59 Memory Lane

Julia pushes the letters out of the way to make room on the table for their afternoon tea before she bustles off to the kitchen. ‘Jam and cream on your scone, May?’ she calls.

‘Yes, please. Jam first, obviously. Is it your own?’

‘Oh, yes. The last of the blackberry jelly from last year. Don loved it.’

There’s a silence as May remembers Don’s boyish glee whenever he was offered anything sweet to eat. Julia isn’t clattering around the kitchen any more, although May can hear the kettle boiling. Maybe she’s blubbing in there. May wonders if she should go in and offer some sort of comfort but she’s never been very good at hugging and so forth, and anyway, Julia would probably dig her in the ribs or poke her in the eye if she attempted anything like that. While she’s trying to decide what to do, Julia comes back in with a loaded tray. Her eyes are a bit pink but there’s no sign of tears. May heaves a sigh of relief.

They sit and eat their scones in silence for a few moments. ‘You haven’t lost your touch, dear,’ says May, reaching for a paper napkin to wipe away the last crumbs.

‘I haven’t made much cake of any sort since … well, you know. It’s no fun baking for yourself, is it?’

‘Haven’t you had your family over to see you, then?’ May doesn’t really need to ask this as she knows Felix and Emily haven’t visited lately. She’s more than aware of any comings and goings around her new neighbours’ houses. There’s nothing else to do these days but people-watch, so she’s sure Julia’s son and granddaughter haven’t been near the place since Don’s funeral last November.

Julia sits up straighter. She drinks her tea and seems to be searching for the right words. ‘They’re very busy,’ she says, ‘and of course Emily’s still working in New York, so she doesn’t get over here very often. Her mother has settled somewhere beyond Munich, out in the sticks, you know. She was always banging on about going back to her homeland, so Emily has to put visiting Gabriella at the top of her list when she gets time off. They booked tickets for me to fly over to Germany for Christmas but I had to cry off at the last moment … sadly.’

‘What a shame.’ May heard this news from Andy at the time and remembers that Julia was ill, although Andy wasn’t convinced that a slight chill should have made her miss all the festivities. May suspects that Julia’s feelings about family Christmases are as lukewarm as her own.

‘And Felix?’ May probes. She’s been wondering if the old feud is still simmering. Felix’s wife managed to cause quite a rift between her husband and his parents, before she upped and left with the owner of a Bavarian Biergarten, and even the mention of Gabriella’s name has put a chill in the air.

Julia shrugs. ‘He’s still based in Boston but he travels all over the world. Business is booming, as they say. I expect he’ll be here soon. It’s my birthday at the end of next month.’

Julia’s eyes fill with tears and May’s heart sinks. She remembers the loneliness of birthdays after Charles died. He wasn’t very good at presents and fuss, but at least he always took her out for a decent pub lunch at the Eel and Lobster on the green. Charles loved a nice plate of scampi and chips, and May always went for a home-made pasty with heaps of buttery mashed potato. It’s well over fifty years since May’s husband went voyaging and didn’t come back. There were whispers of suicide amongst the villagers but the official view was accidental death, due to the storm that suddenly whipped up. Eventually, the remains of Charles’s boat were found near to the harbour and his body was washed up on the next tide after that.

Charles was much too experienced a sailor to make such an obvious error of judgement; everyone who knew him must have been aware of that fact. He was many things, but reckless wasn’t one of them. Although May was surprised at the verdict, she held her tongue. It was easier that way.

May let the dust settle after the inquest and kept a low profile for a while. Life without Charles seemed strange, but soon became the norm. They didn’t marry until they were in their forties, soon after May’s parents died. At the time May felt unusually lost, cut adrift from her comfortable routine, and moving Charles in seemed like a logical step for them both. They had been together for only eleven years when the tragedy happened so May’s used to being alone now, but she can see that Julia has got a long way to go before she reaches that sort of self-sufficiency.

‘Come on, don’t cry,’ says May, patting Julia’s hand awkwardly. ‘You had a good life with Don. Nothing lasts for ever in this world.’ Or does it? she thinks. Maybe if I can get more memories, it might.

Julia is looking at May with deep loathing now and she realises she’s said the wrong thing.

‘That’s not the point,’ Julia mutters.

‘Well, it is really, dear,’ says May, pulling a face and reaching for her teacup, ‘but with hindsight I can see why today might not be a good day to say it.’

