‘I don’t know why I’m disappointed. I knew the chances of him still being around were slim to nonexistent.’ She sighed. ‘I guess I just wanted the fairy tale.’
‘Who doesn’t want that?’
‘Can we go straight to the hospital?’ she asked Jack, as they neared home. ‘I’d really like to see Gran. I’ll get a taxi back from there later.’ What she really wanted to do was hug her. Had she even had anyone to lean on when James had died? Had she gone through that alone? The thought made her heart ache.
‘Sure we can.’
Chapter 10
At the hospital, he pulled the car up into a space and turned the engine off. It was getting dark, the street lights sent off an orange glow, people came and went. The hospital windows were lit up. There was silence when he stopped the car. Lucy didn’t get out right away.
‘Thanks, Jack,’ she said. She couldn’t quite remember ever saying that with such gratitude. ‘Not just for the lifts. I’m not sure I would have kept going with this if it wasn’t for you. What with everything else going on, all the hassle. My mother, for one. I just …’ She trailed off. ‘I’m just really glad you were there for it, I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.’
She smiled at him and turned to open the car door.
The air between them felt full of tension. Nerves kicked in at the pit of his stomach. What even was this? He didn’t do nerves.
‘Wait,’ he managed.
She turned in surprise, her hand on the door catch. She looked so perfect in the muted glow from the dashboard lights that for a moment he was speechless. What exactly was he going to say, now he’d got her attention? There was just a sense that they had been in this thing together, and now it was coming to an end. She would go back to her life. He would go back to his. It would be as if nothing had ever happened. And now he found he couldn’t let this go without saying something, just to mark that it had meant something. Being in the same space with her felt so right.
‘I don’t know what it is about you,’ he said. ‘You are everything that I avoid. You’re so in control of every aspect of your life that you drive me crazy. You’re totally focused on making your future happen the way you think it should be, that you’re completely closed off to spontaneity. All these things that I cannot stand.’
She was looking at him, her lips slightly parted, her hair gleaming gold in the soft light from the dashboard.
‘You’re not making me feel wanted here, you know,’ she said, smiling.
‘If I could switch off whatever this is, I would have.’
She took her hand off the door catch.
‘What are you saying? Switch off what?’
He put both hands on the steering wheel.
‘I don’t know I’m saying. I know your situation. You know your situation for the next forty years. You’ve got every nuance written down somewhere just waiting for it to happen so you can put a tick next to it, and I don’t figure anywhere in any of that. I don’t expect to figure anywhere. I just …’ He paused. ‘I’m going away in the next couple of days and I didn’t want to do that without telling you …’ He took a breath. ‘I like you. I really admire you for having stuck this out. For following it up in the way you have when you’ve got so much going on. For not giving in. I really hope it makes a difference for Olive. And I’d rather spend a night snowed in, in a car with you, in the middle of nowhere, than do literally anything else.’ Silence. But she wasn’t running for the hills, so he hadn’t screwed things up too badly, he hoped.
She smiled at him. Neutral smile, could be happy, could be polite, could be axe murderer. Unfathomable.
‘I hope your trip is everything you want it to be,’ she said at last. ‘Everything you need it to be.’
She leaned forward, rested her hand lightly on his shoulder, and kissed his cheek. It was over almost before it began, that moment, but his mind registered every tiny nuance of it. The closeness of her, the trace of her floral perfume, the lightest touch of her cheek against his.
‘Take care,’ she said.
And then she was gone. He watched her walk quickly across the car park, watched until she disappeared into the building.
Her mind was full of Jack as she headed across the darkened car park and into the warmth and brightness of the hospital lobby. The moment in the car had been wired with tension. She tried to fathom exactly what it had been about. He liked her? What did that mean. Everything he’d said about her he’d then almost immediately backtracked on. Her stomach felt butterfly-flippy, but her mind knew the score. Even in giving her a compliment he was incapable of being steady and clear. And did it matter how much her heart had leaped when she kissed his cheek? Her head could never cope with someone that unpredictable. Even if there wasn’t Rod to think about – after all, she had no clue what state her relationship was in, and this was not the time to have your stomach melting just because some hot guy paid you a bit of a compliment. A half-arsed compliment at that.
Her stomach churned uneasily. Gran had not been good the last time she’d seen her. If she could just be awake to hear everything that had happened, she was certain it would make a huge difference. A step forward. She ventured into the hospital ward with the gnawing worry that had dogged her for all these last visits. The curtains were drawn around Gran’s bed, and she opened them a little and stepped through carefully so as not to compromise Gran’s privacy if the nurses were in there.
There were no nurses. There was no one at all. The bed was empty. And not just empty, but neatly made.
Cold fear crashed into Lucy’s mind and drove everything else out. She’d watched enough TV shows to know what an empty neat bed where you expected to find a sick patient really meant. She grabbed the cold metal bedstead to steady herself. Her mind took in the details, processed them. Gran’s belongings were stacked tidily on the bedside cabinet, as if ready for collection. It felt as if the air had been sucked from the room. She took a huge gasping breath. Where was she?
‘Gran?’
