Chapter 13
Beatrice
The next few days after Arthur’s arrival in New York pass relatively smoothly in comparison to his first two days.
Despite being at least ten minutes late for his shift on the farm every morning, and irritating me at the bar without fail every night, he seems to be getting the hang of things quickly.
It’s been four days since he opened up to me about his sister, and those four days have passed between us without another word about her. Though plenty has been said about him.
‘You’ve been rather up close and personal with the Cavendish boy, Beatrice.’ Barbara looks at me down her nose. ‘Don’t you fancy sharing him with the rest of us?’
‘Now now, Barb—’ Tracy slides in beside me at the bar ‘—you’re sounding jealous. The boy is young enough to be your great-grandson.’
Barbara puffs out her chest at the landlady’s insolence but stays silent.
‘You’re more than welcome to him, Barbara.’ I laugh as I speak, picturing Arthur’s face if anyone left him alone in her clutches. ‘That would mean you’d have to work for Ms Riches though.’
Barbara rolls her eyes. Their quarrel has spanned fifty years and is so petty that no one, even the two women involved, can remember what it was about. ‘I’d rather drink from your drip tray,’ she murmurs.
‘You did. Can’t you remember? New Year’s Eve 2015 when I told you I couldn’t serve you anymore.’ Tracy loves winding her up, and she grins even harder as Barbara flushes the same colour as the Batemans’ beer mats.
‘Aye, I can. What sort of part-timer closes the bar early on New Year’s Eve?’
‘It was four in the morning, Barb.’
The old lady puh-puhs with a flick of her wrist and I can’t hide my laughter.
‘How’s the boy been getting on down at the farm, Bea?’ My grandparents sit together at the bar, both of them nursing the same drinks from over an hour ago, and my nan clutches her glass so tightly as she trembles that I’m sure the bubbles in it are from it boiling, not fizzing.
Arthur hasn’t ventured over to the Big Apple yet today; perhaps I worked him a little too hard on the farm. I feel the tightness of my own thighs and the painful ache of my arms from carting milk pails back and forth down the cow shed.
‘He managed to spill more milk than he collected, and I’m pretty sure he was 95 per cent cowpat by the time we called it a day.
’ I shake my head, trying to comprehend how someone can be quite so terrible at farming, but all of the old ladies still coo as though the thought of him covered in faecal matter is something adorable.
‘His dad was never much the farming type,’ my grandad pipes up, his bitter shandy swilling around in the bottom of his glass. ‘He was always running around in his leather jacket, too much hairspray in his hair, causing a ruckus.’
‘You’ve never told me that before.’ I slide closer to him at the bar and refill his shandy the second he releases the glass in hopes that it will loosen his tongue a little more.
‘Aye, he hated helping his mam and dad on the farm. He clashed with his dad a bit. He was all brute force old Cavendish, like a Clydesdale in the fields he was, an arrogant arse an’ all.
Eddie never stood a chance matching his expectations, so he went down the rebel path.
He was a dreamer, bit like what you used to be.
Head in the clouds. I never saw you as a farm girl, you know; I always thought of you as the brains of our lot. But you took us all by surprise.’
‘Beauty, brawn, and brains you. Triple threat.’ My nan pinches my cheek in her affectionate way and I brush her off with an embarrassed shake of my head. ‘Can you remember her, Rog, doing them little plays for us on a Sunday afternoon?’
‘Aye I can, wrote them all yourself, all one-woman shows. You didn’t need any backup.’
‘All right, all right, we’re not talking about me and my bossy ways.’ I fan myself with the bar towel. ‘I want to know about the Cavendishes – you never told me all these stories before.’
‘Och, I don’t know that much. You know me, gossip goes in one ear and out the other. The Butcher is your man for stories. You know that fella is a font of knowledge.’ Grandad gets to his feet after downing his half a shandy and gestures to my nan to leave. ‘We will see you at home, duckie.’
‘Have a good shift. Don’t work too hard,’ Nan says with a wave as she leaves.
I always thought I knew all there was to know about Eddie Cavendish. Evidently not. That man is like a fountain of stories; everyone has their own.
Tommy was like that. He was only in his twenties when I lost him, but it was like he had lived a thousand lives already.
He knew so many people, and they each had stories to tell.
It’s funny, when he died, it felt like I hardly knew him at all.
So many unknown faces, with tales I’d never heard, came out to celebrate his life.
