Bright Stars

by Sophie Duffy

  ‘What is it, Dad? Why are you calling me?’ I’m outside the Burlington room, pacing the corridor (surprise, surprise). All I can hear is Barbara. ‘Farewell to the Whisky’. ‘Switch her off, Dad. You’re muffled.’

  ‘Sorry, son.’ He leaves me hanging on. Barbara continues to sing – So sit down beside me and I’ll soon gang hane – then she’s muted. Dad’s heavy footsteps, coming back to me. A fumble, then: ‘Are you putting on the Ritz?’

  ‘As we speak, Dad.’

  ‘Did you see what I did there?’

  ‘How long have you been saving that one up?’

  ‘Just since this morning, son. How are you doing?’

  ‘I’m okay, Dad. Don’t worry. I’ll be home tomorrow.’

  ‘And the lassie?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Canadian one.’

  ‘She’s okay. She’s doing amazing. Much better than the rest of us.’

  ‘She came from money. Money comes to money.’

  ‘Tommo comes from money.’

  ‘English blood money, son. English blood money. Your mother would have something to say about that.’

  ‘But Mum can’t talk, Dad. She cannae talk.’

  A bark. Myrtle attacking the front door. A yelp. Silence. And then Sheila. ‘I’ve got my magic knickers on, Andrew!’

  ‘Oh God, Dad, really? I have to go.’

  ‘Aye, Cameron, sorry about that. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ And the line goes dead.

  I wonder whether it might be best to go up to my bed and put my head under the pillow, smother myself now. The world is going mad and I am going mad with it. But something draws me back into the room, less crowded now, people drifting off home, to restaurants, the theatre, lap-dancing clubs.

  And there’s Tommo, slumped on a seat with an empty pint glass in his hand. I sit down next to him, weary now.

  ‘Can we leave?’ Still the posh boy, the spoilt brat.

  ‘It’s not all about you, Tommo.’

  ‘I know it’s not all about me.’

  ‘Then why are you letting her go?’

  ‘Letting her go?’

  ‘After all I did for you. Your life would have been so different. You might not have Bex. Or the kids.’

  ‘All right. Steady on, McTaggart.’

  ‘What are you going to do when they’ve left home and you’re old and lonely?’

  ‘I’ll have Bex.’

  ‘But will you?’

  ‘Has she said something?

  ‘Not exactly. But I can tell she’s not happy.’

  ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to make her happy. Why do you think I gave up my chance of success for her? Why do you think I’m still trying?’

  Heat’s coming off him, sweat’s shining on his face. He starts to cough and a waitress is there beside him with a glass of water. He drinks it slowly, trying to hold it together. He coughs again. And again.

  ‘I need some air.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I’ll be fine. Really.’ *

  Tommo gets up and I follow him, man-mark him. I’m his shadow, his ghost. (Boo.) Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. I am the kilted spectre. Superfirstaider.

  Halfway across the room and I wonder what it feels like for Christie, treading this bouncy carpet with a fake leg. A ghost leg. Do you have to concentrate more? Do you forget how to walk? How would a dyspraxic like me manage it with my two left feet?

  A flash from the photographer brings us up short. Blinded for a second. When I can see again, Bex and Christie are standing beside us like a double act. The dynamic duo.

  Tommo shifts and fidgets and it is like Christie can see right through him, like she has X-ray specs. Like he is the incarnation of guilt. Guilt. She has to find out.

  ‘You guys want to go do something? Get a drink? Something to eat? A walk?’

  ‘I could do with some fresh air,’ Bex says.

  Tommo coughs. Shrugs in a noncommital way.

  ‘Sounds like you could too, Tommo. That okay with you, Cameron?’

  ‘A walk would be good.’

  Christie smiles. She must enjoy seeing me squirm at the mention of the word ‘walk’.

  Don’t mention the walk.

  ‘You okay in that kilt, Cameron? It could be blowy out there.’

  ‘I’ll fetch my jacket.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘I have to change my leg. We’ll meet you guys down here in ten.’

  Ten minutes can seem endless.

  I get my jacket then go with Christie to her suite: I sit on her bed. Her bed is bigger and grander than the bed in my suite. Her suite is a lot bigger and grander than my suite.

