Chapter twenty-six
Iwent home so filled with energy that I sat down with my giant plotting notepad and scribbled on Post-it notes for hours, barely noticing the sun setting and the dusk falling softly across the garden as I sketched out every scene I’d need to bring Isabella and Douglas together, then apart, then finally together again.
It felt as if my heart and my brain and my imagination were turning like perfectly aligned cogs, and it filled me with utter euphoria.
Now I’d seen Isabella and Douglas in my mind’s eye, there was no stopping them as they met, and flirted, and edged their way towards each other all over the Northumbrian market town where I’d decided they lived; sometimes in the woodsmoke-scented studio where Isabella did her sketching, sometimes in the assembly rooms of the town’s coaching inn where Douglas presided wearily over the bickering town council.
Even Arthur suddenly sprang into focus, albeit in the form of very dull letters from America, full of nothing.
Instead of Arthur’s return being the big finish, I decided to move it forward and get it out of the way: I had a much better big finish in mind for Isabella now, one that wasn’t decided by someone else’s actions.
Whenever I hit a blank spot, and panicked that I’d run out of ideas, I asked myself aloud, ‘So, Beth, tell me what happens now?’ and miraculously, it turned out I always knew.
At ten o’clock, the phone rang as usual and I was surprised to see how late it was.
‘Hello, Beth,’ said Martine. ‘Are you still up?’
‘I am. It’s been a busy day!’
‘How are things at Rosemount? Any news?’
I knew Martine would ask, and I hadn’t been looking forward to telling her. ‘Linda’s stable and responding well to treatment but Hugh . . . I’m afraid Hugh died, Martine. Not long after he was brought in. The doctors said he had a heart attack.’
‘Oh!’ She sounded as if the breath had been knocked out of her.
‘Lewis and the staff did everything they could,’ I went on. ‘His son was with him.’
‘His son?’
‘Yes, Jonathan. He came from London as fast as he could.’
There was a long silence at the other end.
‘Martine? Are you still there?’
It sounded as if she was blowing her nose. ‘Yes, I am. Do you have a moment, darling? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.’
‘Give me a minute, I’ll come up.’ I was in my pyjamas, but I could easily change. It was dark now, and if Martine fell over something in the garden we’d never hear the end of it from Jackie.
‘No, I’ll come to you. Why don’t you put the kettle on?’
Martine looked small in the saggy armchair that Tomsk normally curled up in. She perched on the edge with her knees neatly together, and her hands clasped in her lap. A lifetime of Pilates, I thought, would never give me posture like that.
I made a pot of tea (there were two teapots, left over from unsuccessful attempts to teach the au pairs proper British beverage preparation) and put it on a tray with some of the gingersnaps left over from Allen’s tin.
Martine sat, holding the cup in her hands, and didn’t speak immediately. I didn’t hurry her. I sensed this was going to be one of those conversations where my job was to listen, not contribute much. Fortunately, I’d had a lot of practice lately.
‘Beth,’ she said eventually, ‘have you ever had a soulmate? Someone who really understands you. Better than you understand yourself?’
Had I? No. Not even Fraser; even at our best, there were things I hadn’t told him, things I didn’t want him to know about me.
And clearly there’d been more of an understanding gap than I’d wanted to see.
Mali had been a good friend at university, when life was straightforward, and I supposed Ashley and I had weathered some pretty bad times together.
But to have a proper soulmate you needed to open up that secret hatch to your vulnerabilities, and I’d always kept mine firmly sealed.
Adolescence was the time for making forever friends; like horse-riding or skiing, you never quite threw yourself into it in later life, for fear of injury.
I didn’t want anyone, least of all cruel teenagers, to see the chaos, emotional and literal, that Mum and I lived in.
It was preferable to be thought weird at school, rather than known to be the child of a woman who sometimes didn’t wash for a week.
‘No,’ I said. Not yet. ‘Have you?’
I already knew the answer to this. She knew I knew.
I was expecting her to start explaining about the blackcurrant-picking but she didn’t; she crossed her legs, and changed tack again, as if she couldn’t get comfortable in her own story. ‘Did Fraser ever tell you anything about my family?’
