Ignoring all the safety advice, the vicar tiptoed forward, peered at the non-firework, and struck a match.
With a whoosh and a flash and a scream, the first of Molly Coddle’s roman candles delighted the Hazy Hassocks crowd.
The vicar, minus an eyebrow and with a yellowish patch of hair, beamed triumphantly at everyone.
‘What have I missed?’ Joel forced his way through the crowd and pushed in beside her. ‘Have they started on the sacrificial virgins yet?’
Mitzi, whose fingers and toes had been nearing frostbite, was suddenly suffused in a gloriously warm glow. ‘No, but the vicar was close on being fricasseed. It’s an annual event. We’d all be so disappointed if it didn’t happen.’
The flames twinkled on Joel’s diamond ear-stud. Mitzi found it amazingly sexy. It was so – well – unexpected. And it reminded her of all the unisex glam fashions of her youth. He was wearing the long black coat over jeans and a dark sweatshirt, and looked so gorgeous that Mitzi felt her stomach contract.
‘I’m so pleased I managed to spot you,’ Joel said. ‘I’ve been wandering round and round this green for ages. Then I saw your hair. No one could miss your hair.’
Hennaed old hag? Was that what he thought? Oh, bugger.
‘I love redheads,’ Joel said happily. ‘I even married one once.’
‘I married a dyed blond who looked like David Bowie.’
Joel grinned down at her. ‘No contest, then.’
The fireworks were whooshing and swooshing and exploding round them. The vicar, having escaped being blown up by his incendiary devices, was busily organising the Scouts and Guides on the far side of the bonfire, arming them with forked beanpoles.
‘What the hell is going on over there?’ Joel leaned closer to her, his breath warm against her ear, as a rank of Catherine wheels, going nowhere, stuttered and screeched on the spot. ‘Is it some sort of rural initiation ceremony? I’ve never seen anything similar in Manchester.’
‘They’re hooking out the baked potatoes,’ Mitzi laughed. ‘They hand them round later when you’re too frozen to care that they’ve stripped the skin from your mouth – always assuming that Clyde’s wine hasn’t done it first.’
‘Do you fancy a proper drink?’ Joel asked. ‘Later? In a minute? I mean … Well … The Faery Glen is a nice pub and – er – of course, if you don’t want to—’
‘I’d love to,’ Mitzi reigned-in her grin and fought the urge to caper. ‘Ready when you are.’
The Faery Glen was quiet. A proper pub, being all genuine beams and bulging plastered walls and burnished brasses and worn polished furniture, it always offered a warm welcome.
Boris and Otto, looking bored, perked up behind the bar when Mitzi and Joel came in.
‘Dead tonight,’ Otto said. ‘Everyone’s at the fireworks. Be heaving later, no doubt. Nice to see you both. Er – are you together?’
Joel nodded. Mitzi, to her shame, blushed.
Otto smiled. ‘Oh, right. Didn’t know you knew each other, like. The usual, is it?’
‘Pint for me, please,’ Joel said. ‘Mitzi?’
Boris bustled forward. ‘Glass of red? Large?’
‘Yes, please.’
Choosing a dimpled, copper-topped table beside the cavernous fireplace with its glowing logs, Mitzi slid off her coat and watched Joel chatting at the bar. No doubt Otto and Boris were digging out the minutiae of their friendship.
It was so long since she’d been taken out by a man that she felt quite nervous. Not that this was being taken out, of course. Just two people who knew each other slightly, being in the same place at the same time, having a drink. Two lonely-ish people, Mitzi added mentally. Two people who had very little in common except being divorced.
‘Great pub,’ Joel said, handing her the wine glass and shedding his own coat. ‘I wish I lived in Hazy Hassocks – there’s nothing as good as this in Winterbrook. They’re all yoof pubs with lots of noise and music and games and screens …’
‘And you’re too old for all that?’
‘Sadly, yes. Awful, isn’t it? Oh, not that I don’t enjoy the music and the noise and the bustle. But much as I might think I still look eighteen, I’m always aware of the real teenagers staring at me with pity when I try to sing along with Nine Bob Note Rapper and His Wreckin’ Crew, or whatever is playing on the juke box.’
Mitzi laughed. ‘I stick with the Stones and Hendrix and Mott the Hoople and Dave Edmunds – which are all probably way before your time.’
