Chapter 39
Lesson 38: Never underestimate the truths that a good story can hide.
Bridget Jones Tally:
people lost—1
people found—2
When we arrived at the bowling green and found Flossie with Sidney Richie, the poor man looked so upset that I stopped being
angry and actually felt sorry for him. It didn’t hurt his case that he happened to be objectively adorable. He was small and
lean, and he had dressed up nicely with a little tweed jacket and bow tie and a matching tweed flatcap on top of a messy tuft
of white hair. In his buttonhole was a white rose tinged with peach, and I looked down to see that sticking out of Flossie’s
handbag was a beautiful bouquet of flowers, with clusters of berries, thistles, foxgloves, and matching roses.
“We’re so sorry to have worried you all,” Sidney said, wringing his hands.
“I’m not,” said Flossie. “It’s nice to be worried about from time to time.”
“Oh, Flossie dear. Don’t say that. I’m sure they had a terrible morning thinking that something had happened to you.”
He turned to Agatha, approaching with a bravery that I would have been hard-pressed to find in his shoes.
“Agatha, forgive me. I had no idea she hadn’t discussed this with you.”
“Well,” she said, her voice like a whip. “We’ve called the police, so you can make your excuses to them, you pervert.”
Flossie stepped between them. “Sid hasn’t done anything wrong. Don’t speak to him like that.”
“He’s persuaded you to run away with him, a complete stranger, he plotted and schemed, and he’s driven you off in a car and
taken you...” She looked around quickly, and evidently decided she didn’t want to say He’s taken you bowling! for the obvious reason that it sounded so damn cute.
“He’s taken you away from your tour group!”
“I’m not a child, Agatha, no matter what you might think.”
“Then why are you acting like one? Why didn’t you tell anyone where you were going?”
“Because you wouldn’t have let me come.”
“No, I wouldn’t. And I would have been right, as always. You have no business sneaking away to run off with this filthy philanderer.”
“Sid is not a complete stranger. I’ve known him for over fifty years. And he is not a philanthropist!”
“Well, actually, I do my best to make donations every month...” Sidney said quietly to no one in particular.
After Agatha stopped protesting and denying everything they said, a story unfolded piece by piece that seemed to be as much a surprise to Agatha as it was to the rest of us. We all sat down on the benches overlooking the bowling green in the sun, quieted our hungry stomachs, and listened intently. I was shocked that none of us had pieced it together sooner. If only we’d listened a little more carefully to Flossie, instead of always assuming that she was just away with the fairies.
Sidney was the man from the stories, of course. “The Spellbinding Sultan of Samarra.”
“That was just a name for the stage. I’m only a butcher’s son from Tain. But when I was eighteen, I decided that I wanted
to see the world, so I joined the circus. At first I was just a dogsbody, helping to set up the tents and move them from place
to place, but I picked up sleight of hand as we went along and learned whatever I could. Within a year I had my own act.”
The circus had traveled through Flossie’s town in Devon when she was seventeen. At the time, Agatha had been living and traveling
as a companion to a wealthy aunt from the Lake District. Flossie had sneaked away from her father to see the circus and was
completely dazzled by the spectacle.
“I saw her in the crowd that first night, and she was just the most beautiful thing I think I’d ever seen,” Sidney said shyly.
“I decided to do an illusion where I needed help from an audience member, and called her up to the stage.”
“I stole away every night that week to go see him perform,” Flossie added proudly. “It wasn’t difficult. Father liked the
drink.”
When the week was over and they were moving on to the next town, Flossie had arrived with a bag packed and asked to go with
him, and Sidney had talked the big boss into it.
“Once he took one look at Flossie, he wasn’t hard to convince. She could draw a crowd.”
They’d given her a sparkly costume, and she had begun as the sultan’s assistant. After a time, they started asking her to
help with the acrobatics show.
“She was a natural,” Sid bragged. “Mavis the Marvelous, they called her.”
“I loved it up there. The lights, the costumes, the crowds and applause. I felt like a queen.”
Until one day she fell off a horse and broke her ankle.
“Sid offered to take me home, but I wouldn’t go.”
“Anyone who traveled with us had to contribute. With Flossie out of commission for a few months, it caused issues. But we
struck a deal with Big John.”
“We shared a caravan!”
Sidney went pink, and turned to Agatha. “We did, but it was all very proper. Nothing untoward.”
“Sid hung a theater curtain down the middle of the trailer and slept on the floor, and nursed me back to health. It was very
heroic.”
The rest of the story wasn’t as happy. Flossie’s father had lost a leg to diabetes, and she’d gone home to look after him.
He had kept her from Sid, of course. He didn’t want her to leave, and Sid didn’t have much money. He railed at her. Performing
with the circus was for shameless harlots, and it would disgrace the family if word ever got out. He said that she’d been
living in sin and made her promise never to speak of it again to anyone. And she had kept that promise.
