It was almost dessert time before Bernice recovered her good humour.
She confessed later that she’d hoped to edit Harry’s stories herself and was shocked when it became obvious he was handing the assignment over to me. ‘It took a while to see the sense in it,’ she said. ‘I mean, how could a journalist and author, with some 40-odd years experience, possibly do a better job than an English teacher, who’d been retired so long she’d almost forgotten what a comma looks like?’
They’d eaten in silence, the clatter of knives and scrape of forks punctuating the monkish solitude. Comments like “Pass the parmesan” or “A touch more wine please” were the only concessions to conversation until abruptly, with a sigh of resignation, Bernice broke the ice.
“I made this lasagna in honour of you, Buddy,” she said.
“Oh?”
“As I recall, lasagna was the prelude to Cherry-O-Cheese Pie in the other night’s romantic comedy.”
“Ah?”
“So I thought it might segue nicely into Harry’s account of our first date.”
Harry groaned theatrically.
“Well, dear, a promise made is one you must keep,” Bernice smiled sweetly. “And your efforts won’t go unrewarded. You’ll never guess what I whipped up for tonight’s dessert.”
“No!” he grinned.
Without a word, she floated over to the counter and returned with a covered pie plate, which she placed on a cleared spot at the centre of the table. “Et voila!” she enthused, whipping off the lid. “Your favourite, which you haven’t tasted for more years than you have hairs left on your head…
“But!” she concluded with stern emphasis as he ogled their dessert, “not a forkful shall pass between your lips until they have told the tale of your wooing me.” Bernice batted her wispy eyelashes coquettishly in preposterous imitation of a demure debutant.
“Aw, come on! You can tell the story better than me,” he protested. “And I’m much better at eating pie than you, hon!”
She held her ground, shaking her head and wagging her finger. “It’s your story to tell, my dear.”
And it was obvious to all that his giving-in was pro forma, like the feigned resistance of a reluctant speaker being ceremoniously dragged to his chair in Parliament. “Okay,” he agreed. “But I can’t tell any kind of story on an empty stomach, can I? If you give me an extra big slice of Cherry-O-Cheese Pie and a coffee with two creams and two sugars, stirred up nice, I might be stoked enough to tell our story, my dear.”
He crossed his arms and glared stoutly into what we took to be the future tense.
“Empty stomach! You’ve eaten enough lasagna to feed a family of ten hungry Italians, Harry. And you’ve poured more coffee down your gullet today than they’d serve at Nic’s Café in a week.”
“Them’s my terms, sweetheart. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.”
With an exaggerated sigh and a shake of her head, Bernice got up and fetched his double dose of Cherry-O, which she plunked down before him with all the eloquence of an angry waitress. Then she fixed his coffee, and plunked that down too. “Happy?” she snapped. “There’s enough sugar on your placemat to give an elephant diabetes.”
Distracted by some crumbs of Graham Cracker crust that had fallen from his fork into his lap and impeded by a mouthful of cheese pie he was trying to swallow, Harry managed to mumble, “Now, where should I begin?”
“In London, dear. You were on your motorbike, don’t you remember, and I was conductor on a crowded bus.”
“Oh yes. Of course!”
“You pulled up beside us at a stop,” Bernice prompted.
“I’ll never forget that moment. It’s like a locket round my neck that I open up and look into from time to time, hon, just to remind myself that you really are my sweetheart.” Bernice flicked her napkin at him, and they shared a chuckle. “There I was, in all that traffic, all that noise and grit, and I just happened to look up, into the bus, and there you were! My god!”
Bernice flustered. “I was checking tickets and happened to look out the window at that exact same instant, and there you were. I’ll never forget that glance—a firefly moment, surely, I thought—a beautiful, tingling sensation, mourned before you knew it was over. Then I had to get back to my job, and the bus began moving, and all I could think was, ‘He’s gone!’ I heard the motorbike roar, looked up, and you weren’t there. Nothing was left but the fading growl of an engine, leaving me and the #11 bus behind.”
“But damned if I was going to let things end there.” Harry held Buddy’s gaze conspiratorially. “I was no Casanova. I was shy back then—the kind of guy who didn’t stand out at high school dances. For some, making a pass was sort of natural, like there was nothing to it. Maybe you’d ‘score’, maybe you’d get told where to go, and you’d have to try out your moves again on someone else. A game, it was, really. But I wasn’t like that. It took more courage for me to follow through with our first glance than setting out on a night sortie over Germany.”
“My goodness! I wasn’t that formidable, surely?” Bernice clucked.
“I got ahead of the bus, then slowed, keeping it in my rear-view mirror. I didn’t know its route, so had to guess. I was looking for a bus stop, a place where I could dash ahead and pull up close to one.”
“On King’s Road, that turned out to be.”
“I didn’t know anything about taking a bus in London. Didn’t even know if I had the right change in my pocket. But I saw my chance, sped up, parked the bike on the sidewalk, then ran back to the stop just in time to jump on board…”
“I recognized him, of course. Immediately. And knew instantly what he was about. As we pulled away, I saw his motorcycle…”
“When she asked where I was going, I had no idea what to say, so I asked how far a person could go on the #11 Bus!”
“The cheek!” Bernice hooted. “Then, I saw he was blushing and that his quip had really been a faux pas. I couldn’t help laughing, could barely get the words ‘Shepherd’s Bush’ out. Then I was blushing, too, because all the passengers around us were watching our little getting-to-know-you comic drama…”
“Then I asked how much it cost to get to Shepherd’s Bush and where that might be…”
“And the woman sitting behind him laughed out loud,” Bernice said. “Then, when it turned out Buddy didn’t have the proper fare, she said, ‘I’ll pay. I do so enjoy a romantic comedy, and haven’t seen one this funny in many a year.’”
“So I rode to the end of the line, and we chatted in snippets as she went up and down the aisle, then Bernice let me ride back to where my bike was parked for free.”
“Actually, I paid the fare myself. And by the time he got off, we’d made arrangements to meet… We were madly in love before the return trip was over, despite his strange Canadian ways.”
“And now she’s had the better part of 80 years to get used to my Canuck accent; and I’ve had just as much time to learn her uppity British tone!”
They laughed, and Bernice leaned forward, running her hand through his hair. “Now I talk Canadian, too, eh?” she said. “With the slightest twang of Brit, just so he’ll remember my classy origins.”
Next: In the Beginning