Fragile Blossoms (45 page)

‘Can Kaiser have a boutonniere?’

‘Yes.’

‘A white one?’

‘Yes, probably.’

‘Are we going to Bostonia?’

‘What?’

‘Maggie says we’re going to Bostonia in America. Mister Wolf is taking us.’

‘Good heavens alive!’ Julia was furious. ‘That dratted girl has been reading our mail. When did she say this?’

‘Yesterday. She told the boot boy.’

‘And the boot boy told Nanny Roberts! No wonder she was cross.’

‘Are we going?’

‘I don’t know. Would you mind terribly if we did?’

‘Is it far away?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Further than black crows and Susan?’

‘Yes but we’d be together, you and me and your New Papa, and you’d never have to worry about black crows again. New Papa?’ Julia smiled. ‘Isn’t it nice that Mr Luke says you may call him that?’

‘He didn’t say.’ Matty took off down the stairs. ‘My Papa in heaven said.’

She didn’t go after him. Matty has some secret worry about Kaiser. He came this morning and climbed into bed. ‘Can we snuggle after tomorrow?’

‘Of course! You’ll be able to snuggle us both.’

‘I snuggled my Papa in heaven last night.’

‘Did you?’ Julia had felt a sudden yearning. ‘How did it feel?’

‘It was nice. We snuggled with Kaiser.’

‘Well after tomorrow I’m sure there’ll be times when we’ll all snuggle together, Kaiser and the cats, and who knows, Poppy and Betty included .’

‘No.’ Matty had shaken his head.

‘We might! Bits of fur don’t always matter.’

‘No!’ Again Matty shook his head. ‘Kaiser won’t be here.’

The he’d burst into tears weeping as though his heart would break. If Julia thought the wedding making him weep she’d have cancelled there and then but it wasn’t that. Neither did she think it the possible trip to America. It was something else, a painful thing and dark.

Sighing, she hung the wedding gown back in the closet. Then she leaned against the door. ‘Oh hurry and come to us, darling Luke,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think we can survive longer without you. We seem to be falling apart.’

Luke took a deep breath and walked into the public bar.

‘Here he is!’ A cry went up and pint pots were thumped on the counter. ‘The man of the moment!’ shouted Albert, already three parts cut. ‘The man about town and maker of empires, his Royal Highness, Senor Lucca Roberts!’

‘Oh hell!’

It’s obvious what kind of evening is ahead. A free-bar, Luke picking up the tab, the place bulges at the seams. On the other side of the counter everyone is known and yet not, a rare assortment of faces, the casual drinkers, the bar-flies and the open-handed drunks, the whimsical type and the tight-fisted misers always waiting for another to put his hand in his pocket.

‘Hello Pa.’ He bent to kiss Albert and Albert dragged him close. ‘You’re a good lad, the best. I couldn’t have wished for a better son whether or not.’

Luke smiled. Albert does this now and then, has a kind of break out. It’s about Jacky, how his son died before he never really got to know him. In those days struggling to pay bills and save it was a busy life with no time to spare for anyone. ‘Work hard and one day this will be yours!’ It’s a good philosophy but you can’t work all hours and know your children, and you can’t always be there when they need you.

Everybody blamed anybody for Jacky’s death, Albert carried it all and silently. This break out, maudlin hugging and skating close to the truth, is the result. Love of Nan ensures he never tips over the edge, never says ‘this is not my son! This is the bastard son of an Italian peasant,’ but Albert gets close.

‘What d’you wanna drink lad?’ He breathed warm Pipers Best into Luke’s face. ‘You must have a drink. It’s a groom’s duty to get drunk the night before the weddin’. It acts like a fog, stops him seein’ what he’s lettin’ himself in for.’

Smiling, letting it all pass over his head, Luke stood for a while at the bar and then took his drink to a corner table, the clamour a restless sea heaving all about him. Pints were pulled, jokes and ribald remarks were tossed back and forth, and men grinning at Luke as though he were a feeble-headed creature to be mocked. It went on so long he grew weary and wanted to kick the table over and tell them to bugger off and leave him alone. Julianna is to go up the Rise to Greenfields this evening. He is not happy about it. He didn’t say so but she read his face and said it was the old lady’s birthday and she couldn’t refuse. She asked what he would be doing. Luke said he’d be with Albert in the Nelson sharing a drink. Eyes sparkling she teased him. ‘You mean a last drink before you die? The condemned man ate a hearty supper, that sort of thing?’

