Chapter 19
NINETEEN
ALICE
Alice loved spontaneous invitations, when a day turned out completely differently from the way you might have imagined. She especially enjoyed this invitation from Mark, as it seemed to be inspired by her wish to bring everyone together here. Life was definitely returning to Wisteria House.
She opened the windows and curtains and let some fresh air into the lounge, before going to her bedroom to decide what to wear.
As Alice headed off to shower and change, she thought, not for the first time, how fortunate she was that the residents of the block had taken her up on her offer of dinner that Friday evening.
She had observed their comings and goings during that first week, not in an intrusive way, but at the end of the week she had deduced that the residents didn’t have partners.
That was probably why they were open to the dinner invite in the first place.
She never saw her neighbours much at the house near the sea. A family occupied the house on one side, with two teenagers who nodded politely on the rare occasion she encountered them. They had gatherings that she was never invited to.
She would observe guests making their way up the path, laughing and clutching bottles of wine, and push down a tinge of envy.
But then, why would they want a woman of her age at their parties?
Or maybe they simply never thought to ask?
That was the problem with putting people into pigeonholes according to their age, thought Alice.
She would have loved to have chatted to the young people, hearing all about their hopes and ambitions for the future.
Growing old seemed an almost impossible notion when you were young, she realised that, but it would arrive before they knew it.
The residents of the house on the other side were business owners and rarely at home.
Alice and George had socialised with the previous neighbours when he had been alive, but when they both moved on to nursing homes, the new neighbours never engaged with them.
Her and George’s offer of drinks and nibbles had been politely declined by the new, younger families and that was that.
Exactly an hour later, Mark knocked at Alice’s door. She was wearing white trousers and a navy and white striped T-shirt.
‘You look very nautical,’ Mark said with a wry smile.
‘I suppose I do, don’t I?’ she replied. ‘I have a headscarf too. I know how windy it can be out on the water.’
A memory came rushing back to Alice of when she and some friends had taken a boat trip along the River Thames in between shows at the Palladium and attracted the attention of some handsome men at a bachelor party.
The men had bought them drinks, probably hoping for something in return, but the girls had giggled and ran off to their lodgings when the boat returned from its sail as the men headed off to a bar.
Life had been so good then, the possibilities endless for all of the girls, and Alice had enjoyed every minute of her life, especially after she met George.
They took the short drive to the marina and, after parking up, walked along the waterfront, where sailing boats rubbed shoulders with small speedboats and single-engine vessels.
As they walked along the wooden path, several people said hello.
One guy, a friend of Mark’s, stopped for a chat and Mark introduced him to Alice.
‘Pleasure to meet you,’ said the grey-haired man, who was perhaps in his seventies.
‘Alice here used to be a Tiller Girl, you know,’ Mark told his friend proudly.
‘You never did!’ The man stood open-mouthed, and recounted a similar tale to Mark, of watching Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
‘It was a lifetime ago,’ she told him when he had finished speaking, amused how it always elicited an excited response, particularly from someone of the older generation, even though the Tiller Girls still performed today.
‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you,’ said the guy when they had finished chatting. ‘A Tiller Girl, hey.’ He shook his head as he walked off, as if he had just met royalty.
‘Here she is,’ Mark announced presently. His sailboat was moored at the end of a row of a dozen or so vessels.
‘Oh, it’s perfectly lovely.’ Alice eyed the smart boat, white with a green stripe and the name The Oyster painted on the side.
‘Unusual choice of name,’ she commented as he took her hand and guided her into the boat.
‘It was inspired by my grandmother, who was called Pearl and was the happiest woman I knew,’ explained Mark.
‘And would you believe, Diane’s gran was also called Pearl.
She was a cheerful woman too apparently, so it was a no-brainer.
’ He smiled. ‘We did think about calling it simply Pearl, but The Oyster sounded more special somehow.’
‘I take it your mother was not so happy?’ Alice could not help asking, wondering why the boat was named after his grandmother rather than his mother. Mark was silent for a few seconds as he stared out across the water.
