Little Wishes Read online

  With James taking care of medical matters, she knew that the best thing she could do would be to help the person who had saved her mother. “You’d better come with me,” she said as she beckoned Tom to follow her toward the stairs.

  Under normal circumstances it would have been inappropriate to ascend the stairs as they were together. Eyebrows would have been raised at the disappearance of two youngsters like that, especially in a small place like Porthsennen. Yet on that night nobody noticed as he followed her in silence. He waited at the top of the stairs while Elizabeth rooted around in her father’s closet. Moments later she emerged carrying a well-worn sweater and a pair of dress trousers that tapered at the ankle.

  “Thank you,” he said as she handed him the pile of clothes, adding a pair of brown brogues that she knew her father didn’t wear anymore.

  “I should be thanking you,” she said as she stood back. “For what you did, I mean. You saved my mother’s life, no doubt.”

  With the top of his forearm, he brushed his floppy wet hair from his face. “Anybody would have done the same, miss.”

  Elizabeth had so many questions buzzing around her head. She wanted to ask what he had seen, and how he’d ended up being the one to help. About how her mother fell. But she didn’t know where to start, because she was sure on some level that she knew the answer to at least one of those questions. And her father was very specific; they were not to divulge any details of the illness that had claimed her mother, not a word about her memory problems, or the strange things she sometimes did around the house. Elizabeth didn’t want her inquisitiveness to fuel the fires of speculation.

  “Perhaps,” she eventually said, agreeing. “But you were the one who did. I would like to say that I am very grateful.”

  “My pleasure.” Silence descended again. Tom glanced down at the puddle of seawater forming under his feet. “Where should I change?”

  The floorboards creaked as she moved toward the bathroom, pipes rattling as they delivered warm water to the sink. Tom held back from following her, but when she looked up and saw he wasn’t there, she moved to beckon him through. For a moment all she could do was stare at him as he stood in the doorway to the bathroom, the man who had saved her mother. Gratitude swelled inside her, and she wondered if there was anything she could ever do to repay such a thing as saving a person’s life. “There’s plenty of hot water, and soap in that dish,” she said after a while. “Take as long as you like.”

  As Tom stepped into the bathroom Elizabeth looked away, suddenly aware of their proximity in such a small and private room. Edging past him, she made her way to the door. Just before he closed it, he held up the clothes and shoes and said, “Thank you again for this. I appreciate it, miss.”

  The urge to rush back in, reach out, and hug him came to her, but she stifled it, and instead smiled and pointed to the sink. “Get washed and changed before you catch a chill, and come down when you’re ready.” Steam billowed toward her as he turned on the taps. “But just before I go, could you do me a favor?” It seemed wrong to her that somebody who had done something so great should have to refer to her so formally. “Please stop calling me miss. My name’s Elizabeth.”

  Tom just smiled, nodded his head. “I know that,” he said, before closing the bathroom door.

  * * *

  Elizabeth’s fingers tingled against the hot mugs of tea that she’d made for the people who had stuck around after the accident. Once those drinks were in the hands of the helpers, she set about mopping up the patches of seawater that Tom had left behind with a rag she found under the sink, then swept up the sand that crunched underfoot as she walked. It was another fifteen minutes before folks began to leave, reassured by the fact that Catherine Davenport was in bed and out of danger. Elizabeth returned to the living room to find it almost empty.

  “You’re leaving?” she asked James when she saw him buttoning his coat. Her father was finishing up what looked to be a large measure of brandy. Judging from his rosy cheeks, it was unlikely to have been his first. His eyes were still red and swollen from tears.

  “I am going to leave you both in peace,” James said, reaching to stroke Elizabeth’s face.

  “We need to get some rest,” said her father as he stood up from his chair, setting his glass down on a small table. Elizabeth couldn’t bear the thought of how terrible he must be feeling. He swept her up in a tight embrace. “Stop worrying now, eh? She’s going to be fine.” It was the safest place Elizabeth had ever known, yet still her father nodded to James, who was hovering next to them. “Tell her, won’t you? She’ll listen to you.”

