by David Beaty
‘He knew better than to do that.’
She shivered.
‘I like you when you’re all masculine and possessive.’ She put her face up for him to kiss. ‘Do you like me when I’m all feminine and helpless?’
‘I like you all the time,’ he said, chucking her under the chin.
‘I’m being feminine and helpless now because I’m sure my cooking isn’t up to your first wife’s.’
He said nothing, watching her with a fatherly indulgence, as she wiggled her way into the kitchen.
‘Get two knives and forks out of the sideboard drawer, will you, darling?’ She called through to him. She returned carrying two plates on each of which was a slice of cold quiche, some lettuce and a tomato. A bottle of white wine was tucked under her arm.
‘Chilled,’ she said, setting the feast on the table. ‘At least stewardesses are very good on drinks.’
When he had drawn the cork and filled their glasses, she put her elbows on the table and gazed up at him.
‘I missed you terribly,’ she sighed.
‘I missed you.’
‘I was so lonely, I got Polly to come and stay for a couple of nights.’
‘Well,’ he smiled, ‘I’m home now. And I’ve brought you something.’ He went to his bag and fished out the two small parcels. He brought them over and put them on the table beside her, like they used to do with the children’s birthdays. ‘You can open them when you’ve finished your lunch.’
She ate her lunch quickly, giving him and them little childish, greedy glances of anticipatory pleasure. Several times she daintily squeezed them with her fingertips.
‘Can I guess what they are?’
‘No. Just eat up.’
‘I’ve given myself rather too much,’ she pleaded.
‘Nevertheless. You eat up.’
She gave him her most endearing gamine smile, and the remains of the quiche and salad.
‘Now?’ she asked.
‘Now,’ he nodded.
She reached for the parcels, rattling the smaller one against her ear.
‘Open the Saks one first.’
She tore the wrapping and tissue aside, and held up the silk scarf. ‘Oh it’s beautiful! Fabulous! I love it!’ She wound it round her neck, then jumped up and sat herself on his knee to kiss him.
‘Now this.’ He picked the small box up from the table and put it into her hands.
‘But it’s Tiffany’s!’ She made her eyes round with wonder.
‘I know it’s Tiffany’s,’ he mocked her tone indulgently. ‘Open it.’
‘I hardly dare.’ Nevertheless she inserted her pink varnished thumbnail under the seal, and ripped it open. She drew in her breath at the leather box, and pressed it open with reverent fingers. ‘Paul! You dear gorgeous extravagant man! Polly said you’d spoil me. And so you do. How can I thank you?’ She lifted out the delicate gold bracelet and held it up in her fingertips. ‘Here, Paul. Put it on for me.’
She held out her thin child’s wrist. He clasped the bracelet round it. The fastening was easy. He didn’t require his glasses, he thought, seeing himself now on their honeymoon night with distant, wry amusement.
‘Of course it doesn’t go with jeans and T-shirt,’ he smiled at her.
‘No, it doesn’t. You’re right.’ She got up and walked over to the mirror above the fireplace. ‘So why don’t you have a shower and change, and I’ll change as well into something it does go with.’ She turned and gave him one of her most provocative smiles.
He pushed back his chair.
‘Good idea!’
He rumpled her still damp hair playfully as he passed her. He walked upstairs and into their bedroom. He stripped out of his uniform with relief. Before he padded through into the bathroom, he stood in front of the cheval glass. He was still in his prime, he told himself, still fit and muscular, no sagging, no spare fat. He went into the shower cubicle, closed the glass door and began singing as he scrubbed himself. His skin tingled, his body tensed. Archie used to say nostalgically that he was randiest after a trip while everyone else was flaked out. Flying took men in curious ways, Harker thought, admiring himself.
He was just reaching to turn off the hot water, when the glass door of the shower cubicle opened. Belinda, totally naked unless one counted the bracelet, stepped in. She gave him a consciously seductive smile. She held the wrist with the bracelet under his nose.
‘I couldn’t find anything more suitable to wear with it,’ she sighed, and stretched out her hands to his wet body.
