by May, Nicola
‘Cottage! Wow! I thought we were going to a B&B.’
‘Only the best for my little ginger Sarah Burton.’
‘What did you call me?’ Ruby had to shut her eyes and inhale deeply.
‘Sarah Burton - you know, the royal designer.’
‘I know who she bloody is!’ Ruby snapped. She had relived over and over her final moments with George, and this flashback washed over her like a massive tsunami wave.
‘Why - do you not think she’s good enough to be compared too? ’ Michael was perplexed by her response.
‘Look, it’s nothing.’
‘Well, it is obviously something or you wouldn’t have asked me not to say it again.’
‘George… he… on the last day I saw him…’ She paused again, then blurted out, ‘Called me by the same name.’
‘Oh Rubes, I’m sorry. It’s so hard not to upset you and I try my best. A - I don’t know how to say this without it coming out wrong. But maybe I’m not good enough to be compared to either.’
‘Michael. Don’t say that. It’s not about comparing. It’s about coping and learning to love someone again. And when you have never stopped loving the person you were in love with before, it’s bloody difficult.’ She bit her lip and looked to the sky. ‘I don’t expect you to understand and I’m so sorry. Michael. You’ve been brilliant with everything and I am so happy that we are here together today.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’ She grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. ‘Now come on, let’s get to this cottage before it becomes completely dark. I’ve just noticed there are no streetlights here. Where are we anyway?’
‘Questions, questions. It’s a little village called Dittisham, in the South Hams of Devon. I can’t wait to show you round tomorrow. Dartmouth is just up the road, well - up the river actually. In fact, the adventure starts here!’
***
‘That is hilarious,’ Ruby commented as they pushed open the low door into the quirkiest pub she had ever been inside in her life. A soft toy otter whizzed up to the top of the bar on a weighted string and triggered a bell to ring as they approached the bar.
Her mobile suddenly rang and everyone stared at her. The young, strawberry-blond bespectacled barman pointed to the sign above the air ambulance charity box on the bar. IF YOU RING, THE CHARITY BOX SINGS!
Ruby dutifully put in a coin and turned off her phone. Pulling his out of his pocket, Michael noticed he didn’t have a signal anyway. ‘What a good idea. Phones off for the rest of the weekend. I don’t want to talk to anyone but you, anyway.’
After both being convinced the local Addlestone cider was a must, they managed to find a little table near the big window at the front of the pub. The black of the river was paved in light from the full moon and the blinking lights of the boats moored in the Dart estuary.
After a pint of her cloudy drink, Ruby started to feel a bit tipsy. She was sure the ruddy-faced boating locals were watching her reaction to their local bionic brew.
‘Why have the bar staff got FBI on their sweatshirts?’ she asked. ‘Weird.’
Michael laughed. ‘Not weird at all - the pub’s called the Ferry Boat Inn.’
‘Ha! How ditsy am I? I love it here. It’s so cosy with the fire in the corner too.’
‘It’s my favourite place in the world. I had a pact with a good friend once that if ever either of us got into trouble, we would just say FBI because it is so out of the way no one would ever find us here.’ The friend was Justin and it suddenly made him feel sad. They had shared such good times.
‘That’s cool.’ Ruby broke his train of thought. ‘Well, maybe we should have the same pact too, Michael Bell. Not that either of us will ever get into any trouble. Good girl me.’
‘Hmm. When you want to be. But, yes - deal.’ He high-fived her. ‘Another pint?’
‘I can’t believe I’m drinking pints and no! If I don’t eat first, I’ll fall into the river walking back along that little path.’
‘Do you like the cottage though?’
‘You know I do - it’s perfect.’
Ruby squirmed slightly, thinking back to the amazing sex they had had earlier. They hadn’t even waited to unpack or look around. Just ran up to the bedroom of the estuary-fronted cottage and ripped each other’s clothes off. The tension of earlier heightening their lovemaking.
‘I’m hungry too after all that exercise.’ He kissed Ruby on the lips. ‘Check out the blackboard behind you: the grub here is all homemade and very tasty usually.’
