The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted

Further Praise for William Coles

Mr Two-Bomb

Like Kim, I was also a waiter at the splendid Knoll House Hotel in 1988. I went back there recently and it was like stepping into this most fabulous time warp. Children are still not allowed into the dining room at suppertime, and
incredibly
still not a single television to be found in the bedrooms! So as it is, even in this ultra high-tech twenty-first century, families are still being forced to read books and play games, and even, on occasion, actually talk with each other in the evening. Long may it continue! The sights at the Knoll House are also just as breathtaking as they were twenty-five years ago: the Agglestone is still there, the pirate ship and the beach huts and the Dancing Ledges, they're all still there – and I don't doubt that they'll still be there even a hundred years from now.

My thanks to the artist Jono Freemantle who provided me with all those lovely details about what it is to be a painter; and to Rudi Schultz, that dry old sea-stick, who conjured with pictures of beds and beach-huts. And my thanks, as ever, to Margot, my wife, who sometimes wonders, I know, just what is fact and what is fiction in these love stories I write. Perhaps one day I will go through these novels and underline the events that have actually happened to me in black. Those that are based on hearsay will be underlined in green; and those that have sprung from nothing more than my most lurid imaginings will be underscored in brilliant scarlet.

Perhaps.

Is it my nature only to appreciate what I have long after it has left me? When I'm in a long-term relationship, locked tight with a lover, it is so easy to take things for granted: to dwell on the irritations; to lose sight of everything that was once good and kind and decent; to forget the things that I first fell in love with. Instead, my lover's looks, her laughter, her enthusiasms, they all become submerged by a dead weight of the mundane and the routine.

Always, always, I want more. For a few weeks, a month, I can be content. But then, even if I were dating Helen of Troy, I would start to wonder. What if…

My eyes wander and the daydreams begin. Would
her
lips taste any the sweeter? Could I? Should I? Would she?

But there was one woman…

Yes, there was one woman, who kept things so fresh and so chilli-hot that there was never even a moment for complacency.

Of course, it ended – as all stand-out love affairs must. But when I look back on my time with Cally, I am nothing but grateful. Even the little sting in the tail, for that also I eventually – eventually – came to thank her.

I know little about women. But what little I do know is largely down to Cally. She taught me what is classy, what is cool; what is seemly, what is gross. Above all, she taught me that in a relationship the correct route across a square is by three sides. That is, in all dealings – whether with a lover, a wife or a mistress – it is very rarely wise to boldly state your needs. Rather, a man must learn to be canny. When he has a goal in mind, an aim, a yearning, he must travel towards it obliquely.

I can still remember Cally as she told me this one universal truth. It took me a couple of minutes to digest. I pondered it, repeating what she said. She just chuckled, poking at the fire with a piece of driftwood. ‘You haven't got a clue, have you, Kim?' she laughed. ‘One day when I'm nothing more than a memory, you'll realise this is wisdom speaking.'

‘Wisdom?' I jeered. ‘And what wisdom, pray, is she speaking out of?'

‘You are a disgusting little puppy,' she said, ‘and like all disgusting little puppies, you are going to have to be taught the error of your ways.'

I remember her hands tugging at my belt.

‘Again?' I'd asked.

‘If you know what's good for you – which, come to think of it, you probably don't.'

Even now twenty years later, the memory of it brings a smile to my face. With some of my other lost loves, I can barely even remember what happened from one year to the next. But with Cally, I can recall actual conversations; I can remember the exact way that she would raise a wry eyebrow, thereby issuing a bedroom command that could not be ignored. Above all else, I can remember her laugh. The deep, throaty, joyous laugh of a woman who was proud to vent her more noisome emotions and who didn't give a damn who heard her.

But if there is one lesson from Cally etched into my memory, it is that each and every day was to be grabbed by the throat.

Of course, I'd heard that much before – who hasn't?
Carpe diem
! Seize the day! Go for it! Get it while it's hot! Or, as my grandfather, a farmer, liked to say, ‘This ain't no rehearsal.'

And that's what Cally did – and that's what she gave me. The knowledge that this life: it's the only shot we've got.

As we get older, and as we pass the grim, grey mantle of destiny onto the next generation, there is a tendency to accept the ordinary. There comes a belief that, actually, ‘middle of the road' isn't too bad.

