A Girl Called Flotsam

by John Tagholm

  It was hard to imagine Eileen Palmenter as a child of the 60s. Even though she had been a teenager for seven years of this iconic decade, the events that made it famous appeared to have passed her by. She never referred to her childhood and what few photographs existed of her during that time might just as well have been taken in the 50s. They showed a pretty girl, more often than not in a dark cardigan above a calf length skirt. She had grown into the age she appeared to be in these pictures.

  ‘I imagine you’ll be going tomorrow,’ her mother persisted.

  ‘Which gives us both supper and breakfast. Show me where we’re going.’

  There was a strong wind and the rigging on the aluminium masts were sending out a high pitched percussion and the plastic flaps on the waterfront cafés were breathing hard in response. The hills behind were already pink tinged with the late afternoon sun and Beatrice watched her mother hold her hair in place as though it might snap.

  ‘I’m sure you haven’t just come to see me,’ Eileen Palmenter shouted as they made their way along the waterfront. Beatrice thought about lying, but changed her mind.

  ‘I’ve got some work to do in Marseille tomorrow.’

  This information seemed to satisfy her mother who took her arm. ‘So you thought you’d fit me in.’

  This is the way it always is, thought Beatrice who, over the years, had become used to this game and had learned not to take it too seriously, regarding it as part of the friction generated by entering the gravitational pull of her mother’s world. She waited until they had arrived at the restaurant before speaking again. It was on the corner of the front, with beautiful views over the jumble of yachts.

  ‘I’m going to see where Joseph Troumeg had his first restaurant,’ she said. ‘Did you ever eat in any of his places?’

  ‘Well, there’s a question,’ she said. ‘You may not remember, but your father didn’t really do that sort of thing.’

  Beatrice didn’t. ‘But what about you? You must have had some suitors since who’ve taken you out?’ She watched her mother turn her head as though she was averting her eyes from an unpleasant sight.

  ‘I don’t know about that. I seem to recall going to the place he had in Mayfair. It was rather good, as far as my memory serves me.’

  ‘And were you taken?’

  ‘Why does that matter?’

  ‘It’s something you’ve never talked about. Dad, that is and what happened afterwards.’ The conversation had moved more quickly than Beatrice had expected, or indeed planned and she could see that her mother was glad of the distraction of ordering. Her friends’ mothers seemed to fall into two categories, those who confided in their daughters and those who competed but she felt her mother, whilst certainly not the first, was not really the latter either.

  ‘It’s all in the past, anyway,’ her mother said, folding the napkin over her knees, clearly wanting to change the subject.

  ‘Have you had a serious relationship since Dad?’

  ‘Heavens, what is this, an interrogation?’

  ‘It’s just something you’ve never talked about and I was interested.’

  ‘And some things should remain private.’

  ‘Why? Lots of my friends have conversations like this with their mothers.’

  ‘So you’re criticising me now, are you?’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose there is a correct way of being a mother. Anyway, how would I know?’

  It was the crack that her mother had been waiting for. ‘Indeed. The chances of you becoming a mother seem to be receding by the day, even though I can’t keep pace with your changing boyfriends.’

  ‘Yes, there have been rather a lot,’ conceded Beatrice. ‘But these are modern times, mother. That’s what happens.’

  ‘Is it? Doesn’t seem to make you any the happier.’

  ‘Were you happy with Dad?’

  ‘Really, darling. Of course I was.’

  ‘Tell me about him.’

  Eileen Palmenter broke off to instruct the waiter on how to fillet her fish and Beatrice was once again reminded of the steeliness of her mother. It was clear she wanted the subject dropped, but Beatrice pushed her further.

  ‘Where did you meet, for example?’

  ‘I must have told you, surely?’

  Beatrice shook her head and wondered if her mother would continue.

  ‘Why this interest, anyway?’

  What Beatrice would like to have said, as the masts of a large yacht moved gracefully across the windows, was because it might help me understand where I get my attitude to men from, but she didn’t. ‘I’m just surprised that I don’t know, that’s all. Was it love at first sight?’

  ‘What an old fashioned thought. No wonder you still can’t find a man, if that’s your criterion. I took some persuading. There’s your answer.’

  ‘And what about sex?’

  ‘Really, darling, we’re about to eat.’

  ‘I thought the sixties brought sexual liberation for your generation of women.’

  ‘I’m not sure we should be talking like this. It doesn’t seem right.’

  ‘I can’t remember you or Dad telling me the facts of life, but maybe you did.’

  ‘You didn’t need telling. The boys were queuing up from the start and as I’ve told you many times before, I’ve lost count of the men in your life.’

  Beatrice had interviewed many people in her role as a television director and had learned the most important rule was to listen to answers instead of planning the next question. What she was hearing from her mother, apart from evasion, was implied criticism, her inability to find a husband, her sexual precocity, the inappropriateness of her queries. This was all familiar territory, but Beatrice had never before sat her mother down with the intention of interviewing her.

  ‘And who told you the facts of life?’

