This Is All (65 page)

‘Made.
Made?
Past tense? Not
now?
You don’t feel like a woman now?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’re not talking to me like I’m a woman, you’re talking to me like I’m a girl. You’ve never done that before.’

‘I don’t mean to.’

‘Well, you are. And it’s okay. I know I’m not really a woman yet. And whatever you say, I know you fancy me because I’m still more a girl than a woman.’

‘Really? Okay. Let’s talk about you, not about
girls
. Let’s talk about
us
.’

He sat up, pulled the duvet over us, neat and tidy (he was always neat and tidy, precise, in control), and propped himself up with pillows next to me, both of us staring ahead, not touching, our hands in our laps.

He waited.

He’d frightened my mind into a blank.

I said, ‘I don’t know what you want me to say.’

He breathed out heavily. Impatient Man being Patient with Indecisive Woman.

‘That day you lied your way into my office you were a girl, a flirty, excited
girl
-girl. And so vulnerable. Trying so hard not to be what you were. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to take you in my arms and hold you tight and protect you from all the danger you were inviting.’

‘But you didn’t.’

‘Because, as I said, I do have
some
scruples. And unlike most
men, I don’t think a girl is up for it just because she dresses sexy.’

‘What
do
you think?’

‘That she’s naïve and foolish and needs protecting.’

‘But what was different three days later?’

‘You. You were dressed the way you usually were. Your office clothes. Sharp V-necked top. Smart black trousers, tight round the bum and loose round the ankles. Boots with heels. Well made up. Hair beautifully done. Woman, not girl. Still excited. Still looking at me enough to melt the Arctic. But you were the Cordelia I’d seen in Mario’s and every Saturday in the office and had admired in the sewer. You were so lovely and so mature and so pleased to be with me, I couldn’t resist it, and gave you a hug.’

‘But you didn’t just hug me. You kissed me.’

‘I put my arms round you and it seemed the thing that had to happen next. You felt that too.’

‘But I didn’t do anything to encourage you.’

‘You didn’t back off. You didn’t resist. If you had—’

‘You’d have stopped.’

‘Of course.’

‘Sure?’

‘I’m never
that
sure of anything. And anyway, there was no doubt that you wanted it. And I could tell it wasn’t your first time either.’

‘I’d had a lot of practice with a good partner.’ And I laughed. The first time since we began this conversation.

There are many reasons why people laugh, not all of them to do with pleasure or amusement. They laugh sometimes when they’re embarrassed or shy or scornful or afraid. And they laugh to please. Which is why I laughed at that moment. I was out of my depth. Edward was irritated with me. He didn’t want to talk about us in this way. He was so much more confident in his opinions than I, he was so sharp when arguing. I knew he was right about the way I’d behaved that
day with the necklace in his office, and the next Saturday when he put his arms round me and before I knew it we were kissing and I didn’t stop him. But I knew it wasn’t as straightforward as he was making it out to be, not for either of us. But I couldn’t work it out with him, because he wasn’t discussing it, he was arguing and was arguing to win. And I was afraid he would get bored or reject me for being fussy and indecisive and girlish. So I laughed to please him.

‘This isn’t,’ Edward said, not laughing, ‘about why I fancied you, is it? It’s about us. About
the situation
. You and me and me being married and a father.’

I nodded, because it was.

‘That’s what I want to talk to you about,’ he went on. ‘That’s why we’re here.’

‘Not just for a weekend of nooky by the sea?’

‘No, not just for that.’

‘So what is it you want to say?’

‘Later. I’m hungry. Let’s have breakfast first.’

19

‘How about a walk along the beach?’ Edward said after breakfast, during which he had hidden behind his newspaper while I watched the traffic on the road outside. ‘We need some air.’

‘What I need,’ I said, ‘is to talk about us.’

‘Unbelievable, astonishing, mind-boggling as you might find this,’ Edward said, ‘I am so talented I can walk and talk at the same time, even on a beach.’

‘Anything you can do I can do better.’

‘Really? Let’s find out.’

We reached the tide-line, that shifting tangy border between land and sea drawn by a jumbled ribbon of seaweed
and empty shells and washed-up flotsam. It always seems a little sad. We stood silently side by side, looking across the tumbling waves at the horizon, the border-line between sea and sky. A lone tanker was perched on it, as dinky as a plastic toy out of a packet of cornflakes.

