I Remember You (33 page)

‘It’s not till Christmas,’ Tess wanted to get it straight.

‘
Christmas
?’ Diana bellowed. ‘That’s not very
satisfactory
, is it?’ Tess blew her hair away from her face, trying to cool down.

‘No,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s not…’ She felt rather drunk, all of a sudden. ‘Diana,’ she said. ‘Is he OK?’

‘Who?’

‘Adam. Did it go OK? The will and everything, did they read it?’

‘Yes, and yes, and yes,’ said Diana, Sphinx-like. ‘Pretty straightforward. Though I didn’t get anything. Oh, well. Richard and I will move to Mauritius next year instead.’

Tess took another sip of her drink; it was a big mistake. The room, which before had seemed full of people she knew, chaotic, messy, exciting, was now full of strangers, the floor seemed to be shifting, the heat was unbearable.

‘I’m going to go,’ she said suddenly. ‘I’ve got to go. OK?’

‘Sure,’ said Diana. ‘You’re all right, Tess?’

But Tess didn’t hear her. Hot waves of panic, or was it merely drunkenness, were washing over her. She pushed through the rest of the drinkers, outside into the courtyard. Peter.
Peter
. She hadn’t thought about him all day, not once, and the thought of him now flooded over her like a cool breeze.

He was enjoying working in San Francisco; if she was honest, Tess really didn’t know what was going to happen after he came back. She wondered whether he would stay in the States, but she just couldn’t tell, despite the fact he said he wasn’t. That was the hard thing about communicating with someone who wasn’t in front of you. They spoke every day, and if they didn’t speak they were on Skype, which was hard to get used to, but they were both coming around to it. And they emailed and texted all the time. But nuances were lost,
jokes didn’t work, the inflections, little eye movements were missing, all small things that built up into big things. And the intimacy of the smell of his skin, the touch of his hands—they were all gone.

Peter had promised he’d be back in time, insisted she book her flight to get in an hour after him. She didn’t know what was going to happen, but she knew one thing for certain. This time next week she’d be in Rome, out of this strange town, drinking chilled wine in a square somewhere, feeling Peter’s arms around her, his lips on hers…

There it was again: another rumbling sound—was it in the distance? She couldn’t tell. Tess walked across the courtyard, looking up at the almost night sky. The moon should have given her light; as she stepped out onto the high street it showed the streaks of dark, leaden clouds running across the sky towards the horizon. She felt sick, full of wine and no food, full of some kind of foreboding. She looked almost desperately across at Leda House, but it was in darkness. Whatever had happened was now over and the actors in that strange little drama had dispersed. Her eyes felt heavy; she felt as though she had been drugged; sweat beaded her skin, and her feet ached as she walked along the high street, a lone figure under the inky sky. Everyone was in the pub or at home, she realized. It was her, her alone, out here.

It was with some relief that she turned into Lord’s Lane a couple of minutes later. She stood in the dark, fumbling mechanically for her keys, feeling drunk, still sick to her stomach. But as she did, suddenly the door flung open, and she jumped back.

‘Adam,’ she said, almost with relief. ‘My God—hello.’

He was doing up the buttons on his suit jacket. He looked at her. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to scare you.’

‘You didn’t,’ Tess said, leaning against the door frame. ‘You been paying Francesca a visit?’

Her tone was more judgmental than she’d intended, and
she realized she must sound a little drunk. ‘I’m just leaving,’ he said in an odd voice. ‘It’s nearly midnight. I have to go.’

Tess looked at her watch. It was after eleven thirty; how could it be so late?

‘I hope today went OK for you,’ she said, putting her hand clumsily on his arm. Something wet fell onto her shoulder. ‘You know. Not too…awful, I suppose.’

‘It was fine,’ he said, not meeting her gaze. ‘Could have been worse.’ He scratched his head. ‘When are you going to Italy?’

‘Next week,’ she said promptly, unfazed by the question after her rehearsal with Diana. ‘Can’t wait.’ She looked at him. ‘Adam, do you want to stay, have a drink, talk about the day and—and stuff?’

He shook his head. ‘Tess—no. Sorry, sweetheart. Like I said, I have to go.’ He looked up. ‘Wow. It’s finally raining.’

