As soon as my divorce was finalised I went home to Scotland. The weekend after my arrival there, I decided to go away to the east coast for a few days. In a state of over-heightened sensibility, I felt there was something almost incestuous about breathing and eating in the same house as my parents at this particular time. I was embarrassed.
It wasn’t that they reproached me. But, as far as I knew, it was the first divorce in our family on either side: a crack had appeared in the solid wall. Of course, I would be the one to start the demolition with a hammer and chisel, and a megaphone and my name in the paper.
Looking at my mother and father, I felt guilty. I’d started out so much luckier than either of them, and managed my life so much worse. Dad was a clerk in the civil service and, partly because of the regular transfers all over the British Isles from one small town to another, he and my mother had had a limited and isolated life together.
I was their only child, but it never seemed to me I brought them joy, the way children are supposed to. And, as I grew up, if anyone had asked me what kept them together I’d have said, ‘Worries.’ They were always in a strange town looking for a house to live in, and it was always winter, so that like the orphans of the storm they had snow falling round their shoulders. When they found a small, usually semi-detached house, it was sometimes empty, sometimes fully furnished, and they either had to store crates of household equipment, or buy the essentials that had been previously provided. All this was perpetually worrying and, of course, the car was fragile when they got it.
Sometimes I was a worry, too, when I was ill, or examinations were due, or scholarships; but then, when the crisis passed, I was laid aside, as it were, with all the receipts for accounts paid.
I remember that several times a week in the summer they’d drive out to the country, which was never far away, and take note of the harvest. As they did this for years, up and down the country, they were in an excellent position to compare districts, yields and methods. If I was home from school I’d sit in the back seat listening: ‘John, did you notice that crop of—’ ‘Yes, he’s done well, considering, but do you remember that place in the Borders?’ ‘You’re right, that was better, but then think of the soil!’ ‘I know, but even so…’
Greek! I’d shrug to myself.
From the stories they told, their meeting and courtship appeared even more than usual to have been a matter of accident. It never occurred to me that they cared much for each other, though I saw they enjoyed these country outings, and they were never bored. And the fact remains, they had been married for forty years, almost to the day, when I first heard someone say, ‘She’s their divorced daughter from London, Dr Philippa Fraser.’
My father made one comment: ‘I don’t know what people expect out of life.’ This was unanswerable. My mother said, ‘Will the publicity hurt you, Pip?’
I pointed out that a divorce could hardly be quieter than ours. There were no blondes, no sensitive dark strangers of either sex, featured in the very unsensational press report. If I’d told them the truth—that the suicide, murder or insanity of one or both of us had been averted by a brief appearance in court—they wouldn’t have believed me. (‘She always exaggerates!’) No, what they hoped to hear was a conventional explanation, involving the customary third party.
After breakfast on Saturday morning, I was drying the dishes when my mother chose to tell me yet again that my father didn’t know what people expected out of life. She glanced up in a challenging way, and I was goaded, sickly, into saying, ‘Then I’m lucky. When I was ten someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I said, “Divorced.”’
It was then I decided to go away.
My mother’s blue eyes stayed on mine, wide open, seeming to understand what I’d meant to do with those words. Her eyes burned away at me, while she breathed through her nose in silence. I was glad to see she’d decided to hate me for the time being. It was an awful thing I’d told her.
‘Then I can only say I’m very sorry for Nick, if that’s true.’
And I breathed out with relief to see that, after all, she’d turned aside from my blow, leaving all the veils between us intact.
‘Sorry. I’m not fit for human company. I’ll go over to that place on the east coast for a day or so.’
‘I thought you’d just come up here,’ she said, carefully stacking the plates in the cupboard.
‘Sorry.’
The instinct that had carried me from London to this small Scottish village was self-preservation. Never having dealt with this unprecedented situation on my behalf before, instinct seemed to throw up its hands and a hatful of ideas in the hope that I would know best. In coming home, clearly, I hadn’t.
It was extraordinarily cold at the station, or perhaps it was just that I’d forgotten Scottish winters in the years down south. Everyone north of the border knows Londoners are soft, effete creatures.
