The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

by William Coles

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Oh?’ He continued to turn the stem of the glass between his fingers. ‘“Not really.” What a delicate phrase and with such a wealth of nuances. So what’s she like?’

  I chuckled. ‘She’s great.’

  ‘But obviously not yet for public consumption.’

  ‘Or paternal dissection.’

  ‘Nothing ever is,’ he said, ‘though I suppose that’s how we paters like it.’

  I came out swinging over the next nine holes; I didn’t know where the ball was going, but I was intent on hitting the cover off it. As my game got better, my father started to flag. I beat him two and one, and he couldn’t have cared a hoot. We had more drinks in the clubhouse. He’d drunk a lot, well over the limit, but he seemed to have hollow legs. Alcohol had only the most negligible effect on his faculties.

  He was staying at the hotel and offered me supper there, but I didn’t much fancy being inspected by the rest of the team, so we had supper in Swanage. ‘What’s the name of that local pub of yours?’ he asked as we drove back.

  ‘The Bankes Arms.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ he said. ‘Let’s go for a nightcap. Your mother used to like the place. Got a very fine snug, as I remember—’

  I looked at him in amazement. ‘You’ve been in the snug?’

  ‘Yes, with your mother, a little round table and a tiny banquette, all very cosy. Surprised you haven’t tried it out.’ He gave me a dig in the ribs. ‘Honestly, the youth of today. Wasted on you! Wasted on you.’

  I’d not seen him in such fine fettle for a long time. He bought us bitter and two whisky chasers. I was just sitting down when I saw Cally and Greta over in the corner; I’d told Cally that I would be popping round to her place later. I had not expected to see her in the pub.

  I waved at them as I sat down.

  ‘Friends of yours?’ my father said. ‘Shall we join them?’

  The booze had turned him into a bon viveur and he was in the mood for new blood.

  ‘Hi Cally, hi Greta,’ I said. ‘Do you mind if we join you?’

  I made the introductions, hands were shaken, and my father went off to the bar to get a bottle of white wine. Greta was tipsy and flirty, Cally more circumspect.

  ‘How was the golf?’ she asked.

  ‘Golf was great,’ I said. ‘What have you painted today?’

  ‘I was in the mood for horses today,’ she said. ‘First I rode them and then I painted them.’

  ‘And what have you been up to, Greta?’

  ‘Busy, busy, busy,’ she said, and underneath the table I felt her knee knock into mine. ‘So that’s your dad? Ex-army?’ She eyed him at the bar, where he was producing a number of notes from his wallet. ‘He can come and polish my brass any day.’

  ‘He doesn’t do that any more,’ I said. ‘But he could probably send round his batman.’

  ‘His batman?’ Greta rolled her eyes. Her mascara was smudged down her left cheek. ‘And does batman wear tight pants and a cape?’

  ‘Only if you ask nicely.’

  ‘I can ask very nicely indeed.’ She rummaged in her bag and put on some scarlet lipstick. It was a little too thick at one side. She puckered, pouted and blew me a kiss.

  I looked over at Cally. She had her back to the wall and looked very tranquil – not placid, but centred. She was a master jockey, who knew exactly when to give Greta her head.

  My father came to the table with the bottle and four glasses. He’d already polished off his pint and his whisky chaser.

  I was uncomfortable. As I’ve said, I am not an actor. I find it difficult to behave naturally when I’m in the company of a lover and I have to pretend that she’s just a friend. Of course I know how I ought to behave. I should behave just as I am when I’m with Tracy or Michelle. I should be the lark, the gadabout, full of jokes and cheeky put-downs, and should have my foot firmly pressed onto the accelerator. I know how it’s done. Yet when I am trying to treat my secret lover like a friend, it always comes out wrong. My voice becomes too loud or too soft. I clam up. My witticisms crash and burn. It all seems very hammy. To those that know me, I feel as if my love is writ large all over my strained face.

  As my father sat down, his right hand automatically moved to his coat pocket and he produced a fresh packet of cigarettes.

  ‘Foul habit, I know.’ He flicked off the cellophane. ‘Anyone like a cigarette?’

