Tea

I’ve nearly chickened out of this tea with Joe's mum a million times in the past couple of weeks. Even now, when I’m actually driving to meet her, I keep wondering about how I could possibly avoid it. I run through various scenarios in my mind. Anything could happen – there’s still time. It starts to rain lightly and I have fantasies of the road being washed away, a landslide perhaps, so I can turn back to safety, but that kind of thing doesn’t happen in Suffolk. Maybe a phone call? Something to summon me back home urgently. It’s amazing how many unlikely things I can come up with in the fifteen minutes it takes me to get to the park gates.

Even as I push open the big plate glass door of the tearoom where we’re meeting, I’m still wondering if I can avoid it – there’s always a chance she won’t be there – then I can wait five minutes and leave. Maybe there’s been a mix up with dates.

It’s no good though – because the minute I look around the room I can see her, over in the corner. At least she’s alone – I’d been afraid that maybe there would be others…… and she doesn’t look all that different. He’d said that she’d changed, and I’d been steeling myself to not let it show on my face.

“So – what’s this I hear about you and him?

It’s almost the first thing she says.

I sit down, and tell her how we got back in touch. Leaving out the bits he’s asked me not to mention, I talk about all the stuff he’s doing – the art, the writing, how he loves where he’s living – how well everything’s going for him.

She smiles, and says he’s told her all about us – how he hopes we’ll live together, and she says she wants me to know how happy it would make her if we did. She looks at me expectantly, and I’m not quite sure why, so I smile back, and say I’d be pretty happy if that happened too.

Then she picks up a little photograph album from the table and she passes it over to me; there we are – the three of us – me and him and Joel, the summer before Joe died, on the island all dressed up as I’m not quite sure what, laughing and posing. We have hats and funny sunglasses, and silver belts and Hawaiian shirts – except Joel who is all in black, looking about seven feet tall and thin as a rake – we’re all as thin as rakes, and very very brown. I wonder how it’s been for her, seeing us over the years, having children, growing older.

She says, “Do you remember the big party I had for Joel on the beach that year? It was his twentieth, but even then I had an idea he wouldn’t get to twenty one..”

I remember it very well. The white cloth on the long table, and the silver – it was quite formal - and all the little candles, and the sound of the waves, even though we couldn’t see them in the dark. She must have been around the age I am now when Joel died, and after that she had no-one - he was her only child.

The conversation dies for a minute, but only a minute ; there aren’t many awkward silences - we manage that quite well. It’s been fifteen years since we last met, so there’s a lot to say and it’s easier than I thought it would be.

Finally, it’s time to go; the people in the tearoom have been giving us looks for about half an hour and now they’ve started stacking chairs noisily on the tables around ours. It’s still pissing it down outside, and she asks me if I’ve left my car in the official car park. I nod, and she says she’ll give me a lift.

I try not to look puzzled, since she only told me an hour ago that she lost her licence. She forgot to renew it, and now there’s no way they’d let her have a new one, because firstly she can hardly see anymore, and secondly she has almost no sensation in her legs.

I say “ I thought you told me…..?”

“Ah yes – well I can still drive on the estate of course, just not on public roads,” listening to her voice is like going back thirty years in time

I bite the inside of my lip and say that would be lovely.

We stand up, pushing our chairs back, and I follow her down the pale wood stairs, past the orange trees in their matching wooden planters, and out through a big glass door. She walks with her back held very straight, – not bent at all, and she carries her stick as if it’s a fashion accessory more than anything else. She doesn’t look nearly eighty.

Right outside, next to a sign that says No Parking in big black letters is the oldest Saab in the world. Even before she unlocks the doors, there’s a very strong smell of petrol. I decide now’s definitely not the time to light a cigarette, although I could really do with one.

We get in, and as she turns the key in the ignition, I can see on the instrument panel that almost all the warning lights have come on. Some of them are flashing. The smell of petrol gets stronger, and I try very hard not to flinch as as we go at a crawling pace down the gravel driveway, and out into the Capability Brown park. I hold my breath as we only just miss a middle aged couple in anoraks,

It’s not far to where my car is. She drives in through the exit, and stops to let me out. I lean over, thank her for the tea and we kiss, and I tell her I hope she’ll call me if she needs anything. As I open my door to get out, she looks at me and says:

“He wrote me a very long email. He wanted me to tell him it gets better in time, but you know, I can’t, because it doesn’t”

I want to say that for me – and him too as far as I know - it has got better; that despite everything, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. But then I notice that the skin on her face is almost translucent, as if she’s half disappeared, and that the eyeliner she’s drawn above her eyelids isn’t quite straight. I wish I could make it better for her, but I don’t think anyone can.

I watch until she disappears from view, and then I drive off in the opposite direction. Before I get to the gates that lead to the main road and the village, I stop my car and get out for a minute. I turn back, and look up the driveway. It hasn’t changed much since I was sixteen. Perhaps they’ve put pale coloured gravel on it instead of black tarmac, and there’s an electric fence now, along one edge of the park, where the sheep graze. I think about the times Joel and I would go down this road, sharing his rusty orange chopper which wasn’t really big enough for two, but it was all we had, and we were desperate to get to the pub in the village. I remember the arguments, and the bike toppling over, and us falling off, and then staggering back to the cottage at closing time, and how long it took us to walk that mile or so.

Then I get back into my car, and cry most of the way home.