by Jane Riley
Edie and I couldn’t get to his hands quick enough to shake. We almost did a three-handed handshake. And Pete slapped me on the back and said he couldn’t wait to give them to his relatives. We couldn’t have got off to a better start.
Then Fran arrived, passing Pete on his way out. She had gold sunglasses on the top of her head and wore gold hooped earrings. Her face was drawn and pale but her eyes still twinkled. We repeated the introductions and explanation and Edie placed one of her candles on my desk. Fran picked it up and held it to her nose. She closed her eyes and flared her nostrils. I didn’t think the act of smelling one thing could take so long. A tear dampened her lashes and trickled on to her cheek.
Quick, tissues. I pulled one out and waited for her eyes to open.
‘Gosh,’ she said, fanning her face and placing the candle on the desk. She took the tissue and dabbed her eyes.
Edie rubbed her arm thoughtfully. I sensed that Edie wasn’t expecting Fran to be so young.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to cry,’ Fran said.
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ I said.
‘There’s nothing like a good cry to make you feel better,’ added Edie, as if she’d skim-read Dad’s Folder before the meeting.
‘I’m happy,’ she said. ‘Honestly.’
How strange to have someone cry from happiness in my rooms. It was hard to remember the last time that had happened. It could have been when Jean won a year’s worth of unlimited magazine reading. This time, it was even more special. We had touched Fran in a way free magazines could never do, and it moved me. It would have been nice to make this happen more often. ‘You can cry for whatever reason you like,’ I said.
Then she hugged me and reached for Edie and hugged her, too.
‘I’ve got the rest of your candles in a box in my car,’ Edie said.
‘Fifty more tears of joy, do you mean?’
‘And, you know what? I’ve got leftover fragrance. I’d love to make you more candles free of charge,’ Edie suggested, and then smiled at me. I clapped inside. What a superlative human being and business partner Edie was proving to be.
‘Really?’ Fran said, and started crying again.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ Edie grabbed a bunch of tissues from the box I was holding and gave them to Fran.
‘I’m fine,’ Fran sniffed. ‘Thank you. Thank you both so much.’
From my window, I watched Edie give Fran the box of candles from her car in the car park and wave her goodbye. A white balloon rose from behind a row of buildings and took off into the sky.
‘Yay,’ Edie said, returning, her arms out and palms open, as if keeping afloat the high we were both on. I copied her for no other reason than I didn’t know what else to do. Except it made us look as if we were about to break out into song – a duet by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers. Edie burst out laughing. Before I could stop myself, I started singing ‘Islands in the Stream’. I didn’t even like the song and there I was, crooning it off-key.
‘Feel free to join in,’ I suggested. And she did, which gave her the giggles again and made me laugh. We only managed the chorus until we had to stop, breathless from laughing and singing at the same time.
‘That was too funny,’ she puffed.
‘Apologies for my tuneless singing.’
She waved my words away. ‘You don’t need to apologise. I’m hardly Dolly Parton.’
I smiled. Not because her singing wasn’t much better than mine but because of how relaxed Edie made me. It was rare that I sang in the company of anyone apart from myself and I hadn’t even felt self-conscious. With this being the case, our working relationship really was going to be harmonious. Perhaps I could add a new resolution to my list: Thou shalt spend more time with Edie and maybe even make more candles. What a hoot!
‘Let’s celebrate,’ I blurted, ‘with something more appropriate than out-of-tune singing and cups of tea.’
‘Oh, Oliver, I’d love to, but I need to get back to work.’
Of course she did. What was I thinking?
‘But perhaps now we can get the brochures done? Is your friend still happy to photograph them?’
‘Yes, I think he is. How about I tee up a time?’
‘And you know, perhaps now you can tell your mum.’ She laughed. ‘You shouldn’t underestimate her, you know. Keep these samples to show her. You might be surprised at her reaction. Honestly, my mother wasn’t a convert straight away. And if you tell her you’ve just sold seventy, that might win her over.’
