Jubilee (32 page)

‘Mandy?’

She comes up to him and it is her: Mandy, groomed with Gallic style. She’s aged, as they all have, but it’s Mandy nevertheless. She looks at him keenly, making the same transition, then opens her arms wide. They embrace in the French way: one, two, three air kisses with their cheeks touching, and Satish feels a little jolt: that was easy. They pull back to look at each other. Mandy winks at him, then reaches up on tiptoes – it all comes back! – holds his hands in hers and plants a fourth kiss, deliberately, onto his lips.

‘It’s so good to see you. So good,’ she says, rubbing her lipstick from his mouth with her thumb.

They walk back to Cherry Gardens together. He says, ‘So, here we are then!’ and she giggles.

‘It is just lovely to see you, Satish. Best thing about the day.’

‘You’re looking wonderful. You’re looking … French.’

‘I live in Paris! Did you know that?’

‘I did. I cheated – internet. But you do look … there’s something, anyway.’

Cherry Gardens has been decorated only as far as the photographer’s end of the table. The space behind won’t be in the photograph, so there’s no point. The rest of the houses, including Satish’s and Mandy’s, stand bare, unadorned. It puts him in mind of an old film, a spacecraft landing in a field outside a quiet town, the ship all the more alien for the ordinary things around it. A little bit of the past has crash-landed in Cherry Gardens.

‘Tell me about France.’

‘Well, I’ll never be properly French, evidently.’ She stresses the final syllable. ‘But I’ve lived there long enough. I’ve had a French husband.’ She looks at him, raises an eyebrow. ‘In fact, I’ve had two.’

No, she hasn’t stayed still. Two of them! And French! He can see them in their beautiful suits, knowing what wine to order, and using that accent …

‘Two, Mandy? You’ve been busy.’

‘I’m never idle. Do you want the run-down? Do we have time?’

‘I don’t think they can start without us.’

The greenery is more lush than he remembers, the trees more mature – of course – and the houses they shade have grown, too. All those street-facing doors have gone, obliterated by new extensions.

‘Well.’ Mandy nudges against him as they walk. ‘Potted history. I married Luc when I was 24 – too young, of course. He was a bastard. I know they all say that, but really. After we separated his mum rang me. She
apologised
. Then I met Jaffa.’

‘Jaffa?’

‘Jean-Francois. He was fun, but it was brief. Quick marriage, quick divorce. These Catholic boys.’

They’ve stopped halfway down the street and she’s looking at him.

‘You need a new hobby,’ he says, grinning.

‘
Oh coquin!
Anyway, I got one. Do you really want to hear all this? We’ll do you next, I promise. OK. So I left my job –
terrifying
– and I set up this business and language school. Business English, Anglo-American business practices, all that.’

‘You did well.’

‘Yes, I did. Well, that’s it, really. That’s me. I don’t need to ask about you, do I? Well, not the job. Know all about that. Do you smoke?’ She feels around in her bag.

‘No.’

‘Can I? Do you mind? French habit.’ She lights up.

‘Look,’ he says, pointing to the house opposite. ‘Sarah’s place.’

She squints at it. ‘Yes, of course! So that means …’ She counts down with her cigarette. ‘Miss Walsh and me and Miss Bissett – God, what a bitch!’

He turns, and they’re standing right outside it. ‘The Chandlers.’

‘Little bastards.’ They look at the house in silence. Plastic window frames and blotches of colour in the flowerbeds. A people carrier in the drive. Then the front door opens and Satish runs out, Satish small but not scared and not running from anything. He comes right up to the two of them.

‘Hello,’ he says. ‘Are you in the picture?’

‘Sandeep!’ comes a voice from inside. The boy flicks round again and runs back.

Satish realises he’s holding Mandy’s arm.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, letting go.

Mandy laughs.

‘Yeah, I know. Spooky. But think about it. Little Sandeep. He’s living there.’

They look back at the house, front door closed again, and Satish sees her point. He’s living
right there
. His laugh rolls out generously. It’s authentically funny, and now Mandy’s laughing too, both of them curling over slightly, touching each other and setting each other off again.

‘I think you’d call that the last laugh,’ she says.

After a bit they make their way down to Mandy’s house on the opposite side, skirting the party table. Satish sees, in his peripheral vision, food, drink, the red-white-and-blue. A few seats from the end, there’s a ‘Reserved’ sign, and Satish thinks of Stephen.

‘You now,’ Mandy commands him. ‘Tell me about you.’

‘You know about my job, then?’

‘Yes. Very flash. It’s perfect for you, being a doctor. A kids’ doctor.’

