Magic Sometimes Happens

by Margaret James

  I did feel rather mean, I must admit, leaving Mum and Dad in Dorset at that dreadful time. I sort of felt I ought to stick around, be there for them, remind them they had one child left, that they were parents still.

  But Mum said: go, you need a break.

  Dad said: your mother’s right.

  Perhaps they couldn’t stand the sight of me? I sometimes wondered if it would be easier if they blamed me? If they shouted, told me what a fool I’d been, reminded me I knew we should be careful?

  They didn’t blame me. Or they didn’t say so, anyway. I think they blamed themselves. But it was definitely not their fault. It had happened in a foreign country, after all, so what could they have done?

  ‘Business or pleasure?’ asked the fifty-something man beside me who wasn’t dream of love material, more like someone’s lecherous old uncle.

  I could see he’d be an armrest wrangler, space invader, one of those who jabs you with his elbow now and then and makes you spill your coffee in your lap. Accidentally, of course – yeah, right. So he could dab at you with paper napkins and have a little feel of you as well. But at least he didn’t smell revolting like some old men do.

  ‘Pleasure, absolutely,’ I replied. I plastered on my best Madonna – Mother of God, not Michigan-born super-goddess – simpering semi-smile. ‘I’m meeting my fiancé in Saint Paul. We’ll be getting married this October.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ said Mr Lecherous Uncle. ‘So what does your fiancé do and where will you be living – in the States or back in the UK? The ceremony – will it be a big event, in church, a country club, in your fiancé’s folks’ backyard?’

  What is it with Americans? This man was acting as if we’d known each other all our lives. ‘The ceremony will be small and private and that’s all I can tell you,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh, I see. You’re Miss Reserved.’ Glancing at my hand, he grinned – he must have clocked the absence of a ring – and then picked up his New York Times. ‘I love your accent, by the way. But if you’re fixing to cut it in the States, you’ll need to learn to chill a little, right?’

  PATRICK

  ‘You need to chill,’ said Ben.

  ‘You want to tell me why?’

  ‘You’re making something out of nothing, buddy boy. You and Lex, you need time out, that’s all. Okay, she has a crush on some guy at the office. Let’s call NBC. Pat, she’s only telling you she needs a break, like women sometimes do.’

  ‘Yeah, but with my children and some Limey bastard she picked up at Jackson Taylor. Some guy who wants to bring her home to Europe and take my children, too. This Mr Wonderful, he makes her come to life, apparently. She said he makes her fly.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  ‘She did.’

  ‘She reads way too many of those women’s magazines.’ Ben put another beer in front of me, Japanese this time. ‘She needs to take some literature classes, doesn’t she?’

  ‘So she can tell me that she’s cheating on me in a fancy literary way?’ I scowled at him. ‘What is it with you and all these dumbshit foreign beers? What’s wrong with the stuff they brew in Minneapolis?’

  ‘Man, you need to live a little, beer-wise. Listen, Pat, if Lex talked with a lawyer, she’ll know she can’t take Poll and Joe out of the USA unless you agree to let them go.’

  ‘I know, and I already told her that.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’ Now Ben was speaking in his best calm-down-you-crazy voice, the one I’ve heard him using on his cell a thousand times to women he’s been screwing and to men he’s double-crossed. ‘Let Lex go play with this new guy. Let her move into his house and fix his dinner, dig his yard. The novelty of pulling weeds for him will soon wear off. She’ll see the sense of coming back to you.’

  ‘Lexie’s not too great at seeing sense.’

  ‘Then, my friend, you must move on yourself,’ said Dr Fairfax PhD, world authority on Steinbeck, Scott Fitzgerald, Faulkner, all those guys, America’s most famous living writer, amateur psychologist and by far the richest member of the teaching staff at John Quincy Adams University where we are both professors.

  ‘You’ve been with Lex since high school,’ he continued. ‘Perhaps it’s time you found somebody new. You should go play the field yourself.’

  ‘I should punch the asshole on the jaw.’

  ‘You know you won’t do that. You don’t punch anyone, not even me. Well, not since we were grown. You got a lawyer yet?’

  ‘I’ll see one Friday.’

