by Paul Kelly
There was another long silence and then the phone must have gone dead because I could hear Jason sighing as he stepped out from Alfie’s room and bumped into me when I made the excuse that I was heading desperately for the toilet to avoid his questions as to why I was so near when he had been talking on the phone.
Downstairs, I could see him sitting on the settee with his head in his hands and I went up close to touch his hand and he jumped before he apologised for being where he was, making Shindigger growel.
“Did you sleep well?” I asked him and he shook his head.
“I am really worried about Sylvie as I think six months dancing so periodically could be a great strain on her and I know if she could have another male dancer to be with her, her then partner would arrange for her to stand down on occasion, but she does not want the part and although in some ways I am glad as it is really a strain on a girl so young, I want her to shine in the ballet profession. She is a beautiful dancer, but I would worry if she took this part because of the time factor. Six months is a long time.”
I listened carefully to what Jason said and then Emily came into the lounge to prepare for breakfast, but I think she must have heard what Jason had told me and she looked at both of us sitting comfortably together like two old men at rest and then she sat down beside us.
“You are thinking about the strain this task would put on Sylvie aren’t you Jason?” she asked, “But you could do this part with ease, could you not?”
Jason turned to look at me but he said nothing and Emily went on, “If Sylvie knew that YOU would be her partner, there would be no strain Jason because... and perhaps I should not say this, but Sylvie is in love with you Jason and you are in love with her. The two of you are ONE when you dance and that is why this company have asked you both to work for them. Why else do the people of Aberdeen who came to watch this opera ask for BOTH of you to perform again. These people are not blind Jason and I think in your heart, you would like to do this work, would you not?”
I could see the tears forming in Jason’s eyes as he nodded to what Emily had said and then he reached again into his trouser pocket and took out his phone.
I didn’t listen this time, but from the expression on Jason’s face I knew that everything was alright.
“Sylvie wants to do the part, Emily. She will only do the part if I stay in Glasgow and don’t return to London, but she thinks I am going to arrange for another dancing partner for her because she sounded as though she would only do the part with someone else if I could come EVERY EVENING to be with her in the show and when I told her I would be her dancing partner she screamed how happy she was and she even went on to say that she loved me, Emily.”
With that ultimatum I got on the telephone to everyone who had been to the first concert and suggested that they should come to the second, arranging which ever evening suited each of them and everyone was delighted.
It was Alfie who made me smile when he added to my suggestion that everyone should come again to the opera when he said that he would only come if he could have his bed back and when I told him that would not be possible, he added “Well you’ll have to tell that dancing bugger to move over as I like to sleep on the left side and you can tell him that I’ve left my kilt and sporran and things in my wardrobe if he want to appear more Scottish than what he looks like now. ”
Emily could not stop laughing and Jason went red in the face, but he did not refuse the offer to sleep on the right side of Alfie’s bed and there was joy and happiness in the room that evening except for Shindigger who moaned and groaned as he didn’t like sleeping in a kennel in the garden
When Sylvie came home on her weekend from Edinburgh, I could see a different side to my quiet and reserved daughter and Jason gave me a quick look as if to ask could he hug her and I nodded enthusiastically. Emily came out from the kitchen and took all three of us in her embrace, saying that her love was growing bigger and stronger every day and wished the young couple every happiness and joy with a very successful and fruitful life... but she omitted to add anything about children...
Chapter Thirty
If everything seemed to be smelling of roses for Sylvie and Jason, Adrian and his wife Stella were having a difficult time when Stella was attacked in the supermarket as she was doing her normal week’s shopping. I thought they had settled in Falkirk but they must have returned to Glasgow and one of a gang of youths went berserk and pushed Stella to the ground, sending her shopping everywhere around her but as the youth ran off, Stella was unable to get upon her feet again and fortunately one of the other shoppers tried to help, but the pain for Stella was so intense that she thought her spine had been damaged in some way and the supermarket manager called an ambulance where she was taken into hospital, where by some lucky chance, Assim was just leaving the canteen after he had been having his lunch and spotted her in the hall, lying on a stretcher. He checked her over before she could be seen by any of the other doctors as there was a waiting list in the receiving room as long as your arm... and there was already a crowd of people waiting to be attended by a doctor. Assim could tell that Stella’s spine was not affected in anyway, but she started to be sick and he pushed her trolley into a small room at the side of the corridor and with a further examination, he fund that Stella was pregnant and it appeared to Assim that she could have been at least five months on the way and he tried to telephone Adrian, but there was no reply and Stella told him that they now had a Glasgow number as they had moved away from Falkirk and Stella told Assim that her husband was away in Govan with his firm as he was a chief accountant and his presence was necessary in Govan due to some irregularity in the firm’s wages department. Assim then thought it best to get in touch with Emily and she rushed up to the hospital to be with Stella, but she was stunned when Assim told her that he found Stella to be pregnant as Emily was under the impression that Adrian and Stella could not have any children and then she remembered that her brother Adrian and Stella were the only two of the family who had been absent at the opera concert.. Could there be something wrong here, she thought?... Once in CornwAll and a move to Falkirk and now another move to Glasgow and in such a short time? Was it Adrian’s job as a solicitor and accountant that would be a problem or was there problems in the marriage... where Adrian had to be in Govan.
