Magic Sometimes Happens Part 27

'What's your role in this?'

'I write the algorithms.'

'You're going to think I'm very stupid, but what's an algorithm?'

'It's a method, formula, procedure whatever you want to call it a set of rules to follow when making calculations or doing other problem-solving stuff, in my case with IT. Accuracy-wise, the thought-to-text procedures are proving just a little problematic, but we'll get there some day, hopefully quite soon.'

'It still sounds like magic.'

'No, it's science. As for magic, Rosie that's your specialty.'

I met her glance and wished that she could stay with me tonight. I knew she wished it, too. We needed no computer interface.

But how does that poem put it we had s.p.a.ce enough and time.

Or at least, we had until July.

May.

ROSIE.

He hadn't liked Stonehenge.

But he thought Bath was awesome and he loved the British seaside. When we went to Brighton the following weekend, Brighton was a hit.

He had never seen the sea the ocean, as he called it except from up on high, through the small windows of an aeroplane, and that was only recently. He had never paddled in salt water, never walked along a pier. He had never heard the susurration of waves dragging on pebbles, never seen the evening sun splash pink and red and gold upon these waves. As a child himself, he had done almost nothing British children take for granted.

So he was determined to make up for it now.

'c.o.c.kles, whelks, these things are gross,' he told me. But he ate them all the same because he said he figured he ought to try them once. 'The British can't make cotton candy,' he continued, chewing at it valiantly, but it proved too much even for him, and soon he tossed his candy floss into the nearest bin. 'That was way too sweet, too sticky. It was burnt, as well.'

'Do you have any other observations, grumbles or complaints?'

'No, I guess that wraps it up,' he said and grinned at me. 'Your British chocolate is delicious and your ice cream is divine.'

'Oh, thank you, Pat. It's good to know we got a few things right.'

'Rosie, you got almost everything exactly right.' He took my hand and pulled me down beside him on the pebbles. 'We should have met in high school,' he added wistfully. 'Why didn't we?'

'You were destined to be Lexie's husband and Joe's and Polly's father. It was written in your fate.'

'You believe in fate?' He shrugged and seemed to acquiesce, stared for some moments at the white-capped waves, but then turned back to me. He gazed into my eyes, his stare intense. 'But I'm not Lexie's husband any more and I'd love to have some kids with you.'

'You want more children?'

'Sure I'd like a dozen. I'd love to have a big old house somewhere in upstate Minnesota, full of kids and noise and fun and laughter. But perhaps I couldn't put a dozen kids through college, so let's say four or five. Rosie, maybe one day-'

'See that buoy?' I said before he could go any further. I scrambled to my feet. 'Why don't I race you to it, eh?'

He was surprised to learn I'd never been to Ireland.

'But it's so close,' he said as we drove back to London. 'Why don't you check it out?'

'Perhaps one day,' I said. 'But it rains there even more than it does here, you know that's why it's called the Emerald Isle, because it's green, green, green. Pat, are you curious about your Irish ancestors?'

'Yes and no yes because they were my ancestors, no because they must have led s.h.i.+t-awful lives and the whole Irish-British thing is pretty d.a.m.n depressing. You British aren't too popular with most Irish-Americans, you know.'

'Why's that?'

'You were responsible for so much pain and suffering, that's why. A million Irish people came to the US back in the nineteenth century with nothing but the rags upon their backs, escaping the Great Famine.'

'What great famine?'

'Oh, come on you must have heard of it?'

'I don't think so.'

'Well, the way they teach it in the USA, the choice was either leave or starve to death, as many thousands did. There were Irish Catholic people lying dead and dying in the streets and in the countryside. But the British let them die encouraged them to die kept on exporting Irish wheat which could have fed the people. You didn't study history in school?'

'Yes, but we didn't learn about the Irish. We did the Plantagenets, the Tudors and the Stuarts Cromwell, Charles I, the Restoration.'

'Cromwell did bad stuff in Ireland, Rosie.'

I didn't want to sour what had been up to then a perfect day. So I didn't ask him what Cromwell did in Ireland. I turned the radio on and got the s.h.i.+pping forecast. I let all those hypnotic, soothing names Fitzroy, Bailey, Rockall, Malin, Dover rea.s.sure and comfort me.

He said he loved me. I believed him.

But I could see he felt impatient with me sometimes, even though he did his best to hide it. I annoyed him by just being there, distracting him.

I knew his work was very important. It would help to benefit the disadvantaged and disabled everywhere. But I was still jealous of his work, of the fact that he was so wrapped up in it, that I would never be his entire life. I'd always be a part of it, however much I willed it to be otherwise.

Although he never said or even hinted, I got the impression he thought I was lightweight a very silly, superficial person whose life revolved round handbags, clothes and cupcakes. I knew he was irritated by my att.i.tude to fas.h.i.+on, couldn't believe how much I was prepared to spend on what was hot. He wasn't mean far from it but he wasn't bothered about labels. He always knew exactly what he wanted and shopping bored him rigid. Once he discovered Marks & Spencer menswear, he bought nothing else.

