The Forever Girl

  He laughed. “I saw that you were having a lesson. I’m beyond all professional help, I’m afraid.”

  He looked at her, as if expecting her to comment on his tennis – she had never seen him play – but she said nothing. He waited, before continuing: “I thought you were never going to return.”

  She looked askance. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “I just made the assumption.”

  “Well, you were wrong. Here I am.”

  He nodded. “You have the kids with you – so I assume it won’t be for long.”

  She confirmed it would be for the duration of the school holidays and then she would return to Scotland, but only for a short while. “I’m coming back more permanently. Billy’s going back to the Prep.”

  She saw that he seemed pleased to hear this news, and she became guarded. “I don’t think that we should …”

  He interrupted her. “Should what? Talk to one another?”

  “I didn’t say that. But I don’t think it would be wise, after what happened, for us to be seen together too often.”

  Again he queried her. “What counts as too often in this place? Once a month? Once a year?”

  She spelled it out. “Too often means ever. I suppose I’d say that we shouldn’t really see one another at all.”

  He raised his voice in protest, causing her to glance anxiously down the veranda; they were still by themselves. There was a note of frustration in his voice now. “I don’t see what harm there is in two friends occasionally seeing one another.”

  “George,” she said, “there’s such a thing as disingenuousness. We can’t pretend that we didn’t, well, fall for one another.”

  He looked away, as if it was painful to be reminded.

  “We can’t pretend,” she went on, “that people don’t know that our marriages suffered as a result: you know what this place is like for gossip. We happen to live in a village of married couples. There are the keepers, with all their money, and the kept – and I’m one of the kept – and there are lots of us; it’s just the way it is.”

  He interrupted her. “I’ve never heard it described that way …”

  She ignored the interruption. “My marriage more or less came to an end and now I’m rekindling it. I don’t want to go through a separation again – or, worse still, a divorce.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. You’ve got a mind. You’re not one of these women with nothing in their heads but thoughts of their next cocktail party or shopping trip to Miami. You’re not that at all.”

  “Maybe not, but the reality of the situation is that I have no career. David and I can get on. We have children, and one of them is still quite young.”

  He looked at her with a mixture of disappointment and pity. “So you’ve made your bed and you’re going to lie in it.”

  “You could put it that way. I’m being realistic.”

  He stared at her mutely.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was very anxious about meeting you again. And now I’ve upset you.”

  He looked away. “You’re right, though. We can’t, can we?”

  “Not really.”

  “It would have been …”

  “It would have been good for both of us, yes, but I don’t think we can.”

  He took a step away, and lowered his voice. “Let me tell you something,” he said. “For the last three years, there has not been a day – not a single day – in which I haven’t thought about you. Not necessarily for long periods, but even just for a few seconds – a fleeting thought, you’d call it – in which you have been there, in my mind, and I have let you in, so to speak.”

  She wanted to say: me too, me too. But she remained silent. Do not tell your love.

  “Sometimes,” he went on, “when I’ve been driving to work in the car, doing something as mundane as that, I’ve thought of you and I’ve whispered your name, or called it out, even, as if in agony. Why should I do this? Why should you have got under my skin to such an extent that I behave in a way that my psychiatric colleagues would find interesting? In fact – and this may amuse you – I mentioned this – disguising details, of course – to a psychiatrist friend and he said to me, ‘Oh, that’s not all that unusual; that’s how agony is released, by shouting out the name of the person or the thing that haunts the mind.’ And he said, too, that it was a way in which we tempt Fate to bring down upon us the thing that we dread could happen – the disclosure of our secret. Shout it out and control it that way. That’s how he explained it.

  “But I didn’t really care about the explanation; what moved me was the fact that I had found something that I didn’t think could exist. And that thing – the thing that I found – was very simple. Most people know all about it and have never really doubted it because their lives have been such as to give them a glimpse of this thing that they were not sure about, which is love, of course: the sheer fact of feeling love for another, of finding the one person – the only person, it seems – who makes the world make sense. It’s like discovering the map that you’ve been looking for all your life and have never been able to find – the map that makes sense of the journey.”

  “George …”

  “No, I don’t expect you to love me back, because that doesn’t always happen, does it? So I accept that this is the way it is to be.”

  “Can’t we just somehow get over this? I wanted …”

  He brushed this aside; it seemed that he was determined to finish what he wanted to say. “I shall continue to do what I’m doing, which is to be a doctor sorting out people’s minor medical problems most of the time and every so often, I suppose, being able to do something more important for them. And I shall do this in a place that I don’t really like – a place that I think has a tainted notion at its heart – that money should be able to be stashed away without doing anything for the people who actually do the work to produce it. I’m stuck with all that because even in places like this there are poor people and people who are treated badly and who need help with their varicose veins and digestive problems and their conjunctivitis and, yes, their deaths. And I’ll do that because I’m the one who happens to be around to do it. I’m not being Albert Schweitzer or anything like that, I’m just doing a job that I happen to do. And I won’t mind too much that I can’t talk to anybody about this – other than you – because I can’t find the words with which to open up to them. So, fine, I give you your freedom from this thing that happened to us and I promise you I’ll respect what you have to do, which is what you’ve told me.”

