Bittersweet Love

by Cathy Williams

  On the Wednesday, Eric phoned, excited, to inform her that he was going to be married on the Friday afternoon and would she be able to make it.

  ‘This Friday?’ Natalie asked, stunned at the speed with which his love life had recently progressed. ‘Isn’t that a bit soon? I thought you said next week.’

  ‘I know I’ve only known her a short time…’

  ‘But it’ s the real thing?’ She laughed, hoping that he would not live to see his optimism misplaced. It was one thing rushing off into marriage with someone you were desperately in love with, but time could wreak havoc with one’s illusions. She was fond of Eric. She hoped that he was doing the right thing, but there was no way that she would dream of lecturing to him about his decision.

  ‘You and Claire will be the only people there,’ he told her. ‘My parents are out of the country, though from the sound of their reception to the news I seriously doubt that they would have seen fit to attend.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re wrong,’ Natalie said.

  ‘You always were an optimist’

  Natalie patted her stomach unconsciously with an ironic half-smile. ‘Realist. Some situations you can’t change. You just have to make the best of them. What time on Friday?’ she asked, changing the subject, and they chatted for a while about the details.

  Natalie would have loved to speak to Anna, to see exactly how bowled over she was with Eric; after all, she had been quite taken with Kane, and Kane and Eric were hardly similar types. Curiosity, she thought, killed the cat. What if the answer to that isn’t what I want to hear? Anna might well see Eric as no more than a reliable meal ticket after the stimulating but insecure rollercoaster ride with Kane. A timely and convenient revenge. She hoped not.

  A sudden blitz of phone calls snapped her out of her train of thought, and for the remainder of the day she found herself struggling to do not only her own workload, but also that of the only other secretary who had taken the day off sick.

  She completely forgot to mention Friday to Tony, to tell him that she would be taking the time off work to go to the register office. It was only on Friday morning that she remembered her oversight, and she waited anxiously for him to appear through the door. Which he did, about half an hour before she was due to leave.

  Natalie stood up abruptly when she saw him, and said, Tony. I have to ask a favour of you. Is it all right if I leave work early this afternoon? In fact, in about twenty minutes’ time?’

  Tony looked at her, dismayed. ‘What about work?’ he asked. ‘Susie’s still not in!’

  ‘I’m more or less up to date with the important stuff,’ Natalie informed him. ‘But if you like I’ll take some work home with me.’

  He shook his head and smiled at her. ‘No need. You’ve been working hard. You deserve the time off. My wife says that I’m becoming an ogre. Work, work, work and not much else.’ The telephone rang and he picked it up, and Natalie collected her bag and jacket When he finished talking, he looked at her more closely. ‘Now that you mention it, you do look dressier than usual. Where are you off to?’

  She told him the name of the register office, glancing at her watch and realising that she would have to get her skates on if she was going to be there on time.

  ‘Register office?’ Tony followed her out to the door, his forehead creased into a frown.

  ‘Yes.’ Natalie looked at him breathlessly and said apologetically, ‘And I’m sorry I gave you such short notice, but you know how it is. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision on Eric’s part.’

  She smiled briefly and thought of Eric, the least likely person in the world she would have associated with spur-of-the-moment decisions, which only went to prove how love could make the average person act completely out of character.

  Tony was nodding. ‘Well, my dear, all the best.’

  Natalie gave him a vague smile and mumbled some-thing about passing it on to Eric, but her thoughts were already flying off to what Underground train she would need to catch and whether she should simply grab a taxi instead outside the office, and spare herself the trauma of taking the Tube.

  In the end, she caught a taxi and spent just as long sitting in traffic as if she had caught the connecting Tube trains to her destination.

  Eric was waiting outside, his eyes darting from the watch to the road. Anna, it transpired, had not yet arrived, and he laughed nervously at Natalie.

  ‘I’d hate to become a statistic.’

  ‘Statistic?’ Claire was running up the steps where her taxi had deposited her, and Natalie waved in her friend’s direction.

