Encounters

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘You don’t mean you’re going back there for the winter?’ she had exclaimed aghast. She had seen the photos now of his hut in the wild sea grasses and the dunes and the little boat beached high on the wet sand. His only light came from oil lamps; his music from an old battery driven cassette player.

  ‘It’s a two year project, Jill,’ he said, ‘and I’m only allowed away for a few days at a time. There are too many measurements to take, notes to make, things to do. You wait till you see it … You’ll understand then.’

  She remembered that conversation as they stood together in the sleeper saying goodbye and she thought again of the cold little shiver which had crept down her spine at his words.

  ‘But I hate the sea, Andrew,’ a little voice had cried deep inside her. ‘I hate the sea and everything to do with it …’

  The inn was old and rambling, snuggling in a fold of the hills, its thatched roof gold against the frost blue sky of winter. In the hall the grandfather clock ticked the centuries away in peace, to the gentle scents of burning apple-wood and baking.

  Lying awake in his arms she heard the clock chime in the warm darkness and she felt the tears come to her eyes at the pain of her happiness.

  They spent their two days walking hand in hand across the sheep-cropped turf, feeling the icy wind in their faces, running sometimes for sheer joy, their feet hollow on the chalky soil, and the two nights they lay together on the huge goosefeather mattress lost in the wonder of their love.

  As she nestled against him, her fingers tracing the line of his shoulders, holding him close, trying to see his face in the dark she prayed that the night might never end. The sharp ecstasy of their love and the tenderness which followed it had left her wakeful and she lay, listening to his even breathing as he slept in her arms and she wanted to hold him for ever.

  There was no choice, though. He had to go, wrenching himself away from her, refusing to let himself see her tears. But on Valentine’s day he sent her a pale yellow cairngorm set in a Celtic silver pin. ‘I’ve booked us into the inn again for Easter,’ he wrote on the card. ‘Until then I’m counting each day. We won’t waste a moment in London. Meet me at the station …’

  It was a cold wet Easter, the buds still tight on the trees, the daffodils the only brave defiant challenge to a reluctant departing winter. Jill didn’t care. The agony of the long wait was over and she was once more in his arms. To her the colour of the sky, the full gurgling muddy ditches were an irrelevance beside the man who was sitting opposite her at dinner at the table near the huge inglenook fire.

  ‘Nine and a half whole weeks since I saw you,’ she said.

  They both laughed as though it were something funny she had said. He was watching the firelight flickering reflected in the smoky golden brooch at her throat. It set off the tawny colouring of her hair and eyes.

  ‘We must always come back here,’ he said. ‘For our anniversaries and special occasions. It will be our home from home. When is your birthday?’

  She smiled happily, picking up her glass of wine. ‘Not till August. We’ll have to think of something to celebrate before then. When is yours?’

  It seemed strange that she didn’t know.

  ‘June,’ he said.

  Cancer and Leo she thought later. Fire and water. They can never mix. And she pictured again the pounding cruel waves and the desolation she had stared at in the photograph of the shore which he called home and wondered if she could ever bear to leave the city.

  Something to ask him; something to tell him. And either or both could end their relationship; before it had really started. Was either worth it, she wondered? Was it really worth it for the sake of truth?

  It was August, and she stared at him across the breakfast table near the open window. He was buried in the Sunday paper as unconscious of her presence as were the other men in the room of their table companions. The stamp of a husband perhaps?

  ‘I know about your wife, Andrew,’ she said softly.

  For a moment he did not move. He did not hold his breath. His fingers had not tightened on the paper. Then carefully he folded it back at the page he was reading and put it down on the vacant chair between them.

  She tried to read his face, feeling a cold sick fear settling into her stomach. Defensively she reached for her cup and sipped at the coffee scalding her tongue so that the tears came. But it did not matter; he was not looking at her.

  ‘How long have you known about that?’ he asked. He was staring at the ragged torn fragment of toast on his plate.

  ‘Someone told me just after I met you,’ she whispered.

  ‘And you never said anything?’

  ‘I never said anything.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I was afraid of knowing for sure.’

  He looked up at last. ‘And now you are no longer afraid?’

  She reached out her hand, tentatively, scared of being rebuffed. ‘And now I no longer care, Andrew. I love you too much.’

