Love Like the Dickens: A Heartswell Harbour Romance

by Mavis Williams

  As it turned out, he didn’t need to agree even in the moment that he decided he would do it.

  “That’s settled, then.” Irenia sat down and folded her hands. “Light up the Lighthouse. A brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.”

  ∞∞∞

  “Would you join me for… supper? Maybe it’s too late for supper. A drink, perhaps?”

  Agnes was leaving the meeting, wrapping her scarf around her neck against the frosty air when Oscar approached her on the sidewalk. He was so hesitant she wasn’t sure if he was nervous or just asking because he thought he should.

  “Do you… want me to?”

  “I do. Yes. Of course, that’s why I’m asking. Unless you have other plans. In which case it is perfectly all right if you say no.”

  “No.”

  “Oh. All right then. Good night.” He quickly turned away from her and began to walk down the sidewalk.

  “No, Oscar!” She scuttled after him, feeling like a child. “I didn’t mean no, I don’t want to have supper. I meant no, I don’t have any plans.”

  He smiled down at her. Her head was level with his chest, and she had to lift her chin to look into his eyes. “Well then. How fortuitous. It turns out I also have no plans.”

  They stood in the pale glow of the streetlight, looking at each other.

  She wondered what he would look like without his beard.

  “You’re staring,” he said.

  “I’m going into a coma from lack of food.” She grinned. She loved his honesty and the way his eyes seemed to look directly into her soul. And she really was hungry.

  “There should have been snacks at the meeting. It would have made the whole thing more palatable.” He tucked her hand under his elbow and lead her down the sidewalk. “You’d think the Heartswell Association of Women who Care would care enough to offer at least some cheese and crackers.”

  “And wine,” she said. “Although I’d hate to see Irenia when she’s tipsy.”

  The breeze off the harbour cut sharply through her coat as they hastened on their way.

  “It’s cold, bleak, biting weather,” he quipped. They ducked their heads to avoid the worst of the wind, not talking as they approached the lighthouse at the end of the wharf. Her eyes watered from the cold.

  “Will it be open this late?” she asked, glancing up at the moon glimmering behind scudding clouds in the dark sky.

  “They do late supper on Saturdays,” he said, leading her up the stairs to the wide doors. “And I believe they even serve wine.”

  He held open the door and she ducked under his arm, the warmth of the room like a welcome hug after the cold night air. He took her hand and led her to a table tucked under a driftwood sculpture of a whale hanging from the ceiling. She loved how large his hand was. His long fingers wrapped around hers felt familiar, rather than strange.

  Agnes looked around the room, taking in the subtle lighting and folk art. The Lighthouse was round, with porthole windows and tables made of ancient wood polished to a gleaming shine. They ordered red wine, and a charcuterie board. The waitress brought them a basket of warm rolls. Agnes was certain she was in heaven.

  She slathered a roll with butter and tried not to groan with pleasure at the warm delight as she closed her eyes and chewed.

  “First time with fresh bread?” He grinned as her eyes flew open and she wiped a dribble of butter off her chin.

  She spoke with her mouth full. “It’s just so perfect. Don’t you think?”

  “It is delightful,” he said, doing that thing with his eyes that made her feel like her heart was open before him. She didn’t think he was talking about the bread.

  “So.” She reached for some cheese. She hadn’t been on a date for a long time. She remembered when she was younger she would never eat in front of a date, afraid to appear less than perfect. That didn’t seem to be a problem when she was with Oscar. “You build things?”

  “As Irenia would say, I’m handy with a hammer.” He smiled, piling smoked meat onto a cracker. “I prefer books over lumber, but it gives me a chance to spend time with Paisley.”

  “She’s great, isn’t she? She reminds me of my sister.” Agnes touched her jade pendant without thinking. “Impetuous and vibrant.”

  Oscar cocked his head, one eyebrow raised. “Good word choice.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “I could add impulsive and vivacious as well.”

  “Sanguine.”

  “Effervescent.”

  “Pulchritudinous.”