Her seductiveness was so theatrically overdone, so childish, that unforgivably he laughed. Louder, more unfeigning than he had done in months. When he managed to stop himself, it was too late to make amends.
He slept late the following day. No matter how much he tried to deceive himself, he was not a young man and these days flying always caught up with him. He felt shagged-out for the next forty-eight hours.
For that reason and for others, Belinda moped. She spent hours on the phone to Polly and her former colleagues on the airline. Four days after his return, the black-haired, sloe-eyed girl called Chloe came to play records and drink coffee and gossip and giggle. He could hear their voices as he tended the chrysanthemums behind the kitchen window where Harriet always liked to see them. It made him feel his house had been invaded by strangers.
‘Why don’t you ride Fandango?’ he asked Belinda when Chloe had gone. ‘ Get yourself out in the fresh air instead of stuffing indoors.’
‘You sound like my mother,’ she scowled. ‘And why don’t you tell your daughter to come and deal with her damned horse herself?’
‘Because she’s recently had a baby,’ he said stiffly.
And with deadly aim, Belinda replied nastily, ‘Of course. I had forgotten. You’re a grandfather.’ Aware perhaps that she had gone too far she went on, ‘Anyway, Fandango’s too much for me to handle. He needs a firm hand. A man.’
So dutifully for the next three days he trundled the horse round the field a couple of times. Surely I’m not assuming Harriet’s pathetic role, he asked himself, and keeping the horse in the hope of Jane’s return?
A hope now even more impossible than before. For though he had written that stiff little note congratulating her on her daughter’s birth, the cheque he had enclosed had not been cashed, just as his second stiff little note informing her that he had now married Belinda had not been acknowledged.
At the Wheatsheaf on the Saturday, Madge said, ‘Give the girl time to get used to things.’ And though undoubtedly she referred to Paul’s complaint about Jane, her eyes at that moment rested on Belinda who had left the warm corner to go over and talk to Chloe and Griffiths. ‘ This generation has its own ideas.’
That was true enough, he thought, though whether Belinda or Jane, he was damned if he saw much of value in their ideas. Do your own thing regardless seemed to be the order of their day.
‘After all,’ Belinda protested, returning to the subject of Fandango the day before Harker was due out on Service, ‘I can’t expect Polly to make herself a slave. That horse is an expensive nuisance. I shall write to your daughter and tell her to come and take the damned animal away.’
‘Don’t. I forbid you to say anything to Jane.’ He reiterated these words to her as he kissed her goodbye. He was glad to get away.
He had always found that he did his clearest thinking at cruising altitude, midway across the ocean. The merging sense of space and time, of height and isolation from the world below induced a cooler, more sober kind of reflection. Distanced from Belinda, he pondered their separate problems. In all fairness, he must try to do better. He must work harder at the marriage. He must not get irritable. He must make a satisfactory arrangement for Fandango. In New York, having spent too much on the last trip, he bought Belinda only a large box of talcum powder, a commodity she used plentifully if the carpet was anything to go by.
He arrived at London Airport to find her waiting in the Citroën, a sight which prov
oked him, but nothing like the news she gave him. She too had been thinking while he was away. She too had decided some permanent arrangement must be made for the horse. But she had gone one step further. She had done something. Mr Jarvis had told her about the monthly horse sale in Reading. She had despatched Fandango there. The auction was yesterday. She had just heard Fandango had been quite satisfactorily sold.
Paul had found himself almost unable to control his hands on the driving wheel. He didn’t trust himself to speak till he got home. And then began the worst row of his life.
She neither loved nor respected him, that was all he could remember of the row the next morning. She had even begun to hate him. Worse still, deep down inside him like a smouldering slow fire, he felt the shameful beginnings of his own hatred of her.
All night he had tossed alone in the big double bed as the remembered insults squirmed like maggots inside his head. ‘I was wrong about you!’ she had shrilled. ‘ You’re not the big strong Captain. You’re weak. I bet you were weak with your first wife. Just as you’re weak with your bloody silly spoiled daughter.’
