Part 11 (1/2)

The Golden Hind was as welcoming as it had always been for the centuries of fishermen it had served. Grant was greeted with respect, but no warmth, as he shouldered his way through in his uniform.

He nodded at the familiar faces. People he'd grown up with, gone to school with and fought with.

He stopped to chat with a group of them, forcing Jesse to go to the bar and pay for the drinks. A pint of Skinner's for Grant and a St Clement's for himself. He'd promised Greer he wouldn't drink tonight. He saw Mickey and Loveday sitting in a corner by the Ladies and made his way over to them. Mickey shook his hand and Loveday kissed him on the cheek. 'Didn't think you were allowed out tonight,' she smiled.

'Grant's home.' Jesse looked over his shoulder as he pulled up a low stool. 'He kind of insisted.'

'He looks smart in his uniform, don't 'e?' said Mickey.

'S'pose so.' Jesse took a sip of his St Clement's. 'Don't do nothing for me.'

'Or me,' agreed Loveday. 'When's 'e going back?'

'Dunno. He said he had a forty-eight-hour pa.s.s or something. Dad picked him up off the Plymouth train just now.'

They all sipped their drinks thoughtfully. Grant was unpredictable, especially when he'd had a drink. Jesse, already nervous, had an extra strand of anxiety plugged straight into his stomach.

Mickey broke the tension. 'Loveday had 'er final dress fitting tonight.'

'Did you?' asked Jesse, glad to talk of anything but Grant. 'What's it like?'

'Well I can't tell you, can I? It's unlucky.'

'I thought it was only the wedding dress that I wasn't supposed to know about.'

'You're not supposed to know about anything.'

'Oh, right.'

'Wait till you see us in our suits,' Mickey grinned, taking Loveday's hand. 'You won't be able to keep your hands off me.'

Loveday looked down at her drink and gave what pa.s.sed for a smile. 'You always look good to me, Mickey boy.'

Mickey put his arm round her and squeezed her awkwardly; her shoulder crunched up into her ear.

'Ow.'

'So,' said Jesse, putting down his drink and trying to squash his desperation for a proper drink and the chance to swap places with Mickey, 'when are you two gonna get hitched?'

Before they could answer, Grant loomed over the threesome, a pint in one hand and a large whisky chaser in the other. His eyes were brighter than they had been half an hour ago, his cheeks flushed.

'Well 'ere 'e is. The little s.h.i.+t my brother's chosen to be 'is best man. Better than 'is own brother. Let me buy you a drink.'

'We're all right, thanks,' Mickey told him in a flat tone. 'We were just going to make a move. Big day tomorrow, and all that. Want to be fresh.'

Grant's eyes wandered to Loveday's generous cleavage. 'There's only one person I want to get fresh with, and it isn't you, Mickey boy.' He sat down unsteadily next to Loveday. 'Got a boyfriend at the moment, Loveday?'

'Mickey,' she said quickly, taking Mickey's hand.

'Mickey? Mickey Mouse 'ere? You need a man not a mouse.' He swallowed the remains of his pint then downed the whisky chaser. He took her free hand and placed it under the table onto the front of his trousers. 'That's what a man feels like.' He held her hand against him; his grip was brutal and she couldn't pull away.

'Oi!' Mickey yelled, standing up and squaring up to Grant. 'Get your filthy hands off my girlfriend.'

'Oooh, little mousey's got a little squeak.' He leered over at Mickey.

'Let her go, Grant,' Jesse ordered, putting himself between Grant and Mickey.

'Get me another pint and a chaser and I'll let her go. But I think she likes it.' He squeezed Loveday's hand more tightly against him. 'Don't you, Loveday?'

Loveday's face was white with fear and disgust. She glanced up in mute distress at her friends. She was terrified of Grant, but petrified too at the thought of either of them getting into a fight with him.

Mickey lunged towards Grant, his face contorted in anger, while Grant threw his head back and laughed cruelly.

