Chapter 28
Arthur
‘So … that camera?’ Beatrice flutters her lashes, still breathless, and lips swollen from the kiss.
‘Hang on, that better not have been a bribe,’ I accuse, still high from the taste of her, still revelling in her closeness.
‘No?’ She gives me a teasing side-eye, then pecks me again without warning. Every time she presses her lips to mine, it’s like she wipes my mind clean. Any thoughts, any feelings, anything at all that existed before her evaporates and my senses exist only to consume her.
‘Do you have mics too? How about a boom? Ooo wait, what about one of those clapper boards?’
Her face is animated with wide-eyed joy, a world away from the anguish she wore on it only minutes ago. I’d like to think that kissing me is a good enough temporary fix for her melancholy.
‘One of those will cost you more than a kiss.’ She blushes and smacks me softly on the chest. ‘What do you need a camera for anyway? This gala could mean you won’t have to make the film yourself. That’s if you want to go, of course.’ My panic returns.
‘It’s their story.’ She gestures to the pub. The light glows through the windows as dusk begins to fall and muffled voices meet us on the street outside. ‘I just like the idea of them being able to tell it. Plus, I’d love to see Barbara pretending she’s in a bar brawl.’
‘So, you don’t fancy this then?’ I motion to the tickets. She thinks about it for a moment, a whole spectrum of emotion flooding her face all at once.
‘I’m still mad at you, but a posh do where I get to talk about films with some of the best in the business? I suppose it is a dream come true.’
I can’t help myself, it’s been too long since I kissed her last, so I take her by her cheeks and kiss her again.
The rest of the week carries on in a similar vein. Stolen kisses in the middle of conversation, longing looks across fields, and ghostly touches whenever she passes close by.
April comes and so does the rain. Though we spend all of our time casting, prepping, rewriting, the farm still comes first.
With lambing in full swing, hardly a day goes by without a new birth, or an escapee, so that’s where I find myself now: running across fields in the spring showers trying to get my hands on a slippery lamb.
Beatrice flanks the treeline, and I head straight down the middle, all of my extremities frozen, but my body is warmed through by the exercise, and by Beatrice and the sight of her grappling with the farm’s new pocket of mischief.
The lamb bounds around in circles, mocking us with each dive he manages to dodge. Accepting my fate and landing on my arse in the mud, I take a moment to lean back and absorb the moment.
‘What is it now?’ Beatrice asks with a playful eyeroll as I stop to feel the rain’s quickening droplets on my face.
‘It’s raining,’ I say.
‘Clever boy,’ Beatrice replies, taking a breath to recover from her battle as a thick pearl of rainwater flows over her cheek and streaks through the mud smeared over her freckles. ‘You worried about getting your hair wet? Is that it? We should get you back in at Bruce’s.’
I shudder at the thought. ‘I mean, in the films, rain is always … romantic isn’t it?’ If I didn’t have too much masculine pride, I’d be very tempted to frolic right now.
‘Well, you’re not in the films anymore, my darling, you’re in Lincolnshire. That isn’t just water you’re wiping off your face, I can see the snot too.’ She giggles as I rub harder, face burning. ‘The only thing rain is good for is watering the crops and making your boots soggy for the next week.’
‘Have you always been such a fantasist?’ I roll my eyes and turn from her and try to look busy.
‘One of us has to live in the real world.’ She smiles and tries to wipe the hair away from her face as it clings to it with the moisture, but she only smears more mud onto her cheeks.
‘Come on, kiss me in the rain,’ I proclaim, throwing my arms wide as though ready to burst into song.
Beatrice shakes her head with a shy laugh. ‘You’re such a romantic.’
‘And you’re so miserable,’ I tease, flicking a little mud at her trousers that are already caked thick with the stuff.
‘Me? Never!’ She gives an exaggerated gasp. ‘I think you’ll find that we’re in Lincolnshire now, so I’m not “miserable” I’m “mardy”.’
It’s my turn to shake my head. ‘Come here, mardy arse.’
She concedes and leans over to plant a damp kiss on my lips. Taking advantage of the distraction, I tug her by the coat and she lands beside me with a splash.
Before she can scold me, I kiss her again with such ferocity that I feel the pulse of her lip throbbing against mine.
Only the sound of an irritated bleating makes her pull away, and when we both come to once again, the two tiny black eyes of the lamb stare back at us both, clearly irritated by the disruption to his game of tig.
