The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted (26 page)

I became a journalist, starting on a weekly paper in Cirencester; then on an evening paper in Cambridge; then with an agency in Los Angeles. After some years at the pit face, I was about ready to start working on the red tops. To my utter astonishment, I found that I rather took to the trade. I flourished. I built up a bank of stories of new towns and new loves, but these are all for another time.

In stories such as this, it is difficult to round things off neatly. A few strings can be cleanly tied, but not many. The threads of Greta and Darren and Roland and Anthony and Janeen and all my other compadres, alas, cannot be wound up. I have not heard a single thing since the day that I left the Knoll House. I've often wondered about them. But though I wish them well, I have no clue how it turned out for them all.

Louise became another of those great and wonderful stories that happen so rarely but which we hold so close. Ours was also a story to be told another day.

Oliver, my closest friend at the Knoll House, remains one of my closest friends. He is the chief executive of a prosperous hotel chain. Oliver still occasionally visits the dining rooms; he visits and he may even eat, but he takes especial care never to lift a cup, plate or saucer. And his lovely Annette? Reader, he married her! I was Oliver's best man, and managed to feel only mildly envious of this friend who was marrying such an extraordinary beauty. They give every semblance of being just as much in love as they were all those years ago in the Knoll House.

This leaves Cally.

You would be mistaken if you thought for a minute that I adhered to her final command. Despite the fact as she had told me that it might make things difficult for her, I wrote. I wrote her kind cards to Dorset and loving letters. At the beginning of September, I sent her a single red rose. I called a few times too, but there are only so many messages that you can leave on an answerphone.

But I never went down to Dorset to see her again.

I never heard word from Cally. It was the most complete amputation I've ever been through. We had no mutual friends, so there was no one to keep me abreast of the goings-on in Cally's life.

That might very well have been that. Our summer together would have become one of those beautiful memories that are preserved for ever in the amber of the moment.

Then: a house-warming party in London in 2008, south of the river. I was there with Elise and with the girls. My three daughters are the one shining constant in my life. Elise, my wife, is in PR. She is tall and poised, with auburn hair that is still just as straight and as perfect as when I first touched it. Elise got one over on me when we first met in New York in 1998, and generally speaking she has had the whip hand ever since. Despite all we've been through together, we have come to realise that we would rather be with each other than be apart.

It was a Sunday afternoon. We'd brought along the traditional housewarming gifts: salt and bread and that king of the reds, a bottle of Chateau Musar.

Elise was taken on a guided tour and was doubtless making the appropriate comments. The girls were let off the leash and joined the other children in the basement.

I helped myself to a beer and went outside. It was a dull grey day and the barbeque was only just stuttering to life. Gerry, our host, was standing by in his pinny. I bantered with him, admiring the herbs that had been planted by the back door.

I saw some old friends and stood about chatting and laughing. I helped myself to a sausage, its skin thick and black and almost turned to charcoal; it was delicious. The party was taking off; children were pouring out of the house to be fed. I helped out at the barbeque. Gerry flipped the burgers and the sausages, while I stuffed them into rolls and passed them to the boys and girls; I was interested to see who thanked me and who did not. I didn't care either way, but children's manners always intrigue me.

When all the children had been fed and watered, it was time for the adults. I was reminded of my summer at the Knoll House. For everyone, there had to be a quip and a smile and a plate of food.

By now, there must have been sixty or seventy people milling around in the garden. I was looking down as I buttered some bread rolls.

‘You're doing that very professionally.' A woman's voice, a deep hum that resonates.

‘Years and years of training.' I looked up. Immediately a small fuse blew in my head. My face must have been registering a look of slight puzzlement. Haven't I seen you somewhere before? I thought.

The woman was wearing blue jeans and a blazer. She looked at me, smiled.

‘What can I get you?' I asked. I flashed my tongs, and all the while, my brain was whirring, probing, trying to work out the connection. She was married, I could see that. Wedding ring and a large sapphire engagement ring.

‘A burger please,' she said. ‘That would be lovely.'

‘One lovely burger coming right up.'

