“You can’t go to Nashville now,” I said instead. “What would Rufus do without you?”
“No, you’re right,” he said, “thanks for pointing that out. But it’d be great, wouldn’t it? You writing best sellers all day while I mind the house and in the evening you’d come out and sit by the stage at my gigs. Hey, maybe Shotgun Marriott could give me a few tips on how to get started.”
I was still contemplating his fantasy of our life together—what were the groupies like in the country music scene?—as I settled into my aisle seat on the plane. Who knew if I would even return to Long Island? And yet how could I not when I had so much unfinished business there?
And then I started thinking about Franny and the growing unease I had about her role—and possibly Dumpster’s—in the murder of Bettina Pleshette. I couldn’t get out of my mind the look of shock on her face when I had turned up at the Old Stone Market with the quiver. I didn’t need to tell her who I thought might be the owner or what that meant. She took it from me quickly and thrust it under the counter.
“Where did you find it?”
“Lazy Point,” I told her.
She looked sad.
“I was there the other day,” she said. “That’s where Rufus proposed. It was so romantic. We were in his truck and he drove all the way to the end of Cranberry Hole Road and just kept going until we were parked right out in the middle of the lagoon. It’s so shallow around there. Then he produced the ring. We just sat there in the truck and held each other till the sun went down and even then we stayed awhile. He turned on the headlights and we watched the water by moonlight. And all that time”—she shuddered—“this thing was buried just a few feet away. So what were you doing at Lazy Point?”
I told her and asked her if she knew where Martha had gone.
“I have no idea. I didn’t know her too well.” Already Franny seemed to be speaking of her in the past tense, I noted, with a sense of dread. “And I didn’t realize she and Louis had something going on.”
“Speaking of Louis Nichols,” I said, “I sat next to him on the jitney and Franny, I think you should know, he told me all about—”
Suddenly I didn’t know how to put into words what Louis had told me about her life in the city. “He knew what you did, you know, when you lived in Manhattan.”
“Oh my God!”
“But as far as I know he hasn’t talked to anyone else. He spoke to me because he knew we had become friends. But he was asking if Rufus knew.”
Franny shook her head violently.
“But Franny,” I said, “I think you should tell him. I don’t think it would make any difference. Rufus loves you, he’s not going to care what happened in your past. And it’s not as if his life out here has been exactly virginal by the sound of it. But it would be awful if he heard about your past life from someone else.”
“It’s not just Rufus,” she said, “it’s my reputation as a whole. It’s about the Old Stone Market. I’m having a hard enough time as it is getting established. There’s such a backlash among the older members of the community about what I’m doing to the place. I don’t want my past raked up, that would make it even worse. I’ve come back here so Dumpster and I can start afresh. And most of all,” I could see she was on the point of tears, “it’s about Eliza. I don’t want her growing up here with people pointing the finger at her mother.”
“Franny,” I said, “just discuss it with Rufus. You have to, for your own peace of mind.”
“I don’t!” she yelled at me suddenly. “He doesn’t have to know and if you say a word to him, you’d better be careful.” She was advancing on me now, coming around the counter into the main area of the store, and her amazing stature seemed to make her tower over me. “I warned Bettina to keep out of it.”
“You warned Bettina?”
“When she came around to see me about Eliza, that was the blackmail she used. She knew all about the”—Franny hesitated—“the men.”
“But how did she find out? And by the way how did Louis Nichols know?”
“Louis? You never heard this from me but Louis could quite easily have been one of my ‘escorts.’” She waggled her fingers in the air to form quotation marks. “He knew plenty of other girls who were doing what I did so he probably heard about me from them. And Bettina? She was a busybody. She poked her nose in everywhere. Who knows where she got it from. All I know is that she threatened to use it against me and after she left, I just got to thinking—I thought if I went looking for her and told her the kind of trouble she’d be in if she—”
She stopped abruptly.
“You went looking for Bettina? When?”
“I just wanted to stop her—”
“Franny, when did you go looking for her? Did you find her?”
But she just shrugged and turned the conversation around to me.
“So Rufus and I are getting married. What about you and Tommy?”
Now it was my turn to shrug. “Who knows?”
“What do you mean? I thought the fact that he’d come over here to see you meant you guys were going to work things out.”
“Franny, it’s not that simple,” I told her and before I knew it I was telling her about my misgivings and how I was beginning to wonder if Tommy and I would ever be really compatible.
“But you love him?” said Franny.
“Yes,” I said slowly, “but I don’t really want to be with him, not all the time—like you’d have to be in a marriage.”
“You can’t really see him as a husband?”
“Yes,” I said, “oh, yes, I can definitely see him as a husband. He’d be a perfect husband. He’s supportive and caring and almost too good to be true. I just can’t see him as my husband.”
“You know what, Lee?” Franny had a slightly quizzical look in her eye. “Maybe you just can’t see any man as your husband. Ever thought about that?”
“You think I’m blinkered? That I don’t really appreciate what a prize I have in Tommy? Because I do. I totally do.”