I knew I had no excuse not to tell Mum about the candles now. I just needed a way to broach it with her so she didn’t dismiss them unfairly. It required careful planning and a considered approach. I would start pondering ways tonight, I thought.
The Right Hook
That evening, when I returned home to my flat, I did something I never thought I would do: I took a moment to appreciate my singledom. Yes, it felt quiet and empty, as it always did when I first got home, but now, after having been with Caroline, I realised that being single and lonely was better than being taken and unhappy. And it confirmed that I was still lovable, which gave me a new-found sense of hope. Just because I was single again didn’t mean it would always be the case, and my impending forties needn’t be envisaged with a sense of doom. It also helped that I had revived Marie’s diary, which I let myself dip into whenever I wished. I lit Marie’s candle and decided to spend the evening recalibrating myself by doing some pre-dinner pottering in my courtyard, reorganising the pots into a more aesthetically pleasing arrangement, pulling out weeds and sweeping the path at the entrance to my flat. Tending to the outside would be a calming, centring way to end the day – a physical spring clean to mimic my recent personal spring clean. But it was as I was using the broom to rid a corner of the front porch of a particularly large cobweb that I got a tap on the shoulder.
It was Henry. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said.
‘Pardon?’
‘I want the diary back.’
I couldn’t believe it. I’d just reclaimed Marie again from out of my jumper drawer and I wasn’t about to give her back. I said, ‘Pardon?’ again, like someone who doesn’t speak English, even though they probably would have said, ‘Eh?’ or ‘¿Qué?’ or scrunched their nose and shoulders at the same time to show they didn’t understand.
‘I want it back because I don’t want you to have it. I should never have given it to you in the first place,’ he said, slurring his words, as if putting on a bad Scottish accent.
‘Well . . . I . . .’ I didn’t know what to say. What do you say to someone asking for a gift to be returned – one that they had supposedly despised in the first place and one that you wished to keep for yourself?
‘Come on, you fool,’ he said, his body a metronome swaying to an irregular beat.
‘What about your AA promise?’ I said.
‘To hell with AA.’
‘I think we should talk about this when you’re sober,’ I said, leaning the broom against the wall. I thought that was fair. It would give me time to construct my response and mean not having to say ‘no’ to his face when he was in a vulnerable and potentially cantankerous mood.
He didn’t like that suggestion. ‘No,’ he said, and lurched into my flat. The next minute he was rummaging under the newspapers on my coffee table and looking behind the cushions on the sofa.
‘Hang on,’ I said, rushing over to right the papers. ‘You can’t just mess up my house.’ The more he rifled through my things, the more determined I became about keeping the diary. I felt protective of Marie and defensive of my right to have it. Henry didn’t realise how important the diary was to me. It meant everything. It was my present and my past, and was helping me into the future. If I let it go, did that mean all of that would go, too? My chest fluttered and I was starting to sweat. I couldn’t bear the thought of giving Marie away just like that, in a swift act of what would amount to stealing, the way Henry was carrying on.
‘Oh,
I see,’ he said, nodding as if he did understand me. ‘You’re going to put up a fight.’
‘No, I’m not the fighting sort.’
‘I am,’ he said, and swung a right hook towards me. Fearful, I ducked, but needn’t have because he was at least half a metre too far away and all he punched was the air between us, and kept on punching as his unsteady legs gave way and he face-planted into the seat of an armchair. He swore on impact, the arm flopped and he lay still, his body resting on the seat of the chair, his knees on the carpet.
‘Henry?’
He didn’t respond.