‘Don’t get out of the car,’ I told my parents. ‘Hurry home to the fire. It’s much too miserable to wait round on platforms.’
They eyed me, disappointed. It was almost a year since I’d last seen them, and here I was rushing off already. ‘All right, Pip, we’ve gone. Take care of yourself, there’s a good girl.’
They looked a bit shabby, and really quite old, I was alarmed to see. I clutched the car door wondering what I could do to make it up to them. When we’d left the house I’d given them a cheque—something quite substantial, and anyway they were perfectly all right! So why did I want to cry in front of these familiar strangers who said such irritating things to me, and made me feel I shouldn’t know the facts of life at thirty? I was maudlin. It was ridiculous!
‘You’re a great one for trains,’ my mother said. ‘Always rushing away to school, or university, or London.’
‘Oh, choof off, both of you! When I come back we’ll see some shows in Edinburgh, and have dinner at the North British every time, too.’
So they went away laughing in a scandalised fashion at the thought of such extravagance, and the fact that their girl Pip had threatened to provide it, and undoubtedly would.
But then I was in the train and there I was no one’s daughter; all I was was someone conscious of error. I’d always been so clever! It was almost comical to think of this very worthy IQ bending its powers to the ancient problem of choosing and being chosen by a mate, and coming up with a mistake like this…
‘The North Sea,’ I told the taxi driver. My face had frozen on the walk from the train, and it was physically difficult to speak. My chin was paralysed.
‘Is it Mr and Mrs Byrne’s place you’re wanting?’ the old man asked, turning around.
‘I don’t know. The North Sea. It’s a private hotel. Someone recommended it a few years ago.’
‘Och, aye, it’s the Byrnes’ place you’re wanting. They’ve been in it now for about two year.’ He had a thick Scots accent and bright grey eyes.
‘All right, the Byrnes’ place. I’d like to arrive in time for dinner.’
‘Och, there’s no hurry for your dinner, lassie. You’ve missed that by a half-hour at least. Still, they’ll not let you go to your bed without a cup of tea.’
This was all very charming. My capacity for making mistakes was obviously in its early stages. I could see myself headed for a long career in the manufacture of mistakes. Dame Philippa Fraser would appear in some future New Year’s Honours List, her title bestowed by the sovereign for her unremitting efforts to raise the standard of mistakes throughout the country, single-handed.
‘Och, they’ve let it go down, the old place,’ the driver said confidentially. ‘Irish, you know.’
‘Oh?’
‘She’s Irish!’ he assured me, turning right round again and nodding. ‘She’s a hard worker, too, but him! Never does a hand’s turn about the place. The leaves are all over the gardens and up the drive. You wait. I’ll have to change gear to get over them all.’
There was a lack of logic somewhere in his tale that worried me, as trivial things now had the power to do. But it stayed in the background with everything else while my attention listened to Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick…Nothing but a name, but it said everything, ticking in my head the way it had for months.
The old man went on, very dry. ‘Of course, Mr Byrne’s got to entertain the guests.’ (‘En-tairr-tain,’ he said.)
It was too dark to see the square stone house or the dunes of leaves around it when we pulled up.
‘Come along in,’ said Mrs Byrne as the taxi drove off. ‘Willie’s an old chatterbox. This is your room, Miss Fraser. There’ll be supper in the sitting room at nine, and there’s a fire in there, so when you’ve unpacked you might like to come through and meet the other guests. Just Mr and Mrs Alston. He’s an artist from London. And the bathroom’s just across the hall here. You may find this tap hard to manage, but it isn’t really. So now I’ll leave you to unpack. Oh yes, a shilling meter for the radiator. You’ll need it tonight.’
The Irish Mrs Byrne was small, compact, hard-eyed. She looked not well disposed towards the world or its inhabitants.
I debated going straight to bed, but I’d eaten so little all day that even tea and a biscuit began to seem desirable, and I was leaving my room to face the strangers when I heard someone shout, ‘No, I’m sorry! I’m not in the mood to discuss knitting with some maiden lady from the Borders!’ And a door opened onto the dark hallway showing a lighted room out of which stumbled a thin, bearded man. He sheered away from me, not looking, and belted downstairs.
