Chapter 24
Arthur
Home is neither my grandmother’s house, nor Beatrice’s, nor even the Big Apple. Home is anywhere within the boundaries of New York. It doesn’t matter on the exact geography because no matter where you are, it feels like returning to a place that has cared for you for life.
So when Beatrice drives us back to New York without asking for another word from me, the sense of calm that comes with home hits me almost as soon as we get onto the road.
I’m grateful that for the entire journey, she sings tenderly in the driver’s seat, whilst only removing her delicate touch on my thigh to change gears.
I haven’t got the energy to speak or even to blush, so I savour the warmth of her fingertips until it’s my turn to fall asleep beside her as my grandmother’s car hums down the motorway.
When I wake again, the night is almost over and the street lights of the village are a dim beacon in the distance. Beatrice’s hand still rests on my thigh as she sings herself awake. ‘Thank you.’ My voice is hoarse from my sleep, and shy in my quiet shame.
Beatrice’s smile is the only reply at first and I question whether she heard me at all. But after a second of thought, she pinches my knee tenderly between her fingers. ‘You have nothing to thank me for.’
‘No one has ever done anything like that for me before.’ I clear my throat and sit up straighter in my seat, trying to find some way to express my gratitude. ‘I’m so sorry about the film, Beatrice, I really am.’
‘That’s not important right now. We’re in no rush.
We can talk about it until we’re blue in the face some other time.
But don’t worry about it now.’ She manoeuvres the car down the country lanes until we reach the familiar track to my grandmother’s farm.
I have one more month before I leave New York.
That meeting was my one chance to make sure I left some good behind. I don’t know how I’ll tell her.
‘It feels strange.’
‘What does?’ she replies, pulling up to the house and switching off the ignition.
‘You haven’t been mean to me all day.’
‘Don’t get used to it.’ She shakes her head with a lazy eyeroll. ‘Normal service will resume in the morning.’
‘You promise?’ I ask, the car windows beginning to grow cloudy with condensation as our hot breath meets the cold twilight.
‘I promise.’ She thrusts her little finger towards me and I hook it in my own. With her pinkie still clinging to mine, she speaks again. ‘I need to thank you too.’
Thank me? I fucked up her second chance at her dream and then cried like a baby all over her shirt for twenty minutes. What could she possibly have to thank me for?
I think my face replies for me, as she continues without me needing to voice those thoughts out loud.
‘That’s the first time I’ve had the guts to go back to London since my friend Tommy died.
So even though you feel like we didn’t achieve anything, you helped me to accomplish something I’ve been too scared to do for a very long time. So thank you.’
Words fail me but my heart throbs in my chest. Before I can reply, she has opened the door and climbed out of the car into the cool of the a.m. I follow her and watch her from across the roof as she collects her things from the back seat and continues with her tasks as though she hasn’t just opened up to me, as though she hasn’t just shown me a little glimpse of her soul and her secrets. She trusts me.
‘Where are you going?’ I call to her as she begins to saunter back down the driveway and into the darkness where the streetlamps can’t reach.
‘Home.’
‘You’re walking?’
‘I’m hardly going to go on horseback at this time, am I?’
‘You can’t go now.’ The words tumble from me, drawn out and encouraged by her own candour.
‘It’s the middle of the night.’
‘Then stay.’
She stands, paralysed in the middle of the driveway. She looks windswept, her face is flushed, her eyes are wide, and she glows in the moonlight, as though the words hit her like a freezing blizzard.
‘Stay?’
‘Yes, stay here for the night, and I can drive you home tomorrow.’
‘With you?’
‘With me.’ She taps her chin with her finger, the options flying around her mind and the evidence of it shows on her face as her smile conflicts with the furrow in her brows.
‘I think your grandmother would have one or two things to say about that.’ Disappointment seeps onto her face and I’m sure mine is almost a mirror image.
‘Yes,’ I confess, ‘but I think she’d be equally concerned if she found out I let you go home alone at this time.’
‘I’m not sharing your bed whilst Ms Riches is home.’ Her sleepiness clearly helps to negate her usual reservations as she speaks boldly and punctuates her sentence with a yawn.
‘Who said anything about sharing a bed?’ I smirk, knowing this is a moment she will relive again and again painfully once she’s had a good night’s rest and her words dawn on her. But before she can react: ‘Wait there …’
The idea almost bowls me over as I rush up to the farmhouse, unlock the door, and creep up to my room, trying my best not to wake my grandmother.
Collecting up all of the bedding I can fit under my arms, I creep back down the stairs, pausing with bated breath as trinkets rattle on their shelves as they snag on the duvet.
As I scamper back through the kitchen and reach for the door, the overwhelming fear that she’s gone hits me.
Why would she stay? Why would she wait for me?
What must she think of me? That I’m one of those guys who give over-the-top emotional displays to make a woman feel sorry for me to eventually get into her pants?
Because that couldn’t be further from my intention.
I just want her close. I don’t want to have to say goodbye to her, not yet, not tonight.
I hesitate for a moment, my hand on the doorknob and my heartbeat rattling so loudly in my chest I’m afraid of it disturbing my nan in the room above.
Closing my eyes, I draw on my memories, of her lips on mine in the garden of the pub, of her fingertips softly pressed against my thigh in the car, or her hands on my face as she looks at me with such affection that, for a moment, I could doubt everything in the world except for her.
And that’s enough to give me the confidence to open the door and find her exactly where I left her.
‘You stayed?’ I can’t hide my surprise.
