by Emlyn Rees
Rosie had since given birth to two little girls, the eldest of whom was Bill’s three-year-old goddaughter, Joan. Whenever Bill went to Richard’s cottage for Sunday lunch, or accompanied them on a trip to the beach, he’d find himself seized by a sudden and all-encompassing sense of loss. He’d stare in astonishment at this family which had miraculously come from Richard. How, he’d wonder, was it possible? And would he ever be blessed with the same?
Bill and Richard were now in the garage on Lydgate Lane which they’d rented for the purpose of restoring the Jowett Jupiter. Both men wore grease-streaked blue overalls which Richard had borrowed from the coachbuilders in nearby Tarnworth where he worked. The room was muggy and rich with the stink of oil and varnish and sweat.
The Jupiter had been Richard’s idea. He’d telephoned Bill from the coachbuilders the day it had arrived on the back of a tow truck, following the collision it had had with a lorry. Richard’s boss had informed the Jupiter’s rich young owner that he’d be better off selling it for scrap than paying for its repair. ‘That’d take a real labour of love,’ he’d announced, looking over the battered, buckled wreck of a car. ‘More man hours and trouble than it’s worth.’
And that’s what had sent Richard’s mind racing.
Bill had needed no persuading. A buried part of him had loved the romance of the challenge. He’d imagined himself at the Jupiter’s wheel, racing through the countryside. He’d thought of the feeling of freedom it might bring.
He and Richard had combined what little savings they’d had and had set about scavenging and purchasing the necessary parts to restore the Jupiter to its current pristine condition.
Six months it had taken them. Six months of mechanical education for Bill. Six months of honing his teaching skills for Richard. Six months of hours snatched from evenings and weekends for them both.
But now they were here and it had all been worth it. The Jupiter, their Jupiter, was a thing of beauty, a magnificent piece of machinery, which they’d never have been able to afford to buy new or even second-hand. Now, though, thanks to their ambition and toil, it was theirs. Now, Bill hoped, it was finally ready to drive.
Richard stooped over the shining engine, which was visible beneath the hinged-up bonnet. Pensively, he stroked his black moustache.
‘What’s the verdict?’ Bill asked.
Richard lowered the bonnet and clicked it shut. He stood up and rested his hand paternally on the car’s soft top, as Bill had seen him do so many times before on his daughters’ heads.
‘You go first,’ Richard said, tossing him the keys.
Bill snatched them from the air. ‘We should go together.’
Richard began to roll a cigarette. ‘I’ve had my fun fixing her up,’ he said. ‘Just go. I know you’re itching to show her off.’
He wasn’t kidding. In too much of a hurry to remove his battered work boots first, Bill hopped awkwardly from one foot to the other as he stripped off his overalls. He was wearing an old pair of slacks and a blue cotton shirt and braces beneath. He got into the car and started her up. The 1486cc flat-four pushrod engine purred like a cat.
Richard tapped at the glass and Bill opened the window.
‘Are you going to go and see her?’ Richard asked.
‘Who?’
‘Take a guess.’
‘My mother?’
‘Another guess,’ Richard said in an appalling approximation of an American accent.
‘Oh.’ Bill scratched at his face in an effort to conceal his blush.
Emily. Emily Jones, that’s who Richard meant. Bill talked about her too much, Richard had told him, too much for someone who was nothing more than a customer, as Bill had insisted she was.
Bill had to admit, he had been thinking about her a lot recently. He’d started looking forward to her calling into the shop. Whenever the bell rang, it was her he hoped to see when he looked up. Even though their brief conversations had always been centred around her placing her orders, he’d learnt little bits about her life: how her parents were moving away; how she was painting a new sign for the shop; how exciting it was to find herself being the boss for the first time in her life. In turn, he’d found himself talking up the town – even though he was hardly in love with it himself – wanting her to like it enough to stay.
