The Olive Tree (48 page)

Except for one . . .

I sleep then, deeply and peacefully, and for a change, I have no dreams that I wake up remembering. I fumble for my phone to check the time and see it is ten o’clock. I stand up, inch
around the bed, and walk upstairs to take a shower in bitingly cold water. Having dressed, I make a cup of coffee and stand at the back door sipping it, blinking myopically in the harsh morning
sunlight.

I decide then that I should go upstairs and air the bedrooms, relieve them of their odour of uninhabited house. It’s not that any of us have deliberately stayed away for ten years.
It’s just . . . the way things worked out.

Opening the shutters as I walk from one room to the next, I am glad to see that the beds are already neatly made up with fresh white sheets, towels laid at the bottom of each. Angelina seems to
have done a sterling job of taking care of Pandora over the years, and I emerge onto the terrace thinking about what I should do next. I hear the sound of tyres on the gravel and turn to see a
white van approaching the house. I watch as two familiar figures emerge from it and walk towards me.

‘Alex! My God! Can it really be you?’

An Alexis who seems to have shrunk in stature approaches me. When he clasps me to him in a man hug, I realise I am looking him in the eye.

‘Yes, it’s me, really,’ I assure him.

‘How are you? It has been far too long. But I understand the reasons,’ he sighs. ‘And of course’ – he beckons forward the woman standing shyly behind him –
‘you remember Angelina?’

‘Of course I do. In my opinion, her baking skills are unmatched to this day.’ I smile.

‘Hello, Alex,’ she says, kissing me on both cheeks. ‘Why, you are very handsome man now. You remind me of Brad Pitt!’

‘Do I?’ I reply, and decide I like her even more than I remembered.

‘Yes. So, I have many foods in the van and I must start preparing in the kitchen for tomorrow.’

‘Perhaps you can help me unload the wine and glasses, Alex?’

We all go to the van, and as we carry the food and then the boxes of wine and glasses into the storeroom at the back of the house, I study Alexis. The years, I think, have been kind to him, and
the silvery highlights that now pepper his dark hair give him a certain gravitas.

‘Let us go into the kitchen and drink some water,’ Alexis suggests, as we dump the last of many cases and the sweat pours off us both.

Angelina is already at the fridge, storing cheeses and salamis. I watch in surprise as Alexis walks towards her, puts his hands on her shoulders and kisses her on the top of her head as he
reaches inside for the bottle of water.

‘Here.’ He passes me a glass of water.

‘Thanks.’

‘Alex, you look confused. What is it?’

‘I . . . are you two . . . together?’

‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘When Pandora no longer needed Angelina’s help after your family had left, I employed her as our family’s housekeeper. And one thing led to
another. We married six years ago and I became a father two years ago, on the very day of my fiftieth birthday!’ Alexis grins. ‘I have another son.’

‘And I live in a houseful of man!’ Angelina chuckles happily. ‘And now, I would ask that you both leave my kitchen so that I can start preparing the feast.’

‘And I must go back to the office.’ Alexis checks his watch. ‘Come up and see the winery when you have time. We have doubled in size, and Dimitrios works with me making and
selling the wine.’

‘And Michel?’ I ask tentatively.

‘He runs the internet sales side of the company. So, we are a true family business. You will see my sons later today, as we have much more to do at Pandora yet. Call me if there’s
anything else you need, Alex, and I look forward to hearing later of
your
life over the past ten years.’

I watch him blow a kiss to his wife, whose dark eyes follow him lovingly out of the kitchen.

‘Is there anything I can do, Angelina?’ I ask politely.

‘Nothing, Alex. Why don’t you go for swim in the pool?’

It’s obvious that she wants me out of her hair, and I oblige. I take a swim, remembering as I dive into the deep end the horror of rescuing my poor, drowning bunny. More and more I feel
Alice-like here – the pool, too, seems to have shrunk as I reach the other end in five strokes instead of ten.

After padding back up to my Broom Cupboard and changing into a dry pair of shorts and a T-shirt, I take hold of the collected works of Keats. As I do so, various pieces of paper fly out of the
pages. I look at them with a fond half-smile, but one sheet in particular actually brings tears to my eyes. I read it, and my heart immediately starts to bump against my chest.