I love the sea. I love its endless movement, its never-the-same-always-the-sameness. I love its moods. I love its power and its fluidity, its ambivalence, its ambiguity. Most of all I love its total indifference to us silly insignificant human beings. The land is not indifferent to us. People change and shape it. England is just one big market garden really, Will explained to me once, and has been since Mesolithic times ten thousand years ago, when men started clearing the trees and herding animals and cultivating the soil. We leave our mark on the land, but we cannot leave our mark on the sea. We cannot change or shape it. The sea over-rides us. We might, if we go on as we are, poison all the life in it, and by doing so ourselves as well. But the sea will still be the sea, will still ebb and flow, surge and swell, rage and pound, and circle the earth with its beautiful arresting body. Whenever I’m by the sea I feel a truth about myself which is ancient and undeniable. It is that I live on the land but that the sea lives in me. I feel I am made of the sea. I feel that its life, its nature, its way of being, is my life, my nature, my way of being. I even feel my thoughts are like the sea, ebbing and flowing, subject to the same moods and phases and criss-crossed by strange and dangerous currents. I sometimes feel that if I were to walk into the sea and keep going, I would be able to live beneath the waves and that after a while I would be absorbed into the sea again, returning to what I was before I was born.

As I stood beside Edward on the beach that morning, I felt this more strongly than ever. Perhaps because I sensed that he and I had reached a border between us that separated my unsettled sea from his settled land.

*

‘Remember,’ Edward said after we’d watched the sea long enough for the tide to reach our feet, ‘when you came to the office—’

‘The night we—’

‘Became lovers. You did mean it to happen? I mean, you
wanted
it to happen?’

‘You know I did.’

‘Why?’

‘Why did I want it to happen?’

‘Yes.’

‘Funny – you didn’t ask me then. Why now?’

‘It wasn’t that important then. You came in, stood in front of me, an unmistakable look on your face, I held out my hand, to test the water, you took it, I held out my other hand, to be sure, you took it, I drew you to me, you came, no hesitation, I put my arms round you, you reached up—’

‘And kissed you.’

‘There was no reason to ask why. I knew you wanted me. No one kisses like that if they don’t want you. I knew I wanted you. And that was all that mattered. Then.’

‘And now? Why now?’

‘I asked first. You go first.’

‘A game.’

‘No. Not a game. Look, Cordelia, look at me. Please. I’m being serious.’

I didn’t look, didn’t reply. I knew I’d go weak if I did.

‘I want to say something to you. But I want to be sure of – of something – first.’

‘Of what?’

‘Help me, sweetheart. Don’t be difficult.’

I took a step back to avoid my feet getting wet, and said, ‘You know why. I’ve told you before.’

‘All right.’ He took in a breath of patience again. ‘Because you fancied me, and you’d lost Will – or thought you had. You were upset, unhappy. And you wanted a man, not a boy,
who fancied you and treated you the way you wanted to be treated, and I fitted the bill.’

‘Was that it?’

‘O, for God’s sake, Cordelia! I’m trying my best.’

‘Yes, okay, yes, it was something like that.’

‘Nothing more?’

‘Like what?’

‘Love.’

I did glance at him then. What was in his mind? Where was this going?

Because he was supposed to be on business, he’d not brought any casual clothes. He was wearing a trench coat – one of those long light-brown military-style macs with epaulets and a big collar and big buttons and a wide belt that he’d buckled up all neat and proper. He knew I didn’t like it, too old-fashioned and bossy, but he said it was the kind of thing his customers expected and anyway it was good in wet and cold weather and was equipped with big deep pockets in which to carry his mobile and organiser and wallet and god knows what else so that he didn’t need a bag. He was wearing it over a charcoal business suit with polished black leather tie-up shoes, as old-fashioned as his mac. His brogues and the cuffs of his trousers were covered in wet sand.

He looked out of fashion and out of place. Seeing him like that on any other day I’d have been amused, and teased him, and he’d have joked about it too, making fun of himself. I’d have liked it that he didn’t fit, that he didn’t care about looking out of place, that he even made a point of it, and made it with panache. But that day I felt embarrassed by him, and because he embarrassed me, suddenly for the first time I saw how old he was. Not handsomely mature, as I’d considered him till now, but
old
. Old like my father was old.

