Little Wishes

by Michelle Adams

  “At school?”

  “Don’t you remember when we were about six or seven, and they walked us down to the beach?” He stopped for a moment, remembering that walk. “We were supposed to be making a beach scene back at the school, but all you came back with was a dead bird and a tuft of yellow gorse. You told Mr. Nance that it wasn’t right for God’s creatures to die alone, or to be forgotten. That you were going to bury it in the churchyard. He made you throw it away.”

  “You remember that?”

  “Of course. I took the bird from the bin for you. I buried it in my garden.” It was hard to believe, but he was nodding to indicate his truth.

  “But it was just a dead bird.”

  “That’s not how you felt at the time. You’re rare, Elizabeth. You care about life, about dreams.” He swallowed hard. “About me. You make the impossible feel possible. You make me feel brave, even to the point of coming to your house and throwing stones at your window. Telling your father that I’m going to marry you.”

  “Maybe I’m not so good,” she said. “I’m supposed to be engaged, yet here I am with you, in your bed, wanting things I’m not supposed to want.”

  “Who says you’re not supposed to want them?” he whispered.

  The room had warmed up, the heater on full. With a gentle push the covers slid from her arms, and she noticed his eyes following the curves of her body, visible through the thin material of his shirt. He opened his mouth again, but for a moment no words came out. He was so close that the outline of his features was blurry. They were merging together, becoming part of each other.

  “I don’t ever want this to end.”

  He smiled then, a little crease forming by the side of his lip. “Then I promise you it won’t. We can spend the rest of our lives in this room together, forget about the rest of the world.”

  “I think I already did,” she said. And instead of answering her with words, he placed his lips on hers and pulled her body close.

  Now

  When Elizabeth opened the door and saw Alice, it was with both relief and concern. Dark bags hung under the young woman’s eyes, the skin tissue-paper fine. Her time away in Hastings had drained her. And Elizabeth feared that what she had to tell Alice was only going to make things worse. Since her day out with Tom, which even as she thought about it now was near perfect, everything had become steadily more difficult. Only yesterday she had found Tom leaning on the doorframe of the kitchen, looking out to the rear garden. When she’d asked him what he was doing there his answer had been simple enough but concerning nevertheless: pulling in the nets, he’d said. It reminded her of her mother in the months before her death, the spontaneous uncoupling of her mind from the reality of the surrounding world. There one minute, gone the next, like a little puff of smoke.

  “Hello, love,” Elizabeth said as Alice moved into the porch. The chill of an early autumn day came with her, the summer already starting to fade. It did little to settle Elizabeth, who was already shivering with nerves. “How was your trip?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t enjoy it much,” Alice said as she removed her coat. “I just wanted to get back.” Everything about her looked ready for some unknown event, like one of those antelopes Elizabeth had seen on a documentary last night, a perpetual awareness of the possibility of attack. “But I’m back now and today’s going to be great. Can’t believe we’re finally going to Cornwall. Is he ready to go?”

  Dread coursed through Elizabeth like ichor in the veins of gods. Her body was weak, vibrating to the rhythm of trepidation as the words took shape in her thoughts. “No, love, I’m afraid he’s not. You’d better come upstairs.”

  * * *

  Only when she saw Alice’s expression did she realize just how much Tom had changed over the course of a few days. He had slimmed down, his cheeks were sunken, and one of his lower eyelids had drooped. It looked wet and pink, as if it was sore. Was his mouth also drooping? Elizabeth had been denying the changes, but now it was impossible to pretend. When she lay alongside him, the bottom edge of his ribs poked into hers. All night she stroked them gently, as if perhaps she could smooth them back into place, as if her love were enough to mute the blades of bone. But love was never enough. She knew that of old.

  “He looks terrible,” Alice whispered.

  Elizabeth had no verbal response that could soften such truth, and so she rested a hand on her shoulder.