Will she come . . . ?

I just don’t know.

What is it, I wonder, about Pandora, that seems to unlock the emotions? Its walls seem to contain an intensity of energy within them that removes your outer protective skin and burrows deep
inside you, revealing the source of your pain. Like a surgeon’s knife slices through effortlessly to one’s diseased innards.

Dearie me
, I think,
if it’s started already, I’m going to be a snivelling wreck by tomorrow night.

I replace the poems in the book and put them back on the shelf. Then I take down the diary again. As it seems there’s nothing else to do, I grab a pen and sunglasses from my rucksack, plus
a cold beer from the kitchen. And I go outside to sit at the table on the terrace.

I open the diary to the clean page beyond the last entry. Simply because – me being me – I don’t like unfinished business. And if I
was
me in fifty or sixty years’
time, my frustration at its abrupt ending would be beyond measure.

Of course, I cannot compete with Pepys and his dedicated nine years of daily detail, and all I will be able to manage is a ‘memoir’ – a potted version of my life over the past
ten years. But at least it will be something. Which, as everyone knows, is better than nothing.

Or is it?

We shall see . . .

September 2006 – June 2016

School

The one where one eats one’s Frosties in white tie and tails. I don’t care how PC everyone believes boarding schools to be these days – my first term was far
closer to Tom Brown than Gordon Brown, i.e. HORRENDOUS.

Nowadays, bullying at such establishments is no longer thought of as ‘toughening young men up’ – things have moved on since the old days, when the masters would
virtually cheer the bullies on from the sidelines. Instead, it has become invisible and insidious.

The bullies have become like renegade torturers trained by the SAS. The kind who challenge you to a ‘friendly’ pillow fight, then whilst you’re using your fluffy
down version, they are bashing your brains to mulch with a cotton sackful of box files. Or sending you hate mail by text from a pay-as-you-go mobile that can’t be traced. Or
‘fraping’ you on Facebook and changing your status to ‘In a relationship with a transvestite’.

Luckily, having learnt my lesson about the ribbing I’d got over Bee the Bunny in Cyprus – it’s about the only thing I can ever say I’m grateful to Rupes for
– Bee arrived prepared in a cotton cradle, which I surreptitiously attached to the underside of my wooden-framed bed with drawing pins. This meant that during the night, even though there was
a mattress separating us, I could at least reach out my arm underneath the bed and feel the security of his non-furry fur, and whisper to him through the slats beneath me.

I admit that, during the first dreadful weeks, I nearly ran away again. However, I wasn’t going to give Rupes the pleasure of gloating over my departure, and besides, the
teaching
was
incredible.

And it got better, as these things usually do, as I grew in mind and body. By the time I arrived in the sixth form, I was equipped with a stellar set of GCSEs. Fifty years ago
I’d have had a ‘fag’ as well, i.e. a terrified first-former given to me to do my bidding: shining my shoes, laying my fire and toasting my crumpets upon it. The practice was
abolished in the seventies, and a jolly good thing too, although some of my peer group continued to act as though it hadn’t been, seeing it as a rite of passage.

‘Fag’: I discovered recently that its original meaning was from the . . .

I pause in my musings and ponder whether anyone who is reading this diary in fifty or a hundred years’ time is really going to be interested in the provenance of the word
‘fag’. The chances are that we’ll all be speaking Mandarin as the world’s main language by then, judging by the number of Chinese pupils at my school.

Anyway, the upshot of five years of school was that I won a place at Oxford University, reading philosophy.

Family

Mum, Dad, Immy and Fred continued their own lives alongside mine. Fred managed to kill my goldfish within two weeks of me leaving home. When I asked if he’d given it a
decent burial, he told me he’d chucked it down the toilet, as he thought it should be buried in water.

Mum seemed far more relaxed and content than I’d ever seen her before. Too content, obviously, as the minute Fred began school, she announced her intention to establish a
school of her own.

