Keepers of the Flame: A love story Read online

  Chapter 20

  Twenty-two years later

  Silas grabbed a bottle of water from the courtesy table and twisted the cap. It was a warm afternoon in July, slightly muggy with the promise of rain later. Festival season in the UK, where it seemed standard to spend half your summer in a muddy field. Wild Dogz were topping the bill here tonight, but in the meantime Silas had been engaging with lots of press, chatting to the other musicians gathered together in the backstage area, signing autographs and posing for photos with lucky fans who had ‘access-all-areas’ passes. Basically backstage here simply meant lots of enormous marquees strung together, however it was well organised and comfortable, and he wouldn’t have to get wet until he went out on stage.

  He drained the bottle of water and flipped it into a recyclables bin. He’d been sober for seventeen years, sworn off all alcohol and drugs, and felt better for it. He was fifty-five years old, nearly fifty-six, and he was fitter than he’d ever been. He worked out every day, had a private chef who toured with him, and generally tried for keep a positive attitude about life. For his age, he looked great, and he could still do three hour stints on stage when he needed to.

  These days Wild Dogz were at the top of their game. Legends. They could still sell out a gig in Europe in fifteen minutes, but they chose to play only forty to fifty gigs a year now, in batches spread across the whole twelve months, allowing those members of the band with families to enjoy the rewards that success had brought them. They’d worked hard for it after all. Sixteen studio albums, three live albums, two soundtracks and two compilation of rock covers. They still pulled in big bucks.

  For Silas’s part, he loved the live scene as much as he ever had, and yet he was equally as happy enjoying time alone on the ranch he owned back home in Buckhorn, far away from the hustle and bustle of city life, the music business, and all the fuss those two things implied.

  He looked around at the mix of famous faces and unknowns bustling around in the tent. He wanted to get out to the stage area, and hear Muse do their thing, when his eye was caught by a young woman hovering at the edge of the tent. Cute. She eyed him openly, curiously, and he returned her stare with a smile.

  She had long dark hair, flowing free, and wore a white vest top over black jeans and cowboy boots. When he smiled at her, her face lit up and she walked over.

  “Hi,” he said, trying to catch what it said on the pass dangling from the neon-orange lanyard around her neck. “I’m Silas.”

  “I know,” she said, her lips curling slightly. He noticed she didn’t offer her name in response, and her face was pale, dark circles under her eyes showing the signs of recent strain. Silas was unsure how to proceed.

  “Are you a musician, or media or …”

  “Err, none of those. I had an invite. My Aunt wangled it somehow. She has connections in the business.”

  “Who’s your Aunt?”

  The young woman gestured to a crowd in the corner, but Silas couldn’t pick anyone out he recognised. “She’s looking out for you, huh?”

  She giggled. “She certainly is. She doesn’t want me to get hit on by anyone in the music business.”

  “That’s very wise.” Silas nodded. “You shouldn’t trust anyone in this business.”

  “That’s what my Mum says,” the woman smiled although there was a certain amount of ice in her grey eyes. “And she speaks from experience.”

  Silas frowned. “Does she?”

  “She does.” The young woman held his gaze for a fraction too long and Silas felt a premonition.

  “Flick?”

  Silas looked up as the young woman turned to greet the newcomer. A petite woman in her late forties, early fifties, with jet black hair in a sharp and stylish bob headed their way. In a short black dress and knee high leather boots, Silas recognised her immediately. “Terri?”

  “Hello darling,” Terri leaned in to allow Silas to kiss her on the cheek. “How are you?”

  “I’m well, thank you. I didn’t know you had a niece.”

  Terri smiled and hugged the young woman who stood at least six inches taller than her, even without heels. “Strictly speaking, Flick is not a blood relation. Not of mine anyway.”

  Felicity took a deep breath and stuck out her hand, “Hi Dad.”

  “Dad?” Silas looked from Felicity to Terri.

  Terri nodded. “Yes. Felicity here is your daughter. Yours and Jane’s.”

