Tell the Girl

by Sandra Howard

  ‘Well?’ I repeated, fingernails drumming on the unyielding sofa arm. ‘Do I get an answer, or is that too much to ask?’

  He looked back at me with a cornered man’s pleading gaze. ‘Forgive me, Susannah, I’m just collecting myself and my thoughts – and pouring the refill I think I need. Can’t I get you a drink, after all? Do have something.’

  ‘A glass of champagne would be nice, inappropriate as that may be – or perhaps not?’

  He jerked his head up at that and turned, needing to see my expression, but couldn’t keep looking at me for long. He concentrated on the task in hand, pouring several fingers of scotch and freshening the ice in his glass. His shocked reaction to that remark had said it all: I’d guessed right about the beach walk. My blood boiled. Did he think I hadn’t had a clue? Had he taken me for a complete fool? Yet in my heart I knew I’d been more than that – a stupid, pathetic, conceited aging woman.

  I watched him open the oak cupboard doors under the bar-top and take a bottle of champagne out of the fridge behind. I’d thought I had enough going for me, that Warren was attracted, which he had been – but that was in the absence of a sweet-natured young divorcée nearly half my age, pretty, unspoiled . . . I’d presented him with just that, delivered her right into his home, his lap, for a whole sunny summer. I’d soon cottoned on to male egos and youthful vitality, without seeing, crassly, how much I was losing out. And now the reality, of being humiliatingly walked-over by my client and a younger woman, was sticking somewhere halfway down my throat.

  I couldn’t hold in the bile. ‘Shit, Warren, did you think I was in blissful ignorance of your city love affair? Forget the champagne, just tell me what you need to. I’ve been humouring you for too long.’

  The champagne cork flew off and broke a glass. The fizz frothed down over Warren’s hand and splashed his expensively casual linen shirt and shorts. I didn’t leap to his aid. He sorted himself out, went to wash his hands and eventually, with a coy, I’m-not-as-bad-as-all-that, go-easy-on-me, rueful look, he came across the room with his scotch and my glass of champagne. ‘I think the bottle was trying to tell me something,’ he said, sitting down gingerly beside me on the sofa.

  ‘Hmm,’ I muttered and took a sip.

  Warren spread his hands on his spattered knees and turned to face me with sad, soulful eyes. ‘I’ve just made the most terrible fool of myself, Susannah. I mean, I hardly know the girl – or which way to turn. A couple of lunches in New York . . . I got completely carried away, so flattered she was attracted to me, and then this afternoon . . .’

  ‘You asked a girl thirty years your junior to marry you?’

  ‘Twenty-nine years.’ Warren drained his whisky in a gulp. Was his hand shaking slightly? The cubes in the glass kept chinking in a distracting way. ‘It’s summer madness, Susannah. I didn’t know what I was doing and I can’t tell you how badly I feel. I couldn’t bear to lose our friendship and closeness, our relationship that’s given me such immense happiness and pride. The bonding we’ve done, special times together, our little trips. My admiration for you knows no bounds.’

  Did I really have to sit and listen to this crap? I shifted my position impatiently. ‘Yes, well,’ I said, ‘that’s all very fine. I assume, obviously, that you love Daisy – isn’t that all that matters?’

  ‘She’s such a dear sweet girl, it’s impossible not to. I am very smitten, I’m afraid. She’s not motivated by money, so spontaneous and eager to please, highly-sexed, too . . .’

  That wasn’t his most sensitive remark, I thought grimly; he’d be biting his lip for sure. It was inadvertent, but showed how much his libido was working overtime.

  ‘Is Daisy’s sexiness a slight worry to you?’ I asked bitchily, feeling caught on the raw.

  He tensed. ‘Why? Why should it be? What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re in a state of bliss right now – a new, wonderful relationship – but there is the longer term. Suppose Daisy was home seeing her sons and Simon was around? I mean, she’s under no illusions about him, but she’s never been able to turn him away. Then there’ll always be younger men chasing, that’s inevitable. But I’m sure you’ve taken that into consideration in a big-minded way, Warren. You’d be sensibly magnanimous and understanding if she were momentarily attracted, and anyway, it’s a worst-case scenario. Daisy wouldn’t want to let you down.’

