Martinis and Memories

by A. L. Michael

  Man, I needed to stop drinking beer.

  The lights dimmed and whooping and clapping began as a man walked out onto the stage. I turned back to pay for the drinks as the bartender brought them over, tapping my card on the machine as the first notes started.

  I almost physically shivered, a full body tremble as the music started, this echoey, complicated guitar woven through with an unearthly, soulful voice.

  ‘Sounds like Jeff Buckley come back to life,’ Sam whispered to me, his eyes never leaving the stage. I liked to see his face at times like this, moments of pure joy where he seemed to be in exactly the right place at the right time.

  Something about this song was familiar, sitting there in the recesses of my mind, and I stared at the grain in the wood-topped table as I tried to trace it. Was it in an advert, had I heard it on the radio? It made me feel like my chest was caving in on itself, slightly like I wanted to cry with how beautiful it was, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever had a reaction like that to music.

  Maybe that was what Sam meant, maybe everyone felt this way when they heard this guy.

  I looked up at the stage, wondering what sort of person made music like this.

  I locked eyes with the man on the stage, something intense and unspoken passing between us. He didn’t falter in his song, or his fingertips strumming and plucking, but this look of disbelief crept across his face.

  I couldn’t believe it either.

  ‘You know what I said about our past never stopping when it has something to say?’ I rasped to Sam, who looked over to me in irritation.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That, right there, is my past.’

  I couldn’t look away as he sang, that boy with the green eyes like sea glass, and once-curly brown hair, now cut short. He was grown now, so naturally himself, and yet a stranger.

  He broke out into the widest smile as he sang, just for me, that song he’d written so long ago, just before he left. I remembered sitting in the crowd, just like this, trying not to cry.

  The universe was really not on my side this week. Even as I thought it, I couldn’t help but smile back, my chest thumping in painful, excited disbelief, my eyes taking him in as if he were a mirage.

  It was really him. Brodie Porter.

  The first boy I’d ever loved, and the only one to break my heart.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s a bit like that song about working as a waitress in a cocktail bar. Except it was the chippy by the seafront. Not quite as glamorous a beginning. I remembered the first moment I saw him, because it was something not quite right. He stood out, his dark beanie and ripped jeans, guitar case slung over his shoulder. The locals looked at him like he might cause trouble.

  But I saw something else. His eyes scanned the menu board behind me with an intensity I recognized – someone who knew exactly how much they had to spend, and was working out what they could afford. His brow was furrowed in concentration, hand jangling the change in his pocket.

  And then he looked up at me and smiled, those green eyes like the pieces of glass I collected from the beach on my break, worn rough by the waves and sand. His voice had a burr that I would come to learn was a Belfast accent.

  He stepped forward, large grin and said, ‘Well, hello there, darlin’.’

  It was such a strange thing for a young guy to say, completely polite and friendly and not at all a come-on, that I laughed. Any other man tried that and I would have ripped them a new one. The owners were always saying I had a prominent scowl and a face like a slapped arse, but I was a hard worker so they put up with me. I don’t think I’d ever giggled at what a boy said before. I’d certainly never blushed.

  That was the beginning of it all, this slightly older lad who had just moved to our sleepy seaside town, where there wasn’t much to do, especially in the colder months. So he’d come and buy a small bag of chips (and I’d serve him a large) and we’d walk down the beach, talking.

  * * *

  He’d tell me about his mum, and his little brothers, and how he had to help out. I’d talk about dance and the early starts and I’d show him my bruises like they were war wounds. He always responded appropriately, with this kind of disgusted respect for what I put my body through.

  We sat by the beach and he’d play his music, singing little songs about people who walked past, strange things he saw around town, about missing home. Sometimes he sang about real things, things we didn’t talk about until years later.

  He was the only person I told the truth to – that I was starting to hate dancing.

  Of course, this happened over a couple of years, all those tiny moments that built Brodie Porter into my best friend in the world. Escaping out of my window to walk along the pier and drink cans of cider. Sitting in his mum’s house drinking tea and building forts with his brothers.

