Encounters (23 page)

She bought Levis and sneakers and, studying herself in her mirror at home, decided she looked good in them. Not mutton trying to be lamb, but artistic and intelligent.

She had the piano tuner come by and dug out all her old music and classical records. She read Walt Whitman and Emerson, Salinger, Burroughs and Mary McCarthy and replenished the tubes of paint in her paintbox. She had always meant to paint the fall; that after all had been the reason she had first come to visit the States as an art student way back. After she met Dan she had painted less and less as his social interests took up her time. Besides he thought her Bohemian and although he had said nothing she had felt herself discouraged.

She threw all the garbage and accumulated junk out of one of the guest rooms, set up her easel and began to paint again. She took her records up there and the kettle and wondered how she could have wasted her life for so long.

Slowly, by a fraction of an inch at a time as though not believing the chance she gave it, the grey began to appear in the roots of her hair. Bravely she ignored it and began to plan her trip to England.

Then with the first frosts Dan returned. He drove up beneath the reddening leaves sheepish and alone.

‘I guess she and I didn’t gel, honey,’ was his only comment.

She was glad to have him back.

He noticed her hair, but said nothing. For two days she braved his puzzled looks and then she fled back to her hairdresser, who thought she must have been ill and congratulated her on her recovery.

Slowly she packed away her paints, brought the hi-fi back downstairs and forgot to practise the piano.

One day he said, ‘Hon, I don’t go much for those pants. They don’t suit the more mature woman.’ Sadly she packed away her Levis, neatly washed and pressed, into the highboy. It was almost a relief to slip back into her smart clothes. She felt clean again, confident and immaculate. Her feet had had so much hard skin from going bare that she had laddered her tights when she first put them back on.

She missed the music and the painting. When Dan found her reading poetry he teased her; when he found flowers on the table he looked pained and sneezed. He said nothing, but she did not replace them when the petals dropped.

Arm in arm they attended parties and dinners as though nothing had happened. At first she tried to discuss things she loved and had rediscovered: poetry, music, the latest novels. But she met incomprehension and boredom. She remembered now why, so long ago, she had given up.

As though conscious of some loss in his wife which he could not name Dan suddenly promised her a trip to Europe in the spring. Quietly she slipped downtown and cancelled her own flight to England. With her returned reservations went the rest of her dreams.

The summer had been fun. But it was over. She knew the chance would never come again.

The day before the Garden Club winter bazaar she emptied the bottom drawer of the highboy, threw her paints and brushes on the top of the box of clothes and took the whole lot across to the jumble stall.

Her books she kept. That one small part of her, redeemed that summer and hidden in the guest room, she kept. That was all.

S
he put the phone down and stared sadly down from the window thinking of Christmas things. Snow. Mistletoe. The hot chestnut man. Red noses. Mince pies. Noise. Quarrelling. Home …

‘… We knew you wouldn’t mind, Sue darling, as you’d be with Tony this year. Imagine! Christmas in New York with your sister! It’s so exciting for us. And it’s not as though you’ll be alone, otherwise you could have come too …’

Her mother’s tone was so apologetic, so guilty, so desperately hoping she wouldn’t say the unthinkable – yes, I do mind. Yes, I’m hurt and lonely and miserable because Tony has left me and you’re my parents and I need you.

When the phone had rung she had had the usual impossible hope which came with every call at home or at the office that it would be Tony. That, repentant, he was coming back to her, changing his mind as he did over so many things, suddenly and overwhelmingly, expecting to be hugged and forgiven and welcomed like a lost dog running home.

Slowly she covered her typewriter and picked up her tote bag. She smiled at the other girls. Her lips said the right words as she put on her coat and followed them into the lift, but her mind was whirling in a spiral of lost misery.

For the first time she was thinking: supposing he doesn’t come back. Ever. What shall I do? She had all this time been expecting him to appear in time for Christmas. She had known in some sealed, stubborn part of her that he had to come back. The certainty was as complete as the knowledge that her mother would be digging out the box of decorations and hanging them on the little spruce tree in the hall at home. But there would be no Christmas tree at home this year. And suddenly she realized that there would be no Tony either. This time he had meant it.

‘I may be a while, Sue.’ Tony had been standing in the hall of their flat, his raincoat shucked forward on his shoulders, the collar up, like Philip Marlowe after a particularly heavy night. She had grinned and raised her hand half heartedly, intent on what she was doing, not even standing up to give him a hug. Afterwards she remembered how he had hesitated, half turning back towards her. A thousand times she had asked herself what would have happened if she had jumped to her feet then and run to him and flung her arms around his neck.

