Magic Sometimes Happens Part 26

'I'm not mad at all, Joe,' I a.s.sured him. 'I'm very flattered that you like my top.'

'Where did you get it?'

'Gap.'

'Yeah, I thought it looked like Gap. It's a real cool store. I got some jeans from Gap.'

Joe and I, we bonded over fashion.

PATRICK.

'What shall we do now?' I asked, uncomfortably aware that they were ganging up against me, which was both good and bad.

Good because I wanted Rosie and my kids to get along. Bad because she seemed to be encouraging my boy to give her sa.s.s, and I expect a child of mine to have respect and be polite. A six-year-old should not be telling any grown up woman she looks hot, even if she does look hot, as Rosie did today.

'Daddy won't be grumpy long,' she murmured, wiping Polly's ketchup-covered mouth with paper napkins. Then she smiled at Joe, who grinned. 'What shall we do now? Let's have a think. We could go and climb the spire of the cathedral. Or ...'

'Or what?' demanded Joe excitedly.

'We could go to Bath!'

'Go take a bath?'

'No, not take a bath. We could check out something even Daddy will agree is pretty special.'

Yeah? Surprise me.

'How far is it?' I asked.

'About an hour's drive that's all, I promise.' She spoke to me like I was some resentful adolescent on a family day out who needed talking round. 'Come on, Mr Surly, let's go and drink some water.'

'I can drink water anyplace.'

'But this is special water. It smells like rotten eggs and tastes of blood.'

'You're kidding, right?'

'There's only one way to find out.'

'Come on, Dad, let's go!' Always up for anything disgusting, Joe was already tugging at my hand. So we headed off to Bath, aquaplaning through the everlasting British rain.

I'd heard of Bath, of course. I knew it was a Roman city one time and was a tourist destination now. So what was I expecting? The usual pathetic British shopping mall? Some stubs of columns, maybe? Some piles of Roman rubble? If we lucked out big time, might we get to go inside a dusty, dark museum full of tarnished metal, broken crockery and other trash?

As we parked up, the sun came out. The sky was suddenly cobalt and, to my surprise, beneath white cotton candy clouds there was a gracious city built of glowing golden stone. It looked like something in a movie.

Then we were in the movie.

We trod on the actual paving stones the Romans walked on two thousand years ago. We saw bathing pools of gra.s.s-green water from which the steam arose and wreathed around us in wraith-like, spooky spirals. We checked out Roman tombstones, a bronze head of Minerva, a scary Gorgon's mask. We watched as foaming torrents bubbled up from deep inside the earth then gurgled off down ancient Roman drains.

'What do you think?' asked Rosie.

'It's awesome,' I replied.

'Okay, no need to be sarcastic.'

'I'm serious,' I insisted, as I gazed at Roman columns, Roman walls and Roman ...

'Pat, where's Polly?'

'She's right here beside me.'

'No she's not!'

I didn't know what I should do. I stared around in panic, about to get myself a heart attack. But then oh, thank you, G.o.d I saw my baby. 'Polly, get back here!' I yelled and everybody turned to stare at me.

I'd let go of her hand for just one moment and before I knew it she was kissing cousins with two ducks, would you believe it, who were bobbing on the surface of the larger pool. I grabbed her by the hood. I scooped her up and held her very tight. 'You are not Jesus Christ!' I cried. 'You do not walk on water!'

'Daddy, ducks!' said Polly, pointing.

'Pat, calm down,' said Rosie.

'Why are you British so careless of your children?' I would not calm down! 'These paving stones they're wet, uneven, slippery they're lethal for a little one. Why are there no guard rails, nothing to stop a person falling in and never being seen again?'

'There are guides, attendants, and the pool's not very deep.'

'It must be deep enough.' How many cell phones, cameras and eyegla.s.ses could be at the bottom of that pool, that bath of Kermit-coloured water, I wondered, shuddering.

'Polly, stay with Daddy, yes?' said Rosie. 'We would hate to lose you.'

Yeah, understatement of the century. But Rosie had no children of her own, had never had those nightmares when your kids are trapped inside a burning building, drowning in a torrent, and you feet won't move, your arms won't reach, you're paralysed.

How could she understand?

I held my baby in my arms, her head b.u.t.ting my collarbone, her thumb wedged in her mouth. She was tired and soon she would be dozing and drooling on my shoulder.

But Joe was going crazy with excitement, dashing here and there and everywhere and hollering, even though I told him to quiet down a dozen times. I was relieved to see that Rosie held his hand real tight as he did his best to fall into a cistern full of coins.

'Hey, Dad check this out!' he cried. 'I never saw so many pennies, quarters, dimes!' He loved the deep, mysterious pools of water. He coveted the coins. He adored the spooks and watched enchanted as images of walking, talking ancient Romans bloomed on Roman walls. I couldn't bring myself to tell him they were not for real, that they were projections of actor guys in togas, playing on a loop.

Why spoil the magic? We all need magic, don't we?

After going round the baths themselves, we took tea in the Pump Room, an amazing Georgian s.p.a.ce where young, good-looking waiters and pretty college-student waitresses served us tea and perfect sandwiches and jewel-like little cakes.

I thought the British had no time for kids. But it seemed like I was wrong because these guys all made a pet of Polly, joked and high-fived with my son.

I thought how much my mom would love it here. I would bring her over some time, I decided, watch her sip her British tea and nibble cutesy British cakes and tiny British sandwiches served up on silver stands, while a string quartet played music from the shows she loved, and she would- 'Polly, no!' cried Rosie.

