by Marie Joseph
‘Are they? Oh, dear.’
The restaurant was crowded. The menus were almost as big as the tables, which were set disconcertingly close together, but because everyone was talking at once, in fairly loud voices, the sound became diffused so that each small table became like an island.
‘The champagne is Dom Pérignon. Would you like some?’ he asked her. When it came and she’d drunk a little, he said he could see it sparkling in her eyes.
‘You’ve been working too hard, Lisa,’ he told her seriously. ‘My guess is you’ve forgotten how to play. How long is it since your husband died?’
Lisa told him. Then, because she didn’t want to talk about Richard, because the champagne was making her feel light-headed and bubbly inside, she told him about the game she sometimes played.
‘See that woman over there? The one in the turquoise silk trouser suit? Well, I saw her come in and she’s entirely the wrong shape for trousers. If she wore a more neutral shade, a plain dress with maybe just a string of pearls, and had her hair cut in one of the new geometric shapes, it would show her small features up and she would be a beauty.’ She laughed. ‘No, I’m not being catty, just professional. It gives me a real kick to be able to redo a woman’s appearance like that. I used to do the same with houses, giving a room a completely different look. It’s creative, you see, with the same satisfaction that your writing must give you.’ Suddenly she blushed. ‘Don’t get the idea that I think my own image is perfect. It’s strange really, but I have difficulty seeing myself objectively. Sometimes I have difficulty seeing myself at all.’
‘That’s because you’re basically too insecure to be self-satisfied.’ Greg poured more champagne. ‘I guess that sometime, maybe a long way back, perhaps even in your childhood, you were hurt badly. And when that happens there’s a blow to your self-esteem. A man, maybe? A lover who walked out on you?’
‘My father,’ Lisa said without thinking. ‘Oh, my goodness, Greg. I didn’t come out with you to be analysed. What are you, an amateur psychiatrist?’
‘A shrink?’ He grinned so that the elongated dimples came and went. ‘I might well be. There are almost as many shrinks in Washington as in the whole of the rest of the country put together. But Freud did sometimes know what he was talking about, honey.’
‘He put every motivation down to sexuality.’ Lisa toyed with the fish on her plate. ‘And don’t you dare tell me I was secretly in love with my own father. I come from the north of England and we don’t encourage fanciful ideas like that.’ Determined to change the subject, she went on: ‘I’ve always believed that climate, conditions, even the type of industry relevant to one county can formulate a difference in character and outlook. Don’t you agree?’
Greg immediately went along with what she’d just said. If this enchantingly lovely woman didn’t want to talk about how she was raised, then that was OK. ‘I guess I do agree. A New Yorker from the city is a mighty different person from a Californian, a Texan, an Alaskan or, say, a down-easter from Maine. And that’s in spite of the fact that hardly anyone in this country is living in the region in which he was raised. There are subtle differences in their choices and judgements. Me now, I’m an amalgam of so many different cultures that I reckon I gave up looking for who I was a long, long time ago.’
‘Let’s not start looking tonight.’ Lisa could feel the champagne warming her voice, flushing her pale cheeks. ‘Let’s just enjoy this food, this place, these people you say are staring at us.’
‘Wondering who the beautiful Englishwoman Greg Perry is with can be.’ Greg’s eyes were suddenly wise. He would ask no more if that was what she wanted. But how much there was he wished to know.
Before they picked up the car from the parking lot they went for a walk, pacing slowly along the wide pavements in a Georgetown that reminded Lisa so much of Hampstead. They held hands and talked gay, loquacious nonsense. The day had cooled considerably, and the stars had disintegrated into a fine dust powdering the sky.
‘I think the snow will come early this year,’ Greg said, as they walked more quickly back to the car. ‘Any hope of you flying over again for Christmas?’
For the whole of the drive back to Peter and Marianne’s apartment Lisa told him how it would be for her at Christmas.