  He looked affronted, or affected to be, and exclaimed, very much on the defensive, ‘Daisy’s not the flirtatious, unfaithful type – not like that at all! She’s a sincere, decent girl who’d rise above any temptation. I could trust her with my life, I know.’

  ‘She hasn’t turned you down, obviously. I assume she’s still thinking it over? Of course, if she’s already said yes,’ I smiled warmly and held up my glass, ‘congratulations are in order and I made the right choice of drink!’

  Warren smiled nervously. ‘It wasn’t an instant no, or she’d have said so then and there. I told her to take plenty of time, give it thought. And I need to as well, after this extraordinary leap of mine into the dark. A breathing space works both ways.’

  He gave a long sigh, raising and lowering his shoulders emphatically then carried on.

  ‘If only I could make amends. It wasn’t how I planned things between you and me, far from it. You know that. It’s just, well, with Daisy it’s all kind of suddenly bubbled up.’

  That was about the sum of it, I thought sourly.

  ‘I’d give anything to have your forgiveness,’ he pleaded, ‘and stay friends.’

  Warren rose to pour himself a refill and brought the champagne bottle back with him. He took the glass from my hand without asking, but delicately, like a fond husband seeing his wife’s eyes droop, and topped it up. I didn’t argue, but the glass stayed on the side table where he left it.

  He was beside me again, an antiseptic sort of presence, I felt. A faint trace of verbena hung on his skin, some toiletry of sorts, nothing earthy and masculine like smoke or sweat. A florist came to do the flowers twice weekly; the scent of lilies was discernible, but they were in an arrangement that, a little like Warren, lacked a homely, mussed-up touch.

  I’d had enough, all I could take. It was time to make a move, go to bed and mope. I had plenty to think about and plan, like advancing my flight and skedaddling home. I didn’t want to stick around being a lemon to the lovebirds a moment longer than I needed to. I’d tie up a few ends; Daisy could handle the rest.

  She must be in a dreadful twitch about having to face me in the morning. Not easy, since she hadn’t been exactly loyal. I wondered if she’d prevaricate and minimise the affair or come completely clean.

  Warren put his hand tentatively over mine. ‘Thanks for not slapping my face – or telling me I’m a not-seeing-straight old fool, which I am.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t do that; it’s your decision, yours and Daisy’s. She is indeed a very sweet girl – but she still has to say yes!’

  Did I sense a slight reality check? Warren seemed to do a double-take, as though brought up sharp. Had he been leaving that small fact out of account, believing that money and adequate prowess, a sort of gilded prick, was all that was needed? Was he seeing himself as Richard Gere, Daisy as Julia Roberts in the Pretty Woman role? But she wasn’t a hooker and he was hardly Gere.

  I stood up. ‘Night, Warren. You’ll be glad to have that off your chest, I’m sure, the business of telling me. I’ll leave right away, of course, as soon as I’ve seen to any stray threads of the job, and Daisy will be capably on hand. I’ll be very happy for you both if it all works out, and certainly no grudges borne.’

  Warren showered me with thanks, apologies and compliments like so much confetti. I couldn’t wait to leave him and be upstairs alone. The bedroom was a cool haven, privacy at last, and I collapsed onto the bed to shed a few silent bitter tears.

  I hadn’t at heart wanted more than a summer flirtation, which in fact I’d had – while magnanimously accepting what I’d thought of as a secondary dalli
ance with Daisy.

  God, it was hard to take. It wasn’t as if I’d been in love with Warren, but it was the battering to my pride, the humiliation, shame over my conceit. What really hurt deep down, I had to admit, was the sheer, cruel, galling fact of aging – my lost appeal.

  I undressed slowly and went through the drearily held-to routine of cleansing, freshening, creaming up with some expensive gluck in a fancy, heavy pot. It had a vaguely unsatisfactory smell: did they put snail slime in the stuff? Snail facials seemed to be all the rage – at least in Japan. Contact lenses out, flossing, poking around in the gaps between my teeth with little brushes . . .

  I thought of my third husband, Edward, father of my sons, struck down by a brain tumour in his sixties. Both of us had been thirty-three when we married; with Edward it was for the first time. Had he lived and we’d grown old together, he’d have accepted my sagging body, teeth implants and arthritic joints, I knew. Love always made allowances. I felt for all the widows and divorcées of a certain age. Men in similar situations found their Daisys.

