“But she said she met someone called George.”
“Aye, lass. I used to tell all the girls that. Used to fancy meself with a guitar, I did. ’Course I weren’t no good, not like George himself, but I could strum a tune or two, and I prob’ly dreamt that one day he’d not turn up and I could’ve stepped in for him.”
“Nellie had a baby, Geoffrey,” Phillips had chimed in gently, noticing that Ruth had clammed up and was biting back tears.
“Did she?” he’d replied. “She never told me. Not that it would have mattered. I would have loved to have had some kids, but it didn’t turn out that way. ”
Ruth’s lips had puckered and, as tears had streamed down her face, she had timidly asked, “Can I come and feed the ducks with you again ... Dad?”
“You knew Geoffrey was my father, didn’t you?” Ruth had questioned a few days later when she’d got her mind straight.
“I had a pretty good idea, yes,” Phillips had replied.
“But how did you know?”
“It’s a secret,” he had said, knowing that Geoffrey Sanderson would never remember the scruffy man in a baseball cap who had sat next to him one lunchtime while he was enjoying a small beer outside a water-front tavern.
“OK,” yells Trina playfully at her bathroom door, “I’m coming in to put your face on. Ready or not.”
The door opens and Ruth stands in front of her, still in her dressing gown, with her eyes full.
“Christ. Are you ever going to stop crying?” laughs Trina. “What is it now?”
“Why are you so good to me, Trina?” snivels Ruth.
“Oh, I’m just the same with guinea pigs,” replies Trina, then she leads Ruth to the bedroom, saying, “Come on, girl. We don’t want to keep the guests waiting.”
But Ruth is still skeptical that anyone other than Trina and her family will show up, worrying that her second wedding will be no better attended than her first. However, things are different this time—Trina has made sure of that. The Corner Coffee Shoppe has been closed for several months, and is up for sale, but Trina has managed to track down most of the old customers, and Ruth’s side of the wedding chapel is bursting. Darcey, Maureen, and Matt—the crossword gang—have all brought partners; Cindy has brought Dave Smith, the telephone engineer, and spends most of the time flapping her engagement ring under noses.
“I thought you said he pinched your bum?” says Raven as she takes a peek.
“I never said I didn’t want him to,” protests Cindy.
Robyn from the candle shop and several of the other business owners have closed their doors for a few hours, and Trina has drummed up most of her kick boxing class, together with Erica from the cancer support group.
Inspector Wilson, Sergeant Brougham and many of Phillips’ colleagues round out the congregation, though Hammer Hammett, Ruth’s lawyer, sends his regrets.
“His only regret is that he didn’t get a fat cheque because the police dropped all the charges,” Trina had said when she’d opened his response. Geoffrey Sanderson looks and feels like a king as he walks his only daughter up the aisle with Maid of Honour Trina Button tripping along behind. But if Sanderson is a king, Ruth is the beautiful princess, and her charming prince waits at the altar with stars in his eyes.
“Have you got the ring, Dave?” Mike Phillips mutters from the corner of his mouth for the tenth time, and Bliss instinctively checks his pocket again.
“Yes. Stop worrying, Mike. Ruth doesn’t want a ring, she only wants you.”
“Everyone back to my place,” yells Trina as soon as the officiator has said, “You may kiss the bride.” She has a very special surprise waiting in a backyard marquee, and can’t wait to see Ruth’s face.
The Bootles, a tribute band with a Ringo look-alike on drums and a couple of wig-wearing kids on guitars, are apparently waiting for the fourth member as the guests grab glasses of champagne and crowd in. “Where’s George?” asks “Paul” and, on cue, Ruth’s father takes to the stage and picks up the guitar, saying into the microphone, “This is for the most beautiful woman in the world. My daughter, Ruth.” Then the band begins and he sings sweetly, “Is there anybody going to listen to my story. All about the girl who came to stay ...”
“Ah girl. Girl,” choruses the rest of the band, together with most of the audience, and Geoffrey Sanderson’s lifelong dream comes true.
The applause is deafening when Geoffrey takes a bow, and the “real” George Harrison feigns reluctance in taking over from him for a few seconds until Geoffrey is embraced by his daughter and has to leave the stage.
“I’ve been practicing that for months,” beams Geoffrey as Ruth melts all over him.
Trina has long-since given up on repairing her protege’s makeup, so she just dabs at Ruth’s face with a napkin as the Bootles strike up “All My Loving,” quickly followed by “And I Love Her.”
“When I’m Sixty-Four” is playing in the background as Ruth Phillips finally plucks up the courage to deal with the cloud on her horizon, and she walks her husband out of the tent into Trina’s garden, asking, “Do you really love me, Mike?”
“You know I do. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you.”
“And you never doubted me, did you?”
Something in her tone bothers Phillips. He wants to say, “Never,” but he holds back, querying, “Should I have doubted you?”
