A Life Between Us Read online

  ‘You’re only seventeen,’ he said, out of nowhere. He continued to rub her hands, back and forth, fast, then slower, then he stroked her hands, her wrists, gently, absent-mindedly. ‘Don’t set too much store by the likes of Clive Stubbins,’ he said, almost in a whisper. ‘Isn’t he engaged anyway?’

  ‘Like you,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Like me,’ said Edward. He laughed mirthlessly.

  ‘Are you excited about the wedding?’ Lucia said. ‘Simone must be.’

  ‘Oh yes, she can’t wait to be princess for a day,’ said Edward.

  ‘Me too,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Of course. And you will make a very beautiful one, I’m sure.’ Edward continued to stroke her hands. He stared into the fire. ‘And I suppose I shall be the prince.’

  ‘You will make a fine prince.’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Have you and Simone had a row?’

  He looked at her, looked away, looked back. ‘A little one,’ he finally confessed. He shrugged.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Oh, nothing much. It’s me. I think I’m getting cold feet.’

  ‘I know all about that,’ said Lucia, and they both chuckled. He still stroked her hands, and she thought it might have been as much for his comfort as hers. He was clearly upset, despite the matter-of-fact words, the chuckling. He gazed into the fire, his eyes moist.

  ‘Seriously,’ he continued, ‘yes, we had a row. I told her to stop pestering me with wedding talk. It wasn’t nice of me and she flounced off to France to visit her parents. She’d half-decided to go anyway. I must have pushed her over the edge, if you like. The truth is she didn’t even ask me to go with her.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Heigh-ho. These things happen. I’ll iron it all out when she gets back.’

  ‘I don’t think Ambrose will be home tonight,’ she said, staring now at her brother’s smooth hands as he continued to stroke hers.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Edward. ‘He’s a law unto himself, that brother of ours.’

  ‘I am too,’ said Lucia, struggling to keep any defensiveness out of her voice. Just for once, couldn’t they talk about her?

  ‘That’s true!’ he said, and laughed. Lucia didn’t laugh. Why was he laughing? Why was he laughing at her? She was not a laughing stock. She was not. She would show him. She would! Almost midnight now. She took hold of his hands in hers and held them still.

  ‘Happy new year, Edward,’ she said softly.

  ‘Happy new year,’ he said, and he leaned across and kissed her forehead.

  Up on the main road a car horn blared, there were distant shouts and woops. A firework went off. And the house so quiet, the fire beginning to smoulder, just the two of them, up and waiting for their wayward brother who, they both knew, would not be home tonight. Her whole body was glowing, aflame. She slowly placed her brother’s hands on her naked knees. His hands were warm; he made to pull them away but she made them stay, pressing them to her using all her feeble strength. She leaned upwards, forwards, and she kissed his mouth. He tasted of rum, hot and sweet. He tried again to pull away, he might have said no, but his hands ran up her thighs. He kissed her. Properly. Mum and Dad and William were upstairs, asleep she hoped, mere yards away, but worlds away, and even Ambrose could come home at any moment, and with the thrust and scrape of the kitchen door all would be lost. But she knew he would not come. He would spend the night elsewhere, with that girl at the dance. Edward was warm and strong. She was perfectly safe. She could hardly be any safer, at this moment, in this house, with this man. Her time had come. This was how it felt to be truly warm, from the inside out.

  Sunday 15 Febuary 1976

  Dear Elizabeth

  Thank you for the Valentines Day card, it is so sweet and I like it a lot. Meg says it is the only Valentines Day card I am ever going to get but she is just jealos because she did’nt get one at all and I did even though I know its from you it still counts. I am sorry I didn’t send you one but in England we send them to people we secretly love. You do’nt write your name you write a ? so the person you send it to has to guess who you are. Our Grampy died at the end of January. He was 71 years old which is very old and he was’nt ill he just woke up dead one morning and I cried but Meg did’nt and Aunty Lucia did’nt ether but Granny cried a lot and kept saying he worked too hard he worked so hard and poor Tom, poor Tom and she cried such a lot and kept going on about how he missed Robert (thats your dad) and Ambroze, poor Ambroze, I do’nt know who that is, and poor Toms disapointmunt and he never got over it and Aunty Lucia said hush before too much is said and she looked at me and Meg and opened her eyes wide at Granny who nodded and went quiet. Granny is old too and she sits in her chair with a blankit on her knees watching things like Pebbul Mill which I think is boring because its just people talking but through the windows you can see cars going past on the road. My favourite programme on telly is Bagpuss. A little girl called Emily has a cuddly fat stripy toy cat he is Bagpuss and she has her own shop with things in it that she finds. Do you get Bagpuss?

