Two Loves

by Siân James

  ‘Have another drink. And listen to me. You wanted to meet a new boyfriend – you told me that – and you wanted another child. You met someone halfway presentable and you were ready to imagine he was the answer to all your prayers. Very dangerous.’

  ‘How can I find him again? Let me decide the rest.’

  ‘He’ll find you if he wants to. If he doesn’t, what’s the point of trying to track him down? You won’t be able to make him change his mind. Tell yourself it was only a dream. I’ve often had wonderful dreams – that someone loves me so much I know I’m going to be safe and happy for the rest of my life. And then I have to wake up and face all the rubbish again. It wasn’t much more than a dream, Rosamund.’

  ‘It was. He was real, a real person – skinny body, shabby clothes, deep loving eyes. I loved him fifteen years ago, but I lost him because I was frightened and timid. And everything I did afterwards was because of that failure … and I thought I was having a second chance.’

  ‘You must put him right out of your mind.’

  ‘Must I? I’m so tired I can’t think straight. I stood around for hours waiting for him. Oh, I’ll go home tomorrow and never venture to London again. How can I even think of writing this book when I don’t understand the first thing about life!’

  ‘I’ll tell you the first thing about life. And I’m not even drunk yet. Love is bloody great, yes, but it’s never for the right person at the right time. Never. But quite often work can save your sanity, OK? So go to see Erica again tomorrow. You can’t let her down. You were full of plans when you rang me last night. What’s the matter now?’

  ‘I was just thinking of Joss. I didn’t ring him last night. Would you mind if I phoned him now? It might cheer me up.’

  ‘Go ahead. Oh, where the hell is Ben? Bastard! He said he’d try to be back early.’

  * * *

  It was Joss who answered the phone. ‘Mr and Mrs Spiers,’ he said. ‘Who shall I say called?’

  ‘Hello, Joss, it’s me. It’s Mum.’

  ‘Oh.’ He sounded disappointed.

  ‘Who were you expecting?’

  ‘Anyone really. It’s just they’ve got a new pad here for jotting down messages. Do you want to leave any messages?’

  ‘Where are Mum and Brian?’

  ‘At the pub.’

  ‘At the pub?’ She tried to keep the surprise out of her voice.

  ‘It’s Wednesday. They always go to the George on Wednesday.’

  ‘Well, how are you, darling?’

  ‘Very-well-thank-you-how-are-you.’

  ‘I’m quite well too.’

  ‘So do you want to leave a message for them?’

  ‘No, thank you.’ How could they go to the pub and leave a nine-year-old alone?

  ‘Not even “love from Rosamund”?’

  ‘Not even that.’

  ‘But the thing is, I’d rather like to write a message on the pad. It’s a new one bought specially.’

  ‘OK. Put this down; “Mum rang at nine-thirty and was surprised to find you out.”’

  ‘Is it all right if I put nine-twenty because I’m supposed to be in bed by nine-thirty?’

  ‘Yes, that’s fine.’

  ‘Mum, are you angry about something?’

  ‘Not really. Listen, I’ll be home on Friday. I’m looking forward to that – are you?’

  ‘Do you want to speak to Linda?’

  ‘Who’s Linda?’

  ‘A childminder. That’s something like a babysitter but much more trouble, she says.’

  ‘Joss, will you tear that message from the pad and write, “Rosamund phoned and sent her best love and thanks.”’

  ‘“Rosamund phoned and sent her best love and thanks.” Right. Lucky I’m here, isn’t it, to take down all these messages.’

  ‘And best love to you as well.’

  ‘Shall I tell you a rhyme I learnt at school today?’

  ‘No, thanks. I know the sort of rhymes you learn at school. Write it down on the pad for Brian.’

  * * *

  ‘He’s so lovely,’ she told Ingrid, ‘and he’d have loved Daniel. They’d have got on so well.’

  ‘Where the hell is Ben? He promised to be home by seven.’

  ‘He’s always been in my mind, I think, the way he used to be; so young and formidable.’

  ‘People get older. I used to be young and formidable.’

