Body and Soul (14 page)

Rachel was a West Country woman who had always lived a
simple uncomplicated life. Eden had been living quite simply for all the years Rachel had been with her and she had no idea of the sort of fame and lifestyle her employer had been used to before she settled in Gloucestershire. Suddenly Eden’s life was going to go into high gear and Rachel was more necessary than ever to her now.

‘What I want to tell you is that I am going to make a comeback in the music world and that means I must work harder than ever and need to be more private than ever. I want you to run my day-to-day life, keep people at bay unless I tell you otherwise. We will probably be entertaining more, too.’

There, it was all said. There was nothing else to do for now except fit back into her English country house routine. There was a hellish amount of post to get through first. Max would be sending one of his assistants down for one or two days a week to deal with it and the telephone.

The mundane worries of life would be wiped out of Eden’s world. She knew very well how to cosset herself, how to submerge herself in an existence of nothing but love and music, sex and music, which was where she wanted to be again.

For several days after her return Eden worked with the gardener, did some cooking, went through her wardrobe. These were luxuries she had been able to take as a way of life during the past ten years. Then one day she realised she was wasting her time, precious time that could and should be used for her work. Giving up the simple things, the former uncomplicated way of life, was a price she had to pay because fate had dealt her a remarkable hand. She left everything to the gardener, to Rachel, to Max, and took up her life of music and her restored sexual life.

In the ten years that she had been in semi-retirement Eden had kept most of her friends at arm’s length. She kept in touch but usually by telephone or letters, isolated comfortably from her own point of view but never theirs.

Now the news was out about her comeback and Max’s public relations campaign was in full gear friends were clamouring to see her. For weeks she met people she had put on the back burner of her life. Flowers to wish her well arrived nearly every day from
admirers. Laurent called almost every night before he took up his baton. Soon they both began to realise that telephone sex was not enough. They agreed they should cool the sexual heat between them and find other partners to play erotic games with. If word of their telephone sex were to become public it would be ruinous for both of them, especially with the concerts they were to do together. The tabloids would make a meal of their sexual attraction for each other and they were too level-headed to allow that to happen.

Men who had formerly seen Eden as over the hill sexually now made overtures. She liked it. It made her feel quite marvellous. Suddenly she was spoiled for choice in sexual partners which amused her. It was so nice to be wanted for her sensuality. She flirted outrageously as she had done when she was young and had the pick of almost every man who crossed her path.

When the phone calls from Laurent stopped, Eden missed them. They were after all very sexy and had done wonders for her nights alone in bed. Then, after nearly a week, he called again. He missed her sexually, he said, wanted her. It was hard to say no, that they must abide by their decision to cool their ardour for each other. Even that conversation, the mere sound of lust for her in his voice, stirred her sexually. But somehow good sense prevailed on both sides and the telephone calls stopped. His occasional gifts to her did not.

Eden was taken aback by the number of people who wanted press interviews, then the radio and TV talk shows. Suddenly she was a hot property. It seemed that taking a ten-year sabbatical was the best thing she could have done to further her career. Both concerts in Epidaurus were sold out while offers from concert halls round the world were pouring in to Max’s office. And always the big questions remained. What had made Eden Sidd return to the concert stage? Was she still, after such a lengthy absence, able to play with the same musical genius she had once possessed? And what about her playing the legendary Surabaya? How had she come by that? It had been out of sight in private hands for decades.

The outside world was pressing in on her but Eden paid little attention to it all. She resumed her quiet life in the English
countryside, practised every day, walked the dogs and let everyone else get on with their jobs. She did the interviews that Max deemed necessary. Having been seen out and about sporting a tantalising new look, several swains appeared and managed to persuade her into evenings out. She was an honoured guest at a dinner party hosted by a local duke, had sex with several dishy English gentlemen who were handsome, very sexy, and completely discreet.

Eden had never felt better, had not been as happy with herself as she was now for years. Suddenly she remembered how charmed a life she had once lived before Garfield, and even for a time with him. She was also playing the cello like an angel.