She stared at him. ‘You can’t stay, have one drink with us, instead of disappearing off like—like a thief in the night? Where do you have to go that’s so urgent this time?’

He laughed, and she blinked, feeling another drop fall on her face. ‘Sorry,’ he said, suddenly serious. He stepped past her, onto the cobbled street. ‘I’m going away from here, T.’ He bent forward and kissed her forehead. ‘Just for a while. But I’ll see you when I get back, OK? Have a great time in Italy, too. You deserve it.’

It was definitely rain; it was falling in droplets now, on her shoulders, in her eyes. Tess shook her head, blinking rapidly. There was still no wind. ‘Where are you going?’

‘Just away,’ he said.

‘What on earth does that mean?’ she said, the alcohol and the day itself loosening her tongue so she was talking to him like the Adam she knew of old.

He brushed the rain off his forehead. ‘You told me in Rome I needed to change. That I’d stayed the same for too long. Stayed here.’ He raised his voice as a clap of thunder hit them,
and the rain battered down even harder. ‘Well, I didn’t agree with you then, but I think maybe you’re right.’

‘Adam, I was being stupid, I was—’

He interrupted her, holding up his hand. ‘I’d better run, I have loads to do. You get inside. It’s going to chuck it down.’

‘But—’

‘And look out for Francesca, will you?’ he said.

‘I always do,’ Tess said, shaking her head. ‘For God’s sake, Adam, this is—it’s crazy. Stay for a drink!’

But he wasn’t listening ‘No. Sorry.’

‘Isn’t there anything I can do?’ Tess said desperately.

He looked into her eyes, as if he were looking for something, and then he patted his pockets. ‘There is,’ he said. ‘There really is. Look after this for me.’

He took out of his suit jacket a battered, yellowing, slim little hardback, no bigger than her palm. Tess remembered it from Rome. He put it into her hand. ‘This was with my grandmother when she died,’ he said. He swallowed. She glanced down at it, then up at him.

‘What is it?’

‘It’s a book of love poems. Catullus’s love poems. God knows why she was carrying it around. She’s marked bits of it.’

Tess clutched it. ‘She carried it everywhere,’ she said.

‘Just—I want you to have it,’ Adam said. ‘Look after it. It must have meant something to her, if she held onto it all this time.’

‘Why do you want me to have it?’ she asked.

‘Because…’ He trailed off. ‘Because I—I want to believe that there was some love in her, somewhere. And this might be the only actual proof of that. So you should look after it, while I’m away. It’ll make me feel OK, knowing you’ve got it.’ He didn’t look at her, but he folded her fingers around the book and clutched her hand. ‘Night, Tess. I’ll see you—I’ll see you one day.’

‘I’ll see you one day?’ she repeated blankly but he merely
smiled and walked away, down the tiny street. She stood, watching him, and then the rain began in earnest, heavy drops that pattered down on the stones with fury. Thunder cracked overhead, and in seconds, water was running in rivulets down her neck, washing away the sweat and grime of the day, and she stood there until long after he had turned the corner, until she was completely wet through, staring into nothing. She turned, then, back to the house, where a golden line of light shone through the crack of the door, and pushed it open.

Francesca was inside, sitting on the sofa as usual. She was dressed in her Francesca summer lounging outfit, which comprised a small pair of polka-dot cotton shorts and a flimsy pale blue vest. Tess shook herself as she shut the door. Drops of rain flew off her, hitting Francesca, but she did not move.

‘Hey,’ said Tess, trying to sound more sober than she felt. She put the book onto the bureau. ‘It’s pissing it down out there, have you seen? I saw Adam outside. Have you two had a…’ She trailed off and looked around her, in horror. ‘Francesca, what the hell’s going on?’

