‘You mean … you arranged for an abortion? Over here?’
He looked uncomfortable. ‘Let’s just say he left a few loose ends. It wasn’t going to be a social call.’
‘Oh.’ More of a bollocking call, clearly, from an irritated ex-Commanding Officer. There was obviously no love lost between them. ‘He doesn’t know I’m seeing you,’ I said quickly.
‘Good. Probably better that way.’
There was a silence as the implications of what I’d just said sneaked up on us both.
‘Am I …seeing you?’ I said boldly, raising my face to his.
His eyes radiated into mine, blue and steady. I gazed into them. Suddenly I lost my nerve. I turned away.
‘So – is this where you sleep?’ I faltered, going across to finger the curtains. I was happy fingering curtains.
‘No,’ he said, recovering quickly. ‘Dad kips on the sofa if needs be, but since we’re never here at the same time, I use his old room. I’ll show you.’
He walked out, snapping off the light as he went and I followed. Steady, Henny. Just …steady. Get that coffee down you quick, girl. Then go.
‘This is me.’
As the door swung open, I saw Andrew’s old room. A blue and white checked duvet had replaced the sheets and blankets, and there was a new pine wardrobe, but otherwise, nothing had changed. Memories flooded back like the tide surging up the beach. I remembered when Andrew had gone away one weekend, and we’d spent pretty much forty-eight hours in this bed. Making love, making plans, eating breakfast, getting up only to wander around the Royal Academy and look at the pictures, then on to St James’s Park to feed the ducks, then back to bed again. I felt the blood pulsate around my body. Did he remember? Of course he did. Of course. We stared at the bed in silence. A cat suddenly broke the moment, jumping from the top of the wardrobe to the bed, its black form stretched out gracefully – then curling to a ball on a pillow.
‘Oh!’ I jumped. ‘Oh God, don’t tell me that’s FC. It can’t be. Not unless he’s twenty-five years old.’
Rupert grinned. ‘Not FC, but son of.’
‘Oh, sweet!’ I went across to stroke the huge purring shape, marvelling at the similarity. FC had been a leaving present to Andrew from Peter, Rupert’s brother, when he left for Australia. ‘Something to remember me by,’ he’d grinned, presenting his father with a kitten, wide-eyed and terrified. That went for Andrew, as well.
‘A cat?’ Andrew had yelped in horror, gazing at the ball of fluff in his hands. ‘I don’t want a fucking cat!’ Thereafter it was known as FC, as in Fucking Cat, which was fine, until it went missing one night. Andrew, by this time and greatly against his better judgement, had become wildly attached to the wretched thing and was miserably trailing up and down Piccadilly in his dressing-gown looking for it in the small hours, when a couple of American tourists stopped, concerned.
‘Oh Lord. What’s his name?’ the wife had enquired, glancing anxiously about.
‘FC,’ muttered Andrew, peering into a dustbin.
‘Oh, how darling. What does it stand for?’
Andrew had turned and gazed at her for a long moment. ‘Fanny Cradock,’ he’d replied eventually.
We’d always joked – as much as you could with Andrew – that Freud would have had plenty to say about that.
The new cat rolled over in abandonment on the pillow, and I crouched to tickle his tummy.
‘What’s this one called?’
‘AFC.’
‘What’s the A for?’
‘Another.’
I giggled and rubbed under his chin, making him purr like a traction engine. Then I glanced up at Rupert standing beside me.
‘Remember that time you put FC out on the landing in the middle of the night? That night I stayed when your father was away, and the front door shut behind you and you had nothing on?’
‘And I was ringing the bell and yelling through the letter box, bollock naked while you were in the bath with the radio blaring? Vividly, Henny.’
‘And the guy next door,’ I snorted, ‘what was his name?’
‘Sir Henry Thorpe. The Honourable Sir Henry Thorpe.’
‘That’s it,’ I giggled. ‘He came back from a black-tie dinner with his wife and you were outside –’
‘Shivering, hands over my privates, and Lady Thorpe, who wasn’t quite the full sandwich, said excitedly, “Oh look, a corridor-creeper. Tell me, were you coming my way?” ’
I laughed and straightened up. My eyes fell on the photographs on the chest of drawers. I stared.
