Chapter 8
BECKETT
Once Mary had accepted the invitation, they were sort of swept into the building like geese in the middle of a small gaggle, ending up in the room where people had been eating pizza on the night of the snowstorm.
With lots of ‘here we go’, and ‘make yourselves at home’, ‘let me take your coat’ and other chatter that made Beckett’s head swim, he found himself sitting at a large table, while three extra places were hastily set and a mug of tea thrust into his hand.
He turned to Gramps, who was being helped into the chair beside him.
‘Okay?’ Beckett braced himself for the inevitable onslaught of verbal venom that accompanied his grandfather feeling harried, confused or in any way expected to do something he didn’t feel like.
‘I’m famished. When do we get food?’
Beckett tried to feel reassured that Gramps seemed reasonably content for now, but it was hard not to feel anxious, knowing this could change in an instant.
‘Can you wait ten minutes while we round up the stragglers?’ Sofia asked, appearing at Gramps’ shoulder and gently handing him a mug. ‘Coffee with milk and four sugars, as requested.’
To Beckett’s growing astonishment, Gramps not only said thank you, but he winked .
‘Four sugars?’ Beckett asked him.
‘And?’ Gramps huffed. ‘I’ve taken coffee like this since rationing ended. Are you going to start policing this now, along with everything else I find remotely pleasurable?’
Gramps had stopped taking sugar in his hot drinks after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, almost a decade ago, but Beckett merely sat back and decided to try to enjoy their first joint social outing in at least that long.
‘Is Mary okay?’ She wasn’t amongst the dozen or so people now milling around or taking their places at the table.
‘She’s gone to feed Bob,’ Sofia said. ‘Obviously it’s totally fine for her to do it wherever, but she preferred somewhere quieter.’
‘She said enough people here have seen her never reasons, she didn’t want to risk flashing them her blistering nipples, too,’ Sofia’s boy, Micah, said, with enough relish for everyone to stop talking and turn to look.
‘She should show them to my grandson,’ Marvin said, taking a loud slurp of coffee and smacking his lips. ‘He’d know what to do with a blistered nipple.’
Once the smatter of shocked laughter had faded into loaded silence, Beckett then felt compelled to clumsily explain to a bunch of strangers that he’d qualified in medicine, although he was no longer practising as a doctor.
He hated telling people this. It came across as trying to impress them, as if he considered his current job to be lesser, while at the same time inviting questions that he never felt like answering.
Mercifully, as soon as he’d stumbled to a stop, a hatch opened at the back of the room and Moses announced that once he’d said a prayer of thanks, it was time to eat.
* * *
‘What is this?’ Gramps asked the older teenager sitting on the other side of him. ‘It looks like something my old mutt threw up.’
Before Beckett had time to apologise, Gramps carried on. ‘But it tastes delicious. My compliments to the chef.’
To Beckett’s relief, his grandfather then hunched over his bowl and proceeded to determinedly finish the whole lot without feeling the need to make any further comment. Beckett was so relieved, he managed to join in with some of the other conversation.
Mary slid into the empty seat a while later.
‘All sorted?’ he asked.
She nodded across the table to where a woman with silvery hair was cuddling Bob, his head resting on her shoulder. ‘He’s drunk his fill. Which means he’ll probably throw half of it up on her any second.’
‘Here.’ Sofia placed a bowl loaded with tagine, rice and salad in front of Mary. ‘You must be ready for this.’
‘It smells heavenly, thank you.’ Once Sofia had returned to sit with her younger two children on the opposite end of the table, Mary ate a huge spoonful, closing her eyes as she swallowed.
‘Oh, it tastes even better. I think this is just… it’s the most…
I’d started to forget what proper food tastes like.
Oh, crap,’ she murmured, face screwing up and rapidly turning blotchy.
‘Here I go again. Every single time someone is nice to me!’
She turned towards Beckett, holding one hand up to shield her face from the rest of the table and mouthing, ‘Help!’ as a fat tear leaked out.
‘Gramps told Sofia’s eldest son – Eli, sat next to him – that the food looks like dog sick.’
She gasped, the glisten in her eyes switching to a sparkle, until she suddenly dropped her hand from her face, resting it on Beckett’s hand. ‘I’m sorry. It’s not funny. What’s happened to him is horrific, and it must break your heart to hear him say those kinds of things.’
Beckett’s mouth twitched up. ‘Yeah. It’s terrible.
Only…’ He found it impossible to stop the twitch spreading to a full-on smile.
He honestly didn’t know if it was being here, or being with her.
Being the one to turn her tears into laughter.
