The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted (17 page)

‘Probably even better.'

‘I'd have to sit on your lap.' She tilted her wine glass to me. ‘Cheers.'

The subject returned, yet again, to Louise's career. She was planning on having a couple of months off before spending a year at Guildford Law School. After that, she had set her hopes on getting a job with one of the big London solicitors.

‘That'll be back breaking,' I said. ‘Do they start you off on seventy-hour weeks?'

‘Eighty, minimum,' she said.

‘That's my big problem with the law,' I said. ‘Doesn't matter how high you get up the tree, you still have to put in the massive hours. Even when you're senior partner, you—'

‘What are you going to do?'

‘Ah,' I said. ‘You have found out my weakness. I don't know what I want; I don't even know how to find out what I want.'

‘What's the hurry?'

‘That's what I keep on telling my stepmum, though she doesn't seem to be quite so receptive as—'

I broke off. Louise had kicked off her shoe, and her stockinged foot was very softly stroking my ankle.

‘Me?' she said. ‘Now what are you going to do?'

For the rest of the night, we looked; we connected. We both knew that we wanted each other.

I was flooded with a tumult of conflicting emotions, questions. Would it be there, then, that very night? Would it be right, would it be wrong? We had only just met. Should we? Could we?

Time was called and we were thrown out of the pub, and with that last lingering warmth on my thighs I stood up together with Annette and Louise.

We said our goodbyes outside the pub. Louise kissed everyone on the cheek. The rest of my motley crew stumbled off down the lane, their shouting laughter drifting into the night, as Louise and I stood alone in the darkness.

‘Thanks for coming,' I said.

‘I'm going to South America with my parents,' she said, before adding, ‘I'm sorry to say. A last family holiday.'

‘What a shame. You'll come back to the hotel when you're home?'

‘If you're still there.'

‘If, of course, I'm still there.'

We were both suddenly tongue-tied and awkward.

‘Well, goodbye,' she said. ‘You're just what Julienne said you'd be.'

‘Very sweet of her,' I said. ‘But you're the gorgeous one round here.'

We moved together and we clung to each other, like lovers who know they are about to be parted for a long time. She kissed me, but not quite on the lips. Two firm solid kisses, one on each cheek, missing my mouth by millimetres.

‘Can I give you a lift?' she asked.

‘No, I'll be fine thanks.'

I watched as she went over to her Mini, but I did not follow. She opened the door. ‘What's it like being a warlock?' she called.

‘What's it like being a temptress?

‘Have I cast a spell on you?'

‘You certainly have.'

She waved as she climbed into the car. I had never seen such a tall woman get into such a tiny car. She made it look both effortless and sexy, and I could feel wave after wave of raw desire washing through me.

I don't do guilt. I don't know if it is a bad thing. I don't know if it is a good thing. But I do know, I do not do guilt.

I know plenty of people who do feel guilt: men, women; practically every Catholic that I've ever met. They not only feel guilty for their sins, but they feel guilty for even
thinking
about the mere possibility of sin. What a wretched time they must have of it, with this constant mental self-flagellation, as if life isn't tough enough already without having to beat yourself up over something as fantastically subjective as a misdeed.

I, however, have never suffered from guilt. This doesn't mean that I am without moral compass. But for whatever reason, there is no guilt gene within me. I mess up, I do the wrong thing, say the wrong thing, and I move on. There is no insidious demon inside me that forever whispers that I have behaved badly.

But although I do not do guilt, I'm also not very good at lying. I'm not an actor and don't have the skills to make my lies look breezy and effortless. Lying is especially difficult when you are telling stories to a woman who is possessed of some uncanny sixth sense.

So the next day, I woke up knowing that Cally was coming back to Dorset, and knowing that I would be seeing her. But I also allowed myself to revel in the memory of Louise in the pub, her leg pressed against mine and the beautiful hug when we parted.

I called Cally after lunch and, as ever, I got through to her answerphone. I was leaving a long, rambling message, when she suddenly picked up.

‘It's you,' she said. She sounded tired.

‘It's me. How was London?'

‘Full of disease and back-stabbers. How are you?'

‘I am so looking forward to seeing you again.'

‘Nice to hear that my feelings are reciprocated. So what mischief have you been up to while I've been away?'

A fleeting thought of Louise, beautiful, available, wanting me to kiss her.

‘Nothing,' I said. ‘Nothing at all.' Perhaps I said it too quickly; perhaps it just came out wrong. ‘Just playing with Darren. Just the usual.'

She sighed. I wouldn't have put it past her, even at that very early stage in our relationship, to have divined that only the previous night I had been dreaming of another.

‘Dear, dear Darren,' she said. ‘He means well.'

I was suddenly piqued. ‘Why did you go to the pub with him that night last week?' I asked.

‘Why do you think?'

‘Do you fancy him?'