She took a step back, scanned the room. Three other old people on the ward, all of them asleep. She stumbled out of the ward and headed back down the corridor towards the nurses’ station. Ready to demand at top volume for the nurse on duty to tell her exactly WHERE the hell Gran was. She found the station unmanned. Really panicking now, she glanced around her for someone, anyone, who actually worked here, and only then did she become aware that there was Christmas music. Carol singing, in fact. She followed the sound down another corridor to where it opened up into the packed day room. There was a television in the corner, sturdy chairs covered in tough fabric, and a stack of well-thumbed magazines on a low table in between them. A circle of cheery people stood to one side wearing furry Santa hats, draped in tinsel, and banging out ‘O Come All Ye Faithful’, watched by patients and staff. Just as Lucy was contemplating standing on the table and demanding to speak to the head of the healthcare trust IMMEDIATELY, her eyes fell on one of the chairs, just across the room from her.
Not just awake, but smiling awake. Obviously frail and tired, but she’d take a smile after the last few weeks they’d been through.
‘Gran!’ she shouted.
She did an Olympic-worthy vault over the table, and was on her knees next to the chair in less than five seconds, taking Gran’s hand in hers.
‘Are you TRYING to give me a heart attack? When I saw the bed was empty …’
‘I’m not dead yet,’ Gran protested.
She put Gran’s hand against her cheek and closed her eyes. The singers had launched into ‘Away in a Manger’.
‘How you doing?’ Lucy whispered.
‘You should see the other guy.’
Carol singing over with, and a doctor’s examination later, and it seemed like things really were much better. Gran had turned a corner.
‘Do you remember me talking to you about the Christmas tree decorations?’ Lucy asked, when Gran was settled back in bed against a pile of pillows. The medics had gone, and they
were alone again.
Gran thought for a moment.
‘It’s all a blur. Decorations?’
Lucy squeezed her hand gently.
‘The ones in the loft. The ones that James gave you.’
The spark in her eyes at the mention of his name.
‘You know about James?’
Lucy nodded. She made a huge effort to speak quietly and gently, not wanting to tire her.
‘Yes, I know about James. I met his brother.’
She suddenly remembered the photograph, and fished her phone out of her bag. Gran looked down at it, eyes wide.
‘I never had a picture,’ she said in wonder. ‘But I didn’t need one.’ The way she didn’t take her eyes off it belied this. ‘It’s been a very long time.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me? About him? About you being a Land Girl? It’s the most amazing thing and you never once mentioned it.’
‘It was a long way in the past. And I had your grandad to think about, how he would feel. I made a conscious decision when I married him, when I made that choice in the end to build a life with him, that I wouldn’t let the past detract from it.’
‘That’s why the decorations were hidden away?’
‘Yes.’
Gran continued to look at the picture.
‘What was he like, James?’
‘What was he like?’ Gran smiled, her eyes distant. ‘James was the kind of person you noticed in a crowd. He was funny and kind. Very determined.’ She sighed wistfully. ‘I wasn’t looking for him at all, you know. Your grandad had taken me out a few times before I joined up, and my parents were very keen on him. Then, when I was at Horston Green, the girls would go to dances sometimes at the town hall. We’d get a bus there. I had one good pair of shoes with me that I wore when I went out. The rest of the time it was these horrible boots for the farm work. And one night, not long after I’d got my posting, I went with my friends to a dance in my one nice dress, and I broke the heel on one of my shoes in a pothole in the road.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Well, you can’t imagine how cross I was. I was hobbling around at the hall. And James came up and said he would fix it.’
‘And did he?’
‘I took my shoes off and gave them to him, and he promptly ripped the heel off the other one. I couldn’t believe it. At least I had a matching pair so I could dance, he said. And then he danced with me for the rest of the evening. All night. He held me like I was the only girl in the room. Like time had stopped. Like I was the only person there for him.’
Lucy couldn’t help but think of the care home tea dance, the way it had felt to be held by Jack for that stupid jokey waltz.
‘At the end of the night he walked me home, and when he left me at the door of the hostel he took my shoes away with him. A week later I’m thinking I’ll have to go to the next dance in my gumboots, and then a parcel turns up. Shoes back, all mended. I saw him after that at all the dances, once at the cinema, a couple of times just for a walk. And every time it was as effortless as breathing.’
Oh, the heart-wrenching romance of it all! Lucy could just imagine them all those years away. The bittersweetness that it had never had the chance to become all it could have been.
‘Do you think you would have ended up together?’
Gran was quiet for a while. Lucy poured some water for her.
‘Things were different then. Your grandad was a draughtsman, working on aeroplanes. His career was protected, so he couldn’t be called up. He was older than me, he came from a good family, he had prospects, he had a car. My parents thought he was wonderful. It was expected that we would settle down together.’
She smiled a little at the memory.
‘It would have been very difficult to go against my parents. It just wasn’t the done thing. James wanted me to wait for him, and it wasn’t just the separation that was difficult about that. Arthur was the easy choice, the best choice if you listened to my parents, or, in fact, if you listened to anyone at all with an opinion. The notes James sent with these Christmas decorations, they were all about him trying to convince me to stand firm and follow my heart.’
