Weeks in Naviras (11 page)

‘Maybe I should think about doing something different,’ I said.

‘Well, you could easily become a chef, this sea bream’s extraordinary. Reminds me of Portugal. You’re still loaded, right? Why not open a restaurant.’ Gail never resented the fact I had money, but like a few people seemed to think it made me less deserving of sympathy, forgot the price I’d paid for being comfortable.

That period also signalled the start of a pattern of behaviour in James which should have set alarm bells ringing. His appetite for sex had always been higher than mine. Alcohol didn’t suppress it, actually it often amplified it. Once we were living together officially James seemed to become uninhibited, wanting it daily – twice daily, sometimes - and in all manner of ways and places. Against the counter in the kitchen when he came in from work as I was preparing our supper, in the shower cubicle, even suggesting we try it outdoors in Regents Park one Sunday afternoon. I accommodated to a degree – though certainly not in the park - but James increasingly wanted to play rough, try out new things. That just wasn’t me, but my refusal to play along didn’t seem to be a problem for him, not at the time.

I’d discussed this before with my girlfriends, who’d all caught their boyfriends watching something they didn’t want us to see; the laptop lid quickly closed, the stray item of undeleted search history. What was there to do about it? Sometimes they couldn’t fathom how ordinary women didn’t respond in the same way; weren’t being paid to say we liked things. I’d talked about this in the abstract but never discussed the specific and mounting sex-drive disparity with anyone, not even Gail. James never forced anything, sometimes when he’d had a bit to drink and I rebuffed him he’d sulk about it, nothing more. Yet those early years with James often felt like a constant battle to satisfy him. Should this have been a deal-breaker? Easy to say so in hindsight, but my thinking was that James was in his early thirties, and that his libido would calm down in time.

The following summer I came home one Friday afternoon to find James already there, with a suitcase packed and waiting in the hallway. He told me to pack mine, no time for questions, just enough for the weekend. ‘Don’t forget a swimming costume,’ he’d called from the kitchen as I was upstairs, scrambling through clothes.

He’d hired a limousine to take us to the airport. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going but driving to Heathrow I was hoping it would be Naviras. Drinking champagne at the bar in departures I watched the remaining flights of the day on the board, including one to Lisbon. When it was called for boarding James got up and then I knew for certain. Another limo picked us up from Lisbon airport and drove us down to the village, speeding through the night.

Of course we stayed in Casa Amanhã, Lottie had been pre-briefed and welcomed us with kisses and a huge hug when we rolled our cases across the bumpy gravel driveway. ‘Ell-eee!’ She made it feel like we’d only last clapped eyes on each other a week ago, even though it had been more than a year. ‘I’m afraid there’s nobody to take your bags upstairs, sorry about that.  But you’re in room seven, right at the top.  And do come downstairs and have some drinks and supper. We’re still open, just about.’

Lottie had gone to some effort with Room Seven.  Purple petals had been scattered on the bed, a bottle of champagne was chilling on ice on the little bedside table. Crickets were thrumming in the trees outside. ‘Wow, five star service,’ said James, a bit caustically.

Downstairs over dinner Lottie was a little bit standoffish.  Although the restaurant wasn’t busy by any means, she’d given us a table in the furthest corner from the bar. She didn’t take our order herself, getting one of her staff to look after us. After dinner we went back upstairs, and although I was quite tired James wanted to have sex. Maybe it was because it was taking place in Casa Amanhã, but during and after I realised my own libido had diminished in exact inverse proportion to James’s demands for it. He’d made it into a quantifiable thing, judged its quality almost solely on its frequency. Did he notice or care how my eyes were always closed?

When I woke up James wasn’t there but he’d left a note on the table.
Meet me at the beach, Jxx.
For some reason my hair straighteners weren’t working properly, they wouldn’t get warm enough, and it was obviously going to be a hot day so I dispensed with makeup. I felt a little underdressed as I walked quickly down the stairs and out of the front door of Casa Amanhã, heading down to the sea.

As I came to the slipway I could see James was sitting at a table on the sand, not far from the edge of the ocean. It had come from the beach bar, and was covered in a white tablecloth with a small pink flower in a little vase in the centre. James was wearing new clothes; a pair of white linen trousers and a navy blue short-sleeved shirt.

