by Unknown
The camera cut to the nervous-looking face of a middle-aged man who seemed familiar from somewhere or other.
‘I’m not sure I’ve got one, really,’ he said. ‘I distrust easy answers to complicated social problems. But I can’t help thinking that if Sir Giles Whittell really believes that young girls are getting pregnant as a matter of financial calculation, he should ask himself who created this individualist culture in which anything except the selfish struggle for maximum financial gain is literally unintelligible. I’m also, well, amused by the belief that the very rich can only be encouraged by giving them even more money while the very poor should be encouraged by taking their money away.’
I started clapping.
‘Hear hear.’
There was no other applause at all and the speaker was immediately subject to barracking from all sides. Then I remembered who he was. He was the man I had sat next to during Alan’s débâcle at the ICA. I had the impression that I had been rude to him. I felt a stab of remorse. I went to the desk in the corner and searched through a pile of postcards. A grotesque nude by George Grosz. Too explicit. The Annunciation by Fra Angelico. Too austere. Watercolours of British mice. Too twee. The Flaying of Marsyas by Titian. Too much like the way I felt. The Reverend Robert Walker Skating on Duddingston Loch. That was about right. I turned it over and removed some dried Blu Tack, a reminder that it had once been attached to the wall above my desk. ‘Dear Caspar Holt,’ – I was stuck and looked back at the screen where he was now murmuring something about nursery education and being shouted down – ‘I was the woman who was rude to you at the ICA. I’m writing this while watching you being sensible and brave on TV. I’m sorry that the one time I met you I behaved not very well. This isn’t very coherent but you’re saying the sorts of things I want to say but never think of at the time. Yours, Jane Martello.’ I found a stamp in my purse and went straight out and posted the card. I needed some fresh air. The cold of the evening felt good, insofar as I could feel it.
Seventeen
‘Do you remember how you used to come here to play?’
Although it was bitterly cold, Martha had insisted that we walk round the garden together. We stood by the giant oak tree, inside whose vast, hollow trunk we had hidden as children. I rubbed my hand over the mossy bark.
‘Here’s where Claud and Theo and Paul carved their initials. We thought they’d last for as long as the tree. They’ve nearly disappeared.’
We walked on in silence. I felt that I was treading in the footsteps of my childhood. The barns, the fallen trees, the stone walls, the herb garden, the flat patch where there used to be a swing, the skeletal branches, emaciated shrubs. When the wind blew Martha’s jacket flat against her body, I realised how thin she’d become.
‘Are you all right, Martha?’
She stooped gracefully to pluck up a weed.
‘I have cancer, Jane.’ She held up her hand to stop me from saying anything. ‘I’ve known for a long time. It started as breast cancer, but it’s spread.’
I took her chilly hand in my own and stroked it. The wind rushed at us from over the brow of the hill.
‘What do the doctors say? What are they doing?’
‘Not much. I mean, they don’t say much, let me draw my own conclusions. And I’m not going to have chemotherapy or radiotherapy or anything, except pain relief of course. I’m sixty-seven, Jane, that’s a good time to get cancer: it advances more slowly.’ She laughed. ‘I’ll probably die of a stroke at ninety-three.’ Then, more soberly: ‘I hope so. I can’t imagine Alan managing very well on his own.’
‘I’m sorry. I’m really so sorry, Martha. I wish that there was something that I could do.’
We walked back towards the house hand in hand.
‘Martha,’ I said abruptly, ‘do you wish that the body had never been found?’
She looked at me strangely.
‘That’s not a question that makes any sense,’ she replied at last. ‘We found Natalie, and that’s that. If you mean, was I happier before that, then the answer is yes, of course I was. I was even happy, sometimes. When Natalie was found, I had to start the mourning all over again. That old raw grief.’
She pushed open the back door.
‘Let me make you some tea.’
‘I’ll make it,’ I said.
‘I’m not dying yet, Jane; sit down.’
