Encounters

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘What would you like to do, Mary-Sue?’ she asked, racking her brains. ‘I tell you what. If we let Hal make the buns – he’s good at buns – why don’t you make us some peppermint creams and we can all eat one while the buns are cooking.’

  She turned away casually to the cupboard, praying she had some peppermint essence as, over her shoulder, she saw the child watching her, interested for the first time.

  That night when she went in to check if the children were asleep she found Hal had crept into bed beside his sister. She gazed at them quietly for a minute and then tiptoed out of the room without a word.

  The next day was quite good. After TV Maggie suggested they each have one of Mary-Sue’s peppermint stars and she was rewarded with a shy smile. Then they went to the supermarket and the children pushed the trolley for her and chose the food they liked best. Then they all went home for a hamburger lunch.

  It was the first night that Dan wasn’t there to help bath them and put them to bed. He was going to be out till late at a business dinner and Maggie planned to catch up on her scripts. As she towelled each thin little body dry and powdered it and pulled on the patterned pyjamas she longed to put her arms round the children and hug them.

  Why can’t I? she thought miserably. What’s holding me back?

  She dropped a quick kiss on each head. ‘Run to your beds now and I’ll come and tuck you in and read your bedtime story.’

  Wearily she stooped to pull the plug and watch the foaming water run away. A small blue plastic dolphin grounded nose first in the soapy dregs and she picked it out with a wistful smile, shaking a gobbet of wet fluff from its snout and setting it in the soap dish, then she walked slowly into the bedroom.

  Later she poured herself a large Martini and sat spread-eagled on the couch, her head thrown back against the cushion. The room was airless and she was tired out but she had to start reading the scripts. Half of them were due back – with verdicts – by the next morning. Hauling herself to her feet she put on a record, then she went reluctantly to the table by the window and sat down, the ice-misted glass in her hand, sipping as she flipped open the first folder.

  Slowly it began to grow dark. She didn’t notice; reading hard, the lamplight reflecting in the polished wood, she worked on, finishing one script, writing her report and opening the next. Outside the hot air beat up towards the windows from the sidewalk, reverberating with the distant noise of cars. In a minute she would get up, make herself a sandwich, fix another drink …

  It was several minutes before she became aware of the small figure standing beside her just outside the circle of lamplight.

  ‘Hello, Mary-Sue,’ she said quietly, dropping her pen and stretching her cramped fingers. ‘Can’t you sleep, honey?’ A surreptitious glance at her watch told her it was after ten.

  The little girl shook her head wordlessly. Her face was haggard.

  And then suddenly it was so easy to know what to do. Maggie pushed back her chair and held out her arms and the child threw herself into them sobbing miserably. Maggie drew her up onto her lap and hugged her tightly rocking to and fro, overwhelmed by the wave of emotion which shook her as she felt the thin little body pressed against hers, the arms clinging round her neck for comfort.

  It was a long time before the storm of crying passed. Then came the moment Maggie had dreaded for so long. The little girl, her voice muffled in Maggie’s shoulder murmured, ‘My Mummy’s never coming back, is she?’

  Maggie’s voice was surprisingly steady as she hugged Mary-Sue close. ‘No, sweetheart. She can’t come back. That’s why she’s asked Uncle Dan and me to take care of you and Hal for her.’

  They sat for a long time in silence – so long that Maggie thought the little girl had fallen asleep in her arms from sheer exhaustion, but when she cautiously straightened Mary-Sue sat up, yawning, her face still pink and crumpled from the tears.

  Maggie gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Was Hal still asleep when you came in, love?’

  Mary-Sue nodded.

  ‘Good. Then I tell you what. Why don’t you and I go and get ourselves a midnight feast. I’m hungry and I’ll bet you are too. What do you say to a sandwich and some ice-cream soda. A secret; just the two of us. Not telling Uncle Dan.’

  ‘Or Hal?’

  ‘Or Hal.’

  Mary-Sue nodded without another word and reluctantly she slipped from Maggie’s lap still clinging to her hand as they went through into the kitchen.

  It was the strangest midnight feast. They sat cross-legged on the rug on the floor on either side of a fat red Christmas candle, dug out from the back of the closet, eating peanut butter sandwiches and brownies and drinking from tall icy glasses with coloured straws.

  Across the street the neon signs flashed reflections on the dark wall of the kitchen behind the child and Maggie could see her clearly in the opal glow, her face solemn, her shoulder length silver hair hanging over two pathetically narrow shoulders in cotton pyjamas covered in pale blue elephants. Somewhere in the distance a police siren wailed, and always far below was the roar of traffic.

  With a sigh she thought of the unread scripts on the table next door. They would never be done in time now; she felt a little twinge of regret. Then she remembered again the warmth and longing in the child’s arms and she felt that perhaps after all they weren’t so important. They could wait their turn.

  She found Mary-Sue was looking at her suddenly and she smiled gently in the candle light. ‘What shall we do tomorrow, eh?’ she asked in a whisper.

  ‘Make peppermint creams again, Auntie Maggie,’ was the sleepy reply.

