by Fern Britton
He nodded at the familiar faces. People he’d grown up with, gone to school with – and fought with.
He stopped to chat with a group of them, forcing Jesse to go to the bar and pay for the drinks. A pint of Skinner’s for Grant and a St Clement’s for himself. He’d promised Greer he wouldn’t drink tonight. He saw Mickey and Loveday sitting in a corner by the Ladies and made his way over to them. Mickey shook his hand and Loveday kissed him on the cheek. ‘Didn’t think you were allowed out tonight,’ she smiled.
‘Grant’s home.’ Jesse looked over his shoulder as he pulled up a low stool. ‘He kind of insisted.’
‘He looks smart in his uniform, don’t ’e?’ said Mickey.
‘S’pose so.’ Jesse took a sip of his St Clement’s. ‘Don’t do nothing for me.’
‘Or me,’ agreed Loveday. ‘When’s ’e going back?’
‘Dunno. He said he had a forty-eight-hour pass or something. Dad picked him up off the Plymouth train just now.’
They all sipped their drinks thoughtfully. Grant was unpredictable, especially when he’d had a drink. Jesse, already nervous, had an extra strand of anxiety plugged straight into his stomach.
Mickey broke the tension. ‘Loveday had ’er final dress fitting tonight.’
‘Did you?’ asked Jesse, glad to talk of anything but Grant. ‘What’s it like?’
‘Well I can’t tell you, can I? It’s unlucky.’
‘I thought it was only the wedding dress that I wasn’t supposed to know about.’
‘You’re not supposed to know about anything.’
‘Oh, right.’
‘Wait till you see us in our suits,’ Mickey grinned, taking Loveday’s hand. ‘You won’t be able to keep your hands off me.’
Loveday looked down at her drink and gave what passed for a smile. ‘You always look good to me, Mickey boy.’
Mickey put his arm round her and squeezed her awkwardly; her shoulder crunched up into her ear.
‘Ow.’
‘So,’ said Jesse, putting down his drink and trying to squash his desperation for a proper drink and the chance to swap places with Mickey, ‘when are you two gonna get hitched?’
Before they could answer, Grant loomed over the threesome, a pint in one hand and a large whisky chaser in the other. His eyes were brighter than they had been half an hour ago, his cheeks flushed.
‘Well ’ere ’e is. The little shit my brother’s chosen to be ’is best man. Better than ’is own brother. Let me buy you a drink.’
‘We’re all right, thanks,’ Mickey told him in a flat tone. ‘We were just going to make a move. Big day tomorrow, and all that. Want to be fresh.’
Grant’s eyes wandered to Loveday’s generous cleavage. ‘There’s only one person I want to get fresh with, and it isn’t you, Mickey boy.’ He sat down unsteadily next to Loveday. ‘Got a boyfriend at the moment, Loveday?’
‘Mickey,’ she said quickly, taking Mickey’s hand.
‘Mickey? Mickey Mouse ’ere? You need a man not a mouse.’ He swallowed the remains of his pint then downed the whisky chaser. He took her free hand and placed it under the table onto the front of his trousers. ‘That’s what a man feels like.’ He held her hand against him; his grip was brutal and she couldn’t pull away.
‘Oi!’ Mickey yelled, standing up and squaring up to Grant. ‘Get your filthy hands off my girlfriend.’
‘Oooh, little mousey’s got a little squeak.’ He leered over at Mickey.
‘Let her go, Grant,’ Jesse ordered, putting himself between Grant and Mickey.
‘Get me another pint and a chaser and I’ll let her go. But I think she likes it.’ He squeezed Loveday’s hand more tightly against him. ‘Don’t you, Loveday?’
Loveday’s face was white with fear and disgust. She glanced up in mute distress at her friends. She was terrified of Grant, but petrified too at the thought of either of them getting into a fight with him.
Mickey lunged towards Grant, his face contorted in anger, while Grant threw his head back and laughed cruelly.
‘Well, well, little mousey’s gonna have a go with a commando? That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen – little Mickey Mouse!’
