I’d listen to their chit-chat. Ears pricked, even then. There was a bench about half way round, by a clump of pines, a place to pause, the brown needles at your feet peppered with cigarette ends like cartridges round a gun post.
I can’t remember his name—Donald someone maybe— though I can still see him, crinkly-haired and confidentlooking. Someone else who was someone in the High Street, or who ran some business, maybe, out on the factory estate by the Sidcup bypass.
I can’t remember his name, but I remember the name he spoke—Carol Freeman—and I knew it could only be one Carol Freeman.
I’d been at school with Pauline Freeman. If the truth be known, I’d fancied her—an eleven-year-old’s fancying: this was still primary school—and I’d thought it was mutual, just for a bit, but she’d gone off me all of a sudden. Girls for you. (Though maybe now I knew why.) And it had been long enough while it lasted for me to know that her mum’s name was Carol and her dad’s name was Roy. I’d even seen Pauline’s mum outside the school gates. She’d looked like a woman—a mum but a woman. She’d given me a smile, a wave. I even knew where Pauline lived: Gifford Road.
I think they thought I was out of earshot. A breeze stirring the pines. I was looking for a ball this Donald Someone had whacked into the rough.
He said, “Are you still seeing Carol Freeman? Are you still taking her pic?” I know that Dad looked up to see if I’d heard—he shouldn’t have done that—and I know that I made a good pretence of carrying on what I was doing, combing the long grass. I know that he changed the subject pretty fast. And then everything was as it was, but not. A bright blue day in May, when golfers need to shield their eyes. But now there was a cloud.
And up to then I’d thought he had it all made, he knew how it was done. There was Mum and him and me—and only me because that had been enough. A perfect happy triangle.
Caddying. And being taught a little. Golfing lessons. Now I knew—I carried on scouring the grass—I’d have to go on pretending.
Golfing lessons. Eye on the ball, swing from the hips. But on the very first visit, weeks before, there’d been a little history lesson and even a French lesson as well. The plaque on the club-house wall. It was written in French. So Dad could pretend he was translating. A hidden talent. “Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, died here.”
Napoleon?
Hadn’t he died on some island in the middle of the ocean?
“Not
that
Napoleon, George.” (So there was more than one?)
It all came back to me, in a rush, in Gladstone’s.
Not just any old golf course, not just any old step up in the world. I could almost see it running crazily through his mind: now
that
would have been a photo! If only he’d been around then—to have had such clients.
A photo—and a hell of a challenge, a hell of a test. The Emperor and the Empress exiled in Chislehurst. Him with his empire gone and soon to die, her (though she didn’t know it) with fifty years still to come.
“Ready. Look at the camera. Smile!”
How do we choose? Napoleon and Eugénie. She was a frisky Spanish beauty—Sarah’s told me—and he could be a bit of a glum old stick.
Nora and Ted.
And Mum used to say, even after he was dead, “Never mind all of
them,
never mind all those pictures he took—he knew how to make
me
smile. My God, he could make me smile.”
21
The leaves on the trees lining the cemetery paths are yellow as lemon peel. They don’t move, as if they cling by a miracle. The next breeze, the next shift in the air will free them all.
I don’t know what will free me here. I stand, I look. My feet are cold. How long do you give it? A minute? Five? I said to myself: Just do it, lay the flowers—go. But it’s not that simple. How long is right, how long is fair, when you only come once a year?
Put down the flowers. Now beat it before the hate, or anything else, rises up. The seethe in
I can’t remember his name—Donald someone maybe— though I can still see him, crinkly-haired and confidentlooking. Someone else who was someone in the High Street, or who ran some business, maybe, out on the factory estate by the Sidcup bypass.
I can’t remember his name, but I remember the name he spoke—Carol Freeman—and I knew it could only be one Carol Freeman.
I’d been at school with Pauline Freeman. If the truth be known, I’d fancied her—an eleven-year-old’s fancying: this was still primary school—and I’d thought it was mutual, just for a bit, but she’d gone off me all of a sudden. Girls for you. (Though maybe now I knew why.) And it had been long enough while it lasted for me to know that her mum’s name was Carol and her dad’s name was Roy. I’d even seen Pauline’s mum outside the school gates. She’d looked like a woman—a mum but a woman. She’d given me a smile, a wave. I even knew where Pauline lived: Gifford Road.
I think they thought I was out of earshot. A breeze stirring the pines. I was looking for a ball this Donald Someone had whacked into the rough.
He said, “Are you still seeing Carol Freeman? Are you still taking her pic?” I know that Dad looked up to see if I’d heard—he shouldn’t have done that—and I know that I made a good pretence of carrying on what I was doing, combing the long grass. I know that he changed the subject pretty fast. And then everything was as it was, but not. A bright blue day in May, when golfers need to shield their eyes. But now there was a cloud.
And up to then I’d thought he had it all made, he knew how it was done. There was Mum and him and me—and only me because that had been enough. A perfect happy triangle.
Caddying. And being taught a little. Golfing lessons. Now I knew—I carried on scouring the grass—I’d have to go on pretending.
Golfing lessons. Eye on the ball, swing from the hips. But on the very first visit, weeks before, there’d been a little history lesson and even a French lesson as well. The plaque on the club-house wall. It was written in French. So Dad could pretend he was translating. A hidden talent. “Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, died here.”
Napoleon?
Hadn’t he died on some island in the middle of the ocean?
“Not
that
Napoleon, George.” (So there was more than one?)
It all came back to me, in a rush, in Gladstone’s.
Not just any old golf course, not just any old step up in the world. I could almost see it running crazily through his mind: now
that
would have been a photo! If only he’d been around then—to have had such clients.
A photo—and a hell of a challenge, a hell of a test. The Emperor and the Empress exiled in Chislehurst. Him with his empire gone and soon to die, her (though she didn’t know it) with fifty years still to come.
“Ready. Look at the camera. Smile!”
How do we choose? Napoleon and Eugénie. She was a frisky Spanish beauty—Sarah’s told me—and he could be a bit of a glum old stick.
Nora and Ted.
And Mum used to say, even after he was dead, “Never mind all of
them,
never mind all those pictures he took—he knew how to make
me
smile. My God, he could make me smile.”
21
The leaves on the trees lining the cemetery paths are yellow as lemon peel. They don’t move, as if they cling by a miracle. The next breeze, the next shift in the air will free them all.
I don’t know what will free me here. I stand, I look. My feet are cold. How long do you give it? A minute? Five? I said to myself: Just do it, lay the flowers—go. But it’s not that simple. How long is right, how long is fair, when you only come once a year?
Put down the flowers. Now beat it before the hate, or anything else, rises up. The seethe in
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