The Forever Girl (27 page)

Ted was her guest, and she sat with him by the pool after they had filled their plates at the buffet.

She said to him, “You’re going to come and see me in Edinburgh – remember?”

He nodded. “After you come to see me in Cambridge. I asked you first.”

“Maybe.”

She looked at him. His hair seemed a bit different, but it could have been ten years ago, and they could have been sitting in the tree-house.

Ted looked over at the knot of guests around the buffet table. “Look at them,” he said.

“What about them?”

“Don’t you find it hard to believe that they’re … that they’re still here?”

She laughed. “Yes, I do. Just like when I arrived at the airport and saw that it was still there. And when I think of other airports where there are thousands of people and you walk through tunnels and so on and there’s no sky, nothing, and here you can pick flowers when you get off the plane and walk over to the building.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

“And then there’s everybody doing the same thing – and saying the same thing.”

He had noticed too, he said. “I don’t think I could ever live here again. Not permanently. Visits, maybe, but that would be all.” He looked at her enquiringly. “What about you?”

“Probably the same.”

He looked thoughtful. “Do you think that it’s odd that here we are at our stage in life – we aren’t exactly ancient – and we’re already thinking about our past with a sort of nostalgia? Do you find that odd?”

She did – to an extent. “It’s probably because we spent the earlier part of our lives in this rather peculiar place. It’s like being … well, it’s like being born in a garden, I suppose. And then you get a bit older …”

“And you step out of the garden,” he interjected. “Yes, that’s absolutely right. That’s what it is.”

“But we find a life on the outside,” she said. “And we like it. It’s more exciting. There’s more of everything, not just the same old, same old.”

“Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what I feel.”

She smiled. “We always agreed – you and I.”

“Yes, we did.”

She thought:
we were made for one another – except for one thing. For that reason, and then because I can’t get over James. James. James
.

She looked at Ted. “Are you happy?”

He nodded vigorously. “Seriously happy. I think I told you that.”

“You did. You sent me a nice e-mail. Just reading it, I felt really
happy for you.”

“I love Cambridge,” he said. “I love the buildings. I love the sense of history. I love the gentleness of it all.”

“Gentleness?”

“Yes, it’s very … very civilised. People treat one another in a way that’s very different from here. It’s money here, isn’t it? That’s what really counts. Money.”

She happened to see her father as Ted said this. “My father counts money,” she said. “So do most of the people at this party. Or they do things for people who count money.”

Ted laughed. “Very funny.”

“That’s the way it is.”

She raised the subject gently. “And you’ve met somebody?”

He was slow to answer, and she wondered whether she had intruded. But he had told her about it first and so he must be ready to talk about it.

“I have,” he said. “And I’m pretty pleased about it.”

“Just pleased? That doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

“No, I am enthusiastic. Very. Yes, I’ve found somebody whose company I really enjoy. And I think he likes me too.”

“That’s important.”

“Yes, it is.”

“He’s a really good musician. In fact, he can do most things really well. He’s a keen skier too. I’ve never learned, but he’s good enough to be in the university team. But he doesn’t have time to do it – he’s an organ scholar and they have to spend all that time in chapel.”

“It sounds great.”

“It is. I know it is. I think I mentioned we were going to go to Italy. He knows these people. His dad is pretty grand, actually,
and they have all these wealthy friends with villas in Italy and so on. He’s been invited, and he says I can come too. We’re going to go in the summer.”

“You must be very happy.”

“Of course I am. But I know it’s not going to last.”

She looked at him with concern. “You shouldn’t say that. How do you know?”

“Because these things don’t. I’m being realistic. They don’t last all that well in the straight world, let alone if you’re gay. It’s more difficult, I think. It just is. People don’t meet at university and stay together. They get bored with one another.”

“I thought that was changing.”

He sighed. “A bit, maybe. But not all that much.”

“I hope that it will for you.”

“Thank you.” He paused. “And you? What about you?”

