The Room on the Second Floor (9 page)

‘Are you sure you could face me morning, afternoon, evening and night?’ She was still smiling as she asked the question.

He knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could most certainly face her every evening and night. At least as long as his strength held up. The rest of the time would create a bit of a change to his routine, but he really wanted it to work out.

She read the answer in his face. He wanted her. And she knew that she wanted him. She was almost thirty-five now. She had never been married, but she had been in two long-term relationships. Like him, she still bore the scars of the break-ups. She made up her mind.

‘I’m ready to give it a try.’ Her bare foot slid up his leg and buried itself tantalisingly between his thighs. Her hand found his across the table. ‘More than ready.’

The arrival of the teenage waitress, who seemed embarrassed at the sight of this flirting by people twice her age, prevented him from replying. The thought of flirting made him wonder how things were going with Linda’s big dinner party.

‘Wonder how the big seduction is going…’ he was thinking aloud, but Tina knew full well to whom he was referring.

‘I hope she’s been swotting up on her medieval history. Boy, it must be hard to compete with a saint and a whole monastery full of Cistercians for a man’s affections!’

He was impressed. ‘What did you call those monks? I thought your subject was geography. Fancy you knowing about monks and monasteries!’

‘Cistercians, Duggie. They are still going to this day, too. I might work in the Geography Department, but that doesn’t prevent me from having interests outside of Mercator’s projection. Besides, my mum was Catholic, so we had a calendar with the saint’s names on each day.’

‘I’d like to meet your mum.’

‘You’d what?’ This was unexpected. Not unpleasant, just unexpected. ‘You really want to meet my mother?’

‘Yes.’ The comment had just come out by itself, but, on mature reflection, he didn’t see why not. ‘I mean, things are sort of serious between us now. You know, moving in together and so on.’

She took a sip of wine. This was certainly not what she had been expecting. But if that was what he wanted… ‘If you’re sure, I’ll give her a call. She will be delighted.’

‘Besides, it’ll be good to see what she looks like. It’ll give me an idea of what to expect when you are old, wrinkly and grey.’

‘You always were a charmer, weren’t you?’

Chapter 12

Back in Toplingham, the big seduction, as Duggie had put it, was not going swimmingly. Roger, at Linda’s request, had brought Jasper with him. As he had chosen to walk the two miles to her flat, both of them had arrived in a state of near exhaustion. The distance had not been the problem. Jasper the dog was tired out after non-stop sniffing and peeing. Roger arrived with his arms half pulled out of their sockets by the vast strength of the animal. Jasper’s idea of walking to heel was to drive forward for all he was worth, while Roger desperately hung on behind with both hands.

No sooner had they arrived, than they both collapsed. Roger dropped onto Linda’s new sofa, Jasper onto the antique Tabriz rug, left to her by her grandfather. Roger slumped back, almost horizontal. Linda poured him a glass of carefully chilled Chablis and looked on anxiously. He gulped it down and accepted another. In his laidback position, he seemed about to spill it at any moment.

‘At least it’s white wine,’ she told herself. She was also worried about the dog. It was surely only a matter of time before Jasper recovered his strength and decided to chew a hole in the fine and very precious rug. Add to this the fact that the new cooker needed constant watching to avoid the cottage pie burning to a crisp and Linda was not her normal calm self. She felt flustered and frumpy.

Roger thought she looked gorgeous. She had tied her hair up, and it accentuated the curve of her neck down to her shoulders. She was also wearing earrings, something he had never seen on her before. Another few glasses of this excellent wine and he would definitely tell her so. He swigged back a large mouthful. Linda felt conflicting emotions. On the one hand, less wine in the glass would make less of a stain if he did tip it on the rug. On the other hand, she had rarely seen him drink more than a glass of wine before, and this was already his second. Nevertheless, her sense of hospitality forced her to offer him a drop more, all the same.

‘Do help yourself to more wine, if you’d like some, Roger.’

At that moment, the ringing of the timer had her rushing back to the cooker. When she returned with the news that dinner was served, she was concerned to see that he had taken her up on her offer. He was sporting a nearly full glass.

