A Tale of One City - NaNoWriMo 2020

A Tale of One City - Chapter 3

Chapter 3

During the long drive back up the A1 North towards Yorkshire, Chardonnay fumed about the stupid interview she’d just attended. After Charles told her he had a friend on the committee, she’d thought this library job was in the bag. She just had to go there and tell them about her qualifications and experiences, and the job would be hers. Charles had even said they didn’t have any other qualified or experienced applicants, so the job should have been hers. Charles hadn’t mentioned that his friend was a silver fox or that he was a complete prat.

She snorted and glanced out the window screen at the passing snow-covered trees and fields. Why couldn’t she get that bloke out of her mind? He must be at least fifty — old enough to be her dad. A posh bloke like that wouldn’t look at a provincial girl like her, anyway. And he was married, to boot. The fact that he was the only bloke she’d talked to in years who made her heart go pitter-patter was irrelevant.

She banged her fist against the steering wheel and then cursed when her mini swerved on the road. Thankfully, few other vehicles were sharing the road since it was only three days before Easter and lots of people were taking holidays now. There, she’d admitted it. She fancied the bloke, and she hadn’t fancied anyone in years. The only bloke she’d found this attractive was Sean Connery, and that was partly due to the suave characters he played rather than the man behind the face.

At least she managed to squeeze in some sightseeing while in Cambridge. The snow-sprinkled, Gothic college spires looked like they belonged on a Christmas card, and there were open spaces everywhere for students to walk while discussing poetry and philosophy. Imagine, she must have walked along paths taken by Alfred Lord Tennyson accompanied by his beloved friend, AHH. Ted Hughes probably walked hand-in-hand with Sylvia Plath past those grand fountains that resembled wedding cakes while covered in sparkling icicles.

She sighed. She would love to live there. Well, there was still a chance that her genius of a little sister might win a scholarship to do her doctoral research in Cambridge. Chardonnay could join her, share Brandy’s student flat, and get a sales assistant job in the University Bookshop or even in one of the many souvenir shops scattered around the city centre.

Eventually, Chardonnay arrived back home in Thornthorpe and drove through the lamplit, grotty streets where she had spent most of her life struggling to survive. Soon she parked outside her prefabricated semi on Merrill Road. An upstairs curtain twitched, and a minute later the door opened to reveal her sister backlit by the hallway lights. Brandy met her on the garden path, her brown eyes twinkling although her gaze, as always, was averted to one side. It was one of the more obvious symptoms of her high-functioning autism.’

‘Well?’ asked Brandy with as near to a smile as she ever managed. ‘Did you meet him?’

Chardonnay frowned. ‘Dr Smarty Pants, you mean, Rupert’s friend?’

‘No. You know who I mean, Chard.’

‘Noone is on your wavelength, Sis. Just say who you mean.’

‘Stephen Hawking, naturally. Who else would be worth seeing in Cambridge?’

Chardonnay shook her head and pushed past her sister into the welcome warmth of their humble hovel.

Brandy soon joined her, and they both moved into the kitchen at the back of the house. ‘That’s a shame. You went all the way to Cambridge and didn’t get to see anything interesting.’

Chardonnay picked up an empty vodka bottle from the counter, dumped it into the recycling bin, clicked on the electric kettle, and pulled two mugs out the cupboard: her ‘LIFE WOULD BE MUCH SIMPLER IF I WERE LESS PRETTY’ mug and Brandy’s ‘PHYSICISTS DO IT/DON’T DO IT IN A BOX’ mug. Spooning coffee into each mug, she asked her sister, ‘Why would you expect me to bump into the most famous scientist in Britain on my first visit to Cambridge?’

Brandy took a seat and gazed into the air with a dreamy expression. ‘Rupert says he bumped into Hawking all the time when he was there.’

‘Have you been talking to Rupert again?’ She shook her head. ‘Sara won’t be happy if she finds out.’

‘Sara is being idiotic. If I were to write an algebraic algorithm to match her with a compatible sexual partner, Rupert would be the perfect answer.’

‘Life is about more than sex, Sis.’

Brandy tilted her head. ‘No, it’s not. It states quite clearly in Genesis, “Be fruitful and multiply”. Besides, a person’s deoxyribonucleic acid cannot be passed down from generation to generation and be subject to the process of natural selection unless sexual intercourse is involved.’

Chardonnay didn’t bother to argue the matter. Brandy reduced pretty much everything in life down to statistics, well-established scientific theories, and, counterintuitively, a Bible quote to back her opinion. Though Brandy claimed that God was illogical and an invention of primitive minds, she never missed the Sunday service at Bradfield Road Methodist Church.

‘What’s going on down there?’ screeched a high-pitched voice from upstairs, and Chardonnay cringed. Presently, heavy footsteps on the stairs announced the approach of their mother. ‘Why aren’t you at work, Chardonnay?’
She raised a finger. ‘For one, it’s after five, so the library is closed already.’ She raised a second finger. ‘And I told you last week that I had an interview today.’

Mother scowled. ‘For that job down south. I told you I don’t want you to go. They’re all nasty buggers down south. Look what happened to our Sara when she went to live there.’

Ignoring her mother, poured steaming water into the two mugs.

‘You just want to abandon me, don’t you?’ Mother jabbed Chardonnay in the arm. ‘Just like your dad, you’re going to leave me all alone.’

Chardonnay sighed. ‘It was hardly Dad’s fault that he died in a mining accident, Mother. And I’ve told you at least six times that the council are making me redundant in June.’

