Somewhere in His Arms (64 page)

             
“He’s
not
drunk!” Lucy snapped. “He’s ill at having heard Gavin being blackmailed and assaulted by that blob of a manager!”

             
“You saw Gavin?” Pat said with some surprise.
So that’s where they went.
“How was he?”

             
She grabbed Pat’s hand and tugged him with her to the car. “We didn’t
see
him, we were hiding in a closet and heard him arguing with Harvey.”

             
“What were you doing in a closet?”

             
“None of your business!” Lucy said defensively, her cheeks now as red as her costume. “Help me get him out, he needs to drink something.” She followed Pat to the passenger side of the car and found it empty. She turned around in a panic and spied Alec’s tall form headed down to the beach. “Alec!” she shouted, and was about to chase after him, when Pat caught her arm and pulled her back.

              “Let him go, lassie,” he urged quietly. “He’s got to sort this out on his own.”

             
“B-But…” she sputtered, tugging at her arm. “He needs me!”

             
Pat sighed raggedly. “I know he does, lassie, but you’ve got to let him clear his head. He needs to be off by himself for a while. He’s done this before.”

             
Tears filled her eyes and she brushed them away in embarrassment. “He
has?
When?” There were still so many things she didn’t know about her husband, and this was one of them. Pat let her go and put a fatherly arm around her shoulders.

             
“I’ll fix us some tea and I’ll tell you all about the lad while he calms down a bit. How does that sound?”

             
“Sure,’ she sighed wearily. “ But do I
really
want to hear it?” Lucy said to her father-in-law as he escorted her back to the house.

             
He gave her a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t worry, lassie,” Pat smiled.  “It’s not as bad as you think.”

              While Pat was in the kitchen preparing tea, Lucy squirmed out of her costume and scrubbed the makeup off her face. She brushed out her hair and put on a flannel nightgown and robe. Tucking her feet into some soft slippers, she made her out way to the kitchen where Pat was slicing his prized Wensleydale cheese and placing it on some whole-grain crackers. He glanced up and smiled broadly, gesturing for his daughter-in-law to sit down.

             
“Here,” he said, handing her a plate full of cheese crackers and sliced apples. He poured her a cup of Earl Grey. “Cream or sugar?”

             
“Honey,” Lucy said, taking the proffered teacup. Pat handed her the small bottle and sat down, watching her solemnly as she stirred the sweet liquid around. She took a small sip and set the cup down. “Is he still out there?”

             
“Yeah,” Pat grunted, taking a bite out of the cracker and savoring the sweetly bitter taste. “He’s swimming, I think. “

             
“S-Swimming?” she said, nearly choking on the cracker. “In
this
weather? He’ll catch pneumonia!”

             
“I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen. Takes after his mother, the laddie does.” He fished for another cracker and washed it down with his tea. “Gavin is more like his father.”

             
“How did he die?”

             
Pat glanced up, startled. He would have thought the lad would have told her by now. But he supposed it wasn’t something one would brag to his new wife about. The man had been a coward through and through. “He died in a lorry accident. He didn’t know what hit him.” He took another sip of tea, which had gone lukewarm. “Alec didn’t tell you?”

             
“Um…no. I didn’t want to pry.” Lucy sighed and peered up into Pat’s greenish-gray eyes. “I…mean, I thought he’d tell me when he was ready.”

             
Pat nodded. He supposed the lassie had every right to hear about the man who’d helped bring her husband into the world. But he figured by the time he was done, she’d probably wished he hadn’t. “He was barely four when he died.”

             
“What happened?”

             
“He was crossing the road to get back to the inn he was staying at.”

             
“He wasn’t at home?”

             
“He…left after Maggie told him what happened,” Pat said, and rose to fetch some brandy from the cabinet. He poured a good dollop into his tea. Then he poured some into Lucy’s cup as well. “Don’t shake yer head at me, missy! You’re going to need it.”

             
After taking a swig, he continued with the horrible tale. “Maggie was spectin’ Gavin at the time and he just couldn’t get over the fact that the baby wasn’t his.”

             
“What do you mean he
wasn’t
his?” she asked, and took a brave gulp of her brandy infused tea. “What are you saying?”

             
Pat heaved a great sigh and finished his tea. Then he decided to drink the brandy straight. “Maggie had taken a job at a bookshop and was working nights. Johnny boy was off working at the factory and he’d forgotten to pick her up.” He paused to see the look on Lucy’s face. She’d gone white. She knew what was coming next. “Should I continue?”

             
Lucy gripped the teacup in her hands and nodded.

             
“Well, when he didn’t come to pick her up, she took the bus. But the bus didn’t stop at her street, so she had to walk all this way past this abandoned school. She told me she couldn’t remember most of what happened next, but a couple of yobs grabbed her and dragged her in there and…” he trailed off, unable to force the words from this mouth. “They beat her and took their turns one by one and left her there—naked and cold.” He took another gulp of brandy and poured a little into Lucy’s cup when she held it out.

             
“John didn’t even call the police! They had to come looking for
him
at this pub and that’s when they told him what happened.”

             
“D-Did they catch the guys who did it?”

