Читать книгу I Remember You - Harriet Evans - Страница 16

Dear Tess,

Hi. I hope you got my message. I still have your old writing bureau in my attic, the one you stored there after the burglary. I’m selling the flat as we’re buying a house and so I should like to give it back to you. Ticky and I are going to a wedding in Dorset next month. May I drop it off then?

I hope your new life in Langford is going well. Will

Dear Tess,

Hi! How’s it going in the countryside? Danced round any maypoles yet? How’s the job? That’s great news about the house, but who the hell is this random girl you’re moving in with? Sorry about all the questions, I need an update!

It’s all cool here. Cathy has settled in OK, I think it’ll be fine living with her. Anil asked me out. We’re going to the cinema next week. No big deal, he’s nice so we’ll see. Crazy John had a party upstairs with his crazy crackhead friends on Saturday, someone called the police and he got taken away! Can you believe it. Mr Azeem’s got burned down last week, they think some lads did it.

The reason I was emailing as well is because Will aka Wuell phoned yesterday. He didn’t know you’d left London. He was a bit surprised. Anyway, he said he’d tried your mobile and you hadn’t answered, a couple of times. He wanted your address. And he says he wants to be friends. That was what he wanted me to tell you! He said he’s going down to Dorset in a couple of weeks, he’ll be in touch and maybe try and pop by with Ticky (that’s her name, right?). I said nothing. Tess, I hope that’s OK. Didn’t know what else to do.

Also you still owe me ?7 for the bills, remember. Sorry to chase

Speak soon Tess.

Meena x x x

Hi Meena,

Long time no e and I’m really sorry I haven’t been in touch properly. It’s been really hectic here—started job two weeks ago, been trying to sort everything out and prepare all the courses and stuff. Apologies.

The job is going well. It’s odd, going from teaching some bored 14 yr olds to all these super-keen people who’ve PAID to have you TEACH THEM. It’s posher than I’d realized, standards are v high—I don’t know if I’d have come here if I’d known, I’d have been too scared. But teaching people who want to learn…great.

Francesca is really cool, you’d like her. Except she’s even messier than me, you wouldn’t like that. She got made redundant so she decided to escape from London for a few months. She’d been here on a school trip and always liked it. I thought she might be a bit too Londony, but she’s hilarious. She’s got something going on with Adam, you remember my old friend Adam? They are ‘seeing each other’, but they’re both being hilariously casual about it. MUCH LIKE YOU AND ANIL. That is SO COOL Meen—so the date was this week? Tell me how it went?

It’s so lovely here, Meen, when are you coming to stay? Most days I come back from college and Francesca’s here and we watch TV and slump on the sofa or I cook and potter around the house, or else go to the pub which is about five minutes away, with Adam and Suggs and people from college. I can go for long walks whenever I want, and it’s getting lighter in the evenings and it’s so beautiful. I’m happy here.

Last, not long till I go to Italy in June!!!! A whole week in Rome—only drawback is it’s me and loads of crazy middle-aged people who ask questions the WHOLE time, but still, it’ll be lovely.

Lots of love

Tess x x x x

PS Sorry, just reread your email. Will pay money back asap.

PPS And Ticky…………Ticky!!! Fucking TICKY WHO CALLS THEMSELVES THAT.

‘Tess?’ The white wooden front door, which swung alarmingly at the slightest touch, was flung suddenly open as Tess, who had been typing furiously at the computer, swivelled round.

‘Oh, hi,’ she said, as Francesca barrelled into the sitting room of Easter Cottage, a small but light room which doubled as a hall, storage area, sitting room and dining room. ‘Where have you been? Wow.’ She deleted the last line of her email to Meena, then pressed ‘Send’. ‘Look at all those bags!’ she said, standing up, her heart beating. ‘Wow,’ she said again.

‘I know,’ Francesca panted. ‘Done some shopping.’ She dumped the bags carelessly on the wooden floor and slumped onto the sofa. ‘I’m completely and totally exhausted, Tess.’ She kicked off her gold flip-flops; constraints of weather and water never really affected Francesca’s footwear choice, Tess had noticed. The flip-flops skidded next to Tess’s school shoes; sturdy brown slip-on brogues, covered in mud.