  ‘You still are. In your prime and glossy as a cat. If I could paint, I’d love to paint you. I’d like to paint this room, too. Your flat, it’s so full and cluttered. Dora’s is very elegant with hardly anything in it. You feel you have to sit in just the right place or you’ll spoil the effect. ‘

  ‘This is only cluttered because it’s got all my things in it as well as Ben’s and neither of us is willing to get rid of anything. It’s a mess really. We’ve only been together three months and we’re fighting already. He’s staying out to punish me, I’m sure. He doesn’t like me having friends. Oh, sod him! What was Erica’s place like?’

  ‘Very Edwardian. A lot of deep red. Very voluptuous.’

  ‘You must see her again tomorrow.’

  ‘Ingrid, you seem obsessed with Erica. Why are you so keen that I go again?’

  There was a moment’s hard silence.

  ‘I know Ben would be thrilled if I could get some photographs of you and Erica together.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It would add weight to the book, wouldn’t it? The fact that you meet would indicate that you’re on her side.’

  ‘And against Molly?’

  ‘Not necessarily. But you must see that a picture on the jacket of an eighty-year-old mistress and a thirty-year-old wife would be a superb sales gimmick.’

  ‘I wonder if he’d like me topless as well? Would that be an even more effective gimmick?’

  ‘It would all be perfectly discreet, I promise you, all perfectly circumspect. Ben isn’t the sort who’d go for anything vulgar. He’s a serious journalist.’

  ‘Does he stand to make a lot of money from this book?’

  ‘He hasn’t mentioned money to me. Why?’

  ‘If money doesn’t corrupt people, it certainly seems to confuse them.’

  ‘I’m sure he’d be prepared to pay you a percentage if you cooperated with him.’

  ‘When you came to the schoolhouse, you told me that you had no ulterior motive in visiting me. It seems to me you had. You wrote an article about me, but you were also probing and plotting for Ben.’

  ‘Probing and plotting, that sounds awful. I would do a lot for him, but not that. I only want to take some photographs of you and Erica Underhill in her Edwardian sitting-room. Is that so awful?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it is. I think I’m just getting hungry. I always get bad-tempered when I’m hungry.’

  ‘I’ll phone now; two Lotus House specials. No, Ben won’t be home for a meal. He’s drinking somewhere now.’

  Ingrid phoned the restaurant while Rosamund sat very still, studying her long, thin hands as though seeing them for the first time.

  ‘I had a manfriend until quite recently,’ she told Ingrid when she came back. ‘He was really nice, we got on well together, but then his wife lost her job and wanted him back—’

  Ingrid cut in, ‘And that’s why you’re desperate for someone else.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant. I was simply going to say that I’m not completely inexperienced, that I have some knowledge of love, that I do know what I want.’

  ‘I thought I knew what I wanted. For about three weeks after meeting Ben, I couldn’t sleep for excitement. We’ve been living together for three months and already the best is over … Let’s have another drink.’

  * * *

  It was just after one-thirty when Ingrid decided that Ben didn’t intend to come back that night, and if he did, he could bloody well sleep on the sofa. ‘You can sleep in my bed,’ she told Rosamund, ‘the sofa’s hideously uncomfortable.’ She threw a blanket and a sheet onto
the sofa and she and Rosamund got ready for bed, said goodnight and turned the lights off.

  After a while, though, Ingrid turned the bedside light back on, leaned over onto her elbow and pulled back the duvet.

  ‘I’ve never had any lesbian tendencies,’ Rosamund said nervously. ‘Not even when I was fifteen. So just go to sleep, all right?’

  ‘Neither have I,’ Ingrid said, ‘but we’re both miserable and we can try to comfort ourselves a bit, can’t we?’ She put her hand on Rosamund’s breast, circling the nipple very gently with her index finger. ‘Take your T-shirt off,’ she said. ‘What’s the harm?’

  Rosamund complied rather crossly. ‘We’ll be so embarrassed about this in the morning,’ she said.