‘Fantastic.’ He looked happy. ‘I am so hungry I could eat a horse.’ With this he drained the whole glass and leapt to his feet. He startled the dog as he stumbled dangerously close to the bushy black tail. However, to her relief, he avoided any of the obstacles between him and the dinner table. As she turned to pull the dishes out of the oven, she heard him thump down on his seat. This was closely followed by an even louder thump as Jasper dragged himself closer to his master before collapsing once more on the floorboards with a loud sigh. She spared a thought for the inhabitants of the flat below. Then she remembered with considerable relief that they were away on holiday. The other bit of good news was that the dog and the Tabriz rug were now separated by a door.

To her infinite satisfaction, the cottage pie turned out to be a great success. Roger clearly loved it, and ate two massive helpings. From his recumbent position on the floor, Jasper wagged his tail and drooled in sympathy. The evening was looking better. Even when Roger drained a full glass of red wine, she was not too worried. He was articulate, charming and just a little flirty. At one point he even reached out and took her hand. He then held it for all of five or six seconds. She had rarely, if ever, seen him in such a warm mood. Mind you, she thought to herself with satisfaction, this was the first time she had ever entertained him in her own home, or plied him with wine. Maybe alcohol was the answer to unlocking his feelings.

The summer pudding, accompanied by clotted cream, was another definite success. He ate it with relish and heaped compliments upon her, which only served to heighten her euphoric mood. By now the evening was actually going better than she had hoped – and she had done a lot of hoping. Finally she told him to take a seat on the sofa, while she went off to make some coffee.

Upon her return with the tray of coffee, she was thrilled to see him pat the empty place beside him with his hand. Even the sight of the dog toying with the loose threads at the end of the rug failed to spoil her mood.

His voice was low. ‘Why don’t you come and sit beside me on this lovely new sofa?’

She placed the tray on the coffee table and accepted the invitation. She was hardly able to breathe as she felt his arm encircle her shoulder. His face turned towards her, and she was sure she felt him kiss her ear.

‘You are the most wonderful girl in the whole world.’

His words were what she had waited years to hear. The kiss, light as it had been, was what she had so often dreamt of. He laid his head on her shoulder. She let her head gently rest back against his, her heart beating furiously. At last, at last. She was not really sure where the evening would go from here. She knew, without any doubt, that whatever direction he chose would be just fine with her.

In the gardens outside the flat, a shadowy figure wrapped in a thick dark overcoat discreetly stamped his feet and wished he could risk lighting a cigarette. He had been standing there for over three hours. God only knew how much longer he would have to wait. Voices approached, and he froze until they passed. In fact, on this decidedly autumnal night, freezing was a definite possibility. He clenched his fingers around the handle of the baseball bat and prepared for a long wait. Cold or no cold.

Chapter 13

Duggie and Tina lay in the bath and looked out over the river. The moon, reflecting across the reed beds, lit up the bathroom so brightly he could count her bright-red toenails as they lay against his cheek. He was without doubt a happy man, not least as she had just described him as a gentleman. He discovered that her definition of the word was a man prepared to put his back to the taps.

Not for the first time, the topic of conversation had gravitated to the dog-skin parchment and King Henry’s decree. He took a sip of his wine and let his eyes rest on her amazing body. She was rinsing the soap off her breasts at that moment and he watched the performance with delight. He found himself thinking out loud, ‘It must have been fun to live at the manor way back then. I still can’t get over it being a licensed den of iniquity!’

‘So that sort of thing might have been going on at the manor for over a thousand years, then?’ Her voice held the same tone of awe as had Roger’s when he translated the Latin.

‘What sort of thing?’ Duggie was right on cue. He would have set about showing her, but for her strategic use of the loofah to protect her modesty. ‘It’s really incredible.’ She fended him off effectively, but not unkindly. ‘Such a posh and imposing building being used for nefarious practices…’ Duggie tried a few nefarious practices of his own, but she gently swatted him away. ‘Nobody would ever have thought of the manor being a place like that. It’s far too posh.’

She looked down the bath at him in her turn. In the moonlight he looked ruggedly handsome, his muscular torso glistening and wet. Judging that the time was right for a little more intimacy, she asked him the question she had been delaying for weeks.

