I often thought that I didn’t understand my parents. But for that moment, I did.
From his expression, I thought Edwin was about to deliver bad news, but it was the opposite.
‘Could you bear to …?’
‘I’d love to.’
‘I know it’s an imposition,’ he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Taking up your free time …’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Thank you. I’d really like to come.’
‘Marvellous.’ He beamed. ‘In that case, consider yourself my Plus One.’
The invitation was to a champagne reception to celebrate the opening of a new wing to the city museum, in about three weeks’ time. When it took its place on the mantlepiece in all its engraved vellum glory, I noticed that there was no mention of a plus one.
I dared to believe that, extraordinary though it was, Edwin had invited me because he wanted me to be there. Something in me started to unfurl, responding to the warmth and light of happiness. Or the anticipation of happiness. And I saw in my mirror that this state of mind was a good beauty treatment. I had a shine about me. I liked myself.
I also took Elsa’s advice to heart, and refused to think about Rachel. I was elated – which didn’t get past my friend.
‘What are you going to wear?’
‘I haven’t thought.’
‘Well I’m no style guru, but I think you should get into a dress.’
‘I’m not sure I own one – not that sort of one.’
‘There are shops, Flo, and you’re a woman of substance. Want me to come? I won’t interfere, but I will be honest.’
I trusted Elsa – she understood that I wanted to look like myself. In the end it didn’t take too long to settle on a green velvet dress with a wide, shallow scoop neck, long sleeves, and a slight swish to the skirt. I intended to wear it with a silver choker and black suede boots.
‘Good idea,’ agreed Elsa. ‘Customize it. Make it your own.’
‘You look … You look … extraordinary.’
He pronounced this quietly and thoughtfully, as though he were in fact still thinking about it, his face warm and alight with a gentle admiration. We were standing in his hall, waiting for a taxi. I felt shy – me, shy! – and looked down at myself to cover this up.
‘Thank you. I hope …’
‘It’s lovely, Flora. Really.’
There is an intimacy about sitting with someone in the back of a car, and I’m sure we both felt it. Mindful of the driver, we didn’t talk much on the short journey, but at least once I felt his eyes on me. When he’d paid the taxi and we were standing on the steps of the Arthur Coldshaw Building, he said, ‘I’m so pleased you’re here. I can’t tell you.’
‘I’m looking forward to it.’
‘Are you?’ He laughed. ‘That’s nice of you to say. You may find it rather … how shall I put it, stuffed shirt?’
‘I don’t mind. I don’t get out much. A party’s a party.’
‘That’s the spirit. And we shall be the life and soul of it.’
We were certainly the object of attention. I’d expected, and was perfectly happy, to pursue an independent course once we were inside. After all, Edwin would know everyone – he’d have networking to do, flesh to press, appropriate comments to make. I pictured myself as an observer. But that didn’t happen; Edwin kept me at his side and introduced me to successive individuals and groups by name only, with no qualifying description. The combination of social status and anonymity boosted my confidence and I enjoyed myself. More than that – I was flying. Every moment I was conscious of his physical presence. The two of us had such different physiques – he tall, lanky, with long hands and feet, a classic ectomorph; I was an endomorph, square-shouldered and short-legged. I couldn’t stop imagining what his body would feel like against mine …
‘… how you know Edwin?’
Someone was asking me a question. A cool-looking bearded man in pinstripes with a white T-shirt and trainers.
‘Through work,’ I said.
‘So are you an academic, or a writer?’
‘Neither.’
‘Publisher?’
‘Try again.’
‘Can’t be bothered. But I do like your necklace.’
‘Thank you.’
A tray passed. ‘Want another?’
‘All right, just juice.’
Edwin was talking to a woman in a long, layered robe with an African comb in her hair, but I could feel the bat-squeak of his attention. My companion removed my empty glass and handed me a fresh one.
‘What do you think of this place?’
‘I like it. It’s stylish. It gives the whole building a much-needed lift.’
‘Good.’
Something in his manner alerted me to thin ice. ‘Oh my God, hang on – are you the architect?’
‘Guilty. Just as well you said the right thing.’
The African-comb lady moved on and Edwin turned to us.
‘Alastair – you two have introduced yourselves.’
‘Actually no,’ said Alastair, ‘we were working blind.’
‘Flora.’ We shook hands and I said to Edwin. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t realize he was the architect.’
Edwin laughed. ‘I’m sure you would have spoken your mind anyway.’
‘I like to think so.’
Alastair said, ‘I’m being hauled off to say a few words. Nice to see you, hope we bump into each other again.’
We listened to Alastair, who struck the appropriate modest but inspirational note and also contrived to be amusing and brief, but when it became clear that he was to be followed by several other dignitaries with points to make, people to thank and axes to grind, Edwin said softly, ‘Shall we slip away?’
There was a cab rank on the corner and mid-evening was not a busy time. As we approached the driver got out and opened the door for me. So it wasn’t just that I felt different; I appeared different too. Edwin paused.
‘I wonder – can I offer you some supper?’
The fresh air had taken some of the buoyancy from my mood and I hesitated. Was there a protocol here? Was this invitation simply a quid pro quo for helping him through a dull do?
