Chapter 27
My first thought regarding the Tea Dance is what a terrible shame it is that Gracie can’t be with us to enjoy the tinkling piano, potted palms and silver sugar tongs. In reality there are none of these. No wafts of Darjeeling, no ladies in modest frocks, no gentlemen offering to take you for a spin around the dance floor. Well, actually, that’s not true. There are a few of those. A few hundred. Shirtless. Sweating. Arms aloft, pounding and throbbing along to the music. Several of them are only wearing tight swimming trunks, giving a whole new meaning to “One lump or two?”
“Ah,” I stall. “This may not be quite what we had in mind.”
“You’ve brought us to a big open-air gay rave,” Ravenna smirks.
“Yes,” I confirm. “Yes I have.”
“Hey!” One chap with an elaborately tattooed right arm comes up to Pamela. “Are you with this guy?” He motions to Charles.
“Um. Well. Not exactly,” she falters.
“Great, you wanna dance?” he turns to Charles.
Ravenna looks even more tickled by this.
All I can do is look on helplessly.
“Sure,” he surprises all of us. “Why not?”
“What?” Ravenna hoots.
We stand amazed as he merges with the seething bodies before us. He’s actually quite a mover, instantly in time with the beat.
“This is weird, he looks kind of cool,” Ravenna is in awe.
“He always was a good dancer,” murmurs Pamela.
“How would you know?” Ravenna frowns. “I thought you met him at an antiques fair?”
“I think this young man is trying to get your attention,” Pamela redirects her daughter’s attention.
“Oh no, no,” Ravenna backs away from the extended hand. “Not me. I don’t really dance.”
“Oh please,” the young man wheedles. “I only ever get to dance with dudes. Just once I’d like to dance with a pretty girl!”
This gets her. It doesn’t hurt that he’s really good-looking—full six-pack on display, T-shirt tucked into his Diesel jeans pocket, blond hair whisked up into a Tintin peak.
“Just one dance?”
Ravenna tries to resist but he’s gone to full puppy-dog pleading.
“One song, that’s it,” she relents.
“Whatever you say, baby girl,” he says, kissing her hand and leading her off.
I look at Pamela. “I don’t know what to say.”
Fortunately she starts to laugh. “This could be exactly what we need.”
“D-do you want to dance?” I feel a little awkward asking her.
“I think I might need a drink first.”
“Me too. Let’s find the bar . . .”
An hour later, Charles is now up on some tabletop, shaking what his mama gave him, yet still managing to look emphatically heterosexual, which of course makes him the beau of the ball.
“This is so hilarious!” Ravenna whoops and whistles along with the rest of his admirers. I’m guessing she’s taken a few sips of her young escort’s drinks, but I’m hardly in a position to judge. Pamela suggested we needed to cut to the chase with some shots and now I’m feeling wonderfully blurry and absorbed into the scene.
When Donna Summer’s “Last Dance” comes on, we’re all just one heaving, pulsing, sing-a-long mass.
“Cleo!” I wave to the Cleopatra drag queen.
She blows me a kiss back and in my mind the entire place fills with glitter.
• • •
There’s something really fun about being sweaty and disheveled when everyone you are with is in the same state of disarray. Hungry now, but not inclined to go back to the hotel to change, we buy a batch of lobster rolls from one of the walk-up windows near the beach and have a picnic on the sand.
“I don’t know the last time I danced like that,” Pamela marvels as she licks the mayonnaise from her fingertips.
“I’ve never danced like that!” Charles laughs.
“So you say,” I tease.
“Do you have a partner, Charles?” Ravenna wants to know.
“A partner?” he chuckles. “No, not currently.”
“Have you ever been married?”
“Once, a long time ago.”
“But no girlfriend now?”
“Ravenna!” Pamela scolds her. “That’s a lot of personal questions.”
“I don’t mind,” he says. “The thing is, Ravenna, once you’ve experienced true love, it’s hard to settle for anything less.”
“Well I think you should consider putting yourself out there again. You’d obviously have your pick.”
“Of gay men at least!” I try to make light of the situation.
“Oh, look at that!” Pamela points to a man paddling past in a bright yellow canoe, with two small dogs in pink life jackets balanced on the front.
I reach for the camera and then scan the rest of the vista—restaurant terraces buzzing with happy chatter; little rowing boats strewn along the shore; dogs frolicking and no one making a fuss; guys walking hand in hand, laughing.
“I don’t mean to sound prejudiced in any way, but the world would be a very dull place without gay people,” I slur slightly. “They’ve got the whole joie de vivre thing down.”
