The Antique Love

by Fairfax, Helena

  “Hey, you really managed to clean it up.” He stepped forward to where the range gleamed in magnificent glory in the old chimney-breast and bent to open one of the jet-black doors. “No spiders.”

  Penny gave him a happy grin. “Nope. And it works, too. Although we fitted a real cooker as well, so you can use either.”

  Kurt looked about, and Penny felt her anxiety gradually ebb away at his evident pleasure in everything he saw. When he moved over to the electric cooker and opened the door to look inside, some of her former liveliness returned. She tilted her head on one side.

  “So,” she said. “I suppose you’ll be spending a lot of time in the kitchen? How are your cooking skills?”

  He lifted his head and grinned back confidently. “I’ll have you know, people say I’m a great cook. Used to cook for my sister, Ann, every day until I left home. Her friends all said my steak is the best in Wyoming.”

  Penny laughed. “Wow! Do you know, I never really pictured you at home in the kitchen?”

  “Guess you don’t know that much about me.” Kurt was still smiling, but there was a hint of challenge in the way he spoke.

  Instantly, Penny withdrew. Getting to know Kurt would mean revealing some of herself in return, and she had no intention of even so much as hinting at how deep her feelings for him ran. Of putting her heart out in the open and being treated like a kid sister with a crush. Kurt straightened up, the smile leaving his face.

  “So, have we done here?” he said coolly. “Shall we take a look at the bedroom?”

  Penny nodded, her expression taut. Although the feeling of constraint between them almost brought her to tears, she needed to get this over with. She turned back to the hallway and headed up the stairs. In the bedroom, the late afternoon sun was spreading some warmth across the bare floorboards, and the dust swirled a little as Penny opened the door. She made a beeline for the window and opened it. The air outside was warm and still. Kurt stepped across the room and stood beside her, his eyes scanning the bare walls.

  “You’ve done such a great job in the rest of the house. Everything’s perfect.”

  She turned her head, her expression brightening a little. At least she’d got something right.

  “It’s been great,” she said. “I’ve enjoyed it. The decorators were great guys, and the house is a dream. It was a pleasure doing everything.”

  “Then why stop here?” He gestured to the empty room. “I don’t understand. You had such a vision for the rest of the house. Why draw a blank in this room?”

  Penny followed the arc his arm had made. The bare room gave no answer, and his words echoed in the dusty air. She frowned at the plaster walls.

  “I don’t know. That’s why I thought it would be better to ask you to come over.” She looked up at him then. “What you said in the kitchen was right. I don’t really know you. I don’t really understand your plans for the future. I can’t picture the sort of wife you’re looking for, and I still don’t really understand your motives for marrying if you’re not marrying for love.”

  Kurt had turned with her and was facing into the room. The warm light from the window fell on his face, and his long lashes swept downward as he studied the floor. He put his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers and leaned back on the window-sill.

  When he didn’t answer straightaway, Penny continued. “I feel I need to know, or I can’t finish the room. Does that seem odd?”

  He threw her a brief, warm smile then. “No, it doesn’t seem odd to me. I understand you. It’s important for you to feel something…” He left off whatever he’d been about to say to let his gaze travel around the room. “You’ve given so much feeling to everything you’ve done in this house. Everything you do, you take on with a passion. It’s what I—” He broke off abruptly, leaving the unfinished sentence hanging unspoken in the silence.

  Penny stared at him. It’s what I…? What had he been about to say? But Kurt’s head was bent, his features hidden, and he remained silent for such a long time, Penny could almost believe he’d forgotten she was there.

  A muscle trembled in his clenched jaw, but when he finally spoke his slow voice sounded even more collected than usual. “Ever since I left home I wanted a family,” he said. “I wanted two kids, a girl and a boy, and all I wanted was to give them a happy home. The sort of home me and Ann never got.” He laughed without humour. “That’s been my dream. And now I have the financial security and the house, so all I need is a wife and children.”

  Penny drew in a breath to reply, but Kurt turned to her before she could speak. “I know what you’re thinking. That I’m looking at things backward. First should come the falling in love and all the romantic drama, then marriage, then the kids are an afterthought.” His voice had roughened. “But that’s not what I want for my kids. I told you before, passion is short-lived. I’m looking for a woman who shares the same values, who’s not looking for any romance and who can provide a stable home. The sort of home me and Ann never had.”

  There was a roughness in his voice that Penny had never heard in him before. She stole a glance at his profile. His head was bent, the expression masked behind hooded eyelids, making him seem remote despite their physical proximity. Penny was tempted to reach out for him, to touch his hand at least, but his hands were rammed in his pockets, and in any case, the moment was soon gone.

  He straightened up to give another quick scan round the bare room. “I appreciate everything you’re doing,” he said. “Since you’ve asked my opinion, I’d say how about using some neutral colours in here? Something that doesn’t draw the eye too much.”