‘If I were you,’ suggested Richard, ‘looking so splendid in there, I’d certainly drive past the Sea Catch Café. At least a couple of times,’ he added. ‘Maybe even three.’ He grinned. ‘You never know: that way she might even take some notice of you.’
‘Yeah, well, I’m not you,’ Bill answered shortly. ‘Which is why you wouldn’t catch me doing anything quite so ridiculous as that.’
And it was ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Bill certainly thought so, anyway, as he found himself driving past the Sea Catch Café for the fifth time in as many minutes.
But it was exciting, too, feeling this sick with apprehension, breaking out from his daily routine and frittering away his time, without knowing what might happen next. It felt like liberation. It felt like fun. And wasn’t he owed a little of both? Hadn’t he lost enough of his youth already? Hadn’t he watched it gathering like dust on the window sills and shelves of Vale Supplies? Wasn’t it about time he sent some ripples out across the rockpool-still waters of his life?
He smiled uneasily through the windscreen at his mother’s gossipy friend, Mrs Carver, who was leaning on her umbrella outside the butcher’s, and who’d been observing his comings and goings through her half-moon spectacles with increasing suspicion over the past five minutes.
But Bill didn’t care. Any remarked peculiarity was by the by. His being here, acting the way he was, well, the Jupiter gave him all the excuse he needed. Why would anybody disbelieve him if he told them he was simply out testing it?
He rounded the corner on to Winstanton Parade, out of Mrs Carver’s sight, and pulled over to the side of the road. Ridiculous, he told himself again. Ridiculous for a grown man like himself to be mooning over a grown woman like Emily Jones.
He wished he was more the man of the world which the Jupiter made him out to be. He wished he had more experience to draw on. But he didn’t.
The truth was he’d never been much good with women. Like Susan Castle, the girl he’d got engaged to at university. He’d messed that up good and proper. She’d been the first girl he’d slept with (the only girl he’d slept with, in fact) and he’d wanted her to be the last. He’d thought they’d be happy together for life. He’d wanted them to be like his mother and father. But when it had come to the crunch, when he’d returned home to help his mother run the shop and Susan had broken off with him in a letter, he hadn’t even left Stepmouth and tried to change her mind. He’d let her go, and what kind of love was that, that you didn’t even fight for? Surely that was no kind of love at all.
And if he’d got it so wrong with Susan Castle, how would he know when he’d got it right with someone else? He’d only been out with three girls since he’d moved back to Stepmouth. And none of these Sunday teacake flirtations had blossomed into anything more substantial than stilted conversations and the occasional awkward fumbling in the dark.
He’d been to blame. In each case, it had been him who’d called it off. It wasn’t that he’d found the girls in question unattractive, but that he’d found them naive. Or normal, as he’d also come to think of them. Because naive was the norm round here, wasn’t it, for people his age? Aside from the airbase up the road, even the war had kept its distance. No bombs had been dropped on top of them. They’d seen no bodies stuffed into bags. Death, if it had come at all, had drifted down softly on to their doormats in feather-light telegrams, or reached them as whispers from the cushioning lips of a living parent.
Never immediate, then. Not like the night when Keith Glover had torn like a cyclone through the house in which Bill had grown up. When death’s name had been screamed down the army barracks telephone to eighteen-year-old Bill by his hysterical nine-year-old siste
r.
Emily Jones, though . . . in Emily Jones, Bill suspected something different. Not only because she’d left this town and travelled. But because she’d married and divorced. Because she’d seen and experienced more than the rest of the girls in this town had done put together.
And that’s where he saw his and Emily’s common ground: in their difference from everyone else.
Ridiculous, then? Yes. But irresistible, too.
‘One last time,’ he said, prayer-like under his breath – wilful in forgetting that this was what he’d said the last time. (Not to mention the time before that.)
As he turned into East Street, he saw her: Emily Jones, strolling into the road as carelessly as if she were strolling into a meadow. He slammed on the brakes. The car slewed to a halt with precious inches to spare. He could have killed her, he thought, as she wandered round to the side of the car and peered in.
