Living with Strangers (8 page)

Dear Joe

Well I did it. I got my results today and guess what? Two Bs and a C. Amazing. Perhaps I’m not so dim after all, or maybe Papa’s talk paid off. Only now I have to make a decision about what to do. I was offered a place at uni – did I tell you that? They wanted three Bs but they said they’d take me anyway. Trouble is, I’m not sure if I want to go.

Papa and Molly are quite animated. I think they’re pleased, relieved perhaps that I might be out of the way. I’m like a constant reminder to them – of what’s gone wrong, of what they’ve failed so dismally to deal with.

Every day I’m here is a reminder that you’re not. I’ve tried, I really have. Tried to get on with my life, get through it somehow, but it’s been bleak. I look back over the last five years and wonder what on earth I’ve done. Grown up? Perhaps. Learnt a lot? In more ways than one. But so much of me left when you did. All the good stuff. Apart from those times with Gil and Sophie of course, it’s a dark place I’ve been in. Would it still have been like this if you’d stayed? Would you still have left me behind as you were beginning to do? I remember now the drawing away, the furtiveness, the irritation when I wanted to hang around together like we used to. You must have had problems, though I can’t begin to imagine what they were – nothing so bad that you had to leave – leave us all in that silent mess – waiting for just a word, for the prodigal to return, which we now all tacitly concede is never going to happen.

I wish I could be angry with you. I’ve turned my anger into so many things: rage at Molly and Saul, depression, sex, – even work. Only it’s burnt out now, I can’t sustain it, it’s ebbing away. But then, if I let it go I will be letting you go too. That will be it, my anchor cast off – you gone. They call it coming to terms, but whose terms – and what deal will I have to strike?

I write in clichés, Joe, it’s time to stop.

I’m taking Sophie to the ballet for her birthday. We have to sit in the stalls so she can see the orchestra. She’s started playing the violin, but I think she has her eye on the cello, like Oma.

I’m left wondering if we ever really mattered to you at all.

M

Another long night, another long trek down those early years. Next morning I woke in my room under the eaves for the first time in seven years, the shock of this return tempered only by Chloé chuntering quietly in her cot, pulling at the feet of her sleepsuit, trying to put them in her mouth. I got out of bed and picked her up – my anchor, my present in more ways than one.

The following days passed simply enough. With Sophie away and Paul out, I was alone with Molly and Saul for much of the time. Chloé’s routine formed some kind of structure, a useful prop, a conversation piece. Little by little Chloé left my side more boldly, her explorations voiced in an endless string of sounds, some English, some decidedly French. Molly watched and waited, knowing perhaps that unhampered by history, her granddaughter, would sooner or later move towards her. I saw my mother’s reticence this time, in a new light. All the years of holding back – had they really been indifference or had she simply given me space, a free reign, enough rope?

Then one morning, Chloé went over to Molly and took hold of her hand, leading her out of the kitchen and into the schoolroom. Tempted to follow, I stayed until they came back, still holding hands, with Chloé clutching a rag doll I’d seen in the toy basket.

‘She found them.’ Behind her glasses, Molly’s eyes shone. ‘I put them there… in case. A few new things as well. Samuel plays with them too when he’s here, but that’s not often. Adam doesn’t have much spare time and Fee – well, she doesn’t drive. We should have gone up to see them more, but there you are. It’s too late now.’

‘Has Adam been since…?’

‘The diagnosis? Not yet. He may come next weekend but didn’t say for sure. It’s hard.’ She sat down again, putting Chloé on her lap, gently patting her knee as if she’d done it forever. ‘It’s hard for all of us.’

By that I assumed she was excusing Adam. Was this the moment to mention Josef? To bring his name out and hear the sound – here in this room, now. Molly had written it – she had formed the word in her letter. She had asked for my help and I had come, had crossed so many thresholds and now, this last Rubicon. But as I looked at her, holding my daughter, rolling an orange for her across the table as if the past seven years had never been, a stab of old anger returned. I stood up and took Chloé from her.

‘I think I’ll go for a walk before lunch,’ I said. I may have kept the past in check, locked away, but I wasn’t ready yet, to consign those years to the bin.