‘Dear me, Kim, you know so little!' She laughed. ‘Maybe I went to the pub with him so that you might finally be goaded into action!'

‘Really?' I was incredulous.

‘Didn't you know that is we women who call the shots?'

‘You… you schemer!' Here I was imagining that we'd got together through happenstance and coincidence, yet Cally had had it all planned out from the very first.

‘So are you going to tell me what happened last night?' she said.

‘Happened last night?' I said. I could sense immediately that my voice had started to sound rather hollow. ‘Nothing happened last night.'

‘I'll believe you,' she said, before adding. ‘Though thousands wouldn't.'

‘What's that supposed to mean?' I said. I was still nettled by the thought of her drink with Darren just being a ruse to ensnare me.

‘It means whatever you take it to mean.'

‘That's not a very nice thing to say.'

‘Oh, well…'

There was a silence between us, as we both paused, like a couple of heavyweight boxers, a little bruised and now taking stock of each other.

‘Can I see you?' I said. ‘Can I see you tonight?'

‘Ah,' she said, and again there was a pause. ‘Don't come today. I've picked up something vile and I'm shattered. I want to be at my best for you.'

‘I'll take you any way I can get you.'

She gave a very soft laugh. ‘Let's end this conversation now,' she said. ‘Call me tomorrow, and we'll see if we can be any nicer.'

It wasn't what I'd hoped for. I'd hoped, I don't know, for an urgent call to action, and an insistent demand to be at her home or at her beach hut within the next ten minutes.

Instead we'd had our first tiff, and Cally did what I would learn she always did when there was bad blood. She withdrew to wait patiently for the heat to simmer down.

I wondered if I should have told her about Louise, if I should have confessed straight up. But it was always going to be sticky and I disliked confrontations with women. I don't know how Cally would have taken it; though in all probability, she'd have laughed it off. She knew me better than I knew myself, and she certainly knew that a young man in love was always capable of having his head turned by the sight of a pretty girl.

So I had been told to stand easy, and my ardour had to be put into cold storage for the next twenty-four hours. It's never a great feeling when you're primed and full of expectations only to be told that your shot at the moon won't be happening after all.

When tomorrow came Cally tried to fob me off then, too.

I called her after breakfast. She sounded like she was still in bed.

‘How are you feeling?' I asked.

‘Not brilliant.'

‘I'll bring you some fruit.'

‘No please don't,' she said. ‘I look dreadful.'

‘I don't care about your looks. I just want to see you.'

‘Do you really want to see me?'

‘Yes, very much.'

‘I'm going to have a bath,' she said. ‘I'll leave the back door unlocked.'

My feet had wings. No other words could have got me moving so fast. A young man in love will stop at nothing when he is on a promise and the very thought of Cally naked in a bath had me scuttling back to my little breeze block snug for fresh clothes. I stopped off in the dining room to filch some apples and grapes. One of the chefs spotted me as I was putting them into my knapsack. I gave him an airy wave, and then I was out in the sun and loping down the road towards Cally's home. By the time I got there, the sweat had soaked through to the back of my shirt.

I rolled into Cally's courtyard with my anticipation sky high. The very last person that I expected to see was Greta. She had obviously just rung the doorbell and was now walking back to her car.

‘Oh,' she said. She was quite taken aback at seeing me at Cally's house. ‘Kim. What are you doing here?'

‘Just popped over,' I said.

She was wearing black boots and white trousers and a pink cashmere top, coiffed hair, perfect make-up. She was sort of sexy, but she didn't do it for me.

‘She's not in,' she said. ‘She's probably out painting.'

‘Oh well,' I said. ‘I'm sure I'll see her around.'

‘Do you come here often?'

‘No.'

I could sense her probing me. She wanted to know if we were lovers.

‘Can I give you a lift somewhere?' she asked. She had a slight pout. ‘Buy you a coffee in Swanage?'

‘I'm good thanks,' I said. ‘I think I'll…' I was about to say I was going to the beach, but I realised that she would immediately want to join me. ‘I'll be on my way.'

I walked off down the road and took a turn down a footpath that led to the beach. Greta watched me as she drove by. She was in a sporty little GTi, white, and she was driving too fast.

I gave Greta five minutes before looping through the fields round to the back of Cally's house. I jumped over a dry-stone wall and walked up through the garden; it was in immaculate order, but with a lush hint of the wilderness in the borders. I don't think that Cally was ever much of a gardener, but she had a man who looked after it all.

Just as she'd said, the back door was unlocked. I let myself in, took off my trainers, and silently padded up the stairs in my stockinged feet. I was excited; not quite a thief in the night, but I did feel like a trespasser.

I knew where the bathroom was. It was where she had bandaged my ribs all those months ago. The door was closed. I had not made a sound, but she already knew I was there. I was about to knock when she called out to me. ‘Come in,' she said.

