If Only

by Kate Eberlen

  There’s a silence, then Frances says, ‘Tea? Or something stronger? Or’ – she pushes back her chair – ‘why don’t I just leave you two to it?’

  ‘Would you like tea?’ Letty asks, once they’ve heard Frances going upstairs.

  ‘The British answer to all awkwardness,’ he says.

  She looks taken aback.

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’ he says.

  ‘No. You’ve every right,’ she says, looking at the floor. ‘Shall we go for a walk?’

  3 p.m.

  ‘Which way?’ Letty asks him as the front door closes behind them. ‘That way’ – she gestures with her left hand – ‘is Hampstead Heath. The other way is Primrose Hill.’

  ‘Where you went sledging?’ he says.

  ‘Yes!’ She’s forgotten telling him about that.

  ‘Has to be Primrose Hill, doesn’t it?’ he says.

  It’s a relief, but it’s also a stay of execution, Letty thinks.

  The advantage of Hampstead would be that it’s where Stuart’s estate agency is. So the subject would arise naturally, and it’s better to get it over and done with, surely? But the thought is even more terrifying now that Alf is here, in the flesh, even more gorgeous than she remembered him, with his tan and his hair all blond from the sun.

  ‘So you went to Ischia?’ she says, as they walk along the road.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What’s it like?’

  ‘Stunning,’ he says. ‘I thought you might have gone, you know, after—’

  ‘No,’ she says quickly. ‘I took the first train out of Rome to Milan. Stayed there a few days, wondering what to do.’

  ‘No wonder I couldn’t find you,’ he says.

  Their footsteps echo on the pavement, silent thoughts reverberating in the air.

  ‘What’s Milan like?’ he asks.

  They’ve gone back to comparing notes on places they’ve been, she thinks.

  ‘I liked it,’ Letty says. ‘The cathedral is amazing. It’s very dark inside, but when the sunlight comes through the stained glass it makes these incredible coloured projections on the stone. You can go up on the roof, amongst all these unbelievably delicate spires and statues of saints. It’s like being in Heaven . . .’

  She doesn’t tell him that when she was up there, she imagined how easy it would be to throw herself to the ground and make all her problems and mistakes go away.

  But how she dismissed the thought, picturing how upset her family would be, and Alf, if he ever found out, and how it would ruin all their lives and make a horrible mess on the beautiful piazza, which would be incredibly selfish of her. And how that moment had felt like an epiphany up in the sky, surrounded by saints, because that’s when she realized that she wasn’t ill, just sad. Because when she was ill, she’d thought that her dying would make it easier for everyone.

  4 p.m.

  They are standing at the top of Primrose Hill, with London spread out below them. The grass is dry and brown after the unusually long spell of constant sunshine, and the hill is almost like a beach, with people on towels sunbathing, and groups of mothers with small children sleeping in pushchairs in the shade of sun umbrellas.

  Below them is the zoo and then Regent’s Park, says Letty, pointing to the near and middle distance.

  ‘And what’s beyond?’ he asks.

  ‘Well, central London,’ she says. ‘The river Thames. Look, there’s the London Eye . . . and Big Ben, behind that scaffolding.’

  She indicates familiar shapes that seem very small on the horizon.

  He remembers looking out of the window of her amazing loft in Rome, and finding the Vittorio Emanuele monument in the far distance. And he remembers what they did straight after that. And he so wants to touch her now, kiss her. But when he shifts slightly closer to her, she moves away.

  Suddenly she’s running down the hill, with her arms stretched out like a child being an airplane, her long hair flowing behind her. He launches after her, swerving and leaping and stumbling over uneven hillocks, until finally falling and rolling over and over until they are lying side by side on the parched earth, gazing up at the blue sky, laughing.

  He props himself up on his elbow beside her, looking down at her beautiful serious face. She stretches out one hand to run her fingers through his hair and pulls him down, hugging him so tightly he can feel her heart beating against his chest. And it feels so right. As if all his life was leading to this moment, the past gone, the future opening up. When they break apart, he touches her face, gently tracing the outline of her cheek that is wet with tears.

