Chapter 26
We enjoyed a leisurely lunch together, another meal where we didn’t have to rush because no one was urging us out from our table so someone else could sit down, and apart from that we talked so much that we almost forgot to eat.
He was kind and polite and – a thing I’d seldom encountered – gentle. People talked about gentlemen but very few of them actually were in my experience. There always seemed to be that dominance things that was so tiresome. The alpha male wanting to impress or control or belittle.
Why was this man still single, I wondered. Why hadn’t someone else snapped him up before now?
‘You’re such good company,’ I said, feeling very bold, possibly because I’d had two glasses of wine on top of a very small salad lunch. ‘Why are you still single?’
He sipped his espresso and replaced the cup carefully into the little saucer.
‘After my wife died, I just wanted to be alone. And then as the years went by I never found anyone who could possibly have replaced her.’
‘Ah. Yes, of course,’ I said, feeling rather uncomfortable.
And if I was honest I was a bit disappointed too, because I’d heard of this before. A man who was theoretically single but still mourning the death of his beloved wife. And yet at the same time I could understand and sympathise, and his lasting loyalty to her made me respect him even more.
Still, it dashed my hopes, the possibility that we were somehow becoming – what had he called it? – an item. Of course we weren’t, and how could I really understand his loss after all?
We’d had very different experiences. He’d been happily married with a wife who was practically an angel, while I had been unhappy with Fred but stuck it out for the sake of our son and our marriage vows.
Jack had told me about his extended family who would have given the Waltons a run for their money, whereas I had a few relations who I only ever communicated with in Christmas letters and the occasional phone call, and my son was even at that moment apparently turning my house into a cat rescue centre and possibly finding a new relationship with the local vet.
Which reminded me, I hadn’t had any more messages from Ben in the last days, and I assumed that he and Jenna were still canoodling on my sofa in between brushing the kittens and emptying the wine rack.
Oh well.
‘Of course, I have met other women over the years; in fact, a couple of years ago my granddaughters made it their mission to find me what they coyly refer to as a lady friend. They quickly lost interest because I wouldn’t or couldn’t cooperate,’ he said with a rueful smile.
‘But somehow you are different, I enjoy your company. I like being with you. I’m finding it very hard to get my work done because I keep wondering where you are.
I like the way you look after your friends, how you laugh. ’
My mouth went dry and I felt a thrill of excitement ripple down my spine. The closest Fred had come to saying anything like that was to say he liked the way I ironed his leisure shirts. And heaven knows, there were enough of them.
‘I enjoy your company too,’ I said, my lips sticking to my teeth. I took a sip of water. ‘We’ve had fun, haven’t we?’
‘We still have a few days to go,’ he said. ‘Let’s enjoy them.’
‘Yes, let’s,’ I said.
‘So shall we go and buy some Rab cake, and see what all the fuss is about?’
I took the street map out and spread it across the table, trying to remember where the shop was, and we tried to work it out, me spilling water across the table in my enthusiasm and him laughing about it.
In the end the waitress told us, putting a cross on the soggy map with her pen, and it was nowhere near where we had thought it was, but that didn’t matter either.
We strolled through the narrow streets, looking into the shop windows, past the ancient pharmacy, through the tree-lined squares.
After a few minutes he took my hand to draw my attention to something, perhaps a beautiful mug in one of the pottery studio windows because I had said I wanted to take one back for Ben.
And then in a way that was gentle and friendly and not at all possessive, he didn’t let go.
And once more it changed from us walking the same route, to us walking together. And I liked it. I liked it a lot.
Younger people didn’t seem to hold hands, I’d noticed. Perhaps it wasn’t a cool thing to do any more. Which was a pity.
* * *
We returned to the boat just before six o’clock and he went off to do some work, saying he would see me later, and I went back to my cabin and sat outside on my little balcony overlooking the road which ran along the quayside, thinking about what he had said and what I had said and dissecting everything with the thoroughness of a hormonal teenage girl.
Suddenly, I could hear the honking of car horns and some excited shouting, and it was coming nearer every second.
And then out of nowhere, a stream of perhaps fifty or sixty cars went slowly along the quayside, all of them blowing their horns and flashing their headlights. What on earth was all that about?
There were young people, smartly dressed, hanging out of the windows.
Some of them were waving huge Croatian flags; all of them were shouting and laughing.
I stood up and waved back and the noise from the cars increased.
And then in one of the cars I saw a couple who quite obviously had just got married.
He in a smart black suit, she in a voluminous white creation which almost filled the back of the car.
Behind them came any number of bridesmaids crammed into a limo, all of them dressed in pink, and then two cars filled with children and their parents, who were desperately hanging on to their offspring to stop them from falling out of the open windows.
This carried on for a long time, and other people on the boats came out onto their balconies to see what was going on. Harriet, whose cabin was next to mine, waved at the parade.
