Page 44 of Things We Never Said
Hello darling.
I’ve had an enforced break from recording these because I’ve been home for a few days, and you and April have been keeping a round-the-clock watch on me! But now I’m back in Addenbrooke’s and on a new chemo regime which is part of a clinical trial, and which, between you and me, feels very much like a last-ditch attempt. I’m not getting any side effects, which may be a good thing – or, more likely, probably means that I’ve ended up being in the sugar-pill half of the cohort. Still, at least I get to carry on with my tapes.
So here’s a picture of you looking outrageously skinny and scared in Cambridge, standing in front of the Bridge of Sighs. You know, I used to know why it was called that, but I’ve forgotten. Like I said before, all these drugs are doing things to my brain.
That was the first time I had ever seen you in a decent suit, I think. Oh, you had worn that striped one on our wedding day, but as far as I can remember it was pretty awful. I was so proud of you that day in Cambridge. I thought you looked so sexy. It’s a shame you never once wore it again.
We had left April with Green Donna and Alistair, the idea being that Alistair wouldn’t let Green Donna commit hara-kiri with April in her arms, and Donna wouldn’t let Alistair get her stoned. But I still worried all day. I kept on and on asking you if you thought she’d be all right, and you kept on and on replying that yes, she’d be fine. Of course, we had no mobile phones back then. There wasn’t even a landline in our student house. So there were no updates until we got home.
Cambridge was such a shock to the system. I know that you were surprised by things like the prettiness of the colleges and the crowded cycle paths everywhere, but me? I was gobsmacked. Compared with Margate, compared with post-industrial Wolverhampton, Cambridge seemed outrageous, really.
The streets were spotless, the shops were pretty and full of French cheeses and stripy shirts. A cup of tea was one pound twenty or something, I remember, and we were outraged about it. We were used to paying thirty pence in Wolves.
When we walked around the colleges it all made me feel sick, to tell the truth. And I don’t mean that as a euphemism – I mean physically sick, as in queasy.
You kept saying how pretty it all was and, of course, I could only agree. All that grass everywhere, all those flowers and the river and everything ... it was lovely. But I saw something else, something that I don’t think, coming from your family, you were able to see at all.
I saw privilege. Looking at the students strutting around in shirts and ties and stripy blazers, and thinking about those poor mums I’d met in Orgreave, I saw shocking inequality and outrageous privilege. Because those students looked like they owned the place, and that was for the simple reason that they did. The place had been made for the likes of them. I remember wondering what Mum would say if she ever saw Cambridge. Because most people in Margate really didn’t know that places like Cambridge even existed, back then. They probably still don’t.
You went off clutching that big folder of yours and you were gone for almost two hours, so I wandered in ever-increasing circles around the café you had left me in. I went into a bakery and saw that they had proper French baguettes that cost three times the price of a sliced loaf of Sunblest at Salman’s Mini Mart. I saw a shop selling ties that cost more than your suit, and pairs of women’s shoes that cost one hundred and ninety pounds, and I thought that we would never be able to afford to live in Cambridge, and that, ultimately, it was obscene that anyone could afford it.
By the time you got back, I’d decided that not only was Cambridge not for the likes of us, but that I was glad, proud even, not to fit in there. There was something self-satisfied about the place, I thought. Something smug. There were too many men wearing braces and too many women in trouser suits and brogues.
You were beaming, Sean. I can remember your exact expression when you got back. You were beaming, and your eyes were all shiny like you were on the verge of crying.
You licked your lips and said, wide-eyed, that they had offered you the job, straight off. Just like that. You were to start on the first of September, I think. And then you asked me how much I thought you were going to be earning. It took me quite a few guesses before I got the right figure, which I think I remember was seven hundred and fifty pounds a month. Does that sound about right? Whatever it was, it seemed a fortune to us.
We got back to Wolverhampton just after midnight to find April fast asleep in Donna’s bed, and even after the day that we’d had, neither of us could sleep. You talked until the early hours about being terrified you’d bugger up your degree, because the job offer, of course, was dependent on you getting at least a 2:1. Though I didn’t say much, I was terrified, too.
