by Kiley Dunbar
Mirren’s words faltered at this. ‘Th-thanks anyway. We tried.’ Flustered, she looked out over the water, avoiding his sidelong glance. They fell silent for a moment as they came up alongside the barge and passed it. All the while Mirren was becoming increasingly aware of her aching feet after her long day at the bar, but she matched Adrian step for step.
‘I was really looking forward to working with you,’ he said at last. ‘You’d certainly liven up the office. Some days I feel like I’m running the place; Ferdinand’s so quiet, hidden away upstairs all day, most likely snoring.’
‘God knows, I needed that job.’ The voices in her head were singing in chorus, But you messed up the interview. Typical Mirren, always spoiling things. ‘It’s all right. I’m determined to enjoy the Yorick. It’s not so bad, actually, and these long shifts certainly beat awkward Christmases back home.’ She didn’t elaborate even though Adrian raised his brows encouraging her to go on. ‘I have a feeling me and your Mr Ferdinand wouldn’t really have got along anyway.’
‘I guess I’m trapped with the old stick insect then. You’d never guess he used to be an actor, would you?’
This surprised a laugh from Mirren. ‘No, you would not!’
‘That’s why Clement Dickens, the old editor, hired him, to get the gossip straight from the rehearsal room, but when Clement died the editorship went to Ferdinand and that was curtains for the paper. Ferdinand wasn’t much interested in theatre by that time, a touch of failed actor complex if you ask me, so the paper ended up going back to its old pre-Clement ways; it’s theatrical focus went out the window and it became a run-of-the-mill local rag again.’
‘That’s a pity. We could have written up a storm together.’ Mirren checked her smile, realising Adrian had stopped walking and they were now well on their way out of town on the opposite side of the bank from the magnificent Holy Trinity Church, its stained glass aglow and its spire disappearing into the dark sky.
‘Mirren?’ he said cautiously.
She jammed her hands into her pockets, not quite trusting them to stay there. ‘Uh-huh?’ She tried to sound casual.
‘I know you said you weren’t interested in dating and I get that, but I wanted to say that… umm,’ he cleared his throat, aiming his gaze intently at her eyes. ‘I’ll wait.’
She stared back. ‘You’ll wait?’
‘In case one day you change your mind. I’ll be here, waiting. We could get a drink or—’
‘We can get a drink any time, we’re friends, remember?’ she interrupted with false laughter. ‘Anyway, I thought you were done with dating too?’
He looked sheepish at this.
‘Besides, I wouldn’t be a great girlfriend, trust me. You’re dodging a bullet.’
His expression said he wasn’t buying any of that. ‘Of course we’re friends.’ He nodded, looking down at the ground, trying to hide the defeat, and failing.
Scuffing her boots on the path, Mirren felt the awkwardness set in. ‘It’s getting really cold, I’d better head back to my place.’ She thumbed the way along the river behind her, hoping he wouldn’t follow or she might be spending the rest of the evening having to keep up her pretence of living in a real house like a real adult and not camping out in the back of her friend’s boat.
‘Sure. It is chilly,’ he agreed. The moonlight on his dark hair and lashes gave them a sapphire sheen. Mirren blew out a sharp exhalation at the sight of him, crestfallen and so handsome. She tried to congratulate herself for resisting his offer but, deep down, she just felt unkind and self-defeating.
‘OK, goodnight,’ she said, determinedly.
‘See you at the Yorick? I’ll drop in for a Christmas drink.’
‘Right-o, I’m working all Christmas.’ She wondered when she’d last used the phrase ‘right-o’ and whimpered. The impulse to close the gap between them and press a conciliatory kiss to his cheek was overwhelming. Instead, she took a stumbling step backwards, somehow tripping on her own feet but quickly recovering.
He watched her walk away before letting his chin fall to his chest, shaking his head, but he was smiling with the look of a man who had bared his feelings and wasn’t all that sorry he’d tried.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘To me, fair friend, you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyed,
Such seems your beauty still’
(Sonnet 104)
‘Woah, please let me help with that,’ Kelsey called out at the sight of Blythe teetering on a kitchen stepladder, reaching up to the larder shelves and directing some particularly fruity language at some jars of fruit jam.
