Sheer Abandon (8 page)

“Possibly,” said Grace with a feeble smile. “I suppose…”

“Good,” said Martha, seeing victory. “It’s no more than you deserve. I’d much rather spend some of that disgraceful salary on you than on some new Manolos.”

“What are they, dear?”

“Shoes.”

“Oh, I see. Some new style, is it?”

“Something like that,” said Martha.

After lunch her sister called. “My next-door neighbour, she’s a widow”—she would be, Martha thought—“needs help. Her son’s car’s broken down and he needs a lift back to London. I said I was sure you wouldn’t mind taking him.”

Martha felt disproportionately outraged. She did mind, very much. She had been longing for the peaceful drive back to London, with her stereo playing, catching up on phone calls, having the time to think…and of course
not
to think. She didn’t want some spotty lad sitting beside her for three or four hours, requiring her to make conversation.

“Couldn’t he get the train?”

“He could, but he can’t afford it. Martha, it’s not much to ask, surely. He’s quite sweet, I’ve met him.”

“Yes, but—” Martha stopped.

“Oh forget it,” said Anne and her voice was really angry. “I’ll tell him he’ll have to hitch a lift. You just get on back to your smart life in London.”

Martha promptly felt terrible. What kind of a cow was she turning into? Anne was right, it wasn’t a lot to ask. She just didn’t want to do it…

“No,” she said quickly, “all right. But he’ll have to fit in with me time-wise and I’ll drop him at an Underground station, all right? I can’t spend half the night driving round London.”

“You’re so extremely kind,” said Anne. “I’ll tell him then. What time exactly would suit you, Martha? Fit in best with your very heavy timetable?”

“I’m leaving at about four,” said Martha, refusing to rise to this.

“Could you make the huge detour to pick him up? It would take at least fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll pick him up,” said Martha.

Anne came out of her house as Martha drew up; her sniff as she looked at the Mercedes was almost audible.

“So good of you to do this,” she said. “He’s all ready. We’ve been chatting, haven’t we, Ed?”

“Yes. Hey, cool car. It’s very kind of you, Miss—”

“Hartley,” said Martha. She had been fiddling with the dashboard, not looking at him; she took in only the voice, the classless young London voice, and sighed. It was going to be a terribly long drive.

Then she got out, took off the sunglasses she had been wearing—and found herself staring at one of the most beautiful young men she had ever seen.

He was quite tall, over six foot, with messy short blond hair and astonishingly deep blue eyes; he was tanned, with a few carefully scattered freckles on a perfectly straight nose, and his grin, which was wide, revealed absolutely perfect white teeth. He was wearing long baggy shorts, a style she hated, trainers without socks, and a rather crumpled white shirt; he looked like an advertisement for Ralph Lauren. Martha felt less resentful suddenly.

“Mum’s at church, but she said I was to thank you from her,” he said. “Shall I put my bags on the backseat?”

“Yes, do,” said Martha. “Well, Anne, sorry not to have seen more of you. Next time, perhaps.”

“Perhaps,” said Anne. Her tone was still chilly.

“This really is very kind of you,” said Ed again as they pulled down the road. “I do appreciate it.”

“That’s all right,” said Martha. “What happened to your car?”

“It just died,” he said. “It was just an old banger. Present from Mum for my twenty-first. She said I shouldn’t take it on long journeys. Looks like she was right.”

“So what will you do?”

“Goodness knows.” He looked round the car. “This is really cool. Convertible, yeah? I don’t suppose you use this much in London.”

“Not during the week, no,” said Martha. “Not much use for a car where I live.”

“Which is?”

“Docklands.”

“Cool.”

“Quite cool, I suppose,” she said, hoping she didn’t sound like some pathetic older woman acting young.

“And you’re a lawyer?” he said. “Is that right? Do you get all dressed up in a white wig?”

“No,” she said, smiling against her will. “I’m not a barrister. I’m a solicitor.”

“Oh, right. So you do people’s divorces, help them buy their houses…”

“No, I work for a big city firm. Sayers Wesley.”

“So—you work all night, see big deals through, that sort of thing.”

“That sort of thing.” She glanced at him; he had put a baseball cap on back to front, another thing she hated; impossibly, it suited him.