  “He doesn’t look like Dad anymore.” Sheets, hot with the sweat of the night, crumpled as Alice sat down on the bed and picked up his hand. He barely stirred.

  “I called an ambulance already,” Elizabeth said, hoping it came as some reassurance.

  The bedside table, normally so well ordered with a picture of Alice when she was small, was covered in a carpet of used tissues, like little pink gauze ghosts. The sheets were all chaotic, the pillows askew, positioned in a way that any able-bodied man would have corrected for himself. And a scent hung in the air, something Alice couldn’t place but that was without doubt bodily. It was a sensory reminder of the illness that had stormed their lives, taking everybody prisoner.

  “You don’t look very comfortable, Dad,” said Alice, her voice breaking, coarse and tearful. Elizabeth thought it to her credit that she had managed to come up with something that sounded relatively normal. His eyes flickered open; a wry smile passed his lips. Elizabeth realized she was right; one side of his mouth wasn’t responding as it should.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, his voice croaky.

  “I came to see you. And Brian’s coming too. He’s really looking forward to it.” His eyes closed again, and Alice turned to Elizabeth. Her voice dropped to a whisper as they both stepped away from the bed. “Look at his mouth. And his eye.”

  “It started like that last night,” Elizabeth whispered. “But he was talking normally then. Perhaps a bit confused, but I could understand him. This morning he seems a lot worse.”

  “What time did you call the ambulance?”

  “Just before you arrived.”

  Alice moved to leave the room, beckoning Elizabeth to follow. After a quick look at Tom, she did.

  “I don’t like the look of him,” Alice said. “I’m calling them again.”

  As Alice descended the stairs, Elizabeth hurried for a glass of water from the bathroom, offered it to Tom in the hope that she could break his fast. He wet his lips, but that was about it. Alice’s raised voice as she called for the ambulance rumbled in the background, leaving Elizabeth feeling that she was somehow to blame, even though she had no idea how.

  “You all right, love?” she asked, rubbing Tom’s hand. It felt different from a few days ago, stiff somehow, the ridges of his knuckles sharper and more prominent. To see him like this was a shock that played on repeat, as if every time she dared to look, the picture before her worsened. If he couldn’t answer, could he still hear the things she said? It took her back to the days she had spent waiting for him to return from Wolf Rock, the way she would sit and watch the light shining every thirty seconds at night. Even then, with so much distance between them, she had always felt as if they could communicate. At least when he was in London and she was in Porthsennen the space between them had felt tangible. Now, sitting at his side, he had never felt more unreachable in their whole lives.

  Then

  Afterward, they didn’t speak for a while, their heads sharing a pillow, their fingers intertwined like the weave of his fishing creel in the old Mayon Lookout. Elizabeth couldn’t stop looking at his face. Every detail felt like something necessary to imprint on her memory, so that she might convince herself that it had really happened. But despite her shock, the biggest surprise was the sensation of absolute normality. When she had considered the idea of intimacy with James, the very idea of being naked with him, it felt extraordinary. With Tom, she hadn’t given it much more than a second thought. When he looked at her it was as if she were looking at herself. They were mirrors, Tom her own reflection. Even when he pulled back
the covers and eased her onto her back, kissing her neck, trailing all the way down until he arrived at her bare tummy.

  “You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen,” he whispered, before resting his head into the crook of her arm, letting one hand settle across her chest. Instinctively, she wrapped her arm around his bare shoulder, cradled him close. His breathing deepened, the soft lick of air across her chest as his rose and fell. Her eyes flickered shut, blithe to the insurmountable complications that their union would trigger. Little hope existed that she could lie or explain her way out of an overnight absence any more easily than her father would be able to decipher the complexities of her feelings for Tom. But it seemed to her that nothing was as important as right there and then. Perhaps that was what love was, she thought to herself, when nothing that came before or after seemed to matter anymore, when the world could be on fire, but you didn’t fear the burn. Moments later, she drifted into sleep.

