Dance While You Can (24 page)

I finished my drink and got to my feet. My mind, shamed by my foolish behaviour, was already turning to Jessica, trying to concoct some excuse for having missed the auction. If I hadn’t stood back to let a group of people through from the bar, I might never have seen her.

I could say that at that moment the room seemed to go quiet, but of course it didn’t. I could say that my heartbeat changed, but I don’t know if that would be true. All I knew was that Elizabeth was there, at the bar, talking to another woman and laughing as she stirred her drink.

I tried to move and found that my feet were like lead weights. Ever since that telegram I’d thought of little else but what I’d do if I saw her again. Now that the moment had come, all I could do was slump back into my chair and order another Scotch.

After a while she picked up her bag and started to walk towards me. She would have walked straight past, but I was on my feet. Feeling my hand on her arm she turned round, and the moment she saw me the blood drained from her face.

‘Alexander?’

I tried to smile. ‘Hello, Elizabeth.’

We looked at each other for some time as if unsure whether there might be some mistake, until, suddenly agitated, she turned to see if the woman at the bar was watching us.

‘How are you?’ I asked.

‘Oh, I’m fine. Fine. How are you?’

She wasn’t looking at me, and I felt my control beginning to slip away. ‘Can we talk?’ She seemed uncertain and glanced round again, nervously. ‘Elizabeth.’

She must have seen the anguish on my face, because for an instant her eyes softened. ‘Not now. Christine will recognise you.’

‘When?’

I could see the indecision reeling through her mind. ‘Can you wait here? I can come back in half an hour. Christine has to meet someone then.’

My heart soared. It was more than I could have hoped for. ‘I’ll wait.’

Almost an hour passed before she returned, and in that time I experienced such dread as I have never known before or since. The crowd had thinned out a bit by then, and I had managed to get a table in the corner. I stood up and waved as I saw her come in.

‘A white wine, please.’ She smiled at the waitress as she took the order.

My eyes scanned her face, and it was some time before either of us said anything. In the end she was the first to speak.

‘I hardly recognised you.’ Her hand trembled on the glass as she lifted it to her mouth. ‘You’re um . . . well, you’re . . . older.’

‘Twenty-four.’

‘Of course. Four years younger than me.’

‘Almost five,’ I corrected her with a grin.

She laughed, and I can barely describe the joy I felt. Seven years had passed, seven years in which she had become more beautiful, more contained, somehow more aloof. Her hair was pulled back from her face, showing small amber studs in her ears. Her skin looked smooth and olive, and her dark eyes slanted as she smiled. Everything about her was stylish, from the way she moved her hands and folded one leg neatly over the other, down to the tan suede purse that matched the suede insets of the leather jodhpur-suit she wore. She had a sophistication that was almost too perfect, yet when she laughed I saw the Elizabeth I’d known – the Elizabeth I’d loved.

‘I’ve often wondered what happened to you, after . . .’ I looked up and saw that she was watching me. ‘I tried to find you.’

‘I went back to my family.’ She was still watching me, the challenge clear in her eyes.

‘I was wrong . . . my father, we were wrong about you, weren’t we?’

She nodded. ‘It doesn’t matter now, though. It’s all in the past.’

‘Nevertheless . . .’

‘How about another glass of wine? My treat.’

I laughed. ‘The answer is, OK, we’ll change the subject.’

After the waitress had brought the wine we talked for a time about Miss Angrid, united in our guilt that we never wrote to her now. We talked about the weather, about my father becoming Lord Chancellor, and about the queues for the Tutankhamun Exhibition that had just opened at the British Museum.

She leaned forward, resting her hands on the table, and our knees touched. She jerked hers away so quickly that for a moment there was an embarrassed silence between us. Then we laughed. I picked up her hand from the table, half expecting her to pull it away, but she didn’t. Twisting the wedding band round her finger I asked her how long she’d been married, trying to keep the pain from my voice.

‘Almost three years.’

‘Tell me about him.’

She did. As she talked I began to feel as though it had been weeks since we’d last seen each other, rather than years. She sounded bright – too bright – as she told me about Edward and David, and I knew there was something she was hiding. I didn’t ask her about it, but a sixth sense told me that whatever it was was causing her pain. Then she made me laugh by telling me about Christine’s crush on me.

