Daisy: March 2020

I have two more days in Kathmandu to prepare for trekking in the mountains. Top of my list of priorities is to lay my hands on some pills to help with altitude sickness and a supply of loo rolls. Apparently, the former are readily available but the latter are scarce in the more remote parts of Nepal and I’m worried about the possibility of them being suddenly and catastrophically needed. We’ll be staying a day or two in Namche Bazaar, to acclimatise to the change in altitude. My guidebook warns that everything is available there but at greatly inflated prices. Every single item has to be carried up to the hill town – one of the main waystations on the trek to Everest Base Camp – on the backs of porters and mules.

Ironically, when I return to the hotel in the evening with my booty, a BBC news update on my phone describes a severe shortage of toilet paper in the UK as a result of panic buying, so I take a photo of the two rolls I’ve managed to buy in Kathmandu and send it to Jack with a message saying, Eat your heart out!

He must be within reach of shore somewhere because a text pings back almost straight away: Did you know that an anagram of HEART is HATER? Bog paper situation not yet critical here. But good to know I can call on you in case of dire emergency.

Where are you? I ask.

Bought a boat in Bermuda. She’s a beauty. Called Skylark. The name reminded me of you, Laverocks, it being the Scots word for a lark and all, so I knew she had to be mine the minute I saw her. Now anchored off Grenada. Turned away at every port. Attempting to reprovision and then going to make for the Azores. Might as well do lockdown crossing the Atlantic.

On your own??

What could possibly go wrong? He adds a laughing face emoji.

Take care , I text back.

Is that the pot calling the kettle black? comes the reply. Are you in the mountains?

Heading that way.

Watch out for yetis.

And you watch out for sea monsters.

I wait, hoping for another reply, but his connection must have dropped or perhaps he’s busy with the boat because there’s radio silence.

I stuff the loo rolls into my pack and then swallow the first of my altitude pills with a gulp of water before turning off the light. But sleep is elusive, and I toss and turn, worrying about the trip ahead.

I try not to think too much about the description in my guidebook of Lukla airport and its frightening reputation. From the photos I’ve seen, it seems to be a single runway tucked into a narrow meadow high in the mountains, which ends abruptly just before a wall of merciless-looking rocky peaks. I imagine it will be busy at this time of year, the beginning of the Everest trekking season, packed with climbers far more experienced than I who will be making the eight-day trek to the foot of the world’s highest mountain. I’ll be leaving the path about halfway up, climbing into a quieter valley where the village of Phortse clings to a vertiginous slope. The name gives me a tingle of anticipation. Phortse: the Sherpa village where Violet Mackenzie-Grant once lived, now home to Tashi, his wife and his son, Sonam.

I’m champing at the bit to get going, and at the same time worried that my plans may be cancelled once more – or perhaps Tashi and Sonam won’t turn up. If that happens, I decide, then I’ll definitely head home. The thought that I might never see them again brings with it a confusing surge of disappointment and relief. I realise a part of me is hoping the latest plan will unravel too and I can abandon this crazy journey once and for all. I could be back in London by the end of next week. Nobody can say I haven’t tried. I can return with my head held high, my red string bracelet round my wrist, and my photos of Kathmandu to prove to everyone, myself included, that at least I was brave enough to come this far on my own.

Another message pings on my phone and I reach for it, thinking it will be from Jack. But to my surprise, this one’s from Mara. So glad you’re doing this, Mum. Inspirational!

It’s as if she’s read my thoughts and realised I might be in need of encouragement. It’s also the first communication I’ve had from her in a while. Sorcha is naturally the more communicative of my twins. I tell myself I’m glad they’re both so independent and since starting their university courses (Mara’s acting studies at RADA and Sorcha’s degree in ecology at Imperial College), it’s probably only natural they should gravitate more towards their dad. He now lives with his wife, Claire, and their five-year-old son, Max, in a large house in Wandsworth. But there’s a nagging voice in my head that worries whether it’s the best thing for them emotionally. The instinct to protect them from being hurt is still strong. Their dad never showed much interest in them when they were growing up, but recently they’ve drawn closer to him.