‘Oh!’ I breathed. ‘Is that your brother?’
‘Peter,’ he agreed. ‘All grown up.’
It was a framed snap of Peter on a beach; a smiling, blonde girl beside him and three small children.
‘That’s his wife Kerry, and my nephews and niece. Kerry’s a doctor.’
‘Golly,’ I boggled. ‘Time marches on.’ In my day, Peter was the reprobate Andrew worried about, the drop-out who bummed around Bondi Beach telling everyone he was going to be a cameraman.
‘He’s just shot the latest Scorsese movie. He was over here the other day, actually. Popped in on his way back from Hollywood for a few days. He’s having a house built in Sydney. He brought the family. Dad was thrilled.’
‘I bet,’ I said softly. So Peter had turned out to be the white sheep after all. A steady job, building a house, a wife and kids. My eye roved over the other photographs: a black and white studio shot of his mother in an evening gown and pearls which I remembered of old, and a new one, a beautiful scenic shot of a lake, surrounded by rolling hills, a hint of mountains in the background.
‘And this?’
‘The view from my cottage in Ireland.’
I picked it up. ‘It’s beautiful.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘So how often do you – oh. Sorry.’
The frame had come to pieces in my hands, but before I could fix it, Rupert had taken it from me and was hastily bundling it back together, stuffing in a couple of old pictures which had fallen out of the back and which I didn’t have time to see.
‘Don’t worry, it always does that.’
My eyes travelled back to Peter and his family.
‘Rupert, do you ever think …I mean, d’you ever wonder …’
He put down the frame and his gaze followed mine. ‘What, that if things had been different, that might have been me? Sitting on a beach with my wife and kids? A family, a proper home, rather than my dad’s old apartment? A proper life? Of course. Not a day goes by when I don’t regret it. Not a day goes by without me thinking of you, Henny. Thinking what might have been.’
I looked up at him. His eyes were blue and sincere. Focused on mine. I was unable to look away as I had in the other room. Unable even to blink.
‘But … you’ve achieved so much,’ I managed. ‘So much more than you could have done with me. You’ve commanded your Battalion, joined the Special Forces, been out in the Gulf – you were even decorated out there.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘I read about it. It was in the paper.’ I remembered Marcus spotting it in the Telegraph. Grunting as he read it over breakfast.
‘Hmph. Seems your ex-lover has finally covered himself in some sort of glory. Bunged some explosives in the towel-heads’ direction and got himself a gong for his efforts.’
‘Where? Show me.’ And I’d avidly read the report.
‘I gather you were a bit of a hero,’ I murmured. We were close now, inches apart. I could hear him breathing. ‘Pulled an unconscious man back from enemy lines.’
‘It’s easy to be a hero when you’re only looking out for number one. When you’re not thinking of the widow, the children.’
‘You see?’ I said softly. ‘I would have held you back.’
‘You never held me back.’ He lifted a finger and slowly traced a line down my cheek, to my chin. I didn’t move. ‘I held myself back. Held myself back from loving you, from jumping in fe
et first to what I instinctively knew to be right. I’m no hero. You were my life-force, Henny. My reason to be. Why I let you go, I’ll never know. It was the single most cowardly thing I’ve ever done in my whole life. After that, I kept on having to prove myself. Prove that I wasn’t a flunker. Wasn’t windy. But every prize I won for my efforts seemed hollow after the one I’d lost. My rank swelled, and my life got thinner. I was the glory boy with a chest full of medals and an empty heart underneath.’
I felt my own heart pumping away as the blood coursed around my body, tingling in my fingertips, my toes. His face grew closer, our lips a hair’s breadth apart.
‘When are we going to have that coffee?’ I whispered, futilely.
‘I think we both know you don’t drink the stuff, don’t we? Unless your tastes have changed.’
‘My tastes haven’t changed,’ I murmured.
His lips closed on mine, and as he took me in his arms, the room rocked. I rocked with it, losing control of my senses as the years rolled away. As I kissed him, I felt as if I was shedding a skin – my older, middle-aged skin, the one I’d worn as a wife and a mother all these years – and now, standing here in his arms, I felt like the girl again. With the boy I’d loved so much.