‘Orders for party dresses, some of them last-minute, the downstairs shop like a rugby scrum, fitters having hysterics, customers fainting in the crush, Beatles’ background music pounding overall, mothers yelling at their daughters, asking them what do they think they look like dressed like that, and then on Christmas Eve going back to my flat, flopping down and asking myself is it worth it?’
‘And is it, honey?’
‘It’s my life,’ Lisa told him. ‘The only life I know and the only life I want.’
‘I see,’ said Greg, seeing more than she ever dreamed. ‘Will you let me take you out to Mount Vernon tomorrow to see George Washington’s home? I’ve a few days’ leave due and we’ll drive along by the Potomac River and eat lunch in a restaurant waited on by serving maids complete with mob caps and tightly-laced bodices.’ He turned the car into the drive fronting the wide block of apartments. ‘Everything’s in a remarkable state of preservation, right down to the slave quarters with tiered bunks.’ Switching off the engine, he took Lisa in his arms and kissed her gently.
Just for a moment she was gripped by fear, the terror that had filled her with self-loathing after she had let Gordon Conway make love to her.
Greg put her from him, realizing immediately that for this quiet, lovely woman it was too soon, too early to tell her that already he suspected he was falling in love with her. He touched her nose lightly with his finger, and said, ‘Tomorrow, then?’
‘He’s in love with you,’ Lisa’s daughter-in-law told her when Greg had gone. ‘He couldn’t take his eyes off you. What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve heard so many shocking things about him, he must be interesting,’ Peter said. ‘Malice thrives on nothing, here in Washington. He isn’t married and he doesn’t live with anyone, so therefore he must be suspect. Perhaps he’s … .’
‘He isn’t!’ Lisa said without thinking, and they fell about laughing, her son and his pretty wife, leaning on each other till tears came to their eyes.
‘What are we going to do with you, Mother?’ Peter wanted to know. ‘Just look at the time! We’ve been so worried, haven’t we, darling?’ He looked wickedly knowing. ‘Englishwomen have a reputation for going overboard for the first man they meet when they go abroad on holiday. You know, like widows on cruises. It’s this new permissive society, they say. A trying to catch up with what they feel they missed.’
‘But when it’s your own mother!’ Marianne’s eyebrows arched upwards. ‘You feel responsible. I guess you ought to have a serious talk with her.’
‘Birds and bees stuff, you mean?’
‘Along those lines.’
Lisa watched them happily, thanking God for their happiness, realizing yet again that she wasn’t the kind of possessive mother who needed the constant presence of her offspring as long as he was contented. She had brought Peter up to be independent and now that very independence was assuring his contentment. Peter would never go back to England. Already she could see he was totally integrated into American society, part and parcel of the wise-cracking, bustling, striving way of life. Her grandchildren would be born here and, apart from visits, she would have to live her life alone. Exactly as it should be, she told herself firmly, pushing aside the tiny niggle of despair that clouded her present serenity.
‘Greg is taking me to Mount Vernon tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Do you reckon I need a chaperone?’
‘Not if you watch your step, Mother,’ Peter said, solemn-faced.
And the next five days were sun-filled, even though out of the sun Lisa got an inkling of the cold Washington winter just around the corner. They drove for miles, filling up with petrol, which Greg called gas, at garages where the attendants wore bow ties and told them to
‘have a nice day’. They picnicked in pine woods with the Blue Ridge mountains as a back-drop; they drove out to Middleburg and ate at the Red Fox Tavern. ‘Established around 1728, would you believe it?’ Greg pointed out with pride. On a sunny afternoon they walked the tow path alongside the Chesapeake and Ohio canal.
‘In summer,’ Greg said, ‘the butterflies and dragonflies are really something. You can take a canal trip guided by students dressed in nineteenth-century costumes, the barge pulled along by mules. In those days the children of the bargees started work at the age of eight, dragging the barges when the mules were tired. Can you believe that?’