“Oh, I’m sure you do. Just like I know what I’ve got in Rufus. The difference is that I know I want to be with Rufus all the time. I’m unhappy when I’m not with him. And I also know that I want to be part of a couple. But I listen to what you say and I think about what Rufus tells me, of what Tommy tells him, because they talk to each other, those two, oh yes they do. And Tommy tells him about how you used to send him away every now and then, how you needed your space over there in London, just like you hide away in that cabin over here all on your own, and I’m wondering, Lee, maybe you don’t need to get married at all. Not to Tommy or to any man. It’s what usually happens to people but there ain’t no law that says you have to get married. Maybe you just think you ought to marry him because he’s such a sweetheart and you’d be a fool not to. But think about it, Lee. There shouldn’t be any ought to about getting married!”
I couldn’t believe it. She’d hit the proverbial nail on the head. I was so grateful to her for having the perception to understand who I really was that I did something totally out of character for me. I reached out and gave her the hug I’d evaded from her when I’d agreed to babysit for her.
“You’re so right, Franny. Tommy and I always used to have this joke that I’m an undercover polar bear. The male and the female don’t live together, you know, they only come together to mate. Ideally, that’s how I’d like it to be with Tommy. But that’s not a marriage, is it?”
“Not really,” she agreed sadly. “Maybe you’d better remind him that you’re a member of the Polar Bear Club before things go too far.”
And that was where we had left it. Now trapped in the plane, when I wasn’t fretting about when it was going to plummet into the Atlantic, I worried about what would become of her while I was gone. Of course I would be coming back, I reasoned to myself, to see her, to see Rufus, to see my mother—and Tommy. But when, I did not know. It all depended on what happened in London. I would discuss with Genevieve whether to con
tinue the Shotgun book but if we wound up scrapping it and she found me something else in England, then there would be no need to go back to America. So what would Tommy do if I stayed in London?
I picked up the notepad I always carried with me and began yet another attempt at a letter to Tommy, although this time I knew what I wanted to say.
Dearest Tommy,
It’s tricky what I want to say to you and that’s why I’m writing a letter. I can hear you telling me—whenever I had a hard time making you understand something important I wanted to get across—“Write it down, Lee,” you always said, “you’re a writer. That’s what you do. Write it down instead of spluttering away at me.” And you were so right. So here’s a letter to try and get across what I have to tell you.
You’re not going to like it but please don’t jump off the handle right away. Hear me out. I think it’s time I reminded you that I am a member of the Polar Bear Club. You must never ever think that this means that I don’t love you because I do. But I have been thinking for some time that I might not be able to live with anyone—not even you—for a sustained amount of time. There was a moment a few months ago when we were planning our wedding that I thought I could change. And believe me I wanted to—for you. But I fear now that I would probably wind up making you very unhappy and that is the last thing I want to do. Where we go from here, I do not know but
And that was as far as I got before I fell asleep for the rest of the flight. When we landed on a cold October London morning, I treated myself to a cab into Notting Hill even though I didn’t have much luggage with me and arrived home at Blenheim Crescent at about ten o’clock in the morning.
It was the first time I’d been away from home for so long and I was struck anew by the massive size of our four-story Georgian house. It was almost indecent that I should have had it to myself for as long as I did until I moved Tommy in to live with me.
I dragged my suitcase up the steep flight of steps to the front door, knowing the lazy sod of a cab driver was enjoying watching my exertions before he set off in search of his next fare. I was anticipating the sight of Marcus’s paraphernalia cluttering up our hallway as my mother had warned me it would be but when I let myself in, I reeled in astonishment.
I barely recognized the place. It was immaculate with glistening polished floors and surfaces, everything stored away in cabinets and no sign of a baby’s presence anywhere.
And there, sitting at the kitchen table in a silk dressing gown, eating a perfectly formed triangle of whole wheat toast, was my father.
“Ed!” I gasped before I could stop myself. I had never called my father Dad or Daddy, except when talking about him to other people. It had been my mother’s newfangled idea when I was little that I should call my parents by their first names. I think she thought it would make them appear younger. However it was she who quickly tired of it and requested “Mummy,” which I detested. We settled for Mum but somehow my father remained Ed.
He was a bit of an Ed somehow, tall and thin and lanky, the perfect clotheshorse for his stylish wardrobe and his vanity. The thing about my father was that he had always been a bit of a blank canvas, a listener rather than a talker, someone who encouraged you to talk but rarely revealed anything about himself. He adapted his mood—and, I noticed sometimes, his views—to whomever he was with and in this way he had been the perfect foil for my mother’s whirlwind ambition. That is until he had absconded with a young French divorcée.
He stood and embraced me and lowered his head so that his lips collided with my forehead in a kiss. “What are you doing here, Nathalie?” A greeting that more or less summed up our father-daughter relationship. Suspicion and interrogation rather than unconditional welcome.
“I live here, Ed. It’s my home. What are you doing here?”
“It’s my house,” he said.
