‘That sounds like very niche market porn,’ I respond. ‘Neo-Nazis skinheads and a face full of ejaculate.’
Simultaneously, the three of us burst into dirty, sniggering giggles.
‘But, hey, what about when he, you know...’ Ivy’s words trail off, her eyes comically wide. For a minute, I think she’s trying to convey meaning by telepathy before her head begins to move like she’s developed a sudden tic.
‘When he what?’ Natasha asks, frowning.
‘You know, when he goesdownstairs?’Her tiny button nose scrunches, the last word spoken so quietly, it’s more breath than actual word.
‘What, down to the salon?’
‘Nooo.Downstairs.’ Ivy puts her thumbs to pointing use once again. ‘Wouldn’t he need to shampoo his face afterwards? Get out the detangling spray?’
‘Nah. A beard saysI can handle the fall out.’
‘The only hair he’d be plucking out of his teeth would be his own,’ I add, sniggering.
‘Honestly!’
‘A beard saysI’m adventurous,’ says Nat.
‘My George was a wee bit adventurous.’ June’s sleepy voice floats up from the fireside chair. ‘He was even known to drop anchor in poo bay from time to time.’
The room is suddenly pin droppingly silent, all eyes turning to June, though her own remain closed, her head resting back against the old wing-back chair.
‘Your grandad?’Ivy silently mouths the question to Natasha, who shakes her head in response.
‘George was my first husband and I was little more than a child bride, but we married young back then. A soldier he was. He died just after the war, the poor love. He was such a bonny man.’ Her tone is almost wistful, her eyes blinking open, her gaze touching each of us in turn. ‘Tall, dark and handsome. He was like something out of one of yon Mills and Boon novels, only my Georgie was very well endowed, you know in the... aye, down there.’ Closing the book on her lap, she taps the cover lightly. ‘They didn’t write about those bits in my day. But, my goodness, was the man ever adventurous!’
‘Nan!’ What sounds like admonishment from Natasha morphs quickly into wicked glee. ‘You dark horse!’
‘What? Oh, not me, dear,’ she replies, with an air of a large blue-eyed owl. Sitting straighter, she begins to pull the sides of her pink Fair Isle twin set closer. ‘I think he was one of them, what do they call them these days? Bi-scotti?’
Maybe less owl and more cuckoo.
‘Italian biscuits?’ questions Ivy.
‘I think she means bi-curious,’ I say, uncurling myself from the chair to reach for June’s empty sherry glass.
‘Aye, that’s it,’ she agrees. ‘Just plain greedy, if you ask me. It was probably for the best that he passed,’ she adds with a sigh. ‘I was heartbroken at the time, but I had a hard time sharing him, you see.’ Her guileless gaze stares up at me and for a minute, it’s like she can see through me, right into my very head.
‘How did it happen? Did he die overseas?’ My words are little more than a whisper and I find the fingers of both hands curled into my chest. Heart pangs; it’s a word most are familiar with, but not many truly understand. I’d always thought it to be brain-based, a sort of an emotional thing. But it isn’t. It’s an actual feeling, both shocking and physically painful, like catching your shin on the corner of a low table, or being pinched.
Only the injury is to your heart.
Overseas. In some strange field.
Or a lonely stretch of water with the sun beating down.
‘Ocht, no!’ June’s voice brings me out of my nightmarish reverie with a snap. ‘He was hit by the number twenty-three bus coming out of one of them Turkish bath places in London. Like I said, he was a greedy man.’
The others try to smother laughter as, like an automaton, my fingers reach again for June’s glass when her small hand catches my wrist. My eyes don’t meet hers, or more accurately, I can’t look. Not without crying and I’m trying to do less of that. Instead, I stare at the back of her hand; the blue veins beneath skin like a covering of delicate parchment, the unexpected elegance in her fingers, and how the light from the wood fire plays on the pale gold of her wedding band.
‘You survive,’ she says softly. ‘You get out of bed and put your knickers on, just like any other day. Because giving up isn’t an option, and it’s not, what they would want.’
I do look at her then as she grasps my hand, holding it between her own. ‘I won’t tell you it goes away, but one day, you’ll look back and realise it hurts a wee bit less, and then a wee bit less again.’ Her tone is earnest as she begins to pat my clasped hand. ‘Then someday you’ll meet someone else, just like I met my Harold. There’s a Harold out there for you somewhere. I just know it, hen.’
But I don’t deserve a Harold. People like me don’t deserve a second chance.
