The Forever Girl

33



Amanda had suggested it.

“Picnics should be spontaneous,” she said.

Clover thought about this. “Everything should be spontaneous – sometimes. Kissing people. Eating chocolate. Dancing.”

That reminded Amanda of a newspaper headline that she had read about: Dancing breaks out. Dancing, like peace, could break out – could overturn what was there before – when people decided that they had had enough. “Yes,” she said. “Yes.”

They went to the place they always went to. Amanda parked the car in the shade of a tree, as it was mid-day, and if she did not, the car would be a furnace on their return. The heat pressed down like an invisible hand, seeming to hold down even the surface of the sea, dark blue and sluggish. There was the shriek of insects in the air, an ever-present tinnitus, that Clover now realised she had missed. In Australia it had been birdsong; in Scotland it had been the sound of the wind; here it was the chorus of insects that had always been there, a background sound to her childhood.

They did not bring much with them – a plastic sheet that they had always used for picnics and had never replaced in spite of the scars it bore; a thermos flask of iced water; a couple of bread rolls into which Amanda had tucked a slice of ham and the mayonnaise that she knew her daughter liked. It was too hot to eat, but she thought a picnic required at least a nod in the direction of food.

They looked at the sea.

“I’ll swim a bit later,” said Amanda. “I have to summon up the energy.”

“The sea’s going nowhere.”

Amanda smiled. “That’s very profound, darling.”

Clover lay back and closed her eyes. She had never thought about it before, but the only time that she would close her eyes in the open, outside, was when she was with her mother. She thought about this. Trust. Protection. It was something to do with that.

“Where do you think you and James are going to live?”

“We’ll see. He has another year in Australia.”

Amanda nodded. “I suppose we’re always going to live apart. The family, I mean. Us.”

Clover opened her eyes and looked at her mother. “It’s because of this place, isn’t it? It’s because everybody here is from somewhere else.”

“Yes, it is. But that’s what the world is like. That’s what it’s becoming. Everybody comes from somewhere else. Living apart from the people you grew up with is nothing unusual.”

“I’m not complaining,” said Clover suddenly.

“I didn’t think you were. But thank you for saying that.”

“I mean it.”

Amanda looked at her. It was a whole separate life that she had created; that was the miracle of parenthood, and it never seemed to be anything less of a miracle; you made a whole world; several worlds – one for each child. And then you let go of those worlds, as a creator might do of a world he has created; you let go and watched. “Why did he never say anything to you?” she asked.

Seeing her daughter’s hesitation, Amanda was on the point of changing the subject, anxious not to intrude. “Sorry, I shouldn’t pry.”

“I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all.”

Amanda waited. A small child had appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, and was making her way on unsteady feet to the edge of the water. The mother followed, wrapped in a towel. They exchanged brief glances – acknowledgements of sharing the tiny beach – and then a hand raised in passing greeting.

“He thought I wasn’t interested in him.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

Amanda smiled. “Well, he was wrong.”

Clover shook her head. “Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I should have told him, rather than letting him think that. And he said that he thought I was with somebody else.”

“And you were.”

“Yes, but only because I couldn’t be with him.”

Amanda pointed out that James was not to know that. “We all make that mistake, don’t we? All the time. We imagine that people know what we’re thinking, and they don’t. We misunderstand one another.”

They were silent as they watched the mother lift her child and dangle her toes in the water. The sea could not be bothered to respond. The child gave a squeal of delight and struggled to escape her mother’s grip.

“We used to do that with you,” said Amanda. “We used to swing you over the edge of the water. You loved it. I suppose you thought that we would let you go and you might end up in the sea.”

“But you never did.”


“No.”

Clover looked away. “Thanks for all of that. All of it.”

“For what?”

“For making the sacrifices you did. In your life …”

Amanda weighed each word carefully. “I didn’t make any sacrifices. I found out that I didn’t need to.”

“I thought that,” said Clover. “Or rather, I found it out. It came to me – sort of.”

“That your father and I …”

“Loved each other. After all.”

“Yes, after all.”

Amanda brushed sand off the edge of the plastic sheet, but stopped herself. You could not keep sand off you on a beach picnic. You had to give in. “People believe that love lasts forever. Or theirs will. That’s what they believe.” She glanced at her daughter. “I think that you’ve been … well, just amazingly lucky. The two of you. Sometimes you find that. People meet one another when they’re very young and they stay together for their whole lives, which is as close as we get to forever.”

“Yes, maybe we’ve been lucky. I love him so much, Ma …”

“Of course you do. Of course you do.”

“I love him so much I could cry.”

“Well, you mustn’t. Not on a picnic …”


They were distracted at that moment. The child had slipped from her mother’s arms and fallen into the water. But she did not seem to mind. She was buoyant.