‘I’m a paediatric cardiologist.’

‘OK. So, what about the bits I couldn’t Google?’ They pass the end of the table, a gathering of people and equipment.

‘I haven’t had any French husbands.’

‘Careless.’ She fish-mouths, blows a smoke ring, skimming under it as she walks.

‘I’m married, though. Maya. We have two kids.’

Mandy presses her lips together. ‘When did you get married?’

‘In … umm … she’d kill me for this … 1993.’

‘Long-service, Satish. You’ll have to tell me how. Are you happy with her?’

It escapes him uncontrolled, half-gasp, half-laugh. The cheek of it! All this time and she’s still asking questions like that.

‘Yes,’ he manages. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course,’ she says.

They’re standing outside her old house and he looks up at her window, like he always used to, but there’s nothing for him to see there now. Mandy takes a couple of steps up the driveway.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Come on.’ She cranes round to see in through the front window. ‘I don’t think anyone’s in.’ She strides down further, beckoning to him. ‘Come on! Don’t you want to see?’

‘Mandy, it’s someone’s house!’

‘Yes, but it used to be mine. Come on!’

‘What if they’re in?’ But he’s already taken a few steps forward. ‘They’re probably round the back.’

‘So what? We’ll plead curiosity, or ignorance or something.’

He takes the cigarette from her hand – ‘They’ll smell it!’ – and carries it back to the road, stubbing it out and leaving the butt on the pavement. He has a quick look to see if anyone’s watching them and hopes she doesn’t notice and think he’s a coward. She’s already at the gate, lifting the latch. As it clicks up she grins: ‘Just like old times.’

The garden is immaculate and empty. There’s a new conservatory blistering out from the back of the house. Through it, he can see Mandy’s old dining room. Mandy goes right up to the back door, framing her face with her hands so she can see through it properly.

‘Posh new kitchen,’ she reports. ‘Marble worktops. Not a spoon out of place. They even have a
wine cooler
, look.’

But Satish is scanning the windows, top and bottom, making sure they’re not being observed. ‘Come on, you’ve seen it now,’ he says.

‘Do you remember the melamine, and that fake wood?’ asks Mandy.

‘Yes. Let’s go.’

‘Just a minute. Don’t you want to see what the rest of the downstairs is like?’

She grabs his hand and pulls him towards the conservatory, and he feels a rush of adrenaline. When she lets go they stand side by side, both cupping their faces now, peering through a foreground of bookcases and wicker chairs to the dining room beyond.

‘It’s very … tidy,’ he says.

These neat people have tidied away part of his childhood. They, or their predecessors, or
their
predecessors, have got rid of the arch between the lounge and dining room, and sealed up the serving hatch. They’ve stripped away the fingerprints he once left on her wallpaper, and chucked out the carpet on which he trod.

‘It’s smaller,’ says Mandy.

‘I know,’ says Satish. ‘It always is.’

Back in the safety of the street, he asks her, ‘When did your parents move?’

‘Well, in ’84, the day I got my A level results – I had the letter in my hand – Mum came in and told me they were getting divorced.’

‘Were you surprised?’

She does that eyebrow thing again. ‘What do you think?’

‘So they both left Bourne Heath?’

‘Yes, and it was a good thing, too. I never wanted to come back.’

‘So what’s your mum doing now?’

‘She died,’ says Mandy. ‘Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She looks away from him. ‘It happens.’

Satish watches a young woman rearranging a pyramid of cupcakes. She takes one off the top, stands back, and looks at the rest. After a few moments, she replaces the cake.

‘You know,’ Mandy says, turning to him, ‘I’ve been trying to work out what made you come here today. I’m so glad to see you, but – let’s be honest, Satish – this was an appalling place back then. Appalling attitudes. Why would you come back?’

He smiles. ‘It’s a long story.’

She waits. When it’s clear there’s nothing forthcoming, she says, ‘There’s something we need to say to each other. I want to talk about what they did to you that day.’

Suddenly she’s too close to him.

‘You know …’ he tells her, shaking his head. ‘Long time ago, not worth …’

‘I bet no one else says this. I bet everyone else here today pretends it never happened. But I don’t want to do that. I want to talk about it and I want you to let me.’

‘It’s been thirty years, you know … I don’t have much to say about it. I’m fine.’

‘I’m very glad.’ She bites her lip, draws breath. ‘I’m not fine, though. This is something I’ve thought about a lot.’

‘What? Jubilee Day?’

