Pillow Talk Part 38

While Arlo took a shower, Petra went back downstairs and asked Esther if she could help. Esther gave her cheese to grate and as they prepared supper, they gamely chatted.

'I don't mind telling you I felt a bit anxious when Arlo told me you were a jeweller,' Esther said. 'I don't really know much about jewellery. In fact, I'm pretty much wearing all that I own.'

'But why would you be anxious?'

'Well, I suppose I'd feel the same if you were a fashion designer I'd suddenly feel rather frumpy. Or if you were a chef what would I do for supper?'

'You don't need to drip with diamonds to get into my good books,' Petra said. 'I'm a tanzanite girl anyway.'

'Tanzanite?'

'The rarest gem on earth. In a few years' time, it'll all be gone. There will be no more tanzanite at all.'

'Really?'

'Yes.'

'Tell me more. Here grate these.'

'Tanzanite is only found in one location in the whole world in a three-mile area in the foothills of Kilimanjaro. Not only that, it's only found in a specific part of the rock. Look!' Petra grabbed a tea towel, not noticing that Arlo had reappeared. She pleated the fabric so it resembled a ruff. She pointed to the centre of the looped sections. 'Tanzanite is only found in what is called the boudins of the rock. It's all to do with the pan-African event 585 million years ago and a freak geological phenomenon. It's thought that in a couple of decades it'll all be gone. Finished.'

'What's it like? I don't think I'd know tanzanite if a great lump of it fell onto my lap.'

'Well, part of its uniqueness, why its beauty is so exclusive, is that it's trichroic it has a different pure colour on each of its axes. Predominantly blue tanzanite is the rarest as the blue axis is oriented along the width of the crystal not the length so there's more wastage, therefore, to cut for this. It's easier to cut along the violet axis. Do you see?' She paused, wondered if she was babbling, but her audience seemed captivated. 'Geologically speaking, it's a blue zoisite. But Henry B. Platt grandson of Louis Comfort Tiffany of Tiffany's, New York chose to market the gem as tanzanite. It was 1967 and he claimed there were only two places on earth you could find tanzanite Tanzania and Tiffany. He worried that "zoisite" sounded a bit like "suicide"!'

Esther tried the word out loud and laughed.

'It was only discovered in 1967 and there's only one generation's mining. But over and above the amazing facts of its creation and its discovery and its imminent disappearance is the pure romance of the gem. It's wrapped with beautiful Masai legend. They say a magical fire struck Kilimanjaro and when the embers died down, the hill sparkled with vivid blueviolet stones amidst the ash. Masai women are given tanzanite on the birth of their children. Blue is a very sacred colour to them the women only wear it once they've borne children. The Masai believe the stone has healing powers. It's also the birthstone for December. And that's when my birthday is.'

Esther was just about to suggest they eat when Petra sallied forth again. 'You know something else and this is fundamentally important when one considers the atrocities of conflict diamonds, blood diamonds but tanzanite is the most ethically mined gemstone. It's carefully governed and a percentage of the profit is put back into the Masai community.'

'This is fascinating, Petra,' Esther said. 'Was this part of your degree?'

Petra smiled and shook her head. 'It's part of my childhood.' She paused. 'The stories and the pa.s.sion were pa.s.sed down to me. It pretty much dictated what I'd do with my life.'

'Are your parents jewellers too? Gemmologists?' Esther stopped herself. She remembered what Arlo had said about Petra's childhood.

But Petra's laugh put her at her ease. 'Hardly,' she said and then she told Esther all about Mrs McNeil.

When she'd finished, Arlo interjected: 'That's how we came to know each other, Mum. Petra would come to my school and do pottery after visiting the famous Mrs McNeil.'

'Did you ever meet her, darling?'

Arlo shook his head.

'What a pity,' Esther said. 'Her generation had so much to impart. Our lives have had a paucity in comparison.' She poured wine for the three of them and raised her gla.s.s. 'To Mrs McNeil, then.'

Petra surged with emotion.

After supper, Petra showed Esther the bracelet. She didn't tell her about the actress and the commission because actually, the thought of who would buy the piece and at what price had been so far from the work's conception and creation as to seem strangely irrelevant. Petra put the bracelet on an awe-struck Esther. It was the first time that Arlo had seen it and he swelled with pride. As Petra bolted upstairs to find the tanzanite, Esther turned to Arlo.

