‘Hello?’ Cee-Cee blinked as she flicked on the lamp, pulled the Portuguese shawl up over her shoulders and gripped the phone to her face as she sat up in the bed.
‘Cee-Cee? It’s Rachel. James told me you weren’t feeling too well and I’m worried about you, so thought I would give you a call.’
‘Well, that’s wonderful.’ She felt her heart flutter a little; this was exciting and yet a little invasive. The one thing that stood out to Cee-Cee was that if this girl was worried about her, even a little bit, it showed her grief had shifted from the all-consuming sadness that meant there were no spare thoughts for anything other than her loss. Rachel might not know it, but this was progress.
Cee-Cee realised that she now felt a little self-conscious to be in direct contact with the woman who knew some of the most intimate aspects of her life. She found it easy to write, cathartic even, but this was different. Plus, it was very, very late, almost eleven p.m. ‘I am better now – completely fine! Just a bug. No need for anyone to worry.’
‘I am very glad to hear it.’ Rachel laughed. ‘I’ve told James to come over with soup for you tomorrow.’
‘Well, I don’t need soup! And I don’t need him going out of his way.’ Cee-Cee felt the pull in her gut of anxiety; she did not want the Crofts to think she was incapable of performing her duties.
‘I think he just wants to take care of you. And if I were there . . .’
Cee-Cee was surprised by the swell of emotion in her throat.
‘It’s nice to hear your voice, Cee-Cee. It’s late and I couldn’t sleep.’
‘What is the time in England?’
‘It’s just before three a.m.’
‘Goodness, child! You should be sleeping!’
‘I can’t. My head is too busy. I picked up your latest letter from my mum’s. I can’t tell you how much I love your stories. They transport me back to that time and it’s wonderful. I have just read all about your wedding.’
Cee-Cee beamed. ‘Ah, yes, my wedding. And you know, Rachel, to be able to share my story is something very comforting.’
There is no one else . . . Willard gone . . . Oscar gone . . .
‘Comforting. Yes,’ Rachel agreed. ‘And I appreciate your advice because you know how I feel, you know what it’s like. Most people don’t. And of course, I love that you loved Oscar.’
‘Oh, I did! I did! I can’t lie to you, my heart is damaged. I miss that little English boy.’
‘I know, and he was so lucky to have someone like you in his life.’ Cee-Cee caught the catch in Rachel’s voice.
It was me who was the lucky one.
There was a moment or two of silence until Cee-Cee spoke.
‘Will this call be costing you a fortune?’
Rachel sniffed. ‘No! No! It costs nothing as long as I call after a certain time; I got a deal with Three.’
‘Oh, right.’ Cee-Cee had no idea who or what that was.
‘Cee-Cee, can I ask you what happened after your wedding?’
‘Oh, it’s a long story.’
‘I have a large cup of tea and I am quite comfortable sitting on my bed.’
Cee-Cee moved up the bed and rested her back on the headboard. She took a deep breath and felt her spirits soar in anticipation of telling this woman, still a stranger in so many ways, the details of her life.
‘Well, I think in particular about one hot, hot August day. Apart from the heat it was nothing but an ordinary day, at least it was until I received a letter – more accurately a note – pushed into the mailbox and without signature.
‘The paper was unremarkable, faintly lined and torn jaggedly from a notebook. It wasn’t written in fancy ink pen, but a plain old ballpoint. The second note that had been surreptitiously cast in my direction, and whilst of a very different nature, it had just as much of an impact as the first.’
‘What did it say?’ Rachel prompted.
Cee-Cee smiled at her interest. ‘Well, I can see the words now, scrawled off the lines, and if the contents of the note hadn’t been enough to send fire into my veins, then this poor line-discipline was in itself more than enough to cause a flicker of irritation. It was no more than four lines that said: “Willard has broken your trust. He is not faithful. And he is brazen in the execution of his sin, committed at his place of work.” And it was signed: “A friend ”.’
She heard Rachel gasp. ‘Huh, no!’
‘Yes!’ Cee-Cee was happy to hear Rachel so engaged and her obvious shock bonded the two closer, they became allies. She felt that this was a good distraction for the girl, as well as a joy for her to have someone to tell her story to. ‘And I don’t mind telling you that I fell backward on the veranda, sinking down into Grandma Sally’s chair. The breath left my lungs and I was hot, so hot, I could feel the warm beads of sweat running down my face.
‘Willard, my husband of eighteen months was carrying on with someone.’
‘Cee-Cee, that is awful. Just heartbreaking – how did you know it was true?’ Rachel asked.
Cee-Cee, touched by the girl’s sympathy, pictured herself as a bright newly-wed whose dreams were fading like the bloom on her dried bouquet.
‘I just knew it. I felt it. And as God is my witness, I am ashamed to say that all I could think of was: why hadn’t I been able to keep him happy? Why wasn’t I enough? How had that joyous bubble in which we had existed come to burst already? And more important, what would happen now?