  Flowers Shouldn’t Make You Cry

  The sun glittered on the water, refracting a thousand facets of diamond light as the river tumbled towards the west. It was very cold. Jane shrugged herself deeper into her warm coat and glanced up at the man at her side.

  They had pulled up in the layby and kissed and then while Ian felt in the glove pocket for a packet of cigarettes Jane had climbed out to stretch her legs and peer over the hedge. The sight took her breath away. The meadow, nestling in the elbow of dazzling water, was carpeted with daffodils. There must have been acres of them, of the palest yellow and their rich, delicate scent was everywhere in the wind off the mountains behind her.

  The sound of her delighted cry brought Ian to her side in a moment. He smiled at her and reaching down broke off a bloom and gave it to her.

  ‘They’re wild, you know,’ he said. ‘Quite wild. You’ll see, there are acres of them near the farm.’

  She looked down at the single perfect flower and suddenly her eyes were blinded by tears.

  She shook her head quickly, gazing away into the distance so that he should not see, should not realize that she could still think with sadness about the man whom this time last year she had been about to marry.

  Edward had bought the bulbs, string bags of them, all daffodils and together they had knelt in the sooty earth of his small back garden and planted them, brushing away the dusty dried sycamore leaves which had drifted over the fence from the road at the back. She scooped out pockets of soil, setting the bulbs in place and firming back the earth and after a while she sat back on her heels, brushing a strand of hair from her eyes with the back of a grimy hand. She watched him working, as carefully he dug out a line of neat holes down the edge of the path and she frowned slightly. She had been planting the bulbs in big, bold clumps, visualizing the blaze of colour when they bloomed. His would be regimented and orderly, a thin yellow line.

  He was a tall man, older than she, with a cynical shadow at his mouth and eyes which intrigued and tormented her. It was there, even now, while he bent concentrating to firm in the bulbs. She knew that she would do anything for him in her love and forgive much if he should ask it, but there was a strange centre of aloneness in him which chilled her sometimes. It was a place she would never reach, a place completely apart, a place that belonged to the days of the week she did not see him, the evenings he spent away from he
r.

  Perhaps she suspected then that somehow his destiny might not lie with her; that soon her hopes and her world might begin to crumble even as the soft earth crumbled between her fingers. She shook her head to rid herself of her thoughts. She must not allow herself to build things up, to allow them to assume too much importance. She must wait.

  The bulbs planted at last, she had watched from the kitchen door as he darkened the soil with water before he kicked off his boots and together they had washed off the earth, watching their fingers trailing black eddies down the sink.

  Then his arms were round her at last and his lips on hers and for a while she forgot her fears and the bright rushing autumnal sky and the gently creaking door which swung to and fro in the wind.

  In the end they went out for tea, walking hand in hand down the tow path before turning up the alley beside the pub and looking for the teashop by the church.

  Their hands met on the checked gingham tablecloth and they had stared into each other’s eyes, mesmerized, oblivious of the knowing looks of the three old ladies at the next table; that night she dreamed about him and the next, and then they met again to sit in the flickering twilight of the cinema, conscious only of each other and she feared again that the emotions were too strong, too sudden, their love too tempestuous. She knew she was obsessed and in her obsession the daffodils assumed a strange importance. They were a part of him; a part of her, planted by them both together as a promise of a future spring. The brooding bulbs in the earth of his garden became a symbol for her of their whole relationship.

  In other gardens as winter began to release its hold she saw the hard green shoots hafting their way out of the frosted ground. But in the frozen space outside his kitchen door there was no sign. It had begun to matter tremendously that there should be one, the result of their joint efforts, a commitment for the future, something of hers which belonged in his world, something which was theirs together, And then it came. A first small spike, a second, thrusting up from the grip of the whirling snow which turned to water as it hit the path.

  Edward was as attentive as ever, as loving, but somewhere deep inside there was still a core of separateness which made Jane uneasy. Her commitment was total. Surely his should be the same?

  When it came, the moment she had so often feared, it was as if a lurking shadow had suddenly grown and darkened around her.

  It was in the park where the buds on the trees and bushes were beginning to fill and the whippy gold green sallows by the lake were erupting into silver and pussy willow. She saw them across the water, Edward and the other girl. He was holding her gloved hand, gazing down into her eyes as she talked.

  Jane stopped and watched them for a moment. Then, sick, she turned away.

  ‘I saw you in the park today,’ she said, her voice carefully unemotional as she climbed into his car that evening.

  ‘Not me,’ he said. ‘I was in the office.’

  She almost made herself believe him.

  It was cold late spring. The pale green dilations which were the daffodils seemed to hesitate for an eternity before they began to swell at last into buds. She helped Edward decorate the kitchen and as they worked they left the back door open to take away the smell of paint. She could see the clusters of nodding points, the green shimmer above the dead earth and she planned to buy some tubs for geraniums later. If there was a later. And she ached with the fear that it might not happen, that the shadow might return. But for Edward there were no shadows. He was happy then, not suspecting her secret unease and it was while they were both working close like this in companionable silence that he threw down his brush and took her in his arms and kissed her.

