A Funny Thing Happened...

by Caroline Anderson

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  His fingertip stroked her arm, tracing the words ‘Won Award’ that she’d written on it last night, and she shifted in his arms so she could see him. ‘Did I tell you how proud I am of you?’ she murmured.

  ‘You said something, but don’t let that stop you saying it again,’ he said with a smile, echoing her words of the night before.

  She smiled and cupped his cheek, loving the feel of the stubble against her palm. She was going to miss him when she went back—

  ‘Jemima, I love you,’ he said suddenly, and her hand froze against his jaw. ‘Actually, I think I’ve loved you since you were six.’ His jaw worked slightly, and he gave a self-conscious laugh and turned his head so his lips were soft against her palm. His hand came up and took hers, cradling it, and he shifted so they were lying face to face. ‘I know I love you now, like I’ve never loved anyone. It’s never felt like this—as if I daren’t let you go because you’re the most important thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.’

  ‘Oh, Sam,’ she whispered, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘I love you, too.’

  ‘Many me, Jem?’ he murmured. ‘Stay with me for ever. I need you so much.’

  The tears spilled over and splashed on their hands, and a huge pain welled inside her. ‘Oh, Sam, how can I? I’ve got the cows—’

  ‘Owen wants them. You could sell them to him.’

  ‘It’s more than that—Sam, I got away from London because I hated it, and this weekend has just reminded me how much. I don’t belong here—’

  ‘We could move—we don’t have to live here if you don’t like it—’

  ‘I do! I love the flat—all of this complex. I think it’s wonderful, and I think you should be really proud of what you’ve achieved. It isn’t that. It’s—it’s the people. All the bright and beautiful people, all chasing some unattainable dream—Sam, I hate it. It’s so false. There’s nobody here like Owen or your grandparents—people you can depend on in a crisis. The people you mix with are all too busy chasing their own dreams to have time for anyone else.’

  ‘I think that’s a little harsh,’ he said quietly. ‘I have a lot of friends I can depend on.’

  ‘So do I—but they aren’t here, Sam, and they never will be.’

  His fingers traced her jaw, trembling, and his eyes were sad and a little lost. ‘Jemima, I love you.’

  ‘I love you, too, Sam, but it isn’t enough.’

  ‘It should be—’

  ‘It isn’t I know it isn’t. You forget, I spent years working in matrimonial law with people who couldn’t live together even though they loved each other. And in the end, the love’s destroyed. I’m sorry, Sam, I can’t. I can’t marry you and live here—I wouldn’t be me, and after a while you wouldn’t want me. I couldn’t bear that.’

  ‘I’ll always want you.’ His eyes closed and he pulled her into his arms and crushed her against him. ‘Think about it,’ he said, and he sounded choked. ‘Think about it and let me know. Don’t rush.’

  ‘I don’t need to rush—’

  ‘Shh. Not now. Let me love you.’ His hands slid under the shirt and cupped her breasts, and his mouth found hers with desperate urgency.

  Jemima’s heart ached. Whatever he might say it was the last time, their swansong, and she could hardly bear it. Their lovemaking was bittersweet, almost silent except for their muffled cries, and at the end she wasn’t sure if the tears on her cheeks were Sam’s or her own...

  He drove her home later that morning, again almost in silence. There was nothing to say except the words neither of them wanted to hear, and so they didn’t talk. Instead he held her hand, cradled against his thigh, and she fought back the tears and tried not to think about losing him.

  When at last he pulled into the farmyard and refused a cup of tea she was almost glad, because she couldn’t bear to prolong the goodbye. He saw her to the door, put her case inside and then met her eyes.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ he murmured unsteadily. ‘Just think about what I said. We wouldn’t have to live there--there are other places.’

  She shook her head numbly. ‘I can’t go back to London, Sam. I’m sorry. You’ll never know how sorry, but I can’t.’ She touched his cheek with her roughened hand, and it just seemed to point up all their differences.

  ‘I love you,’ she told him, and forced herself to meet his eyes. They seemed to flinch at her words, but he didn’t look away.

