Flying Under Bridges (14 page)

Inge
parked in the gravel drive and led the way to the front door. Inside, the
rather smart hall had a sweeping oak staircase with the large sitting room off
to the right and dining room to the left. At the back was her father’s old
study, the kitchen and a large conservatory. It was here that Inge seated Kate
so that she could look out over the back garden with its neat lawn, the row of
shaded apple trees and the small summer house at the far end. It was peaceful.
The air was good. It was a good decision.

The
removal men had lost none of their fabulous humour on the road down. They
arrived with jokes, demands for tea and a surprising amount of the furniture chipped
or scratched. Inge went into organisation mode for the next few hours. She was
just bringing down a box marked ‘kitchen’ from the bathroom when a woman
appeared at her front door. Everything about her was fantastically fit apart
from her vowels. She was Australian and she whined. She could have whined for
her country.

‘Inge,
good day, what a delight, what a complete delight. Pe Pe Cameron from the
tennis club.’ Pe Pe stuck out her hand so that Inge had no choice but to put
down the box and take it from her.

They
shook firmly as two fit people feel obliged to do.

‘I know
you’re just settling but the nice boys you have helping you said you were in
here and I wanted to be the first—’

Inge
let Pe Pe’s hand go and smiled. ‘You’re very kind.’

Pe Pe
frowned. ‘Kind?’

‘To
welcome me.’

‘Oh
yeah, that. No, really, I know everyone is going to swamp you with invitations,
but I wanted to be the first. Now, this weekend my husband William and I…
William Cameron? Cameron Builders? If you ever need anything doing …’ Pe Pe
glanced around the hall with a look that suggested everything needed doing, and
quickly,’… he’d be delighted. We are holding a little soirée at our home for
the benefit of the tennis club kids’ programme and we would be just thrilled
if you would come and draw the raffle. Now, it’s at seven on Saturday and—’

‘That
is so kind,’ Inge interrupted and smiled. Pe Pe smiled. It was kind. They were
two very smiley women. ‘But I’ve only just moved in and—’

‘It’s
for the kids. For charity.’

‘Right.’

‘At seven
on Saturday. You can’t miss the house. Biggest one at the end of Church Hill
Road.’

‘Right.’

They
both smiled again. Pe Pe gave her a look that showed a definite desire to be
shown around. She smiled once more at her famous new neighbour and made one
last enquiry. ‘Will you be bringing anyone?’

‘No.
No. No.’

Finally
Pe Pe left with more smiling and firm handshaking. Inge shut the door and leant
her head against it. Why didn’t she just say no? Oh God, this was just the
beginning. People coming to her door, talking to her, not leaving her alone.

‘Giving
the door a header, eh, Inge?’ The removal men wandered, seeming to go nowhere,
carrying nothing. ‘On the head, to me, to me.’ They played mock football down
the hall and disappeared into the kitchen to put the kettle on. Inge sighed
and went Out to the conservatory to see if Kate was all right.

Kate
was more than all right. She was laughing. A young lad was sitting with her and
they were both laughing. He was a handsome fellow. Maybe fifteen, with the nice,
lean muscles of a young man to be. Kate looked up and held out her hand to
beckon Inge in.

‘Inge,
this is Patrick. Patrick is now in our employ so you must both be nice to each
other. He is going to mow our lawn for us. Patrick, this is Inge.’

Patrick
had been leaning against a small bookcase but he got up and stood stiffly to a
kind of attention as Inge approached. Inge put out her hand. He carefully wiped
his on his shorts and then they shook hands gravely as new business colleagues
ought to.

‘I
heard you were moving in and I thought maybe you could do with someone. We’ve
got the house at the back. There’s a hole in the fence and … We’ve just moved
here ourselves and Dad says good help is hard to find when you’re new, so I
thought…’

So it
was decided. Patrick would come once a week to do the lawn and once a week to
help Kate with any other odd jobs she might think of. Patrick went back through
the fence and Inge and Kate sat and looked at their new garden. While they sat
watching the back, someone else was watching the front. Beyond their white gate
a silver Volkswagen Golf sat idling.