The tiny sitting room looked as if a poltergeist had been on the rampage. Books were pulled off the shelves; a vase (not a very nice one, from Francesca’s peak period of buying rubbish) lay in bits on the floor; Tess’s beloved cake stand next to it, cracked in half. The huge flat-screen TV had moved position, and was by the door; there was a smooth patch of rug to show where it had been before, with DVDs littered around it, crumbs and even an apple core as evidence of the girls’ laziness when it came to housekeeping. Tess stared at it all, her mouth dropping open. By the entrance to the kitchen was a huge suitcase, Francesca’s suitcase, with clothes hanging out of it, half folded, spilling onto the floor. A lamp, some iPod
speakers and some coat hangers sat next to it, the only orderly notes in the room.

‘Oh, my God,’ Tess said, sitting down next to her on the sofa. ‘What did you do?’

Francesca said nothing, but continued to stare at the wall opposite. Tess said gently, patting her arm, ‘Francesca—’

‘I’ll get you a new cake stand, OK?’ Francesca pulled away from her, and stood up. ‘I’m packing.’

‘You’re packing? Where are you going?’

‘I’m leaving,’ Francesca said, standing in front of the door, her arms folded. ‘I’m leaving first thing tomorrow.’

Tess blinked, and rubbed her eyes. She was in a daydream, she must be. ‘Are you going away with Adam?’ she said.

‘No,’ said Francesca briefly, and she went into the kitchen. ‘I’m going back to London,’ she called. ‘Had enough here. I’ll pay you rent to the end of next month, that’ll be OK won’t it?’

‘Um—’ Tess stood up, and followed Francesca into the kitchen. ‘Yes, of course, but—Francesca, what’s happened? What’s wrong, darling?’

‘Leave me alone,’ Francesca said, bending over and getting some plates out of the cupboard. ‘I don’t want to talk about it, all right?’ She glanced up at Tess, her hair falling in her face, and gave her a really strange look. ‘It’s not your fault.’

Tess folded her arms, watching her flatmate. ‘Is it Adam?’ she said tentatively. ‘Have you broken up again?’

Francesca laughed, her hair flowing like silk as she did. ‘Broken up? Darling, we’re not together, we can’t break up.’

‘But—’ Tess shook her head, casting off the last vestiges of her drunkenness. She had sobered up pretty quickly. ‘You and he—you’re—’ She reached out her hand.

‘Don’t touch me,’ Francesca said. ‘Look, it’s just an exercise. It follows a set pattern.’ She swallowed. ‘Yeah. He texts me to see if I’m free. He comes round after you’ve gone to bed and we fuck each other until we’re exhausted, then we fall
asleep. We don’t talk, before or after. It’s just sex,’ she said flatly. ‘Amazing sex. That’s all there is to it.’ She chewed her bottom lip, almost ruminatively. ‘That’s—he’s not sleeping, since his grandmother died, and I don’t sleep well anyway, so—might as well enjoy ourselves, no strings, get some rest afterwards.’

Tess thought of the times she had heard Francesca crying out wildly in the night, and she thought that she didn’t believe her. Francesca looked up at Tess again and made a sad, odd sound like a sob and Tess realized she had caught her lip in her teeth to stop herself from crying. ‘Oh, Francesca,’ she said, sadly. She put her hands at the base of her spine and leaned back against the kitchen surface, as if to emphasize that she wasn’t going to touch her, and looked at her flatmate. ‘You really like him, don’t you?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Francesca said, but it was unconvincing, and she put her hand over her mouth. ‘Whatever it is,’ she said, rocking backwards and forwards and frowning, as if she were trying not to crumble, ‘whatever, it’s just that I can’t do it any more. I don’t want
this
—’ she waved her hand around, gesturing to the debris on the floor of the sitting room—‘any more. I’ve rung my friend Kate, she and Mac are away on holiday, I’m going to go and stay at her flat for a couple of weeks.’ Tess knew about Kate, she was one of Francesca’s best friends. She nodded, watching her.

‘Francesca—are you sure?’ she said boldly. ‘It’s just—you were pretty screwed up before you got here, and being here’s done you good, hasn’t it? When you think what you used to be like? You’d been made redundant, you were behaving erratically at work. You were a bit…’ She searched desperately for the right word, but couldn’t find it. ‘A bit…mad.’

She said it awkwardly, trying to lighten the mood.

‘You’re hilarious,’ Francesca said, walking back into the sitting room. Tess followed her.

‘Why?’