‘Fishing?’ Joel grinned. ‘I’m forty-one.’
‘Fifty-five,’ Mitzi said, delighted that she wasn’t quite old enough to be his mother after all. ‘And don’t we look good on it?’
‘We do,’ Joel raised his glass to her. ‘Sensational. Here’s to the older generation. May we never grow up.’
After that it was so easy to talk to him. Several drinks later, the pub rapidly filling up, they were still catching up on their various pasts, presents and hopes for the future. It was absolute bliss, Mitzi thought, having had slightly too much wine, to feel so relaxed.
‘Hi, Mum.’ Lulu suddenly loomed over the table. ‘Hello, Joel. Can we join you?’
She pulled up a stool before either of them said a word. Bundling the whiffy Afghan under the table, she grinned at them both. ‘Shay’s just getting the drinks in. Have you had a good evening?’
‘Great,’ they spoke together and laughed.
Lulu nodded. ‘All thanks to Granny’s apple love magic of course … cool stuff. Oh, look – a family gathering!’
Mitzi craned her neck and could just make out Doll’s neat blonde head bobbing through the crowds towards them, followed by Brett. It was lovely to see them, she thought. With his early starts they rarely went out in the evenings, and Mitzi hadn’t expected them to come on to the pub after the fireworks. Things must be looking up for them.
‘Hi.’ Doll’s beam outshone any of the fireworks. ‘I’m so pleased you’re all together. It saves having to say this more than once.’
Brett grinned at her and kissed the top of her head.
‘Oh, pul-lease,’ Lu pulled a face. ‘Not in public!’
Poking her tongue out at her, Doll upped her beam. ‘Mum, you’re going to be a grandmother. Lu you’re going to be an auntie. Joel you’re going to be minus a nurse. Oh, and you’re all invited to a wedding – on Christmas Eve …’
Chapter Sixteen
‘When I asked you out for a meal tonight,’ Joel whispered in the icy darkness of the village hall, ‘this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.’
‘No, I know. Me neither. I’m really sorry,’ Mitzi whispered back, passing him one of Lavender and Lobelia’s special sardine fish-paste sandwiches. ‘But it’s fun, isn’t it?’
‘And different,’ Joel nodded in agreement. ‘Which, since I’ve been in Hazy Hassocks, is something I’m beginning to get a taste for – unlike the sandwiches.’
Mitzi giggled just as the Dansette record player wheezed into Ragini, Rado and MacDermot’s ‘Electric Blues’.
The past week, since Doll and Brett’s earthshaking announcement, had been one of the strangest of her life. Discovering she was to become a grandmother and being foolish enough to fall in love at precisely the same time, had turned her world upside down.
On Bonfire Night in The Faery Glen, Mitzi hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. Of course she was absolutely delighted for Doll and Brett, but – just when she’d been feeling all whimsical and girlish with Joel – the announcement couldn’t have come at a worse time.
Of course, even then she’d known she was far too old for him. It was out of the question. Anyone with any sense would realise that. And he’d shown no inclination whatsoever in that direction. But after her Halloween party she’d allowed herself just a little dream or two of how it might possibly be if convention could be ignored and miracles happened and wishes came true.
Then came the body blow.
A grandmother.
Okay, it was very selfish, but ju
st how old did that make her sound? However much she might think she was still twenty-two inside her head, and youthful in her outlook, her dress and well, everything – there was surely nothing more guaranteed to kill an embryo romance with a gorgeous younger man stone-dead than being called ‘Gran’?
Sitting by Otto and Boris’s roaring log fire that evening, hugging Doll and Brett and trying to take it all in, she’d realised she’d simply have to enjoy Joel’s company. She’d have to make the most of his friendship, but there could be no more silly thoughts of reciprocal love. Her feet, which minutes earlier had been walking on air all the way from the village green to The Faery Glen, had been dragged back to the ground with a resounding thump.
Not that Mitzi’s feet, or any of the rest of her, had stayed grounded for very long. Once the news of the baby and the Christmas Eve marriage had started to spread round Hazy Hassocks, she felt as though she’d been caught up in Dorothy’s Kansas whirlwind.
