Love-40

by Anna Cheska

  And if he’d thought it would make any difference, despite the workload that was waiting for him that night, then he would have stayed with her – of course he would, he was aching to. But what would it have achieved? She was the one who had left. If she wanted to come back, if she even thought there was a chance … she’d have let him know somehow.

  ‘All right?’ Jade passed him a ball to put in the ball cage.

  Hardly, Liam thought.

  ‘Mum said I should show willing.’ She glanced over at the others – Gazza, Stunt and Tiger as if assessing their eligibility, and briefly at Diane Parker and her friends Julie and Helen. From a more competitive angle, Liam guessed.

  He sighed. This, he did not need. ‘Have you ever held a racket before, Jade?’

  ‘Oh, yes, Sir.’ She batted mascara-ed eyelashes at him and twirled the racket she was holding as if she were making a fashion statement. An expensive racket, that had, no doubt, been especially purchased by her awful mother for the occasion, Liam thought.

  ‘Hmm.’ He decided to leave it. If she was too terrible and couldn’t even hit the ball, he’d have a quiet word later and persuade her to be a cheerleader instead.

  ‘Up the other end then,’ he said, waving them to the far side of the green hard court. He still hadn’t tried them on grass and that was a no go area today as it had been raining and the grass would cut up and be treacherous. ‘We’re going to practise chip and charge.’

  ‘Is that what they do at Uncle Sam’s?’ joked Bradley, earning a giggle from Jade. If that was his best attempt at humour, Liam thought to himself, then he could forget it. This was serious business.

  For the next few minutes, he got Tiger to serve, while he demonstrated the technique. ‘Chip and charge is particularly useful on the second serve,’ he said, running on the spot, trying to keep alert, knowing he’d lost their attention already. Jade was standing very close – too close – to Bradley Jacobs; Diane, Julie and Helen were inspecting their nails, fiddling with their ear-studs and picking their teeth respectively, and the rest of the boys were staring at Jade as she now stripped off the fleece and tossed it towards the wire netting that bordered the courts.

  On second thoughts, Liam reflected, perhaps a cheerleader like Jade was not a great idea. She was too much of a distraction.

  ‘Start running in a little way as he serves…’ He had to concentrate here because over the past few weeks, Tiger’s serve had become a bit of a rocket – if an erratic one. ‘Chip and charge up to the net!’ Slightly out of breath, he returned to the service line.

  Diane, Julie and Helen began to clap. ‘I’ll never be able to do it, Sir, will you, Hels?’ said Julie.

  ‘Just have a go,’ Liam urged. In his experience, the main benefit of any coaching session was the practice involved. He didn’t seriously expect them to make use of the technique in a game.

  This time, Liam served, watching in despair as one by one they totally messed it up. They either charged too quickly, meaning they were at the net before the serve came over and therefore in an impossible position to make any kind of return, or they forgot to charge at all.

  Last to come up was Jade and Liam tossed her a serve of such powder puff velocity that it barely made it over the net. Jade however, got on to her toes, chipped and charged, ready for the volley.

  Liam was so surprised that he didn’t manage to get it back to her at all. There was another bout of clapping – this time mainly from the male players.

  ‘You’ve played before,’ Liam gasped. That would teach him to make assumptions.

  ‘Well, I blatantly wouldn’t have come along otherwise, would I, Sir?’ Jade asked reasonably, running her fingers suggestively along the net tape.

  ‘Try it again.’ It could have been a fluke.

  Liam served – not so softly this time – and held his breath.

  Once more, Jade chipped and charged.

  Liam returned the ball, hard and fast to her backhand, knowing she wouldn’t have a chance, but if he were honest, trying to retrieve a small piece of his coaching ego.

  Jade volleyed it with a punch of triumph, completely out of his reach. More cheers.

  ‘How much have you played before?’ After the initial ego-bruise had faded, Liam felt a wave of euphoria. Jade could be his joker in the pack.

  ‘Mum started me with this coach bloke when I was three,’ Jade said, twirling the racket with aplomb. ‘Short tennis with a soft ball. No thanks to that.’

