Life Begins (47 page)

‘Dominic, stop! Get up, this is unbearable.’ Charlotte hung her head. ‘And awkward. And your
knees –
I thought they were hurting… Aren’t they hurting?’ she pleaded, when he stayed where he was.

‘Not till I’ve heard these reasons. I’ll suffer until then.’

‘Oh, God.’ Charlotte groaned, dropping her forehead on to the steering-wheel. ‘The fact is…’ she turned off the engine and flicked on the hazard lights, although the street was empty ‘… your proposal – the bookshop – it holds a lot of… appeal. I’ve even put my money in one of those accounts where you can make a withdrawal every three months without losing interest.’

‘Well, that’s splendid.’ Dominic dropped his arms to his sides, looking puzzled. ‘So what’s the problem?’

Charlotte swallowed. ‘The
problem
is that – as they say in America – I have
feelings
…’ She blew out her cheeks and whistled, her face burning.

‘We all have those, Charlotte.’

He had sat back on his heels and was staring at her, his dark brown eyes unreadable.

‘For you,’ she spluttered, slapping her forehead with a palm and keeping her face averted. ‘There. That’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say, so… er… tread carefully and all that. In fact, in the circumstances, it’s probably best if we stick to the taxi plan.’

‘No, I can’t say I agree with you there. And the refusing of my proposal, I’m against that too. And what was the other thing? Oh,
yes, feelings.
I might have to take issue with you on that score as well.’ Dominic shuffled closer to the window. ‘Charlotte? Look at me, please. I need you to look at me when I say this next thing.’ He took hold of her chin and turned her head until she was facing him. ‘I was frozen. Rose and I were frozen. You and Sam –’

‘Sam hit Rose.’

‘There was that, yes, but she’s a complicated minx and in those days a very sad one, too. Sam was the first to get through. I’ll love him for that, always, whatever on earth happens between them… Relationships at thirteen–’ He scowled. ‘Can you even begin to remember what that was like?’

Yes
, actually,’ Charlotte admitted, her thoughts flying back to Adrian’s kind blunt features and milk-jug ears. ‘Yes, I can. Though I believe Sam and Rose are just really good friends.’ She wasn’t euphoric yet, just calm – calmer than she could ever recall being in her life – as if she knew already that, after all the stumbling, her instincts were leading her in the right direction at last.

Now, where were we? Ah, yes, you were saying you had feelings. Is that correct?’ He took her hand like a doctor about to test for a pulse.

Charlotte nodded, trying to concentrate, trying, even at this relatively late stage when she could feel the warmth of his interest and energy, not to get her hopes up. ‘I think it began in that bloody churchyard –’

‘Ah, and thank God for that bloody churchyard and for Sam, and for house sales and ill-functioning cars and all the other things that have led me to you.’

‘What?’

His mouth was so close she could smell a faint sweetness on his breath; chocolate or maybe coffee. ‘But what about –’

‘What about what?’ He was slipping both hands through her hair now, combing her scalp, until his fingertips cupped the curve of her skull.

‘Your – that woman…’ Charlotte gasped. ‘In the restaurant – at sports – oh, please stop,’ she begged, ‘or I won’t be able to. I won’t be responsible for my actions.’

‘I don’t want you to be,’ he whispered, ‘ever again, not with me.’ He nuzzled his lips and the long nose she had tried so hard not to like, against her hair, her forehead and into the hollows of her eyes.

‘That woman–’ It was hard to speak. The freefall of wanting and being wanted, she had forgotten it. How had she forgotten?

‘She’s called Petra. She’s Polish. I tried my best to like her because Benedict commanded it and obeying my brother has led me to much happiness in the past.’ He brushed his lips along her chin. ‘I have many theories about Petra, current favourite being that she’s on the lookout for an English – preferably rich – husband. Benedict’s thinking of obliging – for his own convenience.’

‘Benedict?’ Charlotte pulled back in astonishment.

Dominic took the opportunity to struggle – with exaggerated grimacing – to his feet. ‘I don’t suppose I’m allowed back in the car, am I? That is, if I’m still capable of walking.’

‘Of course, of course – get in!’ Charlotte cried, guilty for his discomfort, which she had quite forgotten, but unable to resist laughing as he made a show of hobbling round to the passenger seat. ‘Poor old man – is that premature arthritis or what?’

