Gary was finding the atmosphere in the Partridge house hard to shift. ‘Perhaps we should get a rescue dog, Kelly,’ he said, as they lay on the loungers, catching the last of the autumn sun. ‘Simon says they need good homes.’
‘You mean a dog instead of a baby? Is this your way of saying we’ve no hope of ever conceiving?’ Kelly didn’t look at him. ‘Simon says this, Simon says that…’
‘He’s a good bloke and I like him.’
‘Well, I don’t like his stuck-up wife, all airs and graces,’ Kelly replied.
‘You didn’t exactly show yourself in the best light at their house, love.’
‘I never wanted to go to that bloody supper,’ she whined. ‘You’re never away from the choir these days. I thought it was going to be just the two of us here.’
It was time to deliver some home truths. ‘Trouble is, you’re not very good company at the moment. If only you’d find some friends and make an effort.’ Gary was trying to chivvy her. It wasn’t working.
Kelly stomped off back to the kitchen to open a bottle of wine. ‘Want some?’ she shouted.
‘It’s a bit early for me,’ Gary said, sensing a storm brewing. ‘I’m sorry you’re so miserable. If I could conjure up a baby for you, I would, but we have to accept it’s not looking good. You get so tense. The doc said there was nothing wrong with either of us. Sometimes it just happens this way.’
‘So it’s all my fault, is it, for not fitting in? We didn’t come here to fit in, but to enjoy ourselves and conceive. I want to see that specialist in Heraklion again. There has to be a way. Perhaps it’s time we left this sodding island and went home.’ Kelly sipped her wine with a look of misery on her face.
‘Back to London?’ This was news to Gary. ‘I thought you liked St Nick’s?’
‘You can get sick of a place. There’s nothing to do here, no nightclubs, shops. I don’t know why we ever came.’ Kelly glugged another glass of rosé.
Gary sighed loudly. ‘There’s no pleasing you lately. I’m going to see Ariadne to collect my music. I’d forgotten how a good sing can lift your spirits. You should try it.’
‘I prefer my spirits out of a bottle, thank you very much. You go off to join your poxy choirboys. I don’t care.’
Gary was losing patience with his wife. He couldn’t do right for doing wrong and he wanted to escape the dark cloud that seemed to hang over them these days.
*
Ariadne was printing off carol sheets, paper spilling all over her kitchen table. Gary leapt to catch them as they fell. ‘Looks like we’ve got a lot to learn!’ He laughed.
Hebe drifted in from the garden and frowned when she saw him. ‘That’s my job, printing off the carols,’ she said to Ariadne.
‘I know, dear, but last time you got a bit muddled and we had to throw them all away. Come and sit down. Gary’s come to collect his music.’
‘What will we be practising this week?’ he asked, aware that Hebe was glaring at him.
‘“The Twelve Days of Christmas” with actions. It should be fun. You know the one, “a partridge in a pear tree”.’ Ariadne paused. ‘Oh, you must know it by heart,’ she added, seeing the look on Gary’s face.
‘I do indeed,’ he responded. ‘Only too well, with a name like Partridge. I used to get called Birdie at school.’
‘Did you really? How is your wife? She looked very anxious to me.’
‘Kelly’s a bit under the weather, women’s stuff,’ he replied, not wanting to reveal to strangers the true reason for her misery.
On his way home he stopped off for a coffee at Irini’s, watching Mel busy herself in and out of the kitchen, carrying bottles for the fridge. If only Kelly had a friend like Mel or Della, instead of hiding in the villa, reading magazines and watching TV. Their idleness weighed on him, and “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was the last carol he wanted to sing. It brought back memories of the bullyboys in the street pinning him against the wall, ‘Sing for us, Birdie Boy.’ He’d once had a solo in the school choir before his voice had broken. He’d hated that grammar school and the purple and grey uniform that stood out against the usual browns and dark blues of the comprehensives.
It was all his gran’s fault for making him sit the eleven-plus and, when he’d got a place, parading him around as the boy wonder of Cardigan Street. Yes, he was bright enough to hold his own in the class, but on the way home he was waylaid by their neighbour’s lads and given a thumping or worse. He hated school for that reason, hating his gran even more, when she made him join the church choir at St Aidan’s with all the old men and girls. Gran had delusions of grandeur, on account of having it rough, with Granddad being out of work, then leaving her for the woman up the road. Gary had never known his mother, something about being knocked up by a soldier and left holding a baby, which she’d promptly handed over to her own mother before scarpering. It was not the best start in life.
Then there was the question of his name. Gran was called Elsie Garfield Partridge. Garfield Partridge was his name but only Kelly and his passport knew this secret. He had been Gary from the moment he’d entered infant school. ‘Garfield’ was part of Gran’s plan to make something out of his unfortunate start in life as an illegitimate orphan. He was destined to be a success, a cut above the other babies in the street. Nothing was too much of a sacrifice. She’d sent him to a private kindergarten a bus ride away, where he mixed with children way above his station. He got invited to parties in large houses on the outskirts of town, with big cars and gardens the size of recreation grounds. Gran took him on the bus and walked around, waiting to collect him when the time came. He had the best clothes and play outfits.
How she funded it he never knew, until one day in his early teens, he came home unexpectedly from school to find her in bed with a stranger. It dawned on him then why the neighbours sneered at them. She was a prostitute and his education was funded by her trade. He felt angry, ashamed and confused by this discovery. That was when he went off the rails, failed his exams, got excluded from school for drinking, cautioned by the police for stealing bikes, scooters and finally cars.
It was his probation officer, Stuart Gordon, who stood by him and noticed that he was good with computers. He found Gary a job, goodness knows how. If ever he had a son, Stuart would be his name.
He tried to make Gran promise to give up prostitution and stop making him into what he was not. She took offence and shoved him out of the house to fend for himself. It was Kelly Marie Keogh who came to his rescue, funny little Kelly, who loved him for who he was. He’d known her for years as a friend and once fancied her big sister, Bernie, but Kelly was the one who stuck by him.
That was when he worked out that, before her, no one in his fractured family had really loved him. Gran had praised him for achieving her dreams but never cuddled him. He recognised you could be dirt poor, yet have a loving family. Gran did her best, by her own lights, but it had all gone wrong between them.
Kelly had brought him down to earth, helped him to find himself, to take on responsibility and have fun. He had wanted to give her the moon and stars. Their wedding was a simple affair, and Gran didn’t turn up because the Keoghs were Catholics. They took a cheap package holiday to Greece and fell in love with the heat, the colours and the food of the islands. Of course, going to live there was just a fantasy until that fateful moment three years ago when their whole world had changed overnight. So why was it now all going wrong for him?