A Spring Affair (32 page)

Lou ordered a coffee and two crumpets in town. The first bite rolled around in her mouth as if it couldn’t work out the way to the back of her throat. It took her a
Women by Women
magazine and two more coffees to realize she wasn’t hungry, after all. Then she told herself off for unnecessary procrastination. Her brain knew she was doing it, even if the rest of her was trying to pretend it wasn’t happening.

It was early afternoon when she got to her mother’s house.

‘This is a surprise,’ said Renee. ‘How come you’re not working today?’

‘Mum,’ said Lou, standing on her mother’s sheepskin rug. She had decided on the way there to lead into it gently.

‘I’ve left my job and I’ve left Phil as well.’

Then again, the best-made plans…

Renee didn’t say anything for a while. She digested the information, concluded that it was the truth, and then she reacted.

‘Left your job? What on earth have you done that for?
Have you taken leave of your senses? And what do you mean, you’ve left Phil?’

‘I left him yesterday afternoon.’

‘But what for?’

‘Because I don’t love him any more. And he’s having an affair.’

Renee twiddled her necklace. She was counting along the beads as if it were a rosary.

‘Elouise, what are you playing at? Do you need a doctor?’

Even Lou was astounded by her mother’s lack of sympathy. She had thought women of that generation and adultery were an oil-and-water mix, more so than her own generation.

‘Mum, I’m not looking for your approval on this. I’m only telling you because you need to know I’m not at the old address any more and I figured you would probably want to know why. I’m not here to answer any questions about it. I know what I’m doing; I’ve instigated divorce proceedings.’

‘But I thought you only left him yesterday!’

‘Yes, but it’s overdue by three years.’

‘You were happy!’

‘No,
he
was happy,
I
was sodding miserable!’ Lou’s voice crescendoed to its highest pitch.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Renee, dropping onto the sofa.

‘Which bit? That Phil’s having another affair?’

‘No, that you’re not thinking straight!’ cried Renee.

‘But I am, Mum. This is the first bit of straight thinking I’ve done in a long time.’

‘Oh Elouise, he got caught sitting in a pub with someone. Once. You didn’t catch them in bed together,
did you? I bet you’ve got no proof this time either. I suppose that Deb being around isn’t anything to do with it. Was it her again, stirring things up? Has it crossed your mind that she’s jealous of what you’ve got?’

‘What have I got, Mum?’ demanded Lou, bordering closely on angry tears. ‘I’ve got a pig of a man who can’t keep it in his trousers, that’s the sum of it.’

‘You’ve got security, a lovely home, money in the bank, a husband with a growing business. Aren’t you going on holiday soon as well?’

Lou laughed bitterly. That was typical of her mum–thinking of the creature comforts first. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I thought for once you’d be on my side.’

‘I am on your side, Lou. That’s why I don’t want you to throw your life away,’ said Renee, with something akin to panic.

‘What am I throwing away that’s so great, Mum?’

‘Elouise,’ said Renee, almost distraught, ‘marriage is about riding the bad times. Have you looked at yourself to find out why he did it?’

‘Why on earth would I do that?’ asked Lou, with an incredulous laugh.

‘Because…’

‘Because what?’

‘No, forget it,’ said Renee.

‘No, I won’t forget it,’ said Lou angrily. Let her have her say and get it over with. ‘Because what, Mum, because WHAT?’

‘Because that’s what I had to do when your father did it to me!’ cried Renee.

Lou didn’t move. A pin-drop silence fell on the room, broken only by the soft tock-tock of the clock on the
wall by the fire. Even when Lou tried to speak, no words came out. Her mouth moved soundlessly trying to form them, but they got hopelessly stuck behind the hurdle of her lips.

Renee took a linen handkerchief from up her sleeve and blew her nose with it.

‘What do you mean?’ said Lou eventually, on the faintest of breaths.

‘I shouldn’t have said anything. Forget it.’

But something like that couldn’t be forgotten, could it? Something like that couldn’t be stuffed back as if it had never happened?