A woman with dark hair calmly followed him out. ‘Colin…Oh, good evening.’ She smiled at me, and waved an arm towards the stairs. ‘My husband.’
So these were the Alstons. The artist. The Artiste! I thought unkindly. A sensitive Artiste, too! Above all mankind I disliked my fellow sufferers. What a boring, despicable crew they were the world over, having ‘breakdowns’, and bravely recovering, or else not…
A brass standard lamp and a coal fire lighted the lowceilinged room labelled Guests Only. A girl in a green dress stood at a trolley pouring tea.
‘Hello. I’m Mrs Byrne’s daughter, June. This is my husband, Cliff, and that’s the baby. It hasn’t got a name yet, though it’s being christened tomorrow. And this is Pepper.’
She crouched in front of the brown-and-white terrier at her feet, and fed him a biscuit, bite by bite, then stood up, flipping back her fair hair with her hand. ‘How do you like your tea, Miss Fraser?’
Cliff, the young man, held the baby awkwardly, trying to drink his tea; his wife seemed rather pointedly not to notice. He was in his early twenties, white-skinned and sick-looking. Eventually his clumsiness, something, provoked me into taking the baby while he finished his supper. It was a young baby, about six weeks old, a little girl.
June looked on indifferently when Cliff took her back again from me, and said, ‘You’d better come to her christening tomorrow, if you can be bothered. Mother said to ask you. They won’t light the fire till we all get home from church, so you might as well.’
Who was I to resist such an invitation? ‘I’d enjoy that,’ I said. ‘What are you going to call her?’
‘It hasn’t got a name,’ she said brusquely. ‘I told you.’
‘I didn’t realise…’
‘I think we might call her June, after her mother,’ the young husband said, but his wife’s eyes moved from the baby to the dog in a sort of venomous silence. She said suddenly, ‘What’s your name?’
‘Philippa.’
‘We’ll call it that.’
Cliff looked up, then down, resignedly, at the baby’s small bare feet. They were cold: I’d noticed when I held her. She was far from warmly dressed, and the room was draughty. Outside it was starting to rain. I decided to leave this luckless child and its parents to their own company.
‘What will you have for breakfast?’ the girl called after me. ‘Coffee and rolls. Something like that.’
‘Right. I’ll tell Mother.’ And she looked at me with envy. I was not Cliff’s wife. I was not Philippa’s mother.
No, indeed! And how enviable I was, lying awake, staring at the wall, hearing that name, my mind disordered by it, wanting nothing, feeling nothing, believing nothing.
In the morning Mrs Byrne lingered over the delivery of the breakfast tray. ‘So, the baby’s to be called after you! She should never have had it, that’s the trouble. She’s a clever girl, June. She could have got a grant and gone to university. (That’s what I should have done, too, years ago!) Her headmistress wanted it, and her father and I did. But she met Cliff at a youth hostel in the Highlands one weekend and within four months they were married. I should’ve let her meet more boys. He’s been sick the whole time, all in his imagination, I think. He works in the post office in a mining village. They’ll go home there after the christening. What sort of life she’s let herself in for… Is that enough butter for you? We’ll leave for the church at quarter past ten.’
Mr Byrne, a fake-hearty, lantern-jawed Scot, drove us in a fifth- or sixth-hand Daimler to a small stone church set in one of Scotland’s countless grassy hollows. There wasn’t a cottage in sight, just a few sheep chewing blandly.
The Alstons, at the last moment, had been asked to act as godparents, and had not refused. But I noticed Colin Alston’s expression during the ceremony, and saw that a hand or a foot tapped compulsively under the strain of this ordeal. He seemed very tense, but he and his wife, Marion, were pleasant people, and I guessed they were sorry about the outburst the night before that I had been bound to overhear.
Back at the North Sea the new Philippa was placed on the floor by the fire, and Pepper yelped about the room, jealous of her, sniffing her face, investigating. I wanted to protest, but didn’t. The baby cried. Pepper dozed by the fire, winking at it, half-awake.
