Читать книгу Meet Me at the Lighthouse: This summer’s best laugh-out-loud romantic comedy - Mary Baker Jayne - Страница 10

Back at the cottage, Jess had finally dragged herself out of bed and was enjoying Chillout Sunday in front of the telly. I chucked myself down and dropped my head to her shoulder.

“What’s up with you?” she asked, giving the wind-tangled strands tumbling over her PJs a vague pat.

“Hangover. God, Jessie, I’ve had the weirdest 24 hours.”

“Tell me about it. Hey, want to play ‘Guess where they stuck the vegetable’ with last night’s A&E loiterers?”

“Let’s do news first. How’d it go with Gareth?”

She pinkened slightly. “Not bad. I mean, he didn’t get lucky or anything, just a bit of a fumble. Seems a nice lad, for a rugby player.”

“One night nice or second date nice?”

“Second date nice,” she said with a soppy smile. “We’re going for a drink tonight. Proper drink this time, I’m not working. Maybe I’ll get to find out why he’s got ‘Tripod’ on the back of his rugby shirt.”

“Heh. Knowing your luck he’ll just be a really keen photographer. All right, let’s do the thing.” I lifted a hand for her to high five. “Ow! Not so hard.”

She looked down at my head on her shoulder. “So now your news. What did you and Ross Mason get up to last night, apart from what by the state of your eyes I’d say was a pretty heavy session?”

“You had to ask. Listen, Jess, this is going to sound bizarre, but… I may have just slightly, I mean accidentally, while I was pissed…” I groaned. “Me and Ross’re going into business.”

When I’d filled her in on the lighthouse plan, I was expecting a pretty vocal reaction. But Jess just stared.

“Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?”

She didn’t answer. I picked up an open box of Maltesers from the table and waved them under her nose like smelling salts.

“Helloooo? Is my sister in there?”

Eventually she picked her phone up from the arm of the sofa and started tapping at the screen.

“What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Googling what I need to do to have you sectioned under the mental health act, since you’ve clearly gone totally off your chump.”

I sighed. “It does sound a bit insane, doesn’t it?”

“A bit?” Jess looked up from her phone to twitch an eyebrow at me.

“It’s just… well, it’s some excitement, isn’t it? I’ve been bored stiff for months. Bored of my job, bored of blokes, bored of this stupid small town…”

She snorted. “If you’re bored get a hobby. Take up bloody… I don’t know, decoupage or bondage or something. Better still, finish your damn book.”

I flinched at the reference to the long-neglected novel.

“Honestly, Jessie, I really want to do this.”

She narrowed her eyes. “This is about him, isn’t it?”

“Who?”

“Come on, don’t play innocent. You’re talking to someone who’s known you since we shared a womb,” she said. “Ross Mason. You fancy him. We both know you never lure a bloke on to the slammers unless you’re trying to get into his knickers.”

I winced. “That’s the other thing I wanted to talk to you about. Did you know he’s married?”

Her eyebrows shot up. “Christ, seriously?”

“Well, separated. They’re filing for divorce as soon as they’re allowed to. Ross just casually dropped it into conversation today as if he thought I knew.”

She shook her head. “See, this is why everyone should be on Facebook. How else are you supposed to stay on top of 500 old schoolfriends’ relationship statuses?”

“And last night… God, I was this close to going to bed with him, Jess. I feel awful.”

“You didn’t know, did you?”

“I should’ve. Molly must’ve mentioned it a dozen times.”

We both went silent for a minute, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

“Are you remembering –”

“– when Corinne came?” I said. “Yeah.”

We never met our dad, James, before he died; not even once. Mum’s relationship with him had been all over by the time she found out she was pregnant, which according to family legend hadn’t stopped Grandad having to be narrowly restrained from punching the guy, and he’d never shown any interest in us after that. When we got older and learned the whole story, the feeling became more than mutual. But the day Corinne had come to visit loomed large in my little kid memory.

She’d been pretty – beautiful really: a tall, willowy woman in middle age, with silvery skin and long, silken hair, prematurely white, like something out of a fairytale. We were only seven, but we could tell by the way Mum paled when she answered the door that it wasn’t a welcome visit.