‘Those two scars on your shoulder. Are they what I think they are?’ His eyes flashed, but then the smile returned to his face.

‘If you are thinking that I was attacked by a beaver, you’d be right.’ He smiled at her, raised a foot from the water, and rested it gently on her shoulder, taking care not to add soapy water to the wine in her glass.

‘They’re bullet wounds, aren’t they, Duggie?’ She kept her voice low.

He didn’t answer immediately. On the few occasions before, when the subject of his years in the Marines had come up, he had always shied away from conversation. She sipped her wine and held her breath, wondering what he would say.

‘Yes.’ This was followed by a long pause. So long that she was on the point of changing the subject when he started speaking. His voice was little more than a whisper, his eyes far away in the reed beds. ‘Iraq. I can’t tell you the name of the place, but it wouldn’t mean anything to you. It wouldn’t mean anything to most people, except me and the boys.’

‘The boys?’

He took a deep breath. ‘There were four of us. It should have been a routine operation. Insofar as our ops ever were what you could call routine. But it all went badly wrong.’ He reached for the bottle in the bucket beside the bath and refilled his glass. He waved it in her direction, but she shook her head and waited for him to continue.

‘They must have known we were coming. One minute it was quiet as the grave, the next minute all hell broke loose.’ He took a big mouthful. She could see what this was costing him, and she found herself wondering if she should stop him. But he carried on. ‘The two guys on my left were killed outright. A heavy machine gun opened up at close range and cut them to pieces.’ Now she could see his eyes glistening in the light of the moon.

‘Duggie, you don’t need to tell me all about it. I was just asking.’ She gripped his leg with her free hand and kissed it.

‘It’s all right, sweetheart. It’s time I talked about it.’ His eyes focused on her face. She read the emotion in them. ‘I can see it again now, just like it happened. It was a full moon that night too. Tom and Mikey. Both ripped apart in front of my eyes. That’s what HMGs do. They just tear great chunks out of you. They’ll go through brick walls. I was lucky, the bullets that hit me were small arms fire. Small bullets, nice clean entry and exit wounds. I was lucky.’ His fingers reached across his chest and ran lightly over the wounds. ‘Anyway, Monty and I managed to take the machine gun out and get away. We were almost out of range when Monty was hit in the neck. I carried him as far as I could.’ His voice caught, but he rallied. ‘It must have been his carotid artery. He bled to death all down my back. When I put him down, he was already dead.’

She didn’t know what to say. But she knew what she had to do. She pulled herself up onto her knees and reached for him. His arms opened and he crushed her to his chest.

They stayed like that for a long time. Finally she had to move.

‘I’m sorry, Duggie, but I’ve got cramp in my leg. I’ve got to move.’ Immediately she felt him return from wherever his thoughts had been.

‘Sorry, sweetheart, you should have said.’ She climbed gingerly out of the bath and started rubbing her thigh.

‘Here, I’ll do that for you.’ He followed her out of the bath and knelt down beside her. She steadied herself against his head as he massaged the pain away.

‘That’s great, Duggie. I feel better now. You’ve cleared it.’

‘I’m good at mouth to mouth too, if it’s ever needed.’

She smiled down at him, happy to hear his tone lighten.

‘Just as much as you want, my darling man.’ They dried each other and walked through to the bedroom.

She took his hand and sank back onto the mattress. He lay down with her and they hugged each other tight. After a while, he released her and sat up on one elbow.

‘Thanks for that, Tina.’

‘For what?’

‘For being my shoulder to cry on. I’ve never really had one of those.’ He leant forward and kissed her softly on the lips. ‘I’ve never told anybody about that night before. Apart from the official debrief, of course. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think about it, but, somehow, it feels good to talk about it with you.’

‘That’s what friends are for, Duggie.’

‘You’re right.’ His voice sounded surprised. ‘You really are my friend. We’re friends.’

‘That’s right, Duggie. And you just thought I was good in bed.’

‘Not just that. You can cook too.’ She punched him, but not hard, and not on his wounded shoulder. Relieved to see him smiling once more, she decided to lighten the mood. ‘Now, weren’t we talking about the manor being a brothel way back in the mists of time?’