The individual; true man;
Individuality.
A man’s but one half; some woman
The other half must be.
James Thomson, “Mr. MacCall at Cleveland Hall,” 1866
Ella?”
I’m in a dream and I hear my name in chocolate-covered-caramel tones.
“Sorry, but my leg’s quite gone to sleep.”
I crack open my eyes and see a blurred Jamie on the other side of the couch. We’ve tangled into each other in the night. “Sorry,” I mutter. I shift so he can extricate his leg.
As I wake more fully, I notice that he looks almost completely normal. As if one night of sleep has magically cured him. I realize that this is the reason I never noticed he was sick; if he avoided me on certain days, I really couldn’t have known. I open my mouth to say good morning, but Jamie’s smile fades and he murmurs, “I wasn’t trying to trap you.”
I take a second. “I know.” I have to clear the morning out of my throat before continuing. “I knew it when I said it.”
Jamie tentatively reaches out and rests his hand on my ankle. “Please understand, you are no part of this. You and I are separate from this.”
I digest this. In one sense, he’s absolutely right. What if he had continued to hide his illness? We might have fizzled out. I might have left on June 11 none the wiser. This is his illness, not ours.
“Nothing has to change,” he says. “Except that I don’t have to lie anymore.” He grins wryly. “We can continue on. If you want. Nothing has to change,” he reiterates.
I think of something he said the other night, that this—me—was his last hurrah. I realize that I feel the same way. Before I go back to my life, before I continue on my preordained path, my plan . . . I want this. Whatever this is. My first instinct was to run away from it, but now it’s the opposite. Being with him seems imperative now. Like being given the opportunity to hold time in your hand.
At my silence, Jamie swallows. “I understand, obviously, if you don’t want any part of this. If you don’t want to continue the intimacy with which . . .” He pauses. “Perhaps we might be friends?” He looks down at his hand on my ankle like he’s memorizing it. Like it might disappear before his eyes.
“I don’t want to be your friend.”
He removes his hand, nodding reflexively.
“I want to be your girlfriend.”
He looks up at me. “Truly?”
“Whaddaya say?” I stick out my hand. It’s how we do things.
He takes my hand, beaming, and gently pulls me toward him. “It’s a plan.”
AFTER SOME BREAKFAST (which, for Jamie, was just coffee and two slices of thick-slab bacon on toast) we’re lingering at the kitchen table, Jamie looking like he could fall asleep again. I’m back to thinking. Specifically, about the trip I have planned in December. I still really want to go, but am I being selfish? It would be amazing if he could come with me, but it’s over the holidays and surely he has plans. And would he even be well enough to travel?
Jamie breaks the silence. “Tuppence for your thoughts?”
I shake my head. “I was just thinking . . . about a trip I’m supposed to take over break.”
He perks up. “Where are you off to, then? Back to America for the vac?”
“No, actually. Europe.”
“All of it? Really?” I throw a bit of bacon at his head and we both smile. “Where exactly are you going?”
“Everywhere.”
“You’ve obviously put rather a significant amount of thought into this.”
“Considering I’ve never been anywhere, everywhere is a perfectly reasonable answer.”
“Hang on,” Jamie says, straightening. “What do you mean you’ve never been anywhere?”
“Ella from Ohio’s never been outside of the good ol’ U.S. of A. Until she arrived at Heathrow on September twenty-eighth, that is.”
Jamie now sits ramrod straight. “Are you taking the piss?”
“Nope.”
“But you seem so . . .”
“Worldly?” I suggest, putting on an air. “Sophisticated?”
“Opinionated.”
It feels so good to laugh with each other again. “Do you want to hear the plan?” I ask.
“Absolutely.”
I’m excited again. I tuck my leg underneath me and resituate myself. “All right, on December twentieth, I’m taking the Eurostar to Paris, where I’ll spend Christmas, and then I’m training to Brussels for three days—”
“Brussels? Why Brussels?”
I shrug. “It’s Brussels.”
Jamie’s mouth forms a confused moue. It’s the same look I’d give him if he said he was coming to America and wanted to see Ohio. I persist. “Then I’m heading to Amsterdam for New Year’s, spending four nights—”
Jamie interrupts again. “What happened to the rest of France?”
“I don’t want to rent a car. Too expensive.”
