Chapter 16 #3
‘I had to have a word with a teacher at school for showing up my little boy, having a pop at his singing. He wasn’t exactly Aled Jones, shall we say, but I gave her a taste of her own medicine.
Kids… when they get damaged little, they can’t process it and it might cause them all sorts of bigger problems when they get older,’ Frank told them.
Yeah, that’s why I can’t stand Santa effing Claus and his Christmas extravaganza, thought Roo.
‘That was very catty of your careers teacher, Roo, to try and stifle your ambitions. I hope she didn’t succeed in doing that.’ Jane went back in for another forkful of grilled tomato. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d tasted one so flavoursome – another glimmer.
‘Well, I’m a glorified office junior in a plastic injection-moulding factory that makes poop scoops and litter trays, so what do you think?’
‘Doesn’t matter what job you do, so long as you’re happy doing it, gel.’
‘I’m not though, Vincent, I hate it. I still want to be performing on a stage.’ Roo smiled, albeit a watered-down version of a smile. ‘Not jokes though, I sort of evolved into stand-up comedy poetry.’
‘I love poetry,’ said Jane. ‘Clifford and I used to go and see John Cooper Clarke whenever he was performing. They knew each other quite well when Clifford was a professor at Manchester University.’
Roo’s jaw fell open, impressed. ‘Oh wow, Jane, JCC is my inspiration, my god.’
‘ “Chickentown”.’ Jane had a twinkle in her eye. ‘Clifford could recite it backwards. The extra-sweary version.’
The thought of an elderly academic reciting all those profanities amused Roo no end.
‘This is a quality breakfast, Frank.’ Vincent raised his cup of tea in a toast to the chef.
‘I was thinking it might serve as fortification for our rescue,’ replied Frank, ‘but looking at all that outside, I’m not convinced the situation has got any more hopeful.’
‘And inside, we have a ghost that’s scoffing our grub,’ said Vincent.
Frank smiled, but he was bothered by it. And he would get to the bottom of it one way or another, even if he had to stand guard in the galley all night.
‘No such thing as ghosts. Maybe we have a sleepwalker among us,’ said Jane, sweeping her eyes across her fellow guests and concluding that none of them seemed the type to tear into a chicken like a starved animal.
‘You don’t believe in ghosts, Jane?’ This from Roo, who was surprised by her statement.
‘No, I don’t, Roo. I think once we are out of this world…’ She pulled her words up short before she could impose her beliefs on others, but she’d said enough to make her reasoning clear. ‘I’m a humanist, that is to say I concentrate on making the best of my time on earth.’
‘Is that because you were married to a scientist, Jane?’ Grace asked.
‘Ironically, no. I was brought up a heaven-and-angels, god-fearing Christian but my beliefs whittled away over the years. My husband Clifford was a scientist who did believe in an afterlife. He didn’t used to, but then he had a… an experience.’
She had the interest of everyone at the table but she didn’t go on until prompted by Frank.
‘You can’t leave it there, love. You’re going to have to fill us in.’
Jane’s hand stalled while putting marmalade on her toast. She shouldn’t have opened herself up for interrogation, this subject for debate.
‘He had a near death incident. He actually “died” on an operating table during a heart procedure. A rather typical story of heading towards a bright light, of being met by a loved one who told him to turn back. His mother, with his childhood dog’— Jane needs you, go home, Cliffy.
It’s not your time— ‘Of course most of it could be explained quite simply, the things he heard…’
‘They say the hearing is the last sense to go, don’t they?’ Elizabeth said.
Jane swallowed, wondered if she should go on, decided she should.
‘It wasn’t so much what he heard… as what he purported to see when he…
felt his spirit leave his body and look down at himself, at the mad activity happening from doctors intent on not giving up.
Things the surgeon confirmed, details, conclusions that couldn’t have been reached just from joining the dots between the available information.
That’s what gave his account a credibility no one could dispute. ’
Jane flapped her hand to indicate she thought she was going on too much and needed to wind it down.
‘In short, he was absolutely convinced after that there was something beyond life and no one could sway him otherwise.’ Faith transcends all evidence, he told her.
I was there, Jane. It was no dream. He connected with other eminent scientists afterwards who had experienced similar; those who believed nothing truly disappears from the universe and consciousness extends far beyond physical reality.
