Tuesday, 10 July 1956
I don’t know what to do. Una says she wants to spend the night with me.
I hadn’t thought this far ahead when we began and I didn’t expect her to be so forward. I know girls are more so in London than back at home, and I consider myself a man of the world now I’m here. But still. All of the fellas at work think I’m like them, bedding anything that passes my way. But I never expected to feel this way for a girl I have no confirmed plans for a future with. We are not engaged and there is no understanding between us. When I have thought of sex, I’ve pictured a wedding night. It’s what I was brought up to think of and I don’t know if I’m ready to let that go.
But it’s Una Myers. And it would be the easiest thing in the world to say yes to her.
I want to be with her, to feel the fullness of her against me, all barriers gone, all caution thrown to the wind. I think she knows it, too, and it’s tormenting me.
Why am I so prudish? Why can’t I be a man and do as I wish? I’m driving myself to distraction over it when it should be the most natural decision in the world. Una thinks it endearing of me. But she keeps asking – and now I’m scared she’ll stop and walk away. I have to decide soon or I could lose her . . .
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Johnny B. Goode’ – Chuck Berry
Mattie awoke to birdsong and the hum of the hotel guests making their way to breakfast. The sun streamed in through her window and she snuggled down beneath the lavender-scented bed sheets as memories of last night came flooding back. Snoozing the alarm clock on her phone for another ten blissful minutes, she pictured herself back in Gil Kendrick’s arms.
She was still smiling when she arrived in the hotel restaurant to meet the others. Reenie was engrossed in a dog-eared copy of Hello! magazine. Gil looked up and grinned, instantly allaying Mattie’s concern that this morning’s first meeting after last night might be awkward.
‘How did you sleep?’
Reenie’s head shot up, her sparkling grey eyes missing nothing. ‘And why would you care about that, Gil Kendrick?’
‘Just asking.’ He shrugged, but his smile betrayed him.
‘Oh-ho, what have we here?’
‘Nothing, Reenie.’ Mattie raised a hand to her forehead, hoping to distract Reenie’s interest with a faked hangover. ‘And could you keep it down a little, please? Turns out your advice to me last night had a sting in its tail.’
‘Hung over, are we? Good. About time you lived a little, kid. Pull up a pew and I’ll get them to bring you a pot of extra-strong medicine. Vince!’
The waiter at the far end of the restaurant turned. ‘Yes, Reenie?’
‘Pot of your most potent smokey Joe, if you please.’
‘Vince?’ Mattie asked, taking her seat and reaching for a slice of toast. ‘How do you know his name?’
‘He brought me my dinner last night. Turns out he’s a fan of the Beatles like you, Gil. Well, I told him about that night in India I shared with John, George and the Maharishi. Spiritual enlightenment and a damn fine bottle of cognac. Anyway, now Vince is my new best friend.’ She leaned forward, her finger to her coral-painted lips. ‘So it’s extra sausages all the way for us this morning – if you can stomach them.’
Leaving the leafy grounds of their hotel, Rusty carried the reconciliation road-trippers out through the heart of the historic city. It was as if the houses, trees and people they passed all shared the feeling of optimism within the camper van. Today was a good day, Mattie thought. She could feel Gil’s gaze on her as she drove, a delicious secret only she and he shared. With so much of her privacy compromised by the practicalities of travelling at close quarters with other people, it was wonderful to be able to hide something. Gil had caught her hand as they’d walked from the hotel and raised it to his warm lips for a kiss while Reenie went on ahead, oblivious to what was happening. Mattie didn’t know how long their stolen kisses would go unnoticed, but for now Reenie seemed none the wiser.
Reenie, meanwhile, had been noticeably happier this morning at breakfast, her tales of the mischief she and Johnny ‘Chuck’ Powell had unleashed on their bandmates making Mattie and Gil laugh. In marked contrast to how she’d talked about June, it was clear how close she and Chuck had been; closer, it seemed, than she was with Tommy in the beginning.
