How I Wonder What You Are

by Jane Lovering

  ‘What?’ I repeated, irritated for some reason I couldn’t put my finger on. ‘What do you mean?’

  He chewed his lip and tipped his head back. Those incredible eyes, accentuated behind his glasses, seemed to be reaching into my brain, slowly unpacking all my tawdry secrets and I felt my palms get a little sweaty. There was something in that look, something uncalled for and yet something I half-wanted to see, a cool appraisal of me as a woman. ‘I told you about Suze. It would be nice if you felt you could tell me a bit about yourself in return.’

  I felt my hackles rise. ‘Sorry, I didn’t realise it was some kind of “tit for tat” confessional thing we had going on. I thought you told me about your wife to stop me wasting unnecessary sympathy on you, not so that I’d be obliged to give you chapter and verse on my own nasty little secrets.’

  Stan, seeming to sense that this one was going to run and run, put his head down and started to graze. Phinn didn’t move. ‘We don’t have a “thing going on” as you put it, as though you’ve been possessed by some kind of Spirit of Nineteen Fifty. I told you what happened because … because you seemed to care. And because I thought you needed to know that relationships are – well, they’re not all good. You aren’t alone in having screwed up yours, it happens to all of us some time or another.’

  ‘I did not screw up! I did everything right, everything that I should have done. It was Tim who screwed up.’

  Phinn just raised his eyebrows and uncrossed his arms so that he could shrug. ‘Yeah, okay,’ he said, with disbelief in every line of his body.

  I slithered down off Stan so that I could confront him better. ‘Yes! He cheated on me, he ran off and left me, and the worst of it all is that he didn’t even go off with someone young and sexy and gorgeous; he ran off with my mother,’ and then I’d said it and it couldn’t be unsaid and I was left standing biting my tongue, trying to decide whether I wanted to burst into tears or kill the man in front of me.

  He stepped away from the stone. ‘There,’ he said, and his voice was gentle now. ‘That wasn’t so hard, was it?’ Then he patted me on the shoulder and headed off down the path.

  ‘Wha—wait a minute, is that it?’ I trotted after him and, after a moment’s consideration, Stan trotted after me. ‘You trick me into saying something like that and then all you can do is walk away?’

  Phinn stopped again, so quickly that I bumped into him. ‘What were you expecting me to do?’ he asked over his shoulder.

  ‘I don’t know! A small show of concern might be nice.’

  His jacket brushed against me as he turned round. He was so close I could smell woodsmoke and soap from his clothes and feel the trace of warmth he was giving off. ‘Concern, hmmm. Okay.’ Chilly hands touched my face, his eyes hung before me like holes in the sky, and then his lips brushed against mine bringing a warmth greater than the sun. ‘Enough concern?’ He stood back.

  I stared at him. ‘You kissed me,’ I said with, I think, understandable aggrievement.

  ‘Yes, I know. My face was on this side of it.’

  ‘Why?’

  Now I got the first hint of uncertainty from him. ‘It … You wanted concern. It was either that or phone Crimewatch. Why, what did you think I was going to do?’

  ‘I didn’t know! Not that!’

  Stan nudged me between the shoulder blades and I turned around to fuss with his headcollar, anything to avoid having to look at Phinn. Even that brief physical contact had made me pink and sweaty under my coat and I was having to restrain myself from running a finger over my lips in a bewildered way. ‘I just thought you might say something.’

  There was no reply and when I looked back I found that he was ten yards away, moving swiftly over the soft heather and bracken like a ghost.

  We walked back to the village in silence. At the bottom of the track, Phinn, still a little way ahead, stopped and turned. ‘I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to … I’m feeling a bit shaky, my responses are a bit off and I’m seriously not behaving normally. Believe me, kissing women without at least a written invitation in triplicate, is completely atypical.’

  Stan got more fussing. He gave me an ‘am I going to die?’ look, and then bit my shoulder in response, but it was useful to have something to look at that wasn’t Phinn. ‘No. You were right, you were just showing concern, I’m completely out of the loop on … well, being kissed like that.’

