Two Weddings and a Baby

by Scarlett Bailey

  ‘No,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Not yet. Not until you’ve heard what I’ve got to say.’

  ‘Tamsyn,’ Jed said. ‘I think we’ve said everything, haven’t we?’

  ‘No, not everything,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I’m a Thorne, and we’ve never finished saying anything. We’re famous for being able to go on and on for as long as it takes.’

  ‘Tamsyn, you’re such a wonderful …’

  ‘Please don’t give me that speech again,’ Tamsyn took a few steps nearer to the shower. She could see the outline of his naked form on the other side of the curtain, hear his breathing.

  ‘This isn’t about the way I feel about you,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Even I don’t understand the way I feel about you yet, or why it is I seem to have fallen so completely in love with a man that I barely know … I expect it’s probably hormones, or food poisoning or something. I’m sure it will blow over, eventually. This is about you: Jed, don’t go. You don’t have to go, just because people know about your past now. You’re the only person who seems to think that any of that matters.’

  ‘This town deserves a better, stronger vicar than me.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Well, it does, but only because it’s got the best vicar it can possibly have. It’s got a person who is willing to live at the heart of a community and care about everyone in it. I wish you had been in yesterday when everyone came round to tell you how much they care about you.’

  ‘That sounds a bit like a lynching. Did they have torches and pitchforks?’ Jed said drily. ‘Please let me have that towel, I’m starting to get a bit cold.’

  ‘No, not until you tell me, honestly. Do you really want to go?’

  She heard a long sigh from the other side of the curtain and took another step towards it. Now only a few inches, and a plastic sheet with ducks printed on it, separated her from him. Could he feel her longing for him she wondered, seeping into the steam that found its way through the gaps in the curtain?

  ‘No,’ Jed said. ‘I don’t want to go, of course I don’t. But life isn’t about what you want. It’s about what’s right.’

  ‘It’s also about what’s right for you – and this place is the best thing for you,’ Tamsyn said. ‘You’ve been happy here – and well. And Jed, if you’re leaving because you’re worried that I am going to harass you constantly with my schoolgirl crush, then …’ Tamsyn grimaced on her side of the curtain. ‘Well, I know the fact that I’ve just broken into your house and am currently holding you hostage, naked in your shower, doesn’t look good, but I promise I won’t do that again. In fact, if it means you’ll stay, I will go. I can find somewhere else to make wedding dresses. Gretna Green, maybe. Alaska.’

  Jed said something from behind the curtain that Tamsyn didn’t catch.

  ‘Pardon?’ she said.

  ‘I said, I don’t want you to go. Please don’t go.’

  ‘But I know that what happened between us makes you uncomfortable, and I don’t want to ruin things for you. I know you don’t have those sorts of feeling for me, and it’s OK, it’s not the first time a man hasn’t fancied me. I don’t even blame you. I’ve looked like a knackered toilet brush for most of my visit here, and …’

  ‘Tamsyn, shut up.’ Jed pulled aside the shower curtain, just enough to reveal his face, and muscular shoulders beaded with water, shining like jewels on his skin.

  ‘Sorry,’ she managed to say.

  ‘I do like you,’ he said. ‘I do desire you, I do want you, I do think about that kiss, all of the time. I do. But how can we be together? You’re you and I’m me, and we don’t fit, Tamsyn.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ she said, taking a step closer to him. Her hand trembled as she reached out and touched his cheek. ‘I seem to remember our lips fitting together pretty well, and I remember how our bodies filled in all the spaces between us. It felt pretty much like a perfect fit.’

  Jed closed his eyes, his hand that wasn’t securing his modesty covering hers. ‘Tamsyn, don’t.’

  ‘I can’t help it, though,’ her voice was thick with emotion. ‘I don’t even know why.’ She stood on her tiptoes, resting one of her palms against his damp shoulder, looking into his silver eyes, and kissed him, not gently, or demurely, but with all the hunger and longing that seemed to be building like a flood behind a dam, in her chest. And for a few wonderful, heady, perfect seconds Jed kissed her back, before breaking the kiss.