If the band is playing, “Listen. Do you want to know a secret,” Phillips doesn’t hear, as he focuses worriedly on his wife.
“What would you do if I said I’ve kept something from you?”
“Nothing could change the way I feel about you, Ruth,” he answers, then tries to kiss her.
“Wait a minute,” she says. “Can I make a speech?”
“I think Dave’s supposed to go first but ... Hey, it’s your day.”
With the audience stilled, Ruth stands at the microphone holding the bead bag that her mother had stolen for her as she says, “I’ve always thought that this was the only thing that my mother ever gave me, but now I know that she gave me the most important thing in life, the only thing she had to give—love.” Then tears trickle down her cheeks as she weeps, “I’m sorry that I was never able to thank her. I just hope she can hear me.”
“She can hear you,” says Raven, her faith in Serethusa vindicated. “And she wishes you luck.”
“Thank her for me,” says Ruth through the tears as a dapper sixty-year-old man with a large hooked nose and dark glasses slips unnoticed into the back of the tent.
“I owe so much to so many of you,” Ruth carries on, once she’s straightened her voice, and she has Jordan Jackson, his abusive mother, and Tom Burton on her mind when she adds, “All my life I only ever met people who wanted something in return; who always took more than they gave. But in the last year I’ve realized that not everyone is like that.”
Behind her, Ringo’s double turns on a keyboard and quietly plays “With a Little Help from My Friends,” and the newcomer at the back sings along softly, as Ruth goes on to say, “I know some of you are wondering why I chose today to marry Mike. Well, tomorrow is the anniversary of the day that my first husband decided to leave me, and it’s also the day that Raven told me that it was my special day.” She stops to wipe her eyes, and her hands shake as she opens her bead bag for a tissue, but then she takes out an envelope and hands it to Mike, saying. “I’ve been holding on to this for nearly a year. At first I was terrified that it made me look guilty, then I was terrified that Trina would stop being my friend if she thought I didn’t need her, then I was terrified that you would stop loving me if you found out. Now I’ve got a father, a husband, and lots of friends; I’ve got everything I want, so it doesn’t matter anymore. You can throw it away if you want.”
“What is it?” he questions as he opens the envelope, joking, “That’s married life for you. She gets a gold ring and all I get ... is an old lottery ticket.”
A yell of delight comes from the floor as Raven sc
reeches, “She was right! Serethusa was right! It was your day.”
“How much?” asks Phillips, slowly catching on.
“Five million dollars,” says Ruth sheepishly and the tent erupts in noise as the Bootles start back up with “Baby, You’re a Rich Man.”
“There is something else,” says Ruth, holding on tightly to her husband while she looks tenderly into her father’s eyes. “You’re finally going to be a grandpa, Dad.”
“I don’t know if I can take all this,” Phillips is saying, as Trina joyously waves her tape recorder in his face.
“Well, Mike. What’s it like being married to a millionaire?”
“Wait a minute,” says Phillips, taking hold of the machine, “There’s no cassette in here.”
“What cassette?” asks Trina in puzzlement. “Nobody said anything about a cassette. I just thought it recorded.”
The band has switched to “All You Need Is Love,” and Daphne Lovelace is bopping her way around the dance floor with David Bliss.
“I’m not really surprised that Jeremy went bad after what happened to his parents,” says Daphne, her face showing the hurt of knowing that, in a way, she bore some responsibility. And she has a tear in her eye as she goes on, “Mind you, if he’d been brought up by someone who loved him it would have made all the difference. I mean, look at Ruth. What sort of start did she have? But she’s dead right, all she really needed was love.”
“Who’s that over there?” queries Bliss as he spots the strange man in dark glasses having a quiet word with Mike, Ruth, and her father at the side of the stage.
“Where?” inquires Daphne as she struggles for height, but she only catches a glimpse before it’s too late; with a handshake and a hug he has gone.
“It was just a very old friend,” Geoffrey Sanderson tells Bliss a few minutes later as he and Daphne congratulate him, but he has more than an ordinary twinkle in his eye when Daphne muses, “He looked a bit like Ringo to me.”
Cindy is one of the first to congratulate Ruth on her win, but Ruth points to her husband. “It’s up to Mike to decide. He’s got until tomorrow afternoon at five. Maybe he’ll just want to keep things the way they are.”
“It’s only that the Coffee Shoppe went broke,” carries on Cindy, not wanting to hear. “You could buy it back cheap.”
“I could,” says Ruth, as if she’s unsure, then she laughs, “but I’d need someone reliable to run it for me.”
Raven has tears of joy as she hugs and kisses Ruth. “Serethusa was right all along,” she cries. “She told me there was nothing wrong with Jordan, and she was absolutely right about you. It really was your day.”
“Yeah, but what about my accident?” Trina butts in, still waving her tape recorder.
“Bus!” screams Raven. “I said a bus—not a crazy kid on a bike. Bus! Bus! Bus! ...”
A Year Less a Day Page 33