Teasing is how she got round him. It’s not her errand of mercy that bothers him, he doesn’t begrudge the old lady her birthday. It’s the séance. The last effort caused so much bother, why would she get involved again?

After last night’s dream a chat with the dead is the last thing he wants. Italy and vines it was the usual thing except this time there were no vines, there was mud and destruction. It started out alright, he and his Italian father aboard the cart and his lovely Italian wife walking alongside. As always he leaned down to kiss her, that sweet baby-milk taste on her lips, and then boom, without warning the dream became a nightmare.

It was raining, hard rain that stings and bounces. He and the other men were staring through a curtain of leaden pellets at the land turning itself inside out and a river of mud sweeping down a mountainside to swallow a village whole.

He saw it happen; they all saw it, his father and the others who left that morning to dig gullies to save the vines. The vines were never in danger, it was those left behind. On his knees, screaming, he saw it from the further side of the mountain. A cliff fell away and as with Pompeii a whole town disappeared, drowned in mud houses and babies and beautiful wives.

Screaming and sweating is how he woke. Even now he can’t get away from it. It was a dream, he knows that, and dreams as everyone knows are not to be taken seriously. But it felt so real, a real-life event played out before his eyes, a tragedy of huge proportion, or rather the memory of a tragedy and of a life once lived with another Julianna, and how that life, and the people in it, in some sadly beautiful God-given way is offered to him again.

Now he sits in the Nelson with a pint of beer in his hand and feels the weight of the dream, and the morrow, pressing on his shoulders. All about him men drink and laugh and they’ve a right to. It is a stag do, tradition says the groom must be the butt of stupid jokes and his bride referenced the ball-and-chain.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Nan sat beside him.

‘Nothing. I’m alright.’

‘You don’t look it. You look a right misery. You’re gettin’ wed tomorrow or that the cause of your long face?’

‘I don’t have a long face. This is my usual face.’

‘Then God help Anna. Cheer up do! You’re supposed to be havin’ a good time.’

He swept the bar with his gaze. ‘A good time?’

Nan took offence. ‘Yes well we all know the Nelson isn’t the Ritz and the lads not the high-class company you’re used to. They’re local lads, men behavin’ like boys, but they mean well.’ She scooped up a tray of beer glasses and swept away. ‘And you’re too high and mighty for your own good!’

Luke sipped and swallowed. The feeling of dread is to do with Matty. ‘Keep an eye on him!’ That was the thought when he woke this morning. It’s getting him down. What is he supposed to be looking for, a landslide? It feels as though it is yesterday’s father anxious for this life and this child. But to do what? The boy is at home minded by a gaggle of women and his mother but a stone’s throw away. What possible harm can come to him?

Dorothy had her coat on and was standing at the window.

Julia looked up. ‘I thought you were staying in?’

‘I am, madam. It’s only Reg. He’s coming to drop a parcel off and I thought to be ready so he doesn’t hang about in the cold.’

‘I see.’

Dorothy dimpled. ‘It’s a surprise, madam, from the bakery.’

Julia pulled the fur cape over head. ‘Then I’d better not enquire.’

‘I wondered if I might bring him into the kitchen for a cup of tea. It’s a long ride from Lower Bakers and it’s so perishing cold.’

‘You may do that, and if you’ve a mind you may use up the chicken we had for supper. Just don’t let Maggie overdo it.’

‘Thank you, madam.’ Dorothy opened the door. ‘Shall I walk with you up the Rise? They have cleared a path right the way up through the snow.’

‘No need. As you see Mrs Greville Masson has set fire to the world. All those lamps and candles, I imagine Greenfields is visible from Mars.’ Julia fastened her cape. ‘Matty will sleep soon. If you would pop your head round the door now and then?’

She set off up the path. It was hard going. In this weather a path cleared or not it’s a good long walk. Daniel did offer to collect her but things awkward between them she’d rather not. In fact she’d rather not be going. Luke didn’t want her there, he didn’t say, didn’t have to, his expression said it all.

‘You’re going to a séance?’

‘Yes, but I shan’t stay.’

He’d bent his head loving her with his eyes. ‘Be careful. You know what these things are like.’

Such eyes! Last night she tried to describe the colour but couldn’t find words. Like Freddie’s painting, the
White Lady
and the many shades of white, so Luke’s eyes are many shades of blue. When he talks with Matty his eyes are the colour of cornflowers. When he’s concerned or unhappy they lean toward basalt grey. When she is in his arms as the night of Fairy Common and his body thrusting into hers and he’s telling his passion, ‘my dearest dear, my heart’s delight,’ then his eyes are purple in shade.

