When Love Knocks Twice (A Contemporary Love Story) Read online

  Gail stood back from the table in the choir room and surveyed her handiwork. She did not claim to be a gifted flower-arranger but liked to produce something at least competent that didn't jar. To that end she adjusted some stems and added some more greenery. Now all she had to do was get it through the doorway into the church without knocking any of the stems. She lifted the heavy vase and carefully manoeuvred around the table, managing to avoid tripping over any chairs, before deftly sidling through the doorway and into the church.

  At which point she stopped. Someone was in the church, sitting in a pew and praying. She couldn't remember it happening before, and stopping where she was, put the vase down briefly on a side table. Only after she had been watching for two or three minutes did it occur to her how rude she was being, but yet something drew her in.

  He was mid fifties she decided, dressed neatly, slim build, fit perhaps, someone who exercised regularly. Before her imagination really started to run riot the man lifted his head, and whilst still seated, continued to gaze into space, or so it appeared to her. She really must stop sizing up men she thought, and picking up the vase moved forward towards the alter.

  Tom finished praying, or at least talking to God. He always felt that prayer should somehow be constructed, ordered, purposeful, but his was generally a random conversation addressing nothing in particular and everything in general. He looked up, recognising the stained glass window above the altar, remembering how he used to count the panes when he grew bored in church. Only as a young boy, you understand.

  Out of his peripheral vision he caught sight of a woman approaching the alter with a huge vase of flowers hiding most of her face. Only after she had put it down and rotated it so that the arrangement was facing the right way, did she turn around and caught him watching her. In the circumstances all he could do was smile an apology, to which she returned the smile.

  “ Is there anything we can do for you?” Gail asked.

  “ No. No thank you, I was just reminiscing,” replied Tom.

  “ Reminiscing? Then you've been here before?”

  “ Boy and youth I was part of the congregation some, oh, forty years ago.”

  Gail did some hasty mental arithmetic. “Well, forty years ago, I would have been here.”

  There was a pause. Tom gave in to the feeling that he knew this person. The shape of the face, the eyes, something triggered a memory...

  “ Is it, Gail Butler?” he ventured hesitantly.

  “ Well, yes. Now Gail Fisher though.” Gail was taken aback, suddenly finding herself on the back foot, but played for time by looking more closely over the man in front of her.

  “ So, who are you.....is it Tom? Not Tom Drysdale?” she offered tentatively. His smile confirmed it so she continued. “My goodness, how long has it been?”

  “ Must be close to forty years I suppose,” he admitted.

  “ Forty years. Heavens, we were young then.”

  “ Twenty one we were, when I left to go south for work.”

  “ I remember you going,” confessed Gail. “You sneaked off very quietly, no long farewells.”

  “ Well, we'd all drifted a bit by then hadn't we? Not the tight knit group we had once been.”

  “ No, I suppose not. Did you never come back to visit?”

  “ Occasionally in the early days, for a weekend. But it was never long enough to see friends. And then the parents moved south so there wasn't the need.”

  “Shame.”

  “ So you've stayed here,” suggested Tom, “you stayed in the area.”

  “ Yes and no,” replied Gail obliquely. She glanced down at her filthy hands. “Look, I'm in need of a drink. Come and have a coffee. It would be good to catch up on some of those forty years.”

  She disappeared briefly into a side room before reappearing with clean hands.

  “ Good. Come on then,” she instructed briskly, and with her leading, they left the church.

  The town centre had changed dramatically. Buildings had gone, replaced by smart clean-lined developments, built around the old cross-roads. But in one corner of the cross-roads the junior school stood faithfully still, and Tom looked out at it from their window seat in the new coffee shop.

  “ So,” started Tom, continuing their previous conversation. “You haven’t always lived around here?”

  “ No. I married here shortly after I qualified as a pharmacist but five years later Gordon, my husband, an engineer, was moved to Birmingham, and we lived there for ten years.”

  “ And then?”