‘Well, well, well,’ she said, ‘if it isn’t Bill Vale.’
She was wearing what he guessed were her work clothes: loose brown trousers stuffed into old brown leather boots, a khaki shirt and white canvas apron. Scruffy like a land girl, he thought, remembering the pretty women from London who’d come down to help harvest the fields of the town’s outlying farms during the war. As teenagers, Bill and his schoolmates had used to walk up through the country lanes, and clamber over ditches and stiles just to catch glimpses of the older girls’ bare sunburnt shoulders and legs.
‘Hello,’ he said rather stiffly. He’d meant to compliment her, but already it was too late.
She smiled to herself as she looked the car over. ‘You really are quite the dark horse, aren’t you?’
It was the first time he’d seen her up close without her make-up on. Her skin was as pale as Rachel’s and, without eyeshadow to draw out their sparkle, her grey eyes seemed as sly and as wise as a cat’s.
‘I mean, there I was thinking you were just a grocer,’ she continued. ‘And then just the other day your sister tells me that you were going to be an engineer. And that you’ve got boxes full of drawings at home . . . of concert halls . . . and bridges . . . and things you wanted to build . . .’
‘She told you that?’
‘Sure,’ Emily continued. ‘She seemed really proud. She said you would have been famous by now if you hadn’t had to come home to take care of her and your mum.’
He stared back, embarrassed by his sister’s unexpected boasting, but getting a buzz out of hearing that she’d said those things about him, too. Especially to Emily.
‘She’s not always so complimentary,’ he said.
‘You should dig those drawings out, you know. It’s a terrible thing to let ambition go to waste. And look around . . .’ She pointed to the end of East Street, to where you could see the wrecked old Bathers’ Pavilion which overlooked the beach. ‘We could do with your talents round here to give this place a little sparkle.’
For the first time in years Bill found himself looking at the neglected old eyesore of a building – really looking at it – as something other than background, something more than a decaying white landmark. The roof was mostly gone, but those walls, he thought, they were still standing in spite of the fact that the building hadn’t been used for nearly twenty years. It could be really something, he thought, with a bit of work.
‘I’d assumed you were a holidaymaker,’ Emily said.
‘What?’
‘A holidaymaker,’ she repeated.
Because of the Jupiter, he guessed. Because you didn’t see cars like this around these parts too often.
‘I’m giving it a test drive,’ he explained, sticking to his original plan of acting like this meeting was all one great big coincidence.
‘And the same goes for the other four times, right?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘The other four times you’ve driven past the café in the past five minutes,’ she elaborated.
Oh, God. He felt like he was sinking.
‘They were all just part of the test, too, right?’ she went on.
He stared at the walnut-veneered dashboard with its complex array of chrome instruments, wanting to groan. She’d been watching him . . . all this time . . . He felt like he was seven again, like his mother had caught him sneaking into the larder to steal biscuits from the tin, after having quietly observed every single step he’d taken across the creaky floorboards on the way.
‘Exactly,’ he said.
Smiling, she watched him as he shifted uncomfortably on the car’s upholstered leather bench seat, and waited for him to settle, before peering innocently into his eyes. Only then did she deliver the coup de grâce: ‘None of it had anything to do with trying to get my attention, then?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said automatically.
Why was he lying? Wasn’t this what he’d wanted, to be talking to her about them – about the possibility of them – instead of how many pounds of flour and tins of baked beans she needed sent round? But his embarrassment over having been caught out was too strong to fight.
‘That’s a shame,’ she said
His brow furrowed. ‘It is?’
‘Well, it would certainly have been very flattering. If you had been trying to get my attention. But never mind,’ she said breezily, ‘I’m sure my vanity will survive.’
Say something! a voice inside him screamed. Say something! Say something! Say something! This could be your one and only chance! But before he could obey, she said something first.
