Body and Soul (16 page)

‘I had talked myself into believing I was doing something for mankind by bringing the horrors of war in front of people’s eyes. Now I believe I would have done better learning to blow a trumpet or master the oboe. Forcing the world to look at my stunning black and white photographs of violence and mayhem has been my life since I left Cambridge. I may have made some people more aware, or maybe not even that. More likely smug, sad for the victims but thrilled that they themselves have been clever enough to escape another man’s fate. I have seen enough violence: Somalia, Ethiopia, the massacres in Rwanda, tribal wars in Angola. Enough horrors to have burned myself out of believing the world has to know. The world does know and so what?

‘You understand about fame and fortune, the other side of great talent, and so do I. I have a reputation as one of the best photojournalists working, I will always be that. I’ll continue with my work but change my subjects. I will never cover another war.’

Tom stopped speaking. Eden realised his hands were trembling and that there was a nervous tremor in his voice. He had indeed seen too much of the hatred mankind can give way to in the name of freedom. She knew at that moment she had found the man who truly needed her to love him, show him the beauty and rapture she had known all her life. She leaned across him and kissed him tenderly.

‘I didn’t mean to go on so, but it’s best that you know what has happened to me. You won’t run away from a broken man, will you? Because in a way I am a broken human being, a nervous wreck of a man who wants peace and tranquillity, to make love,
have lots of great and adventurous sex with you. For us to work and play together for the thrill of adventure, the fun that is still out there for the taking.’

‘I don’t see you as a broken man, just one who wants to change his life. And I have to tell you something that I’d thought I would keep from you. Now, having listened to you, I think it only fair you hear what I have to say about changing one’s life.’

And Eden related exactly what had happened to her when Tom had not even seen her that fateful day she realised she had become invisible, one of the faceless women of a certain age who are bypassed by a handsome sensual man.

Tom was astonished by the story. How had this happened when now they were obvious soulmates? How wonderful that they should nevertheless have come together for a second shot at life. He was filled with admiration for Eden, for her refusal to lie down and be overlooked. Of course he had not seen her that day, there was nothing for him to see. A terrifying thought that any woman should be invisible to a man, that anyone should lose herself so completely. What courage, what strength, Eden had shown to escape that fate. He loved her all the more for it.

Chapter 16

Overnight Eden felt a difference in her life. She had met a man who loved her. She was in love with a man. This had happened before in her life, many times, and the love affair had always run its course. But she somehow knew this love would never run its course, would never lie down and die. How does a woman just know that? Eden did. They would marry and live together, for better or for worse, in sickness or in health.

Food was found for the dogs and eventually Tom did finish making breakfast. They were ravenous and ate with gusto. Then Eden called Rachel to say that she and the dogs would be in later.

As soon as she’d finished her conversation with her housekeeper, she turned to Tom and said, ‘I am on a strict work schedule and must stay on it if I am to be ready for my concerts at Epidaurus.’

‘I can live with that. I don’t expect you to give up anything for me. We should never have to give up anything for each other, just let our lives flow together. I’ll work when you are working. We’ll play when we can and want to, and we’ll have sex when the desire is there. I may not be saying it very well but you get the drift: we’re not joined at the hip but free to have a life of our own and one together.’

‘The thing is, when we need one other we’ll be there. Lives apart as Eden Sidd and Tom Spurling, and another together.’ What a lovely way to live, thought Eden.

‘Would you like to learn to fish? I love my fishing – that’s why I bought this lodge. I have a mile of the river on both sides of it. I’ll
teach you, if you like? We can spend lazy days on the river and have long lovely picnics.’

‘Can we travel?’ asked Eden.

‘Anywhere you want to go.’

‘I always take my cello,’ she told him.

‘I always take my cameras. When shall we get married?’ he asked.

‘Is that a question or a proposal?’

‘I suppose it’s both. I hadn’t thought about it as having to be romantic, down on one knee and all that. We have, after all, known each other for no time at all. I promise to get romantic after we’re married and for the rest of our lives. I’ll be quite used to the idea by then. It’s not a good one but, yes, it is a proposal of marriage. Please say yes, we can work out the details later.’

‘This is madness but yes, I accept, and I’ll hold you to your terms. Romance for the rest of our lives.’

They agreed to share their houses in England, Tom’s cottage to be used mostly as a studio and for fishing, Eden’s house for her work and for when they wanted to be together there. As they talked about serious things like where to live what became evident was that it didn’t matter. All they really wanted was to be a part of each other’s life.

Both of them had prior commitments, agents to be seen, social events to attend, and they decided they did not want to drag each other along to these engagements. They wanted for a while to be together very privately and so agreed to marry quietly and keep it a secret until they were ready to make it public on their own terms.