  ‘You played when you was three?’ Gazza was eyeing her through his thick black-framed glasses with obvious admiration. He pulled up his sleeves and adjusted the belt of his jeans. Liam suppressed a smile.

  ‘I didn’t get on to a full-sized court till I was almost eight,’ Jade confirmed, clearly enjoying the increase in attention. A true perfomer? Liam wondered, as she straightened her shoulders and stuck out her chest. The Adidas T-shirt heaved.

  ‘Only eight?’ he murmured.

  ‘I was always big for my age,’ Jade informed him. ‘My coach thought I could handle it.’

  Liam too had no doubts on that score. But the question was – could anyone handle Jade Johnson? ‘Do you still have coaching?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah.’ She nodded towards the clubhouse. ‘I don’t come here, though. Mum says it’s too tacky.’ She smiled at Bradley with obvious affection.

  ‘Tacky?’ Liam murmured. Her mother said it was too tacky? He felt a rush of defensive pride. Chestnut Grove might need an injection of cash. It might not boast the best coaches or the smartest surroundings. The showers weren’t renowned for their power, the furnishings had seen better days and the hard courts needed re-surfacing. But despite all that … He looked down the hill to Pridehaven and the horizon beyond. Despite all that, it was his favourite place to be.

  And how come, he wondered, that Bradley Jacobs had come into favour? Did this augur well for Romeo and Juliet, or could it be a disaster? Just how friendly should Romeo and Juliet be?

  ‘Dad says I should give it up,’ Jade went on. ‘He says Mum’s always trying to pretend we’re something that we’re not.’ Another racket twirl. ‘If you get what I mean.’

  Liam nodded. He got exactly what she meant. And it was precisely that kind of snobbish attitude towards the game of tennis that he wanted to eradicate. He collected up a couple of balls and chucked them into the ball cage beyond the base line. Tennis should be played by anyone – money and social status notwithstanding. That was the ethos he’d like to see more firmly in place at CG’s. Liam glanced across at the honey-bricked clubhouse and glass conservatory. Tacky, eh?

  Jade was still talking. ‘He says that netball was blatantly good enough for his sisters and it should be good enough for me,’ she said. She scuffed the soles of her trainers on the green hard court and did a half-twist. ‘As if … But Mum wins all the rows.’ She winked at Liam. ‘She always gets her own way, Sir.’

  What did she mean? Liam hoped it had nothing to do with him. However, this was the longest speech he’d ever heard Jade make, and he was beginning to think that despite everything, maybe she’d be a half-decent contemporary and upfront Juliet after all. She was a natural – a drama queen in the making.

  * * *

  Michael tucked the postcard between the coffee jug and the tin of ginger biscuits on the wooden surface of the garden table. But, Out of sight … and so on was too much to hope for. And he needed it here in close proximity, to remind him.

  He picked up his guitar and strummed a melancholy minor chord, then another. Castor the cat, sunning herself by the greenhouse, yawned, stretched and went back to sleep; the hens fluttered a little, and Hester carried on chewing grass as though nothing had happened. That just about summed it up, Michael thought.

  The postcard had been sent to the shop. That might indicate subterfuge … Michael strummed more violently, or it might, and hopefully did, mean that he – the big guy with attitude – didn’t know where Suzi lived. That was something. And did he know, Michael wonder
ed, about himself, Michael? Was it – as she said – a business relationship, or was it an affair? Almost as bad, was it something in between, still exciting, still unknown, with everything to come?

  He could just see the card’s blue background poking out from behind the coffee jug. Not of a German sky, but a Far Side cartoon – the kind you could get anywhere in any language probably, of a gleeful dog trying to persuade a gullible cat to enter a tumble drier marked CAT FUD.

  Hardly original, Michael thought, watching Castor and thinking how unlikely it was that either Samson or Delilah would have the brain power to lure her to such a fate. Cats, after all, were far superior in intellect, more spiritual too than their doggy counterparts who would be anybody’s best friend for a chocolate bonio.