  ‘Just not enough,’ he finished.

  ‘Our worlds are just too far apart now, and I can’t go back. I’ve made the great escape, and I’m a different person. That doesn’t mean I don’t love you, or think you’re wonderful, because I do.’ Her eyes filled and flooded over, and with a gruff cry he pulled her into his arms and crushed her against his chest.

  ‘Jem, don’t,’ he whispered raggedly. He let her go, stepping back and striding away, then he turned and came back, taking her mouth in a kiss so desperate it was almost savage.

  Then he turned on his heel and went back down the path almost at a run.

  ‘Goodbye, Sam,’ she called, but her words were lost in the roar of the engine and the scrunch of tyres as he whipped out into the lane and sped off.

  She sagged against the doorpost, her legs like jelly, and listened to the fading sound of his car. It drifted away to nothing, and then came the steady, rhythmic crunching of heavy footfalls on the path.

  She blinked and focused on a dear, familiar face, and then it swam again, blurring into the background.

  ‘Oh, dear. Like that, is it?’ Owen said softly, and she fell into his arms and cried until she thought her heart would break.

  Sam drove aimlessly for a while, then turned back. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but somehow he found himself on his grandparents’ drive. His grandmother came out, dusting flour off her hands, took one look at him and wheeled him into the kitchen by the Aga.

  ‘We won the award,’ he told her expressionlessly.

  ‘I know—your mother rang. Congratulations—but that wasn’t what you came to tell me.’

  ‘No.’ Misery settled over him like a soggy blanket, and he slumped into a chair and leant his head against the wall, closing his eyes. ‘I’ve done something rather stupid.’

  She put the kettle on. He could hear her, clattering around, running taps and opening the tea caddy—comforting, familiar sounds that soothed him.

  She slid a cup of tea across the table to him, and he opened his eyes and leant over it, chasing a bubble round the top with a fingertip. ‘I asked Jemima to marry me.’

  She said nothing, just waited, and he felt a huge lump rise up and threaten to choke him.

  ‘She said no,’ he got out past the lump, and squeezed his eyes shut. He had this insane, overwhelming urge to crawl onto her lap and cry his eyes out, and he pressed his fingers into his eyes and struggled to control his breathing. When it was a little steadier he opened his eyes and found his grandmother looking at him with sympathy.

  ‘Don’t be nice to me, for God’s sake,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘All right, I won’t. I take it the problem is where you both work?’

  He nodded.

  ‘And she won’t move to London, of course. She hated it. She was miserable when she arrived here, but she was still happier with her cows and chickens than she had been in the city.’

  He nodded miserably.

  ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  He shrugged. ‘Go back to London and try and forget about her, I suppose,’ he said with commendable calm.

  ‘Before or after you let go of that pain that’s eating a hole in you?’

  His chest heaved, and the next thing he knew his face was buried in a warm, soft bosom, a kindly hand was cradling the back of his head, and he was howling his eyes out like a baby.

  The weeks dragged by. Jemima felt exhausted, pulled down by the weather and the pain of saying goodbye to Sam, and so she turned the cows out early and let them chur
n up the still-soft pasture. It was stupid, and she’d probably regret it later, but just now she was too tired to muck out and too poor to get the tractor foxed.

  With that in mind, she went to Dorchester on the bus, taking the little black dress back to the nearly-new shop, and was paid for one of her suits that had sold.

  Feeling rich, she went into a little coffee shop and bought a coffee and a Danish pastry, and had to leave them and run outside, suddenly queasy. She went to a park, sat down and stared at her cracked and work-worn hands, waggling her fingers and counting weeks.

  Five—well, five and a half weeks since she’d fallen in the river, three weeks since she’d seen him last. Probably seven weeks since her last period.

  No wonder she was tired.

  She went to a chemist, bought a pregnancy test kit and took it home. She looked at it for two hours before she could bring herself to do the test, and when the little strip turned blue her heart thumped.

