March #4
I never met her, but I had googled her. She was a novelist and, though she didn’t have social media, her books had been published widely enough for there to have been reviews and interviews in newspapers and magazines.
The one time I’d typed her name into my browser and pressed return, I’d clicked on the first link – her Wikipedia page.
I’d read briefly about her childhood and her education in France and the UK.
The part about her career was the longest, with details of the first novel she wrote in her twenties, and the ones that followed, the criticism, the prizes.
Below that, at the very end, was a short section on her personal life, composed of just three sentences.
It was enough. I’d learned that she was remarried, that she lived in Paris, and that she and her husband had two daughters.
I couldn’t ask Noah about it without admitting to my online sleuthing, and he never mentioned it.
But every now and then, I would find myself wondering whether he knew, and driving to visit Anna, Caleb and the baby was one of those occasions.
When we arrived, I asked if he would prefer to wait in the car – he’d hated hospitals ever since – and calmly, he shook his head.
But as we walked up to the busy entrance and along extended corridors smelling of linoleum and marked with multi-coloured lines and arrows, I felt his fingers tighten around my own. I told him, It’s OK, I’m here.
Eventually, we found the maternity ward, and a nurse directed us to Anna.
She was lying in bed with a small bundle in a clear cot beside her ; I remember thinking the cot looked like a shopping trolley.
When Anna saw us, she opened her mouth to say hello and immediately began to cry.
When the same thing happened again, Caleb explained that she was having trouble getting words out.
He kissed her on the forehead, then got up from the armchair pushed against the other side of the bed and gestured for me to sit.
I squeezed Noah’s hand and he squeezed mine back.
‘Does anyone want coffee?’ he asked.
‘Good idea,’ said Caleb, lightly knocking him on the shoulder in greeting. ‘I’ll show you where the machine is.’
I sat down in the chair and marvelled at my friend. ‘How are you feeling?’
She cried some more, and in between sobs and bouts of laughter she told me she was frightened.
I glanced again at the delicate bundle beside her, with a little brown face and hair that was thick and dark, even at just a day old. His eyes were closed, peaceful. When I listened carefully, I could hear him breathing.
‘I know, he doesn’t look particularly frightening,’ she laughed, explaining that she was more frightened about doing something wrong.
‘I just can’t get him to feed, and I don’t know why.
What’s going to happen when we take him home?
’ she asked, her voice rising. ‘What if I can’t get him to go to sleep? ’
I smiled and brushed her chestnut hair away from her face and told her to look again at him sleeping by her side. ‘You’ll be great,’ I said, my heart as full as it had ever been. ‘And whenever you need me, I’ll be there.’
It was the weekend after I babysat that Noah and I had dinner with Daniel and Griz.
Noah had been in the middle of marking some papers when we left the flat and his mind was still mulling over an essay on gendering global politics as we passed through the turnstiles to catch the overground to Camden, from where we would take the Northern line to Golders Green.
He tried to pass through his turnstile two or three times before the attendant told him, politely if patronisingly, Take a step back, Sir, and give the machine a minute.
Noah apologised and did as he suggested, all the while retaining a furrowed brow and a fixed stare, thinking deeply.
Worried he might trip, I held onto his arm as we walked up the stairs.
It was a cold but clear evening with the kind of tie-dye sky that makes me long for Norfolk – somehow the sky always seems bigger there, the Earth topped with an extra-large technicolour blanket.
The days were growing longer, the light gaining in strength and lasting until around six-thirty ; in the morning the clocks would change, giving us an extra hour until sunset.
As the train peeled away from the platform, I found myself twisting in my seat to get a better look at the ragged rooftops casting a striking silhouette against the pink and blue.
Feathery plumes of smoke spouted from chimneys, softening the spiked aerials beside them.
I was twisting a little further to see what someone had planted in their roof garden, my thoughts pleasantly turning to my mother, when Noah returned to the present.
‘I love you,’ he said, taking my hand in his.
I twisted back around.
At the other end, it was a short walk to Daniel and Griz’s place, a semi-detached house – part exposed brick, part smooth stucco painted white – set back behind a small, rounded hedge on a road that curved around and down towards the Heath.
Noah and Daniel grew up in a house just a few streets away, in what was a typical northwest-London Jewish family, Noah had told me.