  “ Then Gordon was transferred back here. Back here for another thirty years.”

  Something in her voice gave it away.

  “ Gordon's not around any more?” probed Tom gently.

  “ Pancreatic cancer, five years ago.”

  “ I'm so sorry. You still miss him?”

  “ Oh yes,” Gail exclaimed emphatically, “Especially now the kids have gone.”

  “ Kids?”

  “ One girl, one boy, Emily and Jas. Jas is married with two gorgeous little ones.”

  “ What,” exclaimed Tom, “You? A granny?”

  “ Sssh,” whispered Gail. “You make me sound like a hundred and ten.”

  There was a moment's quiet, broken by Gail.

  “ So what about you? What has life thrown at you since you left?”

  Tom considered for a moment. “A lot of happiness. A lovely wife. Two sons, both now grown, married, and left.” He paused. “And widowhood. Or is it widowerhood?”

  “ Oh Tom, not you as well. How long ago did your wife die?”

  “ Just over a year.”

  “ I have to say, it does get better in time, though it never goes away. Was it sudden?”

  “ Heart attack, out of the blue.”

  “ I never know whether that's worse than a drawn out illness.”

  “ Swings and roundabouts I guess.”

  “ So what brings you back?”

  “ Walk down memory lane I suppose,” conceded Tom. “I retired recently, and what with Abbie gone, I was at far too much of a loose end, so the boys said 'take a road trip', so here I am, still wondering if it was the right move.”

  There was a minute or two while they paid attention to their coffee, now cool enough to drink.

  Gail broke the silence. “You look on your time here with fondness, happy times?”

  “ Yes,” replied Tom after a moment's consideration. “Generally speaking. Every teenager has their ups and downs but yes, I look on them as happy times.”

  “ That's good. I do too, but when you've lived here most of your life I don't think it segregates the place as much.”

  “ What, like I attach it to my youth, whereas you associate it with several periods of your life.”

  “ Exactly. That's exactly it. Gordon could never understand it because he didn't come from round here, but that's exactly what it is. It doesn't generate the same level of nostalgia.”

  “ Ah,” sighed Tom. “Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.”

  Gail laughed.

  “ That sounds good,” stated Tom.

  “ What does,” asked Gail.

  “ The sound of you laughing.”

  “ I seem to remember you used to make us all laugh in the old days.”

  “Ah yes, always the clown trying to overcome my shyness.”

  There was an awkward moment, and Gail took the opportunity to check her watch.

  “ Oh, I need to go. I've shopping to do before everyone comes round this afternoon.” She hesitated. “Where are you staying?”

  “ At the Bull.”

  “ Oh no. Please don't eat alone in a hotel. Why don't you come round for dinner tonight? I need an excuse to entertain.”

  Tom nodded. “If it's not any trouble, I'd really enjoy that.”

  “ Good,” confirmed Gail, scribbling down an address on the back of the bill. “Come early, say, five-ish.”

  “ Looking forward to it. I'll see you at five,” agreed Tom.<
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  Gail scrambled away towards the door, avoiding the dilemma of how to say goodbye to a long-lost friend.

  Tom stepped out into the sunshine and stood on the pavement for a moment, taken aback by the whirlwind of memories stirred up by his meeting with Gail. He crossed the road and took a closer look at the old school. Standing up pretty well for its age. Better than me, he thought. But it had had alterations as well, bits added and bits knocked off. Just like us I suppose.

  Without making a conscious decision he wandered up a side road, and ten minutes later arrived at some tennis courts. At least the tennis club is still here, he mused. Remembered some good times there. Recalled playing Gail and others, and getting beaten. Gail was a better player than he had been, much to his chagrin. The old green wooden clubhouse had disappeared, replaced by something more sleek in concrete and steel. I guess they had to do something or it would have fallen down of its own accord.