  ‘One of those men who get stood up at the altar.’

  ‘You won’t be,’ Natalie reassured him. ‘And, besides, there won’t be an altar.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Eric said drily, ‘I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.’

  Claire bounded up to them, her face flushed from the exertion of running, and hugged Natalie enthusiastically.

  ‘You haven’t called me in over a fortnight,’ she accused, and Natalie shot her a guilty look.

  ‘I haven’t been very sociable recently,’ she admitted. ‘In fact, I think I’ve forgotten where the phone in the flat is.’

  Claire giggled uncontrollably at that while Eric worriedly scoured the street for approaching taxis, in between nervously adjusting his tie.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Natalie whispered, ‘she’ll be here. She’s only fifteen minutes late. Have you met her?’ She turned to Claire who shook her head.

  ‘Actually, I’ve been rather busy myself. Out of the country for ten days. I’m only just getting back into the swing of things over here.’

  Just then, Eric muttered under his breath, ‘At long last,’ and both women turned to see Anna moving unhurriedly towards them while Eric gesticulated at his watch frantically.

  Claire’s mouth dropped open and Natalie whispered to her, ‘I think your jaws will become unhinged if you don’t close your mouth soon.’

  Claire’s teeth snapped together. ‘Is that her?’

  Eric was hurrying down to kiss Anna, a look of rapture on his face, and Natalie nodded drily. ‘Does she live up to your expectations?’

  ‘Wow! What does she see in my brother? Wasn’t she involved with your ex-boss? Correct me if I’m wrong, but he was way out of Eric’s league, wasn’t he?’

  Natalie tensed. Even talking about Kane had the ability to make her feel flustered and defensive, even when that talk was only casual conversation. His image might subside occasionally but it was always there, waiting to pop out against her will.

  ‘You’re right,’ Natalie answered, her voice a shade cooler, ‘he wasn’t in Eric’s league, by which I mean that Eric was way ahead of him in every respect.’

  Claire tore her eyes away from Anna, now swaying up the steps on Eric’s arm, and looked at Natalie with interest.

  ‘Do I detect a note of bitterness there?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Natalie said hurriedly, ‘just stating facts.’ She moved down, curious to see how Anna would respond to her, and much as she expected the other woman looked at her with a mixture of embarrassment and defensiveness.

  ‘Eric didn’t tell me that you would be here,’ she said petulantly, her fingers tightening on his arm, and Eric looked delighted at this small show of jealous pique.

  ‘I’ll try not to be obvious,’ Natalie said obligingly, and got a scowl for her efforts.

  They trooped quickly up to the building and after a few minutes of scouring signs managed to locate the general direction of the register office.

  It was a room. One room with some seats. They were shown in and told to wait, and Natalie looked around her curiously-Eric and Anna were talking under their breath, but even so their voices rebounded against the walls, reminding them how empty of people the place was.

  Not romantic, but that didn’t seem to bother either Eric or Anna overmuch. He was staring at her, besotted, and she, Natalie noticed, was responding with sheer delight. Adoration had its own pecu
liar sex appeal, and Anna was basking in Eric’s adoration. Natalie looked at the two of them with envy and a vague feeling of longing. I’ll never find anyone, she thought. There won’t be anyone there for me or for my baby.

  Eric glanced across at her and then walked towards her, while Claire meandered off to chat to Anna, making theatrical noises about really having to get to know her sister-in-law-to-be.

  ‘ Where’s this registrar?’ Eric asked Natalie in a peevish tone. ‘He’s late. Twenty minutes late.’

  Natalie looked vaguely at the door and shrugged her shoulders. ‘Maybe,’ she said with a stab at humour, ‘he’s got pre-wedding nerves.’

  Eric wasn’t paying her the slightest bit of attention. His eyes were fixed on the door as if he was willing it to open.

  ‘Besides,’ Natalie sounded, ‘it’ s a chance for Claire to chat to Anna a bit before you two tie the knot.’