“And earn a fortune? Yeah?”

“I don’t know how you would define a fortune,” she said coolly.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound rude. I just get interested in people.” He turned to smile at her, an astonishing, beautiful smile.

“So I see. What do you do?”

“I’m just temping at the moment,” he said, “doing IT stuff. It’s pretty boring. But I’m going away in a couple of months. It’s paying for that.”

“Where are you going?”

“Oh—Thailand, Oz, all that stuff. Did you do that sort of thing?”

“Yes I did. It was great fun.”

“Yeah, hope so. I should have done it before uni, really.”

“How old are you, Ed?”

“Twenty-two.”

“And what did you read?” she asked. “At university?”

“Oh, English. My dad wanted me to read classics because he did. But I couldn’t face it.”

“I’m not surprised,” she said and was reminded suddenly and sharply of Clio, pretty plump little Clio, saying almost exactly the same thing, all those years ago. Clio who had wanted to be a doctor, who—Enough of that, Martha. Don’t go back there.

“I kind of wish I had,” he said, “it would have made him so happy. Now that he’s died, it seems something I should have done for him.”

“Yes,” she said, “I can see that. But you’re wrong, you know. You have to do what’s right for you.”

“Yeah,” he said, “that’s what I think, really. But just sometimes…”

“Of course. I’m sorry about your dad. What—what was it?”

“Cancer. He was only fifty-four. It was awful. He kept putting off going to the doctor and then there was a long waiting list to see someone, and—well, the whole thing was a mess really.”

“It must have been very hard for you. How long ago was this?”

“Three years,” he said. “I was at uni and it was really hard for my mum. Your dad was so good to her. She said he helped her get through. He’s all right, your dad. Your sister’s pretty nice too.”

“I’m glad you think so,” said Martha.

He turned to look at her consideringly.

“She’s not too much like you, though,” he added, and then blushed. “Sorry. You’ll be putting me out on the road next.”

“If you’d told me I was like her, I might,” said Martha, smiling.

“Yeah, well you’re not. Of course, she must be much older than you.”

“Actually,” said Martha, “she’s two years younger.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not.”

A silence, then: “That is just so not possible,” he said.

“Ed,” said Martha, “you just made my weekend. Tell me, where did you go to uni?”

“Bristol.”

“Oh really? That’s where I went.”

“Yeah?” He turned to smile at her again, then said, “I bet you were in Wills Hall.”

“I was,” she said. “How did you know?”

“All the posh people lived there. It was a public-school ghetto. When I was at Bristol anyway.”

“I’m not posh,” she said indignantly, “and I certainly didn’t go to public school. I went to Binsmow Grammar School. When it
was
a grammar school.”

“I went there,” he said, “but it was a complete dump by then.”

He must be very bright, she thought, to have got into Bristol from a bad comprehensive. And it was bad; her father was on the board of governors and often talked despairingly of it.

They reached Whitechapel about eight thirty. “This’ll do fine for me,” he said. “I can get the tube.”

“OK. I’ll just pull over there.”

“It’s been really nice,” he said. “Thanks. I’ve enjoyed it. Talking to you and so on.”

“Weren’t you expecting to?”

“Well, not really, to tell you the truth. I thought you’d be—it would be—”

“What?” she said, laughing.

“A bit of an ordeal. Actually.”

“Well, I’m glad it wasn’t.”

“No, it absolutely wasn’t.” He got out, shut the door, then opened it again. He looked at her rather awkwardly. “I don’t suppose,” he said, “you’d like to come for a drink one night?”

“Well,” said Martha, feeling suddenly very uncool indeed, almost flustered, angry with herself for it, “yes, that would be nice. I’m afraid I—well, I’m afraid I work very late quite often.”

“Oh, OK,” he said. “It was just an idea.”

He looked mildly dejected and very awkward.

“No, I didn’t mean I couldn’t,” she said quickly. “I’d—well I’d like that. But I’m a bit hard to get hold of. That’s all.”

“I’ll try and manage it,” he said and smiled at her. “Cheers. Thanks again.”

“Cheers, Ed. It was my pleasure.”

“And mine.”

