“Are we there already?” A weary breath fluttered through his lips. “I thought we might head home for a rest soon.”
“A rest?” she said, pulling on her shoes. “You’ve been sitting down all day, and we’ve just been stuck in this car for the best part of forty-five minutes, thanks to traffic.”
“It wasn’t that bad today.”
“Well, it’s not like Porthsennen. I didn’t expect it to take us so long to get from one place to the next.” When he didn’t relent, she sighed before asking, “Do you want to go home instead?”
“It’s not that I’m not keen. I’m just a bit tired, love. That’s all.”
“It was a mistake, wasn’t it? I should have known we couldn’t fit forty-nine years into a few hours.”
Her expression made him feel guilty; she had gone to so much effort, and all he could do was complain that he was tired. All those years he had let her down by never once knocking on her door, and now he was struggling to make it through a few hours.
“It wasn’t a mistake. We might have both made mistakes over the years, but this certainly isn’t one of them.”
It was so warm and genuine that her disappointment eased.
“Am I forgiven?” he asked.
“Forgiven? For what?”
“Being a spoilsport.”
“There’s nothing to forgive.” And she didn’t just mean today; although he was the one who had left, she was the one who needed to ask for forgiveness. “I could never be angry at you.”
“Then let’s get to it,” he said, edging her out of the car. “I’m guessing we’re about to see 1984 come to fruition, judging by our location.” He stepped into the sunlight. It was such a lovely day, a light blue sky with fine wisps of cloud. It made everything seem easier, and somehow it helped him find the energy he needed. The driver helped steady him, and soon enough they were on their way down the narrow lane that would lead them to Temple Church.
“I thought that you couldn’t remember all the years so well,” she said.
“Well, maybe I remember them better than I let on. After all, I had all year to think about what I wanted to wish for us. It wasn’t that hard to remember fifty wishes, and the order that they came in.”
They steadied each other, Elizabeth gripping his arm as the ground sloped down. “I think you mean forty-nine,” she said with a hint of sarcasm. “Remember, you never made it to Porthsennen this year.”
“No, I don’t suppose I did, did I. Let’s call it forty-nine.” The ornate circular church appeared before them, and as they descended the steps into the vestibule Tom watched as she gazed up at the ceiling. The architecture was awe-inspiring, and she was floored, just as he’d known she would be. “I’m right though, right? It was 1984.”
She handed him another wish, a crumpled piece of blue paper from her pocket. He read the date and the wish.
1984: I wish that I could take you to Temple Church, one of the most beautiful places I have found in London, where we would listen to evensong by candlelight.
“Just like you said.”
“I knew what I was doing that year, all right. And listen,” he said, holding his hand up to his ear. “I can already hear them singing.”
The acoustics were wonderful as they stepped inside, surrounded by interred Templar Knights. Vaulted ceilings rich and echoey loomed above, drenched in flickering shadows. Tom and Elizabeth took their seats to listen to the choir, and he watched her get lost in the music, transcended for a while by the feelings the singing could stir up. He had first walked in here by accident, drawn by the dulcet voices that had reached him on the street. That night he had argued with his wife, which was nothing new, but this time she had accused him of seeing somebody else. She had told him that she had a feeling in her heart that he wasn’t really hers. And although he wasn’t having an affair, and was in every practical respect a loyal husband, he also knew he couldn’t promise his wife that she was the woman he truly loved. And when she had asked him outright if he was in love with somebody else, he had seen little option to lie. He’d told her the whole story of Elizabeth, and she had left the same night. He knew his feelings would never change, and so Alice had begun to share her time between them both, but it had taken only six months for the natural shape of things to form, with Alice spending more and more time with her father in their family home, until one day her mother just never came back.
* * *
That evening after they left the church, they boarded a cruise boat from Embankment and began their sail along the river, just as Elizabeth had planned. They stood outside, the breeze cool against their skin, London Bridge itself lit up a soft shade of blue. When they started to feel the cold they sat at their table by the window, where they watched the boats, buildings, and lights paint the moving cityscape all around them.
“All the lights look like the stars,” she said as she gazed out toward the city. The food had been perfect, the atmosphere incredible. Even Tom had eaten. Now a pianist was beginning to play, and a woman was singing along. “It reminds me of the night we were down by the rocks.”
“You mean the night you fell in.” He shook away the memory. “What a disaster.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“You weren’t to know,” he said as he sipped the last of his wine. “I took us down there, so really it was my mistake.” He was feeling a little bit tipsy. “But a mistake is as good as an accident. Nobody means to make them. And it’s never the mistake itself that’s the problem, but rather how people act in response. You slipping in only would have been a problem if I hadn’t managed to help you to safety.”
“You think it’s always possible to put right a mistake?” she asked.
“I think so. That’s what we are doing here, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.” The grand structure loomed above them as they passed through the turrets of London Bridge on their return leg of the journey. “It really is magical here,” she whispered to him as they sailed through. “London is as beautiful as I once imagined it to be. It’s just different to Porthsennen, that’s all.”