‘Just that you were born here, you and Ray were childhood sweethearts. And that you two bought this house when you were first married, and Jackie was born in—’
‘Not our family. My family. Fraser’s grandparents.’
‘Not really. I guess he felt it was insensitive to talk too much about his family, when he knew I didn’t really have one.’ I thought that was pretty gracious of me, to be honest.
Martine considered this, as if surprised Fraser would be so sensitive.
‘Well. The first thing you need to know about my family is that business was everything to them. Everything,’ she said.
‘They came over from Ireland without a penny and they built a little empire from nothing. My father was completely consumed by it, as were his father and uncles, and their father, and so on. But unfortunately for Dad, he was an only child, and even more unfortunately, he only had me. No male heir. He made absolutely no secret of what a disaster that was. I mean, that sounds nonsensical now, doesn’t it?
It was ridiculous then, but some people still thought like that.
And yet the top champagne houses were run by women – Bollinger, Pommery, Clicquot.
How hard could it be to run a high-street wine merchant’s? ’
‘Stop a minute,’ I said, processing this new information. ‘Longhampton Cellars is your family business?’
‘Of course.’ She seemed surprised that I didn’t know. ‘That’s why the house label has the lions and the castle on it – it’s the O’Shaughnessy crest. A total affectation, but that was my grandfather’s idea. He was the one who hustled and hustled for the royal warrant.’
Why had I always assumed it had been Ray’s family business? He’d always spoken as if it was – talking proudly about ‘our place on the high-street tradition’ and ‘our long connection with the Board of Trade’.
‘Anyway, we weren’t all armchair psychologists back then, so I didn’t know I was growing up in a “toxic environment” of “repressive misogyny”,’ Martine added helpful air hooks, ‘I just sensed from a young age that I wasn’t what anyone had hoped for.
’ She shook her head. ‘I did my best to make my father happy. I worked as hard as I could at school, I played the piano, I grew my hair long because Daddy thought girls should have long hair, I did everything I possibly could to get any tiny crumb of approval from him. I didn’t realise until I was about fifteen that I was wasting my time, and that there was no way I could make him happy, because I wasn’t a boy, but by then my whole personality was based around pleasing other people.
School, orchestra, pony club. I tried my hardest at everything, and everyone made fun of me because of it.
’ She paused. ‘I didn’t like myself much either. I always felt out of place.’
I felt so sorry for her. Even now, Martine’s shoulders were hunching. I’d never seen her like this.
‘But then I met someone who made me feel like there might be a different Martine. I found a soulmate.’
A small smile touched her face, remembering, and her whole demeanour changed. I nodded, not wanting to say the wrong thing.
‘Kathleen and I came from very different backgrounds, but inside we were like two peas in a pod. I’d never had a friend like her – well,’ she corrected herself, ‘I’d never had friends, not real friends.
I knew lots of people because my parents were part of that ‘black-tie dinner with the mayor’ set, always having awful sherry parties to collect people like Happy Families cards, but no one I could really talk to.
Be completely honest with. That was the big thing Kathleen and I had in common: both of us secretly wanted to be someone else. ’
‘Who did Kathleen want to be?’
‘Someone. She didn’t want to settle down at seventeen with the boy down the road.
She didn’t want a job in the factory, or a baby.
She didn’t know what she could do though, because no one in her family had ever been further than the next town.
I don’t want to sound dismissive; people didn’t have many options then.
When I met her, she’d left school but she had such a hungry brain, always asking questions.
Why this, why not that? But she never thought of anything like that for herself.
Whereas I had all those advantages, and I never thought to ask, why not? ’
Martine took a sip of her tea, gathering up the threads for the next part of her story.
‘So. I’d persuaded my parents that I should go to university and they’d agreed because I think my father thought it made him look modern, having a daughter studying for a degree, even if I wasn’t going to do anything with it.
And I didn’t see why Kathleen shouldn’t have the same opportunity, since she was so much cleverer than I was, so I helped her apply for a course at a poly nearby. ’
‘How did her family feel about that?’