I sat at the kitchen table, and noticed that Martha had made piles of all the children’s books she had illustrated over the years. There were dozens. I started leafing through them. The pictures were familiar, of course, my own children had grown up on them, but still as wonderful as ever: funny, crowded and very colourful. She loved drawing large families: energetic grannies and harassed-looking parents and hordes of minute children with scabby knees and messy hair. There was lots of food in her illustrations — the kind of food that children love, like sticky chocolate cake, and wobbly purple jellies with bright yellow custard on top; mountains of spaghetti quivering on plates. And she loved drawing children running wild: over one double page spread a line of tiny, paunchy toddlers marched in red wellingtons; on another, children’s faces peered joyously through the branches of trees. I paused at a drawing of a small girl holding a daisy chain, while a stupendous orange sun set behind her. It was unusual for Martha to draw children on their own–usually they were outnumbering and overpowering the adults.
‘Before we found Natalie, Martha, were there ever times when you’d go a whole day without remembering her?’
It was the wrong question, I knew that, I knew the answer, yet I also knew that we had to talk about Natalie. Martha poured boiling water over the tea leaves, and lifted a large cake tin down from the cupboard.
‘What do you think?’ She put a ginger cake and knife on the table. ‘For a long time I felt guilty. Not just about her going, or dying, or whatever, though that too, of course. About our relationship.’
I waited.
Martha poured two cups of tea and sat down at the table. ‘My last memory of Natalie is of her shouting at me.’ She looked into her tea, then said, ‘No, that’s not what I mean really. My last memory is of me shouting at her. Of course we used to have lots of trivial rows, cigarettes on her breath, that sort of thing. And she would give me this slightly distant smile that she always had when she was being told off and it would make me angry. It’s the sort of row that is a part of being a parent, but this one we never made up. Sometimes I wonder if she died hating me.’ She gave a sad smile. ‘When Alan and I came back from that awful anniversary cruise and arrived at the big party, I wanted to talk to Natalie but there were so many people I had to see and I didn’t and then it was too late.’
‘Of course you blame yourself and feel guilty, Martha,’ I said, ‘and of course you shouldn’t.’
I remembered experiencing a shadow version of the same feeling when my mother died. In the weeks after her burial I’d been in an agony of loss, remembering all the times I’d criticised her, been contemptuous of her, not appreciated her, not thanked her enough, not had that final settling of accounts, when we’d somehow have reconciled ourselves to all the raggedness and imperfections in our relationship.
‘You have to remember the whole life, Martha, and not just the last weeks or days,’ I said, lamely.
‘I do. But the last quarrel somehow summed up all that was wrong with us.’ Martha looked at me steadily. ‘I’ve never said this to anyone, Jane.’
‘Said what?’
‘I’ve never told anyone about my quarrel with Natalie.’
‘What was the quarrel about?’
Martha picked up the knife and cut two slices of cake. She must have baked it for me when she heard I was coming. ‘Drink up your tea; it’ll get cold.’
I sipped obediently.
‘It was about your father and me, Jane. Our affair.’
I went on sipping my tea, but my hands felt very large and clumsy around the tea cup. Carefully, I put the cup back on the table, with an effor
t so that it wouldn’t spill.
‘Go on.’
‘I had had a brief affair with your father in the summer of the previous year. He and your mother were not getting on very well, and you know what Alan was like. He was away in America for much of the summer. I was lonely; all the children were growing up and I felt my life was slipping by.’ She stopped and made a sharp gesture with her hand. ‘Enough, I don’t want to make excuses for myself. I’m not proud of it, and it didn’t last long. We never told anyone. Christopher didn’t tell your mother; I never told Alan. And we were very secretive about it. We never wanted to hurt anyone.’
She took a very small, neat bite of cake.
‘Natalie found a letter Christopher had written to me. She must have gone through all my drawers. She confronted me with it: she wasn’t angry exactly, that was the funny thing, more triumphant. She said that I pretended to be so much better than Alan, and really I was just the same. She said she was going to tell your mother and Alan. She said’ — Martha’s voice was dry — ‘that it was her duty.’