She looked beyond the guests. The two helpers Margaret had brought – a Jamaican couple from her church – were laying out more plates. They both wore white, as Margaret did when she went to church.

“Me?” she said. “I’m fine. I suppose I’m fine. Yes, I’m all right. Yes …”

He reached out to her.

“Because of …”

“Because of him. Yes.”

“You can’t.”

“I know I can’t. I know what I should do. People keep telling me. My mother. You. Everybody. Although you told me once not to give up – remember? Then, when you wrote to me, you said something different. You said what everybody else says.” She made an effort now, and composed herself. “I’m going to be fine.
I’m going to live my life, and I’ll try to get as much as I can out of it, but all the time I know I’m going to think of him. Sad, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think so. Not sad in the sense of being pathetic. Sad for you otherwise, I suppose.”

“It’s forever,” she said quietly. “Whoever is up there in the sky looked down on me and said – ‘It’s forever for you.’ ”

The tension was defused. “You sound like Margaret.”

“Maybe. But she believes it. I don’t.”

“You don’t believe there’s somebody up there … allocating things for us?”

She shook her head. “I believe there may be something – I don’t know why, but I just think there is – but it’s not a man with a white beard.”

“Or a woman?”

“No. If it were a woman, she wouldn’t make things so hard for women.”

They laughed, but she thought:
would it be less embarrassing to talk about a goddess than a god?

“When I was a boy,” he said, “I thought I would get struck by lightning if I said things like that.”

“I saw some lightning today,” she said. “In that storm.”

“I wonder who was struck.”

“I didn’t see. But I bet they deserved it.”

They looked at each other and smiled. She wanted to kiss him at that moment, and she wondered whether he would object. A chaste kiss, to the cheek; a kiss that would say everything about everything; about the value of old friends; about how she wanted him to be happy forever, in spite of his belief that happiness, for him, in his own view of his situation, was likely to be temporary.
But surely all happiness was temporary, she thought – or most of it. That was what made us aware of it – the fact that it was a salience, something that stood out from our normal emotional state. She would not describe herself as unhappy, and yet she knew that she could be happier than she was at present. She would be happy if James were with her, which he was not; and, she thought, he never would be. She heard a snatch of song on the radio – a line from a folk tune – that resonated and somehow seemed right for her. The singer reflected on things that could never be, or at least would never come about “until apples should grow on an orange tree”. Until then, she thought; until then. The song finished and was gone, and she had not heard its title or the name of the singer. The plaintive line, however, remained in her mind.
Until apples should grow on an orange tree
.

28

James went to Glasgow at the end of the semester. He sent her an e-mail a few months later, but it did not say very much. She read it and re-read it, and then, resolving that she would treat it as nothing special, deleted it. Ted gave her news of him from time to time, and when Ted eventually paid his visit to Edinburgh she invited James to join them for a meal. The distance between the cities was not great – forty-five minutes by train – but they were different worlds, it seemed, and he rarely made the journey. On that occasion he was away – he played rugby for a university team and they had a match that weekend in Inverness. Ted seemed relieved that James would not be there.

“It is nice to have you to myself,” she said. “And besides …”

He looked at her quizzically.

“I’m over him,” she muttered.

“Are you? Really?”

She shook her head.

“You see,” he reproached her. “You should listen to me.”

“I will. Eventually.”

He looked doubtful. “Try harder.” And then added, “I like Padraig. What’s wrong with him? I don’t see anything. Mind, you get a bit closer to him than I do …”

“Padraig’s fine,” she said. “He’s considerate and witty and I like him a lot.”

“Like?”

“Like.”

Ted shrugged. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? Liking and loving really are different. But I’m not here to lecture you.”

The visit was a success, and he came back to Edinburgh later
that year. She went to Cambridge, and Ted put on a picnic for her by the river. He took her to Grantchester and recited Rupert Brooke’s “The Old Vicarage” by heart, learned, he told her, specially for the occasion.

