Rise and Shine, Benedict Stone

by Phaedra Patrick

  The three teenagers turned to look at him. Their arms dangled by their sides.

  “Your uncle says you have to go in.” Alexander nudged her.

  “Yeah. It’s bedtime, Gemma.” Alistair laughed. He kicked a can of lager over on the lawn.

  Gemma looked at the two boys then at Benedict. Her expression was blank, impossible for him to read. “I’ll be inside in five minutes, Uncle Ben.”

  “I want you inside now.”

  Her lips curled into a snarl. “We’re just having a bit of fun.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re damaging the gem tree...”

  Alexander strode forward. He placed an arm in front of Gemma as a barrier. “Ignore your uncle. Come and play,” he said.

  “Yeah, come on.” Alistair took hold of her hand and tried to drag her with him.

  But Gemma stood firm and his hand slipped away from hers.

  “Alistair and Alexander Ledbetter.” Benedict took his own mobile from his pocket and held it aloft. “I’m asking you nicely to leave before I phone Nicholas and tell him to come and get you. Does he know that you’ve been drinking?”

  The two boys seemed to shrink in size, their bravado diminishing quickly. “Don’t tell our brother,” Alexander pleaded. “He’ll kill us.”

  “Yeah, he’s scary when he’s angry,” Alistair added.

  “It’s time for you both to go home.”

  Alistair jerked his head toward the garden gate. “Come on, Alex. Let’s get out of here. See ya soon, Gemma,” he said, and the two boys trudged out of the garden.

  “Thanks for taking me to the gig,” Gemma called after them.

  As soon as the boys were out of sight, Benedict heard them begin to shout and whoop again.

  Gemma refused to look at him. Her eyes were narrow and angry. She tossed her hair and marched past him into the house without acknowledging him.

  He strode after her. “Gemma, we need to talk.”

  “Yeah? Well, thanks for embarrassing me, Uncle Ben,” she snapped. “Did you really need to come outside and scold me like I’m a child? I said I was only going to be five minutes... You made me look like an idiot.”

  Benedict let out his breath in a whistle. “Alexander and Alistair were attacking the gem tree.”

  “It was an accident.”

  “They’d been drinking...”

  “It was a bit of fun, that’s all.”

  Benedict folded his arms. “That tree has stood there since my family planted it over thirty years ago. How could you stand by and let them damage it like that?”

  Gemma lowered her head for a few seconds. She rubbed her eye with her fist and stared at her boots. “Sorry about the tree,” she muttered eventually. “I didn’t mean for it to get broken.”

  Benedict closed his eyes. He told himself to accept her apology so they could calm things down and move forward. “Let’s go into the kitchen. I can make us a cup of tea and we can talk,” he said. From the hallway he could see the edge of her purse poking out from under the newspaper on the coffee table.

  “I don’t want a drink. I wanna go to bed.”

  “How was the concert?” he asked, but his question was hollow.

  “It was great.” Gemma took off her jacket, hung it on the banister and tramped up the stairs in her cowboy boots.

  “Gemma,” he called after her.

  She raised the back of her hand. “We’ll talk in the morning, huh?”

  Benedict stood rooted to the spot. Then he followed her up the stairs. “Gemma,” he repeated, his temples throbbing with tension.

  “What?” She turned to face him on the landing and her makeup, black and smudged around her eyes, made her look tired and vulnerable.

  “There’s something I need to ask you...”

  “What is it?” she sighed and flapped her arms by her sides.

  Words swam in Benedict’s head. He thought about her throwing the bag of gemstones at him and the thwack as it hit his cheek. He recalled her switching on all the lights in the house, and her threatening to walk out of the shop. What would she do if he confronted her about hiding her phone and passport under the bush? She might fly into a rage or perhaps she might break down and cry. She’d accuse him of prying again, that was for certain. He combed a hand through his hair.

  He could tell her that he’d discovered her things, and demand to know why she’d hidden them, but he’d already set other wheels in motion. Charlie would call him back soon. And at this moment in time, Benedict trusted his brother’s words more.

  He felt like a wrecking ball that kept hitting a wall but which only managed to knock down small parts of it, to give him a tiny glimpse of what was on the other side. Gemma’d had plenty of opportunities to tell him the whole story of why she was here, but she’d only fed him scraps. And now he didn’t know what was true and what wasn’t. Only Charlie could tell him that.

  “Lord Puss escaped...” he started.

  Gemma’s eyes flicked to the bottom of the stairs. “He escaped...? Is he okay?”

  Benedict nodded. “He was frightened by a firework and ran under a bush in the garden...” He let his words trail off, still wondering whether to confront her or not.

  Gemma’s eyes widened. “Oh...”

  It’s best to leave this be, Benedict told himself. But was he able to prevent himself from demanding to know why she’d lied to him? He had let Gemma stay and had cared for her. He’d introduced her to Estelle and developed an image in his head of them becoming a happy family together.

  He looked at Gemma as she stood before him. She was a paradigm of contradictions: bolshie yet caring, young but almost an adult. He knew that whatever he asked her, he couldn’t be sure that she was telling him the truth. And he also felt guilt gnawing inside him that he’d already betrayed her trust by phoning Charlie.

