“Because in spite of the fact that you try to present yourself to the world as this incredibly capable and independent woman who doesn’t need anybody to lean on, those of us who care about you know it’s all a front. We can see perfectly well that you’re a neurotic and pathetic old duck who worries and frets herself into the ground and it’s blindingly clear that the only thing that’ll keep you on an even keel is a round of milk and cookies. So if that’s all you’ve got, I suppose I’ll have to settle for that.”
He started to walk over to the fridge, glancing warily at me out of the corner of his eye as if I were a rabid dog that might fly at him at any second. Which I was.
“You’re a silly goose, you know that?” said Tommy affectionately as he slurped his milk. He had an uncanny way of sensing just when my anger toward him was beginning to evaporate.
“Am not.” Now I was the one beginning to sound like a petulant child. I got a grip on myself. “Actually, Tommy, I want to apologize. I really appreciate that you’ve come all this way.” I was aware that I was sounding a little stiff and formal. “I mean, you could have given me a bit of warning so I could have washed my hair but I suppose that was too much to ask.” I smiled. I’m trying, Tommy, I’m trying.
“Wanted to surprise you. Thought I said that.” He was looking at me suspiciously as he always did when it seemed I was deliberately trying to be nice to him.
“And you certainly did! So have you heard all about the murders?”
He nodded. “Sounded pretty hairy.”
“Well, I’ll tell you all about it but first I want to say that I heard about you losing your job at the BBC.”
He tensed.
“And it’s all right. I mean it’s not all right for you, it’s awful, and totally unfair, but what you need to take on board is that we’re both in the same boat now. You just saw Shotgun kissing me, okay? He was comforting me but he was also kissing me good-bye. He was essentially firing me. He doesn’t want to do the book anymore so we’re both out of work now.”
“Bloody hell!” said Tommy. “So what are we going to live on?”
For a fraction of a second my old indignation surfaced. I’d just commiserated with him about losing his job but instead of telling me he was sorry about me losing mine, his first thought was— but then I caught myself. What are we going to live on? I should focus on how I felt about the reemergence of the we.
“We’ll manage, Tommy. Genevieve will find me another assignment. She always does.” Even as I tried to reassure him I knew it was the wrong thing to say, that he needn’t worry, as usual I’d solve the problem, nobody needed to rely on him. “And you’ll find something when we get back to London.”
But it was too late and also, as it turned out, not what he had in mind.
“I thought I might have a better shot of getting some work out here,” he said gloomily. “I had it all worked out. You were here. I’d try my hand at something completely different. Fresh start and all that.”
So he hadn’t come here just to comfort me. “What kind of something completely different did you have in mind?” I said carefully. Had he never heard of visas and work permits and green cards?
“Well, I was just talking to your friend Franny and I asked her if maybe I could help out at her store.”
Oh, great! Tommy with fifteen-odd years of valuable experience as a radio sound engineer was now about to become Tommy the illegal immigrant stocking shelves in a grocery store. Besides, he hadn’t known Franny when he decided to come to America so clearly he hadn’t had a plan at all. Spur of the moment Tommy strikes again.
“Well, that might work for a while but then what?”
But Tommy’s eternal optimism was another thing I loved him for. “Dunno,” he said. “Something’ll turn up. America, land of opportunity and all that. So anyway, what do you do with yourself all day?” He looked out the window. “Must be handy having the beach so close. Quite fancy going for a dip, what about you?”
I gave up. If I’d had a bucket and spade I’d have handed them to him, made him some of his favorite cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, and packed him off to the beach for the afternoon with a warning not to go in the sea without his water wings.
But when I stepped behind the shower curtain in some ridiculous show of modesty to change into my swimsuit, he followed and peeked through the curtain. And when I was naked he picked me up in his arms and carried me back to the bed. He might be unfit but he was pretty strong. I tried not to giggle as he wriggled out of his shorts in a sort of elephant shimmy and flopped down beside me.
And passed out.
I lay beside him, prodding him every now and then in an attempt to wake him up, but he was out for the count. He’s just got off a plane, I told myself, he’s exhausted. He didn’t even wake up when the phone rang right beside the bed.
“Lee?” It was Rufus. “Okay, we just cremated Dad. Sounds awful but I don’t know any other way to say it. Look, I just wanted to say I’m really sorry we can’t fit you in the boat when we go out on the water to scatter his ashes. There’s just no room. But there is something happening tomorrow where I really do need you to be present.”
“What’s that?”
“The reading of the will. Dad’s lawyer’s coming out and we’re going to do it at the Stucco House at ten A.M. Does that work for you?”
“Sure,” I said, “but why would you need me there?”
“You’ll see,” he said mysteriously.
Tommy was out for the count so I left him a note on the pillow telling him to help himself to whatever he needed, and said that I was going over to the Stucco House to be with my mother and probably wouldn’t be back that night. I imagined he would have likely reduced the place to chaos by the time I returned but I felt it was important to keep my mother company.
