I turn off at a sign for a service station. The road twists and turns until, finally, I pull into a bleak car park. What a cold, desolate and empty place. I turn off the engine, slide back the seat and sob.
The radio switches to a travel report. ‘Unless the journey is essential,’ says the forecaster, ‘you are advised to stay indoors.’
Too late.
I should have checked before setting off.
I search through my bag for my mobile, panic rising at the thought that I’ve left it at home. My fingers brush against the toy cars, empty sweet wrappers and receipts at the bottom of my handbag. Finally, I locate my phone and call Rhodri.
‘Come home,’ he says persuasively. ‘You can set off early tomorrow morning. The weather should be better, and it’ll be daylight and safer.’
‘I don’t know if I can drive home,’ I cry.
‘You can.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You can. How far away are you?’
‘About an hour.’
‘Call the hostel you’re supposed to be staying at, tell them you’ll be there in the morning. I’ll have the kettle on ready for you. Think of that hot cup of tea waiting for you when you step through the door.’
‘Okay.’
‘You’ll be fine. Drive safely. I love you.’
‘I love you too.’ I sniffle. I know I switch from an independent woman into a weak simpering mess because of my past troubles with Damien, and I feel completely ashamed of my weaknesses. Stepmother Eleanor said recently, ‘I’ll never forget the sight of you when we came round that day after your birthday. You stood in the kitchen like this,’ she made a hunched-over motion, ‘the heating on full, wearing a long-sleeved polo-neck jumper, jeans and a thick coat. You kept wrapping your arms around yourself as you made us a hot drink. You moved slowly. We knew something had happened because you weren’t talking. But we didn’t know what. You looked like a terrified little girl and I wanted to hold you.’
I feel like that now: lonely, vulnerable and afraid.
I turn the key in the ignition and the engine shudders to life. I sweep the car around and set off for home.
‘Sorry, I’m late.’
Rhodri was right: the drive this morning was much better and safer. I breeze into the classroom, dropping my bags and coat onto the floor. In the four corners pairs of women are role-playing an intimate scene.
‘We’re just working on a story based around the theme “The Kiss”,’ says the man who is leading the day’s workshop. ‘You can be the audience. After each performance, clap loudly.’
‘Okay,’ I say, then shuffle my bottom onto a desk. ‘I’ll just sit here.’
I gaze out of the classroom window at snow falling and gathering on the rooftops. Below, stone cottages curve up the hill towards the village in the distance.
‘Morton McDonald, film agent,’ he says, by way of introduction.
I turn to smile at him. ‘Maria. Pleased to meet you.’
As the session goes on, and Morton talks, I find I’m entranced by him: he’s much older than me – I place him at around fifty, but he could be more. And what a very fine specimen of a silver fox he is: well dressed, tall, tanned, funny, clever, a face that knows too much, a thick mass of grey hair, twinkling brown eyes, and… I scan the rest of the participants, noting vague competition in the form of a mature busty brunette called Janice.
Morton paces the room bellowing intellectual discussion points on love, regret and jealousy, something about Faust, Orpheus and Achilles. I do my best to impress him, like a puppy turning tricks for treats.
We break for lunch. Morton gathers up a copy of the Guardian, pops it under his arm and heads towards the door. ‘Where’s the nearest pub?’ he asks, then strides off in search of the Mischievous Monkey.
At lunchtime, I find myself seated with half a dozen chattering women. I nibble half-heartedly at ham sandwiches, drifting in and out of a daydream.
Back in the classroom we sit in a semi-circle. Morton is positioned at the front, posing and setting creative tasks. I find myself playing with my red-leather gloves, teasing them on and off my fingers. My hands are cold because Morton has opened the classroom window and now an icy gale blows across his audience. It must be his age: middle-aged men have an inner boiler system, and the menopausal women aren’t complaining, but I’m shivering.
‘The audience love people making decisions,’ declares Morton. ‘What will it lead to?’ He tells us that some statements can polarize the audience and polarize a play. He talks about unpalatable truths, such as when a character says, ‘I don’t love her.’ Then he asks, ‘What if I were to ask, “Are you happy?”’
