The Many Colours of Us

by Rachel Burton

  I turn away from him reluctantly and walk back towards the car. I open the door and duck my head inside.

  ‘Come on, you,’ I say to my mother. ‘It’s show time.’

  Chapter 23

  The ceremony goes without a hitch and we’ve all eaten way too much at the Royal Garden Hotel. How my mother swung a reception room here on Bank Holiday weekend with only three weeks’ notice is anyone’s guess, but here we are. The speeches are over, the cake has been cut and I’ve honestly never seen my mother look happier or more relaxed. Today is a good day. One of the best.

  The band start playing and Mum and Johnny take to the floor, to a cover of Queen’s Keep Yourself Alive. As predicted Mum towers above Johnny but they look good together and they both dance so elegantly with a grace most of my generation has forgotten.

  The ceremony was a small affair, just family and close friends, but the reception is full of people I don’t know and people who are vague memories from childhood parties and a few people I recognise from the shoebox of photographs Johnny gave to me back in June.

  Johnny worked hard on that guest list after all. While I don’t know anyone, it seems they all know me and I spend a lot of time, when dinner is over and we’re waiting for Mum to cut the cake, talking to people I can’t remember meeting before about how like my mother I’ve become. Nobody mentions Bruce Baldwin, for which I’m grateful.

  One person I do recognise out of the evening crowd is Marco.

  ‘You’ve decided to grace us with your presence then,’ I say as I go to sit next to him.

  ‘Marco’s restaurant would have served better food,’ he sniffs, although we both know even he doesn’t believe that. ‘But yes here I am!’

  ‘Have you closed the restaurant?’ I ask.

  He stares at me as though I’ve just asked him if he’s been to the moon. ‘Of course not,’ he says crossly. ‘Marco’s never closes.’

  Right then.

  As the dance floor starts to fill up, Edwin comes over to ask me to dance.

  ‘Can I steal her away from you, Marco?’ he asks.

  Marco doesn’t say anything, just sniffs again, and if he had a tea towel he’d flick it about now.

  ‘He’s warming to me, I can tell,’ Edwin says.

  I take back what I said about my generation having no elegance. Edwin can dance, which comes as quite a surprise as he twirls me around the dance floor.

  ‘You never cease to amaze me, Edwin Jones,’ I say. ‘Where did you learn to dance?’

  He pulls away a little bit and ducks his head so he can look at me. Even I can’t wear heels high enough to be as tall as him.

  ‘Promise you won’t laugh?’ he asks.

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘Your mother.’

  I bite my lip to stop myself giggling. I promised I wouldn’t after all.

  ‘Really? When?’

  ‘At Campden Hill Road parties when I was a teenager. Me and Rob and a couple of others.’

  ‘She never taught me.’ I can’t work out if I’m annoyed or relieved about that.

  ‘Well somebody clearly did,’ he says as he dips me expertly, squeezing my hand and sending tingles of electricity up my arm.

  ‘School,’ I reply. ‘They tried to make ladies out of us.’

  ‘Not that successfully.’ He grins.

  That smile sends shivers through me, and as the band launch into a jazz cover of A-ha’s The Sun Always Shines on TV, I realise that I can’t remember the last time I felt this happy. Despite everything that’s happened this summer, the lies and the secrets, I feel content. If all those things hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here now, dancing with a handsome lawyer. Everything has a silver lining if you know where to find it.

  ‘So, Johnny’s sister,’ I say, as he spins me round.

  ‘You didn’t know about her either then I’m guessing?’

  ‘No. Mum did and just assumed everyone else knew.’

  Edwin laughs. ‘Joan was very surprised that Johnny was marrying a woman.’

  ‘Lots of people make that mistake about him apparently. Including me.’ I smile. ‘For years and years, it was just me and Mum and now, suddenly I’m inheriting all kinds of family.’

