“Jon!” Jenna tried, and failed, to hide her
surprise. “What are you doing here?”
A silly question,
because of course she knew what he was doing here. He was Saskia’s latest squeeze. At once, all her friend’s coyness about the
identity of her new boyfriend was explained.
Dear God, Jenna thought, at
once astonished and exasperated, is there
a single one of my female friends that Jon hasn’t
shagged over the past thirty years? She
had a wild image of those he hadn’t – Ruth, Shelley, Mags, Cathy – forming an
orderly queue outside his door, and resisted the temptation to giggle.
“I’ve come for
supper,” said Jon, with his most charming smile. “If that’s OK?”
With an effort,
Jenna regained her composure. “Don’t be
silly, of course it’s OK! Come in. Fran’s already here, and Saskia of course.”
As if she’d been
summoned, Saskia appeared in the hall, wine-glass in hand. She gave Jenna an unapologetic grin, and
sashayed forward. “Jon, darling, you
made it! I thought you’d get lost in
those trackless forests, and be eaten by wolves.”
“I have been here
before,” Jon pointed out, drawing her into an embrace. “Lovely to see you both. Jen, that smells delicious. How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks,”
she said, and spoke no more than the truth.
“You?”
“Great,” said Jon,
with a smug smile that once she would have found irritating. He’d
better watch out, she thought, Saskia’s
perfectly capable of having him for breakfast and planting the leftovers in the
garden.
“Anyway, let’s go through,” she said, squeezing
past the lovebirds and returning to the sitting room. Fran was looking at her quizzically, and she
gave him what she hoped was a meaningful glance. Then Saskia was ushering Jon into the room,
asking him what he’d like to drink.
“There’s wine, beer, OJ, mineral water – “
“I’ll have a small
beer. Hi, Fran, didn’t expect to see you
here.”
If Fran had been
surprised at Jon’s appearance, he hid it extremely well. Jenna was amused to see that they didn’t
embrace, despite having known each other for more than thirty years, but shook
hands. “Jen’s giving Flora some extra
tuition,” he said, with a smile in her direction.
“Really? Does she need it? I was under the impression that she’s a
pretty bright kid.”
“She is.” Fran sat down on one of the sofas next to the
stove. “But Krystal wants her to go to
an exclusive boarding school in the US, and there’s a tough entrance exam.”
“And how do you
feel about that?” Jon enquired, taking a place opposite, with Saskia beside him,
rather ostentatiously snuggling up.
“How do I
feel? That’s not the point, it’s how
Flora feels.” Fran took a swig from the
bottle of beer he’d been given earlier.
“And at the moment she’s very positive about it.”
“Boarding school,
eh?” Saskia frowned. “Don’t tell me, she thinks it’s a cross
between Malory Towers and Hogwarts. And
I can assure you, it isn’t.”
“Did you go to
boarding school, then?” Fran asked, with interest.
“Had to, darling,
Daddy was a construction engineer and mostly worked abroad. Good educational facilities are a little lacking in the remoter parts of
Namibia or Brazil.”
“I can
imagine. So – did you like it?”
“Do you want my
honest opinion?” Saskia fixed him with a
look that for once was completely devoid of her usual irony. “I hated every minute. Boarding school is great if your home life is
grim, or if you fit in with the rest of the crowd. I spent
the first three years crying into my pillow every night, and behaving as badly
as I could during the day so that I’d be expelled.”
Jenna stared at her
in consternation and sympathy. She’d
known for years that Saskia’s school career had been somewhat chequered, but she’d
had no idea that it had been so bad for her.
It was now painfully obvious that her aura of world-weary sophistication
had disguised a great deal of misery and hurt. She thought of her own difficult childhood,
and suddenly wondered if, subconsciously, that early, shared unhappiness had
drawn them to each other, despite the fact that outwardly they were so very
different.
“But you survived,”
said Jon, who, Jenna seemed to remember, had attended some elite grammar school
in the Home Counties – there’d been a photo of him bandied about at uni,
wearing an expensive-looking uniform complete, embarrassingly, with cap.
“Only just,” said
Saskia, giving him a look. “All I can
say is, thank the gods for smuggled vodka.