But she hadn’t. She had said, ‘See you tonight.’ Taken him for granted. Dared to be sure. Known, because she had an engagement ring on her finger, that he had to return …

But he hadn’t. That night she sat up till one o’clock, watching and waiting, agonizing over what awful accident had happened, wondering when one rang the police and if one did what did one say …

She woke on the sofa, cramped and very cold, his last words ringing in her ears:
I may be a while.

That was six weeks ago. He had sent a note.

‘… I’m sorry but it wouldn’t have worked. Forgive me and find someone else who will make you happy …’

Two days later when she came home from the office all his things had gone.

She pushed out into the noisy dark street, staring up at the coloured lights strung between the tall lampposts. Behind them the sky was never black in London. It was dun coloured. Muddy. The cloud reflecting the colour below it, mixing it and killing it with leaden overshadows. The sleet glittered on her eyelashes as all round her people rushed past elbowing one another in their rush to get home.

‘
Sorry
!’

A particularly hard push sent her reeling towards the gutter, her boots slipping on the wet pavements and she fell, knowing suddenly that the wetness on her face was not sleet. It was tears.

‘Oh Lord! Are you all right?’ The man who had pushed her stopped and fought his way back against the crowd. He was tall, his collar also up against the wind.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet, swinging her back against the railings out of the way of the crowds.

‘I’m … I’m all right,’ she gasped, feeling stupid. Not wanting a fuss. Not wanting him to see her tears. Just wanting to crawl away and be alone. But impossibly he had gone down on one knee before her, raising the hem of her coat a couple of inches and looking at her muddy knees. She glanced down, her cheeks reddening with embarrassment and saw her tights were torn and a trickle of blood was oozing slowly down into the top of her boot.

He rose. ‘That must be cleaned at once,’ he said authoritatively. ‘We’ll find a chemist …’

‘No, please. It doesn’t matter.’ She glanced up at his face for the first time. He had a tanned, rubbery comfortable sort of face. Youngish. Very young. Well, not much older than hers. A nice face.

He smiled at her. ‘I don’t often pick up strange women,’ he said. ‘But when I do, I do it properly.’ He looked rueful. ‘I was in such a hurry to get home.’

She felt absurdly left out and lonely suddenly.

‘So was I,’ she lied. ‘There’s no harm done, really, I’ll see to it when I get home.’

‘Bacillus
Clostridium tetani,
’ he said absent-mindedly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Tetanus. You must be careful and deal with that quickly. It’s quite deep …’

‘Are you a doctor?’ She felt absurd standing there near the busy underground station, her knees bleeding like a child’s, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave. She had nothing to hurry home for now and he had a pleasant warmth, a kindness she wanted to be near for a moment longer.

A Salvation Army band was taking up its position near them. If they began to play carols she knew she would cry. She had to go. Now. She took a determined step away from him and let out a quite genuine yelp of pain as her left knee stabbed and throbbed as she put her weight on it. He caught her arm.

‘A taxi is what we need,’ he said decisively. He led her to the kerb and looked out into the road. She watched impressed as a cab appeared as if by magic from the almost stationary jam. Tony, for all his presence and
savoir faire
would never have managed to do that.

‘Jump in,’ he said. He climbed in beside her and leaned forward to slide open the glass portion behind the driver. The windscreen wipers were drawing refracted coloured arcs in the crystals of the sleet.

‘Where shall I tell him to go?’ he asked.

She gave him her address after only a second’s hesitation. After all, he didn’t look like a rapist or a murderer and Mrs Green would be in downstairs …

‘What would you have said if I had lived the other end of London?’ she could not resist asking.

‘I’d have taken it on the chin, paid up and taken out a second mortgage on my flat.’ He grinned and she found herself smiling back.

‘You didn’t tell me if you were a doctor,’ she said as he sat back beside her, with a comfortable sigh. There was at least a foot between them on the hard slippery seat.

He grinned. ‘Would that make it all right?’

‘Make what all right?’

‘Me, taking you home.’

‘Probably not.’

‘Then I can admit I’m not. My acquaintance with bacilli is purely passing, at the moment.’

She giggled. ‘Are you going to tell me what you do do?’

‘Must I? I’ll tell you my name. It’s Richard.’

‘Mine is Sue.’

The taxi still had not moved a foot. Up ahead the lights changed from red to green and back to red. The driver glanced over his shoulder. ‘I hope you’re not in a rush, guv,’ he commented.

‘We’ve got all the time in the world,’ Richard said.

Sue glanced at him accusingly. ‘I thought you were in a hurry to get home.’

‘I was. I hate being in limbo, between places. But now I’m here, which is somewhere. So I’m not in a hurry any more.’

He came up to the flat and poked around her drinks cupboard while she took off the torn tights in the bathroom and dabbed at her knees with cotton wool.