  ‘You should see one tomorrow. You need to give this top priority. I speak as one who knows.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ I glanced down at my watch and saw I must have had a whole ten minutes of his psychoanalytic time. ‘Thank you for the counselling, Dr Freud. You’ll bill me later, right?’

  ‘Or you could buy me dinner?’

  ‘I’ll fix your laptop next time you mess up.’

  ‘You couldn’t fix my last one.’

  ‘You poured your latte over it and it was dead before I even came there. You must have learned in science class – milk and electricity don’t mix?’

  ‘I’ll know for next time, eh? I’ll buy dinner, Pat. I had a royalty statement yesterday and boy was it a good one. Fifty thousand copies sold in hardback in the UK alone, and my agent’s shifted Tamil, Georgian and Bulgarian rights as well.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘I can see you’re thrilled.’

  ‘Ben, I always knew you’d make it big.’

  Benjamin Lincoln Fairfax. My oldest, closest friend, a kid who had been born in poverty and raised on welfare in Recovery, Missouri, who somehow won a scholarship to Yale and is the author of Missouri Crossing, the Great American Novel.

  Or one of the Great American Novels, anyway.

  Last time I heard, there had already been a few.

  Although the book has done so well he doesn’t need to work, he still fits in a couple days a week at JQA. I guess he’d miss the pretty female students if he quit. He’s now on his third marriage, this time to a foreign woman he picked up while he was on vacation – pardon me, researching his next masterpiece – in Vegas. He doesn’t take vacations, his life is one long quest for truth and beauty and he doesn’t take time out. Or that’s how he would put it, anyway.

  They met in Dunkin’ Donuts while they were fuelling up on cream cheese bagels and hot chocolate. The girl had been confused by our American funny money. She was trying to buy a single bagel with a hundred dollar bill. So, like the gentleman he always tries to be, Ben helped her out. He bought her bagel and her Dunkaccino, the pair of them got chatting and he noticed she was super-cute, with big dark eyes and long brown hair.

  They spent three days in bed. Yeah, more research, Ben’s real interested in foreign bodies, they’re his specialty. Then they found a chapel and a preacher. Now he’s getting all the action he could ever want, or so he says, and feeling very smug about it, too.

  I can’t see it lasting very long. But what would I know? When I married Lexie, I thought it was forever. When I made my vows, I meant them, every single word, and look how that turned out.

  ‘I can’t stay out long tonight,’ said Ben, as we ate dinner.

  ‘Mrs Fairfax Three is waiting, is she?’

  ‘Yeah, and let me tell you, I have plans.’

  ‘You mean you’re fixing to become a daddy?’

  ‘Get out of here,’ he said, mopping up sauce. ‘I can’t stand kids, as you well know.’

  ‘Why did you bother to get married, then? Why tie yourself to this new woman, after all that shit you took from Mrs Fairfax One and Two?’

  ‘A man should have a wife. Where’s the fun in fooling round if you’re allowed to do it? You’re a married man – you fool around – you feel a little guilty. You get a sense of sin and this adds something special to the pleasure.’

  ‘Perhaps. I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘You bet you wouldn’t know. When I have a little time to spare, we must take
a vacation – just the two of us. I’ll show you what you’re missing.’

  ‘Who’s this girl who’s coming to stay with you and Tess?’ I asked him.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’

  ‘I don’t, I’m merely making conversation. I’m also hoping to get you off the subjects of your sex life and all your foreign and translation rights.’

  ‘You’re asking if she’s hot,’ he said.

  ‘I couldn’t give a damn.’

  ‘The suspense is killing you.’

  ‘Yeah, it is – by boring me to death.’

  ‘She’s one of Tess’s British friends, name’s Rosie Dawson, Rosie Denton, or some name like that.’

  ‘How long will she be staying?’

  ‘You’re interested, aren’t you? You can’t help yourself. She’s planning on three weeks, maybe a month.’ He winked at me and grinned. ‘I’ve seen her Facebook albums and let me tell you, big boy, she’s a little cutie pie.’

  ‘You mean she looks fourteen?’

