Encounters (47 page)

‘Then let me. I’m good at coffee. It’s man’s work.’

She watched him as he ate and stood aside unprotesting when he waved her away from the sink to rinse the plates and fill the kettle. He made the coffee in a jug and they carried their cups outside into the frosty sunshine and stood looking at the water as it lapped gently up the beach.

‘I’m sure you’re not right to blame yourself alone, you know,’ he said tentatively after a long silence. ‘If he really did want to change you he must have been mad, but I doubt if that was it. Not really. How long did he know you before you were married?’

‘Two years.’ She did not resent his interest. It was a relief to talk.

‘Then he must have known you as you really are. I wonder …’ he paused for a moment. ‘I wonder if it was himself he was running from? People do you know. Sometimes. I did myself once.’ He stared thoughtfully out towards the rocks.

‘But why? Why should he want to run at all? I don’t understand.’ A little of her anguish escaped the tight grip of her self control. It deepened and matured her voice.

He turned and looked at her. She was totally self absorbed. She had not noticed the wistful longing in his voice as he remembered for an instant his own pain; the problems he had faced when he had lost the one person in the world whom he had loved. She was overwhelmed with her own desolation. He felt a quick rush of pity. Suddenly he wanted to touch her, to comfort her and reassure her and show her she was not to blame, but resolutely he kept his fingers linked around his cup. The steam from the coffee was white in the crisp air.

‘You can only ever be yourself,’ he said gently. ‘Anything else would be a betrayal of him as well as yourself. Always remember that.’

‘I know.’ It was a whisper. ‘He asked me to go with him and I refused. I couldn’t do it. Not like that.’

‘Then you did right.’ He bent and picked up a fluted sandy shell, hurling it towards the rippling tide. They both stared at the place where it had disappeared. A streak of red weed hung and breathed back and forth below the curve of the beach. It could have been blood on the surface of the sea. She gave an involuntary little shiver.

‘When did he go?’ He was watching the tiny gold hairs on the back of her wrists stir and rise and he thought it was the icy wind which combed the grasses behind them in the dunes which made her shiver.

‘Three days ago.’

‘What would you do if he didn’t come back?’ he said gently.

He thought she hadn’t heard and glanced sideways at her face. It was bleak.

‘I’ll wait for him.’

‘You can’t wait for ever. Won’t you go home?’

She shrugged. ‘For ever is a long time, I suppose. Perhaps when the storms come, then I’ll go. I don’t know.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Perhaps he won’t be that long.’

He found himself staring at her. The smile had transformed her face. Instead of a cold shuttered prettiness she had for a second betrayed a shadow of vibrant beauty. Then the sadness returned.

He had to bite his lip to force himself to keep from reaching out to take her in his arms to comfort her, to stop him from begging her to forget this treatment and lose herself instead in him. He swallowed hard, staring into the depths of the empty cup in his hand. After all, he was a stranger; she had not even told him her name. He had come here to forget his own unhappiness not become involved in that of another.

‘It won’t be long,’ he said with resolution. ‘Take my word. He’ll be back.’

‘Do you think so?’ Her eyes were full of hope. She set her cup in the sand and stood up again, staring along the beach as though she expected to see Oliver that moment, striding towards her.

‘I think so. After all, you are here for him to come back to.’ He looked away from her sadly. When he had gone back his love had gone. She had not waited as this girl was waiting. She had left him without compunction, or so it seemed to him.

He followed Sally slowly to the sea’s edge where the cold white dribbles of water nudged at the heaps of stranded weed; her narrow shoulders were taut beneath her heavy guernsey and there was pathos in the angle of her neck.

Without knowing he did it he slowly shook his head. He had to leave her now. If he did not go now, then he would never go.

He held out his hand to her and unquestioning she took it. For a moment more they stood in silence. Then he let her fingers drop.

‘Time’s getting on.’ He said it very gently.

She seemed to understand. ‘Of course. Thank you for chopping the wood.’

‘Thank you for cooking me the omelette.’

He turned away towards the village and took a few paces along the tide line. Then he stopped and looked back. She had not moved.

‘You’ll be all right?’

‘Of course.’

‘Is there anything else I can do?’

‘Nothing. Thank you.’

‘You’re sure?’

There were tears on her cheeks as the cold wind blew her hair across her eyes. She did not look at him.

He stood for a moment undecided and then he was beside her again and his hands were on her shoulders. Gently he turned her to face him and he pulled her close. Her skin tasted of salt. He kissed her cheeks, her eyelids, her hair and then last of all her lips. They parted a little without protest and they were soft. But they were cold. For a moment he did not move, feeling the comfort of her presence within the circle of his protecting arms, knowing that somehow he was comforting her, then sadly he pushed her away. He began to walk without a word. And this time he did not look back.

