‘And now,’ declared the deacon, raising his voice above the hubbub, ‘a real treat for us all! Two of our parishioners, both keen members of the Tideswell Players, are going to perform some scenes from Scrooge, accompanied by Sydney on the guitar. For those of you new to England, Scrooge is a famous novel by one of our best-known writers, the great Charles Dickens….’
Eric shifted in his seat. The last thing he needed was a lecture on Charles Dickens. Besides, he was dying for a pee and increasingly worried about the safety of his bike. Some passer-by might vandalize it, simply out of spite. However, if he got up now, while the ‘actors’ were making their way to the piano, and before the performance began, he might be able to sneak out.
Fortunately, Lily, all grudges forgotten, was in a clinch with a drunken Brazilian, Vera was blissfully snoozing, and the opera singer engaged in a long argument with Malcolm. Edging his chair back as quietly as possible, he slipped unobtrusively from his seat, muttering something about needing to find the gents.
‘The toilet’s the opposite way!’ some helpful person called, as he began sloping off across the nave.
‘Er, need to check my bike first,’ he gabbled, breaking into a sprint as he approached the glass doors that led to safety and the street. He was through them in a trice but, in his haste to get away, collided with someone coming in – a woman carrying a cake. Before he knew what was happening, the woman tripped and all but fell; the cake flying from her grasp and smashing into pieces, as it landed upside-down on the flagstones.
Dumb with horror and embarrassment, he lent her a supporting arm, steadying her against the wall. Although incredibly relieved to find she wasn’t hurt, he was in agonies of shame about the cake. A large, elaborate creation, judging by the wreckage, it was now a shattered mass of crumbs and cream. Yet still he couldn’t speak, although for quite another reason. This was his mother – yes, in the flesh and leaning on his arm – the mother he had pictured throughout his motherless childhood, and correct in every detail, except not older than him but young and wildly sexy. He stared in rapturous disbelief at the firm yet cuddly figure, just this side of chubby, the glorious auburn hair (not carroty, like his, but still decidedly red, to prove that he’d inherited it), the sweet face, rosy cheeks.
‘Damn!’ she exclaimed. ‘My cake’s a gonner! And it took me the whole morning to make.’
Never before had he felt such crushing mortification. His first all-important encounter with his ‘mother’, and he had made a total hash of it. But a mother who made cakes couldn’t be more perfect – and was just as he’d imagined her: cosy, homely, nurturing, as she sieved flour and beat eggs, yet at the same time lushly sensual.
‘I … I’m horrified,’ he stuttered out, at last. ‘I mean, to be such a clumsy oaf. I could have injured you quite badly, and look at your poor cake! I just don’t know what to say.’ He did know: hold me, kiss me, put your lovely arms around me, never let me go.
‘Don’t worry,’ she smiled. ‘It’s not an arm or a leg, as my sister always says.’
He gazed at her in still deeper admiration. A natural philosopher, as well as a beauty and a cook; someone who didn’t bear grudges or make the slightest fuss, even when she had every right to do so. Suddenly remembering his paper hat, he snatched it off in discomfiture. Just his luck to meet the love of his life when he looked half-tramp, half-clown. The woman, though, seemed hardly to have noticed, absorbed as she was in her dilemma.
‘The only problem is, I made the cake for Freda’s hundredth birthday, which happens to be today. I expect you know her, don’t you?’
‘Er, no.’
‘So you’re not a parishioner?’
‘No,’ he said again, although the word on his lips was ‘Yes!’ – yes to taking her back with him, yes to keeping her for ever in his flat, his home, his heart.
‘She went down with a cold last night, so she’s not actually here for the lunch. But Sydney promised to deliver the cake later on today, as long as I brought it here to the church. Thing is, I can’t make another – not at this late stage. I’m due at my sister’s for Christmas lunch and she lives down in Guildford, which is a good forty minutes’ drive. The whole gang will be ravenous by now – my parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles, my other sisters and their families – and you can bet your bottom dollar they’ll all be saying “Trust Mandy to be late!”’
