“Blimey,” she said, looking at them in turn. “I think this calls for another cup of tea.”
— CHAPTER 19 —
Beryl responded to the news of Alan’s death with a short, sad exhalation, like a week-old birthday balloon finally admitting defeat.
Andrew had only ever given news to relatives on the phone, never face-to-face. Seeing Beryl’s reaction in person was a very uncomfortable experience. She asked him the questions he’d been expecting—how had Alan died, who had found him, where and when was the funeral going to be—but he got the sense she was holding back about something. And then, of course, there was the other thing . . .
“Ducks?”
“Thousands of them,” Andrew said, pouring tea into their cups.
Peggy showed Beryl Alan’s note about feeding the ducks on the back of the photograph. “We assumed it was something to do with this.”
Beryl smiled, but her eyes started to water too, and she reached into her sleeve and retrieved a hanky to dab them dry.
“I remember that day. It was miserable weather. As we were walking to our usual bench we saw an ice-cream van parked on the side of the road. The bloke inside looked so depressed we went and bought a 99 each just to cheer the poor bugger up. We ate it before we’d had our sandwiches—it felt so decadent!”
She lifted her mug to her lips with both hands and her glasses momentarily steamed up.
“Do you remember having the picture taken?” Peggy asked.
“Oh yes,” Beryl said, wiping her glasses with her hanky. “We wanted a snap of us in the shop because that’s where we first met. It took Alan about ten visits to pluck up the courage to talk to me, you know. I’ve never seen someone spending so long pretending to look at books on Yorkshire farm machinery of the eighteenth century. At first I thought he might just really love farming, or Yorkshire—or both—but then I realized he was only standing there because it was the best way to keep sneaking glances at me. Once I saw him holding a book about seed drills upside down. That was the day he finally came over and said hello.”
“And you became an item straightaway?” Peggy said.
“Oh no, not for a long time,” Beryl said. “The timing was rubbish. I’d just divorced my husband and it hadn’t been the easiest of rides. Looking back now I don’t know why I made such a fuss about waiting. It just seemed like I should pause for the dust to settle a bit. Alan said he understood that I needed time, but that didn’t stop him coming in and pretending to still care about bloody farming for the next six weeks, sneaking over to say hello whenever there was a gap between customers.”
“Six weeks?!” Peggy said.
“Every day,” Beryl said. “Even when I had five days off for tonsillitis he still came in, despite my boss telling him I was going to be off for the rest of the week. Eventually, we had our first date. Tea and iced buns in this very café.”
They were interrupted by one of the staff, who was noisily clearing away crockery from the adjacent table. She and Beryl exchanged slightly frosty smiles. “She’s the worst, that one,” Beryl said when the woman was out of earshot, without providing further explanation.
“But you and Alan were together properly after that?” Peggy probed.
“Yes, we were inseparable actually,” Beryl said. “Alan is—oh, I suppose I should say was—a carpenter. His workshop was in his house just down the road, near the little cemetery. I moved in just after Christmas. I was fifty-two. He was sixty but you’d never have known it. He could have passed for a much younger man. He had these great big strong legs like tree trunks.”
Andrew and Peggy looked at each other. In the end, Beryl realized what the unspoken question was.
“I suppose you’re wondering why we aren’t still together.”
“Please don’t feel obliged to tell us,” Andrew said.
“No, no—it’s fine.”
Beryl composed herself, polishing her glasses again.
“It was all down to my relationship with my ex-husband. We’d got married when we were twenty-one. Kids, still, really. And I think we both knew as soon as we came home on our wedding night and gave each other a chaste little peck on the cheek that we didn’t properly love each other. We stuck it out for years but eventually I couldn’t stand it anymore and I decided to end it. And I made a decision then and there”—she rapped her knuckles on the table for emphasis—“that if I were to ever find someone else to share my life with it would have to be for love and nothing else. I wasn’t going to settle for the sake of it being the done thing, or just for companionship. And at the first sign of feeling like we were going through the motions, that we’d fallen out of love, that would be it. Bish, bash, bosh. I’d be out.”
“And that’s what happened with Alan?” Peggy said.
Beryl took another sip of tea and replaced the mug carefully on its saucer.
“We were very much in love to start,” she said. She eyed Andrew mischievously. “You might want to cover your ears for this part, but we practically spent the first few years in bed. That’s the thing with someone who works with their hands. Very skilled, you see? Anyway, aside from that side of things, for a long time we were very happy. Even though his family had buggered off a long time before, and mine had never approved of the divorce, it didn’t matter. It just felt like me and him against the world, you know? But then, after a while, Alan started to change. It was subtle at first. He’d say he was too tired to work, or he’d go for days at a time without shaving or getting out of his pajamas. Occasionally I’d find him—” She broke off and cleared her throat.
Peggy leaned across the table and put her hand on Beryl’s. “It’s okay,” she said, “you don’t have to . . .” But Beryl shook her head and patted Peggy’s hand to show she was okay to continue.
“Occasionally, I’d find him sitting cross-legged on the living room floor, back against the sofa, just looking out into the garden through the French windows. Not reading. Not listening to the radio. Just sitting there.”
