My Real Children (26 page)

“It’s how I do,” he said. Unlike Mark, he liked conversation in bed, he liked her to tell him what she was feeling and what she liked and what she wanted him to do.

“Even after four children and all those stillbirths I feel as if I might as well have been a virgin until I met you,” she said.

They continued to go out, for meals, to concerts, and as the weather improved driving up to the Lake District for picnics and walks. He was good with the whole family. Everyone liked him. She teased him that he’d have to give Helen good grades, and he said that there was no need, she was getting good grades on her own. Trish continued to do all her work, though more and more often she skipped the peace group and the women’s group, which seemed less relevant than they had. David wasn’t like the men they talked about.

He didn’t move in. He kept his room on campus and spent three or four nights a week with Trish. Time seemed to go very fast. When it was time for him to go back to the States she drove him to Manchester airport. “Will I ever see you again?” she asked.

“It doesn’t seem likely,” he replied. “I’m sorry, Trish. It’s been wonderful. But I don’t expect I’ll come back here, and if you came to San Francisco my wife wouldn’t like it.”

“How about Boston, when George graduates?”

“If you’re going to be in Boston write to me. I’m not there often, but it’s not impossible. I might be able to find an excuse. I can’t promise. We shouldn’t spoil what we’ve had. You always knew it was going to end now.” Trish kissed him for the last time when she dropped him off outside the airport. She drove home, tears running down her face.

Helen tried to cheer her up. “Well now you know there are men who aren’t like Dad, maybe you can find another.”

“How on Earth do women tell?” Trish asked.

Helen laughed and shook her head.

“I wish I’d never met him,” Trish said to Bethany, down in the basement later. “I was happy being busy. I liked my life. I made room for him in it, and now he’s gone and I have this huge hole where he was.”

“I think Kevin has done the same,” Bethany said.

“I did notice that he hasn’t been around very much,” Trish said. “Has he really left you?”

“He’s left town, as best I can tell. He hasn’t told me anything. He’s just kind of oozed away, and now I don’t know where he is. I don’t know how I’m going to afford to pay rent on my own.”

“Never mind paying rent, we can manage,” Trish said, putting her arms around Bethany. “I should pay you for doing so much cooking. But how could he just leave that way?”

“When you’re not married you can just walk away,” Bethany said. “I might be able to make him pay something for Ally, if I could catch him and take him to court. But he doesn’t have anything—he’d consider it bourgeois to have enough money to pay for her—so probably that’s it. I’m sorry to drop this on you when you’re upset about David.”

“Troubles come not in single spies but in battalions,” Trish said.

Bethany blinked. “I’m sure that’s something very erudite?”

“
Hamlet.
It just felt appropriate. If Helen had just lost a man as well I’d think it was something in the stars over the house.”

“Helen has found a man, I think,” Bethany said. “But I’ll let her tell you about it.”

Trish wept alone for David and tried to put a good face on it before the world. She kept his business card on her bedside table. It said “David Lin” and underneath that his name in Chinese characters, and then his address in San Francisco. She looked up how much it cost to fly to Boston.

It took Helen a long time to tell her mother that she had a new boyfriend. “Boyfriend” didn’t feel like the right word, as it hadn’t for David. Helen’s new partner, Don, was divorced, and thirty-six. Helen was twenty-seven. “He’s serious, Mum,” Helen said. “Not like the others. Not just seeing my looks.” He was another mature student taking the same degree Helen was. “But he’s doing it part time. He has his own business, importing computers and selling them. He says he wants to know how they work so he can be better at that.”

“Computers and space,” Trish said. “My children are so futuristic.”

“And a pop star and a banker,” Helen reminded her.

“I could never have imagined any of that,” Trish said.

25

Different News: Pat 1978

When she was fourteen, Flossie announced that she wished to be known as Firenza in Italian and Flora in English. Her mothers did their best to comply. She also took to doing her hair like the statue of the goddess Flora and to being more enthusiastic about flower gardening than vegetable gardening. Bee found this amusing and encouraged the flower growing, with the result that the garden was a mass of blooms that year. Jinny, meanwhile, was getting top marks in school and affected to care nothing about her appearance. Philip had just passed his eleven plus and was learning to play the oboe. He sang in the church choir. The girls played popular music as many teenagers did, enjoying Italian pop and the new “Volga beat” songs that everyone seemed to be dancing to. Philip turned up his nose at all of that and played Vivaldi and Stravinsky when it was his turn to use the music center.

