Throughout the meal, James kept his eyes glued on me so firmly that I felt uncomfortable. Afterwards we went into the vast, chintzy living room, where he sat on the arm of my chair, towering over me. I felt as if I’d been stamped with his personal seal of ownership.
Jonathan gave his rather unfortunate high-pitched giggle and said to James, “Understand you’ve given up flirting with left-wing politics, brother-in-law. Are you still marching with those wretched dockers?”
“I haven’t for some time,’James admitted.
So far, Mr Atherton hadn’t opened his mouth except to eat; his eyes were always far away, thinking of other things, probably business. He spoke now, with contempt in his voice: “Lazy buggers, don’t know which side their bread’s buttered. It’s about time they got back to work.”
I had no idea if I was pro-establishment or anti, or if my politics were left or right, I only knew it made my blood boil to hear the dockers being called “lazy buggers” by a man smoking a fat cigar who owned three garages. I wished I knew some hard facts and figures that I could quote in the dockers” defence, but I knew nothing about the dispute other than it was happening. I jumped up.
“Excuse me.”
In the eau-di-Nil tiled bathroom with its matching carpet and fittings, I stared unseeingly at my reflection in the mirror and realised, with a sense of overwhelming relief, that I was wasting James’s time. I felt alien from his family. If I loved him, I would have taken them on and done my best, but I didn’t love him and never would, I’m glad I came,” I whispered. “It’s helped me make up my mind once and for all.”
When I came out, James was hovering on the landing, and I felt a stab of anger. I wanted to say something coarse and brutal: “Would you like to have come in to watch me pee?”
He stared at me and I felt repelled by the abject adoration in his eyes. “You look lovely in that dress,” he said huskily. “You suit red.” He tried to take me in his arms, nuzzle my hair, but I pushed him away. He patted his pocket, “I’ve a present for you, a ring.”
“I don’t want it!”
“But, Millie . . . ” His lips twisted in an arc of misery. “Is it this other chap you’ve been seeing?”
“I haven’t been seeing another chap—least I have, but he’s just a friend. There’s no one, James. No one!” I emphasised the last word, my voice unnaturally shrill, to impress upon him that I was announcing I was free—and he was free to forget me and find someone else.
We began to argue. He refused to believe I meant what I said. Anna must have heard the raised voices. She came out into the hall downstairs. “Are you two all right?” Her laugh tinkled up the stairs. “Oh, you’re just having a little domestic” She made a show of pretending to creep back into the room.
James’s eyes were glassy, his face was swollen, red. I didn’t know this man. Falling in love with me had changed him for the worse. “It can’t be over,” he insisted doggedly.
“It is, James.” I was worried that he was about to hit me.
His fists were clenching and unclenching, as if he was itching to use them and it could only be on me. Then I did something that surprised me later when I thought about it. I flung my arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “James, I’m bad for you,” I whispered urgently.
“Can’t you see? There’s something not quite right about the way you love me.” I stroked his neck. “One of these days, you’ll meet someone else who you’ll love in a quite different way, and everything will be wonderful for you both.” I pulled away. “Goodbye, darling,” I said softly.
He remained silent, his eyes no longer glassy, but full of misery and shock. I thought, I wasn’t sure, that there was also a trace of comprehension that I could be right.
I flew down the stairs, opened the door of the living room, and said breathlessly, “I’m awfully sorry, I have to go. Thank you so much for the meal. It was lovely. No, no, please don’t get up,” I implored, when Mrs Atherton began to get to her feet. “I’ll see myself out.”
It was past nine when I got back to Blundellsands. The first thing I did was ring my mother. Alison had been very quiet but not too disturbed by the strange surroundings.
“She didn’t flick her fingers, the way she does when she’s upset,” Mum said gratefully.
Relieved, I hung up my red dress carefully and ran a bath. Afterwards I watched a Woody Allen film on television, then went to bed with a book and a glass of warm milk, feeling contented and relaxed.
Just after midnight the telephone rang. I prayed it wouldn’t be James, pleading for a second chance or a third, or whatever it would be by now, but when I picked up the extension by the bed, Peter Maxwell said cheerfully, “Hi! I’ve just got in and thought I’d give you a ring. Did you have a nice day?”
“Nice and not so nice. I finished with a boyfriend. It wasn’t very pleasant.”