The day girls used to sneak booze and fags in and sell them to us. We may have been known as the Inmates, but we
weren’t short of cash. Guilty parents
are usually pretty generous.”
“Hopefully times
have changed,” said Fran, but he was looking very thoughtful. Of course, he’d been unsure of whether
boarding school would be suitable for Flora, but hadn’t had much choice in the
matter. Saskia’s lurid descriptions were
undoubtedly not what he’d want to hear.
Jenna opened her mouth to divert the conversation to safer topics, but
was forestalled by her friend, tactless as ever. “Of course they have, darling, only now it’s drugs
and internet porn and sexting. Still,
I’m sure your Flora is sensible enough to avoid all the temptations and
pitfalls. Though when you get a gaggle
of girls together ...” She gave an exaggerated shudder. “My school made St. Trinians look like a
vicarage tea party.”
“Sass, can you give
me a hand with the food? I think I can
smell burning.”
In the kitchen,
Saskia looked at her indignantly. “The
food’s fine. What was all that about?”
“Sorry, but Fran’s
really unsure about whether boarding school would be right for Flora, but he
can’t do anything about it because her mother has custody, or whatever they
call it in the States. So telling him
about all your awful experiences isn’t going to help.”
“Maybe not,
darling,” Saskia said, obviously not mollified.
“But they were awful, and I
don’t feel like sweetening the pill, frankly.”
Jenna immediately
regretted being so blunt. She said
unhappily, “Oh, Sass, I’m sorry. I
really am. I hadn’t realised quite how
bad it was for you.”
“Well, most of the
time I do my best to forget. But I
didn’t want Fran’s kid going through the same thing.”
“If I’m honest, I
don’t want it either. But it’s not up to
me, or him, unfortunately. Did you meet
Flora?”
“She was at your
New Year bash, wasn’t she? Long dark
hair? Quite precocious, I seem to
remember.”
Jenna grinned. “That’s Flora. But she’s lovely - really bright, and quite
quirky. Very much her own girl, I
think.”
“She’ll need to
be,” said Saskia darkly. “But I do get
it, Jen – I’ll back off. Can’t be
upsetting your inamorata, after all.”
“He’s not!
Anyway, I thought ‘inamorata’ was a woman?”
“I thought it was a
hippo.”
“Hippo?
How much wine have you had?”
“Not nearly enough,
darling, and my glass is empty, hint hint.
You must know the Hippopotamus
Song. Flanders and Swann. I remember singing it at school.”
“Of course I know
it!”
Saskia put her
glass down on the draining board and warbled, surprisingly tunefully, “His inamorata adjusted her garter and lifted
her voice in duet – mud, mud, glorious
mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So follow me, follow, down to the hollow, and
there we will wallow, in glorious mud!’”
Their helpless
laughter brought both men to the kitchen door.
“What’s so funny?” Jon demanded, looking as if he thought he was the
object of their amusement.
“Nothing,” Jenna
gasped, feeling the tears rolling down her cheeks. “We just got the giggles.”
“I’m sure I heard
the Hippopotamus Song,” Fran said with a grin.
“Isn’t that a wee bit random?”
“Randomness rules,”
said Saskia, who had extracted another bottle of wine from the fridge and was
in the process of unscrewing the cap.
“Remind me again, how old are you two?” Jon enquired, but
he was smiling.
“Old enough to know
better, darling, young enough not to care.”
That set the tone
for the evening. Some semblance of
formality was maintained at the dining table, which Jenna had set carefully
with her best place mats, the ones depicting the unicorn tapestries – she had
given Fran ‘Hearing’, Jon ‘Touch’, and Saskia ‘A Mon Seul Desir’, which seemed
to fit them all quite well, and ‘Sight’ for herself, while the serving dishes,
heaped with mounds of steaming jasmine rice and a sticky, glistening pile of
stir-fried chicken strips and exotic vegetables, fragrant with spices, were
laid appropriately on ‘Smell’ and ‘Taste’.
While the food disappeared with gratifying speed, the talk ranged from
university reminiscences, exchanges of news about their offspring (fortunately
avoiding any further mention of boarding schools), and updates on work and
careers. Jenna, mindful of the fact that
both the men were driving home and couldn’t indulge in alcohol, restricted
herself to a couple of glasses of wine, and to her secret relief, Saskia took the
hint for once and also limited her intake.
