. But Marianne had won a personal battle and gained respect. Barnaby Sproat congratulated her on such a close match and asked if she would umpire his game against Richard Zammit.

  In this more positive atmosphere she thrived and was top of the class again. But Edward wasn’t there to share it all and sometimes she would glance wistfully over to the desk where he once sat, wishing him still there.

  Then she too left this fortress of early education, and for the next thirty-two years the good times were lost as she somehow got stuck in the dark memories of the third form with the bullying and the name-calling and the hockey and being cold, and the ghastly dinners and being last in the races except for the fat boy.

  It wasn’t until 1974 that she had her next brush with Edward, and not much of a brush at that. While in the lower sixth, she and two of her friends signed up for a residential science course at Waterside Grammar School.

  Edward Harvey was just a name on the programme; a participant on the course in the geography and geology section while Marianne and her friends were chemistry and biology. Marianne would have quite liked to find him; to say ‘look at me now, Edward, I’m not quite the shy retiring violet I once was. I’m ever so trendy and cool in my long flowing skirt with t-shirt, beads and hippy-hairstyle.’ But she was back to worshipping the likes of the blond Adonis (or at least his friend Johnny), and she had a feeling that Edward would be very conventional and conservative and would not be impressed by her pseudo-rebellion. Also, her teenage passions for Sam and Johnny were hormonally charged with thoughts of love and sex and a world away from the innocent admiration she had once felt for Edward. So motivation was not with her to the extent that she was going to put herself out to find him, and some residual shyness still lurked.

  On the last day the whole conference gathered in the hall. There was a buzz of anticipation and shafts of dusty sunlight filled the air. Marianne was sitting in between her friends Sasha and Jane and behind a group of girls wearing the Waterside uniform.

  Feeling uncommonly brave, Marianne tapped one of them on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me. You wouldn’t know Edward Harvey, would you? I mean is he in here? I used to go to school with him years ago.”

  A girl with long brown hair turned round and smiled. “Edward? Yeah …” she scanned the hall. “Yeah, that’s him over there in the middle, longish dark hair, in a blazer … That’s him getting up now.”

  As she spoke, the person she said was Edward started walking across the hall towards the exit. Marianne wouldn’t have recognised him. He was taller than she anticipated and unexpectedly attractive; no longer little Edward and with an air of ease and confidence. But it was a fleeting glimpse, a side-on view that she still remembers all these years later. She momentarily thought about getting up and running after him, but the conference speaker was about to take the stage and she would have had to clamber across half a dozen young people. He would be gone by the time she reached the door – and what would she say, anyway. There wasn’t time.

  After that non-event, Edward Harvey was consigned to the history file; Marianne was to be cast adrift in a world without him and never in her wildest dreams did she expect to see him again. Indeed, their meeting again was so unlikely that it never crossed her mind. But she never forgot him completely, and although years would pass without him appearing in her consciousness, whenever she was reminded of Latin lessons, she remembered his awesome brainpower, his resolute determination and the fact that he never called her by her nickname in all the time she knew him.

  15

  The Perfect Woman

  “Mentally you’re the perfect woman for me,” said Johnny to Marianne after another evening in the pub, supposedly with colleagues after an Open Evening at his school. He was now back home, sitting slumped in his favourite armchair, legs outstretched, fingers clasped behind his head, a half finished glass of beer on the table beside him, and on the floor a plate smeared with the lurid red-brown leftovers of a Chicken Madras takeaway.

  The room was softly lit to flatter with an uplighter and table lamp. Marianne was opposite him on the sofa, legs tucked under her comfortably as she had been for most of the evening. Newsnight was on the television, with Jeremy Paxman in heated debate with Ken Livingstone, but the sound was switched off. She froze. Immediately she began to wonder if he thought she was letting herself go.

  “Thanks,” she said, narrowing her eyes and giving him a hard stare. A year ago he would never have made a remark like this. Perhaps (oh scary thought!) she had unknowingly made that transitional jump between relative youth and the beginning of the decline towards the grey perm and the shopping trolley.

  Since the row when Johnny had been so hostile, they had both been walking on eggshells, avoiding provocative comments. Conversation had been functional and cool. Neither had raised the Charmaine topic again, though they were both aware of it skulking under the surface. Neither had apologised.