Exactly the sort of family he had wanted all his life: a whole big, loving tribe of them, who would come together faithfully for every Christmas, Easter, birthday, anniversary. ‘Look, you get off,’ he urged. ‘I’ll clear up this mess and tell them it was all my fault.’ Thank God the pair of them were in the porch, he thought, which meant no one had actually witnessed the collision. Otherwise streams of well-meaning helpers would have come rushing to Mandy’s aid and this miraculous one-to-one encounter would never have occurred.
‘But you were leaving, too. And you seemed in a tearing rush.’
‘Not at all. I …’ The sentence petered out, as frantically he began to rethink his plan. If she hared off down to Guildford, he would never set eyes on her again. Somehow, he had to accompany her, or at least try to spend more time with her than this inadequate few minutes. ‘Well, actually, I am in a bit of a hurry. I’m desperate to get to …’ He paused – somewhere on the way to Guildford, where she could drop him off – and somewhere a fair bit further than his flat. ‘Kingston,’ he declared. OK, it would mean abandoning his bike and he would be stuck in Kingston with no public transport over Christmas to take him back to London, but he would just have to beg a refuge from his former neighbours, Annabel and Ted. Who cared what they might think? Nothing had ever seemed more crucial than to stick close to this woman. Even lying didn’t matter. In fact, lies were now essential. ‘Trouble is, my car’s been nicked.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ she said. ‘How awful! But look, I can give you a lift. Kingston’s directly on my route.’
‘Are you sure it’s not a nuisance?’
‘Not at all. I’d be glad of the company. Though I don’t even know your name.’
‘Eric,’ he said reluctantly, tempted to change it to something more romantic or heroic: Apollo, Tristan, Romeo, Alexander, Galahad … And if only he could change his clothes, as well; wear a laurel-wreath, a toga, a figleaf or a halo – anything to catch her eye; keep him in her memory. She was dressed in a fuzzy mohair sweater, which lusciously defined her just-waiting-to-be-fondled breasts, and was as blue as her blue-speedwell eyes. A coat was slung across her shoulders – again adorably soft and fluffy, and which made him want to hold her close and stroke her. And her short grey skirt displayed her lovely legs; legs clad in patterned tights, but naked now as he ran his hands along them.
‘Great to meet you, Eric. But excuse me a moment, will you? I’d better go and find Sydney and explain what’s going on, and also say hello to a couple of other people here. One of my sisters lives close by, so this is her local parish. That’s how I got roped in – to make the cake, I mean.’
‘Is she here?’ he asked anxiously, refusing to have an inconvenient sister cramping his style on the journey down to Kingston.
‘No. She went to Guildford last night – sensible girl! I always leave things to the last minute.’
Thank God, he thought – and yes, perhaps there was a God; a benevolent God who had arranged this miraculous meeting. Although the lunch itself had been a trifle disappointing – tasteless, tepid and overcooked – he no longer cared a jot, since he was now tucking into Mandy: nibbling on her succulent flesh, sucking up her juices, savouring each delicious crumb as he rolled her round his mouth.
‘I mean, I should have made that cake last week, not on Christmas morning. And I rushed in here at a speed of knots, knowing I was frightfully late, so the whole thing’s really my fault.’
‘No, it’s my fault. And I’ll replace the cake, of course – that goes without saying. I’m afraid it won’t be home-made, but I’ll buy the nicest one I can find and deliver it in
person to this Freda lady, if that would help at all.’
She laughed – the most wondrous sound he had ever heard.
‘Don’t worry. I make cakes for a living, so one more’s not going to bother me.’
Already, he was biting into feather-light sponge and tooth-tinglingly sweet icing; a whoosh of jam and butter-cream ravishing his tongue. All those birthdays when no one had made him a cake were being gloriously rectified at this very moment, as she baked cake after cake after cake – yes, right there in the porch.
‘Look, we’d better make a move, Eric. It’s freezing out here and you don’t seem to have a coat. Be an angel, could you, and see if you can find a shovel or a broom or something, and maybe a bucket of water. We don’t want someone coming in and slipping on all this cream. And, while you’re doing that, I’ll put Sydney in the picture, and then we’ll get off, OK?’