  ‘No, I mean great figure, masses of black hair and big grey Bambi eyes. Why don’t you come by the apartment, check her out? You could get lucky there. Give Lex something to think about as well – sauce for the goose?’

  The look I gave him shut him up for fifteen seconds or maybe even twenty and I figured that had to be a record.

  Then somebody called me on my cell.

  ROSIE

  I must admit that all the airport ground staff at Minneapolis-Saint Paul were absolutely charming and this was an agreeable surprise.

  ‘Welcome to USA, ma’am,’ said the guy who checked my alien’s passport, stamped it with my date of entry into Paradise and gave it back to me with a big smile. ‘You here on business or vacation?’

  ‘On a little holiday,’ I said.

  ‘You have yourself a real good time.’

  ‘I’ll do my very best.’

  I had no problem smiling back at him because he was so friendly. The last time I’d flown into LAX, the immigration people there had glared at me as if I was a terrorist axe murderer trying to get into California so I could cause the Big One and/or eat all the burgers in the state.

  I made my way into Arrivals and there was my friend with her new husband, which I must say came as a relief because I was exhausted. My body clock was totally confused.

  Tess was jigging up and down and waving like a cheerleader on speed. She was wearing emerald-green jeans, the Chloé top I’d sent her for her birthday back in March and the most enormous thrilled-to-see-you-Rosie grin.

  He was a red-haired thirty-something guy in rimless glasses, almost handsome, over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and well-made. So – good face, good body, but whatever was he wearing? Good grief, he was a tartan-shirt-and-bright-blue-boot-cut-jeans fashion disaster. What could Tess be thinking, letting him go out looking like that? I supposed she had to be in love. But there are standards, aren’t there?

  ‘Rosie, hi!’ Tess threw her arms around me, hugged me tight and then stood back to look at me. ‘How are you doing, love?’ she added, in the careful way that practically everybody spoke to me since Charlie—

  I still find it hard to say the word.

  ‘I’m very well,’ I said, and then I thought, I must work on my Amglish or nobody is going to understand me. ‘I mean I’m good. I’m doing great. I’m not sure of the time, of course. Hello, you must be Ben?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess I must be.’ He grinned and winked and shook my hand. ‘I love your accent, Rosie.’

  ‘Rosie’s posh,’ said Tess. ‘She went to Cheltenham Ladies’ College and Cambridge University. She got a quarter blue in tiddlywinks.’

  This obviously didn’t mean a thing to Mr Tartan. ‘Posh – I just adore that word,’ he said. ‘It’s so British and ridiculous.’ Then he glanced at my left hand and saw what I was holding. A red-and-green-striped apple, a James Grieve from my Granny Cassie’s tree. ‘You brought that foreign vegetable matter into the USA?’

  ‘Oh – I meant to put it in the bin.’

  ‘She means the trash,’ said Tess.

  ‘You’ll probably suit orange.’ Mr Tartan winked at me again and then began to stroll towards the exit, jangling a giant bunch of keys. Those jeans were flipping awful, so loose around the arse he looked like he was wearing Pampers, and I hoped for Tess’s sake that this was not the case.

  ‘Gorgeous luggage,’ Tess said enviously, gazing at my shocking-pink-with-gold-tone-hardware bags. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘Guess?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know – Aladdin’s cave?’

  ‘If you mean Fanny’s office, yes. It’s all Versace – see the tags? You can have it, if you like. I dare say I can get some more or something similar. Fanny’s place is full of stuff and there are always new things coming in.’

  ‘Thank you, Rosie, you’re a mate!’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  ‘It makes me want to go on holiday. Bermuda, Rome, Capri …’

  ‘Or Bethnal Green? Tess, will you be coming home for Christmas?’

  ‘Americans aren’t big on Christmas holidays. They don’t have Boxing Day or anything. So I don’t know if Ben—’

  ‘But if you’re not working, you could come back for Christmas, couldn’t you? Your relations, they’ll all want to see you?’

  ‘Yeah, some of them might.’ Tess shook her head and sighed, stopped walking, turned to look at me. ‘Mum’s still well hacked off because I didn’t ask her to my wedding.’

  ‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  ‘My brother reckons she’s taken out a contract on me. If I show my face in the East End I’m going to wish I’d been stillborn. Mum had big plans for my big day, you see. Me in a meringue and limousine, my poor old dad hoiked out of his recliner and made to wear a topper, those awful wedding trousers and a pair of tails, and my nieces bundled up in turquoise polyester.’

  ‘So you sort of ruined everything by getting hitched in Vegas three days after you met Mr Gorgeous?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Tess shrugged. ‘Yesterday, my cousin rang to ask me when it’s due.’

  ‘So are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not – or I don’t think so, anyway.’

  ‘Speaking for myself, I’d rather have a nice new handbag, Fendi or Armani preferably.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d like some children one day, just a couple. But I don’t want any yet.’

  ‘I don’t want children ever.’

  ‘You’ll change your mind,’ said Tess. ‘Your eggs all have a sell-by date, you know. One day something will go click. You’ll decide it’s time and you’ll go looking for the man who’ll be the father of your children.’

  ‘Does Ben have any pre-existing children?’

  ‘He hasn’t mentioned any.’

  ‘Perhaps it slipped his mind?’

  ‘I’ll have to check his bank accounts and see what’s coming in and going out. Rosie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

  ‘Why would I want to talk about Ben’s bank accounts?’

  ‘I meant Charlie – all that stuff?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘I hope you got some counselling or therapy?’

  ‘I said I didn’t want their counselling.’

  ‘But it must have been an awful shock? Do you get nightmares?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So maybe talking to a counsellor or therapist or even me or Ben would help a bit? I was reading something in a magazine, it was about bereavement and how people deal with it in different cultures and it said the British—’

  ‘Tess, you haven’t mentioned it to Ben? I asked you not to tell him. I can’t deal with sympathy from strangers.’

  ‘I haven’t told him, Rosie.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I haven’t even hinted, cross my heart.’

  She didn’t add, and hope to die. She glanced towards her husband. ‘I suppose we’d better m
ake a move – his lordship’s getting fidgety. Rosie, did you mean it about giving me the bags?’

  ‘Of course I did.’

  It was so lovely to see Tess again.

  We’d only known each other for a year, but I felt I’d known her all my life. She and I could not have been more different if you’re talking about background, social class and education. But we understood each other perfectly because in all the most important ways we were the same.

  ‘It’s hot out there,’ she warned me as we reached the exit and I shrugged into my jacket. ‘You won’t need your coat.’

  ‘Ninety degrees and counting,’ added Ben. ‘But let’s look on the bright side. At least it isn’t raining. It was wet in August which brought out the mosquitoes. Place was a malarial swamp. But the forecast this week’s hot and dry. Maybe with a little patchy cloud and first thing in the morning there might be some light—’

  ‘Rosie doesn’t want to hear a weather forecast, Ben.’

  ‘Of course she does, she’s British.’ Mr Tartan winked at me once more and made me want to ask if there was something in his eye? Or if all this winking was a twitch or nervous habit and he couldn’t help it? ‘What did your Dr Samuel Johnson say?’ he added, grinning. ‘When two British people meet, their first talk is always of the weather?’

  ‘Yeah, all right,’ said Tess. ‘He’s only showing off,’ she muttered tartly. ‘He does it all the time. He’s always spouting literature and stuff. He even quotes some guy called Robert Frost at our Somali janitor. I mean, who’s ever heard of Robert Frost?’

  ‘I have,’ I replied. ‘He was an American poet, he won lots of prizes and his father’s family came from Tiverton in Devon.’

  ‘Well done, my clever phone-a-friend! I know you and Ben are going to get along just fine.’

  I wondered if she’d read her husband’s book.

  PATRICK

  It was Lexie calling to inform me what she wanted from me in the way of maintenance for Joe and Polly paid into her brand new bank account on the first day of every month. Then she added if I didn’t like it that was just too bad. She had met with her attorney and she knew her rights.

  The following day I called my own attorney.

  He said unless I wanted to file for divorce in the immediate future, maybe I should cut my wife some slack, see how it all panned out. This British guy, he might be just a wild infatuation. Maybe Lex would realise she had made a big mistake. Maybe she would call to say she wanted to start over.