Meeting Lydia Page 31

  Past the departing train she walked and into the ticket hall with ten minutes to spare. Up on the computer screen the two trains that she had thought of as possibilities were listed, one on time, the other due five minutes late.

  She bought a travel card and decided to wait in the ticket hall out of the wind, sitting down next to a woman with a massive patchwork bag on her knee. She looked around, scanning, wondering whether anyone else was about to undertake a journey to a meeting as momentous as hers. People drifted in and out of the station: old and young, smart and shabby, mostly alone with fixed expressions, fighting the elements, fighting the world.

  She calmed herself. She was here, the car was parked, she was warm enough and she was sorted.

  Then the announcer said: “There are no trains from London to Kent due to problems with the line. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

  Marianne thought she was hearing things. Surely a mistake? She had just missed one to Victoria. It was the first slight hint that all was not well and a tremor ran through her stomach. As if she wasn’t scared enough already!

  But London to Kent isn’t the same as Kent to London!

  Then she heard the man at the ticket office telling someone that there were no trains to Victoria, “for the time being”. But that couldn’t be right. The computer screen said otherwise, still showing her two alternatives: the one on time and the other five minutes late. Surely if there was a problem it would show on the screen?

  She was dimly aware of the woman next to her giving helpful directions to someone who wanted to go to Peckham, and of a trail of passengers, one by one, buying their tickets and being told that there were no trains to Victoria. The potential for not getting there in time suddenly seemed very real and she was immobilised by panic and indecision.

  Then the announcer said: “Passengers awaiting the service to Victoria are advised to take the London Bridge train on Platform 1 and change at Crystal Palace.”

  That train went all round the houses and took an age – and what if no train came to Crystal Palace? Where do they come from to get to Crystal Palace? What if they were affected by snow too? Oh please … She wouldn’t get there in time. She would miss it all. Unable to tell anyone too, for she still hadn’t asked Edward for his mobile number. Idiot! Tick-tock. Oh my …

  Her brain started searching through all the options. No point in staying put. Staying put was guaranteed disaster. She had to try something. With spirits now plummeting and her buoyant mood deflating rapidly, she went and boarded the London Bridge train. It was her only hope.

  She heard a woman shouting at some boys. “Am I gonna get someone or are you gonna stop?”

  What was going on? Marianne couldn’t face any trouble and went into the next carriage, but she could still hear the woman: “I said, are you gonna stop, or am I gonna get someone?” A determined voice. Someone not phased by wayward youth.

  Marianne wondered if she should go and lend moral support. Often she did jump in and play the teacher. Sometimes the well-practised tone was enough to stop the problem, but times were changing. All sorts of horror stories made the news these days. Even little children answered back and swore; and the bigger ones carried knives. No point in being heroic if there was a price to pay. She weighed up the options. She was already stressed to pieces and couldn’t take the risk of losing her cool even more. The woman repeated her request again … and again. Then, “Yeah, that’s better. You have got a brain after all.” More abuse followed and she came into the carriage where Marianne was sitting, fair hair scraped back into a ponytail and a floppy fringe, similar age to Marianne and dressed in jeans with a pale blue quilted jacket. She didn’t look the type to take on a group of naughty school kids. Marianne had instant respect for her and wished she had gone to her aid.

  Pathetic wimp! She thought of herself.

  “Are you trying to get to Victoria?” Marianne asked. They were the only two people in the carriage.

  “Yes,” said the woman arranging herself on a seat. “What is it with some kids? They are so rude.”

  Marianne agreed and explained her plight. “I have to get to a lecture in Piccadilly for four fifteen. Not sure if I should go all the way to London Bridge? Do you know where it is in relation to Green Park?”

  The woman produced a diary from out of a denim bag that clearly had Mary Poppins aspirations and seemed to contain everything. She leafed through it until she found a map of the underground.

  “Four stops. Not far. That might be your best bet.”

  Marianne thanked the woman and sank once more into the depths of her scarf.

  Breathe … Breathe … You will get there … There is time … Thirty-four years … Edward Harvey … Who are you now? What will you look like? What will you sound like? How will you greet me? What will we say?

  It seemed to take forever to get to London Bridge. When she arrived it was loads of platforms and stairs innumerable, and time ticking by relentlessly – she hardly dare look at her watch. Where was the tube station? She asked a station cleaner with vacant eyes that sprang to life as soon as she spoke to him. No point in wasting precious time going down blind alleys. Even so it was a long, long walk down the platform, through a concourse and then to the escalators.

  As she stepped on the one leading down to the Jubilee line, she relaxed her shoulders ever so slightly. It would be all right. She would make it. And her mood lifted and she began to look forward again to this oh so special meeting.

  “Passengers for the Jubilee line please note there are delays in both directions. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

  The tannoy again, and she wasn’t even half way down the escalator.

  Arghhhh! She howled within. It was surely all over. Any more delays and she would be late. Too late to meet up before the lecture; too embarrassed to turn up in the middle of it; but she carried on down the escalator and followed the signs that would take her westbound to Green Park, just in case.

