by Liam Livings
The lift stopped, and the doors opened at our floor. I pulled away from the kiss. There was a white-haired couple at the door, waiting to get in. “Sorry.”
As the lift doors closed, we both started to giggle, which built into a proper guffaw as we virtually fell through our door, landing in a heap on the floor.
Sky looked up at me as I landed on top. “I know, and that’s how much I love you too.”
We arrived at the Eiffel Tower very early next morning. I stood in the middle at the bottom of the tower and beckoned Sky to join me from where he was leaning against one of the tower’s feet. We both looked up.
Sky said with a smirk, “It’s like looking up the Eiffel Tower’s bum hole.”
“They do say it’s the most romantic city in the world,” I replied with a bigger smirk.
A man stood at the base of the tower with a sign reading “Câlins Gratuits”—“Free Hugs” in French. I joined the queue of giggling girls waiting to hug the stripy-smock-wearing man with the Popeye arms and snug jeans. As he saw me at the front of the queue, he smiled and laughed before giving me a huge, tight hug, and Sky took a photo.
The Louvre might as well only have had one painting as everyone walked straight past all the others, making a beeline for the Mona Lisa. Underwhelmed doesn’t do justice to it. It was a tiny painting, smaller than a laptop screen, inside a clear box, surrounded by people taking pictures with their cameras and phones. I caught a glimpse, but the real spectacle was found when we stood against the far wall in the same room, watching the crowds scrabble for space and a view around the famous painting. That made a more interesting picture than my single second of grabbed alone time with herself in the clear box.
We climbed the hundreds of steps, past painters, people selling knocked off sunglasses and handbags, farther up the steps until we reached the Sacré-Coeur Basilica.
After taking the usual snap of the basilica, Sky suggested we turn round. And that was the real spectacle—the one most people missed out on as they were concentrating too hard on what they thought they’d climbed the steps for, instead of taking time to reflect and enjoy all that was around them. Paris stretched out beneath us as far as we could see: orange-tiled buildings jostled for space among those with green-leaded roofs looking as ornate as a wedding cake, and church spires poked above the other buildings, way into the distance.
“Hungry?” Sky asked as we started walking down the steps, holding each other’s hand.
“I will be.”
“Good.”
As the steps reached a plateau before turning back on themselves, a portrait artist grabbed my hand and said something in French, while pointing to us both, then showing us the range of charcoal portraits surrounding him.
I dropped Sky’s hand, suddenly feeling embarrassed and self-conscious.
The man took our hands and joined them once again, then showed us to the wall to sit for him. There was a bit of a discussion about money, which Sky took care of, and we soon relaxed, holding hands and smiling at the artist.
I released Sky’s hand after some passing tourists tutted loudly.
The artist stood and joined our hands again, saying, “L’amour est l’amour: c’est tout.”
I looked at Sky, who translated, “He says love is love. That’s it.”
After a while scribbling on the paper with the charcoal, glancing at us over the top, he showed us his drawing. It was an impressive likeness of us both. The artist motioned drawing a heart between us, and we both shook our heads and said it was fine just as it was.
I carried the rolled-up drawing on our way home. “Talk about gilding the lily, eh. Drawing a heart between us.”
“He thought we were on our honeymoon. That’s why he offered to draw the heart.”
“Right.”
“Lune de miel. Honeymoon in French.”
We walked to the Seine, to a restaurant on a permanently moored boat called Le Bateau d’Amour—the Love Boat.
After ordering, Sky left the table for the gents.
I took in my surroundings and smiled at the gentle lapping of the water, the slight bobbing motion of the boat, the restaurant filled with tables for two, and the violin player in the far corner, playing classical music I knew.
A waiter arrived in the black trousers and white shirt-black tie combo they all favoured in Paris. He apologised and lit the two candles on our table before disappearing once again.
Sky returned, just as the waiter brought our pâté starters.
“You all right? It’s not those snails from last night, is it?” Sky’s face had a slight green tinge.
“Fine. I think it’s the movement of the boat. I’ll get used to it. Eat your pâté before it gets….”
“It’s meant to be cold.” I cut off a corner of pâté and spread it on the little bit of thin, curly toast it had come with. My knife stopped on something hard as I spread the pâté. It was something shiny, something round and shiny. A plain silver ring.
I placed the ring in my palm. “What’s this in here for? I can’t eat this now, who knows where this has been. Get the waiter over. I want a new pâté.”
Sky said, “Do you like it?”
“It’s all right, not as nice as the pâté last night, though. Maybe my stomach’s a bit dodgy with the boat’s movement.”
“Not the pâté, the ring.”
“Why? Oh.”
Sky wiped the pâté off the ring with his napkin, then put it in my left hand. “Richard, would you do me the honour of being my husband?”
“I… I…. What about your ring?”
“Mine’s in my pâté. I’ve not found it yet.”
“Well don’t hang about, find it and I’ll get on my knees.”
“So we’re both on our knees. Isn’t that going to look a bit weird?”
I shrugged. “So we’ll both do it sitting, putting the ring on each other’s finger. Equals.”