  Cally and Greta both joined him, happily puffing their smoke all over me. In those days before the smoking ban, it was just seen as perfectly normal for us po-faced non-smokers to have to spend our evenings inhaling our companions’ foul fumes. It would have seemed as weird and militant to have whinged about being a passive smoker. Cally tended to smoke when she was happy – when she was out riding, or out painting, or out drinking. I didn’t much like it, though I never told her. Her smoking was just a part of her, as immutable as her looks or her horses.

  My father was interested to hear about Cally’s painting.

  ‘Are you excited by your exhibition?’ he said.

  She shrugged. I don’t think I ever once saw her fazed. You could have stood her in the middle of the Pamplona bull run, being charged down by a dozen prime bulls, and she wouldn’t have turned a hair. ‘I like deadlines,’ she said. ‘I need a deadline, otherwise… otherwise nothing happens.’

  ‘And it’s in August?’ he said. ‘Where’s it going to be?’

  ‘London.’ She tapped her cigarette in the ashtray and twin fumes of smoke spilled from her nostrils. ‘Cork Street.’

  ‘Impressive,’ my father said.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ she said. ‘It’ll be my last one. For a while.’

  Cork Street; it shows how little I knew about the art world. I’d never heard of Cork Street, had no inkling that it was the very epicentre of Britain’s art world. Although I knew that Cally had an exhibition that she was preparing for, it was just another facet of her life. It was neither impressive nor unimpressive, merely something that she did when she was not with me. But of course I should have known that just like her horsemanship and her love making, she was a complete expert.

  ‘What do you paint?’ my father said. He was enjoying himself, had already tapped out the next round of cigarettes.

  ‘Animals,’ said Cally, ‘movement, anything with life.’

  ‘When my first wife died, I had a stab at painting,’ my father said. ‘I thought it would help. Took an art class. Water colours.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I was outnumbered eight to one. The ladies saw me as some sort of catch. Not a class went by when they weren’t offering to take me out for coffee or lunch or dinner.’

  I’d never heard about this period in my father’s life. ‘And did you take any of them up?’ I asked.

  ‘A few,’ he said. ‘It was quite a rich seam. I’d never realised that a widower in the army could be quite so attractive, but anyway… there you have it. Couldn’t paint a damn thing, mind.’

  ‘Learning to paint is the very last reason why people go to art classes,’ Cally said. My father laughed merrily to himself.

  Greta had unbuttoned another button of her lilac shirt and I could see a glimpse of black bra underneath. She was drinking hard.

  I felt something underneath the table. It was a foot that was worming its way up my calf and between my knees. For a moment I thought it was Cally, but quickly realised that it was Greta. She surveyed me coolly over the top of her wine glass, daring me, challenging me, to see what I would do next. I wasn’t sure if she knew that Cally and I were seeing each other, or if she just fancied her chances.

  I went to the lavatory. Darren was already there. He looked over at me. ‘You like them old, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I like them any way I can get them.’

  ‘They’ve got to be twenty years older than you.’

  ‘At the very least,’ I said, before remembering Greta’s probing foot. ‘You should have a try with Gre
ta. She’d love you.’

  ‘Greta?’ he said. ‘Why would I want to go with Greta?’

  ‘Might teach you something you didn’t know.’ I buttoned up and washed my hands. ‘Which probably isn’t saying much, actually.’

  Later in the bar, I saw him staring at us. Greta saw him, too, and gave him a little wave. I shuddered as the thought of Greta and Darren together floated across my mind. What an unholy alliance that would be.

  My father gave me a lift back to the hotel. We’d said our goodbyes to the ladies outside the pub; my father had kissed them each on the cheek, very suave. I’d never really taken him for a ladies’ man before, but after his tales of the art classes, I was looking at him with whole new eyes.

  We buckled up and the cigarette was produced from the packet. He lit up one handed as we did a tight U-turn.

  ‘Nice girlfriend,’ he said.

  ‘I’m not seeing Greta.’ I wound down the window to try and clear some of the smoke.