With only six weeks in which to organise the wedding – very small, Doll and Brett had insisted, with the reception in The Faery Glen – and the BBC’s festive activities, not to mention becoming a party purveyor of Granny’s Goodies, Mitzi was more confused than ever.
For umpteen years when she’d been Mr Dickinson’s right-hand woman in the bank, she’d managed to organise meetings and appointments and conferences and travel arrangements and holidays and seminars and a zillion other things. She’d kept Mr Dickinson’s three diaries running smoothly. There’d never been a double booking, or a missed appointment, or a clash of any sort. It had all run seamlessly. She’d been efficient. Unruffled, calm and efficient.
What on earth had happened? Only a couple of months later and left to organise her own life, she’d gone completely to pot.
Oh, well, back to the real world, she thought – which at that moment was being alone with Joel in the darkened body of Hazy Hassocks’s cold and cheerless village hall with a tinny version of ‘Aquarius’ now rattling through the lone speaker.
The first was lovely; the second was not so…
‘I am sorry about this,’ Mitzi said quietly. ‘I’d really been looking forward to going into Winterbrook tonight and having a meal at Lorenzo’s. My head’s like a sieve recently. I’d forgotten all about the Baby Boomers auditions – and there was no way I could get out of it.’
‘No problem,’ Joel said. ‘We’ll go to Lorenzo’s next time. And we can always get a takeaway later. I know you’re up to your eyes in organising all the wedding stuff.’
Mitzi nodded. ‘How’s Doll coping at work?’
‘Amazingly. Me and Viv and Tammy and Mr Johnson are frantic on her behalf, trying to get her to slow down and put her feet up. And she just laughs and says she isn’t anywhere near that stage, and that both the wedding and the birth will be a breeze.’
‘I know she’s intending to work until the minute she goes into labour,’ Mitzi hissed. ‘And she probably will.’
The record player had moved on to ‘Ain’t Got No Grass’.
Joel grinned. ‘She keeps telling us all to chill.’
‘She’s always been that way,’ Mitzi said, bravely chewing at a sandwich. ‘Cool, calm and collected. God knows what would happen if Lu was in that position. World War Three at least. And please have another sandwich. Go on, Lav and Lob made them specially.’
‘Oh, well, in that case I suppose I ought to steel myself …’ Joel helped himself from the depths of the silver wrappings.
Trilby Man, strutting in the hall’s only illumination on the stage, peered crossly down at them. ‘Can we have some ’ush in the auditorium, please! You’re supposed to be writing this down for me, Mitzi, not nattering. We’ve reached a delicate point in casting – and you two rattling tinfoil and chatting and laughing like damn fool teenagers is putting us off!’
Mitzi and Joel exchanged glances and tried not to giggle again.
Of course, Mitzi thought giddily, Trilby Man was, for once, exactly right. She still felt just like a teenager in love. Madness, of course, and never destined for a happy ending, but blissful all the same.
She’d been more excited than she could ever remember when Joel had suggested the dinner date at Lorenzo’s. And more disappointed than she’d like to admit when she’d realised it clashed with the casting auditions for Hair.
Of course there was no contest.
She tried not to look at the stage as the Hair LP skittered on to ‘Sodomy’.
At least Joel had readily agreed to accompany her to the village hall. He’d said he’d been looking forward to spending an evening with her and while Lorenzo’s may have been more pleasant, the village hall would suit him fine.
It was the sort of statement that made her fall in love with him even more, damn it.
So instead of the fat-candled and garlicky-herby-red-wine ambience of Lorenzo’s, here she was on a plastic chair in the freezing mustiness of the hall, with an A4 notepad, her laptop, various post-it notes, scraps of paper, backs of envelopes, a million scribbled mnemonics, and of course, Joel, trying to juggle everything.
‘Pass the foodie things to me,’ Joel hissed, one eye on the stage and Trilby Man and a selection of the Baby Boomers who were being cast as The Tribe. ‘No, not any more of those bloody sandwiches – who on earth mashes sardine paste with piccalilli? No, I mean the list of the recipes from your Gran’s book and the prices. Thanks. Okay – so I’ll type them up on the laptop while you sort out the wedding stuff and take notes for Mr Hitler-in-a-Hat up there.’
‘Silence!’ Trilby Man roared at them, as several of the less able BBC-ers and the Dansette wobbled through ‘Hare Krishna’. ‘We have artistes working up here!’
