Encounters

by Barbara Erskine

  She grinned. ‘I’ll promise you this much, Neal. If I walk out on you this time I’ll wait around long enough to pay my half of the bill, does that seem fair?’

  His eyes met hers and held them. ‘Very fair,’ he said.

  All This Childish Nonsense

  Richard. I’ve done something dreadful. Pat looked in the mirror, screwed up her face and tried again. Richard, darling, I’ve done something rather wonderful. That didn’t work either. Not at all. Better to say it straight out. Richard, there’s someone coming to stay. For two weeks.

  The mirror was steaming up. Her palms were growing sweaty. Richard, I know I should have told you a long time ago, but I never plucked up the courage. Richard, I know you’ll want to throw me out … but the child was alone and it is Christmas. Richard, please …

  ‘You’ve done what?’ His voice was too quiet. Pat looked hard at the floor and explained again. This time it was easier. She just told him; straight.

  ‘They’d have had to put her in care or something. Richard, she is a relation of mine, sort of. I couldn’t say no, could I?’ Could I? Just as when Sarah had said: ‘I know you and your husband won’t mind, just while I’m in hospital.’ She hadn’t dared say: ‘He’s not my husband.’ She had looked hard at the wall, above the white radiator and the telephone receiver had hurt her ear it was so tightly pressed. ‘He’s not my husband, we’re only living together. Something like this could ruin everything. He says I’m taking him for granted …’

  ‘How old is this child anyway?’ Richard’s voice was still enigmatically cool.

  ‘Six, I think.’

  Richard stood up and threw down the paper. ‘That’s all I need; a child of six, in a flat this size! I don’t want anyone else here upsetting things. We’re fine as we are.’

  He went to look out of the window. Pat could see his knuckles on the green and white print curtain. She winced, waiting for the rip. Those curtains had been her first bad mistake. Attractive, light, airy, hand-made. By her … ‘I hope you’re not going broody or something,’ he’d muttered, instead of thank you. Then he had ignored them. And they did look so lovely once she’d tidied the room a bit.

  Of course later, in bed, he had murmured in her ear, his voice so soft and dreamy she wondered if she had heard right: ‘Those curtains make the room, Pat. It might be nice to have new ones in here, one day,’ and she knew it was his way of saying sorry and thank you. His way; in the dark.

  ‘She won’t be any trouble, Richard. Her mother says she’s a very quiet, obedient child. She’s used to going to stay with people.’

  ‘Good, so let her go and stay with them again.’

  ‘It’s difficult, Richard. It’s Christmas.’

  ‘All the more reason for them to have her.’

  He went into the bedroom. She followed him, hovering. He went back into the living room. She followed again. She knew she was irritating him. She wanted to disappear. She felt sick.

  ‘What shall I do?’

  He had picked up his jacket. ‘Do what you like, but don’t expect me to entertain her if she comes here.’ He was at the door and going; then for a moment he was back. ‘And don’t,’ he said, his chin set in the way she knew so well, ‘expect me to dress up as Father Christmas.’

  In the morning Richard ate the breakfast she prepared and went to work with a smile and a kiss. She liked that; like it must be with real married people. Neither of them mentioned the child. She wished suddenly she was going to work, too. It had seemed fun to finish a job the last week before Christmas, start another in the New Year; have those two or three weeks free.

  Then Richard had said: ‘I hope you’re not going to waste money buying me presents, all that childish nonsense.’

  ‘I like childish nonsense,’ she had wanted to wail, but hadn’t the courage. What if he despised her for it?

  So the cards she sent had been secret, although she’d written, defiantly, ‘from Pat and Richard’ and the ones they received had been gloated over and loved and then reluctantly put in a drawer. She went cold suddenly. The child would expect a tree.

  She gazed round the room. Nothing was ready. The spare bed was still folded behind the door.

  When the time came to meet the train she was there at the barrier and her face was smiling, but inside she was terrified and resentful. Suppose Richard never came home again? Suppose he threw her out? Suppose the child was uncontrollable? Even delinquent?

  She saw the child at the other end of the platform. With it was an adult, responsible for the length of the journey only, who exchanged names and addresses and vanished into the crowd, not seeing or guessing Pat’s panic; leaving a suitcase and the little girl to Pat.