“The hunk from the party?”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t realise you were still seeing him. He’s definitely not your type.”
“Are you going to be the arbiter of who’s my type from now on?” I smiled at the receiver.
“It’s what friends are for. I shall always ask for your opinion on any future girlfriends.”
“It shall be given with pleasure,” I said graciously. We chatted idly, and he was about to ring off when I remembered something. “By the way, knowing it won’t be taken the wrong way and you’ll think I’m after your body or your money, would you like to come to a drinks party tomorrow afternoon?”
“Sorry, but I’m taking a group of first-years to a pantomime.
Will you be at Charmian’s on New Year’s Eve?”
I said I would, and we promised each other the first dance.
The drinks party was being held at Barry Green’s. He had casually offered an invitation to the whole office. “We’ve been having one on Boxing Day for more than thirty years. The world and his wife usually come. Any time between noon and four, you’re all welcome.”
Elliot and Darren had wrinkled their noses: a drinks party sounded much too tame. June would be away.
Oliver welcomed the idea of escaping from his kids for a few hours. “I love them, but it’s usually hell on earth at home over Christmas.” George, who always went anyway, would be there with Diana, bringing his children who were over from France. I had intended taking James, but now I would have to go alone.
The Greens’ house in Waterloo, only a mile from my flat, was semidetached and spacious, the furniture and carpets shabby and worn. The Christmas decorations looked well used, as if the same things were hung in the same place year after year. Everywhere had a comfortable, lived-in look, very different from the Athertons’
Ideal Home. By the time I got there it was already crowded. Barry’s wife, Tess, let me in. She was a pretty woman with a tumble of grey curls and a wide, smiling mouth, wearing an emerald-green jumpsuit. She took my coat and ordered me to mingle. “I’ll do the hostess bit later and we’ll have a proper talk. Right now, I’m busy with the food.”
I found Oliver and his alarmingly aggressive wife, Jennifer, waved to George, who was standing in a corner with two rather sullen teenagers, clutching his chest as if in the throes of a panic attack. There was no sign of Diana. Barry came up with a tray of drinks.
“Food’s in the kitchen, help yourselves, won’t you?”
He’d abandoned the usual bow-tie for a Paisley cravat under a canary-yellow pullover.
Over the holiday, Jennifer had been pressing Oliver remorselessly to start his own estate agency. “Then he won’t get pissed around rotten by whoever George happens to be screwing at the moment. I told him, “Millie will go in with you.” “ She gave me a painful but encouraging dig. “You would, wouldn’t you, Millie?
You could be his assistant.”
“Willingly,” I said, with a smile. Oliver groaned.
Over the next few hours, I well and truly mingled.
Several guests were estate agents, and we gravely discussed the state of the market. Was it up or down? One man gave me his card. “If you should ever think of changing your job . . . ” Barry introduced me to his children: Roger, the architect, an earnest man in jeans and an Arran sweater, Emma and Sadie, who would take the world by storm for a second time as soon as their children were old enough and they could resume their careers.
“Where’s your other son?” I asked. “Is he still abroad?”
Barry’s perfectly groomed moustache quivered slightly. “According to his mother, Sam won’t be gracing us with his presence until New Year’s Eve.”
Later, I forced myself to approach George. He eyed me appreciatively in my red dress before introducing me to his children, Annabel and Bill. “Have you had a nice holiday?” I asked them.
They both shrugged. “Okay.”
“I haven’t a clue what teenagers get up to nowadays.”
George sighed and looked harassed. “I think they’ve been rather bored.” Bill rolled his eyes to confirm that this was definitely the case.
“Why don’t you take them to the Cavern?” I suggested.
“Oh, Dad, would you?” Annabel pleaded. “The girls at school will turn green if I tell them I’ve been to the Cavern.”
“Aren’t I a bit old?” George said plaintively.
“You can just hover in the background,” I said. “By the way, where’s Diana? I thought she’d be here.”
George shrugged vaguely. “She spent Christmas at her place. I haven’t seen her in a few days.”
“Diana’s horrible!” Bill burst out. “You’ll never guess what she did. She actually drew up a timetable of things for us to do—the pantomime, McDonald’s, card games, charades, and idiotic films to watch on telly. She seemed to think we were children!”
Tactfully I wandered off. People had begun to leave.
