Encounters (19 page)

He called the waiter and then escorted me firmly to a taxi. He did not leave my side until we were standing outside Leo’s door that had once been my door too. Then with a handshake and a stiff little bow he turned and left me.

The ceilings had been painted white. As Leo opened the door and I composed my face to greet him, I noticed the fact automatically. And I was pleased.

Nothing of my personality remained in that flat. Even my begonia, which stood ostentatiously on the table by the door, had changed. It had grown gnarled and whiskery and one of the umbrella leaves had blighted and curled up at the edges.

‘It was kind of you to water it for me.’ I might have been away for a week’s holiday.

Leo acknowledged my thanks with composure and showed me to a chair by the fire. The hearth had been opened out and the glowing coals were sending out a radiant smokeless heat. I noticed that some of my carefully stripped furniture had been repainted. Some antiques and bric-à-brac had been introduced and the Greek island look had vanished completely. It was, I had to admit, very attractive in its own way, but not, I thought, entirely Leo’s taste.

‘Are you married now?’ I asked as he handed me a coffee cup. He unscrewed the cap from a quarter bottle of brandy. I did not expect him to nod and when he did I did not expect the sharp wave of jealousy which flowed over me.

‘Do I know her?’

I was relieved to see that it wasn’t the tanned beauty who had incited me to murder. I gazed at the photograph he put in my hand. She was delicate and fair and had the gentle eyes of a dreamer very much in love.

‘Can I meet her?’ I gazed round, half expecting her to appear, but the door to the bedroom was closed. I knew suddenly that the flat was empty. Taking the glass from Leo I looked up at his face. His gaze was fixed on the photograph in my hand, and his eyes reflected exactly those of the girl.

Suppressing with difficulty the lump that persisted in rising to my throat I took a sip of brandy and set the frame down on the low table.

‘I want to make love to you, Jessica.’ He took my glass and cup away and sat down next to me, holding my hands. His eyes were sad, not searching, not demanding; just holding mine.

The bedroom was too tidy. I followed him to the bed and then stood looking down at the coverlet. There were no signs in the room of her presence. No make up, no slippers, no photographs, no lingering whisper of perfume.

And there were no signs there either of the time I had shared Leo’s bed. It was a different place now. The rugs were changed, the pictures were different except for one. Glancing at Leo I felt myself smile just once. He had kept the hand-coloured print I had bought him of two goldfinches clinging to a head of thistledown.

‘Why didn’t you move?’ I asked at last.

‘I liked it here,’ he replied.

His fingers fumbled as he unbuttoned my dress and as he slipped the material back across my shoulders I saw him stare and hesitate and frown.

‘God, Jess. I must have had too much to drink.’ His hands dropped to his sides and with a defeated little shrug he sat abruptly on the bed.

I stood before him for a moment and then, wriggling back into my dress I began to rebutton it. Perhaps he, like me, had had a vision of another, more recent love. I had been Leo’s for so long, but my months with someone else had effaced the memory of Leo’s hands and Leo’s kisses. It was as though a stranger sat before me.

I brought his glass of brandy and my own from the drawing room and sat beside him on the bed.

‘I’ve been married too, Leo. My husband is dead.’

His eyes filled with tears and I knew then for certain that he had lost her. I did not ask any questions and after a while we rose and went back to the fire. The bedroom door was closed behind us.

We talked of many things. Of our lives and careers, of old friends and memories, even of the trial and the horrors that surrounded it. On my third brandy I found myself giggling over the solemnity of the judge. He had turned out to be the grandfather of the dental student who had helped us with the beautiful ceramic tiles we found for the bathroom.

As the fire grew cold and the red, glowing coals faded to clinker I found the silences between us growing longer. I was too tired to move. My head began to roll on my shoulder and when Leo gently took away my glass and covered me with a rug I made no protest. I was content to be there.

The kitchen I found was almost unchanged from five years before. Leo had always been a keen cook. Evidently his wife had not challenged him on that ground. I found the coffee beans in the same place; the grinder was an updated model. I cooked his eggs and put the rolls in the oven while he shaved and in the fragrance of the cooking breakfast felt myself five years younger.

Looking for the butter I found two bottles of her nail enamel in the bottom of the fridge. When Leo wasn’t looking I slipped them down behind a dresser drawer. It was better that he try to forget.

