The Forever Girl (34 page)

They dropped James off at his hotel and continued their taxi journey home. The tension in the atmosphere was palpable, although the niceties were observed.

“A good evening,” said Clover. “Thanks for the recommendation of the restaurant.”

“You’re very welcome,” said Judy icily.

“What did you think of him?” asked Clover.

“He’s okay,” said Judy. “Average. I can’t see why you’re so keen, frankly, but
chacun à son goût
, as they say.”

Clover chose her words carefully. “I thought you took quite a shine to him.”

“Did you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well you were wrong,” said Judy. “I like them a little bit more mature. But I suppose one has to take what one gets.”

They reverted to silence.

Their dinner together had been on a Tuesday. That Wednesday, Judy had to attend a family lunch party with Singaporean relatives on her stepmother’s side. It was the birthday of an aged uncle, and she explained that although she would have liked to invite Clover she would not inflict the extended family on her. “They’d give you no peace,” she said. “They love asking questions. And you’d have to eat and eat in order not to appear rude.”

Clover did not mind. She wanted to visit the Asian Civilisations Museum.

“Sure,” said Judy. “You can go there.”

“And I could take us for dinner tonight. Somewhere … Maybe you could choose.”

Judy looked doubtful. “Our lunch will merge into dinner,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Oh well …”

“We could do something tomorrow,” said Judy. “I have to meet some people, but we could go and have tea in Raffles. Everyone’s ancient, but it’s the thing to do in this place.”

The suggestions were made without enthusiasm, and Clover decided that there might be a good reason for Judy’s having received so few visitors. Judy was bored, she decided, and any visitor, she felt, would be sucked into her vortex of boredom. It was a state that Clover recognised from people she had known in Cayman: the boredom that comes with having money.

They both spent Thursday afternoon in the flat. The weather seemed particularly sultry, and they cooled down with a swim after lunch. There was a group of Russians staying in one of the flats, and they were in the pool too, shouting exuberantly. One of the men made a remark in Russian that was clearly directed against Judy, and was censured by one of the Russian women, who wagged a disapproving finger at him.

“These people are ghastly,” said Judy in a loud voice. “Don’t worry: their English isn’t good enough to know what ghastly means. They’re disgusting.”

They went inside to escape the Russians and the heat. The air in the flat was chilled and Clover felt her skin tingling to its touch. Judy said that she was going to go to her room to read. “We can meet some people for a drink tonight,” she said, “since your friend seems to be too busy.”

“He said he has to work in the evenings,” said Clover. “He won’t be free until tomorrow.”

“Of course,” said Judy. “I forgot. Work.” She sounded as if she didn’t believe it.

“He does,” said Clover. “They work all hours. They just do.”

“Yes,” said Judy. “Okay. They work.”

Clover went to her own room and lay down on the bed. She picked up the magazine she had been reading and began to page through it. She dozed off.

She awoke twenty minutes later. She was thirsty – the effect of the dehumidified air. She sat up on the bed. There was a telephone in the kitchen and it was ringing insistently. She heard Judy open the kitchen door to answer the phone. The door closed behind her. She heard her talking, but could not make out what she was saying. There was laughter.

The conversation seemed to last about ten minutes. Then she heard Judy come out again.

“I’m going out to get some stuff for the kitchen,” Judy called out. “I’ll be about an hour or so. If you want to go down to the pool again, remember to take your key.”

Clover replied that she would remember. The front door was opened and then clicked shut again.

Clover left her room and went into the kitchen. There was a large bottle of Badoit water in the fridge, and she poured herself a glass. She finished the glass and poured herself another half glass.

The telephone rang again. She hesitated. She could let it ring because it would be for Judy and not for her, but she was a guest, and guests had certain responsibilities.

She picked up the receiver.

“I’m sorry to call back,” said a voice. “I forgot to give you the address to pass on.”

It was James.

“James?”

There was a silence at the other end of the line. “Is that you, Clover?”

“Yes.”