  “Your father’s right, Lizzy. She’s going to be just fine.” As James went to continue, they heard the creak of the staircase, the plod of heavy feet. They turned to see Tom arriving in the hallway. Elizabeth’s father stepped forward, reaching for Tom’s hand.

  “Hello, young man, or should I say the hero of the hour. I believe you are the person who saved my wife.”

  Tom nodded.

  “I don’t know how to thank you enough,” her father said. “Please, tell me your name.”

  Tom remained quiet, his fingers fussing at a fray in the sweater. “This is Thomas, Daddy,” Elizabeth said, stepping in. “We actually used to go to school together.”

  “Well, we are very grateful to you, Thomas,” her father said. “But I’m surprised to hear you were at school with Elizabeth. You look older.”

  “A little bit, sir.”

  “So, are you working now?”

  “When I can. Mainly pollack and mackerel, plus a bit of netting for crayfish.” Fishermen populated both Tom’s and Elizabeth’s family trees as far back as anybody knew. “I have been working for Mr. Cressa for the last three years, and where I can during the winter.”

  “Three years?” Her father shared a glance with James. “How old are you? Twenty-one? Twenty-two?”

  “Eighteen, sir.”

  Elizabeth’s father appeared puzzled. “You didn’t choose to continue your education?”

  Tom couldn’t maintain his gaze then. “I learned what I had to, sir. Now I help my family.”

  “Well,” said Dr. Davenport, “that is very admirable. You must tell me your father’s name so that I can congratulate him on having such a fine young man as a son.”

  “It’s Pat Hale,” said Tom.

  Her father took a moment, a heavy breath in. “Pat Hale, eh? You’re his eldest son.”

  “His only son, sir.”

  “Yes, of course. I remember the unfortunate incident with your brother. I’m afraid I didn’t recognize you.” Elizabeth watched her father, his mind elsewhere. “Well, I do hope that in some of your father’s sober moments he finds the time to be proud of you.” Elizabeth noticed Tom’s cheeks flush, and just for a moment she wondered what had transpired, and why her father had said something so cruel. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, Thomas.” He patted him on the shoulder, guided him toward the door. “We’d best get ourselves off to bed. Thank you once again.” James followed Tom from the house, kissing Elizabeth on the cheek just before he left. It came as a relief when her father closed the door.

  * * *

  When the house was empty of visitors, Dr. Davenport directed Elizabeth back into the drawing room, guiding her to sit in one of the chairs. They remained in silence until her father spoke. “I think it’s very important we address what happened tonight, Elizabeth.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes, unfortunately it is. But we don’t want to fuel the rumor mill, do we?” People were already starting to talk. Even in the shop last week she had felt the hush of a whispered conversation and knew somehow without hearing a word that it had been about her family. “Sleepwalking would be a much kinder story than the truth, for all involved.”

  “Of course, Daddy. But . . .” she began, and then thought better of it.

  “What is it, Elizabeth?”

  “It’s just . . .” She hesitated, licking her s
alty lips. The ocean was still loud in the distance, sounding now to her like a threat. “This is as good as she is ever going to be from now on, isn’t it?”

  He sighed heavily, all his breath leaving him, and for a moment Elizabeth wished she could take her question back. The burden of it weighed heavily on her, but she had to know what to expect.

  “Alzheimer’s comes and goes in waves, Elizabeth. She will have good days, and there will be bad days. But when you are with the people you love there is nothing that one cannot find the strength for. One can always find the light through the dark when there is love, no matter what is expected of you.” His hand stroked heavily across her shoulders. “Now go on, Elizabeth. Get yourself off to bed. It’s been a long night.”

