The Love Market (29 page)

‘No I think we’re supposed to do that while we’re making the spaghetti. With no clothes on.’

I chuckle. I love the way he makes a light come on again, when everything seemed dark. ‘Somehow I can’t picture us doing that at all.’

‘Me neither,’ he says. ‘I think that would just make me lonelier than I already am.’

I spend all day Wednesday putting together some preliminary plans: phoning caterers, contacting a client who is an event planner, for a DJ recommendation, researching costumes. I find a site on the Internet that sells exclusive, hand-made ostrich feather masks that Aimee’s going to love. Then I suddenly think, well, hang on, we can put feather boas in vases instead of flowers. It’ll be fun and far cheaper.

David Hall agreed to loan me his house. Well, part of it. He said it was the least he could do—given that I’d introduced him to someone he was falling for—plus, he said, the house has needed a party for a long time.

I went over there and saw the room that he thinks we should have it in. Now I have the whole place envisioned: a couple of chrome martini bars decked in silver tulle, and strung with sliver and gold mini lights, nests of silver Christmas balls on high-top tables, silver candelabra, silver and gold tableware—I must find out where to rent it. And it might be fun to kick things off with a dance lesson! I’ll invite an instructor to teach everyone the Viennese waltz. Or should I do the merengue? Perhaps the waltz will be more original. Plus, it encourages intimate contact.

I am so busy scribbling notes as ideas come to me that I almost forget I promised to take my dad out for afternoon tea.

He is already seated, in Lovejoy’s Tea Room, in the village, when I get there. I watch him for a moment or two, as he sits there unaware of me. His square military shoulders in his best navy blazer. His spectacular, snow-white hair. I try to imagine if I had no parents left, and I can’t.

‘Sandra is going to sit for me,’ he says.

I groan. I lay down the small menu card as I already know I’m having the clotted cream scones, like I had last time I brought him here. Then I smile at him.

“
She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies

And all that’s best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes.”

I quote this to him. I don’t know why.

‘Lord Byron,’ he says.

‘I remember you reciting it to me when I was little. I must have only been about four or five.’ I also remember asking him to paint me. And he never would. He said he didn’t paint any more. And when I pressed him he got angry. It hurt. I thought that if he loved me, he would have wanted to. Or maybe I wasn’t pretty enough.

He nods. ‘You were. Just a little girl.’

I notice he’s wearing one of his cufflink shirts—his best shirt, for the high-tea-ness of the occasion. ‘I’ve always remembered those lines for some reason,’ I tell him.

‘She phoned me after I wrote to her,’ he says, back on Sandra. ‘She wants me to draw her nude.’

‘Will there be a nurse present?’

He scratches the edge of his David Niven moustache. ‘Who for? For me or for her?’

We titter. ‘How do you manage it, Dad?’ I ask him.

‘Manage?’ He looks around for the waitress, impatient to get his scones, having acquired a sweet tooth with age. Then he just smiles.

“So, we'll go no more a roving

So late into the night,

Though the heart be still as loving,

And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,

And the soul wears out the breast,

And the heart must pause to breathe,

And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,

And the days return too soon,

Yet we'll go no more a roving

By the light of the moon.”

The middle-aged waitress has arrived and stands there, in her white frilly apron, entranced, until my dad finishes. He orders for us, makes a slow assessment of her legs as she walks away. ‘It’s about age conquering the restlessness of youth,’ he says, of the poem. ‘Byron of course made me look like a saint. You know his half sister bore a child by him…. The day I stop being in love, and believing in love, is the day I know it’s time to die.’

I’m not sure if that last bit is my dad talking, or Byron, but it makes me melancholy.

He looks around the small room with its ten or so tables taken up with those of us who still appreciate loose leaf tea, pectin-free jam, and the smell of baked goods cooling on a rack. ‘I’m just saying that age and time, and living and life are supposed to dull those senses and desires but sometimes, for some, they don’t. And they never did for me.’

‘Are you talking about Anthea?’

He looks at me disapprovingly. ‘Anthea needs companionship. I light up her life.’

I beam a smile at his egotism. ‘Anthea isn’t your true love then?’

‘
Jacqui
is my true love.’ My sister’s name lingers there. ‘I miss her,’ he says. ‘Every time I look at that woman a part of me blazes like a forest on fire.’

‘I miss her too,’ I tell him. My dad’s declarations about Jacqui get more grandiose every time.

‘Do you miss Patrick?’ He looks at me quizzically.

Before I can answer he says, ‘There are two kinds of people, Celine: romantics, and everyone else. Romantics will never truly be happy, and yet they know a fuller happiness than others. It’s a blessing and a curse.’

‘I’m not sure if Patrick is a romantic.’

‘Well, romantics always think they want to be with someone just like them. But in reality it doesn’t work.’

‘What was my mother?’

‘She was you.’

I widen my eyes at him.

‘Much as you don’t see it or want to believe it. You think you’re not like her because she was bitter and you aren’t. But she had reason to be, and you don’t.’

‘But I’m not a negative person like she was.’

‘She couldn’t let go, and it made her negative. When you’re a romantic, and you’re in love with someone to such an exalted degree, and then that love starts to fade, the natural instinct is to devalue everything that comes after it. Then as though in some cruel turn of fate what you are left with is far worse than what you would have had if you hadn’t met them. You are exactly like her. You hold on to your vision of how you want things to be, instead of accepting how they are. That’s how you marriage failed.’