With a momentous effort, Loveday managed to yank her hand away and hurl herself away from Grant. She moved quickly to Mickey’s side, desperate to get him away. ‘Come on, love,’ she barely managed to whisper. Her voice was shaking. ‘’Bout time we was leaving.’
*
Jesse walked out of the pub with Mickey and Loveday, leaving his troublesome brother to tell anyone who would listen how hard it was to win a green beret. Jesse had rarely seen Mickey so fired up, but he gradually seemed to be calming down as they left the source of his fury behind.
Jesse couldn’t face his parents’ anxious faces if he went home without Grant, so he’d left Mickey and Loveday with promises of seeing them tomorrow, and now found himself walking towards St Peter’s Church. It was the church where all the Behennas, going back three hundred years, had been married, baptised and buried.
He didn’t give his usual salute to his granddad lying in the churchyard. His thoughts were absorbed by the life mapped out before him. Husband to Greer, a father, the boss of ‘Behenna and Clovelly’. What had happened to his dreams? Had he ever been allowed to have any? That night when his father had told him about the merger with Clovelly, he had pushed him to marry Greer.
‘She’s a lovely girl. You’ll want for nothing. You’ll be the boss of the biggest fishing fleet and fishmongery business this side of Plymouth.’
Jesse had resisted, thinking of his feelings for Loveday and his dreams of travelling the world.
‘Loveday’s all right but she’s got no prospects,’ his father had reminded him. ‘You’re better than that.’
Jesse hated himself for being persuaded and, for a while, had been blinded by the riches that Greer’s father had told him he would earn. And it had been easy to start a relationship with Greer. She was mad about him. She looked good. She was an heiress. The thing was, he did fancy Greer and she adored him. She was elegant and cultured; they looked good together and turned heads in Trevay. They’d become a couple.
It pained him to see Loveday. Jesse thought he had resigned himself to being with Greer and to pushing all thoughts of Loveday from his mind, but the more he tried, the more she intruded on his thoughts. Loveday would come to him in dreams, her tumbling red hair flowing over her milky-white breasts, asking Jesse, ‘What are you in the mood for?’ and Jesse would wake, remembering Greer and the expectations forced on him.
His engagement to Greer was a fait accompli. Once they’d become an item, whispers of weddings seemed to follow him everywhere. Greer dropped subtle hints, flicking through the pages of Bride magazine while his father urged him on. ‘No time like the present, boy.’
On his twenty-first birthday, his father had handed him a wad of cash and told him he was promoted to second mate.
‘Enough money there for a ring, boy,’ he’d told Jesse, who had taken the money but felt like he’d sold his dreams.
The engagement had been the talk of the town. Both sets of parents had thrown a big party at the golf club, and Greer had revelled in the attention, wearing a stunning new outfit by Bruce Oldfield that she had bought in Debenhams on a special trip back to Guildford. Greer preened, showing off the diamond solitaire that Jesse could never have afforded before Behenna and Clovelly had merged. Jesse remembered little of the event, except for the strain of trying to avoid Loveday, and the sadness that he thought he saw reflected when they caught each other’s eye.
Shortly after the engagement, Loveday and Mickey started to go out with each other. That had hurt Jesse, even though he had no reason to expect anything different, and he struggled to keep on top of his jealousy. To compensate he became ever more attentive to Greer, which only served to make Loveday ever more attentive towards Mickey.
He’d once asked Mickey, when they’d both been drinking, what Loveday was like in bed. M
ickey told him. That hurt too. Mickey asked what Greer was like. Jesse said that a gentleman never tells. The truth was that there was nothing to tell. Greer had never let him get further than a snog and a hand in her shirt. Her breasts felt small and pert. Nothing like the way he imagined Loveday’s felt.
He’d left the church behind him and was now up at the sheds. A northerly wind was blowing and it rattled the tarpaulins tied to the boats lying against the far edge of the yard. Jesse turned his face from the wind and pulled up the collar of his parka. He wanted to be alone for a while. He fished in a pocket for his key ring and found his key to the Behenna’s Boats shed.
Inside, whilst not exactly warm, it was at least windproof. He went into the small makeshift office made of plywood that he and his dad had built a few summers ago. He switched a light on and found his father’s bottle of Scotch. He pulled the cork and took a sip. The burning in his throat felt good. He took another sip before hearing the creak of the outside door opening.
