Tallis' Third Tune

by Ellen L. Ekstrom

  “I really don’t have time to go over what’s expected, Alice. Put things right, would you?”

  She waved me away and the Shop and the village dissolved as if they were tablets in water, the bubbles rising to the ceiling of the hotel bathroom in which I now stood.

  I could hear Donovan still arguing with his mother, and could only guess what it was about. Once the tub was top heavy with bubbles I slid into the warm water and closed my eyes, anticipating the worst that was yet to come.

  The knock on the door didn’t surprise or startle me. “C'mon in!” I called.

  He poked his head around the door and forced a smile. “That looks like fun,” he greeted.

  “Want to join me?”

  “Thanks for the invitation, I just might,” he said, dropping his bathrobe and climbing in behind me. He kissed the top of my head and picked up a wash mitt and the soap. “Here, let me scrub your back.”

  Donovan’s hands and not the mitt smoothed the creamy soap across my back and around to my breasts, slowly working us into a lather.

  “So,” he said between kisses, “my mother says there’s a story in the Providence Journal and on the local stations about a certain young and dynamic conductor of the Royal Philharmonic and his mysterious lover being seen around a northern English city last year about this time – July maybe. There are pictures of them walking hand-in-hand and with their arms around each other, laughing and smiling.”

  I pulled away gently, angry at Donovan for using a seduction to get to me. I shouldn’t have been surprised: sex was his best weapon and defense. “Why does Arielle care?”

  "You and I were engaged at the time, need I remind you?” Donovan asked, reaching for me.

  “We had dinner a few times, went up to Scarborough to the castle, talked about old times. We were two friends from home meeting up by accident in a foreign country.” I said, grabbing a towel and climbing out.

  “Mother seems to think it’s a scandal of epic moment, in her words, and it will ruin my chances at getting the new building, and damage my father’s presidential bid next year.”

  “Compared to what your father has done – not to mention your track record?”

  A few moments passed before Donovan followed me into the bedroom. He found his pajamas and made a great to-do of slipping them on, buttoning each of the buttons on the jacket – something he rarely did, as he never wore pajamas. It was a means to collect his thoughts and plan his attack, which came swiftly and quietly once we were in bed. I had turned out the light and leaned over to kiss him goodnight when Donovan said, “I think there’s something you’re not telling me, Alice.”

  “What do you want to hear?” I demanded just as quietly.

  “That it’s me you love, and not him.”

  “I told you. How many times need I say it?”

  “Maybe you just need to forget about him!”

  I kissed his forehead. “I’m here with you. Didn’t you say this morning that Quinn got to dream of me all night but you had me in your bed?”

  “I did. And we had Florence.”

  “I loved you in Florence. I fell in love with you in Florence.”

  That led to a night of sex – not love, not passion, but sex. It made no difference. The battle wasn’t won or decided. Donovan kept demanding that I admit loving Quinn and that I confess my sin of infidelity.

  “What you’re really saying is that you married me without love being part of the equation,” Donovan said the next morning. “You married me because we thought you were pregnant and you felt pushed into it. Why don’t you admit it?”

  “When you came to Berkeley last year, I told you that it would take time.”

  The argument continued when we returned to Providence two days of angry sex later.

  “So why did you marry me, Alice?”

  I paused and took a breath before answering. Putting my toothbrush back into the holder next to his, picking up my hairbrush and running it through my hair, I saw his reflection in the mirror – he looked like a little boy, pained and unhappy.

  “I liked being with you, liked your intellect and your passion for your work.”

  “What about my passion for you?”

  “Yes – that too. And I know that you wanted to keep your mother from being embarrassed when I tried to postpone the wedding. But I wonder, for you at least, if it wasn’t just being able to have someone your mother disapproved of.”

  “I told you I fell in love with you in Florence – hell, I fell in love with you on that first date in Verona!”

