Chapter twenty-six #2
‘Not keen. Didn’t want her getting ideas.
But we went, and it was . . .’ Martine paused, suddenly lost for words.
Or maybe overcome with too many words. ‘It was the most wonderful time of my life. Everywhere was exciting in the sixties, everything was new and different and changing, but to be in a city – you can’t imagine how exhilarating that was for country girls like us.
We loved pop music, soul music, and it felt like there was music everywhere, all the time.
Kathleen and I had digs in an absolute madhouse, sharing with actors and gay couples and runaways – oh, it was such fun.
The boys would make us put on plays, and my God, how we laughed.
We laughed all the time. I didn’t have to please anyone, or disappoint anyone – I was free to make mistakes.
We got up to some crazy antics. No one remembered a thing in the morning, and if people did remember, they never held it against you.
They certainly never took pictures, the way they do now. ’
‘Martine!’ I said, pretending to be shocked. ‘What are you saying?’
She gave me an arch look; I could tell she was delighted to have shocked me.
‘Oh, everyone was very live and let live in those days. Not like now. It wasn’t quite Woodstock but .
. . We had such adventures, me and Kathleen.
Two peas in a pod. Two halves of a whole.
’ She smiled sadly. ‘Soulmates. I adored her. I absolutely adored her.’
There was something about the way she said that, that made me want to ask if they’d been more than just best friends.
I didn’t want to ask, and if she didn’t want to say, I wasn’t going to press her, but there was a softness, a dreaminess, in the way she spoke that made me yearn for something I’d never felt myself, and that made me think it must have been love.
‘So what happened?’ I asked, even though I knew. Would Martine’s version be different? Was that what she wanted to tell me, to set the record straight?
‘Dad didn’t mind me reading books for a year or two, but he didn’t see it as something that should distract a woman from her real vocation in life, which was to get married – and, in my case, produce a son.
I think he’d have forgiven me for being a girl if I could have popped out a grandson quickly enough.
And I realise now, my mother probably wanted that even more than I did.
’ Martine sighed, and looked more sympathetic.
‘Looking back, my mother was “ill” quite a lot. As I got older I realised . . . well, Dad was determined to get that heir. The closer I got to graduating the more they kept dropping hints about friends’ sons, and where did I want my twenty-first birthday party?
I didn’t want a twenty-first birthday party!
It was the sixties, I was going to sit-ins and raves and whatnot.
But they went on and on, and eventually I said yes, just to shut them up, and that’s where I met Ray. ’
‘Did your parents invite him?’
‘Of course. His parents knew mine through some society or other – the Hendersons had connections across the county. They knew the businessmen, the farmers, the sportsmen, the drinkers, everyone. That was important to Dad. He loved the social side of the business most, I think, guild dinners with the mayor, golf-club dinner-dances. To be fair,’ she conceded, ‘Ray was ambitious and likeable and good at his job.’
Martine frowned. ‘Anyway, my parents kept throwing us together, and I kept trying to make it clear – politely – that I wasn’t interested.
To put them off a bit longer, I persuaded them to let me do a teacher-training course.
Kathleen was working by then, for a radio station, terribly hip, and we were having so much fun.
Why would I want to be with some boring man who’d want me to stay at home, and ask permission to breathe, when I could be having the time of my life, with someone who made me feel anything was possible? ’
‘And did you . . .’ I didn’t know how to ask this. It was impossibly delicate but I sort of felt she wanted me to. ‘Did you want to marry anyone?’
Martine looked me in the eye. ‘I didn’t want to live any other way than the way I was right then. With Kathleen.’
They were lovers. They had to be.
She was rushing through the painful part.
‘I’ll cut to the chase, because this isn’t nice.
And I never ever want you to repeat this to Fraser or Jackie, but you need to know to make sense of what happened next.
Ray proposed at my parents’ Boxing Day sherry party.
He went down on one knee in front of the Christmas tree, in front of everyone.