By the time she took the much depleted cheesecake back to the kitchen
and found a space for it in the fridge, it was well after nine o’clock, and she
put the kettle on. “Anyone want
coffee? Or tea?”
“I’ll have a good
strong coffee,” said Jon. “Got to get
back to Norwich tonight, unfortunately – I’ve got an article for an archaeology
magazine to finish, and the deadline is looming.”
“I seem to remember
that you were always the one producing your essays at five past midnight on the
day they were due in,” Jenna said with a grin.
“One coffee, eye-wateringly strong – anyone else?”
The coffee machine
duly spluttered into action, and she rejoined her friends, who had migrated
back to the sofas by the fire. Jon glanced
up as she sat down opposite him. “By the
way, Jen, I’ve been meaning to ask you.
Remember when we met at UEA back in September, when you were dropping
Rosie off at the start of term?”
“Of course,” Jenna
said.
“You said you
wanted to pick my brains about something, but you never got around to telling
me what it was.”
“Ooh.” Saskia squirmed round to give her an arch
look. “Sounds intriguing, darling, do
tell all.”
“I would if I could
remember what it was,” Jenna said ruefully.
“Another senior moment, I suspect.”
She cast her mind back to their conversation in the university
cafe. It was a world away now: a world
in which she was still ostensibly happily married, in which she lived in St.
Albans, in which she knew nothing about Madison Briggs and her baby. That Jenna now seemed ludicrously delusional,
cosily wrapped in her middle class bubble, unaware of what was lying in wait
for her. With an effort, she dredged a
memory from the recesses of her mind. “I
think it must have been to do with the casket.”
“The casket?” Jon looked puzzled, and she realised that
she’d never got around to telling him about it.
Briefly, she explained. “It’s a
seventeenth century embroidered cabinet.
I inherited it from my grandmother, and she asked me to research it, try
and find out who made it. So I’ve been
tracing it back in time – I’ve got as far as the eighteenth century.” Belatedly, part of her was wishing she hadn’t
mentioned it, even though these were her closest and oldest friends, and she
wanted to share her discoveries with them.
“It’s absolutely
beautiful,” Saskia said. “Have you seen
it, Jon?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Nor me,” Fran
added. “Though I’ve heard a lot about
it. Jen, you’ve got it here, haven’t
you? Can we have a look?”
She went upstairs
to retrieve it. Every time she opened
her wardrobe door, some shard of panic invaded her: would it still be
there? And every time, of course, she
saw the squat, anonymous wooden container with its worn brass lock, hinges and
handles, giving no inkling of the wonder that lay inside it. With a smile, Jenna pulled it out, picked up
the cotton gloves which Emma James had given her, and took it back downstairs. Saskia had already cleared the coffee table
and wiped it clean, and she set the precious box down on it.
“It doesn’t look
very impressive,” said Jon, his expression dubious. “I presume the star of the show’s inside it?”
“It’s the original
box,” Jenna told him, with a prickle of irritation. ”You’d be a bit shabby too, after three
hundred odd years.” She put the gloves
on, acutely aware of three pairs of fascinated eyes glued on her, and turned
the key. With care, she raised the lid,
and lifted out her unexpected, embroidered inheritance.
Saskia, of course,
had seen it before, but the two men leaned forward eagerly to get a better
view. “That’s amazing!” Jon said, with
evident and gratifying admiration. “How
old did you say it was?”
“About three
hundred and fifty years, probably. If I
can find out who made it, I can narrow the date down a bit – they were
generally made by very young girls, twelve or thirteen.”
As they expressed
their surprise and astonishment, she showed them how the doors opened, and the
drawers behind them, leaving the exquisite miniature garden till the last.
“And there are only
a couple of others with that, didn’t you say?” Saskia commented. “One’s in a museum, and the other – get this,
guys – is owned by the Queen.”
“Apparently so,”
Jenna said.
“It must be worth a
fortune,” Jon said. “Aren’t you worried
that something might happen to it?”
For some reason,
Jenna wasn’t as annoyed with him for mentioning this, as she had been with
Rick. She said, “I’m going to offer it
to the V&A on semi-permanent loan.
