The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

by William Coles

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. She was beautiful, long blonde hair and in a grey wool dress that clung to her every curve.

  She looked at me, very cool, sizing up my jeans and my Liberty shirt. She didn’t know what to make of me, but one thing was for sure and that was that I was definitely not a City-slicker businessman.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. She puffed on her cigarette. She had been talking to a sharp young man who was only a few years older than me.

  ‘You couldn’t get another glass, could you?’ he drawled. ‘And a dustpan and brush while you’re at it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I continued to press my way through the crowd. Suits to the left of me, suits to the right of me; I realised that I was the only man in the room without a tie. My floral shirt and my jeans were similarly unique. Being one of a kind can be fine – if you’ve got the power and got the confidence. But at twenty-three, I didn’t; all my hotel chutzpah had deserted me.

  Cally was by the bar. She was sipping champagne and I had never seen her so glamorous. She was fresh out of the hair salon and her hair positively gleamed, not a strand out of place; she was in black high heels and stockings and the perfect little black dress, with diamonds in her ears and a fabulous diamond necklace about her neck. She was talking animatedly to three men. They were hanging on her every word. They seemed to be about her age, though one was a little younger. I wondered if she had slept with any of them.

  ‘Kim!’ She broke off and kissed me – not on the mouth, but on the cheek. She gave me a light hug with her hand. ‘Thank you for coming!’

  ‘What a show!’ I said. ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You might recognise some of the pictures.’

  I was introduced to the men; I forget their names. ‘This is Kim,’ she said. ‘He’s come all the way from Dorset.’

  ‘And what happens down in Dorset?’ said the younger of the three men. He was in his thirties, slicked back hair. I think his name was Johnny. I had taken against him from the very first.

  ‘Well, it’s wurzel country,’ I said. ‘Cream teas. Smugglers. And inbred farmers.’

  ‘Oh really?’ he said, with this very slight inflection which I took to mean ‘I could not be less interested, now kindly leave me in peace’.

  ‘Yes, really,’ I said. I stretched past the man and took a glass of champagne from the bar. I raised my glass to Cally. ‘I’ll see you later.’

  I saw Greta, pissed and clutching onto a man in the corner, and I also recognised Hugh, the Dorset antiques dealer who occasionally lunched with Cally at the hotel.

  I did not want to talk to them. I wanted to look at the pictures. I was entranced.

  I had seen one or two of them before, but I had never seen the whole collection. The paintings together had far more power than their parts, transformed from being merely good to absolutely formidable. It was as if a complete diary of my time at the Knoll House had been hung upon the walls. The paintings, now with thick frames and heavy white borders, had grown in stature since I had last seen them on the easel.

  There were several portraits of the Dancing Ledges, in the wet and in the heat, when the rock was bare and when the rippling ledges had begun to dance. There was even the Dancing Ledges at night and I smiled at the memory of our midnight dip. In the corner were pictures of the Agglestone, at dawn and at dusk, and more than ever I was struck by how it looked like a giant toad that had been turned to stone upon the heath. There were some pictures, also, of the Knoll House, children playing on the pirate ship and families basking by the pool. Cally’s beach hut was there too, both inside and out, along with a picture of that great Malay bed. It was painted so finely that I could even read the words that had been etched into the wood. There was a picture of the ferry, as it steamed into the sunset, with the seagulls swirling about its bows.

  If I’d had the money, I would have bought every one of them.

  I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But as I looked at those pictures, how I wished that I had even an ounce of Cally’s passion.

  I sipped my drink. Over by the door, there was a picture that held my attention more than any other. It was a painting of Old Harry, with the cliffs and the sea and the birds overhead – and in the corner was a young man in a red top, sipping sloe gin and dreaming of love.

  It was like seeing an old friend amid a sea of strangers. What memories it brought back of the wind and the crashing waves, and a slip on the cliffs that had cost me another of my nine lives; and of a kiss after Cally had dragged me back to safety.