  ‘Certainly not my parents.’

  ‘Were you a virgin when you married?’

  Eileen Palmenter stopped eating and regarded her daughter coldly. ‘I don’t think I should answer that question. Suffice to say, you certainly won’t be. I think you should pay more attention to your life than ask impertinent questions about mine.’

  ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘You were always difficult, Beatrice. From the start. At school you wouldn’t conform and I had no one to help me once your father had gone. We expected a lot more of you.’

  Beatrice, who had heard this before, kept her counsel, fascinated that her mother had evaded answering any of her questions, merely deflecting them and criticising her instead.

  Beatrice knew, of course, that she could never change her mother but it saddened her that there was so little real interest in her life, that the valve only operated one way and that was in favour of her mother. It had grown dark by the time they had finished the meal and the wind had dropped so that the boats had stopped agitating at their moorings. She told her mother that she had checked into a somewhat cheaper hotel nearby and they air kissed before Beatrice wandered off to find such accommodation. It was only now that she turned her mobile back on to see four missed calls from Harry Wesley and a text. She sat in a square opposite an enormous fountain and listened to the hypnotic sound of the water and considered that her mother might be disappointed and angry that her life hadn’t been like her daughter’s. Perhaps Eileen Palmenter’s relationships with men had been unremarkable and her envy had been converted to poisonous and undermining criticism. Sometimes Beatrice thought that her mother was talking about a different child when referring to her, an imaginary creation that bore no relation at all to Beatrice.

  She took out her phone and considered listening to the messages and reading the text but for now she had no energy and slipped it back into her pocket and went over to the fountain where she flicked in a euro and watched it sink to the bottom and join the other coins.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  When they begin the descent from the hills they can see the port below them and the tiny figure on the
dock, although the distance in between takes several hours to complete. He holds her hand as they come nearer, for both now recognise the woman who is waiting.

  She watches her mother come alive and begin to run towards her, her face caught between tears and joy. She holds her in her arms and the boy looks on and her mother sees this and embraces him too, telling him that his father has returned safely but feared both of them had been lost. When her mother has recovered and dried her tears, she takes the boy’s hand again to affirm the reality of their new status. That night a feast is prepared with the boy’s father and they talk of the incident in the distant town and how they had survived, the days and nights on the hills and both parents can see that there is a bond between their children. She eats the lamb flavoured with herbs but her worry of what she has to say means the food settles badly on her stomach. She sees her mother looking at her, knowing there is a problem and she waits for her to ask, dreading the moment when she has to admit that she has lost the brooch. When the time comes something strange and wonderful happens, for on hearing the admission her mother simply throws back her head and laughs. Once again, she takes her hands and tells her that it is she who is really precious, more important than gold and garnet, who could not be replaced and that although the brooch could never die, it could also never live. She could see that the boy is watching, the boy who’d known no mother. He is older and she feels that his face tells all there is to know about him, that in its various shapes, the forehead with its single line, the eyes that look without blinking and seem always about to ask a question, the mouth and the chin that signal both strength and sympathy, she can gauge him.

  The next day her mother declares to her that she would make another brooch to replace the one that had been lost on the hills. She shakes her head and explains that perhaps there was a reason why the brooch had been left behind. That night she had dreamed of the beautiful stone set in the round, silver shield, lying in a crack between the dry, white rocks, ignored by the animals, impervious to the storms which in summer and winter shrouded the hills and made them the loneliest place in the world. In the dream she saw the spring flowers grow up and around the red stone so that above it there waved stems of deep chalky blue and vivid yellow amidst the thick smell of thyme. She had moved on from what the brooch represented, the dream told her and she sees that her mother understands.

  The horsemen who had destroyed the market remind her of the impermanence of things, that life can change in the short time between a father’s hug and his lifeless body falling in the river. And with this comes the awareness that her mother had embraced this uncertainty and not allowed it to crush her spirit. The older she becomes the clearer her mother appears, as though she is walking away from her shadow and can more easily perceive her shape.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Beatrice woke to the sound of her mobile vibrating on the bedside table. She unwound herself from the sheets thinking that she was outside and brought her hands to her face expecting it to be cold to the touch before moving them down to the ache in her back. She fought hard to recapture the dream which she knew had taken place in the open and was tantalisingly close to her. She was conscious that she was feeling positive, that something pleasant had taken place even though she didn’t know what. She looked at her phone to confirm that the sender was Harry. In the midst of her dislocation, she ran through the four messages he left, the first three reiterating his apologies for his behaviour. The fourth had her leaning forward on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Oh, I’ve just been thinking,’ the message ran, the voice quite different from that of the penitent apologies, ‘that it’s hardly likely that the old woman – Marguerite I think you told me her name was – would not have asked Troumeg’s mother more about the war and her son. Women aren’t like that, are they? I have a hunch you should check again.’

  She lay back on the bed and extended her right leg which she examined in detail, bending it towards her before extending it again. It was an involuntary gesture and after flexing the leg a couple of times more, decided to respond to the message.

