The Tail of Emily Windsnap - Liz Kessler [24]
“Things? What things?” he said quickly, his smile gone.
“Just . . .”
“Is she ill? What’s the matter?” Mr. Beeston’s face turned hard as he narrowed his eyes at me.
“Well, my father . . .” I pulled at my cotton candy and a long piece came away like a loose thread from a fluffy pink ball of mohair yarn. I folded it over into my mouth.
“Your what?” Mr. Beeston burst out. What was his problem?
“I was asking her about my father and she got upset.”
He lowered his voice. “What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything.”
“Nothing at all?”
“She said she couldn’t remember anything. Then she started crying.”
“Couldn’t remember anything? That’s what she said?”
I nodded.
“You’re quite sure now? Nothing at all?”
“Yes. Nothing.”
“All right, then.” Mr. Beeston breathed out hard through his nose. It made a low whistling sound.
“So, I wondered if you could help me,” I continued, trying to sound casual.
“Me? How on earth can I help you?” he snapped.
“I just wondered if she’d ever talked to you about him. With you being her friend and everything.”
He examined my face, squeezing his eyes down to narrow slits as he stared. I wanted to run away. Of course he wouldn’t know anything. Why would she talk to him and not me? I tried to hold his eyes but he was staring at me so hard I had to look away.
He took hold of me by my elbow and pointed up the promenade with his other hand. “I think it’s time you and I had a little chat,” he said.
I tried to shake my elbow away as we walked, but he held it tighter and walked faster. We’d gotten all the way to the end of the boardwalk before he let go and motioned for me to sit down on a bench.
“Now, listen to me and listen well, because I’ll tell you this once and once only.”
I waited.
“And I don’t want you bothering your mother with it afterward. You’ve upset her enough already.”
“But I —”
“Never mind, never mind.” He raised his hand to stop me. “You couldn’t have known.”
He wiped his forehead with a hanky. “Now then,” he said, shifting his weight onto his side as he put his hanky away. His trousers had a hole just below the pocket. “Your father and I, we used to be friends. Best friends. Some folks even thought we were brothers; that’s how close we were.”
Brothers? Surely Mr. Beeston was lots older than my father? I opened my mouth to speak.
“He was like a kid brother to me. We did everything together.”
“Like what?”
“What?”
“What things did you do? I want to know what he was like.”
“All the things young boys get up to,” he snapped. “We went fishing together. Went out on our bikes —”
“Motorbikes?”
“Yes, yes, motorbikes, mountain bikes — all of that. We were best friends. Chased the girls together, too.”
Imagining Mr. Beeston chasing girls, I shuddered.
He cleared his throat. “Then, of course, he met your mother and things changed.”
“Changed? How?”
“Well, one might say they fell in love. At least, she did. Very much so.”
“And what about my dad?”
“He did a very good impression of love, for a while. He certainly didn’t want to fool around with cars anymore.”
“I thought you said he liked bikes.”
“Cars, bikes — whatever. He wasn’t interested. They spent all their time together.”
Mr. Beeston stared into the distance, his hands in his pockets. He looked as though he was struggling with something. Then he jingled his coins and said, “But of course it didn’t last. Your father turned out not to be the gentleman we all had believed he was.”
“What do you mean?”
“This is rather a delicate matter. But I shall tell you. Let us say he wasn’t the most responsible person. He was happy enough to lead your mother up the garden path, but not prepared to stay by her side when they got to the gate.”
“Huh?”
His face reddened. “He was content to sow but not reap.”
“Mr. Beeston, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Good grief, child. I’m talking about responsibility,” he snapped. “Where do you think you came from?”
“Do you mean he got my mom pregnant with me and then ran off?”
“Yes, yes, that is what I mean.”
Why didn’t you say so, then? I wanted to say