  Ingrid moved up closer to her and leaning over started to lick her nipples very slowly and lazily with the tip of her tongue, first one and then the other. When she felt her begin to relax, she started to suck them, first one and then the other, as slowly and gently as before. Soon she could feel Rosamund move her belly towards her, a very slight movement, not much deeper than breathing. She lifted her head and saw her closed eyes and her slightly open mouth. At that point she raised herself and lay over her, her belly over hers, their pubic mounds together. And she kissed her, thrusting her tongue deep into her mouth while her hand stroked the soft flesh of her inner thigh.

  ‘That’s all,’ Rosamund said, heaving her away. ‘I just don’t want this. I know you think you’re comforting me, but it’s not what I want.’

  ‘What makes you imagine I was thinking about you?’ Ingrid asked. She sighed and turned her back on Rosamund. ‘Could you put your arm round me, please?’

  Rosamund moved close to her, kissed her shoulder, put her arm tightly around her and they slept almost immediately.

  * * *

  When Rosamund woke she could hear Ingrid and Ben having a ferocious quarrel in the kitchen. It was nine o’clock. Ingrid should have left the flat half an hour before, she was blaming Ben for her lateness and he was blaming her for his uncomfortable night on the sofa. ‘You know why she’s here,’ Ingrid was saying through gritted teeth. ‘She’s here because you wanted me to interview her.’

  Rosamund had a shower and dressed, and when she joined them they were having coffee together, not yet friends but at least observing a truce of sorts.

  ‘I’m sorry I turned you out of your bed,’ Rosamund said, as soon as Ingrid had introduced them. ‘Ingrid didn’t expect you back last night.’ She took the coffee he passed her. ‘When did you get back?’ she asked sweetly.

  ‘About two, I suppose.’

  ‘Liar,’ Ingrid said. ‘I was awake till after three.’

  ‘We both were,’ Rosamund added. ‘Whatever were you doing till three? Not working, I hope?’

  ‘I went back to a friend’s,’ Ben said, the looks he was directing at her indicating that it was certainly none of her business. ‘I knew Ingrid had company, so we had a few drinks together.’

  ‘Ingrid and I had a few drinks together, too,’ she said pleasantly.

  Ben was small and very good-looking, black hair cut very short and olive skin, a khaki shirt and trousers. Rosamund didn’t like him, didn’t trust him, and realised he felt the same about her.

  ‘I’ll be off, then,’ she told Ingrid as soon as she’d finished her coffee. ‘I’ll be staying one more night with Dora and my father and going back home on Friday. Goodbye, Ben.’

  Ingrid took her to the door, tweaking her nipples as she kissed her. ‘I’ll be in touch,’ she said.

  To Rosamund’s surprise there seemed not a trace of embarrassment between them.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘I don’t think I should have come to London, Dora,’ Rosamund said that evening. ‘It’s been lovely to see you, but on the whole it seems to have unsettled me.’

  ‘Good. Being unsettled makes you ready to take risks and live dangerously.’

  ‘So what should I do?’

  ‘Phone some publishers about your book, get that sorted out. Try to meet some of them. Discuss finances. Be greedy.’

  ‘I’m not sure about the book. I can’t be hard on Erica, but Molly treated me as family, so I suppose I should take her side.’

  ‘Balls. Molly’s a devious, calculating old woman and you owe her nothing. Someone’s going to make a packet out of Anthony’s love-life, so why shouldn’t it be you? Take a deep breath, pick up the phone and get talking.’

  ‘I don’t know. Anthony seems to have been such a shit, but he was lovely to me and Joss, so how can I judge him? His first wife died when she was only twenty-five, so that excuses him, I suppose, to some extent … He always implied that she was the love of his life and that everything had gone wrong as a result of her death.’

  ‘Of course he did. If your mother had died of cancer at the age of twenty-five, your father would be thinking of her as the love of his life and would blame everything on her death. Henry the Eighth thought Jane Seymour was the love of his life because she died young. Even though he got his doctors to hack her to death to save his child. Men love the young wife excuse.’

  ‘Erica had to have an abortion. An agonising time, she said.’

