Songs of Blue and Gold (3 page)

‘So you would go back to him then?'

‘Part of me wants to,' Melissa said slowly. ‘We were together a long time – ten years, married for six. It certainly wasn't all bad.'

Leonie put cling film over the salads they had assembled in Mediterranean bowls for dinner with friends. A vast potato gratin sat on the counter ready to go into the oven.

Outside was a patchwork of suburban gardens overlooked by the backs of other substantial Victorian houses in the comfortable grids of Fulham. Leonie's husband and six-year-old daughter were in the garden raking leaves. Autumn was already tightening its hold on the senses as pervasively as smoke from bonfires.

‘Marriages do survive affairs,' said Leonie carefully. ‘But you need to be sure that you are taking him back for the right reasons.'

Melissa reached out for another biscuit. It fractured into grainy crumbs between her fingers.

‘Make certain you aren't just going back into a situation where you're suspicious and on edge every time he's a bit late home. Every time he mentions another woman's name.
That's what will destroy you, it'll be even worse than before.'

She was perceptive as usual, thought Melissa. She has an instinct I lack. Even at university, when we were young enough not to be taking very much too seriously, Leonie had a knack of understanding, of seeing underneath the surface to what was really going on.

Melissa was formulating a reply when a small, muddy tornado whirled into the kitchen, scrappy plaits flying.

‘Emily!' cried Leonie. ‘Look at the state of you!'

‘We've been doing archaeology at the end of the garden. Look!' She held out a short stick. ‘Dad says it's a clay pipe.'

Leonie raised an eyebrow.

‘Let's see,' asked Melissa. ‘It is as well. It's clogged with earth, but there's the hole in the middle. Did you find it?'

‘I did, while I was helping. But I got bored. And there are some bits of smashed plate too!'

Through the window, Ted was heaving two bags of garden waste up the side path.

Leonie followed Melissa's gaze. ‘Don't be too impressed,' she said. ‘First time since June he's been out there with anything more useful than a can of beer.'

She acknowledged that with a warm smile, then turned to Emily. ‘You know that book I kept forgetting to give you? I managed to remember today. It's on the hall table.'

‘Thanks. Did you know that a banana isn't yellow?' said Emily.

‘Isn't it?'

‘No, it's red and green. It's your brain that makes it seem yellow.'

‘Where did you get that from?'

‘Oh, it was on the Internet.'

‘She asks so many questions,' said Leonie. ‘You wouldn't believe how many questions, all the time.'

‘Fantastic questions, though.'

‘Well . . . not always. I was trying to get something done the other day when she interrupted, just would not leave it for a moment. I had to stop what I was doing . . . and the question was, “Mummy, who invented the bread bin?”'

They all laughed.

‘You still didn't tell me,' said Emily. She grabbed a biscuit and wandered off.

‘You are lucky,' Melissa told Leonie.

‘I know.'

‘Melissa, you are going to the christening, aren't you?' Leonie asked. ‘Mattie was worried you hadn't replied to the invitation.'

The cream card casually and belatedly forwarded from London and left in a pile. Melissa realised, mortified, that she hadn't even read it properly.

‘Oh, God, I must call them. How could I have forgotten? I'm godmother! At least I hope I still am . . .' said Melissa, flustered. ‘They asked me as soon as Tamasin was born. I wouldn't miss it, no matter what!' She was indignant anyone would doubt that.

‘Call them now,' said Leonie.

After the cosiness of the afternoon, it was harder than she'd anticipated when the guests began to arrive.

‘Still living in Victoria?' asked Paul, a medic she had once shared a house with for six months. He was studiously not mentioning Richard. Either Leonie or Ted must have told him.

‘I've been in Kent. At my mother's house – she hasn't been well.'

He was saved from any comment on that by the arrival of a couple who looked vaguely familiar. ‘Melissa, you remember Johnny and Caroline?'

‘Oh, yes . . . yes, of course. Hi!'

‘Great to see you! What have you been up to?' said Caroline. She was short and big-breasted, dressed in a matronly flowered ensemble.