“But what are you doing in London?” I persisted. “And where’s Cath? I expected to find her here. And Richie. And Marcus.”
“Well, you won’t,” he said. “I called before I arrived and asked them to move out, and before you start yelling at me”—he held up his hand—“the renovations to their flat were finished. It was all ready for them to move back into. Cath said you were in America. I’d no idea you were coming home. How long will you be here?”
“Why are you asking something like that?” I stared at him. “I live here, Ed. You know I do. It’s my home. It always has been.” I was starting to feel panic rising. I spent more time at home than almost anybody I knew. If I didn’t have a base to which I could retreat and in which I could hide from the world, I would come seriously undone. It was no good, people like Tommy and Cath and anyone else who said they cared about me telling me I needed to face up to the demons I imagined lurked just the other side of my front door. Deep down I knew I’d always need a place where I could hole up and take stock. The Phillionaire had known that instinctively about me, and that was why he had introduced me to the cabin. But my father wasn’t the Phillionaire and suddenly I realized I was comparing them in a way that I knew couldn’t possibly be healthy.
“Nathalie,” said my father gently, “I’m not asking you to go. I’m just inquiring how long we might be able to spend some time together. Because I’d enjoy it, no other reason. It’s been a long time and you’re my favorite daughter, don’t forget.”
It was an old joke between us. I was his only daughter, his only child. And suddenly I felt terrible for thinking he had any ulterior motive for asking what he had.
“So what about you, Ed? Why are you in London?”
“Exactly what it says on the packet,” he said cheerfully, “this is my house and I’ve decided to come back to London and live in it. Who knows, I may even go back to work in the shop.”
My father had inherited money as a young man and had indulged in what my mother always referred to as a “dusty” profession. Edward Bartholomew Books was a tiny stall tucked away in Portobello Market dealing in antiquarian books. My father had sat there happily losing money every Saturday until my mother had yanked him off to France, at which point he’d turned his space over to a young whippersnapper who now used it to sell punk memorabilia.
“Your mother’s got this new life in New York,” he said, “so she really doesn’t need it. Although as soon as she hears I’m here I expect she’ll want it back,” he added ruefully. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
As he was speaking I realized with a sinking feeling that he didn’t know about the Phillionaire. And why would he? Nobody had thought to call him, buried as he was in the depths of the French countryside, least of all my mother or me.
I made a fresh pot of coffee to stave off my encroaching jet lag and talked him through the events of the last month culminating in the Phillionaire’s untimely death. To my surprise he looked unbelievably sad.
“I must call your mother,” he said. “This is the worst thing that could have happened to her. It really sounded as if she had found someone who could get through to her.”
I don’t think I could have been more amazed if he had said he was sprouting wings underneath his dressing gown.
“Don’t look so stunned,” he said. “Your mother and I have had a few conversations since she met him—in fact I’m a little sad she didn’t call and tell me he had died—and I could tell by the way she talked about him that she loved him. And it sounded as though she actually believed that he loved her, not like—”
He stopped suddenly and I wasn’t sure what to say. Surely he hadn’t been about to tell me my mother didn’t believe my father’s love for her.
Apparently he had.
“I mean, I should never have married her,” he went on and I held my breath. He was musing to himself, almost as if I were not even there beside him. But then he said something that told me he was very much aware of my presence, more than at any other time I could remember.
“I’m like you, Nathalie. I like being on my own. I had absolutely no intention of getting married. Ever. It
’s a rare thing but there really are a few people who are better off going through life on their own. I’m one of them and I’ve always suspected you are too. But then I met Vanessa and she was this stunning, exciting creature. I was seduced by her energy, her wonderful ability to embrace life full on. She literally swept me up in her wake and it wasn’t until I was totally smitten that I discovered how complicated she really was.”
“Complicated?”
“She was needy in a way I hadn’t anticipated. She was so desperate for us to get married that I found I couldn’t resist her, even though I knew I should. Yet she couldn’t seem to accept the fact that I really loved her. Nor did she ever really say she loved me. She smothered me with attention but she always seemed to back away—mentally—when I tried to express my feeling for her. She was—I don’t know any other way to describe it—she was awkward.”
I knew exactly what he meant. And so had the Phillionaire.
“But you loved her, Ed?”
“Always. But I didn’t need to be married to her. Still, as you can imagine, that’s the last thing I could have told her given how insecure she was about my love for her. I just went ahead with it and hoped for the best. As you probably noticed, I had a hard time keeping up with her.”
“Join the club,” I said and he laughed. It saddened me to realize what had happened. He had retreated into himself, worn down like everybody else by my mother’s hyperactive personality. I recalled a conversation I had had with her shortly after she had told me they were going to separate, when she had made a remark that I realized now had probably been fueled by resentment. She had told me that once the initial passion of their married life was over, she had decided my father was boring and had no conversation. But sitting here in the kitchen with him, I sensed that in the same way I had begun to access my mother’s more vulnerable persona, I would now unearth a long repressed side of my father that was far from boring.
How to Marry a Ghost Page 27
