What She Never Told Me (9 page)

I started to move out from under her spell when I got to my mid-teens. Perhaps it was simply a matter of growing up and a need to pull away from her. Or perhaps, in some subconscious way, I was jealous that I was no longer the sole focus of her life, and so I retaliated by downgrading my dependence on her.

I talk about these things to Sheila, but in a rambling kind of way. She doesn’t say much, but sometimes asks me questions. I can’t fully explain those times when I almost didn’t make the trip home, so she explores gently. Can I recall what thoughts were in my head as the battle raged between picking up the ticket and turning on my heels and going back into London? Was it Ireland that was the problem or was it my mother? Did I feel less close to her because she had expanded her life beyond me when she met Dermot? Or did I fear that I might be pulled back under her spell? I have no answers, but the questions stay in my head. I haven’t consciously considered them until now.

The postbox image, the original one, is coming more often. Initially, I try to block it because I’m afraid that it will merge with what happened in Crumlin and turn me into a gibbering wreck. But it doesn’t, and so I let it drift forward to the front of my mind. Sometimes it seems as if it’s expanding beyond the original contours, the way a damp patch on a wall or ceiling appears to be spreading and you wish you had traced around the outline with a pencil when it first appeared so that you could keep a check on whether it was getting worse.

Most of the image is the same as before: the small arm, the envelope, the green postbox. But now I’m aware that it’s dark around the image, and it feels like the darkness of night rather than some clouded background shade. There are other things that come to me – flit in and out so quickly that I can’t give them any definition – fleeting sensations of cold, of excitement, of fear.

I’ve begun to talk to Sheila about Crumlin. I tell her that my mother worked in the brewery there and that I think my father may have been her boss.

Sheila says little, but takes in a lot. She never offers an opinion on anything I present to her, but throws out questions, encouraging me to find the answers myself to what’s troubling me.

‘I know you’ll disapprove, but I’ve written to the brewery’s headquarters,’ I tell her. ‘Maybe someone there will be able to tell me how to get in touch with him. Or maybe they won’t bother to write back. It’s been a while since I wrote to them.’

‘Why do you think I’ll disapprove?’

‘Because . . .’

I let my answer trail off, because I don’t want to tell her how dishonest I’ve been, lying in my email about the reason for contacting the brewery and using a false name. I stay silent for a while and then I come up with something for her.

‘Because maybe you’ll ask me if I’m ready to cope with what I may find out . . . or what I may not.’

Chapter Eleven

I have a new singer. Her name is Julia Ross and she wants to go through some repertoire for a recital she’s planning for later in the year.

‘I’m so glad you can do this,’ she said when she first called me. ‘My regular teacher is taking a break for six months to visit her family in New Zealand. Your name came up a couple of times when I asked for recommendations.’

I was flattered. My card is among those pinned to the noticeboard at the studios, but it’s always good when people recommend me.

I like to know who and what I’m working with and her name didn’t ring any bells, so I looked her up on the internet and came up with a few amateur recitals in churches around London.

She arrives for our session at the studio a good fifteen minutes late; not the greatest start. But as she sweeps into the practice room, breathless with effusive apologies, I find myself being charmed by her. In some strange way, she reminds me of my mother, though there’s no obvious physical resemblance.

A man might describe Julia as a bit of a stunner. But that’s too banal a description for a face of pale porcelain beauty, framed by shoulder-length dark auburn hair. She’s somewhere between thirty and thirty-five, but there’s quite an old-fashioned look to her and she’s wearing clothes that might even be described as prim – a little pink cashmere cardigan buttoned up the front and a string of pearls around her neck, a knee-length pencil skirt and pointy-toed kitten-heel shoes. It’s an Audrey Hepburn kind of look.

I ask her to sing a couple of the pieces she’s brought along, so that I can get an idea of her voice. She has a pretty, light soprano, but the songs and arias she has given me are far too heavy for it.

‘You have a lovely voice, Julia, but I’m not convinced that this is the kind of thing you should be singing. I’d be very happy to work with you, but I think I’d want to take you away from this heavier repertoire – for a while, anyway – and try some lighter pieces,’ I say.

I always chose my words carefully in this kind of situation. Someone who thinks of herself as a Wagnerian soprano is likely to be upset if she’s told that her voice is more suited to light opera or musical theatre.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘But my previous teacher thought these pieces were perfect for me.’