  ‘What the hell did Tim do then, Masonic handshakes?’ He hunched himself against the wind and poked his hands into his pockets. I wasn’t sure if it was the weather conditions or the subject of the conversation that was making him so uncomfortable.

  ‘My boyfriends … even before Tim … they’ve all been, well, older. Than me, I mean, not, like older than God or something,’ I added, hastily. ‘I was a bit of a …’ I tried to think of a way of summing up my teenage years and early twenties without making me sound as though I’d never worn knickers, ‘… a bit of a wild child. I liked older men.’

  Phinn gave me a smile that looked pulled down at the corners. ‘I think you’ll find, physiologically, we’re pretty much the same. Lips, teeth, noses, all that. Age doesn’t really come into it much. Unless,’ and his smile went a bit oddly-shaped, ‘we’re talking dentures.’

  ‘I meant …’ I said, and stopped. How did I sum up the difference between all my previous kisses and the one he’d given me? The difference between a kiss that had always had something of the business transaction about it, trading my youth and energy for financial solvency and solid security and Phinn’s almost tender tentativeness. ‘I have to go and put Stan away.’

  Phinn sighed. It made him sound empty. ‘Of course. Goodnight,’ and with an additional hunch to his shoulders he turned towards Howe End, walking as though he’d given away a fortune.

  ‘Phinn!’ Driven not to let it end this way, I called after him, watched his stride break as though he couldn’t make up his mind whether to turn, stop or walk back to me and his legs were waiting for a final decision.

  ‘We’ll talk about the lights later. Tomorrow. Another day. Goodnight, Molly.’ He spoke without turning round, raising a hand in a loose-wristed farewell gesture, and I watched him all the way down to the bridge before I turned Stan and headed him back to the yard and possibly the most energetic brushing session he’d had for months.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Phinn sat in the farmhouse kitchen without switching on the big torch that Link had thoughtfully left for him. The darkness felt appropriately heavy and he stretched his arms out over the table and rested his head on them, letting its weight settle over him like snow.

  Every time he thought about kissing her, enough conflicting emotions arose for a small war to break out in his chest. Had he really done it? Had it really been him? He’d kissed women recklessly before … well, all right, not recklessly, he was a physicist and physics and recklessness tend to go together like cats and explosions, but he’d kissed without due care and attention. Some of those women had even kissed him back. But Molly …

  He groaned as the embarrassment flooded his face with heat, and then buried his head deeper in his arms. Whhhhhhhyyyy? Oh God, please let this all have been a terrible dream.

  He’d first kissed Suze in the park on the hottest day of summer. And she’d kissed back, oh, had she ever, they’d barely made it back to his flat before … Phinn slammed a fist on the table and the sound echoed around the bare room, filling the corners with his hurt. Was that what I wanted Molly to do? Drag me home with her and strip me slowly in that little bedroom? Pull me into her bed and whisper me into making love? The squeeze in his groin was purely physical and wasn’t reaffirmed by his brain, for which he felt curiously glad. No. That’s not Molly. That was Suze, sex used to overcome the distance between us. Molly is … I don’t want it to be like that with her.

  But that just begged the question, what did he want it to be like? He groaned again and banged his head on the tabletop to try to knock some sense into his brain. Nothing. I don’t wa
nt it to be like anything. I don’t want it, full stop.

  * * *

  I lay sleeplessly watching the moon-thrown shadows of my curtains slowly moving down the wall as the hours passed. Every so often I would fall into a doze only to be thrown back to wakefulness by the memory of Phinn’s cold hands cupping my chin and the warmth of his mouth on mine. Then I would be forced to punch the pillow until the hot, hard feeling of embarrassment went away.

  What had I expected? I sat up in the bed, hugging my knees, horrible little flashbacks projected against the dark walls of me as I’d been before. I closed my eyes but they were still there, running in the back of my brain, the memories of the way I’d used my vulnerability to persuade men to help me, to comfort me, to save me.

  And then, Phinn. Who looked far more in need of comfort and saving than I ever had, and yet I’d still tried the same trick on him, that old ‘I’m just a likkle girlie who needs a big, strong man’s arms around her’. Oh God.