Jamie makes the same face again. I persist again. “Then from Amsterdam, I’m doing the overnight train to Venice—”
“Hold on, you’re going to be that close to Bruges and you’re not going?” I huff, growing exasperated. “Tell me you’re going to Ghent, at the very least?” I glare at him. He shrugs and says, “Sorry, but it just seems a waste. Hilary Term doesn’t begin until January eighteenth, you have almost a month, and you’re going to simply take trains back and forth between major cities, which all have the same McDonald’s and the same cheap T-shirt shops and fake gelato and Irish pubs called the Blarney Stone and everyone you meet speaks English?”
A silence hangs in the air, that anticipatory moment right before the curtain goes up at the theater. And then I say it. “Well, if you have such strong opinions about it, you should come with me.”
Without missing a beat, Jamie reaches across the table and grabs his phone, tapping the screen and studying it. “My final treatment is on December the sixteenth. I’ll most likely need three days to recover.” He looks from his calendar right at me. “Ah. What a coincidence. That’s the twentieth. Shall we leave then?”
My heart quickens. “For where?”
“Everywhere. Or was it anywhere?”
That pang of guilt comes round the bend again. “Jamie, hold on. We’re acting like you’re fine, like everything’s normal. I think, just to be safe—”
He leans in to me across the table. “Nothing. Changes. That was the deal.”
I rub my forehead, wanting so badly to believe him. But something else occurs to me. “Also, there’s no way I can afford the Jamie Davenport version of this trip.” We’ve never discussed money, and Jamie doesn’t flaunt it, but it’s clear he has it, that it comes from somewhere other than his meager JRF stipend. The classic car (which he’s said he’s had since he was eighteen), the ability to renovate the town house however he wants, the wine habit. The velvet trousers.
He waves me off. “I’ll take care of it.”
I bristle. “No. Absolutely not. Are you insane?”
“What?”
“I’m not taking your money.”
“Who said anything about taking it? I’m sharing it. ‘Can’t take it with you,’ and all that.”
“Stop it,” I snap. “That’s not funny.”
Now Jamie really looks at me. I’m not ready for jokes about his illness. I swallow, soften a bit. “Look, no one’s ever paid for me, for anything. If you’re going to come with me, we’re going to do it on my budget. I won’t be, like, some . . . kept woman.”
Jamie looks at me. I’m gratified to see that he gets it. He’s not rolling his eyes or belittling what’s clearly a matter of pride for me. He’s just nodding slightly, thinking. Before he even opens his mouth, I know a negotiation is coming. “If any of the plans you’ve already made can’t be refunded, I’ll pay for that.”
So far, so fair. “All right.”
“We’ll take the Aston. A car’s the only way to access some of the more remote hill towns. You can pay for petrol?”
I nod. “Done.”
“And I get five trump cards.”
“What does that mean?”
“Five instances where, if you’re whingeing about how much something costs—hotels, experiences—I get to trump it and we must do it. Because there are some things you’ll regret not doing when you had the chance, and I can’t have that.”
I narrow my eyes. “Three trump cards.”
“Am I a genie?”
“The number three has a nice fairy-tale symmetry to it, don’t you think?”
He snorts. “Deal. And one more thing. If I want to do something for you along the way, buy you something small, take you to a nice dinner, you’ll let me because I’m your boyfriend now and that’s the sort of special preferment boyfriends are afforded.”
I’m unable to contain my smile, excitement bursting through me like a supernova. But almost immediately it’s doused. I peer at him. “Don’t you need to be with your family for the holidays?” A whisper-like sound comes from the foyer, followed by the gentle slapping of something landing on the floor. Before I can question what it is, Jamie stands, unconcerned, and walks out of the room. I call out after him, “Because we could leave after—”
“I really have no need to be with my family at present.”
I chew on this as he reenters the kitchen carrying a pile of mail. I persist. “But you’re . . . you know.”
“Dying?”
I give him a reproachful look and he drops back into his chair and starts sorting the mail into three neat piles. “All I’m saying is if my mom lived in the same country and I didn’t show up for Christmas, I’d hear about it for the rest of my life.”
“Yes, but if you knew the rest of your life was to be significantly abbreviated, I should think you could bear it.”
He actually has a point. Sarcastic, macabre, but a point nonetheless. Eventually I want to discuss his family, especially his father, but not right now. Right now I’m too excited. The possibility of traveling with him is a dream come true that I didn’t even know I had dreamed.
Jamie drops the last piece of mail on what’s clearly the discard stack and stands, going to the counter for more coffee. It’s a very ornate card to be so casually thrown onto the discard pile. It’s square, gilded around the edges, and made out of a thick cream-colored card stock. There’s calligraphy on the front. I pick it up as Jamie says, “Would you like a spot more?”