‘No,’ he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the water. Finally, looking at Alice, he continued. ‘At least not when she was around me.’
For the first time Alice saw a pain behind his eyes. She would talk to him about it. But not right now.
Taking a seat on the boat, Alice listened with interest as Mark proudly told her of his previous sail, including a boat race last year. He started the engine up then, and they were soon gliding across the water.
‘Would you like to take the wheel?’ asked Mark a while later, when they were a little further out, the wind whipping up a little around them.
‘I’d love to.’ Alice took the wheel of the boat, glancing at the distant Welsh hills in one direction, the cranes from the docks and the wind farms to the right, overlooking the beach.
It was a little cool and she was glad she had brought a cardigan that she slipped on after a while, before fastening her scarf tightly around her neck.
It was exhilarating being out on the water.
Alice recalled a day when the tutor of the drama group she attended as a teenager took them across the Mersey for a day out to New Brighton Pavilion to see a show. Watching the glamorous dancers in the chorus line had fired in Alice her desire to be a professional dancer more than ever.
A boy serving them ice cream at a kiosk took a fancy to Alice, and her friend reminded her that her dad would kill her if she got off with someone from the funfair.
It was true, of course, but Alice felt flattered all the same.
Her friends teased her all the way home about how her ice cream had been bigger than everyone else’s.
The following year when the dance troupe she was in had gained quite a reputation, they performed in St Tropez at a private party. After the show, a rich businessman had wowed the girls with a sail on his yacht in the blazing sunshine. Halcyon days indeed.
After an hour had slipped by, Mark suggested mooring up and visiting his favourite beach restaurant. The squawking of gulls above greeted them as they stepped out of the boat and headed to the café that had stainless steel tables and chairs outside.
‘We will eat inside, if that’s okay,’ suggested Mark. ‘Unless you fancy sharing your food with the seagulls.’
Right on cue, a gull swooped down and grabbed a chip from a polystyrene tray in a bin. ‘I booked us a nice table, as it can get really busy at the weekend.’
She followed him inside the restaurant that was larger than it appeared from the outside and had cream painted walls and some cheerful vintage bunting stretched across a wall behind the counter.
‘What can I get you?’ asked a pretty young woman in a black apron, the word ‘Lucy’s’ embroidered across it in white stitching.
‘A pot of tea, please. And it has to be fish and chips I think,’ said Alice.
‘On a Sunday?’ Mark frowned.
‘I don’t see why not. Fish and chips seem perfect after a bracing sail.’ She smiled.
‘No roast lunch on a Sunday.’ Mark tutted then laughed, before ordering roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with all the trimmings.
‘This is the best you will get around here,’ he told her and the girl behind the counter smiled.
They were shown to their table then, a window table that overlooked the sand dunes with a strip of sparkling sea beyond.
A pot of tea for two arrived, and in no time at all, so had their food.
‘How did you know I would accept your invitation for lunch?’ asked Alice as she cut into the crispy batter, revealing white flakes of fish.
‘I would have dined here alone. I do sometimes.’ He shrugged. ‘But I much prefer company, especially yours,’ he told her and Alice smiled.
Talk turned to family and Alice told him all about George, and he spoke fondly of Diane.
‘You must miss her dreadfully. I know I do George. Are your parents still alive?’ asked Alice and she saw Mark’s jaw tighten.
‘My mother is.’ He took a sip of tea.
‘And in good health?’ She estimated she was maybe somewhere in her eighties.
‘I wouldn’t know.’ He forked the last of his lunch into his mouth, before picking up a dessert menu.
‘That’s a shame,’ ventured Alice.
Alice would have been utterly heartbroken to have had a child and then become estranged from them. Although, of course, she never knew the circumstances for the estrangement.
Mark quietly perused the menu.
‘Do you have any siblings?’ Alice asked, breaking the silence.
Mark put the menu down and let out a deep sigh.
‘I have a younger sister, yes, and a nephew. He must be coming up for twenty-one now. I don’t see them much. We lost touch,’ he said, answering what he was certain would be Alice’s next question.