  In the end, he decided that he couldn’t confront her tonight, not without thinking more about it and trying to find the right words. “Lord Puss is fine,” he muttered. “We must take care to keep the front door closed.”

  Gemma’s shoulders slumped and she sighed with relief. Her eyes looked fat with tears. “Good.” She swallowed. “I’m tired and I wanna go to bed. I’m really glad that he’s okay.”

  “Fine.”

  “And I’m sorry about the tree, Uncle Ben,” she said quietly.

  “Good night, Gemma,” Benedict said. “Let’s leave everything until tomorrow. We can talk about it all then.”

  29.

  SMOKY QUARTZ

  grounding, acceptance, potential

  BENEDICT COULDN’T SLEEP. He could hear Gemma snoring along the corridor, and the noise made his body feel skewer stiff. Every one of his nerve endings seemed to be alive, heightening all his senses. He could taste the apple he’d eaten at teatime still sweet on his tongue, even though he’d brushed his teeth. His hearing seemed to home in on the slightest noises—a car alarm going off in the distance and the creak of the gate swinging in the wind. His eyes picked out shapes in the bumps of plaster on the ceiling—sneering faces and roads that led to nowhere.

  He tried to force his eyes to remain open so that surely they’d grow tired and close, but it didn’t work. He glanced at his phone to see the time, and when he looked at it again, over an hour had gone and he was still wide-awake.

  He lay, twitchy and alert, waiting for his phone to ring, or for the ping of a text from Charlie, but there was nothing. He didn’t even know what time it was in the US. It might be hours until Charlie picked up and listened to the message.

  If there had been sweet, sugary food in the fridge, it would have called out Benedict’s name, and he wouldn’t have been able to resist it. He would have crept downstairs to gorge and force it down. But there was only fruit and salad, and a homemade soup that he and Gemma
had made together.

  Thoughts and questions swirled around in his head in a psychedelic pattern, yet he couldn’t focus on any of them for long enough to pin them down, to answer or solve them.

  When he closed his eyes, he saw Gemma’s bare shins in her tan cowboy boots, and gemstones sparkling and shining in the gem tree, almost blinding him with their brightness. He saw Estelle and her black bobbed hair, and Amelia with her caramel skin.

  When his parents died, Benedict had thought that things couldn’t get any worse, but when he slept with Amelia, they did do. It was like he lit a match that night and started a forest fire where everyone he loved got scorched, and the flames were still flickering.

  He felt like he had a coil of pythons in his stomach, writhing around his organs. It was difficult to resist the urge to jump out of bed and storm into Gemma’s room. He could throw something at her to grab her attention, just as she’d done with the bag of gemstones. Then demand that she tell him her story. Yet he knew he had to kill time until his brother got in touch.

  Benedict was used to playing the waiting game. When Estelle left, that’s what he’d done to give her the time and space she needed, but this was a different matter. This was about waiting to speak to his brother so he could unravel Gemma’s web of untruths.

  All he could do was wait.

  * * *

  When morning finally came around, Benedict was bleary-eyed and groggy from his restless night. His pajamas stuck to his back as if they were coated with jam, and he reached up to pluck them away from his skin. His footsteps were slow and heavy as he headed to the bathroom to wash his face.

  “Uncle Ben,” Gemma called out, her voice feeble and slow.

  He froze, motionless outside the bathroom door. “Yes?”

  “I, um, don’t feel well. I have a migraine. So, I’m not gonna come into the shop today. Okay?”

  Benedict pressed his tongue against the back of his front teeth. One part of him wanted to storm into her room and confront her, but the other part didn’t want to see her face. “Okay,” he said to her closed door. “You stay home and rest up.”

  * * *

  The showroom felt chilly. Benedict turned up the heating but couldn’t seem to get warm. His hands were cold and felt bigger than ever. He checked his phone intermittently to see if Charlie had replied, but there was nothing. He called Estelle, too, but her phone rang out unanswered. He tried three times over a couple of hours and then gave up, not wanting to worry her with a string of missed calls.

  He headed out to Bake My Day and the jam doughnuts in the counter spoke to him. Yay, you’re back, they said. Buy three of us and get one free!

  Benedict bought four and sat at his workbench, where he ate them, one after the other, not caring if sugar and crumbs flecked his tools.

  He shivered and wrapped his jacket around him, and the stodgy, sweet food in his stomach, and his lack of sleep, made him feel drowsy. Slowly, his head dropped down until the front of his hair touched the bench. Maybe just a few minutes’ sleep, he told himself... That will make me feel better.

  It was late afternoon when he woke again. He’d rested his cheek against a small pair of pliers, and when he reached up, he found an imprint of the tool in his skin.

  He gave his face a quick rinse under the tap and patted it dry with a towel, still feeling disorientated and lethargic. Picking up his phone, he saw there were still no messages from his brother or wife.

  He sighed and opened the gemstone journal to flick through it. This time he actively looked for Gemma’s words. Scanning page after page, he read the notes she’d written about lapis lazuli, tiger’s-eye and sunstone, wanting to see if he could find any more. He ran his hand over his father’s handwriting, photos and drawings, and his niece’s descriptions of the gems. Then he read through again and spotted something that he’d missed.

