Encounters (48 page)

Neal saw her several hundred yards away, threading her way towards him up the crowded Saturday High Street, her duffle hood pulled forward around her face, her hands deep in her pockets, a basket hitched onto her elbow.

He stopped and stared at her for a moment, then he turned away towards the nearest shop to avoid her. In the doorway he stopped abruptly, his eye caught by his own reflection, by the acute misery he had surprised on his own face and he felt a surge of anger. Pride had kept him from her all these weeks, but now she was there a few hundred yards from him and he would stay away no longer. Swinging back into the thoroughfare he pushed his way through the crowds and caught her arm.

‘We’re going for a walk.’

Emma, dreaming, had not even seen him coming and she bit back a cry of surprise as she found herself being pulled round into the teeth of the wind, but after only a second’s hesitation, she went.

Stormbound, the fishing fleet clustered into the shelter of the sea wall and down river the slate water blended with a slate sky heavy with unshed snow. Side by side they stood and stared down at the restless decks jostling against the quayside. Then slowly Emma raised her head and grinned at him.

‘You know, I think I’ve missed you.’

‘And I think I’ve missed you.’ His eyes narrowed. Her hair whipped from beneath the hood and was flailing around her eyes. He raised his hands and pushed the hood back from her face.

She waited, defiant.

He shook his head. ‘You cuckoo. Why?’

The gesture seemed so empty now. ‘I wanted to change my image.’

He laughed. ‘And have you?’

‘Of course. Can’t you tell?’

‘Not yet. But then I haven’t seen much of you. Come and have a coffee.’

Thankfully she followed him into the warmth of the coffee house near the church where they found a corner table and faced each other free of the blinding wind at last. He stared at her critically as she slipped back her duffle coat.

‘You’ve lost weight, but so far you’re the same Emma. Say something, then perhaps I can tell.’

She grinned. ‘Pearls of wisdom fall from my lips these days. And I’m called Em.’

‘Why not Fred, it’s more feminine. To me you’re Emma and always will be.’ He sounded sterner than she had ever heard him, almost schoolmasterly, and she resisted the answering urge to stick her tongue out at him and chose instead a large Danish pastry from the trolley.

He watched amused. She was different. More confident perhaps; more mature; calmer and more ordered.

‘I hear you’ve been going around with Chris Foster,’ he said after a moment’s silence.

She met his gaze squarely. ‘For a couple of months or so now.’

‘Serious?’

‘Depends what you mean by serious.’ She stared beyond him towards the window where the snow was again feathering down; a sign, back to front on the glass read,
Order Your Valentine Cake Now
and there was a picture of a thick creamy chocolate heart. Suddenly her eyes were full of tears. She blinked them back angrily. Grown women do not cry in public at the sight of a piece of romantic tomfoolery aimed at teenage children.

She groped in her bag for a handkerchief and blew her nose hard, still not looking at him.

‘Could he spare you one evening, do you think?’ His voice sounded husky against the usual coffee house squawk of women.

Squaring her chin she looked at him at last. ‘That’s for me to say, not him.’

She chose a date a week away so as not to seem too eager and they met, impersonally, at a pub they had never visited together before.

But he had a present for her – a tiny silver pendant – very modern in design. Not once did he mention her hair.

She ached for him to touch her, but he was strangely distant and formal with her, meticulously polite. But for the pendant which grew slowly warm against her skin as she played with it nervously on its chain, they might have been strangers as they sat facing one another across the table, their hands a few inches apart. There was no candle between them, but she felt as though there might have been a hundred miles.

And then suddenly he pushed back his chair and relaxed and laughed. ‘You know, Emma, you haven’t changed one bit. You’re still the same delightful old-fashioned girl at heart, for all the sculptured haircut and the space age dress! I’m glad. I wouldn’t have you any different for anything.’ And his hand reached out at last and covered hers.

She grinned, thinking suddenly of the black satin bedspread. The day she had met him again she had put back her patchwork quilt. The effect had been devastating. She felt calm and reassured; back home; undeniably herself once more. But perhaps it was too late. Perhaps Neal no longer wanted her. Perhaps after all she no longer wanted him.

‘How can you tell I’m the same?’ she asked him, her fingers lying easily in his.

‘The way you talk, the way you sit. Even the way you do your hair.’

