Every Woman for Herself (27 page)

‘She’s sent you some food – it’s in the large hamper and the cold box, and there’s quite a lot of my picnic lunch left in the small basket. Oh, and there’s a bottle of father’s whisky, too. Not doctored this time,’ I added hastily.

‘Just as well – what I’ve got’s incurable, and I’d hate to waste another bottle of good whisky. I thought you had rather a lot of luggage for one night, though,’ he added. ‘If you tell me which ones you want, I’ll show you your room first, so you can tidy up and come down when you’re ready.’

Ready for what? I wondered. After all, I’d agonised about spending the night with him and now here I was, alone and in his power, and so far he hadn’t even kissed me! Didn’t I deserve some compensation for being about to make a fool of myself in front of his friends?

I followed him upstairs, and he paused in front of an open door and said, ‘This is mine … should you happen to want me for anything in the night.’

‘Unlikely,’ I said coldly, but I peeped in as we passed.

Mace’s room had a sort of Moroccan palace look to it, something to do with the rich colours and canopied bed. It suited him anyway; as I suppose my little replica Parsonage room suited me, like a shell round a snail.

On closer examination I found it a little odd, because it was like – and yet not like. Everything was softer and thicker and more luxurious, and the bathroom off had a shower over the little bath, and a heated towel rail, and radiators.

‘It’s amazing,’ I said, wandering around touching everything as though it might suddenly vanish like fairy gold.

‘I just wanted you to feel at home, Charlie. I thought it might tempt you to come here with me sometimes.’

‘But Father said you’d borrowed that book about the Parsonage interior ages ago, long before you met me.’

‘Yes, he mentioned the book and I realised it was just what I needed for the stage sets for my first play – sort of austere but functional, old-fashioned but with the odd modern convenience standing out like a sore thumb, you know?’

‘I certainly do,’ I said, back in the bedroom, fingering a satin eiderdown like a lilac cloud while my feet sank into the carpet.

The colour was all it shared with the rough cord matting in my old bedroom.

There was soft lighting, and a little desk as well as the rather Shaker-style white painted furniture. I opened the wardrobe and discovered a long, navy gabardine mac with a belt and back pleat, and a polystyrene head sporting a mouse-brown bobbed wig, a navy felt hat like something out of a wartime film, and a pair of round-lensed tinted spectacles.

‘I think I’ve found your dressing-up clothes, but your secret’s safe with me,’ I said politely.

‘
Your
dressing-up clothes – it’s your nanny outfit. I borrowed the coat and hat from the props department, but the glasses and wig I bought. I thought they’d give you just that air of drab efficiency you might otherwise have lacked.’

‘Thanks.’

I closed the door, and turned to look at him, feeling puzzled and rather touched. ‘Mace, you’ve gone to a lot of trouble – and it might have been for nothing.’

‘But I liked imagining you here, and I was vain enough to think I could persuade you. And I want you to feel happy when you are here,’ he said.

‘Actually, it’s more like home than home is now that I’ve lost my room to Jessica. Aren’t you afraid I might take up residence?’

‘No,’ he said seriously. ‘No, I’m not afraid of that.’

Our eyes met, and he gave me one of his more ravishing smiles; but he still made no move to touch me and I was feeling … well,
piqued
, I think you might say.

‘I thought you might like to see my play tonight. An old friend’s invited himself along, too, with his wife, but we can shake them off afterwards, and come back here for a late supper from Em’s hamper.’

‘That sounds lovely,’ I lied. I expect I might have enjoyed it, too, but not dressed in my jumble-sale finds, and with his London friends. But still, wasn’t that part of the point of my coming, to show him how incongruous I was in his usual setting? That it wouldn’t work? ‘I’m looking forward to seeing your play.’

Well, at least that was true.

He looked pleased. ‘Are you really? Then I’ll leave you to get ready while I stow away that mountain of food and drink Em’s sent. There’s lots of time before we have to leave. And by the way,’ he added as he turned to leave, ‘note the door does lock, and the key is in it!’

I looked out of the window at the dark, quiet square, where the big trees filtered out the streetlights into filigree patterns on the damp pavement, and puzzled over what Mace had said and done – or not done – since I’d got there.