‘A lot. After I got older, especially. It occurred to me … I mean, I have always felt quite strongly that … Did you ever think about the irony, that it all happened because of me, and that in the end I was the one who wasn’t there, so I couldn’t stop it?’

This eccentricity pulls him up short. He pauses, considers it. ‘It would never have occurred to me. You couldn’t have stopped it.’

‘I might have done.’

‘You couldn’t. And it didn’t happen because of you.’

‘It did!’ Her stridency comes from nowhere. ‘It was the kiss they were so angry about, wasn’t it? It was as if I set it all going, then sort of abandoned it. Abandoned you.’

‘No. That’s not true.’

‘I had a responsibility that day. What they did to you …’ She reaches up to him and, before he can stop her, her fingers are stroking his upper arm.

‘Mandy, don’t.’

She pushes back the material of his shirt over his scar.

‘Here it is. God, I want to bash them all in! God, Satish!’

He breaks away from her and smooths down his sleeve.

‘It’s not so bad,’ he says. ‘It’s all in the past.’

‘Don’t say that! It was a terrible thing.’

‘It was a terrible thing at the time,’ he says. ‘I don’t think about it much now. It hasn’t defined me or affected me. It’s not who I am. I don’t mean this cruelly, but your guilt is misplaced. Nobody could have rescued me. I rescued myself.’

‘I’m sure you did,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t let me do it, that’s for sure.’ It’s the nearest she’s come to bitterness. ‘You barely ever spoke to me again, after Jubilee Day.’

‘You’re reading too much into this,’ he says firmly. ‘It was bad, but it happened a long time ago and you were a kid. Those people were looking for an excuse, and I gave them one. You need to – what do they call it? – you need to absolve yourself.’

‘Hmm.’ She doesn’t say anything for a while. Satish is going to speak again, but then she says, ‘Well, how selfish that would be. That would be self-centred, wouldn’t it, to come here and think about my own absolution? The thing is, you’re probably right.’ She looks up at him, appealing. ‘But I don’t think it’s something you do for yourself, Satish. I think someone does it for you.’

‘Fine.’ He makes a swirl in the air with his finger. ‘Consider yourself absolved.’

‘You think?’

‘Absolutely. Absolution.’

They stand there for a while longer, but he can’t think of anything new to say. They turn away from her house, towards his, and Mandy takes his arm.

‘The absolution is good,’ she says. ‘But it’s not why I came back.’

‘To this
appalling place
? So why did you?’

‘You won’t believe me. You’ll think it’s flim-flam.’

‘Go on.’

‘You’re easy to Google. But I wanted to
touch
you.’

Mandy leaves; she’s spotted Colette at the other end of the road. Satish watches her move away from him, and stays watching as the two women reunite, a piece of silent theatre: there’s Colette’s polite puzzlement, recognition, delight, her open mouth, her wide eyes. They move in for a kiss which Mandy performs air-style, as she did with him, but Colette does it the old-fashioned way, a smacker on each cheek. They hug, they pull back to look at each other, they hug again. It’s been weeks since his last meeting with Colette – the row in the café, his shameful accusation. He needs a reunion with her, too, but he can’t face it just yet. He leaves them to it.

Satish is alone outside his old house. After the photograph, he’ll do a meeting. He’s found one nearby. Ninety meetings in ninety days, that’s what they say you need to do. We have a disease, they say, but we do recover. Each day we are given another chance.

There’s a young couple outside, watching proceedings. They’ve left his – their – door open, and through it he glimpses neutral colours: linen and calico, they’d be called, pebble and bamboo. In the window of the front extension there’s a taupe blind. Blue hydrangeas still squat in the front garden, but the driveway’s changed, its cracked concrete replaced by a spread of black tarmac. Down the centre of this waddles a toddler, stiff-legged and rocking from side to side. Her father’s gaze never shifts from her, tracking her progress towards the pavement.

Satish sneaks a look up at his bedroom window. Not much to see there: a silver light fitting, the creamy backs of curtains, the pale wood of a wardrobe. But, like the school playground, it is a palimpsest, full of what used to be there. He can see a boy behind the glass, his hand pressed against the window, his eyes watching another window over the road. He can see the mark this boy’s hand makes. The lad is dwarfed by his own shirt collar. His hair curves in a shiny pudding-basin, a little long at the back perhaps; he’s uneasily halfway between child and man. Satish can see a girl in the room with him, moving towards him. He sees them come together and beside him in the street there are faint traces of the other watchers who saw this, too. He sees the boy being marched out of his back gate, sees him running for home. Satish, grown-up now, bids them goodbye: the watching boy, the kissing boy, the victim, the runner. Each day we are given another chance.