Julia’s mouth twitches, and then she laughs long and hard – a great guffaw that’s most unlike her. ‘Oh, May – you’re a real one-off,’ she says, wiping her eyes.

The sudden connection between them doesn’t last for more than a few seconds but after that, the time passes quickly. They talk about their neighbours’ foibles and the arguments at the stark grey Methodist Church about the new minister’s penchant for long sermons and soppy new hymns, and it’s not until Andy knocks on the back door to announce his arrival that May realises she hasn’t even tried to smuggle a letter into her handbag.

Julia goes to the kitchen to meet Andy, and May stands up, swaying slightly. If she leans over, she can reach the pile on the table. She holds onto her chair back with one hand and takes an envelope at random, slipping it into her handbag. It feels like a good one – quite thick, and there’s a buzz just from holding it. Her heart flutters. She thinks about taking a second letter but the voices are coming closer. She zips up her bag just in time, as Julia and Andy come in, followed by Tamsin, still wearing her Rainbow uniform.

‘All talked out, ladies?’ Andy asks. ‘Ready for the off, May? Tamsin needs her bath; they’ve been clay modelling tonight, and she’s a bit grimy. And she’s wearing most of her tea. It was spaghetti. I think I overdid the sauce.’

‘I don’t need a bath. Clay doesn’t smell bad,’ says Tamsin, but Julia takes her by the shoulders gently and guides her in front of a long mirror. Tamsin giggles. She has a streak of clay all down one cheek and a lump of it buried in her curls, plus a hefty blob of tomato mush on her chin and around her mouth.

‘You’ll need your hair washing tonight, my pet,’ says Julia, and Andy throws her an agonised look. May’s heard the noise from the bathroom on shampoo nights. It’s even worse than the ponytail protests.

May is ready now. She doesn’t meet Julia’s gaze as she leaves the room. The brief burst of warmth between the two of them has dissipated, and the tantalising letter is tucked snugly inside May’s bag. She can’t wait to tap into its memories.

It doesn’t take long for Andy to get May home and settled in her favourite chair, with Fossil rubbing around her ankles.

‘Shall I make you a sandwich?’ Tamsin says. It’s her latest skill. She can only do ham or jam so far but she’s building up to cheese. It’s the cutting that’s tricky. ‘I’m getting better at the buttering bit now,’ she adds hopefully. ‘There’s not so many holes.’

‘No, you get back home and get into bed when you’ve had that bath. I’m full of Julia’s scones, thanks.’

May hears them go, with Fossil following just in case there’s any fish going spare at Andy’s. Her bag is on her knee before they’ve even had time to cross the gap and go through the gate between Shangri-La and their terraced house. She fumbles for the letter, fingers made clumsy by urgency. As she pulls the faded blue sheets from their envelope, the familiar buzzing begins and she sighs with relief. It’s happening. She hasn’t lost the knack of tapping into the precious memories.

For a little while, it’s enough just to hold the pages in her hand and feel a warmth spreading through her body. It builds slowly: a tingling, effervescent shimmer of hope, cascading into ripples of delight. May wriggles blissfully. This is what she’s been missing so desperately. On one level, she’s still in her cosy living room hearing the cry of the gulls and the faint sound of Tamsin pushing the cat back in through the flap in the kitchen door and telling him it’s nearly bedtime. On the other hand, she’s floating above the room, high on a wave of wellbeing and happiness.

It’s the lifeblood, flowing into her veins. The power to stay young, or at least to slow the march of time. One hundred and eleven is surely going to be possible now. Eventually, May feels the intensity of the memories ebbing, and reaches for her glasses as Fossil jumps up to settle on her lap. Pulling out the closely written sheets, she sees Kathryn’s name on the final page.

As she begins to read, cascades of tiny bubbles dance through her narrow frame and she has to stop every few sentences to catch her breath.

We’ve just had a newspaper cutting from our Nottingham family telling us of Pauline’s engagement! Quick work, what? I bet her engagement ring isn’t as good as Mother’s. Opals take some beating, especially three such beautiful stones – and the tiny diamonds around them are so pretty too. If only we could find it. Mother’s heartbroken. She’s started behaving very oddly, accusing each one of us in turn of hiding it. As if we would. We all know how much she wants Julia to have the ring. Will’s very upset about it all. Has he written to you lately? That boy gets more and more secretive the older he gets, it seems to me.