  Penny stared at him, her mouth opening uselessly. Eventually, she pulled herself away from the window. “Neutral colours,” she repeated expressionlessly. “Fine. I just need to be in here alone for a few minutes. Just to have a look around again and to think.”

  “Sure.” Kurt pulled himself upright. For a couple of seconds, there was a taut silence. Then he turned, his tread sounding hollowly on the bare floor as he headed for the stairway.

  Once alone, Penny moved to gaze out of the window, shivering a little. The air had grown colder as the afternoon progressed. She reached out a hand to pull shut the pane. Outside the sun was sinking over the park, and the shadows cast by the trees were lengthening over the grasslands. Penny pressed her forehead against the cool glass.

  She had been right in her intuition. She was unable to visualise Kurt’s bedroom because he himself had no idea what it was to have an intimate relationship. Neutral colours. Even his chosen colour scheme said everything. Penny was unbearably saddened. She pitied the woman Kurt eventually married and even pitied his future children. He meant the best for them, but nothing could be controlled in the way Kurt thought it could. A home could be stable, but it would also be sterile without a deeply loving relationship at its core. She hoped with all the strength in her gentle heart that one day Kurt would find the woman who could teach him this, and that he wouldn’t throw away any chance he had at happiness.

  Out in the park, the last rays of the sun caught the surface of the pond, causing it to shimmer grey and blue in the spring breeze. I don’t like to feel boxed in. She remembered Kurt’s words to her on their first walk outdoors, his homesickness for the great spaces and the sky over Wyoming, and as she turned to look at the empty bedroom the germ of an idea began spreading slow roots. Maybe that was the answer. Maybe she should use this room to show Kurt that passionate love wasn’t a prison to box you in. Passionate love was nothing to fear. On the contrary, it could be a liberation.

  She moved away from the window, taking a few steps around the perimeter and casting her eyes over the walls. Yes, she thought, and in that moment, all her indecision was swept away in a sudden feeling of recklessness. She would forget Kurt’s neutral colours, forget his neutral dating plans, and forget his neutral images of marriage. She refused to make this room a prison for an empty relationship. She would open up her imagination and make Kurt’s bedroom a final,
passionate gift from herself—and risk everything.

  * * * *

  Kurt reached his apartment that evening suffering from an intense lassitude, such as he’d rarely before experienced. All his plans for the future seemed grey and dull as London fog. When he’d first decided on buying the house, he’d had a real sense of purpose. It was one more step on the ladder of success: a good career, a good income, a good house, a good wife, and a good family. Fifteen years ago, when he left college, it hadn’t seemed too much to ask. Now it seemed he might as well be asking for the moon. What the hell had happened to his carefully laid plans in recent weeks?

  He threw the jacket of his suit onto a counter and switched on the kitchen light. A fluorescent glare lit up the white space, hurting his eyes. He pulled out a bottle of bourbon, poured a decent slug into a glass, and leaned back against the units, taking in the gleaming stainless steel, the black worktops bare of any sign of habitation. He hadn’t realised how soulless this room was until he walked into the kitchen Penny furnished for him. She’d transformed that room—just like she had the rest of the house—into somewhere warm, welcoming, full of her personality. A home.

  It’s what I love about you. Those were the words Kurt had left unsaid that afternoon, alone with her in his empty bedroom. He felt all the hopelessness of the unfinished sentence like a terrifying weight on his chest.

  Out of nowhere Alex’s perspiring face that night in the bar came into his mind and his drunken words, Dude, that girl’s really something, isn’t she? In the bright light of his kitchen, Kurt’s fingers gripped the glass. Alex, with his vast experience of women, had realised in the space of a single evening what it had taken Kurt weeks to understand. Penny was really something.

  In a few weeks’ time, once his house was finished, he would have no more reason to see her. They could keep in touch as friends, but he also knew that avenue would be a dead end. She would keep backing off until they lost touch altogether. He remembered his offer to give her riding lessons and the way her face had shuttered. Her polite evasion had told him everything. She wasn’t interested.

  It wasn’t like him to feel so uncertain. He had made a decision to put his dating on hold until the house was ready. He hadn’t really analysed why, but now he finally acknowledged the real reason, that being around Penny so much messed with his head. Each time he’d dated another woman recently, he could only think about how much more fun it would have been if he’d been with Penny. No-one else seemed to fill his senses as she did, so that all he could think of was reaching for her and holding her close, holding her until her soft, expressive body was his and all she was became a very part of him. When he thought of her, every part of her filled his senses, and her very essence seemed to leap through his veins.

  He closed his eyes. What the hell was he going to do? The perfectly suitable women he’d dated were just pallid shadows in comparison, and yet he’d been counting on finding a wife this way. He opened his eyes to stare into his half-drained glass. Once he wasn’t seeing Penny so much, maybe life would return to its previous steady normality, and he could put his plans for the future back into action. He threw down the remaining contents of the glass in one last mouthful. He was a strong man. Surely he could find the strength within him to forget Penny and get his life back on track.

  It was just that when he thought of a life without her, somehow the future seemed to stretch into infinity, dull as ditch water.