It had been mostly his own fault of course. He’d overreacted. But that horse had become for him, as it had been for Harriet, a symbol of something he couldn’t explain, least of all to Belinda. In fact it was the paucity of their communication, his and Belinda’s, that added fuel to his anger and frustration.
‘Jane’s got a damned sight more sense than you!’ he had heard himself shout.
‘Oh, I agree! I agree. She had the sense to leave this geriatric dump.’
Belinda had made that the cue to slam out of the bedroom. ‘ I’m not going to sleep with you, thank you very much. You’re getting old and silly as well as weak!’
He burned with rage and shame, shocked at how he looked in her once apparently admiring eyes.
In the middle of the night she had returned and crawled in beside him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she had said and begun to weep. ‘I shouldn’t have said all those awful things. I didn’t mean them. But you were so angry. You didn’t seem to love me. I take them all back, Paul, really I do.’
But he couldn’t. That was the trouble. They were lodged in the pit of his stomach, in his throat, in his head, in the most vulnerable place of any pilot, in his confidence. Aloud, he said, ‘I’m sorry too. I apologise. I was …’ but it was impossible to explain. ‘ I was fond of the horse,’ he finished lamely.
‘When things are easier, you can buy another. Yours, not Jane’s.’ She put her hand on his face and turned it round and kissed his mouth. ‘There. Now you kiss me. We’ve stopped quarrelling, haven’t we? Put your arms round me. I’m cold. That spare room is freezing.’
Snuggling into his arms, she moved her body sinuously against his. But he still felt almost physically conscious of those arrowheads. Neither her clever little hands nor the sensual movements of her body aroused any erotic desire. He yawned and said he was dog-tired. He turned away to lick his wounds in privacy.
Next morning, she tried to make amends. She brought him his breakfast in bed.
‘We don’t go out enough, Paul darling,’ she said, snipping the top off his boiled egg for him. ‘Chloe was saying only the other day, nobody likes to ask us out because everyone thinks we’re two lovebirds who want to be left on our own.’
‘And do we or don’t we?’ He lifted his spoon. He detested hard-boiled eggs in the morning, but he supposed he ought to eat it as she’d gone to the trouble. He also disliked breakfast in bed, a messy, undisciplined business in his opinion.
‘Well, it was nice to be on our own for a while, of course. But the only people we seem to see at the moment are Madge and Archie. They’re nice of course,’ she added hastily. ‘ But dull, and well, a bit antique. And Chloe and I and Polly were wondering if we couldn’t have our to-celebrate-the-wedding party. That would show we were out of purdah, as it were. And then the invites for us would come flooding in.’
Chapter Fifteen
‘Thursday, the fourth of October, Paul? That all right for you?’
He was just putting his bag into the Citroën before driving up to take out a New York Service, and Belinda had just come out of the house to give him his have-a-good-trip kiss.
‘For the party? Yes, that’s OK.’
There had been much telephoning throughout his stand off, coupled with a bit of giggling. He had agreed to a disco and Griffiths was going to fix it. He had agreed to a dozen bottles of champagne, three cases of wine and a barrel of best bitter. ‘ People will bring bottles too, Paul. They always do. And Polly has promised to make the quiches and help me with the salads.’
‘Before you go, Paul, about the guests?’
‘What about them?’
‘Shouldn’t we ask the powers-that-be?’
‘I’ll only be asking Archie and Madge, Belinda. You ask whom you like.’
She gave a small pout. ‘Must we?’
‘Must we what?’
‘Ask Archie and Madge.’
He closed the boot with a bang. ‘We must.’
‘But he’s so weird. He’ll only bring his twenty-seven ghosts —’
He got into the driver’s seat as though he hadn’t heard her. She came over and put her arms through the open window and hugged him as though she hadn’t said it.
‘I’ll be back on Saturday, Belinda. Only four days.’
‘You’re not still cross about the horse?’
‘No.’
‘I wouldn’t want anything like that to spoil the party. Everyone in Atlanta’s so looking forward to it.’ She looked at him a shade anxiously, ‘You are, too, aren’t you?’
He started the engine.
‘Of course.’
