I was touched by his concern. I knew he’d chosen this place because he liked it, so I didn’t want to try anywhere else.
“Of course I don’t mind.” I replied, but I wished for the umpteenth time that I had cuter pyjamas, not to mention a figure that would even look good in an old sack.
The house was straight out of a storybook, with thick stone walls and red and yellow roses climbing all over the front and it seemed to have stood there for more generations than I had fingers to count on. The narrow, well trodden staircase took us up to a bright, cheerful room with two beds, a small sofa and its own bathroom. Although it didn’t have a sea view, I could hear the waves when I opened the window.
“Perfect!” I exclaimed and turned to face him.
He’d been hovering uncertainly by the door, but he relaxed immediately and returned my grin. We didn’t unpack or anything, we just left the one bag we had in the room and went off to explore.
As we walked, it was easy to remember that he was the historian and boy did we walk that day. He told me things about the town, like how prosperous it had once been, and in its day, possibly more important than Liverpool or Portsmouth, until the ships became too big. After the great storm of 1824, pioneering lifeboat design took place there and played an important role in the early years of the lifeboat institution. Much of the prehistoric world was known because of the fossils that could be found on the beach and in the cliffs. There seemed to be nothing he didn’t know about the place and so much information just kept pouring out of him. My head swum with it all and I had a problem taking it all in.
The town itself was lovely and everywhere we went the views were spectacular, especially the cliffs and the sea. I was as drunk on it all as I had ever been, yet not a drop of alcohol had passed my lips and for a little while, I thought I understood the feeling that my Mum was always unsuccessfully searching for.
The park we went to was still full of roses and the trees had only a hint of autumn colour to them. As we sat on a bench, I couldn’t help myself and started to hum ‘What a wonderful world.’ Jack knew the words, well the first verse anyway and we sat holding hands, doing our duet. It was one of life’s magic moments and I never wanted to leave the place. Suddenly it was as though I too had found somewhere I could call home, but hadn’t even known that I’d been searching for it. I was exhausted, yet deliriously happy at the same time and at lunchtime we headed for a pub near the Cobb.
Afterwards we walked along the harbour wall. Jack was describing a particular storm to me and it was difficult to believe that this water, so calm and gentle now, could ever be so cruel and wild. Then my mobile rang and he stopped mid sentence. I fished it out of my pocket. Only my Mum or work ever called me and I knew it wouldn’t be work. I looked at the display and my heart sank a little. Unfortunately I could never tell by the ringtone what mood she would be in, but I hoped she’d calmed down and wanted just to talk to me, apologise even.
Best get it over with I thought, so I moved away from him slightly, pressed the green button and put the phone to my ear.
“Swwweetie...” she slurred.
I sighed unhappily. She’d either started early or had been at it all night.
“Afternoon Mum.” I said quietly.
“Is it?” she said, sounding confused.
She’d been at it all night then...
“Pop by on your way home from work, there’s a love, I’m a bit short.”
I knew that if I wasn’t quick, she’d hang up and assume that I’d be there sometime during the day. She’d said what she’d wanted to say and had clearly forgotten our most recent row, but then she usually did. It was me that remembered them and me that felt hurt for ages afterwards.
I sighed again. Why did she have to spoil, or at the very least complicate things all the time? I knew that what I was about to tell her would probably only start another row, in fact I felt sure about it, but didn’t know how to avoid it.
“Mum!” I shouted, to get her attention.
“Uhou?” was the slurred response.
“I can’t, I’m not there.” I told her.
She instantly sobered up and her voice sharpened as she realised that things were not as they usually were.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“I’m...I’m...” I trailed off, unsure about what to tell her.
“You’re what...?”
Now there was a hint of anger creeping into her voice.
“I’m in Lyme Regis, more than four hours away.” I said, deciding on the truth.
“What? Why?”
“I’m here with a friend, to celebrate my birthday.” I said quietly, looking over to Jack, who was studiously staring at his feet and pretending not to listen, but I could see his eyebrows moving.
“Hear that Gav? She’s in fuckin’ someplace or other with a ‘friend’!”
He’d come back then I thought, as she shouted this news to the drunken lump she professed to love. At least I didn’t have to worry about her taking another overdose. But any relief I might have felt was quickly wiped out as she carried on screeching at me.
“You ain’t got no friends, so don’t go pretending that you have. You get yourself round here at the double missy and bring some fucking money with you if you know what’s good for you. I’ll give you celebrating your birthday! Why should anyone want to celebrate the day you dragged your fat miserable arse into this world?”
She was in full flow now and the torrent of horrible words started to blur into each other. I hadn’t realised that Jack had come to stand beside me and that he had heard some, if not all of what she was saying. He gently prised the phone out of my taut fingers and snapped it shut, ending the call.
“She doesn’t mean it.” I whispered, trying to get control of myself, trying to not let the hate filled words hurt me.
“When she’s sober...” I began to say.
“When she’s sober, she will have forgotten.” he said softly, finishing the sentence for me.
