The Forever Girl

  She could not hide her disappointment. “But it’s so nice in Cayman at Christmas. It’s the nicest time of the year.”

  “I know, darling. I know the weather’s gorgeous …”

  “Which it isn’t here – not at Christmas. It’ll be cold.”

  “Of course it’ll be cold. It might even snow. Imagine that – a Christmas with snow lying about. Imagine how you’ll like that.”

  There was no persuading her mother, who eventually revealed that the decision had been taken by David. “Your father wanted it this way. I suggested that it would be good for us all to get a bit of sun, but he wouldn’t shift. I’m sorry, darling, but that’s the way it’s going to have to be.”

  For the first few days, having her father in the house seemed to her to be almost like having a guest, an ill-at-ease stranger. He spent more time with Billy than with her, taking him out on expeditions that ended with the boy being spoiled with the purchase of yet another expensive present.

  “He likes Billy more than he likes me,” she said to her mother.

  “That isn’t true. You mustn’t think that, darling. Daddy likes you both exactly the same. And the same goes for me. You’re both the most precious things we have in this world.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Then why don’t we go back to the way it was before? Why don’t we go home?”

  “To Cayman?”

  “Yes, that’s home, isn’t it? That’s where we grew up.”

  Amanda tried to explain. “But remember that you’re not Caymanian. You’re half Scottish and half American. That makes you different from real Caymanians. They don’t have somewhere else to go back to.”

  “They aren’t any different from me. Just because their parents …”

  “That’s exactly what makes the difference, darling. Parents. You get to be something because your parents are something. That’s the way the world works.”

  “So I have to live somewhere I don’t want to be just because you come from somewhere else?”

  This was answered with a nod: the injustices of the world – the rules and red tape – could be difficult to explain to a child.

  “And James?” she asked.

  Her mother made a gesture of acceptance. “It’s different for him, I think. His father has Caymanian status and I believe that James has that too. It’s because his father is a doctor. You know all about that, don’t you? The right to stay there? He can live there for the rest of his life if he wants.”

  “That’s unfair.”

  “Yes, it is. You’re right – it’s very unfair.” Amanda paused. “Have you heard from him? I wonder how he’s getting on at his new school.”

  “I haven’t heard.”

  “You could write to him. Send him an e-mail.”

  She looked away. “I tried to. I sent my address to Ted and asked him to pass it on to James. But then Ted said that James didn’t want to write to me.”

  Amanda glanced at her daughter; the pain of love at that age was so intense – one might easily forget just how bad it could be. It would be transient, of course, but children did not know that; what they felt, she had heard, they thought they would feel forever. “Darling, that can happen. People can make new friends. They don’t mean to upset us when they do that – it’s just the way that things work out.”

  “I’d never say I wouldn’t write to a friend,” said Clover.

  “I’m sure you wouldn’t.”

  “I hate him.”

  That meant, Amanda knew, that she loved him. She had hated somebody once because she loved him; she remembered. Yet there would have to be a parental reproach. “No, you don’t hate him. You mustn’t hate somebody else because they drift away from you. That’s very unkind.”

  Clover went to her room. She lay down on the bed and stared out of the window at the December sky. It was getting dark already, and it was only three in the afternoon. Everything had changed. She had been happy at home with the light and the sun, and now suddenly she had been taken to a world of muted shades and misty light and silences. She thought of James. If only she could see him, then all this would be bearable; he would be like the sun, his presence dispelling the cold, the damp air, the pervading grey.

  She took a piece of paper and wrote on it. I love James. I love James. I said that I hated him, but that’s not true. I said I hated him because I love him so much. I love him and have always loved him. Always. The writing of these words gave her a curious feeling of relief. It was as if she had made a confession to herself – admitting something that she had been afraid to admit but that, now acknowledged, was made much easier to bear, as a secret when shared with another is deprived of its power to trouble or to shame.

  17

  A pattern became established. Although there was talk of their making trips to Cayman, a reason was always found as to why it would not work. David would be away on business, or there were workmen renovating the house, or there had been an invitation to spend a few weeks in France and they could not turn this down without giving offence.

  “We’re never going to go back, are we?” Clover said to her mother. “And you don’t want to, do you?”

  “I’d love to, darling. And we will – some day. It’s just that there’s so much going on here, and Daddy is in the UK so often that it makes more sense for us all to be together in Scotland, or even in France. It really does.”

  “I want to go back to George Town. It’s not the same here or in France. I want to see our house again. I want to swim at Smith’s Cove. I want to do the things we used to do.”

  “All in good time. We’ll go some day.”

  “Billy’s even forgetting what it was like. He thinks he’s Scottish now.”

  “Well he is, in a way. As are you. Half of you.”