But not Cally – she fought, raged, against the very thought. Anything for her, anything at all, to avoid getting stuck in that warm, wide rut that can come with middle age.

And I guess, I suppose, that was one of the reasons why she took up with me as a lover.

I was young, just twenty-three years old, and eager to taste life's smorgasbord. And Cally… she was eager too – only to a factor of ten.

What I still find truly remarkable is that many women her age seem to content themselves with life in a rut. But for Cally, every day it was where's the fun? Where's the action? What's the maximum amount of excitement that can be extracted from my next twenty-four hours on this earth?

Not bad. Not bad at all for a woman who, at forty-four years old, was more than two decades my senior.

But then Cally was, of course, a woman who knew what she wanted.

And most of the time, she got it.

There were consequences to the pair of us trying to extract the maximum amount from each and every moment – some hair-raising, some illegal and some downright dangerous. During my time with Cally, I lost at least three of my nine lives. Each time was different, varying in degrees of spontaneity, foolhardiness and drunkenness.

But to give you just a taster of what could happen when I was with Cally, I will tell you about our little party on Midsummer's Eve. It was indicative of the sheer weirdness that could occur when Cally was in charge.

It had been a late night at the hotel, diners dawdling over their coffees and their brandies as they contemplated the dusky skyline. Meanwhile, I and the other waiters and waitresses had to smile pleasantly and amenably, as if there was nothing we enjoyed more of an evening than hanging around in the dining room of the Knoll House Hotel.

I have not been there in a long time, but back then the Knoll House was an old-style family hotel on that glorious strip of England that is Studland, Dorset. This piece of coastline is famous for many reasons, not least its nudist beach, as well as Old Harry, a spectacular chalk arch that's been carved from the coast. But my romantic heart will for ever associate Studland with the smugglers and the corsairs who would run brandy casks, skeins of silk and fine Virginian tobacco to the wild caves that surround the Dancing Ledges.

The hotel was a throwback. There were no televisions in any of the guests' rooms. Instead guests had to indulge in such old-fashioned pursuits as card games and drinking and – think of it! – conversation.

Children were welcome – it was, after all, a traditional family hotel – but they also had to know their place. The children had a separate dining room, awash with minders who were all absolute sticklers for good manners and hearty eating.

The main dining room, spacious, unchanged since Enid Blyton used to take her table in the corner, was the adults' safe haven. Children were banned at night-time and had to amuse themselves in their bedrooms while an army of nannies paraded the hotel corridors. Guests would dress up for dinner and would be personally welcomed into the dining room by the hotel's avuncular proprietor.

Although I can remember everything about Cally, my memory of the hotel itself is a little rusty. But as I recall, there were about twenty or thirty serving staff, young men and women marking time in Dorset as they decided what next to do with their lives. We weren't paid much, but we did get free lodging and we had the boon of each other's company.

The dining room had well over seventy tables, with each waiter and waitress catering for about twenty guests. But come the end of the dinner, it did not matter if your every table had been cleared and set for breakfast – we waiting staff could only leave after the very last diner had quit the dining room. What did it matter that we had parties planned; pints to be supped in the Bankes Arms; and red-hot lovers waiting for us on the Dancing Ledges with a great bonfire fanned by the sea breeze?

My guests had all long gone, so I was fooling around by the puddings at the central station. These puddings were the stuff of legend. The guests could come up and have as much as they wanted; some would skimp on their main courses to come back for seconds and even thirds of these extraordinary puddings, each accompanied by not just ice cream but whipped cream and thick pouring cream.

Oliver, a tall, angular German who spoke impeccable English, had also already laid up his tables for breakfast and was gazing at the puddings. They filled an entire table.

‘I think,' said Oliver, ‘that I will start with the crème brûlée with some fruit salad and some whipped cream. Then, because I will still be hungry, I will try the trifle, but this time with the pouring cream. And after I have finished that, and because I think I will still be hungry, I will have a large slice of the chocolate gateau.' Like a dog at the butcher's window, he stared soulfully at the puddings. He had a pronounced Adam's apple. It jumped up and down as he swallowed.

‘A good selection, my friend,' I said. ‘But I'm going to start with the trifle. With whipped cream and pouring cream. Then the crème caramel. And to finish, not one, not two, but three brandy snaps.'

