A Banquet of Consequences (3 page)

At her car, she’d said how much she liked him, how he listened to her with interest, and how she felt completely safe with him. “Which is very odd, as I barely know you,” she said. “But I have a very good feeling about you and—”

He kissed her before he could stop himself. Animal lust or whatever it was, he simply had to feel her in his arms. To his surprise, she welcomed the kiss with her lips parting and her body fitting closely to his and not a murmur of protest when his hands slid from her waist to her soft, full bosoms that rested heavily in his two palms.

He felt he might actually black out with wanting her. He managed to get control of himself only because they were on a public street. He released her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand over which he stared at this lovely creature and tried to think how to apologise, how to explain, how to go on with her as he wished to go on.

She was the one to speak. “I shouldn’t have . . . I shouldn’t have . . .”

“No. It was me. It was the drink and you looking so bloody gorgeous standing there and—”

“It’s that I’m married,” she said in a rush. “The boys at the theatre with me . . . at the panto . . . They’re my sons. And I feel . . . What’s
wrong
with me that I would want to see you again when I have no right . . . And I wanted you to kiss me just now. I can’t explain it except to say how different you are from . . . Oh Lord, I must go. Really, I must go.”

She struggled to unlock the door, and he saw how badly her hands were shaking, so he took the keys from her and unlocked it himself. She turned to him then and said only, “How I wish . . .” but then she was gone.

He’d had no chance to say that it didn’t matter a whit to him if she’d lied about nephews, if she’d not mentioned a husband, if she—in fact—had three legs and two heads. What mattered was the word
together.
He was in love before he even knew the names of her sons.

And now, seventeen years along, he loved her still. He stared up at
the building where Will was suffering, and he recommitted himself to her, despite their occasional difficulties. He recommitted himself to the boy as well.

It was because of Will that they had left London for Dorset, selling up everything they owned in order to purchase a business about which Alastair had known exactly nothing at the time. Baking, he’d thought, was the province of women, or so it had been in his childhood home. But this was a professional bakery, a thriving concern with a house on the property into which he could move Caroline and her boys. So he’d bought it; he’d employed its previous owner to teach him all he could about working with flour and yeast and salt and sugar and all else that went into breads, rolls, yearly hot cross buns, cakes, and other confectionery. Years into it now, he had seven shops in the county, and if the life of a baker was exhausting with its ungodly hours and its ruptured sleep, he’d been able to provide for his family.

Caroline had her hands full with the boys, especially with Will. Alastair only hoped that today in that flat with Will gone round the bend as badly as he’d ever witnessed, Caroline was able to wring a miracle out of the poor lad’s madness. If she couldn’t do that, they’d have to send for help or cart him off to hospital. Neither prospect made the promise of peace.

His mobile rang. He grabbed it up from the console between the van’s seats and said, “Is he in order now, luv?”

But it wasn’t Caroline, although he heard a woman’s voice. She said, “Alastair, are you quite all right? I’ve had a feeling all morning that you’re in a bad way.”

He looked back at the building, at the windows of the sitting room that belonged to Will’s flat. He felt a surprising pounding of his heart.

“I’m in London,” he said. “But I’m that glad you rang.”

BROMLEY

LONDON

A
t first, Lily had not intended to see William again. She’d intended instead just to move on. She’d done so before, and she knew that she could do so another time because it was never as difficult as other women her age made it seem. She’d taken a cooking class where she’d quickly become part of a group of foodies who, like her, believed that eating on the cheap did not mean eating takeaway burgers from American fast-food outlets but rather sussing out the best food stalls in every market from Spitalfields to Portobello Road. She’d taken a dancing class where the Argentine instructor made it perfectly clear that he’d be only too delighted to share his smouldering looks and his smouldering body with just about anyone willing to have a go. She’d joined a crew of women who kept fit by rowing on the Thames early Saturday mornings. In short, she’d redeveloped the life she’d let go of during the ten months she’d been with William Goldacre, and she vowed she’d not get so entangled again. But then he rang her.

He sounded wonderful, like the William of old. He also turned out to be just as good as his word because he wasn’t living with his mum at all. He was back on his feet, and he was living in the village of Yetminster. Did Lily know it? Not far from Sherborne?

Of course she didn’t know it because what Lily knew about Dorset could fit into a teaspoon. But she told him that was brilliant news, and he went on to enthuse about his digs.

