Peggy
FROM MY SPOT AT the top of the hill, I can see the pair of them coming. The man, who must be Frank, has wild hair all over the place and he’s leaning on Libby’s arm, his face bright red. Jesus, it would be just my luck if he croaked it on the way to meet me, wouldn’t it?
It takes him bloody ages and by the time he gets to me he collapses on the bench, huffing and puffing. Libby sits down on the other side of him and I can tell she’s worried he’s about to carp it too. But eventually he catches his breath and then he turns to look at me.
I see him taking me in: the silver hair, the old lady clothes, my shopper, and I can tell he’s disappointed. Well, what the hell did he expect, Doris bloody Day? He’s hardly an oil painting himself. And then he holds out his hand to me, and I can see it’s shaking and I recognise it straight away. Well, I would, wouldn’t I, love, after everything we’ve been through?
‘Hello,’ he says to me. ‘I’m Frank Weiss.’
So I say hello back, and tell him my name.
‘Peggy,’ he says, rolling the word round his mouth like he’s testing to see what it tastes like.
And then he doesn’t say anything, just sits staring into the distance, like he’s drifted off somewhere else entirely. So I don’t say anything either, I just look out too, take in this view I know so well. My beautiful London.
You know, I still have one of the first sketches I did up here, back in the days when I was still drawing. It’s of this very view, although you’d hardly recognise it now. That was back when St Paul’s Cathedral was still one of the tallest buildings in the city, can you believe? Now the poor thing’s dwarfed by The Shard and The Gherkin and all those other fancy skyscrapers they’ve built. Not that I mind. You know me, love, I’ve never been one to care about things changing. And this city of ours is the best kind of shapeshifter.
There’s a cough to my left and I turn back to see Frank looking at me. His face is a normal colour now, thank God.
‘Do you come here often?’ he asks, and I almost laugh ’cause it’s like a cheesy line from one of those American films you and I used to watch together.
So I tell him, yes, yes I do. I come here every week.
‘And how do you know Libby?’ he says, and that’s when I realise that she hasn’t told him yet. And I look at her and she nods, as if she’s saying she wants me to be the one to tell him.
‘We just met, on the 88,’ I say. ‘Libby told me about your search.’
And I see his eyes go wide then, like the penny’s dropped, and he looks at me but he doesn’t say anything, and I start to panic again that he’s gonna have a heart attack right here, on our bench.
‘Are you . . .’ he says, and his voice is all quivery, like his hands. ‘Are you my girl on the bus?’
Let me tell you, when Libby told me about him earlier, this old man and his sixty-year search . . . well, I didn’t quite believe it, to be truthful. What kind of person spends sixty years looking for someone they met once? I thought he must be off his rocker. But now I look at him and I can see it in his eyes, see the answer to that very question.
Hope.
That’s what’s been driving him, why he hasn’t been able to give up. His search has given him hope and now he’s terrified I’m going to crush it. So I take a deep breath before I answer.
‘No.’
I see him blink.
‘I’m not your girl on the bus.’
His eyes flicker then, like a candle that’s been caught in a draft.
‘But I think I know who she was,’ I say, before the candle goes out altogether.
‘Are you sure?’ he says.
I can’t help chuckling at this. When Libby described her to me earlier, an art student with bright red hair and a beret, who liked to draw people on London buses . . . Well, there can’t have been that many of them around in the early sixties, can there? Especially not ones who had a thing for that Bacchus and Ariadne painting. So I nod at him and tell him I’m sure.
Frank’s staring at his hands, clasped in his lap like he’s trying to stop them shaking.
‘What’s her name?’ he says, his voice so quiet I can hardly hear him.
‘Persephone Fitzgerald.’ It feels funny, saying that name out loud after all these years.
‘Persephone . . .’ He gives a little smile, a small shake of his head, and then he looks at me. ‘Will you tell me about her?’
And I smile too, because you know me, there’s nothing I love more than a good story. So I sit back on the bench and I tell him all about you.