  ‘Family aren’t just blood,’ Edwin replies, as Frank waltzes past, dancing with Joan, my new step-aunt, who looks slightly less formidable now she has removed her orange jacket. ‘There’s Johnny and Joan.’ He pauses. ‘And me.’

  I look up at him and he smiles at me, and for a moment it feels as though the whole room disappears and it’s just me and him and the music. It feels close to perfection.

  After three songs, I need a break. It’s ridiculously hot and I’ve had too much champagne and being in such close proximity to Edwin is making me dizzy.

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ I say as I go to find the ladies’.

  When I come out of the bathroom Edwin is leaning against the wall opposite waiting for me. His tie and jacket are discarded, his waistcoat undone and his shirtsleeves rolled up. I’ve never seen him so relaxed. My stomach fills with butterflies just looking at him. This wedding is doing us all good; it’s just what we needed.

  He catches my eye and grins. As I go over to him I notice he’s clutching a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Want to sneak off somewhere and drink this champagne with me?’ he asks, brandishing the bottle in front of him.

  I lean against the wall next to him. It’s cool on my hot skin. I’d like to do a lot more than just drink champagne with you, I think. But I’m not drunk enough to say that out loud.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I say instead. ‘But I can hardly walk out on my mother’s wedding.’

  ‘Really? She seems to be getting on quite well by herself. She’s currently regaling everyone with stories of when she lived here and met Bruce Baldwin, which seems wildly inappropriate at her wedding to someone else.’

  ‘Wildly inappropriate is pretty standard for my mother.’

  ‘What about this champagne?’ he asks again, nudging me gently. ‘Come on, live a little.’

  *

  We don’t go far, just to Kensington Palace Gardens next door. It’s late and the sun is low in the sky. It’s still hot but there’s a cool breeze. Edwin throws himself down on the grass and stretches.

  ‘That’s better,’ he sighs.

  I kick off my shoes and wiggle my toes in the grass. I’m glad to be outside, glad I came with him.

  He looks up at me. ‘That bracelet suits you,’ he says. ‘Someone with impeccable taste must have bought it for you.’

  I twirl the bracelet around my wrist. ‘It’s gorgeous,’ I say. ‘Thank you so much.’

  ‘Come here,’ he says softly, patting the grass next to him.

  I lie down next to him, not quite touching. He turns his head to look at me.

  ‘How are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Today or in general?’

  ‘Let’s start with today.’ He props himself up on his elbows to take a swig out of the champagne bottle. He passes it to me. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I forgot glasses.’

  ‘Today I’m happy,’ I say with a smile, taking a swig from the bottle myself. ‘I’m happy for Mum and Johnny. He’s been like a dad to me.’ I pause. ‘Even now I’ve find out who my father was, it’s Johnny who feels like my dad. Does that make sense?’

  ‘Of course it does. No matter how much we tell you about your father, you’re never going to be able to know him. Not really. For which I’m…’

  ‘Shhh,’ I say quietly. ‘No more apologies.’

  We pass the champagne back and forth quietly for a while, like teenagers with a bottle of White Lightning at their first party.

  ‘I’m surprised as well,’ I say, breaking the silence. ‘Surprised Mum ever got married really. She always used to tell me how marriage was an outdated institution, how we could manage perfectly well on our own.’

  Edwin lies down again. ‘Is that what you think
too?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think. I was always scared of commitment when I was with Alec. I guess that’s partly because of Mum. To me at the time, she seemed fine on her own so I thought I would be too. Now I realise she wasn’t fine on her own at all.’

  He doesn’t say anything to that.

  ‘And what about you? What do you think?’ I ask. Just because he essentially lives at home, burdened by family responsibility, just because he’s never talked about a girlfriend, doesn’t mean he doesn’t have one.

  ‘I’m perpetually single. Rob and the business take up most of my time.’ His eyes flick away from me as he mentions his brother, as though he doesn’t want me to see the sadness in them.

  ‘You haven’t got any time for anything else in your life?’ I ask. ‘Because, I don’t mean to interfere but your brother seems to be looking after himself pretty well these days. When we left he was flirting with two women.’

