Harriet Evans - I Remember You

‘Are you doing something different with your hair, dear?’ Jan Allingham asked Tess, a week afterwards, as she was wiping down the whiteboard. The class had broken up and her students were dispersing slowly, grey and ash-blonde heads grouped together, clutching their textbooks and notepads, talking earnestly, nodding to one another.

Tess turned around, the cloth in her hand. ‘Me? No, nothing. Literally. It’s far too long. I must get it cut, actually.’

‘I did wonder.’ Jan bobbed up and down on the balls of her feet, and touched her top lip with her tongue. ‘It’s grown really fast, hasn’t it!’ She smiled at Tess. ‘And that’s a lovely jumper.’

‘Thanks!’ said Tess, touched. ‘I bought it—’

‘Is—is it from Marks?’ Jan said. ‘I think I have it in blue.’

‘Yes,’ said Tess. ‘It is.’

‘Great class today, Tess, thank you,’ said Andrea, popping up behind Jan, while Tess clutched at her hair and looked down at her jumper. ‘So interesting. I can’t wait to tackle my essay on Dido. Marvellous stuff!’

Next to her, Diana Sayers rolled her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I said I’d walk home with Carolyn. She’ll be waiting.’

‘Carolyn?’ said Andrea. ‘Carolyn Tey ? Huh.’ She shook her head.

‘Ooh, Andrea,’ said Jan.

‘What’s wrong with Carolyn Tey?’ Tess asked, curiously.

‘Nothing, dear,’ said Jan. ‘Andrea’s just being a bit childish , that’s all.’ Tess followed her gaze out over the old polished floor of what once had been the Great Hall of the house, and saw Carolyn helping Leonora Mortmain out of the door. As usual, Leonora Mortmain carried no books, no notepad. She didn’t do any of the coursework, she didn’t answer any questions or contribute to any debate. She just sat and stared at Tess, almost unblinking, with a dark-eyed intensity written on her still, hawk-like face that Tess could neither become used to nor fathom.

The other members of the course were half locals, half actual real people, as Tess had started to think of the other hapless students who were unconnected with Langford. And the majority loathed Leonora Mortmain, her superiority and coldness, her seemingly callous determination to rip the heart out of the town. Carolyn Tey, whose father had been her local solicitor, was practically the only person in the class who would talk to her. But Carolyn was a dreadful snob, as Diana was always pointing out. Wasn’t her father the person who, fifty years ago, bought old Mr Crispin’s place Apple Tree Cottage, and renamed it Apple Tree House? People had long memories here.

‘Childish?’ Andrea exploded. ‘Childish, is it, Jan Allingham, to care about what happens to your bloody town? I don’t think so! The planning meeting’s next Monday, and you know what she’s trying to do? That woman? Move it to when we’re all supposed to be in Rome, on our trip and send her solicitor along instead! She’s said she has a minor operation on the original day. My eye. So either we cancel the trip, which is all paid for, or we miss the meeting.’ She fingered the poppers on her quilted jacket. ‘Honestly, I don’t like to speak ill of anyone, but that woman—!’ She paused, and said petulantly, ‘Why’s she coming on the trip anyway?’

‘She’s on the course, like you all are, she presumably wants to see Rome.’

‘I don’t believe it, I’m afraid,’ said Andrea. ‘She wants to cause trouble. And ruin everyone else’s fun.’

Beside her, Diana nodded in sympathy, and Jan, who was rather bossy but liked to think of herself as fair to her fellow man and woman, looked thoughtful, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say next. Tess clutched her cloth, not sure if it would be rude to go back to wiping the board, as the rest of the class milled slowly out. Deep down, though, she couldn’t help but agree with Andrea. Why was Leonora Mortmain coming to Rome?

‘Well,’ Jan said, after a pause. ‘I very much like your jumper, dear. I might have to get another one, in green.’

‘Oh—thanks.’ Tess patted the jumper awkwardly. She wasn’t any good at accepting compliments, and indeed she wasn’t sure this was one, really, since it was a fifty-five-year-old woman telling her she wanted to copy her style. Still, it was sweet of her. ‘Remember, next week I want those last essays about Augustus in!’ she called to the retreating backs of her pupils, glad of the chance to change the subject.

‘Bye, Tess!’ Liz called, slinging her bag over her shoulder. ‘Great class. Maybe see you in the pub over the weekend?’

Tess found Liz’s friendly behaviour daunting. ‘Sure!’ she called back. ‘Thanks, Liz!’

‘Well, I’m off.’ Diana appeared, winding a silk scarf around her neck. ‘Thank you, Tess, that was very interesting.’ She glanced at Jan and at Andrea, who was still muttering mutinously next to them. ‘Carolyn’s obviously gone on. I’ll walk out with you, shall I?’

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Tess, gratefully. She grabbed her bag.

‘We’ve got committee tomorrow,’ Andrea was saying to Jan. ‘Are you still coming?’

‘Of course I am!’ Jan cried indignantly. ‘Andrea, we need to stand shoulder to shoulder! Not face each other as enemies, like…that Roman general, at the gate! Oh, I’ve forgotten his name.’

Tess rolled her eyes and followed Diana towards the door.

‘I saw Adam last week,’ Diana said unexpectedly, as they walked down the drive, Diana pushing her bike. ‘He told me he spent last Friday being your paramour.’ Tess smiled.

‘He told you that?’

‘I’m his godmother, Tess. I do occasionally speak to him, you know. The old boyfriend turned up then, did he?’

Her tone was sympathetic. Tess said, ‘Yes. I owe Adam, big time I owe him.’

‘That’s what friends are for, I suppose,’ said Diana, in a curious voice. ‘Do you miss him?’

‘Adam? I—’

‘No, Tess! I meant the old boyfriend.’

Tess considered for a moment, the only sound around them the dripping rainwater of the recent shower along the driveway, and their steps towards the main gate. ‘Miss him? Not really. I miss the other things.’ She gestured with her hands, rather awkward at saying this to Diana Sayers. ‘You know.’

‘Well,’ said Diana, with her simple, disarming honesty. ‘Isn’t that nice? Not to miss him.’

‘Oh,’ said Tess, taken aback. ‘Yes. I suppose so, yes.’

‘So, how are your parents?’ said Diana, switching topic abruptly. ‘I must ring your mother, it’d be lovely to see them.’

‘I’m going down week after next, that’s funny,’ said Tess. ‘On the Saturday, just for the night.’

‘Isn’t that Adam’s birthday?’ Diana said. ‘He was talking about it the other day. Said he was going to have a barbecue, up at the cottage.’ She cleared her throat. ‘It’s good for him to have people round. I worry he doesn’t…’ She trailed off, wrinkling her forehead.

Tess remembered, with slow horror, that Adam had mentioned the barbecue to her the previous weekend, not once but twice. But, in the way that two sides of your brain can happily know that you’re doing two totally separate things and never does one talk to the other, now she realized with horror she’d booked the train tickets down to Devon, and happily agreed with Francesca that they’d go to Adam’s birthday together…Damn.

‘Oh. God, that’s so annoying,’ Tess exclaimed. ‘The tickets are booked—I have to go—God! Why don’t I think!’ She tapped herself on the forehead.

‘Don’t worry,’ Diana said, in quelling tones. ‘It’s Francesca Adam was worried about, you know.’

‘Yeah…’ Tess began, knowing that her not taking Francesca would be a big deal; he treated her a bit like a child, sometimes. When he wasn’t shagging her, that was, she thought meanly. She opened her mouth to try and explain this but then, from out of nowhere, a black Jaguar drove silently past them. Tess and Diana both craned their necks to see who was in it.