‘Hm,’ said Alexander, as if he had not listened to her reply. He stepped past her and opened the door. ‘Come in,’ he said.
Megan looked up at the windows of his flat again. Everything was white and looked as fragile as an eggshell. ‘Let’s go for a walk instead,’ she suggested. ‘I’ve been sitting down all day.’
He stooped to pick the letter from the mat, and held it towards her without even reading his name on the envelope. ‘Or do you think I should open it?’ he asked, keeping hold of the letter.
‘It’s not a masterpiece,’ said Megan. ‘Open it if you want. There’s nothing in it I won’t tell you now.’
He relinquished the letter. ‘I have to do something,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
The front door closed on her. Folding the letter in half, into quarters, she considered leaving before Alexander returned, but she was still on the step when his shadow appeared on the stippled glass panel of the door. She crammed the letter into a pocket and busied herself with the sleeve of her umbrella.
‘Down to the waterfront?’ Alexander proposed.
‘So you can push me in?’ she replied, but again it was as though he had not heard. Like a steward at the end of a long day, he half-raised an arm to show the way they should go. ‘You’ve been here how long?’ Megan asked as they left his street.
‘In this flat? A couple of years or so.’
‘You’re gardening?’
‘I’m a gardener.’
‘That makes sense. And you’re happy?’
‘It’s satisfying,’ he said, in a way that imposed silence on her. By the frontless house he asked: ‘And you’re still teaching?’
‘For one more year. Then I retire.’
‘You enjoy it still?’
‘It’s satisfying,’ she responded, with a half-smile that he was intended to notice, and did.
Alexander glanced at the house. ‘And you never did get married,’ he said, with the intonation of a compliment.
‘No, I never did. There goes our Megan; she never married. Do you know when I heard that? When I was twenty. That nosy old prune who lived over the road. Remember her?’
‘Mrs Harley? Mrs Hartson?’
‘Hartson,’ she confirmed, tentatively. ‘You didn’t either? Get married?’
‘No,’ said Alexander.
‘A lady friend?’
‘None,’ he replied, and there was a tightening of his lips that might have signified amusement. ‘So, Esmé’s back in your life?’
‘She is.’
‘Quite a character.’
‘A dynamo,’ she agreed. ‘What our Esmé wants, our Esmé gets. As a rule.’
‘I’m sure.’ They passed Mr Kidwell’s shop and went down the ramp to the shore. ‘I still see Sam and Liz from time to time. You remember Sam and Liz?’
‘Good grief, Eck. Of course I remember Sam and Liz. It’s not that long ago.’
‘Their boy’s married now,’ said Alexander, ignoring her exasperation. ‘Clare has a girl.’ The flank of a distant ferry, hit by the sun, shone like a stump of chalk; behind it, and as far as they could see to east and west, clouds the colour of flint were rising. ‘And Jane Nesbit lives not far from here,’ he added.
With her foot Megan pushed a large pebble aside. ‘Eck?’ she asked. ‘You’ll stay in touch? With me, I mean.’
‘What do you think?’ Alexander replied, and he put his hands in his pockets and went over to the foot of the cliff. He perused the cliff-face as though he were reading it. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said.
She stood beside him. ‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘Will you?’
‘See those?’ he asked, aiming a finger at an outcrop of mauve flowers. ‘This is the only place in England you’ll find them.’
‘Is that so?’
‘It is so.’
‘Is this the same flower?’ asked Megan, indicating a plant that sprang from a crack of the footpath.
‘No, it’s not. It’s ordinary thrift. Otherwise known as cliff clover, or sea pink, or ladies’ cushions.’
‘Not rare then, this one?’
‘Not rare at all.’
She plucked a sprig of thrift and put it in the buttonhole of her coat. They walked on.
Copyright
This edition first published in 2002
First published in Great Britain in 2001 by
Fourth Estate
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Copyright © Jonathan Buckley 2001
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