She stood at the edge of the tide watching as slowly the leading ripples hesitated and lost their purpose and drew back, leaving the sand wet and clean and smooth. Only then did she turn and look into the distance. He had gone long since, just as Oliver had gone, along the beach towards the village out of sight. It was as though he had never been but there was deep inside her a small new warmth.

Slowly she wandered back to the cottage and hardly knowing that she did it she went round to the little lean-to woodshed and glanced in. The neatly stacked pile of split logs was real enough, as was the axe, newly-honed and in its place. Weakly she leaned against the wall and closed her eyes and thought about the stranger.

Much later as the moon was rising silver over the frosted dunes she lit the fire and watched the cheerful clear crackle of the logs in the hearth. She made some coffee as he had in a jug and then leaving it on the table she pushed open the door. The tide had gone out so far it was only a sliver of light on the shining moonlit sand and she ran down towards it feeling the cold bite of the wind in her face.

Strangely she was happy, her doubts and miseries resolved into a quiet confidence and resignation and the knowledge that Oliver would return and that when he did, however long it took, she would be there waiting for him.

She stood for a long time at the water’s edge watching the trail of moonshine in the tide and then she glanced along the beach towards the village. For a moment she held her breath. She thought she could see a figure striding out of the dunes. She stared and then she started to run; then she stopped. It was too far away to see – perhaps it was just the shadow of a cloud thrown on the rippled sand. Her heart was beating fast as she waited, her shoes sinking into the softness of the wet silver at her feet. And then she saw the brightness of his hair and the tall, easy stride, and she began to smile. This time it was, it had to be, Oliver.

‘You waited for me to come back?’ he said as he came up to her and put his hands on her shoulder. His face was pale and strained in the moonlight.

‘I waited.’ She smiled up at him.

‘I’m sorry I went away. I didn’t mean to hurt you but I had to think. I had to be alone.’

‘Is everything all right now?’

‘Everything.’ He kissed her lightly on the forehead. ‘It wasn’t your fault, you know.’

‘I know,’ she said quietly.

Hand in hand they walked back to the cottage and he sat down beside the fire and she brought him the coffee and watched him while he sipped it. She never mentioned the stranger who had chopped the wood and taken her so briefly in his arms. It did not seem important.

I
t had happened the night before. She had worked late and was tired after the long walk back through the cold rain-washed streets. Neal had been home before her, letting himself in with his key, lighting the gas fire, straightening the room with, she was sure, a look of mild reproach.

Guiltily she had dropped her two heavy sodden shopping bags on the carpet and fumbled for the wet knot of her belt.

‘I didn’t expect you back so early tonight. I haven’t had a chance to tidy up.’

He grinned. ‘I’ve done most of it for you.’ The room certainly looked very nice. There was a pot of nearly-hatched hyacinths on the table which hadn’t been there that morning. Obscurely she felt irritated.

‘Well, I’ve still got to get the meal and do something with my hair!’

But he shook his head. ‘No need. I’ve booked us a table at the Captain’s Bistro and your hair –’ he took a step towards her and taking a lank wet strand of it in his hand gave it a gentle tug, ‘will look fabulous once you’ve had a drink.’

And that was how it so often was. She, agitated, late, scatty; he always calm, organized – and punctual, soothing her ruffled feathers and her ruffled ego. And she had, she decided, always found it irritating. It made her want to stamp her foot like a spoilt child, instead of receiving his influence with the gracious calm a woman of her age should accord it.

And as always, he was right. Her hair piled on top of her head, swathed in a soft towel, an inelegant tumbler of sherry on the edge of the bath at her shoulder, she lay back in water liberally sprinkled with Boot’s best and she could feel the tight spring inside her beginning to uncoil and the weight of her day at the library slipping from her shoulders.

She put on a simple dress that night and twisted her hair up into an exotic confection of clips and stars. By the time they had walked back down the cold High Street the wind had pulled most of it down, but the effect, even dishevelled was, she knew, attractive to Neal.

Just as some men were supposed to be bosom men and some bottom men, Neal was a hair man, making almost a fetish of it, burying his face in it, holding the weight of it in his hands, winding it gently round her throat till it formed a silken glowing collar.

The bistro was half empty as they forced their way in out of the gale, the night lights on the tables flickering and dipping in unison as the door closed behind them on the evening darkness.

Captain Ferguson was there to usher them in, to take their coats, to bring the menus and then at last they were alone, facing one another across the table, the small clear flame between them.