It was something that would be embarrassing to ask and it really was none of our business but then Adrian was family; he was Emily’s brother and my good fiend friend, but what had to be done?
It was Emily who thought the best idea was to approach Stella and literlly ‘congratulate’ her on the birth of her expected baby and then the presence of the father could be brought into the conversation, but when Emily did eventually ‘congratulate’ Stella on her expectancy, the only reply she got was a flood of tears and a stuttering of an explanation.
“The baby was a mistake,” Stella replied through her tears, I don’t even know who the father might be as I made a fool of myself when Adrian left me and now he will never come back.”
“But if he has only gone to Govan, surely you can contact him there. It’s only a few miles away from Glasgow and... ” but before Emily could say another word, Stella interrupted, “Adrian is not in Goven. He is in Huddersfield and he is with another woman.”
Emily felt so sorry for Stella but she had to admit that she had indeed made a fool of herself and then she remembered what Stella was like on her engagement party to Adrian. She was full of laughter and dancing around everywhere and it didn’t seem like a ‘likely match’ to Emily at the time, but you cannot interfere when two people are in love, can you... and you have to accept whatever nature or ‘natures’ they have at that time, but Adrian had always seemed to be such a quiet and reserved person... so unlike the type Emily or I would have thought he would adapt to the frivolity and giddiness of the person he wanted to become his wife, but again, human nature is so diverse and as I have always maintai
ned, ‘You can see others, but YOU NEVER CAN SEE YOURSELF... ’
Emily left the hospital after Stella had her examination and the diagnosis was definite... Stella was pregnant and it seemed that she would be having TWINS.
When I heard this news I immediately thought of poor old Freddie and his lovely wife who got the baby of their desires, but at what cost and then I reflected sorrowfully... that at least if anything there was love abounding for their little son and he would always have a secure home and at that moment I wondered if Freddie would ever have any more children with Georgia where it could well be ‘SECOND TIME LUCKY’
Nevertheless with better news to come, everyone in the family both on our side and Assim’s ‘crowd’ were delighted to hear that another operatic concert was to be held and that Sylvie and Jason were the lead dancers on that stage that first evening and for the next six months to come. They could decide which date was the most suitable to them and that was settled. What Emily was more concerned with at that moment was the problem with Adrian and his wife Stella and she wished with all her heart that the matter could be resolved and that Adrian would be able to understand and forgive Stella for her stupidity as Emily now felt that Stella was a changed person and she was full of regret and sorrow for what she had done.
It was one afternoon on a Saturday and Sylvie and Jason had just returned from the rehearsal at the studio where the performance was to take place. Shindigger was making a great fuss as he felt he hadn’t been given enough to eat as was his usual grouse but we all knew what he wanted and were used to his annoyance, but Jason asked me if I would go with him into the garden and I noticed that he asked me that when Sylvie was out shopping with Emily and I thought there might be something ‘juicy’ he wanted to tell me about but I was very wrong. It was quite the opposite.
We sat on the garden seat near the conservatory and Jason crossed his legs as he started to speak.
“Felix... I feel I would like to have the right to call you father, if I may or Dad if more convenient, because you have been so kind to me allowing me to stay here as one of the family and I have never known such kindness before in my life. You already know about my birth and how I have never known a father or a mother and so it is something ‘special’ for me to have such a relationship although for most children that would be very natural thing for them to expect.”
I touched Jason’s hand and wanted to assure him that what we had done for him was ‘natural’ for us to do because we had grown to love him as one of the family, but he insisted on going on.
“As you know, I am very much in love with Sylvie and I have been from the first moment I saw her at the London college, but to me love is LOVE. I know that many of my compatriots at the college would think that love meant that you could just have sex with any girl you liked, but I am not like that. I am not what you could describe as a religious person, but from the moment I set eyes on Sylvie, I realized the danger that COULD happen as I am just an ordinary person, but my love for Sylvie is PURE LOVE and I want to you to know that, now that I am living with Sylvie under the same roof.
I am sure that Sylvie understands how much I feel for her and she knows the dangers that could be, but I would never forgive myself if I did anything to upset or annoy Sylvie and it is this that I wanted to talk to you about whilst she was unable to hear what I was saying.”
As I continued to listen to what Jason was telling me, I was beginning to realize and understand more and more how much I loved this young man, just as if he was my own son. Only a father could understand the love that I had for him as a son and I was so proud and happy that Sylvie had gone to college to learn the ballet dancing and had met such a partner who was more than just a friend or even a ‘boyfriend.’ He was a LOVER in the truest sense of the word and I am sure that Sylvie knew and realized that, as did Emily and myself.
Chapter Thirty-One
It made me think of my own youth when I am sure no decent woman would have looked at me twice and I was such a selfish bastard that I would have fucked anyone who offered themselves to me and even if they hadn’t I would have wanted it... I knew it all and nobody could have told me anything. I am thoroughly ashamed of what I was NOW, but the past is the past and there is nothing you can do about it, unfortunately...