  He stopped, and she reached out to him instinctively. “George …”

  She withdrew her hand. A man and two women had appeared at the end of the veranda and had tossed their racquets down on a table. One of the women had looked in their direction and had seen her reach out to George. She was sure of that.

  21

  Ted had said to Clover: “Listen, if you feel awkward about going to the party, then why not come with me? Why not?”

  He did not wait for her to reply. “We could walk,” he said. “It’s not far. I’ll swing by and collect you.”

  She was at pains to say that she felt no awkwardness, although she was not sure that he believed her. Ted had a way of looking at you when you spoke as if he were weighing up the truthfulness or otherwise of what you said; Ted could tell. “I don’t mind,” she said, looking away to avoid his scrutiny. “It’s just that I’m not sure that I want to go.”

  “But everybody …”

  She chided him gently. “You don’t have to do something just because everybody else is doing it.”

  He grinned at her. “You do, actually.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He had written an essay on conformity, and he told her about it. “I got an A for it, as it happens.”

  “Clever you.”

  “Well, I got quite a lot of it from the web, although I put it in my own words. There’s this fantastic site about personal psychology – it’s ca
lled something like The Authentic You. It says that at some stages in your life you really want to conform – you really don’t want to stand out. And you know when that is?”

  She shrugged.

  “Now. Right now. The stage we’re at. Where we are.”

  “That is – if we’re at the same stage.”

  He looked at her blankly. “We’re both sixteen.”

  She pointed out, half-playfully, that boys and girls developed at different rates. “Sorry about that, Ted, but we’re more mature.”

  “That’s what you think.”

  “No, it’s what psychologists think.”

  He was not convinced. “You wish.”

  “It’s true.”

  He returned to the subject of the party. “Please come. James will be pleased.”

  She looked away. “You said something about a Canadian girl.”

  “Laura.”

  She had remembered the name, but had not wanted to utter it. “Her. You said that she and James are seeing one another.”

  “Yes, they are. But you know something?”

  Her heart gave a leap; perhaps he had heard that it was over. “What?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to last.”

  She asked him why he should think this, and he replied that he thought that James was bored. “He may like her, but …”

  “But what?”

  “She looks at him all the time, you see. I think I told you. Imagine what it must be like to have somebody looking at you all the time. Just think of it.”

  Her voice was even. “He probably feels … probably feels guilty, or something. You shouldn’t look at people.”

  “Not at all.”

  She hesitated. “Well, maybe a bit. Now and then.”

  He thought that everybody looked at people. “You can’t go around looking away all the time. How can you?”

  “You have to be careful not to become obsessed.”

  He was staring at her. “Yes,” he said, thoughtfully. “You have to.” And then he continued, “Please say you’ll come with me. You can’t have anything better to do round here. Come on.”

  “If you really want me to.”

  “I do, Clove. I do.”

  She wanted to go, of course, and did not want to go. She thought of her mother’s advice – if it really had been advice, and if it had actually been given: it was not pressed upon her, as advice usually is – rather it was trailed before her, hinted at. You could make yourself unhappy so easily by wanting something that you might never get; that unhappiness could be avoided by the simple expedient of thinking of something – or somebody – else. Of course that was right. She had seen it a hundred times in the magazines that she and her friends read at school: the problem pages spelled it out with wearying familiarity: don’t allow a boy to ruin your life; don’t waste your time; move on. They were right, of course – she knew that – but it was easier said than done. She should ignore James’s party, but Ted wanted her to go with him and she could at least oblige him. Ted liked James; he was perhaps a little bit infatuated by him; could boys be infatuated with other boys, and not be gay? She had talked about that with a friend at school who told her that her brother constantly talked about another boy. “He drives me mad,” she said. “He thinks this boy is just great. The great Anthony: Anthony the Great. He tells me everything Ant says. It’s all the usual stuff, but he still tells me. I think he wants to be him. That’s what it is, I think. He wants to be him. Go and be Ant, I said to him, and he just stared at me.”

  Their conversation had come back to her later. It was not so much the question of how boys felt about each other that interested her – she thought that for the most part boys were indifferent to other boys; they liked to impress each other, but there was not much more to it than that. What fired her imagination was the thought that people might want to be somebody else. Was that what happened when you fell for somebody? Did you really want to be him, or did you want to be yourself beside him? She tried to imagine what it would be like to be James. She closed her eyes and then opened them as if she were inside James, looking out at the world with his eyes. It did not work.