  ‘You know so much, darling. Who else has your knowledge? It’s a fascinating story and you’d tell it with love and sympathy. Why leave it to some journalist who’ll turn it into something really sordid? Molly will certainly get someone to write it; she’s not going to let Erica have the last word. And think of the money you’d make. It might even be turned into a film. Wonderful parts for two ageing actresses. Could Paul play Anthony, I wonder? He’s never managed to break into films.’

  ‘And Molly tried to commit suicide – she showed me the scars on her wrists. And the cousin who looks after her now was another of Anthony’s lovers.’

  ‘My God, you’d never have to work again. You could send Joss to a good school and go to Italy to paint, live happy ever after.’

  ‘I’m not at all happy, Dora.’

  ‘I know, love. What happened? You seemed so happy a couple of days ago.’

  ‘I met someone. Someone I used to know. I bumped into him on the underground … but it didn’t work out.’

  ‘Come to live in London. Sell the schoolhouse and get a flat near us. Let me look after you. Do you have to go home tomorrow? Stay a few more days at least.’

  ‘No, I can’t expect Mum to cope with Joss over the weekend. In any case, I’m looking forward to seeing him now.’

  Paul joined them from the kitchen where he’d been washing up.

  ‘Doesn’t he look handsome in his apron, Rosamund? Your father, you see, has to dress up for every little job, it’s his stage training. He’s got a boiler suit for adjusting the radiators and a navy beret for going out to buy wine … Don’t you think your daughter should come and live near us, Paul? Instead of burying herself away in the country?’

  Paul studied them both for several seconds. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, as grave as if he’d been asked to settle the fate of nations. ‘If I were writing a book, I think I’d prefer the peace of the countryside.’

  ‘If I do decide to write a book, I think I’ll call it Anthony Gilchrist, the Man, making it clear that I don’t consider myself able to comment on his poetry, pornographic or otherwise.’

  ‘No, no, no,’ Dora said. ‘I was thinking along the lines of Wife and Mistress. That’s got a certain…’

  ‘But even in the first chapter, the first few pages, I’d have to be unkind to so many people. For instance, I’d have to be unkind to Father.’

  ‘You make some money out of it, kiddo, and be as unkind as you please.’

  ‘You see I’d have to infer that I was looking for a father-figure, wouldn’t I? I don’t know whether I was – I don’t think so – but it makes some sort of sense, doesn’t it? I mean, I was never in love with Anthony, so it might have been something like that – which, of course, suggests that Paul had let me down as a father.’

  ‘That’s fair enough. I had.
’

  ‘No, I never felt that. I always liked it when you were home, but I always understood that you had to go back to London to work. I never felt let down.’

  ‘But when he married me, darling, you must have felt rather bitter at that time.’

  ‘But only for Mother’s sake. I didn’t feel I was being badly treated. And during your wedding I made an adjustment and knew he was doing the right thing.’

  Dora looked at her rather timidly, waiting for her to continue.

  ‘You see, it was the first time I’d seen Father look like that, or heard his voice like that. I mean, when he recited that poem to you. That Herrick. That was really moving. Hair-raising, I mean. I measure love from that.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Dora said.

  ‘For God’s sake, Rosamund, what a twit you are. I mean, to worry about my feelings when everything’s OK between us.’

  ‘Oh, darling,’ Dora said again.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ Paul said, ‘don’t let’s get bogged down. Women are so bloody sentimental.’

  ‘And then there’s Brian. Mother’s bound to think I’m belittling him if I tell the truth, which was that he simply didn’t want me living with them. Of course he didn’t. Why should he have wanted to start married life with a spotty seventeen-year-old stepdaughter, all gloom and hormones.’

  ‘Don’t even mention him,’ Dora said. ‘Simply say that your mother married her accountant, Mr Brian Spiers, and settled down very happily with him. People will read between the lines, but let them. That always happens. So who else are you worried about?’

  ‘Mother won’t like any of it. If I’m truthful about our early relationship – Anthony’s and mine – she’ll be shocked, and I don’t suppose there’s much point in writing at all unless I am truthful.’

  ‘What was the truth?’ Paul asked. ‘Let’s see how shocked I am.’