  Michael hit B flat. He had found the postcard in her underwear drawer. How significant was that, he wondered. She could have put it there with the idea that if she stuck it on the fridge with the others, Michael would flip (he had, after all, teetered over the edge of controlled jealousy after the boot sale episode.) Or she could have put it there because this Josh Willis was a secret. Because she cared. Or because … she wanted him close to her underwear?

  Michael flinched as he played an off note. No. She had said there was nothing going on, and it must be true. Suzi wasn’t the type. There wasn’t an ounce of deceit in her body. So why hadn’t she just thrown the postcard away?

  Michael heard the faint voices that signified walkers heading along the riverbank path. Mainly, it was just people from Pridehaven who used it to cut through from the town to the harbour, but he supposed it would be holidaymakers soon. Suzi had told him that the worst thing about living in Pridehaven was the summer rush. The town might not be pretty enough to be a tourist attraction in its own right, but caravan sites, hotels and guest houses drew them into Dorset, and cafés kept them on the streets with their cream teas, apple cake and fudge.

  He sighed, pulling the postcard out of its semi-camouflage. The text was dreary rather than personal, the writing big and loopy. There was an anecdote about travelling over the border in his van and being stopped at customs – hardly stand-up material, Michael reflected; the information that a gate-leg table had sold for more than ‘we’ expected. Michael frowned. And a reference to the ‘open spaces’ that give a ‘little bit of freedom’ to the traveller. God knows what that was all about.

  Bloody hippies, Michael thought crossly. They never grew up, always thought the world owed them a spliff and a good time.

  How could he get her back? Michael played another chord, decided it sounded quite good, and made a mental note. If he’d lost her, that was. ‘Want you back for good,’ he murmured. Oh, Jesus, no, that was Take That, he’d have to find something more original.

  A butterfly landed on the glass of the greenhouse, shimmering there for a moment in the sunlight. A Red Admiral, he thought it was, the kind of butterfly you no longer saw in town gardens, if you saw any at all.

  Michael struggled with the melody. She couldn’t say he wasn’t trying to build up a new career. He had four pubs booked now – regular dates of once a month, one in Pridehaven, one in Burton Bradstock, one in Seaton and one in Dorchester. And who knew who might be at any of those gigs? There were so many people in the music business – not just talent scouts, they were a bit of a myth – but guys on the recording side and other musicians after a new band member. People who knew other people. Contacts. It was probably just a matter of waiting for his lucky break. He was only forty. It wasn’t too late.

  Michael put his head to one side and listened. Whoever it was had walked on. The garden was quiet again, the faint rustle of the reeds and sluice of fast flowing water the only sounds to be heard above the occasional scrabble or clucking of the hens, the stringy creak of Hester pulling on her rope.

  In a minute, he’d put the postcard back in the drawer, he decided, just in case Suzi turned up unexpectedly. He wouldn’t want her to think he’d been looking through her things – especially after what had happened with those concert tickets.

  And he wouldn’t normally root through her underwear drawer, he told himself. He wouldn’t root through anyone’s underwear drawer, and unfortunately Suzi wasn’t the type for silk and stockings, frills and thrills in that department. She was no nonsense; black cotton thongs were about as sexy as she got. No, he’d been looking there, because he was scared, and Suzi would never understand that. Never understand his fear that one day it would be all he’d have left of her, her things and a morning alone in her cottage, knowing he had to leave.

  Ouch. Another wrong note. Michael was going for loneliness and the music was telling him pain …

  And besides, he’d really messed up with the concert tickets, because why should she have bought them for him and her? Why should he expect any such thing? He should be doing that kind of stuff, instead of depending on her for food and shelter, instead of acting like a parasite, buying the occasional take-away and imagining that balanced the books. She had never told him she wanted to share her worldly goods with him – like she said, he’d assumed, and he’d assumed wrong. He hadn’t listened either. He’d been a bloody fool, in fact.

  Suddenly the tune came together in his head, and Michael played it a couple of times, changing a chord here, altering the rhythm there, intent on the song and almost unaware of the dark clouds gathering force in the sky above him, though at one point he put down his guitar to pull on an old blue sweatshirt draped on the back of his chair.