“There’s beauty in every place, Elizabeth. Just like there’s beauty in every life. But the really magical moments are few and far between.”
Her hand felt the warmth of his forearm. “Like this one?”
He shook his head. “Not just this one. Like every moment with you.”
“Oh, I almost forgot,” she said, pulling back. Elizabeth pulled a small electric tealight from her pocket and set it down on the table. “1987,” she told him.
“The wish for a candlelit supper?” She nodded. He looked over to the small dance floor and saw a couple of people getting up to enjoy the music, a song he recognized. Pain shot through his arms as he balanced his weight against the table and stood up, but he held out his hand and waited.
“I thought you were tired,” she said.
“Well, I can’t promise you dancing the night away like I could in 1983, but I can offer you at least one dance. Especially to this song.” It was “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis Presley. He had played it to her once before, on the most romantic night of her life. Back when they were kids, when everything seemed possible. With her hand in his they moved onto the dance floor, began to sway along with the music, his hands on the back of her waist, his breath warm against her ear. “I’m sorry,” he said eventually, and tears pricked her eyes. “I’m sorry for every mistake I made that made things harder for you.”
The strength that had held her together since her arrival was fading, and all the feelings that she had been trying to suppress since he first told her he was ill, her unreasonable certainty that blood on a tissue didn’t have to mean anything, well, she just couldn’t hold them in anymore.
“It’s so unfair,” she said. “After all this time.”
With his arms wrapped protectively around her body, thinner than they were just a week ago when she arrived, he began to sing a softly whispered melody. It made
her tingle, feel things she hadn’t in a long while. “I can’t help falling in love with you,” he sang to the tune.
They danced, their eyes on each other, eyes in the room on them. But in that moment it was as if nothing else existed in the whole world. No broken promises, no mistakes, nothing that either of them was desperate to undo. No cancer. They could have been anywhere, a time long ago, a place that belonged only to them. Instinctively she bore his weight and he held on tight. Neither of them wanted to let go. And as the song finished and they stayed right where they were, they both realized, perhaps for the first time in their lives, that neither of them ever had.
Then
Taking her into his home was a dangerous option, but as he turned to look at her, that beautiful face with a cut still oozing blood on her forehead, he figured he didn’t really have much choice. Not if he wanted to be the man she made him wish he was. Made him believe he could be.
“Mum is asleep, so,” he said, holding a finger tinged pink with cold up to his bluish lips. The door creaked as he opened it, just enough to peer around the edge and into the room, breathing a sigh of relief when he saw the empty chairs before him. No doubt his father was still out; Tom certainly hadn’t gone looking for him tonight. Probably down by the water, asleep in one of the boats. Old Man Cressa would find him in the morning and turn him out, no harm done.
The timorous whistle of the wind tickled past the window frames, and Tom was aware of it in a way he wasn’t usually. He viewed the room with the fresh eyes of an outsider, like Elizabeth: the small table in the center; the chipped crockery set out for breakfast; the flaking paint of the kitchen cabinets, which bubbled like the rusted paintwork on the harbor trawlers. Their eyes met, and she understood his concerns.
“I like it,” she whispered.
It was nothing like her grand house with the big bay windows and high roof. Did she really like it, in all its shabby glory? It didn’t really matter in that moment because all he could wonder was whether she wanted him to kiss her again. He was struggling to read her; for all the books he’d read she made him feel embarrassingly illiterate.
“We’d better clean that cut on your face. Come on, follow me.” His grip was firm as he led her up the stairs.
* * *
Standing on the other side of his bedroom door, she heard the click of the latch behind her. Elizabeth took in the details with eager eyes while Tom went to fetch some warm water. The wardrobe in one corner, dark wood and half-open, a belt hanging over the door. On the inside surface both the drawing and the painting she had given him were displayed, like a little gallery of her work. Next to the single bed stood a two-drawer chest unit, white and worn in places, much like the kitchen cupboards. In her room not a single item was out of place, and even her paintbrushes were always neatly lined up on a soft towel because she liked to take care of them. Tom’s bedroom was in disarray, with books in piles, and clothes in heaps in just about every direction you looked. Yet she liked it. It felt homey and snug under the ceiling, which sloped down to the floor like the hills that rolled gently into the sea. On the floor she saw a small black-and-white photograph, Tom minus his shirt. Before she could talk herself out of it, she picked it up, slipped it into her pocket.
After returning with a steaming bowl of warm water, he pulled off his wet shirt, reaching for the thick sweater that was draped over the end of the bed. It was the same one she had been wearing only that afternoon. Nerves forced her eyes away as he removed his clothes, but as he pulled the sweater over his head she glanced back, catching a glimpse of his naked torso.
“You’d better give me that,” he said, pointing to her shoe, snapping her out of her trance. “I’ll put it by the heater to dry.” It was a relief to remove it, her toes cold with the wet. Tom placed it near a small aqua-colored heater underneath the window. He turned a dial on the front, and she felt the room heating up. “What about the rest?” he asked, referring to her clothes.
