Page 12 of The Price of Love
‘My grandfather died, too,’ I found myself saying. ‘He left me his nose.’ And then I realised that this was the first time I’d actually said it aloud. ‘My grandfather died,’ I said again. I hadn’t even managed to say it to Luke. It was almost as though if I didn’t say it, it hadn’t happened.
Cal nodded. ‘Takes a while to get used to, doesn’t it? Almost like they’ve been around so long, they can’t juststopbeing. Maybe they have to, kind of, wear away in our heads.’
On the ride home, tucked down low to avoid the pull of the wind, I thought about this. Had Ganda left me his bodilyremnant to ensure that he never ‘wore away in my head’? Or as a good luck charm? He’d always sworn that, after the accident which had removed said nose, his luck had changed. Nothing that made his fortune, but enough to pay for materials, workspace, horrible baggy tartan trousers — all the sort of things that are necessary to mad inventors. All right, yes, I had to admit it. Much as I had loved . . .still lovedGanda, much as I had enjoyed being his favoured grandchild and helping him with his creations, I had known all the time that he was completely barking. And look at his legacies. An embalmed nose, a ton of dusty books, a pile of mouldering rubber boots, half an acre of sandy soil and two spaniels?
Once home, I fetched the matchbox from the cupboard and pulled open the inner tray. There lay the nose in question; I remembered Ganda pulling the box from the back pocket of his trousers and making me blow on it for luck whenever he’d finished a new project, but I hadn’t seen the actual nose for a long time. It was a small, dried up raisin-looking thing, round with a dividing crease like Tom Thumb’s backside.
‘Honestly, Ganda,’ I said. ‘What were youthinking?’ My grandfather had known he was dying, had a few weeks warning to get his affairs in order, so leaving it to me hadn’t been a mad whim. I closed the tray up. The nose was padded in place with a wad of paper so it barely moved. ‘Maybe I’m supposed to wish on it. Like a star.’ I was speaking aloud, glad that there was no one to overhear. Wishing on a star is pathetic enough, wishing on your dead grandfather’s nasal organ has to border on the pathological.
‘All right.’ I blew on the box and shook it again. ‘I wish . . . I wish . . .’ A mistimed snatch of my fingers and the inner tray of the matchbox flew free, sailed across the kitchen and deposited Ganda’s nose deftly into the plughole of the sink. It caught on the trap for a moment before my careful attempt to pry it free withmy fingernails sent it plunging into the cabbage-scented depths of the U-bend.
I unscrewed the pipe and was hit in the face with a splurge of cold, greasy water accompanying the nose onto the floor. As I mopped up, I found the paper wadding from the matchbox tray. It was thicker than the tissue paper I had thought stuffed the box, and its flight had caused it to spread half-open revealing the lettering which covered one side. I wiped my hands on my legs and ironed the paper down on the floor. The words I read sent me flying to the phone to call Katie, all thoughts of the renegade nose forgotten.
Chapter Seven
Sunday can best be described as a contained disaster. You know those days when, through nobody’s fault, you are desperate to be somewhere else but are forced to go on with a kind of ritual? Katie said that summed up her wedding day to a T. I couldn’t tell Luke or Bree what I’d discovered hidden in the matchbox, not yet. Not until, well, not yet. In consequence I was a bit distracted. Bree was cross with Paddy who hadn’t yet returned home from his conference, which left poor Luke the only one of us fit to hold a civilised conversation. But, on the plus side, he really hit it off with my sister who, when she’d stopped clutching her bump and complaining that Paddy’s absence was causing her Braxton-Hicks contractions, hissed to me over the sprouts, ‘Don’t let this one get away, Wills.’
‘What do you suggest, a high-pressure containment field?’
‘You know what you’re like with men. They’re there one minute and gone the next.’
‘I don’t exactly release them into the wild.’
Bree made a face and passed Luke the potatoes. ‘Will never has much luck with men,’ she said.
‘Whatisthis? Just because Sophie and Iain aren’t here, you feel that you have to go all parental on me? For God’s sake, Bree, next thing you’re going to be showing him photos of me having my nappy changed.’
(Sophie and Iain are Mum and Dad. They brought us up to call them by their given names. Sickening, isn’t it? I blame the parents.)
Under the table, Luke squeezed my knee. ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere.’
I had to dash into the garden room and be sick. I blamed it on the dogs.
And then we drove back to town and I was on stage, wearing the band uniform of black and white, belting out eighties’ classics, feeling all warm and powerful with my boys behind me (best place for Jazz who, in defiance of the whole androgynous-Goth thing, was growing a goatee and therefore looked like a penguin with its dinner round its mouth) and Luke somewhere in the dark audience in front of me. I mean,forgetreleasing an album and have it enter straight at number one, this was what I was in music for.
We finished with ‘Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?’ and exited to applause. Luke was waiting for me. ‘Will you be all right to get home?’
‘Yes, in a bit. Got to give the lads a hand with the equipment first.’
‘Oh. Right. Good.’ Then he gave me a swift kiss on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then. About eight?’ Without waiting for an answer, he was gone. I stood and gawped after him, watching his trendily cut blond hair as it walked off out of the bar. ‘But,’ I muttered to myself, ‘but.’ What had I done? What had gone wrong? All right, so I’d not actually got round to asking if he’d stay over, but, was it me? Did I look, in my white lacy top, less like a celebrity and more like a set of net curtains? Did the black and white ensemble make him think of some ill-advised liaison with a waitress? Or a Friesian cow?
Sadly I began helping the band pack away their instruments, coil wires and box amps.
‘Wonder Boy gone then, has he?’ Jazz appeared at my elbow, parts of his keyboard over his shoulder.
I thought about lying, but not seriously. I might manage to get away with fibbing to Jazz, but Katie would get the truth out of me in seconds. ‘He had to go.’ I drooped, but rallied quickly. ‘He’ll have loads of work to get on with. He and his brother havefound some premises and they’re dead keen to start shipping some cars in.’
‘Has he shagged you yet?’
‘Ah, this will be the famous Jazz tact and diplomacy.’ I half-heartedly rolled some wire in my hands, before Bob, the bass player, snatched it off me.
‘He hasn’t then. Only three reasons I can think of: he’s married, he’s gay, or he could be gayandmarried I suppose, or he belongs to some religious sect that doesn’t believe in sex and thinks everyone should be smooth plastic below the waist. You know, like Action Man.’
‘Action Man is a member of a religious sect?’ I was baffled.
‘Smooth plastic. Well, nearly smooth, just this kind of seam thing.’
‘You’re weird, Jazz.’
