Messy, Wonderful Us

by Catherine Isaac

  Ed refused to become fixated with them; he was not some delicate flower, wounded because his wife didn’t idolise him. So why did he start to feel like a failure, as if his lack of refinement was causing the most dazzling woman he’d ever met to slip through his fingers?

  For the first time in his life, his background bothered him. With good reason; Ed discovered a few months ago that Julia’s father, a stable, honourable, family man – exactly the kind of man Ed himself wants to be – had repeatedly tried to persuade her not to marry him as he’d be the first family member in generations who’d never even been to university.

  But there was nothing to be gained in dwelling on this or any other criticisms. And gradually he started to think they might have a point.

  Chapter 35

  Allie

  I take my time dressing for dinner, picking out a dark blue dress in a soft fabric that falls off my shoulders, which have deepened in colour since we got here. My phone beeps and I open a text from Ed.

  Booked us into a nice restaurant for 8.30.

  I type my response:

  What’s the dress code?

  Fancy dress. Tarts and vicars.

  I don’t own anything tarty.

  You’re the vicar.

  I slip on a pair of wedge sandals that show off the rose gloss on my toes, and give my hair one last spray before heading downstairs. As the last trace of sun glows red on the lake, I find Ed at a small table on a circular balcony made of centuries-old stone that juts out of the rocks. It sits high above the lake, with tall columns covered in lichen and its floor dotted with pots that tumble with white and orange flowers. He looks up from his notebook as I approach and an airy smile appears at his lips.

  ‘You look lovely, Allie Culpepper.’

  I feel a shot of heat in my cheeks as I pull out the ironwork chair opposite him and lower myself into it, pretending I haven’t noticed his eyes settling on my skin. ‘Thank you.’

  His phone beeps and he glances at a text, before switching it onto silent. ‘Jeremy,’ he explains. ‘He’s holding the fort brilliantly. I know you’re not his biggest fan but my timing for this isn’t great and he hasn’t complained once.’

  ‘What about Julia? Have you spoken to her?’

  He begins rubbing his thumb into the dry knuckles on his other hand. ‘We’ve had a couple of conversations.’

  I search his face. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  His lips part as if we are finally going to do this, but he simply says, ‘Maybe. But not tonight.’

  I feel as though I should say something profound here. I want to. But the words jostle for space in my head, then a waiter appears to offer us some drinks and the moment is gone. We stroll down to the town and dine in a lively restaurant on the outskirts of the old quarter, under a canopy of greedy honeysuckle. The food is exquisite, home-made pasta filled with duck, and rack of lamb with creamy green peppers, potatoes and figs. I’m contemplating a coffee, when an elderly Italian couple who’ve been sitting on an adjacent table pause to say good evening before they leave. I’d guess they were in their eighties and, although her face has lost the glow of youth, she retains a beauty in her smile as she clutches her husband’s hand.

  ‘Siete proprio una coppia perfetta,’ she says.

  Ed smiles and replies in Italian before she nods and they disappear into the street.

  ‘What did she say?’ I ask.

  He hesitates. ‘That it’s going to snow tomorrow.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Most of the shops are still open after dinner and it’s still so warm that my sweater is redundant. We head down a narrow street to a busy gelateria, with a long, glass-fronted counter. There must be a hundred flavours of gelato lined up in a kaleidoscope of muted colours – deep berry reds, soft greens and pale lemon, all served using flat metal spades. We are greeted by a handsome man in his mid-twenties, with a smile that suggests he’s very aware of his own sex appeal. ‘Buonasera, bella donna. You like a recommendation?’

  ‘Hmm . . . yes, okay.’

  ‘Let me see, for you, something sweet. Sesame e miele, sesame and honey. I think you’ll like it,’ he says, and as he holds my gaze it occurs to me that he might be flirting.

  ‘Um, grazie,’ I mutter after he’s handed me the ice cream. We step outside into the glow of the street light and Ed shakes his head, half amused, half something else I can’t put my finger on. Indignant? ‘I can’t believe that,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your admirer.’

