One Winter's Night (Kelsey Anderson)

by Kiley Dunbar

  ‘Oh!’ Kelsey was sitting bolt upright on the floor.

  Blythe huffed a laughing breath and pointed a finger towards the kitchen. ‘Get the kettle on. We’ve some tangled webs to unweave.’

  * * *

  Blythe joined Kelsey at the table, dragging her walking frame as she moved, her hand clasping a photograph against the grey rubber handles.

  Kelsey had already given Blythe her Christmas present, the book of Webster plays, and Blythe had kissed her forehead in thanks and it sat now on the kitchen table by the teapot still on its white tissue paper. Kelsey had poured the tea while Blythe was rummaging in a black lacquer box on the oak dresser looking for a photograph.

  ‘This is the father of my child,’ she said, presenting the photo to Kelsey, and taking a slow seat at the table. ‘My one true love, my Laureano.’

  The picture could not have been more different to the images of Wagstaff Kelsey had worried herself over. The man smiling into the camera was slender-waisted, broad-shouldered, svelte and deeply pretty.

  ‘This was taken at our little olive garden at Valladolid, nineteen seventy-two. He’s beautiful, isn’t he?’

  ‘He is!’

  ‘He was born in that little house you can just see in the background. It’s a wonderful place, though I haven’t been there for years now. The whole province was famed for its corrida de toros.’

  Kelsey jutted her bottom lip, confused.

  ‘Bull-fighting, dear. That’s how Laureano got his first taste of applause; when he was a trainee matador. He was so handsome running with the young bulls, the women would throw their fans to him in the ring and then they’d faint with the heat watching him.’ Blythe reached absentmindedly for the tissue wrapping paper that had covered her book and she folded and unfolded it now in her hands as she spoke.

  ‘In the days before I met him, Laureano was being prepared for his first fight by the master of the bulls and he was shocked to learn he was expected to combat the most acclaimed bull in the province – a great proud beast, it was. It had gored two matadors and thrown another over its back that very season. Laureano was scared half out of his wits at the prospect. The master of the bulls was a powerful man in the town and he stood to make a lot of money from the fight. He told Laureano he was not only to defeat the bull but he was to wipe its nose with the blood of its own severed tail. The greedy old fool wanted to make his bullring – and his beautiful new bullfighter – the talk of Spain. The man could smell the money to be made from a debut toreador with a pretty face and a cruel heart.

  ‘But Laureano refused to fight, horrified by the very suggestion. Who would do such a thing? But the master threatened him. He knew a secret about Laureano’s father, you see? A business matter had gone awry some years before and his father had skipped town and was hiding out in the mountains. Laureano was protecting him, taking him food every Sunday evening. To stop his father being arrested he agreed to the fight. He prepared himself to throw down his sword and dagger and let the bull gore him to death, but on the day of the corrida when the creature was released into the ring, Laureano’s heart broke in his chest. The poor thing hadn’t been fed or watered for days. It had been freshly branded on its back and the blood was still running. Its eyes were dull. The beast barely had any fight in it. Laureano took one look at the poor bull and fell to his knees. The crowd turned upon him, hungry to see him defeat the animal. So he ran for it, gathered together everything he owned – which wasn’t much, he was so poor – and he dashed for the coast with his father on one of the bullring’s horses. He sold that horse at the port in exchange for passage and he brought his father here to England that very day. They had nothing except Laureano’s matador costume and his beauty to live off.’

  ‘Wow!’ Kelsey couldn’t help but smile in awe.

  ‘He was a bit wow, yes!’ Blythe smiled too, still folding and twisting the tissue paper in her hands.

  ‘They made do, scrounging odd jobs, living hand to mouth, but that summer the RSC were auditioning in London for a Cervantes play. It was the sixties, the dawn of the package holiday; England was Spain-mad. Laureano auditioned for a background part in a fiesta scene, all clichéd castanets and swishing capes. Well, the director took one look at him and snapped him up as his protégé. He had the looks and the physique and he could project his voice across a bullring; all he had to do was learn better English.