  ‘One of these days,’ he said, ‘I think I’m going to have to marry you.’

  She hugged her happiness to her as she went on painting, not daring to show her joy too much.

  His flat was big enough for two and slowly she found herself looking at it anew. He never suggested that she live there with him and somehow she never left any of her possessions there but secretly she dreamed. Here would go her grandmother’s little chair, hare her favourite mirror. She planned a colour scheme for the small dark bedroom with its ugly basement outlook and already in her mind’s eye saw white trellis draped with clematis around the dustbins outside the window.

  Once she crept into the bedroom alone and sat on the bed, looking around, thinking of colours; and it was then she saw it. A lipstick down behind the bookcase in the corner; she stared at it for a long time before she picked it up and then reluctantly she opened it. It was long and red and moist. A colour she would never use.

  She left it on the table, swallowing her misery, inventing good reasons why it should be there, not daring to face him with it for fear of what his answer would be and later, after he had been in the bedroom to collect a book she saw that it had disappeared. She knew his swift action compounded some sort of guilt, but she loved him …

  She would have preferred it if he had sprung the ring on her as a surprise – bought it or inherited it to place on her finger by moonlight or by the flicker of a candle. As it was he stopped suddenly as they walked down the High Street to collect her shoes from the mender and said ‘What about it?’

  She was embarrassed, unprepared, excited but flustered as the man behind the counter reached out a flock-lined tray.

  On her finger the ring kept catching her eye as they walked on to collect the shoes, a reminder that life can be very ordinary in its magic.

  That evening she cut the first few daffodil buds and deliberately when he took her home she left her comb behind, her mended shoes and her jacket on the back of his bedroom door. It was a gesture of possession.

  In the warmth of the flat the golden bells opened and filled the room with their fragrance. She came there every evening now and cooked on his stove and together they listened to his records, the bottom half of the dirty sash window thrown open onto the back garden so, from the tree in the road, they could hear the ecstatic carolling of a blackbird as the dusk fell and the flowers nodded palely in the dark.

  She was very happy.

  At last she dared to accept their love; she wanted to be with him all the time. She lay in his arms dreaming of the future, relaxed, confident, at peace.

  But he leaned across her and turned on the lamp and looked at his watch, frowning.

  ‘It’s time you went, Janie.’ His lips touched hers for a second. ‘It won’t be long now, before you’re here, properly, for good, but now you must go.’

  She sat clutching her knees as she watched him dress, feeling in some way betrayed, wanting him to stop, to turn back to her and take her again in his arms.

  He found the car keys and then he turned to her. ‘Come on, Janie. It’s late. Don’t forget I have to go to the office in the morning.’

  So did she of course.

  As she grew more confident in their relationship, so she felt more at home in his flat. She chose the material for the bedroom curtains in the lunch hour, secretly measured and made them and hung them while he was out buying some beer. They changed the room completely, making it bright and warm and now, a little, hers. But his polite admiration on his return, as he stood for a moment in the doorway looking, barely hid his anger at her presumption, and crying quietly in the bathroom later she realized she had taken too much for granted. She was still a guest, despite the promise implied by the ring she wore.

  Edward spoke of getting married in the summer and, learning perhaps a little of his ways now, she knew better than to press him for a date. He would tell her she supposed when he so wished and she frowned, a tiny seed of rebellion taking root at last at her own passivity.

  ‘We haven’t decided yet, there’s no hurry,’ she said airily when her friends admired her ring and asked the obvious question. When she went home to her parents she had to take it off altogether – Edward had not agreed to go with her to meet them, although he had kissed away her hurt.

  The back yard glowed with gold – clumps
of dazzling colour and lines of waving heads along the short pebbled path. She thought again of her tubs and suggested them, laughing to Edward, expecting to be snubbed, but he agreed. They bought them that very weekend, humping sacks of soil to fill them and planting out the seedlings together. The garden was very pretty now but she knew, deep inside, that they were only playing house.

  The other woman’s name was Linda. If Jane hadn’t gone to try to buy some ballet tickets and called off afterwards for a coffee near the box office she might never have known. They were sitting at a corner table.

  Edward smiled, his eyes narrowed in the way she knew so well which usually made her heart turn over with love.

  ‘This is Linda,’ he said.

  ‘I’m Jane. Edward’s fiancée,’ Jane repeated, putting out her hand. She had recognized the brightness of the lipstick, the coat of the walker in the park.

  They drank coffee, the three of them and laughed and joked and were at ease in their small talk, but something deep inside pained Jane so much she could scarcely swallow the hot sweetness of each sip.

  He did not insult her with excuses. He kissed her later till her coldness stood no chance at all and told her he had fixed the date. She smiled and kissed him back but her happiness was chilled with apprehension; the game was spoiled.

  There was no row, no scene when it happened. They had been working together in the garden, she showing him how to knot down the straggle of dying daffodil leaves to plant the summer colours between. Then they decided to go for a walk in the park.

  The trees were heavy with new leaves rustling, as they walked hand in hand to the lake to watch the swans.

  ‘I can’t marry you, Edward,’ she said quietly, gently easing off her ring. ‘I’m sorry.’