‘Can’t reach the bloody things,’ she muttered, stepping down again and watching Kelsey reach up with ease.
‘How many do you want down?’
‘Depends. Do you like gin jam? Six ought to do it.’
‘Gin jam?’
At that moment the toaster on the work surface popped. ‘I made some raspberry gin back in September, couldn’t bring myself to waste the booze-soaked raspberries, so voilà! Gin jam.’
‘It’s cocktail hour even at breakfast time?’ Kelsey grinned, placing the jars two at a time on the table by the copper still.
Blythe said nothing but waggled her bare brows proudly.
‘Pop one open, dear.’ Blythe buttered the toast and pulled out a plate for Kelsey. ‘You can sample it here first, let me know if you like your Christmas present.’
Kelsey eyed the six jars and hoped Blythe didn’t mean to give them all to her, until, that is, she took her first bite. Sweet strained raspberry juice and bitter gin had combined in a perfect not-too-firm jelly-like set. ‘Oh wow!’ Her taste buds zinged.
Blythe chuckled and poured water from the whistling kettle into an antique silver teapot. It looked like Kelsey was staying for breakfast. She’d only meant to pop in for a moment to ask her a question.
‘I was wondering whether you wanted to come and see the Christmas lights today with me and Jonathan? You haven’t met him yet and you can talk Shakespeare all day, and maybe we could get some lunch in town? You haven’t been in town for a while, have you? Be nice to get out.’
Blythe’s eyes dimmed. With a nod at the tray of cups and saucers she shuffled away to her salon, leaving Kelsey to load the jam, toast and teapot and carry the tray in her wake, calling behind her, ‘Obviously, you don’t have to, I just thought it might be nice to do something festive?’
Blythe lowered herself wearily onto her pink chaise, still silent.
‘Can I get you any groceries then?’ Kelsey pressed. That was when she noticed the fancy white box of almond turrón on the table by Blythe’s elbow and the bottle of fino still sitting upon their torn Christmas wrapping.
Blythe followed her eye line. ‘I’ve everything I need for a lovely Christmas, thank you dear.’
‘You’ve been getting presents?’
‘Mm-hmm, my favourite. Spanish turrón and sherry. Every Christmas my son sends them.’ Blythe sipped her tea. ‘Eat up, toast’s getting cold.’
Kelsey wouldn’t be put off. ‘You’ve got a wheelchair, haven’t you? I saw it folded up in the hall. Maybe we could take a walk along the street, have a good old nose in all the windows at people’s Christmas decs?’
‘Darling, I appreciate you asking, I do, and my grandchildren ask me the same things and I see them tutting and shaking their heads at me being a stubborn old bird, but Kelsey, you lose confidence after being sat indoors for a long time; even the shortest stroll feels a little frightening. You tell yourself, I’ll go out once I’m over this cold, but when that’s gone, you’ve got a twinge in your back, and then the weather’s not good enough and the pavements are slippery and before you know it a year’s passed and you’ve not set foot over your threshold. You’ll see. The world’s your oyster when you’re young and mobile…’
‘Knock knock?’
Both women turned to the sound of the voice in the kitchen. Kelsey had been listening and nodding al
ong, feeling as though she was finally getting a glimpse of the real Blythe beneath her glamourous bravado and she regretted the interruption even though it was her favourite person. ‘That’ll be Jonathan. I told him to come down when he was done talking with his parents in the States.’
‘Ah, the famous Jonathan Hathaway. Let’s be seeing you then,’ Blythe trilled, and Kelsey watched her elderly neighbour with all her worries about her mobility and independence, the woman who struggled to reach her shelves and hated admitting that struggle, suddenly assuming her actress’s posture again. When Jonathan’s head appeared around the salon door frame, Blythe was already sitting taller and stretching her neck, elegant and poised. That was all about to change when she saw Jonathan.
‘Oh! Goodness!’ Blythe cried out, raising a hand to her mouth, her eyes narrowing to focus on his features. ‘You… you…’
‘Blythe, are you all right?’ Kelsey was on her feet in an instant, making her tea slosh in the saucer.