‘But –’

‘But it does suit you, you’re right,’ he went on critically, his head a little to one side, ‘although of course it makes you look older …’

She had spotted the glint in his eye. ‘I could grow it again if you really thought I should,’ she said. ‘But it would probably take fifteen years.’

He looked thoughtful. ‘As long as that?’ Then he was smiling again. ‘OK. I’m prepared to wait. I’ll hang around until it does. If you want me that is?’

It was what she had been hoping he would say and yet now she hesitated. ‘I’m more changed than you think, Neal. It might not work, us being together again. I want it to, but …’

The grip of his fingers tightened for a moment. Then he released her hand. ‘I won’t push you, Emma. But think about it, won’t you?’ He smiled and picked up the menu. ‘This was where things went wrong before and I’m not going to make the same mistake again. You ordered chicken and white wine, remember?’

She grinned. ‘I’ll promise you this much, Neal. If I walk out on you this time I’ll wait around long enough to pay my half of the bill, does that seem fair?’

His eyes met hers and held them. ‘Very fair,’ he said.

R
ichard. I’ve done something dreadful.
Pat looked in the mirror, screwed up her face and tried again.
Richard, darling, I’ve done something rather wonderful.
That didn’t work either. Not at all. Better to say it straight out.
Richard, there’s someone coming to stay. For two weeks.

The mirror was steaming up. Her palms were growing sweaty.
Richard, I know I should have told you a long time ago, but I never plucked up the courage. Richard, I know you’ll want to throw me out … but the child was alone and it is Christmas. Richard, please …

‘You’ve done what?’ His voice was too quiet. Pat looked hard at the floor and explained again. This time it was easier. She just told him; straight.

‘They’d have had to put her in care or something. Richard, she is a relation of mine, sort of. I couldn’t say no, could I?’ Could I? Just as when Sarah had said: ‘I know you and your husband won’t mind, just while I’m in hospital.’ She hadn’t dared say: ‘He’s not my husband.’ She had looked hard at the wall, above the white radiator and the telephone receiver had hurt her ear it was so tightly pressed. ‘He’s not my husband, we’re only living together. Something like this could ruin everything. He says I’m taking him for granted …’

‘How old is this child anyway?’ Richard’s voice was still enigmatically cool.

‘Six, I think.’

Richard stood up and threw down the paper. ‘That’s all I need; a child of six, in a flat this size! I don’t want anyone else here upsetting things. We’re fine as we are.’

He went to look out of the window. Pat could see his knuckles on the green and white print curtain. She winced, waiting for the rip. Those curtains had been her first bad mistake. Attractive, light, airy, hand-made. By her … ‘I hope you’re not going broody or something,’ he’d muttered, instead of thank you. Then he had ignored them. And they did look so lovely once she’d tidied the room a bit.

Of course later, in bed, he had murmured in her ear, his voice so soft and dreamy she wondered if she had heard right: ‘Those curtains make the room, Pat. It might be nice to have new ones in here, one day,’ and she knew it was his way of saying sorry and thank you. His way; in the dark.

‘She won’t be any trouble, Richard. Her mother says she’s a very quiet, obedient child. She’s used to going to stay with people.’

‘Good, so let her go and stay with them again.’

‘It’s difficult, Richard. It’s Christmas.’

‘All the more reason for them to have her.’

He went into the bedroom. She followed him, hovering. He went back into the living room. She followed again. She knew she was irritating him. She wanted to disappear. She felt sick.

‘What shall I do?’

He had picked up his jacket. ‘Do what you like, but don’t expect me to entertain her if she comes here.’ He was at the door and going; then for a moment he was back. ‘And don’t,’ he said, his chin set in the way she knew so well, ‘expect me to dress up as Father Christmas.’

In the morning Richard ate the breakfast she prepared and went to work with a smile and a kiss. She liked that; like it must be with real married people. Neither of them mentioned the child. She wished suddenly she was going to work, too. It had seemed fun to finish a job the last week before Christmas, start another in the New Year; have those two or three weeks free.

Then Richard had said: ‘I hope you’re not going to waste money buying me presents, all that childish nonsense.’

‘I like childish nonsense,’ she had wanted to wail, but hadn’t the courage. What if he despised her for it?

So the cards she sent had been secret, although she’d written, defiantly, ‘from Pat and Richard’ and the ones they received had been gloated over and loved and then reluctantly put in a drawer. She went cold suddenly. The child would expect a tree.

