He reaches out and pats her hand. ‘The second thing I want to say is of a more personal nature. But I do want to share it with you.’ The hand patting hers is stilled. ‘I once had a friend who I let go. I did not make the effort I should have done and …’ he holds Jo’s gaze, ‘… it is the biggest regret of my life. Do not make the same mistake I did, with Lucy.’
Jo gets up from her stool and walks around to Malcolm. She enfolds him into a hug and holds him tight to her. At first his body is stiff in her arms, and then, like a sigh, he relaxes into her hug. He stays there for some moments – he does not cry, or hug her back – but Jo can feel the tension easing in him. She thinks back to when she hugged Finn, here in the shop. She wondered then how long it was since anyone had hugged Malcolm. Now she knows that it has been a very, very long time since anyone held Malcolm Buswell.
Dear Lucy,
In the shop I have a Christmas tree. It’s covered in fairy lights and I’m tying old-fashioned luggage labels to the branches. People are writing their Christmas wishes on them.
One woman wrote about her longing for a baby. I’ve tied that one close to the angel on the top. I think you know, Luce, how much I want to have a baby, but you must never think that I won’t be able to love your baby or be happy for you. I will be the best Auntie Jo your baby could ever wish for.
This is the wish that I wrote for myself and tied to the Christmas tree:
I wish that I could find my way back to my best friend because I love her and miss her more than I can possibly say.
With all my love,
Jo x
27
The first Sunday in Advent
Today is the day, and Jo and Ruth are making their way across Hampstead Heath. The world around them is grey and fuzzy. A ‘dreich’ day, Ruth calls it. Soon they are passing women, who are peeling off layers as if it were a balmy summer’s day, and, for Jo, doubts are setting in. It may be mild for this time of year, but it is still December. The first Sunday of Advent, Ruth tells her. Jo begins to think Malcolm has the right idea – he is spending the morning with the Sunday papers and meeting them later in La Biblioteca.
When Ruth spots the bulk of a dark wooden changing room out on the decking by the edge of the pond, Jo’s spirits lift. At least they don’t have to strip naked outside by the benches. As they step inside the warmth of the changing room, they are enveloped in a billow of steam. At the end of the building is a line of showers, one of which is spewing clouds of moist air into the room. Beyond is a large picture window looking over the pond. It is not the view outside that Jo notices, so much as the view all around her. She is surrounded by chattering, naked bodies. Bodies of all shapes and sizes. She is conscious of her clothed state, and despite the devil-may-care attitude that swirls with the steam, she feels suddenly shy.
The sign outside said the water was nine degrees, and much of the chat is about the temperature (there is a cold snap coming, water could get down to four or five degrees). And also, wildlife (has Margery seen that the heron is back?). Many of the women seem to know each other: a granite-faced, sinewy woman of around fifty (Jo thinks, prison warder?) is greeting a group of three young women, one of whom is pregnant. As they exchange comments about the water temperature and the possibility of snow this weekend, the older woman’s face breaks into a smile and the granite becomes a soft landscape.
Jo and Ruth find a space and are soon pulling out their black swimsuits and woolly hats. Ruth’s hat is knitted to look like a Christmas pudding. Some of the women around them are putting on bobble hats; the younger women also pull on neoprene gloves and booties. So wet suits are frowned upon, but these are allowed. As she undresses, Jo is tempted to ask if they have any to spare.
Ruth, meanwhile, is standing braless in large, silky, purple knickers, making friends. When Jo glances at the startling colour of her underwear, Ruth tells her in an undertone, ‘It’s the colour of Advent. I’ve always loved purple, although I suspect my congregation never knew I had matching underwear under my vestments.’
Apart from keeping this comment between themselves, Ruth seems unfazed by the possibility of being recognized as the Runaway Vicar. But then maybe she thinks people are unlikely to make the connection between an old news article about a vicar and a middle-aged woman undressing in a swimming pond changing room. Nakedness does bring with it a certain anonymity. Instead of feeling exposed, Jo relaxes into the comfort of not caring if these women see the bumps and lumps of her average body. And looking at the variety of female forms around her, she starts to wonder – what is average anyway?
Having struggled into their swimsuits, they follow along behind a group of women to the water’s edge. It was starting to feel like quite a good idea in the changing room, chatting to the other women. But now, padding along the freezing boards, Jo thinks she and Ruth are out of their minds. She feels her respect for Malcolm’s mother, Eve, increase even more.