“They really have,” Pamela confirms.
We sit for a moment, happy to be part of their rainbow world, looking out across the glassy-smooth water and wiggling our toes deeper into the sand.
And then Charles asks, “Who’s game for trying the Portuguese kale soup?”
“I just want another lobster roll,” Pamela responds.
“I’ll try it,” Ravenna offers, quickly adding, “Kale is a superfood.”
Sounds to me as if she thinks it will cancel out those cupcakes. And maybe here it will . . .
• • •
As we head back to the hotel, Pamela and I fall into a natural meander, pausing to peer into assorted girlie gardens while Ravenna and Charles stride ahead.
I watch them walking, perfectly in sync. No skulking from her now.
“He really does seem to bring out the best in her,” I observe.
“He’s her father.”
“What?” I blurt, tripping over the uneven paving.
Pamela nods. “You’re the first person I’ve ever told. Other than my mother, of course—hence the setup.”
I can’t believe this! My brain tries to catch up.
“Were you expecting to see him on this trip?” I ask.
“I thought perhaps in Boston . . .” She trails off. “I didn’t expect him to be driving the bus!”
“No,” I mumble. “But you’re glad to see him?”
“I am.” She gazes fondly at the back of his head.
“So you didn’t meet ten years ago?”
“Twenty-one.”
“I see . . .”
“I was on a break from Brian, coming up to my fortieth birthday, despairing that he was ever going to propose. Mum said it would do him good to miss me. She was never a fan, didn’t care for his ‘tone.’ Anyway, she and Dad were going to visit some long-lost relatives in Boston, she invited me to join them. So I did.”
“And that’s where you met?”
“My mother was parading every eligible man before me, I think in the hope that I wouldn’t go back to Brian. Charles wasn’t one of them—technically he was still married at the time, just about to start divorce proceedings—but he’s the one who caught my eye.”
“He is a good-looking fella.”
“It was more than that,” she sighs. “He had a gentleness to him and a humility, the polar opposite to Brian. At first I thought it was just that—the contrast—but then I realized it was the first time I felt understood by a man. When he looked at me I felt like he was really paying attention, that he wanted to know me. All of me. And it felt so wonderful, to have someone on my side, someone caring, who I didn’t have to guard against. I felt myself blossoming in his presence, as silly as that sounds.” She looks away.
“It doesn’t sound silly, it sounds ideal. I think we all wish for someone who brings out the best in us.” I feel a yearning for this right now. “It must have been hard to leave him, at the end of the trip.”
She nods. “It was unthinkable. At first. But then you’re home, back to reality. And there was Brian, waiting with a proposal. Of course my first instinct was to say no—how could I possibly settle now that my heart knew what it was to soar?—but then I realized I was pregnant, so choosing Brian seemed like the more responsible, if deceitful, thing to do. I mean, we were already living together—good or bad, he was the known quantity, whereas Charles was essentially a too-good-to-be-true holiday fling. He lived in a different country, he was tied to his school there. I’d just signed up for another series of Teatime with Pamela in the UK. He already had one child and a soon-to-be ex-wife. It was just too complicated.”
“Gosh.” The paths we choose. I wonder how many times she has wished she could rewind to that day and make a different choice. “Did Brian ever suspect Ravenna wasn’t his?”
“He’d make comments from time to time. She doesn’t resemble him in any way physically, but then in her teens she seemed to develop his mean spirit. And he was quite proud of that.”
“What about Ravenna?”
“She has no idea. The plan was to tell her on her eighteenth birthday, but I’ve been putting it off.” She looks so sad now. “Sometimes I can hardly bear to think of what I did.”
I take her arm, afraid she might cry.
“And Charles?” I ask as we continue on. “He never met her before today?”
She shakes her head. “He’s been waiting a long time for this moment.”
“Wow.”
“I know. He wants to tell her tomorrow in Boston—on home turf, I suppose. I just don’t want to rush into anything.”
“Oh I wouldn’t worry about that,” I want to tell her. “She can’t despise you any more than she already does.”
But of course I keep quiet.
“I’ve thought about him every day,” Pamela says, looking ahead at her love. “Always missing him. Missing the hope he brought into my life but somehow not feeling deserving of it.” She shakes her head. “All my issues, standing between him and his daughter. I can’t believe I’ve held him at a distance all this time.”
I turn to face her. “I know what it is to regret, Pamela. But now is the time to look forward. You have a chance to make things right.”
“I can never make it right—”
“Don’t give up,” I implore, gripping her hands. “You have to believe things can get better.”
I mean it: she has to, because then I can believe it too.