Trevor settled deeper into the deckchair, raising the rim of his panama so that the sun could find all of his face and linking his hands across the swell in his belly, the one that contained Eleanor’s splendid Sunday lunch and the tumour he had recently been told would kill him. Three months, the oncologist had said. Six at most.
Through half-closed eyes, he let his gaze travel round Eleanor’s fine garden, with its high enclosure of greenery and lower tiers of colour. White, yellow, pink, blue, he wasn’t good on names, Latin or otherwise, but the colours were a feast, even with autumn getting into its stride at last. The weekend was to offer the last gasp of temperate weather for months, the pundits had warned, news much discussed during the course of Eleanor’s delicious lamb tagine and spiced rhubarb crumble, and deployed afterwards by her, quite fiercely, as the reason her guests were to enjoy their coffee and chocolate in the garden. She had opened the kitchen door and shooed them outside, directing Nick and Billy to the lopsided shed that stowed a hotchpotch of rickety folding chairs, leftover from her Russian lover’s days, she had explained merrily, and summoning Megan’s assistance in fetching a stack of fleeces and blankets to cover their knees and shoulders.
As a result, Trevor was as warm and wrapped as a parcel. At his feet were a cluster of earthenware pots, among them a doughty geranium he didn’t remember seeing before, sprouting out of a grey ceramic urn in clusters of such vibrant polished red that he blinked in wonder every time it caught his eye. All the colours of the world were brighter to him now. It was one of the upsides of the diagnosis.
Not unlike being in love, Trevor decided, watching Eleanor and Nick, whose sense of each other was palpable, even when they were many yards apart. They were, as the adage so aptly put it, falling in love. They talked and listened to other people, but really they were only talking and listening to each other. Their hearts were open and forgiving. No obstacle was too high or wide to be overcome. They chattered about each other at every opportunity. He was job-hunting and flat-hunting. She was teaching and writing. He was soon to meet her nephew and nieces. In a couple of days she would meet his girls. Their lives had been stepping stones to each other, Eleanor had gushed during one rare private moment before lunch, a zig-zag path towards what was meant to be.
There was no right or wrong to such sentiments. Trevor knew that from Larry. You found someone and it felt like they had found you. Then it was a matter of working through whatever came next, none of it easy, none of it guaranteed.
‘Sleepyhead.’ He opened his eyes as Eleanor tweaked up the brim of his hat.
‘Too much pud.’ He grinned.
‘Yes, indeed.’ She tapped her index finger against the new bulge of his belly.
‘I am glad you are happy, sweetie. I want to say be careful, but there’s no point.’
‘No point,’ she echoed gleefully, skipping over to flop next to Megan, who was sitting on a blanket she had laid out as a picnic rug, one arm slung over Billy, parked in a deckchair alongside. They had announced during the course of lunch that they were expecting their fourth child, prompting hoots of congratulations and much cheerful speculation about how highland cattle, pets, siblings and busy jobs would be stretched to accommodate taking care of the new arrival. At one point Billy had left his seat and walked round the table to hug his wife, saying she was a marvel and he didn’t know where he would be without her. Trevor had caught Eleanor and Nick exchanging a glance, sharing some hint of extra knowledge.
Life went on, that was the thing, Trevor mused. His tumour huge, metastasised, would reap its obvious end. The horrors of pointless, prolonging treatment had been discussed and abandoned. He was doing what Eleanor’s dear sister had done; recognising his time was almost done. Soon it would be painkillers and difficult conversations. But not that day. That day was lunch and joy and babies and love. The geranium was blinding. Bloody. Beautiful. Bloody beautiful. Trevor closed his eyes.
‘Don’t move, there’s a butterfly on your back.’
‘So long as it’s not a wasp.’
‘It’s definitely not a wasp. It’s small and blue. I think it likes your fleece.’
‘Everyone’s gone.’
‘Except me.’
‘Except you.’
‘It was a great lunch. Great food. Great friends.’
They were lying on the blanket, the afternoon sun flaming intermittently through the branches of the weeping ash. Eleanor was on her stomach, one cheek resting sideways on the pillow of her hands, facing Nick. He was alongside, leaning back on his elbows, his legs straight out.
‘I always liked this garden,’ she said, ‘even with Igor. I like the way it is enclosed. It makes me feel safe. I know the big bad and wonderful world is out there, but it is nice sometimes, not to have to look at it. When we were little I was happier in London. Broughton had such open views, the sea lurking just behind; I knew it was beautiful but it made me afraid. So huge, so exposed. It was like anything could happen.’
‘Which it can.’ Nick plucked a blade of grass and tickled her ear. ‘The strangest things.’
They smiled at each other.
‘Why did you write to Kat after all those years? Was it really just about turning forty, like you said? Don’t answer if you don’t want to.’
‘I do want to. I have wondered myself sometimes. Approaching such a great age was definitely part of it – I got back in touch with several old friends at the same time. But with Kat…’ Nick scowled, trying and failing to take himself back to the mindset of soul-searching that had gradually got the better of him. Unhappiness was like being ill, he decided, impossible truly to recollect; a memory of fact rather than feeling. ‘Maybe it was also partly to do with wanting to remember what it was like to love someone. I mean, really to love someone. I wrote to Tilly too, as it happens, perhaps for the same reason, but she didn’t reply.’
‘And instead of Kat or Tilly you got me.’
‘I got you’, he said softly.
‘Is the butterfly still there?’
‘Yes. It’s such a delicate dusty blue. Why would anyone want to catch such a thing?’
‘Like your Nabokov and Fowles,’ she teased.
‘I love how clever you are.’
‘That’s good. Personally, I am only after your body.’ She edged nearer him, doing her best to shake her shoulders. ‘Fly away, Mr Butterfly, I need to kiss this man.’ She shook and shimmied harder, making Nick laugh because she looked funny and because the insect stayed where it was.
‘Hang on.’ He leant over her and cupped the creature gently between his palms before throwing it at the sky. It fluttered for an instant, regrouping, and then took off, a dark dot merging with the flames of the sunlit ash.