Chapter 7 Bess
Chapter seven
Bess
Two little children are running in and out from under a sprinkler on their front lawn.
In and out, in and out. I can't hear their laughter, but their mouths are wide with delight, their hair slicked down on their skulls.
The late afternoon sun is caught in the droplets of water, making it look like the children are playing in a fountain of light.
I, too, feel like I've been caught in a fountain of light.
Removing the binoculars from my face, I rest them on my lap and close my eyes.
That letter.
In the meantime just this – I love you.
I'm aglow in the wake of reading it. Of rereading it.
It feels, I imagine, a little bit like what the first flush of love feels like. All that cortisol and oxytocin coursing through your veins, a lightness to your limbs, a pressing warmth in your chest.
I've memorised nearly every word.
Betelgeuse will anchor our love in time and space.
Taken out of context it almost sounds corny, but when delivered in the middle of an expression of love between two people who might never see each other again, it's utterly beautiful.
I've never been much interested in star gazing, but I'm tempted to stay here until the stars come out and imagine what it must have felt like to have the language of a galaxy to share with someone you loved, who was elsewhere in the world, desperately trying to stay alive.
I know I can't ever imagine it. I'll never be able to comprehend those circumstances.
The door to the roof opens and closes, footsteps approach, and everything feels right in the world because Ed’s here.
Ed and I became friends almost as soon as he took over managing the Port Derrum Library.
I'd heard there was a new librarian in town.
I like librarians. How could someone not?
They're people who have dedicated their careers to the care of books and advocacy of reading, so should be somewhere around David Attenborough in the hierarchy of our species.
Naturally, I wanted to see if this one was someone I could give some time to.
So, I did a litmus test of their librarian sense of humour.
I walked up to the issues desk, and after I'd got over my surprise at the new librarian being a man and kicked myself for my gender-role assumptions, I said, "I'm looking for a book I read last year that had a profound effect on me.
" Then I delivered the line that might be a test of their librarian patience, or an opportunity to call me out for my witty jokestering.
"I can't remember what it was called, but it was green. "
Ed didn't miss a beat. "Was it The Very Hungry Caterpillar?"
I decided then and there that yes, this was a person I could happily give time to. Maybe a lot of it.
It was easy. Being mutually aggressively closed doors, we were safe. He was like that gay male friend every straight woman wishes they had because there's no possible chance they're going to try and get in your knickers. And I was like, I don't know, the sister he never knew he had?
"Can I have one of those?" he asks as he lowers himself into the empty sun lounger.
I unscrew the lid of the thermos and pour him a G'n'T.
He takes a sip, settles into his chair with an "Ahhhh", and gazes out over the houses. "Mrs Kavanagh hasn't cultivated multiple husbands yet?"
I laugh. "No. Why on earth would she want multiple husbands? No woman in her right mind would desire that."
"One to cook. One to mow the lawns and tend the garden. One to do maintenance. One to provide massages and clean the pool."
I hold up a finger. "You're forgetting the sexiest one. One to clean the house."
"Ah, yes." Ed nods. "Raphael. Raph when you're feeling frisky. He's definitely the favourite."
On a sigh, I say, "I could do with a Raphael. I wouldn't want to marry him, though. He could come once a week to service the house, service me, then fuck off again."
"True domestic bliss."
I "Amen" him and we settle into a silence that Ed eventually cracks with, "So. Quite a letter."
"Quite a letter," I agree. "I'm thinking World War Two?"
"I'd say so. The Bren gun's a bit of a clue. It wasn't in use until 1930."
"So, it could also be The Spanish Civil War?"
Ed "Hmm"s. "I don't think so. The language like 'ack ack', the careful censorship, the mention of being half a world away, the description of the desert. It's probably North Africa."
I nod. "Either way the sender and the recipient have to be dead."
"Yes."
"Which means discarding the letter in one of your rubbish bins is incredibly disrespectful to both of them. How could anyone willingly throw something as beautiful as that away?"
"I don't know. I really don't."
I think about this for a moment. "Do you have CCTV in the library?"
Ed gives me the sideways eye. "Ye-es. But I'd have to put in a request with justification to head office to have the video reviewed, and identifying who put a letter in a bin would not be considered good cause, I should think."