  I am here, in the Ritz, watching Christie get ready. She reapplies her make-up, checks herself in the mirror, rearranges her breasts in the tight dress and puts on her coat so they are hidden from view. All for a walk in the dark with three quasi-strangers.

  ‘I was never really a fan of dresses but I thought it would look better in the photos. I guess I could change into something more comfortable but I honestly can’t be bothered right now. Some fresh air and I’ll be ready to hit the sack.’

  ‘You look amazing.’

  ‘Thank you. So do you, of course. That kilt really does it for me.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘In a wild, natural kind of way.’

  ‘That’s a compliment?’

  ‘Sure it’s a compliment.’

  She goes to her suitcase and takes out a leg. A half leg. Changes it over. (A bit different to a false eyelash.) ‘So you run ghost tours?’

  ‘I did. I did run ghost tours.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I lost my job.’

  She picks up her iPhone from the bed, slips it in the pocket of her fur-lined Parka, sits down on the bed, next to me, the way we used to sit side by side in each other’s rooms on campus. ‘What happened?’

  So I tell her what happened. The whole Sanderson thing. Jeremy. But I don’t tell her why it happened. The significance.

  ‘I’m sorry, Cameron. I’m sure something else will come along. A better offer.’

  ‘I hope so. I mean, it’s all I know. I’ve been there since, well, since I came out of prison.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time for a fresh start.’

  I shrug. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Are you married? Kids?’

  ‘Separated. No kids.’

  She waits for me to go on.

  ‘Amanda wants some space.’

  ‘She should try Canada if it’s space she wants. We gotta a whole load of the stuff. I was telling Bex they should come out for a vacation. The kids would love it.’

  ‘They probably would. I get the feeling they’d rather be anywhere but home right now.’

  ‘Teenagers always want to be somewhere else, right? That’s what got me into this trouble in the first place.’ Christie knocks her leg, as if for luck.

  I look at it again, look up at Christie’s beautiful face, admire the brain inside that head, the courage inside her heart. ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘I’ve seen it in all sorts of ways.’ She checks her nails, like she’s having a manicure, not facing her demons. ‘I thought I was okay with it but it’s kind of playing around in my head, you know, being back, seeing you guys.’

  ‘Don’t you remember what happened at all?’

  ‘Very little but I keep picturing the back of Tommo’s head. Why would I do that? I was behind the driver. I can’t see you anywhere. I just hear this scream and I think it must be mine.’

  ‘I remember the screaming,’ I say. ‘The tyres screeching. Being thrown forward like someone was kicking me in the chest and then everything stopped and there was this awful silence. Then my head was filled with buzzing, like there was a swarm of wasps in there, feeding off my brain. I heard Bex though. She was saying we had to get out the car. She could smell petrol. She and I both somehow scrambled out. We got Tommo’s door open and dragged him from the wreck. But we couldn’t open y
our door.’ I turn to face her, next to me on the bed. ‘We tried, Christie. We really tried, especially Bex. Then there were people moving us away and I couldn’t see you anymore. I thought you were dead.’

  ‘So did I. Maybe I did die and then decided what the heck, I might as well give this life a second chance, even one-legged.’

  ‘How do you keep so positive?’

  ‘It’s the Canadian way. She takes out her compact, slashes some more red across her lips. ‘This is turning schmaltzy, Cameron. I don’t do schmaltzy.’

  ‘I know that. I read the interview you did for the Guardian.’

  ‘You read it?’

  ‘Online. I googled you.’

  ‘What did you think of it?’

  ‘It was very honest.’

  ‘No point in being anything other than honest.’

  ‘Well,’ I begin, hesitant but feeling a need to be schmaltzy. ‘I’m sorry it didn’t work out, your marriage.’

  ‘Don’t be. I’m over it.’ She flicks her hair like she is flicking away the image of her ex-husband. She pulls me up with her, off the bed and out of the room.

  As we wait for the lift, I know it’s time for me to open up. (Jeremy would be proud. Job done.) ‘I miss my wife,’ I tell Christie. ‘I want her back. I was never able to love Amanda as she wanted to be loved. Because, even after everything that happened, I was still in love with Bex.’

