Robin Byron
ECHOES OF A LIFE
To the memory of Richard
Part I
1
An old woman hobbled along the path to the small lily pond at the end of her garden. Releasing the arm of her companion, she lowered herself onto the stone bench and gazed at the reflection of the leaves in the water. It was mirror calm and warm for late October and the acers which she had always loved so much were now approaching their full glorious red. On the trellis the bees were feasting on the ivy and to her delight she saw a pair of red admirals savouring the autumn sun.
She watched as her companion walked to the other side of the pond and began cutting the last of the roses for the house. She had made her decision now – but how to tell her – her Anna, who had become such an important part of her life? She felt numb; her mind didn’t seem to be functioning at all. She stared down at the water. Sometimes, in her imagination, this little pond merged with that dangerous water from her childhood; foolish, of course, but memories can be so treacherous.
Now back with her cuttings, Anna stood beside the bench. ‘You are very quiet today, Marianne?’ She looked up into Anna’s broad face with those distinctive grey-blue eyes and she had some sense of the struggle which the next few weeks would bring. ‘Let’s go back,’ she said, and disregarding the pain in her hips, she clutched Anna’s arm and marched back to the house, determined to continue with the process she had started.
First, she called her oldest friend, Dorrie, and asked her to come around that evening. Then she sat down to write to her sister. My Dearest Claire, she wrote, we are perhaps the last generation who will write letters to each other… But further words eluded her. She moved to her armchair and sat staring out of the window. From her seat, she could see the sun shining through the leaves of the Liquidambar. She marvelled at the way the colours erupted through the branches: green to a creamy beige, then different shades of pink and at the top a majestic imperial purple. There was a popular name for it, what was it? She couldn’t remember.
Tipping back her chair, she closed her eyes, hoping – though not expecting – to sleep. She tried to view the past with equanimity, but she knew there remained inside her that sense of her own culpability which she had never been able to dislodge. Even the catastrophes, when they are random, can be borne. The agony may seem overwhelming, but there is a purity about it – a pain which can be endured and finally conquered. It was those other events, times tainted with personal fault, which were hardest to live with. As the past became ever more mixed with the present, it was those episodes which loomed largest in her mind.
Rhubarb and custard – it suddenly came to her – that’s what they called the Liquidambar. Like the TV cartoon Izzy used to watch – except they had spelled that Roobarb. With that thought she fell asleep.
2
Afterwards she thought it must have been the music. Don McLean’s haunting tribute to her former idol was coming from the other side of the dance floor as she entered the room. She couldn’t help stopping to listen; only when the mysterious lyrics had faded out did she move across to a table laden with drinks where she accepted a glass of sparkling wine from a waiter whilst looking around the smoky room in case she might see someone she knew. A faint smile appeared on her face when the music went back a decade to an early Ray Charles number, but it was when the DJ put on Bobby Darin’s ‘Dream Lover’ that a little shiver went down her spine; she couldn’t hear that song without thinking of him – without tasting the nicotine on his tongue and feeling the press of his body against her. It had been Betsy who had played it non-stop all that summer vacation, but it was Daniel who materialised genie-like before her when she heard those familiar harmonies.
It’s like a virus, the music that you craved in those early teenage years. It lives inside you, part of your flesh, dormant for months or years but ready to break out in nerve tingling sweet-and-sour ecstasy when you least expect it. It doesn’t matter how much your tastes may have changed, it’s always there, a visceral element that’s inescapably part of you.
First there was Elvis. Everyone was desperate for those thrilling new sounds – but she was not quite ready. To be mad for Elvis was like saying you wanted sex; that was a step too far for a twelve-year-old, embarrassed to acknowledge her feelings in the face of strong parental disapproval. Then, just before her thirteenth birthday, ‘That’ll Be the Day’ topped the charts and a few weeks later she had seen him with The Crickets singing ‘Peggy Sue’ on The Ed Sullivan Show. For the next fourteen months Buddy became her deity and who could object to such a clean-cut musical god? Then, as if to teach her an early lesson in mortality, her god crashed in flames and she did not need any reminder of how she had felt, how she had hugged Betsy and wept all the way to school, on that icy February morning when she heard the news.
For months after his death she had mourned him, endlessly playing his hits on the little crimson turntable in her bedroom. Of course, there were other stars, but nobody could take the place of Buddy for her, at least nobody until she set eyes on Daniel.
Ever since Betsy Morgan had become her best friend in Junior High, Marianne had known that Betsy had an elder brother away at college. She had seen his photographs in silver frames scattered around Betsy’s home but it wasn’t until a day in early June when Daniel was home for the summer vacation that she encountered him for the first time as he brushed past her on the staircase, without eye contact or acknowledgement, until his mother had called up from the hall below: ‘Danny, say hello to Marianne – Marianne is Betsy’s special friend.’
Danny – how she hated that version of his name. To most of his friends and all of his family he was Danny, but to her he had been mostly Dan – though now always Daniel in her memory. Daniel had turned and looked up at her with a cool silent appraisal which lasted for several seconds. She blushed under the intensity of his gaze, trying nevertheless to retain eye contact until eventually he manoeuvred his face into a small ironic smile. ‘Pleased to meet you, Marianne,’ he said, before heading down through the hall and out of the front door.
Apart from the novel but flattering experience of a clothes-stripping stare from a twenty-one-year-old college boy she paid little attention to the brief encounter. It wasn’t until the following day when he had agreed to give Betsy and her a lift into town and she saw him wearing his thick-rimmed Buddy Holly glasses that she was able to study him more closely. His dark hair was creamed and quaffed, like all the boys in those days; what fascinated her were his lips – what she later learned to think of as Mick Jagger lips – set beneath a surprisingly small and well-proportioned nose.
And here he was again, walking towards her across the room, with his dark-framed glasses, lips parted in that same ironic smile. Only of course it wasn’t him – it was a stranger who was now standing beside her, saying something which she couldn’t seem to hear. Catching only the word ‘…lost’, she held out her hand: