Bella Summer Takes a Chance Page 17

  ‘Really, B., we are.’ Faith giggled. ‘Believe me, I never expected to go out with your flatmate! But sometimes life takes unexpected turns, or you do something unexpected.’

  ‘Like make porn?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I guess it’s all the rage lately, doing the unexpected. Look at Kat and her biker.’

  ‘Tell me about it. Talk about shocking, coming from Kat. But I understand it. The heart wants what the heart wants.’

  ‘All right, petunias, enough,’ Frederick said. ‘We’re at risk of degenerating into romcom territory. B., I hope you’re happy for us.’ I nodded. ‘Good, then let’s not become dramatic. Let’s get more wine to celebrate the start of your fabulous music career.’

  Those words rang in my ears as I watched my friends fondle on my former sofa. Was I really serious about the music? It would mean working non-stop to try to get a break. I couldn’t realistically put that kind of time in and also look for another consulting job. It was an either/or decision. So where did my future lie?

  Chapter 17

  As we sat in the theatre on The Actor’s opening night, Fred looked like he was trying to resuscitate Faith. Oddly, they seemed very well suited, and not just because they both had a fondness for facials (and, I still half-suspected, penises). They were both ‘creatives’. He was technically in graphic design. In reality he drew comics, so they weren’t what you’d call a power couple. But that didn’t seem very important to them. They did seem to get each other, and I was happy for them.

  All right, yes, I was also jealous, and a little bit afraid. I was really starting to wonder whether I’d thrown away a perfectly nice relationship that was, in fact, as good as it was going to get. I’d half-hoped that moving back in with Mattias would remind me why I left. Instead, it was reminding me why I liked him. We weren’t in love, true. And no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for him. But Kat was right. We did get along. We liked each other. Maybe it was stupid to fight that, when the alternative might be growing old with cats, making preserves and knitting my own clothes.

  ‘I’m nervous for him. Are you?’ Faith asked when she’d stopped tonsil-wrestling with Fred.

  ‘I am, but what an achievement. Even if it’s not exactly the West End.’ We’d reflexively huddled together as we exited the Tube. Even the fine (still light) June evening couldn’t dispel the feeling that we were risking our lives or, at the very least, our wallets in that neighbourhood. It was the sort of place where the Kray brothers might have gone for a bit of culture on their doorstep. ‘Imagine, being the lead in a play,’ I said. ‘Or getting a front page feature, hmm?’

  Faith blushed and nodded. Her boss was letting her write a series of articles about the council cuts. We were so proud of her. ‘Did you read the article last week?’ Of course we did. ‘Did I tell you they’re letting me have two hundred more words for the feature? It does feel great. And you’ll know exactly how it feels when your singing career takes off.’

  ‘That reminds me, dear heart,’ Fred said. ‘I uploaded the digital version of your mum and you.’

  ‘Thanks, Fred. Tell me what I owe you.’ He waved me away as if a bothersome fly. ‘Well, anyway, thanks. I guess I can send it to the managers. Can you send digital stuff through email?’

  ‘God, B., you are a tech dinosaur. Of course you can, but you don’t need to. Just send them the YouTube link.’

  He really was a good friend. ‘Now I just need about a million people to look at it and I’m off. Maybe I’ll click on it a million times.’

  ‘You joke but you should start thinking like that.’

  ‘You mean cheating?’

  ‘I mean being smart about promoting yourself, and doing everything you can to do it.’

  ‘Do you think I’ll get to sleep my way to the top?’

  ‘One can only hope, angel cake.’ The rest of his inappropriate response was cut off as the lights went down and a disembodied voice cajoled us into turning off our phones, threatening bodily harm if we didn’t do so. I once forgot, making me an early Christmas gift for the comedy headliner. Once bitten…

  The Actor strode on stage. What a monumental achievement. And he was the lead, not just some understudy, or ‘Peasant with pitchfork’. In Shakespeare no less. I could only imagine how proud his parents must have been. Positively bursting. It was in the parents’ contract, along with pretending to like birthday cards decorated with lint and macaroni, and eating pancakes made from flour and Coca-Cola (one of my more memorable culinary forays).

  What the hell? Something was wrong with The Actor. He was all… what the hell? It wasn’t that he was stilted, although he was that. He walked stiff-legged. The phrase ‘goose step’ sprang to mind. And he sounded like he was trying to talk into a wind tunnel. In fact, it was hard to understand him. His emphasis was on all the wrong syllables. Or syll-AB-les.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Fred.