She watched the woman do battle with herself, gaping open-mouthed, seeing the look of bewilderment cross her face before it was erased by a forced, friendly smile, but the panic still showed in Blythe’s eyes. ‘I’m fine dear, fine. I thought for a moment you were someone else… I couldn’t account for it… oh, dear.’
Jonathan was now kneeling by her side. ‘It’s just me, Jonathan Hathaway, Kelsey’s… boyfriend.’ He’d never used the word before, not in front of Kelsey anyway, and their eyes widened and met for the briefest moment of smiling surprise before turning back to Blythe who was now a picture of poise again.
‘You two had better get going if you’re to make the most of the daylight. The days are so short now midwinter’s here,’ she was saying, running her napkin over the invisible toast crumbs on her muted gold pleated skirt.
Blythe always dressed as though she were expecting company – Burton and Taylor perhaps – and she’d stepped her dressing up a notch for the festive season by matching her cream blouse, cardigan and pink river pearls with a winter-white fur stole which Kelsey just knew was as old as the hills and definitely not faux. Her crystal earrings glittered in the light and her smile said she’d pulled off a spectacular recovery from her little moment of discomfiture.
‘Go on, off you go. Don’t want to stand in the way of young lovers. Besides, they’re showing Lawrence of Arabia at ten and I like to see my old pals at Christmas time. Oh, Peter O’Toole was a lovely man, such a twinkle in his eye and always a delight at parties.’
Jonathan was looking warily at Kelsey who was staring, concerned, at her neighbour, uncertain quite what was happening. Blythe was always dramatic, but this morning she was off the charts.
‘Before you go, give that cloth a tug, will you?’ said Blythe, and Kelsey was surprised to find she kept an ancient television in the corner covered over with an embroidered cloth as though it were a mouthy parrot in a cage.
‘Lovely, dear. Toodle-pip.’
‘Umm, OK, well, merry Christmas?’ said Kelsey, only to be met with Blythe’s studied silence. She was jabbing at a clunky-looking remote control.
Jonathan had better luck. ‘It sure was nice to meet you, Miss Goode,’ he said in his charming Tulsa accent. Blythe nodded courteously at that and let him take her hand, but there was a hint of unsteadiness in the way she held her head when she looked at him.
It had taken another ten minutes of reassurances from an increasingly annoyed Blythe to get them out the flat, both of them clutching three jars of gin jam to their chests.
‘Do you think she’s OK? She looked like she’d seen a ghost,’ Jonathan said as they dropped the jars off in the bedsit upstairs.
‘She’s not normally like that, she must have got a fright when you came in. She was busy telling me about how she’s practically housebound. It can’t be easy for her to let her guard down, she’s so proud, you know? If I ever see those grandsons of hers I’m going to have a stern word with them. She needs someone to take her in hand.’
Jonathan laughed. ‘I met her for precisely fifteen minutes and I can already tell she’d not make that easy for anyone. She’s feisty as hell.’
Kelsey laughed and locked her bedsit door.
‘She’s obviously not completely starved of company. There were Christmas presents there, and she mentioned a son? I heard you talking when I arrived,’ said Jonathan taking Kelsey’s hand on the stairs.
‘She has a family, yeah. I don’t know much about them though.’ Kelsey’s words tailed off into silence as she tried to tamp down the thoughts rushing in. Was Blythe startled by Jonathan’s similarity to Wagstaff? Had she seen the resemblance too? How else could that reaction be explained? And those grandsons Jonathan mentioned so casually could be his own relatives if my half-baked theory’s right and Wagstaff really was Blythe’s lover twenty years before Jonathan’s poor mum was seduced by the old rogue… if indeed, that’s what happened.
Down in the hallway Jonathan pulled her close. ‘Now you’re the one freaking me out. You’re so pale. What is with everyone today? Come on, let’s go chill out in town, see some sights. It’s been an intense few days; I feel like we’ve barely had a chance to draw breath. What say you just hold my hand, walk beside me, and we’ll have a proper date to make up for all the ones we missed over the autumn?’ His kiss sealed the deal and they walked out of St. Ninian’s and through the chill winter winds towards town.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite’
(Romeo and Juliet)
One of the many things Kelsey loved about Jonathan was how he was exactly the right height to deliver forehead kisses and that’s just what he was doing now as they stood, hands clasped in the small of each other’s backs through cosy layers, smiling dopily at one another in the middle of the bustling Christmas market by the riverside while a group of buskers with guitars and a keyboard sang about chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Jonathan crooned along and between lines he’d dip his head and press kisses along the smooth spot between his girlfriend’s brows and her bobble hat.