‘You know what?’ She leant in close.
‘What?’
‘I’ve never been out for a ride in a car like this.’
‘Really?’
‘Truly. Not once. Not even in the States.’ She rattled her fingernails against the door. ‘And there’s so much room.’
‘Yes.’ He’d never noticed before how long her eyelashes were.
‘Especially for one person,’ she said.
‘Yes.’ Or how her nostrils flared ever so slightly as she breathed.
‘And I bet it’s so much fun and a real smooth ride, too,’ she added.
‘Oh, yes.’ He was watching her mouth now, the way her bright white teeth were visible through the slight parting of her lips.
Now, he told himself. It’s now or never.
‘Would you . . .’ he heard himself starting to say.
‘Yes . . .’ She smiled at him encouragingly.
He swallowed, his whole body tensing, braced for rejection. ‘Would you like to come out for a drive with me sometime?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ she replied.
He didn’t even think to hide his grin. ‘I nearly never did.’
‘I’d love to,’ she said.
‘Shall we say –’
‘– next Saturday night?’ she suggested.
Then he noticed Mrs Carver standing by the door to the Sea Catch Café, staring at them.
‘A friend of yours?’ Emily asked, following his line of sight.
‘Of my mother’s,’ Bill explained. ‘She’s a bit of a gossip.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘In that case,’ Emily said, ‘how about we give her something to gossip about?’
He opened his mouth to answer, but before he’d uttered a single syllable, she’d rested her hands on the window frame, leant forward into the car and kissed him softly on the lips. As she pulled back, she ran her fingers slowly through her hair. Her cheeks had turned pink.
‘Time for me to get back to work,’ she said. As she walked backwards towards the café door, she stumbled, nearly fell. ‘Next Saturday,’ she called, waving to him. ‘Seven. And don’t you be late!’ She turned then to Mrs Carver, who was standing slack-jawed with wonder. ‘Handsome, isn’t he?’ she said deliberately loud enough for Bill to hear.
Bill sat immobilised in the car. The memory of her kiss lingered on his lips as if a butterfly had just alighted there. When he finally breathed in, he could smell ro
semary and thyme. The whole world smelt wild and fresh.
Even though it had been Rachel’s turn to do the duties, it had been their mother who’d cooked. She’d insisted on it, the same as she’d insisted that Bill and Rachel sit down for a family meal at a quarter to seven, when normally their Saturday supper would have started at six and been over with by now. And why? Well, it hadn’t taken a genius to work that one out. Because Bill’s mother had learnt from Edith Carver that her son was expected elsewhere – an elsewhere of which she completely disapproved.
‘Very forward indeed,’ she was pointedly saying.
Bill ignored Rachel, who was grinning at him cross-eyed, relishing every second of his discomfort. Mechanically, he continued to chew his way through the greasy grey mixture of liver, bacon and potatoes which his mother had ladled into his bowl only seconds before.
‘And as for her and that American man . . . when she was still no more than a girl . . .’
Bill tore a strip of bread off the crusty round cob at the centre of the table. He swiped it across the brown gravy in his china bowl, momentarily revealing the existence of a blue-and-white floral pattern beneath, before the gravy seeped back across, burying the splash of colour like an artefact in mud.
‘I call it impetuous,’ his mother said. ‘Leaving the country like that. Evidence of a flighty nature. At the very least.’
‘She moved there to marry,’ Bill pointed out.
‘And later to divorce.’
‘I hardly imagine that was part of her plan when she set out. After all, she did stay with him for seven years first.’
His mother stared at him fixedly. ‘I stayed with your father till the day he died.’
Bill glared back, angry at her for using his dad’s death against him like this. ‘That still doesn’t mean you can write off her relationship with her husband as some impetuous schoolgirl infatuation,’ he snapped.
‘Which is all the more reason for you not to go getting involved with her.’
‘What?’ he asked. ‘You think she’s somehow tainted just because she’s lived with another man.’