  SMOKY QUARTZ

  Smoky quartz is found where granite exists, within volcanic rocks or in mountainous regions. It is a protective and grounding stone and is excellent in guarding against negative energy. It can calm the mind and assist the prioritization of emotional needs and wants, and bring wisdom to everyday life.

  Under the passage, Gemma had written:

  Smoky quartz is supposed to help relieve stress, fear, jealousy, anger and other negative emotions by transforming them into positive ones. It’s a good stone for encouraging courage and inner strength, and I really need that right now.

  Because when everyone finds out about me, there’s going to be trouble.

  “You’re so right, Gemma,” Benedict said out loud. “I don’t know what it will be, but there is going to be trouble.”

  He knew that, as soon as Charlie made contact, Gemma would have to go home, and he’d have to explain everything to Estelle. Not just about his niece, but about his past and why his brother had walked away from him. Things that had remained buried for years would burst to the surface. How much longer could he hide them for?

  And did he still want to keep everything from his past stowed away, anyway? Wouldn’t it be better to be honest? He had carried his secret around for years, and it felt like a noose around his neck, growing tighter and squeezing the life out of him. He had to do something to set himself free.

  And he knew what it had to be.

  Benedict had done all he could to show Estelle that he wanted her back, but what he had to do next was nothing that llamas or plastic swords could help him with.

  Because if he wanted a future with his wife, then he had to tell her about his past.

  He didn’t know what her reaction would be. Surprise, that was for sure. Upset and even dismay? But whatever the outcome might be, he was going to have to live with the consequences.

  Feeling cold again, Benedict tugged his jacket to try to cover his wide chest. He put Veronica’s star-shaped brooch in his pocket and set off to find his wife.

  30.

  DIAMOND

  intention, commitment, purity

  BENEDICT PULLED UP his jacket against the rain as he headed toward Veronica’s apartment. He walked slowly but steadily, aware of the squelch of his burgundy loafers in the puddles on the pavement. A car drove past too quickly, splashing his ankles with dirty water. He reached down and brushed the gritty specks on his trousers with the flat of his hand.

  As he trudged past the community center, he spotted Estelle heading toward him. Even though she was holding a large red-and-yellow umbrella low over her face, he recognized her plum coat. When he drew closer, he noticed that the umbrella was Lawrence’s and he wanted to wrestle it from her hands, throw it to the ground and stamp on the spokes.

  “Benedict,” she called, waving. “I was coming to see you. Are you free for a coffee?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you...” he said.

  “I was over in Applethorpe and forgot to take my phone. What did you want me for? Where’s Gemma?”

  “She has a bad headache so didn’t come into work today.”

  “Oh. Poor thing.”

  This wasn’t the right time and place to explain things to his wife, not here in the street. He didn’t want to go to Veronica’s apartment, where he had seen her with Lawrence on the balcony, and he presumed that Gemma was still back at the house. “Can we go to the shop?” he asked. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “I’d prefer to celebrate with cake instead.”

  “Celebrate...?” He frowned.

  “Yes. Let’s go to Crags and Cakes.” She linked her arm through his. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

  “Yes, but...”

  However, Estelle started to walk and chat, and Benedict found himself being swept along with her toward the little café.

  * * *

  The white rabbit on the pavement at Crags and Cakes held a toffee apple as
well as his stopwatch. Shooting rockets and sparkles of fireworks and stars decorated the windows.

  As Benedict opened the door and went inside, his legs felt wavy. “Let’s sit in the corner,” he said.

  The tables were situated close together and he had to hold in his stomach to squeeze between them. He chose a seat that faced the wall.

  He inhaled the smell of caramel and coffee and thought back to when he’d first met Estelle. When was the first time he lied to her and invented a story of why he and his brother no longer spoke? He couldn’t even remember what excuses he’d used. Even if it was uncomfortable, he should have told her the truth.

  “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” a waitress called over.

  Estelle propped the umbrella against the wall and Benedict wondered how she came to be using it. He tried to think of something light to say to prepare the way for his heavier words. “You need muscles like Popeye to carry that thing,” he said with a nod.

  “Good job I have them.” She flexed her arm. “Remember when I offered to carry you over my shoulder when we first met?”

  “I never did take you up on it.”

  “Perhaps another time.”

  He noticed that she was wearing the firework necklace but that one of the shards was missing. There was a hollow of yellow base metal instead of a pink resin spear.

  “Oh, yes.” She noticed his gaze and touched it. “A bit fell out and I’ve lost it. Never mind. I don’t think it’s an expensive one.”

  “But you like it...”

  “It’s a bit too bright for me, really. Too dramatic. Anyway, I overheard a terrible joke today. Why didn’t the skeleton go to the ball?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Because he had no body to go with.”

  Benedict tried to smile. “What’s a ghost’s favorite fruit?” he asked.

  “No idea.”

  “Booberries.”

  “Ha,” Estelle said.

  When the waitress came over, Estelle ordered a latte and an apple tart. Benedict asked for a black coffee with no sugar.