Live to Tell (10 page)

Without speaking, he shook his head. Hunched there, he looked so frail.

“Have you had some bad news?”

He nodded. I sat down beside him and took hold of his hand. “What’s happened,” I asked.

“My knee hasn’t healed. It’s got to be broken and re-set!”

I groaned, and held my head in my free hand. I tried not to cry. I felt I needed to be strong for both of us, but he put his arm around my shoulder and gave it a squeeze.

“I know, I know,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m all cried out. Even at the hospital. Made a real fool of myself. They were very good, put me in a side room ’til I felt better. Got me a cup of tea. Then the transport brought me home.”

I felt so angry. I wanted to kill the beast that had so callously ruined the life of my innocent Aidan. “Please tell me what happened the night you were attacked,” I begged. “Was it the men who were after money in that pub on New Year’s Eve?”

“Them and a couple of others,” he said, “They caught Pat and me, but he managed to get away.” He paused. “But I’m trying to forget that night now. My therapist has taken me through all the processes so I can move on mentally. I still find it difficult and some days are really black. Please don’t ask me anymore. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry.”

I knew he still saw his therapist, but the visits were only monthly now.

“And what about Pat,” I asked, knowing that he meant his friend from the off-license. “Is he OK?”

“Don’t see him anymore. He moved to California, to get as far away as possible. His sister lives there and he went to her.”

He looked so unhappy that I felt even angrier.

A few nights later I was due to go to work in the pub but I was late. I always went home from college before going there, just to make sure Aidan was alright, but tonight I missed the bus that I usually caught from the stop outside our apartment block and had to wait fifteen minutes for the next one.

When I arrived, I dashed into the bar, taking my coat off as I went. Jim, the pub manager frowned and pointed to his watch.

“Sorry,” I mouthed, and hung my coat on a hook behind the bar door.

A young man sat at the counter reading the
London
Evening
Standard
newspaper and sipping a pint. He glanced up as I came in and appeared to do a double take. I patted my front wondering if in my haste a button had come undone but everything seemed to be in order. He stared at me and I felt a hint of recognition, but I couldn’t remember where I had seen him before.

“Italy,” he said, a grin spreading across his face. “You were with Olly at that bar in the hills. It’s Danny.” He held out his hand.

The tanned, fit looking boy, I remembered, had grown a couple of inches and his shoulders had broadened. He had turned into, what my father would have called, a fine young man. I shook his hand and his warm grasp held mine for just a second longer than it should.

“So, what are you up to, besides working in a pub? Do you live around here?”

“I’m an art student,” I said. “In Warwick Avenue. What about you?”

Before he could answer, a loud group of men bustled in. They were obviously on one leg of a pub crawl and fearing Jim still had his eye on me, I hurried to serve them. I poured their drinks and those of another large group who met up with them. As I took their money, I noticed that Danny was on his way out of the bar. A couple of friends were with him and he gave me a cheery wave from the door. I smiled at him, feeling unexpectedly happy.

Several weeks had gone by since my encounter with Danny. Then, one night I came into the bar and there he was. He looked round as I entered.

“They told me you were working tonight,” he said. “I came in a couple of days ago, on the off chance. I’d have been in sooner, but I’ve been out of the country. The night I was here before, I was having a last drink with a couple of blokes before leaving.”

“Were you working or on holiday?”

“Believe me, it was no holiday. How’ve you been? We were rather cut off by the crowd, the last time. I’d no idea this place got so full. I guess word got around about the gorgeous girl working behind the bar.”

I smiled at him feeling a bit shy. It was so lovely to be talking to someone in a relaxed way, not worried about illness and injury. He smiled back, and I noticed, with surprise, how blue his eyes were.

“Can I get you a drink,” he asked.

I shook my head. “The boss doesn’t like us drinking when we are working,” I said. “I stick to tonic and I get those free. A real cheap date, me.”

“You didn’t tell me where you are living.”

“Oh, it’s not far, just a bus ride away.”

“That sounds very mysterious,” he said. “Do you live at home?”

“No, er, I share an apartment with someone.”

He looked serious. “A boyfriend,” he asked.

“No, just a regular house mate.”

He looked around again, checking that we were not being overheard. “I was going to ask you… .” he began.

An elderly man who had just come in rapped the copper rim of the bar top loudly with a coin, making me jump.

“Oh, I’ll have to go, the place is filling up. Sorry.”

I noticed that he watched me as I dealt with a stream of customers. Really, we needed two people, all the time in this bar. It was impossible. If anything went wrong, it was chaos. But what could I do? I didn’t pay the wages. After half-an-hour’s continual serving, Jim joined me and I took the chance to look across at Danny. He was still sitting on the same bar stool, and he caught my eye and waved. I went over to re-fill his glass.

“Do you get a break,” he asked.

