by Beth Morrey
‘Clucking bell,’ said Mel, handing me the ribbon. ‘This must be Bob.’
‘So sorry,’ I murmured, scarlet with embarrassment. ‘Do carry on.’ I backed down the aisle, dragging a reluctant Bobby, to join Angela, who was wheezing with laughter, her head in her hands.
Sinking down beside her, I yanked Bobby under my seat as the music started up again and Mel and Octavia joined hands. Their celebrant stood in front of them, dressed in tails, vaguely recognizable – an actor, perhaps. Mel said they’d done the official registry office thing the day before, and this bit was for their friends, for show. At least Bobby had contributed to the spectacle. I breathed in and out very slowly to calm myself.
‘Why is it two girls?’ asked Otis, loudly. Angela clapped her hand over his mouth. ‘For Chrissake,’ she hissed, ‘you’re from Stoke Newington! Get a grip.’
As the actor started a little speech introducing us all, I drifted off, eyes wandering again, remembering the seminars and concerts I’d attended here, sixty years before. This, at least, hadn’t changed, and the familiarity was reassuring. Melanie was wearing a long cream dress, her hair in a chignon. She looked like me, though of course in a more youthful incarnation, which was one of the reasons she made me uncomfortable, like I was the ancient, corrupted attic version. Octavia, shorter and squatter, was wearing a mauve velvet suit and kept turning and pulling faces at her friends in the front, who already seemed to be getting stuck into the wine. My hand itched for a glass.
Several people got up to read and it immediately felt like we were back in Falcon Yard at the St Botolph’s party. At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet. Excruciating stuff – one of the women actually kept her eyes closed throughout her reading, like Little Miss Chatterbox. I could feel Angela’s shoulders shaking again. Bobby yawned widely. Otis was under his mother’s chair, playing with the plastic car park. Then the actor said, ‘and now, let us sing,’ and sat down with a flourish at the piano. I recognized the tune a little, some folk song. Someone in front of us turned and handed us a piece of paper with the lyrics printed on it, and as the words crystalized in front of me, the small crowd around us stood and began to warble, timidly at first; then, as more joined in, with an added confidence and clarity. As the chorus began I suddenly remembered the song, one Mel used to sing as a teenager in her room, tapping her guitar, the untouched toast I’d made on the bed next to her. The memory roused me, and I found myself singing along with everyone, with no need for the piece of paper I held:
‘Every day I need to say I love you.’
Melanie and Octavia were smiling at each other as they sang, Angela was bellowing along beside me and Otis was piping up occasionally from under the seat. Even Bobby was panting along in time, her brown eyes gazing into mine.
‘I love you.’
Did she say it, or did I imagine it? Leo never said it. He never called to say it, nor said it before he left home every day, nor said it in bed, nor even wrote it in Latin for me to translate. And because he never said it, I felt I shouldn’t either. Should we have? Would it have changed anything? Some things were better left unsaid, particularly between Mel and I. But the way she and Octavia were looking at each other, it didn’t look like there was anything unsaid between them. Whereas I’d spent most of my life not saying things I wanted to. I love you. Stop. No. It was a mistake. Please don’t go. I don’t want to. I wish I hadn’t. I didn’t know what else to do. I love you. Why did I hold it all in? Maybe Bobby had it the right way round after all.
Blinking back the tears, I gave myself a shake as the song finished and the guests sat down again. Mel and Octavia exchanged rings, made the promises, and it was all over. Two waitresses appeared with trays and everyone surged forwards to grab a drink. We all mingled together and I was grateful I’d brought Angela and Otis, and even Bobby, so I didn’t have to stand with my back to the wall, sipping too quickly because there was nothing else to do. With them around me, I was able to smile at passers-by, and even exchange a word or two. Several guests bent down to chat to Bobby and of course she lapped up the attention, snaffling several canapés as she charmed everyone.