“You’re very clever,” she said teasingly. “How many boys can recite Rupert Brooke and understand about art and everything? And be good-looking at the same time. How many?”

“I’m not good-looking.”

“Yes, you are. You’re everything a girl could want.”

He laughed. “Except for …”

“Who cares about that?”

He affected surprise. “Are you asking me to marry you? Really, Clover, you’re rather
forward
, aren’t you?”

She said that she would be happy to be married to him. “We could have a pact. If nobody else ever asked us, then we could settle down together.”

“I’d love that,” he said. “No, I really would. I could promise that I wouldn’t ever look at men and you could promise to look the other way.” He became serious. “Does Padraig mind? Does he mind your going off to see another man like this? Some men would be jealous.”

He said this with a smile, and then winked at her.

“He’s not the jealous type.”

“Good.” Then after a pause, he asked, “Are you going to stay with him forever?”

She did not reply immediately. She had not really thought about it, but now that she did, she realised that this was not what she intended. And the fact that she had not thought about the question itself provided the answer.

“No.” The word slipped out.

“I thought you wouldn’t.”

“Things are all right at the moment. We enjoy being together. It’s …”

“Comfortable? Is that the word?”

“Maybe. But what’s wrong with being comfortable?’

He thought that nothing was wrong with it. But he pointed out that one could go to sleep if one became too comfortable.

“And what’s wrong with going to sleep?”

What was wrong with being asleep, he said, was that sleep amounted to nothing, and that the more you slept the shorter your life – your real life – became.

“Oh well,” she said.

“Yes,” he said. “Oh well. So how long are you going to keep Padraig? Until you finish at Edinburgh?”

“I’m not that calculating.”

“But that’s what’s probably going to happen.”

It was, she conceded, and he was proved right. Over the three years that followed, she stayed with Padraig. They did not live together, but they spent much of their spare time in each other’s company. In those three years, she saw James four times – twice at parties in Edinburgh when they happened both to know the host, once in a pub in Edinburgh after a rugby match between Scotland and Wales, and once, by chance, in the street. Although brief, each of these meetings seemed to open a wound that she had thought closed. James was kind to her – as he always was – and treated her as an old friend whom he saw very occasionally but was always pleased to meet again. But that was all. She did not see him with a girl, and hesitated to ask, even if he asked after Padraig. Ted had hinted that James had met somebody in Glasgow but he had been tactful and had not said much. She had
closed her ears to the information; she did not want to hear it.

The meeting in the pub was the most difficult one for her. She was there with Padraig who had gone to the game at Murrayfield Stadium and had arranged to meet her for a drink before going out to dinner. Padraig was at the bar, ordering the drinks, and she was standing in a crush of people, looking for somewhere to sit. James had appeared beside her, and had leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. He was with several male friends, whom he introduced to her, but she did not get the names.

“You’re here with Padraig?” he asked.

She glanced towards the bar. It was taking time for Padraig to be served. “Yes, I am. And you …”

“Pity.”

The word was muttered, and she thought she had misheard him. But it had sounded like it; it had sounded like
pity
. She caught her breath.
Pity
. Did that mean that he hoped that Padraig was over – that she was free to go out with him? She closed her eyes momentarily, feeling dizzy.

The moment passed, and she thought:
he did not say it. It was what I wanted him to say – that’s all
.

He spoke about the rugby. “I’ve been at the game,” he said. “Scotland played okay – not brilliantly, but okay enough.”

“They try,” said one of his friends. “They try but in rugby it’s not a question of trying, but scoring tries.”

She looked at James. I’m standing next to him, she thought. I could easily say to him, James, I’ve wanted to say something to you for years now and here we are standing in this bar and I have the chance and …

The moment passed. Padraig returned with drinks and James went off with his friends. She could not stay.

“I don’t want to stay here,” she said to Padraig. “I’m really sorry. I’m not feeling well.”