They’d been closeted in the kitchen together for nearly an hour when they eventually emerged. Mum’s cheeks were wet, and Corinne’s eyes looked red-rimmed too.

“Can I have five minutes with them?” Corinne asked Mum quietly. And there was a sort of hungry, longing expression in her eyes as she looked over to where me and Jess were watching cartoons obliviously on the rug.

Mum looked uncertain, but eventually she gave a slight nod, and Corinne came to kneel by us. I don’t remember all she said, but I remember her hugging me, and a whisper, very faint: “You should’ve been my little girl, you know.” She pressed a tenner each into our hands – more money than we’d ever had in one go, back then – and she was gone. Although she and Mum grew close in later years, the two of us never saw her again.

After she left, Mum called us to her on the sofa and cuddled us like she’d never let go. It scared me. I think I was half afraid Corinne was going to come back and take us away, for some reason I didn’t understand.

“Who was that lady, Mummy?” Jess asked.

“A kind person I hurt once. Her name’s Corinne.”

“How did you hurt her?”

“Well, chickie, her husband lost his job because of something I did and it made her very sad.”

“Why did you do it then?”

Mum smiled and stroked Jess’s hair. “Oh, I was too silly to know better. It was a long time ago.”

“What did she hug us for?” I demanded.

“Didn’t you want her to, my love?”

I shrugged. “It was ok. She smelled nice. She doesn’t know us though.”

“She’s lonely, that’s all. The man she’s married to goes away a lot, and she doesn’t have any children.”

“That’s mean to leave her on her own.” Jess looked thoughtful. “If I was her, I’d get married to somebody different.”

Mum sighed. “So would I, Jessie.”

“Did you know her a long time, Mummy?” I asked. She always encouraged us to ask any question we liked, and gave a frank answer whenever she could.

Mum shook her head. “This is the first time we ever met. I used to know her husband.”

“Was he your friend?”

“Sort of. He’s your dad.”

“Oh.” I pondered this new information for a second. “Hey, can I have a Jaffa Cake?”

And that was that.

“But this isn’t like that, Bobs,” present-day Jess reminded me. “Ross is getting divorced.”

“So was James. That’s what the lying git told Mum, anyway.” I shook my head. “I know it’s not the same, but… well, I think the two of us know better than anyone that you don’t mess about with married men. People get hurt.”

“He’s only married on paper though. If he’s here and she’s in Sheffield, it has to be over, doesn’t it?”

“Still, it’s not right. You wouldn’t.”

“No. I’d want to wait till it was all signed and sealed, I think.” She examined me carefully. “You’re just friends then, are you?”

“We’re… partners.”

“And this lighthouse malarkey is nothing to do with you fancying him?”

“I do like his company,” I confessed. “He’s a good laugh, easy to be with. But that’s all there can be, at least until he’s actually divorced.”

She sighed. “Yeah, you’re right. Better to wait till it’s simple.”

I summoned a smile. “Well, let’s cheer up. Go on, chuck us those Maltesers and I’ll play your manky doctor game.”

“All right. So. Parsnip.”

“Bum?”

“Correct. Butternut squash…?”

***

It was a spectre-grey Thursday afternoon when I met Ross outside his Uncle Charlie’s bungalow on the outskirts of town, ready to sign the deeds that would make the lighthouse ours.

The ivy-covered house looked the same as always. It never did change much except for an occasional addition to Charlie’s collection of lecherous-looking garden gnomes on the front lawn, the ones he’d been using for years to wind up his property-value-conscious neighbours.

I’d been a pretty frequent visitor once upon a time. When Jess and I were small our grandad, Charlie’s long-time drinking buddy, used to bring us round to be plied with Madeira cake and pineapple squash by Charlie’s wife Annie while the two men watched football. But Annie and Grandad were gone now, and Charlie was all on his own.

He and Annie had never had kids, so, at 83, he was left at the mercy of his brother’s children – a niece and nephew. That was Ross’s dad Keith, well-known tight bastard and all-round mardy arse. I wasn’t quite sure how the same genes had managed to produce someone like Ross.

“Ivy only grows for the wicked,” Ross muttered as we stood in front of the curling tendrils twining themselves around Charlie’s front door.

“Sorry?”

He smiled. “Oh, nothing. Something my aunty used to say to wind the old boy up when he was working out in the garden, a silly superstition. Just came back to me.”