  Eric turned to look at his sister and his wife-to-be who were standing towards the back of the room and he grunted something about supposing so. All the same, Natalie could understand his anxiety to get it all over and done with. She didn’t exactly relish the thought of standing around in the room for an indefinite length of time either. She wanted to get back to her flat. Not that she had anything planned. Recently, she seemed to be cultivating inactivity, even though she knew that it was not a healthy lifestyle.

  She opened her mouth to chat in platitudes to Eric, anything to put a stop to that awful nervous tension that seemed to be overwhelming him, when the door was pushed open. Hard. It banged back against the wall, and Eric said, ‘Thank God. Here at last,’ even though he looked faintly startled. Natalie had a polite smile plastered on her face, and she reassuringly squeezed Eric’s arm.

  But it wasn’t the registrar. What registrar, she asked herself afterwards, went around banging doors?

  It was Kane, and he definitely did not look as though he had come to wish the happy couple all the best.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ALL four stopped talking and stared at Kane in shocked amazement. It didn’t take much imagination to know how they looked—like four people who had personally seen Banquo’s ghost. It would have been comical, but Natalie didn’t feel much like laughing at all. She stared at Kane’s face while her mind desperately tried to work out what he was doing here.

  Eric was the first to break the silence. He laughed nervously and said in quite a controlled voice, considering the unexpected nature of the situation, ‘I thought you were the registrar.’ He cleared his throat and approached Kane to shake his hand. ‘He’s running a bit late.’ He held out his hand to Kane who looked at it as if it were something quite repellant and most probably contagious, and Eric’s face flushed with bewilderment and then anger. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he asked in a more aggressive tone. ‘I don’t recall having asked you.’ He shot a look towards Anna who was still stiff with shock.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Kane said grimly, his eyes raking over Natalie. He walked across to her, unhurriedly, and said in a disturbingly polite voice, ‘And after all the years we spent together I would have thought that an invitation was the least I could expect’ He obviously had not noticed Anna hovering in the background, or if he had he had chosen to ignore her.

  Either way, Natalie still couldn’t work out his presence here. She frowned, puzzled, and he looked at her sardonically, as if to say, Please spare me the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-mouth routine.

  ‘You don’t know Eric,’ she pointed out automatically. ‘How did you find out that we would be here anyway?’

  He wasn’t looking at anyone else in the room at all by this point. His eyes were fixed on Natalie’s face and she was finding it hard to meet his stare levelly and calmly.

  ‘I phoned your boss. He told me where you were.’

  ‘Oh.’ She looked across to Eric and lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug and the gesture seemed to enrage Kane.

  Claire hadn’t said a word so far, nor had Anna. They both appeared to have been struck dumb and Natalie could well understand the reaction. She herself was having some difficulty in getting the words out.

  None of them heard the door being pushed open until the registrar spoke, his voice sharp into the tense silence.

  ‘Am I in the right room?’ he asked sternly, and Eric nodded and began speaking with overdone enthusiasm. He was clearly relieved to have someone else on the scene. He was shaking the registrar’s hand vigorously. At any minute, Natalie thought, he’ll embrace the poor man, who obviously didn’t have a clue as to what was going on.

  ‘Well, I’m running behind schedule,’ he said to everyone at large, extracting his hand from Eric’s and placing it safely behind his back. He took his place behind the desk in the front of the room and slipped on a pair of glasses. ‘I do apologise for the delay, but are we all ready now?’

  He didn’t look up. These things always went according to plan, no doubt. His words were just a formality. He hardly expected an interruption. None of them did.

  Natalie was still looking at Kane out of the corner of her eyes, but she was quite prepared to let the ceremony take place, and then try and figure out what was going on here with him. She looked directly ahead of her, at the registrar’s downbent head. It would be extremely short, she knew. There would be no long sermon or elaborate blessings, just the few simple words necessary to marrying two people. They began to move into their positions, when Kane spoke, his voice harsh.