Andrew thought of his mother in the dark of her bedroom. Inert. Hidden away. Unable to face the world.
“He was a proud old sod,” Beryl said. “Never would have admitted to me that he was struggling with whatever it was. And I could never find the right words, or the right moment, to ask him about it all. Then his back went. Whether it was psychosomatic or what I don’t know, but he had to sleep in another room because otherwise he’d disturb me getting up—or so he said. Then one evening we were having tea, watching some rubbish on the telly, and out of nowhere he turned to me and said: ‘You remember what you told me right after we met, about what you’d do if you stopped loving the person you were with?’
“‘Yes,’ I said.
“‘Do you still believe that?’ he said.
“‘Yes, I do,’ I said. And I did. I should have said something reassuring, of course, but I just assumed he knew I still loved him as much as I always had. I asked him whether he was okay but he just kissed me on the top of my head and went off to do the washing up. I was worried but I thought he was just having one of his difficult days. The next morning I went off to work as usual, but when I got home he wasn’t there. And there was a note. I can still remember holding that piece of paper, my hands shaking like mad. He’d written that he knew I didn’t love him anymore. That he didn’t want to put me through any pain. He’d just gone. Never left an address, never left a phone number. Nothing. I tried to find him, of course. But as you know there were no relatives to get in touch with, and he didn’t have any friends I knew of. I did actually look into getting a whatchamacallit, a private investigator, but the thought always dogged me that maybe he’d just lied, that he’d run off with some other lass. Looking at this though”—she picked up the photograph—“and hearing about this duck business . . . Well, you tell me—” At this, a sob escaped her, and she clasped both hands to her chest. “Maybe I should have tried
harder after all.”
* * *
—
After they’d made sure Beryl was okay, with promises to be in touch soon, Andrew and Peggy emerged from the shop like two people leaving a cinema: blinking into the sunlight, thoughts consumed by the story they’d just been told.
They stood in the car park and checked their phones. Andrew was really just scrolling up and down his short list of existing texts—offers from pizza companies he’d never ordered from, PPI scams, work nonsense. He couldn’t shake the desperate sadness of Beryl’s story.
Peggy was gazing into the middle distance. An eyelash had fallen to her cheek, looking like the smallest of fractures on a piece of porcelain. Somewhere nearby, a car horn sounded with one sharp blast and Andrew reached out and took Peggy’s hand. She looked at him with surprise.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Andrew said.
They left the car park and made their way toward the town center, hand in hand. Andrew hadn’t planned to go this way, but it just felt right, as if they were being drawn along by an invisible force. They walked along the high street, weaving past parents with pushchairs and a group of tourists who’d slowed to a stop in the street as if their batteries had run down, then on further to Alnwick Castle, with its red and yellow Northumberland flags strained taut by the breeze. Without exchanging a word they made their way around the castle to the surrounding field, newly cut grass collecting on their shoes. Down, further, past kids throwing a dog-eared tennis ball around and pensioners resting on picnic tables watching the moody clouds closing in on the sun. Down, further still, along a path carved out by footfall, until finally they reached the river and found a solitary bench half-covered in moss at the water’s edge. They sat and listened to the gurgling water and watched the reeds struggling against its flow. Peggy was sitting upright, her hands in her lap, one leg crossed over the other. They were both very still, at odds with the rushing river, like the model figures Andrew arranged on his living room floor. But even in that stillness, there was movement. Peggy’s foot was stirring almost imperceptibly every second or so, like a metronome. It was, Andrew realized, not because of tension or nervousness, but purely because of the pulse of her heart. And suddenly he was gripped by possibility once again: that as long as there was that movement in someone, then there was the capacity to love. And now his heart was beating faster and faster, as if the power of the river were pushing blood through his veins, urging him to act. He felt Peggy stir.
“So,” she said, the faintest of tremors in her voice. “Quick question. With scones, do you go with jam or cream first?”
Andrew considered the question.
“I’m not sure it really matters,” he said. “Not in the grand scheme of things.” Then he leaned across, took Peggy’s face in his hands, and kissed her.
Somewhere, he could have sworn he heard a duck quack.
— CHAPTER 20 —
It was fair to say, if you were to really drill down and examine the data, and then draw conclusions from said data, that Andrew was, to a certain extent, drunk. He was dancing around Imogen’s living room, with a giddy and giggling Suze, singing along raucously to Ella’s “Happy Talk.” They were, by now, the firmest of friends.
He still couldn’t quite believe what had happened earlier that day. The moment he’d taken Peggy’s hand and set off without knowing where he was going, it had felt like an out-of-body experience. The memory was somehow sharp and blurry all at once. They’d sat for a long time on the bench, their foreheads touching gently, their eyes closed, until Peggy broke the silence. “Well now. I’m not entirely sure I saw this coming.”
As they made their way back to the car Andrew felt like he’d been drugged. He spent the entire journey home trying to stop grinning. He watched the fields flash by, getting the occasional glimpse of the sea, sunlight shimmering on its surface. A sunny August day in England. Perfection.