Don’t ask that question, I think. Don’t ask that question.
‘If I asked, “Are you happy?” that could cause all sorts of problems.’
Why did he say that? All of a sudden I’m unhappy. I was fine until then.
Hours pass. Morton says, ‘Okay, any more questions?’
What are you doing after this? Where are you staying?
‘We’ll call it a day, then.’
I watch Morton talk to some of the group. He has a good posture, confident and inviting, like Sean Connery. What a tremendous laugh he has, and such golden manners. When he’s alone, I get up and take a step towards him. ‘Hello,’ I say.
‘Hello,’ he replies.
What can I follow ‘hello’ with? I could praise him. That’s always a good one. ‘That was really, really very interesting,’ I say. ‘I really enjoyed today.’ Overuse of ‘really’. I’ll come across as too keen.
‘What’s the plan?’ he asks. ‘I could do with eating.’
‘I don’t know,’ I reply hopefully.
He shouts over to the organizer: ‘Is there somewhere to go for a drink and a bite to eat?’
‘The Mischievous Monkey?’
‘Would you like to come for a drink?’ Morton asks me.
‘All right,’ I say, then add, ‘That would be delightful.’
What bad luck. I didn’t expect all those other people to come too. Morton and I walk side by side on a slim pavement. We cross the cobbled road to the pub. I have all his attention and he tells me dirty jokes, some of which I get, some of which I don’t, but I laugh all the same because it’s like I’ve known him for years, not just the past eight hours. When I’m not gazing at my feet, giggling, I gaze at Morton, how he moves his hands, how he walks. I notice that his left hand lacks a wedding ring.
The pub is busy so our group squeezes into a corner. Morton sits at the head of the table. I seat myself at the opposite end. A man squashes himself into a space at my side, and asks for my phone number.
People jostle for drinks and slowly unwind until the corner is filled with ferocious tittle-tattle. Morton rewards his listeners with story after story. If I stretch my legs under the table, I might just be able to touch him. If only I had longer legs. If only these people would go elsewhere. Morton wants to talk to me, I’m sure of it.
Slowly the group drops away one by one as boyfriends, husbands and babysitters beckon them home. Eventually it’s just Janice, the busty brunette, Morton and me. He moves his stool closer to me. I move to the bench opposite him. From here my only distraction is his captivating grin. His only distraction is Janice’s spectacular cleavage.
I’ve almost given up hope of having ten minutes alone with Morton when Janice’s husband arrives. ‘Hello, I’m Andrew,’ he reveals, shaking my hand.
‘Pleased to meet you, Andrew. Are you a writer too?’
‘No, I’m an architect.’
I’ve always fancied getting to know an architect, in case I should ever wish to convert a barn or some rundown French château.
‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ he asks.
‘Red wine, please.’ I may as well get pissed. I’ve nothing else to do. Morton appears to have had the same idea. There’s talk of ordering food from a chip shop, which ends when Andrew discovers it’s closed.
Janice thin
ks me a pest. Janice thinks I have bad intentions towards Morton, but from where I’m sitting he doesn’t look as if he wants protecting: he wants to peer down my shirt. Obligingly, and because it’s very hot in the pub, I remove my cardigan.
After closing time, and many glasses of wine later, we’re hungry and not yet ready to turn in for the evening. Janice suggests we go to her and Andrew’s house for crumpets. I wonder if she’s making a dig at me.
Morton struggles to walk up the hill to their mansion. I laugh raucously as he slips and slides on the gravelled driveway.
We’re drinking wine in Andrew and Janice’s comfortable sitting room when, inspired by Rhodri, I kick off a debate by bleating on and on about the value of independent businesses. Morton studies me as if I’m the hired jester. When I overstep his boredom threshold, he calls, ‘Time to go,’ and ushers me quickly out of Janice’s house and into the heavy rain.
We huddle together at the bottom of the garden path, beneath an umbrella, trying drunkenly to decipher Andrew’s hastily drawn map under the sodium glow of a streetlamp. Soon it’s drenched, illegible, and hangs in wet ribbons from my fingers.