‘Have you decided yet, Emma?’ Neal’s eyes were steady on her face, his voice low. Neither of them had opened their menu and she knew he wasn’t talking about the food.

‘Give me a little more time, Neal, please. There is so much to think about.

He scowled. ‘There is nothing to think about. Either we get married, or we go on as we are. Surely that’s not such a difficult question!’

But it was. Surely he could see it was.

They had lived together on and off for five years, sometimes as now, sharing her flat; sometimes camping in his, sometimes apart for months on end when his job as an engineer took him away, but always returning in the end to one another.

Of course she had wanted marriage once. All young women dreamed of marriage didn’t they, even in this age of emancipation? Surely the most hardened female libber had the occasional aberration and pictured herself in a swirl of white and orange blossom, but that had passed.

As she moved on into her late twenties life became real, and dreams were tempered with, not bitterness exactly, but resignation and, she supposed, maturity. Neal was part of that maturity.

They had met in the library where she worked now as head librarian. She had been an assistant then, when he had come in searching for some esoteric books on early music – his passion – and a friendship had developed.

Within three months there was more than that. They were living together and within six she knew Neal was thinking of marriage. Then it had been too soon to talk of it, but afterwards she realized there was more to her reluctance than that. She valued so much her independence; she valued her privacy.

Somehow she had evaded the issue for a long time, but lately Neal was becoming more persistent, hinting darkly that they would soon be too old to start a family …

Marriage or stay as they were was the choice he had offered, but there was always a third possibility. One he hadn’t mentioned. That they part.

She swallowed, staring hard at the candle behind which his face had become a hazy blur. The thought of parting had sprung unbidden into her mind without warning; it was the last thing she wanted; the last thing in the world.

‘Would you like to order now, sir?’ The waiter’s voice cut through her thoughts and she looked up. Neal was watching her across the candle. Visibly he pulled himself together, dragging his eyes from her face to that of the waiter.

‘We’ll both have steak.’

‘No!’ Rebellion flared again as the waiter raised his pad to write. ‘No, I’ll have the chicken.’

Neal shrugged. ‘White wine then? he queried, this time hesitant and, knowing that he preferred red, she nodded.

Neither of them spoke until the waiter had disappeared.

‘All right, go on, say it. I’m a cow!’ Guilt made her angrier.

He shrugged. ‘If you say so.’ Then suddenly he grinned. ‘You’re trying to be, anyway. Why Emma? What’s wrong? I’m not the enemy, you know.’

‘I know.’ Crossly she reached for a piece of bread from the basket and began to break it up.

And then it had happened. Her hair, still precariously coiled had begun to slip and Neal, leaning forward, had hooked his finger into one of the long heavy tresses. Gently he pulled. ‘You’re going grey, Emma,’ he said.

Later outside in the beating sleet she walked head up, her coat blowing open, alone. She followed the High Street winding down between the houses and turned across towards the quay. The light outside the harbourmaster’s office burned solitarily through the streaks of wetness, reflecting in a shivery rippled line in the water at her feet For a long time she looked down, then stiff and frozen she turned and slowly walked home.

When she got there all Neal’s things had gone. He must have left the restaurant almost immediately after her and loaded his car without a second’s thought. Head high, eyes blazing in her wind-pinked face, she stared at herself in the mirror. Then reluctantly she reached for her brush. At nine o’clock the next morning she was at the hair salon.

She met Chris four days later. He was in his forties, divorced, tall like Neal but very fair and broad shouldered and though he was outwardly quiet he had a tough rough streak in him that appealed to the Emma in her which had emerged as her hair fell to the salon floor. He took her tramping over the moors and, with feet and hands aching with cold, to watch rugger matches and once or twice to a point to point where she backed a horse and won herself five pounds.

Her flat without Neal was untidy now, defiantly untidy and she had put away one by one the things he had particularly loved. One especially, the patchwork quilt so lovingly worked by her great grandmother out of minute squares of coloured silk. Even Chris had admired it, but it did not suit her new image of herself: cool, sophisticated, modern and ageless.

Instead she bought a black satin bedspread by mail order and secretly, for sewing too was for the birds, she appliquéd on it a huge scarlet ‘EM’. She almost wished when she had finished it that Neal could see it. She wanted to watch his reactions.

‘Come on, Em. Let me stay.’ Chris had his arm around her shoulders, his right hand firmly anchored over her right breast. She squirmed uncomfortably.

‘Chris, I’ve told you. I’m not ready. Not yet.’

‘And how long does it take for you to be ready?’