He gently cut through his pâté with his knife, and after a bit of messing about, he pulled out his plain silver ring, wiped it clean, then held it in his hand. “Ready?”
We both put the ring on each other’s finger and said, at the same time, “Will you marry me?”
And we both replied, “Yes.”
We laughed, breaking the tension. Even though I had thought I couldn’t be any happier the day before, I now was.
Sky stood and shouted, “He said yes! We both said yes!” Then he must have repeated it in French as the waiters came out of the kitchen clapping, and some of the guests stood and clapped too. Sky lifted me up and held me tight. “I’m never going to let you go.”
A waiter appeared, saying something about les escargots. He must have misheard what Sky had said to me. We laughed, and the waiter returned to the others. Some were still clapping.
“I’m a bit broken inside here.” I tapped my head. “You must have seen that, when I….”
“You are you, and I love all of you, broken bits as well.”
“Do you really know what you’re letting yourself in for? Did Luke tell you what I did, twice now?”
“You were very unhappy. You were in a very different place from now.”
“I worry that when I am happy, it’s unbalanced, that somehow I need to have some of it taken away from me because I don’t deserve it all. And that’s when I don’t know what I’m doing, when I am not well, when I end up trying to….”
Sky took my hands and held them in the middle of the table. “There’s no cosmic scales of happiness and sadness, it just all happens. All you can do is make it up as you go along, see what life throws at you, and hope someone’s looking after you upstairs. You can’t not enjoy happiness because you worry about it ending. You’ve got to run towards happiness, grabbing it with both hands and squeezing it like your life depends on it. Because it does.” He paused, staring into my eyes. “Are you ready to do that with me, both of us together?”
“I think so.”
“That’s good enough for me”
&
nbsp; On the moonlit walk back to the hotel, as we held hands, he explained how he’d prepared for the weekend in Paris. “I researched what the most romantic city was, and Paris came up. Then there was all this stuff about gay Paree, so I thought ‘How perfect.’”
He continued, telling me how he’d asked the waiter to put the rings in the pâté, and how he’d worried they would get lost and someone else would end up with our wedding rings, and how he’d specifically picked this restaurant because it had a clear view of the moon at that time of the year.
Sky really had got into the Internet research. I hadn’t thought about marrying Sky before he proposed—well, we proposed to each other—but once he said it, I knew my answer would be yes. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this man who’d given up a whole different life just to be with me, but who never once mentioned missing that old life, never once used it against me as emotional blackmail. He freely and kindly gave himself to me, without strings, and I knew that was exactly what I wanted to do for him, for my whole life, with my whole body, forever.
Chapter 39
After the proposal, I had to tell Mum about Sky, and she invited us to her place for afternoon tea.
On the bus, Sky had insisted on sitting at the front of the top deck on the way from my flat to Harrow and Wealdstone. He marvelled at the different houses and flats along the way, and asked why they were sometimes big and white with black wood in the walls and other times they were grey boxes.
“Built at different times, for different people” was my attempt at a reply. How to explain a consumer economy, council houses, right to buy, and suburban expansion in the twenties with the extension of the Tube network to someone who’s only just got the hang of underground trains?
He seemed to accept my explanation, and when I nodded, he excitedly pressed the bell for the bus to stop.
A short walk past a post-war red-brick parade of optimistic, imposing shops and a pedestrian precinct, and we were at Mum’s long, low five-storey block of sixties concrete flats and maisonettes. I pressed her intercom button, leaning against the polished aluminium handle of the glass door, and waited for her to answer. The gardens in front of the block had little egg-shaped balls of box hedge, neatly mowed lawn, and flower beds full of colour.
Mum buzzed us in, and we walked the three flights of stairs to her two-bedroom flat.
She held her arms open and pulled me in for a hug and a kiss on one cheek. “This must be Sky. You’re a big lad, aren’t you? Come here and give your future mother-in-law a hug.” She pulled him in for a hug and kiss.
We followed her into the living room and sat on the thin-legged flowery yellow sofa that was now fashionably retro, but had just been contemporary when Mum bought it in the sixties.
Mum stood at the door, gesturing to the spindly laminated-wood coffee table. “Scones, cucumber sandwiches, fish paste, and I’ve got some fairy cakes cooling on the rack. Help yourselves. Tea’s in the pot. Unless you want coffee, and I can do you a mug. Instant, though, I hope that’s all right.”
I smiled at her. “Tea’s fine. You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble, Mum. I didn’t want you to put yourself out.”
From the kitchen she shouted, “It’s not every day I find out my son’s not only found himself a man, but wants to settle down with him and get married.” She reappeared with a tray carrying a teapot, china cups and saucers, milk jug, and sugar bowl—all flowery, dainty crockery she’d inherited from her nan years ago. “Shall I be mother and pour?”
We both nodded.
She poured three cups of tea. “How long you been together? Where did you meet?” She paused and handed us a plate of sandwiches for us to help ourselves. “It’s fish paste… paste made from fish. Goes well with cucumber.”
I began our well-rehearsed story of how we’d met. “We met in Brighton. On the beach. I was sunbathing, and Sky asked me if I knew what the time was—”
“Because I didn’t have a watch or anything,” Sky interrupted. “And I was meant to be meeting someone at the pier, but they’d not turned up.”
