by Laura Powell
They start down a narrow street with shops either side and walk with their hips almost touching. Gallagher’s strides are twice as long as hers and she struggles to keep up. She has seen grown women tuck their arms into men’s elbow crooks and she would like to do the same, but he might tell her not to. That would be worse than never having tried at all.
She stops to inspect a row of oily pilchards outside a fishmonger’s, then they turn onto a promenade strewn with seine nets and crab cages and docked boats that clank against the harbour wall like wind-chimes. Fishiness and salt fill Betty’s nose. Something changes Gallagher’s mind, and he steers her down a quiet alleyway of cottages to a windier beach with a green archipelago that juts into the sea. On top of it is the shell of a brown chapel. It is a short walk to the chapel and Gallagher leads. He lights a cigarette. The wind picks up and Betty rubs her ears to warm them.
‘Can you blow a bit of that nice warm smoke into my ear?’ she says.
‘You tickle me pink.’
But he doesn’t look very pink, just bitten white with cold. When they reach the church wall, Gallagher is panting.
‘Good job you weren’t in the War with lungs like those,’ she says.
He doesn’t smile.
‘I was only teasing.’
‘Yes.’
‘Were you in the War?’
He doesn’t answer. They perch on the church wall and watch the frothy waves.
‘We were talking about you back at the tea room,’ he says. ‘Tell me what you enjoy.’
‘Being questioned,’ she says with a smile but he frowns and she feels silly again.
The wind hiccups and her skirt billows up. She pats it down, bunching the fabric under her thighs. When she looks back at him, he is staring into her face.
‘I mean, what do you enjoy doing?’
‘Just normal things.’
‘Such as?’
‘Spending time with Mother. Painting sometimes. Taking photographs and being by the sea – I love walking by the sea.’ She thinks harder. ‘I don’t know what else. No one’s ever asked me before.’
‘I don’t suppose they have.’
‘I like taking photographs most of all,’ she says again and when he still doesn’t respond, she pulls her camera from her cloth bag.
He glances down at it.
‘That’s a beauty,’ he says, the same way he did of his car and she is pleased.
‘Do you have one?’
‘Not one as smart as yours.’
‘I’d like to take a picture,’ she murmurs.
‘You must. What a view.’
‘I meant of you.’
‘What on earth for?’ he says, but he notices her blush and speaks more kindly. ‘Go on then, but quickly now. I’m not looking my best, as my grandmother would have said.’
‘I think you are,’ she says shyly and stands in front of him, pointing the camera.
She doesn’t look at him properly through the viewfinder; it burns to look at him head on. She presses the button fast without checking the angle of the light or how central he is. She is relieved when they are side by side again, her camera back inside her bag.
‘What do you like?’ she asks, her chest thumping.
A seagull flies low. Waves beat on the sand and somewhere distant, a car honks its horn. Minutes pass.
‘I thought I used to know,’ he says eventually. ‘I don’t remember what I thought exactly. All I know now is that it’s not that. I suppose that doesn’t make a word of sense.’
‘It makes perfect sense,’ she says, still trying to unscramble it. ‘Do you have a family?’
She sounds stupid; of course everyone has a family.
‘Just a father, he was a personal doctor for many years. I rarely see him, he lives in Paris. He has… strong ideas about my… my work.’
‘Personal? It must have been someone very important to have had a personal doctor.’
‘Chamberlain,’ and he looks away, embarrassed. There is a pause. ‘We write, Father and I. Well, I write him letters, he writes me lectures.’
‘But that’s wonderful. He must have seen amazing things if he went everywhere with the Prime Minister. You must have too, when you were a boy.’
‘I boarded so I only went along in the summer. It’s not as grand as it sounds.’
‘Oh?’ There is a long pause. ‘Actually, one of the hotel guests told me that Prime Minister Chamberlain was a frightful bore. I don’t know how he knew, but he sounded sure.’
‘You’re a funny one,’ says Gallagher without laughing. ‘No, he was a nice chap. And Halifax too, back when he was the Viceroy. He was at Eton with Father, brought me back a stuffed tiger from India once. Vile thing.’
Betty doesn’t hear the rest. You’re a funny one, that’s what he said. He thinks I’m funny. She wants to say something kind in return but his words have steamed on and left behind that little sentence.
‘Can I ask you a question?’ she says nervously.
‘This sounds ominous.’
‘I want to know why you like…’ she stops and starts again. ‘Why did you agree to spend today with me?’
He lets out that barking laugh of his.
‘Because of that.’
‘Because of what?’ and she glances back over her shoulder.
‘Because you’re bold, just as you were to have asked me that question.’
She reddens and looks down at her fingers. She should never have asked. He probably thinks she was fishing.
‘It’s not a bad thing, don’t be ashamed,’ he continues. ‘It means you’re unafraid… Though perhaps you should be afraid sometimes.’
His face darkens.
‘You’d make a good reporter,’ he continues after a pause. ‘You’d cut straight to the truth.’
‘I’ll never leave St Steele.’