‘They might be at some point, but not now. You’re pushing the sound out. That’s because you’re not using your breath properly.’

She looks taken aback, but says nothing, so I go on.

‘I think you’re concentrating too much on the sound you’re making, when you should be using your body – your abdominal muscles, your intercostal muscles – to support your voice. Singing is physical. You have to
feel
it rather than hear it. As I said, I’m happy to take you on, but I’d want to spend most of the time on technique at first. And I’d also want you to work on lighter stuff – at least for now. It’s up to you.’

She thinks for a moment and then widens her mouth into a disarming smile.

‘I’ll give it a try.’

We do some work on technique and, by the end of the session, she’s exhilarated and so enthusiastic about working with me that she books several lessons over the next few weeks.

She wants to know if I am married, what my husband does, what he’s like. So I tell her a little bit about Sandy and me, omitting the bit about our months of separation.

‘I’m so envious of people who are blissfully happy,’ she says. ‘I don’t seem to have much luck in that department.’

Are Sandy and I blissfully happy? I wouldn’t go that far. We were once, and I hope we will be again. But, of course, I don’t say this to Julia.

‘We rub along very nicely. We’re a bit like two old socks – we get lost in the laundry basket every now and again, but we always seem to find our way back as a pair.’

‘You don’t make it sound very romantic,’ she says with a laugh.

I want to jump up and say that my marriage
is
romantic, that it’s the kind of marriage I had always dreamed of but never thought I would achieve. But I don’t, because there’s that gap of several months that Sandy and I don’t talk about.

Julia’s session ends with the arrival of Ben, one of my favourite students. I introduce them and marvel at the immediacy of her effect on him. It’s as if she’s bestowing a blessing on him, and, in a way, she is. She gives him her full attention, looks at him as if he’s the most interesting, attractive and important person she has ever met. I wonder whether she has worked at this or whether she’s simply one of those women who can’t help but reel men in. I can see that Ben is already in thrall to her. He beams all the way through his lesson and, when we finish and start discussing when to fix our next session, he can’t resist mentioning her.

‘Extraordinarily beautiful, that Julia,’ he says. ‘Is she going to be a regular?’

‘Possibly,’ I say, with some caution. One of the sessions Julia has booked is for the same time next week, but I don’t say this to Ben. His wife stays at home looking after three small children and he has a low-paid teaching job in a tough inner-city school. I can tell from his reaction to Julia that he’s already besotted with her – who wouldn’t be? I almost am, too – and I don’t want to facilitate anything that might increase the pressure on his already fractious marriage. So when he asks if he can have the same slot next week, I think about saying it’s not available. But he has already seen the blank space in my diary and Julia’s name in the slot above it. Next week it is.

When I next see Sheila, I tell her about the session with Julia and the way Ben reacted to her.

‘It really was incredible. I’ve never seen anyone – apart from my mother, and even she couldn’t compete with Julia – have such an effect on a man.’

‘And how did that make you feel?’

‘A little bit envious, I suppose.’

‘Why?’

‘Any woman would be envious of her. She’s vivacious and she’s unbelievably pretty.’

‘And do you think you’re neither of those things?’

‘Oh, I know I’m not bad looking. I scrub up well. But there’s something so delicate about her. I can imagine men wanting to protect her.’

‘And you can’t imagine men wanting to protect you?’

‘No, I can’t. I think they see me as being strong and not needing to be protected.’

‘Even Sandy?’

I say nothing.

‘But Sandy turned up in Ireland, didn’t he? Wasn’t he being protective?’

‘I suppose so. But . . . with regard to Julia, it’s not just me being a bit envious of her looks. I felt a bit worried, too.’

‘What were you worried about?’

‘That something might happen between her and Ben. I don’t want Ben to go all soppy over her and wreck his marriage.’

‘I wonder why you’re so convinced that he and Julia are going to become involved? And is it up to you to decide whether they become involved or not? Why do you feel you have to protect Ben? Could it be that there’s a more personal reason for your anxiety about Julia and Ben?’

Sheila has struck deep. Of course, I realise, there’s a more personal reason. I want to protect Ben’s marriage because I’m still trying to salvage and protect my own.

‘Yes,’ I say, now looking into my own soul. ‘It’s all about me, isn’t it? I’m still terrified of losing Sandy again and I’m acting out my fears by projecting them on to Ben and Julia.’