By the time I’d unpacked and had a leisurely shower I’d come to the conclusion that for some strange male reason, because I was alone in his house with him, he’d decided to behave like a perfect gentleman.

I admit, that’s not quite what I had expected.

Alternatively, he was playing hard to get.

Adjusting the neck of the green dress to a point where it strained modesty, I picked up Jessica’s pashmina and went down to see what the lion was doing in his den.

Walking into the theatre on Mace’s arm, wearing my jumble-sale wisp of chiffon, I wondered if I was in a dream or a nightmare.

Mace, six-four of immaculate dark suiting,
was
a dream, but his friend Gavin’s wife, Krystal – a tall, beige tapeworm of an ex-model – had given me to understand that I was hopelessly out of fashion to the point of being bizarre, without actually putting it into words.

However, when we got inside I could see that my dress wasn’t any weirder than a lot of the other outfits, and then Mace introduced me to several of his friends who didn’t seem to see anything amiss either. Most of them were really nice, and quite ordinary. This may have been because they
were
ordinary, but since I didn’t know who was famous and who wasn’t I just treated everyone the same, which seemed to work perfectly well.

The only dodgy moment came when I was left briefly alone with Krystal and another woman came up to talk to her, trailing a man with her like a fashion accessory.

‘Sonya – and Alistair! How lovely!’

‘Krystal, darling – all alone?’

‘Yes, but only for a minute – Gavin and I came with Mace North.’

Not only did she not introduce me to them, the two women talked to each other like I wasn’t even there.

I’ve never been snubbed before.

After a minute I looked across at Alistair, a tallish, slightly vacuous-looking man with a rather nice, pudgy face, and smiled and he smiled back.

I got off to a good start with him, and it was
amazingly
easy: he moved nearer and said he hadn’t seen me around, had he? He was sure he wouldn’t have forgotten me. I said no, I was Charlotte Rhymer and usually lived in Yorkshire, but I was there for the evening with Mace North, and we were just getting on like a house on fire when Mace, with no more than a brusque ‘Excuse me!’ reappeared and dragged me away.

‘What do you think you were doing?’ he demanded, crossing his arms and glaring down at me. ‘He’s a married man – where’s your sense of ethics? Or were you just trying to make me jealous?’

‘I was only flirting!’ I protested hotly. ‘And I wouldn’t have done it if his wife and Krystal hadn’t snubbed me – though he has got a rather nice, teddy-bear sort of face,’ I added provocatively.

‘Unlike me?’

‘You’re more Conan the Barbarian than cuddly toy.’

‘I don’t know if that’s good or not,’ he said, frowning, ‘but I do know that if you flirt with anyone else, it’s over the shoulder and back home.’

I bet he would, too.

‘We Rhymer girls know how to deal with caveman tactics like that,’ I said with dignity.

‘Charlie …’

The bell went, and people suddenly started to move. ‘Come on,’ he said, slipping his hand around my waist and almost sweeping me off my feet. ‘The curtain’s about to go up.’

We were in a box, which made me feel as if I was on show, although I don’t suppose anyone was interested in the rest of us with Mace there; he was definitely worth looking at.

My God, he was beautiful when he was angry.

Once the play started I forgot anything else for, as well as his more obvious attributes, he could certainly write: it was sharp, witty and completely engrossing.

I was still bound up in it when we left the theatre, so I didn’t notice the photographer until a series of bright lights went off right in my face. I stopped dead, blinded, but Mace kept right on walking, taking me with him.

I only hoped the green dress didn’t come out in a revealing Lady Di manner, though perhaps they would airbrush me out, or something, because I wasn’t anyone.

When we stopped to let Gavin and Krystal catch us up, Krystal was looking furious, but I don’t know if that was pique because she missed being in the picture, or because I flirted a little bit with Gavin in the interval, just to see if it worked on him, too.

We parted outside. Mace excused us from going on, saying I’d had a long day (although Krystal didn’t seem that enthusiastic about Gavin’s suggestion that we all go on somewhere together, anyway), and whipped me off in a taxi, which he seemed to conjure out of thin air.

‘So,’ he said, sitting back with a good foot of space between us. ‘Is flirting something you make a habit of Charlie?’