'Well, well, little mousey's gonna have a go with a commando? That's the funniest thing I've ever seen little Mickey Mouse!'

With a momentous effort, Loveday managed to yank her hand away and hurl herself away from Grant. She moved quickly to Mickey's side, desperate to get him away. 'Come on, love,' she barely managed to whisper. Her voice was shaking. ''Bout time we was leaving.'

Jesse walked out of the pub with Mickey and Loveday, leaving his troublesome brother to tell anyone who would listen how hard it was to win a green beret. Jesse had rarely seen Mickey so fired up, but he gradually seemed to be calming down as they left the source of his fury behind.

Jesse couldn't face his parents' anxious faces if he went home without Grant, so he'd left Mickey and Loveday with promises of seeing them tomorrow, and now found himself walking towards St Peter's Church. It was the church where all the Behennas, going back three hundred years, had been married, baptised and buried.

He didn't give his usual salute to his granddad lying in the churchyard. His thoughts were absorbed by the life mapped out before him. Husband to Greer, a father, the boss of 'Behenna and Clovelly'. What had happened to his dreams? Had he ever been allowed to have any? That night when his father had told him about the merger with Clovelly, he had pushed him to marry Greer.

'She's a lovely girl. You'll want for nothing. You'll be the boss of the biggest fis.h.i.+ng fleet and fishmongery business this side of Plymouth.'

Jesse had resisted, thinking of his feelings for Loveday and his dreams of travelling the world.

'Loveday's all right but she's got no prospects,' his father had reminded him. 'You're better than that.'

Jesse hated himself for being persuaded and, for a while, had been blinded by the riches that Greer's father had told him he would earn. And it had been easy to start a relations.h.i.+p with Greer. She was mad about him. She looked good. She was an heiress. The thing was, he did fancy Greer and she adored him. She was elegant and cultured; they looked good together and turned heads in Trevay. They'd become a couple.

It pained him to see Loveday. Jesse thought he had resigned himself to being with Greer and to pus.h.i.+ng all thoughts of Loveday from his mind, but the more he tried, the more she intruded on his thoughts. Loveday would come to him in dreams, her tumbling red hair flowing over her milky-white b.r.e.a.s.t.s, asking Jesse, 'What are you in the mood for?' and Jesse would wake, remembering Greer and the expectations forced on him.

His engagement to Greer was a fait accompli. Once they'd become an item, whispers of weddings seemed to follow him everywhere. Greer dropped subtle hints, flicking through the pages of Bride magazine while his father urged him on. 'No time like the present, boy.'

On his twenty-first birthday, his father had handed him a wad of cash and told him he was promoted to second mate.

'Enough money there for a ring, boy,' he'd told Jesse, who had taken the money but felt like he'd sold his dreams.

The engagement had been the talk of the town. Both sets of parents had thrown a big party at the golf club, and Greer had revelled in the attention, wearing a stunning new outfit by Bruce Oldfield that she had bought in Debenhams on a special trip back to Guildford. Greer preened, showing off the diamond solitaire that Jesse could never have afforded before Behenna and Clovelly had merged. Jesse remembered little of the event, except for the strain of trying to avoid Loveday, and the sadness that he thought he saw reflected when they caught each other's eye.

Shortly after the engagement, Loveday and Mickey started to go out with each other. That had hurt Jesse, even though he had no reason to expect anything different, and he struggled to keep on top of his jealousy. To compensate he became ever more attentive to Greer, which only served to make Loveday ever more attentive towards Mickey.

He'd once asked Mickey, when they'd both been drinking, what Loveday was like in bed. Mickey told him. That hurt too. Mickey asked what Greer was like. Jesse said that a gentleman never tells. The truth was that there was nothing to tell. Greer had never let him get further than a snog and a hand in her s.h.i.+rt. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s felt small and pert. Nothing like the way he imagined Loveday's felt.