April 2014
‘How many bedrooms would you like?’ asks the lady with a neckerchief and a Dr Seuss snout.
Catherine looks at Simon, wanting to reassure him of their fun future ahead.
‘One?’
He already has three children, she doesn’t want him to think she is desperate for another, which she most definitely isn’t.
‘I was thinking three at least, the kids will need to visit.’
‘Oh, of course.’
The woman with the funny nose is surprised the couple standing in front of her didn’t discuss such a fundamental decision before stepping into her immaculate office, but then again she did notice He was wearing a wedding ring and She wasn’t.
‘Well I have this delightful four-bedroomed apartment on the picturesque banks of the River Cam, with the city centre and leafy Midsummer Common on your doorstep, which offers a unique – and exclusive – lifestyle, for just £3,500 a month.’
Simon spits coffee back into a brown cardboard cup and Catherine shoots him a mock-disapproving look behind the estate agent’s back. Catherine can’t disapprove, or complain about the kids visiting. She is just happy to be with him, to tuck her nimble hands around his middle-aged washboard waist in public. This is a rare Saturday when they will spend a whole day and a whole night together after Simon told Laura he was going to a triathlon training camp. It is the first time they can truly test what their future will be like. This time they didn’t go abroad for a dirty weekend wrapped in hotel sheets, away from life and distractions. They’re shopping with the shoppers. They’re doing what people do at the weekend together, and doing it hand in hand. Simon is still anxious about being spotted, even though he’s in another town, but he’s more careless now their decision is made. They just have to get the building blocks in place.
Catherine looks at the spec. It certainly looks exclusive, but she knows they won’t be able to afford it, especially not on top of Simon’s existing share of the mortgage and child maintenance.
‘It looks beautiful, but at £3,500 a month it’s not going to happen. And given that I know they’ve been empty for months, I think you know it’s not going to happen at that price too. So, what’s the best you can do for us, erm…?’ A charming pixie looks at the estate agent’s chest for a name tag but can’t find one.
‘Morag.’
‘What’s the best you can do for us, Morag? I’d love for us to come to an agreement.’
Morag seems to have been placed in a trance by the tall but delicate woman standing in front of her who has elfin features but a huge sway.
Catherine can be curt and demanding and aggressive and charming in equal measure, and it turns Simon on like crazy.
*
Maya jogs up the familiar windowless staircase to Velma’s apartment and knocks on the door. She hears a shuffle of slipper shoes on the other side and Velma opens it, sending the wind chimes by the window into a frenzy as she does.
‘Good afternoon Miss Oh Just Maya. Do come in.’
A book on the coffee table whirls in the wind, like a flip book revealing a trick, and Maya brings it to safety in her hands as she walks into the apartment.
‘How are you, Velma?’
Velma gives a mischievous smile and heads into the kitchen, ready for her big reveal.
Maya looks at the cover of the book in her hand. Josephine Baker in pearls, a bra top and a banana skirt ready to do the danse banane. Maya thinks of Nena and misses her. They haven’t exchanged more than a couple of vague texts since Nena’s birthday last month, and Nena still hasn’t been to Hazelworth to see Maya’s new flat. Maya is wondering what happened to her friend. Why she’s gone off grid since falling in love. She knows she’s been busy with her new TV career but surely Tom would encourage her friendships?
‘I’m fine but are you OK, honey?’ Velma asks.
Maya snaps back into the room and looks up at her new old friend.
‘Sure, I was just looking at this. Is it any good?’
‘Wow, what a woman, what a life! It’s the third biography I’ve read about her and every time I fall more and more in love. I saw her at Carnegie Hall you know, with the boys’ father.’
Maya realises she knows nothing about Velma’s husband. She had kept wanting to ask about him, but she’s almost too scared to because she knows the answers will be sad. And Velma hasn’t ever volunteered the information, so interested is she in other people. But now, as the kettle boils, Maya feels she can be candid.
‘Who is Conrad and Christopher’s father?’
‘Was. Who was their father.’ Velma pours hot water into the chipped Royal Albert teapot and smiles. ‘He passed a long time ago, the boys were only nine and seven, they don’t remember much about him.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Me too. I’m sorry we only had twelve years together, we were so excited about our life ahead of us because it took us so long to find each other. But we crammed a lot into those twelve years.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘We met on the subway, would you believe…’ Velma gives Maya a knowing look. ‘On the 6. I was going from 116th down to Spring Street and he got on at 103rd. We had from East Harlem to the East Village for him to ask me out.’
Maya looks at Velma with surprise, still standing in the middle of the room with her floral bomber jacket on.
‘You wouldn’t ask him?’
Velma lowers her head and looks up over her thick milk bottle lenses conspiratorially at Maya. ‘I was quite traditional back then,’ she whispers.
‘But you’d lived all over the world!’
‘I know, I was a very modern thinking journalist, but in matters of the heart, I was a traditionalist. I’d just gotten back from the Paris bureau, Parisian women are always asked out.’
Maya knew Velma was compassionate, but now she understands why Velma’s magnified eyes are quite so empathetic when it comes to falling for a stranger on a train, and she feels a glimmer of hope.
It can happen.
There’s so much she wants to know.
‘What did he look like?’
‘He was small like me – I have no idea how we made two such tall and handsome beefcakes!’
Maya laughs.
‘And so proper-looking! He had silver hair in a side parting and bright eyes, and he was always so well turned out. Polo necks and suit jackets, even when we were going to the grocery store. We were so different! He was neat and tidy, I… well, look around you, I’m a…’
‘Collector,’ says Maya with a polite smile, removing her jacket and throwing it onto the folds of velvet and boucle piled on the sofa.