  There was a nudge at my elbow. ‘That’s not you, is it?’ It was my father, in full pinstripe with regimental tie and buttonhole, complete with a silk handkerchief in his top pocket.

  ‘Hello!’ I was delighted to see him. I leaned over and gave him a little side hug, before brushing my cheek against his. As usual, he smelled of cigarettes. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Never better,’ he said. ‘So is that you?’ he asked again, gesturing at the picture.

  ‘It is, actually.’

  ‘Just near Old Harry, at a guess,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I might buy it then.’ He squinted at the catalogue. ‘They certainly know how to charge round here!’

  ‘So… you got an invite?’ I asked, still mildly flabbergasted at seeing my father at Cally’s exhibition.

  ‘Cally sent me one after we met in the pub,’ he said. ‘Only popping my head in. Your stepmother and I are going out for dinner to…

  I don’t have the foggiest. Anyway…’ He looked me up and down, taking in my open-necked shirt and my jeans. ‘It is a bit stuffy in here, isn’t it? Nice shirt, much better without a tie. In fact, you know what, think I’ll take my tie off, too. They’re only useful for mopping up the soup anyway.’

  Then and there, he flicked up his collar, worked his fingers at his thick double-Windsor knot, and loosed his tie. He folded the tie carefully and tucked it into his coat pocket, before undoing his top two shirt buttons. What a trooper! Greater love hath no man than to take off his regimental tie in order to slum it with his son. It was an interesting look, with just a hint of string vest showing underneath his shirt. He mopped at his face with his handkerchief and looked round at the giddy throng. ‘Well I’ll just go and say hello to Cally and then I think I’ll push on,’ he said. ‘How’s the Knoll House? They paying you enough?’

  He dipped into his wallet and fished out some fifty pound notes; he didn’t even count them, just folded them up and tucked them into my shirt pocket.

  I watched him as he eased his way to Cally. He gave her a fulsome kiss on the cheek, mouthed the correct platitude and then after a brief word with one of the gallery girls he sauntered back. Always, always, it’s about confidence. Even though he’d taken off his tie, and his linen shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, he had more panache in his little finger than any of those young jackanapes in their bespoke city suits. He gave me a light pat on the shoulder. ‘Ghastly lot of people,’ he said. ‘Do you think they actually buy any of her pictures? I doubt it!’

  It was the only high spot of the evening. For some reason, whether it was my clothes or my ‘sod you’ demeanour, women shunned me. There were quite a number of pretty women there, in their mid-twenties, killer heels, and doubtless fancy jobs too. I must have been exuding some toxic vibe, because there was no one there who wanted to chat. I even presented some champagne to the beautiful blonde in the clinging grey whose glass I had knocked over.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, before turning back to the man in the suit. Beyond my dazzling conversation, I had nothing whatever to offer her, and we both of us knew it. She wanted reliability, dependability, and above all, she wanted me to have prospects, and in my jeans and my floral shirt, my prospects must have looked dire.

  Cally was making a short speech and I lingered at the back of the room. She had made two little jokes and was now going about the business of thanking everyone who need
ed to be thanked.

  Greta sidled up to me and slipped her arm through my mine. She was drunk and she was all but using me as a leaning post. ‘She’s good, isn’t she?’ said Greta. As usual, she was in pink and black. ‘You’re lucky to have her.’

  ‘I certainly am.’

  She squeezed my bicep and sighed. ‘I do love young boys,’ she said. ‘Cally got there first.’

  I blurted out the words while they were still only half formed. ‘Cally was always going to get there first.’

  She did not like it. She was drunk and it took a moment or two for my words to sink in, but once they had, she very quickly withdrew her arm from mine. ‘You’re very hoity-toity, aren’t you, for a jumped-up waiter boy?’

  I wish that I had heeded Cally’s lesson. I wish that I had bitten my tongue. But I didn’t. In my callow youth, I was incapable of soaking up an insult; rather, insults had to be met with further insults, the more hurtful the better.

  ‘If I’m a jumped-up boy, then what does that make you, Greta?’ I asked. ‘A raddled old dotard?’

