Chapter 9

“He’s what?” I asked.

“He’s gay,” Alison said, “plain as the nose on your face.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“I don’t know, I just can,” she replied, “maybe it’s a girl thing.”

Alison and Aunt Mary went upstairs to pack so that they could check out and I went and sat in the lounge, sipping a cup of coffee. Why I paid three pounds for a cup of coffee there, when I could have stayed in the restaurant and had as much as I wanted for nothing was beyond me, but that’s how it was.

Ten minutes later they were back down and checking out. I walked them out to the car and, before she got in, Aunt Mary stopped and looked at me.

“You take care of my little girl, David,” she said, rather sternly, “you hear me?”

“I hear you and I’ll take the best possible care of her that I can.”

“And that includes not letting her get away with too much,” she added.

As I leaned over to kiss her cheek, she continued in a whisper, “and don’t forget to remind her that if you’re going to do anything other than a little touchy feely, she’s no longer on the pill.”

I got a big hug and a kiss on the cheek from my sister and another whispered message, “For god’s sake, don’t get her pregnant,” and then they were in the car and on their way home.

I chuckled at what my sister had said then walked back inside.

Saturday morning TV in England is about as good as it had been in Canada, even now with over a hundred channels to choose from. So that was quickly switched off. I had two and a half hours to kill and no desire to read my script again. I took my guitar out of its case, tuned it and started playing. One of my favourite pieces to play is ‘Cavatina,’ by Stanley Myers, I can’t do all the trills and finger picking that the likes of John Williams and Hank Marvin do, but I could manage the outstandingly beautiful melody quite well.

One thing I knew was that I was never going to be a musician, I could play guitar reasonably well and just about hold a tune if I sang, so long as the range wasn’t very wide, but no, I’d never be a ‘musician’. Not like Cal and her fellow students. But the important thing was that I enjoyed playing and in all probability, if I took the trouble to practice more often, I’d get much better.

I played for an hour, well, slightly more, before I decided it was time to start getting ready for whatever Cal had planned for us today. I was downstairs waiting, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt in honour of the warm spell we were going through and with a lightweight, showerproof jacket in my backpack. I also had my phone, swim shorts, a towel and my Nikon digital camera in my backpack together with two bottles of Pepsi, the no sugar variety and a couple of packets of crisps.

She was on time, which was, I am sure, pretty much a first for Cal and, as I climbed into the passenger seat beside her, she leaned over and kissed me on the cheek.

“How was your morning?” she asked.

“Pretty boring, I just got my guitar out and strummed a bit, what about you?”

“Rehearsal for my end of term recital with Peter,” she said, “it’s going well, but could be better. Oh and talking of end of term, when are you heading off to London?”

“I have to be there July 26^th, why?” I asked.

“I was wondering if you’d take me to the sixth form ball this year.”

“When is it?”

“The twenty-third,” she said.

“No problem then, that’s the Friday before I have to go, we can do that and I can leave that weekend.”

“Great,” she said.

“So what do you have planned for us today?” I asked.

“I thought we’d have a trip down to Chester.”

“Any special reason for Chester?”

“No,” she said, “why, would you rather go somewhere else?”

“No,” I said, “I was just wondering.”

“Just an afternoon and, maybe, evening being tourists.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll buy you dinner out. Oh and before I forget, your mother’s last words to me were that I should remind you that you are no longer on the pill.”

She spluttered a bit at that.

“And to top that one, Pip’s were, ‘for god’s sake don’t get her pregnant.’”

“Well, for starters, I am perfectly well aware that I’m not on the pill any more, since I’ve had no reason to be,” she said, “and if we were so inclined there are ways around that and secondly, I agree wholeheartedly with your sister.”

“How?” I asked.

“David, for god’s sake don’t get me pregnant.”

“Are we at the stage where that could be a risk?”

“Let’s just say that I have very regular, if somewhat uncomfortable periods and it’s thirteen days since my last one,” she said, “so, in the words of the great Clint Eastwood, ‘Are you feeling lucky punk?’”

“Well I think we have a way to go before we have to consider that risk.”

“Actually,” she said, “we probably don’t. Let me ask you on a scale of one to ten, where do you, honestly, think the likelihood of us making love, or even just having sex would be?”

“Honestly?” I replied, “yesterday morning, I’d have said three or four, but after last night, well certainly somewhere above a five. Then this morning it went up to seven or eight.”

“All right, so I have to ask, what changed?”

“Last night was the first time I’d ever seen you perform for an audience and with an orchestra at that. The sheer ecstasy on your face was just awesome. I think I realised then, just how much that means to you. If I can take just ten percent of that, then I will be a very happy chappy.”

“And this morning?”

“When I walked into the restaurant this morning and saw you sat there next to Peter, the four of you at a table for four, I thought that you’d replaced me and that you were there to introduce me to my replacement. I was jealous. I didn’t want to be replaced. I don’t want to be replaced.”

“You don’t?” she asked, with I felt, a hint of hope in her voice.

“No,” I said, “all I want, Cal, all I’ve ever really wanted was you.”

“Charley? Sandy?” she said, “they were all a symptom of you only wanting me?”

“No,” I replied, “they were me trying to replace you and discovering that I couldn’t. They were me thinking that you were totally lost to me and me trying to cope. I won’t say they didn’t mean anything to me, they did, I loved them, but when it came down to it, they weren’t you.”

At this point we turned off the M53 onto the A56, the final stretch into Chester.

Driving down the road towards Chester, she took a left hand turn into a local residential street and pulled the car into the kerb.

“David,” she said quietly, “you’re serious about this aren’t you?”

“Absolutely,” I replied, “last night in the concert, I felt that you weren’t singing to the audience, you were singing to me. I even felt that you were saying the words directly to me.”

“I was,” she said, “at least I was aiming them at you. I felt it was my best chance to tell you how I felt and I knew that your German is good enough that you’d understand them.”

“Like I said, I felt that it was straight from your heart to mine, at that moment, we were the only two in that room.”

A moment later we were kissing over the central console.

“I love you, David,” she gasped when we broke the kiss.

“Good,” I replied.

“Good?” she spat, “I declare that I love you and all you can say is good?”

“Yes,” I answered, “of course it’s good, I’d feel awfully foolish loving you if you didn’t.”

“You,” she exclaimed, “don’t do that to me.”

I took her face between my hands and gave her another thorough kissing.

“Come on,” I said, “let’s be tourists for the afternoon.”

“You need to feed me first,” she answered.

She started the engine and pulled away from the kerb, turning round in the road and then turning at the end towards Chester city centre.

We parked in a multi-storey car park, I paid the king’s ransom that they call a parking fee and we set off to explore the city, looking for a nice quiet little place to eat. We drew a lot of looks from people in the street, walking along, hand in hand, or with our arms around each other’s waist and laughing almost constantly.

We finally found what we were looking for, a small, family run Italian Trattoria off the main drag of tourist shops. It was nothing fancy, exactly the sort of thing you might find in a back street in a small Italian town. We were greeted by the owner who seated us towards the rear of the dining room and presented us with menus, went away and came back a couple of minutes later with two small glasses of red wine.

“Barolo,” he said, “the best.”

I thanked him, but pointed out that at seventeen, we were too young to drink alcohol and he looked at me as if I were something alien.

“Young sir,” he said in heavily accented English, “nobody can eat Italian food without a glass of wine and nobody will bother us with technicalities here. You enjoy, yes?”