by Penny Jordan
Matt, it transpired, was that someone. He had stopped work when he saw her and as her eyes had flicked uncomfortably away from his bare, sweat-damp torso he had reached easily for his discarded shirt, pulling it on, taking care to allow her to stay a comfortable distance away from him as he showed her the sketches he had prepared for a pretty paved sunken garden.
He had taken a temporary job on the landscaping side of the business, he told her later when she took him a cup of tea. Later still she learned that he and Owen Graham, who owned the company, had been at public school together. She also learned that Matt was a wanderer, a traveller, a man who could never be tied to one place or one person for very long.
She had been drawn to him immediately. There was something open and warm about him that touched her starved senses. She had no awareness of him in the sexual sense, not then. She had long ago abandoned any thoughts of herself as a sexually functioning woman, and especially as a desirable woman. She and Gregory no longer had sex, and she felt no desire to experience with another man the misery and sense of inadequacy she had suffered on her honeymoon.
Gregory had his other women. She had learned to recognise the signs and, while inwardly she ached with the pain of disillusionment of all that she had once thought her marriage would be compared with what it actually was, she told herself that in many ways Gregory was no worse than other women’s husbands.
It was true that they might not be as persistently unfaithful as Gregory but, all too aware of her own inability to respond to him, she felt guiltily that she must just accept that he would seek sexual solace elsewhere.
The thought of divorcing him and perhaps beginning a new relationship with someone else was as alien to her as the thought of flying to Mars …
And it wasn’t even as though she was particularly unhappy. Not now … she had been at first, but now she had learned to accept the limitations of their relationship and to live within them. She just wasn’t the adventurous or independent type, she told herself when the small voice of despair and disillusionment deep inside her broke through the defences she had put up against it.
It had been at Gregory’s insistence that she had handed over the care of the garden to Owen’s company. She suspected that Gregory’s insistence had more to do with appearance than because he wanted to spare her the hard work. Hard work which she had actually enjoyed, and which she still enjoyed.
She was trying an experiment with a group of pink hydrangeas in one of the borders through which she was growing a darker pink clematis, and she was just studying the effect of the first opening flowers of the clematis against the paler pinks of the hydrangeas one morning when she looked up to see Matt walking across the lawn towards her.
For some reason she suddenly felt oddly embarrassed and nervous. She flushed a little as he approached her, but he hadn’t seemed to notice, remarking pleasantly, ‘A good combination. You have a good eye for colour.’
‘Not me,’ Davina admitted, his calm words relaxing her. ‘I’m afraid I’m only a copyist.’
‘The effect is good none the less, and there’s nothing wrong with being a copyist. That’s how I’ve earned some of my best commissions.’
From her brief conversations with him, Davina had learned that Matt was an artist, who supplemented his small income from commission by doing casual work for a variety of friends.
He was a man of odd contrasts, physically sturdy and slightly heavily built, and yet unexpectedly deft and gentle in his movements; he worked manually, but his accent betrayed his upper-class origins.
She knew that he had never been married, and suspected that he cherished his freedom. He seemed to have travelled all over the world, and he was obviously intelligent as well as extremely articulate. But what surprised her most of all about him was his obvious lack of material ambitions.
He didn’t run a car; he lived in a small cottage he was renting from a local farmer, laughing about its lack of facilities, its ancient stove and even more ancient hot-water system.
Davina laughed too as he described to her the rough shower arrangement he had rigged up in the yard, and then abruptly her stomach tensed, her body stilling with shock as she suddenly had a sharply clear-cut mental image of him standing there, his solidly muscled body glistening with moisture, his skin, water-sleek, tanned, furred by the soft golden hairs visible to her now on his arms.
Her mouth went very dry. She tried to swallow and was shaken by a fierce frisson of sensation that was so unexpected, so unfamiliar that the shock of it froze her. And then, as the mortified colour flooded her skin, she was frantically glad that Matt had had his back to her.
After that she kept away from the garden on the days when he was working, disturbed and distressed by her physical reaction to him, terrified that he might become aware of it and of embarrassing them both.
She missed the conversations she had had with him. She had recently discovered the books of Gertrude Jekyll and become a devoted fan of her work, and Matt had been a fund of knowledge about her colleagues and peers, especially the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.
And then totally unexpectedly one morning when he was not due to work at all he arrived at the house with a brown-paper-covered package.
‘I spotted this in a bookshop in Chester,’ he told her as she invited him in.
Flustered, Davina offered him a cup of tea. He moved very easily and lightly for such a solidly built man and the realisation that he was standing directly behind her flustered her even more.
‘What is it, Davina?’ he asked her quietly, very gently taking hold of her and turning her round so that she was facing him. ‘Is something wrong?’
She shook her head. Tiny thrills of sensation were running up her arms and down her body, sensations that sprang directly from the sensation of his hands on her bare arms.
‘So you haven’t been avoiding me as a means of telling me that you know how much I want you and that my wanting isn’t reciprocated, then?’
Davina stared at him, as confused as though he had spoken to her in an unfamiliar language, which indeed he had. Davina was not used to hearing men telling her that they wanted her.
‘Now I have shocked you.’
