“What’s funny?” she heard James ask.
She hadn’t realized she had been smiling to herself. “I was just thinking how bad this bit was,” she said, pointing to a perfectly passible interpretation of the stage on the sketch pad in her lap.
He stood up and found a spot on the grass alongside her. “Looks good to me,” he said, shooing away the gulls. He let his hand linger just a little bit too long on her shoulder for her liking.
Not too long for a fiancé, she thought to herself, and with that she folded the cover of her sketch pad and set it aside. The time for games was over.
“Would you like one of these?” he asked.
Her gaze followed his hand to see that while she had been drawing, he had been preparing the picnic. It was the most extravagant picnic she had ever seen, with china plates, sliced strawberries, and a pot of tea steaming on a little stand. He held out a plate of cheese sandwiches, and she took one, setting her pencil down.
“You’ve gone to a lot of effort,” she said.
“It’s my pleasure.” He took a small bite of a sandwich. Crumbs settled on his chin. “It’s just how I imagined it: a beautiful day, you drawing as you are, a perfect setting. Don’t you think?”
“It is a beautiful place,” she conceded, unsure what to add.
“You see, this is what I do, Elizabeth.” He took a breath, seemed a little nervous. “I make my plans a reality. When I was small, I wanted to be a doctor, and now here I am, close to having my own practice. Your father keeps asking me if I am ready; it won’t be long, I’m sure of it. And yesterday I promised you a wonderful day of drawing, and that’s what we’ve got. If I promise something, I deliver,” he said, taking another bite.
“Well, that’s very impressive,” she said. He nodded. His manner failed to reassure her, and there was an uneasy feeling taking shape, like when her father had questioned her about Tom, or when Tom’s mother had walked in on them that morning. A sense that something was afoot that she could not control. “You’ve had a lot of good opportunities, I suppose.”
“Or perhaps I created them, Lizzy.” Edging closer to her, he upset the edge of the picnic blanket. He paused to straighten it, mopped up a splash of spilled tea. All Elizabeth could do was watch before he continued. “Dreams must be fulfilled. They are what set us apart from the animals. I know you have dreams too, and despite what your father tells me about what a wonderful wife you will make, I don’t want to marry you for your housekeeping or cooking.” He winked, lowered his voice. “I’d hazard a guess that neither will be much good. But you see, the truth of the matter is quite simple, Lizzy. I am in awe of you.” He nodded, as if she had disagreed. For a second she could hardly breathe. “I have been ever since the moment I laid eyes on you. Of course, I took you for a beauty, but you are so much more than that,” he said, taking her hands in his. “That’s why I like you so much. Why I . . .” he continued, stumbling. “Why I love you.”
Inside, her stomach was bottoming out, curdling like milk left out on a hot day. His confession had shrunk the world around them so that only she and Tom and James existed in that moment.
“James,” she said softly. “We barely know each other.”
“Sometimes you don’t need to know somebody well to know they are right for you.” That was something they could agree on, she realized. “I know your love of art will always come above a clean house or cooked meal. I know your Hevva cakes are dry and always burned at the bottom. But that’s okay,” he said, smiling to himself. “I did my two years’ national service. I know how to clean, cook, and shine my own shoes to a standard that won’t get me in trouble with my seniors.” His expression changed, turned serious. It was coupled with a movement to touch her face. Still frozen, she didn’t move as his fingers brushed her cheek. “And I know that when your mother’s confusions worsen it hurts you on a physical level, and that some days you can barely stand to talk to her for the fear she will forget your name.” Elizabeth couldn’t look at him then, couldn’t believe that in the short time they had been together he had seen so much of who she really was. “But perhaps most importantly of all in relation to this conversation, I know that you don’t love me.”
Their eyes met, Elizabeth drawn like a magnet. He was pulling at the open neck of his shirt, fussing at the blanket. The smile that seemed to exist on a near permanent basis was still there, but it was an effort now, and his neck was blushing purple as a summer grape.
“James, I . . .” she began, but when she got lost for an answer, he stepped in.
“It’s okay. I don’t expect you to deny it, and if the truth be known I don’t want you to either. Your father pushed us together, and I understand your hesitations. And I’ll be quite honest with you, Lizzy, I went along with meeting you to please him in the first instance. It was important for me to impress him, and if meeting his young daughter did that, then I was game.” A memory of that first dinner stirred, his smart suit the color of sand, and how impressed by him she had been. Every word of his stories felt wild and exciting as they dripped from his tongue, languid and sanguine and exotic. But it had never crossed her mind that they were being pushed together. How naive she was then, how silly. “I assumed I might take you out and that we would laugh together about how we had been set up and call it a day. But his daughter turned out to be you, and I felt things for you that I couldn’t ignore. And I knew then I could spend my life with you, Lizzy, if only you would give me a chance.”
The guilt she had felt on the journey there had receded, but in its place came a sense of sadness. Why would he want this for himself? He knew that she didn’t love him, yet still he pursued this marriage. She had always assumed that he wanted her so that he could access her father’s teaching and patients, but now that she knew he really did love her, how could he accept knowing that she didn’t feel the same way? Was there anything worse than to love and not be loved in return?
