by Ivan B
Ben shot out of his seat like a scalded cat and took another map. He gave it the merest of glances before bowing to Roberta, “Would you accompany me on a meander over the meadows?”
Wordlessly Angela handed out the other two maps, she decided that she’d let them get on with it for today, after all there was always tomorrow.
Chapter 20
Picnic Trails
George got back in his car and shook his head. “I can’t believe you did all that without any props.”
Treasa smiled, “Kids have a lively imagination; you just have to let them use it. To you crossing an imaginary road with imaginary traffic is silly; to them it’s more than real.”
He shook his head again, “The way you got the boys to rush up and down and pretend to be cars while others pretended to be mothers trying to get a baby across the road was masterful.”
“Even if it did descend into chaos when I tried it the other way round,” she laughed.
He ran his tongue round the inside of his mouth and bit his bottom lip. He was due to take her back to the hall now or… “It’s a lovely day,” he said casually. “I know this little pub out in the country that do smashing salads.”
She gave a tinkling laugh before he finished his pre-prepared spiel. “Do they do real food like baked potatoes?”
“Not this time of year, but they do have chicken and curry and suchlike.”
“OK, love to. But I need to go back to the hall for ten minutes first.”
He started the engine and turned the car round. “Hall it is then,” he said.
However, Treasa wasn’t listening. Currently she was in her Molly Mint garb, just what proper clothes had she packed in her suitcase?”
Derek and Gwen were the first to leave the house. He was back in his cricket whites and she was wearing a pale blue blouse with a dark blue skirt and whitish trainers. They took the footpath that led to the village. After about a hundred years they turned left along another, narrower, footpath that meandered through the trees. Just after they turned left Gwen moved slightly closer to his side, after all the footpath was narrowing. “I rather wondered if you’d ask someone else this afternoon.” She remarked casually.
He frowned, blinked and gave her a nervous look. “Why ever did you think that? Didn’t you like this morning?” There was uncertainty in his voice and undertones of bewilderment.
She tried to give him a beautiful smile, on her face it felt like she was doing a fair imitation of an ogre. “I thought this morning was wonderful, just you and me and an empty pool.”
His shoulders slumped and his step faltered, eventually he ground to a halt and turned to face her. She muttered something about not being the prettiest girl in the world and understanding if he wanted to search elsewhere. He looked around, led her to a fallen tree-trunk and sat down so that he could look into her eyes. “Stop demeaning yourself,” he said. “I think you’re a pearl.”
“A pearl?”
He smiled and very gently touched her chin so that her head came up. “Imagine being a pearl in the mouth of an oyster. You’d think your life was all slime and salt water. Then one day you’re taken out and everybody can see you for the beauty that you have.” He lowered his voice, “That’s how I think of you, a pearl.” He hesitated, “Perhaps, my pearl.”
He abrupt groaned and flapped his arms, “Oh that sounded like the worst chat –up line in the world.”
He briefly studied his hands and then resumed eye contact. “Look, I’m not very good at this, chat-up lines and talking to unattached maidens.”
He took a deep breath, “There was never the need in Kenya and after coming to this country it was all work on the voice and then drama school where the other men seemed to know exactly what to say and I was always tongue-tied.”
He tenderly touched her shoulder. “I know this morning I should have put my arm around you when we were sitting on the pool-side, but it seemed so crass and presumptuous. Suppose you hadn’t wanted me to do it, what then? Would I have ruined my chances?” He flapped his arms again, “Oh I don’t know.”
She leant on the tree next to him. “Would I,” she said softly, “have sat so close had I not wanted you to have the chance?”
He grabbed her hand, “Do you mean that, I mean I’m not boring you?”
She giggled, “Not the least, and I think your chat-up line about pearls was marvellous.”
He squeezed her hand, she tried not to wince. “I mean it, you know the story of the pearl of great price, and you’re my pearl of great price.”
He waved his hand towards the hall, “Oh I know that this is a false environment and I’m probably saying and doing things I’d never do at home, but usually by the time I’ve even thought about asking a girl out they’ve died of old age.”
“Well,” she said, “you can put your arm around me anytime.”
He gave a sheepish smile and said tenderly while gazing into her eyes, “Don’t let me lose you by dithering around over what to do.”
She ran her hand over his bald head, “You’re not a bad pearl yourself.”
He rubbed his own head, “Hair fell out when I was twenty, probably turned the girls right off.”
She sidled close, “Well you don’t turn me off.”
She thought that he might kiss her, but true to form he didn’t. Instead her put his arms around her and held her close. It was rather like being caressed by an anaconda. After a few moments he stood up, put his arm across her shoulder and started to walk her on down the footpath. She went close to him and put her arm around his waist. From a distance the size disparity was such that they looked more like father and daughter than two adults, but looks can deceive.