He shut the door and loped off, pulling a Walkman out of his rucksack; she felt quite sure she would never see him again. Especially if he was going travelling.

And she started thinking, as she had not allowed herself to do in church, of those first heady days, the ones when it was still all right…

She had decided to go down to the islands after all. After two more days, Bangkok had become claustrophobic, and everyone she met talked about the islands, the beauty of them. What was she doing, missing so important a part of the grand tour?

She travelled down to Koh Samui alone by train overnight. The train had cabins, sleeping six, with small lights; it felt rather colonial, a bit like an economy version of the Orient Express. A uniformed attendant made up the beds and urged them into bed almost as soon as the train left the station. Martha had already eaten—a smiling Thai had taken her order as the train stood at the station and cooked her a delicious meal on the platform—and she lay down obediently and fell asleep almost at once, waking at some time in the middle of the night at Surat Thani where she was transferred by bus to the ferry and a four-hour journey by sea to Koh Samui.

She had made friends on the boat with a girl called Fran who’d been told the best beach was Big Buddha and, for want of any further information, they took the taxi bus there—and felt the world had entirely changed.

Martha never forgot not just her first sight of the long tree-lined sweep of beach but her first feel of it, the soft white sand, the warm air, incredibly sweet after the gritty stench of Bangkok, the tenderly warm, blue-green water. She and Fran found a hut, rather grandly referred to as a bungalow, for two hundred baht a night and thought they would never want to leave it. It had a shower, a veranda, and three beds. Time slowed; they drifted through it.

After a few days, with no sense of surprise at all, she found Clio staying a few huts along; it was easy to find people, you just asked around the beach and the bars and if they were there, you found them. Jocasta had already moved on, had gone north. “But she said she’d be back,” said Clio vaguely. The life encouraged vagueness; it was timeless, aimless, and wonderfully irresponsible.

Where you lived was defined by the name of your beach: people didn’t say, “Where are you staying?” but “What beach are you on?” It was immensely beautiful; after the filth and squalor of Bangkok it did seem literally like paradise, the absolutely clear water, the palms waving above it, the endless white sand. Big Buddha sat at the end of the beach, at the top of a huge flight of ornate steps, painted a slightly tatty gold; his stern eyes followed you everywhere.

It was the rainy season, but still extremely warm; it was actually more comfortable in the softly warm sea when the rain fell. They spent a lot of time in it. And because it was the rainy season, there were the most wonderful sunsets, orange and red and black, hugely dramatic; everyone just sat and watched them as if they were an entertainment, rather like going to the cinema. Only the sunsets were nicer, Martha said…

They spent a lot of time sitting on their veranda, hour after hour, talking and talking as the day turned to dusk and then to dark, not just to each other but to anyone else who happened along. The ease with which relationships were formed fascinated Martha, growing up as she had in the strict society of Binsmow. One of the things she most liked was the way everyone was accepted just as they were, part of this one great, easy tribe. Nothing else mattered, there was no snobbery of any kind; you didn’t have to have lots of money or the right clothes. You were just a backpacker, nothing more or less than that.

On the third day she and Clio hired a motor scooter and drove inland down the bumpy rough tracks. They found some deep pools, with great waterfalls dropping into them, and swam lazily for hours, discussing how they felt already changed into different people; easier, more confident, happier people. Martha grew fonder and fonder of Clio; she was so sweet, so eager to please, so good-natured. And so lacking in self-confidence: it was strange, Martha thought, she was so pretty. OK, a bit overweight, but from the way she went on, you’d have thought she was a size 20. Those sisters of hers obviously had a lot to answer for.

There were downsides; Martha’s stomach, always delicate, was almost permanently painful and she suffered from diarrhoea endlessly.

“My periods seem to have gone up the spout,” she said to Clio one morning. “One started in Bangkok, then stopped after two days, and then I got one again yesterday, and now that seems to be over.” Clio, in her capacity as medical adviser, had been reassuring, said it would be the complete change of food, climate, routine. Martha had tried not to worry about it, and after a few more weeks succeeded. It was all part of this unfamiliar new person she had become, relaxed, easy, untroubled by anything very much. And very, very happy. She found herself waking up every morning thinking, What can I do today? and knew she could do it, whatever it was.

She felt she had conquered the world.