‘I’ll get you a taxi.’ He hailed one without difficulty. ‘Where is home, incidentally?’ He glanced back over his shoulder at me as the cab purred towards us.
‘Wandsworth,’ I said miserably, wondering where his was and why we couldn’t go together. ‘Which way are you going?’ I asked. Perhaps he lived in Clapham. Perhaps we could share.
‘Oh, I only live round the corner,’ he said airily.
Round the corner? We were in the middle of St James’s. How on earth could he live round the corner?
‘Sorry, mate, I’m not goin’ sarf of the river.’ The cabbie shook his head and shifted into first again. ‘Not at this time of night.’
And off he drove, only half to my regret. Rupert shrugged and tried again, but it was the same story. No one wanted to go that far with an empty cab on the way back.
‘Looks like you’ll have to come back to my place after all,’ he announced cheerfully, as cabbie number three declined our fare.
Suddenly my nerve deserted me. What – just like that? I mean, I was pretty sure he was absolutely gorgeous and everything, but I had only just met him. And the thought of some smooth bachelor pad in SW1, with a couple of aristocratic flatmates padding around in Paisley dressing-gowns whilst their model girlfriends hogged the bathroom, suddenly filled me with dread.
‘Oh, it’s OK,’ he said, seeing my face. ‘Don’t look so worried, I live with my father. It’ll be separate rooms, and since the spare room is connected to his I’m fairly sure I can resist the temptation to corridor-creep. His other faculties may be failing, but his hearing is excellent.’
‘Oh right,’ I said, relieved. I fell in beside him as he walked. ‘Are you sure that’s OK? I mean, it looks pretty much as though I’m not going to get back tonight,’ I twittered nervously. ‘Unless I walk. But if you mean home as in your parents’ home …’
‘As opposed to a bachelor pad complete with sleigh bed and black sheets? Is that what you were expecting?’
I grinned sheepishly. ‘Something like that. Although I never got as far as the black sheets.’
Rupert, it transpired, lived in Albany, a place I’d hitherto never come across, let alone knew existed. It had all the appearance of a large country house, although Rupert quickly assured me it was full of apartments, and was set incongruously behind the Royal Academy, just off Piccadilly. The main entrance, a vast oak door, was locked.
‘Damn.’ Rupert frowned. ‘I’ve only got my set key. We’ll have to go up the back passage – if you’ll excuse the expression.’
I giggled, and he led me around to a side entrance, and then through a covered walkway around a courtyard garden. There were various staircases leading off it, and the place had a hushed, collegiate feel to it.
‘Gosh, what is this?’ I gazed about as we went. ‘An exclusive gentlemen’s club?’
‘That’s not so wide of the mark. Entry is by recommendation only, and you generally have to wait for someone else to snuff it to get some rooms. This place is full of dying Generals. Come on, up here. This is Dad’s set.’
Happily there was no sign of his father as Rupert let us in. The place was in darkness, and the paternal bedroom door firmly shut as we tiptoed past it down the corridor. We stopped at the next one and Rupert opened it.
‘There’s a bathroom off it,’ he whispered, pointing, ‘but it’s only fair to warn you it’s also Dad’s. Cough loudly if you need to pee in the night.’ He grinned at me in the gloom.
I made a mental note to hold on to a full bladder if it killed me.
‘Right.’
We gazed at each other in the doorway.
‘Good night, Henrietta.’
‘Henny. Usually.’
‘Good night, Henny Usually.’
He lifted his hand, and with his finger faintly traced a line down my cheek. I could feel my heart picking up speed. Then he leaned forward and kissed me softly on the lips.
‘Night.’
‘Night.’
He turned to go, and I went in and shut the door behind me. I leaned back on it, listening to him pad off down the corridor. Shut my eyes. My heart was still pounding, banging away against my whalebone corset. Moments later, when I opened my eyes, I was still holding on very tightly to the doorknob behind me.
Chapter Five
Breakfast the following morning was an interesting affair. Rupert’s father was a more distinguished, and far more forbidding version of his son: very tall and slim, his now greying, but obviously once fair hair swept back off a high brow, his eyes still a vivid blue. He instantly got up from the breakfast-table as I came into the kitchen, held out his hand and introduced himself as Andrew Ferguson, but I felt there was a frostiness behind the excessive courtesy. Hardly surprising, I thought, slipping into a seat opposite him, when a young floozy emerges from your spare room, not only unannounced, but wearing the most extraordinary clothes.