‘Thank you.'

She took a spoonful of ketchup, smiled one last time, and joined the garden melee.

‘What's her name?' I asked Gerry.

‘Her?' he said. ‘Fiona. She's Hooper's new wife. Only met her a couple of times. She's great.'

‘She is.' I put the tongs down. ‘Excuse me one moment.'

I followed her across the garden, easing my way through the guests. She was sitting alone on a bench. For a moment, I hovered. ‘Do you mind if I sit here?'

She smiled at me, very warm. ‘Be my guest.'

I sat next to her, a hissing trickle of memories suddenly turned into a thundering tsunami. It wasn't just her hair, which was near identical. It was the shape of her face, her beautiful cheekbones, her height and her buxom figure. But it was the smile that was the clincher. The smile was a total giveaway.

For a while, I just looked at her, taking it all in. I rubbed my hands together, palm to palm, as I wondered what it was that I wanted to say and how I was going to say it.

She was about to take a bite from her burger, but she must have seen something in my eye, for she returned the untouched burger to her plate.

‘What is it?' she asked. No smile now, but rather a look of slight concern.

I looked at her, looked at my hands, and looked at her again. I could feel my thighs shaking against the wooden bench. ‘I wondered,' I said, ‘you remind me of a woman I once used to know. She lived in Dorset. Her name was Cally. She was an artist.'

Very, very slowly, Fiona nodded. She put her plate on the ground. ‘Cally,' she said, and now she too studied her hands. Strong, capable fingers. ‘She was my mother.'

My heart did a backflip. ‘You're the very image of her,' I babbled, before I realised what she'd just said to me. ‘Was?' I repeated. ‘Was your mother?'

‘I'm afraid she passed away,' she said. She had a paper napkin in her hands and she was screwing it into a tight ball. ‘She died a long time ago.'

‘Ah.' My brain convulsed. I felt as though I was on a speeding train heading full tilt for the buffers, but even so, politeness and good manners still kicked in. ‘I'm very sorry to hear that.'

‘So you knew her?' Fiona said. ‘Was that in Dorset or in London?'

‘In Dorset,' I said. ‘I used to work in a hotel near where she lived—'

‘The Knoll House,' she said. ‘What year?'

‘It was 1988.'

Fiona nodded, still disconsolate, even twenty years on, at the thought of her mother's death. ‘The year she died.'

I gaped at her.

‘What?'

Fiona nodded. ‘I'm sorry,' she said. ‘You didn't know. Was she far gone when you knew her?'

But I was still playing catch up. ‘Far gone?' I said. ‘What do you mean? I don't understand.'

‘Cancer,' she said.

‘Cancer?' I repeated, dazed.

‘It started in her lungs,' she said. ‘It ended in her heart. She fought it right to the end, Harley Street, everything that could be done, but in the end, there was nothing that could be done…'

I reeled, stunned at how casually she had delivered this news. ‘But… But she always looked so healthy… And she was so strong. And her hair, and… There was nothing to be done?'

‘You never knew?'

‘No, she never told me. She never once mentioned it.'

‘That was mum,' she said. ‘She only told me in the summer, just a few weeks before she died.'

‘But…' I was still struggling to make sense of it. ‘When? When did she die?'

‘September,' she said. ‘September the second.'

‘Jesus!' I said. I raked at my hair, staring at the sky, and then the tears come in a torrent. I leaned forward, head buried into my elbows. How could I have been so ignorant not to realise that all of Cally's trips to London had had nothing to do with her exhibition and everything to do with treating her cancer? Why hadn't I seen it? How could I not have spotted it? She must have died three weeks after we'd broken up. The thought of it all was so enormous that I could barely take it in.

‘I'm sorry,' Fiona said. She stroked my neck, her fingers soft on my shoulders. ‘I'm very sorry. You must have been very close to her?'

‘I suppose I was.' I looked up at Fiona, wet, red-eyed, monstrous. ‘Where did she die?'

‘In her bed.'

‘The four-poster?' I sniffed and smiled at the thought of that old black bed and all its history. ‘She'd have liked that.'