Eventually I made my way to congratulate my daughter and her new wife. Mel turned as I approached, both of us eyeing each other warily. Our first meeting since those terrible words in my kitchen – she hadn’t even come down at Christmas last year when Ali and Arthur were over, citing long-standing plans with friends up north. She and Ali had never been particularly close anyway, and her remote affection for Arthur seemed confined to cards or vouchers on special occasions. Had I passed on my coldness, and in turn deprived Arthur of his aunt?
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, as I hesitantly stepped forward to kiss her cheek.
‘It was a lovely ceremony. Sorry about Bobby.’ I gestured to my dog, who was wolfing a cocktail sausage. Hearing her name, she looked up and wagged her tail.
‘That’s all right,’ said Octavia. ‘It was a diversion. She’s a gorgeous dog. Have you had her long?’
‘Just a few weeks,’ I replied. ‘We’re still getting to know each other.’ Bobby coughed as the sausage stuck in her throat, her hacking tramp-yack echoing across the din. I considered giving her a kick.
‘I love dogs,’ said Octavia.
‘So do I,’ seconded Mel. ‘But you never did, as I recall?’ She looked at me curiously and I felt myself redden again.
‘I’m looking after her as a favour to a friend.’ I gave Bobby a faux-affectionate pat and simultaneously yanked her lead as she craned towards a passing waitress.
‘Well, she’s very welcome,’ said Mel. ‘We’re having dinner in College Hall later, she’s got a bit of space next to you to sit. Try not to let her escape again though.’
‘Thanks, I’ll manage,’ I replied, wondering how she’d behave around all the food. I returned to Angela, who was holding a glass of champagne and picking her teeth with a cocktail stick.
‘I’m having a great time,’ she announced, snatching a sausage roll. ‘That guy who did the ceremony, he’s in Midsomer Murders, he’s got all sorts of gossip. And that woman over there does documentaries for BBC Two. And I just overheard two people quoting Chaucer to each other. The collective IQ of this room must be through the roof.’
I glanced around. ‘Where’s Otis?’
‘Some professor took him off to the library, said she’d show him a secret staircase,’ she said, draining her glass. ‘Come on, let’s see the famous gardens.’
We went through the French doors at the far end and out onto a small lawn.
‘This is shit,’ said Angela, gazing around with a curled lip. ‘I thought they’d be much bigger.’
Wordlessly, I led her further until we came out into Newnham’s sprawling, ravishing grounds. Slowly we wandered around, our feet crunching on the gravel paths as we admired the sunken rose garden, the apple orchard, the wild flower meadow, the rigorously pruned parterre, all set against the burnt amber of the Queen Anne buildings, bathed in late spring sunlight. Angela sank into a wooden swing bench, gazing at the great oak tree that dominated the main lawn. Bobby lay down on the grass and wriggled ecstatically on her back, paws waving gaily.
‘Yeah, this is all right,’ she said. She looked sideways at me. ‘Must be hard, finding somewhere nice to live after all this. Even your house is a bit of a dump by comparison.’
I squinted at the glinting windows of Peile Hall. ‘The rooms aren’t that nice, or at least they weren’t in my day. Cold. Not many home comforts. Bit of a mausoleum, you might say.’
Angela grinned. ‘Is this where you met your husband then?’ she asked, drawing patterns in the shingle with her foot. She was wearing wedge heels rather than the usual boots.
‘No. Newnham is a women’s college. Leo went to King’s,’ I said, walking away from her and back towards the wedding party, who were now milling on the lawn taking photos. Otis came running out of one of the buildings. He cannoned into me and I caught him in my arms, smiling down at him as h
e beamed up at me.
‘I saw a secret room!’ he said. ‘It was a bit like your attic, but with books. I looked at some of them, they were really boring.’
‘I’m not sure Plato’s Republic is really his thing,’ said the woman who was following him. She looked exhausted.
‘No,’ I agreed, ‘He’s more of a Goodnight Moon man.’ Thanking her, I led Otis back to his mother, already deep in conversation with a small woman who in profile looked nearly as old as me. As we drew nearer, and she turned around, I felt a stab of shock. The years rolled back and once again I was the gauche student on one side of the wall, listening to the tinkling laugh and the clinking glasses and the gramophone and watching a girl leaning against a boy under the stars. Odi et amo. It was Alicia Stewart.
