Played!

by JL Merrow

  “What, here?” Con looked around. They were in an open ward, with other patients and visitors in easy earshot if he stood up and started declaiming stuff.

  Huh. Declaiming. That was one of Tristan’s words.

  “Well, if you do it anywhere else, it’s not gonna do a lot for me, is it? Come on, let’s hear something.”

  Shit. Well, if he was going to look stupid anyway… Con took a deep breath. “An I may hide my face, let me play Thisby too.” He remembered seeing Patrick cover his head with a shawl for this bit in rehearsals. Reckoning it’d be a bit rude to nick the bloke’s blanket, he grabbed the copy of Men’s Health instead, opened it and held it over his head to make a sort of bonnet shape. “I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice. ‘Thisne, Thisne’,” he went on squeakily. “‘Ah, Pyramus, lover dear! thy Thisby dear, and lady dear!’”

  Patrick burst out laughing. “That’s brilliant! Shit, I’m gonna have some competition next time I go for a part, aren’t I?”

  “Nah, this is just a one-off,” Con said uncomfortably, determinedly not looking around the ward to see if anyone was staring at him after that.

  “No way, mate. You’re good. You oughtta keep at it.”

  Con shook his head. “Couldn’t do it without Tristan’s help. And he’s not gonna be here after September.” Like he’d want to carry on spending time with Con after that anyway.

  “Oh, that’s it, is it? Yeah, don’t go there, mate. Long-distance crap’s a load of bollocks.”

  Con was feeling a bit weird when he left the hospital. And a bit annoyed with Heather, seeing as it sounded like she’d gone round telling every bloke in sight he was off the market for the foreseeable. Or maybe Patrick had just meant he hadn’t fancied being a rebound thing? At any rate, he definitely seemed interested now, which was… Weird. Good weird? Con wasn’t sure.

  No, that was bollocks, it was definitely good. Good for the ego, at any rate. Still, weird. Him and Patrick weren’t in the same league looks-wise, and he’d never seemed all that into Con before. Maybe he’d just heard about Tristan supposedly fancying Con, and that had made Patrick take a second look himself?

  Course, they did have the poor bastard on some pretty strong painkillers. Still, it was nice to know there were…options.

  Maybe.

  Trouble was, any time he thought about being with anyone, all Con could think of was Tristan.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  What Kin

  Oh God. Tristan was an idiot. He’d known Con was skittish—what on earth had possessed him to come on so bloody strong? And now he’d ruined everything. All he’d achieved with all the embarrassing display of over-the-top desperation had been a categorical statement that Con wasn’t interested in him.

  Not just that he didn’t fancy a fling. This time, it had been a firm rejection of the idea that he could ever fancy Tristan. So much for striding forwards. He’d taken a giant bloody leap backwards.

  God, he was an idiot. And it hurt, damn it. And not just his pride.

  Oh, damn it all to hell. Amanda had been right, curse her for a clod of wayward marl. He was developing tender feelings for Con. No, scratch that. He had developed tender feelings for the man. Perhaps even lo—

  The phone rang, its jangling tone administering the coup de grâce to his thoughts. Tristan ran to answer it. Suki. It must be Suki again.

  It wasn’t.

  “Tristan?” The tone was peremptory; the voice, familiar.

  “Father, how lovely to hear from you,” Tristan lied smoothly enough, he hoped, to hide the jolt he’d just received to a stomach already roiling with disappointed hope. He was twenty-three years old; not a fourteen-year-old schoolboy who’d been caught behind the changing rooms after rugger with his hands in his team-mate’s trousers.

  Actually, that had happened at fifteen and sixteen too, come to think of it, and whilst the sharpness of Father’s ire had dulled with the repetition, his weariness shone more piercingly than ever. If indeed weariness could be said to shine. Perhaps it merely glowed?

  An impatient clearing of the throat alerted Tristan to the fact that he’d missed something. “Sorry, Father, what did you say? Bit of a bad line on this end.” He cast an eye around the kitchen for some cellophane to crackle to add a touch of verisimilitude to his claim, but alas, none was forthcoming.