‘Where did you go?’ said Tess, crouching over the bags. ‘There’s loads! How did you find the shops? It’s a small town!’

‘I wanted some retail therapy,’ said Francesca. ‘Some stuff for the house.’ She held up a small blue cube. ‘Look! Got this at that really cool shop up by the lanes, the one that sells Alessi stuff. It’s a lamp.’

‘Right,’ said Tess. ‘Wow, it’s…’

Francesca was pulling other things out of the bag, Mary Poppins-like. ‘A plate from Arthur’s! Decoration for the side table!’

‘What side table?’ Tess asked, looking around her.

‘The side table that I bought at the antique shop! The one next to the butcher’s, after the car park!’ Francesca was beaming. She pushed her hair coolly out of her eyes. ‘This place is going to look amazing, once I’ve finished—’ she halted. ‘We’ve finished…er, doing it up.’ She looked up at Tess, who was standing over her, her hands on her hips, and said breezily, ‘It’s marvellous. Great, isn’t it?’

‘Great, if you’re paying for it,’ said Tess, firmly. ‘Francesca, I’ve barely got any money for, oh, I don’t know. Silly things, like forks, and Pantene.’ She took her hands off her hips, knowing she looked a little confrontational, and tried to let her arms swing casually by her sides, as though this was normal, as though it wasn’t really, horribly tricky. Less than a month they’d lived together and she really didn’t want it to be a mistake. She didn’t want Meena to say, ‘I knew it’d never work out. Crazy idea!’

She hated flatmate confrontations and was still amazed at how perfectly normal people could behave so strangely when sharing accommodation with others. Money. It was always about money. Will’s hideously posh but otherwise polite flatmate, Lucinda, had suddenly announced that Tess should contribute to the rent when she was staying the night there, that they should keep a note of the days she stayed over and split the monthly rental three ways on those days. In their third year of university, Tess’s friend Emma had perfectly calmly announced one morning that she thought Tess should pay her two pounds fifty for letting her borrow her silvery top the previous night. Francesca was kind of the opposite; Tess could feel herself turning into Lucinda or Emma.

Yesterday Francesca had said, without irony, ‘Do you think we should just buy a proper dinner service? There’s a lovely one I saw online at Selfridges. It’s only a couple of hundred quid or so.’

Tess watched her new flatmate now. ‘But it’s—’ Francesca began.

‘Francesca!’ Tess said, exasperated. ‘I don’t want a plate. Or a side table. Or a dinner service for eighteen people when we’ve only got three chairs! Stop spending money to make yourself feel—’ She stopped, aware the words were too far out of her mouth. Francesca stared at her. There was silence in the little sitting room. The last of the day’s light shone bravely through the dusty windows.

‘…Sorry.’ Tess cleared her throat. ‘I’m sorry. That’s really rude of me.’

‘No,’ said Francesca, scratching her neck with her nails; it left red lines on her pale skin. ‘I’m sorry. I’m crazy. I need to calm down and…’ She blinked, suddenly. ‘I just need to take it easy. Right.’ She looked around her, as if ‘easy’ was just something she could physically pick up and start taking. ‘I’ll take this all back…’

Tess picked up the blue lamp, which was lying lopsided on the tatty old brown sofa. ‘This is lovely,’ she said placatingly. ‘Why don’t we keep this?’

‘Oh.’ Francesca smiled. ‘OK. I love it actually. And the plate?’

‘I don’t need a decorative plate.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Francesca said. ‘Was it not William Morris who said, “Have nothing in your homes that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful”?’

‘I do not believe it to be useful or beautiful,’ said Tess, putting her hands back on her hips.

‘OK, OK,’ said Francesca, snatching the plate out of her hands. ‘I’ll put it in my room. I’ll—she narrowed her eyes. ‘Where’s your sense of fun, Tess? God, I bet you’re a bossy teacher.’