  Pat licked her lips nervously and tried to smile. ‘Hello, Annabel,’ she said, experimenting.

  The little girl had enormous blue story-book eyes and was solemn. ‘Hello, Aunt Pat,’ she said. ‘My name is Bel.’ She put her hand in Pat’s and waited expectantly.

  My God, thought Pat, what now?

  Somehow they got home. The little girl was enchanted to have a bed which wasn’t ready and which folded up behind the door.

  ‘It’s like a horse,’ she exclaimed and mounted it, pretending to ride. The floor began to shake and Pat bit her lip. She was thinking of Richard’s reaction. Please let him like her, she prayed silently, please.

  ‘I’m hungry,’ said Bel and Pat looked at her watch. What do children eat for lunch? Not yoghurt, crispbread and cottage cheese, that was for sure. She had better ask.

  ‘Chips,’ came the reply. ‘Chips and sausages and fish-fingers and chocolate pudding. Where’s your Christmas tree, Aunt Pat?’

  Richard looked for a long time at the small green fir, wedged with newspapers into his wastepaper basket. The whole flat was full of the scent of resin and pine needles. It was fragrant and beautiful.

  ‘Uncle Richard, Uncle Richard, will you help us decorate it?’ The child was already in her nightie with furry-bunny slippers.

  Pat peered furtively through the kitchen door. She was hiding; she admitted it. But surely the pretty child could manage Richard better than she could? She breathed a quick prayer as Richard set down his papers and slowly began to unbutton his jacket.

  ‘You fraud!’ she whispered in the kitchen later. ‘You utter fraud. All that silver tinsel in your briefcase; and baubles! How did you know I’d buy a tree? How did you guess?’

  He grinned. ‘I knew,’ he said.

  They had to bring the TV and the table lamp and their books into the bedroom so that the child could sleep. Pat saw Richard frown and she cursed silently. She hadn’t thought of that, as she hadn’t thought of the pools of water cascading from the bath onto the floor, the piercing giggles and screams, the enthusiastic assault on Richard’s typewriter, or the scribbles in his books. (‘It’s not scribbles, it’s my bestest writing.’)

  Bel found Pat’s photographs in a box and scattered them, delighted, on the carpet, making patterns. ‘Look, look,’ she squeaked. ‘You – on a pony. What’s he called, Aunt Pat?’

  Pat looked. She had been about fifteen. ‘Black Beauty?’ she hazarded hopefully.

  ‘But he’s not black, Aunt Pat.’

  He wouldn’t be!

  ‘Oh, look! Here’s Uncle Richard.’ The child held out another picture, her head a little to one side. ‘I like Uncle Richard.’

  So do I, thought Pat. Lots. She reached for the photo. It was of them both. He had his arm round her shoulder and was smiling down into her eyes in that gentle, intense way of his which she loved so much. It had been taken the summer she had first met him, two years before. Was it really two years?

  ‘Why are you smiling, Aunt Pat?’

  She had met him at a friend’s party. Both had gone alone, both planning to leave early. They had left early, but no longer alone. From the moment they started talking Pat had realized that she could never be alone again. Not as long as Richard was any part of her life.

  It had taken a long, long
time, though, for Richard to ask, half diffident, if she would move in with him. Scarcely believing it, she had arrived, suitcase and pot plant in hand, before he could change his mind and, laughing, he had found a saucer for the plant. ‘You’ve brought your family, I see,’ he’d said.

  The pot plant was still there, on the windowsill.

  ‘What are we going to give Uncle Richard?’ Bel asked, confidingly, on Christmas Eve.

  How could Fat say ‘nothing’?

  So they went shopping together and bought him some aftershave and some socks and a paperback. Then Bel had a brainwave.

  ‘I’ll pretend to be Father Christmas.’ She gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘Won’t that be a surprise for Uncle Richard? We’ll hang up the stocking for him and when he’s asleep I’ll tiptoe in and fill it with presents like the real Father Christmas does for children.’

  The real Father Christmas?

  Well, Pat had thought of it. She had managed to keep a few small things hidden besides the little girl’s present from her mother which Pat had found tucked in the suitcase. But what would Richard say? Pat licked her lips nervously. All this childish nonsense. But there was a child.