‘The night is yet young,’ he said, ‘and we were both doing our social duty in there. It would be good to have an opportunity to talk.’
‘All right, that would be nice.’
‘Turkish suit you? There’s a jolly little spot more or less round the corner.’
I had forgotten the simple pleasure of sitting at a table opposite an attractive man, and Edwin was a perfect host. The restaurant was busy but the proprietor knew him, beamed at me, and showed us to a corner table. Our candle was lit. We ordered mezze and a carafe of the house red. Edwin raised his glass.
‘Good health.’ We clinked. ‘Thank you for keeping me company. I hope you weren’t too bored.’
‘I wasn’t bored at all,’ I said truthfully. ‘I spoke to lots of interesting people. And anyway my life’s much too quiet.’
‘Really?’ He frowned a little. ‘That makes me realize how little I know about it. About you. Whereas you, I fear, know pretty much everything there is to know about me.’
‘Not at all …’
‘You do look beautiful.’ He said this in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I took a great deal of simple blokey pleasure in being seen with you this evening. So it really is time I asked you some of those questions that people ask other people as a matter of course. I mean …’ He raised his hands, fingers spread, palms upward, inviting a question from out of the ether. ‘Where do you come from? What’s your story? Do you ride a bicycle?’
I must have talked for the best part of an hour – about the hotel, and Holland House, and Salting, and Elsa – even about Gus, whom I found I was able to describe affectionately more in sorrow than in anger. Edwin was an excellent listener, attentive and interested. But he was no fool and picked up on the one area I didn’t touch on.
‘What about family? I’m particularly in
terested in those because both my parents are dead and I don’t have siblings.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Another “only” – do you say, like me, that it never did you any harm?’
‘I think we’d be the last to know, wouldn’t we?’
‘Fair point. And your parents? I imagine you’re still lucky enough to have those.’
‘Yes, I do.’ We were at the coffee stage and I stirred unnecessarily.
‘Do you see much of them?’
‘Not very much these days. They live in the west country.’
‘You make it sound like outer Mongolia.’
I didn’t say that that was what it felt like sometimes. The strangeness of our house, combined with its magnetic pull. And as for Zinny and Nico – he probably imagined a nice newly retired couple, typical of those on the ‘Devon Riviera’ with all the Saga generation trimmings: well-organized holidays to places of interest, membership of the U3A and at least one reputable wine club, dinner parties, golf …
After we paid the bill we waited outside for the taxi he’d ordered.
‘This has been such a pleasure,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we might do it again some time. What do you think?’
‘I’d like to.’
‘I don’t mean the corporate entertaining, of course.’
‘No!’
‘Just supper, conversation. Getting to know one another.’
He was watching me as he spoke, but from my expression he could never have read how gloriously happy I was. The habit of secrecy, of keeping poker-faced, dies hard. I couldn’t quite believe that this was happening, or that I deserved it.
‘That would be really nice,’ I said.
‘You won’t find it awkward with work, and so on? You’ll have to help me, Flora. You’re the modern young woman; I’m in unknown territory.’
Little does he know, I thought. We both are. The taxi came round the corner.
‘So,’ he said, ‘I’m going to walk, it’ll do me good.’
‘Really? It’s miles, surely.’
‘Look.’ He pointed at the floodlit spires of the cathedral. ‘Easy – my guiding light. Not far at all.’ He opened the door for me and handed a note to the driver. ‘This lady will tell you the address. I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Briefly, he leaned in and kissed my cheek. ‘Goodnight, Flora.’
Incredibly, it seemed that what I most wanted was happening. And I was going to have to shed my armour and deal with it.
SIXTEEN
How fortunate that my Prof was a much, much less stuffy and buttoned-up person than me. Like a Jane Austen suitor, less than a week after that evening of the cautious overture, he declared himself.
The intervening days at his house – I had stopped thinking of it as ‘work’, though that was still happening – were like a slow, careful dance, a coming together and separating, and turning, and looking and returning, all to the silent music of mutual longing.
I can see how difficult I must have been to read. Like a dog that’s been ill-treated I found it hard at first to trust. Even – in fact least of all – myself. And my habitual self-possession worked against me as well. I hung back, unable to believe in what was happening, especially that Edwin, the man I knew beyond doubt I was in love with, might actually be in love with me too.
These days, my heart still beats faster when I think of the risk he took in telling me, when from his perspective I hadn’t so much as dropped a glove. I wasn’t playing hard to get, I was the real thing. Thank God he caught up with me that evening as I was about to leave, striding down the hall (he’d just come in from his office) and stopping me in my tracks.
‘Flora!’
I remember I’d already half-opened the door.
‘Where are you going?’
‘Home …’ I think I may have looked (God help me) at my watch.
‘Don’t.’ He closed the door, gently but firmly, and took my bag from me, dropping it on the floor. ‘Please, please don’t.’
I stood there like a statue. Edwin took both my hands – you read of ‘nerveless hands’ and that was what they were – and pressed them to his lips. His eyes closed and he rocked slightly, as if he were inhaling their scent, their taste. The gesture remains the sexiest I’ve ever known. I felt myself melt, soften, start to unfurl.