'She's not just a pretty face,' she said with a wink.

'She's so much more, Mum,' he said, 'so much more.'

Esther looked at her son quizzically. There was something different since she'd seen him last. 'You seem darling, you look exhausted. But you seem content, actually you seem happy?'

Arlo scanned the framed photographs and looked around the room. He turned to his mother and shrugged, smiled. 'I'm doing good, Mum. Petra she's. Well she's changed things for me. I've changed because of her. I didn't realize how much I'd been bottling up. I didn't realize how destructive it was to do that. And I never knew that sharing could be so liberating.' His eyes focused on the picture of Helen. They stayed there a long while. His mother thought how he hadn't looked Helen in the face since she'd been in that frame. Which actually predated her death by some time.

'Five years, darling,' she said gently. 'It's long been time to let go.'

Arlo looked at her. 'With Petra, for the first time, I've wanted to talk, to remember, I've been able to grieve, to regret.' His mother nodded. 'That's good, isn't it?' His mother nodded again. 'I think it would be important for me to see Helen's folks. I feel I need to explain to them too. To ask their forgiveness-'

Esther raised her hand to block the end of his sentence. 'Arlo, no,' she said firmly. 'It's been five years, darling.'

'But it's only just recently that I've you know accessed what I've kept locked so deep. I've literally let those great perimeter walls of the school surround me keeping me in, keeping people out. But now it feels like I've opened my own Pandora's Box and spread the contents before myself and I see that some of them belong to Helen's family.'

Esther looked concerned. 'Visit by all means but not to make yourself feel better. I think you'd be wiser to let Petra bring you back to the joys of life. And love. Visit by all means but as yourself as you are now, Arlo, five years on. Don't dredge up Helen's death. They will need peace as much as you.'

'But I want to explain. I feel I've been such a loathsome coward-'

Esther took her finger to her lips to sternly silence Arlo. 'Don't you say that about yourself, my boy. You had the shock of your life. It was desperately traumatic. Look how it's reverberated all these years. But you're dealing with it. And they're dealing with it. And perhaps Petra is dealing with it too.'

Arlo looked a little unsettled. 'Well,' he said, 'perhaps. But I think I'll phone them anyway.'

'If you do, promise me you will take their lead.'

'Life is worth little without honesty,' Arlo said.

'I'm glad you know that now,' said his mother.

Petra didn't dare take her chances with the creaky floorboards, nor would she countenance Arlo expertly dodging them to sneak into the spare room for a furtive quickie. So she and Arlo gave each other a chaste kiss goodnight at the bathroom door and went to their respective rooms. Actually, Arlo was exhausted. Only a week ago he had contemplated life without love. Now love filled his life and it was a very, very big deal.

He woke up promptly at seven in the morning and then smiled at the thought of no Sat.u.r.day school today, no school whatsoever and a whole weekend with the girl he loved. He lay in bed for a few minutes longer but was eager to look in on Petra. The spare-room bed, however, was empty. He went downstairs to join Petra for a cup of tea. But she wasn't there. With a thudding sense of dread, he checked the front and back doors and was relieved to find both still double-locked. So where was she? Where had she got to? He went upstairs again, checked the bathroom. Oh G.o.d, not Dad's study. No, it seemed not; his father's study was pretty much as it always was. The periphery of the room still walled with his books and journals and files; the central floor s.p.a.ce prosaically purloined by his mother for the ironing board and clothes airers. But if Petra wasn't here either, it left only one room. His mother's.

He knocked cautiously. There was no sound. He opened the door slowly. There was his mother, propped up in bed with a cup of tea, her reading gla.s.ses on, the Rosie Thomas novel he'd bought her in hardback, open. She was sitting up on his father's side of the bed. This was almost as peculiar a sight as that of Petra, soundly asleep, on his mother's side of the bed.

'It was the strangest thing,' Esther said softly with a glance at Petra as if she was a stray cat who'd chosen to stay. 'At some unG.o.dly hour my door opened and there she stood. I thought she wanted the loo or something. But she came right in, sat down on the edge of the bed and muttered something about nothing. I kept saying her name but it made no difference. Then she stood up and said that she was sleepy; pulled back my covers and in she got. I don't know if she would have laid down right on top of me if I hadn't shifted out of the way.'