Treasa was trying to work exactly the other way round. She spent most of her life trying to perfect the looks that made her appear like a child, now she desperately needed exactly the opposite effect. She put on an under-wired bra that gave her the best chance of showing off what little breast she had. Pulled on a tight fitting turtleneck white cotton top, added a knee length pencil straight denim skirt and topped it all off with a pair of white two inch heel stilettos, these were the highest stilettos she could manage. She took her hair out of bunches and combed it out into a fairly stylish cut, carefully applied make up to look like an adult, not a child, slipped on a tiny bracelet watch rather than her ‘child’ watch and walked back towards George’s car. Once he spotted her she almost took his breath away; gone was the adult-child and in its place was a beautiful miniature woman. The lunch at the pub now seemed an even better idea.
Ben and Roberta struck directly away from the hall across a verdant field. As before she walked with little grace or poise; it was as if she was on a prison party enduring a forced march. She didn’t say much, in fact she didn’t say anything. In the end Ben could endure it no longer. “Penny for them?”
“Pardon?”
“Penny for them – your thoughts.”
“Oh,” she mumbled, “You wouldn’t want to know.”
“Yes I would?”
She shook her head, “Please don’t patronise me. I know that I’m just a makeweight.”
Ben racked his brain, what had he done? Their last conversation, the one before they were interrupted by Cameron and Riona, had been going well, he thought. Right along the right lines. He stopped dead. Roberta walked on a few years before turning round and flapping her arms like a penguin. He took a few paces and stood before her. “Please,” he pleaded, “I don’t know what I’ve done. I thought I’d made my feelings clear earlier on, so what’s changed?”
She sat down with a sort of spiralling motion. He squatted in front of her. “You did the bloody crossword,” she said sullenly as if it explained everything.
She put her head in her hands, he thought she was going to cry. “I might as well get blotto now,” she moaned. “At least then I wouldn’t have to embarrass you for the rest of the week.”
He looked startled, “But I always do the Times…”
He
stopped and thought for a moment as he reran her words through his head, before dropping to his knees in front of her. “Did I tell you that I thought you were an embarrassment?”
“You don’t have to, I can’t even get one flipping clue and you did the whole thing in about fifteen minutes.”
It became crystal clear to Ben what had happened. He reached out, took both of her hands and gentle massaged them as he said, “If it upsets you I’ll never do the crossword again. You’ve got qualities that go far beyond mere clues to some fruitless past-time.”
She looked up, resignation written all over her face. She shrugged, “I’d be a hindrance to you. My parents are probably right, no man in their right mind would want a mill-stone like me around their neck.”
“Sod your parents,” said Ben, instantly regretting the swear word. “If they can’t see what a wonderful woman you are that’s their short-coming not yours. I meant what I said this morning, as far as I am concerned you’re the best of the bunch.”
Her melancholy was not that easily thrown off. She slumped forward again, “Best of a bad bunch you mean.”
He surveyed her; red ringlets of hair falling over her face, while she slumped on the ground like a discarded giant doll. He let go of her hands, gently eased the hair away from both sides of her face while tilting her head towards him. He’d meant to say something comforting, instead he kissed her full on the lips. When they parted he whispered, “Best of any bunch.”
She licked her lips as if he’d tasted good. “You don’t understand what you’re getting.” Her eyes looked at the grass by his knees as she spoke in a melancholic murmur. “Don’t be fooled I’m only a newly reformed alcoholic and the precipice is never far away. I’ve spent years of my life in an alcoholic haze. I’ve got a Tudor rose tattoo in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades; I don’t even remember having it done. I’ve woken up in prison cells, in my own vomit, and longing for a drink. I’ve been convicted of drunk and disorderly four times and shoplifting once. I don’t remember going into the store, let alone trying to walk out with an umbrella stand under my anorak.”
She jilted her eyes upwards to look into his. “I want to believe that I’ve found a reason to ditch the drink. A reason to hang on to sobriety, to live a normal life, but…” She sought for words, “But my life has never worked that way. Good things just don’t happen to me.”
He kissed her again. “Believe now?”
“Not quite,” she murmured.
So he kissed her again.
Willow and Henry’s route lay beside a trickling stream along a footpath that on occasion was only wide enough for one. He’d started to hold her hand about five minutes into the walk and now didn’t let go of it even when they were walking in single file. After twenty minutes of walking they came across a bend in the stream and a set of stepping stones. He let go and they hip-hopped over the stones to sit on an old stone bench. As soon as they sat down he put his arm around her shoulders and she shuffled up to sit hip to hip. They watched a flycatcher dart around over the river, Willow wondered what he would do next. Wondered what she should do next. His eyes switched from watching the deftly manoeuvring bird to her face. She suddenly felt drab and wished that she’d done something else with her make-up and put in different ear-rings. He fingered a small ring that was in the top on her left ear. “Did that hurt?”
“Like a million bees having a party.”
He frowned, “Then why?”
He’d watched her, from time to time, finger this ring as if it were giving her permanent discomfort. “Because it was my decision: my last husband told me that I’d be a fool if I had it done as I was too old for such things. I had it done the day I got the formal divorce papers.”
“So it’s a symbol of your freedom.”
She wondered where this conversation was leading. “Sort of.”
