The Gin O'Clock Club

by Rosie Blake

  ‘This one is grim.’

  ‘God, it is. It says, “I know I look like I am in renal failure but let’s hope it’s just the lighting.”’

  ‘Sexy.’

  ‘I like this one. It’s very Distinguished Judge meets Friendly Policeman.’

  ‘Cora took that one.’

  ‘It’s good: like you could handcuff the ladies any time.’

  ‘Howard, isn’t it time you left?’

  Luke was chuckling as we walked down the street to the pub on the corner. I hugged my arms around myself, the wind biting at me. The glowing windows looked particularly enticing as we approached. Luke hesitated as we reached the double doors, the muted sounds of laugher, clinking glass and chatter coming from inside. ‘You don’t mind if we just go to the pub, do you? We could go to a nicer place if you—’

  I interrupted him with a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t be silly. This is perfect.’

  He looked relieved, smiling as he opened the door. ‘After you,’ he said with a small bow.

  I stepped inside.

  ‘I be a’wooing,’ he added, following me.

  He insisted on buying our drinks and I perched on a bar stool at a high round table, enjoying being back in the warmth, still not yet ready to remove my coat. I could see Luke chatting with another guy at the bar. He had the ability to strike up conversation with perfect strangers and would often return with titbits he’d learnt. Tonight was no exception.

  ‘Do you know that guy was the amateur UK junior darts champion?’ He seemed to be an easy person to share things with. I was always amazed by what he could glean from two minutes of chat.

  ‘So,’ Luke said, once we had made vague attempts to discuss our working day (‘OK’, ‘Fine’), ‘that seemed to get out of hand fast.’

  ‘It was the gin.’

  ‘Well, it was flavoured with camomile flowers,’ Luke said, laughing and holding out his hand. ‘Let’s have a look at that list, then.’

  Scooping the list out of my coat pocket I handed it over, Grandad’s barely legible slanted handwriting filling the sheet.

  ‘Look all you like,’ I said, ‘but we’re not doing it, all right?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said, smoothing out the piece of paper. Luke scanned the scribbles, his mouth twitching as he read. ‘What’s a ceil-i-dah?’

  Frowning I peered at the word, ‘A ceilidh,’ I laughed, ‘It’s Scottish dancing.’

  ‘Christ,’ Luke said in alarm, looking up at me, eyes wide. ‘Dancing.’

  ‘Quite,’ I took a sip of my wine.

  ‘What’s a day of conchology?’

  ‘A conch? Er . . . Something to do with shells . . . ?’

  ‘Bell ringing!’ He guffawed. ‘Not sure that was ever a romantic day out.’

  ‘Geoffrey added it. I think they need bell ringers in the church – might have been motivated by that thought. Anyway, we don’t have to do any of this stuff, it was just a crazy idea. They’ll be over it after the next bottle of gin. I mean, who has time to attend dancing lessons with work and everything else? And I’m sure they just got fired up and have now moved on to another hot topic, like how to release equity from their home.’

  Luke had grown still.

  ‘Luke . . . ?’ I prompted.

  He circled the top of his pint glass with a finger. ‘Well, they did seem very keen on the idea. And did you see your Grandad? He hasn’t looked like that in months.’

  I opened and closed my mouth, knowing I couldn’t argue as I had thought the same thing. Grandad had been transformed for a moment, his words fast, spilling into each other. His laugh louder, longer.

  Luke returned to the list. ‘And some of these don’t exactly look time-consuming. Actually, they look like they could be fun. Although admittedly I can’t read a lot of them. Jesus, your grandad has bad handwriting.’ He was squinting at the last one. ‘Does that say Genital?’

  I snatched the sheet back, reading ‘General Knowledge Quiz Night’. ‘General.’

  ‘That’s a relief.’

  It had been good to see Grandad fired up again, bent over that stupid piece of paper as the others had egged him on. Luke had suggested some modern dating methods (Grandad had thought speed dating involved running and his bemused chuckle had lifted my heart). I had forgotten his laugh, gravelly and drawn out. Selfishly, as well, I knew that if he was busy focusing on this project I wouldn’t have to spend so much time worrying he was on his own or trekking across to check on him. I tried to dismiss that thought the moment it arose – but the last few weeks had been exhausting and maybe it would be nice to feel freer. I glanced at the list.