  * * *

  Tom was the first to wake, and he watched her sleeping for a while. It wasn’t the first time he had observed Elizabeth like that. Her presence in the village had become something for which he searched when he left his home in the afternoons, or when he was returning to it after a morning fishing, his eyes exploring the coastline in search of the girl who liked to paint. How many times had he watched her since then? Last night, as much as he had wanted to kiss her, what he wanted to do even more was curl up next to her, touch her face, listen to her talk, and feel the rush of her very presence. That would have been enough. It wasn’t like he had only a few stolen hours to enjoy, or that he was going to lose her; he could never lose part of himself, and he felt sure that was what she was.

  The bedroom door opened before he had time to appreciate what was happening. His mother’s eyes widened then narrowed, an animal with prey in its sights. They flicked between her son and the soft blond mass of hair stirring in the bed. Elizabeth roused, saw the look of concern on Tom’s face. “What’s going . . .” she began, but he shushed her with a finger set tight against her dry lips, before she saw the shift in light as Martha Hale stepped into the room and closed the door.

  Elizabeth had seen Mrs. Hale before but only vaguely knew her face. Either she had a wonderful constitution, or she visited a different doctor, because she never attended the practice, and neither did the rest of the family. Up close Elizabeth realized she was a beautiful woman; Tom shared her pale skin and dark hair, which she had scraped back in a loose knot at the base of her neck. The sight of her staring at them, which she did—it seemed—without any great discomfort, made Elizabeth’s throat go dry and her heart race.

  “What in the name of our Lord are you thinking, Tommy? I said that no good would come of this. Have you forgotten everything I told you?” She picked up Elizabeth’s dress and placed it on the bed. “I thought you were engaged to be married,” she said, her hands on her hips.

  “She fell,” Tom said, trying to distract his mother.

  “Into your bed?” Mrs. Hale took in the cut on her forehead, and the single shoe still drying in front of the heater. “I mean no disrespect, Miss Davenport, but you’ve no business being here.” Her attention turned to Tom. “If you needed to help her, you could have woken me. We could have explained whatever might have happened to her father together. Last night.” Disbelief and perhaps something else, maybe despair, crossed her face as she glanced to Elizabeth. “Not much explaining it now, is there?”

  “Mum, it’s not what you think—” he began, but she interrupted him.

  “It’s exactly what I think, Tommy. But I’ll hear it from her. I don’t need any of your clever lies.” Elizabeth was going redder by the second. “Just how do you expect to explain your whereabouts to your father? And there’s no use looking at him,” she said as Elizabeth looked to Tom for support. “He’s not going to be able to help you. Goodness knows what the young doctor is going to say. So, tell me. Are you still engaged, or did I miss the latest village gossip?”

  “Yes,” she eventually muttered. “I suppose I am.”

  Martha picked up Elizabeth’s underclothes and handed them to her. “What a bloody mess. Would the pair of you just get dressed? I’ll be in the kitchen waiting.”

  * * *

  “Do you want to go out the window?” he asked once his mother had left. That was how Francine had left months before. “The ground isn’t all that high.”

  “There’s no point running away, is there? We’d better just get this over and done with. People might as well get used to it now rather than later.”

  Despite their predicament, he couldn’t help but smile. “So, you still want this?”

  Her face turned ashen, a cloud passing by the sun, taking away the light. “Have you changed your mind?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Absolutely not. I love you, Elizabeth Margaret . . .” He paused for thought. “Oh, I can’t remember all your posh names. I love you, that’s what counts.” His movements were becoming quick and purposeless, his mind in a bit of an overexcited fog. “I’m going to come with you now, speak to your father. Like you say, we have to face this head-on.”

  His fingers were cold and his palms sweaty as she took his hand. Giggles shook loose, inspired by how keen he was. How brave he was. Had she been brave? Not yet she hadn’t, but she knew she would have to be soon. “No. Don’t do that. There are some things I’d better do alone,” she said, thinking ahead. “Best my father meets you after he knows.”