They have all the resources to conserve it properly, look after it, and
put it on display so everyone can enjoy it.”
She hadn’t known until she spoke
that this was what she had decided, but it felt very much the right thing to
do.
“But first,” she
added, “I’ve promised myself that I’ll finish my research into its
origins. I’ve probably only got another
two or three generations to go.”
“So you won’t need
my help?” Jon asked, sounding disappointed.
Jenna thought about
it. There was something in her that
jealously wanted to keep this to herself, make her discoveries all her own
work, but that was being childish. These
were her closest friends, why shouldn’t she share what she’d found with them?
“I’m not sure,” she
said at last. “My grandmother said it
had been passed down through the generations, mother to daughter, and I assumed
she was right about that, but she wasn’t – there was at least one occasion
where it must have gone from mother to son, because there weren’t any
daughters.” She explained about what
she’d learned from her visit to Hessett Church.
“How do you know
that was the only time?” Jon asked. “It
could have happened more recently, and you’re researching the wrong family
altogether.”
“I know I’m not,
because of the name – my great-grandmother was called Winifred Emily Merelina,
and Merelina crops up again and again.
That’s how I knew that the mother-daughter line had been broken when I
saw the memorial tablets – they were both called Merielina Leheup, and they
turned out to be grandmother and granddaughter, with a son in between.”
“You’ve lost me,
darling,” Saskia said. “But I’ll take
your word for it.”
“So this mysterious
MJ, who made the casket, could have been called Merelina too,” said Fran.
“That’s what I’m
thinking and hoping. Now all I have to
do is go back another two or three generations, because the grandmother
Merielina Leheup in the church was born around 1734. If you assume twenty or thirty years per
generation, then that would make her grandmother born about 1670 or 80, when
caskets like that were fashionable.”
“So Google her,”
Jon said. “That’s the obvious thing to
do. There can’t be many Merielina
Leheups around.”
“I know. But I’m sort of reluctant to finish it – I’ve
really enjoyed doing this and I don’t want it to end. Not yet, anyway.”
“Well, would you
like me to do it?” Jon was already
taking out his phone.
“No, please
don’t!” It came out more urgently than
Jenna had intended, and he looked at her in rather hurt surprise. “Why not?”
“Because it’s her
casket, her project, and her research, you plonker,” said Saskia, her
affectionate tone softening the bluntness of the words. “Don’t take it over now, when she’s almost
done.”
“OK,” Jon said,
putting the phone back in his pocket. He
gave Jenna his most disarming grin.
“Sorry. I tend to get carried
away by the magic word ‘research’. By
far the most interesting part of what I do – the real chore is writing it all
up afterwards. Which is why I’m going to
have to tear myself away by ten – I’ve got work to do tomorrow. And that reminds me,” he added, turning to
Fran, “How’s the writing going?”
To Jenna, his tone
sounded very slightly patronising, but Fran didn’t seem to notice it. “I’m glad you asked – I’ve got something I
need to run by a critical audience.”
“You haven’t
brought your guitar, though,” Jenna said, puzzled but interested.
“Don’t need it –
it’s all on here.” He pulled his keys
out of his jeans pocket and indicated the tiny USB stick attached to the
ring. “The wonders of modern technology. Can I plug it into your laptop, Jen?”
She took it off the
shelf beside the fire and put it on the coffee table next to the casket. When she’d switched it on, Fran leaned forward
and slotted the stick into the port. As
the other three watched with interest, he pressed a couple of keys and stroked
the touch pad. The same delicate tune
that he had played to her a few weeks previously, on the day she had first
realised that her father might not be dead after all, dropped into the
quiet. Then his disembodied voice broke
in, quiet and reflectively tuneful.
‘Winter falls on the town,
Dusk comes soon in the day.
In the cafe,
We sit and we talk,
While outside the snow is drifting down.
Guitarist
is singing of love sure and true,
But
I don’t know if I love you.
People
hurrying past,
Certain
of what they’ll meet.
In
the cold street
We
smile and we walk,
While
round us the snow is falling fast.
And
you make me laugh, and such friends are few,
But
I don’t know if I love you.
The
town is lovely at night,
Darkness
hides all the scars.
Under
the stars,
We
sing as we walk,
Through
snow in the strange streetlamp light.