  His thoughts meandered back to Gail. A strange meeting. It created an odd sensation in his brain. Did he regret it? No, definitely not. Did it throw him out slightly? Yes, it did, but in a positive way. Yes, in a positive way. As he sat on a bench watching a trio of teenagers knocking a tennis ball around, he was taken right back. In his mind's eye he could see himself, Gail, and others, many of whom he could no longer put a name to, all playing around at the end of the teaching session they had finished giving to some younger ones. Good times they were. Good times.

  He sat for quarter of an hour until the heat of the sun became too much, and then strolled back into the town centre along the railway embankment in the shade of overhanging trees. He had left his car back at the hotel before he had set out that morning, and checking his watch, decided he could do without lunch if he was eating early that night. So an ice-cream sufficed to keep him going on the two mile stroll back to his hotel, for a shower and a lie down before he had to go out.

  Gail found herself in more of a turmoil than Tom. She had had no inkling of nostalgia when she set off from the house that morning, but now she found herself transported back some forty years, remembering situations, good and bad, from her teenage years. The embarrassing ones were the ones that always came back first but then came the good times, the happy memories, the laughter. They brought a smile to her face as she went through the supermarket checkout, and brought a smile in response from the woman on the checkout till.

  Gail thought of Tom as he had been then, remembered him as a slightly awkward youth, but engaging in an immature sort of way. There were plenty of people from that era that she would have been a lot less happy to bump into. But Tom was fine she decided. Yes definitely fine. She had always felt safe with Tom. Was that why she had invited him to dinner? Or did she just want some company, someone to talk to?

  She discovered that she had driven home on automatic, her mind elsewhere, and she chastised herself for not paying attention. Pull yourself together woman, the grand-children will be here soon.

  Tom wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but when he pulled into the driveway of the old stone manor house, he was fairly sure it hadn’t been this. It was one of the old houses from the days of the founding of the town, when grain merchants had moved out of the city to get away from the nineteenth century city grime, and created dormitory villages within commuting reach of the wharves and docks by the river.

  The driveway was so large, that he would have been in a quandary as to where to park the car, but for the two cars already parked neatly, side by side, against an extensive flower bed. He pulled in beside them, took a deep breath and got out of the car. As he had lain on the bed in his hotel room, he had started to have misgivings about all of this. He still felt emotionally fragile after his wife's death and perhaps this wasn't a good idea, dredging up the past. Too late you fool, he told himself, and gathered the courage to push the doorbell. He took the time to run some fingers through his hair, very aware that there was less to run his fingers through than there had been in the old days.

  Gail opened the door, a little flustered.

  “ Come in. Come in,” she beckoned, gesturing him to come over the threshold.

  “ Are you sure it's convenient?” he offered, pointing to the cars parked on the drive. “I don't want to intrude.”

  Gail looked at him sternly. “Tom Drysdale, if you don't stop apologising...well just come in. The family are still here, so come and meet them.”

  She led him through the hallway to a door leading into the back of the house, which opened into a large farmhouse-sized kitchen complete with refectory table in the centre, at which sat a young woman in her twenties, in tee-shirt and jeans. Tom did a double-take and stopped in his tracks, something that didn't go unnoticed by Gail.

  “ Yes, I know, she's the spitting image of her mother. This is Emily my daughter.”

  And she was right, Tom could have been looking at Gail thirty years ago. “Hi,” was all he could stutter.

  Emily nodded in acknowledgement. “Hi. Welcome to the madhouse, take a seat.”

  At this point the need for a conversation opener was avoided by two toddlers running into the kitchen, running around the table and running back out again, oblivious to any of their surroundings.

  “ Katy and Roddy, grand-children,” explained Gail. “Live-wires, bundles of energy.” She paused momentarily. “Do I remember you saying you didn't have any yet.”

  “ That's right. A delight yet to come.”

  “ Take a tip from me. Save up all your spare energy now, in readiness.”

  “ Thanks for the warning.”

  “ Coffee?” offered Gail.

  “ Please,” replied Tom, and “No,” replied Emily. “I've had enough already.”