Chapter
Nine

The biggest thing
happening in Edenford that summer (apart from the much anticipated Edenford
Players Production of
Fiddler on the Roof)
was the building of the town
bypass. It had caused quite a controversy in the town. There were other things
happening that could have roused the blood of the town —
44
million
people in Africa with Aids, Romanian refugees no one wanted, children’s
hospices closing due to lack of funding, the oldest golf club’s absolutely
desperate need for new mats on the driving range — but the bypass was the big
news. Adam had led the campaign and took personal pride in every inch of road
as it was laid. Eve was less thrilled. They did need somewhere for all the
traffic, but the route chosen was through the Bluebell Wood at the back of the
town.

If she
had been asked, Eve, of course, would have said that she didn’t want the
four-lane highway to go through the woods. What she might not have said was
that she quite wanted it to go right through the town. Through the town and
right down the middle of her house. Then she and Adam would have had to move,
do something new, but Adam had never asked her what she thought so she had
never said. The construction workers began clearing the fields in early spring,
cutting great swathes of space through the grass and woodlands. Eve used to go
every day to watch. Watch the destruction.

The
bypass was what had brought Tom home. Adam and Eve’s son Tom was now
twenty-one. He was Eve’s pride and Adam’s disappointment. Tom’s favourite
childhood haunt had always been Bluebell Wood up in the hills behind the town.
The hours he and Eve had walked there, built bivouacs and sat munching picnics.
Then he had grown up and gone off to save the world. Never the academic, Tom
preferred the outdoor life in one endangered site after another. He was a
warrior for the world. When Edenford town council passed plans for the road,
Tom had returned. He had come home and set up his tent. Now he lived in the
middle of what should have been a dual carriageway. Work had come to a halt
and the town was divided about what was happening. All Adam knew was that his
son and his friends were stopping progress and Adam, local councillor and
horrified father, was appalled.

Eve
visited her son every day. She brought him and his friends food and clean
clothes. She told Adam she did it because she was Tom’s mother. She told him it
was nothing to do with the bypass. Eve stayed out of the politics.

Apart
from visiting Tom in the woods and her mother at the hospital, life proceeded
as normal for Eve. It was her silver wedding anniversary the week Inge and her
mother arrived back in her life. Adam and Eve, the couple Mrs Cameron had never
wanted to see united, had lasted twenty-five years. Eve made a special meal
with candles and matching napkins. She thought it looked lovely. She thought it
would be what she would have every day if she were rich. She also bought a
special perfume called Zen — a scent which expresses the quiet, purity and
tradition of Japanese beauty.

It made
Adam cough and they didn’t last long — the candles. Eve had made Mexican
fajitas and Adam said if he had to have food that needed rolling up then they
would have to put the main light back on. Adam was very excited, which was
unusual.

‘Imagine,
Eve, several thousand acres of shopping space.’ Cameron Builders was building a
new shopping mall just outside town. It was going to be a huge development. ‘Imagine
the possibilities for insurance in a building like that. There is no end to the
things that might go wrong.’ Adam sucked on his teeth and removed a small piece
of grilled red pepper with his fingers. He wiped it on one of Eve’s nice blue
napkins. ‘Mark my words. This will put Edenford on the map and look at this.’
He whipped out a pure white invitation with a gold border. It read:

To
Mr and Mrs Adam Marshall.

Cameron
Developments invites you to the

Annual
Eden ford Tennis Club Night For Kids

June
2. Cocktails: 6—8 pm

It was
lovely stationery. Adam got up and leant the invitation carefully against the
soup tureen on the Welsh dresser.

‘We’re
a shoe in. Your brother is in charge of the whole project. I will casually
bring it up at the tennis club do and he will, casually, say to me — “Adam,
this project will founder if we don’t have the right kind of underwriting.” We
are talking thousands, hundreds of thousands.’

