“Well, I tell him about his brother, when he out here last week.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy pulled her hand out of the turkey. “That’s not the end of the world,” she said.
“I tell him how he can contact his brother.”
“Ahh,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. She could disapprove with just that one syllable. “And?”
“He’s turned up in Hingland. Boy’s at his wit’s end.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy took a large handful of wet cornbread and rammed it into the turkey with a force that would have made the turkey’s eyes water, if it still had any. “Can’t get him to go away?”
“Nope.”
Sharp eyes peered through thick lenses. Then Mrs. Dunwiddy said, “I done it once. Can’t do it again. Not that way.”
“I know. But we got to do something.”
Mrs. Dunwiddy sighed. “It’s true what they say. Live long enough, you see all your birds co
me home to roost.”
“Isn’t there another way?”
Mrs. Dunwiddy finished stuffing the turkey. She picked up a skewer, pinned the flap of skin closed. Then she covered the bird with silver foil.
“I reckon,” she said, “I put it on to cook late tomorrow morning. It be done in the afternoon, then I put it back into a hot oven early evening, to get it all ready for dinner.”
“Who you got comin‘ to dinner?” asked Mrs. Higgler.
“You,” said Mrs. Dunwiddy, “Zorah Bustamonte, Bella Noles. And Fat Charlie Nancy. By the time that boy gets here, he have a real appetite.”
Mrs. Higgler said, “He’s coming here?”
“Aren’t you listening, girl?” said Mrs. Dunwiddy. Only Mrs. Dunwiddy could have called Mrs. Higgler “girl” without sounding foolish. “Now, help me get this turkey into the fridge.”
IT WOULD BE FAIR TO SAY THAT ROSIE HAD, THAT EVENING, JUST had the most wonderful night of her life: magical, perfect, utterly fine. She could not have stopped smiling, not even if she had wanted to. The food had been fabulous, and once they had eaten Fat Charlie had taken her dancing. It was a proper dance hall, with a small orchestra and people in pastel clothes who glided across the floor. She felt as if they had traveled in time together and were visiting a gentler age. Rosie had enjoyed dancing lessons from the age of five, but had no one to dance with.
“I didn’t know you could dance,” she told him.
“There are so many things about me you do not know,” he said.
And that made her happy. Soon enough, she and this man would be married. There were things about him she did not know? Excellent. She would have a lifetime in which to find them out. All sorts of things.
She noticed the way other women, and other men, looked at Fat Charlie as she walked beside him, and she was happy she was the woman on his arm.
They walked through Leicester Square, and Rosie could see the stars shining up above them, the starlight somehow crisply twinkling, despite the glare of the streetlights.
For a brief moment, she found herself wondering why it had never been like this with Fat Charlie before. Sometimes, somewhere deep inside herself, Rosie had suspected that perhaps she had only kept going out with Fat Charlie because her mother disliked him so much; that she had only said yes when he had asked her to marry him because her mother would have wanted her to say no…
Fat Charlie had taken her out to the West End once. They’d gone to the theater. It was a birthday surprise for her, but there had been a mix-up on the tickets, which, it turned out, had actually been issued for the day before; the management were both understanding and extremely helpful, and they had managed to find Fat Charlie a seat behind a pillar in the stalls, while Rosie took a seat in the upper circle behind a violently giggly hen party from Norwich. It had not been a success, not as these things were counted.
This evening, though, this evening had been magic. Rosie had not had many perfect moments in her life, but whatever the total was, it had just gone up by one.
She loved how she felt when she was with him.
And once the dancing was done, after they had stumbled out into the night, giddy on movement and champagne, then Fat Charlie—and, she thought, why did she think of him as Fat Charlie anyway? for he wasn’t the least bit fat—put his arm around her and said, “Now, you’re coming back to my place,” in a voice so deep and real it made her abdomen vibrate; and she said nothing about working the next day, nothing about there’d be time enough for that kind of thing when they were married, nothing at all, in fact, while all the time she thought about how much she didn’t want the evening to end, and how very very much she wished—no, she needed—to kiss this man on the lips, and to hold him.
And then, remembering she had to say something, she said yes.