Meeting Lydia Page 3

  3

  Second Best

  Beckenham lay on the edge of south-east London, a leafy, suburban jewel with a village green and several parks. On the downside, the high street was gradually being devoured by restaurants and coffee shops. With a postal address in Kent, Marianne’s northern friends thought she lived among hop-fields and orchards and were surprised to discover her proximity to Catford, Sydenham and Penge.

  Beechview Close was a cul-de-sac of semi-detached houses off one of the roads leading out towards Bromley. ‘A spacious three-bedroom dwelling,’ the young estate agent had said with more than a touch of hyperbole when Marianne first went to look round. But it had French windows and a south-facing back garden with established fruit trees, and Marianne had thought anything was spacious compared with the flat they had been in for the first five years of their marriage. Now it had been home for some fifteen years, it was as familiar to her as an old friend, but today she had a feeling of dread as she came through the front door with her shopping.

  “Have you seen my tennis racket, Mum?” yelled Holly from upstairs.

  “Give me a chance to get in.”

  She struggled through to the kitchen, shaking her head. That was another of her mother’s phrases. What was happening to her? She was boiling hot and even though it was still August, this was a heat with a difference, coming on suddenly and spreading in waves from her knees to her head. There was still no tell-tale sign that all was well and she was spending hours of tortuous brain chatter playing the scenario of discovering she was pregnant. What would she do? Whom would she tell? What were the options? And the more she thought, the sicker she felt and the doubts crept in.

  “I’m packing for college,” shouted the voice from upstairs.

  “You’re not going for another three weeks!” Marianne shouted back, playing for time. She knew she had put the racket somewhere safe after Holly’s predictable annual Wimbledon-inspired, Tim-inspired, midsummer obsession with the game. But where? She couldn’t think. She began unpacking the groceries, unaware that she put the sugar in the fridge.

  Her mind wandered. She couldn’t be. Surely not. Please, please. Not this …

  She had surfed and searched endlessly for information. The web was full of contradictions about symptoms and signs; full of answers to every question but the one that was keeping her awake at night.

  And her best friend Taryn wasn’t much use, pulling a face and backing away with her arms in a cross-shape in front of her.

  There was the sound of several pairs of galloping feet on the stairs and then teenage voices making plans for an evening clubbing; then laughter and the front door shutting.

  Holly appeared in the doorway. How lovely she looked, simply dressed in jeans and a sleeveless vest, with her dark hair up in a braided plait, standing there on the threshold of the kitchen, on the threshold of a whole new life in the big grownup world of university with all its joys and tears and wonderful friends and challenges.

  “Jodie and Paul,” said Holly by way of explanation.

  “Back together?” asked Marianne, placing a pot of basil on the window sill.

  “Just friends. Paul says he doesn’t want ties when he goes to Warwick.”

  “Probably wise. And what about you and Lee?”

  “Oh, we’re finished and he doesn’t want to be friends.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “It’s cool.”

  Marianne continued unpacking vegetables: beetroot, lettuce, cress, celeriac, fennel, beansprouts, red and yellow peppers, aubergine, courgettes, tomatoes, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, garlic, ginger, mushrooms and chives. She murmured their names to herself like a mantra as if desperate to be distracted.

  “Mum?”

  “Yes darling.”

  “Why has Dad gone away without you?”

  “He’s gone specifically for a few days walking. There’s been another coastal collapse somewhere in Devon. He’s looking for fossils. He wouldn’t want me tagging along.”

  “But you haven’t had a holiday together this year. You usually do.”

  For a few moments there was an uncomfortable silence, each knowing that the bagged cat was struggling to be let out, but both scared of what they would find if they confronted it.

  “We just never got round to it, that’s all.” Marianne couldn’t tell her the real reason; that they decided not to go because of all the rows; because of her.

  Holly decided to change the subject. “Any luck with Friends Reunited yet?”

  “Had an email from Phil.”

  “Who’s Phil?”

  Marianne told Holly a censored version of the Phil story.

  Phil Ackton had led a fascinating life as a young teenager. He was from Newcastle and Marianne used to meet him annually during their summer holidays in Allonby where they both used to help out at the riding school. At first the horses were the prime focus and they took little notice of each other. However, when they hit puberty, Phil’s activities attracted attention because although he wasn’t particularly handsome, he had an unbelievably successful technique with girls. Perhaps it was the money he used to flash around (his father had a lucrative haulage business), but as Marianne wasn’t impressed by that, she found it hard to understand that it would be of interest to any typical fifteen-year-old. Phil and his sidekick Kevin would go on the hunt for potential talent lurking in the chalet parks or on the caravan sites; pretty girls looking bored and too sophisticated for the bucket-and-spade beach holiday on which they had unwillingly been dragged by their parents. The large white riding school buildings dominated the centre of the village and were one of the favourite haunts of Phil and Kevin, largely because of the hordes of young girls hanging about the stables. One year Marianne watched fascinated as Phil went through his routine.

