Meeting Lydia Page 17

  “It’s true that you need to have time,” said Marianne. “But what about the socially anxious and lonely? It’s one way of meeting people; expressing your real self which you might find difficult in face to face encounters.”

  “Yeah, sad, like I said.” Dwayne grinned.

  “Also teenagers,” said Ellen. “Because you may not have freedom to go out. If parents are too strict.”

  “Some researchers have found that if people have an internet relationship first, they like each other more when they meet for real. This is because you get to know the real person without being distracted by peripherals. Appearance is such a key factor when we first meet that you might not give someone a chance to get to know you.”

  “I don’t agree,” said Cate. “You get a picture in your head and then, you know, you meet up and it’s not the same. This happened to me. When we met, I thought noooo … No way. Couldn’t believe it; never spoke to him again. Just not my type.”

  “You told me this morning it was because he was fat!” said Sharna.

  More riotous laughter.

  “If you have an idealised picture of somebody, and you meet them, you’re gonna be disappointed,” said Obi.

  Ellen said: “Like when you read a book and then you’ve got the characters in your head, and you go and see the film of it and it’s like, really weird ’cos they’re not the same.”

  Again, Marianne thought of Edward and the awful possibility that a meeting would herald the end.

  “So what you’re saying,” said Marianne, “is that the research is wrong. You don’t necessarily like someone more just because you first met them on the net? You might be right. Perhaps it can work either way.”

  Afterwards Marianne contemplated the fun that her students were having with this topic. It was great for discussions, but would they remember the theory, the research, the heavy stuff? She was also amazed by their general knowledge about relationships, sure that she hadn’t been so wise at the age of seventeen.

  Driving home late in the early evening after four one-to-one interview sessions with her tutees followed by a departmental meeting, Marianne sat waiting at traffic lights. She was surreptitiously eating a honey sandwich whenever she was stuck at the lights – snatching mouthfuls and hoping no police cars were about. Only last week a woman had been stopped for eating an apple at the wheel. Marianne reasoned that she wasn’t doing anything dangerous and that her plummeting blood sugar levels were much more of a serious risk.

  Dear Edward,

  What is it with me? I am so emotional this week. There is sun on my skin and the city is waking from its winter sleep. Everything makes me want to cry with a kind of poignant happiness. I see the world through new eyes now and want to have time to appreciate it; to make a better go of things than I have so far.

  I am too judgemental; too impatient. Underneath I have always had a soft and sentimental heart, but it has been encased in layers of stone for so long, maybe for always. Now that stone is being chipped away and whole lumps are falling off. I feel I am acquiring a capacity for something that I never had before. But I’m not sure what it is; not sure what to call it. Maybe it’s a heightened sense of compassion; maybe it is love. Now I want to love people more. Yes, that’s it … I was afraid of loving before, but I feel I can cope now. Before I couldn’t bear the thought of loss so I needed the shell.

  Oh Edward, what have you done for me and why am I telling you all this? You are my analyst and that is why. If I did write you this email, you might think I am unhinged, but you wouldn’t run away … You wouldn’t, would you Edward? I could tell you anything and everything and you wouldn’t run away like most men do …

  But commonsense prevailed and she didn’t write it. Instead she decided to cook a treat for Johnny and she went to the supermarket and bought some clams. He liked clams, but would never cook them himself. He was squeamish about cooking anything that was alive.

  She enjoyed shopping for food and wondered if there was some primeval explanation. The option of on-line shopping from supermarkets didn’t seem natural. She liked to make some gesture towards catching her prey.

  How would the lion feel if the wildebeest was delivered to his lair? she mused. It would be just like being in a zoo.

  It was gone seven when Johnny came home, apologising furiously and muttering about an unexpected meeting with parents about a disruptive pupil.

  Marianne made sympathetic noises but didn’t make any comment, where three months earlier his remark would have received a cold and suspicious stare and a frosty greeting.