  ‘I was already a star by then, always hanging about at the theatre during the day, so I helped him a little with his vocabulary and soon we were in love.’ Blythe’s eyes glinted as she chuckled at the memory.

  ‘We were cast together as leads soon after. People liked the look of us side by side, we were both so dainty and so powerful… and you know the rest.’

  ‘He loved you.’

  ‘Oh yes, very much. Laureano’s father was very old by then, he passed away before the baby was born, never met little Lorcan, our boy. Then when it became clear the bosses were determined to starve me out of work, Laureano suggested we go back to Spain, live a simple life, and so we did. We spent a few happy years together, although I missed the life of the stage terribly. I couldn’t do much at Valladolid with this hip, but I could shake an olive tree and work the presses and we made a very small living.’ A shadow fell over Blythe’s face. ‘But my Laureano was far too beautiful for this world and he passed shortly after Lorcan’s seventh birthday. Misfortune often brings yet more sadness in its wake, and my father passed soon after that as well. Daddy’s will left me everything – I was an only child after all – but the stipulation was that I return to England and raise my son a little English boy. I had no money and I had no choice, so I came back.’

  ‘You raised Lorcan here?’

  ‘Yes, but he had his papa’s Spanish heart in him. He missed the heat, dreamt of the sun and the dust and the sea. School holidays back at the old house weren’t enough for him and he moved back there as soon as he could. He was eighteen when he left for good. He’s still there now, with his new English wife. He works in Granada for an animal charity, got a little flat near the Alhambra, and they spend the weekends at Valladolid in the olive garden. They’re happy.’

  ‘I thought your lover abandoned you.’ Kelsey squinted, trying to make sense of the conclusions she’d jumped to.

  ‘No. Laureano just couldn’t stay. Aging together wasn’t to be part of our story. I have lived far, far longer without him in my life than the brief time I spent with him.’

  ‘And you never married, or met anyone else?’

  ‘Oh no, as Shakespeare said, love is an ever fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken. I love him still to this day.’ Blythe lifted the tissue paper to show Kelsey a perfect white paper rose which she twirled between her fingertips. ‘Don’t worry, Kelsey dear. You and Jonathan are facing your first tempest. He’ll be back when the storm’s blown over, and you mustn’t wither away in the meantime, you hear me? We women must continue to bloom, even in the wintertime. You’ve got work to do here. Don’t make the mistake I did of walking away from my occupation. I was the Duchess of Malfi once! And I let them push me out when I should have stayed and fought. Yes, I was in agony with my hip, but Laureano and I should have stayed here. He could have wowed the crowds for years and I could have fought for parts, even if I was only playing to a handful of people in the smallest of places.’ Blythe smiled away the regret. ‘This is your chance.’ She slipped the paper rose behind Kelsey’s ear. ‘Beautiful. Now finish your tea. You’ve got a lot to do.’

  ‘But what about Jonathan? How do you know he’ll come round?’ said Kelsey.

  Blythe smiled, lifting the old photograph of Laureano to gaze at it once more. ‘Love works both ways; otherwise it isn’t love.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ‘Our wooing doth not end like an old play

  Jack hath not Jill’

  (Love’s Labour’s Lost)

  The winter dawn hadn’t yet broken as Kelsey tramped over the frosted grass, the silvered blade
s giving way beneath her boots like crunching glass. Over her shoulders she hauled tote bags stuffed with provisions – bacon rolls and jam donuts – and she had two piping hot takeaway coffees in her hands.

  The red curtains on the barge were still drawn when Kelsey reached Mirren’s bedroom window and tapped at the glass. ‘Wakey wakey, Mirren!’

  Once Kelsey had roused her friend and got her to open the hatch for her to climb inside they stood looking at each other in the brash light from the sconces.

  ‘I brought you some breakfast,’ Kelsey said, handing a coffee to Mirren who was shivering in a baggy t-shirt.

  ‘We’re talking?’ she replied, sheepishly.

  ‘Of course we are. I’m sorry I was short with you on Boxing Day. I shouldn’t have told you to leave like that, but once I found the ring and everything… I just needed a bit of space.’