‘That’s a waste.’
She frowns.
‘I couldn’t leave Mother. And I wouldn’t want to. In theory perhaps, but I couldn’t. She needs me too much.’
‘You talk as though you’re her mother.’
‘Mary always says I was born fifty. And she says that, even now, I age two years for everyone else’s one.’
‘That’s one bit of sense this Mary has spoken then.’
‘Don’t be cruel,’ she says, but she grins.
‘But honestly, when I see you and listen to you… There’s something so wonderfully, I don’t know, so unpolluted…’ he stumbles over his words.
‘Well it won’t be unpolluted when the new road into St Steele is built. The workmen begin in December and Mother says the fumes will be unbearable.’
‘Don’t do that,’ he says. She looks away.
‘You knew what I meant,’ he continues. ‘You’re clever and you’re—’
‘Your job seems marvellous,’ she says to steer the talk away from her. ‘Driving to new places, writing about the people you meet there.’
‘I didn’t choose it. I chose not to have the life I was supposed to have.’
‘Life as a doctor?’
‘Or, God forbid, a politician. No, I did this because it’s the worst fate Father could have imagined for me – my pathetic little rebellion. Pah, even that’s a failure.’
‘Surely there are worse professions.’
‘Than mixing with men like those? Debasing myself, that’s what he calls it.’
‘But—’
‘My mother died when I was born and he sees me as some sort of precious incarnate. Nothing I could do would ever make him hate me, Lord knows I’ve tried. He wraps me in cotton—’ Gallagher stops. ‘I’ve never told anyone this but…’ He clears his throat. ‘My father’s well-placed, as I told you, and when conscription came I was never called. I went to volunteer but they sent me away and said that something in my medical report meant I couldn’t serve. They wouldn’t tell me what. He did that to me. My own father.’
It takes her a moment to catch what he means. She swallows hard and tries to
think of something suitable to say.
‘How can you be a man when your peers, your cousins, your neighbours, everyone you know, is out there fighting for their country and you can’t because your father has falsified your medical records?’
‘He must have done it to protect you.’
‘Do you know the worst thing? I was relieved. Actually relieved.’
‘Couldn’t you have done something? Told the truth or changed your papers back?’
‘You despise me now too.’
‘I don’t,’ she says, horrified. ‘I couldn’t ever despise you.’ But she can’t work out what to think. ‘You didn’t force him to do it.’
‘Well they despise me, the whole family. They suspected, and then my cousin, the golden boy, died serving… I know what they think – it should have been John. So now all I have is him; my loathsome father.’
‘You don’t really hate him.’
‘I might as well tattoo a white feather onto my forehead.’
There is a long pause. She would like to hug him but she doesn’t dare.
‘Come on then, let’s be off,’ he says.
He jumps to his feet abruptly, as though nothing unusual has been said. Betty stays seated.
‘Perhaps we could have another few minutes,’ she says.
He looks down, his curls flop over his eyebrows and his fists ram into his coat pockets. If she really were brave, she would wrap her arms around him and unlock his fists and bury her face in his neck, just to see how he smells. Instead, she smooths her skirt and sits nervously.
‘I suppose another five minutes won’t harm,’ he grunts, but instead of sitting down he paces towards the flat top of the hill.
‘He probably did it because he loved you so much,’ she calls after him, hoping he will sit with her again if they continue talking.
He stops walking and glares back at her.
‘How would you know?’
His anger has a button; she doesn’t know how she manages to press it so often.
‘I know you only get one father,’ she calls back.
‘You haven’t met mine,’ he says, sounding like a boy.
‘Still, remember that and make the most of him,’ she says, pink at her boldness. ‘Mine died.’
She won’t remind Gallagher that he died at war.
‘I don’t want sympathy or anything,’ she continues. ‘Just remember you only get one.’
Gallagher shakes his head. His jaw softens and he looks at her as though she has told him something amazing when, really, all she has said is the obvious.
‘You’re a wonderful little oddity, I hope you know that. You really are something.’
‘Will you do something for me?’ she asks, emboldened.
‘This sounds serious,’ and he looks uneasy.
‘It’s not difficult. I only want you to not reset yourself again.’
‘You make me sound like a broken wireless,’ he says with a tense half-laugh.
‘Please don’t joke.’
‘All right. What is it you want from me, Betty?’
‘Only that you don’t reset us again. I don’t know how else to put it, but you seem to start from scratch whenever we see each other. As if we haven’t really met before.’ She stops and frowns. ‘It made sense in my head.’
‘I won’t do it again.’
‘If you know what I mean, why do you—’
‘I promise,’ he interrupts.
‘But why did you always ignore me?’
He doesn’t answer but he looks closely at her. Little black hairs prick through his chin pores. Sweet cake breath lands on her mouth from his. The seagulls silence and the sea quietens and their faces move closer until they touch. Their lips meet.
Seconds pass. To Betty, it seems longer. Like hours, days even. She isn’t certain whether she draws back first, or who began it at all, or how his lips tasted. Only that they are separate again but that they really kissed.
