Lovers and Newcomers (23 page)

He sat up, bringing his face closer to her cheek, angling himself so that his knees nudged hers. Miranda immediately shifted away from him.

With her book resting on her lap, Polly watched the two of them. Selwyn was making up to Miranda, that would have been obvious to a blind man. What was in question was whether or not Miranda took him seriously. Polly knew him intimately and understood in detail how Selwyn was always grappling with his inborn twin demons of frustration and disillusionment. He leaped at any opportunity to divert himself. Miranda was one area of interest, naturally, and of course he was also going to enjoy a night of village anarchy. Even more so if it could be coupled with some mild teasing in the run-up. She turned her gaze to the fire.

She knew him and loved him because she did know him so well, everything about him, even his demons. Tonight she envisaged her love as something like a block of marble, too heavy to shift, impermeable, smooth and dense and veined with the compacted traces of shared experience. Even Miranda didn’t know that. She wouldn’t understand how complicated and weighty and yet how finely balanced her relationship with Selwyn was, and his with her.

No one could, who was not one of the two of them.

Miranda said composedly, ‘I don’t loathe it. It’s an aspect of Meddlett that doesn’t appeal, that’s all. I love Mead, I don’t have to be in love with its entire context.’

‘I see,’ Selwyn said.

Katherine didn’t order a pudding; normally she liked puddings, the creamier the better, but this evening she was having difficulty in eating anything at all. She listened to what Chris said, or answered his questions, whilst her knife and fork lay forgotten. The waiter took away her main course almost untouched.

She drank instead. They finished a bottle of red wine between them and when the coffee arrived – she never usually drank coffee in the evening – she let Chris refill her glass from a second bottle. Wine made her talkative, in what she hoped was a good way. It wasn’t turning out to be an unburdening sort of conversation – to her relief he didn’t seem interested in trading the particulars of his marriage for hers, or in touching on other disappointments – but rather a meandering process of discovering their affinities. She liked the way he described ordinary things. He told her about the corner shop where he had had his hair cut in preparation for this evening by an elderly Turkish man. As the barber trimmed and snipped he conversed gravely about world affairs, and when the time came to take Chris’s money he accepted a five-pound note with a shrug and a tiny sigh, signifying that they were men, men of the world with serious matters to discuss, and the transfer of money was an unfortunate detail that they should not allow to interfere with their regard for each other.

Chris was an unaffected mimic. He made this small exchange come instantly to life.

‘I really liked him. I want to go back and we’ll put the Middle East to rights together. Maybe I’ll get him to give me a hot-towel shave.’

‘Don’t do that,’ Katherine said. ‘I like the beard.’

He looked surprised, and then pleased. She didn’t think he was used to women commenting on his appearance.

In exchange, she told him about the gay man who had been colouring her hair for the last fifteen years, and how even though she had never seen him outside the salon she probably knew more about the serial escapades and disasters in his life than she did about many of her friends’.

‘The crimper’s confessional,’ Chris laughed. ‘Sarah used to tell me about that.’

It was the only time he mentioned his ex-wife.

He poured more wine. They were bobbing along now on a gently alcoholic tide.

‘I don’t know why I’m telling you about my hairdresser,’ Katherine smiled.

She was discovering that she could talk to him about anything and he would listen to her. The need to protect or present herself in any particular way melted, leaving her exposed. She recognized the exposure. She even welcomed it.

‘I think I’m a bit drunk. Maybe that’s the intention?’ she asked slyly.

His intention or hers, it didn’t seem necessary to specify which.

He took her hands in his, and turned them palms up.

If he tries to read my fortune or makes a joke about a bearded stranger I can still get my coat and leave, she told herself.

He didn’t say anything, though. He was studying the inside of her wrists. With the shimmering confidence of tipsiness, she experienced a moment of undiluted happiness. The equilibrium was, as yet, perfect. She hadn’t dangerously abandoned her inhibitions but she had forgotten her age, the necessity of guilt, and the problem of their uncertain intentions.

It felt delicious, to be sitting here, in the candlelight, with Chris holding her hands. She wondered if the waiters or the other diners could mistake them for a married couple.