I had hoped that our other ‘bairn’ could have found himself a nice girlfriend but in my heart I knew that Alfie was in love with his horses and it would take a woman to have the same loves as he had for any relationship to blossom. I wondered about Umar also as he loved horses but when we saw him when he came to visit us, I thought that as handsome as he was, some girl must have noticed him above all other young men, but he never said anything to us about a relationship of any kind, except that he ‘THOUGHT’ he was in love with a Jewish girl and that his mother would never accept that, but his mother was now dead and I wondered if that would make such a drastic difference to what Umar felt. Farida on the other hand was a beauty to ALL who saw her as well as a beauty to herself. I knew she would have no problem attracting a young man or even an old man, but I couldn’t help think that she would never stay with the one man for very long. She loved herself and she loved every man she could see, but then, I could have been wrong and perhaps Farida might surprise us all by getting married for love and having twelve children to prove it.
However, Emily and Sylvie came back from their shopping expedition about an hour after Jason and I had come in from the garden and Shindigger welcomed them home with a bucketful of barks. Sylvie had bought Jason a new shirt and some underwear as he had only brought a few things with him when he left London to come to Glasgow and I think he had no intention of returning down there to the South to collect anything he had left behind. I knew that Sylvie was glad to have left the college down in London as she never got on at all with the Rutherford dame, but nothing was ever said about her or the way she had treated several of the girls in the classes she controlled. At least nothing that we ever heard... but the Glasgow operatic Company kept phoning Jason regularly to ensure that he would be coming to dance with them and that Sylvie would be his partner. They also emphasized that the concert would go on for six months AT LEAST and they amended the date of the first concert to be September fifteenth and that was a Saturday. Already people were buying their tickets and the hall was just a stone’s throw from being packed.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Stella came out of hospital with her two babies; a boy and a girl and I wished I could have had Adrian’s address in Huddersfield or wherever he was as I was sure that if I spoke to him, he would listen and perhaps come back to Stella and to a new life, but Stella didn’t have an address or a telephone number for him, until one day I got the surprise of my life. Adrian phoned ME and he was not in Huddersfield. He had used this place as a way of getting out of Stella’s life when all the time he really was in Goven and not living with another woman as Stella had imagined. Adrian had read somewhere in a newspaper or leaflet that twins had been born in the Glasgow Maternity Hospital and Stella had used her married name of Southdown to the reporters who came to see her and that was the reason why I got the call from Adrian. He wanted to know if Stella and the twins were alright and I told them they were but that naturally they were missing him, but Adrian would not accept that in the knowledge that Stella had left him to have sex with some other man and apparently enjoyed it and I wanted to contradict Adrian and tell him that Stella had serious regrets over what she had done, but Adrian found that hard to believe as he stumbled roughly into telling me something that surprised me.
“Felix... I have never stopped loving Stella but she can be such a bitch at times. I am sure that she left me to have sex with some other bastard was because of my low sperm count and my inability to get a full erection when we were having sex. I was told of this deficiency by a doctor shortly after we got married and even with sex as regular as six times a day sometimes, nothing happened, so it is really my fault that she
went to have sex elsewhere.”
As Adrian was telling me of his sexual difficulties, I thought again of his brother Steven who had the same problem with a low sperm count and I wondered if it might be something that could run in the male children of the Southdown family. It certainly didn’t affect the female side as Emily and I managed that side of our marriage very well, even if it took some time to ‘materialize’ and I asked Adrian if he still loved Stella when he told me about the number of times he had sex with her before they split up and he assured me that he did and that he had never stopped loving her but that she had got on his nerves sometimes with her incessant chatter about herself and how lovely she was and how she wished she could have had children... and that’s what made him decide to let her live her life as she wanted to and he would move out, but when I explained how I had found Stella after she had her accident in the supermarket when she was shopping there which was the real reason why Assim had examined her and found that she was pregnant and she was a different person to the Stella he had lived with. She was very quiet when I had spoken to her and when she told me that Adrian had gone to live in Huddersfield, he had broken her heart then and wished she had been different in character, but it is difficult to become something or somebody that you are not... and sometimes only a drastic change in your life can make you realize that and force you to do something about it... and that was what happened to Stella.
When I went to visit Stella with Emily and told her that I had seen Adrian and that he was not in Huddersfield and living with another woman, she cried her eyes out and told me that she wished she was a different person to what she was, I realized then that she knew of her imperfections and why Adrian had left her and with that knowledge I knew that Adrian would come back to Stella if he knew of her change of mind and it was obviously my job to tell him., When next I met him and told him what I knew about Stella, he was back with her and the twins that same evening with a new resolve, only to have sex FIVE times a day and not six. I think that worked alright because they both came to dinner with us that following weekend and brought Benjamin and Agatha with them for us to see. Assim came too with Gerard and Eric and his beloved Linda, but the subject of sex was taboo and everyone behaved themselves until Shindigger got jealous because he was the only single one in the room and he thought it was time he could have a mate of his own.