For the first time, I was aware of being the only youngish woman without a partner, and felt conspicuous as the crowd thinned, though I told myself I shouldn’t care. I went upstairs to look for my coat. It was with a pile of others in what appeared to be Barry and Tess’s untidy bedroom. I was putting it on when Tess came in, wearing her rather impish smile. “Ah, there you are, Millie! I’ve been so rude. I always like to have a little chat with guests who’ve come for the first time, get to know them, as it were.” She sat on the bed and patted the space next to her.
“Sit down a minute.”
Under Tess’s friendly questioning, I revealed all sorts of things about myself I wouldn’t normally: about Diana, being demoted, James, and the awful tea at the Athertons’ the day before.
“Never mind, love,” Tess said comfortingly. “Things always turn out for the best in the long run, or so I’ve always found. Oh, well,” she levered herself off the bed, “I’d better go downstairs and be the good hostess. I always feel a sense of relief when it’s over, but sad too that it will be another year before I see some of our friends again. The children always found them a bit of a giggle, but they wouldn’t miss their mum and dad’s Boxing Day party.”
“Except Sam,” I reminded her.
“Ah, yes, Sam. He’s in Mexico.” I was surprised when Tess looked at me rather speculatively, then said, “Let me show you our Sam.” She opened the drawer in a bedside cupboard and took out a sheaf of newspaper cuttings.
“Barry doesn’t know I’ve kept these. He’s rather ashamed of Sam.” She handed me a cutting. “That’s him, in the Daily Express.”
A wiry young man with crew-cut hair was standing on a wall, baring his chest defiantly to the world. He held a banner aloft proclaiming, axe the tax. Several policemen were reaching up in a vain attempt to grab his feet.
“He was sentenced to three months in prison or a thousand-pound fine for that,” Tess said proudly. “Barry paid the fine and he was released, much to Sam’s disgust. They rub one another up the wrong way, yet secretly they think the world of each other.”
There was a photo of Sam at the gates of Greenham Common with his then girlfriend, several of him protesting during the miners’ strike. “He hasn’t been in court for years,” Tess said, slightly disappointed. “Our three elder children are very conformist, but Sam takes after me. I used to go on CND marches when I was a girl—Barry disapproved of that, too.”
“What’s he doing in Mexico? Has he gone to start a war?” I wasn’t sure if I approved of Sam or not, but I admired his independent spirit.
“Oh, no. He’s a record producer. He spends three or four months of the year travelling the world, taping folk songs, tribal music, that sort of thing. Then he comes home and turns them into proper recordings. He’s got a studio in the attic. Much to his dad’s amazement he’s doing very well.” Suddenly she changed the subject, rather drastically, I thought. “I expect your mum worries about you, still single at your age?”
“She does, yes.”
Tess hadn’t changed the subject, after all. “I worry terribly about Sam. He’s thirty-three and I wish he’d establish some roots, start a family, have something more worthwhile to come home to than boring old Mum and Dad.”
A woman came in to collect her coat and Tess put the cuttings away. I thanked her for a lovely time and went home.
Over the final days of the year, I felt like two different people. There was only a skeleton staff at work and I had several half-days off, during which time I stencilled flowers on the corners of the living room and cleaned the flat from top to bottom, whistling tunelessly, happy.
But when I stopped for a break, my mood would darken and I would feel restless, haunted by a sense of failure and hopelessness. There’d been a time, not long ago, when I’d considered myself the only Cameron with an aim in life and any hope of a bright, successful future, but now I was the one with nothing to look forward to. Empty years loomed ahead, a vast, yawning abyss.
Mum had got a job in an office and would start the following week. “Only making the tea, running a few errands.” She’d giggled merrily. “I’ll be the office junior.
It’s just temporary, till Alison comes.”
Trudy was gearing up for when Melanie started school in January or painting bottles for the stall she intended having every week. Should I get a hobby? I wondered. I rang Declan several times, worried that Norman would answer and whether I should engage him in conversation if he did, but there was never any reply. I badly missed Flo’s flat, where I’d been quite happy to do nothing but watch the swirling lamp and listen to music. For want of something to do, on Sunday morning, I went to Mass at the Cathedral with my mother. I felt no spiritual reawakening or miraculous re-conversion in the remarkable circular building with its brilliant blue stained-glass windows, but on the way back to Flo’s, I thought I might go again. Then something happened that I’d always dreaded.