Chloé and I took a long walk into town – there was no reliable bus service now. I pushed her up the hill, past the Moorhen – the pub where I had whiled away Sunday nights at the folk club in the back room and later taken a job, when no other options seemed open to me. It had changed almost beyond recognition, with new paintwork, a new sign, a large extension on the side. In the market square, I noticed the clock tower too had been newly painted, stark black and white. Nothing here matched – a hotchpotch of design, materials, colours. Towns in France, like the language, seemed to flow, buildings harmonised, the roofs all in tune – all slate, all tiles or all stone.

When we reached the hill by the church, I stood looking down to the playground, its swings and roundabout bright, inviting. I saw the lost and lonely creature from all those years ago, struggling with an old pushchair and friendless humiliation. I went as far as the lake and, standing on the bridge, thought of Gil again. More memories, revived by the letters. Were it not for him, in a convoluted way, I would not be here now, would not have gone to France, would not have Chloé. Could the same not be said for so much else? If Josef had stayed, where would we be now? Would we even know each other at all, any more than we do? How much did I know of Adam, or Paul and Sophie for that matter? Five beings, ineluctably linked, branches from the same tree, sawn off at different times and carried away downstream.

*

It was cold by the lake. A low mist hung over the water, ducks and moorhens vied for attention, two swans slid past, craning and dipping in muted elegance, heading for the island in the middle where they’d begun to nest. Chloé had fallen asleep. I pulled up the hood on her jacket, tucked the blanket round her more firmly and walked along the path by the edge of the water. At an old wooden seat, I stopped and sat down. There was a small plaque in the middle of the backrest with a name and date, scarcely legible, scratched by countless idle penknives. Absently rocking the pushchair back and forth, calmed by the water, the bird life, the gentle rush of the weir further on, my thoughts again turned backwards, scattered fragments, memories pulled out of the cupboard. I had finally managed to come back, the letters had shown me the way, but the interim years still festered, unaccounted for, unprocessed, and I knew I was not done with the past.

I’m sitting by another stretch of water, full of good intentions with a pile of unopened books next to me. The beginning of the university term drifts past, a pleasant round of clubs and societies I pledged to join during Freshers’ week.

Summer stretches long into autumn, staying warm until mid October. As the days shorten, I’m willingly caught up in a world that seems to be so full of promise. The only problem is the work – a huge stack of it that grows with every reading list, every assignment, every tutorial.

My head of department is French; a small, smart, frightening woman with a pinched look, as if her shoes are too tight. Madame La Corneille – known, unsurprisingly, as the Crow. Her inaugural address, to the new cohort of language students, she conducts in French and is largely lost on me. I’ve opted rashly for a combined course, hoping that my German will carry me over the pitfalls – the gaping abyss that is my working knowledge of French. The ‘A’ level was a fluke that’s already having repercussions.

Halfway through the term La Corneille summons me to her study.

‘Madeleine, isn’t it?’ She peers at me, lifting a contoured eyebrow. ‘Have a seat.’

I sit down opposite her, there’s thankfully a large desk between us. She picks up what looks like my recent assignment.

‘I’m concerned,’ she begins, coming straight to the point. ‘This work is not what we expect from a first year student. You are an undergraduate now – this is a degree course. What may have passed at school, won’t do here.’ She continues to peer at me over her stylish spectacles.

I perch on the edge of the chair, my hands seek the hem of my jumper. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t realise.’ For some reason I feel the need to apologise. ‘Shall I do it again – the essay?’

‘You must speak to your tutor – he will give you some guidelines. For the time being, I won’t take this any further, but you do realise that even though this year doesn’t count towards your degree, you have to pass in order to continue next year. Unless this improves,’ she waves the back of her hand at my work, ‘you won’t pass.’

‘Right,’ is all I can say. ‘I see. I’ll see my tutor then.’

‘Sooner rather than later.’ She hands me the essay and stands up. ‘Rewrite it by the end of the week and we’ll forget this conversation.’

I’m dismissed, but then she stops me at the door. ‘Your German is fine, by the way. Perhaps you should consider single rather than combined honours – drop the French? Finish the essay and we’ll review at the end of term.’

It’s Wednesday; I have two days to write three thousand words on the French student uprising of May that year. If this woman is a product of the French education system, it’s no wonder the students want to change things.

I leave, humiliated and angry – but sad and homesick too, for Saul’s bumbling entreaties that have, up to now, been the closest I’ve come to a reprimand.

