Moving On

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FOR CHRISTMAS LEO, ELLEN AND THE CHILDREN returned to France. Marguerite, now approaching eighty, had been in failing health for some time, and had requested their company. ‘I know you’re not exactly great friends,’ Leo told Ellen, ‘but I feel she doesn’t have too many Christmases left,’ so they went, and Ellen was forced to put on a polite front, and hide the resentment she now felt towards the older woman.

They found her thinner, paler and quieter than before. She didn’t appear until lunchtime each day. She ate sparingly and spoke little to the adults, but murmured in French with her granddaughters.

Emmaline was still employed there, nursemaid as well as cook these days, but her husband Claude had died the summer before. The big old Peugeot was nowhere to be seen. No more outings for Marguerite.

The house was cold as ever. Ellen spent much of her time in the kitchen, the warmest room, with Emmaline and the girls. Mes petites belles , Emmaline called Juliet and Grace, giving them little cups of the hot chocolate Ellen remembered from her first visit with Leo.

They returned to London a day before 1997 became 1998. In February, Joan rang to say that the tenants had vacated the house and the sale was near closing. ‘You want to come and stay a night there for old times’ sake?’

Ellen felt no such inclination, but it sounded like Joan did. ‘I’ll book flights and let you know.’

That night she rang Claire. ‘The house is sold,’ she said. ‘Now I have no more ties with the town.’

‘End of an era,’ Claire said. ‘I must tell Mam when I’m talking to her.’

‘How are they keeping?’

‘Fine, all well.’ She didn’t ask about Ellen’s father.

‘How’s life with you?’ Ellen asked.

‘Good. Busy as ever. How are my goddaughter and her sister?’

‘Both great. They’d love to see you, whenever you have time.’

‘Give them hugs from me,’ Claire said.

Ellen rang her father to tell him the news. ‘Good to know,’ he said. ‘Good to draw a line under it. You should come and see me sometime,’ he added, ‘if you’d care to.’

‘When I get a chance,’ she said.

Leo, when she told him of the sale closing, said she should spend longer than one night in Ireland. ‘Couldn’t you take a few days off work? Go and see Frances – and your father, if you want. You could fly into Shannon and come back from Dublin. Maggie and I can hold the fort.’

He was still spending much of his days calling on clients. They hadn’t been seeing enough of each other since he’d gone out on his own. ‘We should have a mini break when I get back,’ she said to him. ‘Just the two of us. We could go to the Lake District or the Cotswolds. Somewhere scenic, with nice walks.’

‘We can think about that,’ he agreed.

In the end she just took one night in Ireland, not wanting to use any more of her holidays at such a cold time of the year. Joan picked her up at Shannon and drove them to the house, and they dressed the beds before walking into town for dinner.

‘Let’s go for a drink,’ Ellen suggested, so they went to Claire’s family’s pub. It was just before six, and the place was quiet. Claire’s father was behind the bar, plumper and balder than Ellen remembered. ‘The wanderer returns,’ he said when she went up to order. ‘You’re looking great. London is suiting you.’

She’d always liked Claire’s parents. They’d come to her mother’s funeral, and Claire’s mother had hugged her and kissed her cheek.

‘See much of our girl these days?’

‘Not as much as before. We’re both so busy.’

He dropped a lemon slice into a glass. ‘Turned into a right yuppie, she has. Wish she’d settle down with someone, or come home.’

She heard the sadness in his words. He was older than Claire’s mother, heading into his eighties by now, if he hadn’t reached them already.

‘Tell her to come for a visit, next time you’re talking to her. Say her mother misses her.’

‘I will,’ she promised, and he refused to take payment from her. She would ring Claire on her return to London and urge her to take a trip home: surely she could spare the time for that.

Later, after a mediocre dinner in a new Chinese restaurant, she lay in her old bed for the last time, and was glad. The only thing she’d taken from the house, before the tenants had moved in, was the note her father had left. She’d retrieved it from beneath the mattress, meaning to throw it out, but instead she’d tucked it into the little pocket at the back of Ben’s notebook, unable to let it go.

She closed her eyes and slept.