             
Pat shook his head, tears filling his eyes. “Nah. She didn’t see their faces and then a month later she found out she were pregnant with Gavin. John figured it was his at first, until he got it into his head that it wasn’t and he left…just like that!” Pat snapped his fingers, pursing his mouth in disgust. “Damn near broke her heart when he did that.”

             
“H-How did you meet her?” Lucy rose to heat up some more water for another cup of tea. “I mean, was she alone at the time?”

             
“Yeah, good ole John had gone and popped off. Good riddance to bad rubbish I say!” Pat polished off the rest of the crackers and Lucy’s too. “She were more than six months along when I saw her in the library.”

             
“Was it love at first sight?”

             
“Not at first,” he smiled, remembering how Maggie had looked that day in her red maternity dress. “She was a sight for these sore eyes, let me tell you. I fancied her right off. But she wouldn’t have nothing to do with me!”

             
“Why? You’re a great catch!”

             
His broad shoulders shook with laughter. “I was, wasn’t I? Nah, she was still grieving over that nob and what happened to her and I knew when to keep me distance, so I stayed away but I read an awful lot of books in those days!”

             
“So what happened?”

             
“She got thrown out of her flat in the middle of winter!” Pat shook his head at the memory. “I found her over in the romance section crying her eyes out. So I asked her what was wrong and she told me what had happened and I had an extra room at the place I was renting, so I told her she and the laddie could stay as long as they needed until she got back on her feet.”

             
“That sounds romantic.”

             
“I wish!” He leaned forward. “It weren’t like that. She and Alec lived downstairs and I lived upstairs. I was gone most of the time training and all---but when the time came for her to have the baby---that’s when I told her how I felt and she’d
have
to marry me, or I’d rip me heart out and I’d never be good for anybody!”

             
“That’s a little morbid,” Lucy said with a little laugh. “So, what did she say?”

             
“Well, she looked at me with those big blue eyes and told me I’d fallen off me trolley, but she said she couldn’t let me do that to myself and then her water broke!”

             
“It didn’t!”

             
“It did, right after we’d said the vows in the Register Office.” He laughed loud and heartily at this, making Lucy burst into giggles. “I had to carry her to the car and we nearly got pulled over as I raced to hospital.”

             
“Did you make it?”

             
“No,” Pat rubbed his temples as the brandy was starting to go to his head. “I had to pull over and all these blighters were honking at me. A couple of police helped keep the peace, but Gavin shot out of his mum at ten-fifteen on a Monday morning.”

             
Lucy took a moment to absorb this information. No wonder Alec never spoke about his dad. “Does Alec know…about his mom…I mean?”

             
“Sure,” he nodded, taking a knife and slicing more Wensleydale. “I told him the night before he left for Afghanistan. He was eighteen and he wanted to know about his dad and all. I
had
to tell him.” He sighed heavily, feeling immensely guilty. “But I didn’t know Gavin was in the next room listening to everything I said. He ran off that night.”

             
Pat swiped at the tears beginning to fall. “I guess it was too much for a fourteen-year-old boy to take in to find out how he’d come to be in this world.”

             
She reached out to clasp his large paw. “How could you have known? It wasn’t your fault.”

             
“Yer a good lassie,” he said, trying to smile. “But I should have told him. I was a little hard on the lads. I didn’t want them to turn out like John, having no spine. I guess…I was a little
too
hard. Didn’t mean to.”

             
“Alec turned out just fine!” Lucy said, gulping back tears. “He’s a fine young man and a fine husband.” She rose to pour hot water over their tea bags. “He stayed with me the whole time I was in the hospital, he didn’t leave.”

             
“That’s ‘cause he loves you lassie. You’re good for him. Especially after what that chav did to him!”

             
“He told you about that?”

             
He shrugged. “When he was in hospital, they had him all doped up, so he talked a lot.”

             
“Was it really that awful? The wounds… I mean?”

             
“Were
they? The bastards tortured him for days, ripping out his fingernails, breaking his hands, and using him as an ashtray. Not to mention pouring hot oil over his back. He had third-degree burns, lassie. He weren’t much to look at the first time his mum and I saw him in the burns unit.” Pat sighed again, almost as if something heavy had settled on his chest. “That was a bad time. They didn’t think he’d pull through.”

             
“How long was he in for?”

             
“Six months with the skin grafts and all.”

             
“How did he cope? I mean did he talk to anyone about what happened?”

             
“Not at first. He just sort of stared off into space most days. He kept a lot of things bottled up. He does that.”

             
She nodded, remembering that day after he’d gone to see Gavin. “I wish he wouldn’t. You should have seen him that day he’d gone to see Gavin. He waited till we got home and started screaming at the top of his lungs! I’d never seen him like that. It was a little frightening.”

             
“I know. I keep telling him not to keep things to himself but he’s like Maggie. She does the same thing. She’ll go off and sulk for a while before she loses her temper. It’s not a pretty sight.”

             
“So that’s how he copes? He goes off and has a pity party? Is no one invited?”

             
Pat chuckled at this. “It’s his way, lassie. He did the same thing after Maggie got sick. He come back from work that day and we told him what the doctor said. He must have gone a few shades of pale before going back out. Maggie sent me after him, but I couldn’t find him.”