‘Sacking you, you mean.’ Mother jabbed her in the arm again. ‘I told you that you should have got a proper job in a solicitors office like our Aisha instead of messing around with books and poetry. Look where it’s gotten you.’ She turned to Brandy. ‘And don’t think I haven’t heard you talking to those posh blokes on the computer about cats and particles and stuff. You’ve been in school since you were five years old. It’s about time you went out and got a proper job, too.’

Brandy just ignored her. She never listened to anything Mother said or even acknowledged her presence. When asked by outsiders, she had always either said she didn’t have a mother or pointed to Chardonnay and claimed she was her legal guardian. Now that she’d reached eighteen, it was only a matter of time before she moved out and broke all ties to Mother, with or without Chardonnay. Of course, she couldn’t allow her sister to go off on her own. Though she was a genius, she often had problems dealing with day to day activities, especially if they involved interacting with real people in person and not over the net.

‘Aren’t you making me a coffee, too?’ asked Mother to the air.

‘Why bother when you’ll only throw it out and replace it with whisky?’ asked Chardonnay.

Mother raised a hand, her face twisted into a snarl. ‘Don’t you give me cheek, young lady. If your dad were here, he’d never put up with that.’

Chardonnay turned to her. ‘If Dad were here, you wouldn’t be such a bitch, and then we’d all be happy.’

She didn’t even feel the slap that landed on her cheek. Over the years, she’d become hardened to Mother’s physical abuse. Even though she didn’t expect to get that library job, she knew she could no longer stay in this house. She’d only stayed here this long because Brandy was underage, and she would never abandon her sister. Chardonnay would never have gotten custody of her sister as a single woman without sufficient income to buy her own house. Now that they were both adults, nothing was going to hold them back.

***

Charles passed through the wooden kissing gate into the churchyard of St Helen’s church in Grantcastle, some thirty miles north of Cambridge. He often came here to wander among the moss-covered limestone gravestones and gather his thoughts. As always, he came dressed to the nines and armed with a single red rose. Gazing up at the tall Baroque tower, he was reminded of the happiest day of his life — the day nineteen years ago when he walked Karen Evans down the aisle. She had looked perfect, with her ivory cream dress and fine lace train. When he lifted her veil and saw her beautiful face, he believed he was the luckiest man alive.

The sun hovered over the horizon to the east, and wrens in the horse chestnut trees lining the churchyard boundary greeted the dawn with song. Charles meandered through the graves, avoiding stepping on anybody’s beloved. Soon he reached to section dedicated to members of the Thorpe-Hamilton family where the limestone markers gave way to more opulent granite or diorite memorials. In this area of the churchyard, the grand monuments of the Georgian and Victorian period dedicated overshadowed the more modest memorials of more recent days. He paused briefly at his parents’ double grave. He smiled. ‘Mother, Father, I hope Heaven is treating you well. Is the Champagne a good vintage, Mother? Is there plenty of single-malt Laphroaig for you, Father?’ He always pictured Heaven as a family dinner party in the sky where the dear departed mingled with their equally departed loved ones and enjoyed their favourite foods and drinks in good company and with stimulating conversation.

The solitary, more recent grave to the left beckoned him over. He crouched down and replaced an old and shrivelled rose with the new specimen he brought. He glanced up at the beaming angel’s face shown in relief atop the gravestone — his Karen immortalised in granite at age twenty-seven. This marker was only temporary, to his mind. One day a larger memorial would record the brief spell on Earth of both Karen and himself on that day when he finally joined her at that great dinner party in the sky. ‘Be patient and enjoy that vintage Chardonnay, my love.’

He stood and stepped back, his thoughts troubled. He had not come here simply to pay his respects to his beloved wife. Charles had a confession to make. He paced up and down in front of Karen’s grave, trying to come up with the right words. Finally, he settled down cross-legged on the ground next to Karen’s gravestone, uncaring about the damp seeping in from below or the grass stains that would damage his expensive suit trousers.

‘I never forgot what you said in the hospital that day, but it’s hard. Partly because I can’t seem to let you go, and partly because nobody else ever stirred the feelings in me that you did.’ He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Karen, I met somebody yesterday. She’s completely unsuitable for me, and she probably thinks I’m a knuckle-dragging Neanderthal since I’m so much older than her, but I needed to let you know.’

He stood and stroked Karen’s carved features. ‘It’s strange. You told me that I should move on, but it still feels like cheating even to think of another woman. Her name is Chardonnay.’ He smiled. ‘I know you’re laughing at me now. How ironic that the first woman I’ve met and found attractive in since you left me should be named after your favourite tipple.’
He gazed into the sky, admiring the billowing clouds as they created castles in the azure sky. ‘Thankfully, she’s too young for me. Twenty-eight. Younger than you were when you left, of course, but I was young then, too. Nothing can come of this physical attraction I feel. She will be working directly under me, so any flirtation would be extremely inappropriate, especially with the age difference.

‘She’s so like you in many ways. She also read English Literature at university and loves poetry, though she’s blonde and much shorter than you. Chardonnay also shares your left-wing leanings. I think you and she would get along very well.’ He chuckled. ‘However, she looks like Kate Moss, whom you hated so much because you said she was anorexic and made a poor role model for young girls.’

He leaned down and kissed Karen’s granite forehead. ‘Just a heads-up, my love. If you were here now, I’m sure you would make fun of my lusting after a girl who looks half my age. Of course, if you were here, I would never have noticed her in the first place.’ How he wished that were the case. ‘Anyway, it looks like Chardonnay will be coming to work with me soon. Within the next two weeks, if the paperwork gets sorted soon enough. Once she’s in my sights every day, I’m sure that familiarity will breed contempt and my silly infatuation will prove fleeting. But, as always, my love, I shall keep you posted.’

Charles turned his back on his wife and soulmate.


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