When June noticed this, she flew to him and picked him up. ‘You mustn’t look at the fire, sweet, and make your eyes hot. It’s bad for them.’ She kissed his nose, then went away to collect her remaining bags and baskets while her father revved up the engine to drive them to the station. I stood at the front door with the Alstons to see them go off. Mr and Mrs Byrne were waiting in the front seat while Cliff and June tossed rugs and overnight bags into the back.
‘Cliff, here’s a rattle for the baby. There wasn’t much choice in the shop.’ Marion went over to the window of the car with a pink plastic rattle. ‘I’m afraid it isn’t very nice.’
‘Look, June! Little Pip’s first present,’ he cried, smiling.
‘Oh yes,’ she said, and rattled the thing before the baby’s face as they drove off through the leaves, past the crumbling stone pillars at the gateway.
In the afternoon Mrs Byrne rested while her husband and Colin Alston went walking by the sea. I stayed beside the fire, and so did Marion Alston, with a book and a cigarette. We talked a bit instead of reading. By half-past two, without a light, it was too dark to see the printed page. By half-past three, the misty, dank and penetrating winter night had settled in. We had been silent for a minute or so, sunk in the profound silence of the house, when Marion said, as if she’d taken a decision, ‘Colin enjoyed talking to you at lunchtime. He very seldom discusses painting now, so it excited him. That’s why he went out with Mr Byrne.’
‘I see.’ I had wondered.
Marion said, ‘He was married once before, you know, almost twenty years ago. The girl died soon afterwards. Colin knew her for six months. He’s never quite recovered.’
‘Have you been married long?’
‘No, quite a short time.’
‘It might make a difference to him.’
‘It might. It might be too late. He’s forty-five. He used to be a promising young painter. I read about him in London and saw his work long before I met him. Now he calls himself a competent hack. He does work he despises.’ She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with competence, and we eat well. The only sad thing is—he was capable of more, and lucky, recognised, encouraged…But he just—gave up the ghost. Or rather—didn’t.’
While she looked at the flames of the fire I looked at her hair, and the streaks of grey in it, and I opened my mouth, and closed it. I should say something. But what? I could think of nothing at all. I leaned back in my chair as empty of words, of sympathy, as physically feeble and helpless, as that young baby setting out in life so heavily handicapped.
And it occurred to me as I sat, tired with the effort of drawing one shallow breath after another, that this feeling of bloodlessness, toothlessness, of having had so many qualities drawn off that I was strange to myself, was becoming more and more familiar. And in a way I loved being this weak, indifferent woman.
But why was I being subjected to these sights and stories? Hadn’t I taken three months’ leave of absence from my practice in London to escape them? Down there, if all those patients had been content with a little less—as much as they paid for and were entitled to!—I’d have stayed on. I was not eager to pass twelve weeks, eighty-four days and nights, without the distraction of work. But at least half of them came to say, in effect, ‘Doctor, I’m unhappy. Help me. What do I do now?’
It’s all there in any government handbook describing the medical services—the number of patients seeking treatment for symptoms of psychosomatic origin. I used to be interested in these people—I can’t think why. A year ago, of course, I was that much younger, that much more credulous and ignorant…
All at once I felt oppressed and angry. People telling you sad stories! But then Marion Alston looked over at me, and somehow I was confused. Perhaps it was the effect of the firelight, or the darkness, or the silence, but I seemed to catch sight of a surprising strength of spirit in her. I wondered if, minutes before, when I was so resentful, she hadn’t been offering, rather than asking for, help.
‘My husband and I were divorced recently, and I don’t seem to be very well.’
This statement was roughly the length of Pericles’ funeral oration when compared with my total silence on the subject with my closest friends and relations.
Marion said nothing. I began to feel humiliated. Had I been mistaken in my intuition of her strength? Was she as speechless as I had been? She was older than me, about fifteen years older. (How dreadful! She had actually had to survive fifteen years longer than…)
‘I don’t seem to know what to do next,’ I said.
‘No. But at least you will have a better idea of what not to do.’
‘You mean—poor Cliff and June?’
‘And the Byrnes, and Colin and me.’
‘You’ve come through,’ I said. ‘Anyone can see. But the others…The circumstances are so different, I don’t…’
‘Nevertheless,’ Marion said, ‘there aren’t unlimited roads out of these situations.’