Obviously I couldn’t have appeared in a vintage Hart-nell ballgown – although with hindsight, he might have preferred that – so Rupert had lent me a black T-shirt that was too small for him and a pair of khaki shorts which I’d dragged in at the waist with an Army belt. He’d assured me the effect was very fetching as I’d met him in the passageway, but I wasn’t convinced.
‘But what about my shoes?’ I’d whispered, slipping on last night’s high heels and casting anxious eyes towards the kitchen.
Rupert scratched the back of his neck. ‘Probably not. He might think you’ve strolled in from Shepherd’s Market.’
‘Shepherd’s Market? Where’s that?’
‘A few blocks down. It’s where the hookers hang out.’ He grinned.
I whipped them off in horror. Consequently, my feet were bare as I slid into my seat. I felt like a street urchin.
‘Rupert tells me the taxi cabs were reluctant to convey you to Wandsworth,’ Andrew said meticulously, offering me some toast from a silver rack.
‘Um, yes, otherwise I’d have gone home. But it was too late to get a train, and much too far to walk.’
‘Of course.’ He inclined his head graciously in recognition of this, but I felt his disapproval. Felt I should have had a magic carpet tucked handily in my evening bag.
‘And you’re very welcome, my dear. As all Rupert’s friends are.’
Now why did I get the impression he was letting me know I was one of many? He reminded me of a tall, pale daffodil, his elegant head bowed, but not blowing in the breeze. In a Ming vase perhaps, in a grand conservatory.
‘But won’t anyone worry about you?’ he asked lightly, using an apostle spoon to scoop the Frank Cooper’s from a china pot and not just sticking his knife in as we did at home.
‘Well, obviously I’ll ring my flatmate in a minute,’ I prattled nervously. ‘But she probably won’t be there either. I mean, she may have stayed at a friend’s. A girlfriend’s.’
I blushed guiltily and could feel Rupert grinning at me as I dug deeper holes, but in the world I inhabited – which might well be fast and loose but was the real one – if a flatmate didn’t appear there was no need to call the emergency services. I wondered how Rupert managed his social life with such a vigilant father.
It was quite an unusual set-up, I thought, glancing around surreptitiously as we munched our toast in silence. Despite the embossed linen tablecloth, silver napkin rings, toast-rack and milk jug, and despite this very dapper man in his moleskin trousers, Oxford shirt and gold cufflinks, it all looked slightly incongruous in this small, shabby kitchen. There was no natural light as the window overlooked another building, and the strip lighting above us cruelly illuminated the warped Formica work surfaces, the floor tiles erupting in places, and the tired magnolia paint-work. I had the impression of standards being maintained in reduced circumstances. The rest of the flat, I’d noticed, was in a similar condition. The bedroom I’d slept in had had a threadbare carpet, a thin candlewick bedspread, and the mirror above the basin was cracked. Likewise, the wardrobe and bedside table – the only pie
ces of furniture in the room – were scuffed and worn. I wondered how long these men had been fending for themselves.
Rupert seemed keen not to prolong the meal.
‘Finished?’ he said, getting to his feet, having downed a bowl of Sugar Puffs in record time.
‘Oh. Yes. Sure.’ I made to get up, leaving half my toast, but Andrew put a finger on my arm.
‘Let her finish, Rupert.’
It was said lightly, but it was the lightness of steel. This was a man who was used to being obeyed. I sat down again, and as another silence threatened to prevail, decided prattling was preferable.
‘Are you in the Army too, Mr Ferguson? Like Rupert?’ Golly, Mr? Or Major? Or even Colonel, perhaps?’
He smiled thinly. ‘I might have put it the other way round, but yes. Rupert followed me into the Life Guards.’
I had a sudden, ridiculous vision of father and son as swimming-pool attendants, in tight vests and shorts, blowing whistles furiously, Rupert running behind his father.
‘Dad commanded his Battalion at Goose Green,’ put in Rupert helpfully.
