“No, I never do. Come to that, I never get tired of Florence.”
“I was taking photographs for a new guide somebody’s doing of Greece. I thought you should have done it, you’d have done it better.”
“Greece didn’t have a Renaissance,” Pat said.
In Florence, when the children were in bed, the three of them discussed whether Pat and Bee wanted more children, and concluded that three was enough. Bee was about to be forty, the age Pat had been when Philip was born, and the oldest age she felt it was safe to have a baby.
“As long as you don’t feel—” Pat said.
“I don’t. I don’t at all. I feel that three is enough,” Bee said, firmly. “As for you, it’s time you found a nice wife and got married,” she said to Michael.
“What would I ever tell her about this?” he asked. “A nice Jewish girl like my parents want me to marry would be shocked. Besides, there’s no hurry, and I’m travelling so much at the moment. I keep getting guidebooks, and Sunday supplement travel work. I’m in demand, but only because I can pack up and go anywhere without warning. A wife wouldn’t like that.”
Reading the English papers, Pat was surprised to find her old pupil Pamela Corey was becoming famous as part of the Second Impressionist movement.
On their return to Cambridge she resumed her routine with her mother, who didn’t seem to have missed her or even noticed her absence. “It makes me wonder why I do it,” she said to Bee. “She’s so often hostile and accusing.”
Bee’s father died suddenly of a heart attack in November. They all went up to Westmorland for the funeral. They discussed it on the drive up, and Bee offered her mother a home with them if she wanted it. She refused, saying she was comfortable where she was, with Bee’s brother Donald and his wife and children close by in the village. Bee’s parents had never really approved of Pat, or of the children.
“It’s easier, but I always thought I’d end up looking after them,” Bee said, as they drove home past the drystone walls and sheep-dotted fells. “It’s such a difficult thing.”
“You’ll miss your father,” Pat said.
“I will. He was so proud of me, Cambridge, and the Fellowship and everything. He had a copy of my book on his bedside table—not that he could have made head or tail of plant viruses, but there it was.”
“I still miss my father,” Pat said. “I wish I could have known him when I was grown up.”
“Yes, so do I.” Bee glanced from the road to Pat’s face. “It’s sad you never had that. I had those extra years with my Dad. That’s something to be thankful for.”
They stopped for the night in Lancaster, staying in the King’s Head, an old coaching house hotel on the edge of the city. Pat told Bee about Stan and Flo and the night she had spent in Barrow-in-Furness. “They are the ones who got me started in birding.”
“And she was called Flo?”
“Yes, like hundreds of girls of her generation called after Florence Nightingale, I suppose.”
“They were so desperate for strong female role models,” Bee said. “Were you thinking of her at all when you named Flossie?”
“Not really,” Pat confessed. “Neither Nightingale nor Flo in Barrow. Flossie is called after Firenze directly.”
The next morning they made an early start and drove out of town early, past the new ugly yellow-brick and plate-glass university, and on south towards home.
18
Divorce: Tricia 1972
She didn’t see or hear from Mark for a week. In the end she phoned him at work, which was the suggestion of Barbara from the consciousness raising group. “I’m glad you’ve finally got rid of him, he sounds like a real slimeball, but you have to get the financial details and everything sorted out. He can’t leave you with young children and walk away. Here’s my solicitor’s number. You need a proper lawyer for a divorce.”
At first Tricia’s heart sank at the thought of divorce. What had it all been for? And Mark was a Catholic, divorce didn’t exist for him. They could get divorced and he’d still regard himself as married to her. But she wouldn’t need to. She could be free of Mark. She called the university and asked the switchboard to put her through to Mark.
“Mark Anston,” he answered, his voice precise and bored as ever.
“It’s Tricia. You probably need some things from the house. And we should talk about what we’re going to do.”
“This is a bad time,” he said. She wondered who was there. Students? Colleagues? Would he have told them?
“Do you want to come around this evening?” she asked.
“Not this evening, I have an engagement. Tomorrow evening, about six?”