‘You’ll have to walk me home,’ I croon, screwing what’s left of the map into a ball and popping it into my pocket. ‘I’m a young woman, out on the street in the early hours of the morning – anything could happen to me.’
Morton translates this as an invitation: ‘My bed-and-breakfast is around the corner,’ he says quickly.
Hm, maybe I could go for a quick nightcap… No… definitely no.
‘I can’t stay at your guesthouse. I’m going back to my hostel.’
I’m set on behaving discreetly and respectably when I notice that the village graveyard is looming seductively next to us. I try the gate. It swings open. So I take Morton by the arm and pull him in there after me. Hanging on to one another, we wade through rivulets of mud. I suspect Morton is calculating when, and where, we might get intimate. I’m huddled next to his warm body when a gust of wind causes the umbrella to collapse, washing cold rain over our faces. ‘I love graveyards,’ I gurgle.
‘Have you ever had sex in one?’ Morton asks, wiping water from his mouth.
I wrench the torch from him and throw beams of light on gravestone after gravestone. I read out the names of the deceased and when they died, commenting on the design of the inscriptions. ‘Oooh, look at this one, Morton,’ I call, spotting a large statue of an angel. ‘This lady was lov–’ I slip, landing bottom first in the mud. Morton laughs, then bends down and pulls me up. We stand face to face, blinking away raindrops, and for a brief moment I think he might kiss me.
‘You need to blow hard,’ I command. Morton is on his knees at my feet. I’m soaking wet. ‘Nothing’s happening. You need to blow much harder than that. Put some effort into it.’
‘Is that working?’ he asks, exasperated.
‘At your age, you should be an expert at this.’
For a walkers’ hostel, this lounge is surprisingly cosy. There is even a real fire.
‘I’m trying.’
Morton must know how to light a coal fire. He’s so old that gas fires probably weren’t in existence when he was a child. ‘Did you light coal fires as a boy?’
‘Yes.’ Morton groans, throwing more paper onto the embers. He blows into the fireplace, then prods the poker at various spots. ‘There, it’s going now.’
‘You’re dripping all over the carpet,’ I tease. ‘You should take your trousers off and dry them by the fire.’
‘Do you think so?’ he asks worriedly.
‘Yes. Definitely. You’ll be ill if you stay in those wet clothes.’
I leave the room to change into my pyjamas. When I return Morton is stretched out, fully clothed, on the rug waiting for me. I hand him a coffee. Wrapping his fingers around the mug, he invites me to sit with him. So I do, and together we watch the flames lick at the kindling.
I return home from my brief sojourn in Yorkshire to discover that in my absence Rhodri has been having a go at some DIY. On past projects, this has stood for destroy-it-yourself. ‘Look at this!’ he says, leading the way upstairs.
Good grief, I think, how much is this going to cost me? But then I see that Rhodri has retiled the bathroom. He’s done an amazing job – he’s found his niche. I should find more walls for him to tile. The entire bathroom looks so luxe that for the next hour I stroke it.
Later we share a cuddle together on the sofa and I lavish affection on him. ‘I had a productive weekend,’ I tell him. ‘I learned so much about scriptwriting, and I met this very interesting man.’
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘No.’
‘Did you kiss him?’
‘No. We talked, that’s all.’ Those London lah-di-dah cheek kisses we exchanged at the door as Morton left hardly count and I wasn’t wearing my lucky Janet Reger knickers. They’re red silk-satin and rather skimpy. I bought them in the January sales years ago. When I wear those red knickers the world stops turning. Because I’m a considerate girl, I can’t wear them all the time or the universe would topple into a right mess. I wear my lucky knickers when: I’m sitting exams; I’m going for a job interview; I have a mad crush on the person I’m due to meet that day. Never in the history of my lucky knickers has their charm failed. My lucky knickers’ success rate is 100 per cent.
Still, Morton gave me his business card with his number, email and home address on it so I may write to him. He also said that if I ever wanted to go to the theatre in London I should call him.
