Body and Soul (15 page)

‘Fiddle, cello, violin … what do I know about those sort of instruments? What I
do
know about is money. A million dollars! Imagine, she knows people who give away gifts like that. A woman who’s happy with my Thursday specials.’

‘What’s her husband like?’ asked Tom, trying to sound as casual as he could.

‘Far as I know she doesn’t have one. And not looking either,’ said Grace.

‘How do you know that?’

‘Because she’s never seen out and about. Very anti-social except when she occasionally goes to one of the Duke’s dinners. Someone said she played at a private party for Prince Charles there, but that might be just gossip so don’t quote me. Oh, I’m sure she has men, though. A woman like that – all she’d have to do was whistle. Remember when Lauren Bacall said that to Humphrey Bogart?’

Grace leaned towards Tom and punched him playfully in the chest. ‘You planning to pucker up and blow, Tom?’ she said, laughing as she left him to wait on a customer.

He called after her, ‘I might just do that, Grace,’ and hoped she took it as a joke.

Chapter 15

The following Thursday Eden went back to Frog’s Hollow. She was early and felt disappointed to see that her handsome stranger was not there. She took the table that gave her the best view of the door. Every time the bell tinkled she raised her head to see if it was him.

There was the usual conversation between Edna, Beryl and Eden. This week it was about the price of new potatoes, Jersey Royals. Eden could not get into it, her mind too preoccupied with her versions of the Lalo Cello Concerto and Richard Strauss’s ‘Don Quixote’, and having to go to London to see Laurent and finalise the programme for Epidaurus. The meeting was to be held in Heathrow’s VIP lounge. Max had arranged it there because Laurent had a stopover of three hours before his flight on to Buenos Aires. Then she was to be a guest of the Director of Covent Garden at a gala performance of
Swan Lake
, with the newest Russian ballet wonder performing for the first time in the West. Where did Jersey Royals come into all this? she wondered, yet did not want to offend her two old friends.

She heard Edna say, ‘I never buy them, they’re always too expensive for me. But if you want to have some, Eden, this is the time to splurge. They’re at their best.’

‘Actually I’m not shopping much these days. I’m too busy working.’

‘You gonna give a concert?’ asked Beryl.

‘Two actually.’

‘Will they be on the telly?’ asked Edna.

‘Yes.’

‘You will let us know the dates?’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, I can see why you haven’t time to go food shopping,’ conceded Beryl.

Another tinkle of the bell above the door. Eden looked up. Still not her handsome stranger. She was disappointed. Time was running out. He wasn’t coming. She had been certain he would. Had been looking forward to seeing him again. She wondered whether she had been wrong. Maybe he had not been flirting with her last time. Eden told herself of course he had been. That smart salute had been a dead giveaway, that and the teasing smile that went with it.

She was tempted to ask Grace if he had been in and gone. It was possible, she told herself, that he had come early and assumed she was not going to be there. This is ridiculous, she told herself, I’m behaving like a young girl with her first crush.

‘It’s roast chicken today, done in tons of butter and free-range at that, roast potatoes and cauliflower cheese.’

‘That’ll do me just fine, thanks, Grace.’

Eden finished her meal and left the restaurant. He obviously wasn’t coming. He knew very well what time to be there to get the Thursday special and hadn’t turned up.

Eden conjured up his good looks, the sexy way he had about him. She was more than disappointed, having sensed something wonderful could happen between them and not just something sexual. There had been a need for her in his eyes. She could see pain behind the twinkle for her he had in them. By the time she arrived home, she had talked him back into her soul, this stranger who had already changed her life once and did not even know it. She could not think of him as Tom Spurling, not yet anyway. For her he was a romantic stranger. What to do next? she asked herself. Go back next Thursday. That was about all she could do. She was sure he would come after her when he could.

Eden practised all afternoon and then took a nap. She fell into a deep sleep dreaming of her handsome stranger and was furious when the ringing telephone woke her up. She remained lying in
bed, trying to remember the dream, but could not. It had escaped her. All she could remember was the sensation of feeling happy. The telephone did not stop ringing. Finally she reached over and picked up the receiver. Seconds before she spoke she sensed it was her handsome stranger. She smiled and said, ‘Hello.’

Tom Spurling hesitated before speaking. Eden’s voice enchanted him. It was an intimate sound, a bedroom voice. Soft but at the same time husky, firm, decisive.