Tess thought fondly of that morning’s class on Virgil’s Georgics, in which she and her students had talked about the world of the hive as parallel with the Roman Empire. They had a) read the material, b) answered the essay questions, and c) listened in rapt silence as Tess talked about Virgil’s ideas of Rome and the countryside. Then, over coffee (Jan had made a walnut cake), all had discussed the relevance of the Georgics today to farming and the countryside. Andrea Marsh, who was not only the college’s secretary (every employee at the college was allowed to take one free course a year) but the cofounder of the campaign against the water meadows and kept bees, was particularly interesting.

‘The English bumblebee could be extinct in five years,’ she kept saying. ‘And no one knows why. If they’d listened to Virgil in the fourth Georgic, it’d all be OK. If we didn’t have these ridiculous ideas about twenty-four-hour shopping and eating huge strawberries grown in Chile in December and destroying our countryside to build brand new things—’ she cast an angry look at Leonora Mortmain—‘then we might be OK. He knew that!’

But Leonora had said nothing. She reacted to nothing. She just sat still, until Carolyn Tey—who was devoted to her, a sort of lapdog—offered her a slice of cake.

‘Do try some, it’s quite delicious,’ she’d said, her blue eyes bright with hope.

‘No, thank you,’ Leonora Mortmain replied. ‘I have had enough.’ She clamped her thin lips together. Tess wondered once again why she was there, as she didn’t seem to be enjoying the classes—but how could she tell? Leonora never reacted to anything.

She’d been teaching for a fortnight, and she was still surprised by how much she loved it. It was a treat to teach a class that didn’t lounge in its chairs, picking its nose, staring up at her with eyes full of near-psychopathic loathing. It was a treat for her to say, ‘Who wants to start reading this passage?’ and to see ten hands shoot up. It was a treat for her to watch the awkward Ron Thaxton, whom she had come to see was extremely shy, blossom in the class, talking fluently and articulately about Augustus, about battle strategies, his stuttering anger almost gone.

And then it was a treat for her to walk the ten minutes home, threading into town, her bag swinging from her arm, popping into shops here and there that sold things you actually needed, like a needle and thread, calling hello to people as she went. She was starting to recognize faces now, old and new. Some people remembered her from before, they asked how her mum and dad were, what Stephanie was up to. She thought of London now, of travelling back home, squashed on the tube, dodging the dog shit and the cracked pavements that had once tripped her up, the rain and the unfriendly faces. Tess hugged herself; it seemed so far away. She thought of Will, his huge face like a blank canvas, looming over her the night of Guy’s wedding, as he said, ‘But Tess, don’t you see? We’re not the same sort of people. We want different things.’

She had cried, she didn’t understand what he meant. ‘But I love you!’ she had cried, clutching at his shirt—why had she done that?

‘I don’t think you do,’ Will had said, removing her hand. ‘You don’t love my friends, you were bored the whole way through the reception. Lucinda’s a really interesting girl, you could have bloody made an effort. You’re so—rigid, Tess, it has to be on your terms or not at all.’

Tess shook her head, remembering it now. Dumped because she wasn’t nice to a girl called Lucinda who wanted to charge her rent and who made a living from making stuffed animals. What a diss. But…was he right?

‘Penny for them,’ Francesca said softly, standing behind her. ‘Hello?’ Tess started.

‘Sorry, I was miles away,’ she said, and blinked.

‘Are we all OK then?’ Francesca asked. Tess nodded. Francesca patted her housemate on the arm. ‘Fancy a glass of wine before I shoot off?’

‘Sure,’ said Tess, going through into the little kitchen, which looked out over the handkerchief-sized garden via a rickety old glass-paned door. She opened the drawer, looking for the corkscrew and glanced up at the sky. ‘Hey, it’s stopped raining!’

‘It has,’ said Francesca. She slapped her hands on the sides of her thighs. ‘Spring is here, and I’m ready for romancing.’ She looked up around her, her eyes sparkling. ‘Isn’t this weird? Us, here, in this house? Isn’t it strange, completely bonkers?’

‘Yes!’ Tess said, smiling. She was pleased to see her so happy. ‘Who are you getting ready to romance? Is Adam coming over?’

‘He sure is,’ said Francesca. ‘We’re going to try the pub at the other end of town, want to come? The Cross Keys, you know it?’

The door of the fridge swung wide open, knocking loudly against the wall, and they both jumped.

