That’s when I really got sad. I cried in my little childhood bed, I slept later and later in the morning, and I got less and less interested in doing my exercises and listening to my friends’ stories about new boyfriends and fall-outs and all sorts of things that sounded completely inconsequential to me now. I knew my parents were worried about me, but I just couldn’t find in myself what to do; I just didn’t know. My foot was slowly healing, apparently—but I could feel my toes, feel them all the time. They itched, they twitched, they hurt, and I lay awake at night staring at the ceiling and listening to the boiler make the same noises it had since my childhood and thinking, “What now? What now?”
- - -
1972
Her mother had wanted to accompany her, have a “girls’ day out” in London, but the Reverend had looked very suspicious indeed and hemmed and hawed about it. Seemingly the fleshpots of Paris wouldn’t be quite as fearsome as the den of iniquity that was London—he hadn’t, she thought, quite gotten the hang of 1968—and he had numerous and repeated instructions, both from her mother and from Mme. LeGuarde on the telephone, that the house was extremely traditional and strict and that it would be nothing but childcare and learning another language, a refinement in young ladies the Reverend did approve of. So after several lists and imprecations about how she was expected to behave—Claire was already absolutely terrified of Mme. LeGuarde; her mother made her sound posh, rich, and demanding, and Claire didn’t know how she was going to cope with small children she could barely talk to—he had driven her to the railway station one spring morning, the sky already threatening large amounts of rain.
Already excited, she opened her Tupperware sandwich box as the train pulled out of Crewe, nervous and jittery and filled with the sense that she was leaving, going on a journey, by herself, and that it was going to be vastly important.
Rainie Callendar, the school bully, had cornered her before school broke up.
“Off to get even more stuck up?” she sniffed.
Claire did what she always did. She kept her head down as all Rainie’s cronies burst out laughing and moved away as quickly as possible to try to escape their gaze. It rarely succeeded. She decided in herself, she couldn’t wait for the holidays. However much she was going to get locked in a cupboard looking after French brats, it was still going to be better than bouncing between here and the Reverend.
Inside the box was a little note from her mother.
“Have a wonderful time,” it said. Not “Behave yourself” or “Don’t forget to clean up after yourself” or “Don’t go out alone.” Just “Have a wonderful time.”
Claire was quite a young seventeen. She’d never really thought about her mother’s life in any terms, apart from the fact that she was just there, providing meals, cleaning their clothes, agreeing with the Reverend whenever he had something new to say about the long-haired youths with hippie values that had reached even Kidinsborough. It didn’t cross her mind that her mother might have been jealous.
- - -
Claire was nervous getting on the ferry, terrified she wouldn’t know what to do. It was absolutely huge. The only boat she’d ever been on was a paddle boat at Scarborough. The great white ship seemed to her romantic—the smell of the diesel, the great honk of the horn as it came alongside the huge terminal at Dover, lined with adventurous-looking people with station wagons piled high with tents and pegs and, even more exotically, Citroën 2CVs with real French people opening their picnics (a lot more exotic than Claire’s meat paste sandwiches) with actual bottles of wine and glasses and long sticks of bread. She gazed around at everyone, drinking it in, then went up to the very front of the boat—it was a blowy day, white clouds flicking across the sky. She felt the breeze in her face and looked hungrily back toward England (her very first time leaving it) and forward toward France and thought she had rarely felt more alive.
- - -
“Come and have a coffee,” the message from Claire said on my phone. She’d been discharged, temporarily, and she sounded a little breathy, a little tentative, and I called her back—this was one thing I could manage—to arrange for us to meet up in the cozy bookshop coffee shop, where I thought she’d be more comfortable.
Her nice daughter-in-law Patsy dropped her off and made her promise not to buy too many books. Claire had rolled her eyes when she left and said she loved Patsy, but everyone seemed to equate being sick with being four, and then she remembered she didn’t have to tell me that, and we cheered ourselves up by doing imitations of Dr. Ed sitting on the bed doing his empathizing.
Then there was a pause during which, in a normal conversation, someone would have said, “Hey, you look well” or “You’ve cut your hair” or “You look healthy” (code for “Cor, you’ve gotten fat,” as everybody knows), but neither of us could say anything. In the hospital, with its crisp white sheets and Claire’s neat, spotless cream pajamas, she didn’t look well, but she seemed to belong there. Out here in public, she looked terrifying. So thin that she might break, a scarf tied artfully around her head that served only to announce “I’ve had cancer for so long I’ve gotten really good at tying scarves,” a smart dress that would have looked rather nice if it had fitted her but clearly didn’t as she was far too thin, and drawn-in cheekbones. She looked…wow, she looked sick.
I got up to go fetch us some coffee and some chocolate brownie cake, even though she had said she didn’t want any, and I said she would when she tasted the homemade stuff they did in here. She smiled thinly and said, “Of course, that would be great,” in a way that wouldn’t have fooled a horse. I was conscious of her eyes on me as I limped across the floor. I still wasn’t at all confident with my stick and had basically decided to get rid of it. Cath kept trying to get me to come out, saying that everyone was dying to hear all about it, but that thought filled me with total horror. I did though desperately need to get my hair done. And some new clothes. I was in my daggiest old jeans and a striped top that had been absolutely no effort whatsoever, and it showed.
“So,” she said when I was back. The lady had agreed to bring over the tray, thank goodness. We shared a look.
“We’re like the old nag’s corner,” I said, and Claire smiled. The lady didn’t. I think she was very concerned that we were about to throw up or fall over in her lovely café. The chocolate brownie cake was exceptionally good, though, and worth all the weird looks we were getting.