He drove me home on his way to the hospital, with my begonia, my spaghetti jar and my
Requiem
neatly stacked in a cardboard box on my knee. I would rather have left them.

‘Will you come again, Jess, one day?’ His smile was sad but genuine.

‘I’d like to Leo. I’d like to very much.’ He drew up outside my flat and sat for a moment gazing wordlessly through the windscreen. Then he got out and came to my side of the car.

Helping me out he pinched my cheek suddenly. ‘I forgot all about the need to hide my knives. You must have lulled me into a sense of security.’

As I carried the box of treasures up to my flat I was feeling happier than I had for many months. And I had left another hostage to fortune behind me. In an envelope on the mantelpiece in Leo’s flat I had put a five pound note and a message, ‘Thanks for the loan’, and my phone number.

P
ushing open the door the boy peered cautiously round it. The room was empty. On the bed, his uncle’s suitcase lay with its lid thrown back, some clothes spilling over onto the patchwork counterpane. The curtains had been drawn against the brilliant afternoon sun and the room was a twilit cavern, scented with spice and pomade. He could hear the desperate rustling as a butterfly beat its wings, trapped somewhere between the curtains and the broiling glass.

Glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the passage was empty the boy tiptoed into the room. Lifting aside the heavy material he pushed open the casement. The frail wings beat against his cupped palms for a moment then the creature was gone out into the sun, leaving a dusting of gold on his fingers. He pulled the window to and slipped back through the curtains, holding his breath.

Full of curiosity, he looked round in the gloom. On the chest of drawers lay silver-backed hairbrushes, keys, pencils and a jar of some sort of cream. He unscrewed the lid and sniffed, wrinkling up his nose.

He hesitated before touching the suitcase. Then quietly and efficiently he went through it, searching the pockets, looking beneath every folded garment. He didn’t know what he hoped to find. Some sweets perhaps or interesting photographs.

His eyes rounded in amazement when he found the sovereign. He held it for a moment, hesitated, then slipped it into the pocket of his shorts.

It was hard to remember to walk quietly, to shut his uncle’s door, to stroll off casually towards he stairs. His gym shoes squeaked on the linoleum. He could hear his mother clanging saucepans in the kitchen and his uncle’s drawling tones coming from the front of the house somewhere. Perhaps he had cornered one of the choirboys on their way to practice and was boring him with one of his interminable stories. His father would be in the study writing his sermon.

Stealthily he made his way out into the garden, his hand cupped protectively over his shorts’ pocket. Sitting in the long grass behind the beech hedge he at last looked properly at the gold coin. He had never seen one before, never held one. He gazed at it and turned it over in his palm.

Then suddenly the awful realization came upon him that he had stolen it. He was a thief. In spite of the sultry heat he grew cold. His hand began to shake and unthinkingly he hurled the thing from him. It fell somewhere in the grass.

Hiding his head in his hands he sat for a long time, thinking. He knew what he must do. He must return the coin to its place in his uncle’s suitcase. No one would know it had been taken. Only God.

The boy looked heavenwards and fearfully, fervently, hoped that God was busy somewhere else this afternoon. There had certainly been occasions when He had missed other misdemeanours, after all.

On hands and knees in the long feathery grass he began to search for the sovereign.

Peering between the cool green stems he covered every inch of the ground near him. Then methodically he crawled in circles further and further away from the small patch of flattened turf which showed where he had been sitting. His anxious eyes flitted over stones and a piece of amber glass, a ladybird and finally, miraculously, a glint of gold. It turned out to be a butterfly; perhaps it was the same butterfly. His head ached. His shoulders ached. Trickles of perspiration ran down his back and his shirt clung to him. His nose itched from the grass seed and his eyes watered as he forced them ever closer in the green twilight between his hands. The shadow of the hedge lengthened over him. It formed a darkness so black he doubted that he would ever see again.

Blindly, exhausted, he climbed to his feet. It was no good, he would never find it. Tears trickled down his cheeks leaving clean trails in the dust beneath his eyes. Then he spotted the gold piece shining in a patch of dappled sunlight ten feet from him.

He clutched it to him and ran as fast as he could for the house. The shadows of the tall yew trees in the churchyard had already engulfed the small vicarage: it was as dark as night in the hall and he almost collided with his father who was emerging from his study.

Up the stairs two at a time he ran and listened for a moment, his heart thumping, at his uncle’s door. All was silent. Turning the handle he pushed his way into the room and looked round.