  There were no trains on the platform and the waiting crowds looked uneasy. The electronic information boards were completely blank and no welcoming noises could be heard from down the tunnel; no roaring wind heralding the imminent arrival of a train. Just an eerie silence. Some of the passengers were turning back, looking for alternatives. In twenty minutes the lecture would start. Alternatives would be too late. By the time she emerged from the underground, another five minutes would be lost and she didn’t know how far away she was from Piccadilly. She could no longer think straight. Even a cab would probably take too long or be ridiculously expensive.

  Half formulated thoughts tumbled over themselves in her head, each one evaporating before she could turn it into something workable. She had already missed the chance to talk to Edward before the lecture started, and when it was over he would be besieged by others, all keen to congratulate and ask questions.

  She waited another ten minutes, frozen by indecision, transfixed by the silence from the tunnel and the slowly emptying platform as passengers drifted away. The voice on the tannoy kept repeating the words: “Passengers for the Jubilee line please note there are delays in both directions. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

  For Marianne, they were the worst words in the world and eventually she too gave up and began a lonely trip back up the escalators. What would he think of her now?

  Later, after a very difficult return journey with much hanging about in the cold, she arrived back home tired and numb. Johnny was already busy in the kitchen, preparing potatoes to go with the lamb stew that was simmering in the oven.

  “So how was the lecture then?”

  Marianne took off her coat and scarf and glanced at herself in the hall mirror. She looked bedraggled and damp and sad. How, indeed?

  “Didn’t manage to get there,” she said. “Snow and train problems … and more train problems. And I’m freezing cold.”

  Johnny emerged from the kitchen and gave her a gentle hug. “Your nose is red too!”

&nb
sp; She sniffed and smiled weakly, the adrenaline from the day all lost with her dreams on the rail network of London.

  When later she sat by the computer in the room upstairs, she allowed herself to cry a little. But it was a cry of frustration more than sadness, for a fruitless journey, for wasted energy, for questions that still remained unanswered, for a soul from long ago.

  To: Edward Harvey

  From Marianne Hayward

  Date: 7th December 2002, 21.15

  Subject: Re: Meeting Lydia

  Dear Edward,

  I am so sorry I didn’t make it for your lecture. I did try! Train cancellations in south London due to snow and then even though I managed to get as far as London Bridge, there were no trains on the Jubilee line. No chance to get there in time, so came home.

  I hope all went well for you.

  I am sure we’ll manage to meet one day!

  Marianne.

  41

  Two Thousand Years Hence

  “So here we have a woman of probably forty-something, Marianne Hayward, hormonally unbalanced, perhaps even mentally deranged; married to Johnny Ingleton according to the community records, and possibly having an affair or some sort of illicit liaison with eminent archaeologist Edward Harvey when she was taken so untimely from the world.”

  “I wonder why she was called Hayward and her husband was called Ingleton?”

  “Oh, that’s how it often was in the twenty-first century. Women went through a phase of keeping their maiden names, before the feminist backlash really took hold.”

  “And they had a child?”

  “Yes, Holly Ingleton.”

  Marianne was idly contemplating the far distant future, when the worst of her doom-and-gloom scenarios had been and gone and the world population – decimated due to the ’flu pandemic, global warming and the resultant raised sea levels, and then the 2095 meteorite impact and subsequent cooling – had re-established itself and begun a series of new civilisations around the planet.

  Life would be very different in two thousand years: unimaginably so. The oil reserves would likely be gone and alternative and renewable sources of energy must surely prevail. There might be wind turbines in every desert-planted back garden and solar panels on every roof. Perhaps they would fly around on personal airborne scooters like characters from Thunderbirds, or maybe there would be a return to horsepower, camels and yaks.

  She was lounging in a chair with both her legs over the arm. She had a pencil in her hand and was making notes in her journal. Following her recent immersion in archaeology, she was still contemplating the unsavoury possibility of being dug up at some far future time. She couldn’t erase the images of skulls and bones from her mind and sometimes when she looked in the mirror, she imagined the flesh falling from her cheeks and her eye sockets empty; soul-windows gone. Despite Edward’s assurances, there were no guarantees that the archaeologists of the future would be similarly respectful. Marianne did not relish the prospect of her bones being dusted, dated, analysed and preserved and then turning up in a glass case in some architecturally futuristic museum to be gawped at by the swarms of curious schoolchildren in a couple of millennia.

  But why would anyone want to see her anyway? What had she done to change the world? What would the museum guide book say to warrant the admission charge? What fascinating inscription would be on the plaque by the exhibit?

  She was slightly depressed. This might be just another menopausal fluctuation, or her home situation, or it could be because thoughts of archaeology naturally led her to thoughts of Edward and where they were in their respective lives. She and Edward had started out at a very similar academic level and now, relative to her, he was in another continent. Of course it was partly his motivation and opportunity that served to bring about the current gulf between them, but that was no consolation when the remainder of life seemed to be contracting at an exponential rate and there seemed so little time to redress the balance.