  * * * *

  It was fortunate for Penny that for the next few days she had little opportunity to let her mind dwell on Kurt. Work was busy. Occasionally she would allow her thoughts to wander, and she would recall the time Kurt had brought her the tulips and he had kissed her cheek. She found it hard not to dwell on this memory, reliving the warmth of his kiss. She would find herself replaying the scene in her head, each time having it end with his lips on hers. When she was at work, it was easy to bring herself back to reality. The scene would finish there in her mind, and she could force herself back to her surroundings. At home in the silence of her bedroom, it was a different story. A different scene altogether. The kiss was just the beginning of a fantasy which was full of such erotic longing Penny would find herself burning and sleepless, rising the next day sure she could never meet Kurt’s eyes in real life ever again.

  It was lucky they would only need to meet a handful more times before the house was finished. Maybe even just one more meeting—she could show him the final stage and leave it at that. The thought should have made her happy, but instead, she was appearing at work looking increasingly tired and drained.

  “Hey, did you see the local news last night?” Tehmeena called to her excitedly one morning. Penny had barely opened the shop door. The fine spring had been short-lived, and she was removing her wet coat and trying to shake her umbrella without splashing too much water around.

  “No,” she called back a little grumpily, throwing her coat over a hook. “Granddad wanted to watch golf all evening.”

  “Shame. It was on at six. Why don’t you catch up on the internet now? I doubt we’ll get many customers this morning. Not in this downpour.”

  “Catch up with what? What’s good in the local area—more shop-lifting and arson?” Penny dumped her bag down beside her desk and switched on her laptop. It wasn’t like her to be crotchety, but the past few days, she’d been far from her usual cheerful self.

  Tehmeena pursed her lips. “It’s not all doom and gloom around here, you know.” She turned back to the open china cabinet, which she’d been in the process of dusting. “Take a look on the net and see for yourself,” she called over her shoulder. “Some people perform acts of charity.”

  Penny logged onto the news channel without much enthusiasm, flicking through for the previous evening’s local report. She found the relevant item, clicked play, and immediately, the usual impossibly coiffed newsreader came into view. For ten minutes, Penny listened to her talk about how teenagers had burned a whole warehouse down, her teeth showing in a relentlessly cheerful smile the whole time. There followed an intense debate around the news table as members of the local community discussed opportunities for teenagers in the area and how to combat the rise of mindless crime.

  Penny was just about to call over to Tehmeena that actually it was all doom and gloom when the newsreader turned to the camera. “Well, if you think the rise in teenage crime heralds an era of doom and gloom, think again. An American finance worker is sponsoring a scheme to bring something different to the kids in the inner city. Take a look at this.”

  Penny’s jaw dropped. The screen filled with a shot of Richmond Park, the camera panning slowly past trees coming into leaf and deer in the distance before coming to rest on a group of horses trotting across the grasslands. In the middle of the group, and looking magnificent astride a gigantic white horse, was the unmistakeable figure of Kurt. Even from a distance and with a smart riding helmet covering his dark blonde head, Penny would have known him anywhere. She leaned forward and stared at the screen, open-mouthed.

  The shot of trotting horses was cut away to be replaced by a group of teenagers dismounting awkwardly in a stable yard. Penny wasn’t surprised to see Cass was also one of the riders. The woman dismounted in a swift, stylish movement, giving the camera a glamorous smile before turning away to help one of the kids. Over the scene, the newsreader described how Kurt, together with the stables in Richmond, had put together a programme to help disadvantaged city children by offering riding lessons and introducing them to the abundant wildlife in the park. Next thing, Kurt’s head filled the screen, and he was giving that slow, courteous nod. He appeared to be looking right into Penny’s eyes, and her heart turned over with a thump.

  “I’m lucky to have this wonderful park on my doorstep, and I wanted to share my good fortune with kids who don’t get the same sense of space. Being boxed in is bad for the spirit.”

  The camera panned back to reveal Cass standing by his side, looking up at him adoringly. They made a striking c
ouple. The interviewer asked a few more questions which Cass and Kurt took turns in answering, and then the film finished to cut back to the studio.

  Penny sank back in her chair. So this was the charitable project Kurt had been working on. How like him to carry out his plans in such a quiet way. He was quiet and reserved and would never dream of bragging. He would never dream of bigging himself up about anything. Just like when they first met and she’d thought he was a simple cowboy when all along he was head of a massive company.

  She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. Kurt also hadn’t mentioned just how involved he was with Cass. Maybe because their relationship just wasn’t that important…or maybe because he was hoping they’d become much closer. She reached forward and closed the lid of her laptop with a sigh. Whatever, it was none of her business. And if he didn’t date Cass, he’d only be dating someone else anyway, so there was no point thinking about it.

  She looked up to find several customers had entered the shop whilst she’d been engrossed in the news. She stood up quickly, but before taking up her position behind the counter, she went over to where Tehmeena was relocking the china cabinet.