Page 105 of Little Wing
He stared at her right back. ‘Did you still feel like you needed that drink?’ And she sensed he was telling her not to go there. Not yet.
‘It’s not even six,’ she smiled. ‘But why not – let’s live a little.’
‘Red?’ he called from the kitchen. ‘Or an awful white? Or beer, but it’s warm.’
‘Whatever you’re having,’ Nell called back. ‘By the way, what washing powder do you use?’
Dougie stood in the kitchen and smiled. He liked this. He liked the way that Nell and he could bounce around from one topic to another, dip their toes into the profound, give the mundane resonance. He came back through with two glasses of red wine and a pouch of Fairy capsules.
‘Here,’ he said, ‘happy birthday.’
‘It’s not till September.’
‘I know – I was at your first ever party. It’s just in case I forget. It’s just in case we’re not – we don’t .?.?.’
But Nell stilled his sentence. She kissed him on the lips. ‘But we will be,’ she whispered. His eyes sank into hers and he pulled her close, his hands in her hair as he kissed her back. He smiled at her reddened face and touched her lips with his finger.
‘Slàinte,’ he said, raising his glass.
Nell and Dougie sat and drank and sometimes they chatted and other times they were still.
‘What’s in the box?’ Nell asked. It looked oddly out of place, just randomly plonked in front of the bookshelf.
‘Are you hungry, Nell?’
‘I am a bit.’
‘What do you fancy?’
‘I could absolutely murder a burger – a monumentally big juicy one that drips down your chin, with posh French fries that come in a little tin mug.’
‘Well, as luck would have it there happens to be such a place right around the corner – shall we go?’
‘Let’s. What’s in that box, Dougie? More photos?’
‘Wait!’ said Dougie. ‘I almost forgot.’ He went to his desk in the corner of the room and brought back a large white card envelope. He placed it on Nell’s lap.
‘Go ahead,’ he said.
She opened it, pulled out the contents and gasped.
‘It’s Frank!’
‘Aye.’
‘And me!’ She stared at the photograph. There she was, glancing at Dougie as she placed Frank’s tray down. ‘I don’t remember you taking this! But it’s so –still. Like I’d been standing there, lost in thought, for hours. The light, Dougie!’
‘Like a modern-day Vermeer, Nell,’ Dougie grinned. ‘Aye, the light was just perfect. Actually, I like this one.’ It was Nell and Frank turned to the window in the hope of catching their blackbirds. ‘And this.’
Nell took the print from him and studied it. Frank with his rheumy-eyed smile and a depth to his gaze that spun through the decades of his history for all to see, as colourful as the clothing he now wore to brighten up his eighties and his inevitable passage to the ultimate dark.
‘I love my Frank,’ she said quietly.
‘I can tell,’ Dougie said.
‘May I keep this?’
‘Of course.’