Don’t
know where I’m bound, or if you’ll come too,
And
I don’t know if I love you.
Winter
has come to the town,
Crystal
cold in the night.
Under
street light,
We
stand and we talk,
You
smile through the snow falling down.
Guitarist
was wrong, there’s no love sure and true,
But
I know that I’m in love with you.’
There was a moment
of silence when the song ended, and then Saskia let out a long expressive
sigh. “Wow, that was something else. I love it.”
“Thank you,” Fran
said. “The lyrics are a wee bit rough,
they’ll need more work. But the tune’s
OK, and that’s the most important thing.”
“It’s good,” Jon
said, nodding appreciatively. “Who are
you going to give it to? Do you have
someone in mind?”
“I
do, but if I told you, I’d have to kill you.
Let’s just say it’s a woman, and a household name.” Fran took the USB stick out of Jenna’s
laptop, shut it down and closed the lid with a gentle but final snap.
“You
couldn’t give us a teeny tiny hint, darling?”
Saskia asked, putting a deliberately wheedling tone into her voice.
“Absolutely
not.“ He grinned at her, softening his
refusal, and then turned to Jenna. “Did
you recognise it?”
Yes,
she had recognised both the tune and the lyrics. Suddenly, as the song played, she’d been
transported back to their student days long ago. They had all frequented a cafe bar in a
backstreet just off Norwich city centre, often spending whole afternoons there,
making bitter coffee and slabs of the indigestible, allegedly homemade fruit
cake last as long as possible, talking, gossiping, setting the world to rights
or discussing relationships. The cafe owner, a middle aged man who fancied
himself as a potter – the cakes always appeared on thick, misshapen brown
plates, and the coffee cups never sat neatly on their saucers – had operated an
‘open mike’ policy every Saturday, and Fran had played his first gig there one
snowy winter evening, so shy and nervous that his voice had been barely audible
above the sound of his guitar, while they all watched encouragingly and
applauded him with an enthusiasm that the other customers didn’t seem to share.
Was
Marino’s still there? She doubted
it. After thirty years, Johnny Marino
and his small, voluble Italian wife were probably long since retired, or even
dead. But Fran’s song had brought it all
back, those wonderful heady days when anything seemed possible and a snowfall
was a thing of wonder and delight, rather than an inconvenience to be cursed.
Jenna
dragged herself back to the present with an effort. “It’s the tune you played me a while ago,
isn’t it? With a few extra twiddly bits
here and there.” She wondered suddenly who had been the ‘you’ in
the song. Kirsten, the Swedish girl
who’d had a crush on Fran for a while?
It seemed unlikely, she’d been pretty but intense, slightly scary, and
entirely lacking in any sense of humour.
Elaine, who’d sometimes sung with him?
She was attractive and had a good voice, but was a committed member of
the university’s lesbian group. There’d
been another girl on his course, Abbie, but with her sharp tongue and extreme
political opinions she didn’t seem to be Fran’s type. Certainly not Jules, who was going out with
Jon at that time, before he took up with Jenna.
Or Sarah, perhaps? She’d been unattached until Jon switched his
fickle attentions to her, leaving Jenna in the lurch.
All
those tangled, fraught relationships seemed trivial now, and their younger
selves like children playing, pretending to adult feelings and adult roles that
they hadn’t fully understood. Anyway,
although much of the song seemed to be based on reality, there probably hadn’t
been any ‘you’. Any writer could employ
many different components to create a book or a lyric, and imagination usually
played a much bigger part in the process than most people realised.
“Like
it?” Fran asked. His eyes, the colour of
good dark chocolate, were warm and enquiring.
She smiled at him. “No, I love it. And the words too.” She wasn’t going to ask him whether ‘you’ was
a real person, that would be prying.
Fran was a good friend, but she respected his privacy.
Jon
had no such scruples. “So who is she?”
he asked, with a knowing look. “Or is
she a figment of your imagination?”
“Don’t
be nosy,” said Saskia, nudging him.
“Anyway, songs don’t have to be autobiographical.”
For
a very brief instant, Fran’s eyes met Jenna’s, and she realised that he had
guessed that she remembered Marino’s.
Then he grinned. “No,” he said
mildly. “No, they don’t. Bohemian
Rhapsody, for instance.”
