Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery
Page 53

She glanced around, unwilling to let her eyes rest on any faces. Her heart was beating strongly, too strongly. She felt her hands trembling and tucked them into the pockets of her jeans.
Right at the end of the ward there was a bed underneath a window – it was the nicest, quietest spot on the six-bed ward, and instinctively Polly knew there was a reason why you got it.
The figure lying on the bed was asleep; long, very thin. Even though his hair was mostly grey, she could see quite clearly the sandy streak in it. She wished she’d taken a minute to run a comb through her own hair, although she was at least wearing make-up; if you didn’t wear a full face of slap at all times, Rhonda asked you if you were sick, or had given up.
She halted, nervous and unsure. Carmel leaned over the bed.
‘Tony,’ she whispered. ‘Tony dear.’
There was such tenderness in her voice – a lifetime’s worth, Polly reflected.
The figure on the bed – you could see his hip bones through the thin sheets; it was extremely hot on the ward – stirred slightly. There was a drip above his head, presumably morphine. Polly hoped he wasn’t in pain. That whatever was eating him from the inside was being tended to carefully and effectively; that he wouldn’t be made to linger on in any way.
But she didn’t feel anything beyond that. She didn’t feel the need to throw herself on the bed and shout ‘Daddy! My daddy!’ She barely knew how daddies worked. Instead she stood there, her hands plunged in her pockets, trying to compose herself; trying to make her face into the right kind of expression: concerned without being fake or weird. Her mouth twisted a little, and she bit the inside of her cheek.
‘Tony,’ said Carmel again, and he blinked and slowly opened his eyes.
They were the exact same shade of blue-green as Polly’s own.
Polly shuffled a little closer, into his field of vision. Carmel gently picked up a pair of horn-rimmed glasses from the bedside table and fitted them round his pale, narrow head. He stared at Polly as if he were looking at a total stranger.
‘Is it the nurse?’
His voice was a little quavery, but she could hear him well enough.
‘No,’ said Carmel, holding his hand. ‘No, Tony. This is Polly.’
There was a long silence.
‘Polly?’ came the voice finally. It cracked a little.
‘Yes,’ said Carmel.
Tony drew a long breath. It took him a while; he wheezed slowly, in and out. It sounded absolutely horrible.
‘Polly. Pauline?’
Polly nodded.
‘Hello,’ she said. She didn’t know what to call him, so she didn’t call him anything.
Those blue-green eyes blinked again. It was absurd. Of course, what else could a baby be made up of but the information from both its parents – a toe shape here, an eyebrow there? That was all there was. She thought once again of Kerensa’s baby, then shook the image out of her mind. This wasn’t the time.
‘Nice to meet you,’ she added, her own voice trembling.
Tony’s veiny hand, with its protruding drip, waved feebly in the air in her direction. Polly, rather reluctantly, moved forward and put her own hand out. He grabbed it with slightly surprising force and she felt him squeeze. She glanced down and almost couldn’t stifle her shock: the same square nails; the same very long forefinger. She had her father’s hands.
‘It’s uncanny,’ said Carmel. ‘Sorry. It’s why I couldn’t stop staring at you. Sorry.’
Polly looked at her.
‘Well,’ Carmel went on. ‘It’s just how it is, but none of your… none of your siblings look quite as much like him.’
Polly couldn’t do anything other than nod.
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Tony, his voice croaky. ‘I… It was…’
‘It’s all right,’ said Polly. ‘I understand.’
And as she said it, she felt a weight fall off her; something she had barely realised had been heavy on her her entire life. As she looked at the wasted figure of the man in the bed, she realised he wasn’t the perfect father figure she’d been dreaming of, that she’d wanted so very badly. Neither was he the bad bogeyman of her mother’s imagination, the implacable enemy to be hated for ever. He was just a man who had made a mistake, exactly like the one Kerensa had made, more or less, and then had to live with it for the rest of his life.
It was just there, nothing you could change or prevent. Once upon a time, perhaps, it could have been made better, but not now. And that was okay. Well, it wasn’t, but it had to be. Because it was all there was.
‘Are you… are you having a good life?’ croaked Tony.
Polly nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. She thought about Huckle and suppressed the thought that things might be unravelling at pace. ‘Yes, I am having a good life. It wasn’t always. Then I found out what I really wanted to do…’
‘You’re the girl that makes bread, aren’t you? I saw you in the paper.’
‘I am the girl who makes bread,’ agreed Polly.
‘You should teach her to cook then, she’s always been rubbish,’ he said, grinning a slightly ghastly grin in Carmel’s direction.
‘Shut up you,’ said Carmel, and Polly could see again the massive weight of affection that had obviously survived everything life could throw at it, still more or less shining brightly. Would she ever have that?
She tried to smile at him.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I love what I do. It took me a while to get there, and I’m massively overworked and exhausted all the time and I don’t make any money and all that stuff, but I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.’
Tony nodded. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘That’s really good, isn’t it, Carmel?’
Carmel smiled. ‘She must have had a wonderful mother,’ she said softly, and all three of them fell silent for a moment.
‘Is she… Do you want to meet the others?’ said Tony hopefully, as if he knew already that he was asking too much.
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘No. I don’t think so. I have my life and they have theirs, and I wouldn’t want to complicate matters. Complicate everyone’s lives.’
‘It was me who did that,’ said Tony.
Polly took her hand back and stepped away from the bed.