  ‘He was only selling me an ice cream,’ I shrug.

  ‘He could’ve kept his tongue in while he was at it. I’m embarrassed for him.’

  I chuckle into the gelato, before taking a bite, its grainy sweetness cold on my tongue. We start strolling towards the main square before Ed says: ‘Did you ever regret taking the job in Liverpool after your break-up? Rob was a nice guy.’

  ‘No,’ I reply immediately. ‘Especially not after I’d found out about what happened at the New Orleans conference.’

  ‘God, I’d forgotten about the Argentinian researcher. Rob was a dick,’ he says emphatically, correcting his earlier statement.

  I suppress a laugh. ‘He wasn’t The One that’s for sure.’

  ‘So why did you stay with him for so long?’

  I think for a moment and try to come up with a satisfactory answer. ‘Why does any couple stay together when they’re not head over heels in love? Because they assume it’s enough to appreciate someone’s company? Or they don’t like change? Honestly, I’m not even sure. It felt like more than habit at the time, but . . . maybe not.’

  ‘You did have lots in common too. Work-wise, at least.’

  ‘That’s very true. It was good to have someone to talk to who actually understood what I did all day.’

  ‘Good . . . but not everything?’

  ‘No, not everything,’ I reply, briefly lifting up my eyes.

  He smiles. ‘It’s not easy finding the right person to spend forever with, is it?’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  ‘I think as human beings our system can be pretty flawed: if someone ties your stomach up in enough knots, you leap to the conclusion that you’re capable of spending the rest of your life with them.’

  By now we are in the shadow of the fort, where the pools of light from within its turrets cast a pearlescent gleam on the water. We cross the cobblestones until we reach a small stone well in the centre of the square.

  ‘I once asked my dad how he knew he was in love with Mum,’ I tell him. ‘He said it was because she was the first person he’d think about when he woke up in the morning and the last person he’d think about when he went to sleep.’

  ‘It’s definitely part of it, the good part.’

  I press my hip against the curve of the well. ‘What’s the bad part?’

  ‘When the person you’ve fallen in love with isn’t who you thought they were. Then you discover you’re not the person you thought you were either.’

  I swallow. ‘Well, let’s try my dad’s test. Is Julia the person you think about before you go to bed?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replies, without missing a beat. The eruption in my chest is followed by a helpless wave of guilt and the knowledge that it’s time for me to step up and do the right thing.

  ‘But the thing is—’

  ‘Ed, listen,’ I interrupt. ‘You have to go back to her. Not for her sake, but for yours. I don’t want to know the details of what happened. I’d never intrude. But all relationships need work, you know that. Some of them aren’t worth it. Others are. And what you and Julia have is worth it.’

  A small pulse appears in the side of his neck. ‘What makes you think that I didn’t just get it wrong?’

  ‘Because I’ve known you for most of my life, Ed, and you were so happy when you met Julia. You were talking about the future, about kids, within weeks of meeting her.’

  He reaches into his pocket and takes out a coin, handing
it to me. ‘Make a wish,’ he says, gesturing to the well.

  I rub the coin between my fingers and toss it into the water. It plinks onto the surface before sinking into the murk.

  ‘I hope it was something good.’

  ‘Lottery win,’ I joke. He doesn’t need me to say that all I really want is proof that the man I call Dad is my father. ‘Go on, your turn.’

  He flicks a coin into the water and gazes after it with a frown etched on his forehead. And it occurs to me that, these days, Ed simply doesn’t know what to wish for.

  Chapter 36

  Ed

  When Ed was small, he’d thought of his father as a powerhouse. Physically strong, dominant, a man’s man, with an angular jaw, thick hair and beefy shoulders allowed to peel in the sun. On the days when they’d go to the park as a family, his dad would play fight on the grass with him and Mike and it felt like they were wrestling a wolf.