Saskia
snorted. “That’s the one where he sings
‘Spare him his life for this one cup of tea’.”
“’From
this monstrosity’,” said Jon, who could be very literal at times.
“They’re
called ‘Mondegreens’,” Jenna told him.
“There’s an old folk song where you’re supposed to sing ‘And laid him on
the green’, and it was misheard as ‘Lady Mondegreen’.”
“’Gladly
my cross-eyed bear’,” said Fran. “We
used to sing that in kirk when I was a wee lad.
Or ‘I will make you vicious old men’.
‘Fishers of men’,” he added for the benefit of Jon.
“That
Madonna song,” Saskia said. “’Young
girls with eyes like potatoes’. Or ‘The
girl with colitis goes by’.”
“What’s that from?” Jon was looking increasingly bewildered.
“Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds – ‘the
girl with kaleidoscope eyes’.” Fran was
laughing too. “Have you really never
heard any of those before?”
“’The
ants are my friends, blowin’ in the wind,’” Saskia sang, warming to her theme. “’Should I give up, or should I just keep
chasing penguins?’ ‘See that girl, watch
her scream, kicking the dancing queen’.”
Jenna
wasn’t going to be outdone. “’I can see
clearly now, Lorraine has gone, I can see four lobster claws in my way.’”
“This
is getting very silly,” Jon said, but he was laughing too now, and Jenna was
pleased to see him put his arm round Saskia and give her an affectionate kiss.
Silly
it certainly was, she thought much later, when Jon and Fran had said good night
and returned to their separate homes, and Saskia, having polished off all the
remaining wine, had taken herself off to bed.
But her sides were still aching with laughter, and her memory of the
evening was tinged with a happy glow.
She undressed and snuggled down under the duvet, with the kittens, twin
furry musical hot water bottles, curled up beside her, and thought about Fran’s
song. She’d said to him quietly, as they
exchanged goodbyes on the doorstep after Jon’s departure, “Was it about Marino’s?”
“I
thought you’d guessed. Yes, that was
part of it. Great times, good
memories. It needs a chorus or a key
change, though, and I’ll have to put in some serious graft on it before I can
call it finished.”
“I
wonder if Marino’s is still there,” Jenna had said. “Unlikely, I suppose, after so long.”
“It’s
not. Johnny and Pia retired to Italy,
oh, about ten years ago I think. It’s a
tattoo parlour now. Sign of the times!” He grinned at her. “And before you ask, no, I’ve never had one.”
“Nor
me. Saskia has, though. And Rosie went through a phase where she kept
nagging me to give permission, and I kept telling her no.”
“If
she wants a tattoo, she’ll get it. You’d
be surprised how many of the students have at least one.” He kissed her briefly on the cheek. “Thanks for a great evening, lobster claws and
all. OK for Flora on Wednesday?”
“Great. See you then.”
She
smiled now, knowing that if Rosie got a tattoo, there was nothing that she
could do about it. In fact, a small, tasteful
red rose on her shoulder, say, could actually be quite attractive. And Patricia would loathe it.
Thinking
of Rosie, and her mother, reminded her that she hadn’t yet told her daughter
that her grandfather was still alive, and that she had an Australian family
they’d known nothing about. She would
have to do so tomorrow, before the twins let something slip. But she wasn’t, yet, going to send any kind
of olive branch to Patricia. She wanted
to give her time to think about the consequences of her actions, and to
contemplate the necessity of an apology.
Not for the first time, Jenna felt far more adult than her own mother.
And
there was something else she must do as soon as possible – she must try to
finish her family researches. Despite
his words earlier, she wouldn’t put it past Jon to Google Merielina Leheup and
put the last piece into the puzzle with a triumphant flourish. He’d always had a strong competitive
streak. But this was her family, her hunt, and she wanted to bring her efforts to a final, glorious
conclusion, without anyone else’s assistance.
She had a strong sense that MJ was waiting for her, eager for her
descendant to solve the mystery and reunite the marvellous casket with the full
name of its creator. And once that was
done, she could get in touch with the Victoria and Albert Museum, and offer it
to them on indefinite loan, so that all the world could share its delights as the
the women in her family had, for more than three hundred years.