  “And then you stopped trying once you thought I was won. What mattered to me no longer mattered to you, except that I work on the east coast instead of the west, so it doesn’t inconvenience you. Everything else that matters to me isn’t important.” I climbed into bed and pounded the pillows into the shape I wanted while Donovan took off his watch and glasses, wound the alarm clock so tightly I thought it would explode. He finally got into bed and lay staring at the ceiling for a long while after the lights went out.

  “I’ve tried so many times to make you happy, to figure out what it is you want, Alice. Can’t you at least admit that you have some affection for me? That you love me?”

  I said in the darkness, “I do have affection for you,” and it was the truth. “But if you want to know how deep that affection runs, I’d be at a loss to tell you. When you came to California to pick up where we left off, I was skeptical, but at the same time, I wanted to recreate what we had in Florence. Your eyes followed my every move, your smile was warm and tender. I wanted you to be beguiled again, romantic. I wanted to love you like I did, not the comfortable everyday love, the love of familiarity and security. I wanted the excitement and passionate love – the breathless love that we had. We came close in those days in December last year, and once we decided to get married, it died, I guess.”

  He turned to look at me and I could see his eyes, two dark moons in the reflected light of the streetlamp outside the window. “We did have that, Angel.”

  “Why can't we have that again? Lord knows I've been trying – I’ve been trying to the point of exhaustion. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “Yes you do,” Donovan whispered, coming closer and putting an arm around me. “We’re both frozen by fear.”

  “What is there to be afraid of?” I laughed bitterly.

  “Losing one another. Of making the same mistakes that keep pulling us apart. We just need to think about and decide what it is that we want. If we put our hearts and minds to it, I’m sure we’ll discover that we have the same goal, the same future in mind.”

  “Or,” I sighed, “we rush into yet another decision that has unfortunate consequences or results. You know, it’s been six months since my brother’s death. Maybe I should go out to California and see how Harry’s doing. He’s been asking me to visit, to help him with the sale of the house, and going through Denny’s things.” I paused here, and added, “And the time away will give us time to think about all this.”

  “Do you love me?” he asked.

  “Stop asking.”

  What was so surprising was how well Donovan took it.

  That evening we recreated something of Florence. As usual, we used sex to heal wounds and find intimacy. It was a night of anger and passion, of nothing said and nothing explained or asked, and I was glad when Donovan left earlier than usual for work.

  When he returned home that night, I was already on a plane to California.

  Chapter 14

  The corridor from the airplane to the terminal gate led me into the Curiosity Shop, and I was not surprised at all. In truth, I was relieved. I was glad to see Joan of Arc with her copy of The New York Times Book Review, Richard the Third still struggling with the crossword, Athena trying to talk philosophy with Marie Antoinette and Sigmund Freud arguing with Eleanor of Aquitaine about a mother’s role in history. I knew Dr. Freud was in for a nasty surprise on that one. I was expecting to find my brother Dennis and there he was, d
rawing in one of my old sketchbooks from school. A plate of cheesecake was suspiciously absent from his table beside mine and I pointed that out when I sat down and took up my bottle of Diet Pepsi.

  “No cake?” I queried.

  “Nothing to celebrate – yet,” Dennis said as he continued to draw. I leaned in, hoping to make eye contact but he moved away, saying, “It’s not ready – yet.”

  “Alice…”

  The Proprietress was crooking her finger at me. The box was taken down from its place on the shelf and she opened it. Tap-tappa-tap-tap. Her finger was clicking on the box lid and she raised her brows at me. Tap-tappa-ta-tap, Ta-tap-tap-tappa. “Well?” she hissed.

  I raised my brows in turn, crooked my head to the left and frowned.

  “In your pocket, Miss Alice, in…your…pocket!” She said.

  I felt around in my sweater pocket and caught what I thought was a piece of smooth glass between my fingers. Drawing it out, it looked like a giant ruby teardrop. When the Proprietress snapped her fingers I gave it up and watched it go into the box.