Eden told Tom she would like to be married in a quiet ceremony in the Greek Orthox church in Hydra where she had a house.

‘The invisible net. I know Hydra very well. Always said I would marry there in the very church you suggest. I once lived there for six months while recuperating from covering the civil war in the Sudan. When would you like to go?’

‘It will take some time to organise it, the red tape will be daunting.’

‘No, it won’t. The Patriarch owes me big time for an article and
help in Cyprus. The priest in Hydra will be most discreet if I make him promise to be. You may not have had a romantic proposal but I can guarantee you a romantic and private wedding.’

Tom looked so excited, so full of passion over the idea that they were to be bound together even further. Suddenly she felt that everything she had ever done in her life, everything she’d loved, had been a necessary step towards arriving here at this time in her life, with this man and no other.

That very day they moved into each other’s lives and houses. Rachel looked shocked but happy to have a man around the house and in Eden’s life. She was sworn to secrecy, told she must not gossip about the event because they wanted privacy, they would tell her when they were ready to go public.

Rachel saw it as very romantic, very glamorous, and Tom eased into the household without a problem. They decided Eden would tell Max as soon as the right opportunity came along. He would give her away at the wedding.

They had been together for two weeks when Eden had to attend the meeting at Heathrow with Max and Laurent and was going on from there to the ballet. Max’s car was sent for her while Tom went to Bath to meet an old colleague.

Life seemed suddenly empty without him at her side. There was a rightness about Tom’s and Eden’s being together that made her feel there had always been something wrong with every other man until now. Was it any wonder that previous love affairs wore themselves out? It was quite simple. She had never, until Tom, met the right man, had only thought she had.

Max was waiting at the terminal for her. They went directly to the VIP lounge where Laurent was waiting. He was pacing the floor and seemed nervous. It occurred to her that this was the first time they would have met each other since Alexandria. Max and Laurent’s travelling companion, his personal assistant, tried to orchestrate the meeting but Laurent was not having it. He left them talking together and walked Eden over to a pair of chairs in a corner of the room, called a steward and ordered a bottle of champagne.

His first words to her were, ‘You look ravishing. I must talk with
you privately. Don’t look askance. No scenes, I promise.’

‘Laurent, what’s this all about? You’re frightening me. Has something happened? You can’t do the concert? You want me to change the programme?’

‘No. Something has happened but it has nothing do with the concerts or the programme. Max is doing us both proud in the manner in which he is organising things. This has to do with us, my dear. You and me.’

The look of relief on Eden’s face brought Laurent to a halt. He seemed more in control now, calmer about whatever was on his mind. He kissed Eden’s hand, stroked her cheek. She could see the lust for her in his eyes but also something else, something she could not understand.

‘Ever the professional, I admire you for that. I always have. The look of relief on your face! Music always did come before me, even when we were together. I can’t blame you for that, I’m like it now myself.’

An ice bucket arrived and Laurent dismissed the steward, opened the wine and poured two glasses. He handed one to Eden. ‘To Epidaurus and a night to remember all the days of our lives,’ was the toast he graciously gave.

‘I will always love you, Eden. I imagine I will never stop wanting you sexually. The erotic world I have had with you has never been bettered by another woman and never will. I learned in Alexandria that you will always love me in that way too. But those telephone calls afterwards were becoming a sexual dependency neither of us was satisfied with. They were turning into sick sex, something neither of us deserves to be left with.

‘I didn’t want you to hear this from anyone else but me. I have found someone else to love, someone who will love me as you never could. She looks at me in that same way you used to look at Garfield. The way you never have and never will look at me. I can’t waste my life waiting for you to give me what I want, whereas I can get it from Francine. She is young, beautiful, and I am going to be happy with her. Make her the mother of my children, the woman of my life. Don’t be upset. We can make marvellous music together, be friends, always feel carnal love for each other in a
make-believe world. Fuck each other in our dreams and our fantasies. And there is always Max for you. Put him out of his misery and make a life with him. You’ll not do better.

‘I know that you love me the best way you can and have always done so. And we will always have Alexandria, a lasting memory, one that will not be easy to forget. I’m sorry to let you down like this but I have moved on. Don’t be hurt and angry that our love has run its course. I think you told me that same thing more than once. It hurt me so much then. It will take time but one day you too will forgive and may even find someone to replace me.

‘You haven’t said anything. Is there nothing you want to say to me?’ asked Laurent.

Eden could not think of a single thing to say that would not offend him. What, after all, could she say? ‘You vain, pompous prick! How dare you presume to know about my feelings for you or any other man? Fix me up with Max? We will always have Alexandria … a lasting memory that will not be easy to forget? It was forgotten in a flash the moment Tom Spurling declared he loved me.’