I continued. “So I told him the time, and we started talking.”
Sky said, “I asked if he knew any good places to eat. And we got talking, and soon I sat next to him on the pebbles, and I forgot who I was meant to be meeting.”
“He was late. Very late.”
Mum nodded and sipped her tea slowly.
Sky put his hand on my knee, which had been shaking up and down. He steadied it with a firm grip. “Are you all better now, since you were in hospital, Mrs…?”
Mum smiled, waving away Sky’s formality. “You can call me Jean, or if you’re really good, I might let you call me Mum.” She winked at me. “Much better, thanks. Funny how you can go in for a routine op and then you’re nearly a goner. They said it was routine, something they did all the time for women of my age, and blow me down, while I’m in hospital, what do I get? A bug. One of those hospital-acquired infections. I’ve read about them in the Daily Mail. Hospitals, they’re lethal places, you see. Full of sick people.” She smiled, then offered us the plate of sandwiches once again. “You’re not getting the fairy cakes and scones unless most of these are gone. I’ll be living on cucumber and fish paste for the rest of the week otherwise. I asked Sandra Next Door how much should I do—two growing lads and little old me. I think I’ve still done too much. Never mind, eh?”
We took a handful of sandwiches and munched slowly. The only sound in the room was our chewing and the tinkle of a teaspoon against Mum’s china cup.
She looked Sky up and down. “So you’re the man to tame my Richard, are you? Do you know how many boyfriends he’s let me meet before?”
I started to reply, but Mum put her hand up to stop me. “Not a word.” She turned to Sky.
Sky looked at me with a shrug. “Three?”
“Final answer. Three, is it?”
Sky nodded.
She shook her head. “You’re the first one. So including you, it’s just the one. What’s that about, eh? I mean, I’ve heard bits and pieces about them. Wasn’t there one called Billy not that long ago?”
“Bobby,” I said quietly.
“Never met him. I always assumed Richard would stay single, always playing around, but never settling down. I mean, that’s what a lot of you lot do, isn’t it? There was an article in the Daily Mail about when Stephen Gately—the one from that pop group—died, God bless him.” She crossed herself. “But you don’t know what goes on, behind closed doors, do you?”
“Mum, you don’t want to believe everything you read in the papers.” I paused, looking at my hands, clasped in my lap. “I never showed you anyone because I never thought it would last. Never really cared about them enough to bother.”
“Oh, charming, thank you very much.” She pursed her lips.
“I don’t mean it like that. Why waste your time meeting someone I might stop seeing the following week? It was always pretty fluid, relaxed, pretty whatever.”
She put her hand on Sky’s knee with a smile. “And now here he is, the man to make you settle down, after all this time. You got a magic wand or something?” She winked at Sky and lifted her cup to “Cheers!” it with him.
He shrugged, smiled, and chinked cups with her. “When you know, you know.”
Mum nodded. “You set a date for the do? Church, is it? Or isn’t that allowed for you two?” She put her hand to her mouth. “Not that I’ve got anything against it. I always knew, even when Richard was a little boy. He used to play in the Wendy house when I picked him up from nursery, always stood doing the ironing or playing with the doll’s head with the long blonde hair, putting it into ponytails. So when he told me, I wasn’t too surprised.” She paused and blinked her eyes a few times. “I just get mixed up with the right words to say nowadays. There’s a lovely woman next door, on the other side, Patience, she’s called, from the West Indies, but she came over here in the sixties, so she’s Brixton, really. I sometimes put my foot in it, sai
d she was coloured, but apparently you can say black nowadays. Patience explained it all to me one afternoon round hers, with some French fancies and a pot of tea. And it’s not like I’m not friendly with her, she’s always round here swapping recipes with me, telling me about her grandchildren, and I tell her about you. So it was all right in the end. Patience had a laugh about it when she explained it all to me. Said she could tell when someone was a racist and that weren’t me.” She gazed out the window. “Richard, can you help me in the kitchen, please?”
I followed her to the kitchen, which was filled with fairy cakes cooling on every available surface.
She put her hand to her mouth and shook her head. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean it. You must be so embarrassed. I can’t keep up with it all. One minute it’s civil partnerships for you lot, and then it’s marriage—or can you say wedding too? Anyway, I didn’t mean it about the church. I didn’t marry your dad in a church. Mum and Dad wouldn’t let me, thought I’d disgraced myself with him. Thought I’d been with him before we were married, said I’d married beneath myself. I hadn’t, but they wouldn’t believe me then, and they didn’t believe me until they both died. Beneath myself. I loved him.” She paused, blinking away the tears. “I did used to love him until he buggered off and left us. Hear from him, do you? Still in Spain, I expect.”
I squeezed her arm. “Don’t upset yourself.”
We stood in the kitchen like that for a few moments, and then she took a deep breath. “Still, Islington registry office it was for us. I had a white dress and white platform shoes—I insisted on that much—and your dad wore a black suit, black platforms—his were higher than mine, I think—and big sideburns down his face. Nineteen seventy-three. I was twenty-three, and so was your dad.”