  His mother would sit on a blanket looking after Michelle, just a gurgling baby then, as she’d tuck her slim legs underneath her and wince if the high jinks went too far. Then sometimes they’d all go to the pub, where Mike and Ed would muck about in the car park and the drifting eyes of other men reminded Dad what a head-turner his wife was. He’d throw his arm around her shoulder and kiss her hard on the lips, until she’d playfully bat him away and Mike would stick his fingers down his throat and pretend to puke.

  It was about that age that Ed had started to become curious about what happened each morning after his dad drove his van off to work. But it wasn’t until he was thirteen that he was allowed to tag along on the weekend jobs he used to take in an attempt to address the family’s ever-present financial pressures.

  Watching his father solve even the most complex of electrical problems had felt like witnessing a kind of magic at first. But Ed soon came to think of it as better than magic. His dad had an analytical brain, he was a brilliant troubleshooter and an instinctive mathematician. He knew exactly which wires to splice, join and connect, and seemed to safely and efficiently solve any problem put in front of him. Ed was never let loose with a set of long nose pliers before he’d earned his stripes officially, but long before the tests, he had an encyclopaedic knowledge of earthing and bonding, circuit breakers and fuse enclosures.

  Ed found his mind drifting to this when, a decade after his first weekend shift with his father, he was celebrating the fifth birthday of Spark. In the years that preceded it, Ed had been overcome by an almost superhuman drive to build, progress, grow. It was an intoxicating, euphoric period, when he worked sixty-hour weeks and slept for five hours a night but had still recently managed to beat his own personal best when he’d run a half-marathon. He never took drugs but he felt like he was on something: addicted to success.

  The party had been a glitzy affair, held at an upmarket, if slightly self-aware, hotel. Ed found himself buzzing at his father’s presence, like a small child in his classroom, proudly showing off the stick drawings he’d produced last term.

  ‘What are these?’ his dad asked, stopping a waitress with a tray of canapés. He’d been dressed in a polyester suit that looked like he’d last worn it to attend a magistrates’ court hearing. Ed wished he’d had the foresight to buy him something nicer.

  ‘Lobster with pink grapefruit mayonnaise,’ she replied. ‘I believe they’re delicious.’

  He took one, placed it in his mouth and gave her a thumbs-up. Ed laughed.

  ‘How’s your hotel, Dad?’

  ‘Swanky. No tea and coffee facilities in the room, though.’

  ‘You just need to phone room service and they’ll bring you a coffee if you want one,’ Ed told him.

  ‘Your mother wouldn’t want to drag someone all the way upstairs for a cup of tea. You’d pay through the nose for that.’

  ‘The bill’s covered, Dad. You don’t need to worry.’

  ‘It’s the principle,’ he said, then he smiled. ‘We’re very proud of you, son.’

  ‘Learnt it all from you,’ Ed said and his father snorted.

  ‘Hardly.’

  But it was partly true. It was Ed’s father, after all, who’d shown him how rewarding running a business could be. In fact, he had enjoyed it so much so that B. R. Holt & Sons was still tootling along, owned by Ed, but with his father as managing director, in charge of three employees. Being the boss was remarkably easy on the knees, he found, though he still couldn’t resist rolling up his sleeves and stepping in when someone phoned in sick.

  ‘So will we get to meet Annabel tonight?’

  ‘Er . . . no. We’re not together anymore,’ Ed said.

  His dad raised his eyebrows. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing. We just weren’t right for each other.’

  He gave him a knowing look. ‘I understand. You play the field, son. Get it out of your system while you’re a young man.’

  ‘It’s not that,’ Ed protested, hoping that this wasn’t a common perception, the idea that he was some would-be playboy. He didn’t date for dating’s sake. He’d met a lot of nice women. Intelligent, attractive, sexy women. The fact that none had progressed into a serious relationship was simply because he hadn’t found the right person. ‘Anyway, you didn’t play the field, and you and mum managed to stick it out,’ Ed continued, at which point his father coughed and a little bit of champagne fizzed out of his nose.