  “I did try to phone you. Didn’t want you to think I was down the pub … Charmaine said you probably think I go out too much.”

  She was chopping garlic, red chilli and small shallots which she scraped into a pan to which she had added olive oil. “Humph.” How dare she presume to know what I think! It was tempting to say it, but she tried to keep calm.

  “Looks interesting,” said Johnny, breaking her thoughts, nodding at the gathering pile of finely chopped ingredients.

  “Clams with linguine,” she said, smiling, allowing him to give her a hug from behind.

  “Where are they?” He peeked under the damp cloth that covered a bowl by the sink. He pulled a face.

  “You know you like them really.”

  “I don’t like thinking about what they are and what you’re going to do to them.”

  “If you’re going to get sentimental over shellfish, then you should become a vegetarian.”

  “They’ve got a nervous system; they will feel pain,” said Johnny with furrowed brow.

  “So have cows, but this doesn’t seem to put you off steak.”

  “That’s different … You wouldn’t kill a cow.”

  “No, I wouldn’t. I couldn’t kill anything with a face.”

  “Yet you happily kill clams.”

  “Clams haven’t got a face.”

  “I can hear them screaming when you put them in the pan!”

  Marianne gave him an incredulous look. “Oh please! If you’re not prepared to kill something yourself – or at least condone the killing – then you shouldn’t eat it.”

  Johnny grinned. “I shall look forward to them but I’m not watching the grisly deed. I’ll just catch the rest of the news.”

  Marianne sloshed some white wine into the pan and turned up the heat.

  Dear Edward,

  I’ve never asked you if you’re a vegetarian. I don’t suppose you are. Cumbria didn’t spawn many vegetarians in our era – especially not men. Johnny isn’t one, but he won’t kill anything himself no matter how insignificant. I don’t know if you smoke, either. I imagine not; I hope not! All that wild outdoors … And I haven’t talked to you about politics, religion or sex, because they’re risky areas at the best of times: potential dynamite when you can’t hear the other person’s response. If we were friends, we would know about all these things. They are conversations-in-waiting, but will we ever have the place or time?

  Oh Edward, when I’m talking to the classes about relationships, I sound as if I’ve got it all sussed. And they look at me in awe and wonder, hanging on to every word. If only they knew how hard it is – that the theory is one thing, but the practice is another; that no matter how old you are, or how much experience you’ve got, it doesn’t take much to pull the rug and send you spinning. Sometimes it’s only one misplaced word, or a mistuned tone and the calm and tranquil can become the stressed and turbulent.

  Johnny thought the clams were delicious.

  “Seafood is very good for the sex drive,” he said, hopefully.

  “As if you need it!” said Marianne.

  Johnny basked in the compliment and Marianne smiled. Perhaps they would have an early night so the clams could work their magic.

  25

  Accusation

  Since Edward had returned from his holiday, Marianne was in a glass half full kind of mood.

  I am not pregnant.

  I am not fifty …
yet!

  I am alive.

  She felt content and at peace with the world. Not so many hot flushes and more energy. Also, after over a year of almost constant worry, now when she scanned the horizon there seemed so much to look forward to. Day by day she was rebuilding a harmonious relationship with Johnny, she was getting used to being without Holly, and Edward would soon suggest a meeting. Of that she was sure.

  She wrote in her journal:

  These are things that make me smile:-

  Beach pebbles left shiny and wet by foaming waves

  Cumulus clouds changing shape in a fierce wind

  Wild baby rabbits

  Crushed velvet

  Chopin’s ‘Minute Waltz’

  Dark chocolate digestive biscuits Lupins

  The sweet-sour taste of the first raspberry as it bursts on the tongue

  Giraffes (or should that be giraffe?)

  Country church bells

  The scent of lilac in the early morning

  And honeysuckle as the sun goes down

  Tangled otter moments after sex

  She wondered what Edward’s list would be.

  Or Johnny’s.