Chapter 19
Alicia had aged well; her hair still golden, though peppered with pale grey, her eyes that startling cerulean, though now behind wire-rimmed spectacles. The fine network of wrinkles across her face added character to the rather flimsy prettiness.
‘This is Dr Hargreave,’ said Angela. ‘She said she was at Newnham during the fifties. I thought you might know each other.’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I think we might.’
So often I’d brooded over Alicia Stewart and her Marilyn sashay, even though I hadn’t clapped eyes on her in nearly fifty years. The beginning is the most important part of the work, and Leo and I hadn’t had the best, with that platinum spectre hovering. What if she’d never met the viscount? Would she and Leo have swanned down the aisle, would she have looked after his children, put her career aside, mopped up after him and played the dutiful wife? Was it her heart that whispered back to him?
I bumped into her once, in London, sometime in the late sixties. I was shopping on Oxford Street, she came out of Selfridges and we both hailed the same taxi. I only hailed it because I wanted to escape, but when she saw it she wanted it, and waved, and naturally the driver stopped for her. When she saw me her arm dropped, she smiled and said, ‘Milly Jameson! How funny to see you here.’ I held my bags in front of my body and said, ‘Milly Carmichael now.’ She looked confused for a second, but then her brow cleared.
‘Of course! Leo! What a dear man, how lovely.’
I’d thought: she doesn’t even remember what happened. It meant so little to her, and yet for me, and for Leo too, I feared, their brief relationship had a clanging echo that was still reverberating, like a stuck gramophone. So I took the taxi, and didn’t tip the driver when he dropped me off at my big house, the one I shared with Leo and our children, and never saw her again until that moment in Newnham gardens, when Angela unwittingly introduced us, and we gazed at each other, both searching for the girls we used to be.
She held out a hand, as blue-veined as my own, and I took it.
‘Milly Jameson,’ she said, and this time I didn’t correct her.
‘Why are you here?’ I blurted, then caught myself. ‘I mean, how do you know Melanie?’
‘I don’t, not really,’ she replied. ‘But I supervised Octavia when she was at Clare and we stayed friends. I’m so pleased for them, they’re such a wonderful couple.’
The idea of Alicia – tinkly little Alicia, falling over drunk at parties – as a Cambridge fellow was disconcerting. I’d assumed she’d married her viscount, or some other member of the aristocracy, settling down to a lifetime of giddy soirées. Yet here she was – an academic. Feeling sands shifting beneath me, Bobby pulling on her lead, I made an excuse about her needing a walk, and moved away to collect my thoughts. Sinking down onto a bench once I was out of sight, I pressed my temples and tried to focus, then felt Bobby lick my hand.
‘It was someone I used to know,’ I muttered. ‘Someone I didn’t like much.’
Bobby put her head on my knee and growled in an experimental way.
I laughed weakly and ruffled her fur. ‘No need, thank you.’
Alistair often tried to get me to join those ‘social media’ sites where people post pictures of themselves – he said it was a good way of keeping in touch, knowing what everyone was up to. But I looked at some of the pages he showed me, and they were dreadful, a virtual room full of people boasting and angrily agreeing with each other’s political opinions. People my age relied on cards and letters to keep up to date, though of course in reality we never really bothered, except at Christmas – I suppose those ghastly round robin letters are our equivalent, crowing to the masses in the hope someone might be interested or impressed.
So I had no real idea how my contemporaries’ lives turned out. I assumed many of them went on to have illustrious careers – Cambridge is like that, and sometimes it was better not to know as it could make one feel inadequate to hear of so-and-so winning the Booker, or getting a CBE. But I didn’t know the personal details either – who married who, whether they had children, where they went on holiday, when they got ill. All those women I lived with for years, sharing bathrooms, cooking, studying together in the Cambridge bubble, and then a starting pistol popped and we all scattered. Not for the first time I felt ashamed of my limited interest in the outside world – in people who weren’t Leo. I should have known about Alicia. It would have saved me the pain of so many bitter assumptions. I always felt the only reason she didn’t want Leo was because she was after a title. But it seemed Dr Hargreave was the only title she was interested in.
