“You still want to be an astronaut?”
George blushed. “Not an astronaut. A scientist who works in space. They have Hope Station now, and they’re starting to set up the moonbase. That’s the most likely way for me to get up there.”
“Whatever makes you happy,” Tricia said.
Tricia didn’t understand her children. She never had. Doug was a minor but significant pop star. Goliath was in the process of breaking up—they kept getting back together and then breaking up again, as Doug’s relationship with Sue went through the same process. Doug was working on an album with Peter Gabriel. Helen drifted from casual job to casual job, and from boyfriend to boyfriend. She was nineteen and the beauty she had had as a child had flowered into something so lovely that Tricia was almost afraid for her. Helen’s face and figure were perfect, and she knew it. She talked from time to time about modeling or acting, which Tricia encouraged, because it would have been a way for her to become independent, but in the end she always accepted another job waitressing or in a bar. Now George was going into science with a goal of space. Only Cathy seemed like an ordinary adolescent—at nearly fourteen she worried about schoolwork and boys. Cathy always craved approval. Tricia blamed Mark, who had never taken much notice of her, and still did not, even now when she was the only one of the children who seemed to care about him.
Her mother was still at home, still with Marge coming in every day to look after her while Tricia was at work. She was deteriorating visibly—fearful and afraid of anyone new, any change. She forgot even ordinary words and would spit out accusations if anything went wrong. Tricia was horrified how judgemental and unkind her mother could become at those times, though she tried to put herself into her place and understand that really she was afraid. She liked her routine, and slept a great deal of the time.
Tricia was working full time in the Grammar School in Morecambe, which was due to become comprehensive and merge with the local secondary modern school next year. She was also teaching two evening classes, working with the two local preservation societies and with CND, which was contemplating changing its name to the Campaign for Peace, as nuclear disarmament seemed like a won battle. Her life was busy and fulfilling. Her house was always full of friends—the children’s friends, her friends from the campaigns or from classes, people she knew who were thinking of starting a whole food co-op and cafe in town, friends from the women’s group, and colleagues. People were always popping in for a moment and staying for hours. It sometimes made it difficult for her to get marking done—she started getting up early to do marking before school rather than counting on doing it in the evenings. She didn’t miss Mark at all, indeed she felt relieved of a weight since he had left. Although he was still at the university she seldom saw him. He came almost every Sunday to take George and Cathy out for lunch and was punctilious about informing her if he wasn’t going to be able to do that.
With all this new bustle and press of things in her life came a new name. It came first from the women’s group, where almost all the women used shortened forms of their names as part of their reimagination of themselves. “But Tricia is already a shortening,” she said, when Barb said something. “It’s Patricia really.”
“You should be Trish,” Barb said.
Tricia thought about it and decided she liked it, and soon she was Trish to everyone except Mark, who continued to call her Tricia, and her mother, who still called her Patsy when she recognized her.
That summer, 1974, Doug paid for the whole family to have a holiday in Majorca. Trish didn’t like the heat or the hotel, which was full of other British holidaymakers. She worried about her mother, who was spending the fortnight in a nursing home in Morecambe. She didn’t like the oily food or the flies on the beach, and wished they’d gone to Cornwall instead. To her astonishment, in the second week she ran into Marjorie from Oxford, whom she had not seen since her wedding. Marjorie was married and had twins. They caught up, but found they no longer had much in common, if they ever had. When Doug joined them for a few days at the end she found the reactions of the other holidaymakers to his fame uncomfortable. Marjorie could hardly believe that Trish had a son who was a pop star and became tongue-tied in his presence. Sue wasn’t with him, and when Trish asked him he said that they’d broken up permanently this time and Goliath was over.
Just after the New Year of 1975 Helen came in late one night from a night out with a boyfriend while Trish was washing coffee cups after a meeting of the Lancaster Preservation Society.
“Hi Mum,” Helen said. “Have a nice evening?”