“If you’re ever in Southend, come down the fish shack on the estuary at Old Leigh,” Dave said. “The cockles are on us.” I thanked him and promised I would. “Mind how you go, lad.”
If I weren’t so British, I might have told them I thought they were wonderful role models for their grandchildren, or even thanked them for being so unconditionally loving to their grandson that they tried to land him a date. But I amquiteBritish. So, instead, I thanked them again for the crisps and the Coke, turned on my heels, and made my way back through the crowd towards Mayfair.
Chapter46
Ludo
“Tell me again why you’re sitting on my chesterfield, in front of the television, instead of celebrating the coronation with your sweetheart?” Uncle Ben said, his words mumbled.
The thing about being eighty-eight is you tend to have zero patience for the kind of tiptoeing social niceties that govern these kinds of exchanges for everyone else. Uncle Ben blew a ring of smoke and eyeballed me intently. It was evening, and the velvet curtains were drawn. Benjamin Britten was playing on the gramophone (yes, really), and the telly was repeating gilded scenes from the big day. Bimpe Lasisi popped up on the screen, and I remembered regaining consciousness on a Shetland hilltop and momentarily asking myself if the Church of England had it completely wrong and God was, in fact, a Nigerian-born British woman. I thought of Sunny and how wonderful he had been that day. I thought about last night. Sunny was so incensed, so vehement. Was he telling the truth? What if hehadn’tbeen using me to get to my father after all? Would he really have turned down the job? What if he really did just like me for me? Had I made a bally pig’s breakfast of it all? Uncle Ben blew a puff of smoke into my face.
“Wakey-wakey, dear boy.”
“I met this most tremendous couple down on the Mall,” I said.
“George and Philippa?”
“Bertha and Dave.”
“Let me guess! Union Jack hats and blazers? Commemorative tea towels to wave at the TV cameras? A thermos in their rucksack filled with mother’s ruin?”
I nodded. “That was the general vibe.” I felt a twinge of discomfort.
“They always look like they’re having so much fun, those people, when you see them on the telly.”
Uncle Ben meant no harm, but it would have felt disloyal not to defend my new friends.
“They were good company. Salt of the earth. They’d give you their last penny. Tried to give me their grandson, actually.”
Uncle Ben laughed.
“And you declined?”
“I did. But if their grandson is as loving and generous as his grandparents, some boy out there is going to be very lucky someday.” I smiled, thinking about Bertha and Dave, and sipped at my sherry. “Honestly, Uncle Ben, they were proper in love. After more than forty years of marriage, they were still holding hands and sneaking kisses like they were in sixth form.”
“Properin love, were they?” Uncle Ben said, eyebrows raised. I hadn’t even realised I’d said it. Uncle Ben drew on his cheroot, not letting his eye contact drop for even a second, then blew the smoke out dramatically, like he was in an old Hollywood film. “Did you pick up that kind of language from Bertha and Dave? Or is that the influence of that sweetheart of yours?” I decided to ignore this.
“I want someone I can be like that with, Uncle Ben. That’s all I want.”
“Someone to be barking mad with?”
“If that’s what love is, then yes! I want someone I can share the things I love with, like going to the theatre, or spending Sunday morning reading the newspapers and caffeinating a hangover into submission, or singing show tunes on a little trip to the seaside.”
“Can’t you do all that with that ginger bit of rough you abandoned on Hampstead Heath?”
Uncle Ben had seen me come back to the house the previous night, had seen the floods of tears. He’d seen me slink along the fence line to avoid everyone at the party and shut myself in the summer house. He’d knocked on my door, coaxed me out like a rat with cheese, and sat on my little porch with me, looking out over the firepit, listening to me pour my heart out.
“I’m through with Sunny, and you know why,” I said. I sipped my sherry. “He was using me.”
“Was he, though? I’ve been thinking about what you said last night, and for a journalist, you didn’t really present any ironclad evidence.”
“Evidence? My father was practically offering him a job right in front of me. Sunnytoldme he wanted to work for a paper like theSentinelsomeday, and that he hated working for theBulletin.”
Uncle Ben coughed and took a gulp of his sherry to clear his pipes.
“So, when you fell and he looked after you, that was part of some scheme to get a job at theSentinel, was it?”
“Well, no?—”