The brandy snaps were my favourite. I've no idea, even now, how brandy snaps are made, but they were like brittle brown cylinders of spun sugar and filled with the thickest whipped cream. Another waiter, Roland, had once filched a brandy snap from right underneath the chef's nose, and we had shared it with Janeen on the staff's star-lit patio: at first brittle but then melting on your tongue, delicious with the cool cream.

Roland sidled over. He had one table of golfers still nursing their double Armagnacs. ‘I'll have the cheese,' he said. ‘The Roquefort. Best thing ever to come out of France. And if I take their dregs, there might even be a glass of red for me.'

‘No, no,' said Oliver. ‘The cheese must come after the pudding—'

‘The French say before.'

‘The French!'

And so, as we waited for those four inconsiderate golfers to quit the dining room and go to the bar, we bickered and salivated, constructing mythical feasts that could never be eaten. For although the guests could have their fill, the staff were never allowed a morsel. They were the perfect Tantalus. Every night we would see them, glistening, evermore enticing; and every night, come the end of the evening, they'd be wheeled out of sight to be stored in the hotel's cavernous fridges.

Janeen sidled up. She'd been outside having a cigarette. She was blonde and quite sexy, and once upon a time I'd fancied her, but all those feelings of ardour had evaporated like the morning mist. This had yet to become mutual. There was still a husk of lust in her heart for me.

‘Coming to the pub, Kim?' she asked.

‘Not tonight, thanks.'

‘You and your mystery lover!' she said. ‘You reek of it!' She clutched at one of my wrists and made a play of sniffing at my tunic. ‘Who is she?'

I smiled as I disengaged. ‘My muse.'

‘Who's that when she's at home?'

I was about to lie my reply when one of the golfers suddenly realised that we waiters were still hanging on their departure. He hustled his drunken friends from the room and five of us descended on the table. The table was cleared and re-laid in less than one minute.

We were about to leave when the pastry chef, Michael, fat and happy, called us over. ‘There's a last slice of gateau if you'd like it.'

I'd never tasted this gateau before. It was the hotel's signature piece: four thick layers of moist chocolate cake, mortared together with whipped cream and topped off with grated milk chocolate. We stood in a circle. Forks were shared out and each of us was allowed one single perfect mouthful. We grinned, looking at each other as the chocolate lingered on our palates. Michael glowed with pleasure. Such a small thing. But as with everything in life, and women in particular, we only appreciate a thing if there has been much struggle in acquiring it.

Cally, I knew, was already waiting for me, so I waved my goodnights and darted back to the staff quarters. These were a cluster of breeze block cells, containing little more than a bed and a basin and built-in wardrobe. On cold wet spring mornings, the very walls would weep in sympathy. We were tucked away at the back of the hotel, with a view that comprised either fir trees or more of the hotel's rudimentary staff quarters.

What did I care? It was a clear summer's night and my lover awaited me. I took a moment to hang up my white tunic, a Nehru jacket with blue collar and piping, brass buttons down the front and my name tag on the breast pocket. My black trousers went onto a separate hanger and my black lace-ups were kicked beside the bed. I tugged on jeans and a T-shirt and an old Yankees baseball jacket. I didn't take my
wallet – I wouldn't be needing it where I was going. Did I bother to lock the door? Of course not: I had nothing worth stealing.

I walked back up the hill to Cally's car. It was an absolute beauty, a sky-blue Mercedes sports car with the top already down. That afternoon, I'd left Cally painting by the sea and had driven back to the Knoll House. That first time behind the wheel, I hadn't really opened her up as there had been too much traffic and too many blind spots. But now that it was night and the roads were clear, I thirsted for speed.

I eased out of the hotel drive and for a short while pottered along, revelling in the sea breeze and the star-bright night. I'd never driven an open-top at night. It was thrilling, the wind whipping through my hair and slicing at my cheeks as Van Halen pounded out over the stereo.

I stamped the pedal to the floor, the gears throbbed and the engine roared. I took a too-tight bend on the wrong side of the road and almost went straight into the trees. The car bounced off the kerb and I screeched to a stop. Heart pounding, I checked my bearings and put the car in gear. Much more sedately, almost sheepishly, I continued on my way, tooling through Swanage and out along the coast. Driving at night to be with a new lover: is there anything more exciting?