I turned the knob. I eased the door open and the dark of the corridor was flooded with daylight that spilt out of the bathroom. I looked in. Cally was in the bath, hair tied up, sipping at a mug of black coffee. She held the cup with both hands as if it were a two-handled
quaich
. She looked at me over the rim of the cup with she-devil eyes. The bath was full and thick with bubbles. I could see her face and her neck, but all else was hidden from view. Two candles burned by the sink. The window was open and the room smelt of citrus. It was heavenly – so clean, so spacious, so very different from everything about my life in the hotel.

‘Hello,' she said.

I put my bag on the ground, knelt by the bath, and kissed her. Her lips moved underneath mine. ‘Hello,' I said.

She set her coffee cup on a table, snaked her wet arms around my neck, and kissed me again.

‘Would you like to join me?' she said.

‘I'd love to.'

‘There's coffee on the side if you want. Pour yourself a cup.'

I poured coffee from the cafetière and quickly peeled off my clothes. I left them scattered on the floor.

She laughed at me. ‘I like that,' she said. ‘You just throw your stuff wherever you want and dive straight in. Too few people do that.'

‘Really?' I got into the bath. The water was hot, but not piping. ‘I thought most women liked to keep things neat and tidy.'

‘Not me,' she said. ‘As for
most
women – well, they may like things one way today, but tomorrow, they may also have a fancy for spontaneity and hurling your clothes any which way you please.'

I lowered myself into the bath. The water was very close to teetering over the edge. Cally watched with amusement. ‘Is he going to do it?' she asked.

‘Of course he's going to do it.'

Ever so slowly, I eased my head back until it rested against the rim of the bath. Our legs were interlocked at the knees. The water was so high that it tremored at the edge.

We gazed at each other.

‘Still as gorgeous as ever,' she said.

‘There's only one gorgeous person round here and that's you,' I said.

She smiled and cocked her head.

‘Let me look at you,' she said. ‘Don't talk, don't say a thing, don't do anything. All I want is to look at you.'

‘Okay,' I said. She stretched a long finger to her lips and urged me to silence.

I had never done that before, just looked and looked into a woman's eyes without time constraints and without a word being said. Although nothing was being said, a myriad thoughts and thrills were constantly running through our heads as we forged this intense connection. It's very different from the connection that you have when you make love; it resonates on a much deeper level, like the subsonic boom of a blue whale that travels for hundreds of miles beneath the sea. I realised that if I had fifteen minutes with a beautiful stranger, and if I could only gaze into her eyes, then we would become much more closely connected than we would by any amount of conversation.

I have no idea how long we had been gazing at each other. Occasionally, she sipped her coffee, but her eyes never left mine. My thoughts ranged from girlfriends, to jobs, to dreams of my travels,
but gradually these thoughts coalesced into the single knowledge that I very much wanted to make love to this woman.

But I wasn't going to be the first to break. It was Cally's call, her show, and if she wanted to carry on gazing at me until the evening star had first glimmered in the west, then I would go along with that.

Under the water Cally was stroking my calf with her hand and I started to do the same. Her skin was so smooth it might have been oiled. Gradually, my hand, our hands worked towards the middle, and our fingers touched and clasped and we lay there in the bath, still staring but now holding hands.

The phone rang. We could hear Cally's brief message, and then we heard the unmistakable voice of Greta. ‘Cally, hi, it's me,' she said. ‘Came round to see you earlier and who should I discover here but our young waiter friend. I hope you haven't set your sights on the poor boy. At your age, you really ought to know better.'

Cally sighed and broke off from my hand and let her fingers trail up the inside of my thigh. ‘Well, that's told me,' she said.

‘Especially at your age.'

‘Perhaps, but I find it very hard to resist you.'

For a couple of minutes now, the water had been draining from the bath, until little archipelagos of knees and torsos and breasts emerged out of the soapsuds.

She leaned over to kiss me, her hands lightly about my waist, but then she pressed forward, pushing against me until she was lying on top of me, her skin warm and wet against my chest.

She kissed me. ‘I've never made love in this bath before.'

‘Let's do it, then.'

‘How did you enjoy looking, but not speaking?' she said.

‘I loved it.'

‘Let's try it again, then.'

‘Right now?'

‘Why not?'

Once again, I wallowed in Cally's eyes, though this time it was quite different, because this time we were making love, and though we might stroke and fondle, our eyes never once left each other. She would occasionally lean down to kiss me fondly, lasciviously, but even then our eyes remained locked, as if staring into the wicked flicker of a candle's flame. After some time, she looked at me, perhaps quizzically, and gave me a slow languorous nod as her firm fingers started to knit about my neck. She didn't speak, and neither did I, but I could hear this hum detonating deep in the bottom of her throat, and she drew her knees up and raked me with her nails, and when we were done, she kissed me again.