She gazed round the room. Nothing was ready. The spare bed was still folded behind the door.

When the time came to meet the train she was there at the barrier and her face was smiling, but inside she was terrified and resentful. Suppose Richard never came home again? Suppose he threw her out? Suppose the child was uncontrollable? Even delinquent?

She saw the child at the other end of the platform. With it was an adult, responsible for the length of the journey only, who exchanged names and addresses and vanished into the crowd, not seeing or guessing Pat’s panic; leaving a suitcase and the little girl to Pat.

Pat licked her lips nervously and tried to smile. ‘Hello, Annabel,’ she said, experimenting.

The little girl had enormous blue story-book eyes and was solemn. ‘Hello, Aunt Pat,’ she said. ‘My name is Bel.’ She put her hand in Pat’s and waited expectantly.

My God, thought Pat, what now?

Somehow they got home. The little girl was enchanted to have a bed which wasn’t ready and which folded up behind the door.

‘It’s like a horse,’ she exclaimed and mounted it, pretending to ride. The floor began to shake and Pat bit her lip. She was thinking of Richard’s reaction.
Please let him like her,
she prayed silently,
please
.

‘I’m hungry,’ said Bel and Pat looked at her watch. What do children eat for lunch? Not yoghurt, crispbread and cottage cheese, that was for sure. She had better ask.

‘Chips,’ came the reply. ‘Chips and sausages and fish-fingers and chocolate pudding. Where’s your Christmas tree, Aunt Pat?’

Richard looked for a long time at the small green fir, wedged with newspapers into his wastepaper basket. The whole flat was full of the scent of resin and pine needles. It was fragrant and beautiful.

‘Uncle Richard, Uncle Richard, will you help us decorate it?’ The child was already in her nightie with furry-bunny slippers.

Pat peered furtively through the kitchen door. She was hiding; she admitted it. But surely the pretty child could manage Richard better than she could? She breathed a quick prayer as Richard set down his papers and slowly began to unbutton his jacket.

‘You fraud!’ she whispered in the kitchen later. ‘You utter fraud. All that silver tinsel in your briefcase; and baubles! How did you know I’d buy a tree? How did you guess?’

He grinned. ‘I knew,’ he said.

They had to bring the TV and the table lamp and their books into the bedroom so that the child could sleep. Pat saw Richard frown and she cursed silently. She hadn’t thought of that, as she hadn’t thought of the pools of water cascading from the bath onto the floor, the piercing giggles and screams, the enthusiastic assault on Richard’s typewriter, or the scribbles in his books. (‘It’s not scribbles, it’s my bestest writing.’)

Bel found Pat’s photographs in a box and scattered them, delighted, on the carpet, making patterns. ‘Look, look,’ she squeaked. ‘You – on a pony. What’s he called, Aunt Pat?’

Pat looked. She had been about fifteen. ‘Black Beauty?’ she hazarded hopefully.

‘But he’s not black, Aunt Pat.’

He wouldn’t be!

‘Oh, look! Here’s Uncle Richard.’ The child held out another picture, her head a little to one side. ‘I like Uncle Richard.’

So do I, thought Pat. Lots. She reached for the photo. It was of them both. He had his arm round her shoulder and was smiling down into her eyes in that gentle, intense way of his which she loved so much. It had been taken the summer she had first met him, two years before. Was it really two years?

‘Why are you smiling, Aunt Pat?’

She had met him at a friend’s party. Both had gone alone, both planning to leave early. They had left early, but no longer alone. From the moment they started talking Pat had realized that she could never be alone again. Not as long as Richard was any part of her life.

It had taken a long, long time, though, for Richard to ask, half diffident, if she would move in with him. Scarcely believing it, she had arrived, suitcase and pot plant in hand, before he could change his mind and, laughing, he had found a saucer for the plant. ‘You’ve brought your family, I see,’ he’d said.

The pot plant was still there, on the windowsill.

‘What are we going to give Uncle Richard?’ Bel asked, confidingly, on Christmas Eve.

How could Fat say ‘nothing’?

So they went shopping together and bought him some aftershave and some socks and a paperback. Then Bel had a brainwave.

‘I’ll pretend to be Father Christmas.’ She gave a high-pitched giggle. ‘Won’t that be a surprise for Uncle Richard? We’ll hang up the stocking for him and when he’s asleep I’ll tiptoe in and fill it with presents like the real Father Christmas does for children.’