‘Still working in that library?' asked Johnny, ruddy-faced from the first glasses of wine.

‘Archive,' Melissa corrected automatically. ‘No . . . bit of a career break at the moment.'

‘The party at the Hurlingham,' Caroline reminded her. ‘Some idiot trod on my dress and ripped it. You mended it with one of those hotel kits. It was so clever of you. Do you remember?'

So that's who she was.

‘And where's your lovely husband?' she asked, craning round.

‘He couldn't make it.'

They all agreed it was a shame.

Don't ask me any more polite questions.
That was all she could think after about an hour. She was raw with smiling. There was a sweet moment when Andy Temple, an old flame from college, grabbed her from behind and whispered in her ear, ‘Still got it.' She took it in the spirit it was meant, and wiggled her hips. But apart from that, all seemed sacred to the concept of the couple. Most of the guests had
children now. Emily was busy handing around bowls of nuts and crisps.

Jools arrived late as always, and alone.

She shrugged off her coat. ‘It's more off than on with Ben at the moment. For a man who can't commit even a dinner party is scary.' She tried ineffectually to smooth down her head of curls, a style (in the loosest of senses) she had had as long as Melissa had known her. ‘What about you?'

There was no need for preamble.

‘Richard says he's sorry. He wants to try again.'

‘It's all over with . . . her, then?'

‘Seems so.'

‘And what do you want?'

‘Part of me thinks, Right, that's the end. There are no children involved. I'll never be able to trust him again.'

Jools rested her chin on a defiantly ring-less hand. ‘And the other part?'

‘Maybe I'm just angry with him. I can't help but worry what will happen next. I mean, what happens to a woman coming up for forty—'

‘Forty's a while off yet!'

‘Believe me, it doesn't feel like it. You think you're settled – you never plan for this one. Do you ever meet anyone else? And if you do, might it not end up even worse?'

‘You can't think like that. It's just not the right basis for a good decision. Of course you'd meet someone else.'

Melissa sighed.

‘But you're gorgeous!'

‘Be serious.'

‘I am,' said Jools. ‘I still remember that party you arrived
at, first year at college. Blonde hair. Great legs. You stood in the doorway . . . and there were tongues on the floor.'

Melissa shook her head.

‘Obviously I thought you looked like a stuck-up cow and I would sooner have stuck nails up my nose than make friends with you,' said Jools, dead-pan.

‘Now you tell me. . . .'

A burst of raucous laughter across the room seemed to make her serious, suddenly. Jools leaned in.

‘What?' Melissa asked.

‘Don't do it, Mel. Don't take him back. You're worth more than that.'

The directness took her aback.

‘I know you. I can sense that underneath it all you want to be won round.'

‘I don't know – I—'

‘Just be careful, that's all.'

Melissa nodded.

‘I've said enough. Let's have another drink.'

They put the world to rights over several.

‘
I HATE IT
here, I want to go to France,' Elizabeth said when she woke up the next afternoon.

Melissa, sitting with her, waiting for her to come round, felt an uneasy mixture of empathy and frustration. According to a friendly and patently capable nurse, Elizabeth had been sleeping for hours on end every day.

‘They don't talk to me,' went on Elizabeth. She squeezed the words out and started to cough.

Melissa took her hand, feeling agonies of guilt, wondering how she would cope with her back at home. ‘I don't know, Mum. Perhaps we should see what Dr Stewart thinks. He said this was a good place.'

A shake of the head and a blaze of the eyes in response seemed to exhaust her. Elizabeth's head sank back on the pillows. Her cheekbones stood out prominently. The sight of her greying hair and pale cosmetic-free complexion cut Melissa to the core. Up until six months ago, her mother had always taken such care of her appearance, carefully replicating her old hair colour and discreetly painting her eyes and mouth. Despite the feathered lines, she was still beautiful.
It was hard to think of her as prematurely old, the glowing outdoor cheeks faded to milk white.