“Why do you even want to marry me?”
“Because I know in time you will grow to love me, Lizzy.” He shuffled closer still, reached into his pocket. “I’m not sure how long it might take, but I’m asking you to take pity on a good man, Lizzy, and give him a chance. I accept your current feelings, both for me and perhaps those you harbor for another, in the certainty that in time you will learn that to love me is the right thing.” Was he telling her that he knew about Tom? That he knew and still wanted her? “We forget what it means to face consequences, or struggle, or even the existence of hardship when we feel love. But I promise you that love alone is never enough. I trust one day you will see that and be happy with your choice to marry me. I will always support you and will provide all that you need.”
His words left her speechless, and before she could protest, he produced a small black velvet box from his pocket. The wind had picked up, yet she noticed his brow had started to sweat, wetting the roots of his floppy hair. He carefully opened the lid to reveal a Deco-style ring, a solitaire set in a gallery of smaller stones. The ring itself was etched and engraved all the way down the sides. He took it from the box, carefully as one might handle an insect worth saving.
“I wanted to wait, wanted it to be a special moment, one in which you truly knew how I felt about you. I believe that is now.” His gaze flicked to the ring. “It’s from the twenties, belonged to my grandmother.” He didn’t try to place it on her finger, instead handed it over, setting it in her palm. “As soon as I got the car yesterday, I went to collect it. Now it belongs with you, just as you belong with me.”
A lot of what he said seemed reasonable enough, and there was no doubt that a lifetime with James would see her well provided for. But while James claimed that love could never suffice, neither could mediocrity. It wasn’t enough to be satisfied, when she knew there was a greater prize to be claimed. How could she settle for companionship when she knew the beauty of love, the sweet, unique taste of it? Love wouldn’t fade because life got hard. It existed in a place beyond such complications. Love was a type
of magic; it wasn’t sleight of hand or trickery like some performers exhibited, but a mystery of the world that could never be solved. No logic existed behind it, yet it was a tangible element of life, like fire, air, water, earth, so real you could taste it, and see its colors when you put the right two people together. It was the reason the sun rose in the sky, and the force that caused the sea to roll with the tides. What was life if there was no love? What was there to live for if not for that? It was completely beyond her explanation, and yet one of the most certain things she had ever known.
“I can’t accept this,” she said to James. He shrank before her eyes. “It wouldn’t be right.”
“It’s the boy I saw you with, isn’t it?” he asked quietly as he took the ring. “I knew it straightaway. But, Elizabeth, are you quite sure?”
So he did know. “I’m sure,” and even as she said it, the words underlined her feelings, the act of admission making her even more certain.
“The wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise. Could you just answer me one thing?”
There wasn’t much that she wouldn’t have done then to ease his upset. “Of course.”
“If he weren’t around, do you think you might have been prepared to give me a chance?”
“Yes, James. I think I might have.” Sitting very still, she wasn’t sure if she meant it, but what she did know was that she wanted to. If it was possible for him to understand that she realized he was a good man, she wanted that. And in that moment a hope grew inside her, a hope for him to meet somebody who made him feel as Tom made her feel. She could never have known that he already had, and that indeed she had been right when she thought it earlier: to love and not be loved in return really was the worst feeling in the world.
Now
Tom was a picture of compliance as two cheerful orderlies wheeled him down the corridors and into the radiology department. He had lost some of his spirit, but Nathan was right when he said the steroid would help. In the hour they had been waiting, Tom had woken up and seemed a little livelier.
“Do you want me to get you anything from the vending machine?” Alice asked as they watched Tom’s bed disappear into one of the scanning rooms.
Elizabeth shook her head as she took a seat. “I’m all right, thanks, love. I’ll have a cuppa once we get back to the ward.” Goose bumps ran up and down her arms, chased away by her hands. “It’s a bit chilly down here, isn’t it?”
Alice looked to the corridor, then back to the empty chair. The seat scraped the floor as she sat, and from somewhere in the distance a patient called out in distress. “It’s bloody freezing. I’ll have to ask for another blanket for Dad when they wheel him out. We can’t let him catch a cold on top of everything.”
Elizabeth doubted the severity of such a minor ailment, but she liked Alice’s way of thinking. “You’re a good girl to him. You like taking care of him, don’t you?” Only last Tuesday, when he was feeling weak, Elizabeth had stood aside while Alice lathered soap on a facecloth, washing her father’s back as he sat on the edge of the bed. Tom had looked so small in those moments, so vulnerable as she watched his head hanging low, the roll of skin over his pajama bottoms. That tanned neck and white torso, and all that extra hair he never used to have. How time had whittled him down, no more difficult than a small piece of oak on a lathe.
“Since Mum left, it’s just been the two of us. I always needed him, and now he needs me.” Elizabeth wasn’t sure what to say. Sometimes she caught Alice looking at her, watching her as she made a drink or straightened the sheets on the bed. There was no malice in those looks, but rather wonderment, perhaps over how something could last so long when everything else was crumbling all around them. “That’s why Brian is here. Dad needs to see him too.”
