That Was Then Read online

  ‘Sabine my cherry, she’ll probably wind up in Solihull or Frinton putting cats on diets and giving placebos to poodles. Anyway, she’s a good girl, she’ll turn her hand to anything.’

  ‘I look forward to meeting her,’ I said, ‘at the party.’

  ‘What party’s that?’

  ‘The one I am going to give for Sophie,’ said Sabine, ‘in a couple of weeks time. Your birthday.’

  ‘I see! So what’s going to be on the menu then – heavy metal, hot-and-cold-running sex and lashings and lashings of happy pills?’ Martin had been at the back of the queue for political correctness, it was one of his greatest charms.

  ‘Martin! No, I thought a pleasant, congenial Sunday drinks party to meet some of our friends.’

  ‘What the devil would she want to meet them for?’ asked Martin robustly, putting the question I’d been too timid to ask myself.

  ‘It will be a start, Martin,’ said Sabine, a frosty warning note in her voice. ‘A few introductions, and who knows what else may come her way.’

  ‘I bow as always to your superior judgement, cherry.’ He rose, picked up his towel and lobbed it carelessly into the gazebo. ‘ I’m for bed. Tell you what though Eve – you know a few of the younger generation, why don’t you bring them along?’

  I tried, wildly, to imagine the likes of Pearl and Nozz sipping Pimms chez Drage at an hour on a Sunday they would scarcely recognise as day. ‘ I don’t actually know all that many.’

  ‘But you’ve got a spy in the camp. Get Ben to bring a few along.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘And haven’t the Chatsworths got a couple of boys?’

  ‘They have – yes, I’ll ask.’

  ‘Not your job, Eve – Sabine, you’ll be inviting the Chatsworths, won’t you? Get them to bring their two along.’

  Sabine ducked under water without deigning a reply, but Martin didn’t seem to expect one, and departed with a wave.

  I decided against returning to the subject by any route whatever, and set off to do a few more lengths. I was conscious as I did so of Sabine darting past in the opposite direction, a pale, silent form beneath the surface.

  When we’d swum enough, and got dressed I would have gone straight to the car, but I’d left my bag with my car keys in Sabine’s drawing room. She waited in the drive while I went in to fetch them.

  As I walked back across the hall I heard light footsteps behind me and glanced over my shoulder to come face to face with Helena Bonham-Carter, wearing a Nike T-shirt and holding a chunk of baguette fringed with lettuce and dripping with salad cream.

  ‘Sorry,’ said the vision, ‘night starvation.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I replied, ‘I know the feeling.’

  She flashed me a quirky, conspiratorial smile and trotted up the stairs. Her backview displayed dark hair worn in a fat, untidy plait, and good legs, not of the never-ending, up-to-the-armpits variety, but trim and shapely. I retained an impression of large, dark, intelligent eyes, a humorous cupid’s-bow mouth and a heart-shaped face as unlike a pudding as any I’d seen.

  As I went out to the car I thought it was no wonder Sabine was unsettled. And decided, without even trying, to bring Ben to the aid of the party.

  ‘I don’t mind,’ he said when I asked him. ‘I’ll give it a go.’

  ‘Thanks, you’re a sport.’

  ‘An absolute jolly old brick, aren’t I.’

  It was Saturday morning, and we were in the kitchen. He was smoking a cigarette and drinking chocolate milk out of a plastic bottle prior to going in to HMV, I was sitting at the table in my dressing gown with a mug of tea and the Weekend section of the Telegraph. In the background Cliff Morgan cast his amiable spell over heroes and villains alike in Sport on Four. On the other side of the passage a dazzle of sunlight streamed into the sitting room. I had plans to go on the beach early, until tennis time, and then after lunch to take myself for a long walk along the cliffs. Simple pleasures, but I was a slave to them.

  ‘You met her then, did you?’ Ben asked without much interest, dropping the empty chocolate milk bottle in the bin.

  ‘Only fleetingly, not to talk to.’

  ‘Nice?’

  I knew what he meant. ‘I thought so. Unusual.’

  ‘Not sure I like the sound of that.’

  ‘But you will come anyway – imagine the poor girl immured up there with no one but Sabine for company.’

  ‘She’ll probably be shagging sheep by the time the party comes round, you know what these farming folk are.’