I knew what I was feeling would show on my face and I didn’t want him to see it, so I turned away and started walking along the beach.

Edward came alongside, his mac flapping round his legs.

I knew what he wanted me to say. That I loved him. And the strange thing, the funny thing is, I might have said it, and believed it too, if it hadn’t been for that hateful mac. All those weeks, all those months, when I’d wanted him, and then in a moment, in a split second in fact, I knew I didn’t want him any longer.

When we’d walked long enough for it to be obvious I wasn’t going to answer, he said, ‘At first I fancied you. I fancied you and liked you, of course. But it was never just about sex. Was it? It never was for me, anyway. And I’ve always thought it was more than sex for you.’

He paused, waiting for confirmation.

I trudged on.

We reached a stretch of pebbles that shifted and clattered under our feet. Edward’s leather soles slid about. He waved his arms to help keep his balance.

‘What I wanted to say,’ he said as he stumbled along, ‘what I wanted to tell you is, I loved you. I mean, I
do
love you. I have from the start, you see. That’s what I’m saying. You understand?’

Another pause.

I plodded on, head down, not wanting to hear this.

‘I’m
in love
with you, Cordelia. That’s what I’m saying. And you know that. Don’t you?’

I couldn’t say anything. I opened my mouth to try but the breeze filled it and smothered my words.

‘I admire you,’ Edward said. ‘I’m proud of you. And what I was going to say—’ He took a breath. ‘What I’m trying to say is – I want us to live together.’

That stopped me in my tracks. A dead stop.

‘
What?
’ I said, not looking up. Not looking at anything. A blank unbelieving stare.

‘I want—’ Edward repeated, stopping two paces ahead and turning to face me and catching his breath, though we hadn’t been walking fast. ‘I want us to live together.’

This second time was like a starting gun. I took off. Running. Sprinting. Very fast towards the spindly cat’s cradle of the pier’s legs half a mile away.

20

‘I scared you,’ Edward said.

‘You scared me.’

I was sitting on a bank of sand piled against the sea wall beside the pier.

I had run there. Edward had trudged after me.

‘Walking in soft sand,’ he said as he approached, ‘is like walking in deep snow.’

‘It’s easier in bare feet,’ I said as he brushed sand from his shoes and the bottoms of his trousers.

He gathered his mac round his legs and sat down beside me, looking even more incongruous than when standing up, a city gent washed up by the tide.

He said, ‘I know I’ve been acting foolishly lately.’

I didn’t comment.

‘Wisdom,’ he went on, ‘runs away from you sometimes when you’re in love.’

‘I don’t know about wisdom,’ I said, ‘but I run away from the words “in love”.’

‘Because you don’t believe me?’

‘Because I do believe you.’

He scooped up a handful of sand and sieved it through his fingers. He was left with two bleached cockle shells and a soggy cigarette butt, which he tossed away, intending them for the approaching sea, but missed and said, ‘And it scares you that I’m in love with you?’

‘No.’

‘So what did?’

‘Asking me to live with you.’

He tried the sieving business again. Sometimes, people don’t learn from their mistakes – perhaps when they’re in crisis. This time he was left with two pebbles and the metal ring of a ring-pull from a can. He tossed the pebbles away, reaching the sea this time, and kept the ring, which he tried on the fingers of his left hand. It fitted the third. I thought, He’s married to a tin can.

He said, ‘Would living with me be so terrible?’

I said, ‘No, probably not. I haven’t thought about it.’

This was a lie. At the beginning of our affair, in the blossoming zinging hyper-excited phase, I had fantasised about what it would be like.

I’d not only fantasised about living with him, I was so keen to find out what it would really be like that I’d gone so far as to spy on him and his wife at home. I haven’t told you about this before because it’s too embarrassing, but honesty requires it, I suppose, so here goes. I’d found a way into their back garden, which was usefully provided with bushes and a hedge where I could hide. Using Dad’s binoculars I could see into their kitchen and their sitting room, where they watched tv and sat together and where they played with the children. I’d tried to find a viewpoint from which I could see into their bedroom, but hadn’t managed. I won’t tell everything I observed, sometimes late into the night when Edward and his wife were together after putting the children to bed, it’s shameful enough to confess doing it at all. Enough to say I had a very good idea of what Edward was like when on his own at home and when he was with his wife and with his children.