“Just a cottage in the village, not far from the high street. Well, nothing’s far from the high street here, is it. It’s not much more than two up and two down, but it’s got the most amazing garden. You must see what I’ve done with it, Lil.
And
I’ve got my first client right here in the village. A bloke who stopped by and saw what I’d done and asked could I do the same for him. Surprise for his wife, he said, who’s off in Australia visiting their daughter and the grandkids and he wants something special for her lest she decides she wants to emigrate. Best part is—and I
knew
this would happen if I got out of London—he’s completely on board with the way I work. I told him what I’d put in but not how or the exact cost because—I said to him—I don’t know the exact cost initially and that’s how I work
but
I’ll keep him in the picture every step of the way as costs come up and he says fine.”

“That’s brilliant, William.”

“I knew you’d think so. Will you come down?”

Lily had known he was going to ask the moment she’d heard his voice on the phone. She’d been trying to prepare an answer as he spoke, but she didn’t have one other than a hesitant “I don’t know . . .”

He said, “I want you to see the place. And its garden. And the other garden that I’m working on. It’s not much, but I’m entirely on my own here. I knew it was London, Lily. The noise, the traffic, the herds of people. I can’t cope with cities. Will you come? Listen, there’s no tattoo shop here. I’ve checked.”

“There wouldn’t be, would there, in a village?”

“I mean Sherborne, Lil. Yeovil. Shaftesbury. ’Course there might be something in Dorchester or Weymouth, but here there’s not. You see what that means, don’t you?”

Of course, she did. She could move house—to Dorset—and set up a shop, which was what he wanted. The problem was: It wasn’t what she wanted. There were far too many variables—who in the country wanted tattoos, after all?—and one of them was his mum.

She said, “Your mum must be pleased you’re doing so well.”

“Yes, of course she is. But don’t let’s go there. She helped me get
back on my feet, and that’s an end to the story. I hardly see her now. I
did
do her a garden, though. But that was when I was stopping with her and Alastair. She’s been showing it off to people who come by the bakery for special orders and such, and there’s been some interest there as well. She’s supported me, Lily, but that’s all. I’m on my own now, I’m fit, and I’m thriving. Will you come down and see for yourself? I swear I can make it so you don’t regret it. We were good together, you and I. I know we can be good together again. I guess what I’m asking is will you try? Will you let
me
try?”

Lily considered. She was drawn to William when he was at his best. She was drawn to his joy and enthusiasm. But there was far more to him than that, as she’d discovered.

She said, “I think it might be pointless, William. I’d never be able to support myself in Dorset and even if I could, we’d be setting ourselves up for enormous hurt.”

“Is there someone else, then?” he asked. “I wouldn’t blame you. After what I put you through . . . It was a rough patch for me. But I’m perfect now. I’ve a new medication to take care of the Wording. Not a single seizure since I’ve come home. See, it was the stress. I should have known that would happen in London. I should never have let myself get talked into giving London a try. I’m not like my brother. I can’t even remember why I shipped myself there in the first place, to tell you the truth.”

Because you wanted to get away from your mum
, Lily thought.
And your brother wanted the same for you
. But Lily didn’t say that because he did sound good and he had done what he said he would do. And she cared about him. There would always be that.

He seemed to sense in her hesitation a movement in his direction. He said, “It’s easy as anything, Lily. There’s a station in the village. I’d have to wave down the train—dead quaint that, eh?—but if you tell me when your train’s arriving, I’ll be there to do it. And listen to this: After I show you the place, we’ll go to Seatown. There’s camping well in sight of the beach. I’ve even been on my own for a night, and it was brilliant. There’re miles of walks. A pub. A shop. A village. We can do some walking up Golden Cap. The views, Lily! And with the weather being all right . . . still a bit cold but not raining . . .”

“Camping?” she said because she knew what that meant: a tent, close proximity, the suggestion of an intimacy she wasn’t sure she wanted.

He said quickly, “We’ll do it just as friends. What I mean is that there’ll be no expectations. We won’t plan anything and we’ll have an understanding about all that in advance. No worries on that score.”

His words were tumbling out of him, which was a little troubling, but every single one of them made perfect sense. It wasn’t like when the Wording came upon him. It was normal, excited conversation.

She said to him, “All right, then. But just as friends, William. I have to be honest with you about something anyway.”

“So you do have someone.”

“No, no. I’ve dated, but there’s no one at present. What I was going to say is that I don’t want to live in Dorset. I’m a London girl. Just so you know that. And if you want to withdraw the invitation now, I’ll understand.”

“No way. You’re going to change your mind when you see Dorset. You’ve never been, have you?”

“Sheep being not my thing.”