My darling Jane, I wish I could gift you what I saw, he’d said, because he knew the pain that still ached below her scars.
But she couldn’t make herself believe, even with his unswaying testimony, and she had undergone nothing herself that had ever altered her conviction that all anyone truly had was the here and now.
Even though she often felt Clifford with her, she knew it was only something deep in her psyche trying to bring her comfort, doing its desperate best to keep him near and in time it would fade.
‘What sort of scientist was he, Jane?’ Roo asked.
‘A psychologist, with a list of qualifications after his name which was longer than his name itself: Clifford Terence Bartholomew Horace Wutheridge.’ Jane smiled proudly.
‘Mind you, he was the first generation in his family to break ranks and not follow a legal career, so he had something to prove – and boy, did he. My Clifford was a very clever man. And one able to inspire students and make science digestible for people like me who had a much more dominant right side of the brain. He was very loved. And when he retired – finally – he found a new unexpected career on the TV. I was quite wary for him about it because I thought they wanted to wheel him out as a dusty old fart but he was quite the hit.’
Roo made a small gasp. ‘You don’t mean… Dr – Professor – Cliff… Rutheridge, do you? The fella who was one of the experts on Love in the Sun?’
Grace snorted at the suggestion. ‘I wouldn’t have thought—’ But she was as surprised as the rest of them when Jane nodded, pleasure showing in her expression that her husband had been recognised.
‘You watched him then, Roo?’
‘Oh my god, I never missed it. The aftershow was better than the main programme. He was brilliant and spot-on every time. I remember when he said that Baz didn’t really like Kelsey and listed about a million indicators and everyone thought he was bats because it was obvious’—she wiggled a pair of quotation marks in the air with her fingers—‘he was bonkers about her. Twenty-four hours, he’d dumped her like a hot turd for Shaunelle.
’ Roo gasped again in sheer awe. ‘And that was your fella? He was ace.’ Her smile closed down.
‘I was so sorry when he… There was a programme of all his best bits.’
Jane beamed. ‘Thank you for that, Roo. That’s so kind of you to say. Now you must tell us about you wanting to be an entertainer. Maybe you could help pass the time and perform some of your poetry for us,’ Jane went on. Roo looked horrified.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Then how will you get on a stage and perform in front of hundreds, Roo?’ This from Elizabeth.
‘I won’t,’ she replied. ‘I might still want it but it ain’t going to happen. Not now.’
Jane shook her head. ‘Because of that awful careers person? I wonder how many other people’s dreams she ruined. You should do everything in your power to prove her wrong – convert her criticism into a fuel that will launch you like a rocket at the stars.’
‘Too late now.’
‘Because you’re so ancient?’ said Vincent. ‘What are you? Twenty-two?’
‘Flatterer. Twenty-four. Just.’
Vince mused. ‘Yeah, heading up to that quarter-century, I see your point. Bit past it.’ Then he winked and smiled at her and Roo thought what a great smile he had.
She’d only known him less than a day and yet it felt like much longer.
He was lovely, a proper catch. He wasn’t Harry Styles sort of handsome, his hair was a bit all over the place and his nose was too crooked for that sort of flawlessness, but it couldn’t have been more perfect for his face.
His eyes were twinkly though, kind and hazel and full of fun.
Aaron’s nose was straight and perfect, and his eyes were…
She cut that thought off right away and turned her attention back to her eggs.
Grace laid her cutlery down on her plate. ‘Well, that was lovely, thank you,’ she said to her husband, with the polite formality of a stranger and Jane thought, She’s out of sync with him and can’t find her way back.
‘I’ll second that,’ added Tim. He stood. ‘My turn to wash up, I think.’
Roo handed her plate to him and made a point of saying a pronounced thank-you when he took it from her.
‘I might go and find some decorations,’ she said. ‘I imagine that the staff will have enough to do with the beds and things when they get on so I can save them a job while passing a bit of time. And if by any chance we’re stuck here all Christmas, then it’ll be nice for us.’
She said it but really she didn’t believe they’d be here that long.
When the fog cleared, they’d see green fields out there by later this afternoon.
Fog meant the temperature was rising, she was sure she remembered that from school.
Then again, the geography teachers were as uninspiring and useless as the careers advisor woman so maybe not.