I found her in the kitchen, sitting on a barstool and staring into space. I was still grieving for the Phillionaire but for my mother it must be a different kind of pain altogether. What would it be like if I lost Tommy? And not just if he died but if he had died when were still in the throes of the almost unendurable passion that had accompanied the first eighteen months of our relationship? A passion that had subsided over the eight years we had been together until I had begun to wonder if we could ever recapture it. That we did, and that it had led to my finally wanting to marry him, was something of a miracle.
But then as I tiptoed around my mother, not wanting to break her trance, I wondered if it was possible to experience this kind of passion when you were in your sixties. Suddenly my mother looked up.
“What makes this harder than anything I’ve ever had to bear is that I know Phil really loved me.” The tremble in her voice was unmistakable. “He was the only person who really loved me in my life and now he’s gone.”
I was stunned. “I love you, Mum. And I’m still here.”
“Not the same,” she said flatly. Once upon a time hearing something like this from her would have hurt but since my father had left her, our relationship had changed. She had become more needy and I was able to look past the sometimes blunt and insensitive woman to the complicated person underneath. I knew what she meant about it not being the same love as that for a child or a parent. But what did it say about her relationship with my father?
Then I remembered what Rufus had said: that his dad seemed determined to help her learn to love herself and express her love for others.
“Mum, just keep the memory that he loved you—and that you loved him. And how lucky you were to find each other, if only for a short time.”
“That’s just it,” she said, looking even more distraught, “that’s what’s really haunting me. I don’t think I ever really made him understand how much I loved him. He died not knowing what he meant to me and I just can’t bear to think of it. I just took from him. Money, time, affection. What did I give back?”
“You,” I said simply. “That was all he wanted. He knew you loved him. Phil and I used to talk quite a lot, Mum. You know
we used to plot how we were going to creep in under your defenses when you weren’t looking and get you to come right out and say how much we meant to you.”
I held my breath because I had never spoken to my mother like this before, and because I was including myself in the equation. I was giving her a chance to acknowledge that she loved me as well as Phil. Deep down I knew she did—in her way—but suddenly I felt as if I needed her to voice her feelings, for the Phillionaire’s sake as much as my own.
“Oh, don’t talk such nonsense,” she snapped, and after the initial blow I smiled because it was the first sign that she was returning to her old self. “What defenses? I don’t hide anything. I’m as open as can be. I just don’t think it’s necessary to vent one’s feelings all over the place.”
“But you just said you should have told Phil you loved him, really loved him.”
“Quite true. But I wouldn’t have slobbered all over him. I’d have told him—I was going to tell him—in a different way. My way. More dignified.”
“Not very romantic, Mum.”
“Well, that’s the way I am.”
I laughed. I had to. She would never budge and I don’t know why I had even thought she might. She was who she was and even though she hadn’t said she loved me, I knew that just by talking to me in this way she was taking infinitesimal steps to opening up. And I knew I had to keep burrowing away in an attempt to get through to the still very lonely person locked inside.
When I told her that Tommy had turned up, her face softened in a momentary smile.
“Dear Tommy,” she said. She had always liked him. In fact they were two of a kind, gregarious, outgoing, everything I was not. “So what does this mean—for the two of you?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
“But you won’t send him away again? You’ll give him a chance? Try to be gentle with him, Lee. You’re always so tough on him.”
“Mum, I never sent him away in the first place.” Why did everyone always think I was the one who had called off the marriage? “He walked away, not me.”
“And you’re surprised? Like I just said, you’re always too tough on him. Men need to be handled sensitively. Why are you so tough on him?”
I clamped my lips firmly together so I wouldn’t come out with the retort that was forming in my mind. I didn’t want to argue with my mother tonight of all nights.
But I knew the answer to her question and the fact that his sudden reappearance in my life had done nothing to banish my qualms about the uneven nature of our relationship only made me even more uneasy. And what would my mother say if she knew that earlier in the day I had been locked in a passionate embrace with another man? Because this was what was causing me the most unrest: the fact that I had found it so easy to kiss Shotgun Marriott.
But by eleven o’clock the next morning I’d almost forgotten that Tommy was now just up the beach in the cabin, so stunned was I by the contents of the Phillionaire’s will.
As expected, Scott and Rufus were to share the bulk of his billion-dollar estate between them. But it was in dividing up his American real estate property that the Phillionaire had made the changes that had been added just before he left for Europe. My mother was to have the land and the new house under construction to do with whatever she wanted. She could continue building herself a beautiful home by the water or she could sell. Scott got the apartment in the city and Rufus the Stucco House with the proviso that it be put to some kind of charitable use.
“Rufus, it’s almost as if he knew he was going to die,” I whispered to him. “Are you okay with this?”
“From what I understand Dad changed his will every couple of years,” he said. “He was always talking about putting his affairs in order, as he called it. I guess I’m going to have to do the same. The property’s just a tiny part of it. You just cannot imagine the amount of money we’ve been left in other areas. I think Dad always knew I’d have a problem dealing with being fantastically wealthy—that’s probably why he gave me a direction like turning the Stucco House over to a charity.”