‘We once sewed Rico’s sheets to his mattress in a motel near Rome,’ she said now, her eyes following the buildings as they drove through a particularly pretty part of the city. ‘About two-thirds of the way down from the bed-head to the footboard. We had old woollen blankets back then, with cotton sheets underneath. Chuck had this old darning needle – heaven only knows where he got that from – and thread the same grey as the blanket. He sewed great big tacking stitches across from one side to the other. So when Rico tried to get into bed, he couldn’t work out why his feet couldn’t reach the end of it! He’d had a few, too, so he thought his body had grown and his legs had shrunk. Chuck was a demon for that sort of thing. He was forever hiding alarm clocks under your bed and setting them for three in the morning, scaring the living daylights out of you.’
‘How come you didn’t keep in touch with him?’ Mattie had asked. If they had been as close as she was making out, surely that was a friendship that could stand the test of time?
Reenie gave a sigh. ‘Just stuff, you know. Things got in the way, bad decisions were made, all of that. I am looking forward to seeing him again. We had good times, him and me.’
‘Maybe you can pick up where you left off?’
‘I’d like that. Not sure if he’d say the same, of course! He always talked about living here, you know.’ Reenie pressed her nose to the passenger-window glass, peering up at the elegant town houses sailing by. ‘Thought himself a bit of a Mr Darcy, he did. Me and Alys used to rib him mercilessly because he read Jane Austen. I mean, what twenty-two-year-old chap does that? It’ll suit him now, though. Tommy says he’s quite the country squire.’ Her mockery of Tommy’s Northumberland accent was pin-sharp and made Mattie and Gil laugh.
‘So, were you closest to Chuck when you were in the group?’ Mattie asked, navigating a mini-roundabout that challenged Rusty’s squeaking suspension.
Reenie’s smile tightened a little. Were nerves finally setting in after her confident start this morning? ‘We got on well.’
Chuck’s home was in Widcombe, not far from the centre of Bath. In the morning sunshine the sandstone glowed a beautiful honey-gold, both welcoming to the eye and striking against the deep blue sky dotted with candyfloss wisps of white.
‘Is it his house?’ Gil asked from the back seat.
‘His eldest daughter’s, according to Tommy,’ Mattie replied.
‘Gorgeous,’ Gil said.
Mattie felt herself blush, thinking the comment might not have only been about the pretty suburb they were driving through.
Ten minutes later, Reenie and Gil stood beside Mattie as she rang the brass doorbell.
‘Are you ready?’ she asked Reenie.
‘Been waiting for this for years, kid.’
The large black door opened slightly, yanked to a sudden halt by its brass chain.
‘Yes?’
Mattie couldn’t see the face of the voice’s owner, but the tone of it caused her nerves to tip. Did they have the right house?
‘Hi. We’re here to visit Chuck – um – Johnny Powell? Tommy Mullins called a couple of days ago. I’m Matilda Bell, and this is Reenie Silver . . .’
Abruptly, the chain was released and the door whisked open to reveal a woman in her late forties who looked as if she had been crying. ‘You came,’ she stated, her red-rimmed blue eyes widening to a blank stare.
‘Who is it?’ came a voice from inside.
The woman at the door opened her mouth to speak, but then clamped a pale hand to it. Behind her another face appeared, rounder and younger, wearing the same haunted expression.
Mattie took a step back, the horrible prospect of not only turning up at the
wrong house but also intruding on what was clearly a crisis slowly sinking in. ‘Oh gosh, I’m so sorry . . .’ she said, mentally calculating how quickly she could shift two people and herself from these poor women’s doorstep.
The younger woman moved gently towards them. ‘No, Miss Bell, Miss Silver, we’re so sorry. I’m afraid he’s – not here. You’d better come in.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
‘Seven Lonely Days’ – Georgia Gibbs
Jack had said it was a miracle that all five members of The Silver Five had survived into their eighties. His words came back to Mattie now as she sat with the others, stunned by the news. They had missed Chuck. By a day and a half.
If only we’d been on time . . . If only Reenie and June hadn’t taken so long to talk . . . If only traffic hadn’t delayed us . . .
It was Mattie’s job to stick to the schedule, her responsibility to get Reenie to each member of The Silver Five at the right time. How could she not blame herself that delays had cost Reenie the chance to say sorry to a friend she had loved – and missed – for years?