'She sleepwalks. I didn't think to mention it. Sorry.'

'Does she do it often?'

Arlo nodded, came in and sat by his mother on his father's side of the bed. 'Most of her life, apparently.'

'What an affliction,' Esther said.

'She's hurt herself quite badly on occasions.'

'Poor love,' Esther said and she gently stroked through a ringlet of Petra's hair.

'She hates it,' Arlo said. 'She'll be mortified when she wakes.'

'I read somewhere that it can be linked to trauma you know, in childhood.'

'She's had every test under the sun,' Arlo said. 'Sleep clinics, electrodes, CCTV, drugs.'

'What a thing,' Esther shook her head.

'Perhaps she just wanted to snuggle up with you, Mum,' Arlo said, standing and heading back to the door. 'I don't think she ever really got to do that.'

Petra stirred, turned, opened her eyes and, with her field of vision filled by Esther's nightgown, closed them tightly again. She turned onto her other side, opened her eyes again only to clock Arlo's legs. She scrunched her eyes shut and groaned.

'Oh G.o.d. Oh no.'

Gently, Esther rested her hand on Petra's bare shoulder. 'Don't you worry, my darling. I was very glad of the company and you don't snore like my previous bedmate did.' Arlo grinned grat.i.tude at his mum and she gave him an affectionate nod. Still Petra had her face buried in her hands. 'Arlo, darling,' Esther said, 'can you pa.s.s Petra my dressing gown. It's on the back of the door.' Then she changed her touch to a lively pat on Petra's back. 'I'm going to make breakfast. Who's for a full English?'

'Me, please,' said Arlo.

'And me,' m.u.f.fled Petra.

After breakfast, Arlo went to the corner shop to buy the Sat.u.r.day papers and Petra took her cup of coffee through to the lounge. She was gazing at the family photos on the mantelpiece when Esther came downstairs, dressed.

'That's how I remember Arlo,' Petra told her, when she'd come to stand alongside. 'That hair like Jim Morrison from the Doors.'

Esther laughed. 'I like this one,' she said. It was a photograph of a picnic, with Arlo all toothsome at ten, standing alongside his father, both bare-chested, posing like bodybuilders. She took Petra along the mantelpiece, revealing the who and the when and the where of each picture.

'What a happy collection,' Petra remarked, wondering sadly to herself where the photos of her childhood were, whether they still existed. Had her parents fought over who would have them? Or had they been turfed out with the rest of the bones of contention? A photograph on the bookshelf caught her eye. A girl. She went for a closer look. Arlo had told her nothing of how Helen looked but Petra knew in an instant that this was her. How beautiful she had been. 'Helen?' she asked.

'Yes,' said Esther, 'that's Helen.'

'Wow,' said Petra because the look of the girl warranted such a response.

Esther took the picture from Petra, looked at it, smiled. 'You know,' she said, 'Helen did love Arlo. And he really, really loves you.'

Petra stood alongside her and they looked at Helen together. 'He's doing OK,' Petra said and Esther wondered whether she spoke to the picture or to her. Petra turned to her. 'He's doing OK,' she said again. 'It's been a tough old time for him. I think meeting me brought it all to the fore.'

'Meeting you has been an excellent thing.'

Petra blushed. Then she glanced at Helen again. 'He blames himself,' she said quietly, as if aware that she was exposing something of a secret.

Esther smiled kindly. 'I know he does,' she told Petra. 'It's been a desperate burden for him. But you know, I also knew that he wasn't happy during the period leading up to the accident. And it was an accident, whatever Arlo might think to the contrary, however much he has tortured himself otherwise.'

Petra fell quiet, as if deliberating how much more of Arlo's confidence to reveal. 'He's been talking about visiting Helen's parents,' she said at length. 'He feels he ought to I don't know open his heart to them. Ask their forgiveness. a.s.suage his remorse, I suppose.' And when she turned to Esther, she did so for guidance.

'I know,' said Esther. 'We talked about this yesterday. If you can add anything to what I've said, feel free.' She put Helen back on the bookcase. 'He listens to you, Petra. And that's a wonderful thing for his old mum to see.'