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ hissed Faith.

  ‘I don’t know. Is it a modern interpretation of Shakespeare?’ We weren’t the only ones whispering. The theatre was positively sibilant.

  ‘He’s bloody awful!’ Frederick exclaimed sotto voce. ‘Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou talent?’

  That man could out-bitch Ru Paul when he put his mind to it. ‘Fred, be nice.’

  ‘I’m sorry, light o’ my life, but you can’t date this talentless bag of wind. You simply cannot. It’s beneath you.’

  Where did I stand on dating a man whose talent I found decidedly absent? Surely there were other factors that made The Actor a worthy paramour. It shouldn’t really matter whether he could act, as long as he had that creative side and did something with it. I wouldn’t reject a painter because I didn’t like his paintings, or a writer because I didn’t like his articles. That would have been shallow. Besides, he was the only option aside from Mattias at the moment. I wasn’t willing to give up just yet. ‘Fred, Faith, I appreciate your concern, but I’m not bothered that his acting is different. Just try to enjoy the play, okay?’ I could see the quip on the tip of Fred’s tongue, but he nodded, and kept quiet while I squirmed through the next three hours.

  ‘What are you going to say to him?’ Faith asked as we waited out front for The Actor to meet us.

  ‘I’m going to tell the truth. That it was great to see him in the play.’ It wasn’t a lie, merely semantics.

  ‘What are you going to tell him, Faith?’ Fred threaded his arm through hers. ‘I’ve got my lie all lined up. I’m going to say, “That was the most interesting interpretation of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen.”’

  ‘Don’t you dare, Fred, he’ll know you thought he was crap.’

  ‘But darling, he was crap. Utter shite. A big, steaming pile– Well, hello! Congratulations! That was the most interesting interpretation of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ There was no trace of doubt on The Actor’s face. ‘Several people have said the same thing.’

  Faith stifled a guffaw as she turned away. My friends could be so supportive sometimes.

  ‘We’ll leave in just a few minutes,’ he announced. ‘Mum is taking a bunch of us for a late supper. You’ll join us, won’t you? Oh, here she is!’ He began clapping, which seemed an odd filial greeting. His mum beamed. ‘To the best director in London! Brava!’

  Did he say director? ‘Faith,’ I hissed. ‘Let me see the programme.’ There it was, in black and white. The reason The Actor was onstage. ‘It’s his mother,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, he just said so,’ she whispered back. ‘His mother. They look alike. Are you okay, B.?’

  ‘No, it’s not his mother. It’s his mother. The director is his mother.’ I nodded as her face dawned understanding. She whispered in Frederick’s ear.

  ‘Well, that makes sense,’ he said. ‘B., much as I’m revelling in this farce, I’m afraid I’m getting bored. Do we have to go to supper with them? We’d be dining under false pretences.’

  ‘N
o, of course not. I’ll make our excuses.’ As The Actor might say, something was clearly very rotten in the staaate (dramatic pause) of Denmark.

  His delusional high was too great to accommodate disappointment when I begged off dinner. It shouldn’t have bothered me. His onstage performance threw ice-cold water over my initial attraction anyway. Besides, decent kissing was terrible compensation for a lifetime of cringing pity.

  But the night highlighted everything I’d feared since leaving Mattias. Surely after nearly a year there should have been at least one tiny nibble from a man who didn’t need throwing back. I seemed to be fishing in depleted waters. Did all my friends have special permits? Kat stumbled on her soul mate at the roadside. Faith found Fred in my living room. And Marjorie met The Colonel over lunch. When would it be my turn?

  Chapter 18

  Marjorie and The Colonel weren’t helping my state of mind. They completely ignored The Grandson and me as we walked along Brighton’s sunny waterfront at the weekend. If it weren’t for us, their chaperones, they’d have been eating jelly and doing macramé in the crafts room. They should have been grateful.

  ‘They’re sweet, aren’t they?’ The Grandson broke into my unkind reverie as we trailed behind the old couple. ‘He looks like a man in the first flush of love.’

  I smiled, watching them. ‘You mean the second flush. Surely he was in love with your grandmother.’

  The Grandson’s snort took me as much by surprise as it did him. ‘Excuse me. I’m terribly sorry, em, no, I don’t think they were in love. In those days a lot of people probably found someone they thought they could raise a family with and they married. This idea of romantic love is fairly new.’