I had to say yes. What else could I do?’
I winced. ‘Public proposals are creepy. I don’t know why they’re supposed to be romantic. More like coercive control.’
‘I know. I know. Dad obviously knew it was going to happen – he was pouring champagne for everyone and being congratulated as if I was some prize heifer he’d just auctioned off.
’ She looked furious, even now. ‘When everyone had gone home I told Ray that I wasn’t going to give up my course, that I wanted to get a job.
It was something Kathleen had made me realise – I needed to do something.
I needed to make a difference. I thought that might put him off, make him think he could find a more amenable wife somewhere else.
’ Martine bit her lip. ‘That didn’t go down well.
My mother came into my room that night, demanding to know why I wanted to put my father in an early grave?
Dad was more subtle – he said he’d only ever wanted the best for me, and that marrying Ray would not only ensure the family business stayed in safe hands, but would make him happy.
Didn’t I want to make him happy? Wasn’t that the biggest difference I could make? ’
‘Of course you wanted to make him happy.’
‘Right.’ Martine exhaled, and stared up at the ceiling.
‘But I’d promised Kathleen I’d move to London with her when I graduated.
She’d already been offered work there, and she’d turned it down because she wanted to wait for me.
She wanted us to go together. And you know, we were feminists – we weren’t going be some man’s little lady.
We were going to live together in London, have a house of our own, the way we wanted it.
We even talked about having the acting boys live with us, as lodgers. We had it all worked out.’
‘So what did you do?’
‘I tried to please everybody. I went home as little as I could, I kept Ray’s ring – which was actually my grandmother’s – in a bag and only wore it once I was on the train.
And then I’d reapply my lashes and black liner on the train back to Kathleen, and go to protests and drink beer, and argue about books, and sing, and just . . .’ She ran out of words. ‘Live.’
‘But didn’t she guess something was going on?’
‘Maybe. Maybe she didn’t want to see it. I thought if I said nothing, I wasn’t lying. But that’s not how it works, is it? If you say nothing, the only person you’re hurting is yourself.’ Martine looked miserable. ‘Because it means you’re not worth telling the truth to.’
‘So what happened?’ I was fully invested now. I didn’t want the final explosion to be anything less than cataclysmic but I felt guilty for thinking that. This wasn’t a story, it was Martine’s life.
Her head dropped. ‘You’ve read it. That’s what happened.
I can’t argue with a word of it. I should have made a decision, but in the end, Dad staged a kidnapping and that was that.
I was so ashamed of how badly I’d behaved that I had what you’d now call a breakdown, but I convinced myself I didn’t have a choice.
Then my mother genuinely did fall ill, so I had to look after her, and then I suppose I just resigned myself to the mess I’d made.
Ray and I got married. I had four wonderful children, three clever, talented girls and eventually the son that Ray wanted as much as my dad had.
The son who didn’t want to take on the family business, after all that!
’ She laughed, a quick and humourless bark.
‘Can you imagine? The irony! All that, just to sell it off anyway! Some might say that was my punishment.’
‘For what?’
‘For hurting the one person who truly cared about me. Who just wanted me to be me.’ Martine blinked, startled by the sound of her own words. I wondered if this was the first time she’d ever spoken that thought aloud.
‘But couldn’t you just have said no to your dad? It sounds so Victorian, forcing daughters to marry for the sake of the family business.’
‘It sounds ridiculous now, but that was still the “what Dad says, goes” era, just about. I was brought up to believe that family, and the family business, was who I was. All I was. And deep down, I just wasn’t as strong as Kathleen.
I loved my parents, I didn’t want to let them down.
’ She leaned forward, making sure I didn’t misunderstand.
‘Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I’ve lived a miserable life.
Ray was a decent man, kind. I . . .’ She looked askance.
‘I didn’t mind that side of things. As my mother said, one has to take the rough with the smooth. ’
‘But he wasn’t Kathleen.’
