After we had ordered our food, and the champagne had been poured, we sat back and smiled at one another. I felt relaxed. I was very appreciative of the good things Ian was able to share with me.
“I was expecting Eithne - what have you done with my girlfriend?” Ian asked, gazing at my upswept hair.
“I thought you’d like it,” I said.
“I do, but I’m so used to you with a head of curls.....mind you, I think everyone here appreciates your décolletage,” he added, with a meaningful look at my chest. I blushed slightly.
“Is it too much? I wasn’t sure.”
“No, you look absolutely gorgeous. I can’t wait for bedtime.”
He seemed very upbeat and smiley. I sipped my champagne and gazed around the room, savouring the aura of enjoyment all around us.
Then I looked down at my plate. A little box stood on it. I felt my heart begin to pound.
“How did that get there?” I quavered.
“Open it.”
I did so, praying it might be earrings or a bracelet. But an enormous trio of diamonds winked at me in the lights, and I felt faint for a moment.
“Try it on.”
Ian leant across the table to help me, my hands were shaking.
“No, darling, on your left hand...”
He slid the ring over my third finger, where it blazed like a band of fire. I was speechless.
“Darling Eithne - will you marry me?”
I was almost stunned by surprise.
A torrent of emotion flooded me. Like all girls, I had dreamed of a proposal, but my fantasies had always featured another person entirely. I looked down at the ring. I remembered all the times I had wept over Nick, the emptiness and uncertain days, and then thought of the golden future which Ian seemed to embody. I didn’t love him wholeheartedly ...... would I ever really love anybody the way I had loved Nick? But I had heard nothing of Nick for two years now. Wouldn’t it be better to take the chance of future happiness with someone who wanted me?
To give myself a breathing space, I whispered
“But you’ve only known me such a short time ...... Ian, are you absolutely certain?”
“I am. I don’t need time. Surely you know by now how I feel about you.”
I thought, “Yes...... but you’ve never asked me how I feel about you”.
He half rose from his seat.
“Do you want me to get down on one knee? Because I will....”
Somehow, I could not have borne that. I took a deep breath, and prepared to do what seemed to be the right thing.
“No, no - thank you Ian, I will marry you, if you want me to...”
It wasn’t perhaps the most gracious acceptance, but it was the best I could manage.
Ian got up, came round the table and kissed me. He summoned the head waiter.
“Jacques, a bottle of champagne to every table! Mademoiselle has agreed to marry me.”
The rest of the evening passed in a blur. There was a lot of noise, as other diners came to the table to thank Ian for the champagne and congratulate us. Strangers kissed me heartily, which I did not appreciate, and envious eyed women oohed and aahed over my glittering ring.
I could hardly touch my food, but no one appeared to notice. Quite early on, I asked Ian if we could go home.
“Aren’t you feeling well?” he asked in concern.
“I’m just a bit overcome...”
He told the taxi driver on our way back to Chelsea, and the driver insisted on giving us a free ride, but I saw Ian slip him a tenner anyhow.
At his flat, he undressed me carefully, and took possession of my body in his usual expert way. I waited until he was asleep, and then crept into the bathroom, where I was violently, horribly sick.
I leant my face against the cold porcelain of the bath, and a cascade of tears streamed down my face. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, I hoped so much that Nick would understand.
Then I crawled into bed and fell into an exhausted sleep.
By next morning, I had recovered some of my self-possession. Reviewed in the cold light of day, I could not fault my decision. It would be the height of folly to refuse Ian in case an unreliable figure from my past might reappear. I persuaded myself that my feelings for Ian would be strong enough to make things right, and Ian was pleased at the prospect of our relationship being out in the open.
Our engagement came like a bolt from the blue to family, friends and colleagues, and I was wryly amused by the extreme reactions it caused.
Both families were delighted, after the initial shock had dissipated. My parents were overjoyed at the prospect of a son in law who was well off, handsome and successful, above all they relished the thought that I would no longer be put on the rack by “that bloody boy”.
My godmother Deidre met Ian, was completely bowled over, and thought I had made a very wise choice.
“All those tears you cried over Nick DeLisle - I told you there would be something much better waiting for you,” she exulted, when next we spoke on the telephone. I felt a sudden pang, as I remembered my reaction on the night of the engagement.
“I still love Nick. I always will,” I told her.
There was a sharp intake of breath.
“But I know that’s over and done with. Of course, I love Ian too, but I’ll never forget what Nick and I had together.”
I could feel her disapproval radiating down the line.
“I don’t think I would say that sort of thing to Ian. He might not understand,” Deidre murmured, her tone expressing alarm and displeasure. I couldn’t help myself - it was true, however, I knew she was right. The sentiment couldn’t be expressed again, but would always stay buried in my heart.
Ian’s family were pleased that he would not now be sowing so many wild oats as his father quaintly expressed it.
“Time Ian settled down. Well done,” he told me, as if I had somehow won a prize in a race to civilise his son.
