Meeting Lydia Read online

  “Is he still spending a lot of time at the pub?”

  “Much less now.”

  “Did you ever find anyone you were looking for on Friends Reunited?”

  “I found Edward.” Marianne began, feeling the heat as soon as she spoke his name. “And a couple of people found me.”

  “Edward?”

  “Edward Harvey from Brocklebank Hall. Except he’s called Ted now.”

  “Oh, Harry Potter! Yeah?”

  “So you said!”

  “And?”

  “And nothing.”

  “What is he now?”

  “An archaeologist.”

  “Wow, cool! Will you meet?”

  “He’s in Australia … Or New Zealand or Pitcairn Island.”

  “Living?”

  “Holiday … He may not write again …” Marianne thought as she said the words that this might be true. He may not write again. She may be abandoned with her precious gift of the cure and have no way of ever letting him know the true extent of what he had done for her. For an instant she felt the loss as a pain in her soul.

  “But if he does, will you meet? That would be so extra!”

  “Maybe one day.”

  “Cool.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that.” (Her mother again!)

  “Is he like you expected?”

  “Hard to say by email, but there was nothing unexpected about him.”

  With Holly home, Johnny was happy again; wanting to hear everything and being told very little. Holly and Marianne conspired to keep the most unsettling facts of her student existence just between themselves. She’d met a young man called Dylan and it was clear she was in the first throes of love and thought that everyone else should be too. Used to her father’s suspicions and interrogation, Holly told her mother when they were alone and Marianne provided Johnny with an edited underplayed version. There was someone called Dylan – another law student – who sounded very charming – but it wasn’t anything serious. You know what it’s like at uni, Johnny … Now that he was behaving better she didn’t want him to start fretting about Holly.

  “You don’t think she’s sleeping with the guy, do you?” he said.

  “They’ve only known each other a few weeks.”

  “A few weeks in that intense atmosphere is equivalent to a year anywhere else.”

  “She’s sensible.”

  “By sensible, do you mean on the pill and adept with condoms?”

  “I don’t like to pry.”

  “I hope he’s not one of these serial womanisers.”

  “Don’t assume the worst.”

  “Dylan, what kind of a name is that?”

  “His parents were probably children in the flower-power generation … a bit like us.”

  “At least we didn’t call Holly after a rabbit.”

  “More likely that he’s called after Bob.”

  And Johnny was silenced, but Marianne could almost hear the cogwheels of his consciousness battling with irrational feelings of jealousy and over-protection.

  She wrote in her journal: Holly has met a Dylan and is madly in love; I have met an Edward and he has made me sing again.

  Johnny is being sensitive and kind again, but he hasn’t said sorry …

  For the first time in twenty years, or maybe for the first time ever, I am looking after me.

  22

  Edward

  Is it impossible for men and women to be just friends? Heterosexual men and women, that is. Friends without even a hint of the untoward? When men meet women, the dance goes on however surreptitiously; however under the surface. But when there is no sex, and never likely to be, does it need attraction from at least one of the parties in order to make it sustainable?

  Christmas and New Year had been and gone with all the usual fuss and razzmatazz of drinks parties and extravagance, family visits, excesses of food and endless glitzy television shows.

  Holly was now back in Sussex and Johnny and Marianne were going through the separation trauma yet again, but less painfully, knowing that they had coped before and realising that they were slowly coming to terms with being alone together.

  All was calm in Beechview Close.

  It was cold and bleak with dark days of driving rain from heavy clouds. There was a January rawness to the breeze that northerners called a ‘lazy wind’ because it goes straight through. Johnny and Marianne typically spent their winter Sunday afternoons preparing for the week ahead. When Marianne was using the computer, she frequently sneaked a look at her emails, wondering if Edward was back yet, and if he were, would he let her know, and would they continue their re-acquaintance from where they left off?

  But this Sunday, Johnny was painting the spare bedroom upstairs and the smell of Sea White drifted through the house. This had been on his list of things to do for about four years. Marianne was sick of mentioning it. It was only when she threatened to do it herself and even went to Homebase and bought the paint that he decided he would make a start. She knew he thought he would do it better. This may well have been true. Certainly he would do it faster. She also knew that this great sacrifice on his part would mean that he wouldn’t do anything else for at least another year and she would be expected to balance his effort by caring for his every need. It was a Mars/Venus thing.

  She checked her emails again. Nothing …

  Johnny had always been suspicious when Marianne claimed a new male friend. New male friends made his antlers grow; made him hoof the ground, toss his head in the long grass and bellow. There was Ashley with whom she used to work, who gave the most wonderful hugs, and had a wife called Imogen who was always busily involved in some high-powered job flitting across to Europe every couple of weeks. When Imogen was out of town, Ashley played the single man. When he invited Marianne to the theatre, Johnny raised an eyebrow. “I don’t trust him,” he said. “I know men like Ashley. Oh they’re very nice and all that, but give him half a chance …” So Marianne thought of some excuse to refuse the invitation, Ashley asked no more, and the hugs became a thing of the past.