‘Little shit,’ Beatrice mutters, before diving through the mud after him.
‘Take your wet clothes off and meet me in the kitchen,’ Gran shouts from the farmhouse door when she sees us arrive back in the yard.
Without admitting that it’s been on my mind, I can’t say this is exactly how I imagined seeing Beatrice in her underwear for the first time would go; sat at my grandmother’s dining table like a pair of schoolkids waiting for our uniforms to finish washing.
In my fantasy, my grandmother has no involvement whatsoever, and the room is significantly warmer, so that my nipples aren’t the most impressive appendage on my body.
‘Why are you not fazed by this?’ I whisper loudly to Beatrice across the table as she leans nonchalantly with her chin in her hand. ‘Are you often half nude in my gran’s house?’
‘I’ve been elbows deep in a sheep more times than I can count this week alone. My own body doesn’t scare me.’ She shrugs.
‘That statement is, in equal parts, both beautiful and disgusting.’ I can’t decide which part of it to focus on, so I watch her coy smile instead as she enjoys making me squirm.
Her hair drips over her clavicle and traces down her skin until the raindrops disappear beneath the table.
Her crooked fringe clings to her forehead and she squeezes the end of her ponytail until it drips onto the rug beneath her.
‘As much as I respect and admire Ms Riches, I do hope she hasn’t gone to fetch me one of her nighties to change into. I’d rather drive home bare cheeks on leather.’ She cringes into her seat as she whispers.
‘Okay, that is far too specific not to have happened before.’ Beatrice looks absent for a moment, then shudders before my gran returns with a pile of clothes slung over her arm.
Flicking my eyes back and forth between both women, I can’t help but laugh as one wears a look of genuine fear, whilst the other is completely unaware.
‘Seeing as I am not good enough to have been cast in your little project …’ my grandmother narrows her eyes at me and dumps the clothes onto the table ‘… I thought I could contribute in another way.’
‘Technically, we haven’t filled all of the roles yet, so we could find room for you.’
‘Don’t patronise me, lad, I know where my talents lie anyway, and pretending to be someone I’m not is not one of them.
’ She rolls her eyes and Beatrice smiles behind her hand as I’m taken aback.
‘Anyways, Beatrice …’ her smile quickly falls and she sits to attention as though summoned by her terrifying headmistress ‘… this look …’ Gran gestures to Beatrice as a whole ‘… not going to be doing you any favours at that fancy party.’
‘To be fair to me, Ms Riches, I will be wearing more than just my mismatched bra and pants that I’ve had since I was fifteen. You know that, right?’ My grandmother is silent as she rummages in the pile before her. ‘Right?’ Beatrice’s voice cracks and it’s my turn to laugh.
Ignoring her entirely, she finds the item she was looking for and smiles to herself.
‘There you are.’ Holding up a long, dark, burgundy dress, embroidered with beads and soft chiffon sleeves, she flings it onto Beatrice who only looks to me with furrowed brows.
‘Now it is probably a bit nicer than you’re used to, but Arthur’s grandfather bought me that after I caught him at it with the woman from the butcher’s, and I’ve always watched you working and thought it would suit you. ’
Beatrice is lost for words as she skims her finger along the rows of beads, and I can tell from her face that she’s torn between taking offence and refusing to accept on grounds that it is too much. ‘I—’ she begins but my grandmother waves a hand to dismiss her.
‘Nope, no excuses. Go and stick it on and we will see how it fits.’ Doing as she’s told, Beatrice shuffles out of the kitchen, dress clutched to her body. ‘Now,’ my grandmother addresses me as her new target, ‘this here was your dad’s.’
She unzips a suit from a bag and brushes off some lint from the lapels.
It’s a very dark burgundy, almost black but as the flicker of the fire catches it, a warm glow of red and purple shimmers through it.
She runs a hand down the seams; the mohair is soft to the touch and I grin at the thought of my dad wearing something so …
unique. That man’s idea of pushing the boat out is wearing a coloured pocket square in his black suit, so when Gran tells me he never wore it, I’m not surprised.
‘The village made this suit when he was nominated for his first BAFTA. Everyone chipped in to have it custom-made by the tailor in town.’ She flicks open the blazer and on the inner pocket the words ‘lots of love, New York x’ are embroidered into the silk lining and a little handkerchief with a bright green apple sewn in the middle sits in the bag beside it.