  Castor woke again, got to her feet and stalked gracefully into the cottage to find the warmest corner. But Michael worked on. He had already woven a couple of his own songs into the act – the funny thing was that he’d never gone in for songwriting much before, but this was a creative place.

  He let his gaze wander past Hester to the river beyond. He loved taking the dogs down the riverbank path to the sea, walking with them right over the cliff to Burton Hive. He was becoming an outdoor person, Suzi’s sort of person, while Suzi was spending her days festering away in an antique shop. Odd, but it had never seemed quite Suzi somehow.

  ‘Someone else not you’. The song title came to him. Because that was what Suzi seemed to have become.

  At last Michael put down his guitar, just as the first few drops of rain fell. He loved the taste of the salt air on his tongue, the sound of the waves creeping across the shingle. He felt at home here. He shivered. He didn’t want to leave.

  He knew he should get himself and the guitar back inside the cottage – the wind had picked up and there was clearly a downpour on its way. Even the hens were all inside the hen-house now, and Hester had that resigned look in her pale eyes that usually forecast bad weather. But he lingered, relishing the freshness in the air, using the moment to wonder about his future, his future with Suzi. If he had one …

  She had said she wanted more independence, she had said she wasn’t sure she wanted him living full-time at the cottage – that it was early days for their relationship, too soon to make any commitment. Michael leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees. He’d messed up. So, OK, he’d look for his own place – though it wouldn’t be easy without a day job, without money in his pocket. Suzi knew that. Suzi understood that much at least.

  He watched a thin-legged spider weave its fragile way through the long blades of grass. A harvester. The garden was a wild, cottage garden, crammed with herbs, meadow flowers, and plants that had sprung up from seeds blown from the riverbank – poppies, thrift and buttercups. In the far corner, Hester held sway over the small patch of lawn, to one side the greenhouse sheltered Suzi’s strawberries, aubergines, peppers and tomatoes, to the other side were the hens and the cockerel in their narrow, dusty run.

  Michael got to his feet. It was the planning that had gone wrong, he decided. He should have got things organised here before he upped and left Fareham. But it wasn’t too late to make things right. When he had more money from performing, there wouldn’t be a problem. He and Suzi would survive this – they ha
d to.

  He watched the dark clouds dispassionately as they thickened, seeming to drop lower, closer towards him. It wasn’t over. That night, after she’d gone with Willis to that bloody car boot sale, Suzi had folded against him, Michael, and said she needed … Needed what? Needed him? Michael hoped so.

  He’d held her that night and felt the rush, had tried, while trying not to try, because that was the trick. They had made it, made love, and he was glad. But somehow …

  He picked up the postcard, which was wet, the ink beginning to run, as the rain splattered on to the table, on to his chair, his guitar, his hair.

  Why hadn’t she thrown it away? Somehow, he had still felt like second best.

  * * *

  Liam scowled as he spotted the tall, tightly packed figure of Nick Rossi strolling out of the clubhouse accompanied by four lads. They were all members of the tennis club, of course, had probably all been playing since childhood. And they all had aquiline profiles, thin lips, insipid eyes – the easy, blond, confident good looks that Liam always associated with family money that had never had to be worked for. The opposition. He addressed Rossi. ‘Need some practice, do they – your lot?’

  ‘Hardly.’ Nick shrugged as he glanced towards the next court. ‘Girls too?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yeah, well, I assumed CG’s could vaguely be called politically correct,’ Liam said, though it was undeniably true that Erica Raddle and Deirdre Piston were doing everything they could to nullify this image. He could see them now, inside the conservatory, sitting at one of the tables that looked out to the tennis courts, Erica probably mouthing away as usual while Deirdre took notes of her pearls of wisdom.

  ‘No problem for us,’ Nick said, still watching Jade.

  ‘She’s only twelve years old,’ Liam snapped. And as he spoke, the thought of this creep with his Estelle hit him so hard that he gripped his racket until his knuckles went white. He had to, otherwise he’d floor the smug bastard.

  Rossi shrugged again. Liam would love to rip that shrug from those broad shoulders, love to make him care.