He looks across the room wistfully. ‘You know, your mother was the only woman whose portrait I ever painted and kept. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—sell it.’

Yes, the post-card size oil he did of her, when they first met, that he gave to me shortly after her funeral. That I haven’t been able to look at since for some odd reason. One day—some day—I will. When I am ready to go there.

He looks at me quizzically now. ‘Why did I never paint you?’

‘I don’t know. I once hoped you would.’

‘Madness. I will one day. If you’ll let me.’

I smile. ‘I’ll let you.’

We hold eyes. Then he says, going back to what we had just been talking about, ‘What I’m trying to say to you is, if you’re feeling that Patrick isn’t matching you ideal for ideal, that’s a good thing not a bad thing. He’s being prudent when you can’t be.’

The waitress sets down a doily-lined, single-tiered silver tray with four fat, golden scones on them. My father ploughs right in.

And I think, is Patrick just being prudent?

Or does he just not want me enough?

Mike comes to pick up Aimee for their Saturday thing. Only he’s early, and she’s still over at a friend’s, so I invite him in and offer him a cup of tea. It’s a rotten, rainy night, and in the kitchen we try to talk overtop the sound of the loose downspout knocking against the wall.

‘I’ll fix it,’ he says. I open my mouth to protest, but he’s already outside, removing the small key to the garage that I keep behind the back door—to let himself in to get the step ladders.

He’s up there a while. I keep looking out to make sure he’s all right. Drops of rain cling to the fading rose bushes like hundreds of the world’s tiniest fairy lights. It suddenly strikes me that Northumberland is beautiful. The mists. The rain. The vastness beyond my window. I do want to live here in my own strange, slow-to-realise way. And Patrick was right: I do have a lot to be thankful for.

Mike is quite soaked when he comes back in, and takes off his jacket and puts it over the back of the kitchen chair. Then he goes to the sink first and washes his dirty hands, while I re-boil the kettle.

Thanks,’ he says, taking the mug of tea off me. Mike always used to be busy fixing things around the house. So in a way this feels normal. I have one of those surreal moments where I still feel married to him, I can’t believe he ever left.

Patrick asked me to go to Canada for Christmas,’ I find myself telling him, punctuating our silences. ‘But I’m not going. I said it wouldn’t be fair on you and Aimee.’

He was about to take a drink. Stops. ‘Well, how about if you could persuade Aimee to have Christmas with me and Jennifer, and you go to Canada by yourself?’

I put down the mug that was on its way to my lips, but don’t answer him right away. ‘I would have thought you’d have jumped at the chance,’ he says.

I watch him, and try to read him but it’s difficult. It’s as though there is a blanket laid over his emotions, which has the duel effect of buffering us both from them. ‘Well, the thing is, I don’t think it’s going to work with me and Patrick.’

He looks at the space on the floor between his feet. ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

I go on watching him, but he doesn’t look up. ‘Are you in love with Jennifer?’

He goes on studying the floor between his feet as though he’s looking at it for an answer. ‘No,’ he says. ‘But I do enjoy her company.’

He holds my eyes now. We sit here, listening to the rain, in this study of one another. Then Mike says, ‘See the thing is, I suppose there’s something I’ve always known about myself, Celine. I only ever wanted one woman. And I married her. And unfortunately for me I’m still in love with her.’

His mobile rings. He hesitates, then reaches to the chair, to his jacket pocket. He looks at who’s calling, puts it back in the pocket. ‘It’s Jennifer,’ he says, and huffs a little, ironically. ‘I should go.’

He plucks his jacket from the back of the chair, but he doesn’t immediately move to leave.

‘Don’t go,’ I tell him, quietly.

He looks at me now, tiredly.

‘We should talk.’ I say. But I’m not even sure what I plan on talking about. I want him to leave. I want him to stay.

He frowns, half shrugs. ‘Celine, you’re with somebody else. Fine there are glitches, but I’m sure you’ll work it out. And I’m with Jennifer now.’

‘I thought you said you didn’t love her?’ I clear my throat.

‘That doesn’t mean that I’m not really fond of her, that I don’t really enjoy her company, or that I never will be in love with her. We can hope, right?’

His eyes cut into me and mine drop away from his face. Then he walks around me, kisses me once on the cheek, then walks down our passageway to the front door. I hurry after him and just as he’s opening it, say, ‘Why did you kiss me then? I mean—before.’

He sighs and shrugs again. ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help myself. It was the moment.’

He reaches for the door handle. ‘Mike, I really need you to tell me if you don’t think it’s over between us.’ There. I have said it.

I stop him with my words. He lowers his head for a moment or two, and I can’t tell if he’s welcoming this or if he’s irritated. When he looks up again he talks to the door rather than look at me. ‘You know, there was a time, Celine, when I hoped it might not be.’ He turns to face me now. ‘When I emailed him, there was a small part of me thinking that if you got back together with him and it didn’t work out, then I might get you back.’ He shakes his head, almost laughs. ‘Mad eh?’

Then he glances upstairs, in the direction of the bedroom that we once shared. He seems to be thinking or taking stock. ‘I don’t feel like that now,’ he says.

His words take me aback. Yet there is not a part of me that doubts him. I see it clearly in his face—something that Mike might not yet have even realised about himself. Mike has stopped loving me. He may claim differently, but he’s still harbouring a fantasy; it can be a hard habit to get over.