  Two newcomers to the village were sitting on the low wall that surrounded the house, watching keenly as Marianne took charge of one of the ponies used for short rides on the banks. No doubt they hoped that eventually they would be asked to do the same. God knows why they were all so keen to help. It was slave labour, often involving hours of lifting sticky toddlers into the saddle, dodging their ice cream covered hands and sandy feet.

  “Feet, uggh!” Sarah Strong would whisper under her breath and grimace as she guided them into the stirrup leathers.

  Then miles of walking and jogging round and round until they were exhausted. If they were lucky, they might be given a bag of chips at the end of the day.

  The two new girls were about sixteen – a shade older than most of the others and both blonde and pretty. Dee, the quiet one, was more than pretty. She was stunningly naturally beautiful. Needless to say, she was the one who Phil homed in on with his active radar and instructions to Kevin, looking none too pleased, that he was to entertain Caitlin, whose nose was just a shade too large for perfection. Marianne watched the pantomime.

  Phil went and sat beside Dee, casually picking up a handful of sand and scattering it at his feet. “D’you like horses, then?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “Yes,” she said, quietly through her hair.

  “Can you ride?” enquired Phil, casting his best line and waiting for the fish to bite.

  “Yes,” she said again, equally shyly.

  Phil was not one to waste time. “How about we go this afternoon on the three-fifteen? All four of us? My treat.” He jingled the money in his pocket. The owner of the stables called him ‘Money Bags Phil’ and it suited him fine.

  “We couldn’t––” began Dee.

  “Yes you can. No problem. Kevin’ll pay for your friend, won’t you Kev?”

  Kevin shrugged, then nodded. He had been talking to Caitlin about where they were staying; playing the dutiful friend. But he was displeased at being lumbered with the less pretty one, something that always happened and would lead to arguments in the future. And Caitlin, even though she had a good deal in that Kev was better looking, picked up on his displeasure and went into a sulk.

 
A year or two later, it dawned on Marianne that next to her attractive friend Sasha Clement, she was the reject, she was the one that would always be second best. But she didn’t tell this part of the tale to Holly, nor the part that involved Phil pursuing her friend Sasha during a trip to stay with Sasha’s aunt in Newcastle, and bringing with him his friend Nick to keep Marianne company. Holly would not be impressed. There had only ever been one important man in her mother’s life as far as she was concerned, and that was her dad.

  They had gone to a Ten Years After concert at the City Hall. Nick was a lovely guy. Good-looking too, with long, straight black hair parted in the centre and a wide smile. He and Marianne really hit it off in the gloom of the auditorium. There was lots of flirtatious teasing, and that was when he first called her a mad-alcoholic-horsewoman. It was her first visit to a proper concert and she was high on the atmosphere of teenage energy and incense, and Alvin Lee on stage with his mane of fair hair shaken this way and that as he rocked them through the night.

  This was the Nick she was looking for on Friends Reunited.

  She had been amazed when he wanted to see her again. But he really liked her. Said she looked like a pre-Raphaelite too – not the regular type of chat-up line from a 1970s seventeen-year-old. Years of feeling less than beautiful had eroded her confidence so much that she couldn’t accept that he saw her like this. Whenever she looked in the mirror, she didn’t notice that she was slowly turning into an attractive young woman. Instead she saw the gawky kid that everyone made fun of, and when after several months of long-distance letters and occasional weekend visits, Nick declared love, she had backed away in disbelief.

  No, she could never tell Holly the truth, the whole truth. She couldn’t tell anyone. These were her secrets, carefully boxed and stacked away from prying eyes. Since she’d been married, the secrets had been largely undisturbed, but she knew that the box was gradually disintegrating; that the onset of midlife fears and concerns about her marriage were wearing down the barriers that had kept her safe throughout her adult life. The Moray eel thrashed within. Now the secrets were quietly eating their way through her soul and her confidence and she knew that she should face them.

  But it was harder than she thought. How do you face the demons of a childhood spent being ridiculed about the way you looked? Here lay the problem that was to haunt her for thirty-three long years; until she met Lydia again.

  4

  The Hut

  Marianne notices the new boy straight away on the first day of term. She sees him sitting alone at a desk at the front by the window, small, bespectacled and dark-haired, with his head in a book, both hands over his ears, seeming to shut himself off from the mayhem that as usual is erupting between lessons as they wait for the teacher. Marianne immediately feels some empathy and even compassion. He looks so lost and lonely. She wants to say hello, but she knows that this will cause him problems with Sproat and Colquhoun who sit at the back of the class, orchestrating the action, and waiting to pounce on any sign of weakness.

  The new boy’s name is Edward Harvey …

  The Hut lay to the side of the Brocklebank schoolhouse with the cricket field beyond. It was little more than an enormous shed with bare floorboards and a dusty, damp atmosphere, best suited to practical activities such as woodwork or gardening. It was sectioned into three by two zigzag partitions that folded up against the walls. At one end, there was a tiny stage from which the Headmaster, Mr Russell, took assembly every morning. In the middle there was the third form room and at the far end, backing on to the rhododendron-bordered drive, the slightly larger fourth form. There were small windows on either side, but with the main school building looming large and grey close by, it always seemed a gloomy place. The double desks were wooden and old, with lifting lids, their polished surfaces gouged by generations of schoolboys, each adding their name for posterity.