I had been distracted for a moment, thinking of my mother. But to my relief I saw that Rosie had just moved the teapot out of Polly's reach.

There are always snakes in paradise.

ROSIE.

After Polly tried to grab the teapot, Pat took her on his lap and held her there, distracting her from all the dangerous stuff with sandwiches and cake.

The string quartet launched into something bright and jolly, possibly by Nol Coward, and Pat looked at me and shook his head. 'I can't believe this is for real,' he murmured. 'It's like something out of Georgette Heyer.'

'My goodness, you read Georgette Heyer, do you?'

'No, of course I don't. But Mom has all her novels, and I'm guessing I saw this place on one of the covers of her books.'

'My mother loves those books as well.'

'So if they should ever meet, they would have at least one interest in common?'

'Yes, perhaps. Joe, would you like another little cake?' The memory of my mother giving Pat her special ice queen treatment could still make me blush.

'Rosie?' whispered Joe, as Pat was cutting up some bread for Polly. 'Did you lose any teeth?'

'Well not recently,' I whispered back. 'Why do you ask?'

'I lost a ton of teeth.' Opening his mouth extremely wide, he showed me where three baby teeth were missing. 'I put them in a box with a dead ladybug, a snail sh.e.l.l and a stick insect's head.'

'Joe, will you quit talking about teeth and bugs and stuff and grossing Rosie out?' Pat told him, sighing. 'What will she think of you?'

I thought he was delightful.

If I'd wanted any children which of course I didn't I'd have loved to have a Joseph Riley of my own ...

The adults ate the cuc.u.mber-and-salmon, egg-mayonnaise and ham-and-cream-cheese sandwiches. We all ate the gorgeous little cakes. Pat said everything was good. He tipped the pretty waitress generously. Then I challenged him to drink some water from the fountain in the Pump Room. 'Go on, go on,' I urged him. 'When you come to Bath for the first time, you have to take the waters it's the law.'

'Go on, Dad,' repeated Joe.

'It's absolutely free,' I added, laughing at his frown.

'It's the stuff we saw in those green pools?'

'That's right the very same.'

'You'll have some as well?'

'I promise.'

'Spit or swallow?'

'Swallow, definitely.'

'I'll have some too,' said Joe. 'I'll swallow.'

'No, you won't,' said Pat. 'You'll tell your mom I gave you water the colour of Shrek's a.s.s and she'll tell her attorney. You and your sister stick to juice.'

I fetched a couple of gla.s.ses from the fountain. He saw the water wasn't green at all and frowned at me. 'You got this from a regular faucet, didn't you?'

'No, it's from the sacred spring. But it's purified and filtered so it's safe to drink. Look over there the girl is filling gla.s.ses for some other people now. What do you think of it?'

'Not bad at all it's chalky, chemical, but not unpleasant no rotten eggs, no blood.'

'You can feel it doing you good, then?'

'Something must be doing me good,' he said and gave me a big smile which warmed my heart.

PATRICK.

What a day, best time I had in years.

I don't know why I kvetched so much about Stonehenge. When I think about it, little guys in goatskins or whatever moving rocks the size of small apartment blocks is pretty d.a.m.n amazing.

I guess I hated the rain, the cold, the damp? I was also worried about Rosie meeting Joe and Polly, how it would all work out. But clearly Rosie gets on fine with kids, even if she's careless of them and she talks to them as if they're equals, which of course they're not they're only kids.

As we headed back to the hotel, I thought: you have to stop this now. Stop fooling round with Rosie. Stop wasting Rosie's time. She should be out there looking for a husband, for the father of her children, not hooking up with you.

But I didn't think that I could bear to let her go.

When we got back to Guildford, both the kids were fast asleep. I took Joe and Rosie carried Polly into the hotel. 'Come up and have a coffee or whatever,' I told Rosie. 'I'll get some stuff sent to our room.'

'Dad?' Joe stirred and yawned, opened his eyes. 'I'm hungry, Dad. I want to get a chocolate shake and dinosaurs and fries.'

'Yes, okay.'

'It's not okay,' said Rosie, and she set her mouth the way all women do when they're about to tell a man he's wrong. 'You shouldn't always feed them chips and processed chicken, Pat.'

She was right, of course. I shouldn't feed my kids on junk, use Joe and Poll to make some sort of stuff-you-mate another Britishism I kind of like attack upon my wife. They should have a decent, balanced diet of cheese and eggs and fruit and wholemeal bread, not processed s.h.i.t and shakes and branded sodas, I knew that well enough.

I ordered apple juice and cheese-and-salad sandwiches on wholemeal bread, not white. Joe picked at his and grumbled that he hated dirty bread and that the salad grossed him out. Then he crawled into bed and went to sleep.

As Joe and Polly slept, we talked in whispers.

'Pat, what do you actually do?' she asked. 'I mean at JQA? You've never said.'

'I work on speech-to-text and thought-to-text.'

'Goodness, thought-to-text it sounds like something out of Harry Potter.'

'It's not magic, Rosie. It's turning brain activity into text on a computer screen. I do stuff with guys from several disciplines neurologists, computer scientists, psychologists and physiologists. We're developing technology which will mean that one day even people with the most severe impairments people who can't move, perhaps, can't talk, can't even blink will be able to communicate with ease and accuracy using just their brains. It's possible to do it fairly clumsily right now.'

'How does it work?'

'You talk to your computer with your mind. Your brain makes brainwaves yeah, they do exist and your computer turns them into words. The other guy reads what you said on his computer screen.'