He was smiling. She could hear the rueful amusement in his voice, the total lack of embarrassment or self-consciousness.
‘You’re blushing,’ he told her, releasing her arm to brush his knuckles gently across her hot face. And then he saw the tears filling her eyes. ‘Davina, my dear, what is it?’
He was holding her now, holding her as a child and not a woman.
‘Please don’t cry. I never intended to upset you or offend you.’
‘It isn’t … You haven’t …’ she managed to tell him, and then, like the lancing of a too painful, too long-concealed inner wound, she was telling him about Gregory, about her marriage, and even, most astonishingly of all, about her own deep and humiliating fears that she was somehow unable to function properly as a sexual woman.
Matt let her talk, not trying to halt the tumultuous flood of half-sentences and words, letting the pain spill out of her to be soaked up by the comfort of his physical closeness, his gentle, accepting, uncritical silence.
Later, recalling the event, she would marvel at the extraordinary way in which she had so easily and so speedily cast aside the caution of a lifetime and confided to Matt things she had barely been able to allow herself to admit even in the privacy of her thoughts, but it was as though once she had started it was impossible for her to stop, impossible for her to stem the impulsive disjointed torrent of words that carried with them in their fast flow all the detritus of pain and insecurity she had carried with her for so long.
Matt let her speak, not trying to interrupt or stem the flood, and when the words had finally ceased to pour from her he produced a large crisply clean white handkerchief and commanded gently, ‘Come on, blow.’
He was so calming and relaxed after the high emotion of her outpourings that it made Davina laugh.
‘That’s better,’ Matt told her approvingly, and then while she was still looking up at him, laughter mingling with her tears, his expression changed, a subtle but somehow very distinctive change that made her heart beat faster and her body become charged with a different kind of emotion.
‘I can’t tell you why your husband doesn’t want you, Davina,’ he said softly. ‘But what I can tell you is that it isn’t any fault of yours, and as for your being sexually undesirable …’ He smiled at her again, a rueful, slightly crooked smile that made her breath catch in her throat and her heartbeat rocket into sudden acceleration. ‘Come and have supper with me tonight. I’ve had some ideas about the garden I’d like to discuss with you.’
He saw her expression and his smile deepened.
‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I shan’t try to seduce you. In my book, desire must be a mutual need in order to make it a mutual pleasure. I want you, Davina, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to take you to bed and to show you all the reasons why that husband of yours is wrong, but until you tell me that you want me as well I shan’t do so. You’ve nothing to fear from me, Davina.’
But everything to fear from herself, Davina acknowledged shakily. Common sense and caution told her to refuse his invitation, but recklessly, wantonly, she ignored their chiding voices.
Her father was away on a golfing holiday, and tonight, as with most nights unless they were entertaining, Gregory was unlikely to return home until the early hours of the morning, so there would be no one to carp or question where she was or with whom.
Even so, she couldn’t quite meet Matt’s eyes as she said huskily, ‘Thank you … I’d … I’d like that. The garden does need a lot of replanning,’ she added quickly, guilt making her underline the purpose of her visit. ‘I’ve been wondering about separating the garden into different sections …’ Her voice trailed away and she knew she was flushing, even though what she was saying was perfectly true.
‘I’ve got some books you might like to look at,’ Matt told her. ‘I could make some preliminary sketches incorporating different features.’
‘You’re … you’re very kind,’ Davina told him, swallowing hard, wishing her voice wouldn’t tremble so betrayingly nor her skin flush so hotly.
He was laughing a little now, his eyes bright with amusement as he leaned towards her, his fingertips touching her hot skin, just brushing the corner of her mouth. ‘You’re trembling,’ he told her, watching her, watching her mouth. ‘You’ll tremble even more when we’re lovers, when you cry out my name at the apex of your desire.’
She couldn’t conceal the effect his words were having on her, and nor could she control the fine thrill of pleasure that ran through her as her body reacted physically to the heady sensual promise of his words.
The oddest thing of all, she reflected dizzily later, having gone over and over a hundred times or more the entire incident in the hours since he had left, was not just that he had actually said that he had desired her, but that she had believed him, and had actually responded to him; had actually felt her body’s physical response to all that he had said.
She could feel it even now, could even conjure up a sharply erotic echo of that fiercely thrilling sensation just by closing her eyes and imagining the sound of his voice, by visualising a mental image of him; by recalling everything he had said to her; everything he had done, everything he had promised.
Her heart jerked nervously. What on earth was she contemplating? They could not possibly become lovers. It was totally out of the question. She simply was not that kind of woman. She was married, for one thing, and if her marriage was not the relationship she had hoped for, well, that did not mean that she should fling herself headlong into the arms of the first man to approach her.
Where was her common sense, her caution, her self-restraint, her pride? Did all the things she had lived her life by suddenly mean nothing because a man had told her he wanted her? She had never felt like this before; never felt particularly deprived because of the paucity of the sexual side of her marriage. In fact, she had been guiltily relieved when Gregory had stopped having sex with her. She was not highly sexually motivated, she knew that. She did not feel intense sexual desire, so why, suddenly and totally contrarily, had she experienced that wholly unfamiliar and sharply thrilling surge of need and awareness?