“Are we driving to Italy this year or what?” Jinny asked one June Sunday as they were just finishing lunch.

Pat and Bee looked at each other. “Driving, I think,” Pat said. “They’ve been bombing trains again, and now we can take turns driving it’s cheaper and more practical again.”

“Can we stop in Menton and see the gardens?” Flora asked.

“It depends on whether it makes sense, but I should think we can go that way and stop there,” Bee said. “I’d like to see them too. They have the oldest olive trees in Europe.”

“They have water hyacinths,” Flora said.

Pat looked at Jinny, whose turn it was to clear the table. Jinny obediently began to gather up plates. Pat got up to fetch dessert—a strawberry cake she had made. In the kitchen she automatically switched on the radio. “Not known yet whether the blast was nuclear,” the announcer was saying.

Jinny put the plates down with a clatter. “Nuclear?” she said.

“There has as yet been no official Pakistani response. United Europe has asked China for clarification.”

“What’s happening?” Bee called.

Pat took the cake through into the dining room. “It looks as if China has intervened in the Indo-Pak war. They don’t know if it’s nuclear.”

“What are we doing?” Bee asked.

“Asking for clarification, apparently.” Pat switched the television on.

“Geiger counters as far away as Tehran are confirming that the strike on Delhi was definitely nuclear,” it said as the tubes warmed up.

“What should we do?” Flora asked.

“It’s just like before you were born, the Cuban Missile Exchange,” Bee said. “It doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world and that everyone will push the buttons just because somebody has.”

“They could, though,” Philip said. “It could be the end of the world.”

The phone rang, and they all jumped. Bee wheeled over to answer it. Pat switched off the television and everyone listened. “Yes, we’re all here, yes, we’re all safe, yes, we have heard the news. It doesn’t seem as if there’s anything we can do about it, so we’re going to have some cake. I’m glad you’re safe. Well don’t go any nearer! In fact, come home if you can. I understand that. Well, stay safe. We’ll see you in Florence. We love you.” She put the receiver down. “Michael. He’s in Jerusalem.”

“Does he think it’ll be the end of the world?” Philip asked.

“No,” Bee said crisply. “If he thought that he’d have asked to speak to all of you. He just wanted to make sure we knew what was happening.”

“Is Jerusalem a target?” Flora asked.

“It might be, if the whole Middle East goes up. But they seem to prefer suicide bombs and assassinations to all-out war these days,” Pat said.

“That’s a comfort!” Bee said.

Pat switched the television on again. They ate the cake without tasting it and later drank a pot of tea without tasting that. Jinny kept switching the channel. “Do you think you’ll get different news on ITV?” Flora sniped.

“I wish we could just switch channels and have different news,” Bee said.

“I wish we had any news and not just the same thing repeated over and over and people speculating about what it means,” Philip said. “I’m going to go upstairs and practice. If it’s going to be Armageddon that’s what I want to be doing, and if not I’ll need to be in practice for the concert next week.”

“That’s a really good way of looking at it. We’re not doing any good sitting here,” Pat said. She got up and went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, but she switched the radio on and kept listening to people saying nothing about the nuclear exchange.

When she went back in to the dining room the television was on but only Jinny was there. “Bee and Flora decided that if it was the end of the world they wanted to be grafting geraniums in the conservatory,” Jinny explained.

“What do you want to do?” Pat asked.

“I don’t know yet.” Jinny started to cry. “I’m only fourteen. I don’t want to die. I haven’t found my passion yet.”

“I didn’t find mine until I went to Florence when I was—” Pat counted on her fingers. “Twenty-four. I loved English literature too. I always have loved it.”

“But Florence was your passion?”

Pat sat down next to Jinny. The television was still on, interviewing people in India and Pakistan and giving no new information. She turned it down so the voices were a quiet background but loud enough for them to hear and turn it up again if there was anything new. “Florence, the Renaissance, yes.”

“I don’t know what mine will be!”

“You’ve got plenty of time to find out,” Pat said. “Sometimes it’s harder for people who are very intelligent and talented in lots of directions. I’ve noticed that with girls in school. It takes longer to see what’s important.”