Franny was sitting on his other side and I noticed he was holding her hand. He nudged me and lifted her ring finger to show me the cluster of diamonds on it. I had no idea when he had proposed to her but I was stunned—and thrilled—and I reached over to clasp her hand. But Scott had cut Franny dead when she had walked into the reading of the will on Rufus’s arm and as it turned out, there was more to Scott’s hostility than the fact that she was engaged to his brother.
The Phillionaire had left the cabin to Eliza, with the proviso that Franny be its custodian until Eliza turned twenty-one.
And he had added a last minute codicil stipulating that until that time I be allowed to live there if I so desired.
Quickly I put two and two together. Once he found out that his father knew about Eliza’s existence, Scott must have realized Phil would include her in his will, just as Louis Nichols had said. Well, he could still sue for custody but Franny would soon be a legitimate member of the family and on much stronger ground.
As for me, I could hardly wait to get back to the cabin and start planning my future life there—except when I walked in and saw the appalling mess Tommy had managed to reduce the place to, I almost changed my mind.
It had taken him less than twenty-four hours to cover the entire floor area with his stuff. What could only be described as sheer dread crawled all over my body when I looked in his suitcase and saw the terrifying amount of junk he had brought with him.
“Tommy, what’s this?” I asked, plucking a small brown jar from amongst his briefs.
“Marmite.”
“I can see it’s Marmite.” A salty yeast extract spread that Tommy liked to smear on toast. I studied the label. “This jar contains approx 62 servings.” Which meant approx twelve in Tommy’s case, he spread it so thickly. “I’m familiar with Marmite but what I want to know is why you packed it in your suitcase.”
“Someone said they don’t have it in America.”
And he couldn’t live without it.
“But, Tommy, they do have toothpaste.” I pointed to an industrial-size tube protruding from a pouch.
“Wasn’t sure if they had Macleans,” he mumbled. By now he wasn’t looking at me and no wonder. He had packed at least six months’ supply.
He promised to leave everything in the suitcase because, as he could very well see, the cabin did not have sufficient storage to accommodate my stuff, let alone his. But every couple of hours he would feel the need to retrieve something from the very bottom and this would necessitate ferocious burrowing until he found it, resulting, inevitably, in most of the upper items in the case being deposited around the room. What infuriated me most of all was that this burrowing took place as I was trying to fill him in on the details of the murders of Sean Marriott and Bettina. And then, just as I was about to speculate on the possible suspect, and ask him what he thought, he sat back on his haunches and looked at me.
“But why are you still fretting about all this stuff? It’s not like you’re going to be involved anymore. Shotgun Marriott’s toast as far as you’re concerned. No more book, right? Get over him.”
I ignored the slight edge to this last remark. Get over him. To my surprise, the memory of my moment with Shotgun had not lingered. If anything I was having a much harder time letting go of his book than his kiss. The disk that I had placed beside my laptop had gone and the realization that Shotgun must have pocketed it without telling me really stung. Maybe he had done it while we were kissing to distract me, the rat! And as for being able to walk away from the murders, what on earth was Tommy thinking?
What he was thinking became abundantly clear as soon as he heard about the Phillionaire’s will.
“Well, that’s fantastic. That really is fantastic. What a great bloke. What a sweet thing for him to do. He must have really got the point of you, Lee. Look at that beach, you couldn’t ask for a better neck of the woods to shack up in, could you,
Lee? Perfect place for you to write your books and stuff and it’s safe as houses. You’re not going to tell me you’re frightened of seagulls, are you? Bloody fantastic, eh?”
“Fantastic,” I agreed, “and no, I’m not frightened of seagulls. I’d be amazed if they committed the murders that took place only five minutes’ walk up the beach from here.”
But Tommy was undaunted. “But I’m here now. I’ll protect you. Not sure where we’ll put my mum when she comes to stay, but I’m sure we’ll find somewhere. Can’t wait to tell her. She’s never been to America. I’ve only been once before, for that matter. Can’t remember much, mind you.”
“That’s because you only came for the weekend when you were eighteen. You told me you came with Shagger and the two of you were blind drunk the entire time. I’m surprised you even remember going.”
“Shagger sends his love, by the way. He’s got a new girlfriend. She’s got hair down to her bum and she’s Czechoslovakian.”
“I thought Shagger’s girlfriends were all inflatable.”
“Same thing,” said Tommy and I was amazed. Normally I was never allowed to utter the slightest criticism of Shagger, who had been Tommy’s best mate since he was about two. Occasionally, very occasionally, when I had the flu and couldn’t get my head around anything more substantial, I entertained myself by trying to imagine what Tommy and Shagger talked about when they were on their own. Apart from football, that is. In all the years I had known Tommy I had never heard Shagger say anything more demanding than “All right, are you?” or “Sun’s coming out.” But, as Tommy never failed to point out, Shagger didn’t have a malicious bone in his body and that was the main thing. Or a sober one, was my response but I kept it to myself.
“No, I mean she doesn’t speak English and nor could the inflatables.”
“I don’t know how you’re going to fit yourself in here let alone anyone else.” I pointed to his paunch. “If you want to move in with me, you’re going to have to lose weight. No more Marmite. What have you been living on since I left?”
How to Marry a Ghost Page 24
