Aunt Margaret's Lover Page 13

  'Shall I get you something to eat?' he asked.

  'Later,' I said. 'Shall we talk properly for a moment?'

  He agreed, straightening his back, as if getting ready for an interview.

  'You first,' I said.

  Until this point our contact with each other had been minimal: the initial letter with his phone number, the brief message I left on his answerphone leaving my number and the even briefer message he left on mine arranging to meet at this pub. It had all been very strange after the wealth of literature received from my others. He also gave the telephone number of an architectural practice in Holborn, in case I should want to check his credentials as a man of honour. His name was Simon Phillips, which was quite acceptable. After a Jason or two anything was quite acceptable.

  I doused the madcap Molly of the Fourth in me, who wanted to say, 'Is it true that all architects are failed artists?' and clamped my jaw shut, nodding at him to begin. After my blisteringly wonderful opening, I simply did not feel safe.

  'Shall I tell you about myself or do you want to ask me questions? Or would you prefer to tell me about yourself first?'

  I had a terrible urge to say, 'Well, Doctor, it's like this . . .' but managed to control it. We sat there, with our drinks and his plate of sandwiches, and I thought that in my whole life I had never felt more unreal. But I argued with myself that you could meet a chap at a party and get to this point. All we had done was meet through an advertisement, and, really, going to parties in hunting mode and all dressed up was no different from advertising your availability in writing.

  Then I said, straight out: 'I just wanted some fun for a year. A bit of a fling with no commitments beyond that. And no expectations. Absolutely no expectations.'

  'Are you .. .' He played with the puddle of beer again, considering what he was about to say. 'Is it. .. rebound?'

  Rebound would do, I thought. I nodded. 'Sort of.'

  'You were very positive about it being for a year?'

  So I told him all about Saskia's going and about Greasy Joan and Mrs Mortimer - even the Matisse. But not about Dickie. I was looking forward to being free of that piece of history so far as the next year was concerned. I had already made up my mind, you see, that he would do very nicely. And despite the tangerine hiccough, I hoped he felt the same. He seemed to. At least, he showed no signs of repugnance. I was fed up with the hunting - women are not good at it - and just wanted to get on with having some fun.

  'So you are an independent woman of wealth,' he said.

  Sounded good.

  'I suppose I am. And you?'

  'I'm a partner in a fairly humble outfit, but I do very well considering the state of things nowadays. I have a fair amount of free time. I'm intending to wind down quite a lot over the next few months.'

  'Are you on the rebound, too?'

  He thought, and then shook his head. 'All sorts of reasons for doing this. Mainly because it was suggested to me by a friend. And because until three years ago I was married -no children - and since then I have had the odd one-nighter or two but nothing else. And I don't like one-nighters particularly.'

  I felt a sudden disappointment and leaned back, sighing. 'Look,' I said in my best schoolmarmy voice, 'this sounds dangerously like someone who wants to settle down into a long-term relationship.' I took up the puddle-of-beer method of emphasis and stabbed my finger into the little wet dots. 'Commitment, expectations and all ... I am absolutely serious. I don't want that. In fact I so don't want it that I would be prepared to get out next year's diary, if I had one, and write on a given date next year, "Affair Ends Today." And if that sounds hard, then' - I shrugged - 'I'm sorry.'

  He put up his hand. He was smiling quite peaceably. 'How about April the ninth?'

  I stared. 'What?'

  'April the ninth. How would that do for a closing date? That's always supposing we get on well enough together to sustain it for that long.' He gave me a critical look. 'I think we might. Unless you have any peculiarities of an untenable nature - which I don't think you have. I mean, you appear to be a warm, rational, attractive human being with a point of view.' He paused, the critical look deepened. 'You're not a racist? Or a supporter of capital punishment? Or - God help me - a veganV He laughed. 'No, no. At least I know you're not that.'

  'How? I might be.'