  “At least you’re mentally perfect when you talk to me,” continued Johnny.

  “Are you trying to make some point? If so, I’m missing it.” She shifted her weight and grounded her feet like a plane lowering its undercarriage. She was aware on the TV, of Jeremy’s animated expression, his coat-hanger shoulders and Ken’s benign grin as he delivered some no-doubt unsavoury fact about congestion charging.

  “There you go making assumptions. It’s a compliment,” said Johnny.

  “It’s a funny sort of compliment.”

  “What if I met a woman that had your brains, your mind, and was blonde and curvaceous?”

  “Are you saying blonde and curvaceous is your idea of perfection?”

  “I’m talking stereotypes. Just saying, ‘what if?’ Not necessarily what I think.”

  “Have you met a woman like me plus the blonde and curvaceous?” She was thinking of Charmaine.

  “Perhaps.”

  “You’re trying to provoke me.”

  “So easy … So easy to reel you in!”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “We were talking about wife-swapping.”

  “Leave it, Johnny, go to bed.”

  “You shouldn’t be so easy to wind up.”

  “There is no such thing as the perfect woman. She is a myth.”

  “Somewhere, there must be the whole package.”

  “If there was, she wouldn’t give you a second glance.”

  “Ouch … No need for that!”

  “So you can insult me and I can’t do the same?”

  “I didn’t insult you, I just implied that you weren’t blonde and curvaceous – which is a fact, not an insult. I didn’t say I wanted blonde and curvaceous, or that I wished you were any different from what you are.” He breathed out audibly and his voice softened. “You know I think you’re beautiful, even …”

  Marianne finished the sentence in her head. Even though you’re not. Out loud she said, “Even what?”

  “Even though you don’t realise it.”

  “Hm,” she wasn’t convinced.

  “Let’s go to bed,” said Johnny, “and have wild, passionate sex, like we used to do. No children in the house to interrupt. No one to have to set a good example to. Just us. C’mon Mari.”

  She wondered if this was his attempt at making amends, but she was feeling hot again and sex was the last thing on her mind. She began to think of the bits that weren’t as toned as they once had been.

  “This is your idea of foreplay, is it?”

  What had happened to the long, slow rituals of their younger days? Frolicking on the rug in front of the f
ire, sharing a bath, or being taken unawares in the kitchen? Holly had happened, that’s what. Holly, and taxing jobs, and age and familiarity. Was it all past now? All that lust and excitement? Were the next few years to be full of excuses, avoidance and headaches until Johnny, discouraged by rejection, resigned himself to magazines – or to the likes of Charmaine?

  “We can foreplay upstairs,” continued Johnny teasingly.

  “You’ve been drinking.”

  “But not a lot.”

  “Hm.”

  “Really.”

  “You know what it says in Macbeth.”

  “I’m fine, honestly.”

  Marianne wondered if being with Charmaine had promoted the desire, leaving her to conjure up a performance.

  Johnny leapt from his chair and sat close to her on the sofa, head on her shoulder, blue eyes twinkling and a silly grin on his face. This was Johnny being nice, being charming. The Johnny she fell for all those years ago.

  Marianne so badly wanted things to be normal again and she knew that sex would be a quick way to smooth the ruffles. If she pulled away now, it might be days before there was another chance.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s been a long, hard, day. C’mon Mari? How about it? You know you want to really?”

  At last she met his gaze, relaxed a little and grinned.

  He traced a line down her cheek. “I’ve only ever wanted you.”

  How could she resist?

  Afterwards, they lay entwined like otters, Johnny fast asleep contented, and Marianne, eyes open, still wondering if a woman other than herself had been the prelude to this union.

  16

  Friends Reunited

  Friends Reunited seemed a strange world in 2001 before the launch of the other famous social networking sites. It had its own chat room of faceless voices spewing out the daily drudgery of kids’ misdemeanours and late night pizzas, weekend drinking and Sunday morning hangovers, and the husband who’s always watching soccer, and the wife who doesn’t care any more and slobs around the house in a shapeless t-shirt and leggings. Vacuous chatter, taking up where they left off yesterday; an exclusive club, suspicious of newcomers. ‘Hello, how are you? Went shopping this morning … Marni was sick last night … Must go and put the supper on … Sons squabbling … Hubby watching Manchester United … Hi; bye; till tomorrow darlin’!’