Eloise (9 page)

I sighed. Eloise would never see her twin girls married, never play with her grandchildren. I must be there for Rose and Violet, I told myself, I must try to make sure those motherless little girls grew up happy. Never mind that Ted and Juliana would look after them. I, too, would do my best. I was their godmother, after all. I would try to make sure that, somehow, Eloise’s hopes for them did not die.

And then I remembered a conversation Eloise and I had. So many years ago, before she married Ted.

I had asked you if you were tired of being single, Eloise. I was long married by then, with three children who defined
everything about me. You were only a few months younger, and you seemed sad. There were many days I sat beside you and watched your lovely face sink into a soft despair, especially when you watched my little ones squabbling, cuddling and wrestling their baby days away.

‘Tired of being single?’ you said with a weak smile. ‘Devastated, more like. I long for what you have with Chris. That wonderful bridge of love and companionship. But I won’t have that, I think. I lost it a long time ago, and it won’t come back.’

I was shocked. What were you talking about?

‘Tell me about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve never heard about this. Christ, Ellie, this sounds important. Tell me what’s wrong.’

You smiled and shook your head.

‘I can’t. It’s far too painful and only my … ’

You suddenly sat upright and became your usual gay, sparkling self.

‘Sorry, Cath. I’m an idiot. Can’t help myself. Once a drama student, always a drama queen.’

Eloise and I had met when we studied drama at Bristol University. It had affected us both very strongly, but in completely different ways. She had loved the whole thespian culture; she was a classic exhibitionist, dressed in the New Romantic fashions and totally at home on the stage. She was a good little actress too, although it was clear this was always
going to be for fun. Eloise, with her trust fund and stately home, was never going to need a serious career.

I, on the other hand, did. But I knew by the end of our first year that I was never going to make it as a professional actor. I so loved the poetry and the prose; was totally carried away on the waves of those gorgeous cadences, swellings and sighings of words; the sad sudden plunge from high romance into deepest tragedy; but I couldn’t deliver the words at a level they needed. I never resented it. I was stoical. Acceptance was my lot. I just got on with it, got my mediocre degree, took a typing course and ended up at the BBC in London as a ‘graduate secretary’, working on the venerable science programme
Horizon
. Hoping, with all the other girls in those hallowed establishment offices, that I would somehow leap over the rest of us ‘graduate’ girls and get a job on the creative side. As a researcher. That’s all I, and we, asked for.

And it might as well have been for the moon. You grew up fast in those little rabbit warrens at the BBC, full of testosterone and fear that a young girlie from the typing pool will make it onto the next rung, depriving an earnest Oxbridge graduate of his birthright; his admittance into the ranks of the fantastically pensioned and revered great and good of the BBC.

But I was never really that ambitious. I just wanted an interesting job. And then, in my early twenties, I met Chris,
and that was it really, as far as my career was concerned. I fell in love with him straightaway and my entire focus changed. I knew that all I wanted out of life was to marry him and have a family. I know that’s pretty old-fashioned, but I didn’t care. Once we were married, children came along quickly, and it made sense for me to work from home. I left the BBC without a backward glance. I’d always wanted to write, so I settled for a low-key career in freelance journalism, mostly writing for women’s magazines. I never made much money, but at least I felt I was contributing to the family income, especially when I was contracted to write a regular column on a weekly.

I was very, very happy.

Do you remember, Eloise, how I tried to pursue that conversation with you, to find out about your past secret love? But it never got me anywhere. And, in the end, what you said faded away. Normal life piled up its daily layers. Yesterday was soon obscured. A few years later you were telling about how you’d met Ted in St Ives. This sulky but sexy young artist with a huge chip on his shoulder. At once fascinated by you, and at the same time rudely and stridently dismissive of your privileged background.

