The Post-Romantic Era
The seasons came around in their tiring way, Marnie noting the events in Nature’s almanac: fox-scream night, the changing of the duvets, the rodents moving outdoors, the start of moth season. In May she retrieved the winter clothes she’d put away prematurely in April, exchanging them in June for her summer wardrobe, more accurately her summer bin-bag, a wad of ancient T-shirts that she kept on a high shelf with the Christmas decorations. In the park, the first burnt-black patches from disposable barbecues were springing up. Pomegranates gave way to mangoes in the Turkish grocers’ and strawberries were on special. Soon it would be spider season.
In the meantime, she worked steadily, taking on every assignment she was offered, thrillers, romantic comedies, Napoleonic adventures, YA weepies, locked-room mysteries, a high-concept thriller that took place over twenty minutes, a sci-fi saga spread over twenty thousand years, all from her kitchen table. Love came up a lot, sex too, but she tried not to editorialise. ‘Yeah, right,’ was not a useful note. When not reading for work, she read for pleasure, and one bright, vacant afternoon in June, she put her book down, hauled her terrible window-boxes indoors and emptied out the lunar soil. At a stall in Brixton Market, she asked, ‘What’s the hardest plant to kill?’ and now here they were, two rows of invulnerable red geraniums that she could see from the sofa. The beginning of her gardening years.
There were other changes too. An old friend got in touch, saying she was ‘out the other side’ now that the kids were older, and they met for a drink and laughed, and this led to other reunions with re-emerging friends, a few dinner parties, nothing wild. Whenever talk turned to school catchment areas or exam results, she simply disassociated, made shopping lists, hummed in her head until it passed. At some of these events she was conspicuously paired with recent divorcés – that word, the suave little accent like a tip of the hat – and this in turn led to an agreeable solo dinner with a very nice older man, which led nowhere. She tried not to fret about this. It was, she thought, like picking up a book, reading a paragraph and knowing with absolute conviction that it isn’t for you. The analogy didn’t quite hold – books aren’t upset when you put them down – but in this instance they both walked away unscathed, grateful for the other’s indifference.
But life seemed fuller, more populated than it had a year ago. She went to exhibitions and films, sometimes alone, sometimes with a friend, and when she’d saved enough of Neil’s money, which was her money, she went on a solo trip to Italy, role-playing a character in a Forster novel. In Florence, she read performatively in cafés and sat in the cool of exquisite churches, straining for some kind of spiritual feeling. In Rome, she visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and sought out the graves of Keats and Shelley and found herself moved and mortified by being moved.
She thought of Michael often, though had no reason to say his name out loud. Cleo had told her about Natasha’s new life, and while she was pleased for her, it felt like hearing that a friend had been hit by a car. She recalled his face in the hotel corridor, clean-shaven, shiny and hopeful, and while she’d not forgotten her own hurt and anger, she felt for him too, her old friend, and hoped that he was managing to move on. More often when she thought of his face, nights usually, sometimes first thing, it was the one she’d seen on the beach, old-fashioned, handsome without knowing it, the face she’d watched for days as they’d walked and talked.
Still, she resisted mentioning him to anyone. In the summer holidays, Anthony came to stay but he was unlikely to raise the subject and instead she focused on keeping him entertained, taking him to places he’d loved, the South Kensington museums and Forbidden Planet, though they seemed to have lost their appeal. Instead they went to fashion stores in Soho – stores not shops – where customers queued as if it were a nightclub. She’d not queued to enter a shop since the pandemic but she loved seeing his excitement, and once inside she’d find a chair and read her book, nodding to the music, godmotherly but never grandmotherly. In the evenings they’d get take-out – take-out not takeaway – lie on the sofa and watch old nineties action movies, and it was here, between explosions, that she asked, in her most casual voice, ‘How’s Mr Bradshaw getting on?’
‘He’s all right.’
It was unclear what else she’d expected, and if she wanted a fuller report, she could always ask Cleo. But raising that subject would have opened up all kinds of speculation, so she tried again.
‘He seems okay? At school?’
‘Yeah. He’s a teacher. I don’t know much about it.’
On screen, a mansion exploded, the hero scorning to watch.
‘Is the beard back?’
‘No, his girlfriend didn’t like it.’
‘Oh. Oh. He’s got a girlfriend.’
‘He did have,’ said Anthony, ‘not any more,’ and she felt two emotions in quick succession, as if bouncing over a pothole.
Summer ended and Nature’s cavalcade continued. Flying Ant Day came and went, sweetcorn took the place of mangoes. Schools returned and the buses became busy, the rodents moved back indoors and suddenly it was spider season once again, Marnie catching the webs full on when she took out the bins, swiping madly at her own face.