Adam
sat mentally counting the money he was going to make. Shirley had gone up to
the hospital to see her grandmother so that the anniversary couple could go out
after supper. They didn’t go far. Just up to the driving range where Eve had a
tonic water and watched Adam hit a bucket of balls. It was not what she had
imagined when they were young. Adam was having trouble with his swing. It was
his little ‘injury’ that was the problem. They didn’t really discuss it. He had
taken to walking around with his hand permanently cupped in front of his
genitals. Eve said if it was that bad he probably needed to see a specialist
but he didn’t want to talk about it.

What
with her mother’s night things, which the hospital seemed disinclined to wash,
Tom’s clothes from his outdoor life, Adam’s white shirts and her own ‘problem’,
Eve now found she had a lot more laundry than before. It was boring sitting
watching it go round at home so she took to going to the Laundromat to have a
little break. Of course she had her own machine but more and more, for no
reason, she felt she couldn’t breathe in the house. Her nice house with the
mushroom tiles.

Sometimes
she would take a book with her. Mr Wilton, from the second-hand bookshop, gave
her boxes of books for the charity shop. They could never sell any of them. It
was all odds and sods with pages torn out. Things he couldn’t sell and couldn’t
be bothered to get rid of —
The Female Eunuch,
the Bible with the first
bit missing. Eve would take the cardboard box with her and sit reading while
the wash went round. It didn’t matter what the book was. She was constantly
amazed by how much she didn’t know about everything. She would sit there
reading and whenever she looked up she could see herself in the window — a
rather plain woman with two loads of whites and one of coloureds.

Eve
knew she had never been good-looking. That the nearest she had ever got to
being a
femme fatale
was being involved in a really serious car crash.
She felt a female failure. She had never stopped a heart beating with her
beauty. She doubted she could stop an egg beating and it wasn’t just the new
hairs on-her chin. It was a sad fact for a woman to face that she would never
inspire a single love poem.

Her one
adventure with romance had been Adam and then they got married and that was the
end of the story. Now the rules were clear. He didn’t need to romance her but
she had to work to keep him. All the magazines said so. Every wife was a devil
for having cellulite, she must not ‘let herself go’, she must think of witty
and appropriate conversation to have over well-prepared meals, and he might
smell of sweat and labour but she might not. Not ever. She must succumb to
perfumes, balms and bath oils, colours for her hair, her lips, her cheeks and
her eyes. Above all, she must not look down in the bath and find that her
stomach refused to sink below the water.

Eve
never told Adam she was going to the launderette. It would have disturbed him.
She knew he liked to think he knew where she was at any given moment. He liked
to think of her at home, waiting, preparing, so Eve went to the launderette at
weekends when he played golf. Adam needed his golf. He worked so hard all week
and it gave Eve time to catch up on the jobs she hadn’t had time for. And then
there was the money. The launderette was a waste of money. She had a perfectly
good washing-machine. Eve had to secrete the launderette money from the
Omnipotent Administrator who kept all household accounts. Adam was a stickler
for accounts. He knew what he had spent on bath sealant in 1976.

Eve
nearly ran into Pe Pe on her way to do the wash and had to duck into the Post
Office while she went past. She felt like a spy clutching her bag of evidence,
and then Mrs Hoddle from the charity shop was in there so Eve had to buy some
airmail paper. She didn’t need it. She didn’t know anyone abroad to write to.
Pe Pe might not have said anything but she’d definitely have told William and
William would have told Adam and then Eve knew she would never hear the end of
it. It was Adam who had chosen the washing-machine for Eve. Adam knew about
these things. He had a lifetime’s subscription to that consumer magazine
Which,
so Eve was always kept in the know about what was a ‘good buy’. It was a ‘sensible
piece of insurance’ never to buy anything large without checking with Adam’s
back issues first. Eve sometimes longed to buy something and make a hideous
mistake, but she didn’t have the nerve.