Chapter Thirty-Six
RIVER
River opened up the bar early. He had a sneaking suspicion it would become something of his man cave now they were back. Prague had been a triumph on so many fronts, and yet nothing short of a disaster when it came to his own.
Where had he gone wrong? Why was everyone else enjoying life and getting all the ‘lucky breaks’? Talk about the universe taking the mickey when he was the one who’d got off his backside, walked miles along a baking hot road in Latin America, risked sunstroke and a succession of muggings; taken chances above and beyond what any half intelligent person would have done, all to smuggle a bottle containing Lord only knew what, into the UK. And all to have the love of his life shun him one final time, except on this occasion, she’d banged the nails into the coffin and he couldn’t see any way out.
Georgina was not pregnant. And that was all there was to it.
Admittedly, he was no longer the least bit turned on by anything about her appearance, that alone was reason enough not to let his eyes rest on her for a second longer than was strictly necessary. But even so, he wished Alice would give him some credit, quit labelling him as one of those typical men who wouldn’t even notice if a woman had got her hair cut.
But then Georgina did walk into the bar, earlier than early for her shift which began at two that afternoon.
“Hi,” she said, as if they had never fallen out precisely half a dozen times. “How was Prague? Did it bring you any inspiration for new drinks? You must tell me all about it.”
She unbuttoned her navy trench coat and hung up her red polka dot umbrella, droplets of water danced across the floor and River couldn’t help but be drawn to the new and peculiar curves of her body; the soft rounded stomach which had previously been toned, easily fitting into a pencil skirt, now clinging to the edges of something suspiciously elasticated and unflattering, the bust which seemed to spill out above the rest of her, creating a sudden and indisputable muffin top.
“Yeah,” he heard himself reply, feeling quite as if he’d left his body. “It was good, great, fun, lots of fun, I’m sure your dad told you all about it.”
“So lovely he and your mum are moving in together, isn’t it?” A Georgina far friendlier than even the slightly more chilled out version he had left behind to run the bar replied.
“Hmm?” said River, eyes not only glued, but super glued to Georgina’s contours.
“Are you okay?” she asked, unable to mask her worry as her voice warbled, or was that just the ringing in his ears as he decided he needed to lay, very quickly, upon his favourite bar couch? “River? You’ve gone a slightly whiter shade of pale.”
***
The last thing River Jackson recalled before his head hit the pile of cushions was a fuzzy weeble-like person standing over him, a strange figurine brimming with concern. And she was the first thing his eyes regained their focus on when he did come around.
“I’ve called in Lee,” she echoed, as he attempted to sit up and then thought better of it. “You just stay there. I didn’t know what else to do. You fainted, River! You poor thing,” Georgina moved towards him with a cold dishcloth from the sink.
“Not one of those, health and safety,” he muttered. But she was already dousing his forehead with it and he could only succumb to the relief.
What a lightweight he was. He guessed the stress had done it, followed by the shock of Georgina’s changing shape, the realisation that Alice was right; the growing likelihood that he was, in fact, soon to become a dad.
Dad. Daddy. Father. Pops.
The words reverberated through his skull then, bouncing off the edges, vibrating north, south, east and west, until Lee arrived with a small amber bottle of something which he appeared to wave under River’s nose, causing his body to contort as the assault to his nasal passage caught up with his brain.
River sat up immediately, coughing and spluttering, clutching at a fluffy cream cushion which he used as armour to ward off the intruder from his face.
“Oh man! Why did you have to do that? That smell is mental, like ammonia or something.”
“Spot on,” said Lee, “my nan’s smelling salts.”
“Yeah? Well next time just make me a Frisky Bison or something.”
“You sound like you could do with one,” Lee laughed. “But at least your colour’s coming back.” He raised his brow as if that would give River a clue as to his former shading. “I don’t think we need to call in an ambulance after all. Let’s see if something purely medicinal will help. Georgina, can you prop him up against some pillows, watch your bump of course.”
Watch her bump?
So Lee was in on this sudden pregnancy? Well in that case, Terry must be too – and Heather. Then why had none of them said anything? River was motionless, cushion still very much in his grip. If he held onto it tightly enough perhaps it would take him right back to his own childhood, a time and a place of zero responsibility.
“Right then,” Lee shouted behind him, “I’ll see if I can remember how to make it.”
River eyed him curiously as he went about his business; he was a natural though, carrying himself in a stance of complete confidence as he measured mixers and spirits, pausing to select the most appropriate glass, tasting his concoction discreetly as he went along. And though River may have felt like the literary Alice suspended in some kind of trippy wonderland, he knew now was almost the time to propose.