What did she mean? I said, ‘You came through.’
She picked up a burning cinder with the tongs and threw it back on the fire. ‘Yes. But a few years ago I’d have served as a warning to anyone. Though it mightn’t have been all that obvious at first sight.’
‘How?’ I insisted. I felt shameless, but I had to know what she knew.
‘I was very gay, but there just wasn’t much of a person to be any more. Nothing mattered, though, so that didn’t matter either. I had no reason not to be bright. I went to too many parties, and sometimes drank too much. I carefully had no time to think or read. Some of the music and pictures and plays and books I’d admired for years turned morbid and dull, but it didn’t matter.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Congratulating myself on my survival, I suppose. At the time I didn’t see how little it amounted to.’
‘And did you meet Colin then?’ I thought, There’s always a stock solution to other people’s problems—in this case, another man.
She shook her head. ‘This was years before I knew him.’
Outside on the landing there were voices, and the chinking of teacups. Mrs Byrne came in trundling the trolley, and her husband and Colin Alston followed.
‘What timing!’ they said. ‘Teatime! We knew when to get back.’
‘How’s that fire? Oh, George, I thought you’d look after it while I was resting this afternoon.’
‘Aye, well…I’d better get on with the leaves after tea,’ said George Byrne, lowering himself into his large easy chair for the remainder of the day.
‘We know all about that,’ said his wife, handing round cups and plates.
‘You were both extremely wise to stay in all afternoon,’ Colin told Marion and me, standing over us. ‘I have never seen a more cheerless sight than that stretch of water out there.’ He tugged at his beard, smiled down nervously, then sat beside us to talk about painting, his foot tapping relentlessly all the while.
We all parted friends. It was left that I should get in touch with the Alstons when I returned to London. While Colin paid their account next morning, I stood with Marion watching for the taxi. She buttoned her coat up.
I tried to make a joke of it by laughing a bit, but I had to say, in a low voice, ‘For heaven’s sake, Marion, don’t go without telling me the end of your story. Yesterday you had to stop halfway. I still don’t know what to do.’ I despised myself as I would have despised one of my patients, now that I was this new person. My tact, my finesse, my hobnailed boots, astonished me, but speak I would and did.
Marion looked through the door and away from the house. She seemed grave. ‘If it was anything simple, Philippa, would Colin be like this? I don’t know what happened. I changed. I could never remember how.’
I watched her.
She said, ‘In any case, if I could tell you, if it could be contained in a sentence, it would no longer be true. It would alter. Neither of us would understand. There are some—apprehensions—that are loaned out occasionally and withdrawn as soon as used. Do you…?’
I waited.
She said, ‘People do come through. It helps to want to.’
I was not pleased.
They drove away by taxi to the station, and I stood with the Byrnes on the step and waved. After that I went straight out and bought a soft lemon-coloured lamb for the baby, and some postcards. Mrs Byrne gave me June’s address and I wrapped up the parcel, and wrote the cards to my mother and father, though I would probably reach home before they arrived. I sent cheques to Edinburgh for theatre tickets for the following week. And, lastly, I wrote a letter to Nick to say goodbye and wish him well.
When I had posted all this, I walked back from town to the North Sea. Coming up the drive empty-handed, I saw Mr Byrne in the doorway looking out at the leaves. I called to him, ‘What about a joint attack? There are two rakes here. If you start over that side, and I start here, we could make a great clearance by teatime. And it’s dry, and there’s hardly any wind.’
‘You’re right!’ he exclaimed. ‘It’s the day I’ve been waiting for!’ And he dashed for the rakes and brought mine across, loping over the drifts. ‘These leaves are a sore point with Mrs Byrne, you know. This’ll surprise her. Och, anyway, there’s nothing like a bit of exercise if there’s a body to keep you company.’
This is childish, I thought angrily. This is stupid. And I didn’t want to do it, any more than I’d wanted to move all morning, or write that letter, or buy that lamb, or sign my name. What a way to try to make life bearable! Who had that woman thought she was—the priestess of Apollo delivering oracles?
Still, we kept on, and we swept up the leaves.