  ‘It might be good for him, you know,’ Luke said, folding the sheet in half again. ‘Something to do, a pet project.’ He raised one eyebrow at me.

  I paused, finished the last of my wine. ‘No, we really can’t. I mean, a jigsaw-puzzle evening, Luke? Seriously.’

  ‘OK. Fair enough, you’re right.’ Was there a hint of disappointment in his voice or did I imagine it?

  I desperately tried to stifle a yawn.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, finishing his drink and sliding off his bar stool, ‘let’s get you back.’

  He flung an arm around my shoulders as we pushed our way out of the pub and back into the street.

  ‘Thanks for coming over tonight.’ I looked at the silhouette of his profile in the lamplight.

  He stopped on the street. ‘Lottie, I miss you.’

  ‘Me too. These last few weeks have been a bit mad.’ We walked in silence for a while back to Grandad’s, both lost in contemplation.

  ‘We don’t have to do lots of all-singing, all-dancing dates,’ I said as I reached for his hand. ‘It’s fine just to have evenings like this. We should do them more.’

  He circled his thumb over mine. ‘We should,’ he agreed. ‘Absolutely.’

  Darling Cora,

  I never watched Bake Off with you but working my way through your recipe books is bringing some small joy into the lonelier days. Today I am trying to make banana muffins. All the ingredients are sitting in a Pyrex bowl waiting but I have been scuppered by the lack of a muffin tray. A muffin tray is different to a cupcake tray, the book tells me.

  I remember you made me take a box of kitchen items up to the attic a year or so ago and I am hoping I will unearth it there. It was a heavy box. We’d had quite a disagreement about whether you really needed three glass juicers and you’d finally allowed me to put one up in the attic. Maybe it should go to the charity shop, I had suggested, but you had looked at me in that withering way you had, asking me that what would happen if the other two broke? Armageddon? I had blurted – which had led to two hours of frosty silence on your part.

  It was this thought that lifted my mouth into a bittersweet smile as I pulled on the loft hatch handle and jimmied the ladder down.

  I heard the front door open and close just as I was halfway inside the dark space, my feet still on the top rung.

  ‘Grandad?’

  ‘Up here,’ I called, patting my way towards the dusty light switch, fingers brushing up against cobwebs.

  I could hear Lottie moving up the stairs and tried to twist around to poke my head back through the hole.

  She was already lurching forward, one hand on the ladder, a worried expression on her face as she stared up at me. ‘Christ, Grandad, get down, don’t fall. I can get up there. What do you need? You shouldn’t be—’

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. I need a muffin tray. It’s very important,’ I found myself saying, stepping into the attic. It was boiling in the narrow space. I dipped my head so as not to hit it on a beam.

  ‘Not breaking a leg is important,’ Lottie chastised, following me up the ladder with a tut. She stood next to me, her heels kicked off below, her stockinged feet making marks in the dust. ‘What did you say you need?’ she asked, glancing around at the myriad of boxes, bags, suitcases, broken lamps and more.

  ‘Muffin tray.’

  Lottie frowned. �
��What does it look like?’

  ‘A tray that can fit muffins in.’

  ‘Right,’ Lottie said, stepping forward and staring down at a nearby box labelled ‘Hats’. ‘Probably not it,’ she said astutely.

  ‘There’s a box of kitchen stuff somewhere,’ I said, taking in the numerous items we had dumped here over the years, things we couldn’t bear to be parted with or things we didn’t know what to do with any more. Amazing how it built up.

  ‘Here,’ Lottie said from behind me, opening up a box filled with redundant saucepans, cheese graters and the blessed muffin tray.

  ‘Excellent.’ I took it from her with a smile, excited to start on the banana muffins.

  She was about to walk back across to the ladder when she paused by another box, labelled ‘Photos’. Sinking to her knees she bent over and looked inside, pulling out a stack of albums: burgundy, navy blue, a couple of photographs escaping the pages.

  ‘Oh look,’ she said, opening up the first one and seeing the date in the corner, ‘it’s Dad and you.’ She grinned at the picture of Simon and me, a photo taken on a family holiday to Croyde when Simon must have been about five or six. Her face fell a fraction as she traced it with a finger.