May leans back in her chair. After months of memory-deprivation this is almost too much.

She recalls the large, noisy family and their visits very well. Charles was quite chummy with Don’s relatives for a while. He used to take them out in his boat.

It’s time to put the letter away for the night, even though the mystery of the ring is intriguing. Perhaps there will be more clues in the later ones. May’s sure Julia has never had a ring like the one Kathryn describes.

May is lost in echoes of the past now, and thinking of Kathryn puts her in mind of another girl from long ago, with the same name but spelled differently. She reaches over to fetch a dusty book from a low shelf, and sniffs the musty fragrance happily as the pages fall open at her favourite entry.

May’s old school friend Catherine was what they used to call ‘a card’. She loved making up silly rhymes, usually about their teachers, leaving them around for people to find at the most inopportune moments. Catherine really came into her own during a fad for collecting autographs that swept the girls’ grammar school. These weren’t in the modern trend of finding famous people to write in your autograph book, but merely a way of proving how many friends you had by letting them fill the pages with trite, jokey and sometimes rather rude messages.

When May passed Catherine her own precious leather-bound book, she hoped that the other girl wouldn’t write anything that her parents shouldn’t see. She was relieved to read a poem that was more thoughtful than Catherine’s usual doggerel and reminded her of her father’s words about living to the ripe old age of one hundred and eleven when he’d gazed at that beautiful sunset so long ago. Coincidence? May has never believed in them. This was surely a sign. The poem was entitled ‘My Years With You’, and read:

The Bible always tells us

That in the eyes of men,

The time that we might hope for

Is three score years and ten.

But when I view our friendship

Those years seem far too few,

And I will always hanker

To spend more time with you.

So let us aim for five score

Plus ten before we’re done.

And when we reach that milestone

We’ll add another one.

May was enormously flattered to read this, but came back down to earth with a bang when she found out that Catherine had written the same ditty in at least half the class’s books. Even so, the thought of living to the grand old age of one hundred and eleven strongly appealed to May, and over the years the magical number has become her Holy Grail. She’s so nearly there now.

More letters are needed, and quickly. Julia’s got so many she’ll hardly miss a few, will she? And May’s need is so much greater than Julia’s. Her birthday is on the horizon – only three months away – and she has to get there. She simply has to.

Chapter Five

The next day at around noon, Julia looks out of the kitchen window and sees Andy perched on an upturned crate eating his lunchtime sandwiches. He’s been weeding the rows of broad beans and courgettes he planted in the spring. It’s Saturday, so Tamsin is with him, sitting cross-legged on the grass with a lunch box open in front of her.

Tamsin waves as Julia approaches them with a loaded tray, carefully avoiding the ruts in the path.

‘Have you got my tea things, Aunty Jules?’ she asks, jumping up.

‘Absolutely. I wouldn’t forget you, my love,’ says Julia. She puts the tray down on a nearby garden table in the shade of the oak tree and spreads out the contents – a brown teapot with a multi-coloured knitted cosy, Andy’s oversize mug, a blue and white jug of milk, a tin of biscuits and last of all a miniature tea set for Tamsin.

‘Thank you,’ says the little girl, eyes sparkling. ‘Tea is my best drink ever.’

‘You told me Vimto was your favourite this morning,’ says Andy, ‘and yesterday you said you’d never again drink anything but strawberry milkshake.’

‘Yes, but tea’s my favouritest favourite,’ says Tamsin, then begins humming to herself as she rearranges the teacups more to her liking. Julia remembers her son taking the same pleasure in the tiny cups and saucers, milk jug and teapot with their blue Cornish stripes. His own daughter, in turn, loved them as much as Felix had. Julia sighs. She misses Emily more than she misses her son. Felix isn’t an easy person to get on with – he’s often a bit too fond of the sound of his own voice – but Emily is a delight.

Julia presses her lips together to stop them wobbling. Now’s not the time to get all emotional over a few little teacups. Perhaps she should write and ask Emily to visit at a specific time rather than hoping she’ll make the decision herself? The fear of seeming pathetic catches at Julia’s heart, but she so wants to see her granddaughter.

‘You sad today then?’ asks Tamsin, busy adding milk and a sugar lump to her tea.