The suitcase, closed, stood on the floor by the dressing table. The hairbrushes and things had disappeared. Everything seemed to have been packed away. Hesitating, he wondered what to do. He could hide the coin in the room and hope people would think it had got lost. But his conscience told him otherwise. He must put it back. Silently he pulled the heavy case flat on the floor and tried the catches. They were unlocked. Relieved, he threw back the lid and slipped the sovereign back into the pocket where he found it. It was hard to reshut the case. He struggled to push the clothes down and to strain the lid back into position. The more he tried, the more untidy the contents seemed to become.

He sat on it, but his slight weight was not enough. He was so intent on his efforts that he almost missed the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall. Heart in mouth he left the case and fled to the heavy curtains, slipping through them as the door opened and his father and his uncle came in.

‘I have something for the boy.’ His uncle’s voice had an affable confident boom which had always endeared him to the nephew. ‘I’m sorry not to have seen him at all. Explain why I couldn’t stay, there’s a good chap.’

The boy heard the puzzled exclamation as his uncle saw the open case and unhappily he pictured his angry face. But no further comment was made. He heard a faint scrabbling and then his uncle spoke again, slightly breathless. ‘Here we are. A sovereign for him. I know he’d like it.’

The boy, red-faced and unhappy pressed himself further back behind the curtain. With a slight click the window swung gently open as it had for the captive butterfly. He clutched wildly for a moment at the heavy material as he felt his balance go, then he fell, with a frightened shout, towards the scented flowerbeds in the garden below.

M
ark was standing in the warm evening sunlight gazing up at the front of the house. Watching him a little anxiously from behind her billowing curtains Susannah saw him hesitate for a moment before raising his hand to push the door then, walking slowly like a man in a dream, he disappeared out of her sight into the shadows below her window.

She was waiting for him at the top of the stairs when he reappeared in the hall and she stood quite silent until, glancing up, he saw her framed against the landing window. At once the preoccupied expression on his face vanished and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief; the magic was still there. He ran up two at a time and kissed her on the forehead and then held her at arm’s length to see her better. On tiptoe she came only to his shoulder.

He followed her into her room. It was pretty and pastel-shaded, he saw looking round, feminine like her; the walls were hung with prints of flowers, festoons of blossom filled the vases on the table and bookcase and the shaggy rug was littered with her sewing. The flat was cool in the breeze from the open window.

Quietly she took his hand. ‘I am glad you came, Mark,’ she said softly.

Had she met him only two days before? It had been at a party which had been held in the big conference room at the offices where he worked. Long tables laid out with food and drink had been dragged across the length of the room and she scrutinized them anxiously from her corner. She had been feeling nervous about the party all day because she had supervised the catering and seen that all was ready; now it was up to the contract waitresses to cope for the rest of the evening. She eyed them critically; they looked smart and competent. She took a deep breath and pushed her fair hair back from her forehead. She knew she looked all right; she knew the food was good; so why was she worrying?

They began to arrive: the businessmen, the reps, the cool supercilious secretaries and at last, surreptitiously still rubbing little bits of wallpaper paste from beneath his finger nails, Mark. She didn’t know why she noticed that one man amongst so many others. Perhaps because he too looked a little ill at ease. She watched him walk to the bar and collect a drink. Then he carried it into a corner and, sipping repeatedly, began to observe.

Susannah had known no one there at all except the managing director who had given her the job. He smiled at her distantly and bowed. She smiled back a little wryly, tempted to thumb her nose at so much pompous authority but not daring. It was then she caught Mark’s eye and knew that he had read her mind. Glancing down she smiled, a little embarrassed.

He came over. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked easily.

‘I’m afraid so,’ she said.

‘Are you with the company? I haven’t seen you before.’ Mark could not take his eyes from her face and a flutter of excited unease arose somewhere below her ribs. She took another sip from her glass. ‘Actually I’m the cook. Freelance. I arranged the food for the party.’

He didn’t seem to be listening.

‘I expect you work here?’ she tried again, wanting to see him smile. They were jostled suddenly by a surge of loud-talking men and Mark slopped his drink a little on the skirt of her dress.

‘I’m sorry.’ He was jerked from his reverie abruptly. ‘Here, let me.’ He produced a handkerchief and dabbed her skirt. ‘I’m Mark by the way,’ he said glancing up at her, obliquely, almost on his knees at her feet.