I thought he sounded like a complete prat, and told you so. But you were already lost. He was great in bed, you told me, and I shrugged. He and a million other guys out there, I said.
No, you replied, not so. Not for you at any rate. For you there had been no one who moved you that way for many years. In fact, before Ted there had only been one; among all the boyfriends who had flocked to claim you, only one who had brought you to ecstasy and you wouldn’t tell me who.

And now there was Ted. And you married him.

All this passed through my head as I watched my daughter’s yearning face.

‘OK, Eve, who is he?’

She blushed, giggled, sighed.

‘Oh Mum, he’s so gorgeous. I saw him on the beach this morning. He’s new though. Not from round here. He’s
so
fit.’

Oh God. My daughter had a serious crush.

‘I tell you what,’ I said, ‘let’s see if we can find him down at the café. I could do with a cup of tea and a toasted teacake.’

Eve giggled again. ‘OK, but if we see him you won’t mention that I like him, will you?’

‘As if I would.’

‘You told Harry I liked him. It was so embarrassing.’

‘Sorry, sweetie. Lesson learned. Promise I won’t do it again. Let’s go down to the sea and see if we can spot this gorgeous boy.’

The café in our little cove is only a three-minute walk away. It was full of young families – the schools hadn’t broken up yet –
and a few teenagers free of GCSEs and A levels. Small children swarmed over the rocks while their parents called them back to eat ice creams and Evie and I sat at one of the wooden tables drinking tea and devouring toasted teacakes. Although she scanned the beach with anxious eyes, the glamorous one was nowhere to be seen.

‘He’s probably got really bored with all these mums and babies. Gone off somewhere much more interesting, like Newquay probably.’

Ah, yes. There was always that undertone; although our kids loved Talland Bay, Newquay, on the north coast, with its tempting surfer glamour and noisy nightlife was always the forbidden Holy Grail. And of course, it was our fault that they weren’t there, having a great time with their peers, instead of being stuck in sedate south Cornwall, where there was no surf and the most exciting thing to do at night was to take some kindling down to the beach, light a campfire and drink lager listening to someone’s iPod.

Just as I tried to think of a soothing counterweight, perhaps a reference to the barbeque and disco to be held that night at the Smuggler’s Rest, a lively café just up the path from the beach, there was a shout from above us.

‘E-e-e-vie!’

She jumped up from the table, whirled around and clapped her hands with pleasure as her father, with a huge
grin, shepherded her middle brother past some squabbling children and joined us.

‘Tom,’ Evie screamed, and flung her arms around her sheepishly grinning nineteen-year old sibling. ‘I thought you were off camping with your friends?’

‘I was,’ Tom said. ‘But it was raining like anything in Scotland, so we decided to call it quits. And I wanted to see Mum – and you.’

My eyes filled and I looked at Chris. He gave me a sweet, crooked smile. I’d had no idea, when he went off to pick up groceries from the shop earlier, that he had arranged to meet Tom at Liskeard Station.

Eve was already telling her brother about the gorgeous boy she’d spotted on the beach and Tom was laughing. ‘Come on, Sis. Not another one. I thought you were in love with Harry.’

‘God Tom, you’re just like Mum. I
so
don’t fancy Harry. He looks like Justin Bieber. Or at least he thinks he does.’

‘I would have thought the Bieber was right down your street, Beevs,’ Tom laughed, using the boys’ pet name for their sister.

‘Yeah, like you’d know. You are just
so annoying
,’ she shot back.

We started to walk back up to the cottage, Tom and Eve ahead of us. I was snuggled into Chris’s side, enormously
happy and grateful to him, beyond contentment. Two of my children, here with me on this beautiful summer’s day in the most heavenly place on earth.

And then, walking towards us, came a boy. He cut in from the Talland Bay Hotel, which was just beside our house. Tom and Eve were ahead of us and didn’t see him. But I couldn’t help but stare.

He was beautiful. There was no other word to describe him. Mesmerising, a sort of sylph. Tall, slender, shaggy blond hair. A face that belonged to another world, a land of sprites and fairies. And yet sensuous, very much present and aware.