His mother was a sharp eyed lady, who surveyed me coolly from head to toe when we first met, before taking me by the arm and leading me into her house like some sort of captive. She persisted in referring to me as “Ian’s little girl”, which baffled and infuriated me, and I could see that dealings with her would not be easy - already, she had decided ideas about our wedding, and I thought these would be unlikely to coincide with mine.
Luckily, she and Ian’s father lived in rural Kent, and hardly ever ventured up to London, and I hoped that we would be able to maintain a polite, if not an affectionate relationship, at a distance. Ian didn’t appear to notice anything amiss, and because he was very much the blue eyed boy where his parents were concerned, I counted on him having the final say in matters involving our life together.
Most of the female and account management staff at work were amazed and perhaps even jealous that the lady killing Ian had his wings clipped. There remained a few, however, notably Robin, and most of the creative staff, who thought I was making a big mistake.
I arrived at work early on the Monday following our engagement, to finish off a progress report which was overdue. I knew Ian had informed his fellow directors of our news, and it would not be long before the agency was buzzing with gossip.
Sitting at my desk in my small office, I jumped when Robin came banging in, with a thunderous face.
“What the hell is all this about you and Ian?” he demanded.
His rudeness annoyed me. I did not look up from my papers, but extended my left hand and waved it in front of him. He caught it, and examined the diamonds sparkling on my finger.
“Bloody hell! I wouldn’t have thought you were that materialistic. Is this what you were after all along?”
I only just restrained myself from slapping his face.
“How dare you?” I gasped, furious and upset.
We were both momentarily at a loss for words. Then Robin said, more quietly,
“I apologise, I didn’t mean to be rude. But - Eithne darling, whom we love - you can’t be
serious? You can’t marry Ian, he’s nothing but an expensive facade, he’s a horrible person behind that elegant front. You’ll never be happy with him.”
“People who are expensive facades don’t end up with great jobs in hotshot agencies,” I retorted sharply. There was something in his words which resonated with me, and I didn’t like it.
We stood in silence for a minute, both of us disconcerted, both wondering what to say next. He was the first to speak.
“Of course, if it’s really what you want, then I’m happy for you,” he said slowly. “You’ve been a dark horse, keeping it so secret. Everyone’s very surprised.” He paused. “We’ll have to be careful what we say around you now.”
He meant that I might report back any criticisms or problems now I had a personal link to a director. This seemed unfair to me.
“I’m sorry you feel like that, Robin. You can’t seriously think I’d ever tell tales behind anyone’s back.”
I was disappointed, I had hoped my friends might be pleased for me. But Mia was furious with me too. She could not believe that I had been seeing Ian for so long without telling her. I tried to explain why I had wanted to keep it quiet, as we sat huddled over a bottle in a local wine bar.
“At first, I thought it would just be a fling - if no one knew about it, when it finished, I could still stay on here without it becoming an issue,” I explained somewhat haltingly. “Things overtook me. I wasn’t expecting Ian to ask me to marry him when he did.”
“So why are you marrying him? Have you developed a taste for the high life?” she demanded. “I can see he’s very good-looking and all that, but isn’t he the faintest bit ruthless under that polished exterior? I’ve heard you talk about Nick, and you haven’t got the same look in your eyes when you talk about Ian.”
I winced. That seemed a low blow to me.
“Maybe not - but Ian’s here in person, he wants to be with me, while Nick is - who knows where? For all I know, he’s married to someone else by now. Can’t you understand that I’ve had to make a decision based on facts and not fantasies?”
“Why be in such a rush to marry anyway?” She scowled at me across the table.
“How many offers do you think one gets? I think Ian is too good a prospect to turn down.”
I took the greatest care at work not to flaunt my connection to Ian, or behave any differently, and as a result, the furore about our engagement died down quickly. Ian was right, life became easier once everyone knew, and I enjoyed being included in the higher echelons of agency social life outside the office. I asked Ian not to press me for a date for the wedding, as I wanted to get used to being engaged first, and I thought I would enjoy some tranquil months before getting caught up in making wedding plans.
My only regrets at this time were that I hardly ever seemed to be able to spend time at Wapping. Ian liked us to be in Chelsea, which was always more convenient for the life we led, and he would only spend a reluctant night at Wapping with me on infrequent occasions. I missed the river and the sound of the sea birds, and started to devise little ways of escape whereby I could enjoy the solitude of my watery home. I knew I would have to give it up entirely when I married.
Chapter 22
Now that we were officially a couple, life was extremely busy. Work was always demanding, and Ian seemed to have an address book full of friends and contacts who wanted to entertain us, and meet his new fiancée. I had to buy a whole new wardrobe of evening clothes - what a hardship that was - because Ian made it clear he expected me to be stylishly dressed at all times, and I wanted to please him as much as I could.
It was not always easy. There were eight years between us and as a consequence, his friends were all older than I was, and their lives were at a different stage. Sometimes, I chafed at the dinner party conversations about nannies and school fees, because I felt worlds away from such cares, and I think that a few of the wives resented my youth and looks.
However, Ian was delighted to be an object of envy for his contemporaries, whose admiring glances in my direction seemed to increase his satisfaction with the status quo.