  “You win!” She laughed with delight. “I know it means beautiful, but what a horrible word!”

  He sat back in his chair, twirling his glass in his hand. She held his gaze, one hand on her pendant as she racked her brain for other big words to play with.

  “Tell me about the necklace.” He raised his glass toward her, his eyes gentle in the soft light.

  She wasn’t sure what to do with his directness. Her usual manner was to dodge the question, or change the subject, but she felt completely comfortable in his presence. Like he was a favorite story she had read before and was remembering as she turned the pages.

  “It was Savannah’s,” she said. She held out the pendant, the dark green of the stone warm and heavy in her hand. “It’s jade. She called it greenstone, from New Zealand. You can only be given a jade pendant, you can’t buy one for yourself.”

  “Or the magic won’t work?”

  She looked at him, trying to see if he was mocking her. His face was open and curious.

  “Yes. Something like that. It has to be a gift.” She took a sip of wine. “Savannah gave it to me a few days before she died.”

  “Tell me.”

  She wanted to tell him everything. His eyes were deep brown, so dark they looked black until the light caught them and they glinted with flecks of cinnamon.

  “It was the last time she was really with me, you know? Because of the medication.” She swallowed. “She told me to wear it to remember her.”

  He sat silently. It was the exact, perfect response. She felt a bright surge of gratitude for his silence and his care.

  “It was warm from her skin, the day she gave it to me. I wear it every day, and I can still feel that warmth, as if she’s still with me.”

  He nodded. She slipped the necklace over her head and passed him the stone.

  He didn’t take it from her but placed his hand gently over hers. His eyes asked permission as his long fingers curled over hers. He held the stone between their two palms, looking at her and smiling.

  “I can feel it. It’s warm. I understand how you would get comfort from keeping it so close to your heart.”

  Agnes looked at their two hands joined over the table, the solid warmth of the stone radiating in their palms.

  “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Was she talking to Oscar, or to Savannah? She wasn’t really sure.

  Ten

  She hated this. Hated it.

  She stood on the stage with the rest of the cast, doing warm-up exercises. They leapt about, contorting themselves to pose as a bizarre range of items that had no business in a production of Dicken’s Christmas Carol.

  “Bacon!” Mrs. Crawley shrieked from the floor in front of the stage. The warm-up routine tonight was to impersonate whatever object Mrs. Crawley bellowed at them. Agnes had already suffered through pretending to be a falling leaf, a basketball and the giant turkey that Scrooge sends to Bob Cratchit at the end of the play. Had she known she could have had a role as the turkey, she would have jumped at the chance.

  “Be bacon! You’re in a frying pan, surrounded by your brethren, bubbling and spitting and shrinking! Shrinking, I say!”

  Agnes’ brethren threw themselves onto the stage at Mrs. Crawley’s command, writhing around in overwrought porcine misery. She was sore from her running efforts, and mortified by her own ineptitude. She merely lay down with her arms by her sides, staring up at the bright lights in the rigging above her.

  “
Agnes!” Mrs. Crawley stretched across the stage with the walking stick she used to point out stage directions, whacking it solidly on the wooden flooring so close to Agnes’ head she could feel the wind when it struck. “Bubble, froth, fry!”

  “There’s no one home in my kitchen,” Agnes said. “I’m bacon in the fridge.”

  She heard Paisley giggle, and she turned her head to see the flash of her elfin smile from off stage. Paisley didn’t participate in warm-up. Lucky Paisley.

  Mrs. Crawley growled at her but withdrew her walking stick and called the cast to peel themselves off the floor and begin with Act One. They’d done Act One every night for the last five rehearsals, and Agnes was beginning to have trouble sleeping as she fretted about her stage fright and the impossibility of being a convincing Ghost of Christmas Past.

  She was a solid, stuttering, shaking blob of a librarian. The Ghost of Christmas Past was supposed to be light and child-like and graceful. At least, that’s what Mrs. Crawley told her night after night, to no avail. Each rehearsal had ended at the same point in the script, when Agnes simply could not get past her own feeling of being enormous on the stage. It didn’t help that Mrs. Crawley was already a foot shorter than Agnes, and with exaggerated stooping in her role as Scrooge she barely came past Agnes’ waist.