  She must ask him sometime …

  The next day, she was driving home from work when she became aware that a four-by-four was veering erratically in front of her. It was dark, but she could see the driver was holding a mobile phone. Prat!

  He hit the brakes sharply to lean out of the window and shout something to a be-denimed youth on the other side of the road. Marianne noted a mass of curly hair bunched in a ponytail and just stopped in time. She hung back, annoyed, and mouthed a few expletives, thinking about aggression and road rage and how it felt safe shouting abuse when protected by the body of her car. She had heard stories of those on the receiving end of such, stopping their cars and going on the attack, wrenching the driver’s door open and punching them in the face.

  Mad fools.

  But there was a lot of madness about these days. There were knives. Unthinkable things happened. She didn’t want to appear as an item on News 24.

  As the four-by-four carried on up the road she noticed a retriever in the passenger seat, looking important and occasionally sticking its nose out of the window. He couldn’t be all bad if he had a beautiful dog like that.

  She decided to turn off the main road to get out of his way and she indicated to turn right down a back route that led along the tree-lined roads near Cedarwood School and past The Duck and Bull, the pub where the teachers often went after work.

  Where Johnny and Charmaine sometimes pass the early evening hour!

  The road was newly humped and she slowed right down. Traffic calming measures were anything but calming to drivers. Progress by hiccupping along. Tootling down the road at twenty miles an hour like Great Uncle Isaac in the nineteen-seventies, creating a tailback of embarrassing proportions.

  ‘What’s the delay?’

  ‘Some old geezer in a mini.’

  And Marianne aged seventeen, trying not to blush, in the school minibus with her peers on the way back from a geography field trip, disowning her elderly relative for fear of being uncool. Except uncool wasn’t the word in the nineteen seventies, the word was … God, what was it? Square or spare or …

  Hiccup!

  What did this do for the liver and the suspension?

  But it was preferable to following the lunatic with the dog.

  Then through the semi-darkness as she neared the pub, she saw a man who looked like Johnny standing on the pavement, caught in the glow of a streetlamp, except it couldn’t be him because … because he would be home by now, wouldn’t he, and he wouldn’t be letting a woman other than herself touch him like that!

  She slowed down even more.

  It was Johnny, and the woman was Charmaine and she was touching his face; how dare she touch his face, only I’m allowed to touch his face; and although Johnny wasn’t doing anything incriminating, he was looking at this woman with the golden hair down her back, and she was standing close, looking into his eyes with, it seemed, her hand on his cheek. He didn’t appear to see the silver hatchback almost drawing to a standstill beside them. Didn’t see the woman with dark shoulder length hair and wild eyes glaring at his back through the window. Marianne was incensed to a point where she almost ran into the kerb.

  She thought about hooting or stopping, but she needed time to think what to say, and she would rather tackle Johnny on his own than with Charmaine hovering in the background. In an instant the snakes had returned to her stomach.

  She drove on, glancing in her rear-view mirror, hoping she was mistaken. But she wasn’t.

  The tarty minx!

  Idiot, idiot husband!

  Later, as soon as Johnny walked through the door, Marianne forgot all her new resolve. She forgot that they had been nice to each other for over a month and that she was beginning to feel happy again. The house of cards that had been so carefully constructed since he came back from Ardnamurchan came tumbling down as if the floor beneath had been shaken by an earthquake.

  It was time for accusations and she didn’t wait to think of the consequences. For weeks and weeks she had wanted something concrete to throw at him and now at last she had it. She had evidence. The pressure cooker was about to explode and he had barely closed the front door when she started.

  “What were you doing with that damned woman … with Charmaine?” Marianne leapt from her chair and greeted him with hands on hips and flashing eyes.

  “What are you talking about?” He dropped his briefcase in the hall and walked past her into the kitchen. “What am I supposed to have done now?”