  It was a nasty thing to say, and it was an awful time to say it; Cally was still talking.

  ‘The sooner that Cally is shot of you the better,’ spat Greta, and doubtless I could have come up with an equally acidic rejoinder, but she immediately turned on her heel and went to the bar.

  I should have gone home then and there. I could have caught the train from Waterloo and been back in my bed at midnight. Hell, with all those fifty pound notes that my father had given me, I could have spent the night at the Ritz. But I didn’t, I stayed, and my anger eked itself out through the easiest outlet. Anger is like that. It is rarely assuaged on those who deserve our wrath; rather, we let it steep until eventually out all that lush bile pours, raining down onto the head of the benighted sap that happens to have fallen in love with us.

  Cally toasted us all with her glass, and revelled in her moment. Yet all I could think was how much I wanted to get out of there. There was a part of me, also, who was eyeing up all those well-groomed men and who was wondering just how many of them knew Cally quite as well as I did.

  I watched as she worked the room. She was brilliant; for every man and every woman, there was the kiss, the laugh and the perfectly chosen word.

  She gave my hand a squeeze. ‘Will you join us for dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘I’d love to,’ I lied. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘The Caprice. There’s a table booked.’

  ‘Shall I see you there?’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘We’ll go together…’ But as she looked at me, she tailed off. Perhaps she had already divined my mood. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  If I was angry before, by the time I’d been in the Caprice ten minutes, I was scorching. I was mildly drunk. I was hurting. Who the hell was Greta anyway, calling me a ‘jumped-up waiter boy’? And who the hell were all these suits with their show-pony girlfriends? And… and… What does it matter? The point, anyway, was that I was a young man nursing a grievance.

  Cally had booked a table for twelve at the Caprice and I was the first in. I took the prime position, back to the wall and in the dead centre of the table, and then set about drinking the red wine. It was beastly behaviour.

  The restaurant, or what I remember of it, was very formal, with sleek waiters who seemed to glide on well-oiled casters. White linen, white napkins, flowers for every table, the quiet intense conversations of the well heeled and the well mannered. I had a sudden yearning for the Knoll House’s pudding table and plump dads weaving their way over for a third helping of trifle.

  By the time Cally and the others had arrived, I was already well away on the second bottle of wine.

  Cally led the rest of the guests into the restaurant. She looked at the empty bottle on the table and then she looked at me. ‘My,’ she said, ‘somebody has been drinking.’

  ‘Cheers!’ I waved a glass at her.

  Cally set herself at the far corner of the table. She was looking at me as she took her seat. It may just have been paranoia, but it seemed as if the other guests were also doing their best not to sit next to me. I ended up with Greta on one side of me, and on the other was the companion of the woman whose glass I had knocked over. Opposite me was Hugh, the antiques dealer. Cally’s guests were mostly men, very slick, very polished, and so wholly different from me that I might have been from another planet. Their ages seemed to range from late twenties to their late sixties. Unfortunately, I had neither the time nor the opportunity ever to discover much about them; that’s rather what happens when you end up hogging the show.

  Greta presented me with her shoulder and hardly said a word to me.

  The man on my other side was not interested in me either, but manners dictated that he did at least have to talk to me. I had tried unsuccessfully to engage with Hugh on the other side of the table, so for five or ten minutes I sat there and seethed as I drank my wine.

  The man turned to me. ‘Hi, I’m Morgan.’ He offered me his hand. His fingers were small and rather pointed, as if they belonged to a plump clairvoyant.

  ‘Hi, Kim.’

  ‘So what brings you up to London?’

  There were a lot of things that I could have said. I decided to lob a small grenade into this urbane millpond.

  ‘I’m Cally’s boyfriend,’ I said.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He looked at me anew, interested despite himself. ‘I didn’t know she had a boyfriend, but of course she would. Where did you meet?’

  ‘In a hotel in Dorset.’

  ‘Were you staying there?’ He’d turned to me now, lolling in his chair, arms spread extravagantly wide.

  ‘No, I’m one of the staff. I’m a waiter.’