  Pat and Bel listened to carols on the radio while they made a Christmas cake. Not a rotten old cake, with currants and things in (‘Yuk,’ said Bel), but a chocolate sponge with thick squidgy icing. Pat hadn’t made a cake before.

  ‘My mummy doesn’t need a book,’ said Bel with peals of laughter. ‘Books don’t tell you how to make cakes.’

  They’d better, thought Pat …

  The amazing thing was, she found she was to have a stocking as well.

  ‘Hang it up; hang it up,’ the child shouted, dancing with excitement. Pat was embarrassed. There would be nothing in her stocking. She hadn’t thought of it and of course Richard wasn’t in on this conspiracy. She wildly wondered what she could put inside the woolly sock she was handed.

  ‘Uncle Richard says people hang their stockings round the biggest radiator when they live in flats,’ said Bel.

  Doubtfully.

  ‘Oh he did, did he?’ said Fat. She felt warm inside as she realized Richard must be entering into the spirit of things, that he wanted to join in, to belong even.

  She filled her own stocking, quietly, with a couple of unopened packets of tights and some perfume she had been given for her birthday. Then, lump in throat, she filled the other two and crept back to bed.

  Richard seemed to be asleep. She had hoped he might help her wrap Bel’s presents, but he hadn’t offered. He had sat in the kitchen reading the paper. But she suspected he was taking an interest, his eyes glancing now and then at the lumpy packages.

  Bel woke at half past five with shrieks of excitement. Sleepy and half apprehensive, with a wary look at Richard, Pat allowed herself to be dragged from the bed. She gasped. The stockings which she had left limply stuffed were bulging. Bel’s had overflowed onto the carpet.

  ‘I … er … think we must have duplicated.’ Richard was sheepish as he peered around the bedroom door.

  She looked at him. His hair was rumpled; his bathrobe torn. Looking down at the child, he was smiling, watching expectantly as her stocking was carried, bulging, to the sofa.

  Bel stopped. ‘Aren’t you going to open yours?’

  They smiled at each other, catching the little girl’s excitement and reached, each a little embarrassed, for the grossly swollen socks which lay on the floor. Pat’s heart began to beat a little faster.

  The packets in hers were carefully wrapped in gold and black paper. ‘Nothing very exciting,’ Richard grinned. ‘I’m afraid Father Christmas was a little rusty.’

  Nothing very exciting! A silk scarf; a pendant; a tiny teddy bear.

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Look, Aunt Pat. I’ve got one, too!’

  Pat went down on her knees to grope inside the stocking. A paperback. The sequel to the one she’d bought him! They held them up together and laughed.

  ‘It proves we must be compatible after all,’ he teased. ‘We’ll have to live together long enough to read each other’s.’

  She made mountains of toast and they ate it all sitting on the big bed getting butter and honey on the duvet and giggling. Then Richard lay back, contented and began to read aloud the story of Thomas the Tank Engine.

  ‘Well, I liked it when I was six.’

  ‘But, Richard, she’s a girl.’

  ‘I do like it, Aunt Pat; I do!’

  The flat lay beneath a drift of coloured paper. She put on the chicken and wished she had risked a Christmas pudding. In the end they stuck five-pence pieces into the chocolate cake. (‘You know, love, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s really more like a pudding in the middle anyway.’) But she knew he liked her attempts at cooking. It was one of the things on her side.

  ‘My God,’ said Richard in despair. ‘Look at me. The picture of a happy family man.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and groaned as Bel bounced onto his lap. ‘This would put you off marriage for life, this would.’

  He had meant it as a joke but the air was suddenly electric. He saw Pat, her eyes brimming, turn away to put the kettle on. Damn, he thought, damn, damn, damn!

  Pat sniffed and shook her head as she filled the kettle. I knew it was all pretend, she thought, furious with herself. He’s always told me he’s not the marrying type. So why am I worrying? I never expected it. It’s a lovely day and I’m not going to spoil it. She blew her nose angrily, then she plugged in the kettle.

  But Richard was there behind her. His arm was round her shoulder. ‘Happy Christmas, lover,’ he whispered and gently he kissed the back of her neck.