  I’m not sure I know what ‘love’ means anymore. Even Myrtle only offers me cupboard love. Love wasn’t a word bandied about in my childhood home. There were no ‘I-love-yous’. No hugs or kisses. An all-male household, the members of which expressed their affection for each other in the medium of hair ruffling, back-slapping and Chinese burns.

  But once I had known. And I made a choice. I made that choice out of love. For my family. For Bex.

  ‘Too schmaltzy by far, Cameron,’ she says and pushes me into the lift. ‘But at least you’re being honest.’

  _________________________

  *I clearly learned something from Amanda.

  *Riedel Vinum Extreme Icewine glasses are shaped to enhance the aroma and taste of Icewine.

  *Marilyn Monroe starred in the 1953 film noir Niagara with the tagline ‘a raging torrent of emotion that even nature can’t control’.

  *Never let a choking person leave the room. It’s human nature to want to retreat. That’s when you can fall down, stop breathing and die, no one there to step in and help. (Duke of Edinburgh. Health and Safety. Common sense.) And when you bang the choking person on the back, try not to crack a rib.

  Lake

  Off we set. Four go on an adventure. Up Piccadilly, down Piccadilly. Along streets and around squares. We end up on a vast busy road. Park Lane. Speaker’s Corner. Marble Arch. Bayswater Road, Lancaster Gate. Hyde Park. In we go.

  By now Tommo is struggling to keep up with the rest of us. I put him to shame, striding along with my kilt swaying, a woman on each side.

  Christie turns round. ‘So you’re sounding a bit unfit there, Tommo.’

  ‘Just a bug thing,’ he wheezes. ‘I’ll shake it off in a few days.’

  ‘The smokes don’t exactly help.’ She reaches for his roll-up and takes it from his hand. He is so surprised – not that he should really be surprised by anything Christie does – that he relinquishes it straightaway. She stubs it out with her shoe and I’m trying to remember which leg is missing, which foot she is using. The real or the fake, though there is nothing fake about Christie. That’s his speciality, Tommo’s speciality: fakedom.

  ‘You okay, Tommo?’ she asks. ‘You look like a Lost Boy.’

  ‘A lost boy?’

  ‘Like in Peter Pan. Like you’re motherless.’

  ‘I am motherless,’ he says.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know she’d passed.’

  ‘She hasn’t. She’s still living in France with Le Knob.’

  ‘Not exactly far. Why don’t you just go see her?’

  ‘Everything’s always straightforward for you, isn’t it?’

  ‘You have to make things happen if you want to live fully.’

  ‘You sound American.’

  ‘Shut the hell up.’

  We walk on, Bex and I bookends to Tommo and Christie, the park vast and shadowy.

  ‘Come to think of it,’ Christie says, ‘you are a little like Peter Pan. You know, the kid that never grew up.’

  ‘What do you mean? I’m all grown up and working in the refuse and recycling department of the local council, I’ll have you know.’ Tommo uses a mock officious voice and she gives him this smile tinged with something unnameable. Sympathy, maybe. Pity, perhaps.

  We walk on, the four of us.

  ‘There’s a statue of Peter Pan not so far from here,’ Tommo says.

  ‘That’s neat. Where?’

  ‘Kensington Gardens.’

  ‘Where the Diana memorial is?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I’m not going to worship at the shrine of Diana,’ I say.

  ‘You leave our royals alone, John Brown. They made your Scotland what it is. All that tartan-mania and frolicking in the glens.’

  ‘Your Royals are German. And you’re half-French. You should be allied with us, not England.’

  ‘I live in England.’

  ‘You live in a backwater.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Guys, cut it out,’ Christie shouts at us. Really yells in a way I’ve never heard. Then she pulls herself together. ‘Let’s go see Peter Pan.’

  ‘What time is it?’ Bex asks. ‘The kids will be back soon.’

  Christie checks her watch. A Rolex. Platinum with diamonds. (I’ve seen similar in the jewellers in Princes Street, staring in at the window displays with my nose pressed up against the glass like the little match girl.)

  ‘A quarter after ten,’ she says.

