21. AN IMPORTANT QUESTION

Old times brought back for Chantelle and David

“I thought it was all a mistake,” David told Chantelle as they walked slowly together up Durnley Bottoms towards the corner of Brumpton where her home was. “I actually thought someone was having me on!”

“I bet you’re glad they weren’t,” she said, “now that all that money is yours! Mr Penn said he thought it would make you the richest man in the world!”

”Which is something I don’t want,” David told her. “Let me tell you about my grandmother, the woman who gave birth to the lady you know as Judy, my real birth mother.”

“It’s complex,” frowned Chantelle.

“I’ve always known that I was adopted, though I never knew who my birth mother was, or my actual father come to think about it, but then I don't reckon that that she had much of an idea either! But her mother, my grandmother, a woman called Colette, was a very pretty young woman. Judy showed me a dog-eared photo of her, black and white it was, but I could see that she was a looker! But the man I’ve apparently inherited a lot of money from, and I’ve no idea how much, ruined her life! He wanted a son and when he discovered that he’d fathered a daughter he couldn’t get away fast enough! I suppose when he was young it wasn’t common for women to inherit great wads of wealth like it is today. Anyway, the gist of it is, she never recovered from that rejection, and the damage it did to her passed on to my real mother, who was in a bad way until very recently. I’m no psychologist or anything like that and I can’t even begin to see into her mind, but she seems to have pulled herself together with the old man’s death.”

“She scared me when I first met her,” confessed Chantelle, “threatening your granddad with a knife, of all things. But she was angry and I can see why.”

“She says she’d spent her life up to then being a mixture of rejected by everyone and angry,” sighed David. “And she drank a lot. She told me how much and it sounded like enough to make a ship full of sailors merry!”

“I guessed as much,” acknowledged Chantelle.

“Anyway, that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about, Channy. I don’t want untold riches, especially stuff I haven’t earned. They can stay where they are as far as I’m concerned. Life shouldn’t be all soft cushions and lazy doing nothing. I’m the sort of person who needs to work, or life doesn't seem to mean very much.”

“Being rich is better than being poor, though,” frowned Chantelle.

“Oh, spot on! But there’s rich and there’s super-rich, and I don’t think I’ll be the sort of man to enjoy being super-rich. I’d still have to do something with my time, or die of boredom!”

“I can’t see you ever being bored,” smiled Chantelle. Then she pointed to the place where she had sheltered from a sudden squall and found the keys. “That’s where they were,” she said, “and that’s where you and I carved our initials in a hollow tree and swore mighty oaths...”

“You remember that?” he asked softly. “We did more than just swear a might oath, if I remember it properly.”

“You kissed me,” she whispered, “of course I remember that! It was the one moment of all my life that...”

“That what?” he asked, gently.

“I don’t like to say. It was a few years ago and you’ve got a new life, David. “And I’m still here wondering if I’ll ever meet another David.”

“Is that what’s on your mind?”

“You were always more than just a boy for me to knock around with, you were a friend. A proper friend. Someone I respected, Someone I could trust,” she said quietly. “Come on: let’s see if our initials are still there, in the heart-shape you carved!”

“And if they are?”

They were. She’d seen them, faded but clear enough when she’d sheltered from the downpour.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“We’re both a bit older now. If I kissed you again it might mean a little bit more than it did when we were kids!”

“We weren’t that young!” she protested, then almost shyly, “but I might let you if...”

“If what?” he asked.

“If you let me kiss you back,” she whispered.

“What was that?” he asked.

“If you let me … you heard the first time!”

“All right!” he laughed, then he turned more serious. “At school where I went until I left I kissed another girl, at the leaver’s dance,” he said, frowning. “I kissed her just the once, and when she asked me to kiss her again, she did, you know, ask me to kiss her again, I told her she wasn’t my friend Channy. I actually said that! And she looked at me and I thought I could see moisture in her eyes, but she danced with another boy and kissed him instead. From what I saw she kissed him loads of time, but it didn’t matter to me because she wasn’t you.”

“Is that true David?”

“Of course it is. And you know another thing: she always called me Dave when she spoke to me, not by my real name, not David, like you do.”

“Well, I’ll call you David again if you, like, David,” smiled Chantelle. “Now come on and let’s see what the weather and winds have done to our initials.”

She led the way into the tiny space enclosed as it was by a tangle of overhanging branches already in bud, with bright new green leaves ready for another year.

“There,” she pointed when they were snugly under the shelter of the elders.

He took her by one hand and squeezed her fingers gently. “Durnley Bottoms,” he said, “or Paradise by another name. You know, Channy, when I think of the good times they’re just about all down here, with you, and I didn’t know it but I was a spit away from my old grandfather as you and I scratched our names right there and swore our vow.”

“That we would be friends for ever,” she sighed.

“That we would be more than friends, I hope,” he replied shyly.

“What I like about you, David, is you always call me Channy, never Chantelle, “are we going to get married, you and I?”

© Peter Rogerson 20.12.19