Cassette #13
Hello Darling.
I’ve had an enforced break from recording these because I’ve been back home for a few days and you and April have been keeping a round-the-clock watch on me! But now I’m back in Addenbrooke’s and on a new chemo regime which is part of a clinical trial and which, between you and me, feels very much like a last ditch attempt. I’m not getting any side effects, which may be a good thing, or, more likely, probably means that I’ve ended up being in the sugar-pill half of the cohort. Still, at least I get to carry on with my tapes.
So here’s a picture of you looking outrageously skinny and scared in Cambridge, standing in front of the Bridge of Sighs. You know, I used to know why it was called that, but I’ve forgotten. Like I said before, all these drugs are doing things to my brain.
That was the first time I had ever seen you in a decent suit, I think. Oh, you had worn that striped one on our wedding day, but as far as I can remember it was pretty awful. I was so proud of you that day in Cambridge. I thought you looked so sexy. It’s a shame you never once wore it again.
We had left April with Green Donna and Alistair that day, the idea being that Alistair wouldn’t let Green Donna commit hara-kiri with April in her arms, and Donna wouldn’t let Alistair get her stoned. But I still worried all day. I kept on and on asking you if you thought she’d be all right, and you kept on and on replying that “yes” she’d be fine. Of course, we had no mobile phones back then. There wasn’t even a landline in our student house. So there were no updates until we got home.
Cambridge was such a shock to the system. I know that you were surprised by things like the prettiness of the colleges and the crowded cycle paths everywhere, but me? I was gob-smacked. Compared with Margate, compared with post-industrial Wolverhampton, Cambridge seemed outrageous, really.
The streets were spotless, the shops were pretty and full of French cheeses and stripy shirts. A cup of tea was one pound twenty or something, I remember, and we were outraged about it. We were used to paying thirty pence in Wolves.
When we walked around the colleges it all made me feel sick, to tell the truth. And I don’t mean that as a euphemism – I mean physically sick, as in queasy.
You kept saying how pretty it all was and, of course, I could only agree. All that grass everywhere, all those flowers and the river and everything… it was lovely. But I saw something else, something that I don’t think, coming from your family, you were able to see at all.
I saw privilege. Looking at the students strutting around in shirts and ties and stripy blazers, and thinking about those poor mums I’d met in Orgreave, I saw shocking inequality and outrageous privilege. Because those students looked like they owned the place, and that was for the simple reason that they did. The place had been made for the likes of them. I remember wondering what Mum would say if she ever saw Cambridge. Because most people in Margate really didn’t know that places like Cambridge even existed, back then. They probably still don’t.
You went off clutching that big folder of yours and you were gone for almost two hours, so I wandered in ever-increasing circles around the café you had left me in. I went into a bakery and saw that they had proper French baguettes that cost three times the price of a sliced loaf of Sunblest at Salman’s Mini Mart. I saw a shop selling ties that cost more than your suit and pairs of women’s shoes that cost one hundred and ninety pounds, and I thought that we would never be able to afford to live in Cambridge and that, ultimately, it was obscene that anyone could afford it.
By the time you got back, I’d decided that not only was Cambridge not for the likes of us, but that I was glad, proud even, not to fit in there. There was something self-satisfied about the place, I thought. Something smug. There were too many men wearing braces and too many women in trouser suits and brogues.
You were beaming, Sean. I can remember your exact expression when you got back. You were beaming and your eyes were all shiny like you were on the verge of crying.
You licked your lips and said, wide eyed, that they had offered you the job, straight off. Just like that. You were to start on the 1st of September, I think. And then you asked me how much I thought you were going to be earning. It took me quite a few guesses before I got the right figure, which I think I remember was seven hundred and fifty pounds a month. Does that sound about right? Whatever it was, it seemed a fortune to us.
We got back to Wolverhampton just after midnight to find April fast asleep in Donna’s bed and, even after the day that we had had, neither of us could sleep. You talked until the early hours about being terrified you’d bugger up your degree, because the job offer, of course, was dependant on you getting at least a 2:1. Though I didn’t say much, I was terrified too.
I was convinced, back then, that I would never fit in, that I would never be able to open my mouth in Cambridge without people laughing at me. I believed with all my heart that I would never make a single friend here, either. And I thought that I would never be able to walk down King’s Parade without feeling queasy.
But you got a first class honours, didn’t you? And so we had to move. And I had to get over myself, I suppose, and just get used to life in Cambridge.
Actually, I didn’t get used to it at all. That’s me being disingenuous. Is that the right word? But no, I didn’t get used to it, I came to love it here.
That’s the funny thing about privilege. When you spend enough time in a town like Cambridge, you come to realise that it’s not Cambridge that’s wrong, after all. It’s everywhere else. You come to realise that everyone should get a good education and enough money to buy a baguette and brie if they fancy it. You realise that all kids should get the chance to go to a decent school where the teachers are clever and polite, and motivated. You come to think that all towns should have green spaces and cycle paths. And you learn that when you do put human beings in such a pleasant, easy going environment, it brings out the best in them, not the worst. They don’t end up being right wing, racist dick-heads who want to protect their privilege, they end up trendy lefties instead. When people don’t have to spend every minute of the day worrying how they’re going to pay the leccy bill, they end up with enough spare brainpower to worry about the Vietnamese boat people or animal rights or global warming. They end up drinking soya- cappuccinos and wearing vegan shoes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Because as far as these tapes are concerned, we’re not in Cambridge, yet, are we?