I repeated his name again, a little louder, a little more assertively. Nothing. Was he asleep or, heaven forbid, dead? I tiptoed over to him, as if miming a burglar for a game of charades, which was utterly pointless if he was either dead or asleep, as I wanted him alive and awake. I clapped my hands, whistled feebly. But it was a whistle not even a dog would respond to, so I poked him. His shoulder muscle was impressively firm and taut, which only reinforced my earlier suspicion that if he had managed to hit me, the outcome wouldn’t have been pleasant. He still didn’t move. I was about to lean over once again to give him another poke when he roared back to life. I leapt backwards, slipped on a cushion Henry had flung earlier on the floor and hit the corner of the coffee table. Pain shot into a cheekbone and seared an eye.
‘What’s happening?’ Henry slurred.
He’s alive! I scrambled to my feet. ‘It’s been nice seeing you, Henry,’ I said, hoping he would get the message and leave, having forgotten what he had come for.
‘Was it?’ He formed a pained expression of confusion, then parts of his face twitched – the side of his mouth, his eyelids, eyebrows, even his head jerked, then lolled. He looked as if he was perched between two worlds – the living and the dead – and I wondered if he really was going to drift into the afterlife before my eyes.
‘I think you’d better go now,’ I said. I had to get him out before he remembered what he’d come for.
‘Can I get a drink?’ he said.
Was he stalling, parched or in need of something stronger to kick him back to life?
‘Sure,’ I said, and went to the kitchen. I didn’t bother asking him what he wanted. The helper in me poured a glass of water from the tap, which is what he needed, and the pleaser in me found a mini bottle of brandy I occasionally used for cooking, usually for one of my favourite desserts – poached pears with brown-sugar brandy reduction. I’d have given Henry anything to make him leave. But when I got back, his head had slumped forward and, this time, he was snoring. I did the only thing I could think of doing. I called Andy.
Fifteen minutes later Andy arrived. I put a finger to my lips to remind him to be quiet. Andy’s jaw unhinged at the sight of my face, where a lump was forming and blood dribbled, then stifled a laugh when he saw Henry sleeping soundly, peacefully. He gave me a gesture as if to say, What’s going on?, with eyes like poached eggs, even though I had summarised the situation over the phone. I beckoned for him to come over to me. He sat on the chair arm and I whispered in his ear.
‘We’ve got to get Henry out of here, but I don’t know whether to wait for him to wake, or try and wake him ourselves. Either way, I’m not sure how he’ll react. He’s been very unpredictable.’
‘He could be here for hours if we let him wake on his own.’
We both looked at him, contemplating the options.
‘I suggest we use that glass of water,’ Andy said.
‘What?’
‘We throw it on him. He wakes. We’re on either side lifting him up and walking him to the front door, where there’ll be a pre-booked, prepaid taxi waiting to take him home before he’s even registered what’s happened.’ Andy grinned.
Sometimes I wondered if Andy had visions of working in film rather than photography, his stories and ideas having a distinct cinematic ring to them.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
He knew I didn’t. We glanced at Henry again, his mouth open like a slot machine dispensing only drool.
‘OK, then,’ I said, and punched the taxi number into my phone. Once booked, Andy had another idea.
‘Let’s open the front door and move him in the armchair as close as possible to it, so we can literally push him out.’
But moving Henry wasn’t as easy as it sounded. Andy had to push the chair from behind while I held his legs wrapped in the blanket off the ground and shuffled backwards towards the door. A chest-rattle snore startled me so much it nearly made me drop them. When we got to the door, I gently placed his feet on the ground and tried to remove the blanket. But Henry’s somnolent self wanted to keep it. He gripped one end close to his chest. I tugged. He tugged. I feared I’d wake him before we were ready.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Andy whispered.
But the blanket was one of my favourites and I didn’t fancy it becoming collateral damage. I persisted. So did Henry. The taxi arrived and Andy went outside to ask the driver to wait. He crept back inside, got another glass of water from the kitchen and gave me the one from the coffee table. I still hadn’t managed to get the rug off Henry.
‘Forget the blanket. We’ve got to get him in the taxi,’ Andy said. ‘On the count of three. One, two, three . . .’