Andy frowns at his daughter, but Julia takes a deep breath and smiles. ‘Not especially, sweetheart, it’s just that I’ve been reading these old letters and thinking about the old days.’

‘Oldays, oldays, oldie oldie oldays,’ sings Tamsin to herself as she hands Julia one of the little cups brimming with sweet, milky liquid. Julia takes it, braces herself, and knocks it back in one.

‘Careful. You’ll get the burps,’ warns Tamsin, ‘Daddy gets the burps sometimes. And sometimes he—’

‘Anything interesting in the letters you’ve sorted so far, Julia?’ Andy says hastily, helping himself to a couple of digestives.

‘I … er …’

‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to pry. They’re probably full of personal stuff.’

Julia rubs her eyes to ease the gritty lack-of-sleep feeling that’s built up in them over the months since Don’s death. ‘No, I wasn’t being cagey, it’s just that for a minute I couldn’t remember which one I was reading last. I’m sure it was from Don’s younger sister. She was talking about …’

There’s a friendly sort of silence as Julia racks her brain to think of the gist of that letter. She’s been sorting the letters into decades and is drawn to the fifties and sixties for many reasons. Her own recollections of that time keep mixing themselves up with Don’s family’s news. But as hard as she tries, she just can’t remember what the main point of the letter was. Something about a ring …

‘I’ll just pop inside and fetch the one I was reading last to show you,’ she says.

Five minutes later, Julia’s back outside, and Andy looks up from retying Tamsin’s shoelaces. ‘What’s up?’ he asks, taking in her flushed cheeks.

‘I can’t find the letter I was telling you about.’

Andy laughs. ‘Well, I’m not surprised. Talk about needle in a haystack – there must be hundreds of them.’

‘Yes, but it was only yesterday, and I remember putting it on top of the pile. It isn’t there now.’

‘I’m always losing things,’ says Tamsin helpfully. ‘I lost my best spider last week. I left it in a jam jar in the kitchen, and when I went back, it had gone away.’

Andy doesn’t meet his daughter’s clear gaze and changes the subject quickly. ‘How did you get on with May? You haven’t said much about the visit.’

‘It was fine,’ says Julia absently. ‘She’s coming over every Friday, if you can bring her.’

‘Course I will. Did you find plenty to talk about?’

‘Hmm? Oh … yes … it was quite painless.’

‘Does May give you a pain then?’ asks Tamsin. ‘She doesn’t make me have a pain. I love May. Don’t you love May?’

‘You bet she does, sweetheart,’ says Andy, still watching Julia’s face. ‘We all do. Why are you so anxious, Julia? Did you two argue or something?’

‘Oh, no, it’s not that. I’m just bothered that I can’t put my hands on that envelope.’

‘Who did you say it was from?’

‘I didn’t, but it was from … one of Don’s sisters, I think.’ She bites her lip.

‘Which one? There were two, weren’t there?’

Julia doesn’t answer.

Tamsin waits for a moment and then counts on her fingers as she recites the names. Sisters fascinate her. She has asked Andy for one of her own several times but he says it’s a bit difficult when there isn’t a mummy around. ‘Kathryn and Elsie,’ she says, in a singsong voice. ‘And then there were the three boys. Uncle Don told me about them.’

‘I thought there were only two brothers, Julia?’

‘No, there was—’

Tamsin butts in. ‘There was Will. He was the littlest, and then another little boy called Peter but he went to live in heaven when he was a baby. I bet he knows my mum, doesn’t he, Dad? She probably cuddles him when she’s missing me.’

Julia and Andy are silent, and Tamsin, bored, wanders off to dig a hole in the newly turned soil near the greenhouse. Sometimes she gets to make mud pies in this garden if she asks nicely. Andy turns to Julia again.

‘Is reading about all these times in the past getting a bit too much for you, do you think?’ he says. ‘Only you seem distracted, somehow. Maybe you should put them away for a little while? Have a break. Write to Emily, or something. See if she fancies a visit.’

‘What are you getting at? I’m not going gaga. I don’t need a break.’

‘No, I wasn’t saying—’

‘You think I’m losing my marbles, don’t you? Well, it’s possible. It happened to my mother at about this age.’