  ‘Rob always has been more successful with women than me,’ Edwin sighs. I turn to look at his profile, his face turned towards the sky, his eyes closed. The familiar flutter in my stomach is back. ‘He’s doing great. So much better than me or Dad could ever have hoped. Obviously he’s never going to recover, the nurses and the drugs and everything will go on for ever, but he copes with it all so well. So much better than I do. In fact, sometimes I think it’s him looking after me. Just like at school.’

  ‘What’s stopping you from living your life, Edwin?’ I ask.

  ‘Rob’s accident tore me apart. I mean obviously it tore us all apart but…’ He pauses and I sense that he isn’t comfortable talking about this. ‘I guess you get used to shutting yourself away from the world, so you can’t get hurt again.’

  ‘One thing I’ve learned this summer is that if you shut yourself away from the world for too long, the world will come and break your door down.’

  He opens his eyes and turns his head to look at me, as though he’s just starting to notice the parallels in our stories too. ‘Yeah, that’s true,’ he says.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’ I ask again, determined to get more from him.

  ‘When I was at university there was someone,’ he says quietly, looking towards the sky again. ‘We got engaged. I thought we had our whole future planned out. But in the end she couldn’t cope.’ He pauses. ‘She couldn’t cope with Rob, with the fact that sometimes, often, I had to put him first. She didn’t want to wait around to see if things got better. She married someone else.’

  I put my hand on his arm. ‘And there’s been nobody since?’ I find that hard to believe.

  ‘Well I’ve not lived like a monk,’ he says. ‘But nobody serious, no. If I can’t promise to put the other person first, what’s the point in a relationship? And Rob has to come first. I know he seems really well and his life expectancy is good, but with an injury like this there are risks and I don’t ever want to regret not having spent enough time with him.’

  ‘I think when you meet the right person though, you take the good with the bad. We all have baggage; we all have stories and obligations. I think when you meet someone special you have to compromise.’

  ‘Really?’ he says, looking at me again.

  ‘I think so, yes,’ I continue. ‘I’ve been thinking about this since I split up with Alec. I could never be who he wanted me to be, who he needed me to be. Rather than admit defeat though, I tried to make myself be that person. All I did was make myself unhappy. But the right person for Alec wouldn’t have resented his career. They’d have supported him and got on with their own thing when he wasn’t around.’

  ‘I’d never thought of it like that.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Mary Poppins?’ I ask.

  He laughs. ‘Not since I was about seven, no. Why?’

  ‘You should watch it again, as an adult. Watch Mary and Bert the chimney sweep. They’re the perfect couple.’

  ‘They are?’

  ‘Yes. Mary Poppins comes and goes with the wind, always off on another adventure. Bert knows that’s just who she is. He can’t tie her down because if he does she’ll be unhappy and then she won’t be Mary any more. He allows her to be free, to do all the things she has to do, and he loves her anyway. And when she’s not there he has his own life, dancing on rooftops and so forth.’

  He props himself up on his elbow and leans over towards me, pushing a strand of hair out of my face. ‘So what you’re saying is that I need to dance on rooftops more often.’

  ‘If someone loves you enough they’ll let you be free, trusting that you’ll come back.’

  He looks at me and for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me, and I want him to more than anything, but then he rolls back onto his back, staring up at the sky. I realise I’ve been holding my breath.

  ‘What would you do if money were no object?’ he asks.

  ‘Um…money is no object really,’ I say, still rather embarrassed about my new-found wealth.

  ‘Oh yes. Then let me rephrase the question. How shall we spend your money?’

  I laugh, looking up at the sky with him. I feel his fingers finding mine, gently stroking my hand.

  ‘I know I should say that I’ll travel the world, or maybe even change the world, but I’m happy here in West London making weird clothes.’

  ‘They’re not weird,’ he says. ‘They’re amazing.’