  Tom’s grip tightened. “I’m not going to hide, Elizabeth.”

  “Good,” she said, stroking his face. “But my father is nothing like your mother. And it’s different for boys and girls.” They shared a kiss and some of that certainty from the night before returned. “It’s best this way. Plus, I need to speak with James.” Heaviness over what they had done settled on his shoulders. It hurt him, she saw, that he had to hurt another person to be with the one he loved, and she loved him all the more because of it. More than the night before. What a way to spend a life, she thought, enjoying an exponential increase in the loftiest feeling she had ever experienced. Within seconds she had kissed him again, all thoughts of their families temporarily lost.

  “When will I see you next?” he asked as they pulled apart.

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. Was that apprehension she could see on his face, the creased brow and pursed lips? She noticed his favorite book on the floor, kicked from the bed last night by their feet. “But I’m going to take this with me.”

  “I seem to remember telling you that’s my favorite.” He didn’t look too sure about letting it go.

  “I remember, Thomas Hale,” she said, her fingers flicking at the edge. “Just like I can remember your names. All two of them.” With a gentle tap she bopped him on the nose with the back of the book. “This is my insurance. You’ll have to come and find me if you want this back.”

  It didn’t really hurt, but he wanted to play along, so he rubbed the edge of his nose. “You just try stopping me.”

  * * *

  Tom’s mother’s fingers drummed against the table as they arrived downstairs. It hit Elizabeth more then than it had the night before, the differences between their homes and lives. It looked as if a breakfast bomb had gone off. Was this normal, she wondered, not just for Tom, but in general? Was this what a normal household without a housekeeper was like? His mother was sitting at the table with a cup of tea by her side, a cigarette clasped between her fingers. Smoke drifted toward the ceiling like a distress signal.

  “You’ve missed work,” she announced, as if that were the worst problem of all. The cherry fizzed as she sucked on the cigarette. Confined in the small room, the smoke stung Elizabeth’s eyes. “And at least now I know why your father never made it home. You were too busy off gallivanting to bother to find him.”

  Elizabeth felt Tom tighten next to her. A cold draft slipped beneath the door and brushed her feet, wearing only the odd shoe from the night before, one foot still b
are.

  “He’s big enough to look after himself, Mum.”

  “And I suppose you are big enough too, are you? You plan to go and admit it all now, do you? Expect Elizabeth’s father to offer you his daughter’s hand?” An incredulous look passed across her eyes, as if Tom had suggested he might fly there. “You think he’ll let the likes of you marry his daughter?”

  “Not now, but eventually. I love her.”

  Elizabeth felt his hand clench tight around hers. It wasn’t possessive like James’s touch often was. It was reassuring, unifying. It was a touch she would never forget.

  “I feared as much,” said Mrs. Hale. Her fingers worked hard to stub out her unfinished cigarette, then she stood up. “We’ve all been in love,” she said, like it was a disease or something equally distasteful. “Even Edward Davenport has been in love, Tommy, but look where that got me.”

  And just then they heard the door opening, footsteps on the other side. Cool air rushed in, the smell of seaweed sweeping through the house, quickly followed by Tom’s father. His hair was all rough in a ratty plait that ran down the length of his back and that looked not to have been washed in a good long while. Goose bumps rippled across Elizabeth’s skin as his eyes skipped over the two lovers. They all watched him as he sat down, not a word spoken, yet a thousand looks passed between Tom and his mother.

  “Where have you been?” his mother finally asked. Elizabeth felt Tom’s hand pull tight against hers, and when he edged her toward the door, she followed his lead.

  “Out where I shouldn’t have,” he said, looking up at Tom, then Elizabeth. “Aren’t you that Davenport girl?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Two Davenports this early on a Sunday,” he said. “I am a blessed man. What’s she doing here?”

  “Nothing,” said Mrs. Hale. “She was just leaving, wasn’t she, Tommy?”