Chapter 5 Two Sad Women, Sixteen Truffles, and One Rather Magnificent Mr. Darcy
“And this new girl, Katie, she actually turned up in an old-world dress and a fancy hat?” asks Margie, curled up in amusement, a faux-fur blanket over her lap.
“Yep. A big hat with ostrich feathers, full suffrage colors, and bright red lipstick.”
I’m telling her, and Bill, the story of the year’s first history club meeting, which took place in X12 after school today.
We are in Margie’s pretty terraced garden, on a dry but cold evening, watching the sun set over the sea and sipping mugs of tea, steam clouding up into the air. Bill doesn’t have any tea because he’s really rubbish at holding mugs.
“I wouldn’t have thought bright red lippie was much of a feminist symbol,” says Margie, “but I’m glad if it is. I used to love a bit of red lippie, me.”
“Weirdly, it was,” I explain, trying not to sound like a teacher but probably failing. “The suffragettes took a lot of care with their appearance—they wanted to appear feminine and powerful, rather than like they were trying to be men. There’s a great story—possibly fictional—that the woman who founded Elizabeth Arden in New York left her office in 1912 to hand out tubes of red lipstick to women who were marching for votes.”
“And how many tubes of lipstick did she hand out?” Margie asks mischievously.
“Even I don’t know that—but now you’ve asked, I’ll try to find out!”
She lets out one of her cackles, and Bill thumps his tail in response. Party animal.
Margie has crept into my life and now takes up quite a lot of space in it. When I first moved into the flat upstairs, she gave me a cactus in a pot. Told me it would be impossible to kill (she was wrong). I thanked her politely and fully intended to remain on nodding terms only—it had worked with neighbors thus far in life and I didn’t see why this would be any different.
That changed the first time I saw her struggling to bring her milk in. She had it delivered, but as I went down for my run one morning, I spotted her in obvious pain attempting to pick it up with her poor twisted hands. I had no idea what was wrong with her then, but knew I couldn’t walk by without helping.
Taking in the milk resulted in my being shown her garden, and being convinced to have a cuppa, and hearing pretty much all of Margie’s life story. She is sixty-six, Liverpool born and bred, divorced with one grown-up son who lives in Surrey, and has two young grandchildren she only gets to see at Christmas. The love of her life, she told me, is Bill, her rescue dog.
The next morning, as I tried to tiptoe around to the beach path unnoticed, Bill spotted me. He actually jumped up, massive paws resting on top of the fence, and I swear he spoke to me with his eyes. Liquid brown yearning buried beneath tufts of shaggy fur.
Margie had appeared, told me to take no notice of him, she’d let him out for a trot later, but somehow the words just came out of my mouth: Would he like to come for a run with me?
He would, it turned out—and he’s been my regular running partner ever since. Margie has been my regular hot-beverage maker, and I have been her regular morning assistant. I do a few bits of shopping for her when she needs it, and she makes me casseroles and bowls of Scouse stew, the local culinary specialty, when she’s feeling up to it. She’s stopped giving me plants now, because she knows she’s just condemning them to an early grave.
It is a strange friendship, but one, reluctantly, I value. I say “reluctantly” because I’m not generally brilliant at keeping friendships going. I’m fine up to a point, but I like to keep it shallow. I’m not a hermit; I enjoy going out, but I like my friends to be of the casual-chat-in-the-pub variety. I don’t think I need a psychologist to explain why that is, given my history, but it’s not something I really want to fix—I’m happy as I am. Or, at the very least, not unhappy.
Margie often has other ideas and is basically a very nosy person. Maybe it’s because her own life has been made smaller in recent years; maybe she has always been like this.
I know she loves these chats, where I tell her about my day and she tells me about the goings-on at the beach, and I do too. When we’re talking about stuff like this and not about me, anyway.
“She sounds like a blast, Katie does,” she adds. “I wish I could meet her. I’d love to be the sort of person who turns up in fancy dress even when nobody else does.”
“I know,” I reply, “me too! She just breezed right in, with her hat and her handmade placard demanding votes for women, and didn’t give a damn when everyone stared at her. It was brilliant. Within seconds, everyone was laughing, and she was the center of attention, and everyone knew her name and had told her theirs, and they were all planning what they were going to wear for the next session.”