  ‘No. Do you?’

  The cigarette end followed the bottle into the bin. ‘I read about them in the papers.’

  As I returned to the Hatches, Matches and Despatches, I thought, with great satisfaction, was he ever barking up the wrong tree.

  Tennis wise, as I saw it, there were two possibilities for Sabine. Her perturbation would either fire her up to play the game of her life, or it would prove her undoing.

  On Saturday the latter prevailed. She fluffed, she over-hit, she double-faulted, and her simmering temper, always a fellow traveller on the tennis court, boiled over with some regularity. Desma was as dogged as ever, but with Sabine on self-destruct nothing could save their partnership from complete annihilation.

  Ronnie was at her most breezy and good-humoured. ‘Of course I’ll bring them along,’ she called, as she whacked the balls up to our end after another love service game. ‘Or at least I’ll definitely bring Philip, he’s around that weekend. I don’t know about Simon, but I’m not sure you’d want him anyway …!’

  ‘It’s Martin’s idea to invite young people,’ said Sabine frostily. ‘I’m sure they will be bored to death.’

  ‘Why should they be?’ asked Desma. ‘It’s a nice idea to mix up the generations, and your stepdaughter will appreciate it.’

  I was about to agree with this, but caught Sabine’s expression as she strode to the baseline to serve and decided against further encouraging remarks.

  ‘Do you want any more?’ asked Ronnie, ‘because I’m sure we could rustle up a few.’

  ‘Whatever,’ replied Sabine, lifting racquet and ball together in preparation. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready as I’ll ever be,’ said Ronnie. ‘Fault! But not by much.’

  For one reason or another we didn’t go on to lunch that day. The Chatsworths were going to visit Dennis’s mother, Desma had to see her sister in hospital, and Sabine pleaded extreme domestic pressure.

  As I opened my front door, my legs trembling slightly from running up the stairs immediately after tennis, I experienced one of those sudden and entirely unexpected frissons of melancholy: I was the only one of the four of us returning to an empty flat – no one waiting, no calls on my time, nothing to do but my own thing. It was what I most liked about my life, and yet it still, occasionally and from out of the blue, had the power to rattle me.

  As if I had exercised some telekinetic power, the phone rang.

  ‘Hello there.’ It was Ian. ‘I was expecting the machine.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I thought you’d be having lunch with the girls.’

  It annoyed me sometimes that he knew so much about my life and I so little about his. My routines were in his memory bank, but I was far too proud to ask how he spent his weekends.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘not today.’

  ‘Well look,’ he said, ‘I wondered if you’d like to come up to town one evening this week – we could have some dinner or something.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked baldly. I realised that sounded unnecessarily rude, and added: ‘I mean, any particular reason?’

  ‘Oh, just an opportunity to talk … I could come down there if you like.’

  ‘We’re not exactly overburdened with four-star restaurants in Littelsea. As you know.’

  ‘No, but we could drive out somewhere. It’s up to you.’

  I really didn’t know why I was hesitating. Dinner in town with Ian was not something to be
sniffed at, and it wasn’t as if my diary were black with invitations.

  With an unsettling flash of insight, he said, quite without sarcasm: ‘I don’t want to disturb the peaceful tenor of your life.’

  ‘You’re not,’ I replied, ‘I’d like to come.’

  ‘Good – Thursday? I’ll meet you at Victoria.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘How’s Ben?’

  ‘He’s fine, at work at the moment.’

  ‘Well give him my love. Tell him there’s a good chance for tickets for the Oval Test.’

  As I dumped my tennis kit in the washing basket and changed into jeans, I had to concede how fortunate it was that Ian and I were on good terms. Our separation was nothing if not amicable, and our dealings with one another always friendly and harmonious. His call had cheered me up. I was not a sad person, deserving of sympathy: I had a life.

  In this benign frame of mind I gave Helen a ring before leaving to see if she fancied a walk. The phone rang several times before it was picked up and a man’s voice answered.

  ‘Yup?’

  I realised with a shock that I was speaking to John Kerridge, but there was no backing out now.

  ‘May I speak to Helen?’

  ‘Can I say who’s calling?’

  ‘It’s Eve.’