  'Because you've eaten most of my ham sandwiches.'

  I pushed the plate towards him. Only one little piece remained. There is a creeping selfishness when you live alone. 'God,' I said, 'I am sorry.'

  He stood up. Just for a moment I thought he was going to depart on the grounds of my heedless greed. I mean, how would 1 have felt if I had bought a plate of sandwiches and he had practically eaten the lot at our first lovers' rendezvous? Surely, at the beginning you were supposed to be on best behaviour? Munching my way through his rations without so much as a polite request was hardly that. 'I am truly sorry,' I said, half seriously. 'Truly, truly sorry. It won't happen again.'

  'So I should think,' he said, and, picking up my glass, he went over to the bar.

  I breathed out, relaxed as much as I could, and realized that I had scarcely looked at him. I suppose if anyone had asked me for a split-second summation I would have said friendly face, comfortable person, and neither a blazer nor a pair of well-creased flannels to mar the effect.

  I sat and stared at his back view. Grey jumper, denim shirt, navy cords, deck shoes. Perfectly reasonable. But unfamiliar, the clothes covering an alien body of which I could not imagine the texture or true shape. What was his smell like, his habits, his gestures, his requirements? I went cold. This was all completely potty. And what were we going to do now? Walk out into the Oxfordshire countryside and bonk? Immediately? Walk out into the Oxfordshire countryside, get out our diaries and choose a suitable occasion some time hence when we would bonk? Anyway, I didn't want to bonk. I wanted to .. . well, not bonk exactly . .. and have hot sex certainly, but with a bit more than - well, with a relationship attached. Just not for ever. Oh, the whole thing was more than completely potty - suddenly it was impossible. And dangerous. He was clearly no philanderer - he was bound to want the normal human thing of moving from affection into love and from love into for ever, with all its sorry disillusions. No. No. This had gone far enough. It was hopeless. It would not work. I prepared myself to say this when he returned. The barmaid was handing him some change. She was saying she would call him when the sandwiches were ready. He was turning to come back . . . And then, as he returned, negotiating a way around the tangerine top who smiled up at him carnivorously and spoke, he glanced from her shelving bosom to me, winked, said something to her, and was back sitting down. And I thought, To Hell with it. He will be my lover. I vowed to go home that night and read my Ovid avidly. He is a wonderful antidote to romantic love. With Ovid, as with life, it always ends in tears.

  'What did she say?'

  'She said they'd be ready in a minute.'

  'I don't mean her. I mean the tangerine Exocets.'

  'Oh. Her. She said that I had a nice bottom.'

  'She did?' I was struggling between a desire to appear unconcerned and an already and pronounced territorial instinct. 'And have you?' Was all I could think of to say.

  He chewed the remaining sandwich and grinned. 'That's for you to judge . . .'

  I was about to reach for my glass but thought better of it. In the entire time I had known him, biblically and otherwise, Roger had never said anything to give me a comparable frisson. I smiled unaffectedly and said to myself that one always played games with lovers at first - one certainly didn't let out all the secrets straight away. I didn't want him to know he had scored a bull's-eye in the frisson department.

  He continued to chew for a moment, thinking. I was desperately seeking something for my hands to do, but he had taken the last sandwich and I didn't quite feel up to holding a glass straight. It seemed best just to keep them hidden under the table. The way 1 was feeling I might end up chewing the empty plate. What is
it about men that they always manage to hide strong emotion? There he was, just having floated a most suggestive statement, and he was eating as if he had only said, 'Fine weather for May.' Should I have brought up the subject of bonking there and then? I mean, what was the form in these matters? Keeping an unaffected smile firmly on my lips, I said, 'Why April the ninth?'

  'Well,' he said, 'that's the day I head off for Nicaragua.' He leaned forward. 'But not for a holiday.' His eyes had become much more serious. 'I'm going out there to work. Taking my engineering skills to a far-flung corner from which I may never return.' He drank some more of his beer, looking at me over the rim of the glass.