  But in the year she turned sixteen, they went to Cayman for a month, a week being added to the three-week break the school allowed over Christmas. Amanda told Clover of the trip at the beginning of October, and the intervening months were spent in a state of eager anticipation. Three years had elapsed since they had left George Town, during which time she had settled into and accepted her new existence. There was no shortage of new friends – Strathearn was a friendly school and strong bonds were formed with her new classmates. There were boys she liked, one in particular – a studious boy from Glasgow whose passion was ornithology. He painted birds and had a collection of feathers and bird eggs. He seemed a lonely boy, and they slipped into a comfortable friendship that was, from her point of view, a long way off romance. He sent her a Valentine card one year, slipped unseen into her French dictionary, and although it was anonymous she could tell it was from him because it had a picture of a bird perching on a red heart, and he was the only boy in the school who would have chosen a card like that. She was flattered, but these cards were not something to become excited about. There was only one Valentine card that she really wanted to receive and of course it never came.

  David sent her a message. “I can’t wait to have you all back home,” he wrote. “You and Billy and Mummy; we’ll have a great time together. And you’ll be able to catch up with all your old friends, which I expect you’re really looking forward to. Counting the days now!”

  She wrote back to him: “I know that it’s soon now because the dreams I’m having are all back in Cayman – it’s as if I was already there. I think this is a sign, don’t you?”

  He replied: “Of course it is.”

  The days before they left passed slowly. She made a list of things she would need to take – swimming costume, sunblock, clothes for parties. They were going to what had remained a family home in spite of her parents’ separation, but she knew that everything that she had left there would be the possessions of childhood and nothing would fit her any more.

  “Your room’s still here,” her father had written. “And it’s exactly the same as it always was.”

  Yes, she thought; but I’m not the same. And that led he
r to wonder whether James would have changed. She had looked at his Facebook page, cautiously, as if trespassing, but he did not seem to bother very much with it and there were only a few out-of-date photographs. She wondered what he would look like now; it was only three years and people did not change all that much in three years; or did they? He had still been a boy when she had seen him last, and now, at sixteen, he could look quite different. Boys changed; they became thicker and coarser. The fact that they had to shave changed everything about their faces, it seemed to her; or so it seemed with the boys at school. Some of them did not use electric razors and came to class in the morning with cuts on their chin or on their neck; she shivered at that; she hated to think of how people dragged razors across their skin that could so easily slip and slice into it and … It did not bear thinking about.

  She could not imagine James doing that. His skin was smooth, and like the colour of light honey, as he tanned so easily; that was how she remembered him, anyway. She was careful about the sun because with her colouring her skin could turn red and itch. She closed her eyes. In a day or two she would be seeing him, talking to him, and everything would go back to the way it was when it had just been the two of them; before Ted started to get him involved in things that excluded her; before something happened between her mother and his and he started talking about seeing her less. They would go back to that time. That would happen; she was sure of it.

  They caught a plane from Edinburgh to London, and then boarded the flight to Grand Cayman via Nassau. On the ground in the Bahamas, when all the Cayman passengers had to stay on board, she looked out of the window into the Caribbean glare, watching a man driving a small airport truck, a shepherd of great jets, fussing about on some errand opaque to others. The cleaners came on in a bustle of energy, removing the detritus left by the passengers who had disembarked in Nassau; she heard the patois of their conversation and found that she understood; she had not heard it for a long time, but she understood it, and realised that this was the language of home. She wanted to join in, but did not, as the cleaners looked straight through the passengers, who were simply not there for them; they were too rich, too alien. She wanted to say something that would tell them that this did not apply to her; that she was Caymanian and she knew what it was like. But she did not.

  She turned to her mother in the seat beside her.

  “Are you looking forward to getting there?”

  Amanda smiled. “Of course.”

  “To seeing Daddy?”

  “What?”

  “Looking forward to seeing Daddy?”

  “Of course I am.”

  She was silent. “Can’t you get together again?”

  Amanda reached out and took her hand. “Sometimes these things happen. People find it easier to live apart.”

  “Because they don’t like each other any more?”

  Amanda hesitated. “Sometimes it’s like that. But that’s not really what it’s like between Daddy and me. Not really.”

  Clover took her hand away. “I wish you would. I just wish you would.”

  Amanda’s gaze moved to the window. A young man was driving away a refuelling truck, describing an arc across the shimmering concrete; another, wearing earmuffs against the whine of the engines, was signalling to their pilot, looking up at the cockpit as he did so. The cleaners had vanished as quickly as they came, dragging behind them the bags of litter like sacks of loot.

  “Would you like me to try?”

  Amanda was not sure why she said this; it had not occurred to her that the subject would come up, and she had not intended to raise it, but now she had asked her daughter whether she would like her to mend her relationship with David and Clover was going to say yes.

  “Please try.”

  “I will.” Again the words had come out without being planned, like an off-hand agreement to do something minor. But this was not minor.

  “Good.”

  Beside Clover, Billy struggled with sleep; he had stayed awake the entire previous night – out of excitement – and now it was catching up with him. Clover tucked him up in his airline blanket; the plane’s ventilation system breathed cool air upon her; she felt a welling of joy: they were going home; her mother and father would be together again, which is what she had always wanted; things lost were to be returned to her, made safe, secured.

