The Forever Girl

6



He was there when she reached the bar, which is the way she wanted it to be. If she had arrived at the Grand Old House first then she would have had to sit there, in public, looking awkward. George Town was still an intimate, village-like place – at least for those who lived there – and somebody might have come up to her, some friend or acquaintance, and asked her where David was. This way at least she could avoid that, although she realised that this meeting might not be as discreet as she might wish. People talked; a few months previously at a tennis club social she had herself commented on seeing a friend with another man. It could have been innocent, of course, and probably was, but she had spoken to somebody about it. Not that she had much time for gossip, but when there was so little else to talk about … And in due course she, and everybody else who had speculated on the break-up of that marriage, had been proved right.

She should have said no. She could have said that she had to get back to the children – they had always provided a complete excuse for turning down unwanted invitations. Or she could have suggested that he called at the house for a drink later on, and she could then have telephoned David asking him whether he could get back in time because George Collins was dropping in. And David would have told her to explain to George about his meeting and that would have been her off the hook – able to entertain another man at the house in complete propriety. But she did not do this, and now here she was at the Grand Old House meeting him without the knowledge of her husband.

She tried to suppress her misgivings. Men and women could be friends these days without threatening their marriages. Men and women worked together, collaborated on projects, served on committees with one another. Young people even shared rooms together when they travelled, without a whiff of sex. It was natural – and healthy. It was absurd to suggest that people should somehow keep one another at arm’s length in all other contexts simply because their partners might see such friends as a threat. The days of closed, possessive marriages were over; women were no longer their husbands’ chattels, to be guarded jealously against others.

That was a rationalisation, though, and she was honest enough to admit it to herself. She wanted to see George Collins because he interested her – it was as simple as that. She thought, with shame, of how different it would have been if it were David she was meeting for a drink; she would have felt nothing. Now something had awakened within her – she had almost forgotten what it was like, but now she knew once more.

He was sitting some distance away from the bar, at a table overlooking the sea. When he saw her come in, he simply nodded, although he rose to his feet as she approached the table. He smiled at her as she sat down.

“It’s been a hellish day,” he said. “And alcohol helps. I know it shouldn’t, but it does.”

She made a gesture of acceptance. “I’m sure you don’t overdo it. But I suppose, being a doctor …”

He completed the sentence. “Makes no difference. None at all. Doctors are as weak as the rest of humanity. The only difference is that we know how all the parts work, and we know what the odds are.” He paused. “Or I used to know them. You’d be surprised at how much the average doctor has forgotten.”

She laughed. Talking to him was pleasant – so easy. “But everybody forgets what they learned. I learned a lot about art when I was a student. I could rattle off the names of painters and knew how they influenced one another. Nowadays, I’ve forgotten everybody’s dates.”

He went off to order her a drink at the bar. While he was away she looked around the room, as naturally as she could. There was nobody she knew. She relaxed.

They raised their glasses to one another.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thanks for coming at virtually no notice. I thought that you’d have the children to look after.”

“They’re with the maid. They love going to her house. She spoils them.”

He nodded. “Jamaican?”

“Yes.”

“They love children. They …” He stopped himself. “Or does that sound patronising?”

She thought it did not. “It’s true. It’s not patronising in the slightest. Complimentary, I’d have thought. Italians love children too.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, but … white people can’t really say anything about black people, can they? Because of the past. Because of the fact that we stole so much from them. Their freedom. Their lives. Everything.”

“You didn’t. I didn’t.”

He looked into his glass. “Our grandparents did.”

“I thought it was a bit before that. How long do people have to say sorry?”

He thought for a few moments before answering. “A bit longer, I’d say.” He paused. “After all, what colour are the people living in the large houses and what colour are the people who look after their gardens? What colour are the maids? What does that tell us?”

She thought: yes, you’re right. And then she thought: David would never say that. Never. That was the difference.

“We had a Jamaican lady working for us,” he said. “She was with us until a year or so ago. She was substitute grandmother. The kids still miss her.”

“They would.”

There was a brief moment of silence. He took a sip of his drink. “That poor woman …”

“Bella?”

“Mrs Rosales.”

“Yes, Bella.”

He looked up at the ceiling. “It makes my blood boil.”

She waited for him to continue.

“I assume that her employers know what’s what. I assume that somebody told them what she needed.”

“I believe they did. I only heard about it from Margaret – the woman who helps me. She implied that they just couldn’t be bothered.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “It could be too late, you know. She may have to lose the leg anyway.”

“Well, at least you’ll have tried. This person in Kingston – who is he?”

“He’s a general surgeon – an increasingly rare breed. He does anything and everything. He used to be in one of the big hospitals in Miami but he retired early and went off to this clinic in Kingston. They’re Lutherans, I believe. Missionaries. People like that still exist.”

“Do you think he’ll be able to help?”

He nodded. “I phoned him just before I came here. He says that he’ll see her tomorrow. We took the liberty of booking her on the Cayman Airways flight first thing. I’ve got my nurse to go round and let her know.”

She told him that she would reimburse him for the flight, and he thanked her. “It’s not all that uncommon, you know,” he said.

“Infections like that?”

“Yes. But I meant it’s not uncommon for people to let their domestic workers fend for themselves. I see those people every day of the week. Filipina maids, any number of Jamaicans, Haitians – the lot.”