  ‘It’s me that’s sorry.’ Mirren looked dejected and as though she’d barely slept. ‘I didn’t mean for it to go like that. I swear me and Adrian had already decided to stop looking for information about Jonathan before we’d even found any but it was too late; Mr Ferdinand was suddenly there spilling the news and we couldn’t pretend we hadn’t heard it.’

  Kelsey threw an arm around her. ‘It’s all right, honestly. It’s done, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have set you on looking for clues, I got carried away dreaming about reuniting Jonathan with his dad. I should have gone with my gut and told Jonathan our hunch right at the start instead of carrying on like a shit Nancy Drew.’

  Mirren laughed with relief, grateful for the attempt at humour.

  ‘Have you heard anything from Jonathan yet? He must have landed by now.’

  ‘Hours ago. I tracked his flight online, but no, nothing yet.’

  ‘I returned Adrian’s phone, he must have found it by now, and I’ve left him messages. I told him how upset Jonathan is, how he ran off like that. I’ve no idea what Adrian’s planning to do. I don’t know how else to find him. I don’t even know where he lives!’

  ‘It’s OK. I don’t think there’s anything else we can do right now. Listen, you’ve got the day off, right?’ Kelsey wanted to change the mood before Mirren could start up with the apologies again.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘We’ve got work to do then.’ Kelsey unloaded the bags onto the little table in the gallery space, then rubbed her hands to warm them, scanning the empty walls. ‘Let’s get this exhibition sorted. It could take a few days. Reckon that’ll keep us out of trouble for a bit.’

  Mirren grasped the hammer and the spirit level from Kelsey’s materials. ‘All right, you can be the gaffer. Just tell me what to do.’ She inhaled a breath, preparing to work. Kelsey only looked her over and laughed.

  ‘You can put some bottoms on for a start and then there’s bacon rolls to eat; can’t work on an empty stomach.’

  Mirren gripped the hem of her t-shirt and they both smiled with the relief and the affection that stretched back to their girlhoods.

  ‘Oh, and have I got a tale to tell you,’ Kelsey called through the boat as Mirren went to get changed. ‘And it all begins with a beautiful Spanish matador!’

  The two friends ate and talked and worked on all through the short winter’s day and into the night, music playing, voices chiming with different strategies to display the photographs to their best advantage, both trying to avoid giving way to the anxiety in their hearts and marvelling yet again at the strength of their friendship, their very own fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken.

  After Kelsey left later that evening with the entire exhibition plotted out and the first of the pictures already displayed on the barge’s low walls, Mirren laid her tired body on her bed and for the first time that day reached for her phone. She’d have sat and stared at it all day long if Kelsey hadn’t turned up and she wouldn’t have missed the calls from Adrian. As she was deciding what to do with his voicemails – did she really need to hear any more lies? – the phone rang in her hands.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ she flinched. She hadn’t realised how tense she still was from the revelations of the day before, even though she’d spent the night cursing herself for letting her resolve slip while nursing a growing anger for Adrian, the man who knew she had sworn off men but still pursued her, acting kind and considerate when really he was only after one thing, and he’d got a newspaper scoop into the bargain.

  It didn’t matter how many times she flicked the phone to ‘busy’ he rang again and again until at eleven o’clock she gave in to her rage and answered, ready to unleash her worst words upon him.

  ‘Thank God! Mirren. It’s me, Adrian.’

  ‘You’ve got a lot of nerve ringing me all day. Where have you been since the twenty-sixth? I was trying to reach you? Do you know the trouble we’ve caused?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ve been working a lot of lates.’

  ‘At the paper?’ she interrupted.

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Mr Ferdinand said he’d see you on the twenty-eighth, that’s tomorrow. What did you have to do at work that was so urgent yesterday?’

  ‘On Boxing Day I went back to the offices. I wanted to look into Wagstaff and Olivia a little more.’

  ‘So you are going to publish the story! No doubt you’ve told the whole thing to Mr Ferdinand too.’ Mirren’s nerves rattled and she found herself pacing through the barge. Thank goodness she’d kept Kelsey’s – mistaken, as it turned out – hunch about Blythe and Wagstaff to herself, or else Adrian would now be dead set on exposing her secrets too.