‘One inch of decidedly-cooking sherry,’ he said as she returned to the living room, her elastoplasted knees safely encased in jeans, ‘even less Sainsbury’s whisky and a can of lager. I can safely say, either you are a dipsomaniac down to your last ten minutes’ worth, or you are not a drinking lady.’

She laughed. ‘I haven’t felt very sociable lately. I’m sorry. Would coffee do instead?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t feel I’ve made full reparation yet. I saw an off licence on the corner. I’ll go and get something.’

He would not listen to her protests.

She stood and stared at herself in the mirror when he had gone. Her face was very pale and there were dark circles under her eyes, but there was a small sparkle in the clear blue irises which hadn’t been there that morning.

He came back with two bottles of wine, a Chinese takeaway and a huge bunch of holly.

She stared.

‘What on earth is that?’

‘I thought you might get the wrong idea if I brought mistletoe.’

‘But you didn’t have to bring either!’

‘I did.’ He put the bottles down and stacked the paper carriers on the table. ‘I’ve decided I’ve got to come clean and tell you what I do. Otherwise I’m here under false pretences. First, I’m not a doctor but I am a medical student, so I’m almost qualified to swab your knee myself. Next summer I shall be, exams permitting, and yours will be the first knee I touch professionally, I promise.’

‘If the bacillus hasn’t got me first.’

‘Exactly.’ He had found a corkscrew by himself and expertly drew the cork.

‘Second, as this is the vacation and I am, in common with most of my species, hard up-ish, I have a temporary job. Namely, I am masquerading as one F. Christmas Esq. at the local big store.’

She stared at him. Then she burst out laughing. ‘You’re not serious!’

“Perfectly. I had only hung up my robe ten minutes before I met you. It’s a jolly good job – with luncheon vouchers!’

They were half-way through the chow mien when the phone rang.

Sue climbed to her feet from her cushion in front of the coffee table near his and went to answer it, still laughing, unsuspecting.

It was Tony.

‘Sue? Can I come and see you?’

She felt her stomach muscles clench uncomfortably. The receiver grew slippery in her hand.
Come home. Please come home.
The words screamed in her head, but she managed to control her voice with a supreme effort. ‘Of course, Tony. What about tomorrow?’

‘I had thought perhaps now …’

‘I’m sorry. I’m busy tonight. Come tomorrow.’

She stood staring at the wall as she hung up, her hands shaking violently. Richard closed her fingers round the stem of her wine glass. ‘Sip it, he said quietly.

She obeyed and the world stopped spinning.

‘That was my ex-fiancé,’ she said after a moment.

‘Don’t tell me unless you want to.’

She went back to her cushion with a grimace. ‘I think I do. Do you mind?’

She and Tony had met at a squash club in the City. She was swept off her feet by his handsome attentiveness, by his charm and his easy confidence and soon she was going with him everywhere, her blonde, blue-eyed prettiness set off by his dark hair and permanently tanned skin. He drove an MG and her parents had approved of him utterly. They had become inseparable and Sue was besotted by him, physically and emotionally obsessed by her first real affair.

‘You still haven’t told me what he does for a living,’ Richard put in quietly.

Sue looked down. ‘He hasn’t actually got a job.’

‘There’s nothing wrong in that.’

‘No, I don’t mean he’s unemployed. I mean he doesn’t work.’

‘Oh.’

There didn’t seem any more to be said.

Tony took her to parties and dances and brought her first not-too-expensive presents, then expensive presents and moved in when her flat mate moved out and finally presented her with a sapphire surrounded by tiny diamonds as they chose the day three months hence when they would be married.

She looked down at the pile of empty cartons on the coffee table and laughed ruefully. Tony would have made me put this on plates in the kitchen and seal the cartons into a bin liner so they didn’t spoil the ambience,’ she said, gently self mocking.

Richard grinned. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? It sounds eminently sensible.’ He reached for the bottle and filled her glass.

‘My mother has started making lists,’ Sue said quietly. Suddenly there were idiot tears in her eyes again.

‘Mothers do.’ Richard grinned, carefully not looking at her. ‘My mother even listed how many hole-less socks I had when I started medical school.’

‘How many were there?’ She looked up, smiling through her tears.

‘Three, as I remember.’ He slipped off his shoe and stared reflectively at his protruding big toe.

She let out a gurgle of laughter. ‘You’ll have to do better than that when you get to Harley Street.’

It was nearly midnight when he got up to go. He walked slowly to the door. ‘Can I ring you sometime?’

She nodded. Thank you for the holly and everything.’

He slipped back the lock and walked onto the landing. Then he turned and almost absent-mindedly dropped a kiss on her forehead. ‘Don’t forget to bathe your knees again,’ he whispered. ‘I realize I am probably too late to join the queue of your admirers, but I’m damned if I’m going to lose you to a bacillus.’