Most probably it was the warmth of her hand on his – he was more than a little starved of human affection.
‘If I didn’t find the funny side of a rude comment, I don’t think I could bear the straight-up meanness when I’m cleaning him up in the middle of night or he refuses to take his medication, and there’s no one to share the wretchedness with.’
She nodded, understanding. ‘Would he have found this funny, maybe? Did he have a good sense of humour, before the stroke?’
Beckett shook his head. ‘He didn’t even have a bad one. I reckon he was born a dour old man.’
‘Well, I’m glad you don’t take after him in that respect, at least.’
It was a slight dent to his ego that Mary might think he took after Gramps in other ways. Not the Gramps she knew, anyway.
* * *
Once slices of either carrot or coffee cake had been passed around, and drinks topped up, Moses called for everyone’s attention.
‘Now you’re all in that post-lunch state of bliss, it’s time to get those amazing brains working and creative juices flowing. We aren’t here just because we love Ali’s cooking.’
‘Speak for yourself!’ someone said.
‘I’m only here to get a look at the baby,’ another person added. ‘I’m not at all sure I want to help at the carol concert this year. Why add to all the Christmas stress if you can help it?’
‘What was that, Auntie?’ Moses raised his eyebrows innocently. ‘How very kind of you to volunteer to organise the flyers before the meeting’s even properly started.’
‘You might be my pastor, but you’re still my nephew. Just remember, boy, I changed your nappies once upon a time,’ his auntie replied archly. ‘And yes, put me down for that, and I’ll help with set design. As long as we aren’t using that high-wire harness again. My blood pressure can’t take it.’
‘That’s wonderful, but before we run away with ourselves, I’m going to hand over to this year’s carol-concert organisers.’
‘Um, before you start, we should probably get going.’ Beckett stood up, because the last thing he wanted to do was sit in on a meeting that was nothing to do with him. He had a million things to catch up on at home, thanks to having no carer. Not least of which was to find a replacement.
‘Mary hasn’t had any cake,’ Bill said, perturbed.
‘No, but we don’t want to gatecrash your meeting. She could take some home with her.’ He turned to Mary. ‘Do you want to take a piece home?’
‘No,’ Mary said, causing Beckett to frown in confusion. ‘I want to eat my cake here, please. With my new friends.’
‘Okay, but I really think that Gramps…’
‘Can someone bring me a second slice?’ Gramps called. ‘To eat in. I don’t do takeaway. And another coffee. Four sugars and full-fat milk.’
‘Fine. Okay. Fine. Sorry for interrupting.’ Beckett sat down again. ‘But he doesn’t take sugar. And only a small piece of cake.’
‘Are you fat-shaming your grandpa?’ Eli asked, leaning back and rubbing a languid hand over his cornrows. ‘Because to me he looks like he needs all the calories he can get.’
‘He’s always trying to control me. When I get up. What I say. What I eat. It’s worse than the army.’
‘He’s diabetic!’
This was why Beckett didn’t go out anywhere. Least of all with Gramps.
‘Anyway, while someone fetches a large piece of cake for Mary, and a smaller one for Marvin, I will leave you in the capable hands of our carol-concert maestros, Carolyn Dennis and Cheris Gray!’
The room suddenly erupted with the sound of Noddy Holder shouting, ‘It’s Chriiistmaaaas!’, leading straight into Slade’s enduring festive hit, ‘Merry Xmas Everybody’, as two women sprang out from behind floor-to-ceiling-length curtains at one side of the room.
‘What?’ Gramps yelled, loud enough for those nearest to him to hear over the blare of music. ‘Please no. It can’t be blummin’ Christmas already!’
‘Have they been hiding there the whole time we were eating?’ Mary asked, collapsing into giggles.
Both women were wearing garish Christmas jumpers, one composed of green and red tinsel and the other with a knitted Rudolph complete with flashing red nose.
One of them balanced a foot-high Christmas-tree hat on her head, the other one a top hat decorated like a chimney, with Father Christmas’s feet sticking out of the top.
They were both shaking sleighbells and lip-syncing along to the song until, at the end of the first chorus, someone dashed over to the sound system in the corner of the room and pressed stop.
‘Sorry,’ the woman said. ‘I have to be finished here in time to pick up Kasey from a birthday party. But I think we’ve got the gist.’
‘What was this meeting about again?’ Eli asked, with an impressively straight face.
‘It’s Chriiiiistmaaaas!’ both the women shouted, shaking the bells vigorously above their heads. To be fair, at least four people in the room joined in. Including Mary.