‘Would you like me to tell you how it went?’ I ask Rhodri.
‘Not really,’ he says.
Hmph. Rhodri is distracted by something other than my return. I wish he’d show even a tiny amount interest in the things I love.
A week after my trip to Yorkshire, I’m sitting opposite my quirky friend Sybil in an arty little bar at the university end of town. Our friend Emmeline is in the room upstairs, preparing to read a story to a crowd of literary punters. We pick at a mezze platter placed on the table between us. I scrape up some hummus with a triangle of pitta bread, wondering if I should make a grab for the last black olive or dive for the last dolma instead.
‘So, how are things at work?’ she asks, after we’ve talked about her boyfriend gradually moving himself, unasked, into her flat. Men really should come with a warning attached to them. And an alarm that rings when they leave socks under the bed.
‘Good,’ I lie, gulping a mouthful of wine. ‘I’m looking for more freelance work. Athens and I are always arguing.’ Things have been difficult in the office, these past few weeks: I keep saying and doing the wrong thing.
‘Rhodri?’
I sigh. ‘In a mood because I dyed my hair with a non-organic colour. I couldn’t afford an organic colour at the salon so I opted for a normal one. I didn’t want to dye my hair at home in case I ruined the new bathroom tiles.’ Sybil nods. ‘We had a big row when Rhodri insisted he could dye my hair for me by holding my head over a bucket.’
‘A bucket?’ Sybil shakes her head. ‘How’s Jack?’
‘He’s made it as sports monitor. He’s very pleased about that.’
‘Toga?’
‘I don’t know. He promised to take me to the Hilton, then to a windmill. I’ve heard nothing lately.’ I know I’m smiling to myself. I take a sip of wine to hide it.
‘What?’ asks Sybil.
‘Nothing.’
‘What?’ she insists, arching her eyebrows.
‘I have a crush on someone.’
‘Who?’ Sybil is enchanted by my crushes.
‘It’s very strange.’
‘Do I know him?’
‘No.’
Sybil looks at her watch. ‘We’d better go upstairs. Emmeline will be reading soon.’
As we stand up I reach for the last dolma. Sybil pops the olive into her mouth.
‘He’s called Morton,’ I say. ‘And he’s fifty next week.’
Sybil frowns. ‘Is he
a George Clooney fifty?’
‘No. Not like George Clooney at all.’
‘Then what do you like about him?’
‘His eyes. His voice. His smile. Everything. I’m in London at the end of the month to attend some seminars for work. Maybe I’ll see him then.’
The next afternoon I’m seated in a café in Jackson. Outside, pensioners sit on chairs sucking cigarettes as if they’re lollipops. A cup of tea here costs just sixty-five pence. The thick smell of bubbling fat sticks to my skin. Everyone looks greasy. The girl at the counter sways along to Rod Stewart and the Faces on the radio as she rings money through the till and froths milk for cappuccinos. The cook sings over the spitting of frying sausages. Beneath the table my foot bobs along to the music, a waitress clacks across the floor in flat shoes, then slaps two plates on the Formica table opposite mine, calling, ‘Full English. Full English.’
Spying a mother from school at a table by the window, I wave awkwardly, then flick open my writing pad and unscrew the pen lid. I tear out grubby curled pages and on a clean sheet of paper write:
Dear Morton,
Happy birthday! I’m in London at the end of the month if you’d
like to meet for a coffee.
Maria x
In the bottom right-hand corner I print my email address. Nervously, I slide the note with a book into an envelope, lick the edges and seal it. Was my handwriting messy? It usually is. I leave money on the table for the tea, gather my bag and coat, then head quickly to the post office before Jack finishes school.
14
It’s a sunny afternoon in early March. Jack and I are cycling home from school together. He’s very quiet. He has a secret, I’m sure.
‘What’s wrong?’ I ask.
‘Nothing,’ he answers sullenly.
‘Has something happened at school?’
‘No. Just leave it.’
‘If something’s happened, you can tell me about it. Anything. You can trust me. Promise.’
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