  ‘He’ll be over again before we know it,’ I said in a faux-cheerful voice, not fooling either of us. Simon was a workaholic, stuck to his desk in Singapore: annual visits weren’t always guaranteed.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Lottie said, going along with the lie. She turned to the next album quickly, less keen to look at photographs of her father.

  ‘God, these are from 1964,’ she said, pulling out a photograph of a group round a long dining table. ‘Grandad, snazzy shirt,’ she said, holding up the photo of me dressed in a lurid purple and orange swirled shirt I had loved.

  ‘That was in the flat I owned before we were married,’ I said.

  ‘Ah, look at Grandma. God, she looks amazing. Who’s that sitting next to her?’

  Glancing at it I felt the old envy rise to the surface. ‘Trevor,’ I sniffed. ‘First boyfriend of your grandmother. She insisted they stay friends.’

  ‘Jealous much?’ Lottie giggled, studying the photo. ‘He’s quite devil-may-care, isn’t he? With all that facial hair.’

  ‘Hiding a weak chin,’ I mumbled.

  Lottie laughed and nudged me and we both stared at the picture of your younger self. I had always been jealous of anyone who had known you before I did. Now, though, I could just take in your long neck, your hair cut into a dramatic bob, your wide mouth open in a laugh, the light in your eyes. You were beautiful, Cora, through and through. I hope I told you that enough; I’m sure I didn’t.

  In the photograph we were all playing cards. Remembering those nights, long dinner parties with someone on the upright piano and others playing estimation whist, reminded me of the good times we had had when courting. ‘Your grandmother was a whiz at card games.’

  Lottie stared at the picture for a while.

  I know in the last year you’d been more and more worried about her, and her staying this week has brought home to me how thinly stretched she is. She doesn’t stop. She’s almost manic in her approach. It reminds me of Simon in those days as a trader, desperate to get on, to work at the expense of everything else. I remember that day when he told us he would be emigrating to run the branch in Singapore and I could almost hear your heart breaking.

  He’d gone, and of course we wanted desperately for him to be happy, and work really did seem to drive him, but knowing this meant our future was expensive long-distance phone calls on an unreliable line and bi-annual visits was devastating. In recent years there was Skype, of course, but it was still half a world away. It seemed a comfort at least to know that his decision did seem right, that he was truly happy in that world.

  Lottie, though, she seems less certain, more torn in two. I remember the early days of her and Luke, her telling us about the lazy walks they’d go on, their constant visits to yurts in Wales, cabins in Dorset, spa hotels in Cornwall – they were always roaming and relaxed together. Now, though, work seems to have swallowed her up. I want Lottie to have the same fun we had, the same evenings with Luke, with their friends.

  Lottie’s mobile rings and she glances at it before stuffing it guiltily back in her pocket. ‘It’s Amy,’ she mutters with a blush.

  ‘So,’ I said, my thoughts making up my mind. ‘We need to plan your first evening together with Luke, something suitable for a young courting couple.’ I tried to inject a lightness to my voice.

  Lottie looked up, placing the photo back in the album. ‘Oh, oh no, Luke and I are fine, happy with how things are, no need to do anything drastic, it was a crazy idea.’

  Realising she wasn’t going to go along with the scheme made me pause. I looked back at your face in the photograph, still hoping for another moment, another hour, another day in your company. She shut the album cover. ‘You must!’ I found myself saying. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to me. Howard has already chosen my profile picture for Tinder.’

  I hadn’t dreamed of actually going along with the ridiculous idea but now Lottie didn’t seem keen either I felt a desperate desire to see it through. She needed to do this. She and Luke needed this time to remember what was important.

  ‘But surely you don’t really want to date or anything yet?’

  ‘Oh I do!’

  Her forehead creased in a frown. ‘It’s OK to say you’re not OK, Grandad.’

  I tried to sound enthusiastic. ‘I just thought it might be a good way to take my mind off things!’ (Sorry, Cora, I’m so sorry.) ‘Not so much the women but more the chance to get out there, do different things, meet new people.’ I felt like I was rambling now and came to a halt.