Oh and she loves him! She loves his touch, his kisses, and his hunger for her. What woman would not want such a man?

Nan once said she pitied the lass that would get him, she’d rue the day. Julia will never rue the day. In church last Sunday they knelt side-by-side, their hands clasped together on the rail. It was a moment of reflection and yet she could hear Luke, hear his thoughts, so calm and true, and she thanked God for him as she thanked Him for Owen. That a woman should know the love of a true man is a blessing, that she should be loved again is a miracle. That the new love should love her boy is God’s handiwork

‘Wolf, wolf, wolf!’

Matty lay in bed counting the ticks of the clock. Kaiser is restless. He jumps up on the bed and down again. Now he’s pacing the room his paws thud-thud. Mumma has gone up the hill to the Big House. He watched her go. She looked beautiful. Mumma is beautiful. She is an angel, Mister Wolf says. Matty likes the Wolf and is glad he is to be his New Papa. He and Mumma are getting married tomorrow. After that Matty will never be able to call him Wolf again so he is making up for it.

‘Wolf, wolf, wolf.’

It’s likely he should be asleep and then tomorrow, like Christmas, will come that much quicker. Matty’s never seen Father Christmas. Every Christmas Eve he lies awake waiting. Every year he thinks to see him but never does. Just as Father Christmas is landing the sleigh on the roof Matty falls to sleep. When he wakes it’s all over. He creeps down stairs and the presents are in stockings hanging by the fire. Now he lies awake for another visitor, but one not nearly as nice. He waits for the Shadow Man.

Matty calls him Shadow Man because that’s all he ever really sees. The first time was from the bedroom window, the man smoking a cigarette in the laundry room. It’s possible he saw him again once when staying with Tabby Cat at the Nelson. Matty doesn’t know why he thinks the man in the pub and the one in the laundry room are the same, he just does. There was a fight, you see, people shouting, and this man was kicked out of the pub, tumbling out of the side door ‘arse over tit’ as Albert says. He was lying in the back alley among beer crates. People were laughing because his nose was red and bloody. He hadn’t a hanky so Matty gave his. ‘Oy Matthew! Get back here!’Albert had shouted. ‘You don’t talk to Nat Sherwood. He’s a thief and a bully-boy!’

Bad man is what Joe Carmody said when sweeping the laundry floor. ‘Look at these fag ends! What’s he doin’ hidin’ here!’ The Shadow Man wants to hurt Momma, why else, as Joe says, would he hide there. Smoking is a grown-up thing. Matty picked up a cigarette end once and holding it between his fingers la-di-da’d about the garden. It stank so he spat it out. Papa smoked a pipe. Matty saved one from Cambridge and keeps it behind the skirting board

‘Wolf, wolf, wolf!’

Fag ends are nasty, they smell. They can’t be nice to smoke. Thinking this, and hoping to appease unknown gods, Matty stole a cigar one day from the silver box on the corner table. He took it to the laundry room and laid it on the windowsill. A good job Joe Carmody didn’t see him. He’d have skinned Matty alive. Joe was always skinning people alive. He wanted to skin Callie, the old lady who steals plants from over the wall. She doesn’t steal them anymore and so she still has her skin.

Joe is dead like Mr and Mrs Bear and Susan and Papa. Matty misses him and goes every day with Kaiser to the green house to water his plants.

Matty left a cigar the night before last in the laundry room. Late last night Kaiser woke Matty. They stood at the window watching. The shadow slid over the wall. On, off, on, off, a tiny circle of fire blinked in the darkness.

It was an SOS message!

Matty knows about Morse code, Mr Doodle is teaching him.

SOS . . . . - - - . . . . . is a message.

It means Save Our Souls. You send it when in distress, says Mr Doodle, like sailors when their boat is sinking. Matty doesn’t know what a soul is but thinks the Shadow Man is in distress. Maybe he is not a bully-boy as Albert says. Maybe he’s lonely. Matty knows how it feels to be lonely. When Papa died he wanted to be with him. It’s better now Mister Wolf is here but he wouldn’t want anyone ever to feel lonely.

‘Wolf, wolf, wolf!’

Papa used to say there are two ways of dealing with a bully, stand up to him or offer a peace pipe. Later tonight Matty will creep downstairs and take another cigar from the box and lay it by the Reckitts Blue Bag ‘
that keeps your linen whiter than white
!’