She smiled and edged a little further away from him on the sofa. ‘Not long, I promise. Come on, have some more coffee. Then you will have to go. I must get to the library early tomorrow.

He was frowning this time as he stood up and she knew that he would not take her excuses much longer. Either sleep with him or break up with him. Chris would not waste time on a relationship that was going nowhere.

She ran her fingers through her hair, exasperated, after he had gone. Why did men always want something more? Why when there was so much to a relationship besides sex did they reduce everything to that one denominator and threaten so much else that was good?

Of course she knew her reaction meant she did not love him. How could she love him when at night, alone, shivering beneath her black and scarlet satin, her thoughts always came back to Neal. Neal who was gentle. Neal who was strong and understanding and patient with her.

Next morning she rang Chris from her tiny private office behind the book stacks. ‘Chris. Tonight. Come to my place for a meal. We won’t go out anywhere, OK?’

‘You mean it, Em?’ From his voice she knew he understood.

‘I mean it, Chris.’ She stared down at the phone for several minutes without seeing it after she had hung up. Then, with a shrug she turned back to her desk.

Chris went to considerable trouble with his appearance that evening. And on his way to her he stopped off at the florist and bought, for a small fortune, one single hot house rose. Somehow it seemed right for Em.

For her part she had bought two bottles of red wine. Only one bottle, all to herself, would bring her to it and if Chris wasn’t going to drive home that night he might as well have one too.

Rain was lashing the windows as she pulled the curtains closed and turned up the gas fire, listening for a moment to the reassuring purr as the flame licked across the cold elements. She laid two places at the low coffee table before it and set the two cushions in place. Then she searched out a record to match her mood.

The bedroom was perfect. Small, intimate, the huge scarlet letters writhing across the swell of the pillows. The room had none of the warmth and love which Neal had known but then, she swore at herself sharply, it wasn’t Neal she was expecting.

She was in the kitchen when the bell rang, a wooden spoon in her hand, dabbing ineffectually at a creamy mushroom sauce which was sitting on the cold burner waiting only to be poured over the chicken and put into the oven. Her bottle of wine was already a third empty.

She stared at Chris, her stomach suddenly contorting into a cramp of apprehension as he stood in the doorway, his hands behind him. He looked different, strange; scrubbed and almost shy, like a schoolboy on his first date as reluctantly, even awkwardly, he produced the rose. ‘Do you want to stick this thing in some water?’

She took it, more embarrassed than he was, ridiculously touched at the gesture and fumbled in a kitchen cupboard for a tall glass to hold it while he stood in the doorway behind her watching. Then, all at once, they were laughing. The strain had vanished. They were no longer circling teenagers, awkward because of the contrived situation. They were adults again. He poured himself a tumbler of the wine and hauling himself up onto the worktop he sat and watched as she anointed the chicken with her sauce and put the dish into the oven.

They ate, they talked, they sat lounging on the cushions before the gas fire listening to records which almost but not quite drowned the sound of hailstones lashing against the windows under the heavy curtains. Chris made no move to touch her, watching her from time to time from beneath his heavy brows as she talked and laughed, her face a little flushed from the fire.

She was, he thought, more beautiful and more vivacious than he had ever seen her but quite unlike herself. Surely she knew that he had guessed she was playing a part, wearing a pretty social mask. He had realized from the moment he set foot through the door that he would never sleep with her now.

The little clock on the mantelpiece ticked round to one o’clock and she was still talking hard into every silence when at last Chris leaned forward and put his hand on her wrist. She stopped, electrified by his touch.

‘It’s late, Emma,’ he said gently. ‘We’ve both got to work in the morning.’

She nodded and clutching the coffee table to steady herself she stood up.

‘I’ll make some more coffee, shall I, before …?’ Her voice trailed away.

‘Before I go. Yes, please, Em. I’ve drunk a bit more than I should.’ He smiled. In fact he was stone cold sober. It was Emma who was a little tipsy.

‘Oh but you can’t go, Chris. I don’t want you to. I want you to stay. Truly.’ She waved vaguely towards the bedroom door.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her towards him, staring down at her. ‘Thank you, Em. But no. I’m not blind. I can see how it is with you. I understand.’

After he had gone she sat down again in front of the fire and stared into the hot depths of the flames.

But how is it with me? she thought miserably. I just don’t know.

She still saw Chris; they were too fond of one another to part, but their relationship had steadied into a warm friendship which contained no demands. She had never mentioned her past to him. He knew there must have been other men, but she was a creature of mystery, a strange old-fashioned type of person inspite of her efforts to be different and he respected her for it. He was even pleased with himself now for taking her the rose. It hadn’t been such a silly gesture after all.