  “I need to know when you’ll have that business of the house wrapped up.”

  “Well, certainly by October.” Honestly, that was ages off.

  “Hm. That’s not going to be good enough, Tristan. I’m going to need you in New York by the end of August—early September at the very latest.”

  “What?” Tristan cringed as his voice cracked. “No, I’m sorry, Father, that’s impossible. I have commitments—”

  “You’ll have to cancel them. There’s a deal we’ve just confirmed that’s going to put Goldsmith and Klein right on the front of the financial pages, and there’s no point you turning up after the fact. I want you there.”

  “But you promised I’d have the summer!” Why did Tristan always devolve into a whining child around his father? Why?

  Father might have been asking himself the same question. “Enough of that nonsense. I’ve been far too indulgent of you for far too long. It’s time you grew up and started contributing.”

  Contributing? To what? The coffers of Goldsmith & Klein? Last Tristan had heard, they were bulging quite admirably without his help.

  Then again, what had he been living off all his life before joining the Players? Perhaps Father had a point, and it was time to start putting something back.

  Oh God.

  Father was speaking again. “You’ve got until the end of August. Anything that’s not settled by then can be put into the hands of our solicitors.”

  Tristan had a brief, unsettling vision of old Mr. Endicott donning horns and buckskin trousers to play Puck, and had to force down a hysterical giggle.

  “Tristan? Are you still there?”

  “Y-yes, Father.”

  “Good. That’s settled, then. End of August. I’m relying on you, Tristan. Don’t let me down.” He hung up, the unspoken “again” echoing through the years of mutual incomprehension that lay between them.

  Tristan slumped to Nanna Geary’s kitchen floor, making sure to do it with grace and drama to obfuscate the fact that his knees were, in fact a tad on the wobbly side. Everything was collapsing around him like a poorly anchored backdrop. Two months had dwindled into one, and that one month turned from Dream to nightmare. He’d have to tell Heather he couldn’t play Puck. He’d have to tell Con he couldn’t coach him to the end.

  If the play would even, in the face of this latest setback, go on. No, how could it? Heather had called him her only hope. She’d have to cancel.

  Tristan would have to let everyone down.

  But at least there was one good thing—possibly—he could do before he left.

  “Yes?”

  A more different elderly lady than Nanna Geary it was hard to imagine. Nanna Geary had exuded a sort of safe, solid competence, whereas Miss Wellbeck had a distinctly fragile air.

  Tristan gave her his most trustworthy smile. “My name’s Tristan Goldsmith. You don’t know me but—”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, starting to close the door. “I don’t buy anything at the doorstep.”

  “I’m not selling,” Tristan said quickly. “I was just hoping you might be able to talk to me about life in the village during the war.” Given her age, there was no need to specify which one. “I’m Jewish,” he added, which as he’d hoped seemed to justify his interest, in her eyes.

  “Oh. Well, I suppose you could… I’m shouldn’t really let people in I don’t know, though.”

  On impulse, Tristan pulled out his Equity card. It didn’t have his picture on, but it did look vaguely official. “And I live
at number twenty-two, Valley Crescent,” he added. “I don’t suppose you knew Mrs. Geary, who I inherited it from?”

  Her anxious face cleared. “Oh—you’re Alice’s Tristan!”

  Tristan blinked. Of course he’d been aware that Nanna Geary had a first name, and must even have used it at some point—say around seventy or eighty years ago when she’d been in pigtails, and ye gods, that wasn’t an image that would leave him any time soon—but to hear it bandied about like that was unnerving to say the least. “Ah, yes.”

  “Oh, you must come in, then. Alice was so proud of you, you know.” She fluttered ahead of him into a tiny sitting room that faced out onto the children’s playground behind the church. Faint shrieks from the throats of brightly clad toddlers filtered through the double-glazing. “I do love to watch them play,” Miss Wellbeck added, proving she had at least some of her marbles. “I never married, you see. Do sit down. Would you like some tea? I always have a cup around this time of day.”

