Chapter 57
Warm White Wine
The Ghost was standing in the lobby of the brand new Sheffield Crucible Theatre.
The place was full of people dressed in brown suits and kaftan dresses. It was a wine reception held for opening night. He saw his living self, in a jacket and mauve shirt, and with a new and short-lived moustache under his nose, chatting to a large red-faced man from the Yorkshire Post.
‘Despite that monstrous moustache,’ said the Ghost to no one, ‘I scrubbed up all right.’
And then he remembered what this was. He was there for the precise moment when Wilbur realised that Maggie was in the room.
The Ghost watched his living face light up at the sight of her, like a window catching the light.
He tried hard not to be too obvious, but kept stealing glances.
And soon he was just gazing, hoping she would see him.
He thought of Anna Karenina, how Levin’s love for Kitty is confirmed when he sees her on the ice.
For Wilbur, seeing Maggie felt like relief, as though a part of him hadn’t been breathing this last year.
But that relief he felt on seeing her was the terrifying moment he realised he loved her.
It wasn’t that he had been thinking of her night and day.
He’d thrown himself into work and the shop was now thriving.
But even as work became a kind of anaesthetic, she had never fully left his mind.
Every time he was sitting near Dougie’s grave he thought of her.
Every time he was passing Endcliffe Park he thought of her.
Every time he wanted to tell someone about the pain he felt inside he thought of her.
He always hoped she was doing well, and happy, but it was never a hope that he acted on.
His assumption had been that she didn’t need him complicating her new life in London.
So it was a kind of shock when she phoned to say she was coming home. She’d said she’d got a job at the Crucible as their in-house designer and wondered if he was going to the opening night.
He tried to pay attention to what the journalist was talking about but had lost the drift. He was just looking at Maggie, who was wearing a burgundy corduroy dress and chatting with ease and grace to some people he didn’t know.
‘It was a big mistake though, wasn’t it?’ the man from the Yorkshire Post was saying.
‘Sorry,’ said Wilbur. ‘What was a mistake?’
‘The decimalisation of our national currency! They’ll be back to pounds, shillings and pence next year, mark my words. Bet it’s bedlam right now running a shop …’
Wilbur’s eyes met Maggie’s across the room. ‘Oh, we haven’t found it too bad. Listen, Terry, I’m ever so sorry but I’ve just spotted an old friend …’
He weaved his way through the crowd until he was there.
‘Hello, trouble,’ she said, politely peeling herself away from the people she’d been talking with.
He recognised Claudette. ‘Hi, Wilbur!’ she said, raising her eyes at Maggie with an excited smile, as if he’d been the happy subject of a conversation he didn’t know about.
‘Oh, hi, Claudette! Hope you’re well.’
Claudette couldn’t hear him. He turned to Maggie. Felt a little rush of adrenaline.
‘So this is your new workplace?’
She nodded. ‘Graphic designer for the theatre. Claudette works here and knew I was unhappy in London and she got me some advance work.’ She showed him a programme for Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, the play they were about to see.
He noticed the name ‘Maggie Shaw’ in tiny letters beneath the strikingly simple, geometric cherry tree on the cover.
He felt a surge of pride for her, but even more of joy that she was back in the city.
‘That’s fantastic, Maggie.’
‘You must be a dignitary,’ she told him with a smile. ‘Because this reception is for – and I quote – “Yorkshire and England’s finest dignitaries and journalists”, and you are not a journalist.’
‘I’ve never really known what a dignitary is.’
She gave a cheeky smile. ‘It means, in ordinary parlance, that you are up yourself.’
He laughed. ‘Well, in that case I am most definitely a dignitary.’ Their eyes got lost in each other’s gaze for a moment. ‘So what exactly happened to London?’ he asked after sipping his warm white wine. ‘I didn’t want to pry too much on the phone …’
‘Pry away.’
‘I’m prying, Maggie. This is me … prying.’
‘The work was good. I just felt I was, you know, losing myself.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, there were thirty people and I was the only northerner and one of only three women. And Trevor Jacobs, the guy who runs Trapezium, stole my ideas when he couldn’t get in my knickers.’
She said this without any slant or intonation. Just with the neutral flatness of truth.
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ve always felt I can say things to you, Wilbur. I know secrets are always safe.’
‘I am the Secret Keeper.’
She smiled. Her eyes gave him her full attention. ‘Anyway. What about you?’
He told her that Mr Bagdale was dying and had, quite literally, handed him the keys to the shop. He told her he had helped his mother get her first house with its own little garden. He told her he lived there too, and had his own car to drive to work.
He felt uncomfortable. He felt like he was talking about an outline of a life. It gave him a sense that something was missing, and that she might be it. So he asked her more about London.
‘Oh, I don’t know. There’s a type of small-mindedness you get in the trendy London set,’ she explained, taking a stick of cheese and pineapple from a passing tray.
‘They think they’re worldly because they talk about Cambodia and Vietnam and get stoned to Pink Floyd and wear Mexican-style blouses, but scratch the surface and you find out they use their …
you know … cosmopolitan signifiers … to shut people out as much as welcome them.
They have more prejudices than the average steelworker downing pints in the Frog and Parrot over on Division Street …
But that’s just my own defences talking,’ she said, getting serious for a moment.
‘Maybe we all are just looking to belong anywhere that will have us. And I suppose, Wilbur, the sad thing about human beings is that, to belong, someone somewhere always needs to be shut out. And I think that was me.’
‘I can’t imagine wanting to shut you out,’ Wilbur said.
His Ghost sighed, ‘Oh … I miss those thoughts.’
Her eyes shone like a shared secret. ‘Thanks, Wilbur. That means a lot.’
‘I missed you.’
‘I missed you too. It was quite surprising, actually.’
‘Really?’ Wilbur said, with humorous confidence. ‘I’d say it’s totally understandable. I’m quite magnetic. Look at me.’ He stuck out his jaw. ‘Robert Redford, eat your heart out, right?’
‘It might be more that you’re a little lost lamb and I came back like Bo Peep to find you.’
‘Hey. I have a moustache now. I’m a tough guy. I caught my finger with a staple gun the other day and I didn’t even cry.’
Maggie laughed but the laughter faded quickly. The look on her face folded into serene contemplation amid the hubbub of the room.
‘I’d always thought if I came back it would feel like a defeat, but it doesn’t …
I feel like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
I mean, look at this place. Look at these people.
Look at you.’ Her eyes were adding subtext and his heart was doing the rest. ‘Sometimes everything you need isn’t so far from where you start. ’