"You could say it's an important document that needs to be returned to its owner."
"Except its owner threw it in the bin. They'd see through that one pretty quickly."
He's right. Of course he's right. I slump into the lounger and raise my binoculars again.
The children are still playing in the sprinkler, and over in the street behind them.
..I couldn't care less. I lower them again, my heart no longer in it.
Instead, I take a large gulp of gin, wanting to prolong the afterglow of the letter.
Thinking I already know the answer, but wanting to hear it from someone who is actually experienced in it, I ask Ed, "Why do people chase love?"
He shifts in his seat. "Connection, companionship, brain chemicals? Because we're told it's an ideal? Because sometimes we can't help ourselves – love happens to us."
"You mean you fall in love without choosing to?" I’ve never been in love. I have no concept of what that pull towards desperate longing feels like, and having seen so much unhappiness in relationships – my own parents’ constant ups and downs, arguments and attempts at trying again – I’ve never wanted to.
But now I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve missed out on something… exceptional.
Ed's reply is soft. "Yeah."
"See. That's what I don't like about the process.
The lack of control over it. If I were to ever do love, if, I would want robust vetting beforehand.
Like a long lead-in time in which all foibles and incompatibilities were identified, then I could make an informed decision about whether I wanted to invest any emotion in that person. "
"It would save a lot of heartbreak." He doesn't quite say it wistfully, but I know it has to lie behind his words.
Ed has only ever talked about his relationship once after we shared a bottle and a half of semi-decent Chianti on top of this very roof last summer.
I'd rigged a chain of outdoor fairy lights from poles I'd duct taped to the lip of the roof and placed a ball of them in a large glass jar between the sun loungers. It was magical.
He had opened up about the reason for his move to Port Derrum. It was a new start, a place to take some time to recover from the end of his relationship.
As he told me everything, he didn't bother to wipe away the tears on his cheeks, or apologise for them.
I respect a man who's in touch with his emotions and doesn't excuse them.
Afterwards, I turned the fairy lights off and we picked all the constellations we knew. Orion's Belt was the first one on the very short list.
"You'll find someone again, Ed. You won't even have to try. You're not only handsome, but you work in one of those professions that make people swoon, like fire fighters and brain surgeons."
Ed raises one corner of his mouth. "Do you know that every single female who I told I was training to become a librarian, said 'Really?', like I'd just announced Henry Cavill was going to give them a personal strip tease?"
"They did not," I say through a laugh.
"Every single one."
As much as I feel obliged to scoff, I can well believe it. Many women would be happy to entertain an ideal with a man who looks like Ed. Except for me. Obviously. “You must have the ladies lining up.”
"In a town the size of Port Derrum?"
"All those yummy mummies coming in for Story Time. Their eyelids probably go into spasms from all the eyelash batting."
Ed laughs and the movement causes a lock of thick, ebony hair to fall over one eye. The remaining one is half closed so that his iris looks almost black through the curtain of dense lashes.
Other women, no doubt, would find the combination of wayward hair and thick lashes irresistible. One of them comes immediately to mind. "I saw the way that member of the House of Lords, Pauline Westerton-Whatsherface, smiled at you in the library last Tuesday. She looked positively hungry."
Ed grimaces. "God, it was intense, wasn't it? All those bleached teeth. She was beaming like a glow worm's doop valve."
"Doop valve?" I say through a laugh. "Where did you get that from? The Handbook of Glow Worm Anatomy for Six-Year-Olds?"
"'Arse' sounded too aggressive."
Ed never goes for aggressive. Cutting and funny, yes, but anything tending towards mean, no.
Next to my caustic thundercloud, he is sunshine and the sparkling angel dust that falls from butterfly wings.
Or something equally worthy. What I bring to the friendship is anyone's guess.
Perhaps we balance each other out, like yin and yang, or The Dark Side of the Force and whatever they call the light side. The Light Side presumably.
"Arse is too aggressive," I agree. "Especially as an endearment for your future wife."
Ed raises his eyebrows. "Oh I'm not going to marry her. I'm just going to use her for her body."
I stifle a laugh and poke my lip out in consideration. "She is kind of hot for someone who's old enough to be your dad's eccentric aunt."