‘I’m mad?’ Francesca cried. ‘You total hypocrite, Tess.
I’m
mad! That’d be funny if it wasn’t so totally patronizing. And wrong, by the way. Can’t you see we’re just playing at real life, here? With these—’ she gestured to the broken china—‘with these cake stands and stupid sofa cushions and—arghh.’ Her shoulders sank down and her arms fell heavily to her sides. ‘We’re grown women and we’re both hiding from where we belong.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I’m not mad, Tess. I had a crappy job and it made me unhappy. But I know where I belong, and that’s back in London, with my friends, getting another job, living the life I had before.’ She stared up at her. ‘Someone rang me about a job last week. Doing pro-bono work, only taking on needy cases. There’s a load of competition, obviously. But I’m going for it.’

‘Oh,’ said Tess. ‘That’s—well, that’s great.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’

‘Hey—’ Tess shook her head. ‘That’s not important. I just want you to—

Francesca interrupted her. ‘Tess, I know where I belong, and if I stay in Langford it’ll be like—like being wrapped up in cotton wool. I’ll be throwing my life away, doing some half-arsed job and waiting for Adam to come round at midnight and leave three hours later. I know where I need to be, that’s all. Can you say the same thing?’

Tess said, faltering, ‘Of course I can—’

But she remembered something Leonora Mortmain had said to her, their first night in Rome, a line that had been playing at the back of her head all through this long day. Her beaky face, beady eyes, watching her carefully as she spoke.
A woman should live for herself, not in the shadow of others
. She had been referring to herself, as much as to anyone else.

‘Really,’ said Francesca, picking up armfuls of clothes from beside the sofa and dumping them into the open suitcase. ‘Tell me, why haven’t you seen Peter since you got back?’

‘I—we haven’t been able to. And the funeral was today so—You know that.’

Francesca nodded. Tess looked around her, her eyes resting on the broken cake stand briefly before she realized she didn’t want to look as though she was bothered about it.

‘I’ll get you a new one,’ Francesca said. ‘I’ve said I will.’ Tess shook her head impatiently—it didn’t matter. ‘Oh—oh, Tess.’ Francesca sounded almost imploring. ‘You’ve got to see what I’m talking about.’

‘I don’t,’ Tess said, trying not to sound as upset as she felt. ‘I think you’re trying to make me feel bad so you can justify your own behaviour, but I don’t want to have an argument with you about it, Francesca, not if this is your last night.’ She laughed shortly, and shook her head. ‘Why are we even—this is crazy! Your last night. Don’t go!’

‘I have to,’ Francesca said loudly, too loudly. ‘God, Tess, don’t you see? Look at this, look at us!’ Her face was a rictus of rage; she relaxed, and a tear ran down her cheek. ‘We live in a town that’s still controlled by the family that ran it two hundred years ago! You teach things that happened two thousand years ago! You think you’re in love with some guy in Italy who’s about to move to the other side of the world, and you seriously think the two of you are going to be together!’ She winced, as if it was painful to say these things, but it didn’t stop her. ‘You talk to a picture of Jane Austen, because a picture on the wall is the closest you’ve got to having a friend here, apart from me and Adam. And you two aren’t friends, whatever you’ve got you’re not friends.’ Francesca paused, panting, and then she said, ‘And everyone here is over fifty, apart from us and Adam, and he’s the biggest hypocrite of them all, he’s in bed with all of them!’ She was sobbing now. ‘It’s like I woke up today, and now I see it I can’t stay here another day. I just can’t.’ She shuddered. ‘I need to get my own life, I want to walk on wet pavements again, I want to be annoyed when the tube’s cancelled, I want
to fall in love with someone who loves me back, and I don’t ever want to see a
fucking
tea towel, ever again.’ She kicked the side of the sofa. ‘Tonight made up my mind for me.’

‘Is that why you—’ Tess gestured at the mess, not knowing what else to say.

‘This? This wasn’t just me. It was your precious Adam too.’ She smiled, almost pleased she could shock Tess like this. ‘I knew I was going after that ridiculous service, that awful wake at the pub. I knew I had to go. But he—he merely hastened the process.’