I felt as though I lived within him at one time, that we existed as one being, knowing everything there was to know about a person.
I suppose it isn’t until you lose someone that you realise how much you had yet to ask, so much you had yet to learn.
I always said he should make a film about his life.
It would make other stories seem dull in comparison.
But he always said that no one would believe it to be true, and it was even too far-fetched for fiction.
I wish he had made that film now, so I could watch him over and over, and for just those ninety minutes, though he would just be pixels on a screen, it would feel as though he was here, living.
I always told myself I’d write about him after he died but I never have.
As the years pass on now, I find myself forgetting little things, and big things too I suppose.
But I never forget him. Just now, he feels so far away, so out of reach that I have to convince myself that he was real, he was here and not just a figment of my imagination.
I wonder if Arthur would understand that. That although his sister still lives, he grieves who he has lost to her condition. Taking a napkin from the drawer, I scrawl a little note on it: a film to remember. Before they’re lost.
‘What you writing?’ Arthur finally arrives at the pub, the lengths of his hair, still sopping, drip onto his shoulders and leave damp patches in his shirt.
He leans over the bar to nosy at the napkin but I throw it away before he can reach it, and I’m grateful that he soon shifts his attention elsewhere.
‘I have showered four times and I still have cow shit in my hair,’ he grumbles as he sits down at the bar. I pour him a drink with a smile.
‘You don’t have to tell us, we can smell you,’ I tease and Arthur replies with a sarcastic ‘har har’.
‘How do you manage it?’ He points at my wavy mane.
‘1. Practise, 2. Plaits, 3. I’m just better than you.’ Arthur rolls his eyes and swipes another hand through his hair, attempting to twist some of it into a sort of knot.
‘Not like that.’ Barbara is back at the bar like a flash and pats Arthur’s hands away before she takes her old tree knoll fingers and plaits it for him. Shock paralyses his whole face until all he can do is stare at me, open-mouthed, flicking his eyes back and forth, silently begging for help.
‘You look gorgeous,’ I tease him with a wink once Barbara has finished working her magic and his mane of hair is slid back into a Katniss Everdeen–esque situation.
‘She taught me how to do mine, you know. Practically kidnapped me out of the fields after school one evening to tell me I looked feral, so you’ve got off lightly.
My eyes were watering after she was done with me; she took the gentle approach with you. ’
‘I can’t move my face.’ He grimaces as the tight plait gives him a budget Botox look.
‘What on earth?’ Tracy takes one look at him when she re-emerges from upstairs and shakes her head in that ‘I’m not even going to ask’ kind of way.
‘I think I need a haircut.’
‘Here, turn around,’ I say, still sniggering, and I lean over the bar to loosen him out of his bind. I slide his damp stands through my fingers until all of them are free and he thanks me with a sigh.
‘I’ve got some shampoo that will help with the smell, kid.’ Tracy chuckles to herself before heading back up to her flat to fetch it. ‘Your dad was always precious about his hair too,’ she says as she hands him the bottle.
‘Doesn’t surprise me. He has it cut every three days.’ Arthur shakes his head.
‘We were at school together,’ Tracy leans into the bar as she lets the memory take her, ‘he always hated smelling of farm, so he’d coat himself in his dad’s aftershave so thick that you could smell him coming from two streets over.
’ She chuckles. ‘It was bloody awful, like tear gas with the amount he sprayed. He soon had to pack it in though, after his dad realised three quarters of his bottle of Brut had disappeared in a matter of days. He chased him round the cabbage field ’til it got dark. ’
Arthur listens so closely to the story that he can’t take his eyes from Tracy the whole time she speaks. Once she finishes, he stares at the grain of the wood bar, tracing the grooves with his finger.
‘Sorry, duck, did I upset you?’ Tracy notices his shift in demeanour, but Arthur lifts his head to give her a reassuring smile.
‘No, no.’ He sighs. ‘It’s just so strange hearing stories about him.
I’ve never met anyone that knew him before the fame and things, and, I don’t know, I guess it’s just a weird feeling.
Everyone else seems to know him far better than me.
’ Shaking his head, Arthur laughs breathily.
‘He had a whole life I never even knew about.’
Pity stirs in me, as I’m sure everyone else that has gathered at the bar to listen feels something similar. Tracy takes him by the hand and squeezes his fingers softly.