  ‘You’re talking like an anthropologist. Marjorie fell in love with her second husband, and her third, and she said a lot of her friends were in love with theirs. I don’t think “marriages of convenience” were exactly the norm then either.’

  ‘Maybe not in some social circles.’

  I’d lived in the UK long enough to know an English put-down when I heard it. ‘You think Marjorie is beneath your grandfather? She’s not. She’s been all over the world. She’s highly educated.’ I knew these things didn’t matter in the classist pecking order but felt I should try to defend her somehow.

  He put his hands up like I’d taken a swing at him. ‘I know she is, B. She’s a wonderful woman. I wasn’t talking about Marjorie. I think she’s a godsend for my grandfather. He’s a difficult old man. He was probably a difficult young man, and I’m grateful that she wants to spend time with him. I was justifying my grandparents’ relationship, not commenting on Marjorie. I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay. I didn’t mean to attack you. I just feel very protective of Marjorie. I’m glad they’re together too, and able to enjoy their lives. I hope I’m that sharp at their age.’

  ‘I’ve got no chance of that. I’ll be drooling into my porridge by the time I have my midlife crisis.’

  ‘Do you think you’re on the road to your midlife crisis?’

  ‘Certainly. Aren’t we all? My granddad mentioned that you’d recently split from your ex. Is this your midlife crisis?’

  His smiling delivery blunted any malice in the question. ‘I guess so. I hadn’t thought of it that way, but you’re probably right. I did pretty comprehensively change my life midstream.’ I resisted the idea that my break-up was the result of some mad midlife urge. You couldn’t really equate my decision with suddenly getting hair plugs or buying a Porsche. I simply realised I wasn’t in love with him, so I ended the relationship. Goodness, that did sound a smidge midlifey. Was I having a midlife crisis? I was also changing careers pretty drastically. But I hadn’t bought the car. Or had hair plugs. So no midlife crisis. Phew. ‘What about you? Is there a looming crisis in the works?’

  ‘Oh, certainly. I’ve been mid-change for several years now.’

  ‘You say that like it’s the menopause. Comfy with your crisis, are you?’

  ‘Absolutely. I wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t live in a state of flux. Mine started when I quit banking. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I was burnt out. Really, it had been dead-end for years. Which probably sounds odd to say about investment banking. I wasn’t exactly a binman.’

  ‘I know what you mean, though. Unfulfilling. My job was like that too. I just didn’t realize it until I didn’t have it any more. It’s true what they say. Hindsight is twenty-twenty. Speaking of which, I think we should have turned back there. This road goes on for awhile.’

  We were, after all, supposed to be chaperoning, not leaving two geriatrics to find their own way home.

  ‘Granddad,’ he shouted ahead. ‘How are you feeling? Should we start back?’

  ‘Yep, yep, good idea,’ said the sprightly old man, deftly spinning Marjorie round in her wheelchair. ‘All right, old bean. About face. The Commander has called retreat.’

  ‘I need to get back anyway for my gig tonight.’ I felt very professional saying this.

  ‘Oh? Where is it?’

  ‘Er, at the Holiday Inn in Fitzrovia.’ So much for my professionalism. ‘It’s a corporate event.’

  ‘Well, everyone has to start somewhere.’

  ‘Except I’ve been doing this for almost twenty years.’

  ‘Oh. Well, at least it pays, right? And it’s moving your career in the right direction.’ His encouraging smile gave me the tiniest dollop of hope on an otherwise bone-dry sandwich. Then his expression changed. ‘Granddad? Granddad!’ He rushed to where The Colonel grasped Marjorie’s chair, clutching his arm. ‘What’s the matter?!’

  The Colonel slumped to the ground.

  ‘Call an ambulance!’

  ‘Maybe it was my fault,’ whispered Marjorie as we watched the walking wounded file through the A&E. ‘Maybe it was too much, too much strain. I so wanted to go out and enjoy the day today. I suggested the walk.’

  ‘Oh no, Marjorie, it wasn’t your fault. Has The Colonel had heart problems before?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t I know that?’ She cried quietly. ‘I love him, you know.’

  ‘I know. He’s going to be okay. The doctor said it was a mild infarction. That’s hardly even a heart attack. They’re taking good care of him.’ My words were so inadequate. Myocardial infarction. It sounded much less scary than a heart attack. But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t, especially at The Colonel’s age. ‘We’ll be able to see him soon.’ The Grandson was talking to the doctors, discussing their options. As if there were many options. He wasn’t exactly going on the transplant list at his age. ‘Marjorie, do you want to talk about it, about The Colonel?’