A Father Christmas ringing a bell and holding out his collection tin smiled at them indulgently as he Ho-Ho-Ho’d past them, no doubt seeing what everyone else could see; two young people stupidly in love, getting in everyone’s way, totally unaware of the world outside their love bubble.
‘Me-rry Christ-ma-as, to yoo-oo-ooo,’ Jonathan sang, really going for the big finish, and Kelsey grinned helplessly up at him as the last-minute shoppers bustled by and the band burst into a Mariah Carey Christmas number complete with jingle bells ringing.
‘We should probably, like, look around at these stalls?’ Jonathan said, still planted to the ground holding Kelsey close, and they grinned at themselves for being like this.
‘We really should move along,’ she agreed.
It took another few moments of gazing and at least twenty soft kisses at her temples for them to link hands and start walking, still more absorbed in each other than they were in the beautiful scenes around them. The Christmas lights high above the market were shining even though it was only ten in the morning and the sky was a dark, looming grey. Blythe had said earlier on it looked like it might snow but so far not one flake had fallen.
Rich foody smells swirled in the cold air from the pulled pork stall, a candyfloss machine, and a van with a queue snaking right down to the river’s edge popular with visitors hungry for foot-long unpronounceable German sausages.
The first stall they came to was laid out beneath its green awning with vintage jewellery, old books and kitschy knick-knackery. Jonathan pulled Kelsey closer to it. ‘Do you like anything here?’
‘Oh, I don’t need anything.’
‘Nobody needs cute stuff, no, but do you like anything you see?’ He understood her love of vintage things and the way old objects could recall lost worlds and forgotten stories. Her eyes spa
rkled as she looked over the items in a voracious way that made the stall owner mentally rub his hands together.
Kelsey had a copy of an old book in her gloved hands already. ‘This is nice.’ She gave the black leather and gold embossing a little sniff before flicking through the pages. ‘It’s a nineteen-fifties copy of the plays of John Webster.’
‘Can I buy it for you?’ Jonathan reached for the book. ‘I already have something special for you but it’s nice to unwrap lots of little things, right?’
‘Actually, I was thinking maybe for Blythe? She played Webster’s Duchess of Malfi once, you know? But I’ll pay for it.’
Soon the book was wrapped in tissue paper and in Kelsey’s trusty satchel and they were on their way to the next stall, which was laden with gingerbread biscuits. The scent of cinnamon, ginger and brown sugar hit them hard.
‘Now it smells like Christmas. My wee brother used to love these,’ Kelsey smiled.
‘My sisters love ’em too. Mom always baked cookies on Christmas Eve and we’d leave some out for Santa Claus. The thing about having four baby sisters is they need a lot of Christmas cookies. She’d be baking most of the holidays. At least that’s how I remember it. In fact this stall looks kinda like Mom’s kitchen. Cookies everywhere.’ He was smiling and gripping Kelsey’s hand. ‘Can you fill up a bag for us, please?’ he asked the baker before turning to Kelsey. ‘You want angels or reindeer?’
‘I like the love hearts,’ she replied, drawing Jonathan’s focus back to her rosy cheeks and smiling lips. The poor stall owner had to navigate their lovestruck, goofy distraction to get Jonathan to remember to actually pay for them.
On they strolled, talking all the time about their respective family Christmases, sampling the gingerbread and not minding the bitterly cold north wind.
‘Hey, look at that!’ Jonathan suddenly pulled Kelsey to him and pointed through the crowds on the marina. Kelsey spotted it too and they instantly broke into an awkward slow run through the thronging masses.
There was one table unoccupied at the busy little pink café with the candy-striped awning where they’d first met: their table, with two chairs arranged just as they had been on the very day they first bumped into one another, and yes, they were going to reclaim their spot.