  ‘What?’ he asks.

  ‘I just want a little bit more time with you!’ she says.

  ‘You’ve got it!’

  ‘No . . .’

  She pushes him off, sits up abruptly. Looks the other way.

  ‘Too much has happened that can’t be changed.’

  ‘I’m so sorry about Gina,’ he says.

  ‘I thought all along there was someone . . .’ she says.

  ‘I’m so sorry.’

  She takes a very deep breath, like a backwards sigh.

  ‘Alf, it’s not Gina, it’s Spencer.’

  ‘Spencer?’

  ‘Stuart. I know him as Spencer . . .’

  He doesn’t understand what she is saying.

  ‘You know Stuart, how?’ he finally asks.

  ‘It’s a long story and at the end of it, you won’t like me any more and—’

  He puts his finger lightly on her lips.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  She takes his hand from her face and turns away from him again, not able to look at him as she begins to tell him about her first meeting with Stuart at the Randolph hotel and how she walked out and left him. And then, their subsequent chance meeting on the train.

  ‘I was compromised as soon as I sat with him in first class,’ she says.

  Alf wonders if it was chance at all.

  And then she tells him about all their meetings after that. The Sky Garden, New York, the opera, Venice, the opera, their boat trip to Burano, and what happened in the hotel room that was so close to the lagoon she could hear the water lapping and the gondolas clunking against their moorings.

  Her weeping is all mixed up with blaming and berating herself, and when he tries to comfort her she pushes him away crossly, so he sits and listens, until gradually her sobs subside with one big breath and there is silence between them.

  He knows it is crucially important to say something. The longer he doesn’t, the less she will believe him, but he can’t find anything that doesn’t sound like a trite cliché.

  ‘Letty . . .’

  He dares to touch her hand, and when she allows that he draws her to him, and her tears soak through the shirt he is wearing, right to his skin, as he holds her against his chest, never wanting to let her go again.

  5 p.m.

  For the longest time Alf says nothing, and Letty doesn’t want to move because she loves feeling his hand holding her head against his chest, and the wonderful smell of him. Then finally, he speaks. ‘In a way we were both seduced.’

  ‘Both?’

  He stands up, pulling Letty to her feet, and says, ‘Let’s walk down to the river and I’ll tell you about how I met Gina.’

  He tells her about the audition for Grease, and driving to the after-party in her brand-new pink Cinquecento, and how by chance she turned up at his mum’s dance school – but Letty wonders if it was chance at all – and how he helped her make up flat-pack furniture in her brand-new apartment on the seafront, and how it was thrilling to keep their secret affair from his mates at school, and how, when it all blew up with his family, it was Alf who felt guilty for getting Gina into trouble, but how it was too late, then, to turn back the clock.

  In the Italian Gardens, they stop to sit for a while in the shade. Someone must be watering the plants, Letty thinks, because there are bright cascades of petunias spilling from stone urns.

  There’s a long sil
ence in which Alf seems to be figuring it all out.

  ‘I think we should be grateful to them,’ he finally says.

  ‘How do you work that out?’ Letty asks.

  ‘Neither of us would have been in Rome without them, would we?’ he says. ‘We never would have met . . .’

  Is this what love feels like? Is she understanding him correctly? She’s been wrong before. Didn’t she think that Josh loved her? But that was different, because with Josh she was always trying to be someone different, the sort of girl she thought he would like.

  With Alf she has always been herself, in all her neurotic loneliness. And he still seems to like her.

  Holding hands, they walk through the elegant Georgian terraces of Fitzrovia, then the narrow streets of Soho, which was once the red-light area of London but is now full of clubs and cafes.

  Letty stops walking suddenly, forcing herself to ask the direct question she needs him to answer.

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you that I slept with Stuart?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Alf says.

  Her chest sinks. She knew it was too good to last.