I shook my head. “No. It’s straight through till closing time. It’s only four hours a night. Could be worse. I quite like it here and it pays well by pub standards. As a student I don’t have many choices. I’ll have to go,” I said, noticing the backlog that was building.

“Over here,” Jim called out, indicating the assembled mob.

The next time I looked over to where Danny had been sitting his stool was occupied by someone else and he had gone.

A few days later I was on duty again and there he was. I hadn’t noticed him come in but when I turned round from adjusting one of the optics, he was sitting there, looking at me.

“Oh,” I gasped, nervous anticipation taking hold of me. I should have assumed he wanted a drink as he was sitting in a bar, but it never occurred to me. I knew he had come to see me.

“Before anyone interrupts us this time, I’ve come to ask, can I take you out one night? When are you next free?”

“I, er, um, I don’t know.” I felt anxious, and watched for Jim’s cadaverous form. He didn’t believe in his staff fraternising too much with the paying, or in this case, non-paying, customers.

“What about tomorrow then? Shall I pick you up? Where’s the best place?”

“I’m not sure.” This was the first date that I had even contemplated since I’d met Joe in Carnaby Street and I felt a bit pressurised, wondering what he expected from me. Danny was powerfully built and was staring at me in a very direct way. “Do you know Maida Vale at all,” I asked. “We could meet by the tube station. Is eight o’clock alright?”

He leaned across the bar and kissed me on the cheek. “See you there, then” he said. “At eight, OK?”

I was making a special effort with my make-up. I toyed with the idea of wearing false eyelashes but was worried that they would come off unexpectedly so I just made do with mascara, eye shadow and glitter powder instead.

“You look nice,” said Aidan looking up. “Where are you off to?”

“I don’t know, probably just a drink,” I said.

“For God’s sake be careful, won’t you?” He sounded extremely worried. “Please be careful where you go. Avoid, you know where. Promise me.”

“Don’t worry, silly Billy. I’ll be fine. I’m never going anywhere near
there
again. Are you all ready for the hospital tomorrow?”

He was booked into St. Mary’s for his operation in two days time, and had to be there the night before for the preparations.

He frowned. “Well I’ve got to come to terms with it haven’t I? Thank God for the NHS. Oh by the way, Dermot says he’ll take me in his car, so if you can’t get the time off college it’ll be alright. I have to be there by four.”

“Oh, it’s Dermot, now, is it? What happened to “that damned priest” I wonder?”

“Well, I can’t call him Father, can I? I’d feel stupid doing that.”

I waited in front of Maida Vale station in the dark for twelve minutes, before it dawned on me that I might have been stood up. A lump came into my throat and I swallowed hard facing up to the humiliation of having to go home early to Aidan. A strange man kept wandering past, eyeing me up and down, and I was getting ready to run up Elgin Avenue, to the Vale, when a horn blasted out and a car stopped in front of me. Danny leaned across the seat and opened the passenger door.

“Hi, sorry, I’m late. The traffic’s at a stand-still in Cricklewood. God, I was so worried. If you hadn’t waited I’d have had no way of contacting you. I haven’t even got your phone number.”

“Where have you driven from, then,” I asked, climbing in, not saying that I didn’t have one.

“Mill Hill. That’s where I live when I’m working in London. Not that it’s very often. I’ve been all over the place this year. I don’t know if there is anywhere special that you’d like to go but I know a nice little place near Hampstead Heath. I thought we might go there. You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

He parked outside a restaurant, on a side street in Hampstead and we went in. I had pulled my hair back, behind a tortoiseshell comb that Aunt Jess gave me. It cascaded down my back and over my coat, but some strands had escaped and were curling over my forehead. I was pleased, given the surroundings, that I had made quite an effort to dress up.

In the well-lit cosy room, he held me at arm’s length and looked me up and down.

“Wow, you art students certainly know how to make an impression, don’t you,” he said. “You look good enough to eat.” He shook his head and bit his lip. “The first time I saw you, you were like a gypsy, a real wild child. Now here you are, looking like you’ve just stepped straight out of the pages of
Vogue
.”

“You know a lot about me,” I said. “But I know nothing about you. What work do you do, that you’re all over the place?”

“God, I’m sorry,” he said sitting down. “I thought you knew. I’m in the Royal Signals, er The British Army. I guess I forget that not everyone knows. It just seems so normal to me.”

I must have looked surprised because he laughed at me. “Don’t look shocked. We’re quite respectable really. Well, most of the time.”

I remembered then what Joe had said about Danny wanting to join The Army.

“Of course, yes, I remember.” I smiled at him. This was difficult. I did not want to talk about Joe, or allude to his conversation, but I knew so little about Danny, it was hard not to. With a smile the waitress came over and gave us large plastic menus but most of their dishes seemed to be chalked up on a blackboard. I’d never been anywhere where they did that before and I kept looking around me for further surprises.

“This place is lovely. I’ve never been anywhere like this before. You always wanted to, didn’t you? Join The Army, I mean.”