  Stunned, Silas stared in wonder at Felicity. He could see the resemblance now, the hair colour, her nose, the shape of her chin – they were all Jane, but her eyes and mouth, that was down to him, no doubt about it. She looked a little like his own mother, remembered only in photographs. “Wow,” he said, struggling to articulate the feelings swirling inside him. “Wow.”

  “I suppose it is a bit of a shock for you,” said Terri.

  “All this time? And I didn’t know?” Silas said. “Why didn’t Jane tell me?” Terri shrugged. Her lips were firmly sealed. “Did Dewey know?” Terri pursed her lips and Silas ran a hand through his hair. “Man.”

  He turned back to the young woman. She was easily as beautiful as her mother, clear eyed, intelligent. He had no other children, as far as he was aware, so finding a daughter he never knew existed was a revelation. “Felicity,” he said in wonder. “Do you go by Fraser?”

  “On my birth certificate it says Felicity Ella Garfield Fraser. But you can call me Flick,” Felicity said. “Everyone does.”

  “You don’t like Felicity? I have to call you Felicity. Your mother loves that name.”

  Felicity cocked her head and smiled genuinely for the first time since Silas had met her. “You remember that?” she asked.

  Silas shook his head and clamped his hands to the side of his face, struggling to comprehend the situation. “Every minute of every hour I spent with your Mom is ingrained in my mind, Felicity. I’ve never loved another woman the way I loved Jane in my entire life.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that,” Felicity said, her face serious, pain in her eyes. “That’s why we came.”

  Chapter 21

  Jane smiled as the nurse raised the blind at the window. With so little time left to her, she wanted to glimpse every aspect of the world outside. From her vantage point in the hospice bed, she had a great view of the trees in the grounds beyond, dancing in the breeze, busy with birds and bees. In the distance she could hear the lazy summer sound of a lawn mower, hurrying to clip the grass before the promised rain arrived.

  “Would you like me to turn your music up for you,” the nurse asked. Felicity had filled an iPod with Jane’s favourite music. It was docked on the dressing table, out of reach.

  “No, I can manage,” replied Jane, waving the remote that was never far from her hand. She remembered Roy and his radio and how he had wanted the pleasant surprise of listening to tracks picked by the DJs, to hear each for the last time. What would Roy have thought of all this new technology and the ability to download thousands of tracks to one tiny device? Jane had it on shuffle and every new track gave her pleasure. He’d have loved it. He’d died at 48, and she wouldn’t make 52. What a pair they were.

  “Do you have any pain?” the nurse asked checking Jane’s pulse and blood pressure.

  “No,” Jane replied. Not quite a lie. The morphine went some way to managing it.

  A tap on the door alerted them both to visitors. Felicity poked her head around the door and smiled. “Hi mum! Are you decent?”

  “Hello darling!” Jane struggled to sit up, thrilled to see her daughter. “How was your concert?”

  “It was amazing! I missed you though.” Felicity came into the room and hugged her mother gently. Jane felt her daughter’s tears against her cheek, and ached for her. Time was running out for them, and she remembered how it had been when she lost Roy. How bereft she had felt. If she could have spared her daughter the certain pain of loss, she would have.

  She stroked Felicity’s hair softly, reassuring her. Her baby. She smelled so
clean and fresh, of shampoo and the outdoors. She smelt of love and innocence.

  “Who were the line-up?” Jane asked. Felicity must have told her, but she couldn’t remember.

  Felicity perched on the edge of the bed, holding her mother’s hand. “Oh … well … Ed Sheeran. Muse. Kanye West.” Jane pulled a face and Felicity laughed. “Muse were fab, Mum!”

  “Yes, they’re a great band to be fair. Were they any good live?”

  “They were phenomenal. Look I’ll download some YouTube videos later if you’re up to it.” Felicity waved her phone at Jane.

  “Why not now? I’m awake.”

  “Because I’ve brought someone with me.”