“Unless they blow the world up before I can find out,” Jinny said. “Or the IRA get me, or a car crossing the road.”

Pat hugged Jinny to her and rocked her. “Those things could happen, but we have to live as if they won’t. Or if they do we have to find ways to cope and follow our passion anyway, like Bee has.”

“I wish I knew already, like Flora and Philip,” Jinny gulped.

“They may not know. They’re so young. They may be wrong.” Pat gave Jinny a tissue. “Blow your nose.”

Jinny did. “I want to do something to make the world a better place.”

“It’s so hard to know whether you have,” Pat said. “I mean, I write my guide books, and people use them, but it’s a very little thing.”

“If the Chinese were going to nuke Florence now, would you want to be there?” Jinny asked.

“Yes,” Pat said immediately, and then directly afterwards contradicted herself. “No. What good would it do? I wish I were there right now so that I could go and stare at the Botticellis the way Philip’s playing his oboe and Bee’s grafting. But if it has to die what good would it do me to die with it? It would be better to live on and tell people how it used to be.”

“Now it’s my turn to tell you to blow your nose,” Jinny said.

“I’m sorry—wait.”

The television had cut back to the announcer, who was looking grave. They froze, but it was only news about the fallout from the Delhi bomb.

“Numbers that big become meaningless. They’d do better to show us one child who will die,” Pat said. “Look, it’s not doing us any good to watch this.”

“But there might be some news,” Jinny protested. “At any minute, there might.”

“I know.” Pat smiled through her tears. “But we can listen to the radio in the kitchen. Let’s make dinner. If we were going to eat one last thing, what would you want it to be.”

“Gelato!” wailed Jinny, choking on the word.

“Well, if the world’s still here we’ll be in Florence in three weeks,” Pat said. “Meanwhile I think it’s time to get out the pasta maker. I have one tin of truffle butter that I was saving, but I think we could have it today. Come and help.”

Pat called the others for supper at six o’clock. “Come and eat. Italian dinner tonight. We have homemade pasta with herbs from the garden and truffle butter, followed by gammon and eggs, then fresh raspberries and cream.”

“You picked the raspberries?” Bee asked.

“Jinny picked them,” Pat said.

“Well, I suppose we might as well,” Bee said. She wheeled out of the conservatory. “You’ve made a feast!”

There were flowers on the table, Bee’s grandmother’s lace tablecloth and Pat’s mother’s best china plates. “It seemed appropriate,” Pat said.

Philip came down and was appropriately enthusiastic about dinner. “I was wondering if I could go to choir school,” he said, as he came back from clearing the pasta plates. “I might be able to get a scholarship. A boy from choir did.”

“If it’s what you really want,” Bee said.

“I really think it is.” Philip hesitated. “What I’d really like would be to go to choir school in Italy.”

“Do they even have choir schools in Italy?” Pat asked.

“There’s one in Rome and one in Milan,” he said. “Or there’s Wells. Wells is the best one in England, everyone says.”

“There’s King’s College right here in Cambridge,” Pat said. “Going away to school costs a lot of money, and also we’d miss you.”

“I’d miss you too,” Philip admitted.

After dinner they switched the television on again, and were rewarded with some actual news. It was announced that in a joint communication from Moscow and Brussels that the USSR and United Europe had informed the governments of India, Pakistan and China that no more nuclear strikes would be tolerated.

“Does that mean it’s over?” Flora asked.

“I have no idea,” Pat said. “It might. Or it might mean that if those countries won’t listen, then we—or the Russians—would hit them from the moon. That could mean the end of everything.”

“What are the Americans doing?” Jinny asked.

“Splendid isolation,” Bee said. “Always their default policy. It’s what they do best.”

They went to bed and woke the next morning to a world that, as after the Cuban Exchange, seemed determined to carry on as if nothing had happened. The millions dead in China and India, the millions more predicted to suffer radiation and cancer deaths, were not exactly forgotten but swept under the carpet. The mood was that of having dodged a bullet. The girls in Pat’s classes the next day seemed on the edge of hysteria, needing very little to tip them into either laughter or tears. It was almost exam time, and she read poetry to them, couching it in terms of revision.