‘So does a ferry run from right outside here then?’
‘Yes. You can get one across to Agatha Christie’s house or to Dartmouth.’ ‘Agatha Christie, we have to go!’
Michael was pleased at her excitement.‘It is a beautiful house – Greenway, it’s called. It was her holiday home, I believe, but is a National Trust property now. She actually based one of her novels there. Slugger, mate.’ Michael addressed the young barman whom he had recognised from the last time he was here. ‘Is the Dartmouth ferry going this time of year?’
‘You best ask old Ron over there. I think it depends what time he leaves here.’
Michael laughed. ‘OK, thanks.’
Ruby grinned with pleasure.‘Valentine’s Day with Agatha Christie and you. Maybe you can see if Daphne du Maurier’s free too and then I may just have to marry you!’ She was slurring by now.
Michael knew he couldn’t rise to this, but just to hear those words come out of his beautiful lover’s mouth, even in jest, made him feel warm inside.
So warm inside, that tomorrow he would tell her.
– Chapter Thirty-One –
‘AITCHOO!’ Everything about Simon Dye was loud, even his sneeze.
‘Bless you,’ Ruby offered as she came through the church-hall door. ‘So now you can’t blame poor little Fanny for your allergy, can you? She’s not even here.’
‘Susie?’
‘Ruby.’
‘Ruby, her dirty little hairs are obviously now embedded into the wooden floor.’
‘Maybe you’re allergic to me?’
‘More likely the moaners who come here every Tuesday.’
‘Harsh. But true.’ Laughing, she walked through to the small kitchen at the back of the hall.
‘Diet Coke?’
‘Yep, lovely.’
Ruby didn’t dare say she knew that in his mug at the front he had already poured his vodka. Mind you, maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. She was finding helping out here a lot harder than she’d anticipated. It had made her assess her own loss in ways she wouldn’t have thought possible.
‘So are you seeing anyone again, after your husband passing?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Ah, shagging someone then?’
‘Simon!’ Ruby turned her head to the side. ‘I think it’s more than that.’
‘Think?’ Ever the counsellor, he wouldn’t drop it.
‘Simon, stop it. It’s like I can’t give my all to someone because I still love George. We have just been away for Valentine’s, actually.’
‘So, it is more than that.’
‘He told me that he loved me.’ Ruby welled up.
Simon ran to her side. Here.’ Pulling two chairs up facing each other, he handed her a tissue and gently held her small pale hands in his great big black ones.
‘Is he a good, kind man?’ His Scottish accent seemed to get stronger with emotion.
Ruby nodded.
‘Do you feel he always puts you as number one?’
She carried on nodding and sniffed.
‘Just take it slow then, Ruby. Love is the great redeemer. If it is real you will know. I have no doubt about that. Death; bereavement - it’s a horrible business. But it will make you stronger - and you are strong, I can tell. It will be all right. That fella up there.’ He pointed to the picture of Jesus at the door. ‘He will make sure of it.’ Kneeling down to her level, he gave her a massive bear hug.
She felt a rush of
guilt, as she thought back to the moment when Michael had lain his heart on his sleeve and she had brushed it down onto his cuff and right onto the floor.
He had been so excited when he had pulled her up the steps of Dartmouth Castle. It was a freezing day, and the sea hundreds of metres below was glistening in the winter sun. The view was magnificent and Ruby felt happier than she had done in months.
He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into a little tiny room within the gun tower. It was big enough for two with a little ledge to sit on. The seagulls shouted their approval at his romantic gesture. The wind whistled through the viewing gaps.
‘This place!’ Ruby was swept away by its beauty.
‘I know. All the history too. This castle was evidently built during Henry VIII’s reign, but there is proof there was a castle here in Saxon times too.’
‘Imagine what’s it’s seen and heard.’ Michael could hear the excitement in Ruby’s voice. ‘I’d love to go back and just be an observer. I feel like that about a lot of history, don’t you?’
‘Ruby?’
‘Yes.’