  ‘Thank goodness,’ were his first words on hearing her voice. ‘Can we start again?’

  ‘I wasn’t aware we’d started in the first place.’

  ‘You’re right, of course you’re right.’

  ‘So what’s this about women and what they talk about?’

  Happy to get on to safer ground, she could hear his tone change.

  ‘Wouldn’t you have thought that if Marguerite and Odile had known each other for more than half a century that two things of such importance as children and the war would have cropped up more than once?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Beatrice said. She lay back on the bed and straightened her other leg, pointing her toes forward as she used to at ballet classes when she was six. ‘Do you have any other insights for me?’

  ‘Only that you fascinate me.’

  She thought about this for a moment. ‘How can you say that when you hardly know me?’

  ‘I’m not sure that’s true…’

  ‘What, a couple of muddy afternoons on the Thames and a less than successful lunch in Paris,’ she interrupted.

  ‘I wonder I needed that much,’ he said.

  This caused her to hesitate before replying, because it opened an arena of debate which had troubled her for a long time.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, I thought I could tell a lot about you from the very start.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t really know and I don’t really care,’ he said. ‘It’s not something I want to examine too much. Something about the shape of your face. I just want to be given the chance to find out if I’m right.’

  Beatrice had heard versions of this from several men, but there was an ingenuous quality to Harry Wesley’s approach which was quite different, not arch or suggestive and for some reason it made her place her legs together, toes in line and raise them above the bed.

  ‘What did you have in mind? Lunch in Marseille might not be a great idea.’

  ‘Is that where you are?’

  ‘No, I’ve just gone ten rounds with my mother in Toulon and I’m about to have more of the same over breakfast.’

  ‘You must tell me more,’ he said and Beatrice thought that he sounded as though he meant it.

  ‘Thank you for your suggestion about Marguerite. I will certainly speak to her again. Later today I’m off to Marseille to continue my pursuit of Mr Troumeg.’

  ‘I’m glad we’re talking again. Call me and let me know how you get on. And I’ll think about a safe venue for us to meet.’

  Afterwards, whilst showering and then padding around the small bedroom getting dressed, Beatrice weighed up the call trying to assess what she thought about Harry Wesley and whether he really was unlike the other men who had come and gone in her life. She couldn’t give her thoughts any shape but she was conscious, like an animal is of a another creature hidden in the undergrowth, that something was moving just out of sight.

  ‘Did you sleep well, mother?’ she asked in the breakfast room, bright in the morning sun.

  ‘As much as one ever does, these days. I’m a light sleeper and those wretched gulls don’t help. When are you off?’

  ‘I’m in no hurry. Did you think on about what we were talking about last night?’

  Her mother picked up her napkin and spread it on her lap. ‘I suppose you have to be like this in your work. Never taking no for an answer.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true, I do have to be like that. Some people call it a skill.’

  ‘Or a very bad character trait. Anyway, the answer is no.’

  ‘I just wondered how you knew that Jim Palmenter was the right man for you. Was it his looks? Or his sense of humour? I mean, what did you think when you first saw him?’ Beatrice asked this whilst taking a croissant and layering it with jam.

  ‘He appeared perfectly ordinary to me, if you must know. He was a serious man.’ She wiped her
mouth as if to zip it shut.

  ‘It’s not a lot to go on, is it? I mean, did you kiss on the first date?’ Beatrice felt disengaged, the impersonal interviewer that her mother had earlier scorned. ‘How does one know these things?’

  ‘Well, you clearly don’t. Your father proposed to me on holiday in the Cotswolds.’

  This much Beatrice knew, having been told the story several times. ‘But how long after you met was that?’

  ‘Several months. In some ways he was quite romantic.’

  ‘Quite romantic is rather damning him with faint praise, isn’t it? You must have slept together before you got married?’

  ‘You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you? Is it something you’re working on? The sex lives of our parents, or some such nonsense.’

  ‘It’s a good title. I must remember that. No, it’s more personal.’ Beatrice waited, for here was another opening for her mother to pursue, if she’d heard.

  ‘Your father was a good man and let’s leave it at that. Now, wasn’t it Joshua you were currently going out with?’

  Beatrice was surprised that she remembered, although experience had taught her that her failure to remember, or her misremembering, was nothing more than an act.

  ‘Yes. Joshua. You’re right.’

  ‘Well, how’s it going?’

  ‘It’s gone.’

  ‘Not again. I can’t say I’m surprised. What do you do wrong?’

  ‘I can tell you what he did wrong, if you like?’

  ‘It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?’

  Beatrice had expected this. ‘He never used to listen to me.’

  ‘And they were all the same, were they?’

  Eileen Palmenter’s defence was impenetrable, as Beatrice knew and full frontal attacks were rebuffed with ease and so she tried a lateral approach, conceding ground whilst she regrouped her forces. ‘Maybe that’s the problem. I always choose the same sort of man.’

  ‘I hardly think so dear. You can’t have two men more different than a classic car expert and – what did Joshua do, something in design, wasn’t it?’