A Christmas Gift Page 7

  ‘Poor Bear.’ Randall couldn’t get his mouth to form the L in Blair very well. He asked a question, which, on the second attempt, Georgine got as, ‘Is she very upset?’

  She paused to consider, cooking tongs dangling from her fingers. ‘Putting a brave face on, but I think it’s rocked her. She wasn’t expecting it and she still loves him.’

  ‘Gi’ her a ’ug.’

  Georgine grinned. ‘I will. I’ll tell her it’s from you.’ She turned the sausages and took a tin of tomatoes from the cupboard. ‘By the way, a new guy at Acting Instrumental turns out to be someone I went to school with, Rich Garrit. I didn’t immediately recognise him. He’s changed his name to Joe Blackthorn for some reason.’ It made her stomach drop to remember the shock of the realisation.

  Randall made a puffing noise, trying to get a word out. Georgine gave him time as she opened the tomato tin. Finally, he managed, ‘Criminal?’

  ‘Blimey. Hope not.’ At school, she reminded herself with an unpleasant thrill, he had hung with all the rough guys and it had been really weird the way he’d turned on her one day and then disappeared. Nobody had known where. Georgine had even put aside her hurt and anger to ask his sister, Chrissy, but Chrissy had just shrugged and turned away. Then, in a matter of weeks, Chrissy had gone too. Unnerving rumours of Garrit doing away with both children had swirled around the school until the teachers had heard and said that Rich and Chrissy had each transferred to schools out of the area.

  Starved of oxygen, the flames of rumour went out, but Georgine had struggled to cope with the loss of a friend. It had been like a bereavement. For the first time in her life she’d become moody and difficult, which had led, eventually, to that truculent moment of stupidity that had changed everything for everybody she loved.

  Her family became a distorted thing. Dad lost everything. Mum left. Blair developed an awkward relationship with money. It had all stemmed from Georgine and those moods, and it seemed as if she’d spent her life since then battling the fallout. It was probably why now she liked everything to be neat and controlled.

  ‘Careful with him.’ Randall groped for his hankie to wipe his mouth before he finished. ‘Ve’y careful, p’ease.’

  Georgine’s heart warmed at the love in her father’s gaze. ‘I’m meeting him at The Three Fishes at eight. It’s nice and public.’

  ‘’Kay.’ Randall nodded. ‘Tex me later?’

  ‘I will. Now, I’m just putting the bacon under. I’ll give you three rashers.’ She moved on to tell him how the Christmas show was going. He loved to hear about her job and she loved to talk about it, so the subject lasted them through dinner and the washing up. Then Georgine checked Randall’s bank account for him, exhibiting her phone screen so he could nod in satisfaction that his benefit was coming in OK and his rent going out.

  Then she said goodnight and drove home, grateful that her car, small and middle-aged as it was, remained reliable in the face of increasingly cold weather.

  Despite her assurances to her dad, when the time came to meet Joe, she wasn’t sure she should have agreed to it. Blair was out or Georgine might have asked her to come along. And why had she suggested the pub? She didn’t have money to spare on non-essentials. She resolved that if Joe bought her a drink and she bought him one back, that would provide ample time to hear what he had to say. She could squeeze that much out of her budget now she had Blair’s contribution to the household.

  The hood of her coat protected her hair from the worst of the swirling wind as she strode along the footpath that brought her out of the Bankside estate where Great Hill Road joined Main Road. A few strides from the village pub, her footsteps slowed. Last time she’d spoken to Rich Garrit she’d been struggling to hold back hurt tears and he and his scruffy mates had been hooting with laughter at her. OK, they’d been fourteen, but it had felt like a betrayal because Georgine had stuck up for Rich when others had poked fun at him and said unkind things. They hadn’t been ‘seeing each other’, but they’d done art, drama and music together and their friendship had seemed enough for them both. Once away from his braying mates he’d dropped his naughty-boy persona and shown his intelligence, discussing unexpected subjects like karma and whether good people really did return to more enjoyable lives, as a TV programme about Buddhism had said.

  Though the intervening years had been enough for her to shuck off a schoolyard gripe, Rich Garrit had once proved himself to be unreliable.