  ‘Oh hi, Eve, I’ll pass you over.’ He assumed a familiarity with me which I should never have dreamed of returning. We had met once, and fleetingly, but my name had obviously been bandied about in some context or other.

  He’d put his hand over the mouthpiece for a moment, but as he removed it I heard the unmistakable rustle of bedding. Oh God, they were indulging in afternoon delight and I was—’

  ‘Eve.’

  ‘Look Helen I’m sorry, I didn’t realise you had company, I’ll call another time.’

  ‘That’s OK, I’m here now.’

  ‘But it’s irrelevant anyway, because I was going to ask you if you wanted to do something this afternoon.’

  ‘You’re right, I can’t.’

  ‘Not to worry—’

  ‘Another time perhaps.…’

  ‘Yes, yes, see you soon.’

  I was sweating as I put the phone down.

  I walked right up the cliff path, over the bluff and down into the next bay which was accessible only on foot. On the way I passed within a few hundred yards of the Drages’ boundary, and wondered what they were doing this fine Saturday afternoon. There would certainly have been no point in inviting Sabine to accompany me – she considered walking a mindless pursuit fit only for the British and their dogs. And what about Sophie? Were she, her father and stepmother enjoying a swim together? Or stretched out on parallel loungers on the sunny stones outside the gazebo? Or perhaps they’d all gone out somewhere en famille? Somehow I couldn’t picture this. Family outings were another activity sure to be well beyond Sabine’s pale.

  My question was answered when I paused at the point where the footpath crossed the lane, and the Drages’ runaround, a grey Range Rover, hummed past with Martin at the wheel and Sophie sitting next to him. They were smiling and talking happily, and didn’t see me. Of course – Martin was taking her out and relieving his wife of her onerous responsibilities for the afternoon. Whatever Sabine might imply, this snapshot left me with the impression that Martin and his daughter were on excellent terms.

  The path began to drop down into the next bay. Ancient geography lessons told me that this was a hanging valley, scored by a river of ice a millions years ago, now just a smooth grassy cleft in the chalky headland. The path met the foot of the valley about fifty metres above the beach, but there was a narrow shelving scramble down the cliff between crouching clusters of broom and gorse, and wind-shrivelled brambles that yielded only the smallest, sourest berries.

  Knowing the track like the back of my hand, I went down at a canter, trying not to think of the long trudge back up in the evening sun. In a minute I was on the beach. At least, I thought of it as a beach but you couldn’t possibly have done beachy things on it – no cricket, volleyball, sandcastles, dabbling idly in rock pools or dashing headlong into the surf. This was an obdurate tumble of great smooth stones like Henry Moore rejects, lying as they’d fallen any old how, God knows how many millennia ago. After the calf-crunching scuttle down the cliff I now had to swarm and clamber and teeter and leap for several more minutes until quite suddenly the boulders went quiet and flat beneath me, as though performing a massed, petrified salaam before the might of the sea.

  This was where I got my reward. Now I could sit with the pale rocks prostrate before me, and the smooth silver-green hills rising on either side, and feel like Britannia, ruling the waves.

  The tide was on the turn when I reached my usual vantage point. The surf poured in, sighing, over the rocks and retreated, muttering, between them, leaving a gradually widening dark band to show where it had been. With each retreat, legions of tiny crabs scuttled and sank in the gulleys of granular sand. Overhead to the west a flock of herring gulls wheeled watchfully, not so interested in this deserted beach as the man-made pickings of Littelsea.

  It was another cloudless afternoon. I sat on one rock with my back against another, my arms resting on my knees, my closed eyelids red against the sun, revelling in the privacy.

  In spite of the hardness of the rocks I think I dozed off, because when a voice called my name it penetrated my consciousness like the crack of doom and I was badly disorientated, my neck stiff and my backside gone to sleep.

  ‘Eve, sorry to disturb you – it’s me.’

  ‘Who …?’ I looked up, dazzled by the sudden glare of the sun. ‘Rick?’

  He was bare-chested, in shorts and desert boots, and carrying Bryony in her backpack.

  ‘Don’t often see anyone down here,’ he said, ‘so thought I should at least greet a kindred spirit. Desma’s gone to visit her sister in hospital in Dorking,’ he explained.