Mitzi stared very hard at the floor.
‘Your shoulders are shaking,’ Joel whispered. ‘He’ll notice.’
Mitzi bit her lips very hard and sniffed back hysterical tears. There was something unnerving about a dozen pensioners wearing hats and scarves and zip-up bootees and very tightly buttoned coats pretending to be youthful free spirits. And it could only get worse.
Lav and Lob, hippie bandannas tied rakishly round their cycle helmets, had made so much fuss about being left out that they’d been co-opted in as extras in The Tribe on the understanding that they wouldn’t have to sing any of the songs with rude words.
‘Lovely! Lovely!’ Trilby Man clapped. ‘That’s The Tribe sorted, then! Mitzi – ’ave you got all the names down, duck?’
Mitzi nodded.
‘Right. Good. So that’s the lot. Now the main roles – make sure you gets ’em all in order … Ronnie will be Berger, Christopher is Woof, and Sid and Philip will share being Claude because of the strenuous nature of the role. Beryl is Crissy, Doreen is Dionne, and Bernard can be Sheila because of his falsetto and wig. Oh, and hopefully Frank will be okay as Hud once he gets the all-clear re his blood pressure because of hanging upside down from that there pole in Act I …’
Trilby Man’s voice droned on. The Dansette was stuck on ‘Ain’t Got No …’ Mitzi scribbled. It became more and more obvious that this was going to be a disaster of epic proportions.
Joel, diligently tapping away one fingered on the laptop was trying hard not to laugh. ‘I think I’ve nearly finished your list – you’ll have to check the spellings on some of these things, though. But what on earth are Green Gowns? And Dreaming Creams? And who wants Dragon’s Blood in their pudding?’
‘God knows,’ Mitzi started to gather together her pieces of paper. ‘But someone might – it’s supposed to be a love potion according to Granny Westward, so I just threw it in … Thanks for doing that. I’ll print out several copies when I get home and we’ll see what happens … Right – I’m more than ready for a drink.’ She groaned as the Dansette hit ‘Good Morning Starshine’. ‘Let’s get out of here before Trilby Man starts putting them through the song-and-dance bit and I really disgrace myself. You do fancy a pint at The Faery Glen, don’t you? Okay, last one out of here buys the first round.’
Jo
el beat her to the door by a millisecond.
‘Of course I’m delighted, darling,’ Lance held Doll’s hands in his across the scrubbed-pine table in his maisonette. ‘Couldn’t be more pleased. A grandpa! I still can’t believe it … And are you feeling okay? I remember how ghastly Mitzi was with both you and Lulu.’
‘Hopefully I haven’t inherited her morning-sickness genes, then. No, honestly I’m absolutely fine,’ Doll grinned. ‘It’s very early days, of course, but you know me – strong as the proverbial herd of oxen.’
‘Long may it last, love. And do you and Brett want a boy or a girl? Thought of names yet? And this wedding – I am going to give you away, aren’t I?’
Doll laughed. ‘Of course you are. It’s only going to be a very small do, though. Church wedding at four o’clock on Christmas Eve then straight into The Faery Glen. And we don’t mind if the baby’s a boy or a girl – but one thing we are sure about, it’ll have a very ordinary name. Jane or Ann or Susan or John or James – it will not suffer like I have!’ She looked round the very clean kitchen. ‘Where’s Jennifer? Have you told her that she’ll be a step-grandmother at the tender age of thirty-two?’
‘She didn’t take it too well. Had to go off to the nail bar for restorative treatment. She’ll be sorry to have missed you tonight – she’s at her evening class at the moment.’
‘Jennifer? Goodness, is she attempting to improve her conversational English?’
‘Bitchy …’ Lance tried to look stern and failed. ‘It’s a ten-week course on skin buffing and something else she’ll need to climb the beauty therapy ladder. Could it be colonic irrigation?’
‘Possibly. Probably. Almost definitely.’
They smiled at one another. Doll really wished that the family hadn’t been fractured. That her parents could have shared this wonderful news together. Still, it was something that Mitzi and Lance were now on such friendly terms. She’d probably never let either of them know that it was their divorce which had made her doubt for so long whether marriage to Brett was a good move. If Lance and Mitzi had remained together then they’d have probably tied the knot years earlier – baby or no baby.
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