‘Adam—did this?’ Tess didn’t believe her.

‘Well, both of us,’ said Francesca shortly. ‘He was almost mad.’

‘You must have had quite a bad fight…’ Tess was bewildered. ‘How can you be like this with each other?’

‘Ha.’ She smiled again, a great big smile. ‘You think I’m mad, babe. You have no idea.’ She looked at Tess, her hand on her cheek, her face flushed, hair tumbling about her. ‘You should look in the mirror sometime. Or at that man you think you know so well. You’re welcome to him. To all of it. I don’t know what happened with his mother, or his horrible old grandmother, but whatever it was, it’s screwed him up for life.’

‘It’s kind of understandable,’ Tess said, trying to be loyal to Adam, and the memory of lovely Philippa, whom everyone missed every day. ‘I can’t blame him, you know.’

‘Nothing can be that bad,’ Francesca said. ‘I’m sick of it. I’m getting out of here, darling, it’s the only way. I can’t stay.’

‘What time’s your train, then?’ said Tess, not knowing what else to say.

‘It’s at eleven,’ said Francesca. ‘I’ll be home by lunch-time, and you can go to college in the afternoon, and by the evening you’ll have forgotten I was ever here.’

With an air of total finality, she dropped her dressing gown, the blue Chinese dressing gown, into the suitcase, and flipped the lid shut.

Spring 1977

The younger woman walked heavily across the lawn to the striped deckchair facing away from her. She could see a pair of feet, shod in pointed black pumps and crossed elegantly beneath the chair, and she cleared her throat tentatively.

‘Hello?’

No answer.

‘Um—hello?’ she said, slightly louder, trying not to wheeze. She wiped the sweat off her brow; she was nervous.

Silence.

‘Er…Mother?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

A low, drawling voice came from the chair, but nothing moved.

‘If you take only one thing away from this meeting, please, it is that you are never to call me Mother again.’

Philippa shifted her weight from one leg to the other. It was hot, even in her cheesecloth kaftan, and she was very pregnant, and she wished she were sitting down, there, under the shade of the spreading magnolia tree at the edge of the lawn, in a deckchair like this one, sipping something cool. These days her feet seemed to have permanently swelled to twice their natural size. Everything ached: her feet, her back,
her breasts, her neck; she felt sick all the time, and had headaches that never went away, always had done, and she couldn’t take anything now to stop them. She was always un comfortable, especially since she’d come to Langford. She had never wanted to find her mother, never felt the urge to make a neat story out of her life. Philippa was used to self-sufficiency. But now she was desperate. That was the only reason she was here.

How they found out where she was, she never knew. Since Tony left, went back to the States, Philippa had been increasingly alone, her already-small band of friends in Dublin dwindling by the day. She had always been a loner, preferred her own company to anything else. She was an only child, after all. From the moment she had been able to escape the kindly but suffocating ministrations of her adopted parents, she had escaped as far as she could; it was the sixties, and though she didn’t know it, she was far less alone than she would have thought in this desire to flee. She didn’t particularly care who her real parents were, nor did anyone ever ask. The baby-boomer generation was made up of so many different kinds of families, fractured by the Second World War, and in those days, there was no real guarantee of ever finding out. Besides, she wanted to live her own life now. That was in the past; she wanted a future.

The next few years were like a dream come true. She had gone to Morocco for a year, travelling around with a girlfriend from university, had driven along the Silk Route in a minivan, ending up in India, living in Varanasi for a few months and selling beers to fellow dropouts. She had crossed the States with friends in another minivan, and somehow ended up teaching English in California, she didn’t know how. When Philippa crossed the Atlantic again, she knew she couldn’t go back to the safe, dull Home Counties of England she had learned to despise. She went to Dublin and stayed there,
gaining her PhD, becoming a lecturer, living a gently bohemian life, drinking long into the evenings, arguing about poetry, discussing politics and art, taking off for strange places at a moment’s notice, having sex with whomever she pleased. Nothing that tied her down, nothing that made her feel like little Philippa Crabtree from Basingstoke, growing up in one of a row of identical houses, hair plaited like every other little girl in her street, shoes, satchel and dolls identical to everyone else’s.