‘It always does that! So annoying. Ow,’ said Tess, putting the wine bottle firmly on the kitchen surface. ‘That’s a lovely pub,’ she added, rubbing her hand. ‘Right next to where we grew up. Adam’s mum worked there for a bit.’

‘What was she like, Adam’s mum?’ Francesca asked curiously. ‘Adam never talks about her.’

‘She was lovely.’ Tess took out some olives, bought the previous day from the Jen’s Deli on the high street where Liz worked. Jen’s Deli catered for tourists wanting a picnic. The olives were three pounds ninety-nine for a small tub. She tipped them into one of the little painted bowls that sat on the kitchen mantelpiece. ‘Ooh, I love this, don’t you? I feel as if I’m in a picture book, living in my own little cottage.’

‘You are living in your own little cottage,’ Francesca pointed out. ‘So am I.’

‘Oh.’ Tess took the nice new glasses out of the cupboard. Francesca lolled against the kitchen counter. She plucked an olive out of the bowl.

‘Has Adam always lived there, then?’

‘What?’ Tess opened the bottle. ‘Lived where? Here?’

‘In that house,’ Francesca said patiently. ‘Did he never live anywhere else, after she died? Am I going out with a man who’s never lived anywhere else?’

‘So you are actually going out with him?’ Tess said, trying to sound nonchalant. ‘Oh, my God!’ She swallowed, hastily, realizing she sounded like a teenager. ‘So have you—I thought you two were…’ She trailed off.

Francesca tossed her hair casually behind her back; Tess had noticed that, far from doing it to intimidate, she did this when she was feeling self-conscious.

‘Ahm. I don’t know. I suppose so. I’m seeing him.’ She raked a hand across her scalp. ‘We talked about it on the weekend. I don’t know what going out means these days, do you? It’s a bit juvenile, anyway. Like, sometimes it means one thing, and sometimes it means something else…you know…’ She trailed off, and Tess was pleased to see she was blushing.

‘You like him!’ Tess hit her housemate on the arm. ‘Oh, my God, how cool. And he likes you, it’s obvious.’

‘Is it?’

‘Absolutely.’ Tess thought back to the previous Sunday, when she, Francesca, Suggs and Adam had taken a picnic up to the ruins of Langford Priory, once the greatest monastery in Somerset before Henry VIII had given it a good going over. They had sat in the grass, perching on stones scattered around, looking down over the valley towards the town, and that’s when it had happened. Tess had asked Francesca for a knife, and Francesca had leaned into the bag to get one, her hair falling in her face and, without thinking about it, Adam had reached forward and gently tucked her hair behind her ear, his big hand touching her shoulder afterwards. He said nothing, Francesca said nothing, but Tess had watched them, with affection and a pang of loneliness, realizing she was aware of something they weren’t: that her oldest friend had fallen hook, line and sinker for Francesca Jackson.

She asked, a little shyly, ‘Can I ask—when did this all…happen?’

‘Oh—properly? Well, he came round to bring that spanner he’d promised? And he ended up fixing the door and then he stayed—and he stayed…’ She blushed.

She stopped, and looked at Tess guiltily, though why, Tess wondered fleetingly—there was nothing to be guilty about, it was nothing but good news. Why shouldn’t they have sex in the middle of the day, in her own home, while Tess was off wearing a sensible cardigan and shirt, teaching people about things that happened two thousand years ago?

‘That’s—it’s OK with you, isn’t it? It doesn’t make you feel weird?’

‘Of course it’s OK with me!’ Tess said. As she said it, she knew it wasn’t, it was a bit weird. It was her flatmate and her oldest friend, after all. She’d just have to get used to it, and then it’d be fine. And if she practised looking as if it was OK, it would be.

‘Oh, good,’ said Francesca. ‘I don’t want things to be awkward.’

‘Why would they be? He’s not my boyfriend.’

‘Exactly,’ Francesca said.

The words, No, he’s my boyfriend, hung in the air, unsaid.

‘So are you hanging out in the day then?’

‘Well, it was only Monday it happened. Sunday if you count the walk. So yeah, he came round on Tuesday too, and today—well, I’m seeing him in the evening so I—I wanted a distraction.’ She picked at the side of her nail. ‘And I went shopping.’

