Chapter 18
Marjorie and The Colonel weren’t helping my state of mind. They completely ignored The Grandson and me as we walked along Brighton’s sunny waterfront at the weekend. If it weren’t for us, their chaperones, they’d have been eating jelly and doing macramé in the crafts room. They should have been grateful.
‘They’re sweet, aren’t they?’ The Grandson broke into my unkind reverie as we trailed behind the old couple. ‘He looks like a man in the first flush of love.’
I smiled, watching them. ‘You mean the second flush. Surely he was in love with your grandmother.’
The Grandson’s snort took me as much by surprise as it did him. ‘Excuse me. I’m terribly sorry, em, no, I don’t think they were in love. In those days a lot of people probably found someone they thought they could raise a family with and they married. This idea of romantic love is fairly new.’
‘You’re talking like an anthropologist. Marjorie fell in love with her second husband, and her third, and she said a lot of her friends were in love with theirs. I don’t think “marriages of convenience” were exactly the norm then either.’
‘Maybe not in some social circles.’
I’d lived in the UK long enough to know an English put-down when I heard it. ‘You think Marjorie is beneath your grandfather? She’s not. She’s been all over the world. She’s highly educated.’ I knew these things didn’t matter in the classist pecking order but felt I should try to defend her somehow.
He put his hands up like I’d taken a swing at him. ‘I know she is, B. She’s a wonderful woman. I wasn’t talking about Marjorie. I think she’s a godsend for my grandfather. He’s a difficult old man. He was probably a difficult young man, and I’m grateful that she wants to spend time with him. I was justifying my grandparents’ relationship, not commenting on Marjorie. I’m sorry.’
‘That’s okay. I didn’t mean to attack you. I just feel very protective of Marjorie. I’m glad they’re together too, and able to enjoy their lives. I hope I’m that sharp at their age.’
‘I’ve got no chance of that. I’ll be drooling into my porridge by the time I have my midlife crisis.’
‘Do you think you’re on the road to your midlife crisis?’
‘Certainly. Aren’t we all? My granddad mentioned that you’d recently split from your ex. Is this your midlife crisis?’
His smiling delivery blunted any malice in the question. ‘I guess so. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re probably right. I did pretty comprehensively change my life midstream.’ I resisted the idea that my break-up was the result of some mad midlife urge. You couldn’t really equate my decision with suddenly getting hair plugs or buying a Porsche. I simply realised I wasn’t in love with him, so I ended the relationship. Goodness, that did sound a smidge midlifey. Was I having a midlife crisis? I was also changing careers pretty drastically. But I hadn’t bought the car. Or had hair plugs. So no midlife crisis. Phew. ‘What about you? Is there a looming crisis in the works?’
‘Oh, certainly. I’ve been mid-change for several years now.’
‘You say that like it’s the menopause. Comfy with your crisis, are you?’
‘Absolutely. I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t live in a state of flux. Mine started when I quit banking. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was burnt out. Really, it had been dead-end for years. Which probably sounds odd to say about investment banking. I wasn’t exactly a binman.’
‘I know what you mean, though. Unfulfilling. My job was like that too. I just didn’t realize it until I didn’t have it any more. It’s true what they say. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Speaking of which, I think we should have turned back there. This road goes on for awhile.’
We were, after all, supposed to be chaperoning, not leaving two geriatrics to find their own way home.
‘Granddad,’ he shouted ahead. ‘How are you feeling? Should we start back?’
‘Yep, yep, good idea,’ said the sprightly old man, deftly spinning Marjorie round in her wheelchair. ‘All right, old bean. About face. The Commander has called retreat.’
‘I need to get back anyway for my gig tonight.’ I felt very professional saying this.
‘Oh? Where is it?’
‘Er, at the Holiday Inn in Fitzrovia.’ So much for my professionalism. ‘It’s a corporate event.’
‘Well, everyone has to start somewhere.’
‘Except I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years.’