  His reappearance with a completely different name didn’t encourage her to trust him now.

  She crossed the road towards The Three Fishes. Built of the local russet-coloured stone and presently festooned with a blinding cat’s cradle of Christmas lights, it was at the heart of Middledip both literally and figuratively. M.A.R. Motors, Booze & News and the Angel Community Café were all a short walk away down Main Road. Nearby stood the playing fields and the village hall. The latter was currently closed and rather than its own Christmas decorations sparkling from its windows, a car park full of building machinery and skips indicated that work had begun on replacing the roof.

  The wind more or less blew Georgine in through the door of The Three Fishes, bringing her to the attention of the landlord behind the polished wooden bar. Known in Middledip as ‘Tubb from the pub’, opinion was divided as to whether or not his sometimes-uncertain temper hid a heart of gold, but you certainly didn’t get through the door to his pub – in either direction – without him noticing. ‘Evening,’ he said, his eyes flitting over his bar as if wondering what Georgine would buy.

  When the France family had lived in The Gatehouse, a three-storey stone property near The Cross, they hadn’t frequented The Three Fishes much. Randall had been a member of Bettsbrough Golf Club and their mum, Barbara, of Port Manor Hotel’s country club, and one of those polished establishments had usually won the France family’s custom. Tubb never seemed to hold that against Georgine.

  She was the only member of her family remaining in the village – not counting Blair, who was really just using Middledip as a safe harbour while she recovered from her most recent emotional storm. Randall’s assisted living flat was in Bettsbrough and Barbara flitted between a big house on a beach in Northumberland and a big house in the hills of central France.

  Not put off by Tubb’s boot-face, Georgine shoved back her hood and offered him a friendly grin. ‘Phew, blowing a hooley out there.’ Unwinding her long aubergine scarf she swapped greetings with a few villagers she knew then, unzipping her coat, glanced about the busy bar for Joe.

  Rich.

  Whoever the hell he was.

  Then she glimpsed him. He’d bagged a table by the fire and was lounging in a chair and watching the goings on of the pub through his specs with a half smile. His dark grey jeans and leather cowboy boots looked expensive, as did the thick black jacket lying over a nearby chair.

  She weaved her way towards him, the boots making her think roadies must be ‘music biz’ enough to dress a bit alternatively. When he noticed her, he rose, giving her the smile that now she recognised perfectly clearly from the days it had flashed from the face of the boy who’d been the class joker. ‘Well, howdy, Mizz Jaw-Jean.’

  The delivery of the well-worn joke was deadpan, but his eyes laughed. Despite having spent the afternoon brooding on why he hadn’t mentioned their old connection as soon as he recognised her, Georgine felt the corners of her mouth twitch. It was reassuring to be reminded of his clowning, the days when Rich would try to make her giggle in class. Once he’d pretended to take out his eyeballs to polish them. Next time he’d opened his eyelids he’d been cross-eyed, as if he’d replaced them in the wrong sockets. She’d had to look away to prevent herself from laughing out loud. Pretending had been OK then.

  But now?

  ‘Hello …’ She hesitated.

  ‘Joe,’ he finished for her. ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘A glass of chardonnay, please.’

  While he went to the bar she took a seat, noticing a couple of t
he younger Acting Instrumental students in a coterie of teenagers in the corner. All had soft drinks on their table. Tubb knew better than to serve the underage youth with alcohol. Apart from the threat to his licence, their parents, aunts and uncles could well be knocking back a merlot somewhere in the pub.

  On the bar, tiny white lights sparkled on a small Christmas tree – Tubb wouldn’t waste space he could fill with customers by putting up a larger, floor-standing tree – and a colourful range of notices about Christmas raffles and hampers was tacked to the wooden posts around the bar.

  Georgine combed her hair with her fingers before flicking it back over her shoulders.

  When she looked up, Joe was watching her. Then Janice the barmaid arrived to serve him. ‘Yes, duck, what can I get you?’ she said, and he turned to give his order.