“But that’s what I mean; if she really meant it, she’d say it when she was sober too.” I said lamely, but strangely, it didn’t give me the usual reassurance that had so often comforted me in the past. It lost something when it was said out loud to someone else.
He studied me for a moment, then with his thumb, gently wiped away a tear that I hadn’t felt escape.
“Do you always make excuses for her?” he asked.
I looked up into his eyes. “She’s my Mum. She’s sick and no, I’m not making excuses for her. I’m using what information I have to decide what’s what.”
I could see that he didn’t understand what I meant, so I tried to find better words to explain something that I’d never tried to explain before.
“For years she made all the choices, or rather she didn’t always; too often she let things happen that maybe shouldn’t have been allowed to. I was just a kid and had to get by as best I could. Often she wasn’t able to, or didn’t want to think about how those decisions or actions would affect me. They weren’t all bad, you have to believe me on that score, but from a lot of them nothing good ever came, not for her or for me. The difference is that now I make my own decisions and deal with the consequences myself. Now I form my own opinions and try to make the best choice; mainly for me, but sometimes for us. Me and her I mean.”
He didn’t say anything, he just carried on looking at me. It wasn’t that he disbelieved me, more like he still didn’t really understand. I tried again, but kept it simpler.
“Jack, she’s my mother. Sure, I wish she could love me in a way I could count on, but wishes rarely come true. She’s the only family I’ve got and when the chips are down, usually I’m all she’s got, so that means around fifty percent of this relationship is down to me. Sometimes I get it wrong, that’s all.”
He went quiet for a bit, I suppose thinking about what I’d said. As he looked into my eyes he was frowning and I could see he was still troubled.
“Do you make excuses
for me?” he asked quietly.
His voice was barely a whisper and filled with some deep pain.
“Oh Jack...”
I reached up and touched his cheek. “I don’t have to make excuses for you. You have your life to lead, I have mine. For reasons that you can’t tell me, it’s unlikely that we’ll be spending much of it together. But that’s ok, really it is. You give me hope, something that’s not been in plentiful supply in my life, so that makes it a pretty big thing.”
In that moment, I realised not only how lonely I’d been, but also how alone he was too. I could feel it coming from him in waves, creeping through my carefully layered defences, but right there and then my loneliness had no power over me; I was free of it. I didn’t say any of this, but I guessed from the way his eyes held mine and how he smiled at me that he understood. Actually, I knew much more than that, I absolutely knew that he felt the same.
“I hardly know you Jack, yet I feel as though I really do, daft though that sounds. I’m so glad I will get to spend my birthday, this particular birthday, with you.”
I didn’t look away as I spoke, I felt content just floating in his eyes.
“Me too,” he said. “I’ve missed you all the time.”
Such simple words; spoken so softly, yet with such burning honesty they unleashed all the things I’d spent my life hiding. I spoke slowly, letting an idea form on its own, allowing the words to come out without checking them first.
“I know there are things you can’t tell me and time you can’t spend with me, but we have these few days; maybe we can make them last a lifetime. You know, like in the war, when no one could be sure they’d ever see each other again, so that somehow they made more of the time they had.”
He nodded. “Ah, time... I have all the time in the world, but not enough to spend with you, to find out what we could have been, or how good it would have been.” he said cryptically.
Most of what he said made no sense at all, so I didn’t really consider it. My heart and mind latched onto the one word I did understand. He’d said ‘we’ and he’d said it in a way that gave it depth and meaning.
I knew then that there was every amazing possibility that he could love me. You can’t imagine how that knowledge affected me; I had no words, there was nothing I could say to explain myself. I suppose our first kiss was inevitable, but that didn’t make the timing of it anything less than perfect.
As we stood there he wrapped his arms around me and buried his face in my hair, just murmuring my name, seeming to have the exact same level of wonderment that I was feeling. Smug was not something I’d ever had much of a chance to experience, but for the rest of the afternoon, smug was exactly how I felt.
Chapter six
Neither of us had taken any posh clothes and in fact, he hadn’t taken anything else at all. In the evening we were both ravenous; what with the fresh sea air and all the walking we’d done, so we decided to have dinner in the pub where we’d had lunch. The menu had loads of stuff on it that I’d never eaten before and we ordered a huge seafood platter to share, with dips and onion rings and ate it with our fingers, giggling and pulling faces at some of the flavours and textures. He seemed as uncertain as I was about some of the bits on the plate, but we finished most of it and shared a bucket of ice cream for pudding; all different flavours and covered with lashings of chocolate sauce.
Afterwards, we were so full we could hardly move and after some sleepy indecision, settled on a waddle along the beach to walk some of it off. I didn’t think my poor feet could walk another step, but the coolness of the sand was bliss and I wriggled my bare toes deep into it whenever we stopped.
We left the lights of the town behind us and I could see so many stars, more than I’d ever seen in my life before. There was a new moon suspended over the dark water and that wonderful sound of the waves lapping on the beach. We were in no rush and walked hand in hand, stopping often, to kiss or just to stroke each other’s face, as though neither of us could believe that the other one was really there. I thought that nothing could have made it more perfect than it was.