‘Insults. That’s a
very
good sign,’ Dominic muttered, closing the door and pulling her as far into his arms as the gear stick would allow. ‘Now I’ve lost my thread again. Where were we?’

‘Benedict.’

‘Ah, yes.’ He stroked her hair, looking serious for a moment. ‘My brother is gay but in need of wife. Rock Hudson syndrome. It’s a secret, but we’ve done that before, haven’t we, Charlotte – told each other secrets and I thought it felt bloody marvellous, didn’t you?’

‘Bloody marvellous,’ she murmured, wondering that waiting to be kissed could feel almost as good as the thing itself. ‘I wish he did like me, all the same.’ She sighed, then added with mock-petulance, ‘He’s so handsome and famous – I
want
him to like me.’

Dominic laughed, pulling her closer. ‘Benedict likes you very much indeed. He’s just protective. He thought you were far too beautiful to be interested in a donkey like me, and then, of course, there was the red hair, which worried him because of Maggie. But you’re nothing like her,
nothing.
’ He paused. ‘And, of course, he believed that odious rumour your son started – the bloody doctor. Christ, at those sports the other week, when he kissed you, I was close to murder, I tell you.’

‘Did Henry kiss me?’ Charlotte exclaimed, delighted. ‘I don’t even remember.’

‘Twice. Once on each cheek… like this. But not like this, or like this, or…’

Now Charlotte, tangled in her sheets, rolled her face into her pillows. A four-by-four, attempting to drive the correct way down the street, had disturbed them with several indignant hoots. She had had to reverse the Volkswagen, with her ears singing and the world spinning and Dominic, not entirely himself either, offering unreliable advice about whether to put her left or right hand up or down.

Rolling on to her back, Charlotte opened her eyes to watch the silvery light of dawn thicken through the gap in the curtains. Her body, pumped with hope and excitement, was more than ready for the day. She turned to her alarm clock, willing the hands to move faster.

‘And there was me thinking I’d worn you out,’ Dominic murmured, sliding across the bed and slipping his arms round her.

‘You did, totally. I’m awake because I’m buzzing… happy.’

‘Hmm, that doesn’t bode well… Your happiness, sleep – can’t I have both?’

Charlotte lay as still as she could, fighting a bursting urge to ask if it could really be okay – them, the recklessness of running a business together. Dominic would say yes, because he was kind and basking still in the after-glow of having made love. But he didn’t know. He couldn’t know. And neither could she. No one could. And he was exhausted, she reminded herself, because of her, he had said, all the weeks of weighing up what to do, afraid of rejection, of defying Benedict, of following his heart.

He had fallen quiet, his chin resting lightly on her shoulder.
Charlotte, too, let her eyes close, not to sleep but to savour his warmth and the lazy, lovely knowledge that she was back at the beginning again, ready not to need answers, ready to believe and be believed in.

Having asserted her desire for a quiet birthday so volubly, Charlotte was aware that she had no right whatsoever to bemoan a mild sense of let-down when the day presented itself with no more fanfare than making herself an exceptionally early cup of tea. Nor was there much to celebrate in the task of having to rouse a sleepy teenager for a drive to a field in the middle of West Sussex.

‘Will there be food?’

‘Of course there won’t be food. It’s a balloon, not a cafeteria.’

‘Happy birthday by the way,’ Sam muttered, shuffling into the kitchen in his pyjamas a few minutes later. ‘I made you something at school but it needs to be fired. Shall I tell you what it is?’

‘No!’ Charlotte pretended to be appalled. ‘I’d much prefer a surprise.’ In a bid to enliven things a little, she fetched the small parcel her mother had so prematurely handed over in March and opened it while they ate breakfast, making as big a to-do as she could of picking off the Sellotape. Sam watched sleepily, taking desultory bites of toast and jam until, from among a froth of tissue paper, Charlotte pulled out her once beloved set of babushka dolls. ‘Well, my goodness.’ Surprised, disappointed, having expected bath salts or something useful for the kitchen, she turned the ornament over, wondering if Jean in her new, more positive frame of mind would ever have chosen to make a gift of something so unlikely.

‘Can I have a go?’ Sam begged, wide awake suddenly, hastily licking the jam off his fingers.

‘Of course. It was mine when I was little. I expect Granny thought I missed it.’