No. Definitely not.

They smiled at each other through the nimbus of the candle flame. The restaurant was almost empty.

‘Where now, Katherine?’ he asked. ‘I’ve enjoyed this evening. I feel like a child at the end of a birthday. I don’t want it to be over.’

‘Neither do I.’

Let’s see, she thought. My place? Oh God, no, not back to the flat. New carpets, curtains, lampshades, all chosen and ordered and arranged by a
wife
. The domain of married people, even more so than in the cottage at Mead.

How
does
this all work? She had no idea. Surely Chris ought to have the next move planned, if anything more was going to happen? Amos would – of course Amos would, he’d had enough practice over the years. Yet she was sitting here holding hands with Christopher Carr precisely because he was so different from Amos. She couldn’t have it both ways.

‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.

‘With a friend. We were at university together, he’s an archaeologist too. He’s an unconventional person. I’m not sure I could wish Gerry’s set-up on anyone, let alone you.’

Katherine imagined that Gerry would be a very late developer. Chris would sleep on the sofa bed in his living room and the place would be festooned with male clothing and sports equipment, something like Sam and Toby’s flats in their middle student period.

They were new in this together, the two of them. She could take the initiative, if she wanted to, but when she tried out the words in her head she found that she still wasn’t barefaced enough to suggest a hotel.

‘Tell me, and I’ll take you anywhere you like. Sailing down the Danube? Breakfast in Manhattan? The moon? Just say the word.’ He seemed perfectly serious.

‘None of those.’ She drew in a breath. What the hell, again. ‘We could go and have a last drink at our flat. It’s near here.’

Our
flat, that was the right touch. One glass of whisky, and she could still extricate herself by sending him back to Gerry’s.

He pretended to consider, letting her know that it was only a pretence. ‘I think that’s a good idea. It’s more accessible than the moon. I can make sure you’re safely home, you can tell me to leave as soon after that as you want.’

The close echo of her thoughts made her blush and then laugh. He leaned across the table so their faces almost touched. ‘I love your smile.’

He was unaffected enough to make this unambitious compliment sound like Shakespeare.

Katherine knew that Chris meant what he said. He was honest, and it was his honesty that made her open up to him like a cupboard that had been locked for years. I love
you
, she almost blurted, but she stopped herself in time.

It was a short cab ride. Seconds later, it seemed, she was fumbling with her key outside the flat. The cold air outside the restaurant had acted rather disconcertingly on her balance.

‘There. Done it,’ she murmured, as the door opened and they stepped inside.

What she was doing now was strange enough, and exciting enough, to switch off the stream of detached observations that usually ran in her head. There was no lapse between thinking and doing.

Chris unbuttoned her coat, and she shed it. They negotiated two more steps along the hallway, and she kicked off a shoe with each. Kitchen to the left, living room to the right. He took her hand. It was as if they were dancing a slow waltz, utterly absorbed in the music. The streetlight shone as it always did through the living-room window, illuminating the lower half of the small but fine Howard Hodgkin that Amos had given her for her fiftieth birthday.

Damn. No more light. Keep the room in shadow. Better to inhabit a no-man’s-land.

Two more steps. The cushions of the sofa pressed against her calves. It was easy to sit, imperative to continue this kiss.

They lay back. There was a slither of hands and skin, the various obstacles of buttons and folded cloth. Behind her head, on the sofa table between the lamp and the ivory statue of the Buddha that Amos had brought back from one of his Himalayan holidays, the telephone began to ring.

Chris lifted his head.

‘I’m not going to answer it,’ Katherine said.

The ringing seemed to go on for hours. At last the machine took it. After the message, Toby’s voice filled the room.

‘Mum, are you back yet? Your phone’s off, and Sam said you sounded a bit weird. Pick up, Mum, if you’re there, will you?’

Three or four seconds of silence followed.

‘If we can’t reach you, Mum, I’m going to come over.’

After another looming silence, her son hung up.

