Before All Else Read online

  “Sous chef. Courier.”

  “That’s it. Then tour organiser. Stone polisher. Fruit picker. How am I doing?”

  “Great. Keep going. Fruit packer. Dog walker. Nanny. Teacher of English. Reflexologist. Crystal healer. Clown.”

  “Clown?”

  “Children’s parties. Go on.”

  “Er. Time share. Gardener. Basket weaver. Pool attendant. Cage dancer. Fish filleter. Salt panner. Zoo attendant. Roman centurion. Potter. Here, here, I’ve run out. Give me yours.” He grabbed her hands, counting out on her outstretched fingers. “Henna artist. Hair braider. Hostess. Manicurist. Water cooler supplier. Air-conditioning agent. Oh, I give up. Too much.”

  Later that night she lay in bed and completed the list. Tour guide. Kiosk manager. Line dance caller. Bingo caller. Magician’s assistant. Rental car agent. Beggar. Wood carver. Runner. Decorator. Sand sculptor. Handbill distributor. Hawker. Amanuensis. Goat herd. Beachcomber. Living sculpture. Companion. Dance partner. Personal shopper. Yoga teacher. Condom supplier. Film extra. African drummer. Fire eater. Chalet maid.

  What was it that singled her out for the precarious, unpredictable life of a traveller? Just how had it happened? Some people she had met around the world looked on travelling as a totally immersive experience as if they wanted the experiences, the encounters to change the colour of their blood, cause it to flow the other way. To her, moving from place to place, country to country was a lantern show. She was the lens through which images flickered and faltered. The world moved, whorled and danced, like the spume of the ferry, the tumbling of the gulls. The lens – she – was immutable, unchanging, apart.

  Now she wants Enzo to leave the apartment so she can open the letter from Tilly. It is unlikely to be very important, just a page or so of news of the farm, her husband and her daughter, sale success at the sheep market, the British weather. Why does Tilly continue to write? Amelia has yet to write back. What would she write about? The games that she and Enzo play? Their code, their understanding? How strange it would seem to any outsider.

  They are nothing but professional when working together in the café. He is the Patron, at night snapping his fingers at her to bring a tray of liqueur and six tumblers to his most esteemed guests. In the tight corners between tables, he expects her to squeeze herself out of his way. He shouts over conversations, allies himself with the customers, never her. A man who walks on air fanned by the wings of his domestic angels.

  Never does he put his arm round her, introduce her to his associates. Never does he look at her in any way that could give any hint of their afternoon intimacies. She knows she is a fool for looking for any special recognition. There is too much to lose, too much at stake.

  He is rarely in the restaurant during the day, when Amelia serves the lunchtime customers and makes preparations for the evening. “It’s as if you don’t even know I’m here.”

  “Of course I know you are here. But, we have to be so careful, so discreet. We are all playing a game. There are players, who are not just the two of us. There are players beyond us. We can play the game as long as we respect the rules. The day we challenge the rules is the day the game stops.” From this, Amelia understands that the sanctity of his marriage is being honoured, in his own particular way. He will protect his wife from any and every embarrassment, from any contact or association with this British woman who is simply an orbiting moon, whose brilliance, even, is a mere reflection.

  Is it for this, then, twenty years ago, that Cecily, who had forged every path that Amelia had travelled up to that point, had sent her on her separate way with her blessing? “Go. Do it for me.” Cecily was about to marry Henry. She would miss the wedding. “Don’t come back till you’re ready.”

  And Amelia’s part in this? Her arms move, her body moves, images on a carousel, shadow dancing against the wall. Once the show is over, she will leave without trace. Just as a candle flame has no shadow. Maybe head north, spend a ski season in the Alps, edging home a few hundred kilometres at a time, nonchalant, haphazard, non-committal. Aloof.

  Yet the danger is, this aloofness that she wraps herself in for protection is also her undoing. Her comforter and her assassin. She knows she is going nowhere – fast.