He sounded surprised. “But Judy said you were out. I called a couple of minutes ago and she said you would be out all day.”

Clover said nothing.

“You still there, Clove?”

“Yes, I’m here. I’m surprised she said that. I was here all the time. In my room.”

“Oh well, I called – the first time – to tell you about a change of plan. I’ve found a fantastic place for tomorrow. I gave her the
name of the place but not the address. That’s what I phoned back about.”

“I see.”

“It’s just that I thought it would be easiest for us to meet there because I’m going to be near the restaurant. We have a meeting a couple of blocks away and it would save me going back to the hotel.” He paused. “Would that be all right with you?”

“Of course.”

“I suppose she thought you were out.”

“I suppose so.”

She wrote down the details and he rang off. She returned to her room and waited for Judy to come back.

“Did James call?” she asked.

Judy did not flinch. “I don’t think so,” she said. She had several shopping bags with her and she placed these on the kitchen table. “Were you expecting him? I thought he was working.”

Clover shook her head. “No,” she said. “I just wondered.”

She decided to go for a swim in the pool by herself. She slipped into the water and swam slowly across to the other side.

They went out that evening with Judy’s friends – two young men of about their age – both Australian – and a slightly older woman from Hong Kong, a barrister who had just started her practice. Clover enjoyed their company, but could not get out of her mind her distrust of Judy. One of the Australians whispered to her during the evening that he found Judy difficult. “How well do you know your friend?” he said.

“Not all that well.”

He grinned. “Careful,” he said.

“Oh yes?”

He winked. “Yes. Very careful.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Men,” he said. “She likes men.”

Clover smiled. “So?”

“Other women’s,” he whispered.

That night, Clover dreamed of her mother. It was a very clear dream, in which she was sitting with Amanda in the garden in the Caymans. Her mother was wearing her tennis outfit and a blue headband.

“Darling,” said her mother, and then stopped.

Clover said, “I know what happened. I know who you loved and how hard it’s been for you.”

Her mother stared at her. “Do you really?”

And then she woke up. She thought of her mother, and the insight that she had had in the dream came to her, as knowledge now.
Her mother loved her father
. Suddenly she wanted to speak to her; to give her the forgiveness that a child may feel he or she must give to a parent – a forgiveness that usually comes only much later, when we come to understand that our lives have at heart been much the same life led by our parents, even if led differently in their externals.

She closed her eyes. The air conditioning was humming and a clock beside her bed ticked loudly. It was clear to her now. Her mother had survived it, and she would too. You can love and not be loved in return. You can live without the thing that you want above all else; you can be free of it. We all have to do that; we all have to make a compromise. She would let James go, as people everywhere gave up on the unattainable. And in giving up, there was a certain freedom, for herself as much as for him.
The pursuer abandons the pursuit and the quarry gets away; both are free, for the moment. Let some other girl – anybody … but maybe not Judy – have him. He did not want her, and it was foolish, and ultimately self-defeating to carry on thinking that things could be otherwise.

She steeled herself to say goodbye. She would not say it in so many words, of course, but she would say it nonetheless, in any of the other ways in which goodbye could be said.

The restaurant was busy, and they were asked to spend some time waiting for their table in the small bar. It was an intimate place, and they had to sit close to one another on an upholstered bench.

“Your friend, Judy,” said James.

“Yes,” said Clover.

He shook his head in amusement. “At that restaurant – you know when you went out to the Ladies?”

“Yes?”

“She turned up the flirting. Full blast.”

Clover said that she was not surprised. “But you didn’t respond?” she said.

“Of course not,” said James.

“She’s not your type?” asked Clover.

James shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s because …”

She waited.

“It’s because I’ve always loved you,” he said.

33

Amanda had suggested it.

“Picnics should be spontaneous,” she said.

Clover thought about this. “Everything should be spontaneous – sometimes. Kissing people. Eating chocolate. Dancing.”