  I should cut myself some slack, I really should. I thought I’d found the right man in Tim, he’d ticked all the boxes. Older, financially stable, nice car, heading for the top of his career – not that investigative journalism really had a ‘top’ as such, simply not getting shot was usually good enough – and seemingly sufficiently fond of me to propose and start making wedding plans.

  Bastard.

  I punched the pillows again. Small downy feathers drifted from the pillowcase where my stress-relief methods had perforated something and I decided to get up and make tea. Anything which might distract me from this constant loop of shame and horror that I seemed to have locked myself into.

  Halfway down the stairs I was once again assailed by the memory of Phinn’s face, looking slightly shell-shocked as he’d moved away from me, letting his fingers trail the length of my cheekbones before falling to his sides. His eyes, huge and full of starlight. His expression, not of pity but of understanding, as though he could somehow comprehend how utterly humiliating it had been to find that my fiancé had been having an affair with my mother; that he’d called off our wedding not because of the mythical ‘overseas job offer’ that he hadn’t been able to turn down but because he couldn’t work out how to explain things to his friends. Because, oh yes, he’d managed to run the whole double-life thing for six months, escorting me to journalistic functions, taking me around to whatever ‘do’ required the presence of his co-award winner. Whilst, at the same time, quietly dating her and, when the school at which she taught had a Christmas dinner-dance for the staff, turning out in a tuxedo and jiving the night away.

  This time I kicked the wall. The pain was like a message from another world telling me to concentrate, not to let myself get sucked in to reliving that horrible, humiliating time; that Phinn wasn’t Tim. That I should just accept the kiss for what it was – sympathy and understanding portrayed in the only way that made sense at that moment – forget it and move on. The girl I’d been before … that wasn’t me any more. I should realise that just because Phinn had kissed me didn’t mean there was any obligation on either side to leap into bed, relinquish my existence to please a man for as long as it took for me to see the next best opportunity.

  As I hopped down the rest of the stairs and into the kitchen, holding my injured toe and swearing slightly, I made up my mind. Yes, I kind of fancied Phinn, but that was all it was. A physical attraction to someone with a good body, a cute face and a nice smile. That was all. It was allowed. It didn’t have to be acted upon. We barely knew one another, and as far as I could tell, the only thing we had in common was a preoccupation with the mysterious lights. Hardly even a basis for a flat-share, let alone the exchange of bodily fluids.

  I fetched a packet of frozen peas from the freezer and stuck them on my foot while I staggered about making the tea. The big hot flushes of shame were dying down now, probably because it’s hard to overheat with three pounds of petit pois on your instep, although I was still getting the occasional memory-rush that made me sweat … Daniel driving me to work every morning and waiting to drive me home; Simon, who took me for a week to the South of France where he got tired of my flirting with his friends; Marcus who owned the polo ponies and let me ride his best horses whenever I liked … I’d used every one of them. Slept with them for what I could get, and never really cared a damn about anyone. Had I really cared about Tim? Or did I care more about what he’d done to me?

  I made the tea, took it back upstairs, and was asleep before I’d taken a single sip.

  * * **

  Next morning I got back in from raking another six inches of hair off Stan, who was either losing his winter coat or attempting to grow himself a friend, then sat down to chill my now throbbing foot and grab another densely-packed chapter of folklore. It was fascinating. There had been a sighting of a giant black dog outside the building that was now the pub. It had followed a man all the way along the street only to vanish into the wall of my cottage. I stared at the wall for a few moments, almost as if I expected it to reappear, then read on. There was an entire chapter based on the well-known-in-the-village fact that the hill I regularly rode over supposedly housed a dragon nursing its hoard of gold. I gave a little shiver and the bag of frozen peas fell off my foot.

  I carefully rebalanced them and read on, a short and rather thin-on-detail paragraph about a ghostly white hare which haunted the village fringe where Riverdale adjoined the moorland. My pleasurable frisson of fear was curtailed by the ringing of the phone.

  ‘Hi, Mike.’