The photographer tapped me on the shoulder, shaking me from my reverie, and I put on my best mother-of-the-bride smile, though I must have looked shaken and distracted, holding limply to Bobby’s lead. Once the photos were done, we were called back into the College Hall for dinner. The Hall was exactly as I remembered, the side facing the lawns spanned by huge leaded white mullioned windows, intricate cornicing picked out in white on the walls, and the far end dominated by enormous oil portraits of Newnham’s great and good – other people who’d achieved far more than I had.
Throughout the dinner I could see Alicia further down the table, talking animatedly, eating and drinking profusely. There was a certain look to Newnham women – the ‘gimlet eye’, Leo called it, which was apt given Alicia’s love of cocktails. She had it and I suppose I did too, despite us being such different breeds. I was disturbed by the affinity, didn’t want to feel it. But, making my way down several glasses of wine, I began to remember things I hadn’t thought of in decades – the night we climbed out into the gardens to walk in the wet grass in bare feet, passing a bottle of pilfered Black & White between us and hiccupping with laughter over the tale of its acquisition; her habit of miming putting her head in a noose whenever we saw Newnham’s gorgon of a housekeeper stalking its corridors; the flick of her wrist as she wiped lemon rind around a martini glass. These memories, bubbling to the surface as the entheos took hold, while the old animosity sank into the depths.
Kicking off my shoes and stroking Bobby under the table with my foot, I watched my nemesis.
‘Just an old friend,’ I murmured, passing Bobby a morsel of beef. She reared onto her haunches to snatch it from my fingers.
As if aware of my gaze, Alicia’s eyes roved across the table until they met mine. She inclined her head and raised her glass, and then, after a second’s hesitation, she stood up and moved across to join me.
‘I wondered,’ she said, ‘if you’d like to go and see our old rooms?’
We walked along the long corridor together, Bobby trotting at my heels.
‘I’ve lived in Cambridge for years and never been back,’ Alicia explained. ‘At least, I’ve been back for meetings and pudding seminars and whatnot, but never gone back to Peile. Cedric, my husband, and I taught at Clare and – well, there’s been no reason. But seeing you, it made me remember. There might be no one in, I suppose, but it’s worth a try.’
So we knocked on the door of Alicia’s room and no one answered. Then we knocked on the door of mine, and it was opened by a student who was nonplussed to see two old ladies come to visit, but gamely let us in and even went off to the Junior Comm
on Room while we stood in the doorway and looked around.
It was in better shape than when I lived there, but similar enough to spark a blaze of nostalgia – the thin high windows that the gentlemen used to climb out of after curfew, the narrow creaking bedstead, the scratched writing bureau, the smell of furniture polish and old ‘boring’ books. Days and nights spent in this room, shivering and reading under a blanket and lying awake watching the trees and hanging up a ripped dress in the cupboard. That fleeting, explosive period was so intense, it seemed a lifetime of formative experiences were crammed into that room. Even after all those years, it still felt like home.
We stood and stared for a while, soaking it in, and then Alicia, looking straight ahead, said, ‘I was so sorry to hear about Leo. Such a lovely man. Quite brilliant.’
‘Yes,’ I said. I couldn’t look any more, so turned and walked back down the corridor. She shut the door and followed, and as she caught up with me, she began to sing:
‘Mr Barman, bring me a drink,
Make it so strong that I can’t think,
Give it two shots, and I’m in clover,
Then keep ’em coming til the night is over …’
She finished with the demonic cackle I remembered so well and I found myself snorting with laughter.
‘You always were a lousy singer,’ I said. ‘Bloody awful din.’
‘You always were a lousy drinker,’ she replied. ‘You could never keep up.’
‘No,’ I said slowly, ‘I never kept up with you. You said you and your husband taught at Clare?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘He’s a mathematician. Terribly clever, nothing like me!’ She cackled again. ‘We’re both retired though, now. Pottering around Cambridge like a pair of old fogeys.’