  Charles would help me pick up the pieces. He was a friend for all seasons, but he could be forgiven if his patience was wearing thin. Charles didn’t get carried away with Daisy-age girls, he was too wedded to that draughty old Norfolk house of his. He’d probably had one or two of the horsey, hearty huntresses up there in his time – weren’t horsey women famously randy? He was a widower, after all – a free soul and might click with one of them soon. They were hardy types, those Norfolk females, who would leap at the chance of Charles and his freezing home.

  I lay in bed, miles from sleep, far too hacked-off and brooding. How much did I blame Daisy? Could I still work with her, assuming she didn’t marry her beer magnate and ship herself out to the States? Would she be able to resist a personable billionaire? Southampton summers in a redesigned home – to a spec in which she’d had an active hand – an apartment overlooking Central Park, Manolo heels . . . And they’d be the least of it. Warren could give her sons a golden start to adult life, their futures assured. She seemed genuinely to like him, too; she’d responded to him right away.

  Would she let go of Simon, even newly married? I hated myself for giving in to a dreadful attack of bitchiness, the way I’d put that thought into Warren’s head, but it had been in his mind already, I knew. Warren was as possessive as he was old, and he’d protested about her virtuous fidelity a bit too keenly by half.

  I turned over in bed impatiently; where was the soothing balm for the blistering pain of rejection? The inevitability of what had happened was the depressing thing. Daisy’s nubility, Warren’s over-excited libido. But if he truly loved her, I tried to persuade myself in a pride-assuaging way, could he really have carried on with me for so long and taken the trips we had? Warren was serious and proper, conventional to the tips of his toes; he seemed less cut out for a double-act than some. He’d enjoyed being with me – a little nervous drinking in Newport, true, but when we’d helicoptered to Martha’s Vineyard and also to St Michael’s, that cute chic resort in Maryland, he’d been visibly relaxed and contented, as well as in his sexual stride.

  There was no way to salvage any pride, no soft landings, no saving graces. By Thursday evening he’d known what he wanted and it wasn’t me; contentment in my company was no match for younger physical charms. It did take some swallowing.

  Warren’s ex-wife, Willa, had been the great love of his life, I believed, from the way he’d talked about her to me. His obsessive need to have every centimetre of his summer home upturned hadn’t only been a ruse for a summer flirtation with a design consultant like me. I sensed it had a lot to do with an on-going, all-consuming passion – the smallest reminders of Willa still causing heartache and pain.

  Warren was in the grip of a seventy-year-old’s infatuation, but was that foundation enough for a quality third marriage? Would comparisons with Willa begin to creep in? How much depth of love did one need for long-term happiness? Perhaps that applied more to Daisy, since it was hard to see Warren as the great all-time love of her life: he must surely be less than a grand consuming passion. He had compensating factors, though, in spades and, approaching forty, mustn’t she long for more security? It was a tough decision. I cared quite deeply about Daisy. Despite it all, I was truly fond of her.

  No one was around in the morning. Breakfast was set up on the deck. Martha came out with fruit juice, a dish of fresh fruits, luscious paw-paw with lime, ink-dark blueberries, pineapple and mango slivers, rich red strawberries for colour. Fresh-baked croissants, the hypnotic smell of the finest Brazilian coffee . . . I complimented Martha and said, looking about, ‘Surely I’m not the first up?’

  ‘Mr Lindsay’s gone sailing with Mr Harvey from next door. I think it was a spur-of-the-moment plan, fixed up just this morning. Mr Lindsay said he wouldn’t be back till late, and that we shouldn’t expect him for dinner.’

  ‘You don’t call him Warren?’ I asked lightly, thinking smugly that it was typically male of him, getting out of the heat in the kitchen and making himself scarce.

  ‘He’s never actually suggested first names,’ Martha replied. ‘He’s quite formal in his way.’ I suspected from her sensitive smile that she had some idea where we were at and felt in sympathy.

  ‘And Daisy?’

  ‘She’s gone to the Jitney stop to meet the lady coming to see you about skylight blinds. Jackson’s taking the men down to Montauk.’

  ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘I’d better enjoy this wonderful breakfast while I can.’