  Moonlight illuminated the staircase as she climbed, her skin pale and cold in the gray light. She found herself not only feeling pleased about the absence of an engagement ring on her finger, but also thinking of Tom. Tonight, she realized that she had never been more grateful for anybody in the whole world. The image of him lingered in her mind, stumbling from the water with her mother under his arm, saving one of the people she loved most. She was still thinking about him when she slipped into her sheets, when she closed her eyes and eventually succumbed to sleep. That night she dreamed that she was the one who was struggling out at sea, fighting for breath, and that Tom was the one who came to rescue her.

  Now

  For a while Elizabeth sat at the table, staring at the basket of past wishes. For forty-nine years he had kept his promise, had always delivered. For the second time in as many minutes she got up to check that she hadn’t made a mistake, telling herself that perhaps it had been windy overnight and that the pot had blown away. It was impossible to ignore the fact that Tom had always known how to account for that in the past, tucking his gift alongside the front step, just behind the rose planters. Never once had his gifts gone missing. Never once had he forgotten.

  Could she have it wrong? The calendar hung above her from a pin tacked into the old plaster wall, so she ran a gnarled fingertip along the row until she came across the right date. September 7. There it was, the little blue crocus she had painted in anticipation. Had she gotten the date itself wrong? Things like that happened lately, at her age more than she would have liked. Only last week she’d wandered down to the Roundhouse, the gallery in Porthsennen, to inquire whether any of her latest watercolors had sold. After she’d waited outside for the best part of an hour, watching as the surfers moved back and forth in the water, Old Man Cressa’s grandson had walked past.

  “Out for the last of the weather?” he’d called as his little spaniel scurried along a trail of scent on the ground.

  “Waiting for them to open,” she’d said, pointing to the gallery, then tapping her watch. “Am I running fast or are they running late? My watch says it’s almost ten.”

  “I’d say you’re running about twenty-three hours too fast,” he’d said, laughing to himself. “It’s Sunday.”

  Stupidity had swamped her at the realization, and even more so over the thought of him laughing. If she’d been a youngster it would have been a simple mistake, but when you’re sixty-seven years old, she thought, it’s a mistake of old age. And now, sitting in that robe and clinging on to a love that had passed her by, she couldn’t have felt more foolish. What on earth was wrong with her? Who was she trying to kid?

  The sight of the champagne felt like an insult, so she tipped what was left down the sink and put the dirty plates in the dishwasher. The basket of wishes was just as unfortunate, so that went back into the cupboard alongside the old bottle of champagne, his diary, and a few other gifts that he had left throughout the years.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked Cookie when she saw him watching her. “A silly old fool,” she offered quietly to herself. A single fat tear dripped onto the robe, the silk blushing as dark as her mood. “What a senseless old woman you’ve become, Elizabeth.”

  Pictures of Kate stared back at her accusingly from around the room. One in particular stood out. In the photograph, Kate was just twenty years old, wearing a harness with her feet strapped together and her arms spread wide, standing on the edge of a cliff surrounded by jungle greenery. Moments after that photograph had been taken, she had thrown herself over the edge, her life secured by nothing more than the bungee cord and a large dash of hope. “Born courageous” was what Elizabeth always said of her. Even as a child she never feared having a go at things. Nothing like Elizabeth, not in appearance or character, instead following her father in both. Kate would never have sat around waiting for gifts from a man who’d left her. When she thought things were over, that was it, done. That’s why Kate wouldn’t speak to her anymore, not since last November. Best part of a year without so much as a hello. Elizabeth missed her so much, and her two boys. They would have grown so much in the time she hadn’t seen them. Elizabeth wished she could take back the things they had said, but that wasn’t how life worked. It didn’t seem to matter how many messages she left or phone calls she made, how many times she begged for forgiveness. You couldn’t turn back the clock.

