Chapter twenty-seven
At his own request, Hugh Lloyd’s funeral was a quiet affair – family-only cremation followed by a scattering of his ashes at sea – but Lewis arranged a celebration of Hugh’s life at Rosemount a few days after, to which I was invited.
Kay, via Pam, asked if I would read one of his Story of My Life stories, and invited me round to discuss which would be most appropriate from the dozens that I had in my notebook.
I wasn’t sure whether Kay really wanted me to read something, or whether she just wanted a chance to talk to me on my own.
It was a strange conversation to start, given my unusual God-like insight into her past lives.
The night after Martine and I spoke, she had written a letter which she’d asked me to take to Kay at Rosemount the next day.
I duly did, and then, later that afternoon, at her request, I’d dropped Martine off at Rosemount in person.
She looked nervous but immaculately dressed, and she was carrying something in a gift bag.
I don’t know how long she stayed; she said she’d call a taxi to collect her.
In a funny role reversal, I hovered anxiously by the kitchen window, checking to make sure she’d got home safely, and finally, at eleven, her light went on and Martine called me, briefly, to let me know she was back.
I don’t know what was said, and I thought it diplomatic to wait to be told. The following day, I got an update of sorts when I returned from Tomsk’s afternoon walk to find a bottle of blackcurrant cordial and a bottle of champagne on my doorstep.
When I drove over to Rosemount to talk to Kay, I found her sitting at the table in her room, furiously writing on a laptop. Her fingers were flying – almost as percussive as her piano playing – and she was frowning in concentration. I envied her touch-typing speed.
‘Beth! Come in!’ She gestured at one of the mid-century armchairs that made her and Hugh’s apartment look unusually Mad Men; every other apartment I’d been in was styled in the comfortable tradition of ‘generic British soap opera’.
‘I’m collating some notes for Lewis, he wanted some stories to tell about Hugh.
I asked Susan if she had any good ones and she’s sent me some corkers that even I haven’t heard.
’ She paused, and frowned at the screen.
‘I’m not sure they’re entirely suitable, but that’s so Hugh. ’
‘Susan?’
‘Hugh’s second wife, Jonathan’s mum. He married her in . . .’ Kay glanced down at the laptop again, ‘Seventy-two? His first wife, Theresa, died in seventy-one. Better get that right! I don’t think there was an overlap.’
‘Hugh never mentioned he’d been married before.
’ Hugh and Kay had that comfortable companionship that I’d assumed had been formed over decades of marriage.
I thought of all the stories Hugh had recounted; not once had he mentioned any woman other than Kay.
Although, thinking about it, most of them had been about his professional experiences, or his later life.
There was a sort of gallantry about that, I thought.
I wondered if that was why Kay had felt she had to keep her own memories so private.
She read my expression. ‘Hugh wasn’t the sort to dwell on things that didn’t work out. He loved Jonathan, and that’s what mattered, as far he was concerned.’
I told Kay how very sorry I was for her loss, and how much I’d enjoyed the entertaining afternoons with her and Hugh, feeling part of that exciting world.
I’d have loved to have worked with Hugh, although probably not as his accountant.
‘You both made that time come alive for me. I’ll never see any of those adverts the same way again! ’
‘Well, it was lovely for us too.’ She put her laptop to one side.
‘There’s something comforting about sharing your memories with a new generation.
I mean, not the “feeling like a history project” part, that’s quite sobering when you still feel thirty inside, but feeling as if there was some significance to what you did with your youth.
It reminded us what fun we had. Although as Hugh said after you’d gone, we should tell these youngsters about the bloody dull parts too.
Can’t have them thinking it was all expense accounts and speed boats, as he put it.
’ She paused. ‘Although in his case, it was mainly expense accounts and speed boats.’
Kay was wearing a black silk shirt and black trousers, so simple they had to be expensive.
The monochrome was broken up with a pair of leopard-print loafers that reminded me of Martine’s gold lamé slippers, the ones Jackie forbade her to wear in case she fell down the stairs.
Pam had told me she was ‘bearing up well’; she looked tired, but philosophical.
‘Did you enjoy the story project too?’ I wasn’t quite brave enough to ask directly, but Kay knew what I was getting at.