“Huh?” I turn the card over in my hands.
“Coffee.” Then, in a bad truck-stop diner accent, “‘Warm up on the joe, darlin’?’”
I smile but don’t look up. The card I’m holding is a final invitation. A reminder invitation. To the very ball Charlie mentioned when we were trying to help Maggie: the Blenheim Ball. The don’t-tease-me-with-something-I-can’t-have Blenheim Ball that’s happening in two weeks. “Jamie?”
My voice has him side-eyeing me suspiciously. “Am I correct in assuming my name is going to be followed by a request of sorts?”
I hold up the card. “This invitation, it’s to the Blenheim Ball. I’ve actually heard of it, and, well . . . I’ve never been to a ball. And actually—”
“You can’t imagine how much I detest these things,” he interrupts.
I soldier on. “But it’s a palace. And I’ve never been to a palace.”
Jamie waves his cup dismissively. A drop splashes over onto the floor. He uses a socked toe to wipe it, and says, “We shall see many palaces. Wait until you see Versailles. In fact, let’s go there first. We’ll start in Paris, take the train out, I know a lovely little inn in the village there.”
“I want to go.”
“And we shall. The weather might be crap, but—”
“Jamie!” He finally looks at me. I hold the postcard up with fervor, like it’s a map to some buried treasure. “I want. To go. To the ball.”
He looks appalled. “Why?”
“Because I’ve always wanted to!” This is probably true. I guess. I mean, who doesn’t want to go to a ball? “I’m from Ohio!”
Jamie shakes his head, sitting back down. “Ella, these things are dreadful. Awful rich people affirming to each other how awful and rich they are.”
“Right! Great!”
“And my parents will be there.” He says it like a warning.
“So?” Jamie sighs, looks at the floor. I go coy. “Unless . . . you don’t want them to meet me.”
“Oh, you are a sly one. You know it’s not that.”
I switch effortlessly into wheedling political-operative mode. “Are things so bad with them that you can’t fulfill the simple dream of your American girlfriend”—I stutter slightly over the word—“because your parents might be on the other side of the room?” Jamie levels a look at me. I push it further. “Either tell me why it’s impossible to be in the same room as them or take me to the ball. Your choice.”
Jamie’s jaw flexes. After a moment, he sighs. “Fine. We’ll go.”
“Really?!” I’m surprised by his response and even more surprised to find that I’m genuinely excited.
“Just let me—” But I’m jumping into his lap, coffee splashing everywhere. Jamie lets out a laugh as I kiss his face all over.
“Thank you, Jamie. Thank you so much.”
Jamie adopts a princely affectation. “’Twill be my sincerest pleasure to escort you, madam.” Then he drops it, looks at me seriously. “But do understand, I may find it necessary to leave early.” I tilt my head at him. “If I’m not feeling well I won’t stay there making a spectacle of myself, providing grist for the gossip mills.” I can understand that. These are the things I need to start considering. Jamie tips his head back slightly, eyes thoughtful. “You know, it might be wise for you to bring along a companion, just in case.”
“Excellent idea!” I say, a bit too quickly and loudly.
Jamie looks at me, suspicious or confused, I’m not sure which. “Yes, a buffer of sorts.”
I bite my lip. It’s time. “Can there be more than one buffer?”
Jamie looks imperiously down his nose at me. “How many buffers?”
“I know three buffers that would make some seriously questionable, Faustian-level bargains to go.”
“I knew it!” he says with a smile, oddly triumphant. “I knew you had some ulterior motive.”
“No, I really do want to go, it’s just that—”
His smile broadens. “I’ll put the tickets on my parents’ tab.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. The shock of my attendance will cause them to buy everything at the silent auction just to gloat. A case of Rothschild, a chef’s-table dinner at the Dorchester, yet another round of golf at St. Andrews my father will never use. We’re single-handedly contributing to the prosperity of the foundation.”
I throw my arms around him.
He mutters into my hair, almost to himself, “I ought to see if Cecelia will be coming.”
“Cecelia?” Even now, after everything, her name still doesn’t sit as well with me as I would like. Which I’m not proud of.
“Yes. I’m sure my father took care of it, but I’ll ask.”
I pull back and look at him. “Why would your father take care of Cecelia?”
“He does whatever he can to be kind to her.”
“But why?”
Jamie quirks his head at me. “Because Cecelia was Oliver’s fiancée.”