‘I’m Susannah,’ she said, and he smiled.

For the rest of the evening they talked and laughed, inseparable; companionable; feeling as if they had known one another for years and he, realizing at last who she was, complimented her on her cooking, doing more than justice to his share as they talked.

Then the crowds began to thin. ‘Do you have to stay behind to clear up?’ he asked.

She shook her head. ‘Not this time, no. I’m coming back in the morning to see to things.’

‘But it’s Sunday tomorrow.’ he objected.

‘I know. I don’t mind.’

‘In that case, can I give you a lift home?’

She would have liked so much to say yes, but she had a car. She felt panicky suddenly. She hadn’t even known his surname, then.

But later, as the party finished he had offered to walk her to her car, opening the door for her as she stepped out of the hot stuffy building.

‘I can never understand how people can lock themselves up in smoky rooms like that when it’s so lovely outside,’ she commented over her shoulder to him as he followed her, talking wildly to hide her nervousness and stretching her arms above her head, shaking her hair to rid it of the smell of smoke.

He smiled. ‘It can’t be the company tonight. It must have been your food.’

‘Flatterer.’ She walked ahead of him across the asphalt. Her car was parked with its nose almost in the dark sootiness of a privet hedge.

She paused and turned to look at him and hesitated for a moment. He was looking down at her, a frown on his face. Wasn’t he going to say anything? The silence lengthened. Desperately she spoke up again, her voice sounding too loud in her own ears. ‘Perhaps I’ll see you around?’ she hazarded, with an attempt at a casualness she didn’t really feel. She wanted so much to see him again.

‘Oh I hope so.’ He took her hands in his and held them tightly, his eyes seeking hers in the dark.

He was going to kiss her. Susannah took a small step towards him, raising her face imperceptibly to his, but he released her quickly, as if afraid, and stepped back. ‘Drive carefully, Susie,’ he called as he turned away.

She stood still for a moment, unbelieving, disappointed, then she began to grope in her purse for her car keys.

The next day Susannah let herself into the office with a pass key she had been given and went into the room where the party had been. She wrinkled her nose in distaste. Dirty glasses and plates, overflowing ashtrays, crumbs trodden into the carpet, everywhere the stale smell of exhaled smoke and musty conversation. She threw open the windows and began to clean up, plodding methodically through the job, stacking, scraping, emptying. Resolutely she did not allow herself to think of the tall handsome man who had talked to her so caringly the evening before and who had left her so abruptly.

It was a long time before she realized that he was there. He was watching her through the glass door of the office. She took a deep breath to steady herself and raised a hand in greeting.

He opened the door. ‘I had to come to collect some papers. Do you want some help?’

She smiled. ‘I’d love some, but it’s a dreadful mess in here.’

He shrugged. ‘For you, ma’am, I’d brave the Augean stables if you asked.’

They had both laughed so easily together and it had taken her half the time with his helping her.

‘Susie, I want to see you again.’ At last he had said it. ‘Soon. Tomorrow, if you can.’

And now he had come. Susannah watched him looking round her room, hungry for details of her life. She smiled again, understanding. She longed to know about him, too. But not yet. She liked him still to be a little mysterious; a stranger whom destiny had brought to her door. He told her that he had booked a table, she picked up her coat and they went out together.

They drove through the bright evening to a restaurant she had never been to before, she talking, a little puzzled by his long silences, and intrigued; he wanting to touch her, his hand straying every now and then to hers, not really listening at all, just happy to be close to her. He was already certain in his own mind, although she didn’t know it, that what he wanted was a future linked indissolubly with that of this exquisite, fragile girl.

It was a dark, intimate restaurant, the tables barely lit by smoking night lights, hidden from one another by high-backed settles. Susannah sat opposite him and every now and then, as they talked, his hand would stretch out and gently, with a finger only, touch hers across the deep-crimson cloth.

‘Would you like to come in?’ She looked up and smiled at him at the door of her flat when he brought her home later.

For a moment his gaze met hers. Imperceptibly he nodded, but he said. ‘I shouldn’t.’

‘Why not?’ Her voice was gentle. She reached out to him and he came.

He watched as she filled the kettle at the sink and plugged it in. ‘There’s a drink if you’d like,’ she smiled at him, but he shook his head.

‘Coffee’s fine.’