‘Forgive me,' she said. ‘I don't know your name.'

I sniffed again and wiped the tears from my cheeks with my fingers. I shook myself, the shudder arching up my back as my heaving emotions were once again brought into check.

‘I'm Kim,' I said.

‘Kim?' she said, and now it was her turn to gape. ‘
You're
Kim?'

I nodded, trying to regain composure, aware that the other guests were now starting to look.

‘Why?' I said. ‘Did she ever mention me?'

‘You're Kim!' she said and she clutched both my hands, now laughing, beaming with pleasure. ‘You're Kim! I've only spent the last two decades searching for you!' She laughed and squeezed my fingers tight. ‘It's funny, I always thought you'd be much older.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I was the toy boy.'

‘And what a toy boy you must have been. She doted on you!' She tossed her hair. Even that small gesture was exactly like her mother's. ‘Listen, I've got something for you. I've only been waiting twenty years to give it to you.'

‘Really?'

‘She said it was an atonement.'

‘Atonement?' I asked. ‘Cally showered me with nothing but love. What did she have to atone for?'

‘Ah… well,' said Fiona. ‘Thereby hangs a tale.'

As I write, I can hear the ever-same sound of the sea, rumbling as it sucks at the sand on the beach. Sometimes I spend so long here that the tide will come in and go out, and I will still be here at dusk when the tide turns back again.

Occasionally I sit out on the veranda with my chair and table set towards the sea, watching the endless sweep of the sand and waves. Like Cally, I take comfort from the knowledge that I am just a part of this chain: that we were watching these exact same waves for hundreds of thousands of years, and that we will be watching these waves for hundreds of thousands of years hence.

I prefer it when it is wet, as it is today, with the wind howling at the windows, the rain thundering onto the roof and the waves white and brutal, while I sit snug inside my beach hut with nothing but my words and my memories.

It has changed very little since I was last here with Cally. There are still a few of her books, but now mixed up with some of mine and I suppose a few of Fiona's. The hob is still here, the vast seascape painting is still here, Cally's vast double bed is also still here. Sometimes I think that I can still smell the turps and the linseed and the mulch musk of burnt umber and that irresistible tang of coconut oil. When the mood takes me, I spend the night and dream dreams of the love making these walls once witnessed.

The beach hut is Cally's gift to me, her atonement for a small wrong she had done me.

But I don't see it like that. Without that wrong, who knows where I would have ended up.

It turns out that being dispatched from Knoll House in disgrace had nothing to do with Darren or Greta. There was no conspiracy between them to set me up. In fact, I don't even think either of them ever told Cally about my tryst with Louise.

It had been Cally all along. Cally had wanted to break up with me because she didn't have much time left. She was dying and she wanted to save me from the hell of watching her die. So she ended it as quickly and as painlessly as she knew how, by planting the hotel's marked money underneath my mattress. I can almost picture it now: Cally sneaking into Anthony's office, stealing the cash and the dye that went with it, then planting them both in my room. It was as good a way as any of calling time on our relationship.

I like to think that if Cally had told me about her cancer, I would have stuck with her to the very end. I might even have taken something from the whole grim experience. She acted for my own good, but I hope I would have been capable of stepping up to the plate. Who knows?

On her last day, when Cally was doped up to the eyeballs on morphine and lapsing in and out of consciousness, she told Fiona about me. For a single summer, I had been this golden boy, a constant reminder of what joy it was to be alive. That's how she may have seen it, but funnily enough it had always seemed entirely the other way round to me. Right to the very last, it was always Cally who was showing me what it was to seize every moment. She grabbed every second of it.

The first time I returned to Studland, I went back to the Dancing Ledges. They were exactly as I remembered them, with the tide running high and the waves lapping up onto the ledges. I walk to the Dancing Ledges often, now that I have my beach hut by the sea; and they seem destined to for ever drip with her memory. When the wind howls and the rain is flecking at my face, I only have to close my eyes and I can see Cally sitting there, squatting by the fire as she draws her horses on the rock.