He also said that growing up surrounded by other Jewish families had meant that he and his brother were, for better or worse, mostly sheltered from anti-Semitism.
We hadn’t been together long when I asked if his interest in security and development stemmed from what had happened to his grandparents’ generation.
He told me he’d never thought about it. After we watched a documentary on the Holocaust and I broached the subject again, he admitted that as a child he’d become fascinated by stories about fleeing from the Nazis.
I think the adjective he used to describe that fascination was morbid.
We arrived and used the knocker.
After a few seconds, eleven-year-old Lizzie, Daniel and Griz’s eldest, opened the door.
‘Lizzie, look at you,’ cried Noah, ‘you’re almost as tall as Cathy!’
She laughed and so did I. My height, or lack thereof, was a running joke. That and my childlike hands and feet. Noah always said he was amazed that I was living an adult life with shoes that were a size three and a half.
He stepped forward and enveloped her in a hug. ‘Been swimming?’ He tugged at her wet hair, which was pulled back into a ponytail.
Swimming was Lizzie’s thing. It was more than a hobby – she was good, great even. We’d been to watch her in a handful of races, all of which she’d won. As I leant in to hug her hello, I considered that the thing I liked best about pools was the smell of chlorine, the chemicals reminding me of work.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and now I’m starving.’
‘Well, let’s see how long it takes for your dad to bring out tonight’s food,’ said Noah.
Ever since Griz had signed him up for a cookery course a while back, Daniel had assumed the role of head chef in their family kitchen. He was talented, and very thorough.
‘Oh, I did it, by the way,’ said Lizzie. ‘I tried telling him you two don’t count as guests.’
‘And?’
‘He said that was no reason not to make an effort.’
‘Well, it was worth a shot.’
I smiled at their camaraderie.
‘Where are your brother and sister, then?’
‘Uncle Noah!’
Right on cue, Nick appeared at Lizzie’s side, swiftly followed by seven-year-old Allie.
‘Hi there, you two!’
More hugging. Though Nick was in awe of Noah, he was at that awkward age when touching a woman was hell on earth, and as soon as he was in my arms he stiffened like a piece of cardboard.
Allie, on the other hand, held on tight.
When I went to stand up, she latched onto my necklace, her blue eyes bulging.
‘I like this,’ she said, twirling the single natural pearl between her fingers.
‘Thank you, sweetie. Your uncle gave it to me.’
She gasped, in the dramatic way she’d taken to doing lately, and told me how lucky I was, that it was sooooooooo pretty.
I looked up at Noah, who was smiling. ‘You’re right, Al, my wife’s one lucky lady.’
When he’d given it to me, however many years earlier, he’d said that the least he could do if we couldn’t live by the sea was to bring the sea to me.
Of course, if I wanted to stay at the National Gallery, I really had to live here.
But there were museums up and down the coast, and I went through a brief period of wanting to trade London in for a town suffused with sea air.
Margate, maybe. Or St Ives, though that was far from home.
Noah was vaguely open to the idea, but my wanting was never strong enough for me to push it.
Eventually, like a fever, it subsided. I’d learned to live with my lingering curiosity.
‘OK, enough hellos, kids, give your uncle and auntie some room to breathe,’ Griz said as she appeared, shooing them off down the hall, the red tiles barely visible beneath kicked-off school shoes and trainers and discarded sports bags.
As they rounded the bend into the kitchen, the biggest room in the house, with a light-filled conservatory tacked onto the back, Allie yelled out, ‘Ouch, Nick!’ Lizzie told them both to stop it.
It was no wonder that Lizzie was outgrowing me – Griz was the same height as Noah.
She was slender too, with the kind of long legs I often think are wasted on non-runners.
In the beginning, I was intimidated by her beauty – that and her being Jewish, a natural fit in the family.
Though Noah was no longer observant, Daniel and Griz were still active in the community, as were the kids.
When I’d said as much to Noah, he’d assured me, with a glint in his eye, that I would feel more comfortable if I paid less attention to her classical features and more attention to her fashion sense.
She turned to me, pompoms dangling from the bottom of her jumper, and gave me a kiss. ‘Cathy, hi.’
‘Hello, Griz,’ I said, smiling.