  She was pregnant. Sam’s baby was growing inside her, and in seven months or so she would be a mother. ‘A baby, Noodle. What do you think of that?’ she said to the dog, and she wagged her curly little tail and grinned.

  Jemima sat down on the kitchen chair with a thump, and stared at the strip. She’d brought it downstairs from the bathroom with her and couldn’t bring herself to throw it out, just in case. In case of what, she didn’t even consider.

  Jess, lying outside on the step, growled menacingly and began to bark, and Jemima stuffed the little strip into the kitchen bin hastily.

  ‘Hello, Owen,’ she called through the door, and her neighbour came in, Jess growling at his heels, and nodded to her.

  ‘You all right?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘I think so. How’s your arm?’

  He waggled it, newly out of plaster, and winced. ‘Bit on the tender side. Been overdoing it, of course. See you’ve put the beasts out.’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. They were—um—getting a bit much, without the tractor to do the mucking out’

  He put the kettle on and sat himself down opposite her, fiddling with a box lying on the table. ‘Don’t suppose you want to sell them to me as a wedding present?’

  ‘No, I don’t—a what? Owen, you dark horse! Congratulations!‘ She leapt up and went round to hug him, and Jess growled threateningly from her position by the Rayburn. ’Jess, shut up, he’s not getting married to me.’

  The dog subsided, and Owen, once he’d finished blushing, told Jem all about it. ‘Seems she’s had a soft spot for me for ages, but didn’t like to say so. When I asked her out and she said no, she was just playing it cool, expecting I’d ask her again.’

  ‘Except that you didn’t.’

  ‘No—not for nearly a year. Stupid, isn’t it? Still, I’d spent a lot of time in there, chatting to her over the bar, so I suppose we got to know each other a bit like that.’

  ‘And now you’ve asked her to marry you and she’s said yes?’

  He nodded. ‘I love her,’ he confessed, looking a little uncomfortable with this admission of rank sentiment, and his eyes fell on the box he’d been playing with.

  Jemima, blushing furiously, snatched it out of his way but not before he’d registered what it was.

  ‘Jem?’ he murmured.

  ‘Don’t you tell a soul,’ she threatened, wagging a finger at him.

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘Of course Sam!’ she exclaimed, scandalised. ‘Who else?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. You city types do things different.’

  ‘I am not a city type,’ she said firmly.

  ‘No? Sorry. I could have sworn you were, with that fancy car you turned up in first of all—’

  ‘That was then. This is now—and now I’m not a city type. I don’t know if I ever really was.’ She made them tea and sat down, and Owen stirred enough sugar into it to turn it to syrup and regarded her steadily.

  ‘So, what are you going to do about it?’ he asked.

  ‘The baby? Have it, of course.’

  ‘And carry on here?’

  ‘Yes—well, I don’t know,’ she added, trailing to a halt ‘Oh, Owen, I don’t suppose I’ll be able to, will I? The thing is, without the herd I can’t afford the mortgage I had to take out to pay Uncle Tom’s debts, and if I’m going back to work what would I want with all this lot?’

  She gestured towards the window, and beyond it the farmyard, the cows, the hens, the pasture, the woodland—all of it needing maintenance, and that meant money. ‘I suppose I’ll have to go back to work.’

  ‘As a solicitor?’

  She nodded. ‘Yes. I hated it—well, dealing with divorces, anyway. I suppose I could do another branch of law—conveyancing or something.’

  ‘You wouldn’t reconsider marrying Sam?’

  She shook her head. ‘Not if it means marrying half of London. Owen, you should have seen them all. You’d think they owned him, and he can deal with it. I can’t.’

  ‘Would you have to?’

  She shrugged. ‘The flat’s open-plan and beautiful. That’s where he works. There’s no way a baby would fit in there. It would distract him, and there would be sticky fingermarks on the plate glass and the suede furniture, and it would fall down the stairs and brain it self--no, it wouldn’t work.’

  She sipped her tea and looked across the mug at Owen. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to buy a herd of cows as a wedding present for Jenny?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  SAM was busy.