  ‘’Ow did you know it was me, babe?’

  ‘I’ve got caller display. What’s up?’

  There was a rasping sound, which was probably Mike scratching his cheek with his pencil. ‘’Ow’re you goin’ on the folklore thing? Can you run to a long piece or shall I just shove some more pictures in?’

  ‘It’ll be fine. I’ve got lots of material.’ I looked at the thin book lying on my chair. ‘Well, quite a bit anyway. Don’t worry. It’s not like you to start badgering me; you know I’m good for coming in before deadline. What’s up?’

  ‘It’s not so much you this time, love. That guy you asked about a column for? The one in the YouTube clip? ’Ow well do you know ’im?’

  And all the carefully structured arguments came rushing back into my brain on a tide of blood which heated my face to near-ignition point. ‘Why? What does it matter? I mean, we’re just friends, of course, there’s nothing more in it than that, in fact I’d hardly even say “friends”, more like casual acquaintances. If that. Barely know the guy.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mike sniffed. ‘Okay.’

  ‘Why?’ If I sounded suspicious it was with good reason. How could Mike possibly know anything about Phinn and me? Had someone been spying on us? Had the kiss reached as far as London?

  ‘You know I works for the Beeb sometimes? Nature programme stuff? Well, I’ve got a mate makin’ this kind of real-world look at sci-fi,’ which Mike pretentiously pronounced ‘skiffy’. ‘’E’d got some guy lined up to front it all, cheap version of Brian Cox or summin’, guy’s only gone and fallen down some bloody mountain or another, six months in a specialist unit they reckon. My bloke came to me and I showed ’im that clip you sent me … d’you reckon your man would be up for it?’

  ‘What, Phinn?’

  ‘’E’s got the “look”. Apparently. ’Ee don’t look no different to any other bloke to me, but then I’m not some steamin’ poofter from Production. Get ’im to give us a ring, love, will ya? I can put the two of them in touch. Hey, your man there could be lookin’ at fame, fortune and beatin’ ’ot girlies off with a stick!’

  The thought of Phinn being faced with hot girlies made the bag of peas fall off my foot again. ‘I’ll pass the message on,’ I said, my voice a little on the quiet side. ‘I can’t promise anything though.’

  ‘’S fine, babe. Look after yourself.’ And Mike was gone, leaving me with a supernaturally red face, a swollen foot, and the need to call round at Howe End. I debated various other met
hods of contacting Phinn which didn’t involve facing him, but eventually had to concede that none of them would work and limped down the road in a pair of sandals, my toe being too sore to accommodate my usual boots.

  When I got there Link was sitting outside with a spiral bound notebook on his lap and his mobile on the grass beside him.

  ‘Morning.’ He looked up at me, narrowing his eyes against the sun. ‘Bax has just gone down to the shop, ran out of milk. You haven’t got any more bacon on you, have you?’

  ‘Sorry, no.’ I looked down at the notebook where he’d been working, lines in pencil scored through, overwritten, circled around and with additional words written in the marginated edges of the page. ‘What are you writing?’

  Link rummaged a hand through his hair. ‘You’re not going to laugh, are you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose it depends. I mean, if you’re writing love letters to Nigella Lawson or something, then I might snigger a bit.’ I crouched down beside him, carefully propping my foot to one side. ‘But if it’s the creative outpourings of a mind filled with angst, then no I won’t. Probably.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. Writing to Nigella, that is. Although, phwoar, I wouldn’t say no to a bite of her ravioli … okay. No, this is my job, only it’s not exactly the most macho of earners so I tend to keep it all a bit quiet. I write greeting card verses.’

  ‘What, that “roses are red, violets are blue, you are a nutjob and I smell of pooh”? That sort of thing?’ I was trying to read his compositions upside down but the combination of terrible handwriting and faint pencil was defeating me.

  ‘Almost exactly nothing like that. Why is there no mobile signal in the village?’ He changed the subject with an adroitness that told me the subject of his creative talents was closed. ‘It’s ridiculous. I can’t even text. No Snapchat, nothing.’