  'Well . . .' I said, a bit at a loss, 'that sounds very . . . um . . . exciting.'

  He leaned back, put down his glass, smiled at the beer puddle. 'Oh, it is, it is. And dangerous. Unpaid, voluntary and extremely right on. It's a commitment I made to some people I know over there - can't be got out of. That's why your year thing was so tempting. I have to go, no matter what. I am shit-scared and I expect to die in the jungle from snake bite. Or a shot from a CIA gun. Or maybe just swamp fever. Anything really.' He shrugged with artificial nonchalance. 'Suicide mission. Call it that.'

  'I will not,' I said, suspecting I was being played with. 'You're talking as if you've come out of a nineteenth-century novel. Haggard or somebody.'

  'That was Africa.'

  'Marquez, then.'

  'Right continent at least.'

  'You are being extremely patronizing.'

  He slapped the table with his hands and laughed. 'I am. But look at it from the Nicaraguan point of view. Torn apart by civil war, racked by poverty, disease, corruption, which has been made only worse by the West - and you sit in an Oxfordshire pub and can't even get the continent right.'

  'Well,' I snapped, 'with all that going on I should think a Nicaraguan would be far too busy to notice.'

  Our second order of sandwiches was waiting on the bar. The barmaid called to us and Tangerine top looked over at our table laconically. I got up quickly and collected them, giving her an affordably friendly glance as I passed, holding my head and the plate high as I sailed back to harbour.

  'Well,' he said, 'that was our first lovers' quarrel. How did you like it?'

  'Loved it,' I said. 'Have a sandwich.'

  'I don't want to get too heavy about all this,' he said. 'I'm not a tub-thumping individual, nor a crusader, and I would be just as happy - prefer, perhaps - to leave that side of things alone. It's a decision I made, I'm going to go and I've done most of the talking about it that I want to do really. What I'm hoping for is a bit of fun until then, and a nice easy ride . . .'

  I dared to pick up a sandwich. 'Do you mean that emotionally' - I bit - 'or sexually?'

  For a split second he paused, stared, looked unsure. Good. I thought. If we were battling for control here, then I wanted, at least, to show I had some artillery. Then he began chewing, swallowed, picked up his glass, drank, put it down and said, 'Both.'

  At which we each gave in and exploded helplessly with laughter.

  If I had felt unreal before, it was as nothing to this - I mean, we hadn't even held hands. But then, no one had said it was going to be to formula.

  He looked at his watch and for a clammy atom of time I thought he might say that he had half an hour and how about it, but he was only checking the date. 'It's my birthday on Thursday,' he said. 'Shall we do something together? I like pasta. How about you?'

  Today was Tuesday. One evening to assimilate, one day to be nervous, one day to be really nervous and then we would meet again. 'I'd love to,' I said, and 1 meant it. Which was a nice surprise.

  Without thinking too much about the metaphor, I decided to take the bull by the horns. 'Well,' I said, with a great deal more confidence than I felt, 'what about the sex thing?'

  He looked serious. 'Well,' he said, 'how desperate are you?'

  Agrippina could not have been more indignant if someone had suggested she didn't know her poisons. 'I'm not at all desperate. Not at all. I just thought we ought to . . . um . . . well. . . discuss it.'

  'Are you for or against?'

  What a very silly question. I was a liberated women of independent means, wasn't I? 'I'm for, of course - but that certainly doesn't mean that I'm desperate.'

  'Well, I'm for, too. So' - he shrugged and his face bore the slightly perplexed expression of one whose lights have fused -'it'll happen, won't it . . .?' He gave me a look that made me feel that being caught staring at another woman's breasts was as nothing. 'After all, this is only our first date.' He was right, of course. Possibly it was time to cede a little of the control to nature.