‘Impressive,’ I said when I was within earshot of him.  He stood up.

‘I was wondering how long it’d take you to wake up,’ he said, kissing me. ‘I was worried you’d have a lie-in and I’d be sitting out here all day.’

‘I wouldn’t have done that to you,’ I said, sitting down on the high-backed chair.  James didn’t sit, instead he got down on one knee on the sand in front of me. My heart started pounding. He smiled at me, produced the ring from the pocket of his shirt and said:

‘Ellie, You’d make me the happiest man in the world if you’ll say you’ll be my wife.’

I honestly hadn’t been expecting it. It wasn’t uncommon for James to make romantic gestures; flowers sent to the flat, little teddy bears waiting for me on the kitchen counter with a slushy card. I liked all that, came to expect it almost. But this seemed very soon. About a year too soon, by my reckoning. Still I must have only paused for two or three seconds before saying yes. James breathed a little sigh, stood up and pulled me to my feet.  He held my hand up and slipped the ring on. As he kissed me I looked into his eyes and I saw triumph.

We drank the champagne and ate caviar which James must’ve ordered in somehow. Then we went for a long walk over the cliff, along the endless path. The sunshine bounced pale yellow off the sea as the tide came in below us. I forgot about my problems and anxieties. James promised to buy a derelict cottage we passed, he’d renovate it into a place where we could grow old together. We took a hundred photos of it, and of my ring, us, the long clouds which curled up at the ends.

Lottie couldn’t have been more neutral about our engagement if she’d tried. Although she’d been an accomplice in the weekend getaway I don’t think she’d expected James to go that far. ‘What a big diamond, sitting there on its own like that,’ she said when I showed her the ring. ‘You’ll have to be careful around my glassware, darling.’

I’d hoped that we’d spend more time in Casa Amanhã, but James had us on a Sunday morning flight back to London. We decided to throw an engagement party the following weekend, hiring out an entire pub near Westminster. It was a fun day and night, the first time all our respective friends were in the same place and everyone seemed to get along surprisingly well.

It was just unfortunate that James had to invite people whom he secretly didn’t like but whom he’d need later on in his career. It made my engagement party more like an office Christmas do in some ways, fraught with politics of all kinds. I was treated to the spectacle of James talking to Gilly Caulfield, who at the time was an MP’s researcher. Far too young to be wearing twin-set and pearls, Gilly’s idea of a good time back then would’ve involved unleashing beagles to tear apart illegal immigrants. ‘Vile girl,’ said James in my ear after she floated off to talk to someone else.

He had more time for people like Hugo Manwaring and Rob Kitchener, both affable and obviously bright. They were also working either in Parliament or Whitehall, and would rise in tandem with James over the years. I didn’t foresee these people sitting around a Cabinet table together a decade later, at least not all of them. Rav was there, of course, the life and soul of the party but still unaccountably single, and still failing to get selected for a seat. We’d become quite good friends by that point, not least because we were both finding ourselves constantly thwarted.

That night should have sounded another warning bell because it was also the first time I met Rosie. Incredible that James had managed to keep her from me for nearly a year, given how tightly-knit they all were in Tory central office. She came up to me when I was recharging people’s glasses at the crowded bar. I’d seen her earlier, pencil thin and wearing a stunning black dress with green corsages off the shoulders.

‘It’s fantastic to meet you, finally,’ her soft voice had always been oddly classless. ‘Do you need a hand?’ She introduced herself, trying to gauge how much I knew about her already. ‘Well I’m glad James has met someone who’s not in the party,’ she said. ‘I think it’s better, don’t you?’ She didn’t give me a chance to answer before carrying on. ‘Just so you know, my time with James was very brief and work got in the way of it.’

I tried not to appear stunned, said nothing.

‘It’d be great to get to know you, not to talk about that, of course!’ She said this with a sort-of purr. I must have been floundering.

‘I’d really like that, Rosie. Maybe you could come round for dinner.’