She said that she had heard about the way he helped. “It’s very good of you …”

He brushed aside the praise. “I have to do it. It’s my job. I’m a doctor. I’m not a hero or anything like that. That’s not the way it is, you know. You just do what you were trained to do – same as anybody.”

She watched him. She could tell that he was uncomfortable talking about his work, and she decided to change the subject. Although they had known one another for years, she knew very little about him. She knew that he was British, that Alice was Australian, and that they kept to themselves much of the time. Apart from that, she knew nothing. She asked him the obvious question – the one that expatriates asked each other incessantly. How did you end up here?

He smiled. “The question of questions. Everybody asks it, don’t they? It’s as if they can hardly believe that anybody would make a conscious, freely made choice to come to this place.”

“Well, it’s what we all think about, isn’t it?”

He agreed. “I suppose it is. In so far as we have any curiosity about our fellow islanders. I’m not sure if I find myself wanting to know about some of them.” He hesitated. “Does that sound snobbish?”

“It depends on which ones you’re thinking of.”

“The rich ones,” he said. “I find their shallowness distasteful. And they worship money.”

“Then it doesn’t sound at all snobbish. And anyway, we all know why they’re here. It’s the others who are interesting – the people who’ve come from somewhere else for other reasons. Not just because they’re avoiding tax.”

He looked doubtful. “Are there many of those?”

“Some people come for straightforward jobs. David did.” She felt that she had to defend her husband, who was not as obsessed with money as many of the others were. He was interested in figures, and there was a difference.

He was quick to agree. “Of course. I wasn’t talking about people like David.”

She decided to be direct. “So how did you end up here?”

He shrugged. “Ignorance.”

“Of what?”

“Of what I was coming to. You know, when I saw the advertisement in the British Medical Journal, the ad that brought me here, I had to go off and look the Caymans up in the atlas – I had no idea where they were. I thought they were somewhere in the South Pacific, you know. I thought they were somewhere down near Samoa. That shows how much I knew.”

“So you took a job?”

“Yes. I had just finished my hospital training in London. I was offered the chance to go on to a surgical job, also in London, but somehow I felt that to do that would be just too obvious. All too predictable. So I looked in the back pages of the BMJ and saw an advertisement from the Caymans government. It was for a one-year job in the hospital – somebody had gone off to have a baby and there was a one-year position. I thought: why not?”

“And so you came out here?”

“Yes. I came to do a job, which I did, and then I met Alice. My job at the hospital came to an end but I applied for a permit to do general practice and I got it. The rest is history, as they say.”

She smiled at the expression. The rest is history. That meant things that happened – everything that happened. The moss. The acquisitions. Children. Inertia. Love. Despair.

She looked about her. A group of four people – two couples – had come into the bar and had taken their places at a table on the other side of the room. They were locals – wealthy Caymanians who had what David called that look about them. They did not carry their wealth lightly. She thought she might have seen one of the women before somewhere, but she could not be sure. People like that kept to themselves, to their own circles; they disliked the expatriates, only tolerating them because they were useful to them; they needed the banks, and trusts, and law firms because without them all they had were mangrove swamps, some beaches, and a reef.

George had said something to her that she had missed while being distracted by the newcomers.

“Sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“I said: how long are you and David going to stay?”

She sipped at the drink he had bought her: a gin and tonic in which the ice was melting fast. She shrugged. “Until he retires. Which will be … heaven knows. Another twenty years? Fifteen?” She put down her glass. “And you?”

“I’d leave tomorrow.”

She was surprised, and her surprise showed.

“Are you shocked?” he asked.

“No, not really. It’s just that I thought you were so … so settled here. I’ve always imagined that you and Alice are happy.”


For a moment he said nothing. She saw him look out of the window, past the line of white sand on which the hotel lights shone, into the darkness beyond, which was the sea. Then he said, “I only stay because these people – my patients – depend on me. It’s an odd thing. I could say to them that I was packing up and leaving, but somehow I can’t bring myself to do it. Some of them actually rely on me, you know, and that wouldn’t be easy. So if you said to me: here’s your freedom, I’d go tomorrow. Anywhere. Anywhere bigger than here. Australia. The States. Canada. Anywhere that’s the opposite of a ring of coral and some sand in the middle of the Caribbean.”

She stared at him. “You’re unhappy?” She had not intended to say it, but the words slipped out.

“Not unhappy in the sense of being miserable. I get along, I suppose. Maybe I should just say that I’d like to be leading another life. But then, plenty of people might say that about their lives.”

She looked at his hands. She thought they were shaking. No, perhaps not.

“And Alice?” she said.

He looked back at her. “She’s not too unhappy,” he said. “She doesn’t like this place very much – she’s bored with it. But in her case, there’s something else that is far more important. You see, Alice is completely in love with me. Completely. Not as most wives are with their husbands – they’re friends, they rub along together out of habit and convenience. With her, it’s something quite unlike that. She lives for me. I’m her reason. I’m her … well, I suppose I’m her life.”

She whispered now. Nobody could hear them, but the intimacy of the conversation dictated a whisper. “And you? How do you feel?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I wish I could give you a different answer, but I can’t. I don’t dislike her, but I’m not in love with her. Not like that.”

“Like me,” she said.

For a moment he did not react, and she wondered whether he had heard. In a way, she hoped that he had not. She should never have said that. It was a denial of her marriage. It was an appalling thing to say. David had done nothing to deserve it – but then Alice had done nothing either. They were both victims.

Then he spoke. “I see,” he said. “That’s two of us, then. Trapped.”