“That was an eventful day, then,” Peggy said when they were back at Imogen’s, as if they’d just been for a ramble and come across an unusual bird’s nest on the ground.
“Oh, I dunno. Pretty run-of-the-mill stuff for me all told,” Andrew said. He leaned across to kiss her but she laughed and gently nudged him away. “Give over, what if someone sees? And before you say anything, earlier it would just’ve been a pensioner on a bench, not . . .” Imogen or the kids, was the unspoken thought. The spell might not have been completely broken, but it was certainly damaged. Andrew was about to get out of the car but Peggy made an exaggerated show of looking around before leaning over and giving him a peck on the cheek, before quickly fixing her makeup in the mirror. It was all Andrew could do not to skip up the drive, Morecambe and Wise–style.
Dancing around the living room to Ella would have to do instead. Maisie, who up until now had been summarily ignoring them in favor of her novel, waited until the song was over before asking who the singer was. Andrew put his hands together as if in solemn prayer. “That, my friend, was Ella Fitzgerald. The greatest singer there’s ever been.”
Maisie gave the subtlest nod of approval. “I like her,” she said, with the tone of someone weighing in calmly to settle a fierce debate, before going back to her book.
Andrew was about to find a new tune (he was in the mood for “Too Darn Hot,” next) and, more importantly, get another lager from Imogen’s booze fridge in the garage, when Peggy appeared at the living room door and asked the girls to come and help her lay the table.
Andrew retrieved a fresh beer and flopped down onto the sofa, allowing himself a moment to take everything in. He let the music wash over him, listened to the animated voices coming down the hallway, and breathed in the delicious cooking smells drifting in from the kitchen. All of it was intoxicating. He decided this should be part of some governmental scheme: that everyone should be legally entitled to have at least one evening a year where they could sink down into soft cushions, their stomachs rumbling in anticipation of ravioli and red wine, listening to chatter from another room, and feel for the briefest flicker of time that they mattered to someone. It was only now he could truly see how deluded he’d been to think the fantasy he’d created could be anything more than the weakest facsimile of the real thing.
After he’d listened to “Too Darn Hot,” Andrew headed to the kitchen and asked whether there was anything he could do.
“You could give the girls a hand,” Peggy said. Andrew saluted back, but Peggy had turned away and missed it. She and Imogen were having to chop, peel and stir in close proximity, but, as if carefully choreographed, they managed to avoid getting in each other’s way. Andrew, on the other hand, now fully buzzed by the beer, quickly became an increasingly frustrating presence as he tried to help. There was something about being in another person’s kitchen that meant everything he was looking for seemed to be in a totally illogical place. So when he confidently opened the cutlery drawer all that was inside was a warranty for a sandwich toaster, and the cupboard that should have housed glasses contained just a novelty eggcup in the shape of a hollow-backed pig, and some birthday cake candles. “Andrew, Andrew,” Imogen said with an air of frustration as he tried to pull open a false drawer next to her, “glasses top left, knives and forks here, water jug over there, salt and pepper here.” She pointed out each item like a football manager on the touchline indicating who the defenders should be marking.
Table now laid, Andrew sat down at it with a fresh beer and some Pringles Suze had brought him (two in her own mouth poking out to make it look like she had a duck’s beak) and drank in the atmosphere. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, was well kept but with lots of character—a bunch of flowers in a quirky vase on the windowsill, a print on the wall with a picture of a woman cooking and sipping from a glass with the caption “I love cooking with wine—sometimes I even put it in the food.” The windows had steamed up to reveal handprints and a wonkily drawn heart.
“I never know whether you’re
supposed to eat the top bits of peppers,” Peggy said to no one in particular. “Don’t want to make people ill but don’t want to be wasteful either. I end up walking to the bin, nibbling on it till I get there, then chucking what’s left away.”
Jesus Christ, Andrew thought, unable to stifle a hiccup. I think I’m in love.
* * *
—
As the old drinking adage goes: beer before wine, then you’ll be fine; six beers before half a bottle of wine, then you’ll be dizzy and believe the story you want to tell to be much more important than anyone else’s.
“Yeah, so, yeah,” Andrew slurred, “. . . yeah.”
“You were in the kitchen?” Imogen prompted.
“Yes, Imogen, we were! But then we thought we’d check the bedroom because that’s where they usually leave their money if they have any—cash, you know, rolled up in socks or in a Tesco’s bag shoved under the mattress. So anyway, anyway, we went in there—didn’t we, Peggy?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“And the impression we’d had up till then was that the man had been fairly quiet, fairly normal . . .”
“Andrew, I’m not sure this is okay . . . the kids . . . ?”
“Ohhh it’ll be fine!”
Peggy took his hand under the table and squeezed it firmly. It would only be much later that he’d realize this wasn’t an affectionate gesture but an attempt to get him to stop talking.
“So, the bedroom’s bare apart from a telly, and I accidentally turn it on and lo and behold—”
“Andrew, let’s talk about something else, eh?”
“—he’d been watching a dirty film called Quim Up North!”
Peggy had spoken over him, so the impact of the punch line was deadened.
“Come on, girls, shall we play cards or something?” Imogen said. “Maisie, you can help teach Suze.”
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