‘Ah.’ I nodded, and a farmyard scene complete with duckpond sprang inconveniently to mind. Goose Green?
‘I don’t think there’s any danger of me doing that,’ he added. ‘I mean, commanding my Battalion, rather than going to the Falklands.’
Ah, right. The Falklands.
‘That’s not what I hear at Regimental Headquarters,’ put in his father smoothly. ‘Paddy Faulkner thinks there’s every chance. So long as you stick with C Company.’
There was a silence and I had a feeling of tension in the air. Of high hopes upon him.
‘I’m sure he’d do it brilliantly,’ I said staunchly, without the faintest idea what I was talking about, but I earned a smile from Rupert. His father looked surprised, but I detected a glimmer of something human around the mouth, too. He cleared his throat.
‘Are you from an Army background, Henrietta?’
‘No, my father’s an engineer.’
‘Ah.’
I found the monosyllable hard to interpret. Was that OK, I wondered, an engineer? Or not great?
‘We travelled quite a lot though,’ I added wildly.
‘Ah.’ This was a more encouraging ‘Ah’, and was accompanied by a knowing inclination of the head. Presumably Andrew now imagined I’d lived a similar ex-pat life to theirs; upping sticks every few years to go abroad, adapting to different cultures, being the new girl on the block, whereas in fact Dad had been posted to Hull for six months and Mum had stayed in London, refusing to accompany him. We were only widely travelled in the sense that we went to Puerto Banus for our holidays.
Hoping he wasn’t going to quiz me further, I folded my napkin carefully and glanced at Rupert. He got to his feet decisively. Andrew also stood.
‘Are you away?’ He proffered his hand again. ‘Very good to have met you.’
‘And you,’ I agreed, thinking how extraordinary to have shaken hands with someone twice over breakfast, a meal I normally took in bed, or on the hoof.
Outside in Piccadilly, we walked down towards Knightsbridge in silence, digesting the last ten minutes. I was shuffling along in a pair of huge flip-flops Rupert had found me, and he was wearing an old felt hat, jeans and a red T-shirt with a rip at the back where he’d yanked a particularly tickly label out.
‘He’s nice,’ I ventured shyly.
‘Dad?’ Rupert smiled. ‘He’s fine when you get to know him. Bit frosty when you first meet him.’
‘And your mother?’ I glanced up nervously. His profile beside me was calm and relaxed though.
‘Oh, Mother left years ago. Went off with Dad’s best friend, a Brigadier in the Blues and Royals. They live in America now.’
‘Oh. How awful.’
He shrugged. ‘It was at the time, but we were both away at school. Boarding-school rather softens the blow. You create your own world.’
‘Both?’
‘I’ve got a younger brother. He lives in Australia now.’
‘Oh, right. Quite young to have emigrated?’
‘He wants to be a cameraman. Natural history, that sort of thing, and that’s where the work is. He knew from an early age what he wanted to do. My father thinks he’s dropped out.’
‘So …you were the one to conform. Toe the party line?’
He smiled. ‘That may be the way it looks, but I like the Army. I like the way of life, the people. Gives me a sense of belonging. Like a great big family, I suppose.’ He glanced down at me as we dodged the crowds. ‘And I know what you’re thinking. As a substitute for mine?’
I laughed. ‘Well, is it?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? I just enjoy it. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do.’
‘You’re lucky to have a plan.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t you know what you want to do?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’
I had, actually, but I couldn’t tell him. Couldn’t tell him I found work desperately overrated and what I really wanted to do was meet a lovely man and get married one day. That in my shallower moments I saw myself, sunglasses perched on head, Gucci carrier bag swinging, pausing in a hotel lobby to ask if my husband had left any messages. How could I admit that? I couldn’t even admit it to myself.
‘And you’ve always lived with your father?’ I went on. ‘Never wanted to move out, live with other guys in a flat?’
‘Of course.’ He jumped on a 137 bus which had stopped at the lights beside us, grabbed my hand to pull me aboard. ‘Come on, this’ll do us.’ He steadied me as the bus lurched away. ‘But you can’t always do what you want, can you?’
