Chapter 33 #2
She didn’t even want to say it, the things they’d have to work around: the various shooting seasons, for instance, printed in indelible ink in the Pennington diary.
They’d be having their Boxing Day shoot on the estate tomorrow if the weather was clement enough.
If it had to be postponed, that would be considered worse than the cancellation of the engagement party.
Then, starting on the ‘glorious twelfth’ it would be the poor grouses’ turn.
Every June and July were out because Elspeth-Ann and Gaylord went to Valencia to stay with her sister who had married a conde.
They’d have to avoid the busiest export windows too, the networky-trade gatherings.
She’d suggested the following year, but Gregory said there was little point in waiting, so May was a probability.
There would be a small private wedding and then a large garden party in the late summer.
May was too close.
‘What on earth is the matter with you?’ Gregory said on at least two occasions when she had woken up gasping for breath because she was being suffocated in her dreams. It would have taken Freud about three seconds to come to his conclusion about what was going on there.
‘I’ve got a big inglenook, ’ Vincent announced. There was a moment of silence and then they both broke into laughter.
‘Sorry, that wasn’t a euphemism,’ he said. ‘Fireplace, I mean. I have a big inglenook fireplace. Nothing nicer on a winter’s evening than to get it blazing and sit in front of it.’
‘That’s my idea of heaven.’ Elizabeth smiled wistfully. ‘Thick walls, a creaky staircase, a lovely roaring fire.’
‘Cheese toasties for supper. A good box set,’ Vince added.
‘A shared bottle of Pinotage, a huge tub of popcorn.’
‘Salty or sweet?’
‘Cinema sweet.’ There was no thinking about that for Elizabeth.
‘I love the cinema, me. Especially the posh ones with the reclining seats. Lots of space for my long legs to stretch out. Although I need nachos and cheesy sauce and salsa.’
‘That sounds great. I went to a party once when I was young. A cinema party, it was fantastic. We all had hot dogs and ice-creams.’
‘My kids will have them sort of parties. Loads of little noisy buggers getting excited, making memories.’
‘I’d love that.’
‘You having kids one day, Elizabeth?’
‘I hope so, yes. What about you?’
‘I’d love ’em. I’d like to be the sort of dad mine was, you know – hands on, building a tree house with them, taking them to football and being the embarrassing dad on the sidelines.’
Elizabeth couldn’t picture him being any other sort of dad.
She was smiling at the thought of that future Vincent, then that smile closed up as she thought of what would lie in store for her.
She’d be there at every sports day and award ceremony but she’d most likely be alone.
Something else would take precedence for Gregory: meetings, business, politics…
‘Your dad sounds a good sort.’
‘Well, he’s not with us any more, sadly,’ said Vincent.
‘They didn’t have me until they were knocking on.
Mum was in her mid-forties, Dad was well over fifty.
They didn’t think it would ever happen. I kept ’em young, though.
’ He grinned. ‘Dad used to run up and down at the side of the pitch telling the ref he’d got it all wrong and he was like a spider monkey up and down that bleedin’ tree in the garden building my den.
When I had to sell their house, I wish I could have taken it with me.
And you could hear my dad laughing from a mile away.
I could always tell when he was in the audience at a school play.
Mum copped for taking me to rugby on Sunday mornings if Dad was on call, and more often than not he’d be sorting someone’s plumbing emergency.
She used to be freezing, she was only a tiny little woman – like Roo, no meat on her bones to insulate her.
Never moaned once about it though. Your mum and dad go to all your things? ’
The thought of Roderick Dudley cheering her on at the side of a hockey pitch was ludicrous.
‘They were very busy people,’ she said, diplomatically.
Her mother had promised she’d be there when she was presented with her exams certificate, but in the end it had clashed with a tennis tournament, or so she said.
She had a lot of tournaments in those days.
As Elizabeth was to find later, her mother was just very busy with Luis Lemos.
‘I see,’ Vincent said. It was becoming ever clearer why an air of sadness lingered around Elizabeth like an aura.
‘Your children will be very lucky,’ said Elizabeth.
‘So will yours,’ said Vincent.
Their eyes locked; something passed between them, intense and warm. Too warm. Elizabeth broke contact first.
‘I think I’ll go and see if Frank needs any help. I’m sure he must.’
She needed to go before Vincent saw the blush bloom on her cheeks and heard her heart boom because it felt loud enough for the train engineer in St Hilda to have heard it.