  Lottie looked as surprised as I felt. ‘But—’

  ‘But fair is fair,’ I interjected, removing the spotlight from myself, ‘and I only want to do it if you and Luke agree to try things the old-fashioned way. That will give us all something to plan and help out with too.’

  Lottie scuffed her stockinged foot on the floor, making marks in the dust. ‘I’m not sure, Grandad. There’s so much going on, I don’t really have the time to—’

  ‘Nonsense. It won’t take up lots of time.’ I was sounding positively forceful but I realised this was my way to help. I might not have your skills in conversation, Cora, but I could do something practical.

  ‘Well, I suppose, if you really want me to.’

  ‘I do. I think it will be a fun thing for the both of us.’

  ‘Luke didn’t seem completely against the idea,’ she admitted. ‘All right,’ she said, standing up, ‘if you’re sure . . . ’

  ‘I’m sure!’ I almost banged my head on the beam as I stood.

  ‘OK then!’

  ‘Excellent!’ I exhaled in a short, relieved burst. ‘Excellent.’

  With that agreed I ushered her back down the ladder, knowing I needed to get something before I followed her. I reached round behind me and rummaged through the kitchen box, extracting the glass juicer and holding it carefully against my chest as I made my way back downstairs.

  Teddy

  Chapter 9

  Love is a commitment you need to work at like any other

  SIDNEY, 84

  It didn’t take long for Grandad and his friends to put plans in place. The first night back in our flat, Luke and I were met with a flashing light on our answerphone.

  ‘Lottie, Luke,’ Grandad began, voices cutting across him so that we could barely hear what he was saying.

  ‘Are you trying their mobiles?’

  ‘Did we write down Ludo? I have always really enjoyed Ludo.’

  ‘No one else likes Ludo, though, Geoffrey.’

  ‘Ssh, I can’t hear myself leaving this message. Luke, Lottie,’ Grandad repeated a little louder, ‘so pleased you’ve agreed, can’t wait to get started. We’ve been planning things a little more.’

  ‘Where’s the tonic?’

  ‘Ssh, I’m leaving them a message. Oh,
I needed to ask whether you both think I should join Grindr too. Howard seems to think it’s another dating website. But enough of that for when I next see you, which is soon because we’ve got your first date all lined up. It’s next Tuesday, in fact. Hope you can make it, I’ll send the address. Should be a good one to kick off.’

  ‘Is there a dress code?’

  ‘He can send that in the message, can’t he?’

  ‘There won’t be a dress code.’

  ‘Does this gin really have cubebs in it? I can’t taste them . . . what is a cubeb?’

  An abrupt sound of a dialtone followed and I looked at Luke, whose mouth had fallen open a fraction, and then we both burst out laughing.

  ‘What have we agreed to?’ he whispered.

  ‘I have no idea,’ I said.

  The following Tuesday came around far too quickly.

  ‘We’re late,’ I said, tugging on the skirt of my teal green tea dress. I hadn’t worn it in years. It had once been a firm favourite. I had pulled it off a hanger at the back of the wardrobe, realising I hadn’t made an effort to dress up at all for an age. Moving past the sea of black and grey work suits to a row of forgotten colours and shapes, I reached for a dusty pink coat to wear over it.

  ‘Teddy will understand,’ Luke said, infuriatingly unfazed.

  ‘I hate being late,’ I huffed as we let ourselves out of the flat.

  ‘Which is weird for someone who is always late.’

  ‘Haha.’

  Luke shrugged. ‘You look pretty,’ he said. ‘So it’s worth being five minutes late. What is a whistle drive anyway?’

  ‘A whist drive,’ I said.

  ‘What’s a whist?’

  ‘Oh my God, Luke, you’re an idiot,’ I said, buying myself time because I didn’t know the answer either. ‘It’s cards, isn’t it?’ Not wanting him to ask more I sped up, the train station just up ahead.

  ‘Sorry, card shark, I’m more of a poker man.’

  ‘Luke, you’re shit at poker.’

  He stopped walking, stared down at his feet. ‘I know,’ he said in a quiet voice, ‘but I want to be a poker man.’

  ‘Well, maybe we can work on that after tonight.’