Chapter 45
Things felt as if they were truly coming to a close now, there was a winding down in the air, a change.
It came with different feelings to each of them.
To Roo it brought the excitement of an unknown future she was ready to embrace.
To Tim it made him want to just get home, talk to his daughter and then book his flight.
To Henry, he felt galvanised by his time spent with these wonderful people to fight and carry on fighting until he was heard.
Grace and Frank wanted to be back in the dear familiarity of their home, but enjoy it as they hadn’t before with their old, loving connection restored.
But Vincent would have been happy to stay, another day would have done, just to enjoy the company of them all for a little longer.
To enjoy the company of Elizabeth. He shouldn’t torture himself by prolonging their proximity, it was stupid.
They’d have to part at some point. He could only delay getting out of the car, unloading her cases, saying goodbye, but he couldn’t stop it.
Then he’d return to a life where he was sort of content but it would feel paler by comparison now, so much more lonely.
As for Elizabeth, every time the lady came out of the clock and the man struck the bell he delivered a fresh wave of dread for her. Her headache was lingering; she felt as if that brass man was in her skull, banging at the inside of her temple.
Tim was the first to break up the party. He yawned and stretched his great long arms.
‘One last shower, one last time wrapped in that fluffy robe, one last night in that beautiful bed,’ he said.
The song on the radio ended. Non-Christmas songs were starting to infiltrate Brian’s playlists now: ‘Red Roses For a Blue Lady’, though only Frank recognised it.
Elizabeth looked blue, he thought, though he wouldn’t embarrass her by saying as much and he hoped she was okay.
She certainly didn’t look like someone who was going to be reunited with her fiancé soon.
‘Our last night as the Yorkshire Belle eight,’ said Vincent.
‘Nine, if you count Brian as an honorary member.’
On cue Brian spoke out of the radio.
‘Well, I’ll bid you goodnight,’ he said.
‘I’ll not be around for a few days. I’m taking a break.
I’m going to see my mum. She’ll not know who I am, she hasn’t for a while.
She thinks she’s still a bus conductress in Clitheroe and tries to charge everyone in the home fares, but she’s happy.
She keeps saying that she should retire at thirty-two, even though she’s ninety-five on New Year’s Eve.
She’s in a lovely home, they right look after her. ’
Everyone exchanged glances. Oh, the pain behind the frontage of some people’s lives. Frank was only grateful that he’d lost his old mum just when she’d started to slip. He wasn’t sure he could have coped with her looking at him and not seeing the boy she made.
Elizabeth dabbed at her eyes. She was upset by Brian and his mum but it also served as a cover for the build-up inside her that was threatening to burst its dam wall.
‘So adieu, friends, because I never say goodbye. It’s too final a word and there’s no need for that. So thank you for listening to me. I hope anyone who is still stuck out there somewhere gets home safely now. And I hope you’ve had some enjoyment from my gentle tunes of yesteryear.’
‘Brian, you’ve been a bleedin’ legend, mate,’ said Frank and stood up. Everyone followed suit and they gave Radio Brian a whole-hearted standing ovation.
‘This has been the real BBC, Brian Bernard Cosgrove. Happy New Year when it comes to you all. May it bring you everything you’ve wished for.’
Then there was a click followed by a silence that resonated through them all like a seismic wave.
Frank walked into his cabin and had scarcely even put one foot inside when Vincent, who was in there, blocked his way.
‘Change of plan, mate.’
‘What do you—’
‘No questions.’
Vincent pushed him out gently but firmly and beckoned his confused cabin-mate to follow down the train, one car forward to ‘Sigismund’. Then he opened the door of the first, hitherto locked, room and thumbed inside.
‘See you in the morning, Frank. Come on, in you go.’
Frank, dumbfounded, did as he was told.
When Grace went to her cabin, she noticed that her case wasn’t where it should be and her robe was no longer on the bed.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Grace,’ said Jane, who was already in there. ‘You can’t sleep in here tonight. Come with me.’
She bustled a bewildered Grace out and down the passageway, past Vincent and Tim’s room and into ‘Sigismund’. She knocked on the door of the first cabin and when she heard a ‘Come in’, she opened it.
‘Have a nice evening, Grace,’ said Jane, standing aside to let her enter the twice-bigger room with a sumptuous red and gold theme, pale burr maple walls, its own ensuite and a hand-painted ceiling that would have had Michaelangelo wolf-whistling.
Frank was sitting on the double bed, an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and two glasses on the table beside him.
‘I… I thought these cabins were all locked,’ said Grace, still wearing a mask of confusion.
‘Let’s just say I know a man who knows a little about unlocking locks. Good night, you two,’ and with that Jane closed the door.
Henry wriggled down the bed and made a gleeful noise that a small child might make rather than a grown man.
‘Told you,’ said Tim.
‘I’m not sure any bed after this one is going to pass muster.’
‘Yes, we are all going to have to get used to slumming it,’ Tim chortled.
‘I shall, however, make it my mission that – God willing – if I get out, my bedding will always be of the highest quality I can afford. That will be one of the many legacies from this… interlude.’
‘You do that, lad,’ returned Tim.
‘I remember getting on board, feels like so long ago. I remember the taste of that pie. I thought I’d landed in heaven after dying in the snow.’
‘Aye, it’s been a taste of heaven.’… But it’ll be nowt compared to being in a New Zealand airport and seeing my daughter at the barrier, Tim added to himself.
‘It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Tim.’
‘And you, Henry. It’s a Christmas I’ll never forget. Something to tell the grandchildren about. The day Santa got lost in the snow.’
He waited for a response but all that came from Henry was the softest snore of contentment.
While Elizabeth was in the bathroom, she had decided that she had to talk to someone, she had to get out the words that she didn’t know what to do.
She wouldn’t expect Roo to direct her, just listen while she opened up her heart, and just maybe through the act of doing that, it might help get herself in order.
She felt like a bowl of breadcrumbs, being tossed around by a baker’s kneading hand, nothing binding, nothing coming together.
She couldn’t get it out of her mind, Vincent’s hand catching hers, such a small action but it had resulted in a big bang inside her, as massive as the creation of the whole solar system; she felt the heat from a newly born sun glowing in her chest. She knew he felt it too because he didn’t look at her, they were both staring straight ahead as they walked, not knowing how to verbalise it.
What did it mean? What could it mean? She was a jack-in-a-box that had sprung out, swelled in the air and the light, and had grown too much to return to its container.
But what else could she do? She both had to go back and also…
she couldn’t. Jane’s earlier comment to her was circling in her head like the vultures in the Bantam Cock poem: Don’t settle for a life without love, Elizabeth.
You might think you can, but you shouldn’t.
Gregory didn’t love her, she knew that. To him, she was just a key to the door that led to what he wanted. He would never hold her hand and send shivers through every nerve-ending she possessed. He’d crush her until there was nothing left of her but tears and regret.
The words formed in her head on the approach to the cabin. They were cued up ready in her voice box to splurt out.
‘Roo, can I talk to you?’
She opened up the door to find Roo fast asleep.