Chapter 14

Several weeks after Eden had returned home, she found the time to drive into the village. First she went to the cheese shop and browsed.

‘Haven’t seen you around for quite a while. I figured you were away. Thought we might have lost your custom until Rachel told us where you were. Greece, wasn’t it?’ asked the cheese lady.

Eden said as little as she could without being rude and fled from the shop. She knew how the village folk liked to know everything; frequently did in fact know everything. At other times she had found their gossiping amusing, it had become a part of living in the country. She told herself there was no particular animus in the villagers’ curiosity. When she went into the butcher’s shop it was more or less the same friendly inquisition. Where had she taken her holiday? Had it been one of those package deals? Mr Cobb was looking for one for him and his wife.

Actually, Mr Cobb and the cheese lady took Eden back in time. She was reminded that she may have changed but they would not necessarily know it. They were just behaving towards her as they had for the past ten years. By the time she stopped at the bakery for some cream slices, she was even prepared to volunteer the fact that she had had a marvellous time. Her old routine took over then and next she went for lunch at the Frog’s Hollow tea room. She was smiling when she entered the cafe. This, after all, was where it had all started or finished, depending on how you looked at it.

The bell over the door rang as she entered. The room fell silent
for a few seconds as it always did when someone entered. All eyes were upon Eden. The proprietor Grace Peebles carrying two Thursday specials for the lunching ladies Edna Archer and Beryl Pike, looked harried but pleased to see Eden. There were two middle-aged men at another table, a young couple and a pram at the table in the window. The man who had not given her a second glance several months before was sitting alone at a table close to the kitchen door.

Several people spoke to her. Beryl and Edna were their usual sweet selves. ‘We’ve missed you. Been away?’ asked Beryl.

‘Yes, and it’s nice to be back,’ replied Eden.

‘Like me, always glad to get home from a holiday no matter how different and exciting it might be there,’ said Edna.

The two women were flushed with delight at talking with her again. Eden found herself really pleased to be back in Frog’s Hollow, talking to Edna and Beryl who were so easy and pleasant. Suddenly conversations they had once had together came flooding back to mind and though she felt a million light years away from these two women now she made a point of not slighting them. ‘Those carrots look nice, Mrs Pike. The greengrocer or the supermarket?’

There followed a dissertation on the price of carrots sold loose and those with their green tops still on. Eden then told them about the cheese and cream slices she had bought and finally took leave of them to sit at the last available table.

‘You’re lucky, I’ve got one more Thursday special left. You want it?’ asked Grace as she dashed past.

‘Yes,’ said Eden without questioning what it was.

She was aware that the handsome stranger was unable to stop staring at her. He was looking at her in the direct way men do when they find a woman who is sexually appealing to them. Every woman recognises that special look. It brought a smile to Eden’s face. She glanced in the mirror on the wall opposite her. Even she could see the difference in her looks compared to the last time she had lunched at Frog’s Hollow when he had ignored her.

Eden was not a woman who primped. She had always had the kind of good looks that came naturally. She had been confident in
them, knew how to dress provocatively and how to show herself off to advantage. The woman she saw in the mirror was dressed in a pair of cream-coloured wide-legged trousers that clung to her hips and fitted her bottom sensually. Her jacket was of yellow leather, short, and moulded like a second skin. Around her neck she wore a white finely pleated chiffon scarf tied dramatically. Her hair was slightly dishevelled which was always a good look on Eden. However, there was something about the way the stranger was looking at her that did make her primp. She ran her fingers flirtatiously through her hair, wiped the corners of her pale-lipsticked mouth, then sat down.

Beryl and Edna were looking at her. Caught staring, one nudged the other and Edna, to cover their rudeness, said, ‘It’s lamb today, creamed potatoes, broccoli and carrots.’

The tea room was so small everyone heard them talking across the tables and no one thought it odd. Actually it was quite the norm. Everyone talked to everyone here. There was something strangely social about the Thursday special crowd, probably because it all began and ended in an hour.

Sam Perry said, ‘There’s a choice for pudding. I suggest you take the spotted dick,’ directing his words towards Eden.