  ‘Please, don’t,’ he whispered.

  ‘Why not?’ Tamsyn asked him. ‘You are allowed to be happy, you know; you are allowed to have someone.’

  ‘But could I have you?’ Jed took his hand from hers. ‘You don’t even believe in God, Tamsyn.’

  ‘I-I believe in you,’ she replied hotly. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  ‘Even so, can you really see yourself at my side for the rest of your life? Can you see yourself as a vicar’s wife, hosting the fairs, and being at every service? Don’t you see, Tamsyn? That’s the reason I can’t let myself fall for you. Because when I do, it will be for ever, and I can’t lose you. So if you can’t promise me you’re for ever, right now, right here, then please, just go.’

  Tamsyn took a step back from him: everything he had just said was everything she had wanted to hear, and yet … for ever seemed like a very long time. The last time Tamsyn had decided to dedicate her life to something she had once been just as passionate and committed to, she’d discovered she’d been making a mistake. What if loving Jed meant messing up the life he had here, the life he loved so much? And she didn’t suppose his bosses would take too kindly to the vicar’s wife being an agnostic with more faith in the benefits of a good lipstick than the Man Upstairs.

  ‘Don’t leave Poldore,’ Tamsyn said, handing him the towel. ‘Please don’t go. This place needs you. Promise me that you won’t leave.’

  ‘Does that mean you can’t promise me for ever?’ Jed asked her.

  ‘I’m not sure that I know how to.’ The words caught in Tamsyn’s throat. ‘Are you staying?’

  ‘I’m staying,’ Jed said. ‘I’m staying for you, because maybe one day I hope you will look at me, and you will think that for ever is possible.’

  Sadly, Tamsyn handed him the towel and left the room, walking into the cool air of the bedroom. She heard Jed coming out from the bathroom, heard his bare feet on the floorboards behind her and closed her eyes, and he put his arms around her. Turning to face him, she buried her face in his neck.

  ‘So if I can’t believe in God, and you can’t believe that love is enough, then I suppose this has to be goodbye, doesn’t it? But just between us, being this way. Not to the town, not to your life.’

  She pulled away to look him in the eye. ‘I feel so stupid for feeling so heartbroken.’

  ‘You’re not stupid,’ Jed said, kissing her gently on the mouth. ‘You’re the best woman I have ever met, Tamsyn.’

  ‘So,’ she said, taking a step back from him and lifting her chin, ‘I will see you around, Vicar. Better get back to that wedding. I’ve got an appointment with the karaoke machine.’

  ‘Goodbye Tamsyn,’ Jed said as she walked away, determined not to look back. ‘See you around.’

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  St Piran’s was still full of the wedding decorations as the congregation filed in for the Sunday service, which was billed as a service of thanks for no loss of life during the floods. It was just as packed as it had been for the wedding, one week and one day before. The only two people who weren’t there this time were Alex and Ruan, who had disappeared to the lighthouse at some point after their wedding, and no one expected them to show their faces again for some time.

  It had been an interesting week, one in which Tamsyn had kept herself very busy so that she didn’t have to think about the fact that she’d fallen in love with the one man she couldn’t have. Laura and Keira had stayed on a little longer to help her find a place to rent, a top-floor apartment with views looking out over the estuary and a balcony where she could sit
and eat croissants, assuming another hurricane-force wind wasn’t about to sweep through the poor battered town and take her with it.

  She had been in touch with Bernard again, emailing him her official letter of resignation, and then making sure he emailed his carefully worded press release about her to all the relevant trade press and fashion magazines. And she helped anyone and everyone who needed it. She helped Sue clear up Castle House after the sick and the homeless gradually began to return back home. She helped Eddie, Rosie and Lucy clean the pub and pump water out of the cellar. She’d gone to Kirsten to see her room in the hostel and bought her a new pair of curtains and a second-hand TV, and when Sue said Jed was looking for people to coordinate a clothes drive for those who had lost everything except what they were standing up in, she’d turned up at the church hall and worked quietly and methodically, organising all the donations into groups according to size, age and gender.

