The Sense of an Ending

‘Well then, unless she gets in touch with you, I’d leave it. Cash the cheque, take me on a budget holiday, and forget it. Two fifty each might get us all the way to the Channel Islands.’

‘I like it when you tease me,’ I said. ‘Even after all these years.’

She leant across and patted my hand. ‘It’s nice that we’re still fond of one another. And it’s nice that I know you’ll never get around to booking that holiday.’

‘Only because I know you don’t mean it.’

She smiled. And for a moment, she almost looked enigmatic. But Margaret can’t do enigma, that first step to Woman of Mystery. If she’d wanted me to spend the money on a holiday for two, she’d have said so. Yes, I realise that’s exactly what she did say, but…

But anyway. ‘She’s stolen my stuff,’ I said, perhaps a little whinily.

‘How do you know you want it?’

‘It’s Adrian’s diary. He’s my friend. He was my friend. It’s mine.’

‘If your friend had wanted you to have his diary, he could have left it to you forty years ago, and cut out the middleman. Or woman.’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you think’s in it?’

‘I’ve no idea. It’s just mine.’ I recognised at that moment another reason for my determination. The diary was evidence; it was — it might be — corroboration. It might disrupt the banal reiterations of memory. It might jump-start something — though I had no idea what.

‘Well, you can always find out where the Fruitcake lives. Friends Reunited, telephone directory, private detective. Go round, ring the doorbell, ask for your stuff.’

‘No.’

‘Which leaves burglary,’ she suggested cheerily.

‘You’re joking.’

‘Then let it go. Unless you have, as they say, issues from your past that you need to confront in order to be able to move on. But that’s hardly you, is it, Tony?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ I answered, rather carefully. Because part of me was wondering if, psychobabble apart, there might not be some truth in it. There was a silence. Our plates were cleared. Margaret didn’t have any problem reading me.

‘It’s quite touching that you’re so stubborn. I suppose it’s one way of not losing the plot when we get to our age.’

‘I don’t think I’d have reacted differently twenty years ago.’

‘Possibly not.’ She made a sign for the bill. ‘But let me tell you a story about Caroline. No, you don’t know her. She’s a friend from after we separated. She had a husband, two small kids and an au pair she wasn’t sure about. She didn’t have any dreadful suspicions or anything. The girl was polite most of the time, the children didn’t complain. It was just that Caroline felt she didn’t really know who she was leaving them with. So she asked a friend — a female friend — no, not me — if she had any advice. “Go through her stuff,” said the friend. “What?” “Well, you’re obviously wound up about it. Wait till it’s her evening off, have a look through her room, read her letters. That’s what I’d do.” So the next time the au pair was off, Caroline went through her stuff. And found the girl’s diary. Which she read. And which was full of denunciations, like “I’m working for a real cow” and “The husband’s OK — caught him looking at my bum — but the wife’s a silly bitch.” And “Does she know what she’s doing to those poor kids?” There was some really, really tough stuff.’

‘So what happened?’ I asked. ‘Did she fire the au pair?’

‘Tony,’ my ex-wife replied, ‘that’s not the point of the story.’

I nodded. Margaret checked the bill, running the corner of her credit card down the items.

Two other things she said over the years: that there were some women who aren’t at all mysterious, but are only made so by men’s inability to understand them. And that, in her view, fruitcakes ought to be shut up in tins with the Queen’s head on them. I must have told her that detail of my Bristol life as well.

A week or so passed, and Brother Jack’s name was there in my inbox again. ‘Here’s Veronica’s email, but don’t let on you got it from me. Hell to pay and all that. Remember the 3 wise monkeys — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. That’s my motto, anyway. Blue skies, view of Sydney Harbour Bridge, almost. Ah, here comes my rickshaw. Regards, John F.’

I was surprised. I’d expected him to be unhelpful. But what did I know of him or his life? Only what I’d extrapolated from memories of a bad weekend long before. I’d always assumed that birth and education had given him an advantage over me that he’d effortlessly maintained until the present day. I remembered Adrian saying that he’d read about Jack in some undergraduate magazine but didn’t expect to meet him (but nor had he expected to go out with Veronica). And then he’d added, in a different, harsher tone, ‘I hate the way the English have of not being serious about being serious.’ I never knew — because stupidly I never asked — what that had been based on.