‘I’m partial to strawberry jam so I’ve taken the roly-poly,’ said the man lunching with Mr Perry.

By the time her meal arrived there were conversations going on across the room between all the tables. All except the handsome stranger’s.

Grace Peebles arrived at Eden’s table and deposited a plateful of food. She then sat down and wiped her brow with a clean tea towel she had been carrying. ‘Mind a bit of company?’ she asked.

‘Not at all.’

‘People have been asking after you. We were worried something had happened to you. You’ve been away a long time. Then Mr Perry here bumped into Rachel and we heard you were away on holiday. That’s so, isn’t it, Sam?’

‘Yes, Rachel came into the shop to have me mend your flat iron, Miss Sidd. If she hadn’t done that we wouldn’t have known anything about where you was.’

‘I knew. I read it in the
Standard
,’ said the young man rocking the pram with one hand while he forked food into his mouth with the other.

‘You never said,’ his wife commented.

‘You never asked,’ he replied.

Eden was cutting into the delicious lamb on her plate when Grace said, ‘Joey Chalk, you are a one! We’ve got a real live lady who gets in the papers living right here amongst us and you never said a word.’

‘It was something about a million-dollar fiddle.’

‘Cello, not a violin,’ said the stranger.

‘Oh, I don’t think you’ve met this gentleman, Eden,’ said Grace. ‘He’s become one of our Thursday special people, haven’t you, Tom?’

‘Yes.’

‘Eden Sidd, this is Tom Spurling. He’s a photojournalist, living over in Sutton Benjamin. Seems he’s been hereabouts for years but travels for his work quite a lot. Not now, though, he’s working on a book,’ said Grace, sounding quite proud of her new customer.

‘Hello,’ said Tom Spurling and went back to his pudding.

Eden gave him a dazzling smile and said, ‘How clever of you to have found the best kept secret in the county, the Thursday special at Frog’s Hollow.’

He raised his head and gazed into her eyes. ‘It did take some finding but when we’re travelling in strange lands the first thing we journalists look for is a decent bed, the second the best food, so habit prevailed and I found Grace and Frog’s Hollow.’

Grace puffed up with pleasure. Tom Spurling had charm, knew how to flatter. Eden found him mysteriously attractive. Physically he was sexy with that aura of masculinity to which women feel instantly attracted. He had a lovely accent, too, educated but definitely northern. It made him appear a bit of a rough diamond. These deductions were made purely by instinct, though, because really he gave very little away. Eden sensed he was the sort of man who liked florist’s girls, hairdressers, barmaids. Nothing complicated. He was the type who liked sex on the run with young delicious ladies, beautiful with great bodies and no complications.
Or maybe older married women out for a lark with a man who would not complicate his life or theirs. And career women might excite his interest, those who were independent and had no need of support from him of any kind.

All this was going through her head while she ate and Grace chatted. When Eden was halfway through her meal she looked up at Tom Spurling to find him studying her. There was something he liked about her, that was evident.

Grace left Eden’s table and she was at last able to eat undisturbed. She enjoyed eating alone and sensed that so did the handsome newcomer. He rose from his chair then and pulled on a black leather jacket. Leaving the money for his lunch on the table, he nodded to Eden and walked from the tea room. Once he had closed the glass door, he glanced once more at her through it and smiled, putting his hand to his forehead and giving her a smart salute.

That night in bed she thought about Tom Spurling. There was something very appealing about him. She realised that her attraction to him when she had first seen him was what had made the pain of being ignored by him so acute. Well, he certainly hadn’t ignored her this time. He had been openly flirting with her. Eden went to sleep with a smile on her face.

All the way home from Frog’s Hollow, Tom kept thinking of Eden Sidd. He had not been so intensely attracted to a lady as he was to her for a very long time. She was a very sexy woman. Everything about her was sensual: her face, that body, the size of her breasts and bottom, the long legs that appeared to go on forever. And especially her hands with their long and slender fingers.

Of course he knew who she was, even had a recording of hers. An old girlfriend of his had given it to him one Christmas. She was undeniably a great musician, no little thing but something to put aside for now because primarily he fancied her rotten. He sensed that they would be great together in bed. He had a passion not only to fuck her breathless but to make love to her.

