Ted catches my eye from across the circle. He shakes his head, but his eyes are smiling and, with a beer in his hand and his friends around him, he looks more relaxed than I’ve seen him all day. I can’t believe how at home I feel among these people I’ve only just met. It crosses my mind that I can’t think of the last time I made a new friend back in London.
Ilídio walks over and nestles down in the sand at Sandy’s feet, reaching up to hold her hand, smiling up at her with his huge white teeth. The affection between them appears so easy, so delightfully unfiltered. The thought prompts me to check my phone, waiting for Jasper to call. Surely, he’ll phone this evening.
Picking up a jug from the camping table, which is doubling as a bar, I help top up people’s drinks around the circle. When I reach Gerry, he beckons me to sit down in the empty chair beside him.
“Is everyone making you feel welcome, Laura?” he asks. I shuffle the chair closer so I can hear him better.
“Oh yes.” I nod. “Incredibly so.”
“What a night for it, hey.” He nods toward the fading light on the horizon, the warm red of the clouds as the sun disappears behind them. Gerry’s face is remarkably free of worry lines; he looks cheerful, even though he is about to say good-bye to the only home he has known. I watch his limbs vibrate in constant motion, and I imagine how exhausting his condition must be.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Gerry?” I ask, the glasses of sangria I’ve consumed loosening my curiosity about him.
“Of course—the best kind of question.” He smiles and widens his eyes.
“How do you stay so positive? Do you worry what’s around the corner?” He pauses, and I’m worried I have offended him. “Sorry, that’s a big question to ask.”
“It’s a good question,” he says, putting his drink down in the camping chair’s cup holder. “The thing is, with a degenerative condition like mine, if I look back at everything I could do before, the things I used to love—sailing, woodwork, playing the guitar—it can only depress me. Equally, if I look ahead to tomorrow, no doubt I’ll only be able to do less than I can today. The tremors and my eyesight may be worse, my step less steady. This is not something that gets better,” Gerry says with a calm smile. “So, if I can’t look back, and I can’t look forward, I’m forced to live here, right now. Today I can sit around a campfire and talk to my friends. Today I can watch the sunset, even if the outline is getting hazy. Today I have made a new friend and I’m enjoying her company and her vibrant conversation.” He makes a single, slow nod in my direction. “The Roman poet Horace said: ‘Don’t hope or fear, but seize today, you must! And in tomorrow put complete mistrust.’ All any of us have is today.”
Calm washes over me as I listen to Gerry talk. His words feel like a parent stroking my hair, and there is something in his outlook that reminds me of Mum. It makes me wonder at how petty my own concerns are by comparison, how much time I spend dwelling on the past and fretting about the future. How many times have I asked, “Why me?” Why did I have to lose both my parents before the age of twenty-seven? Why haven’t I found love yet? I look at Gerry, at what he’s lost, and I doubt he has once asked, “Why me?”
Across the circle, Ted stands up and clinks two bottles together to garner people’s attention. Sandy walks around the circle and tops up my glass on her way past.
“Everyone here knows I’m not one for speeches,” Ted says, and there are some jeers from the group, “but I just wanted to say a few words about the man we’re all here to celebrate. I’m sure he’ll have a few words to say himself.”
Gerry raises his glass with his unbandaged arm and says, “Always,” and everyone laughs.
“Firstly, this is not a good-bye party. Dad’s going to be just around the corner at Acrebrooke, and I know you will all be visiting him. If you don’t, he’ll be calling you all endlessly, persuading you to come— Oh, and while you’re about it, will you bring him those cheese biscuits he likes.” People laugh, and Gerry bites his lip and nods. “But, while it’s not a good-bye, Dad moving is the end of an era. Our family have lived at Sans Ennui for over two hundred years, and this house has seen happy memories, as well as some sad ones. So, I’d like to raise a toast to Sans Ennui—this beautiful house that has been a home to Palmerstons past and present. May whoever takes it on be as happy here as we have been.”
Everyone raises a glass, and I hear mutters of “To Sans Ennui.”
“And Dad, whose life has been changed so much over the last few years, I just wanted to say that I’ve never known anyone who’s borne the hand they’re dealt with more unbridled positivity. I think we’d all be happier if we woke up in the morning and tried to be a little more Gerry.”
I swallow a lump in my throat, and looking around I see it isn’t just me who’s been moved by Ted’s words. He sits down as people clap, then Gerry is helped to his feet by his friend Raymond.
“All seems a lot of fuss for a shaky old codger like me,” he says, directing a wink in his friend Ruth’s direction. “But I appreciate all the effort, and Ted’s not wrong about the cheese biscuits. Oh, and sloe gin, if you please.” People laugh while Ruth smiles and shakes her head. “I don’t have much to say. ‘There’s a change,’ you’re thinking. But one thing I have learned in this life, as a wise woman once said to me, ‘Tide and time wait for no man.’ So get on your surfboard and catch that wave, even if you’re shaking like a rattle all the way in, because I’m yet to be reliably informed if there’s decent surf in heaven.”
Everyone cheers, Ilídio whoops, and Gerry slowly presses his hands together in thanks, before carefully lowering himself back into his chair.
“There’d better be surf in heaven or I’m not going,” Ted calls across to Gerry.
The words make me well up, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek to try and cauterize the feeling. It doesn’t feel appropriate that I should be the one getting so emotional—I only met the man this afternoon.
The party proves to be great fun. I chat with Gerry’s friends, help Ilídio with the barbecue, and run around giving everyone sausage baps in napkins. Sandy keeps topping up my glass with her “secret recipe sangria,” which puts a glow in my cheeks and then a stagger in my step. Gerry laughs with everyone, beckoning people to come and sit next to him, making sure he has made time to speak to everyone individually.
“You know, Gerry is one of the best cabinetmakers you will ever meet,” Ilídio tells me, as he tops up my drink. “He taught me everything I know, but I’ll still only ever be half as good as he was.”
“He did that alongside driving the cab?” I ask.