Before my departure on this trip, I’d tried to arrange to see both Mara and Sorcha, but Mara had cancelled at the last minute as she had to be at an important rehearsal. So Sorcha and I had dinner at a fancy restaurant in the West End. She’d talked about how cute her half-brother Max was, how cool her dad was with him, and how Claire had been busy recording a studio album but might be going on tour again, while ‘the boys’ stay at home and mind the fort.

I’d tried to swallow another overpriced chip, while choking down my concern and resentment. Then chided myself silently. I didn’t want to be the bitter, rejected ex-wife, consumed with jealousy. But I’d sacrificed so much for him and his career, and now I felt I’d lost everything I ever cared about, so perhaps a pang of anger every now and then was justified.

My ambition to become a gardener like Violet had led me to study for a diploma in garden design and to do an apprenticeship in horticulture. I’d begun to establish my own landscape gardening business and it was gathering momentum. My big break came when I was asked to design one of the smaller gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show and it had won a gold medal, catapulting me into the gardening stratosphere. But that all changed when I met my husband – whose name I can’t even bring myself to think, let alone say, so much does his betrayal still hurt.

He came to the music school at Ardtuath to record a folk singer who went on to become a global presence on the music scene. His job as a sound engineer took him all over the place, wherever the next tour went, but he insisted we had to make our home in London, saying it was easier for him, logistically, as he never knew where he’d be flying off to next. It was a big sacrifice for me. Getting married and moving to London meant starting all over again, building a client base in the city. People there wanted instant, low-maintenance designs involving much hard landscaping and plants that would behave themselves, a far cry from the exuberant wildflower meadows and wildlife-friendly habitats I loved to create. And we could only afford a small flat in an apartment block, so I didn’t even have a patch of garden of my own.

I still remember the moment I found out about the affair. And although years have gone by, the memory still makes my stomach clench with the physical pain of his betrayal. I suppose I should have suspected something before I did. It seems the wife is usually the last to know. Claire – the now-famous folk singer – and he had grown closer at the same time as he and I had drifted apart. Inevitably, I suppose, as our worlds became so very different. Mine involved fitting in my work around school runs and nagging over homework, while his involved air tickets and tour buses and stadiums packed with fans – glamour, with the added risk of a freelancer’s sporadic salary. No wonder Mara and Sorcha were drawn to him like moths to a flame, readily exchanging my boring, cramped flat for holidays in exotic places and backstage passes to gigs.

The betrayal, followed by the aftershocks of divorce and life as a single parent, made me feel completely inadequate. Sometimes I used to think I’d leave me too, if I could.

I switch on the light and prop myself up on my pillows to compose a message in reply to Mara’s, trying to sound confident and not come across as too needy, too worried, too nagging ...

Thanks, love. Enjoying my adventure! Hope all good there. What will you and Sorcha do if a lockdown happens and the universities close?

All good. Don’t worry, we’ll go to Dad’s.

I begin to type, then backtrack hitting the delete key and in the end settle for a thumbs-up emoji. By the time I send it, Mara has gone offline, and it sits there unseen. Perhaps she saw I was typing and deliberately retreated, knowing the mention of staying at her father’s would send me into a tailspin. Because of course I’m worried. I’m anxious that spending more time with their father will only set them up for hurt and rejection. He took absolutely no interest in the twins when they were younger. They’ll be useful, I suppose, as childminders and entertainers. But will Claire want them in her home for weeks on end now her latest tour will have been cancelled? And how will they be able to keep up with their studies with the universities shutting down?

I shake my head, trying to snap myself out of the tailspin of rumination. I’m just jealous, I tell myself firmly. This is not the woman I want to be. And anyway, perhaps it will work out well and the girls will be safe and happy as the world descends into chaos. They’re adults now. And they certainly don’t need me butting into their lives from halfway around the globe.

