Read The Hand That First Held Mine Online

Authors: Maggie O'farrell

Tags: #Literary, #Psychological, #Family Life, #Historical, #Fiction

The Hand That First Held Mine (39 page)

BOOK: The Hand That First Held Mine
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Felix draws himself up to his not inconsiderable height. ‘May I ask what this is all about?’
 
Lexie disappears from the window for a moment, then reappears, holding something out to him. ‘This,’ she says, and drops it.
 
It is horseshoe-shaped, flimsy, and it twists in the air before it falls to the steps, bouncing towards him. Felix picks it up. It is blue with white spots. A hairband. For a moment he can’t place it, but there’s one thing he knows for sure – it’s not Lexie’s. He experiences, for the first time, a slight tremor of foreboding. ‘My darling,’ he says, stepping forward, ‘I have no idea where this came from. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it before and—’
 
‘It was under the bed.’
 
‘Well, isn’t it entirely possible that the charlady left it there? I mean . . . Look,’ he says, ‘we can’t talk about it like this. I’m coming in.’
 
‘You can’t,’ she says, pushing her hair off her brow. ‘I’ve bolted the door. You’re not coming in here ever again, Felix, and that’s final.’
 
‘Lexie, I’ll say it again. I have no idea where this came from. It’s nothing to do with me, I assure you.’
 
‘I’ll tell you where it came from,’ Lexie says, leaning menacingly out of the window. ‘It came from the head of Margot Kent.’
 
‘It can’t possibly . . .’ He falters to a stop. There is a fatal pause before he continues, ‘I’m not sure I even . . .’
 
Lexie folds her arms, looking down at him. ‘I told you,’ she says quietly. ‘I warned you. I said, not her. And you have the gall,’ her voice rises to a shout, ‘to do it with her, here, in my flat.
In my bed
. You’re a shit, Felix Roffe. How bloody dare you?’
 
He has no idea what she’s talking about. He doesn’t even remember the girl. Unless it’s that pallid wisp of a creature who made a play for him that time and has been phoning him up ever since. Could it be that one? Felix feels a weakening in his chest. He did have her here, come to think about it, while Lex was away in Ireland. His flat was having plumbing work done. But he hadn’t meant to. And, frankly, it’s unlike Lexie to be threatened by a girl like that.
 
‘Sweetie,’ he attempts to speak soothingly, his usual tone with Lexie, ‘don’t you think you’re getting this a little out of proportion? Whatever it was, it was nothing. You know me. Nothing at all. Why don’t you let me in and we can talk about it properly?’
 
Lexie shakes her head. ‘No. I knew she’d do this. I knew it. I warned you, Felix, I warned you and I always mean what I say.’
 
‘What do you mean,’ he says, ‘you warned me? Warned me about what?’
 
‘About her. About Margot Kent.’
 
‘When?’
 
‘After that lunch at Claridge’s.’
 
‘What lunch at Claridge’s?’
 
‘We saw her outside and I said, stay away from her, and you promised me you would.’
 
‘I didn’t.’
 
‘You did.’
 
‘Lexie, I have no memory whatsoever of this conversation. But I can see you’re upset. Why don’t you let me in and we can—’
 
‘No. That’s it, I’m afraid. Everything should be there.’ She gestures at the garden. ‘Goodbye, Felix. Good luck with getting it back to your place.’ She slams the window shut.
 
It is one of their more dramatic splits. And, as things turn out, their last.
 
 
 
 
A week or so later, Lexie was having a bad day. She had been late for an appointment with someone at the Arts Council, the Tube train having sat in a tunnel for half an hour. She was supposed to be writing a piece on a production of
Accidental Death of an Anarchist
but the director she’d been hoping to speak to had come down with shingles so Lexie had to push the piece back a week and come up with something else at short notice. Felix had called three times this morning, in contrite, pleading mode. Lexie hung up on him every time. Theo had looked this morning as if he was coming down with a cold, and at the back of Lexie’s mind all day was the hope that it was only a cold. She still hadn’t got used to the constant undertow of maternal anxiety, the pull he exuded from their house in Dartmouth Park, as she went about her business in central London. He was her magnetic north and her needle swung always in his direction.
 
‘Thank you so much . . .’ Lexie was saying into her telephone, already halfway out of her seat and scrabbling with her spare hand for her bag under the desk. ‘Please tell her I really appreciate it . . . Yes, absolutely . . . I’ll be there in half an hour at the latest.’
 
She yanked on her coat, hauled her bag on to the desk and threw in a pad and pencil. ‘Off to Westminster,’ she said to her colleagues, ‘if anyone asks. Back soon.’
 
She hurried into the corridor, belting her coat, going over in her mind what she needed to establish in the interview, when someone touched her elbow. She jumped and whirled round. There, next to her, was a man. The corduroy jacket, the open-necked white shirt were instantly familiar but it took her a moment to place him.
 
Robert Lowe. It was such an incongruous, such an unexpected sight – Robert Lowe in the dingy corridor of the
Courier
– that she laughed. ‘Robert,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’
 
He shrugged. ‘It’s me.’
 
‘What are you doing here?’
 
‘Actually,’ he began, and then he stopped. ‘I . . . I was seeing a friend who works at the
Telegraph
and . . . I thought, seeing as I’m on Fleet Street, that I’d come and look you up. But,’ he gestured at her coat and her bag, ‘you look as if you aren’t in a position to be looked up.’
 
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m not. I’m having a rather disastrous day. I’ve got to go over to Westminster.’
 
‘I see.’ He nodded, pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘Well . . .’
 
‘You could walk me down to the street . . . if you like . . .’
 