‘I like your voice,’ he told her.

‘Is this Tom Spurling?’

‘You’re not offended that I’ve called? I don’t mean to be intrusive but I missed you at the tea room and frankly can’t bear to wait another week before making contact.’

‘How did you get my telephone number?’

He was relieved not to hear any annoyance in her question. ‘Not easily.’

‘But journalists have their ways, is that it?’

Tom liked the lilt of amusement in her voice and was relieved that she had not been offended by his call. ‘I would like to see you again, to talk to you. As much as I like Frog’s Hollow, I think I can do better than that, somewhere quieter. I know a pub close to my cottage. You could come and see my place and then we could walk along the river to the Trout.’

Eden was given instructions as to how to get to Tom’s house. She thought it was unusual that he didn’t offer to pick her up, but then sensed there would be many unusual facets to Tom Spurling. Eden rarely went out at night and when she did it was usually with someone who would pick her up and drive her home. She was uneasy about being alone after dark on roads and lanes she was unfamiliar with even though she had a mobile telephone, which she never used. The dogs seemed the best choice of companion. They liked riding in the car, day or night.

What to wear to a pub? Nothing flashy, she decided, but something pretty and sexy. Youthful. Eden flung on and off half a dozen things. Nothing looked right. The bed was soon littered with clothes and time was flashing by. At last she selected the same outfit she had worn the day she had first met him. Now
she was late so rushed down the stairs, the dogs at her heels, and was out and at the car door, urging the dogs into the back seat. There was the usual ten minutes of pandemonium as fur flew and the animals vied for supremacy amidst much barking and yelping.

Eden drove all the way with the map light on to follow the directions Tom had given her. The dogs settled, wrapped around each other, and she could hear Winkie and Wonkie snoring. A thirty-minute drive and she was at the edge of Tom’s village and driving down an unsurfaced track through a wood. Eden was relieved she had decided on taking the dogs with her. This place seemed to be at the back of beyond. Three-quarters of a mile down the track, she saw lights and a cottage.

She stopped the car. Not a sound from the back seat. ‘Some protection you are,’ she said to the three dogs.

‘I’ll protect you,’ she heard Tom say through the open window of the car. ‘That is, if you think you need protection.’

‘I always think I need protection. Whether it’s true or not.’

Tom opened the car door and Winkie and Wonkie leapt out followed by the Russian wolfhound who was all over Tom. ‘I think I’m the one who needs protection,’ he told her laughingly.

The dogs ran off round the front of the cottage and Tom slipped an arm around Eden’s shoulders. Like that, they walked together up a pebbled path to the entrance of his cottage. ‘I was worried you weren’t going to come.’

‘Would you have been very disappointed?’ she asked.

‘Shocked more like.’

‘Shocked? I don’t think I understand. Why shocked?’

‘It would have been the beginning of the end of my life. You see, I think I want to spend the rest of my days with you. So if you hadn’t come, I might have died.’

‘You’ve never even kissed me, how do you even know we’re compatible?’

‘Do you know that we’re not?’

‘No, actually, I know that we are,’ Eden told him and stepped closer. She folded Tom’s arms around her and kissed him, licking his lips with the point of her tongue. He drew deeply on her kiss
and something wondrous happened to them. It was a warmth that flooded their bodies and their souls. They were liquid fire playing with ice, two melting people re-forming as one whole and complete human being. It was instant passion and togetherness, a mutual need to love each other and make love to each other.

Tom gently unfolded himself from Eden’s arms. He stroked her hair, removed her pleated scarf and held it, sniffing the scent of her upon it. He unzipped her yellow leather jacket and removed it from her shoulders, dropping it to the floor. ‘I want to know you, every part of you, intimately. I want to take you to the outer limits of love and lust and beyond. You are everything in the world that is lovely and I want us to be together forever.’

‘I feel the same about you, Tom. Crazy as it seems, I believe we have no time to waste. We must do nothing now, just be. Does that make any sense?’

‘All the sense in the world,’ he replied.

They were holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes. ‘I was overwhelmed by you the minute I saw you for the first time last week,’ he told her as he walked her through the sitting room of his cottage.

Together they sat down on a wolfskin blanket covering a bed set in one corner of the large room. Slowly they undressed each other and for the first time feasted on what each of them was seeing. They caressed each other, took their time learning about each other’s bodies.