  ‘Of course you’re not,’ he said. ‘But Cally… Cally is terrific.’

  It was pointless denying it. ‘Cally is terrific,’ I said. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘Not know when my eldest son has fallen in love? Not know when he’s sitting opposite his girlfriend in the pub? Think I was born yesterday?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, very firmly put in my place. ‘I didn’t know it was that obvious.’

  ‘As for Greta, what a trollop.’ He tapped his ash out of the window.

  ‘Greta just gets a bit flirty when she’s drunk.’

  ‘That would be most of the time, then.’

  CHAPTER 13

  If my father had divined from one single session in the pub that I was seeing Cally, it did not take my colleagues long to follow suit. After all the hiding and secrecy, it was a relief to both of us when it was finally out there.

  It was dinner time at the hotel, late July, and by now the Knoll House was in full swing, with families arriving for a week, two weeks, and with the whole operation so slick that every staff member had become battle-hardened. Even Oliver had managed to ameliorate his natural clumsiness and was no longer smashing more than a couple of plates a week. His party piece was the cuff flick, and usually occurred when he was gathering up either plates or menus. He would stretch over to pick up a plate, and as he did so, his cuff would catch a glass.

  I once saw him upend a full champagne flute over a woman who was wearing a spectacularly clingy creamy cashmere dress. She was a young mum and she was revelling in having a dinner away from her children. Her husband was some corporate guy on holiday, wearing the standard blazer, chinos and natty blue deck shoes. The woman had come in to the dining room with a full glass of champagne, and had been sat down for all of one minute before Oliver handed her a menu. He knocked the glass into her lap, soaking her from her belly to her knees. The situation would have been quite hilarious if it had happened to anyone else, and if Oliver had not been so hideously embarrassed. But it all turned out all right. The lovely woman went off to change and Anthony brought them a bottle of champagne and the couple were soon laughing away and even chafing Oliver over his clumsiness.

  On this night, the first person into the dining room, limping on a blackthorn walking stick, was my old adversary Major Loveridge and his wife, Jemma. Since the dry-run at the start of the season, Anthony had made sure that the major was never actually sitting at any of my tables, though I would always wave and say hello if I saw the man.

  That evening, the major was seated just adjacent to my tables; Oliver was his waiter. Over the previous few months, I had discovered that he suffered from gout.

  The major and Jemma had just sat down and were deciding which pie to have for dinner when I breezed over to the table next to them. I swept an imaginary crumb from the tablecloth.

  ‘Good evening, ma’am!’ I said. ‘Good evening, Major! How is the gout today?’

  He looked at me with weary eyes. He humphed.

  ‘My father suffers from gout,’ I said chattily. I picked up a wine glass and began to polish.

  The major perused the menu.

  ‘He swears by cherry juice,’ I said. ‘My stepmother got him onto it. At first he was a bit sceptical.’

  The major licked his finger and, without once looking at me, turned a page of the menu.

  I held the glass up to the light, admiring its gleam. ‘Now you can’t get him off the stuff! Cherry juice in the morning. Maraschinos at tea. Cherries on his cupcakes and cherries after dinner. He’s even put in a couple of cherry trees in the garden, but they don’t really produce very nice cherries. Bit bitter, you know? But there he is, still gobbling them down.’

  The major’s wife darted a look at me and then back at her husband, a wee timorous mouse peeping from its hole. The major was still stolidly reading his menu.

  ‘Oh, but there I am, prattling on about my dear old dad’s gout when I’m sure it’s the very last thing you want to talk about. May I recommend the sole? Catch just came in this morning.’

  Off to the side, I saw Anthony greeting Cally and Greta. He kissed them both on the cheek.

  ‘My guests have arrived,’ I said. ‘If you will excuse me.’

  Cally and Greta were at their usual table, and though Cally was usually quite reserved when we were together in public, tonight she was almost brazen.

  ‘Kim!’ She was pleased to see me. I’d not seen her for a couple of days and she stretched out her hand and cupped my arm. But she looked tired, too. I didn’t really know what preparing for an exhibition entailed, but it was certainly gruelling. Every time she returned from London, she always looked a little more weathered; though it might have been the smoking. I think she smoked a lot in London and this tended to exacerbate the lines around her mouth and her eyes.