‘The street?’
 
‘I have to find a taxi.’
 
‘Ah.’
 
‘Only if you have time.’
 
‘I do,’ he said. ‘I will.’
 
Lexie walked ahead of him on the stairs. ‘How are you?’
 
‘I’m fine. And you?’
 
‘Fine. As well. When did you get back from Ireland?’
 
‘Yesterday.’
 
‘Did you get much out of Fitzgerald?’
 
‘Not a great deal.’ He smiled. ‘He’s not an easy subject, as you know.’
 
‘Yes.’
 
‘I’ll have to go back. In a month or so. Sometimes you can catch him on a talkative day. As you did. He was rather disappointed when you left.’ He held open the door for her and as she passed through she thought she heard him add, ‘As were we all,’ but she wasn’t sure.
 
Outside, the sky was flat and white above them. Lexie stood at the kerb, looking up and down Fleet Street. ‘No taxis,’ she said, ‘of course.’
 
‘There never are, when you want one.’ He cleared his throat, folded his arms, then unfolded them. ‘How’s Theo?’
 
‘He’s fine. Got a bit of a cold.’
 
Robert came to stand next to her at the kerb. ‘It means “God’s gift”,’ he said.
 
‘What does?’ Lexie was distracted, straining her eyes into the traffic, searching for an orange light.
 
‘His name. Theodore.’
 
She looked at him, amazed. ‘Does it?’
 
‘Yes. From the Greek
theos
, meaning God, and
doron
, meaning gift.’
 
‘I had no idea. God’s gift. You’re the only person in the world who’d know that.’
 
There was a pause. They were two people standing on a pavement in the watery London sunshine, waiting for a taxi. It was a simple scenario but it seemed suddenly fraught with significance and Lexie wasn’t sure why. She had to swallow and glance down at the ground to clear her head of the thought. ‘It’s nice to see you,’ she said because it was and she couldn’t for the life of her work out why he was here, on a Wednesday morning, in Fleet Street.
 
‘Is it?’ He passed a hand through his hair. Then he stretched his arm up in the air. ‘There you are,’ he said. ‘Look.’ A taxi slowed, swerved and arrived at the kerb.
 
‘Thank God,’ Lexie said, and climbed in. Robert shut the door for her. ‘Goodbye,’ she said, and put her hand out of the window. ‘I’m sorry I had to dash.’
 
He took it and held it. ‘I’m sorry too.’
 
‘It was lovely to see you.’
 
‘It was lovely to see you too.’ They were talking like caricatures or people in a bad play. It was unbearable. He released her hand and she watched out of the window as the figure on the pavement got smaller and smaller.
 
A few days later she was coming into the reporters’ room when her colleague Daniel waved the telephone receiver at her. ‘For you, Lexie.’
 
‘Lexie Sinclair,’ she said.
 
‘It’s Robert Lowe,’ came the familiar voice. ‘Tell me, are you dashing about again today?’
 
‘No. Not today. I’m . . . What am I doing? I’m lounging. By comparison.’
 
‘I see. I’m not sure what lounging constitutes but does it allow for lunch?’
 
‘It does.’
 
‘Good. I’ll be outside at one.’
 
In the event, they came straight to the point. There was no hedging, no pursuit, no uncertainty, no seduction. Lexie walked up to where he stood on the pavement. Neither of them said hello or made any greeting. She drew a cigarette out of the packet, put it into her mouth.
 
‘You strike me,’ he said, after a moment, ‘as someone who is good with secrets.’
 
‘Good in what way?’ she said, searching her bag for matches.
 
‘In that you keep them.’
 
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, and held the flare of a match to her mouth. ‘Yes, of course.’
 
‘You know that I’m married?’
 
‘I do.’
 
‘And so are you,’ he held his hands up to ward off her interjection, ‘or whatever you want to call it. I have no desire to leave my wife. And yet . . .’
 
Lexie exhaled her smoke. ‘And yet,’ she agreed.
 
‘What shall we do?’
 
She thought for a moment. It occurred to her afterwards that he might have been talking about where to eat lunch. But at the time, she said, ‘A hotel?’
 
 
 
 
Such deals can be struck so easily sometimes.
 
They went to a street near the British Museum where there were several hotels that accepted people during the day. Lexie didn’t ask how Robert knew this. The room had velvet curtains of a faded blue, a potted fern, a washbasin with a chipped mirror. There was an electricity meter that wouldn’t accept any of their shillings. The pillows were hard, the sharp ends of feathers prickling from the cotton cases. They were both nervous. They made love quickly, more from a desire to get it done, to gain that sense of having embarked. Then they talked. Robert tried again to feed shillings into the meter, with no success. They made love again, with more leisure and more skill this time. As she dressed, Lexie watched the clouds piled up beyond the narrow window.
 
The arrangement they devised was simple, straightforward, perfect, you might say, worked out in moments. They would meet twice a year, no more, and never in London. An exchange of telegrams was to be their method. THE GRAND HOTEL, SCARBOROUGH, they might read, THURSDAY 9 MARCH. And nothing more. No one was ever to know. They never spoke of Robert’s family, of his wife Marie. Lexie never enlightened him as to what had happened with her and Felix. Robert never asked, never questioned why Theo always came with her to their assignations. Perhaps he guessed the truth of the situation, perhaps not.
 
It was hard to know whether Theo remembered Robert, from one time to the next. He was always pleased to see him, always took him by the hand and dragged him away to show him something – a crab in a bucket, a shell from the beach, a stone with a hole worn through it.
 
BOOK: The Hand That First Held Mine
8.78Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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