He laughed at this, his boyish, appealing William laugh, absent during those final dreadful days in London. “Just you wait,” he told her. “You’ll change your mind.”

SEATOWN

DORSET

I
t
was
more than sheep, as things turned out. Dorset was rolling chalk hills green with spring, disrupted by copses of hardwood trees coming into leaf and woodlands thick with firs and chestnuts and birches and oaks. The open land consisted of wide vistas that dipped into huge bowl-shaped valleys, of magnificent slopes occasionally broken by the intriguing undulations in land: medieval strip lynchets long ago scalloped into the hillsides for farming. It was a countryside of hedgerows sheltering paddocks and fields, of brick and stone villages where flint-banded buildings nosed directly to the edge of the roads like suckling puppies, and of churches everywhere, as if the people of Dorset knew something about the hereafter that the rest of the country was oblivious to.

As he’d promised, William met her at Yetminster Station, where he waved down the train to stop. He hugged her hard, stood back, and looked at her with his face lively with a kind of health and happiness that, admittedly, she’d seen rarely on him in town. He squired her round Yetminster—a limestone village that popped up in the middle of farmland not far from the stately beauties of Sherborne, with its castles and its distinguished school. He showed her his tiny cottage as if it were a structure in which every corner contained a
jewel of architectural wonder. He took her into his garden so that she could admire—and she did admire—what he’d done to transform it with an artful potting shed on which the newly planted wisteria would someday climb, a stone path winding across lawn richly edged by herbaceous borders, a tiny two-level terrace with seating and pots in which his eye for colour and shape had led him to plants that would be showpieces as spring advanced to summer. She called it stunning, and it was.

He told her that he’d known she would love it and she would feel the same about Seatown, so off they went on their camping trip. No mention was made of anything else. No word about his mum, especially, and for this Lily was grateful. For obviously Caroline Goldacre—as she always had been called, never changing her name from the surname of her two boys to the surname of her husband, Alastair MacKerron—had done a world of good for William, and Lily hated to admit this.

She wondered about the camping idea as they drove to Seatown, which was on the coast overlooking Lyme Bay. It was not just cold; it had oddly become unseasonably bitter with the kind of frigid wind that blew its way occasionally from the Ural Mountains and swept across Europe, stunning everything in its path. She mentioned this to William, but his response was, “Not to worry. We’ll have the tent, I’ve two duvets along with the sleeping bags, and once we start the walk up Golden Cap, we’ll be warm enough. You’ve brought a hat, haven’t you? Gloves as well? We’ll be fine.”

Seatown comprised little more than a hamlet that was, wisely, tucked a good distance away from the bay in a fold of land that protected it from winter storms driving in from the English Channel. It was a small scattering of holiday cottages typical of many villages by the sea: nautical themes abounded on windowsills and in narrow gardens; upended fishing boats waited for their seasonal paint jobs; crab pots and floats and nets lay about, emitting the sharp scent of fish.

The camping area was just beyond the hamlet, facing directly onto the sea. The narrow lane they’d driven coursed past this area, dipping down a slope that ended abruptly at a shingle beach, where a stream bubbled across the pebbles, burying itself beneath them and
reemerging near the salt water. The landscape, Lily saw, was as dramatic here as William had promised. For the beach was backed by tremendous cliffs looming over the shingle, and one of them was Golden Cap, the highest point in the county. It soared more than six hundred feet above Lyme Bay, providing—according to William—a stunning view not only of the water and of the town of Lyme Regis to the west of them but also of Dorset itself, which lay in splendour to the north. Walking here was where they would warm up, he told her, just as soon as they set up camp. And there was the Anchor pub down near the water—see it, Lil?—where they’d go for a hearty dinner after their climb.

The area for camping comprised two parts, both of which spread out on the east side of the lane to the beach, opposite to Golden Cap. Here, an area of caravans stood for hire on a shelf of land while slightly below and in front of these structures was the spot for tents. Perhaps a dozen of these mushroomed across grassland in rainbow colours, despite the cold.

Lily shook her head. “We English,” she said.

William laughed, understanding. Nothing got in the way of the English when they intended a holiday. He swung into the camping area, parked, and dashed inside the little shop, where he would pay for the privilege of a handkerchief square of land on which to set their tent. He was back in less than five minutes, and off they went. Another thirty minutes and their tent was set up, their sleeping bags and the duvets were inside, and all was ready for the strenuous walk up Golden Cap to see the view.