  “That would be lovely,” Tristan said, hoping she was equal to the task. He was somewhat concerned that if she filled the kettle too full, she’d be in danger of buckling under its weight.

  He sat upon the tiny sofa and occupied himself with looking around the room. As regarded furniture, it was a curious mix of the new and the old. Tristan imagined she’d previously inhabited a larger place and had, on retirement, been forced to quite literally downsize a fair number of her possessions. The overlarge armchair, which was where Miss Wellbeck liked to sit if the handily placed side table and the indentation in the seat were any guide, looked to be an old favourite, but the sofa had quite clearly been bought to fit the smaller living space and had an almost showroom-fresh air about its aggressively stuffed cushions.

  Miss Wellbeck reappeared with a dainty tray, bearing tea in two china cups, milk in a jug and sugar in a bowl, which she placed carefully on the side table before sitting down. “Milk? Sugar?”

  Tristan said yes please to the one, and no thank you to the other, and sat back with his cup and a smile.

  “Now, what was it you wanted to talk about?” Miss Wellbeck asked. She didn’t take sugar with her tea either. Nor were there any biscuits on offer—Tristan suspected she didn’t have any in the house. Or any other food, for that matter, from the size of her. “Oh yes, the War. Of course, I was only a little girl when that happened, and a lot of it passed me by. It didn’t seem very real, you understand. We heard the news on the wireless, and of course we prayed every week for the young men who went off to fight. I do remember being very cross when there wasn’t enough sugar to ice my birthday cake one year.”

  “Did you have older brothers and sisters?”

  There was a pause. Tristan hadn’t expected that to be a difficult question. He waited politely while Miss Wellbeck took a sip of tea, the cup rattling a little in its saucer.

  She put it down on the side table and folded her hands in her lap before she looked at him once more. “No. There was only me. They wanted more, I think, but God decided otherwise.”

  There was something there. Tristan was sure of it. He backed off, all the better to execute a flanking manoeuvre. “I suppose living in the country, rationing wasn’t too bad a problem, in general?”

  “No, we always had meat on the table. And I was rather pleased, than otherwise, to have Mother cut down her old dresses for me. Made me feel so grown up.” She smiled. “Not that the boys thought so, of course. To them I was just a nuisance of a little girl.”

  The boys? It sounded oddly specific, the way she said it. But softly, softly… “Children’s games must have been very different in those days.”

  “Oh yes. We had so much more imagination, I’ve always thought. Nowadays people just buy a child a toy or one of those electronic gadgets, but when you don’t have much, you make up your own games.” She dimpled. “To a fault, sometimes. I remember the boys getting into a great deal of trouble for some of the things they did.”

  And there it was again. Yes, Tristan was certain she had some very specific boys in mind. But it wouldn’t do to be too direct. “Did boys really use to sneak into orchards to go apple-scrumping?” he asked artlessly. “One reads about it in old books, but it seems such an innocent crime these days.”

  “Oh, but you’d get a thrashing for it back then! And it wasn’t just boys who did it, let me tell you.” She gave him a mischievous look, and Tristan could suddenly see her as the girl she’d been. He’d be willing to bet she could wind the boys around her finger, once they’d reached an age to be susceptible to feminine wiles.

  “Miss Wellbeck, I’m sure you’d never have done any such thing,” he said with his most charming smile.

  “Oh, but I did. I’m afraid Bill wasn’t a very good influence on me,” she said, her smile vanishing to leave a look of such sadness Tristan feared to prod even as he mentally punched the air.

  But damn it, what was he here for? “Bill?” he asked, as gently as he could.

  She looked down at her folded hands for such a long time, Tristan began to fear she wouldn’t answer. “So strange… I met Bill’s grandson the other day, and I’m afraid I was terribly rude. It was the shock, you see. I suppose, after all this time, it shouldn’t really matter—but you see, I never married.”

  Yes! This was the heart of it, Tristan was certain. “Bill was…your sweetheart?” he guessed aloud, keeping his tone soft.