‘I'll see what the doctor says,' whispered Melissa.

She seemed to have slipped further away in the day Melissa had spent in London. It was hard to know how long the disease had been there. When did the connections in her brain weaken and begin to fail? What had been normal forgetfulness in a person who was getting older, and what was more sinister? Melissa felt guilty for not knowing, for not sensing before. Perhaps it could have been halted. Perhaps she could have realised in time and done more to slow the decline. Was it too late now?

‘I brought something for you.'

Melissa passed her a couple of photographs – from the same stack they had looked at in her bedroom: pictures of sea and rocky beaches, the colours gaudy under the glossy membrane. If they had sparked her interest so clearly before, perhaps they might do so again.

She stared down at them with no sign of recognition. Melissa sat quietly, giving it time. There was a worrying wheeze in Elizabeth's chest as she began to cough again. But after the fit had passed, she seemed to rally.

Astonishingly, Elizabeth nodded enthusiastically at the sunny pictures and said, ‘Lovely . . . Corfu.'

Corfu? Melissa had never heard her talk about Corfu before. Was that where the photographs were taken?

‘Did you like it there?' Melissa prompted eagerly.

She handed her the picture of the sea taken outside the white house, the one Elizabeth had said was someone's home.

‘When did you go to Corfu, Mum?'

As before, Elizabeth ran a finger across the surface, then
looked up and brightened, her face curiously young.

‘Julian,' she rasped.

‘Julian?' Melissa wanted to keep this lucid moment going, keep her mother in it for as long as possible before she disappeared back into her mysterious new inner world. ‘Who's Julian, Mum?'

Elizabeth considered the question, staring at a low cupboard in the room, on which stood the wherewithal to make a cup of tea or coffee. What pictures were forming in her mind? Had any gauze lifted from her injured memory? Or was she making this up, latching on to names that she had once heard and reproducing the sounds?

‘That kettle never used to be green,' she said.

Melissa sat back in her seat fighting not to feel deflated. It had been weeks since anything she had tried had inspired such a positive reaction in her mother as these photographs. It had been hard not to hope they might unlock part of her mind for longer. A clutch of pictures slid off the bed and hit the floor with a sharp patter but Elizabeth did not react.

It was getting harder and harder to find lines of communication. During the two months she had been staying with Elizabeth at Bell Cottage, Melissa had been consciously probing, asking questions, trying to determine how the illness was progressing, how far it was eating up her reserves. And there had been times when she had almost seemed her normal self, remembering people and events from the past.

So where had these photographs and the memories come from – if that was indeed what they were? Who was Julian and why had she never mentioned him before? It was odd, this feeling that she did not know her mother as well as she had thought, when it had been just the two of them for so long.

But as Melissa kissed her goodbye a couple of hours later, it occurred to her that it might not be so unlikely that her mother had had her secrets. She had always held something of herself in reserve. As Melissa grew up, Elizabeth became not distant, exactly, but preoccupied somehow. More and more so. She had a quiet determination, too, which some mistook for dreaminess but which Melissa recognised in herself occasionally as a self-effacing, rather embarrassing kind of doggedness. When the demands of everyday grew too much she would retreat into a world of books, when reading and thinking was time suspended in which she recharged her inner resources. That was another trait Melissa had either inherited or learned early on to imitate.

But in remembering episodes from the past Melissa had to remind herself to be careful not to re-evaluate her mother's expressions, her words and actions in the light of the person she – Melissa – had become, instead of the child for whom they were intended.

Elizabeth had rarely been critical. ‘I've made too many mistakes to tell anyone else how to live their life,' she'd said more than once over the years. It was only recently that Melissa had thought to wonder, what mistakes were they?

Melissa called Dr Stewart, who duly visited and diagnosed a lung infection. He recommended that she stay for at least another week at the nursing home where her condition could be monitored.

‘Lack of appetite means weight loss – which leads to vulnerability to infection such as pleurisy. That's what I'm most concerned about now. We need to keep her where she
is. Better than that draughty old house.'