‘Aren’t they fun? Must be a wedding, I’ve heard about this,’ she shouted over the noise. ‘Do they realise this road is a dead end? They will have to all come back again!’
She was right; about ten minutes later, the whole parade passed by again, going in the opposite direction.
Some of the bridesmaids were then sitting, waving on the sills of the open car windows, their pink dresses billowing, and the whole street had practically come to a standstill, watching them pass.
People on the pavements were waving back.
Some were throwing flowers onto the road, dogs were barking and running alongside the cars, and a couple of young men let off confetti canons out of the car windows, and there was a shower of gold and silver in the air.
Harriet and I laughed at the excitement, the spectacle of a young couple starting out their married life with such a display of solidarity from their friends and families.
I certainly hadn’t felt like that the day I married Fred.
I’d felt more like a walk-on in an event that he had designed.
The place had been filled with his work contacts (‘good for business’) and a selection of his relations (‘we have to or they will be offended’) who had clustered together, working their way through the buffet like a ravening hoard, unwilling to speak to my family.
His mother in maroon velvet sulking because she wasn’t the centre of attention, his father trying to find out the cost of the reception from the bar staff.
Fred boisterous and slightly drunk, his best man a sallow chap called Glen, making a speech that was somehow dull and yet tasteless.
‘Isn’t this exciting? You’d never get away with that in Redditch,’ Harriet yelled.
‘They’d all be arrested,’ I shouted back.
Further along, Don had come out onto his balcony to see what was happening.
‘What the heck is all this racket about?’ he bellowed.
‘They’ve just got married,’ I shouted back. ‘I think they do this to ward off evil spirits.’
His expression said it all. ‘It shouldn’t be allowed. Someone should call the police.’
‘Oh, don’t be such a party pooper,’ I said, ‘it’s fun. And anyway, look over there.’
I pointed to where two young police officers were standing on the pavement, and they weren’t exactly waving, but they didn’t look as though they were going to do anything about the parade.
‘For heaven’s sake,’ Don growled, and went back into his cabin, slamming the door behind him in a marked manner.
After the noise had died down, I went and had a shower, reasoning it was a good time to take advantage of the decent water pressure. And then, wrapped in my robe, I had a little nap. It had been a very successful day.
* * *
We all met up on the top deck an hour later to have a drink before dinner.
The exuberant atmosphere of the wedding parade had obviously affected us all.
Anna was in her new blue creation, the deep décolleté filled in with a sparkly necklace, Harriet in a twinkly top and black trousers.
Evelyn and Marjorie looked similarly celebratory, and I wore my new yellow dress with the spaghetti straps and the matching wrap that I had bought in Nice. It felt like quite a party.
‘Here’s to that newly married couple, health and happiness to them,’ Evelyn said as we shared the bottle of champagne she had opened to start off the festivities. ‘Wasn’t that a splendid parade earlier on? So joyous.’
‘Did you really think so?’ Dawn said from behind her. ‘I was quite rattled and it’s brought on one of my heads. I took two aspirin to get over it.’
‘Perhaps you should have gone into the cupboard under the stairs?’ Marjorie said.
Dawn flounced off with her nose in the air, greatly offended.
‘Oh dear, now you’ve upset her,’ Evelyn said.
‘I don’t much care,’ Marjorie said. ‘She’s a human maelstrom, sucking the joy out of everything. My sympathies lie with Craig, even if he is a bit of an oaf.’
‘He can’t play bridge either,’ Evelyn said, ‘he never took any notice of Don’s discards. Jack made mincemeat out of him.’
‘Ah, Jack,’ Anna said smoothly, ‘did I see you two holding hands like the Start-Rite kids earlier on?’
‘You might,’ I said, sipping at my champagne.
Harriet sighed. ‘How lovely. And one might say romantic.’
‘Might one indeed,’ I said, trying to look mysterious.
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man,’ Evelyn said, looking over my shoulder.
‘Good evening, everyone,’ Jack said, ‘do you mind if I join you? And did you see the wedding parade earlier on?’
Marjorie nodded. ‘It was hard not to; I was very worried about that chap hanging out of the car waving that massive flag though. One slip and he could have been badly injured.’
‘I think that’s part of the fun,’ Evelyn said. ‘When one is young one doesn’t think about such things. Just enjoy the moment.’
I felt the lightest touch on my shoulder as Jack sat down next to me, and Harriet poured him a glass of champagne.
‘I expect they have all gone off to the wedding reception now. We were just toasting their future,’ she said.
Jack held up his glass and clinked it against mine.
‘To the future,’ he said.
Yes, I thought, to the future.
Whatever it might hold, it had to be different from the one I had envisioned. I wanted it to be brighter, clearer and more enjoyable. One where I could make positive choices and have fun, and this holiday had shown me that I was more than capable of that.