  Gail busied herself putting some coffee on, and Emily turned to Tom.

  “ So Mum says that you two knew each other in your teens.”

  “ That's right, back in the last century.”

  Emily put on a mischievous smile. “So dish the dirt. What was she really like as a teenager?”

  “ Emily,” warned Gail.

  “ Don't worry Gail,” reassured Tom. “Your secrets are safe with me.”

  There was a pause before Gail replied, “I always knew I could trust you Tom.”

  There was something in her tone of voice that caught Emily's attention. She looked at her mother, then Tom, and finally back to her mother.

  “ Were you two an item?” she exclaimed.

  “ Emily!” shrieked Gail, in a shocked tone of voice. “What a question to ask.”

  Emily appeared unabashed and undaunted, and turning to Tom, raised an eyebrow in interrogative fashion. Tom did not appear in any way embarrassed, although slightly at a loss as to how to reply.

  He looked at Gail as he replied to Emily. “No, we were never an item, were we Gail?”

  “ No, just good friends.”

  Emily adopted a quizzical expression, as if she didn't know whether to believe them, or whether there was a conspiracy going on. The interrogation may have gone on longer but for the arrival of Jeremy and his wife.

  Gail grabbed the opportunity.

  “ Tom, Jeremy and Sarah, parents of the two tornadoes you saw a moment ago.”

  There were general 'Hi's' exchanged, Jeremy apologised for their delay in coming through but the Lego had been at a crucial stage. Tom confessed to being a Lego enthusiast and before he knew it he had been dragged through to the lounge to inspect the Lego models, leaving Emily and Gail preparing coffee and dinner in that order.

  Emily got up and closed the door behind them before sitting down again.

  “ So, what is it with you and Tom?” she quizzed.

  “ What do you mean?” replied Gail.

  “ Like I say. What is it with you and Tom?”

  “ Nothing. I bumped into an old friend, who I probably will never see again so I'm taking the chance to catch up on years lost. That's all.”

  Emily didn't respond but gazed at her mother with the sort of expression that Superman would us
e to melt ice in a bid to save the world.

  “ You're fond of him, aren't you?”

  Gail gave her the sort of look that left Emily in no doubt that she had crossed a line, and if she continued to do so then she would regret it. Emily knew that look and didn't push any more.

  Shortly after, with coffee brewed and dinner in the oven, Gail and Emily joined the others. Gail stopping in the doorway to watch the heads bent over the pile of Lego on the carpet, one of the heads distinctive due to the grey hairs. She smiled and made some sort of remark about eternal children, whilst the thought occurred to her that Gordon should have been there, playing on the floor with his grand-children.

  It wasn't long before Jeremy and Sarah made their excuses and left, to feed mouths and administer bath-times. Emily also made her goodbyes and followed them out to the car, shepherded by Gail.

  With the car door open, Emily turned to kiss her mother goodbye, but before doing so, she looked her in the eye.

  “ Enjoy yourself.” Gail made a face but Emily repeated. “No Mum, I mean it, enjoy yourself, it's time you had some fun.”

  Gail returned to find Tom tidying toys in some sort of logical manner.

  “ Oh, thank you. Just move them over to the corner. The kids will be back in a few days to make a mess again so it's not worth a lot of effort.”

  Tom was left to his own devices, while Gail went to prepare the remainder of dinner, and rather than stand hovering over the cook, he took the opportunity to survey the bookshelves and the music collection, LPs and CDs stacked in some sort of order. Some he nodded at knowingly whilst others raised an eyebrow. He picked up a book he had been meaning to read for some time but had never got round to, and that was where Gail found him half an hour later, perched on the arm of an easy chair, book in hand.

  “ Dinner's ready if you want some,” she announced.

  Tom hastily put the book down as if he had been caught in some guilty act, and stood to follow her out of the room.

  They ate an easy meal with no awkwardness, talked of general things, children, jobs, the world and all manner of things impersonal.