  Marianne was in the third form now and she sat on her own at a desk in front of the teacher’s.

  “Is that yer geography homework?” said Pete Glanville. He sat behind her, a shambling giant, twice the size of most of the boys in width as well as length, and if he slumped down in his seat during lessons, he could kick the back of her chair or scuff his muddy shoes against her blazer.

  Her geography exercise book, with its pale green cover, lay open in front of her on the desk; on the page, a carefully drawn map of Europe with coloured pencil shading and the key towns and cities marked with red dots, the names written in beside. She froze and said nothing.

  “Bit tidy, isn’t it?” mocked sneaky-faced Lanigan, seated next to Glanville.

  Marianne did not turn round.

  “Swot … swot … swot …” they chanted.

  Here we go, she thought. Something is going to happen; something unpleasant. And she braced herself, shoulders tensed, for whatever might follow.

  Glanville then took his fountain pen, angled himself to one side and flicked it towards her work, covering the pristine pages with a shower of blue droplets. “Ooh, not so pretty now!” The two boys laughed and looked over their shoulders to check that others had seen what they’d done.

  “Get lost,” said Marianne, her heart quickening lest this response caused even more trouble.

  “Leave her alone, commanded Barnaby Sproat from the back of the room, not because he wouldn’t have done the same himself, but because he was King Cockerel and Glanville and Lanigan must be subservient to him. Sproat had sharp blue eyes that constantly scanned his territory like a radar beam, checking that everyone minded their place, quick to reprimand those who took liberties. Willie Colquhoun sat beside him, repeating commands, following orders; his henchman.

  Later, when the homework came back graded, there were red biro circles around every one of the ink splatters, and a comment about the importance of presentation. As usual Marianne said nothing to her teacher, feeling the injustice but scared of making things worse.

  This was what it was like in a world away from the cosy confines of forms one and two, with Mrs Swift and her tight perm and mohair cardigans banging on the piano, or leading the chanting of the times-tables, or reading them a story about the mischievous dog called Pooky.

  Away from the main schoolhouse, Marianne was easy prey for the bullies. Spittle-coated paper pellets frequently stung her cheek, having been propelled through the shaft of an empty biro. She dreaded the hiatus between one lesson and the next when the chaos would unleash automatically and the ‘thutthut’ of the peashooters would punctuate the din.

  Occularly-disadvantaged Alice had gone to some far-flung boarding school and left Marianne on her own. Now she was the only girl in the class. When Alice had been there the two of them had sat conspiratorially at the far side and taken no notice of the boys. Marianne thought if she stayed out of their way, they would forget her and if they forgot her, they wouldn’t taunt her with name-calling. It had worked when Alice was there, but not any more.

  Name-calling had haunted her since the beginning, since she was five. It was what happened to the weak and frightened, and once it started, it became your identity. That was who you were; no longer Marianne Hayward. And it cut her to shreds every time she heard it, and even now, even at the age of forty-five she has never told a soul.

  During moments of self-doubt, she hears that name again, is that person again. But of course to most of her adult world she has always been Marianne. They would never know.

  She wasn’t the only one. Pete Glanville was Jake but she didn’t know why. Timothy Hopkins was Bunny and Jeremy Lanigan was Titch. There was Yackie and Fattie, Dracula and Snotty Gash. This was the world of prep school where nicknames were the way it was and if unlucky enough to be saddled with one of the cruellest, then it would haunt the owner all their lives. Such is the privileged world of private education.

  She tried to tell her father about the bullying.

  He had been to prep school and public school and had heard it all before.

  Knowing what had worked for him, he
taught her a dog Latin rhyme: ‘Caesar ad sum iam forte, Pompeii aderat, Caesar sic in omnibus, Pompeii sic in at.’ She had smiled indulgently at the time.

  But Glanville and Lanigan didn’t like Latin and they were too dim to understand why the rhyme was funny. That day they took her satchel off the back of her chair and started throwing it between them, spilling the contents all over the floor until Timothy Hopkins on watch by the window shouted, “kef, kef ” (at least that is what it sounded like to Marianne), and there was a sudden scampering into seats and opening of books so that by the time the teacher strode in, all he saw were angelic faces thirsting to be filled with knowledge and Marianne kneeling on the floor, hurriedly scooping up the contents of her bag. Didn’t the teachers know what was going on? Didn’t they care?

  She told her father that his plan hadn’t worked. He decided that more heavyweight tactics were required and taught her the rude words to ‘Colonel Bogey’. “They’ll be impressed by that,” he said. “Tell them that; they’ll leave you alone.”

  She didn’t know what the words meant, and although she had heard of Hitler, she didn’t know Himmler, Goering and Goebbels. She didn’t know what balls were either – except to throw and catch – but one day when the frost was hard on the ground and the windows were still icy from the freezing night, she told the rhyme to the gathered rowdy throng. Certainly her rendition left them speechless, but it did little else. This time they stole her French text book, tossing it above their heads from boy to boy until it found its way into the hands of Barnaby ‘Bas’ Sproat.