  Standing at the window, she brushed the curtains aside, looked down to the coast and up the hill to where the old Mayon Lookout was positioned. A walk up there would have been her first stop in her plan for the day, and afterward she would have driven out to Penzance to go to the theater. That was Tom’s wish in 1982: I wish that I could take you to see a musical in the West End. Cats was good. I think you would have loved it. Today she was due to see an acoustic guitar player, a woman singing. The closest she could get to fulfilling that wish. But she already knew she wasn’t going to go. It wasn’t 1982 anymore, and this wasn’t the West End. Whosever life she had been trying to live all these years, it wasn’t really hers. It was a life that belonged to another girl, one who stopped existing in many ways on the day that Tom left.

  Heading upstairs, Elizabeth returned to her bedroom. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she opened the bedside drawer and removed a box of tissues. Underneath, she found a black-and-white photograph of Tom, standing without a shirt, his hands on his hips. The hardest thing wasn’t knowing that he didn’t look like that anymore, but knowing instead that she had no idea of what he did look like now. Knowing that he had changed, and she didn’t know in what way. Fingers so old she barely recognized them as her own brushed across the image, before she placed it back into the drawer and covered it with the tissues. Sometimes it was best not to look.

  “Pull yourself together, Elizabeth,” she told herself. Using a trick of old, she gave her cheeks a pinch for some color, then finger-combed her graying blond hair into place. Grabbing a pair of walking trousers and a thick fleece from the wardrobe, she dressed, then picked up the robe from the bed. After a moment’s hesitation she bundled it into a heap and tossed it to the bottom of the wardrobe. “You’re acting like a silly girl,” she said, dusting off her hands as if she had just completed a job well done.

  Outside the house she found it was a perfect coastal day, bright and sunny with a light breeze. Clouds moved at speed overhead, and out near the horizon they lingered gray and heavy, offering the promise of rain. It was hard to ignore the old lookout behind her, the place she used to go to with Tom. The last time she’d climbed those steps to the lookout, it had made her knees ache. Was it so stupid to go there now? Pausing on the road, she stopped to look back over her shoulder, her gaze traveling up the green hill toward the small building on the top. What stopped her? A sense of regret, perhaps, or even foolishness. Whatever it was, she continued along the road instead, reminding herself again that it was pointless to revisit the past.

  With her plans for the day in ruins, she stopped at the café and ordered a cup of tea, then sat to drink it at a small table overlooking the water.

  “What are you doing sitting out here?”

  Elizabeth looked up to see her oldest friend, Francine, just coming down the road with a newspaper tucked under her arm. Francine took her ti
me thanks to a recent hip replacement. Balancing her weight on the table, she set her stick aside and lowered herself into a chair.

  “Just an early-morning cuppa,” Elizabeth said. The thought of admitting the real reason she was sitting there made her cheeks blush. Heat spread across her face, so she loosened the zipper on her fleece.

  “Don’t often see you wasting time like this,” Francine said as she helped herself to a sip of Elizabeth’s tea. “Why aren’t you painting?”

  “Oh, you know.”

  Francine shook her head, waited for an answer.

  “I just didn’t fancy it.”

  Her friend’s eyes widened with surprise. “What have you done with my Elizabeth?” Francine chuckled before looking out to the clouds on the horizon. “I would have thought a storm like that would have soon sparked your interest. What’s up with you? Is it something to do with Kate again?”

  Elizabeth loved Francine, and in all the time she had known her she hadn’t changed at all. There might have been a few more wrinkles, but her hair was still dark chocolate brown and her lips as red as strawberries. Even her manicure was perfect. They had nothing in common really, if you thought about it, but had shared a lifetime of highs and lows. Like a couple of sisters who bickered something rotten, they would have defended each other to the end. Elizabeth had learned early on that Francine was to be depended upon, and she had never forgotten it. But although Elizabeth had told her some of her deepest secrets, Francine knew nothing of her ongoing connection to Tom and the gifts he left each year.

  “Well, Kate’s still not talking to me, but it’s not that.”

  “So, what is it then?”

  “It’s Tom,” Elizabeth said.

  Francine thought for a moment, but the name needed no introduction. “Thomas Hale?” she said with a smile. Elizabeth didn’t like that smile one little bit. “Now there’s a name from the past. What about him?”