*
I tell him how we met, back on our first day at art school. I tell him how everyone else spoke all la-di-da and walked around as if they owned the bloody place, and then there was you, standing in the corner looking like a beautiful Victorian waif and swearing like a trooper. I remember we caught each other’s eyes and it was like looking in a mirror: we both recognised, without saying a word, how hard we’d had to fight to be there, the sacrifices we’d both made that those other kids would never understand. And then you grinned at me and strolled across the room, your eyes never leaving mine.
‘I’m Percy,’ you said, and you must have seen me screw up my nose ’cause you said, ‘My real name’s Persephone but that’s a bore.’
I tell him how we got a room together, down in Clapham, in a house full of girls trying to make their way in the city. How we were inseparable: Percy and Peggy, Peggy and Percy. How you opened my eyes to London; took me to dodgy little drinking dens in Soho where we were the only girls in the place, taught me to smoke and play poker. And the art galleries, of course. I’d never been to the National Gallery, and you took me that first Saturday and made me sit for an hour in front of one painting. I thought you were barking, but by God, you taught me more about art than any of those stuffy old men at college.
And then, I have to confess, I detour a little bit to tell him what happened to me. Well, you can’t blame me, can you?
I explain how I met Arthur – handsome, charming, dangerous Arthur – and how naive I was when he told me we were safe, he was taking care of things. And then how, a few months later, you held me as I sobbed in the loo with the realisation of what had happened. How you were with me when I told my parents, who were so furious they made me and Arthur get married, even though we didn’t love each other. How I had to drop out of art school in our final year and move into that little flat in Clapham Junction, and how Arthur had started cheating on me even before David was born.
I can see the girl, Libby, is watching me the whole time I tell them this, biting her lip as she strokes her big pregnant bump. So I stop then, because it’s not my story they’re interested in, after all. It’s yours.
I tell them how you graduated top of our class but stayed in London to help me when David was born, sleeping on the floor next to my bed when Arthur was out drinking all night, barricading the bedroom door when he got home. How you wanted me to leave him and us to get a flat together, you working to support me and the baby. I still wonder sometimes what would have happened if I’d said yes, how differently things might have turned out for us both. But I didn’t, did I? Too scared of that bloody man and his fists. Besides, I didn’t want to hold you back, love. You were never meant to be tied down.
Then I tell them about the postcards you sent; first from Rome, when you studied there, then from Paris and finally from New York. I still have them all at home in a box, the weekly cards with your spidery scrawl on the back. I remember standing at the sink in my tiny kitchen, reading in wonder these unfamiliar words: Andy Warhol and the Factory and someone called Edie Sedgwick. And Frank nods at this, his face bright, and I can see that these words mean more to him than they ever did to me.
‘So she really did become an artist, like she said she would?’ he asks, and I tell him too bloody right, that you set the New York scene alight. And he grins, his eyes shining, and I almost want to stop the story here, leave him at the part where everything is so promising and bright. But then he asks me to go on and I know I have to finish your story. For years I’ve been waiting to tell it, Percy. I can’t stop now.
So I tell him how the postcards started to slow down, sometime in the mid-seventies. At first they’d be a few days late, then a week or so, and eventually I was only getting them sporadically. I still wrote to you every week, like a worried mother hen, but I wasn’t even sure I had the right address anymore. I’m fine, I’ve just been busy, you’d write, when a card finally came. I’ve had the flu but I’m on the mend. I didn’t believe you for one second, love, you’ve always been a terrible liar. But still, nothing prepared me for that day you rang on my doorbell.
Do you remember how I opened the door and couldn’t speak, I was so shocked? I’d never seen a person look so near to death: even wrapped up in all those coats I could see how skinny you were, and you had those dark circles round your eyes. And your hair! My God, that beautiful red hair had almost all gone.
And then came the dark days of your withdrawal. The days when you moaned and cried for hours on end, unable to sleep or eat but refusing to see a doctor. The days when you scratched your skin until it bled, and I had to lie there and hold your hands to make you stop. David would peer in through the door and watch, fascinated, like you were some kind of wild animal. And then, just when we’d got through the worst of it, when you could eat a bowl of soup without being sick, you told me.