‘Oh. Well, at least it pays, right? And it’s moving your career in the right direction.’ His encouraging smile gave me the tiniest dollop of hope on an otherwise bone-dry sandwich. Then his expression changed. ‘Granddad? Granddad!’ He rushed to where The Colonel grasped Marjorie’s chair, clutching his arm. ‘What’s the matter?!’
The Colonel slumped to the ground.
‘Call an ambulance!’
‘Maybe it was my fault,’ whispered Marjorie as we watched the walking wounded file through the A&E. ‘Maybe it was too much, too much strain. I so wanted to go out and enjoy the day today. I suggested the walk.’
‘Oh no, Marjorie, it wasn’t your fault. Has The Colonel had heart problems before?’
‘I don’t know. Why don’t I know that?’ She cried quietly. ‘I love him, you know.’
‘I know. He’s going to be okay. The doctor said it was a mild infarction. That’s hardly even a heart attack. They’re taking good care of him.’ My words were so inadequate. Myocardial infarction. It sounded much less scary than a heart attack. But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t, especially at The Colonel’s age. ‘We’ll be able to see him soon.’ The Grandson was talking to the doctors, discussing their options. As if there were many options. He wasn’t exactly going on the transplant list at his age. ‘Marjorie, do you want to talk about it, about The Colonel?’
‘No, dear, actually I’d like to be distracted right now. I’m not fond of hospitals. I spent too much time in them with Tony.’
I tried to think of something to take her mind off The Colonel lying in the next room. Between Clare’s pregnancy, my joblessness and Kat’s decision to hire a private detective to follow James, I was likely to make her want to slit her wrists. ‘Well, speaking of Tony, will you tell me more about Hong Kong?’
She smiled at the memory. ‘They were wonderful days. He was something, my Tony. He could hold an intelligent discussion about any topic under the sun. That’s what first attracted me to him. I’d never witnessed such a thing. My family weren’t what you’d call intellectuals. They were doers, which had its merits, but they weren’t great thinkers. I hadn’t gone to school past the usual – you’d call it high school – and nor had my friends. Even if the war hadn’t come along, there were only a few girls I knew who’d likely have gone on to become teachers or nurses. Most of us went into domestic work. That was what girls like me did.’
‘You didn’t work during the war, though?’
‘Oh, yes. I did for a lady called Missus Cooper who lived in a big house on the other side of Bristol. She had eight little ones and I cleaned for them, and did the shopping.’
‘It sounds so normal. I didn’t expect that. I’ve got a view of the war from history books. I imagined everyone living in air-raid shelters, queuing for rations and painting on their tights.’
She chuckled. ‘That’s the problem with learning from books. Gives you a very two-dimensional view of the world. No, we lived our lives as normally as possible. We did have rationing, of course, and went to the shelters when the sirens sounded, but we also went to work, still had family dinners, went to the cinema, worried about fashion and all the other things young people do today.’
‘That’s why it’s so nice to hear your stories, Marjorie. You’re a living history book!’
She smirked. ‘For better or for worse. How did we start talking about the war?’
‘We were talking about school, and education.’
‘That’s right. I’d done well in school so the university accepted me when I applied, even though I was an old student. Oh, I was excited! Finding that little pot ignited a lifelong passion for me. Sometimes I wonder how my life might have been different had I not found it, or been able to go to university.’
Was that a nod to fate from a woman who professed not to believe in it? ‘Fate threw you in Tony’s path, then.’