  “You never said what made you go back,” Dennis spoke up.

  “I thought it was quite evident,” Eleanor of Aquitaine said as she got up from her argument with Freud and came to where I stood. She reached out and stroked my cheek with a perfect hand, the great wedding band on her finger cold on my skin. I was about to speak when Eleanor’s cool, patrician beauty started to morph like gelatin into the face of Donovan and suddenly I was back in Providence. It was Donovan’s hand on my cheek.

  “I know why you left,” he whispered. “I just want to know why you came back, and if you’re going to stay.”

  “I’m pregnant,” I said with very little emotion.

  His eyes nearly popped and it was a moment before he smiled. “Really?” he asked. “Really!”

  “Count back to our trip to New York.”

  I walked past him and went up the stairs to our bedroom where I dumped the carry on and suitcase, glancing about to see if anything had changed in the four months I’d been in California. Nothing. Proof of that was the film of dust on my vanity, the laundry still folded on top of the dresser waiting for me to tuck it into the proper drawers or on to the right shelf in the closet.

  He was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, the glass in hand. “It’s mine, I hope?”

  “Donovan, please. Endearing comments like that make me want to get back on a plane to California,” I said as I threw open the suitcase and started unpacking. “Are you so unsure of yourself, so intent on shooting a torpedo into this marriage, that you keep opening your mouth and let anything that’s idiotic come out?”

  “I wasn’t the one who went to California. Maybe you ran into that high school flame that hasn’t died out.”

  “That would have been impossible – he lives in England for most of the year from what his mother told me.” I looked at him and saw the most painful expression I’d ever seen on his face. “Oh, for God’s sake, Donovan! Of course it’s yours! There hasn’t been anyone else since I met you in Verona and that was what, two years ago?”

  “Well, that was a lie.” Richard the Third sighed. He was seated at my table in the Shop, leaning his chin in the palm of his hand, frowning at me. I had been propelled back to the Shop, and I felt as if I’d gone down a roller coaster. My stomach was queasy and I avoided the looks that came from everyone, Proprietress to Sigmund Freud.

  “Why didn’t you tell him the truth?” Richard the Third asked.

  “You can’t lie to us,” Marie Antoinette purred, sitting next to Richard the Third.

  “I didn’t want to raise a child without the father – remember most of my childhood?”

  A half-dozen heads turned in my direction and now I faced them down. Only my brother looked sympathetic.

  Now Freud came to my table with a cup of hot chocolate – something I detested – and made himself at home.

  “No one here believes that – even you don’t believe it, Alice.”

  “But…!”

  “Drink your hot chocolate like a good girl and catch your train to Scarborough. It’s time at last and you know it.”

  I held the mug to my lips.

  “Go on.”

  After taking a sip and trying not to gag, I found myself back in York in May of 1978 at The Bitter End in The Shambles. My hot chocolate was now a glass of foamy beer and I was seated in a corner booth facing the door. The publican brought over a pitcher and a second glass and nodded thanks when I gave him a substantial tip. No sooner had he gone than the door opened and Quinn entered with the sunset on his shoulders and shining in his tousled hair like a rosy halo.

  “Sorry I’m late – last minute meetings about the recording session in London,” Quinn said breathlessly as he slid into the booth and sat close. He turned and smiled. “How is the faery princess today?”

  “Hopefully ruler of all that I survey,” I quipped as I poured a glass for him and topped off my own.

  “Well, you know the answer to that,” he responded with a wink. He took a drink and then dug into the fish and chips that were just presented to us in paper baskets lined with newspaper. “Did you give any thought to my invitation?”

  “Yes, and I think I deserve a real weekend off. I haven’t had one in a long while.”

  “Excellent! I’ve got tickets on the sleeper over to Scarborough.”

  “You were that sure I’d want to come?” I laughed.

  “I was prepared to do some pretty serious convincing.”

  “And how would you have done that?”