The real Father Christmas?

Well, Pat had thought of it. She had managed to keep a few small things hidden besides the little girl’s present from her mother which Pat had found tucked in the suitcase. But what would Richard say? Pat licked her lips nervously.
All this childish nonsense.
But there was a child.

Pat and Bel listened to carols on the radio while they made a Christmas cake. Not a rotten old cake, with currants and things in (‘Yuk,’ said Bel), but a chocolate sponge with thick squidgy icing. Pat hadn’t made a cake before.

‘My mummy doesn’t need a book,’ said Bel with peals of laughter. ‘Books don’t tell you how to make cakes.’

They’d better, thought Pat …

The amazing thing was, she found she was to have a stocking as well.

‘Hang it up; hang it up,’ the child shouted, dancing with excitement. Pat was embarrassed. There would be nothing in her stocking. She hadn’t thought of it and of course Richard wasn’t in on this conspiracy. She wildly wondered what she could put inside the woolly sock she was handed.

‘Uncle Richard says people hang their stockings round the biggest radiator when they live in flats,’ said Bel.

Doubtfully.

‘Oh he did, did he?’ said Fat. She felt warm inside as she realized Richard must be entering into the spirit of things, that he wanted to join in, to belong even.

She filled her own stocking, quietly, with a couple of unopened packets of tights and some perfume she had been given for her birthday. Then, lump in throat, she filled the other two and crept back to bed.

Richard seemed to be asleep. She had hoped he might help her wrap Bel’s presents, but he hadn’t offered. He had sat in the kitchen reading the paper. But she suspected he was taking an interest, his eyes glancing now and then at the lumpy packages.

Bel woke at half past five with shrieks of excitement. Sleepy and half apprehensive, with a wary look at Richard, Pat allowed herself to be dragged from the bed. She gasped. The stockings which she had left limply stuffed were bulging. Bel’s had overflowed onto the carpet.

‘I … er … think we must have duplicated.’ Richard was sheepish as he peered around the bedroom door.

She looked at him. His hair was rumpled; his bathrobe torn. Looking down at the child, he was smiling, watching expectantly as her stocking was carried, bulging, to the sofa.

Bel stopped. ‘Aren’t you going to open yours?’

They smiled at each other, catching the little girl’s excitement and reached, each a little embarrassed, for the grossly swollen socks which lay on the floor. Pat’s heart began to beat a little faster.

The packets in hers were carefully wrapped in gold and black paper. ‘Nothing very exciting,’ Richard grinned. ‘I’m afraid Father Christmas was a little rusty.’

Nothing very exciting! A silk scarf; a pendant; a tiny teddy bear.

‘For me?’

‘Look, Aunt Pat. I’ve got one, too!’

Pat went down on her knees to grope inside the stocking. A paperback. The sequel to the one she’d bought him! They held them up together and laughed.

‘It proves we must be compatible after all,’ he teased. ‘We’ll have to live together long enough to read each other’s.’

She made mountains of toast and they ate it all sitting on the big bed getting butter and honey on the duvet and giggling. Then Richard lay back, contented and began to read aloud the story of
Thomas the Tank Engine
.

‘Well, I liked it when I was six.’

‘But, Richard, she’s a girl.’

‘I do like it, Aunt Pat; I
do
!’

The flat lay beneath a drift of coloured paper. She put on the chicken and wished she had risked a Christmas pudding. In the end they stuck five-pence pieces into the chocolate cake. (‘You know, love, if you don’t mind me saying so, it’s really more like a pudding in the middle anyway.’) But she knew he liked her attempts at cooking. It was one of the things on her side.

‘My God,’ said Richard in despair. ‘Look at me. The picture of a happy family man.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and groaned as Bel bounced onto his lap. ‘This would put you off marriage for life, this would.’

He had meant it as a joke but the air was suddenly electric. He saw Pat, her eyes brimming, turn away to put the kettle on. Damn, he thought, damn, damn, damn!

Pat sniffed and shook her head as she filled the kettle. I knew it was all pretend, she thought, furious with herself. He’s always told me he’s not the marrying type. So why am I worrying? I never expected it. It’s a lovely day and I’m not going to spoil it. She blew her nose angrily, then she plugged in the kettle.