  ‘Because I hate the idea of you ever being with anyone else,’ he says. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that I slept with Gina?’

  ‘He paid me,’ she says, ‘I was his sugar baby.’

  ‘He thought that. You didn’t. You thought he was taking you to the opera. Gina paid for a spa day in a hotel. Does that make me her gigolo?’

  ‘Why is gigolo a much nicer word than whore?’ Letty wonders.

  ‘We’re not in the eighteenth century any more,’ Alf says. ‘Nobody’s going to send us to a penal colony . . .’

  It’s a reference to Manon, she realizes, and for a moment she thinks of Des Grieux, Manon’s devoted lover, dancing with desperate, mournful passion.

  ‘I’m not saying you’re like Manon,’ Alf says. ‘And I’m no romantic poet either. So here’s the thing: we can live our lives regretting what we’ve done or we can move on. It’s like hearing a song, trying to decide whether you’ll dance or not. If you wait too long, the music’s over, you’ve missed your chance, and you’ll never get that moment back.’

  6 p.m.

  He can see her thinking about what was just a throwaway line, examining its logic.

  ‘But what about . . . Stuart?’ she says. ‘It feels like he’s stalking me . . .’

  Alf thinks of what Stuart said about Letty, and the expression on his face when Alf hit him. How Alf suddenly recognized him for what he was. A cowering, spiteful misogynist. He wonders now why it took him so long to see it. He was so bowled over by the success Stuart had made of his life and the wealth he had accumulated, when all he was was a pathetic middle-aged bloke with a James Bond fantasy.

  ‘Stuart’s a bully,’ he says. ‘Bullies are usually cowards. I don’t think he’d dare do anything. It’s the chase he obviously enjoys. Probably not capable of any kind of relationship, not even as a stalker . . .’

  He hopes that’s true. He’s not going to live his life intimidated by the thought of an Arsenal supporter with a lime-green Porsche.

  They cross Trafalgar Square and take a route through Charing Cross station that looks dark and unpromising, but suddenly becomes a footbridge across the river Thames.

  The tide is high and the water churns beneath them. In the distance, he can see the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral surrounded by the glass towers of the City, their windows glinting in the evening sunlight.

  There’s been something that he’s been practising saying, in case he ever saw her again, and if there’s ever going to be a moment, this is it. And it’s easier walking, somehow, when she won’t be staring straight at him and wincing when he gets the pronunciation wrong.

  ‘There’s something I want to say to you,’ he says. ‘Please bear with me.’

  There’s a small enquiring frown on Letty’s face. She’s still nervous, expecting the worst. He hopes that in time, she will relax with him again, like she did in Rome. He clears his throat, suddenly very nervous himself, and takes her hand.

  ‘Vivamus, mea Letty, atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis.’

  Now she is smiling at him. Dimples.

  ‘Let us live, my Letty,’ she laughs, ‘and let us love, and put no value on the gossip of horrid old men.’

  It’s weird, Alf thinks, how the words seem even more appropriate now than before he knew about Stuart.

  ‘Soles occidere et redire possunt; nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda.’

  ‘Suns may set and rise. For us, once the brief light has gone, we will sleep forever.’

  ‘Da mi basia mille, deinde centum, dein mille altera, dein secunda centum, deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum. Dein, cum milia multa fecerimus . . .’

  ‘Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand and a second hundred, then yet another thousand, then a hundred, then when we have kissed so many times . . .’

  Her violet eyes are shining in amazement that he has remembered all the words and she looks so happy, he wants to stop walking and kiss her, but he has practised the poem so many times, he is determined to get to the end.

  ‘Conturbabimus illa, ne sciamus, aut ne quis malus invidere possit, cum tantum sciat esse basiorum.’

  ‘So that we confuse the total and not know it, and no bad person can envy us, when he realizes our kisses are so many.’

  They stop in the middle of the bridge. He looks at her. She takes a step towards him, and he lifts her off the ground so that their faces are level and they kiss for a long time.

  Dozens, hundreds, thousands of kisses.