Later the same day in my tutor’s study, we drink tea and munch biscuits while he patiently explains how to set out the argument I’ve dismally failed to present. I go away, reassured a little, and spend the evening and much of the night on a reconstruction.

But the level and quantity of work I’m expected to achieve prove a daunting challenge, and one for which I’m totally unequipped. School, when I bothered to work, when I chose to ‘apply myself’, with or without Saul’s intervention, posed few problems. This is different and I seriously doubt whether I can muster the necessary resources, academic or otherwise, to spend the next three years here.

*

I write often to Sophie – long, falsely cheerful epistles full of detail she may well fail to understand. But she always writes back, her bold, neat handwriting spilling out her enthusiasm for everything she does. It strikes me then how the essence of a person can be contained within their writing, how it speaks in ways other than the story it tells. After Oma died, her writing inside my suitcase –
‘For Madeleine, One Day, from Oma’
– consoled as much as her voice might have done. I saw her beautiful hands, manicured to perfection, long after she had ceased to play or speak coherently. I have no such prompt from Josef; no visual clue to the person he has grown into, no pattern on a page that will illustrate who he has become.

So I treasure Sophie’s letters and welcome her news from home. I speak to Molly and Saul once or twice, but hanging around in a long queue for the phone, crouched in a draughty hallway then feeding money into the call box all too rapidly, is a joyless task. I soon resort to a series of short notes, which I hope will convey the lightness and purpose I’m singularly failing to feel.

Yet my time that first term is not wholly overcast with gloom. As I discovered after Gil, it’s easy to temper intensive study with hours of doing very little. For the first time, friendships are based on things other than suspicion or envy or fear. Girls often knock on my door at odd times of the day or night, brandishing a bottle. Some are homesick, but many more are simply sick of home and savour their newly won freedom. We spend hours draped around the room engrossed in music, or politics or somebody’s love life and, to my surprise, I love it. I find myself seeking out company, setting up these episodes that result so often in hilarity and hangovers.

At times we spend evenings in the Union bar drinking cheap beer, or go to watch a play at the theatre – an experimental offering of the drama faculty or some hopeful young playwright. Yet the past always hovers, always threatens and sometimes creeps in, despite my efforts to lodge firmly in the present.

Towards the end of October, on an afternoon too glorious for lectures, six of us pile into an old Jaguar and head for Dartmoor. The car belongs to Max, a second year student from Wales who wears a greatcoat and black homburg, regardless of the weather. He’s started to spend a lot of time with the girl in the room next to mine, but it’s obvious where his real interest lies. His car has seen better days and has lost its silencer somewhere on the way, but undeterred, we chase for an hour or so down sunken Devon lanes, through villages and up onto the moor.

At Lettaford, we park up and wander around, looking for a footpath. When we find it, we ramble off, over the rough track, with no map, no food and no idea where we’re going – it just seems the right thing to do at the time. Several hikers pass us, sensibly equipped with packs and provisions and stout boots. I have to give up after a couple of miles – my feet are bleeding where thin sandals have rubbed them raw. I sit with Max on a granite outcrop amid the heather and broom, and gaze out across the wild, bleak heathland. I try not to think of Gil and the Easter March and my half-crown blisters. I try not to think of Josef, of the trip to Germany and our glimpse of the open, rolling heath near Lübeck – wasteland, wasted land, where no one walked at all. But much as I try, the past will not leave me alone.

I start to work a couple of shifts a week in the Union bar. There’s no pay involved, but I’m allowed as much alcohol as I can manage – a perk I take full advantage of. So too does my widening circle of friends, some of whom, largely male, hang around hopefully towards closing time. New pairings are happening around me but, though I’m drawn into a series of casual encounters, some of which may be repeated, no one sparks anything more than a fleeting response. I still have no wish to complicate my life with any kind of commitment. I see how inconvenient life becomes for those with partners left behind, at home or on a different campus, the worry, the struggle – often lost – to stay faithful to someone or something they are rapidly growing out of. I may turf a body out of my bed before the cleaners arrive in the morning, or wake up on a strange floor with someone whose name I can scarcely remember, but I never suffer as other girls do. My integrity is still intact; the pledge I made after Gil still holds true.

By the end of term, I’ve begun to settle. Changing to a single honours course has simplified the work and though I still have to cope with French until the end of the year, as a subsidiary subject it’s less of an obstacle. I even look forward to going home. Max obligingly gives me a lift to the station, though his interest has now moved on quite amicably to other fresher fields.