I was convinced, back then, that I would never fit in, that I would never be able to open my mouth in Cambridge without people laughing at me. I believed with all my heart that I would never make a single friend here, either. And I thought that I would never be able to walk down King’s Parade without feeling queasy.
But you got a first-class honours, didn’t you? And so we had to move. And I had to get over myself, I suppose, and just get used to life in Cambridge.
Actually, I didn’t get used to it at all. That’s me being disingenuous. Is that the right word? But no, I didn’t get used to it, I came to love it here.
That’s the funny thing about privilege. When you spend enough time in a town like Cambridge, you come to realise that it’s not Cambridge that’s wrong, after all. It’s everywhere else. You come to realise that everyone should get a good education and enough money to buy a baguette and brie if they fancy it. You realise that all kids should get the chance to go to a decent school where the teachers are clever and polite, and motivated. You come to think that all towns should have green spaces and cycle paths. And you learn that when you do put human beings in such a pleasant, easy-going environment, it brings out the best in them, not the worst. They don’t end up being right-wing, racist dickheads who want to protect their privilege, they end up trendy lefties instead.
When people don’t have to spend every minute of the day worrying how they’re going to pay the leccy bill, they end up with enough spare brainpower to worry about the Vietnamese boat people or animal rights or global warming. They end up drinking soy cappuccinos and wearing vegan shoes.
But I’m getting ahead of myself, aren’t I? Because as far as these tapes are concerned, we’re not in Cambridge yet, are we? We’re still just terrified in Wolverhampton: you that you might muck up your degree and miss out on the job, and I that you might succeed and get it and force me to move to snob-land.
I didn’t express my fears at the time. I had no vocabulary, back then, for any of this. But as the weeks went by, I became terrified. Really terrified. I was convinced that Cambridge would somehow show me up, that once you saw me there, you’d realise what a mistake you had made. I knew you’d see how the Margate bird stuck out like a sore thumb and you’d suddenly want some posh, clever, educated girl with a name like Camilla and a daddy who’d give you a Bentley for a wedding present.
As summer arrives, Sean finds himself waking up earlier and earlier, and on Wednesday morning, when he wakes at six, he decides to fit a site visit into his journey to work. It’s another beautiful morning: the sky is blue and the air is crisp and fresh.
On reaching the site of his next project – a plot of land where four houses have recently been demolished, a plot of land for which he’s designing twelve luxury apartments – he grabs his camera from the car boot and clambers across the remaining rubble.
He stands on the highest point of scrappy grass and looks out at the view. A racing eight and a coxed four are streaking along the river, cutting through the mirror-like surface of the Cam. One of the coxes is shrieking at his team through a megaphone. Sean thinks back to when he used to row, how fit and happy and healthy it used to make him feel. Sure, all that being shrieked at was horrible, and on cold rainy days it had been hellish. But on days like today, it had been perfect. On days like today it had been the best possible way to start a day.
He takes a deep breath and watches the boats as they vanish around the bend. Yes, the view from the apartments is going to be stunning.
Once he has checked the measurements of the site and taken photographs from every angle, he clambers back down to the street. Attracted by the continuing ripples from the now-distant boats, he crosses and leans on the railings. He glances at his watch. It’s still only eight, and he suddenly finds himself in no hurry to get to work, no hurry at all. So instead of heading back to the car, he climbs onto the railings where he sits and pulls his cigarettes from his jacket pocket. Hunting for the lighter, he finds the smooth lump of rose quartz that his daughter gave him. He smiles at the memory and slips it back into his pocket.
Below him, a little to the left, a young couple in their late twenties are emerging from a canal boat. They both have fabulously dishevelled bed-head hair. Sean watches as the young man sets up a folding table and chairs on the roof and the woman joins him with a metal pot of coffee and two mugs.
Sean studies the woman, who is a pretty brunette with generous curves, and wishes, suddenly, that he was her twenty-something boyfriend. He wishes he lived on a canal boat. He imagines himself spending sexy Sundays in bed as the boat rocks gently.
He feels guilty, as if he’s being unfaithful to Catherine, which is silly, of course, for so many reasons. But he feels it all the same.