‘I wasn’t asleep,’ I said, snapping my eyes wide open again. ‘And no, I didn’t even realise I could flirt until tonight.’

‘Of course you can do it. You had them eating out of your hand, and Krystal and Sonya are probably giving their husbands hell at this very moment.’

I yawned. ‘It was their own fault, they should have been nicer to me.’

‘Just how nice did you want them to be?’ he snapped.

‘I meant Krystal and Sonya should have been nicer, not the men,’ I explained, ‘but I’m sorry if they’ve got into arguments because of it … they were nice. Most of the people I met tonight were nice.’

‘Well, I don’t know why you should sound surprised about it!’

‘Mmm … but some of them were quite well known, weren’t they? And I’m not anyone, really. I don’t fit in your world.’

‘Why not? The theatre world’s full of oddballs.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And if you don’t fit into my world, I’ll make it fit around you.’

‘But, Mace, everyone will think you’re mad! I think you’re mad! I’m not anybody. There’s no reason …’

‘Of course you’re somebody – the artist daughter of famous biographer Ranulf Rhymer, editor of a new alternative magazine – the article’s coming out in the paper on Sunday, by the way – beautiful, unusual, maddening …’

‘I still don’t think people will know what you see in me; and neither do I. I must have the charm of novelty, but it’ll wear off.’

‘No it won’t. It’s not love philtres or infatuation or senile dementia or anything else: it’s love. And it doesn’t matter what other people think, does it?’

‘I suppose not, though I thought it did before tonight. But I suppose people are just people when you get down to it. Some are nice, some are boring and some are swollen-headed and full of themselves.’

‘I hope that last one wasn’t aimed at me?’

‘No – you seem surprisingly normal, considering.’

‘Considering what?’ he demanded, but fortunately we’d arrived home, and the first thing I did was kick off my sandals and head for the kitchen.

I might be exhausted – it seemed like a century had passed since this morning – but I was also ravenously hungry. Mace set the table with candles, and opened champagne, and we demolished a large part of Em’s supplies, after which I felt like a new woman (but not necessarily a better one).

Mace was a very champagne sort of man, I thought: dry, crisp and given to the odd occasional explosion.

I was more like the peaty single malt whisky we had afterwards; though actually, as it turned out, a blended one would have been closer to the mark.

‘I’m glad you’ve stopped being all dog-in-the-manger about my flirting,’ I told him, sinking into a rather billowy sofa and tucking my feet under me. ‘Because I’ve got something I want to tell you.’

He stared at me for a moment, then threw himself down next to me and pulled me into his arms. ‘I’ll show you dog-in-the-manger,’ he muttered, kissing me.

I kissed him back with some enthusiasm, which might or might not have been due to the combination of champagne and whisky, but after a minute he stopped and frowned down at me. ‘I really wasn’t going to do that.’

‘Well, stop doing it, then; I did say I’d got something I wanted to tell you.’

‘But is it something I want to hear, like “I love you, Mace”?’

‘No, it’s something I found out recently – about myself. But I think you ought to know and … well, I want to tell you about it.’

He settled back with me in his arms, and all the lights suddenly dimmed to a romantic glow.

‘How did you do that?’ I demanded, sitting up.

‘Magic,’ he said, pulling me back.

I was glad of the dim light, actually, because telling him all about Ranulf not being my father, and all the rest of it, upset me much more than I expected, and Mace had to comfort me in the way he does best.

One thing sort of led to another, but had I behaved like a lady I’m sure he would have carried on behaving like a perfect gentleman, for whatever weird masculine reasons he was doing it.

However, he was pretty perfect just as he was.

Skint Old Philosophy

We are probably the first generation capable of choosing not to become our mothers.

Mace found me planning out the conservatory next morning wearing only his dressing gown, and had there been more ground cover I don’t suppose I’d have been wearing that for very long, either.

‘Mace,’ I protested, fending him off with a tropical plant catalogue, ‘the neighbours can see us.’

He released me reluctantly. ‘Then you’d better order enough plants to turn the place into an impenetrable jungle while I go and find some breakfast.’

‘Maybe I’ll go and put some clothes on first. I only meant to have a quick look in here in the daylight, but I got carried away.’