I’m pregnant, Pegs.
‘What?’ Libby says, and the surprise in her voice reminds me of exactly how I felt back then. I mean, you’d been at death’s door a moment ago, how could you possibly be pregnant? But you were so sure. And when you finally let me take you to see a doctor, he confirmed it was true. Somehow, through it all, you’d carried a baby.
Do you remember those months that followed, how excited we were? You got that little flat round the corner and together we painted a mural on the nursery walls. Well, I say together, but you did all the artistic bits, I just stood there and watched. You had colour back in your cheeks and you were full of energy, although you were still far too skinny. You used to sing all the time, Bob Dylan and Nina Simone, and you were always dancing. You were so happy, my love. So happy.
I stop then, for the first time not sure whether I should go on. Libby’s watching me, a blissful look on her face ’cause she knows that feeling, that excited bubble when you’re about to meet your baby for the first time. But it’s not just her that’s bothering me. For some reason, I’m suddenly worrying whether you’d want me to tell this part of the story. These are two complete strangers, after all. Would you want them to know?
And then I look up, out over Parliament Hill, and do you know what I see?
A kite. A red and white kite, dancing in the air above us. And I know then. I know you want me to tell the story. To say his name.
Jack.
I tell them how perfect he was; tiny but utterly perfect. How the midwives wouldn’t look at you properly, but you never noticed because you only had eyes for your son. I tell them about the six days and nights you sat with him in hospital, even when the doctor told you there was nothing you could do and you should go home. How you dressed him in the hat and clothes I’d knitted for him, all far too big, and sang him Bob Dylan and Nina Simone. And as I’m talking, I can see tears in Libby’s eyes, and Frank reaches across and squeezes her hand. But she looks at me and nods and I know she wants me to go on.
So, I do. I tell them how we brought his ashes up here, you clutching the tiny box to your chest. How you said you wanted Jack to play here forever, with the kites, London at his feet. And how, when you opened the box, there was a gust of wind and you howled, a sound I’ve never heard a human make, before or since.
And then I tell them how we returned to the flat in Clapham Junction, how the days turned to weeks and then months, and somehow life went on. How, with your support, I finally mustered the courage to kick that piece-of-shit husband of mine out, and you moved into the flat and took his place, hanging your paintings alongside mine on the walls. How you got a job as an art teacher at a local school, a job you loved and did for the next thirty years. How you became a second mother to David, the support you gave me when he went through his difficult years, how we celebrated the birth of my granddaughter, Maisie, together. And how you would come up here every week, without fail, to sit on this bench and talk to Jack.
And Frank, who’s barely said a word since the start of the story, turns to me then, his mouth open.
‘She came here every week?’ he says, and I tell him yes, sometimes more than once a week.
And he shakes his head, as if he can’t believe me. ‘I come here as well, have done for decades. This is the bench I always sit on.’
His eyes are wet now, and I think he might start crying. But then he starts giggling.
‘Isn’t that something?’ he says. ‘All this time I’ve spent looking for her on the bus, and all along she was sitting up here, right under my nose.’
And Libby starts to laugh then too, and I join in, and before I know it we’re all cackling, tears running down our cheeks. What a sight we must look! And I don’t even know why we’re laughing, to be honest, but it feels good. After everything that’s happened, by God, it feels good.
When we finally stop I tell them the end of the story. How we noticed you getting forgetful first, an item missed off the shopping list or a misplaced mobile phone. How you refused to see a doctor for ages, until I frogmarched you to the GP. How you never let the Alzheimer’s diagnosis define you. I tell them that you eventually had to give up teaching at the school, which broke your heart, but how you volunteered to run art classes at the local old people’s home. How you swore you’d make it to Maisie’s wedding, and you did, wearing a bright purple dress and dancing with all the young men under the giant glitterball.
How you died a few days later, twelve years ago this month, with me holding your hand.
How I brought your ashes up here and released you into the sky, to fly with Jack and the kites.
And then I’ve reached the end of your story . . . our story . . . and I stop talking.