I examined him with concern. He seemed vacant, purple rings bruising his eyes.

“You ok?”

“Just tired,” he said, flushing slightly. “Up late on a design job.”

“Hi, Uncle Charlie,” Ross said when the door eventually opened, pumping the old man’s hand heartily. “Good to see you, you old bugger.”

“You too, lad. Come on in.” Charlie ushered us into the dimly lit house that for some reason always made me think of soup – something in the musty smell – and closed the door behind us.

Charlie looked the same as ever – which was to say, a bit like one of his own gnomes. Short, stocky and weatherbeaten, with the large arms and broad chest that came from 40-plus years hauling things around on boats back when he was a trawlerman, decked out as always in jeans and silk smoking jacket like a smart-cas Hugh Hefner. His expression was the same combination of mischief, grumpiness and wry humour.

“How’ve you been, Roberta?” he asked in his pipe-roughened voice. “Your mam keeping well?”

“She’s fine, Charlie.” I gave him a hug. “Our Jess says hi too.”

“Well, you’re good girls. So.” He jerked a thumb at Ross. “This young idiot tells me you got him blotto and talked him into opening a pub in my Annie’s lighthouse.”

“Er… yeah, something like that. That ok by you?”

He shrugged. “No business of mine, not once you’ve signed on the dotted line. Come through, kids.”

“Charlie, you sure you want to do this?” I asked when Ross and I were seated on his uncle’s beige sofa with him in an armchair opposite. The lighthouse paperwork was all laid out on the coffee table, waiting for the solicitor Charlie had booked to witness the sale. “I mean, you haven’t got a few marbles missing or anything?”

“Only the same handful that’ve been rolling around upstairs for the last 20 years, flower,” he said with a shrug.

“You could get a good price for it, you know.”

“I could. And do what with the money?”

“I don’t know, get yourself new carpet slippers or something; you’re old. Or buy another pervy gnome, scare the kids on their way to school.”

“You’re a cheeky lass.” He grinned, a wide smile showing off his few remaining teeth. “Knew I liked you for something other than being Bertie Hannigan’s granddaughter.”

“She’s right though, Uncle Charlie,” Ross said. “We don’t want to take it off you unless you’re absolutely sure you want rid at that price.”

“Look, son, you and the rest of the family must’ve worked out by now I’m a miserable, cantankerous old bastard whose only joy in my old age is causing trouble for you all.”

“It has been noted, yeah.”

“Good, then you’ll know it’s easiest to shut up and let me have my way. I can’t be arsed faffing with estate agents and the like, it might well finish me off. You kids just sign the deeds, take the bloody lighthouse and bugger off.” He leaned over the coffee table for his pipe and started stuffing it with fresh tobacco from a tin on the arm of his chair.

I frowned. “There isn’t any more to this, is there?”

“How d’you mean?”

“Well, you’re not about to pop your clogs or something?”

The old man shrugged. “Not that I know of. Might last a few more years if I keep eating my greens.”

“So you really want to do this then? You, Charles Mason, being of sound mind and body and all that jazz?”

“Yep.” He sighed as he took a match to his old Dublin pipe, wreathing the room in brown-blue wisps that tickled our eyeballs. He inhaled a deep draw before he spoke again. “All right, if you really want to know, there is another thing. The bloody council.”

“They written to you again, have they?” Ross said.

“It’s worse than that. Bastards are threatening to sue me.”

“What?” Ross shook his head in disbelief. “On what grounds?”

“Reckon they can make a case based on me letting the old place fall into disrepair, affecting the tourism industry. Some jumped-up little bureaucrat at the town hall sent me an ultimatum. Sort it out, sell it on or face the music.”

“Bastards!” Ross’s brow knit dangerously. “Who threatens to sue an old man? I’ll bloody well go down there.”

“Oi. Less of the O word.” Charlie’s papery face broke into a smile. “But ta, lad. Nice to know someone in the family gives enough of a monkeys to watch my back.”

Ross sent an affectionate smile back. “Well, you’re not a bad old sod. You know I’ll look after you. So is that why you’re selling then?”

“That and I just want rid. Anyway, it’s worked out well, this young lady convincing you to take an interest.” He bobbed his silver head in my direction. “Lighthouse would’ve gone to you in the end anyway. Was going to leave it you in my will.”