Hot colour burned her skin as she closed her eyes in self-distaste. She ought to be ashamed of herself. She was ashamed of herself, and she certainly wasn’t going to go and have supper with Matt tonight. He would understand, of course, when she didn’t turn up. But what would he understand? That she was disappointed because he had said that he would not attempt to seduce her? Her face burned even more hotly at the thought.
Even so, it wasn’t until she was actually getting changed that she was prepared to admit to herself that she was going to go.
She drove to the cottage slowly and nervously, fiercely reminding herself that nothing was going to happen, that they were merely going to discuss replanning her garden, but that didn’t stop her heart from beating nervously, nor her body from tensing in nervous anticipation.
But it was too late now. She had reached the cottage, and there was Matt, opening the door and waiting to welcome her.
Her heart literally feeling as though it had lodged somewhere in her throat, blocking it, she got slowly out of her car and walked even more slowly across the cobbled yard, pausing briefly as she felt the soft cushioning of something underfoot and looked down to discover that someone had planted a variety of mosses in the cracks between the cobbles.
Her tension momentarily forgotten, she studied them, entranced by the subtlety of the soft greens and yellows against the grey of the stone, realising that only Matt with his artist’s eye could have chosen such a delicate and yet effective colour scheme.
‘Like it?’
She had been so absorbed that she hadn’t heard him move, and now suddenly she felt breathless and dizzy as she lifted her head and realised how close to her he actually was.
He smelled clean and fresh, of soap rather than any artificially created scent, and she was suddenly acutely and keenly aware of him as a man. He was dressed casually in jeans and a soft faded cotton shirt and, like him, his clothes smelled of clean fresh air and soap.
Dizzily she stared at him, helplessly caught up in the tide of her own awareness, fighting to remember why she was here as he led her towards the cottage.
The front door opened straight into a small sitting-room, where a log fire burned in the grate, casting softening shadows over the room so that at first one didn’t notice the shabbiness of its furnishings, only the warmth of their colour.
Old faded rugs softened the bleakness of the stone floor, woven throws disguising the splits in the leather-covered chesterfield. A variety of plants in pots cluttered the window-sill, and almost every inch of wall space seemed to be filled with shelf after shelf of books.
Thoroughly bemused, Davina simply stood absorbing her surroundings, both drawn to and fascinated by their alienness, by their total contrast to her own home. Here nothing was rigid or formal; here nothing shrieked too self-consciously and gratingly of wealth and status; here everything was soft and mellow, inviting one’s touch, soothing one’s senses.
Matt, watching her, marvelled at her naïveté and her innocence. She had absolutely no awareness whatsoever of her own overflowing sensuality. He had never seen a woman respond so quickly nor so enticingly to the visual stimulation of her senses. He had witnessed it first while he watched her in her garden, his artist’s eye immediately aware of the way she touched her plants, of the way she responded to the texture and colour of them.
It was the same now in this room. He could almost see the way her senses were responding to its warmth and colour.
She was starving inside, he recognised. Not for the crude physical appeasement of mere sex, but for the true fulfilment of the sensuality she had been forced to suppress. He would teach her to enjoy t
hat sensuality, to appreciate and to laud it. He would make love to her here in this room in front of the fire, which would cast its warming glow over her pale satin skin; where its curves and hollows would glow, mysteriously pale and vulnerable in the shadows and where she would cry out tremulously beneath his touch.
He would make love to her in the sunshine as well; in the long sweet grass of the cottage’s small neglected orchard, where her skin would smell of sunlight and where she would protest a little at the brilliance of that sunlight on their entwined bodies until he showed her the delight of its warmth on their skins.
And if he stayed long enough he would make love to her in winter, their bodies locked together in the warmth of the high old-fashioned brass bed upstairs in the cottage’s single attic room, while outside the snow would lend an eerie delicacy to the light and her breasts would glow rosily pink from the roughness of his skin against their soft tenderness as he suckled on her nipples.
Davina, totally absorbed in her wondering visual exploration of the room, had no idea of his thoughts. When she looked at him he was watching her quietly, smiling slightly at her.
‘You’ve made it so …’ she shook her head, searching for the right words, and could only say helplessly ‘… so … so you.’
He grinned at her, and as she watched him she realised that she had never known this with anyone, man or woman; that she had never shared laughter with anyone before; that she had never wanted to share laughter, nor indeed thought of herself as the kind of woman who did laugh very much; but suddenly with Matt it seemed easy to laugh, easy to kick off her shoes and to curl up on the chesterfield, as he suggested, while he brought her the books he wanted her to see.
They were well worth seeing, and very quickly she was engrossed in their contents, exclaiming enthusiastically and enviously over the photographs of the gardens they detailed.
When she lingered wistfully over a photograph of a pergola heavy with fat pink old-fashioned roses Matt produced a sketch-pad and quickly showed her how such a feature could be used to break up her own garden. As she pored eagerly over his sketch Davina forgot how hesitant and doubtful she had been about spending the evening with him, watching in awed pleasure as his pencil quickly created for her a visual image of how her garden might be transformed.