I love shopping not as much as Tess loves shopping, but I do enjoy it and of course I love a bargain, particularly a designer bargain. When I saw a rather gorgeous cardigan in a shop in Bond Street after I had been to talk to f.a.n.n.y about a new promotion that she said would make me rich and this rather lovely garment was reduced as well, naturally I had to snap it up. But afterwards I realised I didn't get such a bargain, after all. The girl was chatting to her mate and gave me the wrong change.

'It doesn't really matter,' I told Pat, when I met him later for a coffee and he noticed I was wearing something new. 'I'd have bought it anyway, even if it hadn't been in the sale. I did wonder if the change was right. But the discount was something per cent. So I couldn't work out what I should pay while I was in the shop.'

'Why couldn't you?'

'I don't have that sort of mind, and anyway G.o.d gave us calculators. So I don't need to do percentages or long division or any of that tedious stuff I had to do at school. Pat, I'm not going have a nervous breakdown over twenty quid.'

'It isn't cool to be cheated by a store. It's just plain dumb.' He found his pen, reached for my paper napkin. 'Okay, here's the simple way to figure out percentages. Rosie, are you listening?'

Twenty minutes later, I understood percentages at last and realised it was possible to do them in my head. Or some of them, at least. I was amazed.

'Why didn't I get this before?' I asked.

'Whoever taught you math instructed you but forgot to show you how to learn. A teacher shouldn't stand there and pontificate. It's a teacher's job to show his students how to learn. Then they'll understand most anything within a range of capability and they'll go on learning all their lives.'

'I bet you couldn't teach a frog geometry.'

'As I said, we have to work within a range of capability. Rosie, twenty-five per cent of thirty-six?'

'Oh, that's easy nine.'

'You find it easy now. You couldn't have done it half an hour ago. Fifty per cent of four?'

'It's two,' I said and kissed him. 'Pat, it's you and me.'

What was our range of capability? What did we need to learn? What could we hope to learn, to have a chance of happiness?

'We're good together, aren't we?' I asked later when we were at my flat. He'd seemed distant and preoccupied right through the evening, going through the motions of making conversation, but making me feel like I wasn't there.

'I don't know,' he said.

'What don't you know?'

'You're definitely very good for me. You make me very happy. But I'm no good for you. I think you need a younger guy.'

'You could be right. I'm only twenty-nine but you're already in your fourth decade. You're almost geriatric. But hey, you mustn't worry. I can steer a wheelchair.'

'Okay, put it another way someone with no baggage, no history, no ties.'

'We all have history. Patrick, do you love me?'

'Yeah, I do too much to hurt you, now or in the future.'

'I'll take my chance on getting hurt. So let's live for the moment and let's not think about your history.'

I wasn't going to tell him about mine.

PATRICK.

Rosie said she had to take a couple days away to visit with her folks in Dorset: her grandmother was sick and she was worried.

My grandmothers were dead and buried by the time I came along and maybe it was just as well. Mom's parents more or less disowned her when she married Dad, and from what I understand his own were trash of the worst kind.

'Yeah, I'll watch Joseph Sat.u.r.day and Sunday,' I told Lex when she collected Joe and Poll from the apartment London University had found for me. 'We can do some guy stuff. Do you and Mr Wonderful have plans?'

'Stephen's going to take me to the Lake District.'

'Where's that?'

'It's someplace in the north of England, supposed to be real pretty. Wordsworth used to live there.'

'Who was Wordsworth?'

'A famous British poet, he wrote a famous poem about daffodils, the famous British flower.' Lexie looked at me like I was dumb. 'Patrick, could you watch your daughter, too?'

'I don't think so, Lex. Joe and I are heading to the Natural History Museum to check out dinosaurs. We're taking in the Science Museum, too. Polly would be bored. Anyway, I reckon you and Mr Wonderful could use a chaperone.'

Lexie blushed at that. 'Patrick, I we-'

'What?'

'You kids, go into Daddy's bedroom and close the door behind you,' Lexie told them. 'Joe, you take my iPhone. You know how to find the games. Polly, go play Barbies.' As the kids went off dragging their backpacks, Lexie turned to me. 'Pat, don't be so difficult. You and I when we were kids in high school, we loved each other, didn't we?'

'Yeah, I thought we did. But people change. Move on, cross boundaries, so there's no going back.'

'What do you mean, cross boundaries?'

'I heard about your afternoon with Ben.'

She looked at me like I had slapped her face. 'How did you know?' she whispered. 'Ben promised not to say a word to you.'

'You forget you had a witness, Lexie, and Tess didn't promise anything.'

'So she told you?'

'She did.'

'But it was nothing! Two old friends, we had a drink together, smoked some stuff and things got out of hand. We didn't mean-'

'I don't care what you and Fairfax did or didn't mean. Or what you and your lovers do, provided you're not jerking me around.'

'You want to file for divorce?'

'No, I'm far too busy and all that stuff takes time. I have a major conference in the summer and I have a ton of work to do.'

'You always put your work before your family.'

'I don't.'

'You do! You always did.'

'As I said, I'm busy. I'm sure your schedule must be crowded too, so I'll let you get on. I'll collect Joe Friday about six o'clock, okay?'

'If you don't watch Polly we can't go to the Lake District,' said Lexie. 'Or not to the place we planned on going.'

'Why?'

'Stephen wants to take me to a smart hotel in Windermere where children aren't allowed.'