She lifted up her blue cotton skirt to reveal a tattoo that ran around her left thigh like a closely clinging Celtic garter. “I had this done after my first husband. He’d told me that only whores had tattoos, after finding him in bed with my mother I felt like a whore.” She paused and pointed to her shallow breasts, “I had this after my second.”
She saw the bewilderment of his face. “Just after I married him I found a lump in my right breast. It scared the life out of me as my mother and an aunt died of breast cancer, grandma might have had breast cancer as well. It turned out to be benign, but it set me thinking.” He voice dropped in cadence, “I couldn’t bare the thought of dying like my mother. I’d read about women in my position who’d had a double mastectomy, just in case. I tried talking it over with him, but he said that I was neurotic and that if I went to a GP about it I was more likely to see a psychologist than a surgeon.” She took in a sort of wavering sharp double intake of breath. “I had a double mastectomy a year after the marriage was annulled. Call me stupid if you like, call me anything you want, but the relief afterwards was like a load lifted of my shoulders.” She paused. “These are totally false, just a couple of small silicone implants. She gazed across the river. “The surgeon who performed the operation sent my breasts for examination in the laboratory.” She swallowed as if fighting back vomit
“I was told that they showed the genetic mutation BRCA1, which meant that I had every chance of developing breast cancer at a relatively early age.”
He rubbed her shoulder with his hand. “So you did the right thing.”
She shrugged, “Surgeon also told me that such developments were easily countered by drugs these days and that had I talked over my family history with my GP there might have been another course of action.”
Henry slightly shook his head and raised his eyebrows, “Then why did he do the operation in the first place?”
“She, not he. I went private, they don’t do such things on the NHS without an awful lot of bother. In America they don’t ask many questions, they just take the money.”
They sat in silence. Henry didn’t speak for a few minutes and Willow’s heart was in her mouth. She knew that she’d have to tell him sometime about her body and wondered if this would be a final turn-off for him. “I guess,” he said compassionately, “men have let you down.”
He suddenly swung to face her speaking firmly, “When I’m married I don’t sleep around, well actually I just don’t sleep around. I haven’t got a wife tucked away rearing children I won’t pay for and I don’t go in for nude bathing with basketball teams or treat my wife to the odd bit of violence.” He ran his fingers down her plait. He gave a half-laugh. “I suppose I’m a bit boring really.” He ran his fingers delicately up her plait. “But I can promise that I’d treat you with respect and devotion.”
She tried to stop her pulse racing. “But every time you see my body, you’ll see the marks of my previous husbands.”
He gently massaged the back of her neck. “So what? Their just physical things, we both know that previous marriages leave psychological scars, memories and potential comparisons, besides. I’ve got ‘Sally’ tattooed on my left buttock.” His voice dropped an octave. “We had it done while we were in the Maldives. I had her name tattooed on my buttock and she had mine tattooed on hers, it seemed sort of romantic. It certainly made her very happy. She died the next day.”
They sat in silence again. She decided that she had to be sure. “What about the mastectomy, does it mean I’m a neurotic? How do you feel about neurotics?”
He rubbed the back of her neck again. “You did what you thought was right, it your situation I might have done the same. I doesn’t change who you are. I didn’t come here looking for a pair of breasts, I came looking for a soulmate.”
He thought they might kiss, but a fisherman, complete with giant fishing tackle box, came near them and started to set up, so the moment was lost.
Chapter 21
Leftovers
When everyone had left the lounge Riona and Cameron were alone for the first time sitting in separate side-by-side armchairs. She looked at him
, he looked exhausted, both physically and emotionally. “You OK?”
He nodded, “Vicar gave me the collywobbles, whatever got into her?”
Riona grinned, “I asked her for a letter confirming the exact time she proclaimed us man and wife, it rather took by surprise.”
She watched his eyes, “It’s not just that is it?”
He half shrugged, half shook his head and half slumped into his chair, “It’s the seriousness of it all, I thought it would be easy but…”
Riona bit her bottom lip, the gold teeth glinted in the sunlight. “But being saddled with a dowdy woman wasn’t in the contract.”
Cameron’s eyes opened wide and he sprang to his feet, “That’s not it at all, I’ve never thought that you are dowdy.” He started to pace up and down. “It’s just the importance of it, it’s not bachelor and spinster anymore it’s man and wife and there’s no going back.”
She tried for a jocular smile without fooling herself or Cameron, “Divorce is easy.”
He suddenly grabbed her hands, “I meant what I said in the church and I said it before God – that’s important to me, you don’t cheat on what you say to God - you’re my wife, for better for worse, for richer for poorer.”
He squeezed her hands, “But it’s not for the ‘richer’ bit, I didn’t do it for the money OK, I never want you thinking that no matter what happens.”
She held his hands, “Then why did you do it.”
He filed his lungs with air, closed his eyes and sighed, “Because you needed a husband, because I was there and,” he hesitated, “and because I never thought that I would ever marry, I’m not too good with girls. I don’t seem to have the right polite conversation, or find an easy manner, or have what they find attractive. Give me a piece of software and I can fathom it out, give me a woman and…”