'You're not old,' Petra laughed.

And Arlo arrived back and said, What's so funny? and his mother and his girlfriend said, Oh, nothing.

It was time for elevenses. They could all do with a nice cup of tea.

The weekend was lovely though it ended too soon with Arlo needing to take a lunch-time train to counteract the infernal works on the line and still be back at school at a civilized time. Esther told Petra she needn't rush off but Petra said that she had something she needed to do. However, before she left, after Esther had taken both her hands and kissed each cheek, Petra invited her to come into town, to meet her for lunch, to see the studio, to meet the Studio Three.

'I'd love to,' Esther said. 'Let me give you my mobile number.'

'You have a mobile?' Petra said, amazed.

'Oh Lord, you didn't think my son being a Luddite was genetic, did you?'

Petra had not realized until that very morning that there was something she really did need to do. Having accompanied Arlo back to King's Cross and spun him a white lie about feeding Eric's neighbour's cat, she left him, covered in kisses, waiting for his delayed train. She changed stations and headed for Watford. She bought anemones, their stems succulent and twisting, their sooty black faces framed by vibrant crowns of richly hued petals.

She didn't know what she was going to say, really. And she couldn't antic.i.p.ate how she'd feel. But she knew she had to go there. To make her introduction. And then, to take her leave.

The grounds were peaceful by definition and seemed all the more serene for the presence of many great graceful trees standing tall and benevolent. There were lots of visitors, all keen to reciprocate kindly glances of empathy. Petra had to ask for directions to Helen and, as she approached the grave, she felt tears p.r.i.c.kling. She read the inscription on the stone carefully. It was very simple, beautifully carved. Just her name, her dates and how much she had been loved. More tragic than anything Petra had personally known. Horrifically, desperately tragic.

We wish you had not died.

Petra laid the flowers down, stood still and silent for a while. Then she knelt and bowed her head and said over and over, Dear Helen dear Helen dear Helen I hope you're OK with this, it's important to us that you are.

Arlo did visit Helen's family quite soon after.

In bed with Petra a week or so later, Petra gamely chatting about this and that, he suddenly interrupted her, hushing her with his fingers to her lips.

'They were happy for me, Petra,' he said, 'when I told them about you. Helen's folks. They were genuinely happy for me.'

And from the ease with which Arlo recounted this, as well as from his unfurrowed brow, Petra deduced that during the visit, he'd done everyone proud. His mother. Petra. Himself. And Helen.

Chapter Fifty-two.

The last few weeks of term galloped along for all concerned. The GCSE and A level boys at Roseberry Hall willed their last exams to come around finally and they were then duly rewarded with long summer days to lounge around, play sport and simply take stock of all they'd achieved. The rest of the pupils summoned bursts of energy to complete any outstanding work and some of the work was quite outstanding indeed to ensure favourable send-offs from this year's form tutors and an auspicious start to the next school year. For the teachers, the summer holidays seemed all the more tangible once they'd written the boys' end-of-year reports. An official farewell barbeque was organized for Miranda Oates and the following weekend those colleagues who were also friends organized a more raucous send-off with a pub crawl through Great Broughton. Arlo was invited but he couldn't attend as it was a weekend he was spending in London. Miranda said she understood. And she did. She did understand. Which wasn't to say she wasn't slightly hurt. But she kept that to herself. Almost the end of term. Out with the old. A long, hot summer. Then in with the new.

In London, Petra's landlords did not charge her rent and their insurers gave her an allowance; of which, after some pressure, Eric accepted half. Petra put the remainder into a kitty that enabled them to have their weekly shop delivered by Ocado and M&S. She really enjoyed living with Eric and though she still went walkabout at night, the sorties were definitely less frequent. Arlo and Eric rubbed along just fine and Petra and Arlo also spent another weekend with Esther, whom Petra had seen a few times in between visits too. Esther had been intrigued by the way the Studio Four worked together as a studio as well as individually as jewellers. She'd spent a peaceful afternoon, sitting quietly in the corner of their hive of creativity, watching Petra buzz around and Eric act like queen bee. Charlton had charmed her and Petra continued to delight her.