A great surprising tenderness filled Lisa’s heart again as she realized this tough man’s pride in his heritage. Since that first kiss he had made no attempt to touch her, apart from a friendly arm round her waist or a holding of hands as they walked along. Lisa looked at him, then away as his eyes searched her own. She knew he was seeking a response she could not make, the kind of love she couldn’t give. They had begun something of which she already knew the end, and the knowing filled her with a deep sadness.
They drove back in silence that day along a straight wide road with wooded hills on either side. When they got to the huge block of apartments he held both her hands for a moment, jiggling them up and down in the warm comfort of his own. And the question in his eyes asked her what was going to happen to them? What were they going to do next?
‘The day after tomorrow I go back home,’ Lisa said, giving him her answer.
That night the telephone rang as Lisa and Marianne were in the kitchen frying chicken and simmering rice. Peter and Greg were watching a baseball game on television with a concentration so rapt that it was as if they had staked their entire assets on the results.
‘It’s for you, Lisa.’ Marianne came back into the kitchen, bright blue eyes laughing in her tanned face. ‘The man with the plum in his voice again.’
‘Hello? Gordon?’ Lisa smiled into the receiver. ‘You sound as though you’re standing right next to me. Everything OK?’
‘I’m ringing from the shop, It’s a quarter to twelve here on a dark and stormy night.’
‘But all’s well?’ Lisa asked, raising her eyebrows at the two men now watching television with the sound turned off.
‘All’s very well, I’m glad to say.’ Over the thousands of miles Lisa heard the rustle of papers. ‘Do you want me to give you the figures? I’ve got the Lancashire ones here as well. They’re down a bit, but we’re up.’
‘You mean with you away from the north their profit margins drop, but with you down south the London ones rise?’
Lisa felt very happy. Soon they would be sitting down to golden fried chicken, mange-tout peas and mushrooms, finishing off the meal with a slice of Marianne’s carrot cake, a towering confection of moist sponge and luscious cream. So she would go back pounds heavier, so what?
But listening obediently to Gordon’s figures she was unaware that Greg had turned round in his seat to watch her with an indefinable expression on his craggy face.
She was looking particularly lovely, he was thinking. During the afternoon she had worn her dark hair loose, but now it was upswept in a tiny bun on the top of her head. The style accentuated her delicate features, and the sun had done no more than tinge her cheeks a wild-rose pink. He fingered his own wind-leathered cheeks reflectively. Her cameo-like appearance belied the almost masculine strength of her character. Greg stroked his chin and smiled. Boy, but she was one tough cookie, his little English lady. He was doing OK. Playing it cool, not saying anything to freeze her into that icy silence and stiffened resistance the time he’d kissed her. Just look at her now, teasing the guy back there in London, making it clear that the way she felt right that moment the whole business could go bankrupt and she wouldn’t give a damn. Give her another coupla weeks here and she wouldn’t want to go back. Greg glanced briefly at the television, just to show willing. He wasn’t clear in his mind as to what lay ahead for them. He knew that his days of foreign assignments were over, but he reckoned that with Lisa around he wouldn’t mind too much being desk-bound during the week, then taking the both of them off to do some fishing, lounging around that old trailer he’d fixed up in Virginia.
She could open up a shop here if that’s what she wanted. Somehow he couldn’t see Lisa doing the coffee and cookie round. He smiled, watching Lisa again. It would work out fine once he’d gotten her promise to marry him. He wouldn’t rush her too much, even so. He could afford to be generous in his understanding, loving her so.
‘And that’s all, then?’ Lisa wrinkled her nose at the two men watching the silent screen. ‘I’m almost through,’ her expression said, and Greg lifted his shoulders to show there was no need for her to hurry.
Back in London, Gordon Conway glanced at the brief notes he’d made before putting through the call to Washington. He tapped the last item with his forefinger. ‘Oh, yes. They did have a bit of a crisis up north – the factory. They’ve had a lot of rain up there and the women were complaining about the damp coming through the walls. Nellie Smith swore they could have cultivated mushrooms in it.’