Suffice to say that the Beaumont School of Dance grew apace into what could be regarded as a multinational company. Apart, that is, from the actual cash such a venture is meant to
generate. Mum, being Mum, seemed to teach most of her pupils for free. It was rare to come home for the school holidays and not find a sobbing person in a leotard sitting at the kitchen table,
taking advantage of her listening ear as they poured out their life’s problems.

That is, until the words that everybody dreads more than any other arrived at that same kitchen table. And Mum found herself with new problems of her own.

I pause again at this point, because I still feel unable to put into words the horror of the moment she and Dad told me. I stand up and get another beer from the fridge to
drown the memory, and decide I will fill in the blanks on all that later on.

Family continued

Apart from Mum’s problem, which obviously turned all of our worlds upside down, Immy and Fred seem to have done little more than grow quietly upwards. Maybe they
didn’t have much choice, given the circumstances.

It was Dad who shouldered a lot of the pressure when Mum couldn’t. He’s now a dab hand with the tumble dryer, and can make a decent Pot Noodle of his own in a pan from
scratch. He’s a seriously good bloke, my dad. And the best thing I ever did was to legally adopt him and his surname.

As far as Genetic Dad is concerned, he turned up one day near Christmas at Cedar House about a year after the apocalyptic summer and demanded to see me, his ‘son’. Mum
came upstairs to my bedroom, with that look of concern I know so well written all over her face. She explained that Sacha was downstairs. She said I didn’t have to see him. I told her not to
worry, and that I would.

When I arrived downstairs, he was at the kitchen table, knocking back whatever alcoholic beverage my father had just handed him. He looked dreadful. His hands shook, his bones stood
up under his papery skin . . . And despite my determination to hate him, as usual, I felt sorry for him.

He wanted to know whether I wanted a ‘relationship’ with him.

Of all the people in the world, this poor, sad man was not top of my personal relationship list. So, with much effort, I told him no. In fact, I told him no so many times, I felt I
was repeating a mantra. Until Dad realised I’d had enough and bundled Sacha out of the kitchen to drive him to the station.

I didn’t see or hear from him again, until . . .

I shall move on.

The rest of the Pandora Posse

Sadie had her baby, a sweet little girl who she named Peaches – so typically Sadie – although I suppose it could easily have been Melon, or Gooseberry . . . and she
made
me
a godfather!

Now, that was a really nice thing to do, even though every time I see Peaches, I struggle to say her name out loud, especially if we’re in public. And it really is one of
those monikers that you can’t possibly shorten. I tried ‘Pee’ once, which really doesn’t work, so I now try to avoid calling her anything at all. She’s a friendly
child who has placidly accepted a succession of ‘uncles’, as Sadie has continued to swap boyfriends the way I used to swap football cards. In that regard, it makes my own childhood look
like a walk in the park.

Andreas the Carpenter has never known about his daughter. This may be why, in retrospect, Sadie made me a godparent. Perhaps she thinks that when the time comes for Peaches to
discover her mother’s behaviour was less than unimpeachable, she can send her to me for counselling.

As for the rest of the Chandler clan: Jules moved to her cottage near Oundle with Rupes and Viola, and put down roots there like a particularly ferocious specimen of ivy. According
to her annual round-robin Christmas letter – posted like clockwork on the first of December to arrive (second class) on the fourth, just when every other mortal is making their list of People
They Must Send Cards To – she quickly established herself as head of every parent–teacher association and fundraising committee going. I imagine that if there was a fête,
bring-and-buy or bazaar, there she’d be, chivvying time and money out of the other parents.

Basically, she went to school with Rupes (who ended up captaining the First XV rugby team, so he was happy). And in between, she managed to keep the family body and soul together by
working as an estate agent.

I have to hand it to Jules: even if she is one of the most irritating human beings I know, she gets stuff done. In fact, she’d make the most wonderful sergeant major.

As for little Viola, her name was always in the Christmas letter Jules sent, so I presumed she was still alive. Although I didn’t actually set eyes on her until . . .

At this point, I must apologise to the reader of this memoir for all the ‘untils’. There are a lot of things to tell and it’s going to be quite difficult to write
some of them, so please bear with me.