I stared up at him as we wobbled, and wondered what he meant by that. Then realized, and felt humbled. Personally I couldn’t wait to get away from home. I’d been overjoyed to leave my overbearing mother who argued and bickered with my father, and felt no shame in leaving Benji, my younger brother, with the pair of them. Fond as I was of Dad and knowing he’d miss me, when Penny, my new best friend at secretarial college, had casually mentioned that her parents owned a flat in Wandsworth and would I like to share it with her, I’d jumped at it. As Mum had too, actually. She was nothing if not ambitious for her children and wanted some of Penny’s kudos to rub off on me. Wanted to say to her neighbours in our Finchley Road block, ‘Oh yes, Henny shares with Archibald Trevelyon’s daughter, you know. An old Cornish family. Goes to masses of parties, Henley, Ascot …’ I felt ashamed, and wondered how much of her had rubbed off on me. How thin the membrane was between us. God, I even had similar aspirations.
‘What are you thinking?’
He’d followed me upstairs and down to the front of the bus. The front seats were empty so we took one.
‘That you’re a much nicer person than I am,’ I said glumly as I sat down.
He laughed. ‘How can you say that? You’ve only known me two minutes. And anyway, I might be painting a much glossier picture of myself just to impress you. You might otherwise consider it pretty sad of me to still be living at home at twenty.’
I regarded the aquiline profile beside me: the straight nose, the felt hat tipped rakishly over gleaming blue eyes. ‘Sad’ was not a word that sprang instantly to mind. Suddenly, his face changed.
‘Shit. It’s not supposed to turn left here. Come on.’
He grabbed my hand and we flew down the gangway, pounding down the steps again and jumping off at some lights on Queenstown Road.
‘I thought you were in the Army?’ I panted. ‘Whatever happened to navigational skills?’
‘Could have sworn the one-three-seven went over Wandsworth Bridge. Oh well, never mind. Let’s walk.’
He still had my hand and my heart soared. We hadn’t even discussed whether or not he’d see me home, he’d just naturally assumed he would. A good sign, surely?
We walked back through Battersea Park, kicking up the cherry blossom on the gravel paths, and then wound our way through a maze of Victorian terra
ced streets, oblivious of our surroundings and taking a very convoluted route home. As we went we chatted and teased one other, and made each other laugh quite a lot too. Two young people alone in a big city, with world enough and time to enjoy. The girl, to the casual observer – that old man perhaps, walking his Cairn terrier – was laughing immoderately in outsized flip-flops, as the boy, encouraged by her laughter, performed even more comical facial gymnastics and threw a felt hat in the air. If he were feeling mellow, this passer-by, and not too embittered by the world, he might even have smiled to himself. Recognized the signs. Because I suppose we were falling in love.
We finally made it back to the flat at about lunchtime, starving and exhausted, but elated too. I have to say I was embarrassed to open the door and find the place in the same chaotic state as Penny and I had left it last night. The flat faced south and all the windows were shut, so the first breath one took was a bit like inhaling deeply in a barman’s trouser pocket. Ashtrays flourished in the sitting room, overflowing with cigarette butts and tissues, and lipstick-stained glasses and an empty bottle of champagne stood sentry on the mantelpiece. A bowl of crisps had apparently been tipped over and trodden into the carpet.
‘Oh, er, sorry. We left in a bit of a hurry last night.’
I flew around like a mine-sweeper, tipping ashtrays in the grate, opening windows and tucking bottles under my arm as I headed for the kitchen. The kitchen was worse. It looked as if we’d been burgled. But as I slammed cupboard doors shut and threw bottles in the bin, I couldn’t help feeling pleased. I’d left this flat with such a sense of resignation last night, with Hughie, and now here I was, back with this lovely man. This ‘catch’ as my mother would have put it. I shuddered at the thought.
As I darted around, I flicked the answer machine on, then hurriedly turned it off as Hughie’s voice roared, ‘Where the hell did you get to last night!’ Clearly miffed at missing his rumpy-pumpy. I took a quick peek in my bedroom as I flew by. Clothes, hairdryer, tongs, hangers and tissues littered the floor. I gathered them all up in my arms and shoved them under the bed. Why, Henny? Any particular reason?
Not That Kind of Girl Page 7