  ‘Yes, she did say. Nothing serious I hope.’

  He blushed. ‘ Routine plumbing so I’m told.’

  I scrambled to my feet and smiled at Bryony’s round, pink face looking over her father’s shoulder. ‘ Hello sweetie.’ She turned her head away and clutched at Rick like a koala.

  ‘Going through a shy stage,’ he explained. ‘Part of growing up, I suppose.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Anyway – we didn’t mean to disturb you, we always come down here to look at the waves. We’ll be on our way now.’

  ‘It was lovely to see you. Do give my best to Desma, and I hope her sister’s OK.’

  ‘I will. Thanks. Bye … Give Eve a wave, Bryony.’

  But she still averted her face, so he waved for her. I sat back down on my rock and watched them go back up the track to the cliff path. He made astonishingly light work of the gradient, considering he’d got a toddler strapped to his back. At the top I noted with further admiration that he did not turn in the Littelsea direction, but the other way, where the path rose steeply to a series of rolling bluffs: a fair hike by any standards.

  I waited till the sea had retreated another twenty metres or so, and the rocks in front of me were pale and dry in the sun. Then I clambered to my feet, tottered, stretched and began the long scramble up the cliff.

  By the time I began the descent to Littelsea I was sweating and my legs were heavy, but I was experiencing the anticipatory glow of a well-earned g and t and something tasty in the pasta line for supper.

  As I headed down the shallow steps towards the long curve of the promenade, I reflected fondly on my home town, and the many friends who made my life there so thoroughly agreeable, and my reflections gave the expression ‘to know one’s place’ a fresh meaning. I knew this place, and my place in it, and the knowledge was a sure source of comfort and of peace.

  Chapter Six

  I always liked the hour’s train journey to London. In fact, I liked train journeys full stop. Provided, that is, I didn’t meet someone I knew on the platform and had in consequence to be socia
ble instead of slipping into auto-pilot. Driving was all right, but one had to remain alert. That ‘ Let the train take the strain’ was an astute piece of advertising.

  On Thursday evening, travelling up to have dinner with Ian, I furnished myself with a copy of the Brighton Evening Argus which I would leave on the seat at Victoria, and a very slim, very torrid, designer novel, also purchased at the station, which would fit easily into my bag. I wore a long chainstore dress in shades of blue, light at the top and fading into indigo at the hem. It wasn’t new – I’d bought it before going to stay with Mel – but Ian wouldn’t have seen it before, and it was cool and comfortable. Also, I liked myself in it. It was kind to my figure and displayed my holiday tan to advantage. I wore a pair of silver dolphin earrings Ben had given me and flat silver-grey sandals.

  I was entirely relaxed about my evening with Ian. Now that the burden of marriage had been removed from our friendship, it flourished. He would be, as he always had been, a perfect dinner companion – attentive, thoughtful, amusing and generous. I wouldn’t even notice those aspects of his character – his slight fussiness, a tendency to pontificate, a way of sniffing when he laughed – which used to grate on my nerves. Why should I pay them no never mind these days, when they were no longer my problem? At the same time there remained enough regard for our old relationship for me to value his good opinion. I wanted him to say I looked nice, and, less worthily, for his admiration to be tinged with regret. There was no going back, but I wished the past to be accorded the rosy glow that was its due.

  In the event, I didn’t read my paper or my book on the way up, but leaned my head back on the seat and gazed out of the window, watching my reflection skim over the warm, dusty, great southeastern countryside. The train was almost empty, since most people at this time of day were heading in the opposite direction. I’d seen very little of my friends so far this week, and it had been busy at work. But with Sabine’s party on Sunday I anticipated all that would change. She had even invited Desma and Rick, who were not normally (in common with other parents of young children) on her entertaining A-list, so it was clear this was an all-hands-to-the-pump job. Sensible of the honour, and knowing where their duty lay, the Shaws had prevailed on friends to look after Bryony. Ronnie had exceeded all reasonable expectation by getting hold of both her boys for the occasion and Ben was going to bring Nozz. At first I’d been doubtful about this, but Ben pointed out that Nozz scrubbed up quite well, and would bring a Bohemian touch to the party which Sabine – even while keeping one eyebrow caustically raised – would appreciate in retrospect.