‘Be quiet a moment.’ He shuffled closer to her on the little ledge, lifted her chin gently and kissed her deeply and passionately. She felt a rush of warmth flow through her and wanted to make love to him there and then.
‘I love you, Ruby,’ Michael whispered as he pulled away.
‘No, no. Don’t ruin it, not now.’ Ruby suddenly shot up and began to run as fast as the tiny winding castle stairs would allow.
He found her sitting on a rock on the beach way below the castle.
‘I’ve known you for less than two months, Michael.’
‘And I’ve known from the minute I met you that you are very special, Ruby. I can’t help the way I feel.’
‘You should have waited. It’s too soon.’
‘Not for me it’s not. I say it how it is - and how it is, is that I love you. I bloody love you.’
‘You don’t even know me.’
‘But I know how I feel.’
***
‘Tits, wanker, bollocks.’ Jimmy pushed the door open, roughly jolting Ruby back to reality and away from her thoughts of the dreadful long journey back from Devon in total silence.
‘Hello, Jimmy. How are you tonight?’
‘Oh you know, all right. Still waiting for Mrs Right. Sick of cooking burgers as I can’t find a proper job.’
‘I didn’t know you were looking. Milky coffee with sugar?’
‘Oh go on then, spoil me, Ruby, and yes - I’ve been looking for months. I’ve got a finance degree and I worked in Accounts for years, but when Jenny died at just thirty-two, I went to pieces.
‘It takes quite a woman to cope with a man with this awful syndrome, you know,’ Jimmy went on. ‘My self-confidence is at an all-time low at the moment.’ His whole body jerked. ‘When I have happy moments I don’t even tic. I really do think if I can get my life on track again and find a decent job and a woman who will take me on warts and all, this damn syndrome won’t be half as bad.’
Ruby made a vow to herself there and then that in ten years she would have made the effort at least to have moved on from her current state of mind. Imagine still grieving after all that time. Poor Jimmy.
Now that he had her attention, he wouldn’t stop.
‘I get the interviews no problem and then they see me and hear me and that’s it.’
Ruby stepped back slightly as she got a stench of the bad breath Simon had warned her about. She for once thought carefully before she spoke. ‘Maybe you should smarten yourself up a bit before the interviews. You know - have a shave, iron your shirt nicely.’
‘That’s exactly what my Jenny would have said.’
‘See? You can do it, Jimmy.’
‘Can I?’
‘Yes, you can.’ Ruby put her hand gently on this arm.
‘Will you help me, please?’
The Fireman crashed through the door with Ellie. They were laughing together loudly.
‘We share the jokes in here!’ Simon shouted from his desk, then whispered to Ruby: ‘Miserable fucking bastards usually.’
Cali sauntered in with a yapping Fanny.
‘AITCHOO! That bloody dog!’
‘Bless you,’ the group resounded.
‘Right, grab your drinks you horrible lot, let’s Bow Wow.’ Simon slurped from his vodka mug. ‘Tonight the topic, my little lost lovers, is…’ He paused and looked at Ruby, who was clearing up in the kitchen.
‘After bereavement, how soon is too soon to fall in love again?’
The mug that Ruby was drying slipped from her fingers and smashed to the floor.
– Chapter Thirty-Two –
‘A fecking box of chocolates and a dozen red roses. That was it. Rubes - that was it! No proposal of any sort. In fact, he fell asleep on me before we even got at it. I’d bought a whip and some body paint as well. Fecking bastard.’
‘Blimey, Fi. Haven’t heard you this angry for a while. Calm down. Let me get us another drink and we can talk about it.’
Fi took a massive slurp of her wine. The football was on so it was a busy Saturday afternoon in O’Neill’s Irish bar, but thankfully they had got in early enough to get a seat.
‘What’s the matter with him, Rubes? You know James as well as me; being a lawyer he is pragmatic and steady, but we’ve been together five years now and he knows how much I want to settle down.’
‘Hmm - and he usually does like his sex as much as you, so it was strange he fell asleep on you.’
‘Do you think he’s having an affair?’