‘I did. I think Hugh wanted to get his best stories down before he forgot them, but your questions kept me awake at night. They made me think about what my life would look like, from the perspective of someone who hadn’t lived through the things I had.
What the big turning points actually were – not the job changes, or the awards, but the moments when I changed, as a person.
Your perspective on what’s important shifts, you know, as you get older and you start to understand yourself, warts and all.
You can’t always see the turning points at the time.
’ She gave me a knowing look. ‘Sometimes you just need to push on. Onwards and upwards, you know? I hadn’t allowed myself to think about some things for years, but once those memories were bouncing around again, in my mind’s eye, I had to write them down. To stop them bouncing around.’
‘What did you want me to do with them?’
Again, the amused half-smile. ‘Nothing, to begin with. Just have them, so I knew that those happy days were alive in another memory. Like uploading them to the Cloud. I wasn’t sure if she .
. .’ For a moment, Kay’s composure cracked, but she carried on.
‘But it was important to me to write them down, and acknowledge that those moments changed my life. If you were creating a big picture of human history at Rosemount, so you could understand my generation better, and have a record of who we were, and why, then I wanted those moments to be a part of it.’
I wanted to ask if Hugh had known about Martine but I hesitated. Even when Kay had pulled back the curtain on her most private, precious memories, I knew she hadn’t been talking to me. They’d always been for Martine.
Kay tilted her head, as if she could read my mind.
‘I was nearly fifty when I met Hugh. We’d both lived what you’d call interesting lives, but we were the sort of people who looked forward, not back.
Broad brushstrokes, as he put it. There were things we didn’t talk about, but it didn’t matter because – well, you met Hugh, we had more than enough to talk about.
It used to make us laugh, you know, when we first moved in here, and everyone treated us the same way they treated Bill and Linda, as if we were a venerable old married couple.
People do assume, when you’re older, that you’ve been together since the year dot.
We kept our own flats for years, because he was such a fusspot, and I’m a night owl – we only got married because he’d booked a holiday somewhere you needed a wedding ring, or else.
We were sixty-eight. It was quite a joke, being the oldest couple at the registry office.
It made us happy, being unconventional, kept us in touch with our groovy selves, he used to say.
’ Kay suddenly looked sad, properly bereft.
‘We mightn’t have been joined at the hip like Linda and Bill, but I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss Hugh.
He was the greatest company you could imagine.
He could make any room feel like a party. ’
‘We’ll all miss him,’ I said. Which was the truth.
We discussed which of Hugh’s stories I would read at the celebration; Kay decided on a touching memory Hugh had shared about seal-watching in Pembrokeshire after his father died, rather than one of his more ‘of its time’ racy anecdotes, which we agreed only he could do justice to.
I asked her if she wanted to continue with the Story of My Life project, because I genuinely wanted to hear more of her stories about elbowing her way through the boys’-club atmosphere of PR in the seventies and eighties, and she seemed genuinely pleased that I wanted to know.
‘And I suppose I could carry on playing the piano for the singalongs.’ Kay arched an eyebrow. ‘Hugh hated Andrew Lloyd Webber, so the first time we sing Cats, it’ll be for him.’ I didn’t like to tell her there might not be many more, if Eric Alexander had his way.
We didn’t mention Martine again, but as I was leaving I noticed one small but significant change to Kay’s room: in amongst the condolence cards, the solitary black Staffordshire dog that I’d never really noticed before had now moved on the main shelf – where it was united with its partner.
‘Beth?’ Lewis called me as I was almost out of the front door. ‘Have you got a moment?’
I followed him into his office, where he left the door just ajar so it was technically open, as per his ‘open door’ promise, but not invitingly so.
‘I just wanted to update you on the plans.’ Even though we were alone, he mouthed the word ‘plans’ in the same way I mouthed the word ‘walk’ in front of Tomsk. ‘We’re at eighty per cent of the estimated deposit target!’
‘Really?’ Kevin Allison, the broker, was exploring the financing options for Lewis; it was going to be tough, Kevin had warned him, but he ‘never liked to say impossible’.
(I liked to say impossible a lot with clients. Managing expectations, then occasionally exceeding them, had been a big part of my strategy.)