‘As I sit here tonight, I wish I could reach down to my nineteen-year-old self and say, “It’s nothing to do with you, Cee-Cee Templeton! It is all him! Feeling blue and down in the dumps is like howling at the wind and rain while a storm rages – ain’t nothing you could have done to prevent it!” Not that it would have hurt any less.
‘Grandma Sally came outside, alerted by my crying, and asked what the matter was. Now, apart from the goings-on in our marital bed and the strength of devotion I felt to the man I was married to, I had never had a secret from Grandma Sally, and without hesitation I handed her the note. Well, she read it and read it again and she gave a tight-mouthed little shake of the head and said, “You need to put on your best dress and you need to go and see him at his place of work. You need to face it head-on.” She might have been right, but as I stood at the pale stone bus shelter in my best dress, a pale-blue cotton frock with a white tie belt, only usually worn for church and Cup Match weekends, I felt my nerve fade and my legs turn to jelly. I looked at the bend in the road and wondered if it might be possible to make out I hadn’t seen the note, to keep quiet about the whole thing and hope that Willard might settle down and that Grandma Sally might not raise the subject and that my faith in him might heal.
‘It was a lot of hopes. Too many.
‘I decided to leave it to fate. I would count to ten and if the bus hadn’t shown up by then, I would leave, walk home in the heat, have an iced tea and think things over; but if it came before I got to ten, then I would go into town and go and see Willard at the Hamilton Ferry Port where he worked, and I would have it out, face to face.
‘I started to count. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . . five . . . and it was as I was about to take a breath and mentally reach for six that the single-decker bus appeared. So there it was, fate had decided.
‘It wasn’t too busy and I took up a seat at the very front, as was my God-given right to do, and sat with my back straight, all the way along South Road and along into Front Street. I jumped off a stop or two early to give me a chance to compose myself. And I walked briskly, nodding hello to the people I knew, and there were many, some like Mrs De Souza calling out, asking after Grandma Sally, and I lifted my hand and shouted back, “She’s good!” – knowing that if I stopped and chatted, I just might never get away or, worse, lose my nerve. My stomach churned at the thought of the conversation I was about to have with the man I loved, and my heart raced in preparation for what I might see. After all, the note had been very clear: “Brazen in the execution of his sin, committed at his place of work.”
‘I tried not to think about my daddy working along in Pitts Bay Road, not five minutes from where I walked, for fear of giving in to my cowardice and running right into his arms and telling him all my woes.
‘I wasn’t concentrating much on my surroundings, but was thinking of how I might address Willard and how, no matter what, I had to remain confident and dignified; this above all else.
‘It was as I walked past Trimminghams that I clashed with a woman not much older than me, wearing lemon-coloured gloves and a white pillbox hat. After I had apologised and accepted hers in return, I heard her mutter to her friend, “Did you see those killer cheekbones? Lucky girl!” and as I might have mentioned, it was these few words gave me the shot in the arm needed to go and do and say what I had to.
‘I spied my husband before he saw me. He was leaning back on the metal handrail with one foot in its shiny, brown, company-issue loafer, raised and resting on the metal grill of the fence that stopped folk who queued for the ferry tumbling into the dock while their noses were in their newspapers. There was a girl stood by his side. I can confirm she was indeed wearing cherry-coloured lipstick, as well as a fancy red-and-white frock with a neat, starched collar. She had one of those bodies that went in and out in all the right places, with a tiny waist and a bosom that needed a whole lot more upholstery than my thin vest could ever have provided. I thought she looked pretty, but I couldn’t hate her for it. It sure as hellfire wasn’t her that had stood next to me in St Anne’s Church, Southampton Parish, and taken them vows!
‘I watched Willard talk to her with his head cocked to one side, so he had to look at her through his lashes, and I saw the slight smile on his face and I remembered the many sweet nothings that had passed his lips while he spoke to me in the exact same way. And truly it felt like a dagger to my heart.
‘I walked over slowly, paying little heed to the policeman who stood in his British uniform on his little raised island at the intersection, blowing a whistle and directing the traffic – horses and carts, buses and suchlike – with his straightened arms and bendy elbows. Willard threw his head back to laugh at something that young Miss Bosoms had said, and it was as he lowered his gaze that the laugh stopped and his eyes widened and just for a second he looked a little afraid and I was glad. I told myself, “Don’t you let him mess with you, Cee-Cee! You have killer cheekbones!” I must be stupid, Lord knows, because at the sight of that look of fright I felt sorry for Willard. He was my dear heart and to cause him even the slightest of harm or worry did not sit well with me.
‘I was some kind of fool.’
‘You were in love, Cee-Cee: a fool in love!’
‘Yes, that I was, Rachel, dear. A fool in love.’