Molly and Sophie come to meet me at the station. As the train draws in, I see them on the platform, Sophie jumping excitedly, Molly’s permanent frown easing a little as she sees me and smiles.

Molly offers to take my case as I open the door.

‘It’s fine, thanks. It’s not heavy.’

‘How was the journey?’

‘Long. It’s busy in London – the tube was packed.’

‘We’ll have to walk, I’m afraid,’ Molly says, ‘Papa’s at work still, so there’s no car.’

‘How’s Paul?’

‘Fine – doing homework. He didn’t need the distraction of coming out at this hour.’

Sophie is quiet. I hold her hand on the way home. She keeps stealing glances sideways as we walk up the long hill from the station to the house.

When we arrive home, Saul comes out of his study and hovers in the hall to greet me. Paul bounds down the stairs, abandoning his studies – a few inches taller than when I left. At supper, we pass dishes and make quiet conversation – small rituals, a change from institution meals.

Saul butters a slice of bread. ‘It’s going well?’ he asks. ‘The course?’

‘It’s hard – harder than I thought. I’ve had to drop some of the French.’

Saul stops buttering. ‘And that’s alright, is it – to change so early on?’

The salad turns heavy in my mouth. ‘I’d no choice really. I failed two essays at the beginning. I’d probably have failed more. It was the best thing to do.’

Saul wipes his mouth with a napkin. ‘Well, you’re the one to judge. These things are never easy. But you know you can do it, Maddie, it’s just up to you.’

Molly changes the subject, asks if I’m eating properly, whether I’ve lost weight. I tell her the food is fine, though it isn’t. I hope never to eat stew again in my life.

‘I’ll avoid that then,’ she says. ‘No stew.’

Later, I go to see Sophie after her bath. I sit on the edge of the bed and read to her before she goes to sleep. She settles down, pulling the eiderdown up to her chin.

‘I’m so glad you’re home,’ she says. ‘I miss you. It’s not the same here without you.’

‘I know,’ I say, tucking her in tightly. ‘But I’m not so far away. You know where I am. We write, don’t we? And you’re the big girl now – you have to look after Molly and Papa.’ I dish out these platitudes knowing she doesn’t suffer as I did when Josef left. My absence in her life is no more than a pause, a space, pure and simple, regularly bridged. For Sophie there will be no anguish, the dereliction of spirit that clouded my earlier years. She will bear no scars from this separation and I’m thankful for her youth and her resilience. I kiss her goodnight. ‘Sleep well,’ I tell her. ‘Knock when you wake up.’

*

The weeks at home pass uneventfully. It seems the truce we secured in the summer still holds, an air of normality prevails, we have almost the appearance of a family unit. I work for the Post Office, delivering Christmas mail, and gratefully restock my funds for the coming months.

Christmas itself is the usual low-key affair. There’s no visit from Adam this year. Citing lack of time to travel down, he has chosen, as he now often does, to visit Fee’s family in Derbyshire. In reality I suspect that our draughty house and mis-matched crockery don’t appeal to his fiancée’s delicate inclinations.

Nourished by weeks of good food, I return to my hall in the middle of January, determined that this term I will study hard. I’ll do justice to myself, and now that a certain peace is restored, to Saul’s faith in my ability to achieve. But that early enthusiasm erodes rapidly once I’m back. All too soon I’m overtaken by the lure of abundant company and a candle well burnt at both ends. Work piles up and remains undone and my tenuous commitment to obtaining a degree fails in sympathy with the failing of my first year exams.

At the end of May I face La Corneille again. Buffered by her desk, I wait while she issues the ultimatum: since I’ve failed by a narrow margin, re-sits are permitted – am I prepared to repeat the year? I shudder at the thought.

***

How far removed that life seemed now, that time, those distant years viewed down the wrong end of a telescope. Sitting by the lake with Chloé in the cold, I thought of the times I longed to return to Madame La Corneille and stand before her huge desk and reel off, very politely in French, a string of reasons why she should not have failed me that first year, why her lack of faith in me had been so misplaced. Yet I also knew that it had not been her lack of faith that failed me, it had been my own inadequacy, my inability to hold onto anything, like the blue balloon, and wrap it more than once around my hand. At some point it had all unravelled and nothing I did had mattered enough to want to keep it.