  And he has a wife, thought Marianne. If I had a wife instead of a demanding husband, then maybe I would be written about in magazines; maybe I would have had time to develop some ambition. If more women had ‘wives’ then their achievements would be so much more.

  Another problem was that she hadn’t heard a word from Edward since their failed meeting. It was so unlike him not to acknowledge an email – however briefly – that she was more than a little concerned.

  She began scribbling in her journal again. She was trying to sharpen her literary style. Soon she would begin her book in earnest, but she was having trouble with the plot; trouble with the way it should end. Should Maya and Adam meet, or should they not? Would a meeting make a more sellable story? And if they met, how would it be?

  “She didn’t do much of significance for most of her life … Taught kids in a sixth form college … That was just before the time when everyone went to university … when the children had to stay in education until they were twenty one …”

  “I remember … then they ran out of electricians and plumbers and builders and it was another sixty years before society re-stabilised.”

  “But she had always liked to write.”

  “Wasn’t she the one who wrote a half finished novel about bullying?”

  “That’s her! That’s when her life took on some impetus. She found a classmate on that Internet thing and they wrote to each other for months. But the ’flu got her before the book was finished.”

  “And that guy she wrote to was Edward Harvey?”

  “That’s the fellow! Renowned for his survey of St. Agnes, Scilly in 2002 and considered a world authority on labyrinth mazes.”

  “Is there any evidence to suppose that he and Marianne Hayward were anything other than friends?”

  “None at all, although people like to speculate about these things.”

  “Huntley Shorthouse, for one.”

  “The Affair theory doesn’t wash with me. It is the notion of scandalmongers and busybodies. Tabloid-trash, out for a quick buck. Anyone with half a brain can deduce that Edward Harvey was too busy to have an affair – least of all with someone who lived two hundred miles away.”

  “Shorthouse would say that distance was irrelevant in 2002 and that busy people are the ones who manage to fit most in.”

  “But if Marianne Hayward’s opinion of Edward Harvey is the same as her character Maya’s opinion of Adam, then Edward Harvey wasn’t the type of person to have an affair.”

  Marianne knew that people were unpredictable and that it was impossible to be certain about anything, particularly the sexual proclivities of men. Readers of books wanted passion; readers of books often suspended their morality …

  ‘In this futuristic world two thousand years from now, it is the growing absence of heterosexual relationships that is increasing interest in the love affairs of the past, and neo-archaeologists have looked to literature for clues as to how such relationships were manifest.

  ‘Recent interest has focused on the unfinished novel by Marianne Hayward, not least because of her acquaintance with Edward Harvey and their suspected connection with the soon-to-be restored Brocklebank Hall in the north of England.

  ‘In trying to select the most appropriate ending for Ms Hayward’s book, several eminent scholars have attempted to find evidence of what really happened between her and Edward Harvey. A visitors’ book from The Society of Antiquaries in Piccadilly, London holds a record of signatures of guests attending society meetings. It is known that Edward Harvey lectured occasionally at this venue and in view of Adam’s written invitation to Maya in Chapter 27 and Maya’s subsequent acceptance, scholars believe that a meeting may well have occurred. However, there is no record of Marianne Hayward’s signature in the guest book on the date for which the invitation was made. Also, it should be noted that there are significant differences between the lives of Marianne and Edward and the fictitious lives of Maya and Adam. Although it is clear that her novel is in some respects autobiographical, that is true of many n
ovels – particularly first novels – and it is always difficult to be sure where the fact ends and the fiction begins.

  ‘The debate is centuries old, but has taken on a new momentum since the discovery and excavation of Marianne Hayward’s burial site.

  ‘Archaeologists have also in recent months found what they believe to be the site of the Oakleigh House of Ms Hayward’s book. This would have been the Brocklebank Hotel and Conference Centre, formerly Brocklebank Hall which was indeed once a boys’ prep school. But again, this is a speculative link, based on the assumption that Ms Hayward attended such a school, and shared a class with Edward Harvey.

  ‘Records show that Edward Harvey’s great-great-granddaughter, Candrina Atwell-Harvey – one of the last surviving descendents of the Harvey family before the cataclysmic events of 2095 – kept a scrap book with a photograph of her great-great grandfather aged eleven and dressed in a frock and clearly involved in some dramatic production. It could well be that this was his appearance as Lydia Languish, but there were no notes to confirm or disprove.’

  Marianne paused and nibbled the end of her pencil.

  ‘Stacy Greetham’s version of the end of the book continues the picture of Adam-as-Enigma as he and Maya never meet. On the other hand, Imogen Cartwright predictably sees a passionate dénouement as the two protagonists reunite at Victoria Station, become enchanted with each other on a launch to Greenwich and seal their fate with a lingering kiss among the figureheads on the lower decks of the Cutty Sark, followed by a somewhat explicit encounter in the grounds of Greenwich Observatory. There the novel ends, Cartwright failing to deal with the undoubted aftershocks.