“You’ll have to turn around,” she said, remembering her own wild thoughts while he was changing. And so he did, turning to face the window. Her movements were awkward, her fingers struggling, from either exposure or fear. Not that she didn’t want to be there, but still, it was one thing to want something and another to get it. After pulling off her coat and the rest of her clothes, she reached for one of his shirts, slipping it over her head. It was so long it almost reached her knees.
“Get under the sheets.”
“What?” she cried, a little louder than she had intended.
“Listen,” he said, pausing in his task of laying out her clothes to dry. “If I was going to try anything, I’d have already slipped my trousers off.” Her eyes shot to his bottom. It was very shapely, she thought, like two of Mrs. Anderson’s eggs in a handkerchief. “But if you get under, I won’t see you in your underclothes.” Her heart was pounding as she lifted the cover and sat on the bed. It was soft but lumpy, the sheets cold. Watching him lay out her clothes was calming, arranging them as he was across a chair by a small wooden desk. That too was covered in books, pushed up against the sloping ceiling, as if it were playing its own part in holding up the side of the house.
Within just a moment he was sitting on the edge of the bed. “So why do you always call me by my full name? Should I be calling you Elizabeth Davenport? Is that what posh people do?”
“If you were calling me by my full name it would be Elizabeth Margaret Beatrice Davenport,” she said with all seriousness.
“Four names?”
It went without saying that it warranted explanation. “Elizabeth after our queen, and two names from my grandmothers. It’s quite normal when you think about it.”
“I’m just Thomas Hale.”
“And yet you make such a fuss when I call you that.”
He shuffled up the bed and took a small cloth to dip into the water bowl. With the care of a mother cat over her kittens, he dabbed it at the cut above her eye. “It’s a bit formal, don’t you think, considering that you’re half-undressed and in my bed.” He deserved a slap across the arm for that one, and he got it. “My shirt suits you, though.”
“Why do you always make jokes?” she asked, trailing off as the water rushed into the cut. A sharp stinging sensation caught her, the water dribbling over her eye and onto the sheets.
Her thoughts raced as he moved up and over her body, shuffling on his elbow. Just a short distance from her face she could feel his breath mingling with hers. “I could stop making jokes if you like.”
“I thought you promised not to try anything.”
“I don’t recall making that promise.” He shrugged, smiling, as if he didn’t care either way. “Can’t blame a bloke for trying, though.”
Goodness knows where she got the courage to kiss him before, because although she wanted to again now, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. But the kiss on the rocks had been different. It wasn’t going anywhere. A kiss in this room could lead just about anywhere, and while she was happy to get lost with him, she was anxious about the journey.
In the end it was easier to change the subject, so she pointed to the desk filled with books. “You like to read a lot, don’t you?”
“Yes,” he said, scampering across the bed. He let his feet splay out behind him, close to her face. It felt so personal, so intimate. “This is my favorite,” he said, handing her a dog-eared book.
The pages were brown and tatty, smelled of fish and the sea. “Pride and Prejudice?”
His fingers fussed at the bedsheets, moved over the chenille bobbles before working their way toward her covered feet. He traced the outline of her toes. “Please tell me you know what it’s about. If you don’t, I can’t see you anymore.”
On the inside cover she saw that he had written his name. She thought of her father and how Tom would be able to hold a discussion about books, how maybe he would be impressed that Tom was well read. “What do you think it’s about?” she asked, closing the book. Even though she was sure he was jokin
g, she didn’t want to risk admitting that she had never even heard of it. Her foot tingled where his hand continued to rest on it.
“It’s about love.” For a moment he was quiet, as if he was thinking. “And us.”
“Us?”
“Yes. About how I’d never be good enough for you, not really. About how people think I am one thing, when really I am many.” His fears were coming to the surface, washed up like flotsam in a milky surf. He wanted to share everything about himself, even the bad bits, like the fact that sometimes he was quick to anger, like his father, or that when he ate fish he got terrible wind. Even that. He wanted to know everything about her, and for her to know him in the same all-consuming way.
“You think that people look down on you?”
“Maybe.” He took his hand from her foot. “That I’m just a Hale. Like my father.”
“Does that bother you?”
“It used to. But now all I care about is what you think of me.”
“Well, you should know the answer to that by now.”
He rose from the bed and moved over to one of the bookcases on the far wall. He leaned over, giving her another fine view of his backside, then stood up holding a vinyl. He set it on a turntable, and it began to play, the volume low so as not to wake his mother. It was Elvis Presley, one of her favorite songs.
Once he came back to the bed, he was close enough that she could feel the warm air breeze from his mouth to her face. “I’ve never met anybody like you before, Elizabeth. Most people just get on with things, but you do and say what you think is right. You’ve always been like it, right from when we were at school.”
Little Wishes Page 14
