Matchday 33 #6
Nicola is waiting at the front steps, waving and grinning.
Dad’s birthday is usually a somber affair, quiet but for the scraping of cutlery on the dishes.
But a good football result could always hold back the well of grief for himself; it’s a welcome relief to see it might work on Mum as well, under the right circumstances.
She pulls the roast out of the oven before Oliver’s even out of his coat, fussing over the trimmings and refusing any help. She wipes her hands on the tea towel sticking out of her pocket and turns him by the shoulders to face her.
“Come on, then,” she says, cupping one cheek in each palm. “Let’s have a look at you, triumphant one.”
“Same as ever, Mum,” he replies, stooping slightly to kiss her forehead.
“Hmm,” she hums. “You look right as rain. Very healthy. Some nice color on you.”
He feels the warm glow of pride at her assessment. They move toward the dining nook; he offers her a wineglass and proffers his own pint of water to clink.
“To Dad?” Oliver asks and she smiles in a sort of faraway manner as they touch the glass rims together.
Nicola seats herself at the head of the table in an elegant unfolding of limbs, taking a swallow of wine and beginning to serve them both.
Oliver watches her carefully, taking in the pepper of gray in her plush fringe, the wedding band on a gold chain kissing the stitched edge of her collar.
She looks nice in her civvies, hair down and scrubs off.
“Mum?” he asks around a mouthful of peas, before he can lose his courage.
“Ollie?”
“When did you know—like, when were you sure that it wasn’t just a crush, with Dad? That it was real?”
The words spill out in a jumble and he immediately feels guilty for raising it now.
But it’s Dad’s birthday, and he is his namesake, and he walks around with his face on his own every day, and he misses him, and he never knew him at all.
He wants to know when they chose each other, the other Oliver and Nicola.
He knows the basics, the movie-premise version of events: Nicola Baird sat next to Oliver Harris in the library during a rainy primary school lunch break and they started a conversation that never stopped.
They lived in each other’s pockets, friends, then family, then lovers.
Nicola waited for Oliver when he left London to go to Oxford, and he came back to her, working the family bookstall while she finished nursing college, staying on even longer to account for the newly arrived Oliver, longer still when he was too sick to work anywhere else, right up until he stopped working at all.
When Dad was admitted to the hospital, Nicola was almost done with a specialized nursing license in the next building over, and she wasn’t working in the cancer ward, but she reviewed all of his treatment plans anyway, discussed every avenue with his doctors.
Oliver spent most of that time with his grandparents, haunting the bookstall, or underfoot at the hospital, learning medical terms he was too young for.
The end of the story doesn’t feel right to Oliver, and it never will, but it stays the same: Dad gone.
The bookstall out of business within two years, caught between a recession and the first wave of gentrification in Camden.
His grandparents, ill and frail and aging rapidly, one after the other, then gone too, before Oliver made his debut.
Oliver alone in the academy, but not too alone, clinging to his football and to Maggie. Nicola working, always working.
It takes her a long time to answer—like she’s thinking about all those things too.
“What makes you ask, darling?” Her eyes are shining, her voice is low. He feels guilty, prone with sorrow, but not any less curious.
“I met someone, I think,” he starts, courage not stretching quite far enough to say who or where. “But it’s not…not like I expected.” That much is certainly true.
She gives him another watery smile, looking not a little shocked to hear it.
“That’s wonderful, wonderful news—for God’s sake,” she says, suddenly dabbing at her eyes with the old cloth napkin on her lap.
“Leaky as an old roof, the state of me.” Oliver laughs, half-crying himself.
He wants her to ask for more details. He wishes he’d never brought it up.
“I wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything, those early days, when every choice is laden with love,” she sighs.
“Your dad was such a romantic, he could make sharing the water bill feel like Austen wrote it.”
“He was?” Oliver asks tentatively, thinking of reading Pride and Prejudice with Leo on their way to the Midlands.
“Oh, terribly so. He wanted such a courtship. It moved so slow I wasn’t even convinced he really liked me until he told me how much he missed me at Oxford.”
“How did you find out for sure?”
Nicola takes a careful mouthful of carrot, chewing slowly.
“Well, he came back,” she says softly. “He could have stayed on, found graduate funding and tried to write. But he wanted to help your grandparents, and he wanted to be with me. When he finished his degree, he said we should get a flat together and it was my turn to focus on school. I was so shocked! Straight to living together. Uni instead of marriage. What a scandal,” she says.
Oliver is hanging on every word, drinking in the images of them as he’s seen in old photos, terrible haircuts and healthy, handsome faces.
He has a thousand more questions bubbling up inside him, but he doesn’t want to risk stopping her from going on.
He’s not sure they’ve ever talked like this before, as Nicola the wife and Oliver the son.
It’s always been the nurse and the footballer, no ghosts to speak of.
It was safer that way, almost like it never happened.
“I think it made me nervous how much I wanted to say yes. I didn’t want to tie him down, I was afraid he’d feel trapped.
Everyone gave him quite a bit of trouble for leaving, for going to Oxford.
They thought he was up himself, with his literary salons and his big degree.
But he was just smart, he loved learning.
He wanted to read everything. I didn’t want him to come back to prove anything, I wanted to be sure it was for me.
So I told him I’d go to school wherever I first got an offer, and if it was London he had a deal.
” It’s pragmatic, such a grown-up and feminist sensibility.
It’s so Nicola, every inch the mother he knows.
“But he was so happy when Royal Free came calling. I knew he loved me then. I told him, ‘What are the odds?’ and we moved right in, engaged a year later. I didn’t admit it until later, but University Hospital in Southampton accepted me a week earlier. ”
“What?” Oliver gasps, shocked into laughter. “Seriously?”
“When I got the letter, I was so disappointed!” She has such a pleasant laugh, giggling like a schoolgirl.
Nicola is flushed with wine and reminiscence; Oliver feels like he’s getting gossip he isn’t quite supposed to know.
“I knew then, what I really wanted, for me, was to be where he was. So I decided to hedge my bets…I just wanted to be on his team. I wanted us to choose to live our life together. To choose our life in Camden.”
“Team” thumps and echoes, soft in Oliver’s ears like his own heartbeat. Who wouldn’t want that? Even if it scares you, even if it’s a risk. Maybe especially then.
“If you knew then that it would mean you’d be alone now, would you do it again?
You don’t have to tell me, I mean—I just—” He has to know, even if he doesn’t have a right to.
Was it all worth it to her? If he lost something like Dad, would he survive it?
Nicola did, somehow, but she’s always been stronger than everyone else.
“It’s all right, Ollie,” she tells him, staring him down with the same green eyes as his.
“You’re allowed to be curious, my love. I’m happy to tell you.
It was hard to learn to do everything all over again, without his company.
I’d be up half the night crying and then at two in the morning I’d make a cake for you to have after school, just to keep my hands busy.
I’m sure everyone thought I was raving. But we had each other.
We weren’t alone. And you were so strong.
I remember thinking, sometimes, Who’s taking care of who? ”
“I mostly remember football, to be honest,” Oliver admits, shamefaced. “I just wanted to go to the academy. The more I ran, the less sad I was.”