  I don’t know how long we lie there watching the sky change colour. I don’t notice anything other than the feel of my hand in his and when Edwin speaks again I realise that hours or minutes could have gone by. Time has gone into that beautiful elastic place when everything feels good and you’ve had just a little bit too much champagne.

  ‘They close this place up just after sunset,’ he says. ‘We should leave. Do you want to go back to the wedding or…’ He pauses.

  ‘I think I’d like to go home,’ I say.

  ‘Can I walk you back?’ he asks, quietly, slightly embarrassed.

  I nod.

  We walk back up Kensington High Street together, holding hands and leaning against each other, passing the last of the now warm champagne back and forth. I feel like a student again.

  When we get back to Campden Hill Road we stand outside my house. Neither of us speaks and after a moment he pulls me gently towards him. His lips are so close to mine I can almost taste the champagne on his breath.

  I close my eyes, breathing him in. And then, suddenly, his phone rings. It sounds incredibly loud in the quiet dusk.

  He takes the phone out of his pocket and looks at the display.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I have to take this.’

  He turns his back on me as he has the conversation and I try not to feel rejected, remembering what I said earlier about allowing people the space to get on with their own lives, their own obligations.

  After a moment, he puts his phone in his pocket and walks back towards me, taking both my hands in his.

  ‘Julia, I’m so sorry, but I’m going to have to go. Rob’s usual nurse is on holiday and the temp agency have cancelled on us. Dad’s going to need my help later and…’

  I take one hand out of his and place my index finger on his lips. ‘Go,’ I say, with more enthusiasm than I feel. ‘It’s fine.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says quietly. ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes please.’

  He kisses my forehead, lingering for a moment, and then turns away, walking back towards the High Street. I climb the steps up to my front door and then turn to watch him. Sensing me he turns too. He waves, before disappearing into the fading light.

  Standing there on the steps of my childhood home, I suddenly realise the depth of my feelings for Edwin. This isn’t a passing crush; I’m in love with him. My feelings for Alec were nothing in comparison to this. Watching my mother get married, seeing that everything has changed, has allowed me to see what is right in front of me. Truth be told I’m terrified, but I’m ready to feel these feelings p
roperly, not bury them or run away from them. Because I’m sure he feels it too.

  6th June 1998

  My dearest daughter,

  This is going to be the hardest letter I’ve written to you so far. Part of me just wants to wish you a happy birthday and talk about something else.

  I’ve been working through the twelve steps for twelve years now. Some of them are harder than others. All of them are hard – getting through one day without thinking about drinking is hard – but this one…everyone hates this one. You can feel the atmosphere change in meetings when step nine is mentioned.

  Step eight is to make a list of everyone we’ve ever hurt because of our drinking (well, that bit was easy – although it was a long list) and be prepared to make amends with them all.

  Step nine is to contact everyone on that list, wherever possible, and try to make amends.

  This year yours isn’t the only letter I’ve been writing.

  And it’s time for me to try to make amends. I know you won’t read this letter just yet, but one day you will. One day, I hope, you will read all the letters and I hope you know how sorry I am for everything.

  You never saw me when I was drunk, thank God. You never had to suffer that, but your mother did and as a direct result of my drinking and the way I behaved when I drank, the wedge was driven between your mother and me that meant I never really got to see you. And for that I am truly sorry.

  Whether you forgive me or not is your call to make, but if you would indulge an old man a little bit of advice on your birthday, let me tell you that the art of forgiveness is underrated. Don’t make the mistake of carrying around grudges, of ignoring your feelings, of hauling that stuff around like a heavy bag for the rest of your life. That’s what I’ve done; I’m sure it’s what your mother has done. Try not to follow in our footsteps.

  The last twelve months have been hard on all of us. Cedric’s son Robert was in a terrible accident last year and it looks as though he will never walk again. We’re all still reeling from the news. You never know what life is going to throw at you. I suppose that’s why I chose this year to work on asking for forgiveness. And seeing if it was possible to forgive myself.