And then there was no hesitation. Kissing me wildly, passionately, Rupert slipped my jacket off my shoulders. My hands fumbled for his shirt buttons as, still locked in an embrace, we stumbled towards the bed. His hands plunged into my hair, then cupped my face, as he paused a moment to break off and stare at me, as if he couldn’t quite believe it. Then his lips found mine again and he relieved me of my top, struggling with it, rather inelegantly, over my head. We tumbled into bed, but not before my hand had hit the light switch. I wasn’t twenty-one any more, and I didn’t have the body he remembered, even if, I was astonished to discover, despite being broader and less skinny, he pretty much did. He rolled on top of me and kissed me from my ear down to the base of my neck and I felt my whole body turn to liquid.
‘Get it off,’ he whispered in my ear.
It was a long time since I’d been ordered to take my clothes off but I struggled obediently with my bra strap. His head jerked back.
‘No,’ he gasped. ‘Bloody cat! It’s on my head!’
I glanced up. In the gloom it did look rather as if he had two heads, but that could have been the drink.
‘Go on!’ I gave it a shove. The cat squealed indignantly and landed lightly on the floor, feet first. A second later, it was back, nestling in the crook of my neck.
‘Ouch!’ I squealed. ‘It’s got claws!’
‘It’ll have to go,’ muttered Rupert. ‘This isn’t quite how I envisaged this moment.’
‘Chuck it out,’ I panted, sitting up and marvelling at the urgency in my voice, at the uncharacteristic waves of desire crashing over me, at the longing for his body to be back next to mine as he leaped from the bed. As the blood stormed around me, I was astonished. Delighted, too. After all, I usually regarded this as something of a spectator sport, didn’t I? Didn’t always join in. With Marcus, that is. Marcus. The storming blood froze in my veins.
‘I’ll shove him out of the kitchen window onto the fire escape,’ Rupert promised as he hastened from the room. ‘Back in a mo.’
I didn’t answer. Stayed sitting bolt upright, my blood still frozen. After a moment, it thawed and my heart began to beat again. I flopped back miserably on my pillows.
Yes, but – think what Marcus has done, I reasoned, desperately trying to claw back ground. What he’s probably doing right now! I tried to imagine it, frantically summoning up the requisite images. Ah – Perdita’s cottage, that was it, in the picturesque bedroom under the eaves … her lithe tanned limbs wrapped around him with – ooh yes, riding boots on, and spurs too. ‘Come on, Marcus, faster, gallop!’ ‘Bastard,’ I muttered. Yes. It was sort of working. Oh – and the whip. Don’t forget the whip. Go on, Perdita – hit him hard.
‘Shit!’ came Rupert’s voice from the kitchen, along with the sound of breaking glass.
‘What’s happened?’ I called. There was an angry feline squeal.
‘Bloody thing jumped back in and knocked a glass off the draining board. Be with you in a minute.’
I heard more swearing and banging around as he doubtless tried to sweep up the glass. I pulled the duvet up to my chin and stared at the ceiling. Oh come on, come on. My nerve was slipping away like mercury now, I could feel it sliding right out of the door and down the street, and summoning up more visions of Marcus on the job didn’t seem to be helping. I could see her all right, but not him. Every time I tried, I could only see his face, white with anger and contempt, even though he was flat on his back with Perdita astride him riding for England – hard hat on, whip clenched between her teeth …
I rolled onto my side and brought up my knees in a foetal position. Would it help, I wondered, if I imagined them in our marital bed? At home? After all, that’s what she’d suggested in her email, so perhaps that’s where they were now. In our sumptuous cream bedroom, between my Egyptian cotton sheets. I ground my teeth at the thought. Yes, that was doing the trick. How dare they! How dare she slide out of bed and slip into my silk robe? Well, grubby towelling robe, actually, so perhaps she wouldn’t, but padding naked into my bathroom, picking up my cleansers and toners and putting them down with a sniffy air, admiring her flushed, post-coital cheeks in my mirror. A warm feeling – could be anger, could be desire, either way it was hot and I was going with it – spread back around my body like a hot spring. Oh, come on, Rupert, come on, I’ve got it now, I thought, fists clenched in triumph. We’re getting somewhere! I felt like an impotent man, marvelling at something he didn’t see very often and jolly well wanting to run with it before it disappeared.