  Love from your couzun in England,

  Tina xx (these are kisses in case you wandered)

  Eleven

  December 2013

  It was a Friday in mid-December and busy everywhere, even at the cemetery.

  ‘You decided to come back then,’ said Meg. Tina had tidied the grave and was sitting on the nearest bench. Meg was beside her.

  ‘I came back,’ said Tina. ‘As if I wouldn’t.’

  ‘As if,’ agreed Meg.

  ‘I had a row with Keaton,’ said Tina, and she burst into tears. Meg said nothing. She waited for Tina to stop crying. ‘Well, it was a sort of row. The closest we ever come. We had words.’

  ‘What were the words about?’ said Meg.

  Meg was so nosy. Yet Tina herself had brought the subject up, so obviously she wanted to discuss it. Didn’t she? ‘I don’t really know,’ she said.

  ‘You’re such a fibber,’ said Meg.

  Tina thought her sister tossed her hair. It’s what she would have done. ‘He wants me to go back to that woman,’ said Tina. ‘It’s all he talks about at the moment.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘Virginia,’ said Tina, guarded now and wishing she’d said nothing. Meg didn’t hold with counselling any more than Tina did.

  ‘Who the hell is Virginia?’

  ‘You know. The… shrink woman.’

  ‘Oh, not that crap again? Honestly, some people…’ and Meg lapsed into a disapproving silence, until, ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘Are you going back?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ and nothing further was said for a moment or two. Tina thought Meg had closed her eyes. As a child she’d closed her eyes and smacked her own forehead in frustration, or disgust, whenever Tina said or did anything stupid, which was often.

  ‘You know why he’s doing this don’t you?’ said Meg, leaning forward and staring at Tina, who tried to stare back but found she couldn’t. It was hard to focus sometimes, hard to see through the fug and fog and bleariness of her mind; her inner life, which was more real to her than anything around her, more real than Keaton and coffee cake and graves and logs hissing in wood burners.

  ‘Yes, I know why,’ said Tina.

  ‘No. You don’t though. It’s because he’s fed up with you being nutty and he’s thinking of running off with that secretary of his. He’s trying to put the frighteners on you.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Tina, picking lint (that may or may not have been there) from her coat, and sitting up straight. She wasn’t going to listen to such nonsense. ‘Meg, honestly…’

  ‘You’ll see,’ said Meg, with malicious confidence. Keaton’s secretary – assistant – was somebody T
ina tried to ignore. The thought of her, the nagging doubts that lingered in her mind, even though she knew Keaton was a man to be implicitly trusted. Tina did not feel threatened. She knew Keaton could handle such things, and nothing terrible would come of it. She had felt light about the whole thing, that evening last summer when Keaton had… confessed, almost, to his assistant’s feelings for him.

  The sisters were quiet for a few moments.

  ‘Tina?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t bother with counselling. It’s a waste of time and they’ll crush your soul and make you believe in all sorts of nonsense.’

  ‘Oh, Meg, come—’

  ‘And they’ll steer you away from me. You’ll stop believing in me and we’ll never—’

  ‘Meg…’ warned Tina, but Meg was not listening.

  ‘And we have things to do, right? We have unfinished business to attend to.’

  ‘No. I do, apparently. Me.’

  ‘That’s the way it is. I can’t help that any more than you can.’

  ‘That’s not quite true. I could have helped it. I could have done more. It would have been all right but for me.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘Forget it, Meg,’ said Tina.

  ‘Shan’t. What are you going on about?’

  ‘That day.’

  ‘I thought we didn’t talk about that day?’ said Meg, mocking, and Tina knew it was time to end the conversation but she couldn’t, not this time, she had more things to say and she felt she ought to say them. Rarely had it been sensibly discussed, if at all. If it was all right for Meg to say startling things, it was all right for her as well.