  Jane cast a quick glance at the closed door. “Terri?”

  Felicity shook her head and took a deep breath. “Don’t be cross with me, okay Mum?”

  Jane smiled uncertainly at her daughter. “What do you mean?”

  Felicity bit her lip. “I had to do this, and Terri helped me.”

  “Do what?” asked Jane in alarm.

  Felicity didn’t answer, and instead crossed the room and opened the door. “You can come in,” she told the figure outside, “but please be gentle.”

  Terri came into the room followed by a tall man with a bunch of flowers. Jane willed her eyes to focus, wondering if she was seeing things. Older, hair greying at the temples and tied back in a neat pony tail, wearing jeans and a leather jacket, not as slight as Jane remembered him, more muscular, and yet indisputably him. The one man she had loved for her entire life it seemed.

  “Silas.”

  “Jane Fraser,” he said, smiling, even while the tears coursed down his cheeks.

  ***

  Terri took Felicity out for something to eat leaving Jane and Silas alone.

  He took the seat next to her bed and held her hand. Her fingers felt thin and cold, and he wrapped them in his warm ones, wishing he could breathe life back into her, this woman he had never stopped loving. She lay against the pillows, pale as a ghost, black rings under her eyes, but he could see the light still burning inside her.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she was saying.

  “I should have come a long time ago,” he replied.

  She shook her head slowly. “Felicity was wrong to bring you. I don’t want you to see me like this.”

  “But now I have. And do you know what I see?”

  “You see a woman old before her time, with a limp, sad body. The shadow of the girl you loved once.” Jane spoke with some bitterness, remembering Monty and her perfect body, and Nyree the supermodel. She had never been able to compete with Silas’s other women.

  “No,” Silas spoke softly, “If you were looking with my eyes, you would see the very essence of the woman I loved, the woman I have never stopped yearning for. At 22, at 28, now. The person you are is here,” he tapped her heart, “and here,” he tapped his own.

  “So what happened to us?” she asked, tired to her very bones.

  “I happened. There’s no excuse for my behaviour.”

  “Monty.”

  “Was that her name? Yes, it was. I don’t know. She was just an excuse. I excluded her from the tour after that, or maybe Dewey did. Of course it was too late. I screwed us up. I screwed up everything. We got home to the States and I went on a bender. It lasted five years.”

  Silas squeezed her hand gently. “I did a lot of stuff I shouldn’t have done. I’ve spent the years since I became sober trying to make amends.” He leaned close to her, pleading. “I’ll never be able to apologise enough. Can you forgive me?”

  Jane turned her head to the side to look at him properly, a smile playing at her lips. “I forgave you the moment our daughter was born,” she answered.

  ***

  She slept while her music played gently in the background. Silas sat with her, his hand lying on hers. Terri and Felicity came back and Terri offered to take him to a restaurant or café to eat, but he declined, wishing to remain with Jane.

  At last he stood to stretch, walked around the room a few times then returned to Jane’s bedside. Outside darkness was falling and a breeze was getting up. The trees swayed into the slight wind, shaking their branches like huge green pom-poms.

  He turned about and looked down at Jane, brushing some strands of hair away from her forehead.

  “She sleeps a lot,” Felicity said.

  “I guess it’s a blessed release from the pain.”

  “She says she doesn’t have any. She’s a terrible liar.”

  “She always was,” agreed Silas.

  “What was she like when you first met her?” Felicity asked curiously.

  Silas exhaled and thought back. “What can I tell you? She was so incredibly alive. So fresh and vibrant and intelligent and … normal. I haven’t known a lot that was normal since I was seventeen years old, but with your Mom … I did ordinary things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like making marmite on toast at three in the morning and washing up, and eating ice cream in Italy at midnight, paddling in the river and dancing … dancing in the rain even. We did that the first night we met. I’ve loved her ever since.”

  “Why didn’t you come back for her?” asked Felicity without a hint of malice. “She waited. She was always waiting. She said you would one day.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Did you marry someone else?”