“How did you manage to snare him?” a lady called Tania, the wife of an old school friend of Ian’s, asked me one evening, as we left our coats in the theatre foyer. We were going to see a new production of Twelfth Night at the Old Vic. “None of us thought he would marry for years, he’s always had a load of glamorous girlfriends in tow. You must have something he really likes.”
I disliked this kind of comment, which I had encountered on several occasions.
“Perhaps by not trying to snare him, as you put it,” I retorted. “We just started seeing each other and it developed from there. I wasn’t looking to get married.”
She gave me a glance of unwilling approbation.
“Well, if I were you, I’d set the date quickly. You don’t know what a catch you’ve landed, that’s obvious.”
The other side of the coin was that Ian found my friends somewhat juvenile. He was long past the stage of kitchen dinner parties with spaghetti bolognese and rough red wine, if, indeed, he had ever been there, and his essentially conservative nature meant he disliked the spontaneous element of my old social life. Soon, it became easier for me not to try to include him and I had to restrict my own involvement to evenings when he was occupied elsewhere. It needed careful juggling, and occasionally a ball would drop.
However, we were happy together, and I told myself I did not regret my decision to accept his proposal.
One day, when we were discussing the wedding, I was upset to find that he did not intend us to marry in Beresford. It hadn’t occurred to me that this was likely to be an issue.
“You don’t live in Beresford any more, you’re not living a Beresford life,” he stated calmly. “It’s the back of beyond, no one will want to go there. I thought we would be married at Chelsea Register Office, with a lunch to follow at the Savoy. My family and our friends will expect something along those lines.”
I opened my mouth to say that my parents would expect me to be married from home, but one look at his face made me hesitate. Recently, when Ian had decided something, I found it was almost impossible to persuade him to think differently.
I must have been a bit quiet the day afterwards, because Robin asked me whether anything was wrong.
“Well - I’m not looking forward to telling my parents that Ian wants the wedding to be in London,” I told him.
We were waiting for a train back to the city, having had a meeting with John Warrender in Guildford. The platform was grey and dusty, we sat on a bench which badly needed painting, and I felt depressed.
“They’ve always been set on a big reception at the Golf Club. It’s been a bit of a family joke, but I know they will be hurt. I don’t think Beresford is good enough for Ian.”
Robin gave me a sideways glance. I had to be careful when talking about Ian with him, because I knew they disliked one another, and this made things difficult for both of us.
“Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but I always thought it was the bride’s privilege to choose where she wants to marry,” he said. “Don’t let Ian railroad you into something you don’t want, Eithne. He likes his own way, and you need to make sure he doesn’t always get it.”
I felt tearful suddenly, and couldn’t speak.
“Ian’s always more malleable when you stand up to him and put forward a good argument - at least, he is at work,” Robin continued, warming to his theme. “Now he’s got you where he wants you, I expect he’s a bit too inclined to rule the roost.”
This was such an accurate description of recent events that I almost gasped. It was true. In our first months together, Ian’s dominant personality had been tempered by his uncertainty as to my feelings. Now he knew where he was, he was rapidly assuming full control.
I was confused by my reactions to this. It was Ian’s self-confidence and authority which had attracted me in the first place, and I could not have tolerated a liaison where
my partner was weaker than I was. However, I could not help contrasting our relationship with my time at Oxford with Nick, where we had been happy and in tune without one of us holding sway over the other. Perhaps it was easier at a relatively young stage of life, without so many commitments and concerns.
I hoped that Ian and I would be able to achieve a similar balance in due course. We did not disagree about anything else of importance, and life continued smoothly, apart from one incident which shook me, and left me unsettled.
We attended an Advertising Awards dinner, where Mackerras Mackay took two tables, and invited a number of senior clients as guests. After the main event, everyone moved on to the Arethusa night club in the King’s Road, a popular venue for after dinner dancing.
None of the clients present were known to me at work. There was one man, oily, insinuating, who had been drinking heavily, and eventually demanded that I join him on the dance floor. I think he did not understand my connection with Ian, because he kept trying to paw my body, and I had to evade his persistent attempts to kiss me. He insisted that we dance again, and I did not want to make a scene. It was very uncomfortable, and I only extricated myself with some difficulty.
Ian glared at me when I re-joined him at the table. He ignored me when I tried to speak to him, and after a while, he indicated that we should leave.
I was surprised and annoyed - I didn’t think I had done anything wrong. Outside, he hailed a cab, and threw himself back in the seat with averted face.
“What’s the matter?” I asked. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this.”
“I don’t like you showing me up and making me look a fool,” he hissed.
“What? I haven’t done anything. I could hardly refuse to dance with him at the beginning, that would have looked very odd. But you can’t blame me for what he was trying to do.”
We rode home in uncomfortable silence. Back at his flat, Ian turned a cold shoulder on me in bed, and I lay awake for ages, wondering why he was so annoyed with me.
Eventually, I fell into an uneasy sleep. In the early morning, I woke abruptly to find Ian parting my thighs, and he proceeded to satisfy himself roughly and rapidly, before stalking off to take his shower.
From The Moment I Saw Him .... Page 17