I couldn’t believe Andy’s plan had actually worked and I managed to yank off the blanket before Henry got tangled in it as he leapt from the armchair. Our unified water throws doused Henry in a more violent way than I was comfortable with, but it did the trick. So startled was he by the force of the cold water and the two of us standing over him that he shot straight out the front door – conveniently close, thanks to Andy’s ingenuity – without us having to heave him up and push him out. His speed didn’t last long, though, as in his drunken state he stumbled and nearly headbutted a large plant in a terracotta pot. Andy raced out, with me following, to guide him down the path to the taxi. He protested, as we knew he would, but he was also still in a confused stupor and, thanks again to Andy’s forward thinking, was easily placated by the bottle of brandy Andy had tucked into his back pocket prior to the water-dousing. We stood on the pavement watching the taxi disappear down the street. I felt stunned, like I had to replay what had just happened to confirm it had really happened.
‘Well, mate, that’s one way to spend a Monday evening,’ Andy said, slapping me on the back.
The slap snapped me out of my daze and another rush of relief flooded through me. Marie was safe. Soft, off-white clouds undulated across the sky like albino flags. The smell of slow-cooked curry from the neighbour’s two doors down permeated the air. I thanked Andy and kept thanking him as we walked back to my flat, so much so that he told me to stop thanking him.
‘Of course I’d help you, mate, it’s a given,’ he said.
Six Weeks and One Day to Go
As I made tea, Andy tidied my living room, putting the other armchair back in its place, wiping up residual water with a tea towel and draping the blanket over the back of the chair to dry. Then we sat down and, as I pressed a bag of frozen peas to my face, I filled Andy in on the salient points of Henry’s visit. I told him how I liked dipping into the diary every so often, to read Marie’s words, to hear her voice. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I told him about Caroline – how she’d wanted my full commitment, even my babies; how she had found the diary, thought I was having an affair, and how I had broken up with her.
‘I thought everything was going great with you guys,’ Andy said.
‘Yeah, well . . . We just weren’t right for each other.’
‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out, but at least you gave it a go,’ he said gently.
‘I did give it a go, but I’m pleased I’ve let her go.’
‘So why are you still clinging on to the diary?’
‘I’m not clinging on to it.’
He gave me a look of disbelief which was really quite unnecessary. ‘You could have given the diary back to H
enry if it was part of your break-up with Caroline and saved yourself all the palaver we’ve just been through.’
I swirled the dregs of tea at the bottom of my mug. ‘I don’t want to give it back, Andy. Anyway, I’d already cleared up the misunderstanding with Caroline.’
‘I know it’s nice to have the diary but it seems to be causing you a hell of a lot of unnecessary grief.’
‘I like having Marie around.’ I know I was sounding defensive but Andy clearly didn’t understand. ‘Did I show you the candle Edie made of her?’ I went to fetch it and waved it under Andy’s nose.
He nodded. ‘Not bad.’ He read the label. ‘Fancy.’
‘It’s nice to be able to light it and feel that she’s still with me. Like reading the diary and hearing her words.’
‘Are you still reading it?’ Andy asked.
‘Well . . .’ I shrugged. ‘It’s nice to,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’
Andy gave me a thoughtful look and put his mug on the floor. ‘Oliver. Can I say something?’
‘You know you can.’
‘I don’t want to talk out of line, but are you in love with Marie’s love, if you get my drift? Or are you actually in love with Marie and do you think it’s easy to love her because you can’t have her?’
I shrugged.
‘Well, I can see the upside,’ he continued. ‘You get the perks of feeling in love, albeit one-sided, without the hassles of actually having a girlfriend.’ If he was trying to lighten things up, I wasn’t in the mood. ‘Look, whatever it is, I think you need to give the diary back. You need to move on from Marie. It doesn’t mean you can’t remember her, but you can’t have her. You never could. What does it matter if Henry has the diary back?’
‘It’s comforting,’ I added, which probably sounded pathetic in retrospect, but that was the truth.
‘It’s holding you back,’ Andy said.