***
Somehow River made it through until closing time, but trade had been light, thank God for Tuesdays. And somehow he had managed to sweep Georgina’s physique under the carpet. It was the only way, after all. He wasn’t going to confront her, and when he thought back to her promiscuity that day on the Tor – then sending his erogenous zones haywire, now filling him with the kind of nausea that was enough to have him wondering if he was some freak of nature carrying a joey in his own pouch – it would hardly surprise him to hear there had been a string of potential candidates for fatherhood since he’d given her the cold shoulder. Case closed as far as he was concerned, and surely that had to be why Terry had never aired his soon to be status as grandfather in public. He was ashamed. His daughter hadn’t the faintest idea as to who the father of her child actually was.
The rush of the cocktail had worked wonders though and he began to go through the paperwork for the weekend that had just passed, sorting out the cash and receipts, tallying up the proceeds of the pre and post carnival trading. Yet for some unfathomable reason, his figures kept falling short. In the end he resorted to good old fashioned pen and the local newspaper which lay unread on the bar.
He ordered one every week just as a café might stock the papers, not that he’d go as far as to start buying the sensationalist tabloids; he’d rather put a bullet to his head. But such an innocent regional rag would have enticed him immediately as a teen, full as it was with pictures of his friends and their various sporting victories, snippets about local bands and festivals, the wall of fame – and equally – the wall of shame that was the high schools’ and colleges’ exam results. Old habits soon had him leafing through the paper, until there on page fifteen his hand froze, and then began to shake with rage.
It was Georgina.
Unmistakably Georgina, leaning out of the top window of his cocktail bar, with a couple of male ‘friends’, putting money – and he didn’t need to second guess where her charitable offering had come from – down one of the collection poles, held aloft as it typically was by a Pierrot clown complete with freaky black teardrop. Words failed him. Action didn’t. He downed the remainder of his second Frisky Bison, letting the liquid alcohol do its thing and hollered out her name.
Georgina waddled forth, already bearing more than a striking resemblance to a penguin doing an impersonation of Tina Turner, but River wouldn’t let himself get distracted this time. Business was business and she was about to be sacked from his. Lee watched on nervously in the background, much as his personality had had a transplant, some things never changed when it came to confrontation.
“Yes, River, did you want me?” she said through the innocence of her smile.
Lee began to edge himself over to the most distant table in the bar, sensing the sparks that were about to fly, one ear cocked out should his intervention be required. River was only too glad he was there to support him.
“What the hell do you think you’ve been playing at?”
He slammed the paper down in front of Georgina as she stood at the customers’ side of the bar, sensing immediately that she clearly hadn’t had chance to flip through her father’s edition this week.
“Man gets rescued from slurry pit on farm… that’s nice,” she said, her voice laced with fear for the first time since their paths had re-crossed, “not really sure what it’s got to do with me though.”
“Not the farmer… this,” he pointed to the photograph which framed her jubilant act of benevolence as two thugs claimed possession of her, cocktail glasses – his cocktail glasses, probably full of beer or something equally uncouth – in hand, balancing on either side of her shoulders.
“Oh… well… you know, it was just a couple of mates, they had nowhere else to watch the parade… and since you’d decided to shut shop… and I had a key… there was no harm done though, honest.”
“I think that’s a little beside the point, don’t you?” he yelled, unable for the moment to find any further words, thankful to Lee for stumbling forward.
“I knew Jonie and me should have watched the carnival down this end of the High Street so we could have kept an eye on the premises for you, mate. I knew it… I did try to convince her, but her Aunt lives in Chilkwell Street, had put on a mammoth spread of food and everything, kind of like a family tradition. Jonie couldn’t let her down. But now I’m sorry, ‘cos I’ve been and let you down.”
“Course you haven’t,” said River, dismissing the very idea on the spot. “But she has.” He pointed at Georgina. “And it’s one step too far this time.”
“But we tidied up after ourselves… you have to admit, there’s not a trace of us having been here.”
“How many of you were there? Did Blake get in on the fun and games too? The cat goes away… the mice will play, huh?”
“I’m sorry, really I am. It won’t happen again.”
“Damn right it won’t.”
“You sound like you’re going to fire me.”
“Clever girl.”
“I hardly think you have the grounds to,” she snuffled and brought a timely tissue to her nose, like that might attract his pity, “over a simple misunderstanding. All you ever said to me before you went away was we weren’t to open up to the public Saturday night. That didn’t exactly cover a small private get-together with friends.”
“It’s not your bar… and these so-called friends of yours have been having a little fiddle with the takings as far as I can see. Look at this.”
River pushed the calculations under her nose. Lee took a deep breath and gave himself permission to come across now too, to bear witness, shaking his head at the chunk of missing money that was circled in red pen.