There had been very few women in Tom’s life whom he’d wanted to love, give himself over to with no holds barred, but
today he’d found one. It had been an instantaneous desire that was so powerful he’d had to run away from Eden just to get himself in balance. He had never felt this way about any other woman. Her mere presence was so powerful, so rich. She’d shone in that simple place like a star, sounding like a goddess come to earth when she had talked carrots and cheese with the two old dears. She had such class, such style, saying nothing when the young father had called the glorious Surabaya a ‘fiddle’. Had Tom not spoken up, he was sure she would never even have corrected the young man.

He sat in his kitchen in a rocking chair, trying to force her out of his mind. Eden Sidd was not the type of woman to get involved with. She was years older than he, terrifyingly clever and talented, with a whole celebrity life going for her. Tom himself had a penchant for dusky charmers, ladies of the night, hot sex and hotter women, good time girls who understood that his lifestyle was one of here today and gone tomorrow. He had always been an adventurer, a man who took chances every day for his work. He had covered several African wars and many more tragedies. His colleagues and competitors had nicknamed him Kamikaze Tom.

Now he was fed up with war, had had enough death and destruction, poverty, starvation, maiming, blood and guts to last him a lifetime. That was what his book was about, a reportage of his years of photographing the dark side, the meanness, the evil in life. After its completion he intended to photograph only the beautiful and sublime, facets of nature still untouched by man.

Tom had not so much lost his nerve for danger as burned himself out. He wanted the lighter side of life and though he had not been looking for a woman, there was something so positive and right about Eden Sidd he actually thought he would die without her. Dramatic in the extreme but that was the way he felt.

The feeling was so intense and out of the ordinary that he had not the least idea of how to cope with it. Eden Sidd drew him to her like a magnet. He had to find a way to become close to her. What madness! For all he knew she might be married, in love with a man, have children. He knew nothing about her except that he had found his soulmate, someone with whom to build a life, the
sort of life that he had so far missed. This was the woman he wanted to grow old with.

His cottage was by a trout stream, isolated but within walking distance of a village. He went down to the river for some fly fishing. The peace and tranquillity of the slow-running river calmed him somewhat. He cast his line time after time and the sound of the river, the early-spring sunshine, the scent of the wood and wild flowers, did their work. He regained some of the balance he had lost when he’d fallen in love with Eden. He would bring her here fishing, he decided. Teach her the ways of the river, how the trout ran. She was already a part of his life.

That evening he went to a pub, drank much too much and chatted up a young thing: blonde, blue-eyed, quite sweet and silly. He took her home, feeling incredibly sexy, wanting to fuck into oblivion this pretty young thing who worked at the supermarket. She came, many times, ending up by begging him to come but no matter how they fucked he couldn’t. He stayed rigid and full of desire, not for the young girl but for Eden.

It seemed to Tom that the following Thursday would never come. The days dragged by. It was difficult to focus on his work. Every hour he was away from Eden he kept promising himself he would do something about meeting her. She had an unlisted number, he had checked that, going through his contacts book for anyone who might be able to help. He used up many favours but Tom was not a successful world-class photojournalist for nothing. If he had managed to get the likes of Gadafi and Mubarak to sit for him and be interviewed with hard and sharp questions, he certainly had the clout to get Eden’s private number.

He deduced rightly that no one in Frog’s Hollow would have it. He rarely stopped in Frog’s Hollow for morning coffee and certainly never for afternoon tea. But he did now and Grace sat down with him and offered some information. ‘Is it true, do you think, that Eden plays a musical instrument worth a million dollars?’

‘Probably more,’ Tom answered, trying to appear disinterested.

‘She’s such a nice simple woman, so down to earth. She’ll speak to anyone.’

‘Not so simple, I think, Grace. Simple uncomplicated women do not play a cello worth in excess of a million dollars, and especially one that has been given to them as a gift. And they don’t make a triumphal return to the serious music world in an ancient Greek amphitheatre.’