For along with everything else, there was also the prospect of our imminent lovemaking. I knew, for a certainty, that we'd be making love that night. But when? Immediately? Would I kiss her languorously and then without a word start to unbutton buttons, pop rivets and unzip zips, before soundlessly we made love beneath the cliff face? Or would there be a kiss and a tip of tongue before we sat cosily by the fire and exchanged our daily morsels, all the while anticipating the lovemaking that was to come? And then the caresses and fondles would become ever more urgent until the conversation was abandoned.

I parked up and started to walk through the fields to the coast and to the Dancing Ledges. Perhaps it's just the memories talking, but I still find the name so evocative. They say the Dancing Ledges are named from the waves that used to dance over the rock flats at high tide. But for myself, I like to imagine the smugglers capering in the firelight by the side of the sea.

I was wondering what Cally would have brought to drink that night. She was quite wealthy, I knew that, and I think we could have drunk champagne every night if that's what she'd wanted. But sometimes it would be a bottle of chianti, sometimes Sancerre, or ice-cold kummel. Once, she had even obtained a bottle of absinthe, green, sickly, wickedly potent.

Long before I reached the cliff, I could see the smoke swirling on a fierce wind and hear the waves booming onto the rocks below. The sea was running high and fast, with white tops rolling in as they pounded themselves into frothing surf on the black granite. The rocks gleamed in the moonlight.

I stood at the cliff edge. The fire was twenty, maybe thirty yards out, right on the very edge of the Dancing Ledges. The larger waves seemed to be all but crashing onto the fire itself, though it would be a while yet before the high tide began its shimmering dance over the ledges. Closer to the cliff face was the pool. The ledges had been cut out by quarrymen and, while they were at it, they had also carved themselves a swimming pool. It was rippling, rectangular, and the high tides cleansed and replenished it. At night, when the Dancing Ledges were a flat grey slab, the pool seemed to turn into a wide black window.

Cally was squatting down by a rock with her back to the fire – my secret girlfriend. During those early days, we were the only two people who knew about our relationship. It wasn't that I was embarrassed or ashamed of Cally. I loved her. I just didn't feel the need to have to explain this love to anyone.

I suppose before I met Cally, I also might have curled my lip at the thought of a young man with a much older woman. If you haven't experienced it yourself, then doubtless it seems perverse, unnatural – even taboo. It's fine enough, these days, for an older, richer man to take up with a woman half his age. But when it's the other way round, a mature woman and her – how I hate the phrase – ‘toy boy' lover, then people tend to be much more suspicious about motives. She, the older woman, is seen as disgustingly depraved – while the younger man is little more than a pampered sponger, on a par with a gigolo, being paid to deliver the goods in the bedroom.

Well, I've been there. Not that I expect you to understand – at least not right now – but perhaps one day you will have a better idea of how a young man can fall heels over head for an older woman.
I could just trot out some trite cliché about age just being a number; or age just being a state of mind. Or I could quote Mark Twain and tell you that age is an issue of mind over matter – and if you don't mind, it doesn't matter. But the truth is this: I have met men and women in their twenties who have already acquired the fusty dullness of middle age. Cally, on the other hand, was that rare breed, like a teenager to her core, hungering for adventure.

What does it matter? It went in, and it went out – and it worked.

Even before I had started to scramble down to the ledges, Cally had spotted me. She had this uncanny radar for me, which told her instantly when I was at hand. She looked up and she waved.

I climbed down and stalked over to the fire. She was drawing on the rock with a stick of charcoal. I don't know how long she had been drawing, but the picture stretched a full three yards across the rock, a herd of wild horses thundering across the heath. It was very fine, similar to the 30,000-year-old cave paintings at Lascaux in France. I liked it all the more for the fact that within a few hours it would have been washed clean by the sea. Its temporality only added to its power.

Cally was a professional artist. Even when she didn't have a canvas in front of her, she was always doodling on whatever came to hand – paper napkins, receipts, books and fliers and even, yes, million-year-old rocks on the Dorset coast.

‘How was the car?' she asked. With three quick flicks she etched out a perfect horse's mane.

‘I'm going to get myself an open-top.'