“Me? What for?”

“Piss your dad off, mainly. And to see your face from the great beyond when you realised I’d saddled you with a lighthouse.”

“Ha. Yeah, I bet.”

“I still don’t know, Charlie,” I said. “Not sure we should take it if the council have bullied you into it like that.”

“Trust me, you’re doing me a favour.” His expression softened. “Look, she’d want you to have it. My Annie. Seems right it should go to our Ross, keep it in the family.”

“What was the lighthouse like when Aunty Annie was young?” Ross asked. “Don’t remember her ever talking about it.”

“Well she did, all the time. Still, you were only a nipper when she passed, doubt you’d remember.” Charlie took another long draw on his pipe, his crinkled eyes unfocused. “It were an impressive sight in its heyday. There was still a keeper back in the thirties, Annie’s grandad Wilf. Lived there with his wife. Proper old-fashioned battleaxe her Granny Peggy was, scary as the Old bloody Gentleman. And by, but she were houseproud. Every day she’d be out there topping up the paint, scrubbing the front step with sand. The floor were bare stone – they’d no brass for carpet – but she’d have you take your shoes off and walk round in your socks like she had ruddy shag-pile down.” He smiled wistfully. “Pride of the town, our lighthouse, in them days.”

“So how did it end up like it is now?” I asked.

“Oh, the war came. Light had to go off, Peggy and Wilf moved out. When peace broke out they decided they didn’t want to go back and leased it to other keepers, offcumdens who didn’t take the same pride in it. By the time Annie inherited it, the day of the lighthouse was over. Ours were a husk of what it had been by then.”

“So it’s just been left to rot?”

“No, when Annie were here she did what she could with it. The paint always shone when she were alive. She wanted everyone to see it, pride of the town, same as when Peggy had it.” He blinked, and I thought I saw the hint of a tear in the already watery eyes. “And then my Annie were gone, and no amount of paintwork could bring her back. It’s been years since I could bear to look at the thing.” He summoned a gap-toothed smile. “Ah well, no good getting weepy now, I’ll see her soon enough. You kids take the lighthouse. Make your aunty proud, eh, our Ross?”

I glanced at Ross, and was surprised to see tears in his eyes too.

“I’ll do my best for her, Uncle Charlie.”

“Ross, can I have a word?” I said. “I mean, in private.”

Charlie grinned. “I can take a hint. I’ll brew us up a pot.”

“He’s grieving,” I whispered when Charlie had tottered off to the kitchen.

“I know. He misses her.”

“Then we can’t take it, can we? We’d be taking advantage of a lonely old man.”

“We wouldn’t though. She’s been dead 18 years, he’s not exactly rushing into it.” He shuffled on his cushion to face me. “Look, the lighthouse makes him miserable. Every time he hears about it, it reminds him the love of his life is gone and that bastard’s still standing.”

“Yeah, but… well, it isn’t right.”

“You heard him, Bobbie. My Aunty Annie loved the thing.” His brow gathered into a determined frown. “Well, you make your choice, you’re entitled to back out. Me… I never thought about it till he told me all that. But I’m doing this. For Annie.”

“Hey. If you’re doing it I’m doing it, partner.” I leaned round to look into his eyes. “Don’t be angry, Ross. I care about the lighthouse too.”

His face softened. “Sorry, got a bit carried away. Anyway, it’s your lighthouse.”

“No, it’s your lighthouse, I think that’s clear now. But if you want me… well, maybe it’s our lighthouse.”

He shot me a smile. “I do want you, Bobbie. I want it to be our lighthouse.”

He was looking at me with that keen expression in his eyes, the one that was so often the prelude to a kiss, and I stiffened. But before things could go any further, there was a loud rap at the door.

“That’ll be the lawyer lady,” Charlie called from the kitchen. “Can you get it, lad?”

I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the invisible solicitor for getting me off the hook. Kiss awkwardness averted.

Ross jumped up, coming back in a few seconds later closely followed by an official-looking solicitor in a black pencil suit. And in what felt like no time at all, Charlie had an extra pound in his pocket – and Ross and I were the proud owners of a pair of cheesy grins and our very own lighthouse.