‘You told me to.’ She shrugs, her eyes drooping as she blinks at me drowsily.
‘When do you ever do anything that I tell you to?’ I smile and gesture to the barn with a flick of my head. ‘Come on.’
With my hands full, Beatrice has to slide open the doors and the moonlight floods the high wooden ceilings. The machinery stands guard across the front of the barn, the wide-open space whistles with a draught and Beatrice trembles with the cold.
‘We better not be sleeping in a tractor. They’re uncomfortable at the best of times,’ Beatrice whispers, as though her voice could wake the engines from their slumber.
‘Just over here,’ I return in a whisper. Leading her to the ladder in the furthest back corner, I climb it the best I can with no arms, throw down the bedding, and wait for her at the top.
‘The hayloft?’ She’s tentative, but still she climbs the ladder and joins me on the small platform.
Just close enough to the roof to expel the draught but wide enough to sit in comfortably, the hayloft has been seemingly out of action for a while but there’s still enough of a sprinkling of hay across the floor for it to make do for a mattress for a night.
Spreading out a blanket over the top of it, I set out the pillows at the head and fan out the duvet ready to crawl inside.
‘It might be a little itchy.’ I climb between the duvet and the blanket and pat the space beside me. ‘But I think it will be warm enough, just for tonight.’
Beatrice watches me with her arms folded and an eyebrow raised.
‘I know I fulfil a lot of the country bumpkin stereotypes you city folk have, but a roll in the hay? Come on. I thought you were more original than that.’ Her laugh echoes around the loft and I’m grateful that the dark hides my glowing face from her.
‘Not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant.’ She continues chuckling as she slides between the sheets and lies down beside me.
‘I have to admit, it was comfier in my head,’ I confess as I pluck a strand of hay from poking into one of my arse cheeks and Beatrice shuffles into the makeshift bed that seems more like a nest at this point.
‘Yeah, I think you’ve been watching too many films. This isn’t The Little House on the Prairie, I’m afraid.
There’s a reason we stopped sleeping on straw centuries ago.
’ Lying on her side, she faces towards me, the duvet drawn up to her chin as she rubs her feet together like a cricket trying to summon her song.
The starlight squeezes through the gaps in the wooden structure just enough that it bathes her face in silver. I want to touch her, follow the path of the light as it circles around her freckles, kisses across the soft hairs on her cheeks, and floods her tired eyes with radiance.
‘You are beautiful.’ She says the words I was thinking but coming from her mouth, they stupefy me to silence and I find myself unable to catch my breath.
Her lashes quiver as I watch her trying and failing to cling on to her consciousness and when her eyes don’t open again and her soft snores fill the gap between us.
I press my lips to her forehead and suddenly lying in this pile of hay on the floor is the comfiest I’ve felt in my life.
When the spring sunrise wakes me a couple of hours later, I find that in my drowsy delirium, Beatrice has become tangled in my limbs as though woven into me.
Her face is pressed to my chest, her legs are threaded through my own, and my arms envelop her in such a way that I wouldn’t even know where to begin to unravel myself even if I wanted to. And I don’t.
I was anticipating waking with a heavy head and an aching body, but last night’s episode hasn’t seemed to take it out of me as much as previous ones, and I can’t help but think that Beatrice has a little something to do with that.
‘God, you’re such a creep.’ Not opening her eyes to speak, her voice is gravelly as she greets me with her eye-squinting smile that’s becoming more and more familiar.
‘What have I done now?’
She stays put, doesn’t try and shift out of my grasp.
‘I can feel you staring at me.’ Her voice is muffled as she buries herself deeper into my shirt.
‘Just trying to figure out if you’ve drooled on yourself too, or you’ve saved it all just for me.’ Pulling back a little, she can only summon the energy to glare at me with one open eye before closing it again and nuzzling ever closer. ‘My shirt is practically dripping.’
‘That’s just ’cus you sweat more than a pig in a packet of truffle fries,’ she teases in reply.
‘Is that a thing?’
She shrugs against me. ‘Probably not but all of my other versions of that phrase are either about sex offenders or just wildly offensive so …’ Finally, she emerges from the cocoon of covers to look at me with both eyes and her flushed face in its perfect entirety.
‘Fair enough.’ Unable to suppress the urge, I sweep the loose strands of her hair behind her ear and pull what feels like half a bale of hay out of her braids. ‘Can I ask you something?’
‘If it’s a proposal of marriage, I’d like you to know that I’m looking for a partner with a dowry much larger than yours.’
‘How would you know my dowry isn’t big? I haven’t even shown it to you yet.’ I narrow my eyes dramatically, playing along.
‘If you have to go out of your way to show me, it’s too small.’
‘Is that so?’ I pull her into me tightly until my whole body presses against her and she releases a pleasurable whimper at the contact.
‘It is.’ Her smile tugs at her cheeks and fans out at her eyes.
‘You’re such a windup.’ I release her reluctantly and shake my head, finding it harder and harder the more I know her to keep a straight face.
‘I’ve been called much worse, so I’ll take that as a compliment.’ She lies on her back and faces the ceiling with a grin. ‘Anyway, what did you want to ask?’
I have to clear my throat before I speak, a little too flustered now to just come out with it and ask.
I need to think about my words carefully, but that’s never been my strong suit.
Beatrice flicks her eyes to me to determine the reason for my prolonged silence and I have to sit up to swallow down my nerves.
‘Beatrice …’ I begin, my mouth dry but my palms deluged.
‘Arthur?’
‘Who is Tommy?’