  He was busier than he’d ever been in his life, even at the end of the Maltings project, and that suited him down to the ground. He didn’t like being alone in the flat with nothing to do, because every time he stood at the balcony doors he thought of Jemima. Every time he sat on the settee he thought of Jemima. Every time he lay down alone in his bed he thought of Jemima.

  He didn’t know missing someone could cause such disruption, could bleed all the colour from a glorious day, could take all the laughter out of even the funniest film.

  Music killed him—the songs they’d danced to, all the bittersweet love songs that seemed to be playing in every shop he went into. Even his classical music was a no-go area, and he’d taken to listening to Radio 4 in the car.

  He seemed to be spending his life in the car. The project that had followed the Maltings was under way, didn’t seem to need much of his attention and left time for following up all the enquiries he’d had after the award had become his.

  Oddly enough, several of them were south-west of London—Surrey, Hampshire, Wiltshire—even one in Dorset, although not as far west as Jemima. So he drove, and he lunched with clients, and he drove on again for dinner with other clients, and inevitably someone would ask about Jemima.

  ‘We aren’t seeing each other any more,’ he’d explain, and stifle the pain the words caused.

  His parents were harder to deal with, because they worried about him constantly and said he looked awful.

  He did look awful. He’d taken to avoiding the mirror except in emergencies, and even then he couldn’t meet his own eyes. There was something too wounded, too deep to deal with lurking in their sunken depths, and so he didn’t look and carried on working as long as they would stay open, and then fell into bed and tried not to think of the soft warmth of Jemima’s body snuggled up against him, or the gentle touch of her hands, or the incredible tenderness of her embrace.

  Then one day, about five weeks after the opening, he had a phone call from one of his clients.

  ‘Sam? Darling, it’s Moya. I need you to come over and go through these plans with me again—we’ve changed our minds about the roof garden, and we thought—well, look, could you come over? It’s awfully hard to explain.’

  His heart sank. Moya Kennedy was a difficult woman, terminally indecisive and spoilt to death. ‘Sure, Moya,’ he agreed without enthusiasm. ‘When?’

  ‘Today?’

  He looked at his schedule. He had a client in London at eleven, then another at three. He’d planned to
get his hair cut and go for a walk around another site he was tendering for in between, but—

  ‘How about twelve-thirty, quarter to one?’

  ‘Lovely—I’ll give you lunch. You’re a darling.’

  He didn’t feel like a darling. He went to his first client, had difficulty parking and narrowly escaped a fine. He didn’t want the job, anyway. He didn’t agree with the client about what was right for the house, and so he declined the opportunity to design the alterations. The client then took the hump and got very sniffy about it, and he left knowing he’d burned his boats with a large section of the Hampstead community.

  Oh, well, tough. He was busy enough anyway. He headed for Moya’s house, parked in the road outside on a double yellow line and went in. He’d stick the parking fine on her bill, he decided.

  ‘Sam, darling, do come in.’

  He did a mild double take. Moya was dressed—if that was the word—in a very skimpy little negligee over not a lot, he suspected, and her sunbed goggles were perched in her expensively streaked hair. There was the odd strand of grey in it now, he noticed—probably more, under the streaks. He went past her into the hall, and, gathering up a tray of nibbles, she ushered him up to the top floor where they were planning a roof garden off their bedroom.

  ‘I’ll bring this up with us and we can eat while we look at the plans—to save time.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Sam agreed, following her to the top of the house. ‘I’m a bit pushed today. So, what was the problem?’

  ‘Oh, we’ve got a few changes we wanted to make—we thought a conservatory might be nice over part of it, but then we thought—well, look, here are the designs. Rob’s scribbled a few notes for you, but he’s had to go away and he’s left me all alone. You look at them while I get something on—you caught naughty me on the sunbed, napping. Back in a tick. Have a nibble.’

  She set the tray down on the bed, patted his arm and disappeared into the bathroom.

  He scanned the notes scattered on the bed, sitting down on the edge while he ran his eye over the changes.