Finally I heard a door slam shut and Rupert’s firm, familiar tread came down the passage. Too firm, perhaps, and rather slow for one intent on his red-hot lover. The door opened. By now, as I’d wrestled with images of Marcus and Perdita, I’d wrestled out of the rest of my clothes too – thrown them aside in a liberated, inebriated fashion. I was sure it would help the nerve, and the libido – and anyway, suddenly I wanted him to see me. Naked. I kicked the duvet aside too. Yes, suddenly I didn’t want to hide the Caesarean scar, the fuller bosom, the stretchmarks. I wasn’t the girl he’d known, but I was very definitely a woman. I raised my chin as he turned on the light, and let a seductive smile play on my lips. It froze there. For standing framed in the doorway, in his pinstriped suit and Brigade tie, an Evening Standard tucked under one arm, was Andrew Ferguson.
Chapter Eighteen
I snatched up the duvet and clutched it to my chin, horrified.
‘Andrew!’
He stood there, mute with astonishment. Then it dawned.
‘Henrietta.’
We stared at each other for a brief, appalled moment, and then he came to. Snapped off the light, went out and quickly shut the door.
‘Dad? What the hell are you doing here?’ I heard Rupert’s voice in the passage.
‘Looking for a bed for the night if that’s not an unreasonable request.’ Andrew’s voice was level, but tense. ‘I just put my head round your door to see if you were here, but it seems you have company.’ He lowered his voice. ‘What the hell are you up to, Rupert? She’s married, for Christ’s sake!’
I lay there, rigid with shock and embarrassment, and didn’t hear Rupert’s response, but there was a furious, hissed exchange culminating with Rupert snapping, ‘I’ll do as I bloody well like!’
Having momentarily lost the will to live, I was suddenly galvanized into action. I leaped out of bed and ran around the room, snatching up my clothes abandoned on the floor. My skirt, my bra – where? Ah, at the foot of the bed – oh God, the shame! With trembling fingers I threw it all on. I was just doing up my shirt, when Rupert came in, pale-faced, a muscle twitching in his cheek.
‘You don’t have to go, Henny.’
‘Of course I do!’ I gasped, struggling with my shoes
. ‘Oh my God, Rupert, I thought you said he was at his girl-friend’s!’
‘He was, but a relative of hers was taken ill. She had to go, that’s why he came back here, but I will not have you turfed out in the middle of the night.’ He was white with anger. ‘Stay, I’ll sleep on the sofa.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I spluttered, ‘of course I’m going. I’m married, Rupert, as we keep so conveniently forgetting and as your father has so thoughtfully reminded us.’
‘And so is Marcus.’ He came in and shut the door.
‘So an eye for an eye?’ I regarded him steadily.
‘But it’s not just that, is it?’ He came across and put his hands on my shoulders. ‘This would have happened anyway. It would have happened regardless of his infidelity, you know that, Henny. In your heart you know this was meant to be.’
I gazed into his clear, confident blue eyes. So sure. So convinced we were meant to be together. I glanced down.
‘Maybe.’
He lifted my chin with his finger so I had to look at him.
‘I don’t know,’ I whispered. ‘I feel so confused. And so ashamed, right now. Oh God, Rupert, your father …He saw me –’
‘In bed, so what?’
I gulped. Yes, well, slightly more than just in bed, actually, but we wouldn’t go into that right now. I reached for my handbag.
‘I’ll get a taxi,’ I said.
‘I’ll ring for one for you.’
‘No, I’ll go out and get it.’ I didn’t want to hang around here any longer than was necessary.
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘Rupert, you don’t have to –’
‘Henny, of course I’ll get you a taxi. What – you think I’d let you wander around on your own at three o’clock in the morning? I’ll get my coat.’
My own coat, I recalled, was still in the sitting room where I’d left it. Without thinking, I nipped across the landing and through the open door to get it. It was dark, but I knew it was on the far side, on the window seat. I went quickly across and picked it up, but as I turned, I saw Andrew sitting facing me on the sofa opposite the window, still in his suit, a glass of whisky in his hand. Just – sitting in the dark. The moon from the uncurtained window washed palely over his face. I stopped still. Our eyes met for the second time that night.
Not That Kind of Girl Page 25