  Bel was watching solemnly from the doorway. ‘Have you given her your special present yet, Uncle Richard? I know where it is.’ The child was clutching the doll (‘Look, Uncle Richard, she wets her nappy!’) which her mother had sent for her. ‘Shall I fetch it?’

  Pat turned. ‘What special present?’

  Richard shook his head in despair. ‘Don’t I have any secrets any more? Fetch it, then. Carefully.’

  The present was wrapped in the same stripy paper. It was so tiny the sticky tape enveloped it. It was a very little box.

  ‘I thought it might get lost if I put it in that great hairy stocking,’ he muttered as he took it.

  The kettle was clouding the room with steam but Pat took no notice. Shaking, she held out her hand and he gave her the box. A ring box.

  ‘And besides,’ he went on, ‘I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea. I expect Father Christmas is married already.’ He grinned mischievously.

  ‘I’m the one who wants a wife …’

  A Love Story

  ‘Chérie, je t’aime.’

  I nestled into André’s arms, his soft whisper so close to my ear that I couldn’t tell if I felt the warmth of his breath or the brush of his lips on my hair.

  ‘My Suzie, we must go.’

  Reluctantly I allowed him to push me from his knees and I stood up, conscious of my crumpled skirt and unbuttoned blouse. I was a mess. I could never look glamorously dishevelled as I imagined his French girlfriends would have looked under similar circumstances. My make-up would certainly have run and my tights had snagged on the cushion zip as we sat down. I felt overwhelmingly depressed.

  I had met André three months before at my niece’s graduation party. He was twenty-three and I was nearly forty. At first I had been amused by his attentions, and flattered of course.

  ‘But chérie,’ he had said, gently teasing. ‘The Frenchmen are always fascinated by older women. Surely you know that?’ And I laughed and accepted first his compliments and then his invitation out to dinner.

  But that one evening together had led to more and before I knew it I was falling in love with him. It was no use my telling myself every morning as I gazed in the bathroom mirror that I looked old enough to be his mother. I didn’t. I had a good skin and as yet the crows’ feet were minimal, but even so I found I was spending far more ti
me and money on my appearance than I had before I met André. I had the notion that Frenchmen expected their women to be chic and feminine and I intended to live up to André’s every expectation. Even in bed. When he first made it clear that he wanted so sleep with me I had objected, in a real panic that once we had slept together there would be nothing left to attract him, but I did us both an injustice. When at last I gave way unable to hold out any longer against something I wanted so much, he proved a superb lover and his attentions became more marked and more loving every day.

  As an assistant lecturer in French at the university he had a room in one of the men’s hostels and acted as assistant warden there. At the weekends we would make toast in front of his electric fire and lie on his narrow bed together listening to tapes. But it was difficult there. We could never be sure that there wasn’t going to be a knock on the door at any moment. The best times were when he came back to my flat and we knew we would be alone.

  You may ask why I wasn’t married. Most people did, in their usual tactless way. When I was twenty-two I had become engaged to a young man whom I worshipped. But our engagement grew longer and longer. Each time I tried to persuade him to fix a date he would find an excuse. At last after five years I had realized what my friends and family had probably known all along, that he was not the marrying kind. It broke my heart, but ours had not been the stable relationship which can last without marriage. After we parted I avoided any serious affairs, nursing my wounded pride beneath a stout campaign for the independence of women. Until I met André.

  Now, in his cosy bed-sitter, in the dim light of the shaded lamp I looked up at him as he stood before the mirror combing his hair and I knew I loved him as I had loved no one before and I was afraid.

  He turned and smiled, holding out his arms. ‘I wish you did not have to go, Suzie.’

  I loved the way he pronounced my name. He made it sound exotic and a little wicked. Other people just called me Sue.

  We kissed long and passionately and then reluctantly we went out into the dimly-lit hall, tiptoeing so as not to disturb any sleeping students. From behind some of the doors came the muted sounds of music, but most were quiet. The lines of light beneath the doors showed that few were asleep. It was only a week from the exams and I suspected that many a set of brains was being cudgelled that night to try and make up for lost evenings earlier in the term.