Alice finished her meal and placed her knife and fork in the centre of the plate before she spoke again.
‘Why did you lose touch? I would have thought family would be important to you, especially after you lost your wife,’ she asked gently.
Mark drummed his fingers on the laminate table and Alice wondered if she had gone too far with her questioning.
‘Honestly? I don’t know.’ He glanced out of the window, and Alice noticed his eyes moisten a little.
‘Lynn is three years younger than me, yet she looked after me when I was little.’ He allowed a smile to play around his mouth.
‘As teenagers we would sometimes sit together in my room, listening to music, her teasing me over my Debbie Harry posters on the wall, and me teasing her over her Donny Osmond pictures.’ He laughed.
‘She would make us tea and bring it up on a tray with a plate of chocolate digestives. My mother hated her fussing over me, though.’
Alice could see the pain in his eyes.
‘Why?’ she asked gently.
‘Because she couldn’t stand me,’ he said without a trace of emotion.
‘I tried to figure out why over the years but could never understand why a mother would act that way. It was eating me up.’ He sighed.
‘So, after a lot of soul searching, I cut her out of my life.’ He took a moment, then continued.
‘As an adult the coldness and criticism had continued whenever I visited her. She was never like that with my sister. I decided enough was enough,’ he said, as he fiddled with a cardboard drink coaster.
Alice remained silent as he talked, seemingly happy to get it all off his chest.
‘Anyway, the last straw was when she didn’t even bother to turn up for Diane’s funeral. I just thought, what’s the point? Who needs that kind of toxicity in their life?’
He asked a passing waitress for another pot of tea.
‘Oh, Mark, how dreadful. I am so sorry to hear that,’ said Alice sincerely. ‘Did you ever ask her why she treated you the way she did?’
‘Ask her?’ He frowned.
‘Yes. Why not? I’m not trying to excuse her behaviour, but there might at least be a reason why she behaved that way. There usually is,’ she suggested.
Alice could not really imagine why any mother could behave in that way, but then human nature was very complicated. She had lived long enough to realise that.
‘In answer to your first question, she would have denied it. Said it was all in my imagination,’ Mark told her.
‘I remember Diane being furious with her once for belittling me at a family gathering. She cornered her in the kitchen out of earshot of others and gave her a bit of a dressing-down. Mum clutched at her chest, feigning stress and denying everything. She never spoke to Di again after that.’
‘Oh, Mark, that’s truly awful. But why don’t you speak to your sister?’
‘I can’t lie, I do feel a bit ashamed about that.
She came to the funeral, and we went out a couple of times later, but things just drifted,’ he admitted.
‘We haven’t fallen out exactly; we just aren’t close anymore.
’ He shrugged. ‘She’s busy, still working as she can’t afford to retire just yet.
Weeks turn into months, and suddenly you are not a part of each other’s life anymore. ’
A waitress appeared then and set down the second pot of tea.
‘Do you miss her?’ asked Alice as she poured tea for them both.
‘Sometimes, yes. But I guess adult siblings often lose touch, don’t they?’ He sipped his tea.
‘Not usually without good reason,’ Alice told him honestly.
‘Maybe you’re right.’ Mark sighed. ‘I think it started when I called her a couple of times to arrange a visit, but Mum was staying with her at the time after a fall so I never went, and somehow we never rearranged.’ He gazed out of the window once more.
Alice felt for Mark. He had a sister who he was once so close to, yet she was becoming a stranger to him.
‘You should contact her,’ said Alice firmly. ‘Your relationship with your sister should not be a casualty of the relationship with your mum.’ She leant over and placed her hand over Mark’s and heard him take a deep intake of breath.
‘I know, of course you’re right. You usually are.’ He smiled.
‘Well, it’s easier to see things as an outsider. And maybe I have reached an age where I have seen it all before.’ She raised an eyebrow.
They resisted a dessert and headed outside where the sun was shining brightly and everything felt a little warmer. They would head back to the boat soon. Alice had had a wonderful time and hoped Mark had too, despite her questions. And she really hoped that he would make that call to his sister.