  Martha knew I liked my coffee in a mug so I could wander about with it, and stepping down into the garden, clasping the mug, I felt renewed. I marvelled at the sunlight slanting through the red maples. It caught the dew, which glistened iridescently. It brought clarity of colour to the pastel roses; it illuminated a patch of dull grey paving, making me decide that the new slabs should be bleached-bone pale. Accepting the job with its interesting Warren possibilities had been an experience, much of it good, but now I was ready for home. I wanted the familiar, my own set-up, and some time in my house in the South of France. I longed for Mediterranean brilliance suddenly, to be in my own skin again, free to do as I chose.

  Daisy returned with an over-made-up woman who had sample swatches of blinds slung over her shoulders like onion strings, and a hefty book of glossy photographs under one arm. Doing our business took time; she was talkative. Daisy and I continued to work when she’d left – with no mention made of Warren, not a word.

  At twelve-thirty I snapped shut my notebook. ‘I’ve told Martha we’ll have a snack lunch at the Beach Club, Daisy, our usual Monday routine, so perhaps we should walk up there now. It’ll give you a chance to tell me your decision, if it’s made. I’ll be going home tomorrow or the next day, leaving you to finish off here. Do you want to change, pick up a bathing suit? Leaving in, say, ten minutes?’

  Daisy looked at me strangely. ‘Warren’s told you then – the bombshell he dropped on me yesterday afternoon? I hadn’t realised,’ she said, blushing and very flustered. ‘I mean, the way you’ve been so nice and normal all morning, I’d no idea . . . God, how awful! I’d hoped, I suppose, depending which way I made up my mind, that you might never need to know.’

  ‘I’d guessed and tested the theory, and I put Warren on the spot late last night. It was Warren who’d been tired on Thursday, you see, not me. I hope he has his wits about him, out sailing today – he drank a lot of scotch, telling all. You knew he’d be gone till late, didn’t you? He had told you?’

  ‘No, but Martha did,’ she muttered slightly sullenly, obviously resentful that Warren hadn’t even warned her that I knew he’d proposed. ‘God, I’m unbelievably sorry about all this, Susannah,’ she added passionately, eyes bright with warmth, ‘but almost relieved. I’ve so much wanted to pour it all out to you – even if it meant having to be kicked out on my ear.’

  I stared, unsure what I felt. ‘Go and get ready then. We can talk more on the way.’

 
We walked slowly in the heat of the day; a hundred degree high, the weathermen said, still into Fahrenheit. Daisy didn’t stop talking.

  ‘I’m entirely to blame, Susannah. It wasn’t really Warren’s doing, not at the start anyway, which is the point. He’d given me his card, told me if I ever needed help, that sort of stuff, and I’d called him up one day when I hadn’t especially needed to. I’d just been feeling a bit lonely in the city, I guess, with time to kill and lunchtimes on my own. It really is all my fault. I’d been stupidly flattered by his flirty little glances,’ Daisy drew a breath, blushed again and plunged on, ‘and with the summer heat and all the excitement . . . But what sort of an excuse is that, for letting you down so comprehensively? God, I feel so ashamed.’

  ‘I’d already feared you might duck out on me,’ I said, ‘that you’d feel too lovelorn for Simon to cope. I was certainly wrong there.’

  Daisy smiled vaguely, still looking abject and was off again.

  ‘Then it got more serious, you see,’ she said. ‘Warren started giving me presents. I begged him not to, they embarrassed me, made me feel as cheap as they should have done, and more disloyal than ever. Silver chains, designer bags, you’d have known they were way more than I could ever afford.’

  Daisy stopped just short of the Beach Club, dropped down her bag and buried her head in her hands. I waited impatiently for her to look up, feeling I had rather more to cry about than her. I should be the one lifting tearful eyes.

  Hers were wetly forlorn as she faced me. ‘I can’t expect you to forgive me and I’ll never forgive myself, ever. After all you’d done for me, taught me, your kindness, the fun times . . .’

  ‘I’d quite like to get on now,’ I said curtly, cutting her off. Daisy deserved to stew a bit longer. She’d known what she was doing, she wasn’t an ingénue. I wasn’t quite ready to draw the line, say all was forgiven and forgotten, and it was blindingly hot, standing on the pavement in the full sun.