‘Cost us all an arm and a leg this did, especially back then. But everyone practically threw their money into it, even when they had so little, just so he could look like the star he was that night.’
‘But he never wore it?’ I shake my head as I trace the thread lettering.
‘Nope, the ungrateful bastard never even came to see it.’ My gran’s previously soft tone extinguishes and she’s her usually bitter self once more.
‘I had to tell everyone down the Big Apple that there was a change in the dress code. They still watched him, still loved him, still do. But that was when I knew he wasn’t the boy I had raised anymore. ’
She pulls out the suit and inspects the bottoms of the trousers closely. ‘Now you’re much taller than your father – he inherited your grandfather’s stubby little legs – but I reckon there’s room in these hems for me to take them down for you.’
‘You want me to wear it?’ I reply, looking again at the inscribed words of affection and feeling a little out of my depth.
‘No, I’ve just got it down from the loft for the fun of it.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Of course I want you to wear it. Come on, get it on.’
‘But it’s for him and they’re big shoes, and a big suit, that I could never fill. They made it for Dad. Won’t they be short-changed now if you give it to me?’
‘This suit, if anything, will be too small for you, son. Both literally and figuratively. You have proven yourself a worthy man, and you still do. Plus, I reckon that all of the old beggars who haven’t forgotten about it, after all of these years, will be pleased to know it isn’t sat collecting dust anymore. ’
‘Well … if you’re sure …’ I take the trousers hesitantly.
‘Why would I get it out if I wasn’t sure? God boy. Do you always have to dilly-dally about with everything? Have a bit of confidence, have a bit of fire.’ She practically throws the rest of the outfit at me as Beatrice steps back into the room.
She has released her hair entirely from its restraints and it hangs about her face in waves of wet and dry.
The dress clings to her figure at the top, then billows out towards the bottom, so it is as though she floats across the lino.
The colour is dark against her pale skin, but it seems to weave in between her dark strands like a shot of moonlight through a night sky.
‘Wow,’ is all I can bring myself to say, and my grandmother only watches her in silence with an uncharacteristic smile.
Beatrice is beautiful when her hair sticks up in feral directions, when she stomps through the yard in her wellies, when she’s buried in her overalls, and she snarls at me like a protective beast. Seeing her so prim, so proper is strange.
Yet she looks no better, and certainly no worse than she ever has before.
She is faultless in every way she presents herself, and I am in more danger of falling in love with her than ever.
‘Would you mind?’ She sweeps her hair over one shoulder and reveals her back that’s been left bare from a zip only half finished.
Without a second of hesitation, I am at her service.
Any chance I get to touch her I will take, even if it is just a fleeting caress of her spine as I finish the job.
She shivers at my touch and her back prickles with goose bumps, and that’s all the reassurance I need that she is in just as much danger as me.
‘This dress really is beautiful, Ms Riches.’ Beatrice looks at herself and shakes her head as though unable to believe her own beauty. ‘Thank you.’
‘It was made for you, my dear. You really do have a lovely figure when you’re making an effort.’ Beatrice side-eyes me at the backhanded compliment but she takes it with grace and an award-winning smile.
Pulling on the suit, I realise that the colours are almost identical to the fabric draped over Beatrice. These are a matching set, and I blush a little standing beside her as though we are two halves of the same whole.
‘Now if you can bag a film deal on being best dressed then I reckon you two kids are in with a chance.’ Gran smiles and fluffs Beatrice’s skirt.
‘Suits you, Hollywood,’ she says, turning to me and tugging lightly on the tie.
‘You’re looking all right yourself.’ I wink and she turns away with a grin.
‘Anyway, it fits, it’s lovely, but can I take it off now before I get it all sweaty and smelling of farm?’
Gran nods and Beatrice skips off nervously.
‘That dress wasn’t from my grandad, was it?’ I ask as soon as Beatrice is out of earshot.
‘Your father always told me that I’d be with him by his side when he won.
When all that I had given up to raise him had paid off, I’d be right there with him when he collected that award.
He never called. He hasn’t called since.
’ Her happiness at seeing us both dressed up seems to dwindle as she grows introspective.
‘Why don’t you come with us? To the gala I mean?’ I’m serious, but she laughs.
‘I’m far too old now, my boy. Plus, the farm needs me since you’ve stolen my best hand.’ She sighs and rubs her wrinkled hand along the shoulder pad of the blazer. ‘I’ll be right there with you both when you get that deal and you start clearing up at the awards shows. I promise you.’