  Enzo switches off the computer and pushes back from the desk on his chair, lighting another cigarette despite one still smouldering in the ashtray.

  “I’ll be in for eleven o’clock. Will I see you?” Instantly she regrets her question for it seems to spin a silken thread round the two of them. Enzo is hunting for his keys and taking pages off the printer. There is no way she would ask about his correspondence, so why is she defensively asking bright questions to bat away his curiosity about hers?

  “Possibly. I’m not sure.”

  “Tomorrow? Still going up to the mountains? You did promise.” She cannot stop herself. Even with nothing to hide, Enzo’s bullishness, his extreme jealousy, his possessiveness tip her into a pit of guilt and guile. She becomes petulant, pushy.

  “We’ll see.” He kisses her hurriedly, grabs his jacket and leaves, slamming the flat door behind him.

  She watches from the balcony as he strides up the street towards his car. A memory comes back to her, of their first outing as a couple. Enzo had collected her from the flat and they headed out of town up into the hills. The road was being made dual carriageway. They edged slowly past heavy machinery, a temporary gantry and queues of traffic going the other way. Yellow dust quickly covered his car, like creeping guilt. They said very little to each other. She rested her elbow out of the window, wishing for wind in her hair and the smell of olives, citrus, aromatic herbs, not this heavy sultriness and bitumen from the roadworks.

  Will he look up and wave before he drives off? She leans over the balcony, primed to wave. Already she is forgotten. He drives off at speed.

  Tilly’s letter contains the final plea, “When are you going to come and visit, Melly? We all miss you.”

  Since being with Enzo, she had only visited home twice. Once for Mummy’s funeral; once for Daddy’s. On her first visit, Cecily had seemed apologetic yet defiant, defensive. “I’ve put you up at the pub,” Cecily had told her.

  “Why can’t I have my old room?”

  “Uncle Denny’s in there.”

  “Well, why does Uncle Denny get my room and not me?”

  Cecily gave Amelia a steely look. “Because I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Well, I’m not staying anyway. Going back on the nine o’clock flight.”

  Cecily had sighed and walked away, leaving Amelia to step over the door into the hallway.

  Cecily had phoned eighteen months later to say that Mummy was really ill, not expected to last. Which came first? Her protest why Mummy had declined so far before they let her know? Or a sharp, guilty little spasm – why do I need to know this? If you hadn’t told me, then… She left unvoiced the unthinkable thought of not coming back for her mother’s funeral. Sorrow and regret danced a macabre dance in her heart.

  Yet it had been different when she’d returned home for the funeral. They’d maybe gone too far the last time in their resentment and anger. This time the sisters were more careful with each other. Softer.

  “I’ve put you in your old room this time,” Cecily had told her after hauling her out of the airport taxi and holding her in an extended embrace. “It’s not exactly the same, obviously, but I thought you’d be comfortable there.” She lay down on the narrow bed, her eyes following the familiar lines of the gable windows, the dust between the rug and floorboards, the gap under the door, the shadows of people’s feet as they passed in the corridor. The room had been hers throughout her childhood and early adulthood. How she wished she could scrape away the patina, the accretions, cleanse her eyes, remove what fogged and smeared her vision, could turn back her clock, go back to when things were so very different.

  *

 
“Stay for a few days,” Cecily had urged. “It’s ages since we’ve seen you. You’ve changed so much. You must have some great stories.” She gripped her arm, imploring her with a long, solicitous look. “Tilly. Tell Amelia she can’t go yet.” Tilly stood on her other side.

  “Come on, sis. What’s the rush?”

  Amelia felt hemmed in by a bodily conspiracy of sisters. Enzo had said he would be at the airport waiting for her in less than ten hours. He had stood behind her as she booked the flights, pointing on the screen which ones to select, giving her a pass out of less than twenty-five hours. He didn’t offer to accompany her and she had not thought of asking him.

