Not Playing the Game
Page 23
He felt a total fool. He was behaving just as he had with Charlotte all those years ago when he’d worn her down into marrying him, knowing she didn’t love him but choosing to disregard the danger, hoping, somehow, it would work.
The taxi stopped outside a large apartment block. Dan paid the driver and walked up the steps to a panel of door buttons. He found Mickey’s name and within a moment heard her voice over the intercom.
‘Dan?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’
A buzzing sound came from the door lock and he entered the building and took the elevator to the eighth floor. Suddenly he was quite overcome with tiredness and the disadvantaged sense of looking a wreck; and as the lift slowed and halted and the doors parted there was Mickey, looking young as hell in a blue tracksuit, no make-up, her dark hair long and loose, her feet bare. And, of course, she looked no different to the way she always had, it was only in memory and imagination that he’d distorted the image, the expression; most of all over the past few hours during which time she’d become distant and wary, even hostile.
She smiled warmly and stepped towards him, offering to take his case.
‘Such a surprise,’ she said. ‘I’m so pleased.’
Then her smile went. ‘What is it? Has something happened?’
The elevator doors snapped shut behind him and Dan felt the frown in the muscles of his face.
‘No. No, of course not,’ he said, attempting to recover himself.
They moved along the corridor and he followed her into the apartment.
‘Are you sure there’s nothing?’ she said, looking at him again as she closed the door.
He gazed back at her.
‘Mickey, I’ve come all this way . . .’ he paused, ‘I could have pretended that it was business but I might as well make an utter fool of myself and get it over with.’
Her expression became puzzled.
‘This is going to be embarrassing for both of us,’ he continued. ‘I had the notion that it was now or never, that it couldn’t wait any longer. My God, the clichés! You see what I mean about making a fool of myself!’ He started to laugh.
Mickey, still puzzled, smiled again and said: ‘At least do it in comfort. Come and sit down. Let me get you something to drink.’
She edged past him to lead through to the living room with its subdued lighting and low-slung seating. Dan, now awkward in everything, struggled to remove his jacket – he was still wearing the formal clothes of a conservative politician.
‘What would you like?’ Mickey called to him.
‘Coffee. Black coffee, please.’
He sank back into the sofa cushions of a beige velvet sofa. He felt too far gone to care any more about the foolishness, besides, he’d already said too much; but he waited, nervously, for her to come to him. He glanced round the room. Three framed photographs were grouped on a bookcase, two containing Mickey’s sister, Laura, one of them with a child. The third, much smaller, was of a baby. There was no sign of David, but that photograph was probably in the bedroom. Dan sighed. He felt horribly middle-aged and decidedly poor competition against the confident and athletic-looking ‘Man of the Match’.
Mickey came in with coffee and a look of expectation that meant he would have to continue with the gruelling confession of God knows what: ‘This is the big romantic gesture,’ or ‘I’ve come to tell you I’ve decided that I want to love you – that I think I do love you.’ Could it be that simple?
‘Very black coffee,’ Mickey announced, holding a cup out to him.
‘Oh, I’ve missed you,’ she said then.
Dan was jolted into the immediate. The nature of Mickey’s missing him had the sound of capitulation.
‘David?’ he questioned.
‘Not any more,’ she said, still holding on to the cup which he’d not yet taken.
‘Do you think we can give it a go?’
‘I really think we should,’ she said.
‘We’d be mad not to.’
‘Quite mad. Do you want this coffee?’
He took it from her and she slid down beside him. He put his arm round her and rested his against the back of the sofa. He was quite exhausted but this was one of those very few moments of utter happiness.
For a while they remained in this attitude, soaking up the contentment, each thinking how nearly the chance might have been lost through misunderstanding and caution. Then they began to talk.
‘It could easily have been the other way round,’ Mickey said. ‘It could have been me coming to you. I’m flying back to England in two weeks’ time – just for a few days. Josephine’s baby is being christened and she’s asked me to be godmother.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘Because of David? No. It sounds a bit high-minded and magnanimous but that’s not how it is. I don’t think I’d have any right to those sort of feelings. It’s more a sense of owing that baby something; but maybe I’m just attracted by the sophistication of Josephine’s asking me,’ she added, self-deprecatingly.
‘I’ll have to be back in London by Tuesday,’ Dan said, ‘but I should be able to get everything cleared up by the time you’re ready to return to New York.’
‘We can spend the rest of the summer together,’ she said.
‘And then?’
‘Oh, you’ll probably have had enough of me by then.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Dan said. He leaned forward and took some of the coffee. ‘Tell me what you’ve been doing, besides working. What sort of a life do you have here?’
She ran her fingers through her hair and curled her bare feet into the plush material of the sofa. The question sounded ever so slightly loaded, but there had been no other men.
‘Not exactly riotous,’ she said, ‘except that I’ve taken up tennis.’ Mentioning this induced the sense of pleasure she took in the game and her gaze fell to the three, newly strung specialist graphite rackets stacked in their cases on the lower bookshelf. A few inches above, the photograph of Josephine’s baby caught her eye. When it had arrived she’d studied it closely, searching for a resemblance; and there was something, although she couldn’t exactly say what it was.
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