‘Christine? The woman you were with at the bar?’

She nodded. ‘Quite besotted with you. A good job she didn’t see you.’

I shrugged. ‘Not my type. Too round. Besides, women with severe faces frighten the life out of me.’

She threw me a look, then went on to tell me about Violet May, who had gazed into a crystal ball and told her that we would meet again. When I raised my eyebrows, she kicked me. And as I gazed into the eyes that I had tried so hard to forget, I could see so clearly how empty my life had been.

She looked away, trying to hide the colour that had crept into her cheeks.

‘Why did you never get in touch with me again?’ I asked.

‘For lots of reasons. You were so young, Alexander. You had your whole life ahead of . . .’

‘A life I wanted to spend with you. You knew that.’

‘You could have changed your mind.’

I looked down at our hands entwined on the table. ‘There are a host of platitudes that either one of us might come out with now,’ I said, ‘but let’s take them as read. Don’t let’s lie to each other. Yes, perhaps we are different people now, but that doesn’t change the past. What I’m trying to say, Elizabeth, is that I want to see you again, that we can’t just walk out of here as if nothing has happened.’

‘No, I don’t want that either. But – ’

‘If we could turn back the clocks, which moment would you choose?’ I was half teasing her, and she laughed, but it sounded sad.

‘We were on our way to Sark. And I was going to tell you . . .’ She shrugged.

Putting my finger under her chin, I tilted her face up to look at me. ‘What were you going to tell me?’

She smiled and shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

‘Will you come there with me now?’

She stared at me.

‘Will you?’

She pulled her hands away then, and tucked them into her pockets. Her eyes scanned the room then fell to her wine. I knew she was going to look anywhere but at me, and I could feel her slipping away.

‘Elizabeth. Please, Elizabeth, just listen to me. I probably have no right to say this, but I’m going to say it anyway. I still love you, at least I think I do, but I’ve got to find out for certain. And if the past seven years have been as much hell for you as they have for me, then for God’s sake don’t you think we owe it to ourselves to try again?’

She didn’t speak for a long time, and when she did she covered her face with her hands. ‘You don’t know how I’ve dreamed that one day I would hear you say that. How many times I – ’ She looked up, and through her tears she was laughing. ‘Seeing you now, touching you, hearing you, I don’t need to find out, Alexander, I already know.’

I reached up to wipe the tears from her face, and she turned to kiss my hand. ‘The answer is yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, I’ll come with you.’

– 19 –

The initial awkwardness of meeting again, this time in the cold light of morning, was augmented by Elizabeth’s guilt at leaving her daughter. Throughout the short flight to Guernsey she tried hard not to let me see how she was fretting, but by the time we stepped off the plane I could tell she was near to tears. Unable to bear her anguish, I took her in my arms and told her I would book us seats on the next flight back to London.

‘I want to be with you, Alexander,’ she said.

‘You will be. We can always see each other in London, as often as you like. I just don’t want you to be unhappy.’

‘I’m not. I won’t be. I know in my heart that Charlotte will be all right. She’s with people who love her, she probably won’t even miss me.’ She tried to laugh and I watched her face as she fought with her emotions. ‘I can’t seem to think. I’ve wanted this for so long, but now . . .’

‘These yours, squire?’

We looked round to see a baggage-handler hauling our suitcases off the conveyor belt. It wasn’t a particularly educated guess he’d made as everyone else had long since departed. I thanked him, took our cases, and turned back to Elizabeth.

‘I’m afraid, Alexander. I’m afraid of the way I feel. And afraid to go back again in case I lose you.’

‘You won’t lose me, darling. I promise, you’ll never lose me again. If you want to go home then all you have to do is say.’

For a long time she stared down at our luggage, her hands now firmly stuffed inside her coat pockets, her hair falling around her face. When at last she looked up her eyes were swimming with tears. ‘I think we’d better hurry if we don’t want to miss the boat, don’t you?’

I felt such a rush of relief that I dropped the bags and gathered her into my arms.

‘Do you suppose we’re being dreadfully selfish?’ she asked, when we were aboard the ferry.