  ‘There is not going to be a marriage.’

  All four froze and the registrar looked up, startled. Natalie had an insane desire to burst out laughing, which she controlled by looking down at her feet and keeping a perfectly straight face.

  ‘I beg your pardon, young man?’ the registrar said, shocked. He looked around at the gathering of people and said sharply, ‘Is this some kind of joke?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Eric moved towards the registrar, placating, while he glared sideways at Kane with hatred. ‘I have no idea what this man is doing here, sir. I barely know him.’

  Out of the five of them, Kane appeared to be the only one still in control. He had folded his arms across his chest, and Natalie could feel his eyes boring into her, willing her to look up, something which she had no intention of doing.

  ‘Would someone mind explaining just what is going on here?’ the registrar asked. ‘I’m a busy man. I don’t have time for these sorts of games.’

  ‘No games.’ Kane moved forward. ‘There is to be no marriage.’

  For the first time since Kane’s entrance, Anna stepped forward and spoke, her voice hard. ‘Kane, what the hell is going on?’

  Kane threw her a disdainful look. ‘A witness, Anna? I had no idea you were that friendly with Natalie.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Anna said, and in a flash Natalie understood what was going on. It should have been obvious from the very start, but things had happened so quickly and so unexpectedly that her brain had hardly had time to put two and two together.

  Kane had said that he had found out where she was from Tony. Dear, vague Tony. Had he thought that she and Eric were about to tie the knot? He must have, and this must have been the message he had conveyed to Kane.

  So why, she asked herself with an excitement which she tried to staunch, had he rushed over here?

  ‘I think you’ve made a mistake,’ she said softly, turning to Kane, and he glared at her.

  ‘I think you are the one who has made the mistake,’ he said harshly. He moved towards her, taking her elbow in his hand, but before he could elaborate Natalie said quickly,

  ‘I’m not getting married. Not that it would have been any of your business if I had been. No, I’m not marrying Eric’ Her eyes flitted across to Anna. ‘Anna is.’

  It didn’t take Kane long to catch on that he had made a mistake on a huge scale. A split second, in fact By this time, Anna had approached the desk by Eric and had linked her hand defensively through his arm. She really loves him, Natalie thought, before her attention once mo
re refocused on the man looming over her.

  ‘You could have told me from the start,’ Kane muttered under his breath, ‘and spared us all this scene.’ He looked so utterly sheepish that Natalie smiled, and he threw her an accusing frown. ‘Everything’s been sorted out,’ he said with a calmness that she could only admire. ‘Please do carry on.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ The registrar looked around his little audience. ‘No more surprises?’ He glanced at Claire. ‘Surely an outburst is due from your corner?’

  Claire grinned, her composure back in place. ‘None that I can think of, sir.’

  The registrar mumbled something under his breath that didn’t sound terribly amused, and then launched into his little speech, which he knew off pat.

  As far as Natalie was concerned, it all went in one ear and out of the other. She was simply far too aware of Kane’s presence next to her to pay any attention to what the registrar was saying. He could have been casting spells and she would not have been any the wiser. Did she mean so much to Kane that he would actually have put a stop to her marrying Eric, if that was what she had intended to do?

  No, she told herself rationally. He just would not see anything so terribly wrong in doing it because he was convinced that she felt nothing for Eric, and the reason that he felt that way was because he knew the power that he himself had over her.

  So don’t start over-reacting, she thought, and just remember that you will never be free to do anything with him anyway, because there’s the baby. Mistakes are made to be learnt from, and there’s nothing romantic about his gesture. At bottom, it’ s probably just selfish after all.

  As soon as the short service was over, he hustled her out of the room, ignoring Eric’s piqued question to Natalie as to whether she had forgotten that they were all going to have a bite to eat. Natalie looked over her shoulder helplessly. ‘I’ll join you later,’ she said with a miserable attempt at an apologetic smile, and Kane growled.