  Quinn leaned in, his eyes bright and clear, his smile captivating. I closed my eyes and hoped for a kiss. He was leaning in, further still. I held my breath, waiting…“Are you going to Scarborough Fair, parsley sage rosemary and thyme, remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine…” he softly sang, with lips tantalizingly close. “Convinced?” Quinn murmured in a sexy, husky voice.

  “When do we leave?” I asked breathlessly.

  “Two hours. We can meet at the station, or I can pick you up.”

  Back at the flat, I put together a bag full of necessities – a change of clothes, toiletries, and lingerie. There would be no books or papers except maybe the Sunday Times. I hoped signals from Quinn weren't crossed, mixed, or wrong.

  As I passed the nightstand, I noticed the letter I’d started to Donovan and picked it up. Here in three pages I had summarized all the reasons I could think of why postponing the wedding was a good idea, or even better, calling it off all together and going our separate ways. In the month I’d been in York Donovan had not tried to call, even though I knew he was back in Providence, and my messages were never returned, my calls never answered. If actions spoke louder than words, as he was wont to preach, then Donovan had made up his mind, as well. Turning the letter over and re-reading it now for the third time, I put it in the nightstand drawer with the photograph and closed the drawer slowly, as if giving myself time to reconsider.

  I was slipping the silver rose around my neck when I heard the doorbell. Skipping down the stairs, I had a moment of panic, thinking when I opened the door I would find Donovan on the stoop and have to explain myself, and I hesitated on the landing. When the bell rang again – and then a third time, I took a deep breath and told myself I was silly.

  An enormous bouquet of pale silver roses, white lilies and white roses greeted me when I opened the door. Quinn peeked out from behind them and smiled.

  “Freesias were out of season. Ready?”

  “Ready!”

  The bouquet took up half of the back seat in the taxi and was placed on the bench across from where I’d thrown myself down when we found our compartment on the Flying Scotsman. Quinn shut the door and rather than sit beside me, he sat on bench next to the flowers. “I love looking at your eyes when we talk,” he the explained.

  “You always know the right thing to say,” I murmured.

  “You’re teasing me, right?”

&
nbsp; “No, just speaking the truth.”

  “You’ve always been truthful with me, Alice Rose.”

  I suddenly felt a shock, a surge of electricity going through every artery and vein in my body. I wanted to speak, but couldn’t, and was grateful the conductor entered our compartment to take our tickets. He smiled at me and in a rich northern accent said, “Something you need, Miss?”

  “Oh no, nothing. Sorry – I was expecting the guy who usually works this route; we became friends the last time I took the Scotsman.”

  No, this conductor wasn’t Jack Lemmon and I was a little disappointed when he left without humming a song.

  Reality started sinking in; what I was doing I would never allow from Donovan - or Quinn, for that matter. And yet, here I was…

  I fumbled around in my bag for something to do and pulled out a mirrored compact, opening it to check my lipstick and mascara. The Proprietress winked at me from the mirror. When I shifted to look around the mirror, I was in the Shop.

  “Why the long face, little miss?” the Proprietress wanted to know. The smirk spread across her face, from perfectly applied red lips to the masterfully arched and tweezed brows.

  “I’m having second thoughts,” I admitted, glancing at my table where the laptop sat opened and ready for me, the coffee mug was still warm and the Diet Pepsi cold and fizzy.

  “You should have thought about that in 1978, my girl! Once a thing is done, it’s done.”

  “And it’s like being on a roller coaster,” Dennis spoke up, joining us at the counter. “Once you get into the car, you’re in it for the ride. You can’t pull over and get out just because it’s scary and uncomfortable.”

  I turned to my brother and pulled him outside to the high street. “I will be no better than Donovan!”

  “Spending time with a friend? Taking walks along the shore or climbing castle ruins? Having a sympathetic ear or shoulder to cry upon and know that the care is real? Why is that so bad, Alice?”

  “I’ll be with Quinn – you know!”