“Some people have that knack, don’t they, love? That confidence that makes people want to be around them. I used to have it myself, back in my younger days.”
“You still do, Margie. I can’t keep away.”
“Well, that’s just the pulling power of a good dog, that is, Gem. Bill is irresistible to all. So what are you up to tonight? Netflix and chill? Grading? Hot date with that PE teacher fella?”
I’d mentioned Karim to her over the summer, when a text from him had landed while I was picking some of her homegrown strawberries and raspberries. She’d been like Bill with a bone ever since, determined that it was about time I “saw some action.”
“Gorgeous young thing like you,” she’d said, grinning, “you need to be out there. If you don’t use it, you’ll lose it, you know?”
“You just want to live vicariously through me,” I’d replied, not wanting to ponder exactly what it was she thought I might lose—I didn’t want to ask, because she doesn’t shy away from naming body parts. “And if that’s the case, you’re in for a dull time.”
She’s asked about him a lot since then, and even made me show her his profile picture on Facebook. I don’t really use Facebook, but I am on it, and I do enjoy looking at other people’s lives—maybe I’m just as bad as Margie.
“Ooh, he’s lovely,” she’d said, staring at the screen. “I’d give him ten out of ten on Dick Advisor!”
Every now and then, Margie says something so funny and so rude that I can easily imagine her all those years ago, center stage in a life that was full of fun and laughter. She’s still center stage really—it’s just that she has a much-reduced audience.
This evening, as we sit together, she seems slightly less bubbly than usual. There are tones of regret in her voice, in the way she talks about Katie, and about her own past life.
I can tell already, without her saying anything, that she doesn’t want me to leave. I’m not quite sure when this happened but, sneakily, I have started to care about that a lot—I can’t bear the thought of going upstairs and imagining her down here, sad and alone.
I’d been planning on a quick visit, in and out to check up on her, but something in the way she is behaving has me on low-level alert.
“I was going to go to the new yoga class at the leisure center,” I reply, “but I’m not sure I can be bothered now I’m sitting still. It’s been a busy day, and I’m thinking Bill is the only downward dog I need tonight.”
She looks at me, her eyes narrowing slightly as though she’s searching for evidence of a lie. I manage to hide any regret I might have been feeling, and we sit quietly together, listening to the shrieks of the gulls and the sound of the sea as the tide comes in. It’s peaceful here, as the light fades and the remnants of the day slip into the far horizon. A few dog walkers, the occasional cyclist, nothing more.
“So, our Matty called me this afternoon,” she says after a while. Matty is her son, who does something complicated in shipping that neither of us understands.
“Oh, right—how is he? The kids okay?”
“Great, yes. But he wanted to tell me they’re going away for Christmas this year—Barbados, I think he said. It’ll be lovely, I’m sure.”
It will be lovely, I think—for Matt and his family. Not for Margie, who looks forward to Christmas with the enthusiasm of a toddler because she gets the chance to see them all. Matty usually drives up to collect her and she spends a week down south, gets to see his twins, Lucy and Luke—six years old now—open their presents, gets to have her Christmas dinner in their big house, and gets to be at the heart of family life for a little while. Having that taken away from her will have been a huge blow, and explains why she seems so deflated.
“I see. How do you feel about that?”
There is a bit of a breeze rolling in from the waterfront, and it whips her wispy gray-blond hair up into a flurry. She swipes at it with her fingers, and I notice they are red and swollen.
“Won’t lie, hon, I’m a bit disappointed. He said they’ll organize something else, maybe bring me down for the twins’ birthdays in January instead. So that’ll be nice. I just—well. I’m feeling a bit sorry for myself, I suppose.”
“I think you’re allowed,” I say, reaching out to touch her shoulder. I’m not one of life’s natural caregivers, but Margie has a place in my heart—somewhere between mother and friend—and I am sad to see her so down.
“I’m letting myself off, just for tonight. I have a lot to be grateful for, I know that. Matty and his family are all healthy. I have Bill. I have my garden. I even have this mysterious redhead who lives upstairs and spends time with this silly old woman when she should be out having fun.”
“Hey, this is my idea of fun! And why don’t we make it even more fun and crack open the whisky?”