Martha stopped, and the kitchen felt very still as she waited for me to speak.
‘Did she tell anybody?’
‘I don’t think so. Not that I ever knew.’
‘But she might have told Alan.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why are you telling me now, after all these years?’
Martha gave a weary shrug. ‘Perhaps because it’s a good time to uncover family secrets. Perhaps because I will die sometime soon, and I needed to confess, and I thought you might understand. Perhaps because you’re the one who’s rooting around for the truth.’
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t know what I was thinking. I tried to imagine my father with Martha, but I could only picture them as they were now: old, with papery skin and liver spots and stubborn habits. Martha turned back the pages to the drawing of the little girl and the setting sun.
‘That’s Natalie,’ she said. ‘I know it doesn’t look like Natalie, except the mouth maybe. But it’s how I always think of Natalie. She was a loner, you know. She snooped round other people’s lives and she had boyfriends and went to parties, but she was always alone. I was her mother, but sometimes I felt she was a stranger. All the boys, oh they pretended to be grown up and independent, and they shrugged me away or were rude to me when their friends came round, but they needed me and they were always so transparent. Natalie, though, I often felt rejected by Natalie. I’d always thought we would have an intimate relationship, two women in a house of men.’
She stood up and cleared away our plates.
‘You make those phone calls you were talking about; I’m going to get those cuttings for your garden.’ Pulling on her jacket, she picked up a pair of secateurs and disappeared into the garden.
Mechanically, I did as Martha suggested, and hunted through my address book until I came across the name of Judith Parsons (née Gill, one of my best friends from school). She was surprised and thrilled to hear from me: how was I in London, how were my sons, isn’t it awful how time flies, yes it would be wonderful to meet up — sometimes she and Brendon came to London and then she’d be sure to give me a ring. As we were about to say goodbye to each other I asked, casually, guiltily, oh, by the way, did she happen to have Chrissie Pilkington’s phone number. I was going to be working near where she lived for a few days and thought it would be jolly to catch up with her. Judith’s enthusiasm dampened slightly. Yes, she had the number, but she was Christina Colvin now: I jotted the details down in my address book, dialled again.
Christina Pilkington-now-Colvin was not so happy to hear from me. I could understand that. It had been twenty-five years since we’d last seen each other. I brought back memories she must have wanted suppressed. But she reluctantly agreed to have me round for tea later that afternoon. I wrote down directions, and just before I put the phone down she said, suddenly, ‘My husband will be there, Jane.’
Martha loaded the cuttings into the back of my car, then gestured towards the pile of children’s books on the table.
‘They’re for your grandchildren, Jane. One day.’ And then, at last, we hugged each other.
The Colvins lived just outside Oxford in a large neo-Tudor house, all timber and diamond windows, with a swimming pool in the garden, and an avenue of rhododendrons. I’ve always hated rhododendrons. Bright flowers and shiny leaves and nothing lives under them.
I would not have recognised Chrissie. When I knew her she was thin and tall, with startling blonde hair always piled on top of her head. Now she seemed shorter — or perhaps she seemed shorter because she was so much wider. Her substantial body was packed tightly into smart white trousers and a green shirt, and placed on high heels. Her wild skinny beauty was quite gone. I could see she was anxious beneath her make-up. We shook hands; neither of us could decide whether to kiss each other on the cheek, and as we were havering, a stout man in a grey suit came out of the house, hugged me warmly and said over the top of Chrissie’s half-hearted introduction:
‘How lovely for Chrissie to see an old schoolfriend. I’ve heard so much about you, Jane.’ I doubted that. ‘Tea? Or would you like something stronger?’
‘Tea would be fine, thank you.’
‘Right. Then I’ll leave you two lovely ladies to talk. You must have so much to catch up on.’
‘Ian’s a company director,’ said Chrissie, as if in explanation. We went into the house. I could hear a dutiful tinkling from a piano upstairs. ‘My daughter, Chloe. Leonore’s with a friend.’
We sat in the living room, among plumped up cushions and prints of flowers and landscapes. Chrissie didn’t offer me tea.