  ‘How did you find Catullus in Latin?’ she asks eventually.

  ‘The internet can be very useful,’ he tells her.

  ‘That is the loveliest thing that anyone has ever done for me!’ she says, beaming at him.

  And then she draws away, her face suddenly anxious again.

  7 p.m.

  It’s just twelve hours, Letty thinks, since she discovered she was pregnant, and realized that her life had changed completely and she was going to have to change herself. She was going to have to be strong now, because it was no longer acceptable for her to muck up. It wasn’t just about her any more.

  But there is a part of her that longs to wallow in the unbelievable happiness of the past few minutes for just a little longer. Just this evening, maybe, just tonight. Or maybe even for another month, until it’s more certain. Because she knows that what she is about to say will change everything again, risk everything.

  But Frances knows.

  So Alf has to know. No more secrets.

  She listens to the water lapping below and the hum of the city. Alf’s arm is around her shoulder, his forefinger gently stroking her skin under the sleeve of her T-shirt. She wishes it were possible for them to stay in this perfect moment, in this liminal place, forever.

  ‘I’m pregnant, Alf,’ she says.

  She feels the slight pressure of his hand as he turns her to face him. And then he looks into her eyes for a long time, before dipping his face and kissing her so softly, his eyes closed, as if he is concentrating on pouring his love into her. For a moment, she feels nostalgic for the time, just a minute ago, when they were carelessly in love, and it was just the two of them and there was no need to be sensible at all.

  Then he says, ‘The weekend after we spent that Friday afternoon on the Palatine together, I was walking by the Tiber and there was this graffiti, Non cercavo niente, ma con te ho trovato tutto! Sei il mio tutto. Ti amo! When I read it, it was only you I thought of. And I thought, how can I love her, how can she be my everything when I’ve just met her? But you are my everything. I love you.’

  They amble hand in hand along the riverbank and watch the sunset from Waterloo Bridge, then wander into Covent Garden piazza, where there are tables on the pavements, and people are smiling and toasting each other with Prosecco. The air is so warm and balm
y they could be in Italy.

  They both hear the music at the same moment.

  It is the Ed Sheeran song, ‘Perfect’, sung by a busker who’s standing in the colonnaded portico of a church that looks a bit like a Roman temple.

  ‘Viennese waltz,’ says Alf, suddenly stepping in front of Letty, taking her into hold, pushing off with his right thigh against hers, so that she has no choice but to follow him as they waltz around and around the cobblestones.

  They are dancing in the dark, with her feet somehow following his, her hair flying out behind her, the honey gold of the market and the floodlit white of the Opera House racing around like images in a magic lantern against the indigo blue of the sky. She can feel the ground beneath her feet, Alf’s arms strong enough to support her if she stumbles, and, as they twirl and twirl, fear turns to courage, and surprise becomes a giddy sensation of such elation that when the song finally ends, she collapses against his chest, breathless and laughing. And it is perfect.

  Epilogue

  Thank goodness for that! Frances thinks as she hears them come in. She can tell by all the whispering and laughing and shushing that they have had a lovely time.

  She remembers when she came to this house for the first time, how exciting it was to be at the start of a great adventure with Ivo. They couldn’t make each other happy forever, but that didn’t make the beginning and the middle any less wonderful.

  Alf will be a good father. He was perfectly sweet with the twins.

  It won’t be easy, but they will manage.

  Perhaps they’ll all live in Palatine Road, and who knows, maybe she’ll be able to help look after the baby, so that Letty can finish her degree, and he can go to dance school?

  And maybe Oscar will give Alf a job. He’s certainly got the looks for a West End leading man. Oscar will absolutely adore him! She wonders if Alf can sing, but she knows that now is not the time to barge in and demand to hear him.

  Maybe Oscar and Raj will bring their baby round too? She’ll operate a family crèche! She will buy a twin pram and push the babies round the little park at the end of the street, and get to do the bit of mothering she missed out on.

  Grandmothering, she reminds herself.