  Night after night, Agnes got to the part where the Ghost reveals Scrooge’s sister to him in the past, and she would simply feel so out of place, so awkward and incompetent that she could barely finish the scene.

  “Tonight is the night.” Mrs. Crawley waved Agnes toward her. She crouched on the edge of the stage so she was eye level with the fierce pince nez of the Director. “You are a butterfly, you are a falling leaf, you move like the wind.”

  Agnes looked at her sceptically.

  “You are not wearing army boots and going to a barn dance,” she said, stamping her walking stick onto the ground to underline her words. “I’m glad we’ve had this little tête à tête, my dear. Do not disappoint me.”

  Agnes was dismissed and she shuffled miserably off the stage. She was certain the entire Cratchit family hated her, she saw the way they glared at her when they had to stop at her big scene because she had knocked something over, or whispered her lines, or somehow managed to say the Ghost of Christmas Present’s lines instead. She was holding everyone up, and each night felt heavier and heavier.

  She moved into the wings, avoiding the Portly Gentlemen who smiled at her as she tucked herself away behind the edge of the curtain.

  “Bah, Humbug!” Mrs. Crawley’s voice had a habit of penetrating the entire theatre like someone was chewing tin foil over a microphone.

  Agnes took several deep breaths, listening disinterestedly to the scenes as they moved through the beginning of the play. Most of the cast were retired men and women, but there were several young people who performed as crowd members, and the Cratchit children. Tiny Tim was a little eight-year-old whose mum was cast as Mrs. Cratchit. Agnes loved watching the little boy rocket around backstage with his fake leg brace and crooked crutch. He had almost knocked Mrs. Crawley over one day when she came backstage to change into her nightcap.

  Paisley bustled about, whispering encouragement to each performer, fitting them for costumes and organizing their props so they could grab them easily when the time came for their cue. She was only twenty-three but was so much more confident than Agnes.

  “You should be me,” Agnes whispered to her when Paisley took a moment to sit beside her. “You should be the Ghost of Christmas Past, you move like a dancer.”

  “And you move like you’re terrified,” she said. She cocked her head to look at Agnes, her smile erasing any criticism her words might have implied.

  “I am terrified,” Agnes said. “I am terrible at this. I can’t be bacon.”

  Paisley snorted, nodding. “No one can be bacon, but it wouldn’t do to tell Irenia that.”

  Jacob Marley shuffled by and Paisley leapt to her feet just in time to untangle his drifting chains from a chair. Marley was played by the roundest man Agnes had ever seen. The only name she had heard anyone call him was Doink, and he was at least as big around as he was tall.

  Doink looked over at Agnes and winked at her. He had an impressive moustache that drooped expansively over his several chins.

  “Don’t fret, new Chick,” he said warmly. He reminded her of a cinnamon bun. “You just get out there and have yourself some fun. It’s just like being a kid again, ain’t it? Just get out and play.”

  ‘Thanks, um… Mr. Doink. I’ll try.”

  He shuffled over to her, Paisley following with his chains and lock boxes like a wedding train in her arms.

  “You know they says ya gotta think about the audience in the buff, right?” he said. “That’s bullshit, ya ask me. Irenia Crawley in the buff ain’t gonna make me perform, I’ll tell ya that right now.”

  Agnes sputtered, covering her mouth with her hand as Mrs. Crawley suddenly bulldozed her way off stage, hoarsely whisper-yelling for her night cap and gown. She thrust off Scrooge’s great coat and top hat, dropping them to the floor and standing with her arms outstretched so Paisley could tug the floor length sleeping robe over her head.

  It was a terrifying spectacle. Agnes was certain Mrs. Crawley was going to accidentally rip off her shirt in her blazing rush to complete her costume change. Paisley tugged the nightcap over her silver curls, thrust a candlestick into her hand and turned her back toward the stage.

  “Do you think Irenia pictures the audience in the nude?” Agnes asked.