‘OK,’ he said – except he was singing it, declaiming it, with all the ardour and romantic fire of every impassioned tenor in Bayreuth, Covent Garden, La Scala and the Met.
chapter seven
‘Right, Kath, we’ll start here in Biography. What we need to do is weed out any stock that’s tatty, dirty, or falling apart. For instance …’ Eric checked through a few volumes, then withdrew a book from the shelf. ‘This life of Mary Wollstonecraft.’ He tensed at the author’s first name: Amanda. Five whole days and still Mandy hadn’t rung. Perhaps she was dead, he thought, with horror; mangled in a car-crash, once she’d dropped him off at Kingston and continued down the motorway.
‘But that’s not tatty or dirty.’ Kath’s voice was all but drowned by the shrilling siren of the ambulance as it sped towards the wreckage.
‘It’s not in prime condition, though.’
‘Still, seems a shame to throw it out.’
He had felt the same at her age, reluctant to dispose of any book whatever. In his childhood, books had been precious passports to all the things he craved: happy, cosy families, seaside holidays, pet dogs and cats, visits to doting relatives. And, later, as an adult who avoided danger and had never been abroad, he valued books for their power to whisk him to every country in the world, or let him live vicariously as deep-sea diver, Arctic explorer, parachutist, mountaineer.
‘Don’t worry, Kath, many of the books we discard end up in good homes. Some are sent to other libraries and some to the prison book club. And the prisoners often pass them on to other men on their wing, or to visiting friends and family, who, in their turn, may give them to someone else, so they keep having a new lease of life.’ He liked to think of all those readers bringing their own perspective to each book; gaining something unique from it; interpreting it in different ways. ‘And we’re planning a big book-sale in February or March, with all the other branches in the borough, which will take care of some of the weeded stock. Now, I’d like you to go along this shelf, Kath, examine the condition of each book and tell me whether you think it should go or stay.’
He was grateful that the library was uncharacteristically quiet, since he couldn’t really concentrate – well, only on Mandy and why she hadn’t phoned. Tomorrow was New Year’s Eve: the day she was meant to be delivering his made-to-order cake. Yet he hadn’t even given her the details: what sort of cake he wanted, its size and style and type of decoration. Had she known that he was lying; that the big bash at his flat was a total fabrication; the cake a mere device to ensure he stayed in touch with her?
‘This one’s slightly grubby, but the dirt’s only on the cover, so should it go or stay?’
Reluctantly, he took the book from Kath, longing to be alone, at home, so that he could fix his entire attention on the only thing that mattered in his life. Except he’d been doing that the whole of yesterday; spent an exhausting Sunday veering from dizzy hope, every time the phone rang, to deep despair when it was some odd friend and not the woman he adored.
Was he raving mad? How could he adore a woman he’d met for precisely fifty-seven minutes? For all he knew, she might be gay or married. She hadn’t worn a ring, though, nor made mention of a partner. But suppose she was a schemer or a cheat, or even a boozer or a druggie. ‘No!’ some voice inside him screamed. ‘She’s flawless, perfect, exemplary in every way.’
He forced himself to examine the book, although the picture on the jacket began changing before his very eyes to that of a gorgeous female with Titian hair and heavenly blue eyes. ‘We’ll keep it, Kath,’ he stated, clinging on to it protectively.
If only he’d taken her phone-number, but he’d been so incredibly nervous in the car, they were fast approaching Kingston before he’d plucked up courage to trot out his string of lies: how New Year’s Eve just happened to be the fortieth birthday of one of his close friends, so he’d decided to surprise him with a party and a cake. And, although she’d expressed immediate interest, she was in a tearing rush by then, and had simply jotted down his number, promised to phone him to discuss it, and accelerated off with barely a goodbye.
Kath was studying another tome, frowning in indecision. ‘What about this Life of Wordsworth? I decided it should go, but I feel distinctly nervous chucking things that maybe ought to stay.’
‘Don’t worry, this is just a trial run. We won’t rely on your judgement until you’ve had a bit more practice. Your first instinct was correct, though. It is distinctly tatty, so clearly you’re getting the hang of it.’
He’d had to lie to Ted and Annabel, as well; forced to throw himself on the mercy of a pair of aged neighbours he hadn’t seen for almost a year, and somehow explain the peculiarity of turning up on Christmas Day unannounced and uninvited. And, because no trains were running until December 27, he’d remained captive there, with them and their in-laws, enduring what seemed an eternity of tedium. And all for the sake of a woman who had broken her promise, or forgotten him entirely.