Sitting in the house where, just two days before, Chuck had been present was a strangely hollow experience. It was as if his spirit still pottered around them through the high-ceilinged rooms, making himself tea in the large green and cream kitchen with its slate floor and black marble worktops and sitting at the piano in the room where everyone now sat quietly.
Mattie hadn’t felt this with Grandpa Joe; not being in his life at the end had meant not having to join with the family in a similar situation at the Bell farmhouse during the first few hours of loss. She had heard from Joanna that he had passed away, but by that point she’d run into Asher’s arms for comfort. By the time Asher’s affair had been exposed, the family were already busy with the tasks of preparing for a funeral and a house sale.
But the palpable sense of loss here, as tactile as the brocade fabric sofas on which they sat in stunned silence, was as personal as if Mattie had lost her own grandfather all over again. Gil looked utterly mortified, staring at the red Moroccan rug beneath his feet, and Mattie felt her heart sink every time she met the gaze of one of Chuck’s family and had to offer a sad smile in return. She had hated such smiles from family and friends when they’d heard of her loss; smiles that always came across as insincere and pitying, regardless of the giver’s intentions.
Reenie was white-faced and unnaturally quiet in their midst. She suddenly looked like a little, lost old lady again – small, vulnerable and bemused by a world she now didn’t recognise.
‘It was so fast,’ Chuck’s daughter Sheena was saying. ‘We went to A & E because he said his stomach was so bad. I honestly thought they’d give him some laxatives, maybe keep him in overnight at worst, but then send him home. Dad’s always been so healthy – always was . . .’
A young, pretty girl Mattie guessed to be in her mid-teens hurried across the room from her seat by the piano to embrace her mother. The room sank into suffocating silence once more.
Mattie looked at Gil for support. He gave a small cough. ‘So – um – was this piano his?’
Chuck’s granddaughter gave a sad smile that broke Mattie’s heart all over again. She recognised the haunted look the young girl wore because she had seen it in her own mirror. ‘He played every day. Sometimes for hours at a time.’
Chuck’s piano must have always been a large, looming presence in the room, but was now made more so by the vases of pure white lilies placed carefully around it on the parquet floor. Tiny white tea lights in simple glass votives burned alongside them. It had become a shrine. Would it ever be played again, Mattie wondered? And what did you do with a piano when its owner passed away? Would its removal take away the heart of the room in which it had lived for years? The instrument was beautiful: anyone could appreciate the craftsmanship, the polished walnut gleaming as if it had been carved from a slice of mottled amber. Its body was half-shrouded in a bottle-green velvet cloth, and at its base were wheels and foot pedals made of shiny brass. It was old, but very much cared for. Mattie caught Chuck’s daughters and his granddaughter casting glances at it, as if he was likely to appear at the piano stool, ready to entertain them again.
‘Six in the morning,’ Eleanor, Chuck’s youngest daughter, rushed. It was a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, a bittersweet noise that Mattie knew only too well. ‘Most expensive alarm clock in the neighbourhood. Dad liked to be up early and wanted everyone else to be up, too. Most mornings it was Fats Domino or Neil Sedaka. On the days when his pain was bad he’d wake us up with Chopin’s Nocturnes or Debussy’s “Clair de Lune”.’ She shook her head. ‘Mornings have been too quiet since we lost him.’
‘Did he ever play our songs?’
Everyone turned to see Reenie staring at Chuck’s oldest daughter.
‘He did,’ Sheena smiled. ‘When he knew you were coming, we heard little else. He was determined to serenade you with a medley when you arrived . . .’
‘If we’d been here when we said we would . . .’ Reenie’s voice trailed away and her eyes welled as the awful truth hit home.
‘Oh, Ms Silver, you couldn’t have known. None of us did. It’s been such a shock. We still don’t really know what happened. The coroner hasn’t got back to us yet, but . . . I’m just so sorry he didn’t get to see you. I can’t tell you what it’s meant to him to know you were coming. He was like a teenager jumping around the place, and all the old stories came out again. He hadn’t told them for years, you know, but this week it’s been all we’ve heard. The last thing he said . . .’ Her voice cracked and her sister caught her hand. ‘Before we left him to speak to the doctor, the very last thing he said was, “They’d better not keep me in here. I’ve a date with Reenie Silver and sixty years’ worth of stories to share.”’