  ‘I know you think it wasn’t my fault, but it was,’ Tina said. ‘It truly was.’

  ‘You are joking?’

  ‘No. I’m not joking.’

  ‘You know good and damned well whose fault it was!’ cried Meg, and she reached out her hand, and Tina took it. Meg’s hand was cold, so cold, and so light it may not have been there, resting in Tina’s larger hand, which was strong and sturdy and warm by comparison. ‘And we don’t talk about that day,’ continued Meg. ‘Remember? And until you face up to the truth of it—’

  ‘No, no!’ Tina snatched her hand away, and stood up. ‘I won’t listen to this. I can’t any more.’

  ‘Chicken,’ said Meg.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said “chicken” because that’s what you are!’ cried Meg. ‘And you’re stupid too. You actually believe in your philandering husband and your tiny, tiny life!’

  ‘How dare you? At least I have a life, at least I haven’t—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Well, don’t you dare bring Keaton into this! He’d never cheat on me, never. He’s not that kind of man.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Meg and she chuckled, cruel and derisory.

  ‘Fuck you, Meg,’ said Tina, shocked at her own words. Meg had wound her up before, of course, thousands of times, but rarely did Tina swear. It wasn’t her style.

  ‘Fuck yourself,’ said Meg. ‘Better still, fuck Keaton before that secretary of his does.’

  ‘Assistant,’ said Tina quietly, her voice floating away from her, taken and lost. These arguments with Meg were exhausting; ephemeral. They were impossible to win, and perennially circular. Why couldn’t Meg just let it go? It happened. It’s over.

  Kath had said those words with such confidence, such conviction and simplicity. Kath was a good person. Perhaps she was somebody Tina could talk to about all this? Perhaps Kath could help after all, like Meg had hoped, just not in the way she had hoped. Perhaps Kath could help Tina, if not Meg, who was beyond help, but refused to know it. Damn her! And now something else, another crazy idea, this new but not-new idea, that Sharanne was in love with Keaton. Was Keaton in—? No. No. Some thoughts were unthinkable. She mustn’t take any notice of Meg’s nonsense. She rose from the bench. She muttered goodbye to her sister, who of course did not reply.

  Keaton arrived home from work to find his wife sprawled across their sofa. She appeared to be drunk. She’d evidently opened one of their bottles of wine they’d been saving for Christmas, and it languished on the floor next to the sofa. He picked it up – almost empty. Defensive and short-tempered, Tina said she could drink if she damn well wanted to and she’d had a bad visit with Meg. She’d had a bad day. You know, like he did sometimes, and came home and had a glass of wine? That was supposed to be that, Keaton could tell, but he wasn’t satisfied. Had she forgotten it was his work’s Christmas do tonight? The thirteenth of December? This year she’d said she’d join him. Had she forgotten?

  She had forgotten. She couldn’t go now, she claimed. She felt dreadful. She’d eaten already and she wasn’t hungry any more and she felt like she could throw up. He’d have to go without her. She was sickening for a cold too, on top of everything else. She’d been so chilly visiting Meg. Why did she even bother? Keaton shook his head and withdrew from the lounge and took the stairs two at a time. He stripped off his work clothes and jumped into the shower. He had about forty-five minutes. Had Tina remembered to book a taxi? He doubted it, and what did it matter now anyway? She clearly wasn’t going to join him, not in that state, so he’d drive himself there and take a taxi home. He might even walk back. The hotel was only five miles or thereabouts from home, not so far. He liked to walk, especially on cold, clear nights. He could get a taxi back to the hotel in the morning and pick up the car. He’d known deep down that Tina wouldn’t go, because she never did. But he had hoped, and he certainly hadn’t expected to arrive home and find her drunk.

  He tried not to imagine what had happened this day to his wife. It was becoming boring, this way of carrying on. Her mental state was an increasing worry to him, but he was running out of ideas. What more could he do? If she wouldn’t go to counselling, he couldn’t force it. She was a grown woman and she could make her own decisions. It seemed to him, as he showered, that the only thing he could possibly do was to give up trying to help her, and give up on his dream of being a father, and let Tina carry on as she was. He would be there for her, of course. He loved her, absolutely and without conditions. But he couldn’t change anything and he was tired. He was tired of nagging. This time, she would just have to deal with it in her own way. He was going out for once, and he was going to have fun.