  When he rejoined Georgine, he placed the drinks on the table as he took his seat. She became uncomfortably aware of her heartbeat. The time had come to hear what he had to say, and there was a part of her that didn’t want to. It was unsettling that he’d had the opportunity to observe her and absorb the memories of twenty years ago, while she hadn’t recognised him at all.

  She took a sip of wine, unwilling to be the one to start the conversation.

  Joe’s own drink was fruit juice and he took a long draught of it, then rubbed his palms down his jeans. ‘I’ve been obsessing over where to start. Or even how much you want to know. I’m sorry I wasn’t transparent with you.’

  Georgine nodded.

  He glanced around. ‘I’m not sure this is the right venue for this conversation. I suppose I thought a village pub on a weeknight would have a quiet corner.’

  She said nothing. The only quieter venue within easy reach was her home, and she was not going to invite him there. Blair might be in by now, and anyway, home was her safe place.

  Joe cleared his throat as her silence continued. ‘OK. I’ll approach this as chronologically as I can. There are still things I don’t know and probably never will.’ He took another gulp from his drink. ‘I was born John Joseph Blackthorn.’

  Georgine felt her eyebrows flip up. She’d presumed the name she’d known him under to be his birth name and that Joe Blackthorn was an identity he’d assumed, the reasons behind which had been at the heart of her unease today.

  He gave a small, wry smile. ‘Yes, it’s my real name. My mother called me Johnjoe and sometimes it got shortened to Joe. I don’t remember my father, Tim Blackthorn. He died when I was two. They’d taken me to a beach on the east coast and he’d had a few beers. He went for a swim, got caught in a current and drowned.’

  Georgine felt a shiver run through her, not just of compassion for such a tiny tot losing his dad but because he’d never told her such significant things about his life. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  He gave a low laugh. ‘I didn’t know about my dad myself for ages. For the few years before he died, he didn’t speak to his upper middle-class parents. They’d made their feelings known when Dad, a student at Cambridge, took up with Mum, an under-educated local girl with the wrong accent, who, in their opinion, encouraged him to drink too much and work too little.’

  ‘Were they harsh?’ Despite her earlier reservations, Georgine was beginning to get caught up in the story.

  Joe sipped his fruit juice and shrugged. ‘I think my parents were as bad as each other. They moved in together and Dad flunked out of uni in his second year. I came along – by accident, I expect – and he never told my grandparents about me. Not long before he died, he did ring his brother, Shaun, and ask if they could meet. Said he had someone to introduce to him. At the time Shaun thought he’d maybe got a new girlfriend and was hoping Shaun’s approval might pave the way to him talking to their parents again. Now, of course, he thinks the “someone” was me. But Dad died before he could set up the meeting.’

  Georgine found it hard to even imagine the situation. She’d had such a golden childhood, brought up by loving parents whose marriage gave at least the illusion of security. ‘But when your dad died, didn’t your mum contact his family? Tell them about you?’

  His eyes grew shadowed. ‘She took it into her head that if they knew about me they’d try and get me off her. Do you remember Garrit?’

  Georgine nodded. She had known the man Rich had lived with was not his natural father. He’d always referred to him as Garrit, like everyone else, as if Garrit hadn’t been worthy of a first name, let alone a title like ‘dad’.

  ‘Mum hooked up with him. He was a shit but a kindred spirit so far as booze was concerned.’ Joe paused to give a little shake of his head as if finding the workings of his mother’s mind hard to comprehend. ‘When I began infant school she registered me as John Joseph Garrit. She told the school she didn’t want my real father knowing where I was, but she meant Dad’s family, if they ever discovered I existed.’

  ‘Do you think the Blackthorns would have wanted to take you off her if they had?’ Georgine took a gulp of her wine to free the lump that had risen to her throat at the way the child Joe had been helpless to influence his own fate.

  ‘They would have been heartless bastards if they didn’t, considering the life I was living.’ Joe smiled bitterly. ‘The years went on. Mum and Garrit sank lower, neither of them holding down a job, Garrit doing bits and pieces on the side and claiming every benefit he could think of. Once I reached my teens he used me as a runner for whatever he was mixed up in – obviously dodgy. He used to send me off with packages or envelopes with promises of dire retribution if I peeked at the contents or didn’t bring the payment straight back to him. We ended up in the worst house on the worst council estate in Bettsbrough, filthy curtains at the windows and a garden that was a rubbish heap. I used to have actual nightmares that you’d somehow find out where I lived and turn up.’