‘But you were going to get someone to see to it.’ Lisa pulled another comical face at the two men: Peter, who in appearance was her father born again, and Greg, next door to being handsome with his brown face and hazel eyes, sitting there holding his pipe gently between two fingers. How easy it would be to love him… .
‘So we started with the builders,’ Gordon was saying. ‘After all, they did the restoration work.’
Marianne appeared from the kitchen, looked round as if counting heads, then disappeared again. Peter got up and followed her.
‘A good move,’ Gordon said. ‘The bossman came at once and said he’d have it put right straight away. Free of charge, would you believe it? He must be the last of a dying breed. No one does anything for nothing these days.’
Gordon knew all this could have waited until Lisa was home, but he’d seen the last week’s takings with his own two eyes, hadn’t he? The London shop was a little gold mine, so a transatlantic call was a mere drop in the ocean, so to speak. Besides, he hadn’t figured on having to work such long hours. No wonder Lisa often looked tired halfway to death. Added to which, the sound of her voice still gave him a little frisson of excitement, even though what had been between them was history, dead and past. He squinted at the list, trying to decipher his own spidery scrawl.
‘I have the bloke’s name here,’ he said. ‘A Mr Grey. Mr J. Grey.’
‘Jonathan!’ Lisa closed her eyes against the sudden swell of emotion starting shamefully in her loins, licking its way up into her armpits, throbbing, overwhelming her with intensity. ‘Jonathan Grey,’ she said again, exulting in the saying of his name.
‘You know him, then?’ Gordon frowned. ‘Apparently he asked for your London address, but Nellie wouldn’t give it to him. Per your instructions,’ he reminded her. ‘You know our Nellie, she’d suspect the Pope of an ulterior motive; but maybe she should have… .’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
But something mattered. Greg Perry watched as Lisa replaced the receiver, then smiled at him, not seeing him at all.
During the meal he refused to look at her, knowing for sure she had gone away from him to the secret place in which she dwelled, shutting him and everyone else out as if they didn’t exist. And because he prided himself on being essentially masculine, a growing anger against Lisa spread inside him. He recoiled from the sadness this so English woman was forcing him to experience. He’d seen enough of sadness in the wars he’d covered, lugging his portable typewriter round places which had left deep scars on his mind. God damn it, he’d finished with all that! What left-over life he had to live had been deliberately uncomplicated until she’d come along. He told a whopping fisherman’s lie and they all laughed.
Except her. At least, her lovely wide mouth laughed, but her eyes… . Greg looked away from the dreams slumbering in their depths, the
n was blazingly angry once again at his own perceptiveness.
He drove back to his apartment later that night, across the bridge over the Potomac River, with clusters of stars grouping together in the moonless sky. He would ask her no more questions, knowing if he did that the answers had roots in her that he must never question. He must let her go, and say nothing.
Two days later, because both Marianne and Peter were working, he drove her out to the airport with the Blue Ridge mountains etched hump-backed against a navy-blue sky.
The passengers crowding the airport lounge were very quiet, sitting on low leather seats hugging their hand-baggage. There was nothing of the daytime noise and bustle, just a sitting there as if already they were suspended in time and space over the Atlantic Ocean.
Greg said, ‘It’s been nice knowing you, Lisa.’
‘Thank you for giving me such a good time. I hope we meet again.’ Lisa smiled at him, tucking a strand of dark hair behind an ear. ‘Please don’t wait till we’re called through. I hate goodbyes. I always have done.’
Standing, he pulled her up to face him. His eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles were kind, and as his mobile mouth widened to a grin the dimples came and went, adding rather than detracting to his masculinity. Because he was a writer, used to expressing himself truthfully, the words inside his head ran like poetry: ‘Goodbye, my love. From tomorrow I will see your face before me every waking minute. Already your voice and your laughter are a part of me. Darling Lisa, I could have been the love of your life. I would have cherished you till death parted us, but I will force myself to forget you, and no other woman will ever get so close to me. Never again will I feel this vulnerability. I swear that.’
‘Have a good flight,’ he said aloud. ‘Come back one day.’