“I never knew that Sid was looking for me.”
“Of course I was. I went to her father’s house, but he told me she had married and moved away. I thought maybe after I stopped
performing, perhaps she’d realized that I wasn’t so exciting after all. I wasn’t a sultan from the Middle East, just a poor
Scot without much to offer a new bride. I sent letters for a year or two, but when they were never returned, I didn’t want
to bother her.”
“If this is true, how could you never have told me? In all these years?” Agatha’s voice was still angry and defensive.
“Because you would have agreed with Father.”
Flossie reached out and grabbed Sidney’s hand. Agatha’s face was drawn, but she didn’t deny it. There was more there than just anger; to me she looked totally and utterly lost.
Eventually, we moved our conversation to a café for a long, late lunch. None of us was eager to separate the two after such
a touching reunion, and we were hungry for more of their story.
Shyly, Sidney took out a folder and, to our giddy delight, we pored over original posters that he had saved showing Flossie,
a stunning bombshell, standing on the back of a camel, or hanging with arms outstretched from a trapeze, her sequined leotard
glittering like jewels. They were color illustrations; even the mermaid was there, just as she’d said. There was also one
where Flossie stood next to Sidney as a deck of playing cards floated in the air.
He looked strikingly handsome, and she looked like a movie star, all shining waves of blond hair and hourglass curves. He
had also saved some news articles, and we passed them from person to person, greedily reading everything we could.
Agatha was quiet as the grave. I wondered how two sisters could share a life and have this secret between them. It was hard
to imagine what she was feeling. Confusion, betrayal perhaps, jealousy certainly for an exceptional life lived, which she
had had no part of. Perhaps she didn’t know where she fit in with this new Flossie, or how they would carry on from here.
Not quite the way they had been for so many decades, perhaps.
When we finally dragged ourselves away from Inverness, we were running quite a bit behind schedule. Sidney’s face had looked
crestfallen at saying goodbye to Flossie all over again. I tried to look away when I saw him clasp her hand in both of his.
“Seeing you again... well, it’s brought me more happiness than I can say.”
She didn’t respond. Her eyes were misty with unshed tears, her hand wrapped around his, like she wouldn’t let go for all the world.
“I wonder if I could write to you, and if maybe I might be able to come down to Somerset to visit. Maybe one day you might
like to come back to the Highlands for a little holiday? There are so many beautiful things to see here. I have plenty of
room for both you and Agatha to stay.”
“Yes, I would. I would like that very much. I also need to return this spoon.”
He turned to Agatha then. “I really hope that we can get to know each other better. Flossie used to speak of you so often
that I felt I knew you. I can’t apologize enough for today, but I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and let
me make it up to you.”
“We will see about that.” Most of the bite had gone from her bark.
According to the itinerary, it was the day that we were supposed to talk about Once There Were Wolves as we toured a reindeer park in the Cairngorms, and The Winter Sea as we visited Slains Castle for sunset, but we would have needed more time. Instead, Robbie drove us straight down to Dunkeld,
where we checked into an adorable traditional inn.
When Robbie said that he was taking us to a deli, I had visions of a school cafeteria, complete with hairnets and brown plastic
trays, but what we found was a charming award-winning restaurant with a stunning selection of gourmet deli items, a wall of
spectacular wine, and a modern menu of Scottish tapas.
Sharing lots of small plates and bottles of wine lent itself to a chatty evening of shared stories, warmth, and laughter. Questions for Flossie bounced around the table like a pinball machine, and she glowed from the attention. We should never have discounted her stories. It was true sometimes she lapsed into befuddlement, or creative renderings of real experiences—tall tales from a woman whose personality was much larger than we knew, an adventuress in earnest. We began to adjust the way that we listened and asked questions. She’d been in our midst the whole trip, and we’d looked right past her.
That night Robbie and I collapsed into bed, exhausted and reflective. He lifted up the covers, and I crawled in and flopped
down like a rag doll before he wrapped me up in legs and arms.
“Hey,” he said. “Thank you for today. You were amazing. You kept such a level head. I honestly don’t know what I would have
done without you.”
“Pfft. It was Flossie. I would have done anything. Besides, I love organizing things and implementing a plan. I know you were
worried, but you did a great job keeping the ladies calm.”
“Hmm. We make one dynamic duo, Miss Alice Cooper.”
I took a moment and allowed the warmth of that statement to melt over me. Then I propped myself up on one elbow and kissed
him, trying to press into him all the unsaid feelings I wasn’t sure I would be able to put into words before I left.
We made love, but afterward, neither of us could settle.
“Hey.” I stroked the hair back from his forehead. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Course.” He let out a sigh. “I guess I’m a bit shaken up, to be honest.”