‘No, B., I threw me in Tony’s path. I don’t know why you insist on this idea of fate when you are clearly driving your own destiny. You should be proud of that, not dismiss it as a cosmic certainty. You decided to move to London, didn’t you? You realised you weren’t happy in your relationship and you took the steps you needed to change it. You found a flat with that lovely young man to share. You’ve worked successfully in your field for years and now that your assignment is cancelled you are pursuing your music instead of finding another job. That’s not fate, my dear, that’s you. You’re taking the chances in your life. Just like I did. I applied for the university course and got on. I chose my classes and met Tony. I carried on a wonderful relationship with him and eventually we married. We decided together to move to Hong Kong to be near his parents, who were getting old.’ She sighed with pleasure. ‘What a fabulous place Hong Kong was! Tony had told me all about his home, of course, but nothing prepared me. I expected a traditional Chinese city, whatever that means. Rickshaws and coolies, I guess, if I’m honest. But it wasn’t like that. It was modern, with tall office blocks and flats and traffic snarls and people crowding the pavements, some wearing miniskirts and drainpipe trousers. I loved it. Yet all you had to do was scratch the surface to see the tradition. Many of the Chinese girls wore cheongsams of the most beautiful silk in such vivid colours. Between the dresses and the neon signs and the markets, the colour was everywhere. Oh, the markets, B., you should have seen the markets. Just off the main roads jammed with buses and taxis and office workers were narrow streets, no more than alleys sometimes, lined with vendors. The colours and smells and sounds in the wet markets. They were all over the city, because that’s where the meat and fruit and veg were sold. This was before supermarkets arrived so we shopped at the markets every day. As I recall, a supermarket did open, but most people still shopped the usual way. The locals sniffed at such an idea, having a shop like that. They called it Gweilo Market.’ Seeing my question she added, ‘Gweilo is what they called us foreigners. It either means ghost or foreign devil, depending on who’s saying it. There wasn’t much in the way of overt racism towards me, though. I can’t say the same for our treatment of the Chinese.’
‘It must have been hard for you and Tony, being a mixed couple.’
‘Oh yes, certainly. Our friends were lovely, of course, but strangers stared, and worse.’
‘What about your families? Did they accept it?’
Marjorie married Tony the year after they met, which would have been around 1967. Their mixed marriage would still have been illegal in some US states.
‘Well, my parents were no longer around by the time we married, but Tony’s were alive, as I mentioned. They did their best but never really warmed to me. It was too hard in those days, especially for well-to-do Chinese who had enough of their own social pecking order to worry about, plus the usual colonial racism. Most of the British clubs were restricted to gweilos, even in 1970 when we arrived, so I can understand my in-laws’ own pressures. Tony and I just muddled through, and did our best to ignore the inevitable objections. But we never hid our relationship. We were too in love for that. And besides, there was no way to hide our races. It hurt at times, but since I was never going to blend in, I generally did as I liked and didn’t worry about what other people thought. I guess I still don’t, and I’ve got Tony to thank for that.’
‘It sounds like you’ve got Tony to thank for a lot of things.’
She smiled. ‘Yes, I do. We had nearly thirty years together and I don’t regret a minute of it.’ She looked wistful. ‘I didn’t expect thirty years with The Colonel, but I hoped for a bit more time.’ She sighed.
‘He’ll be all right, Marjorie, I know he will. Wait here. I’ll just check whether we can go in to see him. I’m sure he’d love to see you.’
Fear gripped me as I approached the reception counter. What if they told me he’d died, and I had to tell Marjorie? ‘Hello? I’m checking on the patient that was brought in a little while ago, with a heart attack?’ The nurse was certainly taking her time with her computer screen.
‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as if double-checking something before she continued. My heart thudded in my throat. ‘Are you family?’ I nodded, bracing for bad news. ‘He’s through those doors to the right.’
‘Is he?’ Gulp. ‘He’s not dead, is he?’
She looked startled. ‘Goodness, no, I don’t think so! The doctor will be with him.’
‘Oh, thank you, thank you!’ I was so relieved. Marjorie would get more time with The Colonel. She’d have the chance to say and do whatever she needed to ensure she had no regrets.
Did I have regrets? I knew what Marjorie would say if she hadn’t been busy wheeling determinedly towards her puckered paramour. Could-haves didn’t matter because the fact was, I did what I did. But then, that very minute, I knew I wanted to do everything I could to build my music career. If it failed, then so be it. But if it failed because I never gave it the chance to succeed, then I would have regrets. I was calling People on my way home from the hospital.