TEN
One morning, about a week after visiting her mother, and still a little shaken by it, Pamela arrived in the shop to find Jenny standing transfixed in the back office, still holding the telephone.
She looked half-amused and half-incredulous.
‘Sit down,’ she said to Pam.
Pamela sat. ‘What?’ she said. She looked at the receiver still cradled in Jenny’s arms. ‘No.’ She held up her hand. ‘Don’t tell me.’
‘Deep breath,’ said Jenny.
Pamela breathed. ‘Let me guess. The Clarkes’ hand-painted is peeling off again?’
‘Nothing so sweet.’
Jenny replaced the receiver thoughtfully. ‘That was Douglas Brown’s sister. She wants to come and choose some stuff.’
‘The sister from hell?’
‘Battersea Waterside, actually.’
‘Wants to come here? She must have an ulterior motive.’
‘Maybe she just wants a discount?’ said Jenny, who always took the straightforward route.
‘Hmm,’ said Pam, not at all convinced.
Jennifer went back out into the shop.
Still thoughtful, Pamela watched her heave a large gilded book of new French tapestry samples off the counter. ‘Oh, let’s send those back.’ She pulled a face. ‘Vulgar, over-priced things.’
Jenny opened the book and also pulled a face. ‘Appalling,’ she agreed. ‘What are the French coming to. . .’
‘Retro,’ she said absently. ‘Retro. It’ll all be over soon.’ She stood there tapping her teeth with a pen. ‘I wonder what Zoe Brown really wants? Odd. Very odd.’
‘She definitely wanted to deal only with you.’
‘Well, if it is a discount she’s after, she won’t get one. Somehow I doubt it. More like a dog returning to its vomit. She’s an emotional basket-case, especially where Douglas is concerned.’
‘Maybe she won’t come.’
‘Well, all will be revealed in the fullness of time.’
She went to help with the heavy book of samples. ‘Just look,’ she said, eyeing the price list. ‘Talk about crass. And you’d need a second mortgage for these. Who in their right mind would buy them?’
Their eyes met. They both nodded. And they both said in unison, ‘An emotional basket-case. . .’
‘If she rings again,’ said Pam, ‘make her an appointment.’
‘Here or there?’ asked Jenny.
‘Oh, here,’ said Pam. ‘I feel like playing the Grande Dame.’ She ran her fingers lightly over the gilded lettering. ‘I wonder how Douglas is,’ she said.
‘Pamela,’ said Jenny sternly. ‘No.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t,’ she replied, as lightly as she could manage. ‘Not with Douglas. Not after all that pain. I’m quite cured. Dean saw to that.’
She spoke to Daniel that evening. He was distant and clipped, as if she had got in the way of something. She tried not to think what. At the end of the call she said lamely, ‘Do you need anything up there?’ To which he said, ‘Mum, they do have shops.’
Afterwards she found herself wandering around the house doing the phrase in a number of silly voices – Mum, they do have shops – Mum, they do have shops – Mum, they do have shops. . . By the time she completed the circuit, it was all she could do not to call him back and yell something unpleasant down the phone. But what? I’ll stop your pocket money? Father Christmas doesn’t come for naughty boys?
On the following Sunday she got up very early, breathed deep of the fresh morning air, threw her walking boots in the back of the car, drove east and cursed both Rick and Margie all the way up the North Circular, along the M11 and well into the B1049, until the beauty of Ely Cathedral finally put her rancour to shame.
She had not meant to drive east at all. She had meant to drive west, pick up Margie, and have a day out with her, maybe hiring a boat on the Kennet and Avon. Now she was driving east because she could not stop herself. Because there was no one here to stop her. Damn the two of them, she said to herself, and drove faster. And, for that matter, damn Zoe Brown, too.
If the cursing of the latter was understandable, the cursing of the two former was severally odd. In the first instance it was odd because Margie and Rick had never actually met. In the second instance it was odd because they were both supposed to be friends of hers. Unlike Zoe Brown. In the third instance it was odd because, as Pamela pointed out to herself in between her extreme bouts of scurrility, they had not actually done anything wrong. Which, of course, made her curse them all the more.
Rick started it. Finding herself with time on her hands, Pamela asked if she could have some guitar lessons and he agreed. They were supposed to begin on Saturday afternoon but at the last minute Rick rang, sounding extremely subdued, and said that his wife, earth-mother Vanessa, did not think it was a very good idea.
‘Well – another time then,’ she said, not understanding. ‘Maybe Monday evenings?’
‘Er – no,’ said Rick. ‘I think she means It’s Not A Good Idea – Ever.’
‘What?’ said Pam.
‘You and me. Alone.’
As the penny dropped it was as well that Pamela was made speechless. Otherwise she might have committed the unforgivable, because truthful, sin of saying, ‘Does your wife seriously think I’ve got designs on a pot-bellied old rocker with hoops in his ears and hairs growing out of his nose? Grey hairs growing out of his nose?’
‘I see,’ was all she allowed herself to say, with icy dignity, before ringing off.
Immediately she called Margie. And, taking the view of Sisterly Rights that meant she was allowed ten minutes of uninterrupted fuming while Margie made sympathetic noises, was much miffed to find herself getting very short shrift – about three minutes – before Margie interrupted and said briskly, ‘Oh, it’s inevitable. It’ll go on happening everywhere. Why do you think I moved to the country? You’ll even find yourself in Lenny’s doing your usual flirty thing over the carrots and then Mrs Lenny will whip out from behind the cabbages and give you the evil eye. You’re even more of a threat now you are not a mother.’