Velma brings a tea tray through the open doorway of the kitchen. The cake in the centre of it stands like a dome of deliciousness. Layers of vanilla sponge, jam, custard and custard cream all topped with a layer of pale green marzipan and a delicate pink rose perched on top. It doesn’t look like one of Velma’s usual rustic loaves or cobbled together cakes. It is precise and pretty.
‘Wow!’
‘Yes Maya, I think your baking style might just be rubbing off on me. I saw it in one of last Sunday’s papers and thought it was very… You. Isn’t it darling?’
‘A prinsesstårta from Sweden! I’ve heard of them, but never had the fortune to try one.’
Maya’s Excellent General Knowledge skills stretches to cakes and where they come from.
‘Oh Maya, you’re so clever, I’d never heard of it, but I thought you might like it.’
‘It’s beautiful. I can’t wait to try a slice!’
Maya rubs her hands together in anticipation.
‘So tell me about how he spoke to you. What was his name?’
‘Duke Diamond.’
‘Duke Diamond? Wow.’
‘Well, when a handsome stranger extends his hand and says that name in such a gentlemanly fashion, you’re kinda hooked there and then.’
A knife slices through a soft pink rose bud and into verdant marzipan. Both women stop to admire the cross-section shades of pink, green and white.
‘So pretty!’ marvels Maya.
Velma continues, full of pride and excitement, for her cake and her story.
‘We talked all the way to the East Village, about how I had just gotten back from Paris, my time in Buenos Aires before that, about how he worked at the United Nations Secretariat, and he said he’d help me settle back into New York life. I didn’t dare tell him I knew those streets like the back of my hand, I was swept up along with it. And when we got off together at Spring, we stayed together from that moment.’
‘That’s amazing. And it explains a lot,’ Maya says, sinking teeth into custard, jam, sponge and whipped cream. ‘Heaven!’ a full mouth exclaims.
‘Isn’t it just?’
Silence sweeps across the apartment, chasing out the wind, as Velma and Maya eat.
There are so many questions Maya wants to ask, but one stands out more than all the others.
‘Do you mind me asking how Duke died?’
‘Not at all, darling,’ says Velma, as she clumsily wipes cream off her lip with a shaky hand. ‘We knew straight away that we wanted to settle down together. I wasn’t getting any younger, and Duke was ten years older than me, so I happily gave up being a correspondent and took the agony aunt job so I could stay in New York where his work was. We got married, had the boys, my work fitted in nicely around motherhood, and we had this lovely life in Brooklyn. Until…’
Maya looks terrified. ‘What happened?’
‘One day he got in the car to go to work, drove across the Brooklyn Bridge onto FDR Drive, and had a massive heart attack at the wheel. He was only fifty-five. And when the police came to our house, I just knew it. The hardest thing I ever had to do was tell the boys. It was even worse than hearing it for myself.’
Maya’s eyes are so full of tears she knows the next blink will send one tumbling. She puts her plate down on a pile of books with caution.
‘I’m so very sorry, Velma.’
‘Thank you,’ Velma pats Maya’s hand in comfort. ‘Me too. Sorry for the boys mostly, he was such a wonderful father.’
Velma puts down her cake plate and pours tea.
‘At first I was angry. Marriage and kids caused me to lose my adventurous spirit and I became a bit more timid. When Duke died I felt hopeless, and I kinda resented him for that. But that passed. The boys grew up. I travelled again, went to the West Coast, back to Europe. To London.’
‘You didn’t ever fall in love again?’
‘Nope.’
Velma stirs the tea.
‘Do you think then that there really is only one person for everyone? One true love, and Duke was yours?’
‘Hell no!’ Velma laughs, as she brings her hands together in a clap. ‘I have received enough correspondence and heard enough tales from the heart to know people can fall in love many times, sometimes as deeply and passionately as the last, sometimes even more so. There isn’t just one person for everyone. That’s nonsense.’
‘But you travelled all around the world and met Duke on your return to New York.’ Maya takes her teacup and looks down into it, feeling bad about what she’s about to say. But if there’s anyone she can be candid with, it’s Velma. ‘And there’s been no one since.’
‘I’m sure I could have fallen in love anywhere if he was right. But that’s the thing. The connection and that feeling of everything being right is so rare and only happens a few times in life. For me it happened once, but it can happen more. I have widowed and divorced friends who have gone on to love again, and it’s a very real love. I have friends who have fallen in love when they shouldn’t have. But it happens. I just know that those feelings, those connections, those moments… they don’t come along all that often in life. And they need to be acted upon. I didn’t let suitors pass me by out of some widowly duty to Duke, I was just unlucky not to have had that feeling again. You have to make the most of it when it does come along.’ Velma gives Maya another of her kind, knowing looks.
‘Oh I wish Train Man would ask me out like Duke did you. He’s barely noticed me.’
‘Well times are different now, honey. I might have even asked Duke had it been another day.’
The cake is so delicious their plates have almost cleaned themselves.
‘Another slice?’
‘No thanks, I’m going to my sister’s for a roast dinner with her family.’
‘Oh how wonderful. Why don’t you take the rest of that for them when you go?’ Velma says, nodding to the remaining cake. ‘It won’t keep. And would you like to borrow the book? I’ve just finished it.’ Questions that come like friendly commands.
Maya picks up Josephine Baker again and looks at the cover. Carnegie Hall 1973. What must it have been like to be Velma? To only spend twelve years of a lifetime with your soulmate, although Maya feels that she would give anything for just one hour to talk to Train Man. She tucks the book into her bag.
‘Oh I have something for you!’ Maya remembers, as she takes a dainty-looking rectangular box out.
‘Are these what I think they are?’
‘I made them!’ Maya squeaks. ‘My best batch yet!’