Phoebe had come to say goodbye, but she couldn’t stay for long. She had something on her mind.
‘Lu disappeared,’ she told us. ‘I’m not sure when. I went down to find him yesterday morning and he was gone.’
‘We have to find him,’ I said. ‘Alison and I can help you. He won’t have gone far, surely.’
Phoebe shook her head. ‘I spent all of yesterday looking. I took the car out and drove for miles. But it wasn’t any use. There’s nothing much I can do now. I don’t think he would have gone unless he felt ready for it. He has some money, and he’s a lot stronger than when I found him last week. We just have to hope for the best.’
‘We’re going home tomorrow,’ Alison said. ‘You will write and tell us, won’t you, if you hear from him again?’
‘Of course,’ said Phoebe. But she never did.
Strangely enough it was Alison, out of the two of us, who kept in occasional contact with her after that. Phoebe’s paintings — in fact not just the paintings but the studio, the atmosphere in her house, her whole way of life, everything about her — seemed to have inspired Alison and from then on art became her passion. When her mother came back from holiday the next day she brought a new boyfriend with her, and before long Alison and her mother had moved down to Birmingham in order to live with him. From then on, of course, we hardly saw each other at alclass="underline" but the events of that week in Beverley had created a bond between us which was not easily broken. I had begun by feeling indifferent towards Alison; then at one time, briefly, I had hated her; finally, we had come to be friends, and that friendship has strengthened and endured, now, over many years, despite absence and distance, despite the ways in which we have grown up and grown apart, and sometimes misunderstood each other.
Those few, intense and mysterious days in the early summer of 2003 continue to haunt me. The memories are strong. I remember how the discovery of David Kelly’s body was reported on the news, how it had shocked and angered my grandparents, and how it made me realize something about the finality of death. I remember the shadow of death that hung over their house during that time, and the tingling euphoria that seized us all when it miraculously lifted.
There is another thing I have no trouble remembering. I have no trouble remembering it because I have it in front of me, right now as I write these words: the Pelmanism card with that loathsome picture of a giant, brightly coloured spider. The afternoon of our picnic, Phoebe had the pack of cards with her, and she gave me and Alison a spider each, as a souvenir of our adventure, and as a token of our friendship, which she told us we must never neglect because it was one of the most precious things we would ever possess. I never spoke of the cards to Alison again: I don’t know whether she kept hers, or whether she lost it. But mine has always stayed with me: first at home, in a special drawer of my bedside cupboard; then at Oxford; and now …
Now it sits in front of me on my desk. It has never been a pleasant thing to look at it, it has always filled me with dread, and tonight, in the deathly stillness of this house, it poisons my mind once again with strange imaginings, and I can’t help walking over to the window, one more time, pulling back the curtain and looking into the garden. Peering into the shadows at its furthest depths.
There is nothing there. Nothing at all.
Such silence. Such darkness. It is no wonder that in a world like this, things can disappear. Even people. People like Lu, whose existence seemed so precarious, so unrecognized, that there was nothing to stop him slipping away into that woodland at dawn and simply evaporating, blending into the mist. Did he ever find his friend? I’ve wondered about that, many times, over the years. The men who drowned in Morecambe Bay the next year, picking cockles for their gangmaster as the treacherous tide rushed inwards … they were Chinese, most of them. Just the other day, I read once again about their terrible deaths on the internet and my stomach tightened when I saw that one of them was called Xiang. But I expect it’s a very common name in China.
~ ~ ~
Dodie Smith, I Capture The Castle (1948):
‘Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.’
THE COMEBACK
1
From: Susan Wells
To: Val Doubleday
Subject: Re: Dilemma
14/09/2011 22:17
Dear Val
You asked me for advice. You are not going to like what you hear.
First of all — very sorry to hear that things are so tough at work. You won’t be surprised to learn that the situation up here is much the same: libraries, if not closing, then having their opening hours reduced and being told to cut down on staff. I’m sure your job is safe but I can see how hard it must be, managing on less and less money every week. It’s happening everywhere. Even at our chambers, people are being laid off. A lot of our work was for legal aid clients, and there’s not much available for legal aid these days — more people are choosing to represent themselves instead. The results are pretty disastrous as you can probably imagine.
It’s so depressing. Everything seems to be going to pot at the moment and we have another four years of this lot to put up with. Sounds like you are at the sharp end of it as well. When I think of all the time our daughters used to spend at the library, and all the wonderful things they got out of it, and now our grandkids are going to have none of that, at this rate. It’s enough to make you howl.
But come on, Val, however desperate things are … Steve?? You want to get back together with Steve? Oh, I know you didn’t say that straight out, but, reading between the lines, that’s what you’re thinking of, isn’t it?
It’s grim, sometimes, being a single middle-aged woman. I think that’s something we can both agree upon. But just remember what he did to you …
And ask Alison for her opinion, if you haven’t already!
Lots of love
Susan
*
‘Guess who I sat next to on the bus the other day?’ said Val.
‘What are these?’ said Alison, fishing inside the shopping basket and bringing out a bag of carrots.
‘They’re carrots.’
‘I can see that. But they’re not organic.’
‘So?’ said her mother, defensively. ‘They’re still carrots aren’t they? I sat next to Steve, since you’re so interested.’
Alison frowned. It was a name she never wanted to hear. ‘I thought we always got organic. They put all sorts of pesticides and chemicals into these, you know. That’s why they all look the same.’
‘Yes, well, they cost about half the price, so that’s what we’re going to be eating from now on. You’d better get used to it.’ Val snatched the carrots from her daughter, slit open the bag with her fingernail and tipped them into the fridge’s chill compartment. ‘We had a really good chat.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘He’s struggling a bit. The college made him redundant and then took him on as a freelance. So now he’s on half what he was for the same work. It’s terrible, isn’t it, how they can do that?’
‘Four bottles? Really?’ said Alison, lifting out one bottle of Pinot Grigio after another.
‘They were 50p off,’ said Val.
‘Oh I see, so by getting four of them you’ve saved even more money.’
‘Oh shut up. The thing is, I thought I might invite him round here for dinner.’
‘It just seems silly to be saving money on vegetables when you’re wasting it on wine.’