  His house was this warm, loving place. His mum, even when she was having one of her weak days, always welcomed me with a cup of tea and a piece of cake. I was always invited to stay for dinner, and always sent off with hugs and compliments. It was the warmest place in my childhood, that little house on Brompton Road, with the blue front door and the old-fashioned flowery sofas.

  There were a thousand memories that flickered into view, like flipping through Polaroids. Rolling along the seafront on skateboards, hearing the old people moan and feeling my hair whistle out behind me. Watching him in a small room like this one, feeling so proud and so impressed I could burst. Seeing his face out of the corner of my eye at one of my competitions, and smiling so hard that I broke concentration. And then that last time, desperately promising to wait for him, and trying not to cry as he asked me not to.

  The sadness and embarrassment flamed my cheeks as I watched him finish his set, his eyes flittering back to mine every few seconds. It was the most intense eye contact I’d ever shared, and I longed to jump up and run.

  And once again, when my past returns I’m not in my glad rags, not wearing my armour. I was recognisable as Annabelle Stone even across a smoky, dark cellar club when I wasn’t expected. I didn’t do a good enough job at reinvention.

  ‘So, you know this kid?’ Sam said after the clapping had stopped and Brodie had walked offstage.

  ‘Something like that,’ I said helplessly, looking around for him, his arrival imminent. ‘We were best friends when I was a teenager. He was the one I was talking about.’

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Sam exhaled, letting out a low whistle. ‘You know, kid, maybe you’re right about fate, or the universe. This is like the thread getting pulled tight. But are we making a scarf, a jumper…’

  ‘… a noose?’ I grabbed my beer and drank it down, a little too quickly.

  ‘Well hello there, darlin’,’ a warm voice said from behind me, and I could hear the smile before I turned to see it.

  He looked the same but different, slightly towering over me but slouching to hide it. He wasn’t holding his guitar, and he kept running a hand through his incredibly short hair, as if to alert me to how much he had changed.

  His eyes drank me in and I stood there, feeling underwhelming. If only I had been prepared, I could have been my most Bel self, made up and confident and impressive. Instead, here I was, sipping on a beer with my adopted father-figure, wondering why my business might be going down the drain. My outfit was black and uninspiring, simple and professional for a day when I had been planning to stay invisible in the crowd.

  ‘Hello there, trouble,’ I croaked, awkwardly opening my arms for a hug. He wrapped his arms around my waist, his chin grazing my neck as I felt his breath on my skin. He’d always made me feel delicate. Brodie once said I should have a sign on that said ‘handle with care’ and when I got angry he amended it to ‘warning: fire hazard’. I’d laughed so much I forgot to be annoyed, and we’d not spoken about it again.

  ‘I wasn’t sure you recognized me for a minute,’ he said, standing back and looking at me. His face was open and enthusiastic, way too youthful. Still there was the slightest spatt
ering of grey in his barely-there stubble, and somehow even noticing that made my heart race a little.

  ‘I’m shocked you noticed me all the way across the room,’ I said inanely, half shrugging as I threw my hands up, suddenly awkward. It was like my body had betrayed me. I was still in shock.

  ‘Not notice Bel Stone? You had this light around you, there was no way I couldn’t notice you,’ Brodie said.

  ‘Wow, that’s poetic.’ I blushed a little, then watched as his face changed into a grin.

  ‘No, Bel, I mean literally.’ He pointed to the neon blue beer bottle outline on the wall behind me. ‘You were lit up.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Sam stood up next to me, and I recovered my wits. ‘Oh God, sorry. Sam, this is Brodie. Brodie, this is Sam. He was the one who convinced me to come tonight. Said there was some incredible talent onstage.’

  The men shook hands, seemingly trying to figure out exactly who the other was. I knew Sam was wondering if this young man had hurt me. Perhaps Brodie was wondering what our relationship was, if I’d finally found my dad, or I’d started a relationship with an older man.