“Five hundred quid unaccounted for, did you think I wouldn’t notice, just because I’m semi-wealthy, does that make it all right?”
Georgina lowered her head.
“Here,” said Lee, reaching into his back pocket for his wallet, “let me chip in to cover it. It’s the least I can do for not second guessing something like this would happen.”
“And why should you have to cover her tracks?” said River. “A couple of weeks and you’re walking down the aisle with Jonie, why should you spend the honeymoon period of your life babysitting grown women who can’t keep their fingers off other people’s property?”
“It must have been the Rigby-Chandlers who stole the money,” said Georgina, matter of fact, looking River straight in the eye. But oh how she’d have failed a lie detector test.
“You’ve had it in for them since the official opening night,” said River, desperately trying to keep his cool now.
“Yeah, well, perhaps there’s good reason they haven’t been paying for their drinks and Mrs High and Mighty carried out that threat. The perfect cover up. They’re broke, just like the aristocrats you see on the TV documentaries with their pleas and the background violin playing because, poor things, they live in those crumbling stately homes that we have to fund with our taxes; how simply awful for them.”
River began to clap slowly, sarcastically, increasing his hand movements with speed.
“You really are too bright for this place, you know that? I’ll concede: your suspicions are one hundred percent correct when it comes to their former financial situation… perhaps have a chat with your dad though who will fill you in on the current turn in their luck… but the thing is there’s just a slight problem with that theory when it comes to the carnival weekend, George. You see, it seems Lord Pervert and his wife decided to go to Prague themselves to join in with the fun.”
“I… I… told you they were scroungers, beneath the Trilbies and… and the emeralds, they’re brassic… broke, inviting themselves along to everything.”
“But that still doesn’t explain how the float and takings don’t tally for the weekend when they were in Prague… when they were in a whole other country, a fact that you are completely overlooking!”
Georgina began to bite her nails, as if that might help her come up with something more convincing.
“Well, I’m waiting for a proper explanation, it’s that or your P45.”
“So that’s it?” she said after a lengthy silence. She rubbed her stomach in a manner that was getting über predictable already, and treated him to one of her atypical smiles, game face back on, kindly disguise of hours ago, ancient history. “First you cool things off with me… not long after shacking up with her in a caravan.”
“Alice has a name and yes, we are very much together… and happy, extremely happy.”
How he wished that were the truth.
“And now you are sacking me, after I nursed you this afternoon as well? I didn’t have to do that, you know.”
“That’s about the size of it, yes.”
“You are unbelievable, and as for this place, I hope it goes to the dogs.”
“Once upon a time, Georgina, not all that long ago, we could have had something meaningful, you and I. There was a seed, a spark, a call-it-whatever-you-will, and I’m not going to deny it. But you abused my trust, took me for a fool, and even those of us who are a little slower off the mark,” he didn’t dare look at Lee then, much as he would have made the perfect illustration for his point, “we get there in the end, see through the wool women like you pull over our eyes. Will that close my heart up if another relationship comes along… be that with Al, be that with anyone? No, because unlike yours, mine isn’t made of stone. I don’t hold a vendetta against the world. And yes, for the record, I am more than in love with Alice, I’ve loved her all my life, it’s just a shame it’s taken me until now to realise it. So thank you, thank you for pushing me further away from you and closer in her direction. You’ve been more of a Guardian Angel than you’ll ever know. I want to grow old with her, have her babies and live happily ever after. There. You satisfied now?”
Georgina held her stomach with both hands now, her eyes boring into him with an intensity that spoke its own language: River Jackson, father of one.
“Okay, good bye, River,” she said, “you’ve more than made your point.”
She walked to the hat stand by the door, melancholy shrouding her, and slowly put on her trench coat. She unhooked the umbrella which had been hanging beneath it. River and Lee could only stand motionless as she reached for the door handle. River couldn’t wait to pour them both the nearest excuse for alcohol to hand. He couldn’t do this alone anymore, had to halve the problem by sharing it with a friend.
Georgina was midway out the door when she turned back to them, as if she’d forgotten something.
“Oh, what now?” sighed River.
She began to laugh a small laugh, making it heartier, ever more staged and deliberate, and then stopped, without warning, letting the peels of her joy linger in the doorway.
“Did you honestly think I’d walk away just like that?” she said finally. “I’m a pregnant woman, babe: you’re about to become a daddy.” She chuckled again, sadistically this time. “How’s that going to look when you want custody? Not to mention the fact that the dismissal of a woman in my position,” she stopped then to nod her head and purse her lips for added effect, “is just a wee little bit of a faux-pas in this day and age. So, it looks very much like I will be seeing you tomorrow.”
And with that, the door slammed on River’s life as he knew it.