‘No, no, you have to tell me now.’

Please don’t tell me.

Renee licked her dry lips. ‘Your father had…an…We picked up the pieces. It was hard but we did it. We didn’t throw it all away for a couple of rough years. It takes time and it was worth it. That’s why I know your troubles will pass.’

‘Dad did this to you?’

Lou couldn’t take it in. Her beautiful, wonderful, kind, smiling father put her mum through this pain? Her dad, who had hugged her when she caught her first boyfriend snogging someone else and told her to forget him and move on because he wasn’t good enough for a Casserly girl.

Renee didn’t move, didn’t look up, didn’t make eye-contact.

Lou’s stomach spasmed, not that there was anything in there to throw up. Her head went light and swimmy and she had to steady herself against the big oak dresser by the wall, ironically one that her dad had made.

Her dad and another woman?

Lou had to get out. The air in that room was thick and sucked dry of oxygen.

‘I have to go,’ she said, groping in her pocket for her keys.

‘Elouise!’ Renee called behind her, but Lou was already down the path and nearly at the car.

She drove blindly to the town park, got out of the car and followed the path up the hill to the folly, which her dad used to tell her was the ‘Unleaning Tower of Pisa’. They’d had so many picnics on the grass there when she was little. Mum wasn’t one for walking (being born in high heels) but Lou and her father and Murphy walked here a lot. He’d carry their picnic basket and they’d sit and open it here amongst the beds of scarlet tulips, and eat egg and cress sandwiches and Twiglets and the cakes that Lou had made, and wash it all down with Ribena for her, a flask of milky, sugary tea for her dad and a big bowl of water for Murphy. She felt close to her dad here. She could see him, stocky and big-shouldered with his large hands that were so gentle with plants and kind to animals. That was the dad she wanted to remember–not a dad who hurt hearts that loved him. Had she been attracted to Phil because she had sensed that deep down they were the same? No, no, no…

She felt as if someone had scooped out all her innards and replaced them with rocks. She wanted to be dead and not face the questions her head was throwing at her. No, not dead, because she might wake up on the other side with the same things going through her brain for eternity. She simply wanted to not exist, to slide out of everyone’s consciousness, and for the hole she was in to
close up completely over her, so she was nothing. Futures were taken away from people all the time, but Renee’s disclosure had taken away her past–a past that should have been set in stone, unchangeable, a solid foundation. And now it was gone, crushed, and the rubble blown away.

It was quite dark when she realized she should go home, wherever that was. Her big comfortable house called. She could have a nice warm Keith Featherstone bath and crawl into bed beside Phil. Maybe it
would
be all right in time, as her mother said. They
had
been happy once, her mum was right. Well, content–was it the same thing? Lou didn’t know.

She called in at the
White Rose
corner shop on the way back to the flat and bought a box of After Eights, a bottle of brandy, some kitchen roll and a set of drinks coasters. It was a ridiculous bag of shopping in the circumstances.

The silence was hard on her ears in the flat, so she clicked on the radio to release some music at a gentle volume, just to take it away. Then she twisted the top off the brandy and poured some into a cup before tossing it into her mouth. She didn’t get the unravelling-of-the-day warmth that Phil seemed to get from the spirit; it merely burned the back of her throat. It gave her an excuse to sob.

It was late when Tom let himself into May’s and he went cautiously up the stairs, hearing the melodic burr of the radio filter down through the café ceiling. He knocked gently, but when there was no answer, he pushed open the door and went in.

Lou was so locked in her grief, head in her hands, sobbing like a child that she wasn’t conscious of another presence until Tom was a step away from her, when it was totally past the time when she might have salvaged any dignity. But Lou’s pride was gone anyway. Everything was gone; she was hollow, empty, had nothing left within her that was capable of feeling anything but pain. He sat beside her on the bed and placed his arm around her shoulder, pulling her into him. She quickly wiped at the salty drops rolling down her face faster than she could clear them.

He noticed the brandy bottle, but there weren’t enough of the contents gone to have caused any major damage.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he said softly.