‘Why have you really come?’ she asked.
‘Have you heard about Natalie?’
She nodded.
‘That’s why I’ve come.’
Chrissie looked nervously round, as if her husband might be standing in the doorway. ‘I’ve nothing to say, Jane. That was over twenty years ago, and I don’t even want to think about it, let alone talk about it.’
‘Twenty-five years.’
‘Twenty-five years, then. Please, Jane.’
‘When did you last see Alan?’
‘I said I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it.’
‘Does your husband know that when you were fifteen you had a sexual relationship with Alan Martello? Is he understanding about it?’
Chrissie started and looked me in the eyes. I felt sorry for her, but triumphant also because I could see that she was going to talk to me. She shrugged.
‘I haven’t seen Alan since Natalie disappeared. I don’t expect you to understand, but he was so… glamorous, if you can believe it. I was just a kid, and he was this famous man and he gave me things and told me how beautiful I was.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘It seems strange now, doesn’t it? When he wanted to sleep with me I didn’t stand a chance.’ She looked down at her perfect red nails and then said, almost smugly, ‘He nearly ruined my life. Why don’t you blame Alan, not me?’
‘Come on, Chrissie, don’t exaggerate. It was only sex. Didn’t you enjoy it at all?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think about it.’
‘So why did you tell Natalie?’
Chrissie looked surprised.
‘I didn’t. She followed us to the woods once. And she saw us, you know.’
Chrissie had an air of prim triumph.
‘Did you see that she was there?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what happened?’
‘What do you expect? Alan started sort of wailing. He crawled over to Natalie and he started tugging her skirt, and saying that she was his darling girl and how could she ever forgive her old dad, and you know what men are like, and how Martha would suffer. It was pretty embarrassing really.’
‘What did Natalie do?’
‘She just walked away.’
‘What did Alan do then?’
Chrissie
looked straight at me. For the first time I could see the provocative heedless look of the adolescent Chrissie.
‘He pushed me back onto the ground and fucked me. I think it had excited him. That was the last time, though.’ There was a chilly silence. ‘Now you can tell my husband all about it.’
‘You went out with Theo after that, didn’t you?’
‘Ask him.’
‘What about Natalie? You know she was pregnant, don’t you?’
‘I’ve seen the papers.’
‘Who do you think was the father?’
‘I don’t know. Whatever his name was—Luke McCann, I suppose.’
As I left, Chrissie’s successful husband waved cheerfully. ‘Do come again soon, Jane, it’s always nice to see Chrissie’s old chums.’
From the car, I saw Chrissie, a middle-aged woman wearing too much lipstick, and I saw what must have been Chloe, the piano-playing daughter, standing at an upstairs window. She looked just like the Chrissie of twenty-five years ago. That must have been hard for Chrissie to bear. I drove away with an embarrassing screech of tyres, and all the way back to London I thought about sex and its strangeness and embarrassments.
Eighteen
Against all expectations, I felt that my analysis was making me less judgemental than I had been. Instead of brooding about Martha and about Chrissie, or conducting a sterile debate about it all in my mind, I could talk to Alex about it. He wasn’t shocked by the things I was telling him and he wasn’t pruriently interested and although he could be critical of me, scathing indeed, I never had to apologise to him. When it came down to it, I believed that he was on my side. I trusted him. Well, who else could I trust?
The day after returning to London, I arrived at Alex’s house with bundles of Christmas shopping, like a traveller passing through. I leant the bags against the couch. Occasionally, as I talked, I ran my fingers along their rumpled plastic, a sensation of normality. I needed it. When I told him about Martha and my father, I almost thought he might laugh, it seemed so excessive and sleazy and pathetic. But he didn’t and he didn’t offer any stupid sympathy. And when I described the encounter with Chrissie, I thought he might be irritated by this new example of my amateur detective work. I was a bit apologetic and defensive as I repeated what she had said about all the awfulness with Alan and Natalie and I was surprised when Alex only nodded with interest.