‘You must know, Flora,’ he said, lowering my hands but still holding them, his voice shaky, ‘that I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with you.’
The most wonderful, unequivocal, open-hearted declaration of love a girl could hope for. And what did I say, in a croaky, broken voice?
‘Me too …’
Reader, he kissed me.
Gradually I learned to accept the blissful truth, but still I needed to poke it with a stick to check that it was real. Just as well that his delight in us – everything! – was boundless and unshakable. He ‘carried me off’ (his phrase) to the Welsh borders for a weekend of ‘uninterrupted indulgence’. When, one early morning we lay face to face, warm, used up, floating, knowing we could go back to sleep and then do it all again, I felt compelled to remind him of the difference in our ages.
‘Disgusting,’ he said, sliding an arm beneath me and pulling me against him.
‘A quarter of a century.’
‘Ah, but look at us.’ He tilted my head gently to look at me. ‘How easily we close the gap.’
And close it we did, again, before breakfast. And then we walked for miles up the hills of Pilgrim’s Pass. We laughed, too, at the same things. Edwin could make me laugh with a look, a turn of phrase, a reference, and the laughter, like the lovemaking, was a release. I realized I hadn’t done enough of it – when tears of mirth ran down my cheeks I could feel the tension running out with them.
At home, we picked up the familiar pattern of our lives. What else would we do? We neither of us knew where we were heading and, as Edwin had said on what I now thought of as that first night, we were in ‘unknown territory’. I returned to my flat, and turned up at Edwin’s house at the appointed hours. There was an enchanted tension in maintaining the structure and semblance of our working lives when everything had changed. I even managed to set aside (not without an effort of will) what my parents would make of all this. Let them wait, and wonder. They had always had secrets from me – now I had mine. Or so I thought until one morning when Edwin had gone to London and the doorbell rang.
Rachel was standing there with her head a little on one side, and a warm, collusive smile on her face.
‘Flora!’
‘Hello.’
‘Is himself in? By which I mean is he in the shed?’
‘Actually no, he’s seeing the publisher.’
‘Hooray, that’s what I was hoping!’
I said, ‘Sorry?’ although I knew perfectly well what she was getting at.
‘I know you’re busy, but can I come in?’
‘Sure – of course.’
She slipped past me into the hall and kept going, saying over her shoulder, ‘Can I tempt you to a coffee break …?’
I followed her, and watched as she did the business with Italian grounds and the cafetière – Edwin and I usually made do with instant when we were working. She put mugs, coffee and milk on the table and we sat down.
‘Well!’ She leaned forward on folded arms. ‘I’ve got to tell you, I’ve never known him like this.’
The proprietary note was hard to ignore. I told myself that she couldn’t help herself, and intended nothing by it.
‘He’s so happy,’ she went on. ‘And carefree – it’s a pleasure to behold. And that’s because of you, I hope you realize that.’
‘I’m glad.’ The kettle roared, and turned itself off. Neither of us got up to do anything about it. So much had changed since we had last spoken and I sensed that we both knew we had to change the terms of engagement.
Carefully I said, ‘I don’t think either of us saw this coming.’
‘Gosh, genuine coup de foudre!’
‘Not exactly. We got
along so well, we were friends—’
‘And then, all of a sudden, you weren’t?’
‘Exactly.’
‘How absolutely great.’
All this time she’d been gazing at me intently, and something was happening to her face, behind her eyes. A sad softening, almost an ageing process – it was like watching one of those stop-frame films where a landscape moved from summer to autumn in less than a minute. She propped her chin in her hands, and fanned her fingers momentarily over her closed eyelids. Her mouth looked uncertain.
I thought, Has she been in love with him all this time? And the thought came without the smallest taint of schadenfreude.
What I said was, ‘I know how much the two of you care about each other,’ and was instantly appalled by how patronizing I sounded.
But she nodded, swiping her fingers over her eyes, and got up to make coffee. She needed to do something, to regroup.
‘Yes, we do. But perhaps not in the way you think.’
‘I don’t …’
‘He was Mark’s best friend, and then mine. You’re lucky, you know.’ She turned and gave me a wan version of her usual warm, foxy smile. ‘Edwin has a gift for friendship. Perhaps because he’s been single his whole life, he invests a lot in his friends.’
‘I can see that.’
‘He’s quite simply the kindest and most thoughtful man I’ve ever met.’ She poured coffee, but picked up her mug and remained standing. ‘And fun! I honestly don’t know what I’d have done without him in the time since Mark left.’
She needed to talk, and I realized that whatever she was going to say I needed to hear, for both our sakes.
‘People probably think I’m over Mark,’ she went on. ‘And by the way I’m not sure I ever shall be, or that I want to be. When someone buggers off just because they’ve had enough of you, it ought to be enough to make you hate them, but in my case it hasn’t worked like that.’ She gave a thin little laugh. ‘My pretty sad case. The bastard was the love of my life. Forget the past tense, is the love of my life. Your man is one of the few people who understood that.’
Love in a Mist Page 17