‘No,’ she said, and laughed bitterly. ‘Not unless you can get me a new dad.’

‘A new dad?’ he asked. ‘Why a new dad?’

The story spilled out of her. Lou told him what a wonderful man her dad had been, and then she told him what Renee had said, and Tom used his thumbs to wipe away the tears she didn’t think would ever stop. They were like giant facial windscreen wipers.

‘Lou,’ Tom said softly, ‘your dad obviously loved you very much. You have to hang onto that.’

‘Every time I’ve tried to visualize his face this afternoon, I can’t. All I see is Phil.’

‘Let me make you a cup of tea,’ said Tom.

‘I want another brandy. I want to get so drunk I pass out.’ And Lou reached for the full mug on the table, but Tom snatched it away.

‘All that’s going to do is give you a blinding headache,’ he said. ‘Besides, I need that mug, so give it here.’

She let it go. She knew it was an angry, punishing act to throw a drink she didn’t like at all down her throat. She wanted to lash out at Phil, at her mother and most of all at her father, but he wasn’t there and never would be there to explain why he had smashed himself up in her heart. So the only available target to hurt was herself.

The radio was playing out ballads. The twangy guitar seemed to be directly attached to her tear ducts and wasn’t helping her mood at all. Her dad was always listening to that sort of music. Tammy Wynette, Johnny Cash, June Carter, Dolly Parton. Phil obviously liked Dolly Parton, but for less musical reasons.
Dad. Phil. Dad. Phil. Dad.
They were the same man, a generation apart.

Some Country and Western woman with a smoky mountain voice had written a song especially for her and had chosen this moment to air it and torment her. The intro alone suggested it was going to go on about a broken heart and some man-bastard who had caused it. Lou lifted her eyes to the ceiling. Her heart felt physically capable of snapping like a biscuit.

Dance with me tonight
, the woman sang.
Make everything all right
…

Lou was not in the mood to listen to a song like this, pulling the tears out of her soul, each one attached to the last.

‘Dance with me,’ said Tom instinctively, whilst he was waiting for the kettle to boil. ‘Come on.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Lou, giving vent to a reflex laugh despite everything. Big Alan Flockton was the tallest bloke she had ever danced with at six foot three–in width as well as height. Not only had she felt a total
prawn, but when the music stopped she found that every student within a 300-mile radius of the campus ball had been laughing.

‘Come on, I mean it.’

But no one laughed now as Tom pulled her to her resisting feet and took her hand in his. She tugged it back, but he held on. He circled her waist with his arm and placed his cheek at the top of her head. A picture came to her of her dad teaching her to waltz in the front room to Engelbert Humperdinck. A sad song about loneliness.

They rocked gently, barely moving, his hand gripping hers–no, she wasn’t going anywhere if he had anything to do with it. He pulled her closer still. She thought she felt his lips move in her hair.

She didn’t feel like a prawn now, she felt like china. This was wrong, though. She shouldn’t be letting him hold her like this. But her body needed his warmth, his unthreatening affection, those lips in her hair.

Dance with me tonight
…This had to be the final
chorus, and Lou hardly dared move in case she ended the moment.

…
And make everything all right. Dance with me, my darlin’, one more time
.

He pulled slowly away from her when the song ended and took her face in his big hands.

‘Lou,’ he said, but the tone of his voice said much more.

His lips brushed against her salty cheek. He shouldn’t be doing this, he knew, but when she didn’t resist, he kissed her lightly. He felt her lips part in response as his touched the corner of her mouth, and then they fell full on hers, tentatively, before they made firmer contact. His arms came around her, hers were around him. His kiss took everything away, there was only her and him in this freshly white-painted universe–oh, and Kenny Rogers now singing ‘Coward of the County’.

‘Lou, I shouldn’t say this, I know, but I can’t help it. I’ve liked you–
really
liked you–for so long.’

‘Tom…’

Hearing his name said in that way was enough for him to know he wasn’t about to make the world’s biggest plonker of himself.