10
‘Is that you, Mickey?’ Jesse called out tentatively.
He peered round the office door and nearly choked on his whisky.
‘Hello,’ said Loveday in a quiet voice. ‘I just wanted to see you, you know, make sure you were all right an’ that.’
‘I’m fine.’ He stood and wiped his suddenly sweating hands on his jeans. ‘Do you want a drink?’ He watched her as she closed the main door. The sound of the flapping tarpaulins in the yard was instantly silenced.
‘’Tis windy outside,’ she said. ‘And ever so cold.’
‘I can make you tea? No milk, though. That would warm you up.’
‘What are you drinking?’
Jesse looked sheepish. ‘Me dad’s whisky.’
‘I’ll ’ave one of those then.’
‘Right.’ Jesse found a cleanish mug and poured her a decent measure. She had walked closer to him now. ‘Come in and make yourself comfortable. My dad’s chair is the best.’ He pointed at an ageing armchair.
‘Lovely. Thanks,’ said Loveday, taking the drink he handed her and settling herself. ‘I thought you might be up ’ere. Are you nervous about tomorrow? Mickey’s like a flea on a trampoline about his speech.’
‘Is he?’ smiled Jesse, plonking himself on the only other seat, the part-time accounts secretary’s swivel chair. ‘He won’t tell me nothing about what he’s going to say.’
‘He’s told me some of it. It’s good. Nothing too embarrassing. He doesn’t want to upset Greer’s family, them being so proper an’ all.’ She raised her mug. ‘So, cheers then. ’Ere’s to you and Greer.’
‘Cheers,’ said Jesse, and they both drank.
‘Is your dress all right then?’ asked Jesse.
‘No.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Everything.’ Loveday began to laugh. ‘It’s truly ’orrible. Greer calls it peach but it’s more like orange – not my kind of colour at all. It makes me look like a really fat milkmaid and I can’t move my arms in it.’
Jesse frowned. ‘Have you told Greer?’
Loveday waved a hand airily. ‘Oh, well, it’s Greer’s day and it’s what she wants. I can’t tell her I hate it, can I?’
‘I bet you look lovely in it, really.’
‘No, really I don’t. I mean, my mum likes it and Mickey will like it because he likes whatever I wear but …’ She looked down at her drink, the smile gone. ‘I look awful in it and I feel awful in it and I know what people will be saying behind my back.’ Jesse heard the catch in her voice.
‘Hey.’ He leant forward and looked up into her eyes. ‘I’ll punch anybody who says you don’t look beautiful. You always look beautiful to me.’
She wiped a burgeoning tear away and tried a smile. ‘Shut up, you idiot.’
Jesse tilted back into his chair. ‘I’m a bit nervous too.’
‘Whatever for?’
‘Well, getting married is a big step.’
‘But you and Greer are made for each other.’ She looked at him carefully. ‘Aren’t you?’
‘Oh, yes, of course we are. She’s great you know, we’re mates. Known each other for ever, almost as long as I’ve known Mickey, and you.’
‘I used to have a crush on you when I was little.’ The whisky had gone to her head.
Jesse laughed. ‘I know.’
Loveday stuck her tongue out at him. ‘Don’t laugh! ’Twas awful. All you ever did was go off with Mickey and play football.’
‘What did you want me to do?’
‘Play with me.’
‘And do what? Talk about Barbie and work on dance routines?’
‘You’re a shit dancer, Behenna.’
‘So are you.’
She stuck her leg out and kicked his shin. ‘’Ow dare you! I was disco champion one Christmas at school.’
‘The boys voted for you because your bottom wobbled so nicely in your costume.’
She gave him another kick in the shins. ‘Got any more of that whisky?’
Jesse reached for the bottle and poured each of them a generous slug.
‘D’you remember the school poetry competition?’ said Loveday. ‘The one when Greer wrote that soppy thing about the universe and the animals.’
Jesse started to giggle. ‘I didn’t understand a single bleddy word.’