Katherine became aware of an undignified tangle of straps and rucked clothing. The weight of her sons’ concern lay on her frontal lobes, gathering pressure like a headache. She shifted and Chris sat up at once. She saw his silhouette against the streetlamp.

‘Excuse me,’ he murmured.

He got up and went into the kitchen. She heard him running a tap and filling the kettle. She ran her fingers through her hair, straightened her clothing and stood up. She found Chris leaning thoughtfully against the sink. He had taken two mugs and placed them beside the kettle.

‘You’re married,’ he said. There were layers of implication beneath the bare statement.

‘I am married,’ she agreed. The difference now was that up until a few days ago it hadn’t been necessary to remark on it. It would have been like saying that the sea was watery.

The kettle boiled. She watched him as he found a teabag, opened the fridge for milk, made one mug of tea and left the other standing empty. He put the full mug carefully down on the counter nearest to her. Then he came and kissed her, to one side of her mouth.

‘Call your son,’ he said.

‘I will.’

He stood back.

‘I’ll talk to you in a day or so. I enjoyed tonight more than any evening I can remember.’

That, too, she accepted as the truth.

‘So did I.’

After he had gone she locked the front door and sat down with the mug of tea. The homeliness of it made a welcome link to him. She dialled Toby’s number. He picked up on the first ring.

‘Mum, you
are
there. What’s going on?’

The anxiety in his voice cut into her. ‘I was out having dinner, and now I’m back. I’m sorry you were worried about me, darling. There was no need to be. I’m quite safe.’

Already she was straying out of the territory of truth, and that was not with a stranger but her much loved son. Avenues of guilt yawned ahead, but she closed her mind to them for the time being. She heard herself saying yes, it had been a good meal. She was tired now, that was all.

Toby was reassured, although clearly puzzled by the tone of her voice.

‘Yeah. Well, all right, if you’re sure you’re OK. ’Night, then.’

Katherine made a similar uncomfortable call to Sam.

Finally she switched on her mobile and glanced at the display. There were several missed calls from her sons, nothing else. The effect of the wine was rapidly wearing off. She would not, she told herself, most definitely
not
, be sending Chris a goodnight text. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she was laughing at herself. How old was she, fifty-something or fifteen? How good was it, to feel this young and silly?

The voice in her ear insisted,
You see? You are a person. You are not anyone’s good or chattel.

Still smiling, Katherine left her coat and shoes on the hall floor and went into her bedroom. Glancing at her open jewellery box, scent bottles, framed photographs, the door to the dressing room standing ajar, the gleam of polished wood, she thought vaguely that there was so much
stuff
here. The idea of the impending house was still more crowding. The as-yet theoretical granite and glass and polished concrete structure was waiting to be made solid, and then the further spaces within that unwelcome solidity that would have to be filled with interesting modernist furniture and judiciously chosen art, only to obliterate the patch of ground where ancient people had once buried their tribal leader.

‘Bloody house,’ she muttered. ‘What do I want a new house for?’

She didn’t want it. She would have to tell Amos so. In the morning, though. It could all wait until morning.

She tipped forwards on to the bed. The pillows were soft, and she was tired so she closed her eyes. Katherine fell asleep without cleansing her face, for the first time in at least thirty years.

‘I’m going to London in the morning, remember. I’ll need to take the car,’ Polly said to Selwyn.

She had already told him that she was making a quick trip to see Ben. Alpha and Omega had both said that they were worried about their brother. There was never a shortage of problems in Ben’s life and it was not his way to make light of them, but the current crisis was a genuine one. His girlfriend Nicola had not only left him, but had physically disappeared. He had been crying so much when he explained this on the phone to his mother that he had had to stumble out of the magazine offices and stand in a doorway to talk.

Polly piled the supper dishes in a washing-up bowl. She had a bigger trestle table for a kitchen now, and there was a cold-water standpipe with a tap where the sink would eventually be. The rate of progress was rapid in the barn.

‘Of course, take the car,’ Selwyn said. He was on his knees measuring and marking lengths of planking salvaged from a demolition site. The waiting planks stood on end against one wall, like a haphazard shelter within their own not much more substantial house.