Page 13 of Blow Down (The Plumber's Mate)
“You have glum-face,” Gary told me as we sat down in the bar area. I swear that gets smaller every time I go in, as more and more tables get co-opted for diners. “Tell Uncle Gary all about it. What has the nasty man done now?”
“Nothing. Seriously.” I shrugged. “We just went round to his mum’s for Sunday lunch yesterday, and it was a bit of a mare.”
“Ooh, go on.”
I hesitated. It didn’t seem right spilling the beans about Phil’s cheating ex. “Oh, you know. The usual family arguments. His mum having a dig at the kids every chance she got, playing ’em off against each other. She even brought me into it a couple of times. You know how it goes.”
Gary stared at me in polite incomprehension. “No, but I’m fascinated. Do go on.”
Right. Gary was the only child of hippy parents who were still daft for each other. He’d probably never observed a full-on family row in the wild. “Uh . . . It was just a bit tense. That’s all.”
He pouted, cheated of juicy details. “You’re no fun.”
“Yeah, neither was that lunch, which is why I don’t wanna talk about it.” I hesitated. “Listen, have you ever had an ex you just couldn’t get over, no matter how much of a shit they were to you?”
“I hope we’re not talking about your fiancé, here.”
I gave a shaky laugh. “No.”
Gary raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. Well, personally, no, but I have observed the phenomenon in others. It’s The One That Got Away. The Grass That Is Always Greener.”
Don’t ask me how Gary manages to pronounce capitals. He also does a nice line in quotation and exclamation marks.
“What, you reckon it’s not the bloke at all, just the idea of ’em?”
“How unusually perceptive of you, Tommy dearest. Yes.”
Great. So I wasn’t up against a memory of a cheating bastard. I was up against a memory of an idealised bastard.
Gary patted my knee. “But don’t worry. I’m sure he loves you more.”
I gave him a weak smile of thanks. Then I blinked. “Oi, I said we weren’t talking about Phil.”
“I know, darling.” Gary took a sip of his martini, smiled, and set down his glass. “But I’m not silly enough to believe you.”
The week went by without any further skeletons toppling out of closets, for which I, for one, was bloody grateful. Phil got over himself—by which I mean his family—and came round to mine for tea more often than not, although he was busy a couple of nights with work.
We didn’t talk about the Mysteriously Cheating Mark. To be honest, I was still struggling to get my head round it myself. I mean seriously, if you had Phil waiting for you at home, would you really bother looking around for a bit on the side? Depending, obviously, on your personal orientation. Me, well. Don’t get me wrong, if anyone asked, I was totally up for a thirty-two-some with the England rugby squad. But as for anything remotely likely to ever happen, what’d be the point? Phil was tall, built, and gorgeous, and what’s more, he knew what I liked. And, well, I loved him, didn’t I?
I nearly asked Phil about moving in a couple of times, but the moment never seemed quite right.
It wasn’t that important, anyhow. We’d sort it all out once we’d got a bit further with planning the wedding.
The day of the Harvest Fayre dawned bright, sunny, and warm, with the prospect, so the girl on the telly told me, of clear skies all day. It was the sort of British summer’s day it would have been nice to have in the actual summer, instead of tacked on in the autumn when the kiddies were back at school and the shops were already starting to get their Christmas stuff in. I’d have suspected Greg of having had a word with the bloke upstairs if I hadn’t thought it more likely Mrs. F-M. had performed some arcane ritual of her own. At any rate, there was no chance of me getting out of whatever she had planned for me now.
All right, I could have simply not turned up. I just wasn’t certain Cherry would ever speak to me again if I didn’t go along to do my bit for the needy of St. Leonards and, more importantly, Greg’s career.
“So what is it you’re doing at this thing?” Phil rumbled in my ear, his arms around my waist while I buttered a slice of toast. He’d stayed over Friday night.
“Buggered if I know. S’pose I’ll find out when I get there. With a bit of luck, it’ll just be an hour or two manning the bar, and then we can skip off together. Unless you’ve got a secret passion for Morris dancing? I mean, there’s got to be Morris dancers, right? Big event like St. Leonards Harvest Fayre, there might even be competing teams having a dance-off.” A stray thought struck me. “Oi, your surname’s Morrison, innit? So does that mean, way back in the mists of time, one of your ancestors was a Morris dancer?”
Phil gave me a look. “I’d have thought you’d be the last person to make assumptions based on anyone’s surname.”
“Fair point. But were they?”
“If they were, they had the decency to keep quiet about it so as not to embarrass the descendants, all right?”
“What are you saying, here? It’s a very manly pursuit, Morris dancing. Some of ’em have really big sticks.”