A sign posted the way. William led, with a rucksack on his back and a confidence in his stride. They rested often, for there was no hurry. They paused to take pictures. They stopped to rustle through his rucksack, where she discovered he’d brought chocolate bars, nuts, fruit, water, and even a bottle of red wine and two glasses. They sat against a boulder and looked back across the magnificent sweep of Marshwood Vale, all the way to a hill fort that Will told her was called Pilsdon Pen. Another month and the gorse would be blooming on Golden Cap, he told her. Then it would be yellow explosions, floral bursts of sun on a mantle of green.

When they made it to the very top of the cliff, it was all that William had promised it would be. The wind was intense, so they did not remain long. But in the western distance the crescent of Lyme Regis winked in the afternoon light while to the east Dorset’s Jurassic Coast introduced itself along the length of Chesil Beach, where boulders segued to rocks to stones to pea-sized pebbles as the strand travelled its incredible eighteen miles, backed by a glittering shield of water, an enormous lagoon that William identified as the Fleet.

The sea was grey on this day, but the sky was blue. Clouds scudded across it as if chased by the sun, but there were no birds, which Lily found odd. She’d expected gulls, but not a bird was in sight. And the only sound was the relentless wind.

She said to William, “You’re dead mad, you are, bringing us up here. Even the birds can’t cope.”

His response was a happy, “Swim to France? I feel like I could.” He cast a look at her, and his face was boyish. He said spontaneously but a little shyly, which she found appealing, “Lily, can I kiss you?”

“Odd question from a bloke I shared a tooth glass with.”

“Does that mean yes?”

“S’pose it does.”

He leaned to her and kissed her, a gentle kiss without expectation of anything more. This, too, she found appealing. She responded, and the kiss lingered. She felt the stirring within her, as she ever had.

SEATOWN

DORSET

On the way back down to their camping site, he kissed her again. This time he didn’t ask permission. He merely stopped abruptly, and the expression on his face told her what was coming. She discovered that she wanted it to come, but there was danger in this.

She said, “I’ve got my life back, William. I don’t want to lose it again.”

“We’re not going to talk about that,” he told her. “Not yet. I won’t say not ever because things have changed for me. I’ve moved on as well.”

“What’s that mean? Is there someone . . . ?”

“I wouldn’t have asked you to come down if there was someone, and I bloody well hope you wouldn’t have come if there was someone on your side as well.”

“I’ve said there isn’t.”

“But has there been? In these last months? Because there hasn’t for me and—”

“William . . .” She said his name like a gentle admonition.

“Never mind,” he said quickly. “None of my business.” He resumed their walk.

They made love that night. Lily couldn’t have said what was behind William’s desire to be with her that way—aside from biology and the kind of animal lust that arises when a male and a female are thrust into intensely intimate quarters with each other after a pleasant day together—but on her part it was a half-and-half thing. Half lust, if she was honest with herself. Half curiosity, if she was more honest still. For their previous coupling had been an engagement of manic intensity where his release followed so hard on the heels of initiation that the end result had most often been abject apology, reassurance, and a recommitment to “make things different next time.” They’d never been different, but she’d kept up her hopes. Now she was merely curious.

Thus she let him seduce her once she read the signs that he wanted to do so: the earnest looks, the warm hand on the back of her neck as they walked back from their meal at the pub, the fingers gently brushing her hair from her cheeks. When he said without the hesitant preamble she’d come to learn was his style, “D’you want to make love with me, Lily?” she admired that new courage in him that gave voice to desire instead of sidling into the act as if it was the expected thing between them. This made her consider that perhaps it had been her own lusty approach which had, all along, been the source of his troubles. So this time, she followed his lead and let him guide her as he wished. They lay together afterwards on their sides with their hands intertwined on her hip.

“I love you,” he said. “Now and always.”

She smiled, but she didn’t say the words he wanted to hear. She
thought he might protest at this, asking for more as he’d done in the past, but he didn’t. Instead he smiled back at her and said, “So . . . How was it for you?”

“You know very well how it was for me. But, William . . .” She waited for him to steel himself, but he didn’t do so behind that open and generous expression on his face. She said, “It doesn’t change anything. It’s lovely here. I recognise that. But I don’t want to leave London.”

“Yet,” he said. “Add ‘yet.’ You know it’s there, waiting to be said.”

“I don’t know that.”

“Yet,” he said.

She saw the compromise he was offering her so she went along. “I don’t know that yet.”

He reached out then. His fingers brushed lightly against her nipple, and she felt what she was meant to feel, the answering rush of blood between her legs that said how quickly she could be ready for him.

“You’re very naughty,” she told him.

“I can be naughtier still,” he replied.