As he passed us, he gave a smile of such dazzling sweetness that we both stopped.

‘My goodness,’ breathed Chris. ‘He’s a remarkably good-looking young man, isn’t he?’

I wanted to laugh. No, I thought, he’s not a man at all. A boy, yes. But what kind of boy, human or elvish, I had no way of knowing. And yet I sensed something. I felt I knew him.

When we got back to the cottage, Eve and I started to cook dinner. Only spaghetti with a pesto sauce, cheese and fruit to follow. I’m a lazy cook. I can, actually, cook very well, as Chris and my kids will mournfully testify from time to time, remembering the homemade soufflés, steak and kidney pies, lasagne and treacle tarts that made their delicious way onto our table when they were younger. But I’d stopped enjoying cooking when the depression hit me and these days I was hard-pressed to open a can of soup. Depression is not just bad for the soul but the family stomach as well.

We ate around the old oak table and Evie once again started to talk about the gorgeous boy she had bumped into on the beach that morning

‘I hope I see him again, Mum. My friends would kill to meet him.’

Tom rolled his eyes.

‘Actually,’ Chris said, ‘I think we saw him earlier.’

Evie’s eyes went wide.

‘Dad, what are you talking about? Did you see him on the beach?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Dad and I saw him coming out of the hotel next door. At least, it may have been him. He was about your age, tall, blond and very good-looking.’

‘How good-looking?’ Tom muttered. ‘Sort of Justin Bieber-soppy good-looking?’

‘A lot better looking than you,’ Eve fizzed back at him. ‘Just because you’re as ugly as sin, and he’s gorgeous. You’re just jealous, Camel-face.’

‘Eve,’ I said. ‘Your brother is not ugly. In fact he’s very handsome. Ask Maria.’

The mention of Tom’s newly acquired university girlfriend, who had stayed with us at Christmas, made him blush, and Eve laugh.

‘Oh yes, I’d forgotten about Maria. I mean, like, God knows what she sees in you. You really are the pits.’

Chris sighed. ‘OK, Eve, that’s it. I wanted to have a really happy family break here with us all. You know your mother’s been ill and this was supposed to make her feel better. If you two can’t stop squabbling, we’ll go back to London tomorrow.’

Tom looked horrified and upset, Eve furious and defiant.

‘Mum’s
always
ill these days,’ she burst out. ‘I’m sick of it. Why does everything have to revolve around her? I’ve just met the boy I could fall in love with, but you lot are just putting me down.’

I was immediately flooded with guilt. It was true. I had been paralysed by depression at one of the most important points in Eve’s young life. It had made me self-absorbed, removed from my most sacred and demanding duty; to be, above all, a mother to my children, focused on their every emotion. They needed me, and I had not been there.

I sat forward, motioning Chris to stay quiet. ‘Darling, nobody’s putting you down. Everyone loves you, including Tom,’ I flicked my eyes at him, and to his credit, he took his sister’s hand.

‘Hey, come on, Beevs, I was only having fun.’

It was over as quickly as it had begun. Suddenly they were laughing and teasing each other, communicating in a language their father and I could not begin to understand but were deeply relieved to witness.

We went to bed, Tom and Evie to the rooms they’d had since they were little, Chris and I upstairs to our pretty beamed attic master-suite.

We hadn’t made love since I’d left Cornwall in panic after my stay at Roseland Farm. I’d been too locked into the grey world inside my head to even think about sex; and Chris, God knows, was far too worried about me to make any kind of physical overture. But on this sweet summer night, together in our favourite place in the world, two of our beloved children tucked snugly into their beds downstairs, we turned to each other at last, in gratitude and relief. We were together again, each wrapped around the other, full of love and desire. There was so much time we needed to make up. I felt shy. Maybe it wouldn’t be the same, both of us clumsy and self-conscious after our prolonged period of sexual separation.