  Jed had paused by the table she was working at for a moment, and their eyes had met. She thought he might have been about to saying something to her, but there was just so much that couldn’t be said that small talk seemed pointless. Instead he nodded and went on his way.

  Which was when it hit Tamsyn, rather like a bolt from above, and she knew what she had to do.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Laura whispered in her daughter’s ear as they slid into a pew at the back.

  ‘Yes,’ Tamsyn said. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Yes, but are you really, though?’ Cordelia leant over from the pew behind, where Keira was attempting to entertain the twins with an iPad, even though one iPad between two four-year-olds was never going to cut it.

  ‘Are you sure that you want to be a singer?’ Tamsyn asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ Cordelia said.

  ‘And are you sure that you loved Dad from the first moment you set eyes on him?’ she asked her mother.

  ‘Yes,’ Laura said. ‘But …’

  ‘And are you now sure,’ Tamsyn turned to Keira, ‘that you should have just forked out for two iPads?’

  ‘I really am,’ Keira said with a resigned sigh.

  ‘There you are then,’ Tamsyn said. ‘I’m sure this is the right thing to do. I’ve even googled it, and everything.’

  The three other Thorne women exchanged glances, but they all knew, because they were all exactly the same, that once a Thorne had made up their mind to do something, they couldn’t be dissuaded. No matter how foolish their actions might be.

  Tamsyn waited for the end of the service, the part where the school band that was standing in for the wrecked organ was due to strike up, but the school band happened to be led by one of the girls she had spoken to on that first night at Castle House, and she knew not to start playing when Jed signalled to her.

  This was it, Tamsyn thought. This was the defining moment of her life.

  ‘I have something to say.’ She got to her feet and then realised that the words hadn’t actually come out, out loud. Clearing her throat, she tried again.

  ‘Um, hello, everyone!’ she called out, so that everyone in the church twisted in their pews to look at her. ‘Hi!’

  She waved, and then regretted it.

  ‘I have something I’d like to say to the vicar, does anyone mind? If I say something to him, the vicar?’

  She was met by a chorus of curious no’s.

  ‘Tamsyn …’ Jed’s gesture was rather hopeless; it seemed he was starting to get to know the resolve of the Thorne women too.

  Tamsyn made her way into the aisle and walked up to the front.

  ‘Jed Hayward, you are a vicar and I am a fashion designer. And you believe in God and I might believe in some sort of design in the fabric of the universe, maybe. You have principles, and I’ve shopped there once. You are a good, decent, kind, strong and frankly damn gorgeous man. And I’m … well, I’m just me, really, a woman who for more than a week now has not been able to find a pair of hair straighteners in the whole of Poldore. But I have helped a baby and a mum get back together, got a teenager back on her feet and I have made beautiful dresses for my brother’s wedding. And I have held you in my arms and known what it was like to find pure joy.’

  There was gasp, and a scandalised murmur ran around the church.

  ‘Yesterday you asked me if I could promise for ever. And I’m here to tell you the answer, and the answer is no. I can’t promise for ever. Not if for ever means one more second not at your side, one more minute when I can’t take your hand, another second when you don’t know that, for reasons known only to your boss and the universe, I have fallen in love with you and I can’t live without you. Jed, I love you, I do. And I know we are two very different people, but did someone say that the greatest of all things was love, and I really think we have that. I really think we have love.’

  ‘Tamsyn,’ he spoke her name, but she gestured for him to let her go on.

  Tamsyn paused and took a deep breath, fear coursing through her veins as she prepared herself for the greatest gamble of her life. ‘Did you know if we start posting our banns now, we could be married in six weeks’ time?’

  This time the gasps were accompanied by shrieks, and a yell or two.

  ‘Tamsyn?’ Jed smiled at her, shaking his head. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I guess I’m saying let’s try this your way. Let’s try for ever,’ Tamsyn said. ‘And I’m asking you to marry me, no wait, get married to me, in this church, in six weeks’ time, because I don’t want to wait one second longer than that to be your wife.’