  ‘Well, I can’t pretend it’s all been a bed of roses. Things were difficult when we had a few money worries – and when Michelle went through her rebellious phase. I don’t claim to be any great harbinger of wisdom, son, but I do know this. When you finally meet someone special and your head’s in the clouds, just be aware that things get tough for the best of us. The only trick is riding the storm.’

  Chapter 37

  Returning to Nightingale House was lovely. Until then, she’d wondered if she’d been biased about how beautiful her baby was, but everyone adored his shock of dark hair and the expressions on his little face. Christopher never cried. When other mothers were traipsing up and down corridors in the dead of night, desperately trying to settle their babies, Peggy would lean over and tuck in the blanket she’d knitted for him, letting her eyes settle on the face of her angel. She could watch his tiny eyelids flicker with unknown dreams for hours on end.

  Over the next six weeks, she revelled in every new expression of his. He was only five weeks and a day old when he first smiled at her, as they sat under the huge, ivory blooms of the magnolia tree on the far side of the house. That moment of connection made her heart flare and she wished her mother could just see him and fall in love like she had. But when her mum visited, she refused to meet the baby, insisting that while she was there the staff should look after him.

  ‘Who was he, Peggy?’ her mother asked once, out of the blue. ‘The father, I mean. I think you owe us that much.’

  Both her parents had initially leapt to the assumption that it was poor John Astley, the boy next door but one with whom Peggy had played in the street as a little girl. He’d repeatedly asked her out through the course of their teenage years and, despite her politely declining – she just didn’t feel that way about him – her dad remained permanently suspicious that he was up to no good. Peggy had put the stoppers on the theory that he was the father immediately and John’s subsequent engagement to a girl who worked in the Pavilion bingo hall forced her parents to accept that she was telling the truth.

  ‘It might make things a bit better if your dad and I knew,’ her mother persisted.

  But it wouldn’t have. 1963 might have been the year when four lads from Liverpool – mere streets away from where Peggy lived, in fact – were taking the world by storm, but the cultural revolution that the Beatles represented never made it past the doors of Peggy’s house. In fact, it never would.

  *

  He’d been an actor, with a small part in The Pirates of Penzance, which ran for two weeks at The Empire in the summer of 1962. Although the cast rarely mixed with the front-of-house staff, Pe
ggy had been tasked with helping out backstage when a tummy bug led to several crew calling in sick. It was as she was handing out refreshments during rehearsals that he’d first come to talk to her.

  ‘What on earth are they thinking getting a girl like you to make the tea?’ he’d said as she’d offered him a cup.

  A blush rose from somewhere inside her. ‘A girl . . . like me?’

  ‘You’re too pretty to be backstage. You should be the leading lady.’

  ‘I just work in the box office.’ She shook her head, cursing the quiver in her voice.

  ‘So you’re pretty, clever and good with people?’

  ‘Well, I try my best.’

  He was posh, from somewhere down south, and called himself Jack Newman, though that was a stage name, a combination of two of his heroes, Jack Lemmon and Paul Newman. He had a mop top like Paul McCartney – the kind of hair her dad thought heralded the downfall of society. She considered him exotic and worldly wise, though everyone who wasn’t from Liverpool fell into that category at the time.

  He took to seeking her out every afternoon before the matinee and hovering about between rehearsals as she worked. ‘He’s like a lost puppy around you,’ her friend Barbara had said, although that wasn’t how it felt to Peggy. She was flattered by his attention and went to sleep each night replaying his brazen advances.

  ‘I hope you’re coming to the end of show party,’ he’d said, the day before the final performance. ‘You’re part of the team now.’ The entire production company was moving on to Birmingham afterwards, though Jack’s ambitions went far further afield – all the way to Hollywood.

  Although her heart soared at the invitation, the first thing she’d thought of was her parents. Other twenty-two-year-olds might not have hesitated, but she couldn’t imagine even suggesting it to them.

  ‘Not your thing?’ he’d teased.

  ‘Oh, no it’s not that,’ she protested. But, as the heat of his eyes warmed her skin, she didn’t feel like protesting about anything anymore.