  ‘No, dear, actually I’d like to be distracted right now. I’m not fond of hospitals. I spent too much time in them with Tony.’

  I tried to think of something to take her mind off The Colonel lying in the next room. Between Clare’s pregnancy, my joblessness and Kat’s decision to hire a private detective to follow James, I was likely to make her want to slit her wrists. ‘Well, speaking of Tony, will you tell me more about Hong Kong?’

  She smiled at the memory. ‘They were wonderful days. He was something, my Tony. He could hold an intelligent discussion about any topic under the sun. That’s what first attracted me to him. I’d never witnessed such a thing. My family weren’t what you’d call intellectuals. They were doers, which had its merits, but they weren’t great thinkers. I hadn’t gone to school past the usual – you’d call it high school – and nor had my friends. Even if the war hadn’t come along, there were only a few girls I knew who’d likely have gone on to become teachers or nurses. Most of us went into domestic work. That was what girls like me did.’

  ‘You didn’t work during the war, though?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I did for a lady called Missus Cooper who lived in a big house on the other side of Bristol. She had eight little ones and I cleaned for them, and did the shopping.’

  ‘It sounds so normal. I didn’t expect that. I’ve got a view of the war fro
m history books. I imagined everyone living in air-raid shelters, queuing for rations and painting on their tights.’

  She chuckled. ‘That’s the problem with learning from books. Gives you a very two-dimensional view of the world. No, we lived our lives as normally as possible. We did have rationing, of course, and went to the shelters when the sirens sounded, but we also went to work, still had family dinners, went to the cinema, worried about fashion and all the other things young people do today.’

  ‘That’s why it’s so nice to hear your stories, Marjorie. You’re a living history book!’

  She smirked. ‘For better or for worse. How did we start talking about the war?’

  ‘We were talking about school, and education.’

  ‘That’s right. I’d done well in school so the university accepted me when I applied, even though I was an old student. Oh, I was excited! Finding that little pot ignited a lifelong passion for me. Sometimes I wonder how my life might have been different had I not found it, or been able to go to university.’

  Was that a nod to fate from a woman who professed not to believe in it? ‘Fate threw you in Tony’s path, then.’

  ‘No, B., I threw me in Tony’s path. I don’t know why you insist on this idea of fate when you are clearly driving your own destiny. You should be proud of that, not dismiss it as a cosmic certainty. You decided to move to London, didn’t you? You realised you weren’t happy in your relationship and you took the steps you needed to change it. You found a flat with that lovely young man to share. You’ve worked successfully in your field for years and now that your assignment is cancelled you are pursuing your music instead of finding another job. That’s not fate, my dear, that’s you. You’re taking the chances in your life. Just like I did. I applied for the university course and got on. I chose my classes and met Tony. I carried on a wonderful relationship with him and eventually we married. We decided together to move to Hong Kong to be near his parents, who were getting old.’ She sighed with pleasure. ‘What a fabulous place Hong Kong was! Tony had told me all about his home, of course, but nothing prepared me. I expected a traditional Chinese city, whatever that means. Rickshaws and coolies, I guess, if I’m honest. But it wasn’t like that. It was modern, with tall office blocks and flats and traffic snarls and people crowding the pavements, some wearing miniskirts and drainpipe trousers. I loved it. Yet all you had to do was scratch the surface to see the tradition. Many of the Chinese girls wore cheongsams of the most beautiful silk in such vivid colours. Between the dresses and the neon signs and the markets, the colour was everywhere. Oh, the markets, B., you should have seen the markets. Just off the main roads jammed with buses and taxis and office workers were narrow streets, no more than alleys sometimes, lined with vendors. The colours and smells and sounds in the wet markets. They were all over the city, because that’s where the meat and fruit and veg were sold. This was before supermarkets arrived so we shopped at the markets every day. As I recall, a supermarket did open, but most people still shopped the usual way. The locals sniffed at such an idea, having a shop like that. They called it Gweilo Market.’ Seeing my question she added, ‘Gweilo is what they called us foreigners. It either means ghost or foreign devil, depending on who’s saying it. There wasn’t much in the way of overt racism towards me, though. I can’t say the same for our treatment of the Chinese.’