Reenie gave a loud sob, and buried her face in her handkerchief. Mattie leaned across to touch her arm, but Reenie batted her hand away. ‘I’m okay. It’s just I – I can’t believe we missed him.’
Mattie closed her eyes. All the hours they had wasted, delayed by stubbornness and traffic jams – when time was slipping away like shoreline sand pulled by receding waves. It could have been so different. It should have been how they’d planned this meeting: full of fun and laughter, and past hurts being healed.
‘When is the concert going to be?’ Eleanor asked, pulling Mattie back into the room.
Gil looked up. ‘This Thursday night. At least –’ he turned to Mattie – ‘if it’s still possible?’
What could she say to that? The plan had been for all five members to perform. Wouldn’t it be disrespectful to his memory to go ahead without him?
‘There’ll be no gig.’ Reenie’s voice spoke sharply into the room. ‘Not now. There can’t be.’
Gil shot to the end of his seat. ‘Reenie, I understand how you must be feeling, but—’
‘But nothing, Kendrick! The deal was all of us or none of us. That’s what we said when June agreed to join us. I won’t get on that stage – or any stage, for that matter – without Chuck Powell.’
Mattie looked on helplessly as Gil began to argue with Reenie. Chuck’s daughters were insisting that they wanted the concert to proceed, too. But Reenie would hear none of it, her replies rising in both volume and pitch.
‘I won’t do it, so stop asking! Chuck was The Silver Five. He kept us together during that first year, when the rest of us would just as easily have jacked the whole thing in and gone our separate ways. In the end, we stayed for Chuck, for his sake. That’s why –’ Her eyes grew wide, and she suddenly turned to Sheena and Eleanor. ‘Oh, girls, I feel awful that I never said sorry to him! All those years, wasted. I loved him, you know, like a brother. More than a brother, most of the time. He was always the peacemaker for us. Always putting the group first and his feelings last. We owed our success to him, not to Rico or the music business. Chuck was the glue that stuck us together through the tough times. Without him, there’d’ve been no hit records, no tours, nothing. W
e’d’ve ripped each other to shreds long before we ever recorded a single if he hadn’t stepped in.’
‘He loved you, Reenie,’ Sheena replied sadly. ‘I hope you know that. He loved you more than you could ever return.’
Chastened, Reenie bowed her head. ‘He told you.’
Mattie stared at Reenie. What did Sheena know that she didn’t?
‘Of course he told us, love. He wouldn’t have been Dad if he hadn’t been completely honest. You know what he was like. Wore his heart like cufflinks, he used to say. He loved you. Even when you turned him down. Even when you left the group and ended his career. And even later when—’
‘Stop! Please, just – stop.’ Reenie gave a heavy sigh, a hand against her brow.
‘What happened later, Reenie?’ Mattie couldn’t hold the question back. She had to know. Until now, Reenie had insisted she and Chuck had been close friends, but there had always been an unspoken omission Mattie couldn’t decipher.
‘Ah, it’s been too long. Too much else crowded in.’
‘He never blamed you.’
‘Don’t say that . . .’
‘He didn’t, Reenie. Even when he flew back from seeing you and was in bits for months. He always said it had been your decision, and he had to honour it.’
‘Decision to do what?’ It was one thing to upset a friend, but quite another to break a heart – several times over, if what Chuck’s daughters were hinting at was true.
Reenie’s lilac-rinsed curls were shaking furiously now. ‘Not here. Not now he’s . . .’
‘He loved you, that’s the truth,’ Eleanor stated, her smile conspicuous by its absence. ‘I can’t say I liked it, but there it is. When Mum died, you were all he could talk about. I think Mum knew you were The One That Got Away. That’s why he flew to America to be with you.’
‘I couldn’t say yes,’ Reenie replied, her voice thick. ‘I wanted to, but—’
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