  ‘No, that’s not it at all,’ he was protesting. ‘I only wanted to put together some pictures and some information to help this poor Jonathan guy out, help fill in some gaps for him. I’ve been working flat out, I guess I got absorbed in it, but I found loads of good stuff. It’s all saved on a memory stick. If you meet me for a drink I can give it to you…’

  ‘“Poor Jonathan”? Do you expect me to believe you feel sorry for him, after what you did to him in the summer?’ The salacious front page gossip about Peony and Jonathan danced before her eyes again, with Adrian’s name printed above all the lies.

  ‘In the summer? Mirren, please, I—’

  ‘I might be weak-willed, but I’m not stupid. You’re just another sleazy journalist out for themselves. I’m only sorry it took me so long to figure you out. Just make sure you destroy that memory stick because if this gets into the paper then so help me—’

  ‘It won’t, I promise. Look, I’ve left the memory stick at work. I’ll go get it tomorrow and drop it off at your boat, OK? Then you can do what you like with it, but honestly, I think Jonathan should see it. There are pictures of his mum, and interviews; there’s even coverage of a summer gala when Olivia and Wagstaff both dressed as masquers and were photographed together. He should have those…’

  ‘You can bring it by first thing tomorrow, but just post it through the hatch. I don’t want to see you.’

  Mirren hung up the phone and stalked off to brush her teeth, wondering why she didn’t feel triumphantly self-righteous and relieved, only sad and sorry and disappointed with herself once more.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  ‘I am to wait, though waiting so be hell’

  (Sonnet 58)

  The next day there was no memory stick delivered to the barge, nor the next, or the next. With each day that passed Mirren’s anxiety grew and she had to ring Kelsey from the laundry room at the Yorick and tell her all about it – that in Adrian’s possession there were carefully collated stories and images featuring Jonathan’s mum and his biological father. He’d broken his promise to return them and Mirren wasn’t even surprised. He’d probably already sent the story to Mr Ferdinand by now. She warned Kelsey to prepare for the worst when the paper went to print on Friday.

  Kelsey had listened and inhaled through gritted teeth, clasping her hair between the raked fingers of her free hand. ‘OK. OK. Right then.’ She calmed herself. ‘It’s good to be forearmed. I’ll let Jonathan
know.’

  ‘You’ve spoken to him?’ Mirren’s voice was full of hope.

  ‘Not yet, no. But I’ll keep on leaving messages.’

  Kelsey had to believe Jonathan would come round eventually, otherwise how could theirs be true, fixed love? He’d wanted to propose only a few short days ago, hadn’t he?

  After hanging up the call, she rang Jonathan again, not even considering the time difference with LA where he was taking up his drama teaching residency for the rest of the winter; if he was working or sleeping his phone would be switched off anyway, or maybe he was just filtering calls and ignoring hers. Either way, the news about the memory stick full of evidence was a new, worrying development and he had a right to know about it. So she spoke down the crackling line, telling the man who’d once loved her enough to buy her a sapphire ring that, come New Year, the whole world would know about his mum’s long-held secret, and it was all Kelsey’s fault.

  Both women spent Hogmanay alone chatting on their phones with their mums back in Scotland. Neither of them felt like raising a toast to ring out the old year, but both steadfastly made resolutions to try to be wiser in the months to come and to be more considerate of others, and Mirren renewed her vows of living a single life from now on.

  Early on New Year’s Day as Kelsey hung the last of the pictures at the barge, Mirren ran out to buy the newspaper whose publication they’d been dreading.

  They’d agreed in advance that no matter how bad it was, how salacious and invasive, they’d stay calm and not let Adrian’s bad behaviour make them behave badly in turn. They’d brought all this on themselves and they’d have to do the best damage limitation they could and that would include phoning Jonathan’s mum at home and apologising to her and asking Mirren’s friend in the legal department back at the Broadsheet if she could do anything about suppressing the story online.

  Mirren almost leapt down the hatch into the barge just as Kelsey was hanging the portrait of Jonathan in the only space left on the walls and trying hard not to give in to the tears welling.