We’re still just terrified in Wolverhampton: you that you might muck up your degree and miss out on the job, and I that you might succeed and get it and force me to move to snob-land.
I didn’t express my fears at the time. I had no vocabulary, back then, for any of this. But as the weeks went by, I became terrified. Really terrified. I was convinced that Cambridge would somehow show me up, that once you saw me there, you’d realise what a mistake you had made. I knew you’d see how the Margate bird stuck out like a sore thumb and you’d suddenly want some posh, clever, educated girl with a name like Camilla and a daddy who’d give you a Bentley for a wedding present.
• • •
As summer arrives, Sean finds himself waking up earlier and earlier, and on Wednesday morning, when he wakes at six, he decides to fit a site visit into his journey to work. It’s another beautiful morning: the sky is blue and the air is crisp and fresh.
On reaching the site of his next project – a plot of land where four houses have recently been demolished, a plot of land for which he’s designing twelve luxury apartments – he grabs his camera from the car boot and clambers across the remaining rubble.
He stands on the highest point of scrappy grass and looks out at the view. A racing eight and a coxed four are streaking along the river, cutting through the mirror-like surface of the Cam. One of the coxes is shrieking at his team through a megaphone. Sean thinks back to when he used to row, how fit and happy and healthy it used to make him feel. Sure, all that being shrieked at was horrible and, on cold rainy days, it had been hellish. But on days like today, it had been perfect. On days like today it had been the best possible way to start a day.
He takes a deep breath and watches the boats as they vanish around the bend. Yes, the view from the apartments is going to be stunning.
Once he has checked the measurements of the site and taken photographs from every angle, he clambers back down to the street. Attracted by the continuing ripples from the now distant boats, he crosses and leans on the railings. He glances at his watch. It’s still only eight, and he suddenly finds himself in no hurry to get to work, no hurry at all. So instead of heading back to the car, he climbs onto the railings where he sits and pulls his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. Hunting for the lighter, he finds the smooth lump of rose quartz that his daughter gave him. He smiles at the memory and slips it back into his pocket.
Below him, a little to the left, a young couple, late twenties, are emerging from their canal boat. They both have fabulously dishevelled bed head hair. Sean watches as the young man sets up a folding table and chairs on the roof and as the woman joins him with a metal pot of coffee and two mugs.
Sean studies the woman, who is a pretty brunette with generous curves, and wishes, suddenly, that he was her twenty-something boyfriend. He wishes he lived on a canal boat. He imagines himself spending sexy Sundays in bed as the boat rocks gently.
He feels guilty, as if he’s being unfaithful to Catherine, which is silly, of course, for so many reasons. But he feels it all the same.
He wishes above all, he realises, that he was young again. He lights his cigarette and watches geese as they take off and land, their wings whipping the water.
He’s feeling restless. Days like this have always made him want to leave.
He once read an article about Aboriginal Australians and how they would get up one morning and head off on walkabout, not returning sometimes for months, and this is exactly how Sean had felt when he was younger, specifically on summer mornings like today. Yes, despite the fact that he loved his wife and daughter and despite the fact that he enjoyed his job, there have always been days when Sean felt an almost biological urge to go walkabout.
He remembers driving to work wondering what would happen if he didn’t turn off the ring road – what would happen if he just carried on driving? If he headed south, he could drive to Dover and stick the car on a ferry across the Channel. And then, what? Would he head south to Spain, or east towards Russia? How far would he get before his credit card ran out?
He had resented Catherine on those days. He had (while still loving her) hated her for being the reason he couldn’t leave, for being the reason that his life was so adventure-free.
But today, he is free, isn’t he? No one is waiting for him, nobody cares what Sean does anymore.
The woman tips her head back and laughs at something the young man has said, and Sean wonders how long it is since he last laughed. She leans in and kisses him, then nervously looks around as if kissing is perhaps a crime.
She smiles at Sean, then winks, and he forces a smile back, then embarrassed, stubs his cigarette out on the underside of the railings and stands. He drops the cigarette butt in a litter bin, then returns to his car.
As he opens the car door, his phone vibrates, so he pulls it from his pocket and checks the screen. It’s showing an SMS from Perry saying he can’t attend to their mother this weekend and can Sean please go instead? Sean sighs deeply, replies, “Sure. No worries, I’ll go Saturday,” and slips the phone back into his pocket. You wanted to drive somewhere, he thinks.
He climbs into the car, puts on his seatbelt. He starts the engine; he glances one last time towards the couple on the houseboat but they have both vanished inside. He pulls gently away.
When he reaches the roundabout, he heads not south towards Dover but north across the Elizabeth Way, towards work. “Sorry, Catherine,” he murmurs. “It wasn’t your fault at all.”
The reason Sean never left was not, it transpires, because Catherine and April had stopped him leaving, after all. Perhaps there was a little cowardliness about him that made adventure difficult; perhaps there was a certain lack of imagination, an inability to take risk in his genetic makeup, that had kept him here. But mainly, he realises, it was that everything he really wanted had been here in Cambridge. His vision is blurring now. He sniffs and wipes away the tears with the back of his hand. Yes, even now that he’s free, he doesn’t want to leave. Even now, all he wants is another twenty years with Catherine.