Still puzzling, Charlotte drifted to the sink with their dirty breakfast plates. She had been very fond of the dolls once upon a time. And Reggie had varnished some brightness back into the paintwork, she remembered suddenly, shortly before he died. Maybe that was it – Reggie’s handiwork, a memento infused with his love…

Behind her, Sam let out an unguarded, girlish squeal.

‘Wow, awesome! Mum, look what I found – right in the middle. Do you think Granny meant to put it there? Is it real gold? It’s got a picture on it of a lion. Awesome,’ he repeated, trying what Charlotte could see now was a ring – gleaming and huge – on each of his fingers, and frowning in disappointment when not one of the ten proved big enough.

‘Well, my goodness, it’s his signet ring,’ she said quietly, taking it from Sam and cupping it in the palm of her hand, feeling its weight, remembering the groove it had worn in the little finger of Reggie’s left hand. ‘It was your – your grandfather’s… my father’s… That is, he
was
my father because he looked after me from when I was born but my real father died before I ever knew him.’

Sam had taken back the ring and was studying the crest. ‘That’s bad luck, but I guess if you never knew him, you couldn’t really miss him, could you?’

‘No,’ Charlotte murmured, humbled by this guileless summary and the still innocent heart responsible for it. Her world had darkened when she was so young; a small piece of bad timing – stumbling into the shed – and she had been turned upside-down. Sam had his troubles aplenty, but
nothing yet – give or take a close shave or two – on that scale. ‘It’s what they call seal-engraved,’ she continued, sneaking the chance for a quick ruffle of his hair, ‘which means you can dip it in sealing wax and close letters and envelopes with it – like in the olden days.’

‘Wow,’ Sam exclaimed, even more fervently. ‘I want to do that now.’ He began looking around, as if sealing wax might be found in one of the kitchen drawers.

‘Not now. Now it’s going somewhere safe and you are going upstairs to get dressed.’

‘Will it be mine one day?’ he persisted, hovering in the doorway.

‘Yes
, I suppose it might,’ Charlotte conceded, laughing. ‘But for now it’s
mine
, and today is
my
birthday and if you don’t get a move on that balloon will take off without us.’

Sam reappeared a few minutes later, not only dressed but clutching a card – clearly printed off the computer – with the number forty emblazoned in crimson across the front. ‘The thing I made, it’s jewellery, too, but not a ring,’ he blurted, clearly fearing the inadequacy of his offering, both on account of its absence and the tremendous treasure that had been concealed in the gift from his grandmother.

‘I shall love it,’ Charlotte assured him, every trace of let-down gone as they sped off with no rush-hour traffic to worry about – it was only just seven o’clock on a Saturday – and the clear skies the forecasters had promised already in evidence overhead.

Sam was soon fast asleep, his fleece bunched up to cushion his head against the car window. He was tired because it was so early, of course, but Charlotte also suspected he might have guessed at her hopes of using the enforced intimacy of the car to quiz him on his feelings about the Dominic situation. ‘But it doesn’t matter,’ he had
cried, with some exasperation the last time she tried, ‘because it’s just what’s happening, isn’t it?’

It was indeed what was happening, Charlotte mused, and she was as powerless in the face of it as a pebble against a tidal wave. And, as Dominic had once so wisely pointed out, to know another’s heart was a rare privilege and if Sam wanted leaving alone she would jolly well have to manage it.

With only a small truck parked in the corner of the field, Charlotte thought at first that she had the wrong time or place. But soon they and a few of the other fourteen would-be passengers had been invited to sign registration forms and assist with the unpacking of the equipment, which included a fat bale-shaped bag containing the balloon in its deflated form. Sam, taking orders from the burly man in charge, was in heaven, tugging and pulling at the contents of the bag until an astonishing sea of material had emerged, covering most of the field. They then stood side by side, equally entranced, as pumping blasts of cold air from a small, noisy machine on the back of the truck inflated the sea into a floating, brightly striped bubble the size of a multi-storey car park.

‘And here’s your other present,’ Sam shouted, over the roar, as a silver Mercedes swept to the end of the line of other parked cars. ‘I told them to do it, I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Who to do what?’ Charlotte shouted back, knowing the answer even before Dominic and Rose scrambled into view, rubbing their pale faces and in an assortment of clothes – Wellingtons, shorts, scarves – which suggested that they, too, had struggled somewhat with the dawn start.