  “No. I was married once, never since that time.”

  “So you could have come back then?” Felicity was quietly insistent.

  “I thought it best that I didn’t. I was no good for anyone for a long time. I was destructive, and hateful. The band fired me. The record company dropped us. It was a mess. I was a mess. By the time I regained some sense of who I was, and the band reformed and let me back, and I remembered what I was supposed to be doing with my life, I figured your Mom was better off without me.”

  “Would it have made a difference if you had known about me?”

  Silas gave this some consideration. “Probably. Maybe I’d have insisted on being around, yet what good I would have been to you or her is anybody’s guess. I’m sure you’ve turned into a better person without my influence.”

  Felicity laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You are everywhere in our house. We have scores of framed photos, there’s your music. There’s things you gave her. She has your press cuttings. I used to ask why I couldn’t meet you and she said I would when the time was right. She used to answer all my questions about you. You’ve never been a horrible secret. I yearned for a daddy as a kid, but when I was a little older I realised that she knew best. I knew I’d meet you one day.”

  “And here we are,” Silas said sadly, sitting next to Jane and taking her hand once more.

  “Better late than never,” Jane murmured and her eyes flicked open.

  ***

  Sometime after midnight, with Felicity dozing in a chair, Terri disappeared outside for a cigarette. Silas and Jane continued to converse quietly.

  “Are you sure there’s nothing that can be done?” Silas asked, not for the first time. With all his money, and access to the best doctors in the world, he felt he needed to try.

  “Absolutely nothing. It’s metastasized. It’s in my bones.”

  Silas shook his head angrily. “If you’d only been in touch earlier.”

  “By the time we knew what was wrong I was already terminal, Silas. No-one could have helped me, not even you.”

  “It’s unbearable.”

  “You have to bear it,” Jane scolded quietly. “That’s our baby there.” They both stared at the sleeping Felicity affectionately. “Help Terri look after her, will you? Please? Especially … after I’m gone.”

  “Of course I will. To my dying day.”

  Jane nodded, satisfied. “That’s all I ask. Life has been good to me on the whole.”

  Silas kissed her gently on the forehead. “No regrets?” he whispered.

  “None at all.”

  Drops
of rain spattered against the window and they both glanced that way.

  “Well maybe one regret,” said Jane weakly, trying to push herself up in the bed.

  “What’s that?”

  “That we didn’t get to dance in the rain one more time.”

  Chapter 22

  “What are you doing?” Terri asked in horror.

  Silas was attempting to ease Jane out of bed when she came back from her cigarette break, shaking the water from her jacket.

  “We’re going outside,” Silas replied, attempting to unhook Jane from her drip.

  “I really don’t think so. You’re out of your mind. Stop doing that!” When Silas continued Terri swore at him. “I’m fetching a nurse,” she said and rushed from the room.

  “What’s going on?” Felicity sat up, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

  “Your Mom and I are going outside.”

  “What?” She jumped to her feet. “You can’t do that.”

  Jane held her hand out to her daughter. “Felicity,” she said, “I want to. Help me. Please?”

  Felicity shook her head in dismay. “Mum, stay in bed.” But Jane held her gaze, her eyes pleading and Felicity backed down.

  “Excuse me sir?” Terri had returned with a nurse and doctor in tow. The doctor examined Silas uncertainly, afraid he might be dangerous.

  “What’s in these things?” Silas asked, indicating the two machines Jane was hooked up to.

  “Morphine and saline,” Felicity replied.

  “They can be unhooked? At least temporarily, right?”

  Felicity nodded, but the doctor answered, “I wouldn’t advise that.”

  “It’s fine,” Felicity said. “My Mum wants to go outside for a few minutes. They won’t be long.” Felicity appealed to Terri, “We should let them go.”

  Terri looked from Felicity to Silas and back to Jane. She could see Silas’s determination, and Jane’s desire. “Alright.”