‘I can categorically say no on that front. Whatever we say about James, he has been straight up about everything. I remember when George was going to marry Candice and we knew she was fleecing him of his dad’s inheritance, James didn’t take sides. He just said it how it was, and besides that, you can just tell he’s not a philanderer.’
‘But what does a philanderer look like? Anyone has the capacity to cheat.’
‘Not when they love you, they don’t. Stop being stupid, Fi.’
‘Get in there!’ Three lads in West Ham shirts jumped up at the same time as their beloved team scored.
‘My turn for the drinks.’ Fi intuitively gave Ruby’s arm a squeeze as she got up. ‘He’s here in spirit, I can feel him.’
She placed two large wines down on the table.
‘We’re gonna be pissed by six if we carry on at this rate,’ Ruby said. ‘What will James say then? You know he doesn’t like it when you get too drunk and disorderly, especially without him.’
‘See - another fault we have identified, Ruby girl. But I so want children, we have to get married.’ Then Fi pulled herself together, saying: ‘Look at me going on about me as usual. How was the weekend of sex with the delicious Mr Bell?’
‘It was bloody brilliant until he told me that he loved me.’
‘What!’
‘I know. I mean, I’ve known him for seven bloody weeks and the three little words literally bolted out of his mouth. Oh, Fi. I don’t know what to do. He is just the perfect gentleman. I fancy the pants off him and I feel so safe with him - but it just feels far too soon to be getting so serious.’
‘Oh, Rubes. Michael is so sweet. And that must have been so hard for him. Why not say what you just said to me? You can take it slow, see what happens. At least you know with him he won’t take five fecking years to propose!’
‘That’s what Simon said. Take it slow.’
‘Who the feck is Simon? Don’t tell me, you’ve got another one on the go?’ Fi laughed and hiccupped at the same time.
‘More news I haven’t told you about,’ Ruby explained. ‘I’m volunteering for a charity at the church hall in Eustace Street. Goes by the name of the Bow Wow Club.’
‘Oh. What’s that then, a dog’s home or something?’
‘No, it’s short for Boyfriends of Widows, Wives of Widowers; it helps people who are seeing bereaved people learn how to cope with t
hem and the problems losing somebody so close brings up.’ Ruby took a slurp of wine. ‘However, all sorts of waifs and strays turn up, even if they’ve just lost somebody and are feeling lonely.’
‘Aw, bless you Rubes, that’s so sweet.’
‘Talking of Simon, you’d love him. He’s a big black man with dyed orange cropped hair. He’s really funny and I can just tell he loves sex.’
‘Ooh, how divine.’
‘Only thing is, he’s so camp I don’t know if he’s gay or not; he seems to fancy men and women.’
‘Even better. That means he does just love sex.’
‘Fi! There’s you saying you think your boyfriend is behaving badly - listen to you.’
‘I just haven’t had it for a while, that’s all. And on that note, come on let’s drink up. I am feeling horny. James Kane is getting more than he bargained for when I go through that door.’
‘Just make sure the football’s over or you won’t stand a chance.’
They put their coats on to leave and Fi hugged Ruby tightly. ‘Go and see Michael. Just tell him how you feel. You like him, but want to take it slow as it’s scaring you a bit.’
Ruby walked up West Hill deep in thought. Could she imagine life without Michael in it? She loved his company and the feeling that being so close to him brought. She would be hard pushed to find anyone as decent. If she was really honest with herself, she was really scared of getting close to someone and losing them as well. But she would have to face that fear head on or she would end up sad and lonely, like poor Jimmy at the Bow Wow. Ten years on and still single.
OK, decision made. As soon as she got in she would arrange to meet Michael. They had to talk. So what, that he had said he loved her. Some women waited months for that moment. She should be happy that he cared that much.
She put the key in the door and rushed to the toilet, bursting; she really should have gone at the pub. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her face had filled out a bit now and she was pleased. Her brother was right, being a bony joany just didn’t suit her. She also liked her red hair longer. Losing her trademark bob was a good thing. Changes had to happen for her to move on.
She washed her hands and rinsed away the soap that had caught in her wedding ring. In doing so, the ring slipped up to the top of her finger.