  She seemed to crumple. Alarmed, Tristan leapt to her side and took her tiny, cool hands in his. “I’m so sorry. I’ve upset you. There’s no need to answer. Please don’t try. Can I get you some more tea? A… A handkerchief?”

  That seemed to animate her, at least. She pulled a tiny, lacy scrap from one sleeve and dabbed at her eyes, then put it to her nose and gave a delicate little blow. “No, I’m quite well. Silly of me, really. After all this time… No. Bill was… Bill was my brother. Half brother, I’m afraid. So you see, there could never have been anything between us.”

  A jolt shot through Tristan. Her brother? “Wasn’t Bill the name of the baby your father found in the churchyard? Bill Izzard, named for a gravestone?”

  She nodded and didn’t seem surprised that he’d heard the story. Then again, it had probably been all over the district when she was a child. “Although of course it wasn’t true at all, about finding him there. It was before my parents married. The mother was one of the women in the village. A married woman, but her husband was working away at the time. Father was a young man, just out of the curacy, and very handsome. Well, I always thought so.”

  And, apparently, she hadn’t been the only one. “When did you find out about Bill being your brother? Was it when he stayed with you during the war?”

  “Oh no. It wasn’t until much later. He came back a few years after the end of the war, looking for work in the area, and asked if he might stay at the vicarage again, as my father had always been kind to him. He was quite disappointed to find Alf Smith was off doing his National Service at the time. They were such good friends as boys, you see. So Bill and I spent a good deal of time together.”

  It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. “You must have been, what, fifteen? Sixteen?” She nodded. “Was Bill a good-looking man, like your father?”

  “Oh, he was very handsome, but not at all like Father. His grandson has quite the look of him. I think that was why…” She trailed off, then looked up at him with a determined set to her jaw. “That was when Father confessed all to us, and…it was thought best that Bill should move away. I never saw him again, after that.”

  God, Tristan could see it now—the unacknowledged son caught stealing a kiss from the acknowledged daughter. The horror—the outburst—the terror of scandal. The tears, as the would-be incestuous couple were parted forever. “It must have been terrible,” he said, stroking her hands once more, “to be parted from a brother you loved so much.”

  She nodded once. “Would yo
u be so kind as to pour me another cup of tea? The pot’s in the kitchen.”

  “Of course.” Tristan scrambled to his feet and tried to think what on earth to do now. Should he mention he knew Con? Suggest bringing him round? He still hadn’t come to a decision when he returned to the living room, cup in hand.

  “Thank you, dear.” She didn’t take a sip of tea, seeming steadied by its mere presence in her hands. “You know, Alice would have been so pleased to know you’ve settled in the village. It’s what she always wanted for you.”

  Tristan stilled, arrested in the very motion of applying bum to sofa. “It…was?”

  “Oh yes,” Miss Wellbeck went on, her expression happier now. “You know, some people were surprised when she got another cat at her age. But she always knew you’d look after Meggie for her.” The dimples made a faint reappearance. “Now, I know you young people think old ladies don’t know about such things, but I happen to know there’s a young man in the village she had her eye on for you.”

  “There…is?”

  “Oh yes. She wouldn’t tell me who it was, but she left his number in her address book for you to find.”

  Tristan left Miss Wellbeck’s flat feeling lower than a mouse’s arse. To think he’d neglected the very animal it had been Nanna Geary’s dying wish for him to look after. At least he’d tried to make amends, even if it had met with a singular lack of success.

  He also had a new appreciation for Nanna Geary’s deviousness. And a fierce desire to know just whose phone number he was supposed to ring. He knew very well the address book in question. It was a stiff, black, leather-bound monstrosity with a clasp. He hadn’t even opened it, thinking it unlikely to contain anything of relevance to him.

  God, he could have thrown it in the dustbin.

  Looking neither right nor left—except when crossing the road, because dying at this juncture would be rather pointlessly ironic—he hurried home, where he opened the address book with a trembling hand. It couldn’t be… Could it?