  No, she yearned for something quite different from what she imagined James wanted. She wanted to be with him; she wanted to listen to him because everything he said was somehow … What was it? Was it anything different from what Ted or any other boy said? Yes, it was. It was different, but she could not decide why this should be so. James was funny. James looked at you in a particular way when he spoke and that made the words seem different. James was beautiful. James made everything seem special, as if the sheer fact of his presence cast a light upon what was around him that was simply not there in his absence. Margaret used to say that about Jesus. She said: The Lord makes everything shine, you know. He makes it so different that you scratch your head and ask: is this the same place? Is this Jamaica? Is this Cayman? Or is it the Lord’s special place? Margaret had religion, and people who had religion said things like that; sang them too. But leaving Jesus and the Lord to one side, she wondered how one person, a boy, could do this? How could one person transform the world about him?

  She had not allowed herself to use the word – at least about herself and James. But now she did. Now she thought she was approaching the heart of what was happening; she had fallen in love with him. This was the mysterious thing that people talked about so much, that was in almost every line of every song, written into the digital code of every mp3. Love. This is what it was. It was like a wave. It was like being covered by a great wave coming in off the open ocean; a wave that rolled you over and over, making you tumble helplessly in its force, rendering you unable to do anything about it because it was so strong. That was what it was like, and it was happening to her. She could admit that now. She loved James.

  And what can you do if you are in love? What are you meant to do? Do you throw yourself at the person you love? Do you tell him how you feel and place yourself at his mercy? Or do you wait until the moment comes when what you are experiencing within yourself is somehow reciprocated and the feelings of two people coincide? The problem with that was that if she did nothing, James would be lost to her, and then somebody else – some girl from Vancouver – would step in and take him away. Lure him away with sex. Give him what every boy wanted and thought about all the time, if you could believe what you read about that.

  Ted had hinted – in a smutty, childish way – that this is what had already happened. She could not bear to think about that. How dare she even touch him: slut. Even if they only kissed, that was too much. Her lips all over him, parted like the lips of a … mollusc. Mollusc. Her saliva in a little trail on his chin. Her teeth. Her disgusting, greedy lips. Her busy hands. Now she felt a new emotion: hatred. She hated that Canadian girl. She wished that she would die. No, she did not; you could not think that. She was a girl, just like she was. She had parents who probably loved her and would be upset if she were dead. You could not think that. Or just a little bit dead – dead for a short time – and then discovered still to be alive. No. Injured somehow. Run over, perhaps; not too badly, but enough to put her legs in plaster. No, that was cruel; you should not think cruel things about real people, and I will not. I will not. Sent away then. Sent back to Vancouver for doing something illegal in Cayman. Marched out of the country and being seen at the airport handcuffed to a fat Caymanian policewoman who ate too much unhealthy food and who wanted to get home to eat more fried conch and rum cake. Parents crying and waving goodbye; their only daughter disgraced on the front page of every newspaper; We had no idea she was such a slut, they said to the press. The Cayman Airways plane with its piratical, one-legged turtle painted on it waiting for her; people staring out of the windows and pointing at her. Goodbye. Goodbye. The sound of the plane’s engine and its blast blowing leaves and sand back across the runway like one of those high winds. Back to a school in Vancouver – a girls’ school – where there would be no boys to ogle or seduce. A school run by nun
s, perhaps – if there were any of those left; they had them in Quebec still and they would come and scold you in French. A school where the dormitories were actually small cells with barred windows out of which, if you stood on a chair and peered, you might just see boys in the distance, all of them unaware of you; far away, out of reach.

  She stopped herself. It was not in her nature to be unkind; in fact, she was naturally quite the opposite. I am an ordinary girl, with ordinary feelings; that’s all. She would not think such thoughts; she would make a real effort to like Laura, to see her better points … her hair, for instance. She stopped herself again.

  In a moment of honesty, she said to Ted as they walked together up the short tarmac drive of the Collins house: “I feel nervous, Ted. Sorry, but I do.”

  Ted turned to look at her. He smiled. “Of course you do, Clove. We feel nervous about people we like a lot. We feel worried in case they won’t like us as much as we like them.” He paused. “I feel nervous too.”

  It occurred to her that it was not just for her sake that he had suggested she accompany him to the party. “Because …” she began.

  He hesitated. “Same as you,” he muttered.

  She reached out to him, but said nothing.

  “I spoke to somebody once. He said I’d grow out of it. That’s what he actually said.”

  “Maybe you will.”

  He laughed. “Nobody says that any more. But at least with James I know it’s no use. I can be his friend – that’s all.”

  She felt a rush of sympathy for the boy beside her. “Isn’t that enough?”

  “It’ll have to be.” He paused. “But don’t think I’m unhappy – or all that unhappy. I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  “So let’s go in.”

  James answered the door. She looked up and saw him; then she glanced at Ted. He was smiling, as was James.

  “Clove?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ages …” He stepped forward, grinning, and put his arms about her. “Ages and ages.”