‘And would you have?’
‘I would have.’ Her voice was absolutely resolute. ‘Arthur was a good man, he was a good father, a good grandfather. You know that better than anyone. I did love him.’ She smiled. ‘But I only ever loved one person like that. As if the universe felt like it was aligned right when I was with him; as if I could take on the world if I could just have him. He made my heart smile. It was perfect.’
She looked into Gran’s eyes and thought about her own situation. Perspective had slipped into place and she wasn’t sure at all that what she saw was what she wanted.
‘Even though I lost James, I don’t regret a single moment of it, because he was the best and most real thing in my whole life. The one time I’ve felt like that about someone, the reason I know that love can feel that strong.’
Why did Jack come immediately into Lucy’s mind?
‘I feel so sad for you,’ she said.
Gran squeezed her fingers and smiled.
‘Don’t feel sad. Love comes in many forms. That kind only came once for me. Your grandad was a good and kind man, and I did love him. Over time it grew into a mutual respect and affection. There’s a lot to be said for a relationship like the one I had with Arthur. It was secure. It was reliable. I was looked after, and I felt safe. All of those are good things. But what I felt for James was something special, something beyond that. It was instant and intense and effortless, it didn’t need to be built over time, it was just there between us, and it was perfect.’ She smiled up at Lucy. ‘If you ever feel that, don’t ignore it. Don’t swap it for something easy or practical. James was right about that. Hold on to it with everything you have, because you don’t know how long you might have it, and you might never feel it again. That’s part of what makes it so special, you have to put your heart on the line. It’s worth it.’
‘I’ve always struggled with anything that I can’t control, I suppose,’ Lucy said, picking up her own paper cup of water and sipping it. ‘I mean, look at the mess I’ve been in with you in here. I just wanted to break you out and take you home.’ She leaned in and lowered her voice. ‘And I still might, if I can sweet-talk the doctors into letting you come out for Christmas. As long as you’re okay of course.’
‘You are more like your grandfather,’ Gran said, smiling. ‘And there’s a lot to be said for security and certainty in life. But just don’t rule out the chance to find more. Your mother has always followed her dreams.’
Lucy couldn’t stop an eye roll at the mention of her mother. Gran shook her head slightly.
‘I’m not entirely sure what those dreams are,’ Gran said. ‘To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure she even knows herself what they are. I think it’s more about knowing there’s more out there for her somewhere. It drove your grandad nuts, but I’ve never been able to be too cross with her for that, because I understand a little of how she feels.’
All Lucy could think about was Rod. There had never been fire in their relationship even in the beginning, and she had almost relished that. Fire and intensity that was too strong to harness could be swept away in a moment. On some level deep inside her she had chosen the safe option and hung on to it for all it was worth. Until now.
‘Rod’s got this amazing promotion lined up that he’s been working towards for such a long time,’ she said. ‘All these things we’ve planned for. I think he was on the brink of proposing if he got it. Once he keeps partnership for a couple of years, we were planning on getting married, buying a place together, having kids. All these things I thought that I wanted.’
Gran smiled.
‘I’d congratulate you. But you look like you’ve lost the winning lottery ticket.’
‘This future with Rod, it’s like this easy, safe, secure road ahead. I go down that road, and I know nothing bad will happen. That really counts for a lot. I know it sounds dull
, but just knowing what’s ahead makes me feel okay on a daily basis.’
Okay on a daily basis. Was that what she was shooting for here? She closed her eyes briefly.
When she opened them, Gran was looking at her. Very tired and frail still, but her blue eyes were as shrewd as they always had been. She’d always been able to see straight through Lucy. Fibs had held no weight with Gran when she had been a little girl.
‘You could while away years being okay,’ Gran said. ‘A lifetime, in fact. Ask yourself if that’s really what you want. Be brave. Take a few risks. Be spontaneous. Don’t get to the end of your life and feel like you’ve wasted it. I would never have forgone those few months with James, no matter how dark and terrible those days were after he was lost. That time was worth everything to me.’
While Lucy waited for a taxi, Gran settled comfortably for the night, she couldn’t help wondering if she would ever feel that level of passion and depth for Rod.
‘Stop right where you are and don’t say anything until you’ve got a drink! I want to see your face when I tell you.’
Not what she had been expecting. She’d actually half expected her stuff to be packed and stacked up right about where she was standing. Instead, she seemed to have walked into some kind of party.
Rod removed her bag from her shoulder, lobbed it into the corner, and thrust a flute of champagne into her hand.
‘I tracked down Gran’s pilot,’ she said.
His face clouded over at the mention of it.
‘And I know everything that happened now.’
He immediately brightened.
‘That’s great. So it’s done with. Finally.’
She wasn’t sure it would ever be done with. Not for her.
No interest in how it had gone. It just hadn’t really been on his radar, this. While she’d been swept up in the romance of it, he’d been cracking on with real life. She didn’t blame him. She just felt terribly out of step for the first time. Her instinct was to try to fix this, to talk things through, to get back to what she knew. Only now she wasn’t sure that was even what she wanted at all.
The Present Page 15