She knew he wanted her.

In the sitting room he smiled and put down his coffee cup and looked at her so long she began to feel strange – almost dizzy – there was such an intensity of feeling in his eyes. Then he put his arms around her and she let him kiss her.

She heard the little clock beside her bed next door chime midnight. He heard it too. Gently he pushed her away. ‘Your coffee’s getting cold,’ he whispered, inexplicably sad.

She slipped to her knees on the soft carpet and sipped her coffee, leaning against his legs. His head was lying against the sofa back, his eyes closed in the lamplight. She couldn’t know that suddenly and unwillingly he was thinking of Annabel.

Two days before, on the day of the party where he met Susannah, he and Annabel had at last bought the new wallpaper for their flat. She had chosen it and he was content to watch, knowing her eye for colour and her quiet taste. He had smiled at her fondly as she pulled out first this roll and then that until at last she had decided and turned to him for confirmation.

‘Are you going to help me do it?’ he asked as they paid for it, scrupulously half each.

She nodded, ‘I’ll do the painting round it; you do the papering, Mark. Remember? You said you could do a better job than the men who did our bathroom and I seem to remember a small bet?’ Her dark hair was curling into her eyes and he had longed to push it back for her, but his arms, like hers, were loaded.

They had worked hard and by mid-day she had painted a door and one strip of the paper was up.

‘It’ll dry flat,’ he murmured hopefully as she came to inspect his handiwork and she hadn’t criticized it.

‘It’ll be lovely,’ she had said. ‘I’ll go on painting while you’re at this party tonight. They shouldn’t allow office parties on Saturdays. Do you really have to go?’

He hadn’t wanted to go. If he could have thought up an excuse he would have used it. But this time, this once it was important that he be there. ‘It has to be on a Saturday because the German delegates will be flying back to Frankfurt tomorrow. It’s boring, I know, but there might be some good contacts there.’

‘I know your kind of good contacts! Curvaceous, sexy Fräuleins!’ She smiled at him.

That was the joke between them, just as when he said to her every so often, ‘One of these days you’ll marry one of the fat directors of that firm you work for, Miss Conway,’ and she would solemnly nod and compute their salaries on her fingers. She wouldn’t, of course. Mark and she might not be married, but he was the man in her life and had been for nearly five years.

That afternoon when he was wrestling with the second strip of paper she had slipped out for a while.

She walked slowly to the surgery, feeling the warm June sun on her hair, acutely aware of the colours and shapes of things in the road, as if her faint anxiety made her more alive. The waiting-room was nearly empty and it was barely fifteen minutes later before she was once more in the road. The test had been, against all probability, positive.

This time she was thoughtful as she walked and she saw nothing of the summer trees. It was strange that she did not wonder at once what Mark would say. Perhaps because she knew instinctively that what had happened would in a way make no difference; her future, as it always had been, was in her own hands – her future and now that of the baby. Decisions, if they had to be made, were her job and she was not afraid of them. Not usually. Unnoticing she broke a twig off a lime tree as she passed and twirled the stem in her fingers.

Mark and she were a partnership. They shared their lives and their home, but at the same time they respected each other’s rights as individuals. Whatever she decided – and she knew that ultimately he would say that the choice must be hers – he would respect her for it when she told him. If she told him. She snapped the twig abruptly and threw the pieces into the gutter.

The future did not seem to be clear. There were so many aspects to face: to tell him, or not to tell him; to have it or not to have it; to have the child and then let it go perhaps, to someone else.

She and Mark had never seriously considered marriage. Their relationship suited them both as it was and she knew he valued it for its freedom. But now?

Her tongue suddenly tasted blood in her mouth, sharp and salty and she realized she had been chewing the inside of her cheek as she walked. She hadn’t done that since she was quite a little girl.

She walked a long time before turning at last, as she began to feel tired, for home. Her only decision was that she would do nothing – not yet.

Strangely she began to notice things again now; her heightened sense of perception had returned with that one meagre resolution – to do nothing, The trees were again brilliant in their cloak of summer green, the last of their blossom white and creamy, with bees clustering to suck, their buzz droning above the cars. As she turned back into the main road she saw a couple walking towards her. The girl, obviously pregnant, turned to the man and laughed up at him with such trusting joy in her face as they walked that Annabel found that she too was smiling. She hugged herself a little and against all reason felt ridiculously happy.