‘Oh yes, I’d love that! I’ve heard about your legendary Portuguese suppers,’ she smiled. It felt like a complete demolition of my understanding of myself and the world I was about to go into. ‘You know I
must
go to Portugal,’ Rosie often talked about things she felt she ought to do. ‘I just can’t believe James met his future wife so randomly like that, out there. It’s good, it’s positive.’

The barman had finished pouring. ‘Tell you what, I’ll go and drop these off,’ I said, feeling like Rosie had just hit me in the face. ‘We’ll be upstairs, come and join us,’ I really took no interest in whether she would follow me, mercifully she gave me five minutes to regroup my brain before coming up.

‘I just met your colleague Rosie,’ I said to James. My face said the rest.

‘Ah, yeah,’ he winced. ‘Always been a tricky to raise, that one.’ He looked sheepish.

‘It’s fine, but it would have been nice to know before I’d met her, that’s all.’ I was surprised that someone like James would stage-manage this so badly.

‘I know.  But look, it was all over long before I met you, we’d only been together for a few months, she’s a great girl but…’ He didn’t finish.

Later I was angry at James for allowing me to be so humiliated, for ensuring that I’d always feel at a disadvantage with Rosie. James insisted that she had a funny way of dealing with people and didn’t make friends easily. Some people thought she was borderline Asperger’s, he said.

‘Was that why you split up with her?’ I asked.

‘Who said it was me who did the dumping?’ James replied quietly.

‘What on earth is she doing in press relations, if she’s so socially backward?’ Variations on that question would chew me up for years to come, because Rosie had always struck me as the most over-promoted person I’d ever met. It wasn’t that she didn’t work hard, far from it. She was famous for being at her desk at 7am every weekday, long before any of her colleagues got in. In fairness to James she didn’t fraternise much with the rest of the central office staff, would always be on the tube home by 9pm so she could read the next day’s papers. No, my problem with Rosie was that she didn’t seem to live and breathe politics like James and his set. This made her seem amateurish, her with self-righteous smugness only accentuating her mediocrity. I never once heard her speak about policies with anything more than a surface level of interest or conviction.

Although initially James and I had agreed not to set a date, it was only a few weeks before James wanted to get something in the diary. Rav told me why, one Thursday night in the pub while James was away at the bar. ‘Michael Shandwick’s sick,’ he said, knowing full-well I’d understand what this meant. Shandwick was the MP for Eppingham and was in his early seventies.

‘Terminally not well?’

‘He’s missed a string of votes in the last two weeks, the whips are having kittens about it,’ Rav gave me an ominous look.

‘So James will run, and he wants to get married first.’ I swilled the red wine around the glass in front of me.

‘It would certainly help, how d’you feel about it?’

I couldn’t focus my eyes back on Rav, but I knew anything I said would be relayed back. My own relationship had developed usual channels. ‘Well, we’re going to get married anyway, so if it helps James,’ I sighed. ‘If helps him become an MP in the seat he really wants, then of course I’d be supportive.’

Rav flashed me a smile, finished the dregs of his pint. ‘You really are a legend, Ellie.’

‘You’ll run his campaign?’

‘He’s asked me, yeah. The party will throw plenty of cash at it. It’s marginal, but perfectly winnable,’ Rav had his eyes on James, who was putting change in his back pocket at the bar. ‘Especially if he’s got such a dazzling new wife.’

My father thought it was a bit soon, although he didn’t raise an objection outwardly until he’d had a few drinks. ‘Why are you in such a rush? You’re not pregnant, are you?

‘Definitely not pregnant, Dad. Far too careful for that.’

James and I would’ve preferred civil ceremony but Dad insisted on the full-blown church service. As his only child he wanted his day, unfortunately this meant either waiting six months for the next available Saturday or taking a last-minute cancel in three weeks. So I had a February wedding and as such a very indoor affair. Still, it snowed the day before which gave everything a sense of sparkle and freshness. Although there was very little in the way of sunshine, we did get a gorgeous late afternoon glow as the sun slipped down below the clouds before it set. The snow turned orange then pink, I had some lovely photos of people walking up to the country house where we held the reception. Although the church service had seen a small guestlist of fifty people the reception was much larger, mainly because James kept adding to it. In the end I’d had to pay quite a lot of the costs because it seemed unfair on Dad to foot the bill for dozens of James’s party colleagues.