  Doink leaned in and put one giant meatloaf hand on her shoulder.

  “I’ll tell ya the secret, kiddo. Ya does it for one person,” he said. “It’s simple. Ya chooses that one person who loves ya the most, who cheers for ya the most. The one person ya can’t do without. Imagine that one person in the audience, only that person, and that’s who ya play to.”

  She felt the familiar burn of tears in her eyes. She was here because of her one person. But Savannah would never be in the audience. She would never know Agnes was even here, doing this thing, feeling this doubt and fear and overwhelming sense of inadequacy.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing,” she muttered.

  “You think that crazy Director of ours knows what she’s doing?” he said, his belly rumbling with mirth. “She’s making it up as she goes. None of us have a sweet clue, darlin’. You’re not alone.”

  He rubbed his giant hand on her head like she was a wayward child. He turned toward the curtain, his chains rattling out behind him as he moved onto the stage.

  “Who are you?” Irenia, the female Scrooge shrieked like she was faced with a chainsaw wielding murderer.

  “Ask me who I was,” Doink said, growling out Marley’s line in his rumbling bass.

  Agnes sat very still, listening to the lines, breathing in the musty aroma of the theatre and wondering who she was.

  She had been a different person when Savannah was alive. Now, without Savannah, who was she?

  ∞∞∞

  Oscar arrived at Nora’s house just before noon. He knew Nora wasn’t home and he felt guilty about sneaking behind her back to come speak to her husband, but it seemed that something had to be said, and he was about to say it.

  He sat in the driveway for a few minutes. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he pondered the speech he had rehearsed several times that morning. It was a good speech, not too preachy but not pulling any punches either. A cross between Churchill and Michelle Obama, that was the tone he was going for. He hoped to inspire Paul to step up as a husband and soon-to-be father; to do the right thing and support Nora. He would appeal to his emotional side, but he wanted to be a little threatening also.

  Support Nora or else.

  This was where his speech got a little spotty.

  Oscar wasn’t sure what his or else could be. He was definitely taller than Paul, but Paul was built like a refrigerator. Physically threatening him would make them both laugh him out of t
he room.

  Or else? He pondered.

  His threat ability was limited. He had books. He had a wicked vocabulary. He wore size fourteen shoes. Not exactly intimidating.

  He decided to wing it. That’s what Agnes would do. He smiled as he thought of her, and it braced him in his uncertainty. Agnes would walk in, talk to Paul, and walk out with the problem dealt with. Intimidation rarely worked, anyway.

  He would rely on logic and a civilized conversation.

  He strode toward the front door, already congratulating himself on addressing the problem of Paul, and Nora wouldn’t even need to know he had come by.

  He knocked and heard a distant yell which he assumed was a welcome. He pushed open the front door and walked into the dim hallway. The curtains were closed in the living room, leaving the house feeling gloomy and abandoned.

  “Hello? Paul? It’s Oscar.” He made his way through the living room and tugged open the curtains. There was a grunt of complaint from the sofa as brilliant sunshine flooded the room. Paul was lying down, shirtless in pajama pants with a three-day growth of beard, squinting like he hadn’t seen the sun for a week. Oscar tried not to be obvious as he took inventory of the room, but he counted half a dozen beer cans on the floor by the sofa, and a cold pizza still in the box on the coffee table. The room smelled like old socks.

  “Whatcha doin’, Oscar?” Paul raised himself up on one elbow, rubbing his face with his hand.

  “Just came by for a chat,” he said, looking for a place to sit down. There was a full laundry basket on the chair and what looked like the parts to a dismantled stereo on the love seat. Oscar stood in the middle of the room, completely unsettled by the mess. Nora had taken over the role of the homemaker when her mother left, cleaning and folding and sorting everything in sight when she was still a teenager. Oscar knew it gave her a sense of control.

  Nora was obviously not in control in this house.

  “Nora’s not here,” Paul said. “She’s at work, I think.”

  “I know.”

  “You want a beer?”

  “It’s noon, Paul.”