‘So that’s it,’ Tess said, smiling. ‘It’s a substitute for shagging.’

‘No!’ Francesca smiled too. ‘How rude. He’s—oh, man.’ She sighed, mistily. ‘He is so gorgeous. You have no idea. I just feel like…’ Her shoulders rose and sank again, and she gazed unseeingly past Tess, into the sitting room. Tess followed her gaze, almost desperately, hoping to see what Francesca saw:

A kiss in a sun-dappled glade.

A gorgeous man arriving at the cottage and sweeping you off your feet.

Mind-explodingly good sex…in the afternoon.

Instead, she saw:

The batteries from the TV remote control, which were always falling out (it had no back, mysteriously).

A stack of essays on Virgil and Rome spilling out of her cloth bag.

Her main school shoes, clumpy, sensible, covered in mud, lying next to Francesca’s strappy gold flip-flops.

Francesca was like Dido or Thetis, lying on a day bed eating chocolates, a cloud of hair tumbling down her back, whilst handsome suitors arrived to pay court and ravish her. She, Tess, on the other hand, was a dwarfish teacher with a pile of marking to do, a hair growing out of her chin and footwear that even Mary Whitehouse would say could do with sexing up a tad.

‘Drink?’ Tess said, practically ripping the cap off the bottle of wine and upending it into her glass. ‘When are you going out? You meeting him at the pub?’

‘No, I’m going to his house to pick him up,’ said Francesca. ‘Haven’t been there before. That’s why I was wondering what—’ she took a sip from her glass, and flicked her hair again.

‘What what?’

‘What his mum was like. If there’s anything I should know.’

‘If there’s anything you should know.’ Tess stared into the distance. ‘Ahh.’ She exhaled, through her teeth. ‘Philippa. She was wonderful. That’s all you need to know.’

‘That’s not very helpful.’

‘I know. Sorry.’ Tess thought back. ‘I can remember her, really clearly, after thirteen years. She was just a wonderful person. It’s a tragedy.’

‘What exactly happened?’

‘It was an aneurysm. She just—dropped dead in the street one day.’ Tess swallowed. ‘She was on her way back from the shops. Mum found her.’

‘That’s awful.’

Tess nodded. ‘It was. Her, of all people. Philippa was—she was really special.’

‘Like how?’

‘Like—when we were little, she treated us like we were people in our own right, you know? She’d give you little presents for special occasions, nothing much, just personal things that were just for you.’ There was the time when Tess was eleven, and had to have braces on her teeth for eighteen months, and Philippa had bought her a special two-year diary, to count down the days till they were off, and she’d scribbled little things in it. ‘Only a year to go now!‘ ‘Who’s that beautiful girl? It’s young Miss Tennant, the one with the perfect teeth!’

‘Aah,’ said Francesca. ‘Nice.’

‘She was nice. She—’ Tess started, and then she stopped. ‘She was lovely.’

‘What happened to Adam’s dad, then?’ Francesca asked tentatively. ‘You don’t have to tell me, but he hasn’t mentioned, and I sort of thought, was it something awful?’

‘Could be,’ Tess said, sipping her wine again. ‘No one knows.’

‘Knows what? How he died?’

‘No,’ said Tess. ‘There isn’t really a mystery there, I think he’s just some guy who she had a thing with. No one knew really where Philippa came from, that’s the weird thing. That house was empty for years, and then one day she just turned up.’

‘Like Mary Poppins?’ Francesca was smiling.

‘Sort of,’ said Tess, earnestly. ‘Honestly, she never really told anyone anything about herself. Mum asked her once, why she came to Langford, and Philippa said, “I don’t know myself, to be honest.” And then she never said anything again.’

‘No,’ said Francesca, fascinated.

‘Yep. And I’ve never understood it. Why did she come to Langford? Why? I mean—we were lucky she did, but—’

‘It’s interesting,’ said Francesca. ‘Wow.’

‘Absolutely,’ said Tess, though she felt a little guilty, giving up Adam’s family secrets like that. She looked out of the window, wondering. Really, she supposed, she didn’t know what the secret actually was, so how could she give it up? Adam himself didn’t know where he came from. That was how it had always been.