He made a supreme effort to return to his professional role, fearing Kath would notice his extraordinary state of mind. The way he felt at present, all books seemed dispensable. Indeed, he would gladly sacrifice the rarest writings in the world: the few existing (priceless) copies of Herodotus and Aristotle, Tacitus and Pliny, along with all the precious manuscripts in every leading library in the world – burn them to a cinder, without the slightest qualm, in return for one brief phone-call from his love.
‘Right,’ he said, trying to adopt an authoritative tone, ‘let’s start putting all the weeded books in a big pile on the floor here, and we’ll pack them into boxes, once we’ve removed the labels and the bar-codes. I’ll show you how to do that later on.’
Maybe she had lost his number. A small scrap of paper could easily be mislaid, or might have even blown away as she opened the car door at Guildford and dashed in to see her family.
‘And another thing we need to check is how often the book’s been taken out. If there are hardly any date-stamps on the label in the front, we get rid of it, OK?’
Perhaps she had rung – in just the last half-hour. The very thought filled him with such joy, he wanted to go down on his knees and worship her, adore her. Well, he’d wanted that from the first second they had met and, throughout the too-brief car journey, his mind had woven erotic fantasies: they were on honeymoon in a secluded little love-nest and he was slipping off her clothes; running a slow hand from her delicately white throat to her deliciously pink toes. Or making love on some exotic beach; the December sleet changed magically to tropical sun; her limbs enticingly warm as they threshed against his own. In point of fact, his spoilsport voice had been droning on in stilted fashion about the weather and the cost of housing; too shy to express the sentiments brimming in his heart.
‘This one’s been borrowed only twice since last December, so does that mean—?’
He was almost surprised to see Kath still standing there. Since Christmas Day, only Mandy existed. ‘I’d suggest, as a rough rule of thumb, that if it’s not been taken out for a year or more, then no point keeping it. So we’ll give this one a reprieve for now and reassess it
later. But can you carry on alone, Kath? There’s something I need to check.’
His mobile, actually. Again he gave thanks that the library was near-empty, due partly to the appalling weather and partly to the date – many people still away for Christmas or New Year. It meant he could find a secluded corner and switch his mobile on, without being summoned by a customer, or sought out by some member of staff. However, his brief moment of elation gave way to deepest gloom when he discovered not a single text or message. Perhaps she’d picked up bad vibes from him – felt he was an alcoholic, a schemer and a cheat. Dead right. He would have had booze on his breath, after that bibulous Christmas lunch, and he had been lying through his teeth. He’d even told her his car had been stolen, when he’d never possessed a car in his life, and – worse – was too scared to drive. If she ever got to know that he’d gone to the church by bike (a bike he’d retrieved unscathed, thank God, after its long sojourn outside All Hallows), she would assume he was a pathological liar. She’d probably written him off already as seriously neurotic; detecting from his mere tone of voice that he was someone best avoided. But then why would she have agreed to make the cake at all – and agreed enthusiastically? ‘I’d love to do it, Eric. And I’ll really go to town and make something extra-special for your friend.’
He wandered over to the window and stared at his reflection in the pane. Today he was reasonably well dressed, but the day they met he must have looked a wreck, in his old cycling clothes and with his hair sticking up on end. Perhaps Mandy didn’t quite believe that a scruff like him could afford a made-to-order cake. He’d had no idea what they cost, but quite a tidy sum, he’d guess. In fact, the more he reflected on their meeting, the more he realized that he’d obviously come over as a tongue-tied, clumsy oaf – the way he’d cannoned into her, destroying Freda’s cake; then bored her rigid all the way to Kingston because he didn’t dare reveal his genuine feelings. Could he really blame her if she decided she didn’t want his custom? She was bound to have dozens of cake-orders from existing (reputable) clients, without taking on another from some bloke who seemed suspicious in the extreme? He wasn’t a practised liar – that was the whole problem – so he’d tied himself in knots trying to invent a story that had clearly sounded bogus. She must have seen through him from the start, but, being kind, had simply played along, rather than call his bluff.
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