But then he gently took my hand in his and placed my free hand on his shoulder. Then he put his arm around my waist and started to sing a song that I didn’t recognise. He knew some of the words and hummed the rest and we began to dance slowly in time with the song. I followed his lead and we twirled, ankle-deep in the water, alone on the beach, but together in our own wonderful world. I felt as though I’d stepped into someone else’s story, someone unknown, whose life was more interesting than mine could ever be and then realised that it was really mine; all mine.
That night I made love for the first time. There had been dark times before, when one or other of my Mum’s louts had taken by force and with horrible carelessness what they wanted. There had been no love involved, only fear and the certainty that Mum would choose not to believe me.
With Jack though, it was exactly as I would have wanted it to be; gentle, surprising, tender and safe. Afterwards we lay next to each other, arms and legs all intermingled, not wanting to sleep, not wanting to let the magic disappear through the open window, only to get lost in the waves. I didn’t trust myself to speak; I might have said the wrong thing, so I contented myself with the warmth of his body and the fact that he seemed very happy to have me there. His hand reached for mine and I felt him trace patterns over it, then we laced our fingers together.
He sighed and then in the darkness whispered, “I love you Grace, crazy though that must seem to you.”
“Yes, it’s crazy.” I said with a smile. “We could be crazy together though, but only if I’m allowed to love you back.”
In the seconds that followed my words and as I waited for his response, I don’t know which of us was more still. His face was only inches away from mine and in the strange light it looked pale.
“Permission granted.” he whispered, then silenced my gurgle of delight with a long kiss.
When I woke up, I was aware of an empty space beside me in the narrow single bed and my heart lurched. I didn’t want to open my eyes, so I tried to listen for sounds in that unfamiliar room. Was he in the other bed, or the bathroom? But I could only hear the waves, which normally would have delighted me. I slowly sat up and only then did I open my eyes. The other bed was still made and only my clothes were on the floor. The bathroom door was open, so I could see all too clearly that it was empty and I had to stifle the sob that was clawing its way up to my throat from somewhere deep inside me.
In that confused moment, when I was feeling so foolish, sad and lost, the whole room shimmered. I blinked, trying to clear my eyes. It was the strangest thing, as though the room itself suddenly became elongated. The door appeared to be a long way off and somehow, in the space between it and the bed, Jack was walking quickly towards me. He was very far away, but getting closer at the same time and his face was twisted as if he were in pain. I was worried and reached out to him. Was he hurt?
It seemed to last only a second and then he was by my side, sitting on the bed, gathering me up in his arms.
“Grace, Grace, I’m sorry. I meant to be back before you woke up. Grace don’t cry, please don’t cry.”
“Mnumph, happy tears.” I blurted, into his now soggy shoulder.
He pushed me away gently and held me in front of him, watching me carefully. As I smiled, he seemed to relax.
“Grace, I meant everything I said last night.” he said, soundings so serious. “I do love you. I can’t promise you all the things a man should be able to promise the woman he loves, but that doesn’t change the fact.”
The tears dried up instantly and any silly thoughts I’d had, melted away.
There was a gentle knock on the door and I looked up, pleased to see that it was back where it should be. I glanced at Jack.
“Breakfast for the birthday girl!” he proudly declared.
He went to collect the trolley that had been left outside and then carefully wheeled it to the side of the bed.
>
There were red and blue flowers in a tall, thin vase. On a tray was a jug of fresh orange juice, tea in a proper teapot with china cups and saucers, thick slices of toasted white bread, fried eggs, bacon, sausages and great big grilled mushrooms and tomatoes. There was another china plate with butter, jam and marmalade and still another, with a pile of muffins on it.
“It’s a feast!” I cried in disbelief.
“We’ll need it.” he announced cheerfully, as he loaded a plate and handed it to me. “Today, we are going to do the coast walk.”
He piled some food onto a plate for himself and then sat on the bed beside me. We munched in silence, letting the moment pass, the one where I should have asked what on earth had just happened and by asking, forcing him to make up a story when I already knew that he didn’t want to lie to me. When we’d had seconds or possibly thirds, because there wasn’t much of anything left on the trolley, I carefully poured the tea and then got back into bed feeling happy.
“I left because I wanted to get you a birthday present.” he said quietly, handing me a square wooden box.
I looked at it for ages. It was highly polished and beautifully made, not like any of the cheap stuff I’d grown up with and on the lid was a hand painted picture of trees, with a snow topped mountain in the background.
“Open it.” he whispered.
I slowly unfastened the small clasp and lifted the lid. Inside was some kind of mechanism, hidden by a beautifully patterned brass disc with hundreds of tiny holes in it, held in place by a bar with tiny wheels. It started to turn on its own and as I looked up at him a little mystified, it began to play music. The tune was the one he’d hummed the previous night, when we danced on the starlit beach. My eyes filled up again and big tears splashed down onto my hands, but I also had the hugest smile on my face.
What about us? Page 5