  Amanda could tell that David was nervous. He had a way of speaking when he was unsure of himself – a clipped, guarded form of speech that she had noticed before and that she had put down to the tightening of muscles that went with insecurity. It was the vocal equivalent, she thought, of sweaty palms or a thumping heart.

  They had seen him on the observation terrace – standing slightly apart from a family group of Jamaicans excited at an imminent reunion. The Jamaicans waved madly, flourishing tiny Jamaican national flags, the children issuing whoops of delight; David stood stiffly, but waved enthusiastically to the children when he saw them.

  “There he is!” shouted Billy. “See him, Ma? See him?”

  She raised her eyes against the glare. It was early evening and the light was gentler, but it was so much brighter than in Scotland. She had forgotten just how strong it could be, this Caribbean light; how it could penetrate. Scotland, with its attenuated light, soft at the edges, allowed one to hide; to conceal, if one wanted to do so; to live in ambiguity.

  She felt the warm air on her skin, and shivered. The touch of the air was what had struck her most forcibly all those years ago when she had first come here. She used to go out at night, out from the air-conditioned cocoon of their bedroom, and stand in the darkness with the night air about her like a mantle. The air clothed you here. It was like swimming. It was like that.

  They moved through immigration quickly. In the baggage hall, the luggage carousel seemed tiny – a toy so small that it could have been operated by clockwork. It was silent when they went through, but about ten minutes later burst into life and started to bring suitcases. Theirs were out early, and placed on a cart that Billy had retrieved. She led them through the customs area and into the hall where David, having come down from the observation deck, was now standing. Billy ran forward and embraced his father, who lifted him up briefly before turning to Clover and kissing her on both cheeks. Then he turned to his wife.

  The nervous voice: “You made it.”

  She nodded. “Yes. Here we are.”

  He took a hesitant step towards her. “Thanks. Thank you so much.”

  She was not sure what she had expected, but somehow she had not imagined that he would thank her.

  “Margaret wanted to come,” he continued. “But she couldn’t.”

  “Something on at the church?”

  He laughed, but his voice still sounded strained. “How did you guess?”

  “Things don’t change,” she said. And she thought: but they do.

  In the car he seemed to relax. Billy, delighted to discover that he recognised everything, revelled in pointing out landmarks. “There’s that tower – that radio thing. See, I remember. And there’s that place that sells fishing stuff. Remember that? Remember, we went there once?”

  David said, “Of course I remember.” Then he added, “You’re talking like a Scotsman, Billy.”

  “I’m not. I talk the same as everybody else.”

  “And everybody else around you is Scottish these days.”

  “Maybe.”

  And from Clover: “He talks too much, don’t you, Billy?”

  They swerved to avoid a car that had failed to signal.

  “Home,” Amanda muttered.

  Clover would have stayed up, but she too was tired and was in bed by half past eight. Billy had managed a swim before he had fallen asleep at the table, and was helped to bed by his father. David had been tactful and had asked Margaret to prepare a separate room for Amanda at the back of the house. “You’ll be all right there?” he had asked. “Margaret went out of her way to make things comfortable.”

  In the Ca
ribbean winter, air conditioning was unnecessary, but Margaret had left it on at high pitch, making the room feel like a walk-in fridge. David had gestured to the thermostat and rolled his eyes. She said: “Yes. Down. If you’ve lived without it for years …”

  “In Scotland? I suppose so.”

  She shook her head. “No, that’s not what I meant. I meant Margaret. In Jamaica they wouldn’t have had it – not at home. It would have been an impossible luxury – something dreamed of.”

  “And then you get it …”

  “And you think you’ve arrived in heaven.”

  He smiled at her. “It’s the same with food. I was reading somewhere or other …”

  “The Economist.”

  He laughed. “I do read other things. Occasionally.”

  She bit her tongue. She did not want to start off on the wrong foot. “Of course. Sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  He had not taken offence. “It probably was in The Economist. Anyway, it was about average weight in Germany. It goes up and down, apparently – just like everywhere else. But what they were saying was that in the post-war years, once their economic miracle got going, they became heavier and heavier, because they remembered when they did not have enough to eat and made up for it.”

  “Pigging out. Insecurity does that.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “I’ve prepared something for dinner, if you’ve got an appetite … They keep feeding you on planes. I suppose it keeps you busy and stops people asking for things all the time.”

  She was hungry; she had not eaten much on the plane.

  “I’m quite the cook these days,” he said. “Not that I’m boasting. It’s just that necessity is the mother of invention.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He smiled. “Oh, I don’t say that out of self-pity. I actually rather like it. If you look in the kitchen you’ll see all my books. Delia. Jamie. All those people.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  He moved towards the door. “Come through when you’ve unpacked. I only have to heat it up.”