There are tears in Julia’s eyes as she marches back into the house, and she wipes them away with the back of her hand, slamming the kitchen door behind her. Andy frowns. Now he’s done it. Why did he have to be so tactless?

His mind returns to their conversation over and over throughout the day, and by evening he’s decided to take action. If Julia won’t get in touch with her granddaughter, he’ll do it himself. Emily gave him her email address and phone number after the funeral, just in case he needed her for anything to do with Julia, and now he does. This is serious.

Andy has seen Emily off and on over the years when she’s visited Pengelly and sometimes actually plucked up the courage to talk to her, but she always seemed rather aloof, even when she joined the rest of the local gang on the beach for impromptu barbecues and illicit cider binges. Her gothic phase was quite scary but she’s left that far behind her now.

It was a chilly day when they said the final goodbye to Don. Emily was wrapped up warmly in a soft black coat so long it almost swept the floor, and she’d added a cherry-red cashmere scarf and lipstick to match. He remembers her telling him that her grandfather posted the scarf the winter before, when Emily wasn’t able to get to Cornwall in time for Christmas. Don was always good at presents. Emily’s hair was out of sight for most of the day, tucked up inside a fur hat. She looked like a Russian princess, Andy recalls, pale and delicate, but stunning.

Afterwards, when they gathered at the local pub with all the available villagers for Don’s send-off drinks, hefty sandwiches and chunks of pork pie, Andy watched breathlessly as Emily pulled off her hat, and corkscrews of golden hair tumbled down her back. It was cross between a shampoo commercial and a Pre-Raphaelite painting come to life.

Andy needed a large whisky to take his mind off the sight. But later, when he tried to talk to Emily, she was so sad that he had not the heart to tell her how lovely she looked. And anyway, he hasn’t been interested in serious relationships with women since Allie died. You couldn’t really count Candice, could you?

He opens his laptop and starts a new email before the unsettling thoughts have a chance to get a grip.

‘Hi Emily,’ he writes. ‘I’m just dropping you a line to say …’

What is he actually going to tell her? Your grandma’s acting strangely? I’m worried she’s not even beginning to deal with Don’s death? She hardly ever leaves the house? He tries again.

… to say that Julia isn’t acting quite like herself, and I wondered if you could give me a call, or I could phone you for a bit of a team talk? I’m really concerned about her state of mind, and the way she’s forgetting things that have only just happened. I know it’s hard for her being alone in the house after all those years with your grandpa, and grief can affect people in different ways, but I’m afraid it’s more serious than just missing him and feeling sad. I won’t tell her I’ve written to you – don’t want her to think I’m interfering.

Love, Andy

He frowns at the screen, deletes ‘Love’ and adds ‘Regards’, then changes it to ‘Best wishes’, and presses Send. At least he’ll have tried. Whether she gets back to him is another matter. Flying around the world doing glitzy book deals and hobnobbing with top authors must be very time-consuming. Writing to a mere gardener will be way down her list of priorities. She probably won’t even bother to reply.

Chapter Six

‘Well, of course I’m OK, darling,’ Julia says. ‘Why wouldn’t I be? I miss Gramps – I’m bound to, aren’t I? But I’m keeping very busy sorting his things.’

Emily imagines her grandmother, short dark hair as smooth and neat as ever, sitting next to the telephone table with her elegant legs up on a footstool, dressed in one of her daytime outfits – a print frock, maybe, or a soft sweater with a knee-length skirt. She can hear Radio Three playing in the background. It’s the sort of tinkling piano concerto that Gramps hated. He’d have switched it over to something more upbeat.

‘So what have you been doing with yourself? Are you getting out and about much?’

There’s a pause. ‘There’s a lot to do at home at the moment. And I’ve got to tell you about the letters, Em.’

Emily listens, fascinated, as Julia fills her in on the chest full of family treasures.

‘You’re kidding? Family memories going right back to the fifties? How cool is that?’

‘I know! But it’s not just that. I’ve found another couple of letters this morning, ones I’d not read before, or I can’t remember having seen them, anyway. I’m getting the strangest hints here and there about something that’s been missing for a very long time and has never been found, as far as I’m aware.’

‘Really? What is it?’

‘A rather unusual opal ring. I remember Don telling me about it. He wanted me to have it when we got engaged but I think his sisters or maybe his brother had other ideas. It belonged to their mother, and then it was lost just before she was going to give it to me.’