“Me too.”
“We could have lost her.”
“Nah. She was always in good hands. And think about it—if she hadn’t run away, we probably never would have known that she
had this whole incredible secret life, and none of us saw it.”
“It’s just so tragic. My heart broke for them.”
I sat up to get a better look at him.
“Really?”
“They found each other. They had everything they wanted, and it all got taken away. For nothing. They spent their whole lives apart believing that the love of their life had forgotten about them. Life can be so cruel.”
I thought about that for a minute. It was odd to me that I had heard the same story and taken away something completely different.
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Don’t you?”
“They both took a risk when they were young—broke free and did something wild, completely off script for them. Maybe all the
building blocks were in place for them to have this life where Flossie stayed home with family, and Sidney took over his father’s
business. But instead they were bold, and they lived their lives completely, even if only for a little while. And they were
rewarded with this glorious adventure and true love, and enough memories to last a lifetime. I think that’s a beautiful thing.”
“But wouldn’t it have been all the more painful then to lose it? What if they’d fought harder? Could they have found each
other again? Could Flossie have left her father and found Sidney? Or Sid have come to her home and demanded to see her? Told
her how much he loved her, said he wasn’t going to just let her go?”
Robbie’s eyes searched mine, clearly in pain. I was surprised by how emotional he was getting. It had happened so long ago.
“I don’t know, Robbie. Maybe so. No one can know what might have happened if they took another path. But I’ll bet if you asked
them if they would take it all back and spare themselves the pain, they would tell you that they wouldn’t give that time up
for anything.”
We laid back against the pillows and held each other. He was quiet for a while, and so was I, lost in my own thoughts. There
was a bit of pain in my chest, and I tried to needle it out.
My voice came out soft and hesitant, as if I was making a confession. “Do you know what I kept thinking today when they told us their story? That I was jealous of them. I was jealous because they had this big, beautiful, epic adventure—like something out of a storybook. And...” I had to stop for a moment and take a few breaths to keep my voice from cracking. “. . . and I don’t know. When is it my turn? When will I have a grand adventure? After the career and the husband and the kids? After the mortgage payments? When I retire?”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” His voice wasn’t defensive. Instead it was gentle. Comforting. The offering of a consolation
prize.
“Yeah. Of course. But this was just a couple of weeks, and it’s almost over. I’ll be gone again in a few days.”
He threaded his fingers with mine and held my hand in that way of his that could make me feel safe, gentle all my worries
away, just with the curl of a few fingers. He opened his mouth, and I thought he would say something, but he didn’t. Instead
he shifted behind me and gathered me into him, wrapping his big arms around my chest and holding me tight.
“I’m thirty now, and it all happened so fast that I can’t even remember how I got here,” I said. “I never ran away. I never
broke free of my story. What if I was supposed to? What if I missed my chance?”
“You didn’t.”
“I’ll wake up tomorrow, and I’ll be fifty. And sixty the day after that.” It sounded silly, dramatic, but tears swam in the
corners of my eyes.
Robbie shifted and put his mouth next to my ear. “Alice Cooper. I’ve never met anyone more capable of deciding what they want
for their life, and making it happen.”
I couldn’t accept that. The words were so very wrong that all the old familiar pains and insecurities resurfaced. “But I haven’t.
I messed everything up. And I’m so confused.”
“You’re adjusting, that’s all. Give yourself time, sweetheart.”
I felt a tear slip down, and then another. He brushed it away with the soft pad of his thumb and kissed my damp cheek.
“Besides. It’s never too late. The circus will always be looking to hire people like you.”
I laughed and hiccupped my tears back in. “Would you buy tickets to my show?”
“I’d heckle you from the stands. Say it was false advertising and demand my money back.”
I smiled, and the tears dried on my hot cheeks, salt pulling at the skin. “You wouldn’t dare. I’d be waiting for you. With
my clown posse.”
We slid down and curled into each other. Thoughts drifted as I faded closer to sleep, sometimes solid, sometimes diaphanous
wisps of gossamer smoke I could not grasp hold of. But in the darkness, something tugged at me and wouldn’t quite let me drift
off until I spoke it aloud.
“Robbie?” His breathing was heavy and regular. “Robbie?”
“Hmm?”
“Will you promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“You know that dream you have of a wheelchair accessible tour?”
“Yeah?”
“It’s wonderful. Make it happen. You’re building something beautiful here. What you want is right in front of you. Don’t let
fear stop you from reaching out and grabbing it. Don’t let this get away. Fight for it.”
Maybe it was something I’d been wanting to say. Maybe it was something he needed to hear. Or maybe it was just the emotional
melodrama of someone who’d had a very long, dramatic day. But I meant it.
His arms closed tighter. “I think... I might be done with letting things get away from me,” he said into my skin, and then
we slept.