  Then there was Jean-Paul from Marseilles, who was on an exchange visit teaching maths. He had a wild black beard, a nervous wife and three sons. Marianne tried to be hospitable and invited them for dinner, but his wife couldn’t come because she had to look after the children. Johnny watched them like a hawk from avocado cocktail though to Jamie Oliver’s Aunt Sheila’s Pudding. Jean-Paul flirted and complimented and Johnny’s expression said, ‘this man thinks he’s Casanova’, and afterwards he gave Marianne chapter and verse.

  Marianne said he was French, that they all behaved like that and he shouldn’t read anything into it.

  Johnny said French or no, if he left them alone together he would like to bet that Jean-Paul would try it on. “I know what men are like,” he said, “I’ve been one for a long time.”

  Marianne pretended to take no notice, but when Jean-Paul and his family moved back to France, he sent her a postcard with saucy undertones about The Last Tango in Paris and she began to think that Johnny might be right.

  There had been other male friends throughout her life, but always something had happened to spoil everything. At school in the sixth form, twice it happened that they suddenly declared feelings that she’d never suspected. Once it was alcohol induced, after a sneaked kiss on the floor by a vegetable rack in a kitchen at a party. And once on the day of her A level results after a split with her boyfriend. Both times she had been shocked. Suspicions were aroused. Was this what they’d wanted all along? Was the friendship false – just a means to get close? Defence mechanisms were raised with the impenetrability of the Thames Barrier and in each case the friendship withered.

  Sometimes the problem lay outside the friendship – a jealous girlfriend wanting exclusive female access to her partner’s thoughts.

  But Johnny didn’t know Edward. Johnny had never known Edward, so there was nothing he could say to scupper that acquaintance – assuming Edward wrote to her a
gain and assuming she told Johnny that he had. In any case, she could tell Edward wasn’t the philandering type, and nothing, absolutely nothing that Johnny could say would alter her opinion about that.

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 17th January 2002, 07.34

  Subject: The Return of the Natives

  Hi Marianne,

  Happy New Year!

  We are back safely after a wonderful trip. ‘Down Under’ was everything and more … NZ – breathtaking scenery every which way … The children want to live in Sydney now!

  Shock to be back in the cold and the wet …

  Hope all well with you.

  Much to do.

  Best wishes, Ted

  Ted? Edward just wasn’t Ted and never would be Ted to her. Ted was carpet slippers and baggy green cardigans with leather buttons. Ted was comfortably dozing in front of the fire with the TV still on and a mug of cocoa on the mantelpiece.

  Names were such important things. Teachers know all about names. Michelle was sweet faced and quiet; Wayne was loud and aggressive; Elizabeth was staid and well-behaved, while Eunice was matronly and may have a lilac rinse. Hugo and Oliver still talked of Mummy and Daddy even when they were thirty-five, and Jake would always woo the girls. Even the spelling variants, abbreviations and level of popularity cast a tone and led to pre-conceived ideas about attitude and lifestyle. Mandi and Sandi were young and trendy, possibly hairdressers and drinkers of alco-pops; Steven and Garry worked on a building site while Theo and Peregrine organised lavish parties for twenty-somethings.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 18th January 2002, 17.42

  Subject: Re: Return of the Natives

  Hi Ted???

  So you like Hardy too!?

  Is Ted what you would prefer to be called? It doesn’t seem like you but I will if you want.

  Good to hear you’re back safely and that you’ve had an enjoyable holiday. We have had a typically family-based Christmas with Holly at home. She has a boyfriend, Dylan! Johnny has taken an instant dislike just because of his name (and because nobody will ever be good enough for Holly!) Just about got used to her being here again and then she was off for another term. Such joys still to come for you.

  I have been thinking about the Brocklebank meals … Were they as ghastly as I remember or is it just that my dislike of milk puddings, cooked cheese, solid custard, lumpy mashed potato and butterbeans has coloured my image of the whole picture!? And the sausage! D’you remember it floating about in a dishful of grease? Abi used to give it to the dog! I did enjoy the cottage pie and the various jam sponges, though – particularly the roly-poly!

  Question for you … What is the odd one out between log, saw, axe and shovel?

  Happy New Year too!

  Marianne

  A low key reply, but her heart was smiling. He was back; he had written again. What next? Perhaps they could be friends one day; simply friends. Perhaps they could make the impossible, possible. It was what she had wanted at the age of ten, even before Lydia. Those missing years of adolescence, when love and lust and hormones reigned, might be their salvation. No memory of sexual passion to complicate. Only the innocent adoration of a schoolgirl crush.

  But if men and women are so different – and they are – an innocent e-relationship was going to need careful orchestration. They would have to find common ground without venturing into the danger zones of the big three risky topics. Would they have enough to say when the Brocklebank memories were exhausted?

  Already Marianne was noticing the differences in their styles. She often wrote laboriously and he wrote in sound-bites. Yet in Edward’s snippets there was a plethora of information and many unanswered questions. Marianne wanted to know so much more than she was ever told. Wanted to sit down with the man and exhaust a topic before they moved onto the next. She wanted to ask him how he met his wife Felicity and whether the children were like him or her. She wanted to understand what had happened between Brocklebank and university, when they had grown through their teenage years only a few miles apart from each other, yet a few miles that were even further in spirit than the distance they now shared. She wondered why she was so curious; indeed perhaps it was his very lack of information that aroused her interest, and perhaps she was revealing too much and he would soon get bored.