That reminded Amanda of a newspaper headline that she had read about:
Dancing breaks out
. Dancing, like peace, could break out – could overturn what was there before – when people decided that they had had enough. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

They went to the place they always went to. Amanda parked the car in the shade of a tree, as it was mid-day, and if she did not, the car would be a furnace on their return. The heat pressed down like an invisible hand, seeming to hold down even the surface of the sea, dark blue and sluggish. There was the shriek of insects in the air, an ever-present tinnitus, that Clover now realised she had missed. In Australia it had been birdsong; in Scotland it had been the sound of the wind; here it was the chorus of insects that had always been there, a background sound to her childhood.

They did not bring much with them – a plastic sheet that they had always used for picnics and had never replaced in spite of the scars it bore; a thermos flask of iced water; a couple of bread rolls into which Amanda had tucked a slice of ham and the mayonnaise that she knew her daughter liked. It was too hot to eat, but she thought a picnic required at least a nod in the direction of food.

They looked at the sea.

“I’ll swim a bit later,” said Amanda. “I have to summon up the energy.”

“The sea’s going nowhere.”

Amanda smiled. “That’s very profound, darling.”

Clover lay back and closed her eyes. She had never thought about it before, but the only time that she would close her eyes in the open, outside, was when she was with her mother. She thought about this. Trust. Protection. It was something to do with that.

“Where do you think you and James are going to live?”

“We’ll see. He has another year in Australia.”

Amanda nodded. “I suppose we’re always going to live apart. The family, I mean. Us.”

Clover opened her eyes and looked at her mother. “It’s because of this place, isn’t it? It’s because everybody here is from somewhere else.”

“Yes, it is. But that’s what the world is like. That’s what it’s becoming. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Living apart from the people you grew up with is nothing unusual.”

“I’m not complaining,” said Clover suddenly.

“I didn’t think you were. But thank you for saying that.”

“I mean it.”

Amanda looked at her. It was a whole separate life that she had created; that was the miracle of parenthood, and it never seemed to be anything less of a miracle; you made a whole world; several worlds – one for each child. And then you let go of those worlds, as a creator might do of a world he has created; you let go and watched. “Why did he never say anything to you?” she asked.

Seeing her daughter’s hesitation, Amanda was on the point of changing the subject, anxious not to intrude. “Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.”

“I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”

Amanda waited. A small child had appeared out of nowhere,
it seemed, and was making her way on unsteady feet to the edge of the water. The mother followed, wrapped in a towel. They exchanged brief glances – acknowledgements of sharing the tiny beach – and then a hand raised in passing greeting.

“He thought I wasn’t interested in him.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Amanda smiled. “Well, he was wrong.”

Clover shook her head. “Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I should have told him, rather than letting him think that. And he said that he thought I was with somebody else.”

“And you were.”

“Yes, but only because I couldn’t be with him.”

Amanda pointed out that James was not to know that. “We all make that mistake, don’t we? All the time. We imagine that people know what we’re thinking, and they don’t. We misunderstand one another.”

They were silent as they watched the mother lift her child and dangle her toes in the water. The sea could not be bothered to respond. The child gave a squeal of delight and struggled to escape her mother’s grip.

“We used to do that with you,” said Amanda. “We used to swing you over the edge of the water. You loved it. I suppose you thought that we would let you go and you might end up in the sea.”

“But you never did.”

“No.”

Clover looked away. “Thanks for all of that. All of it.”

“For what?”

“For making the sacrifices you did. In your life …”

Amanda weighed each word carefully. “I didn’t make any sacrifices. I found out that I didn’t need to.”

“I thought that,” said Clover. “Or rather, I found it out. It came to me – sort of.”

“That your father and I …”

“Loved each other. After all.”

“Yes, after all.”

Amanda brushed sand off the edge of the plastic sheet, but stopped herself. You could not keep sand off you on a beach picnic. You had to give in. “People believe that love lasts forever. Or theirs will. That’s what they believe.” She glanced at her daughter. “I think that you’ve been … well, just amazingly lucky. The two of you. Sometimes you find that. People meet one another when they’re very young and they stay together for their whole lives, which is as close as we get to forever.”