  A pin could have dropped in the church and you would have heard its metallic chime as it hit the floor, as everyone turned to look expectantly at Jed.

  ‘Do you mean it?’ he asked her, walking down the aisle towards her.

  ‘I’ve honestly never been more serious about anything in my life,’ Tamsyn said.

  ‘Then yes, Tamsyn Thorne,’ Jed took her hands as he reached her. ‘Yes, I will marry you.’

  And that might have been the first time in the four-hundred-year history of St Piran’s that the congregation went wild.

  Epilogue

  It was warm, very warm, and Tamsyn could feel the heat of the day on the back of her neck, having piled all her hair into a bundle of loose curls, which Keira had threaded through with flowers for her, pink sorrel and white daisies.

  ‘Are you thinking of doing a runner?’ Ruan asked her as they stood outside the church in near silence. It couldn’t have been a more placid day; there wasn’t a hint of wind, and the sea was the purest sapphire blue. Most of the town was inside St Piran’s already, and they’d had to bring in extra seating. Everyone wanted to be there on the day that the vicar married an agnostic he’d only just met. They were the talk of the town, or more likely the county – no, actually, they’d been talked about even further afield than that. Bishops had discussed them, and Tamsyn’s status as a non-believer; they had travelled to meet with senior clergy, who counselled them in marriage, and what their life would be like together, and how it might be impossible for them to make it work when at their core they were so different, finally meeting with Jed’s boss, the Bishop of the Diocese.

  ‘But we’re not that different,’ Jed had said, reaching out to take Tamsyn’s hand. ‘And I’m not the first clergyman to marry someone who isn’t devout. We both believe in the same things: community, decency, faith, caring for others and, above all, love. Tamsyn believes in those things too, as she’s shown more than once in the weeks that I’ve known her. She’s totally revitalised the Youth Homeless Project in Poldore, she’s getting the kids work experience, mentors … She’s done so much to help the town get back on its feet after the storm; she’s supported my verger during her recent difficulties, and is helping her settle into life as a mother. And all while she is setting up her own business … And more than that,’ Jed had turned to look at Tamsyn, and she felt the heat rise through her from her toes upward, and wouldn’t have been at all surprised if there was steam coming out of the top of her head,
‘I love her. More every day.’

  The Bishop had said a little more about how very quick it was, and what was the hurry. He’d pointed out that although there was no actual rule against marrying someone of a different faith or no faith, he was more worried about the pressures that might be put on the marriage as time went by. And then it was Tamsyn’s turn to speak.

  ‘I believe in him,’ she said, looking at Jed. ‘He’s been through so much. He’s still overcoming so much, and yet look at everything he does for the people around him. As well as being really quite gorgeous.’

  Jed closed his eyes, but luckily the Bishop laughed.

  Tamsyn continued, ‘I admire the way he lives his life, I admire his values. And I will be a really good vicar’s wife. I will; I’ve found a blog on it already, where there are loads of vicars’ wives offering tips and a support group. I don’t doubt we’ll have hard times, because everybody does. But I also don’t doubt that we will find a way through them, together.’

  The Bishop sat back in his chair, smiled and wished them the very best of luck, which wasn’t a blessing, exactly, but it was what Jed had needed to hear, and Tamsyn was grateful.

  The days before that meeting, and afterwards, had been days of wonder, truly.

  On the day she had proposed to him, Tamsyn had sat on a pew at the front of the church and waited as the congregation, slowly, very slowly, because they all wanted to see what would happen next, filed out of the church. Almost half an hour passed as Jed said goodbye to his flock, answered questions, fended off jokes, and Tamsyn sat perfectly still watching the sunlight dappling through the stained glass.

  Eventually she heard the mended door close behind her and Jed’s footsteps walking up the aisle towards her.

  ‘I put you on the spot a bit, didn’t I?’ she said. But he said nothing, taking her hand and leading her out of the church and through the vestry, out through the funny little door and into Kissing Alley.

  ‘You asked me to marry you,’ he said finally as they stood there in the shade of the secluded spot.