‘Bye, darling.’
He put in the clutch, waved and hooted the horn in farewell. Then with a sense of relief mixed with guilt at feeling it, he drove up to Heathrow Airport.
For a change the Atlantic was in a good mood both ways. The weather in New York had been that early autumn blue-skied calmness with just a touch of chill, and the sun was shining in London when he arrived back on schedule.
‘Lovely to see you, darling!’
Belinda was in a good mood too. Throughout the drive back to Elmtrees, she chattered endlessly about the party preparations.
He was relieved that the house gave him its familiar welcome as he came through the door. No further alterations had been made to the pictures or the furniture. The stick still stood in its niche under the hall telephone. Nothing had been sold. Nothing new had been bought.
‘I know you’ll have had a big breakfast before landing, darling, so I thought we’d just have hard-boiled eggs and lettuce and yoghurt for lunch. So good for you … and of course I’ve been madly busy as you can imagine.’
She was even more madly busy next day. Chloe, the sloe-eyed stewardess, arrived shortly after breakfast on the pillion of a motorcycle, driven by a young Second Officer on Atlanta. Paul found himself profoundly irritated as Belinda led them through the house, exposing his home to their speculative, immature eyes.
‘As you see,’ Belinda said, ‘ the house is quite nice, and it has distinct possibilities. There’s a very nice woodblock floor I’ve discovered under that fitted carpet. And of course the conservatory is perfect for the bar.’
Second Officer Johnny Jones wanted the electric light fitments down so that he could hang a jazzy ball for the disco lights. Chloe felt the pictures were old-fashioned for the decor they wanted. The sofa and the big armchairs in the sitting room were absolutely out. More helpers arrived the next day and manhandled them into the garage.
Belinda was in her element ordering the youngsters here, there and everywhere, answering the phone, extending the party invitations wider and wider.
‘Of course you can bring your friends. The more the merrier!’
‘Of course bring your brother. He sounds fab! We’ll cram everyone in somehow.’
Five days later, Paul thankfully escaped again. Not such a good trip this ti
me – the weather was beginning to break and an easterly gale gave them a late arrival at London.
Belinda was still in a good mood. Clearly the party had kept her happy and occupied. The house was being turned upside down, but in a good cause.
‘Everything’s organised for Thursday, darling. Nothing you need do.’
On the morning of the party, furniture-shunting became intense. The champagne and wine and beer arrived. A procession of girls brought trays of home-made delicacies. Madge contributed a white iced wedding cake. Masses of flowers arrived from the florists. Griffiths arrived to fix the disco. Johnny Jones began fixing strings of coloured lights in the garden.
And then in the midst of the turmoil, Paul glanced in the alcove below the telephone and saw Harriet’s stick wasn’t there. ‘Where’s it gone?’
‘Haven’t the faintest.’ Belinda shrugged her shoulders impatiently. ‘Anyway you don’t want it. You were going to throw it out.’
‘I do want it! And I wasn’t going to throw it out!’
‘Madge said you were.’
‘That I very much doubt.’
Belinda made to walk away, but he caught hold of her wrist.
‘Did you throw it out?’
‘I might have done.’ She frowned at him. ‘Yes, maybe I did. I’ve thrown out a lot of old rubbish while I had the helpers. It seemed a good opportunity. Johnny Jones is making a fire in the garden.’
‘Christ!’ He dropped her hand and stalked off.
Johnny Jones looked up at him in some alarm as he came marching down from the house to the rough patch where Harriet had made the compost heap and where they burnt the rubbish.
‘Nice blaze, sir,’ he said. ‘Bit difficult to start, but she’s got a nice hold now!’
Afterwards, he told Polly that he honestly thought the Captain had flipped his lid.
Suddenly he’d darted forward, thrust his hand right into the flames, and pulled out an old walking stick that was just beginning to burn.
Paul kept his bandaged hand in his pocket for most of that awful party. His burns were comparatively light, but it was a bloody stupid thing to do. He was surprised at himself and ashamed at having made a fool of himself in front of a junior pilot. Belinda echoed his estimate of himself.