Her eyes go big and round, and she nods enthusiastically. She starts to struggle to her feet, but I tell her to rest and go fetch the bottle myself. She keeps it in what she calls her “naughty cupboard,” and I bring out a box of Thorntons chocolates at the same time.
I splash us both a generous dollop of booze into our tea and put the box on the little tile-topped table that sits between us.
I raise my mug and we clink, both exclaiming, “Cheers!” and laughing.
I don’t try to distract her or make her talk it through—Margie doesn’t need any encouraging on that front, I’ve learned, and she will speak when she is ready. Instead, we watch the changing light filtering through the clouds, the first hint of the moon shining on the water.
“I’ve been thinking about life,” she says eventually, after our tea has cooled and the box has been raided. There were sixteen truffles to start with, and only ten remain.
“Oh no—should I call an ambulance?” I say, making her smile.
“Get away with you, cheeky mare,” she snaps back. “I’m serious. Almost.”
“Go on, then—what are your revelations for the day?”
“Well, I was thinking about all the roles we play. We start off as somebody’s child. Then maybe we become somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother. Somebody’s grandmother. Somebody’s father, or brother, or best friend. We define ourselves so much by our relationships, don’t we? Then when it all gets stripped away—when there’s a divorce, or a death, or people just move on—we’re left bare. Left as the scraps. And sometimes that feels hard, seeing yourself as the scraps. As the leftover bits of other people’s lives, the bits they don’t need anymore.”
A seagull, white and plump, has come to land on the fence, and Bill lets out a low growl that sees it flap away. Margie is looking at me, waiting for a reply. I have no idea what to say to her—how to make her feel better. How to make myself feel better, as a black cloak of discontent falls soft and cloying around my shoulders.
I realize that some of what she says is true, and I realize that I am none of the things on her list, not really. I have been within touching distance of those roles but never really filled them. It’s all been very messed up, and I have had to create my own role. I am me, I am Gemma, and I have always told myself that that is enough. Perhaps, truthfully, I have always simply believed that that is all I deserve.
As I ponder Margie’s words, an edge of doubt creeps in—doubt that makes me wonder if I’m actually an understudy in my own life story. If my own fears and regrets—about giving up my baby, about never having any more children, about seeing even a date with Karim as dangerous, and ultimately about eventually turning into my own mother—add up to more than the rest of me. If the things I haven’t had, haven’t been, equal more than the things I do have and am. It is a horrible thought.
“I don’t know, Margie,” I say sadly. “I suppose I just try not to think about things too hard. Being deep and meaningful never ends well for me. All I can say is that I don’t see you as scraps, not at all. And, anyway, the leftovers are sometimes the very best part of a meal.”
I look down at the tile-topped table. It’s a mosaic of blues and greens, swirled with patterns of seashells. I start to count the individual squares and reach seventeen before I lose track and have to start again. I can’t believe I’ve sat here so many times and never done this before—I must be slipping.
“You’re probably right, love,” she says, patting my hand. “Bubble and squeak is made from leftover cabbage and spuds, and it’s one of my favorite ever meals! Ignore me. I’m just a silly old moo tonight. Let’s have another drink, and raise a toast to the moon, and look forward to the return of the sun.”
There is a touch of the pagan to Margie, I’ve always thought.
We raise our toast, drink some cold tea and whisky, and I wonder how to lift our mood of melancholia. I realize most people would share, would tell their own story, would parcel out that sadness in order to make it smaller and more manageable.
But I also realize that I am not capable of such sharing. That I hoard my story, keep it close to keep me safe. I am not capable of reaching out, and I am not capable, right now, of a pep talk. So, instead, I dig inside my always-crowded brain and find something I am capable of.
“Margie, did you know,” I ask, “that on this day in 1960, the actor Colin Firth was born?”
“I did not know that. We should mark that joyous occasion though, shouldn’t we? Colin Firth has brought a lot of pleasure into my life over the years.”
“Mine too. Shall we go inside, finish these chocolates, and see if we can find Pride and Prejudice to watch? I’m no doctor, but I firmly believe that there are very few ills that can’t be cured by the sight of Mr. Darcy in his sopping-wet britches. We might be scraps, Margie, but we’re scraps with taste!”