Mist is rising from the surface of the pond and the light is dank and dreary. The trees and bushes lining the edge of the pond are vague shapes in the murky distance. The surface of the water is greeny-grey, flecked orange with floating leaves. Jo spots the ‘prison warder’ by the water’s edge. She stretches herself to her full height, although Jo can tell it is costing her something to pull against taut and tired muscles. And then, with a delicate flip, she is an elegant arrow entering the water. She emerges some way out into the misty gloom, and begins a slow and steady crawl away from them. In that moment Jo feels that the woman has left her accumulated worries on the wooden boards at the edge of the pond.
A lifeguard approaches them and asks if this is their first visit. (Is itthatobvious?) As the woman runs through points about controlling their breathing, not staying in too long; and making sure to warm up quickly afterwards, Jo stares longingly at her fleece.
Duly instructed, they then wait, shivering, as the group of young women descend the metal ladder – their chatter punctuated by squeals as their bodies meet the cold of the water. Then they push off and, as a group, begin to glide across the pond. The pregnant woman flips onto her back and, scissor-kicking, turns her face to the sky, her hands around her bump. Jo is washed with a longing that takes her breath away, far more than the cold water does as it rises up over her thighs.
She is the first in. The cold makes her whole body pant, and she forgets the pregnant woman, Ruth, everything, as she fights the feeling of her body in panic. The cold is stinging, her heart is racing, and she grabs great mouthfuls of cold mist, as she fills her lungs with moist, icy air. Her limbs automatically thrash into some sort of breaststroke. She can hear her mother’s voice.Keep moving, get some feeling into them.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Ruth begin a deep and slow breaststroke across the pond, and hears a startled, ‘Holy shiiiiit!’ drift back towards her with the ripples of water.
And then her heart stops feeling like it is about to burst, and she is flooded with such elation that she feels like she is young again. And then she remembers that, compared to many, sheisyoung, and a laugh erupts from her. What is thirty-nine anyway? It’s only a number. The other women have disappeared into the mist and Ruth is just a Christmas puddingbobbing on the water several metres away from her. An, ‘Oh my!’ is washed back to her and she thinks of Malcolm and his mother, Eve, who flew bombers and who swam here in this pond as the seasons changed around her.
There is a duck drifting through the floating leaves ahead of her. Its beady eyes remind her of Ruth. Ruth, who can so quickly sink into self-critical anxiety. Will Jo ever get to understand what troubles her? Know why she ran away? Will she ever find out about the lost friendship that Malcolm regrets? And the more she thinks about it, the more she is certain there is something behind the purple and orange slippers, rather than simply a love of colour. They looked beautiful but old, so they must be of sentimental value. She wonders how long Malcolm has kept them, and who gave them to him.
She smiles as she swims.
And Eric? She watches her fingers break the mottled surface of the water. Her chocolate-coloured nail varnish an iridescent flash. She shouldn’t think about him; they’re just friends, and he’s clearly with Clare. But just right now, in this water, eye-to-eye with a duck – everything eases. Even the tight kernel of pain that she keeps hidden within her loosens.
‘This is amazing!’ Ruth appears behind her left shoulder. ‘I thought I was going to have a heart attack, but it’s incredible.’ And with that she strikes out again across the pond, leaving Jo to her slower meandering strokes that are bringing her in a small circle closer to the edge of the pond.
Once in a rhythm with the cold singing rather than stinging, she reviews her week. It has been a good week. The shop has been busy and her mum was cheerful on their weekly Skype (still confident that ‘in the spring’ Uncle Wilbur would be back). Behind her mum’s comfortable face, she saw her dad walk past and lift a finger in affectionate greeting, whilst at the same time shaking his head. So, she is to keep quiet and stay put for a while longer. And that is not so bad. She has experienced the pleasure of finally turning a profit. Maybe this is the beginning of something? A new venture for her? She certainly likes chatting to her Stationery Lovers – feeling she is connecting with her tribe.
She thinks about Ruth and Malcolm and their different ages and how insignificant this feels to their friendship, and she decides James has a lot to answer for. She does a particularly vicious breaststroke kick deep into the water, then gazes up at the leaden sky and thinks of the prospect of lunch with Ruth and Malcolm. With the thought of food and wine, she realizes her whole body is now shaking. The feeling of well-being is seeping away and her muscles are trembling. Her hands and feet are sore with cold.