The lust was there, stronger than anything either of them had ever had with previous partners. They expressed that to each other, talked about it, and Tom said, ‘I don’t want us to get this wrong. Maybe it’s not so much that what we feel for each other sexually is stronger than with other partners, so much as it’s different. Something we cannot put into words, actually something that needs no comparisons. Tell me you understand that we are together for always? We are going to have the best adventure with each other all the rest of our lives.’

Eden didn’t answer him. She was distracted by his naked flesh, the tone and muscle of his body, the large and erect phallus. She wanted to give herself to this man, to please him with her sexuality,
to give him the pleasures he had been looking for all his life. They had kissed each other’s bodies and souls for what seemed like forever and now Eden wanted to take possession of him and he to take possession of her. She sat astride Tom and slowly fed his penis into her cunt while he sucked on her nipples and caressed her breasts. Wholly impaled upon Tom she came after she had slipped on and off him several dozen times. Then, after lying in her arms for a considerable time, he took command of fucking her into orgasm after orgasm.

Together they watched the dawn rise. How or when the dogs had found their way into the cottage Tom had no idea but they were there fast asleep lying on the floor at the foot of the bed. He kissed Eden awake and then they lay on their sides facing each other, stroking each other lovingly, having sex.

Eden wanted to say something about his having already had an impact on her life. That she had been invisible to him and been horrified by the experience. That he had in a sense saved her life and she was indebted to him. That she had not realised until now she had wanted him even then. That she had been devastated because he never gave her a second glance. She couldn’t do it and realised she never would.

It was only in the dawn light that Eden really had a chance to study the room. It could not have been any other man’s. It was a turn-of-the-century fishing lodge with the river very nearly at the porch. Everywhere she looked there were books piled high on tables or spilling out of bookcases. Several stuffed and mounted fish adorned the walls, and old and new framed photographs were hung in a haphazard fashion. Fishing rods leaned against walls or in the corners of the room; a fishing net with a long handle was draped over a low easy chair of worn leather. There were half-unpacked boxes and suitcases everywhere that made it look as if Tom was just settling in or else getting ready to leave. There was a large double desk with a computer on it and stacks of photographs piled neatly in row after row.

‘It’s bit of a mess. I confess to not being very neat but then I didn’t expect to fall in love. I’m not out to impress you. You get what you see. That’s the way it will have to be with me.’

‘And me,’ answered Eden.

‘I suppose the best way to get to know each other would be to take things as they come?’

‘Yes, and be able to ask each other anything we want.’

‘Sort of a truth game?’

‘Well, something like that.’

‘I’ll go first,’ suggested Tom as he fried eggs for their breakfast standing naked at the cooker.

Eden, wrapped in wolfskins, sat on the worktop next to him. She crossed her legs and Tom pushed aside the skins so he could have a better view of her long shapely limbs. He smiled at her and she knew he was yet again excited by her mere presence. There was no hesitation in his eyes, he wanted her again in a carnal fashion.

‘The truth is you’re hungry but you’d rather fuck me again than eat,’ said Eden teasingly.

‘That’s true. You win,’ he told her as he turned the gas off and swept her from the worktop to the floor. He tore away her furs and they fucked in the kitchen while shooing the dogs away. Concentration was hampered by their laughter as the dogs constantly vied for Eden’s attention.

Once more replete with their sexual escapades and feeling love and companionship towards each other, they lay silently in each other’s arms. It was Tom who broke the silence, ‘Is there any great love in your life I will have to duel with – pistols at ten paces and all that?’

‘No, not necessary. No pistols or swords. It was a very great love but over more than ten years ago.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘One never quite forgets great loves, one always has a memory of them, but that’s all.’

‘I can handle that,’ said Tom.

To herself Eden thought, No, my dear, you’re not evil enough to cope with Garfield. But all she did say was, ‘There is a man in my life – Max, my agent. He’s devoted to me and we love each other very much but never in a carnal way. He’s my best friend and so will always be in our life. You’ll like him, I’m sure. He loves
me and is as much a part of my career as I am and always will be.’

Before she could say anything more Tom told her, ‘You know, I will never come between you and your music. I don’t pretend to understand very much about your world but you can teach me to appreciate music – the nuances only a great artist such as you understands. Music has always been one of the things I never found enough time for but wanted to escape to. I love it and I’m bound to it but have never been able to indulge myself fully. I was always busy covering wars and pestilence, bringing them to the world through newspapers and TV.