  “Oh, I can’t. You know, got to get back to work. Would love to, you know I would.” Cecily and Tilly looked at her doubtfully, both sharing the same tilt of the head, the same pull of the lips. If she let loose one tear, let fall one single negative word, then all would come tumbling down. Best just pay her respects, hug each sister long and hard and be back on that plane. “I’ll come back for longer, I promise.”

  Mummy was laid to rest next to Daddy, their gravestones identical. “Don’t stack us, darlings. You know me and your father. The only thing that kept this marriage going is separate everything. Alongside is fine.” Mummy, for whom the funeral of her husband of forty years was no excuse to be anything less than gracious and courteous. Tears were for the weak. Amelia agreed with her.

  If Amelia thinks of Cecily now, it is almost without sound or vision. A presence in the house that they’d grown up in. A caretaker of people. Of other people’s spaces.

  Is she ever going to make it back home again?

  She quickly rereads Tilly’s letter before tearing it into small pieces.

  For too long now her wandering star had got its co-ordinates stuck.

  6

  Marcus

  Marcus places milk and a newspaper on the kitchen counter before making his way into the living room. The late morning sun is pouring through the window, turning the carpet an African red. Pleasant smells of salamis, rich cheese and fresh bread waft up from the deli beneath. Within half an hour, the doors to the pub will swing open for business. Could life really get any better?

  As time moves on, life with Velda is becoming simply a strata, an episode banded by other episodes, a distinct period set in the context of what came before and what will come after, a way station on the way to somewhere else.

  Well, that is on a good day. But it still grieves him to have to put Velda in the past. He’d always assumed she’d be around for good, seeing him off when his time came, and then probably starting a new life of her own in Eastbourne, within a bus ride of her sister.

  The children had been fine, thankfully. A couple of days after moving in, he’d received a text from Martha. “Hi Dad. Just checking you got there OK and are settling in. See you soon xxx”. Nothing from Paul, but he hadn’t expected there would be. Both son and daughter had seemed fairly equitable about the split. Weren’t things meant to be a bit more heated than this? Weren’t there supposed to be tears and recriminations? If not from the parents, then at least from the children?

  He and Velda hadn’t really established a protocol for contact post-separation. He’d have to just see how things go, how she wants to play it. He will always be there if she needs anything. Wouldn’t let the old girl flounder but, and he sighs as he considers the fact, it had all been her idea. If she wants to go it alone, then so be it. He has a fleeting image of Velda sitting in the middle of the rug, the tribal sisters all around her, incense snaking into the air. There would be wooden beads and incantations, drum beating and arm waving and exhortations. She’ll be fine. He can see her point. What more use could she possibly have for a defunct Quantity Surveyor with one foot in Grimes Graves and all the sensitivity of a rutting rhino? Or was that more to do with his snoring? What does it matter now anyway?

  He can only stand by as the big red book of their marriage, age-spotted and careworn, neglected and overlooked, relinquishes its dry glue, pages fluttering one by one to the floor.

  Time for a cup of coffee. He leans against the window frame, looking down onto the market square. A quiet, purposeful energy suffuses the place. Isn’t that what Velda would say? She went on quite a lot about ‘energy’. Her thing was sub-kinetic energy. The tick-tock of the universe. Tosh! But it’s proving quite a struggle to rid Velda from his mind.

  But the energy thing is true. The small town has a genteel feel about it. Cars manoeuvre sedately round the market place, drivers looking for somewhere to park. People greet each other across the street. There is a bustle, comings and goings. He chuckles to himself. That would be a good name for a shop, Cummins and Goings. He might even think of opening a little establishment himself. It seems that sort of village (or was it a town?): an antiques shop, an art gallery, a deli of course, two pubs, an Indian, a supermarket, a post office (run by the redoubtable Madge), a bookshop, an ironmongers. People happy to support local businesses. How much better here than that ghastly place on the outskirts of London he’d just left behind him, house numbers up to four figures, muggings, having to lock everything up, wheelie bins taken for a joy ride every Friday and Saturday night, vomit in the front garden.

  He has time now to just watch the world go by. And sleep! He has never slept so well, every night dreamless oblivion coming like a fast-acting narcotic.