  Then somehow all of a sudden we were behaving naturally. As if we had met at a party or something and this was our first date rather than the pre-determined unromantic result of forethought. We talked about art, of which he said he knew very little but which turned out to be a good deal more than many. He favoured buildings rather than paintings and his hero was Corbusier. Expressionism was more in his line visually because, he said, it reflected the turbulence of the age. How he managed to say such a thing without being pompous I am not sure, but he did. I told him about framing and how it felt almost godlike sometimes to be adding to and enhancing an already perfect piece of art. How I managed to say that without curdling his blood I don't know, but I did.

  Having got our pomposities out of the way, he then said a very nice thing - which was that Inigo Jones began life as a picture-framer. Something which I did not know and which I squirrelled away for the days, those long dull winter days, when I would be back at the shop twixt Reg's eye and Joan's flick. I could ponder on being made Court theatre designer by Charles III and thereafter designing temples to ecology ..."

  Film interested him more than theatre. Cars not at all, which he regarded simply as things to drive around in. Friends were few and very dear, acquaintances more thickly strewn. He was happier in town than country, though not averse to rural ways. He was neither a gourmet nor a cook, but liked simple food, simply served. And he never wore suits. There were a lot of places he wanted to visit here and in Europe during the year, some alone, some with company. He lived in a flat which he did not own in Clapham.

  So banal really, yet so important, all these beginnings.

  I was glad that he really was going away. His personal details sounded far, far too appealing. Mind you, anybody's can before you come upon the smelly socks under the bed.

  One other matter (besides sex) needed raising. 'We should, I said, 'discuss money.'

  He was struggling not to laugh. 'Oh,' he said. 'Are you going to charge?' He gave me a far too innocent stare. 'I didn't know that.'

  I waited.

  'I leave you everything in my will,' he hazarded, draining his glass. 'I accept.'

  I couldn't decide whether to be offended or not. So I sat it out.

  Eventually he said, 'Money?'

  I nodded. And waited again.

  'You mean who pays for what?' he said.

  'Yes.'

  'I hadn't thought about it. What's your view?'

  'I think we should go Dutch - mostly.'

  'Agreed. That sounds fine. Very practical.'

  Somebody's got to be, I thought. I stood up. 'And now let me pay for half of our lunch.'

  'No, no' - he pushed at my purse - 'have this on me.'

  But I insisted. You can have your knees sliced from under you on matters of money in relationships and it was best to begin as equals.

  We paid and left. The May sunshine was still very bright as we walked towards our cars.

  'This is all very bizarre,' I said. 'Isn't it?'

  'It is,' he said solemnly. 'Look on it as an adventure.'

  On the whole it seemed the best approach.

  'We mustn't forget the romance,' I said, half teasing, turning from unlocking my door.

  'Women never do,' he said, and he kissed my cheek.

  I jumped about a foot. God knows what I would have
done if he had suggested a quick one round the back. The ten-second mile?

  'Bye, then,' I said, awkward as a teenager, as I got into my car. He stood there waving as, a little confusedly and in the wrong direction, I drove away. I found myself looking in my mirror to check that he would not slip back into the pub for an assignation with Miss Bristols. But only a moment later I realized, with a wonderful flash of pleasure, that jealousy need never be part of this accord. We had struck a Chinese bargain, one that did not need lawyers or even to be written down, for it was of equal benefit to us both and therefore as binding as law.

  By the time I had righted my course and reached home, I was beginning to feel quite thrilled. Something is happening at last, I told myself and Mrs Mortimer. In the hall mirror my eyes looked very bright and my cheeks quite pink, which was exactly right. 1 could almost see the damp hanky and the tear in my eye as I waved him off to Nicaragua next year .. . Nicaragua of all places - and I wondered why. Just a Boy's Own sense of 'outward bound' tinged with politics? Or something more profound? Not my business. Wonderful liberation. I did not have to find things out. A great relief. It would happen, he had said - and that applied both to sex and to other things. Let it be.