  One of Holly’s emails told her she needed a different technique to snail letters, but she was resistant to change. She wasn’t a teenager and didn’t want to start writing like one. She wondered whether the schools of the future would teach email and texting protocol in English lessons in the way they currently taught how to compose business letters.

  Few of Marianne’s generation used emoticons when they wrote. Somehow putting smiley faces at the end of sentences didn’t seem fitting for a middle-aged woman with a grownup child. No wonder there were so many misunderstandings. She didn’t use fasgrolia either. In fact she didn’t know what fasgrolia was until she came across the term in a psychology textbook and there discovered that LOL did not mean lots of love.

  To: Marianne Hayward

  Frobm: Edward Harvey

  Date: 21tst January 2002, 22.17

  Subject: Re: Return of the Natives

  Hi Marianne,

  Prefer Edward, but easily slip into what’s usually expected … Sorry!

  I don’t look forward to the day when Rachel leaves home. She already has a boyfriend of sorts, but I’ve been told (by Felicity) not to worry or to make any comments.

  Remember Brocklebank food well!!

  Waverley was in touch at Christmas and says he remembers you.

  Probably wrong; saw … because it is the only one that spells a word backwards??

  Dashing as usual …

  Edward

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 22nd January 2002, 20.45

  Subject: Saws, shovels and uneducated Russian peasants

  Hi Edward,

  It was part of an IQ test used to illustrate cultural bias. The correct answer is apparently log because all the others are tools. But uneducated Russian peasants answer shovel because the log can be cut up by the axe and the saw. Our students are divided between log and shovel. No one has yet suggested saw – but I shall now use this as a further example of bias as it is a perfectly valid answer!

  Is Waverley the person in glasses sitting next to Mrs Swift in the 1968 photograph?

  Felicity is right!

  Best wishes,

  Marianne

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 22nd January 2002, 22.50

  Subject: Re: Saws, shovels and uneducated Russian peasants

  Hi Marianne,

  Interesting! Never even noticed that the log was not a tool!

  Have just dug out the old school photographs! It is Waverley next to Mrs S … Well remembered! My children didn’t recognise me! Haven’t worn glasses since I was twenty …

  Too busy to think …

  Edward

  Always busy, thought Marianne. Like Rabbit in Winnie the Pooh scuttling about writing notices! And fancy not wearing glasses any more. She would have to reformulate her visual image of him now.

  “Edward is back from Australia,” said Marianne casually to Johnny.

  “Who’s Edward?” Johnny was making supper, and there was a pungent aroma of spring onions, ginger and soy sauce. In fact since coming back from Ardnamurchan, the pub had ceased to be his second home and since New Year, he was hardly drinking at all.

  “Edward is the guy I found on Friends Reunited. The person I was at Brocklebank Hall with as a child. You know. He went to Waterside with Sam.”

  “Ah.” Johnny barely paused in his quartering of the pak choi.

  “I did tell you … The Rivals. Lydia …”

  She waited for him to say something disapproving, almost hearing his brain clicking.


  But he went back to his stir-fry, adding an enormous handful of bean sprouts from a bowl of water by the cooker.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 27thth January 2002, 20.16 Subject: Re: Saws, shovels and uneducated Russian peasants

  Hi Edward,

  Had been imagining you with glasses so that was a surprise! Last week I mistook a purple motorbike tank (on a wall) for a duck so it won’t be long before I pay a visit to the opticians!

  Told a class today about you saying the ‘saw’ was the odd one, and why. I said that the person who said it was really very clever – excellent at Latin when we were kids – and one of the bright sparks said that it was because you were good at languages that you had focused on looking for differences in the words themselves.

  In haste,

  Marianne

  To: Marianne Hayward

  From: Edward Harvey

  Date: 28th January 2002, 18.32

  Subject: Re: Saws, shovels and uneducated Russian peasants

  Not so good at Latin at Waterside – bored perhaps after having don eso much at Brocklebak!

  Just back fron lecturing inLondon.New York next week. Edward

  Clearly in a rush, thought Marianne! She took this mention of London as an excuse to remind him of his suggestion before he went away.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From: Marianne Hayward

  Date: 30th January 2002, 19.11

  Subject: Re: Saws, shovels and uneducated Russian peasants

  When you come to London, do you ever have any spare time so we might meet?

  Marianne

  Now that Edward was back and there was the possibility of further developing their re-acquaintance, she wondered more and more about the real person on the other end of their cyber exchanges. To whom was she talking? What had Edward become? Did it matter whether he was hunky or not? And did he have the same questions about her?

  “He’s a man, of course he will,” said Robin Hamilton, a male colleague who was following the story with interest and with whom she shared the occasional cup of tea and exchange of confidences.

  “But I don’t think he’s that kind of man,” she said.