  ‘Did you know we knew each other?’ Brodie gestured his head towards me.

  Sam sank back onto the bar stool in that slow way he had, a half smile playing about his mouth. ‘Son, believe me. The number of coincidences and weirdness about this evening is not worth getting into. I saw you a couple of weeks back at Thirteen Lanterns, and wanted Miss Bel’s fine opinion on some excellent music. That’s all she wrote.’

  Brodie’s eyes hovered on Sam for a moment, as if he were trying to place him. He shrugged it off, and turned back to me. ‘God, Bel, you look amazing.’

  I looked down at my black trousers, black boots, black floaty top. I looked like I was wearing a masseuse’s uniform. My hair was curly and loose and the only decent things that made me at all pretty were my pair of false eyelashes and on point red lipstick. It was meant to be a day to hide out with a beer, not to impress long-lost sweethearts. If I’d learnt anything from fate’s little game today, it was to always dress to impress.

  I laughed in awkwardness, and turned to Sam. ‘I mean seriously, can you believe this? It’s like, Arabella Hailstone, this is your life.’

  Sam snorted and gestured that he was heading to the bar.

  Brodie wrinkled his brow at the name, but continued, ‘You know, whenever I walk through Covent Garden I think of you. Always wonder if one day I’ll see you walking out of the opera house.’

  I blinked. ‘Why?’

  Brodie looked at me strangely. ‘Because of the ballet. Your mum said you ran off to join the ballet.’

  ‘My mum?’ I said. ‘Wait, when was this? I left for London ages after you were gone.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you I came back?’ He looked surprised. ‘I came to see you but she said you were gone – you’d been offered a place on some big ballet scheme and you’d gone to London. I asked for your address, but she said she didn’t have it…’

  That’s what my mother had told everyone? Not that I’d run away because I was tired of life, and her, and her rules and restrictions, but that I was some dance superstar destined for excellence?

  She always had to save face. All those years of screaming down the phone that I had shamed her by running off with the boy from the estate, and she’d been holding her head high, using me as a sign of her own brilliance back home. Sounded about right.

  God, he’d come back. Had he come back for me?

  Brodie Porter had only been in town for about a couple of years before he’d left again, his mum’s sickness getting worse, needing more support from family. He hadn’t been able to cope at the end, with his mum and his brothers, needing to work, trying to build a life. He’d left to go to Southampton, to his aunt’s, where he was promised help. Where he still got to be a son rather than the main source of income for a struggling family.

  He wasn’t far away, and yet time had passed. Life had been difficult and I knew not to expect too much. I’d missed him though. Mourned the ‘what ifs’ and ‘might have beens’. Played over that last goodbye in my head, smashing my face into my pillow as I wished I could unsay the things I’d said. I’d let myself be vulnerable, and after that, trying to be friends felt too awkward. The messages and calls became shorter, infrequent and listless. It was better to stop answering rather than feel the thing I cherished most die a painful death.

  So I’d let him go.

  ‘Look, Bel, I think we need to have a proper catch up, but I’ve got to do my next set in a minute, and need to get my act together.’

  His eyes were warm and soft, and he reached out to touch my arm. ‘But could we chat after? You won’t disappear into thin air, right?’

  I wanted to joke that that was his job, but it didn’t feel right somehow.

  ‘I’ll be here.’ I tilted my head to the booth. ‘There’s a lot to catch up on.’

  ‘My God, that’s an understatement.’ He grinned, squeezed my arm and walked off.

  I couldn’t help but smile back at him; he had the kind of joyful grin that could do that to a girl. I stood quite still for a while after he left, not sure whether to go and get the drinks or quietly collapse back onto the bar.

  ‘Well, that’s an interesting development,’ Sam said into his beer, waiting for me to respond.

  ‘What, the third blast from the past in a week?’

  Sam smiled, turning to me. ‘No, you. How you just blossomed. Took me weeks to get that out of you in front of a camera, and all that boy needs to do is look at you.’