‘No one could have been. I remember thinking, the night before I got married, I’d just have to keep looking forwards, like the old drayhorse.
Dabinett, she was called. Darling old thing.
She had embroidered blinkers for special occasions, navy velvet with gold hops.
Couldn’t go backwards. Dad said she was too stupid to go any direction but forwards, but I’m not so sure. Poor Dabinett.’
Martine stared down at the floor and the pain in her eyes was unbearable.
‘And Kathleen never contacted you? Or you her?’
She shook her head. ‘I didn’t want to. I knew she’d be successful.
I knew she’d achieve big things. I wanted everything for her, more than I wanted for myself, but I didn’t want to see in case it made me resent what I had.
I missed her so much it burned a hole in me.
I tried to carve a role for myself where I could, and I found tremendous fulfilment in being a good mother.
If I was a bit pushy on occasion – and I know what Fraser will have said to you!
– it was only to make sure the girls were never limited the way I was.
Not that I’d ever want them to know that, so please don’t tell them. ’
Fraser’s tales of his mother’s relentless tiger parenting, before it was even a thing, made a sad kind of sense now. ‘I won’t repeat any of this,’ I said quickly.
‘I just wish—’ she started, and stopped. ‘I just wish I’d had the chance to do something for myself.’
‘It’s not too late,’ I said. ‘Write another book. Go travelling. Spend some of that money your family made.’
‘Ah! That’s the other thing. I can’t! I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but why not, it’s the cherry on the cake – when Fraser told us he didn’t want to carry on the business, Ray sold it, as you know, to a chain.
Didn’t consult me, of course. Anyway, he struck a very good deal, largely because of wine my father had laid down, bought himself a Jaguar.
But unbeknownst to any of us, he put the bulk of the money in a trust, one that can only be spent on charitable works in the community, and it’s called, wait for it, the Raymond Henderson Foundation. ’
‘What? But it’s your family money! Shouldn’t it be the O’Shaughnessy Foundation?’ I was amazed at the casual arrogance of Ray Henderson. Although not totally surprised. I could see Fraser doing similar.
‘Quite! I only found out recently, when the solicitor went through the financial arrangements with me. And now Jacqueline’s asking me which park bench we should order for Dad, when I think what he had in mind was something more in line with the Albert Memorial.
I’m afraid it’s made me rather furious. Too furious to know what to do. ’
‘I think you should tell Jackie some of this,’ I said. Not the Kathleen parts, obviously. ‘She’s worried about you. If she knew why . . .’
‘No.’ Martine’s eyes were adamant. ‘The last thing I want to do is diminish their memories, Beth. Ray adored them, and he was a good father. You saw last weekend how they feel about our marriage – it’s what holds our family together.’
But at what cost to you, even now, I wanted to say? At what cost to them? But this wasn’t my business.
Martine got up to go, and I walked down the stairs with her. She paused at the door, took my hands in hers, and said, ‘Thank you, Beth.’
‘What on earth for?’
‘For listening. And for keeping an eye on me. I know that’s what you’ve been doing – you’re more discreet than Jacqueline.’
‘You’re welcome,’ I said, and she squeezed my hands.
‘I’ve always been very fond of you, you know,’ she said. ‘You reminded me a lot of myself, constantly worrying what people thought. If I pushed you too, when you and Fraser were together, I’m sorry. I just wanted you to believe in yourself.’
‘You didn’t,’ I said.
I mean, she had, but now I saw why. It was quite touching.
Martine’s face was sad, and serious. ‘You deserve more, Beth. Much more than I suspect Fraser could ever give you.’ Then she turned to go, and I realised there was one major question I hadn’t asked.
‘Martine!’ I called. ‘Wait! I wanted to ask who . . .’
She turned, and said clearly into the night air, ‘Kay.’
Then she smiled again, more sadly, and went back to her empty, beautiful house.