‘Dreadfully,’ I replied, without a moment’s hesitation. ‘Not to mention irresponsible, self-indulgent . . .’

‘You’re begining to remind me of that awful schoolboy I used to know.’

‘And if you remember, I was always at my very worst when I was with you.’ She laughed and looked away, but not before I saw the colour that had come to her cheeks. ‘Almost,’ I added, ‘as bad as you.’

By the time we docked at Creux Harbour the barrier that had risen between us that morning had disappeared. A horse and carriage carried us up over the steep hill towards our hotel, and Elizabeth was almost childlike in her enthusiasm for the rugged beauty that greeted us. Wild spring flowers spread between the trees and hedgerows, creating a carpet of violet blue that swayed in the breeze, and the winding pathways that eased into the long grass promised even more celebrations of undisturbed nature. On either side of the crumbling road, primroses peeped out of the banks, smiling into the face of the sun. I watched Elizabeth as she looked all about her, absorbing her surroundings, her eyes sparkling with joy.

‘Oh, Alexander!’ she cried, ‘it’s so beautiful!’ And I pulled her into my arms . . . . As I kissed her it was as if all the knots inside me were unravelling. As if some secret place inside me that had always belonged to her and had lain cold and deserted for seven years, was opening up to her. I felt so alive. When finally I let her go, her cheeks were flushed, and I was embarrassed to see that several of the locals were standing at the side of the road, watching us, each one of them sporting a grin that practically hooked onto their ears.

The seventeenth-century hotel was at the top of the wooded hill that led down to Dixcart Bay. The porch was bright with hanging flower-baskets, and an old Bassett hound lay across the front step, slumbering peacefully in the afternoon sun.

After checking in we followed someone who turned out to be the chef, up the rickety stairs to our room. I hadn’t missed Elizabeth’s quick look as she heard me announce us as Mr and Mrs Belmayne.

When the chef finally departed, after proudly pointing out every eccentric nook and cranny of our room, which was made even more bewildering by the oddness of decor, Elizabeth went to the windows and pulled back the curtains. I went to stand beside her, and it was as I slipped my arms around her waist that I realised how very nervous she was now that we were alone. I let her go, but kept her hand in mine as we stood looking together over the gardens that sloped down to the bluebell woods beyond.

I sensed her relief when I suggested we take a walk, and once outside in the crisp May sunshine, her light-hearted mood returned. We wandered down the steep, tree-lined path to the bay where we stood for a long time, watching the tide as it roared against the cliffs. Five or six yachts bobbed on the horizon but otherwise there was no sign of human life; we could have been the only people in the world.

Feeling her hand slip into mine I looked down at her and smiled.

‘Are you really here?’ she whispered.

I brushed the hair from her face and touched my lips against her nose. ‘Yes, my love, I’m really here.’

By the time we returned to the hotel, night was drawing in. I carried our drinks outside and we sat in the darkening courtyard huddled into our coats, watching the shifting shadows, listening to the stirrings of invisible night sounds.

We talked long into the evening, telling each other about our lives. I told her how Lizzie had sent the telegram that I had thought was from her; ‘I wish it had been,’ she said, and I saw tears fill her eyes.

‘You haven’t said up until now, and maybe it’s none of my business, but where did you tell Jessica you were going?’ she asked, after a while.

‘Just, away.’

‘But wasn’t she curious to know where?’

I shrugged. ‘If she was, she didn’t ask.’ I didn’t add that we had had a blazing row when I had arrived home late, without her birthday pendant. In fact, it was because of the fight that I hadn’t had to elaborate on where I was going. I merely packed a bag and told her I’d be back in a week. Her parting words, screamed from the top of her lungs, had been: ‘Don’t bother!’

‘And you?’ I asked. ‘What did you tell your husband?’

‘I didn’t have to. He’s in New York at the moment.’ At the mention of her husband, she seemed to close herself off. I said nothing, understanding that this was a part of her life that was hers alone. Then, as the moment passed, she was smiling again, and asking me about Henry.

She laughed when I told her the incredible story of his bigamous marriage. ‘But now it’s all worked out perfectly,’ she sighed wistfully, when I’d finished. ‘And when will he be marrying Caroline?’