  I kissed both the ladies on the cheek. ‘How goes the exhibition?’

  ‘Fraught.’ She stroked my arm again and smiled up at me, and there was almost a look of relief in her face as if she was once again back in calm waters after weathering the storm. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  Greta gave her an arch look. I realised that if she hadn’t known about us before, she most certainly knew about us now.

  I fetched them their bottle of champagne.

  A man had come into the room with his family. In the traditional confines of the Knoll House dining room, he looked bizarre. He was a desperate mid-forties man, in black leather trousers and cowboy boots, and a striking silk waistcoat in canary yellow over a crisp white shirt. I was not at all sure that the waistcoat worked with the leather trousers.

  At first I thought that the man was accompanied by his three daughters. But when I looked at the girls more closely, I saw his hand lingering on the older one’s waist and realised that she was his lover. With his clothes and his much younger girlfriend, I thought he looked ridiculous.

  I should have realised that something was up when Anthony escorted the group to one of my tables, next to the major and his wife.

  After the four guests had sat down, I went over to the table and went through my spiel. The man’s lover was about my age and very pretty, as all trophy girls must be. She had light freckles on her nose and a healthy tan and sun-kissed hair, and was altogether way too wholesome and too lovely to be mixing with this middle-aged man in his too-tight leather trousers.

  The girls seemed pleasant enough, the man perhaps a little condescending; there was some strange vibe about the table, though I was not able to place it.

  ‘Are you regulars at the hotel?’ I asked.

  ‘The girls have been coming here for years,’ said the man. He turned to his girlfriend and stroked her bare shoulder. ‘But it’s your first trip, isn’t it, darling?’

  ‘So how are you enjoying the show so far?’ I asked, hands clasped lightly behind my back.

  ‘I like it,’ she said simply.

  ‘Have you heard of the nudist beach?’ the man said.

  ‘Dad!’ the elder daughter said, scandalised.

&nbs
p; ‘There’s been talk of a nudist beach,’ I said, ‘but we don’t need permission, we just do it.’

  ‘You’ve skinny-dipped here?’ the girl said.

  ‘Just this morning. It was brisk.’

  ‘Fancy a go?’ said the man to his girlfriend.

  ‘I might do,’ she said.

  ‘You let me know what time you’re going down.’ I doled out the menus. ‘I’ll see about getting the beach cleared.’

  I thought no more of it until I returned to the central station. Several waiters were agog to find out what I had been talking about with my new guests.

  ‘Nudist beaches, or something like that,’ I said to Tracy. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘He’s such a hunk,’ Michelle said.

  ‘Him?’ I said. ‘Are you joking?’

  ‘He’s not as tall as I thought he’d be,’ Tracy said.

  ‘The guy in the leather trousers?’ I said. ‘Why? Who is he?’

  ‘He’s Pat McNamara,’ said Tracy. ‘You know, the soap star. I didn’t know he’d split from his wife.’

  ‘Must have been quite recently,’ Michelle said. We watched as Pat stroked his girlfriend’s knee. ‘But that’s definitely a new girlfriend.’

  ‘How do you know so much about him?’ I said. ‘When do you have time to watch TV?’

  ‘Don’t you read the papers?’ Tracy said.

  ‘Sometimes,’ I said.

  ‘You mean the Telegraph,’ Michelle said. ‘All that boring shit about Gorbachev and Perestroika!’

  ‘And let’s not forget Glasnost,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and Glasnost, whoever he is when he’s at home.’

  Tracy weighed in. ‘Well, if you ever sank your toffee little nose into one of the red tops, you might learn something new.’

  By rights I would have responded in my usual acidic fashion, but I held my tongue. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said. ‘I’ll give it a go. I might learn something new.’

  Nothing much happened until about an hour or two later. The major and his wife had had their starter and their mains and were now readying themselves for the main event, the pudding. The major beckoned Oliver over.