“Of course, love.”
They watched a mother carrying a small child, his face buried in her neck, closely followed by another radiographer. “It wasn’t his fault, you know? Brian, I mean,” Alice continued. “It was me who ruined things. I told him I didn’t want kids.”
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, racking her brain for the correct response. “Well, if it wasn’t what you wanted, it was for the best.”
“I suppose,” she said, doing up the buttons on an oversize cardigan. “But I’m starting to wonder if I was wrong. I see Dad in there, and you here with him. It’s about family, isn’t it?” An intense urge struck Elizabeth then, a need to tell Alice everything about Kate. “That’s the point of life. Not promotions and money and Michelin-starred restaurants on a Saturday. It’s family, and being together. I didn’t understand that before.”
Elizabeth needed to break the tension, Alice being close to tears. “Michelin-starred restaurants seem like a good part of life to me,” she joked. “Not that I’d know, mind. I’ve never eaten in one.”
“You’re not missing much.” Alice shrugged. “Just the same as anywhere else, really. Only less food.” They both smiled, shuffled to get more comfortably positioned in their seats.
“Regardless, your dad will be pleased to see Brian soon.”
“Yes,” she said, before a moment of quiet. “And I never thanked you, did I? Not just for convincing me to talk to Brian, but for being here too. The truth is, Dad needs you. And I think this would be a lot harder without you.” Tears streamed down Elizabeth’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to upset you.”
Without thought Elizabeth reached for Alice, patted her arm. It was a simple touch, but a sign that something had shifted in their connection. “You didn’t. You just made me think of something, that’s all.”
“Of what?”
“Not what. Who,” Elizabeth said. “You know, a long time ago, I didn’t want children either. Couldn’t imagine it, and thought that having a family would ruin all my plans to be an artist.” Alice twisted in her seat. Elizabeth didn’t look up in that moment, her cheeks growing hot. “Then I had Kate,” she said. “I love her more than anything, but we’re not on speaking terms anymore.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Families are not always easy, are they? I didn’t speak to my mother very much in the years before she died.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
The resignation in Alice’s shrug was hard to witness. “When I was a kid, I worshipped her. She was so glamorous, you know, had all these amazing clothes; I used to dress in her heels, and she’d do my makeup. But she was fickle too. Volatile.”
“Your dad didn’t mention that.” Tom didn’t seem to want to talk about it much, and what he had told her never once painted the woman he married in a bad light.
“He would never speak badly of her. But after she and Dad separated, when she asked me to go and live with her, there was never any question in my mind that I preferred to be with Dad. She died almost twenty years ago now. Caught an infection that went to her heart. I did try to reconnect toward the end, but it seemed too much time had passed. If it helps, I regret we lost touch like that, but I regret it more that she let it happen.”
It was beyond Elizabeth’s comprehension that a mother wouldn’t want her daughter in her life. She would have given anything to get Kate back. “I’m sorry it was like that. I try all the time with Kate, but she won’t forgive me.”
“What did you do?”
Only then did she realize she’d said too much. “She feels wronged by something I kept from her.” Keen to get it back on track, she veered back toward Brian. “But my point is this: even though things are difficult now I would have bitterly regretted not having my daughter. So, if you think you’ve made the wrong choice, just tell him. Don’t get another ten, or even twenty years down the line and wonder where your chances went. It’s a horrible place, hindsight.”
For a while, they watched the radiographers coming and going. They both shifted to stand when the door of the room Tom had disappeared into opened, but the nurse who came out said they would be another ten minutes because of a computer having frozen, or something like that. Elizabeth wasn’t sure what she me
ant. It was cold, but not that cold.
“I’m still thinking about canceling the move to Hastings, you know?” Alice said.
“Is that what you really want?”
“Sometimes I think so, and then I remember life with Brian, and how awful we were to each other before I told him to move out. Can things ever really get better between people if they were so bad before?”
“I think so.”
“But I said some terrible things, that he was selfish and lazy. Unambitious,” she said, horrified, as if that was the worst one of all. Perhaps just the one that hurt the most.
“Time changes things, though. You could just tell him you’re sorry.”
“He says he wants to make a go of it, but how am I supposed to put things right?” That was something for which Elizabeth knew the answer. Pride was a terrible thing; it kept a lid on all the things that needed to be said.
“You just say it, love. You just have to take a moment to be brave and do it.”
Elizabeth had rather hoped the conversation would lift Alice’s spirits, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect entirely.
“The house in Hastings has got these two downstairs rooms,” Alice said. “A second lounge and a bedroom. I thought maybe Dad would come and stay.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a tissue. “Doubt that’ll ever happen now.”
“You never know,” Elizabeth said, even though everything she had seen over the last couple of weeks told her that it was unlikely. “Look at the fact that I’m here. I would never have thought that likely a few weeks ago.”
“Well, he’s always loved you. Just like you’ve always loved him.”
Little Wishes Page 17