  ‘You’re pulling my leg!’

  ‘Or maybe I’m not.’

  ‘So you’re a waiter at this hotel in Dorset, and Cally comes over for dinner, and then one thing leads to another! Stone the crows!’

  Hugh had picked up the fag end of our conversation.

  ‘Did I hear right?’ he asked. He was tearing off bits of bread from his roll and popping them into his mouth without looking. ‘You’re seeing Cally?’

  ‘I suppose I am,’ I said.

  He crowed to himself, rocking from side to side, before turning to address Cally at the end of the table. ‘You’re a cradle snatcher, by God!’

  Cally looked quizzically from Hugh to me, sizing up how best to flatten him. ‘Who wouldn’t?’ she asked. ‘Miles more fun than being with a middle-aged man.’

  And by now, the whole table was listening and was digesting the fact that I was Cally’s lover, and although I didn’t know what they were thinking, I was aware that Cally’s guests were not really wishing me well. Perhaps incredulity, perhaps a slight amount of hilarity, and perhaps there was some envy mixed up in there, too. Cally was a very beautiful, very rich woman, and she had this extraordinary sexual magnetism.

  Morgan’s girl, bless her, piped up. She was sitting on the other side of Morgan. ‘I hope I have a toy boy when I’m in my forties.’

  The other woman piped up, well groomed, jet-black hair, slightly older than Cally. ‘I’d have taken a toy boy in my thirties,’ she said.

  Hugh had finished his bread roll. He licked his index finger and very carefully swept up the crumbs on his plate. He popped his finger into his mouth. ‘They never last,’ he said, ‘but they’re jolly good fun while they do.’

  ‘They are,’ Cally said. I don’t think she was overly pleased that our love affair had become public knowledge, but now that it had, she was going for it. ‘If you’ll forgive me, Kim,’ she said, with a nod to me. ‘I think that every woman should have at least one toy boy in her life.’

  ‘And you’ve had plenty!’ Hugh crowed.

  ‘Thank you so much, Hugh, I can always rely on you.’

  I don’t know whether the man was drunk or just intent on baiting me, but as the others watched, he snuffled into his drink. ‘Once tasted, never forgotten, eh?’ Hugh sa
id. ‘What was the name of the last one? Was it Martin?’

  ‘Hugh, please,’ Cally said.

  ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just a middle-aged blow-hard,’ he said. ‘Lucky to get it up more than once a week. Not like you young bloods, eh, Kim? Eh?’

  I suddenly felt liberated, relieved of an enormous weight. I didn’t care what I said, in fact the more outrageous, the more shocking the better.

  ‘Let me explain something to you, Hugh,’ I said. ‘Men – as you well know – are at their sexual prime when they’re about, I guess, my sort of age. Maybe a bit younger, but I’m not far off it. You, on the other hand, are probably a little over the hill. But women reach their sexual prime at roughly the sort of age that Cally is now. So you can see that it makes perfect sense for Cally and me to be together. Morning, noon and night, we’re at it like rabbits.’

  I looked over at Cally. She drank some wine, then put down her glass and massaged her forehead.

  ‘Are you, by God?’ said Hugh.

  ‘Indoors or out, rain or shine, before breakfast or after tea. We’re at it non-stop. We can’t get enough of each other. We’ve worked our way through the Kama Sutra, and now we’re doing it with bells on.’

  ‘Kim!’ Cally said.

  But it was way too late for self-restraint. The genie was well and truly out of the bottle.

  The faces of the other guests were a complete picture. The men, perhaps remembering their glory days, perhaps imagining what it would be like to work their way through the Kama Sutra with Cally; the women, discreetly toying with their wine, glancing at me intermittently. But what they were thinking, I could not fathom.

  ‘And do you do anything else apart from have sex with each other?’ Hugh said.

  I have noticed that middle-aged men tend to have a peculiar fascination with sex in all its forms. They may not be getting much of it themselves, but they like to talk about it, as they fancifully lust after all those ships that once passed them by in the night.