  I felt myself get defensive. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was just surprised to see him.’

  ‘Bel, I knew you when you were married. You never looked at your husband like that. What do you think that means?’

  ‘Oh God, Euan. I guess he doesn’t know about that.’

  Sam snorted. ‘You mean the man comes back for you, and finding out that you ran off to marry his old bandmate might upset him? Shocker.’

  I nudged him with my elbow. ‘I was nice to you about your surprise daughter, why aren’t you being nice?’

  ‘I am, sweetheart, I just find your life so incredibly interesting.’

  ‘A little too interesting, right now,’ I said, watching Brodie across the room, wondering if I’d somehow summoned him here with my thoughts. He’d been in London all this time? All these years if I’d walked down a certain street on a certain day, I would have bumped into him? So why now?

  The music started again, and this time Brodie looked over at me before he introduced the song.

  ‘This one’s about old friends and good times,’ he said. ‘I hope you like it.’

  I didn’t remember this one at all. Except that the words seemed to echo every feeling of those days, how easy it felt. He sang about a girl who struggled to be happy, who dreamed of escape, who he wanted to take by the hand and lead through the world.

  The lyrics twanged in my chest:

  ‘I wanted to tell her I’d be there, she wasn’t alone,

  But by the time that I got there, she was already gone.

  She’d harnessed her dreams on her own.’

  ‘Subtle.’ Sam snorted, looking at me as I stared past the man onstage to the wall behind him, suddenly realizing what he’d said. ‘Jesus, what’s that look for?’

  ‘He came back.’ My throat was hoarse. ‘He came back and I was already gone.’

  ‘With Euan,’ Sam added helpfully.

  ‘I think you’re missing the point, Sam.’ I turned to look at him. ‘He came back, and my mother never told me. Never mentioned a thing.’

  ‘So it’s back to being your mom’s fault again, Bel? Don’t you think this record’s a bit broken?’

  I felt the rage rise up again, my cheeks burning. ‘Oh, so now that you’re a parent you relate to her differently. She’s forever free of anything she might have done wrong, just because she’s told you, not me, but you, that she’s so sorry about everything? D
o you think that makes up for years of derision and disappointment and having no childhood? Having no one to cuddle you or tell you you’re smart or kind or doing okay? Even without all that, if she had done one decent thing, telling me he’d come back, that he’d cared enough to try to find me… my life could have been completely different! It could have changed everything!’

  ‘And it could have changed nothing, you don’t know. You don’t know why she didn’t tell you.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s time I find out.’ I stood up. ‘Tell Brodie I’m sorry, I’ve got something to deal with.’

  I threw down my business card so that Sam could pass it on, and he looked disappointed.

  ‘You’re so certain she’s a good person. I’m just giving her the chance to prove it.’

  He said nothing, shaking his head slightly.

  I looked back at the stage, Brodie’s face faltering a little as he saw me leaving. I didn’t know how to say anything, so I said nothing, marching out of the bar and onto that bustling London street. Every part of me wanted to be back there, watching, scratching my fingernails against my palms in anticipation of that after-party catch up. What we would talk about, how I could trace that smile of his, like taking a photograph. I wanted to know everything about his wonderful life.

  But another tiny voice inside breathed a sigh of relief. There would be no apologies, no explanations or justifications. I wouldn’t have to talk about Euan, or my failing business or how angry I was about how everything had turned out.

  I would have time to compose myself.

  My heart felt like it was tearing as I walked away, resisting a magnet that sought to drag me back to that bar, to him. Fate was screaming at every step that I took in the opposite direction. The universe had brought me here, to him, after all this time, and I was still running away.

  Chapter Eleven

  London at night has a certain mystical element to it, the buzz that never fully goes away but is just covered up by daytime noises of commuters and tourists and ordinary problems. It’s a buzz that I can hear more clearly at night, like a rhythm of the city made from overheard snippets of conversation, music from open restaurant doors and the thrum of the Tube in the hollows beneath the streets.