‘Shall we explore this a bit more on Thursday?’ Sheila says, indicating that our fifty minutes are up. ‘I’m afraid it’s time.’

*

You don’t make it sound very romantic
. Julia’s words stay in my head, annoying me, and I wish I had told her there and then just how romantic our marriage has been. Apart from those months of limbo.

I could have told her about our wedding day, which I can honestly say was the best and happiest day of my life. That’s not to downgrade my Dublin childhood with my mother, but Sandy brought a different, grown-up kind of happiness that I hadn’t experienced. Before Sandy, I had agonised too much over relationships, over things that seemed so crucial at the time but were, in retrospect, clear signs that I should have cut my losses and moved on.

Early on in our relationship, he told me he had a confession to make. I immediately thought he was going to tell me about an indiscretion, maybe a one-night stand, which he now regretted, during those first weeks together. But it was nothing like that.

‘I fancied you before I met you,’ he said.

‘What? How? I don’t remember my name being up in lights and my picture splashed all over the place.’

‘It was a few years ago. You were singing Dido at one of those country-house festivals.’

‘And was I good? Were you bowled over by my incredible singing?’

‘I’m sure you were and I probably was, but I can’t remember,’ he said, chuckling. ‘You were wearing some outrageously sexy costume and I just kept thinking how gorgeous and tragic you looked.’

‘Why didn’t you come and talk to me afterwards?’

‘Well, I couldn’t, could I? I was still married to Elizabeth. But when she and I finally went our separate ways, I have to admit that you did come into my mind. Took me a while to track you down, but here I am.’

You can’t get any more romantic than that, can you? He had
tracked me down
. I wish I’d thought of telling that story to Julia, but it was too late. The moment had passed.

*

The work is progressing on the house in Ireland. Joe calls me regularly to give me updates or suggest minor adjustments here and there. He emails me photographs and videos. The extension is up, and now it’s just a matter of doing the tiling in the bathroom and kitchen, and putting in the fixtures. I pore over the catalogues he emails me and send him back my choices. We discuss them on the phone.

‘Will you be over any time soon?’ he wants to know. ‘I only ask because we’ll want to get going on the upstairs. We’ll need to empty the attic so we can lift the ceiling. There’s nothing to speak of up there, but you might want to come over anyway to see where we’re at.’

‘Oh, Joe, I don’t think I can get away for a while. I have an awful lot of work on.’

The truth is that I can’t face leaving London at the moment. Things are going well with Sandy. And it’s true that I have a lot of work lined up. But I also have a faint dread of going back to my mother’s things, even though I want to know the truth about my father, want to know everything my mother never told me about him.

‘No problem,’ Joe says. ‘But you’ll have to come over at some point.’

I will, but not for some time, and not unless Sandy comes with me. Or unless I’m so sure of him that I don’t mind leaving him for a while. But I’m not sure of him. I’m trying hard to put our months apart at the back of my mind, trying not to torment myself over what made him leave and what made him come back. I look back over the years to when we first met and I try to remember what brought us together and kept us together for so long. For me, there had been that strange familiarity coupled with an attraction I had felt almost immediately and which got stronger the more I got to know him. He made me feel safe, too. But for him . . . ?

He used to joke that I was so clearly in need of a big strong fellow like himself that he felt he had to make a sacrifice and take me on. Once, he looked at me as we lay in bed, drifting into sleep, and told me I was the most beautiful and precious thing in his life. How safe and strong that made me feel.

We had a lovely life, the kind of life I would never have had with Chris or any of the other men I had been involved with. We did gloriously simple things. On Sundays, Sandy went out to get the papers and we read them slowly over breakfast, as if the day was going to be endless, and then we might wander off to the Tate to look at some paintings, or even just meander around Holland Park. We had friends – his hospital friends, my music friends – and we mixed them all up together. It was great fun.

Now, I don’t want to rock the boat by asking him too many questions. And there’s something else that bothers me. The episode in Crumlin has led me to question the way I remember things, and now I can’t help wondering whether I did something –
some thing
– that made Sandy leave me. Did something happen that I just cannot remember? Or is there a much more straightforward explanation? Has what he once felt – that I was precious and beautiful – simply disappeared? And is it ever going to come back?