  Today really is the first day of the rest of my life, Marcus announces to the empty room. What might he do? Good question. But not one that needs answering today. He can take his time. Because it is his time. He can go backwards, round and round, come to a crashing halt for all anyone cares now. He relishes each word as it comes to him. There. Is. No one. To. Tell. Me. What. To. Do. No targets. No deadlines. Nobody else’s agenda. Freedom. The very idea of so much freedom is enough to make a chap giddy, so he sits down hard at the table in front of the window to ponder.

  A shop. That would be rather splendid. Leaning against a worn wooden counter, passing the time of day with his regulars, sharing a joke, allowing the odd indiscreet comment to pass his lips such that they would think him a jovial sort of cove. One who doesn’t take things at face value. The sort of chap you could rely on for a pithy comment on the issues of the day. Nobody’s fool. Trouble was, scan the shelves as he might in this glorious daydream of his, he can’t quite see what items he is offering for sale. The village seems pretty well catered for. What does he know about anything anyway? Apart from a patchy interest in local history, there isn’t much that he could bring to the party.

  Business is already looking brisk at the Red. He might check that out later, perhaps for an early supper. His eyes sweep along the buildings opposite. Not much action at the insurance office. Lights dim in the solicitor’s too. The street continues down the hill in a haphazard, jumbled fashion.

  He watches as the woman opposite steps over the cobbles and up the stone steps to her front door, bending over a few faded potted daffodils on the way.

  His phone beeps loudly and vibrates itself a few inches across the table. The sender’s name comes up as Velda but there is no message. Silly woman. She’d never managed technology very well. What does she want? Should he text her to ask if she is OK? But what can he do about it if she isn’t?

  He reaches for his notebook. Last night, Wagner on the stereo and a bottle of fifteen-year-old port to hand, he’d started to write a few notes. Somewhat euphorically perhaps he imagined himself flying high in the sky, reeling and circling above an ancient landscape. To the marshalling music, a sonorous voice had narrated his words:

  The salt air creeps further and further inland from the soft-edged coast, the dewy mists captured by fewer and fewer mighty oak sentinels. The land is gradually cleared, dug, heaped. A deep rotation begins.

  It goes on, but much is largely illegible. He will look at it again when he’s got more time.

  There is a sound of honking in the square.
A large white van with an image of a wheelbarrow on the side reverses out of one of the parking spaces in the centre of the square, hitting a lamppost. The passenger wing mirror drops shards of broken glass onto the road. A small car hurriedly reverses out of the van’s way.

  Maybe he is still affected by the creative pulse of the previous night, sitting at the table into the small hours, writing, writing, writing, but he can still recall that feeling of floating in free space, sipping the nectar of endless possibilities, buoyed by a joy and an optimism denied him for so long. The feeling rather surprises him.

  This calls for action.

  The box marked ‘Desk Drawer’ contains a ball of Blu-Tack. It is dry, cracked and contains a surprising number of short hairs. Unfolding the glossy poster, he relocates Melanie and her Honda CB400N Super Dream to the back of the loo door.

  They have both been given the freedom of the road.

  Cecily

  So that had been a rather fruitless search for elderflowers. What had she been thinking of? She drops the dried daffodil heads she’d collected on her way in into the compost bucket by the sink. Stupid woman!

  Time for some lunch and then she’d have a think about what to do to pass the afternoon. Perhaps she could start to write that history of the house she’d been thinking about. Get down to the library and do some research. Print a little pamphlet. Have an Open Day with scones and cream. Oh really?

  The odd murder or scandal or skeleton somewhere lurking in the woodwork would appeal to the Out and Abouters. Plain scones or fruit? Cream with that or the dairy-free option? English Breakfast or Berry Burst to refresh your curious mind, with a side order of wronged maidservants, captured highwaymen, disgraced nobility? That would be £2.50 please. It would take a lot of tray bakes and cups of tea to fix the lead flashing in the chimney or arrest the rising damp in the back kitchen.