  Georgine took another glug of wine. Of all the horrible aspects of the life Joe had lived as Rich Garrit, that was what had given him bad dreams?

  He carried on, the evenness of his voice making the bite of his words all the deeper. ‘I hated Garrit. He knocked us all around and was verbally abusive. When I was about nine I found my birth certificate in a case on top of a wardrobe. It took me a few minutes to realise from the date of birth that John Joseph Blackthorn was me and that I’d once had a dad called Tim. I asked my mum about him. She was economical with the truth and said he hadn’t stuck around. I used to fantasise he’d come back for me, that he’d be a good man I could live with. In my head, I tried my real name on for size. “I am John Joseph Blackthorn”. I used to write it on bits of paper and then rip them up so nobody found them.’

  Tears pricking in the backs of her eyes, Georgine murmured, ‘I had no idea.’

  His smile was bleak. ‘I probably should have been an actor, I covered up so well.’ He glanced up as if checking no one was listening in. ‘It got worse when I went to senior school. My primary school had been in the crappy area we lived in, but Bettsbrough Comp was fed by several other primaries and I finally saw how shit my life was when I met kids from comfortable homes.’ He took a slow breath. ‘Apart from you, they either laughed at me or ignored me. I think that’s why the kids from the Shetland estate formed their rat pack. Stuck with their own. We called the Shetland estate “Shitland”, do you remember? I was unwillingly absorbed by the definitely dodgy Shitland gang. They all had nicknames and with stupid teenage humour they called me “Rich” because I wasn’t.’

  Georgine swore under her breath. His smile flashed at hearing her curse but she couldn’t smile back. ‘You made people laugh. You were perpetually clowning around.’

  ‘Sometimes they laughed because I meant to make them laugh,’ he acknowledged. ‘Sometimes they laughed because I had to wear wellies to school that were so small my heels stuck halfway up the leg part and I had to walk around on my toes. You should try that some time … all day.’ Beneath the table he shifted his legs, as if his feet, tonight in tooled leather, remembered those wellies. ‘I found that if I laug
hed at myself then at least they were laughing with me more than at me, but I hate to even remember those old humiliations.’ He fell silent, propping his chin on his hand and gazing across the room, perhaps seeing not villagers chatting but long ago insensitive teenagers sneering and pointing.

  Allowing him time to gather his thoughts, Georgine fidgeted with her wine glass on the table. If she positioned it correctly the Christmas lights on the bar were reflected, as if the last mouthful of wine was joyfully twinkling.

  But it was an illusion.

  So much of life was.

  Quietly, she waited.

  Finally, he heaved a great sigh. For the first time this evening, he seemed reluctant to meet her eyes. ‘Remember the Christmas card?’

  Georgine nodded. The shiny blue front had been hand sewn painstakingly with gold beads, the careful lettering inside. To Georgine, Merry Christmas, Rich. How could she forget?

  ‘I’m really sorry about how I behaved.’ He groaned, closing his eyes for an instant. ‘You’d always made me feel … well, as if I was just like everybody else.’ He held up a hand as if she’d tried to interrupt. ‘We both know I wasn’t. “Neglected” I heard Miss Penfold call me, the one who looked after the sale of second-hand school uniform, which she gave me free if I was looking particularly desperate. “Neglected” was a sanitised term for not enough food or adequate clothing.’

  ‘Are you sure you want to tell me all this?’ Georgine’s hands had begun to sweat at the way Joe was exposing himself with this bald recounting of his early life.

  The expression in his eyes altered, became wary. ‘Aren’t you sure you want to hear it?’

  It sounded like a test: Are you strong enough to listen to my story?

  ‘Listening’s hard,’ she admitted, ‘knowing that all this was going on right under my nose. But it’s a lot easier than living it. Would you like another drink before you go on?’ She reached for her bag. But when she turned back, purse in hand, she saw he was already up and threading his way through the drinkers that filled the area in front of the bar.