She has to bite hard on her bottom lip and think of Joan’s poor dead cat Beatrice (run over by the milk float), to stop herself grinning, but Gallagher jumps to his feet and paces away from her. Betty reaches out and touches the bit of wall, still warm from where he sat. When he turns, his hands are hidden in his coat pockets and his face is stony.
‘We’re going.’
He nods in the direction of town. He walks, she follows, and then they are hurrying through the streets, almost running back to his car. Gallagher closes the door without looking at her and he drives back towards St Steele faster than he ought.
Half an hour passes before Betty speaks.
‘You said you wouldn’t do this.’
She can’t tell whether he heard her over the road and the engine, but he pulls over and parks on the verge of the empty country lane. Through the windscreen, a stream dribbles along between the road and the field. The sky is salmon pink.
‘It was wrong of me,’ he says in his formal voice. ‘Today shouldn’t have happened.’
‘But I’m glad it did.’
He thumps his fist against the driver’s door.
‘Don’t, Betty.’
She stares out of the window over his shoulder, burning to shout something that will change his mind. A trail of ducks waddle along the stream, led by a drake with emerald feathers. If this all weren’t so serious, Betty might point them out. They might get out of the car and watch the ducks toddle toward the tar-coloured fields.
‘But I am glad,’ she insists, forgetting her nerves.
‘No, I’ll hurt you.’
There is a long pause.
‘Is that why you ignore me?’ she presses. ‘Because you think you’ll hurt me.’
‘It’s not right. That woman in the tea room was bad enough.’
‘So you don’t dislike me?’
‘Of course I don’t dislike you. I wouldn’t be in this bloody car if I disliked you. Or watching terrible, terrible films with you. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m thirty years old and I’m – I’m not the sort of person you just make friends with, Betty.’
‘You didn’t enjoy the pictures?’ she says, pretending to sound cross.
He half smiles, as she had hoped, and reaches forward to touch her cheek but jerks back again as if possessed and fighting with his two halves.
‘No,’ he scolds himself.
‘But…’
She can’t find sensible words so she swivels in her seat and reaches forward to kiss him, fast before her courage fades. Their noses bang together and Betty winces. She is about to draw back in shame and let him drive on, when his head tilts diagonally and his lips find hers. Then they are kissing again, but with their lips parted this time.
Betty hopes she is doing it right. His lips are warm. They fit with hers. Gallagher opens his mouth and works harder into the kiss. Hot air passes into her mouth and she is careful not to breathe in, not to choke on it. She tries to inhale but her nose is blocked up. She splutters.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, pulling back.
‘Don’t be sorry. I’m just not very good at it.’
‘Shush,’ he says softly.
He rubs a lock of her hair between his fingers and searches her face. Betty moves forward again and this time, their noses don’t bang and their teeth don’t clank. They kiss and they kiss, and when they finish her lips sting in a good way. He places her hand on the gear stick, beneath his own hand. Then he drives back to St Steele slowly, so very slowly.
Chapter 8
Fifty years later
The building is easy to find. Mary asks for directions from the railway station guard and she reaches it five minutes later. It is stucco fronted and broad, and seems to have once been a mansion with servants’ quarters. Today it is flanked by a gravel drive crammed with eight cars, sleek ones that Jerry would whistle through his teeth at. Number six, it says in gold stickers on a glass panel above the beetle black front door.
She stands in front of it for a long time, looking at the window sills tha
t smell of new paint and biting her fingernails down to stumps. He is inside, probably just a few steps away. She wonders what he is doing and wearing, how his face has altered with age, and whether he will recognise her.
She has known he was here for little over a year: she had stumbled upon him as she was skimming the readers’ page of the Surrey Comet. One of the letter writers’ surnames had grabbed her and made her shiver, the way that surname always did.
She had read the letter with vague interest: The writer was disgusted that the council had backtracked on a policy to grant parking permits to relatives of people living in Surrey care homes, and he went on to calculate how much he had spent over the last year on parking outside Eugenie Heights, the care home of his dear father John, the famous war correspondent.
Mary was glad that she was home alone when she read that, as she choked on her tea. It was as though she had lost another small part of him, though she knew deep down that she had never had him at all.
By the time Mary had finished re-reading it, her mind was knotted up. To untangle it, she had sifted the dirty socks from the laundry bin, swilled them and pegged them on the washing line with neat two-inch gaps between each. As she clipped on the pegs and measured each space with her thumb, she had let herself wonder how many children he had, who he had married and why he became a war correspondent of all things, when he had once told her that war terrified him.
When the washing line was full, she had looked up the address of Eugenie Heights in the Yellow Pages and written it down next to his Christian name – his full name would have been too much. It would have brought him to life again. She had slipped the scrap of paper into her old diary where she thought Jerry would never look.
Mary steps towards the front door. She is gathering the courage to knock when she notices her reflection in the bay window; a shapeless figure with a flat bun. She turns away ashamed – she should at least tidy herself up for him – and she hurries back to the station entrance.