  ‘Best keep that watch hidden,’ Tommo says. ‘Some bugger will have your hand off.’

  ‘Geez. I don’t want to lose a hand as well as a leg.’

  I rub the back of my neck. A ghost’s breath upon it. But Christie full on laughs and so does Tommo, and I remember the pair of them in the back of the car on the way to the Lakes, flirting and joking and wondering if they would get together and so leave Bex for me.

  Then Tommo starts to pech again and has to stop walking. He is stooped. He is shrinking. He has to bend over, hands resting on his thighs like he’s just finished a half-marathon, spitting on the ground.

  ‘You sure you’re up to this, buddy?’

  ‘I’m up to it. We’re headed that way.’

  I see him glance at Bex but she is trailblazing ahead, her own pace, her own mind, her own woman that no one can touch.

  Am I dreaming? Peter Pan? We are standing in the middle of a park in the middle of London by a statue of Peter Poncing Pan. Christie is taking pictures on her iPhone. Bex is watching her, hands in the pockets of her winter coat, a massive scarf wrapped round her voluminous hair. Tommo lurks in the shadows, like a mugger.

  It is dark. It is cold. A siren moans in the distance.

  ‘Let’s walk round the lake,’ Bex suggests.

  ‘Call this a lake?’ Christie says.

  ‘It’s called the Serpentine,’ I say.

  ‘Actually this end is called the Long Water,’ Tommo corrects me.

  Smart-Alec-Know-it-all-Show-off.

  We lumber off in a weird group. A kilt, a false leg, a cough, my beloved.

  Déjà vu, snatches of memory. A hike up a hill through fog and snow and sleet. Bex limping with a twisted ankle, sitting with her leg in my lap.

  It’s spitting now, a soft drizzle that clings to our coats like dew as we walk along a path, skirting the lake, through shadows and dappled lamp light, bushes and shrubs on each side. No traffic and the smell of horse manure so we could be deep in the countryside.

  When we get to the Serpentine proper, Christie seeks out a bench and sits down. Bex and Tommo sit down too, one on each
side of her, Bill and Ben, George and Mildred. There is a space next to Bex so I take it, having to squeeze up a bit. She shuffles along but I can still feel her coat against mine.

  ‘Do you mind, if I take off my prosthetic? My stump’s sore.’

  ‘Course we don’t mind, Christie.’ This from Bex, speaking on our behalf but making a mess of it as she sounds unsure. Tommo and I remain silent.

  ‘Well, that’s stumped ya!’ Christie quips, a souped-up accent, overegging a bad joke but that’s the point. The whole point.

  We laugh, all four of us. Quietly at first but then the laugh gathers momentum and becomes a welcome release of emotion. I want to say something nice, something to commemorate this moment but Christie beats me to it. ‘I’m kind of surprised that you two made it.’ She pats a leg each, one of Bex’s, one of Tommo’s. ‘How have you managed to stay together all these years? I only managed five with Pete. Probably only two of those were any good. I’ve had longer and more intimate relationships with my doctors.’

  ‘We’re not married,’ says Bex. ‘Maybe that helps.’

  ‘Knowing you could just walk away if you wanted?’

  ‘We have kids. A home. A life together. That’s not easy to walk away from,’ Bex says.

  ‘So did you ever get to be that go-getter, change-the-world social worker?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Bex says. ‘I mean, I am a social worker. I work with old people. But I’m never going to change the world.’

  ‘But you’re making it a whole lot nicer for those old guys. That’s more than most.’

  Then Christie goes on to tell us about her charity which helps out kids with missing limbs – land mines, wars, just your average sort of thing. And I feel like a school boy. My first day at school, sitting on the teacher’s lap and weeping. Puking in the book corner over the Ladybird books.

  I am Pat.

  I am Susan.

  I am nerd-boy-turd-boy Cameron MacJudas.

  I have to do something.

  ‘Last time we were sitting together was at the television centre, waiting for the band to go on.’

  I throw it out there, a bone for the dogs to pick over.

  No one speaks for a while. Christie is busying herself with her leg. Tommo is hunched over. Bex has turned to stare at me with those eyes I’ve never forgotten. Eyes that sustained me through my time in prison, knowing I was there for a reason.