  He turned off the shower, stepped out and wrapped the towel around himself. Fleetingly, so fleeting he was barely aware of framing the thought, he wondered what Sharanne would be wearing to the party.

  Twelve

  January 1964

  Lucia thought she heard Edward leave on the morning of New Year’s Day, but she wasn’t sure. She was in bed, and could not get out. The chill her mother had foretold last night was upon her. ‘Walking home barefoot in the snow, Tom! She’ll catch her death’ – and she had. In her nightmare visions she saw her brothers. They were monsters, all. Even William, in truth a harmless soul, but there he was, looming over her, breathing fire, wielding an axe. She closed her eyes. They were already closed. She heard a voice.

  Did she cry out? Had she cried out? Had she dreamed it?

  She thought she heard her parents and William say goodbye to Edward as they stood at the foot of the stairs. She thought she heard his car struggle up the lane in the snow. That must be why he had gone earlier than planned. The snow. It’s stopped snowing at any rate, she thought she heard her dad say. The snow was in her mouth. She was choking. His hand covered her mouth. Be quiet, oh be quiet.

  She’d made love to Clive Stubbins. But it wasn’t Clive. It was never Clive.

  Mum was at her bedside. She worried – ‘Should I call the doctor?’ ‘She’s caught a chill that’s all. Stop your fussing, Anne.’ Later, Helen Shapiro was at her bedside, crooning a lullaby. Lucia reached out her hand to her; she wanted
to tell her what had happened, but she knew she could not. Helen was singing, just singing and smiling. And soon she was gone.

  They wouldn’t understand. Nobody would ever understand. But had she dreamed it? There was stickiness all over her. Perhaps it was sweat. Perhaps it was blood. Perhaps it was something else. She was on fire yet she had snow in her mouth; she was lying in snow. But the snow was hot. Oh, what had they done? He was gone. Back to his London flat and his half-French fiancée whose name was Simone and who would be coming home from France, when of course they would kiss and make up and get married. And in the early days, the university days, when Lucia used to stand in the corner and stare at her, Simone came for tea twice and Mum had made buns the one time and scones the other and she had thought Simone marvellous: such a nice girl! But Mum was wrong. She was frilv… frivolv… what was it? Frivolous! Simone was frivolous.

  Simone must never know. Nobody must ever know what they had done. What had they done? There was one person she could tell wasn’t there? ‘Mum? Mum?! I—’ ‘Hush, Lucia, sleep now, dearest.’ Coldness on her forehead, her mother’s cold hand, a cold flannel smelling of bath salts. Her brother’s hot hands. Her hot hands, their hot mouths together. The stickiness between her thighs. The life she might have led. Nobody must know.

  Monday 1st March 1976

  Dear Elizabeth

  I got your letter and I really like the paper and matching envelope you have nice things in America. I wish I could live there. It is still cold here even though it is supposed to be springtime now because it is March. Wow-wee, you are so lucky to have a new baby sister, and I like her name. My grannys house is changeing. Aunty Lucia has taken over, it is more or less her house now she says and she is throwing things away. She says a clutered house is a clutered mind and no wander Grampy was sumething, but I cant remember what she said. It was’nt very nice about her own dad. Granny got upset and cried but Aunt Lucia tutted and told her to keep out of it and not interfeer, she knows what she is doing. Meg and me went there for tea after school today. Mummy went to see her frend and she was’nt back in time to make our tea. Aunty Lucias food is dry and it tastes funny, a bit like old bread. At school we are going to have baby chicks, we have an incubator and its warm and I cant wait to see the babys when they hatch. Miss Tyson says we will be able to cuddle them if we are carefull. I am always careful with little animals but Meg and me are still not allowed to have a rabbit. I’m reading a good book called The Diddakoi by a writer with a funny name it is Rumer Godden. It is a fantastic story, please read it if you get the chance. The girl in the story is called Kizzy and she’s a bit like me and Meg except we’re not gipsys. Its been on telly too which I watched and so did Meg and we really liked it. It was called Kizzy on telly. If it is ever on your telly PLEASE WATCH IT! I am sending you a card for your birthday and a packet of my favourite sweets which is Tooty Frooties. I hope there are a lot of purple ones because they are the best.