The difference between Laurent and Tom was huge. There was no contest there. One was the man she had been looking for all her life while the other was just a man. But there really was no point at all in talking to Laurent or telling him she had finally found the man she wanted to marry and grow old with.

The kindest thing she could do was not to steal his thunder. Let him believe that he was dropping her and she was, as he wanted to believe, devastated by losing him. Laurent needed the satisfaction that goes with deliberately hurting someone, a saving face sort of thing on his part, the ploy of a little man. Well, she had always been a bigger person than he, this was no time to bring herself down to his level.

‘So this Francine is the reason you no longer needed to go on with our erotic phone calls, that we have not been together since Alexandria? Wife, the mother of your children, young and beautiful … everything I am not. How cruel to remind me of the things I lack. You expect friendship to compensate for losing you? Is that what this is all about?’ asked Eden, playing to his vanity.

‘That’s all I am prepared to give you. Isn’t it enough?’ was his reply.

‘I guess it will have to be. We are two civilised people and it seems to me friendship is no little thing. At least I heard this news from you and that’s something. Give me time, I’ll get over you.’

Eden watched him closely and was amazed at the vanity of men. The look of self-satisfaction, the sense of one-upmanship in the love stakes, was written all over his face. A brilliant conductor with a knowledge of music that was sublime felt the need to feed his own vanity, believing a few inches of sexual organ gave him absolute power to wield over her. Was it any wonder their love affair had run its course?

Eden wanted to put Laurent in his place and tell him, ‘Too late, I have found Mr Right and Mr Right has found me.’ But what was the point? Why alienate someone who would be a good friend? Why embarrass him, spoil the game he was playing? Soon enough he would meet Tom. Then Laurent would open his eyes and see how happy Eden was, no longer blinded by his own vanity.

They finished the bottle of champagne and talked briefly about the upcoming concert. Then his flight was called and Laurent kissed Eden deeply, sensually. He caressed her face, held her close to his body until she could feel his sex straining against his trousers. He whispered loving sensual words and licked and kissed her ear lobe. Gently she pushed him away. She had played along with his game but this was overplaying his hand. ‘This must end, never again, you have Francine now,’ she said, walking away.

In the car on the way to Covent Garden and the ballet Eden nearly told Max about Tom and their plans to wed. What stopped her was the idea of the outside world sharing what they had together, even someone as close to her as Max. It was too much of an intrusion on their very private world.

Max noticed that she was pensive and asked her, ‘Did Laurent upset you about something?’

‘No, quite the contrary though he thinks he has. It’s too tedious to get into. Laurent is still a little boy in many ways.’

‘He always will be. That’s part of his charm. It’s why you left him for Garfield. He will always be a child prodigy even when he’s
an old man. He will never quite grow up.’

‘That’s astute of you, Max. But then you always are.’

He took her hand and squeezed it in the dark. ‘You seem somehow happier, more content with your life. There is something more to this than the concerts.’

‘Yes, there is something. I have a secret, one I would like to hold on to for a little while longer. Grant me that?’ she asked, and leaned against him to give him a kiss on the cheek.

Max was on to her. He knew her better than anyone. The Eden Sidd charm, the sensual little ways that always worked on him. He would not pry or cajole her into revealing her secret. That had never been the way with them. They never manipulated each other, were always straight and honest in their dealings.

Street lights were flashing past the car as they sped along the Cromwell Road on their way to the West End. Now it was Eden’s turn. She felt that Max was being reserved about something. He too had a secret, one he thought she was best not knowing. They went down Exhibition Road and into Hyde Park. The traffic was heavy but they were still moving.

‘There will be a crush of people going to this Gala. It’s the hottest ticket in town, everyone wants one. The loathsome Dante actually called asking me to get a pair of seats for Garfield and him. Not a word for ten years and then he tries to hustle seats from me!’

So that was Max’s news. Eden felt her blood run cold. If Dante wanted seats at the ballet he would get seats. Why call Max, though? They detested each other. It must be that Dante wanted Eden to know they were in town or he would never have called. That devious Byzantine mind. Dante and Garfield … her life and love with Tom were miles away from that nasty gigolo and his pimp. Not even bad news could mar her evening, though. Eden laughed aloud and told Max, ‘Dante’s a worm, not worth thinking about.’

He knew that she meant that and breathed a sigh of relief. Their car drew up before the Opera House and Eden slipped out, Max having jumped out first to help her. His eyes scanned the crowd moving into the house. Eden looked extremely glamorous
dressed in a long black gown that hugged her figure and wrapped in a diaphanous shawl of plum-coloured silk as fine as a spider’s web. Neither of them saw Dante lingering in the crowd, watching.