I check my phone again in case Mara is back online, but the falsely cheery emoji remains hanging in the space between us.

As I plug in my phone to charge, I catch sight of myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall and once again my reflection takes me by surprise. I always used to look as determined as I felt, but both my appearance and my confidence are melting away, becoming fuzzy and indistinct. I don’t like what I’ve lost: my self-possession; my role as a mother; my previous relationship with my girls; the ability to catch a man looking at me and to smile back at him, feeling wanted. Nor do I like what I’ve gained: ten pounds in weight; a layer of flesh settling like a snowdrift around my waist and thighs; and a single, disconcertingly coarse hair sprouting on my chin, which stubbornly resists all my attempts to permanently eradicate it with a pair of tweezers.

My mother also gently pointed out one evening, when I’d been weeping into my glass of wine during a heart-to-heart with her, that history has an uncanny way of repeating itself. There were certainly a few parallels with my own father, who had deserted Mum when he’d found out she was pregnant as it was far too much of an inconvenience to his own career as a composer to contemplate supporting a wife and child.

That conversation prompted me to visit a counsellor but it didn’t help me much to know I’d just ended up writing the same old story all over again and passing it on to my girls.

We all do it, don’t we? Unwittingly making the same old mistakes, over and over again. Except perhaps Violet. I think she’s a good example of someone who defied her upbringing and wrote a new story, all of her own. When I was going through some of my darkest moments, her journals continued to inspire me.

Since there’s now no chance of sleep, I pick up a letter of hers from the bundle of her papers and start to read.

The Laurels

12 Corstorphine Gardens

Edinburgh

Sunday, 27th November, 1927

Dearest Hetty,

Well, I’ve almost completed my first term and despite Ma’s predictions I have neither got myself expelled nor have I dropped out. In fact, it’s been everything I dreamed of and more. My assignment to the Herbarium at the Botanic Garden has been going well and my drawings and paintings have, I think, added to the recording and cataloguing of many of the specimens. The chilblains on my fingers are worth it! Ma will have kittens when she sees the state of my hands (the only one of her predictions that HAS come true). The heating in the Caledonian Hall consists of a temperamental monster of a boiler that only barely manages to raise the temperature of the room by a degree or two at best, so I often work wrapped in my coat, wearing a pair of fingerless gloves so as to be able to use my pencils and brushes. But as I draw and paint, I forget the cold and the damp and the grey skies beyond the soot-speckled windowpanes and am transported to lush tropical valleys filled with bright rhododendron blooms and rugged, snow-capped mountainsides, where poppies the colour of a summer sky nod amongst carpets of starry white saxifrage. Oh, how I should love to see such sights one day! Of course, women are rarely included on the plant-hunting expeditions that send these treasures back to us. But maybe, somehow, one day I will travel further than the Scottish railways can carry me.

Speaking of which, I’m so looking forward to coming home to Ardtuath for Christmas. There is much to tell you about the past three months here, and whilst I suspect the botanic and horticultural details will bore you rigid, I do have some news of a romantic kind that will interest you more. One of my colleagues at the Herbarium is a most personable young man by the name of Callum Gillespie. It has taken a few weeks, but he has finally plucked up the courage to ask me to accompany him on a walk beside the Water of Leith next Saturday. I must confess, I find his shyness rather attractive. So far, he is most comfortable talking about the plants we work on together, but I have managed to extract from him the information that his family comes from Perthshire, where his father is head gardener on an estate near Dunkeld. Ma will have even more kittens when she learns this is the sort of person I socialise with nowadays. But, after all, we are equals at work (indeed, he is a couple of years ahead of me in experience and holds down a far more responsible role than I do at the Botanic Garden). I like him very much indeed. He is a great deal more interesting than anyone we were ever introduced to at those hunt balls.

Is there anything in particular you would like me to bring from Edinburgh, dear Hetty? I look forward to treating you to such luxuries as silk stockings and scented bath salts, as well as some of those rose cream chocolates you love.

Counting down the days until I see you ...

Your sister,

Violet xx