  One by one the cards fell. She could feel them fluttering and spiralling from their pyramid and landing on the floor. “I saw you … I – saw – you! I passed you on the way home; bad traffic; had to take side roads. Had to detour near Cedarwood – past The Duck and Bull … Saw her and you canoodling on the pavement …”

  “Canoodling? God, Mari … what are you talking about? It was nothing of the sort!” He began to fill the kettle.

  “I saw you … no good denying it. She was touching your face. All very cosy, I’m sure.”

  “Mari …”

  “Don’t Mari me. I told you she wasn’t to be trusted and now I know I was right.”

  “Believe me, I haven’t done anything …” He calmly took a mug from out of the cupboard and a tea-bag from the container on the shelf.

  “You let her touch you like that. That’s more than nothing. More than just friendly.”

  “I had something in my eye.”

  “Bullshit.” Now she had started, she wasn’t going to stop.

  “Honestly.”

  “That is a flirty line, and you know it.”

  “But I did. It was a fly or something.”

  “You should have blown your nose hard.”

  “She offered to have a look.” The kettle steamed and clicked off and Johnny began pouring the water into the mug.

  “Some chance of seeing a fly under a streetlamp! Which means she fancies you.”

  “Okay, perhaps she does like me … but I swear … honestly … there’s nothing more to it.” He stopped pouring the kettle and turned to look at her. “Mari, I wouldn’t.”

  “You admit she’s been coming on to you?”

  “Well … maybe …”

  “Absolute cow!” The cards continued to fall; clubs and spades, diamonds and hearts, Kings and Queens and aces, falling, falling, falling …

  “I told you months ago that you should be careful. But you always dismissed it as nonsense. My paranoia. Why didn’t you listen to me?”

  “Because there was nothing for you to worry about.”

  “How can you say that? Of course I’m going to worry if someone as gorgeous as her starts flirting.”

  “She means nothing to me.”

  “And what about what you might mean to her? You’re leading her on …”

  “Mari … What can I do
? I work with her. I’ll stop seeing her outside school, if that’s what you want.”

  “Too right you will.”

  “She’s not a bad person – she’s confused.”

  “I’ve been suspicious of her intentions for months, and you kept saying I was being unreasonable. What are you saying now?”

  “Okay … okay …” Johnny threw up his hands. “You’re right. I’m wrong. I should have been more careful.”

  Marianne looked at him hard, trying to see under any veneer of pretence. Words fell over themselves in her head and she was unable to speak. She opened her mouth and then closed it; shrugged then turned away, aware of all her resolve now being in ruins, that it was too late to backtrack now and that she would have to start rebuilding all over again.

  A week later and following several more heated discussions about Charmaine’s real intentions, the cold war had set in once again in Beechview Close. Marianne phoned her friend Taryn.

  “Well, he denied everything at first. Said I’d no evidence … Evidence! This isn’t exactly Agatha Christie!

  “Eventually he did admit that he’d noticed she was coming on to him, but he said that he hadn’t thought anything of it because of some bloke she has – I mean!! That’s men for you. She was touching his face, for God’s sake! He said he had a fly in his eye. Well maybe he did, but she didn’t have to be so all-over him. Dammit, how obvious do you have to get? Would he have noticed if she’d tried to get into his pants? Hmph!”

  “Johnny is a babe-magnet,” said Taryn in her deep and sexy voice.

  “That’s no excuse,” said Marianne. “Anyway, I went into a mood because I knew I was right and that at last he’d realised. I only intended to be cross for a couple of days, but now he’s gone back into booze-mode, I’ve undone all the good of the past few weeks and I’m afraid I may have lost him again.”

  Taryn told Marianne to get back to her new strategy. That if she’d done it before, she could do it again. That there was no such thing as a quick fix to relationship issues. A new way of being takes time, she said; well-practised patterns are etched as deep as sheep-trails in the bracken and it is never easy keeping off the well-trodden paths. Only when the new ways are familiar – when they have made a visible mark on the land – only then is it safe to say that a change is complete. “Remember Edward Harvey,” added Taryn. “Get back to your distraction.”