‘Her face when she was up there reading it.’ Loveday put on a holier-than-thou expression. ‘All serious like and putting on a posh voice.’
‘She won, though,’ said Jesse loyally.
‘Yeah, but only because the bleddy teachers didn’t understand it either. They only gave her first prize ’cos they couldn’t face her mother complaining.’
‘’Er mum’s all right, really,’ Jesse said.
‘Yeah. Course she is,’ Loveday added quickly. She hadn’t meant to be so mean about her friend. She blamed it on the whisky and being made to wear a dress that looked horrid.
‘No … it’s just that, well, that’s my new family we’re laughing about.’
They sat in silence, absorbing this reality.
Loveday moved to stand up. ‘Well, I only came to see if you were all right, that’s all, and you look fine to me.’
Jesse put his hand up and stopped her. ‘Don’t go. I like you being here.’
Loveday touched his blond hair and stroked it. ‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
Loveday sat down slowly. ‘How nervous are you about tomorrow?’
Jesse stretched up, leaned back and blew a long breath out of his mouth. ‘To be honest, I’m shit scared. Am I doing the right thing, Loveday?’
‘Course you are, Jesse.’ She gave him a reassuring smile. ‘You’re marrying Greer. How can that be wrong? You’re going to be part of a new company. You’ll make money and drive a flash car and have holidays in Spain. Of course you’re doing the right thing.’
‘Then why does it feel so wrong?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘It feels wrong. I’m only twenty-one and I’m not sure if I want to marry anyone … not just Greer. It’s not her fault.’ He stuck the heels of his hands over his eyes and almost soundlessly said, ‘The truth is I’m scared.’
Loveday came off her chair and knelt in front of Jesse. ‘Scared of what, darlin’?’
‘Just plain scared.’
She hesitated, then put her arms round him and rocked him soothingly. ‘It’s all right, darlin’. I’m here. What you’re feeling is normal for a bloke. Getting married is a big day, but that’s all it is. A big day, then everything gets back to normal. You’ll go on your honeymoon and when you get back we’ll all still be here. Just the same. Nothing changed.’
‘That’s what makes it so frightening. Nothing will have changed and nothing will change till the day I die. Trevay, the boats, my family, you and Mickey. All the same. I’m stuck.’
‘What nonsense is this? You’re not stuck. You’ll have money to go anywhere in the world, do anything you want.’
�
�With Greer and her money.’
‘With your wife and your money.’
He took his hands from his eyes and looked desperately at Loveday. ‘I’ve made a mistake. I’m … I’m marrying the wrong person.’
Loveday let go of him and sat back on her heels. The wind had picked up again and the sound of the wires on the masts of the boats in the harbour travelled up the lane, past St Peter’s, and now swirled through the crack in the door of the Behenna shed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘I should never have let Dad persuade me.’ He looked at her in desperation. ‘It’s you, Loveday.’
He had crossed the Rubicon. The words were spoken. The truth was told. Loveday’s heart was hammering in her chest. She felt faint and a bit sick.
‘Me?’
He nodded.
Outside the first flurry of snow twisted in the wind.
Inside she leant forward and kissed him.
*
‘What are we going to do?’ Loveday was lying on the makeshift blanket of Jesse’s parka.
‘We could do it again.’ He traced the soft dough of her stomach from her belly button to her breasts. She shut her eyes to enjoy the pleasure of him squeezing her nipples and taking each in turn into his mouth and sucking gently on them.
‘I mean about Mickey and Greer.’
He took his lips from her sweet breast and moved up her body to look into her eyes.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t want to hurt Mickey.’
‘Kiss me.’
‘I don’t want to hurt Greer.’
‘Kiss me.’
His kiss was gentle and she couldn’t help but kiss him back. Gently they made love again.
Outside the wind caught hold of something and the bang woke Loveday.
‘Oh my God. Look at the time.’ Loveday was holding her watch. ‘We’ve been here for ages.’
Jesse, curled round her hips and thighs, woke groggily. ‘Shit.’
The almost empty bottle of whisky, regarding them from the top of the dusty metal desk, stood as the sole witness to their crime.
They dressed in near silence, passing each other a stray sock or lost shoe.