‘Margery Jane Harcourt,’ said Pam with vexation, ‘Danny hasn’t died and gone to heaven. He’s just moved to Liverpool. I am still a mother.’
How could Margie understand when she had never had a child of her own?
‘You would have to be as circumspect and well behaved as Ani Patel to be accepted. How is she by the way?’
‘Fine,’ said Pamela shortly. ‘Ari’s doing A levels.’
‘She’s really seeing him through. Good for her. Will you give her my love?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Pam impatiently. ‘But what about Vanessa and Rick?’
‘Oh, just accept it. Get yourself a woman guitar teacher. Or a dishy bloke.’
‘But Rick’s a friend.’
‘Oh, no, he’s not. Not any more. It’s probably crossed his mind.’
‘Margie!’
‘Yes, well. What I mean is, we are perceived as bad enough being single, and a threat. Probably, as you approach fifty, a desperately lonely threat. . . Friendships with other women’s menfolk are difficult. And Vanessa might be right. Rick could get carried away. What with you being so free now.’
Had Pamela not been smarting from losing one friend that day, she might well have put down the phone.
‘I have got a business to run,’ said Pam indignantly.
‘You could give it up tomorrow. Or leave it and let Jenny and that new girl get on with it for a while.’
‘But I don’t want to. I like what I do.’ She was certainly not going to admit to Margie that she also found herself a little bored by it. ‘I’m only saying that I’d have to be desperate to even consider Rick. . . let alone Lenny – his teeth move in and out. It’s from cracking all those walnuts.’
But Margie’s cackle of laughter was shorter than usual. ‘Listen – I’ve got to change the subject. I’ve met someone new.’
‘What, what?’ said Pam. ‘New? You mean brand new? Never been unwrapped?’
‘Not quite,’ said Margie.
There was a pause.
‘He’s married, Marge?’
‘I told you,’ she said. ‘Desperate and lonely. I got tarred with the brush often enough so I thought I’d wear it – the cap.’
‘You’re mixing your metaphors,’ said Pamela quietly. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t.’
They both knew what she meant.
It was then that Pam had the bright idea. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘let’s have a day out together tomorrow. We could meet half-way and –’
‘Oh, I can’t,’ said Margie. ‘I’m seeing Tom.’
‘I thought mistresses didn’t see their married lovers at the weekend?’
‘Oh, he’s moved in,’ said Marge.
‘You didn’t hang about.’
‘Time marches on,’ she said.
Pamela felt a shiver run up her spine.
‘So,’ she said breezily, ‘can’t tempt you out for the day tomorrow, then?’
‘Sorry,’ said Margie. ‘Talk soon. Bye.’
Thus here she was, transporting her walking boots, feeling dejected and dumped, on her own, with the beauties of Swaffham Prior to her right and the charms of Ely Cathedral ahead, and on her way beyond those to the Levels of Cambridgeshire. Cursing her two fair-weather friends for making a hole in her life through which the memory of Douglas could come creeping, creeping and against which she was as weak as any soppy Victorian maid. If Rick’s offensive suggestion had not caught her on the raw, and if Margie had not been quite so brutally involved with someone new, and if Zoe Brown had not been in touch, she would have been fine. As it was, she was not fine, and she came to these parts as thirsty as a Walsingham pilgrim.
She had never been back here since they ended the affair. It remained in her heart and mind as a sacred place. Just the two of them alone. She without Danny, he without Zoe and the shallowness that surrounded him in London. She knew exactly which pathways to walk, exactly which fields to skirt, exactly which pub to stop in for lunch and from where to sit and watch the evening sun go down like a great pink billiard ball sinking below the net.
She experienced them all over again. And it was hard to do these things without him. To run across fields of brown ridged earth towards a horizon that never came, opening her arms to the huge sky and thinking, in suspended reality, that he might suddenly come walking across the field towards her, smiling, laughing, arms out, smelling of country dampness and his own particular scent. She wondered what she would do if she ever saw him again. Would the desire to kiss him still remain? In the past she had always wanted to kiss him as soon as she saw him. Supposing she still did? Woman Arrested for Attacking Ex-lover Lookalike came to mind. She shivered. No, she would never mistake him for a stranger. If she saw him, she would know him. But she would not see him. Ever again. That was the whole point.
She stood at the edge of the field in the gathering darkness and willed him to be there. And then she turned back to the car, not sure if she was glad or sorry that it was only fantasy. He would not be there, of course not. He was probably even now rolling around in the sheets with someone wonderful, childless, with small hips, while she stomped around these fields playing Dido. With which embarrassing thought she went back to the car. Shriven.
Driving home, caught up in the traffic cones and roadworks, she listened to Vaughan Williams, whose very Englishness fitted the day so perfectly. And she was aware of hearing Daniel’s voice saying, ‘Oh, not that classical stuff again, Mum. Please. . .’
But, of course, the passenger seat was empty.
She turned it up all the louder, letting the rippling music fill the car.
She could do anything she pleased now. Anything she wanted. Well, almost. And even that was a possibility. . . Not that she ever, really, would. She had given Jenny her word.