  His fingers had closed tightly over hers, but he was no longer looking at her. His face was troubled as he stared past her out of the window.

  ‘Life never is simple, is it?’ he said at last. ‘We think because we ignore something, because we pretend it isn’t there, because we leave it behind that we are free of it. But somehow, somewhere it is going to catch you up.’

  ‘I said I didn’t care, Andrew,’ she persisted gently.

  ‘But I care.’ He stood up violently, pushing his chair back so that it rumpled the worn carpet. At the other tables there was an infinitesimal shocked silence at the interlude, then a studied refusal to allow it to ruffle the calm surface of breakfast time.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to know about her.’ He waved his arms in the air helplessly. ‘As long as you didn’t know that I had had a wife I could pretend I had not been through it all; pretend everything with us was fresh and new and real …’

  ‘Andrew!’ Jill protested, but already he had turned on his heel. He walked stiffly past the other tables and out of the room closing the door with a sharp click behind him.

  Jill remained where she was, painfully conscious of the questioning stares that were being directed at her, clutching at one pitiful straw as the misery of their first quarrel descended on her.

  ‘Had had a wife,’ he’d said. Had, not have …

  She forced herself to pour another cup of coffee and sat before it, not touching it for five more minutes. Only as the other residents rose and made their way out of the room did she too push back her own chair. She stood for a moment looking out onto the rose beds then resolutely she went up the stairs.

  To her surprise he was there, lying face down on the bed.

  ‘Andrew, it’s our last day. Can you forget I mentioned it? Please?’ She sat down before the dressing table and reached for her brush. ‘I don’t want to know about your past. All I want now is the two of us together.’

  It wasn’t quite true, but she would settle for it.

  He rolled over and lay watching her, his arm across his eyes as though he was dazzled.

  ‘You say that, Jill, but it will always be there in the background.’

  ‘It always was, for you, Andrew,’ she reminded him gently.

  He gave a sheepish smile. ‘I’d better tell you about it anyway. She was too young and I was too idealistic. We both expected fairy tales and found a grim reality we couldn’t cope with. End of story.’

  She swivelled on the stool until she was facing him. ‘End of story?’

  He shrugged. ‘You’re right. Except for this residue of bitterness and disillusion. That stayed. I’m sorry. I love you, but I’m afraid of trying to make it permanent for us. Can you understand that? Like trying to trap a sunbeam. It’s there till you make a move to hold it then wham, the world is dark.’ He turned his head away. ‘I shouldn’t have led you to expect anything more from me, Jill. I can’t give it.’

  Later they walked, but no longer hand in hand. Somehow it was easier to put their hands in
their pockets as if to ward off a cold wind. At lunch, though, the curious stares directed at their table by their neighbours anxious to know how the quarrel had progressed made them giggle. And suddenly the tension had gone. Jill felt the pressure of his knee against hers beneath the white starched cloth and, meeting his eye, felt her heart leap with relief.

  They spent the afternoon in bed, both resolving drowsily that it would be best to say nothing more as they lay in one another’s arms, realizing, after this their first argument, how fragile a thing love was; how easily it could be destroyed and how doubly precious it was for that reason. And for that brief afternoon and night their love reached a new height of passion and tenderness.

  At King’s Cross the following afternoon Jill knew, however, that things would never be the same again and she cried as she clung to him. ‘Andrew! Oh Andrew!’

  Firmly he unclasped her hands. ‘It won’t be long, love,’ he said, ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  But would he? Desolate she stood on the platform watching the long train snaking into the distance and she realized suddenly that she had not even got round to telling him how she felt about the sea.

  Weeks later she was meeting her brother Ted for lunch. He was tanned and handsome, his hair streaked by three months of Kenya sunshine and she was proud of him as he escorted her to their table. He ordered for them, then he leaned across the cutlery and grinned. ‘I met a friend of yours at Heathrow when I arrived.’

  ‘Oh?’ Unsuspecting she sipped the white wine she had asked for as an aperitif. ‘Who?’

  ‘Andy Hamilton.’

  She became very conscious of the buzz of conversation around them, frozen as she was in a bubble of sudden silence. Cautiously she raised her eyes to Ted’s.

  ‘Oh?’ was all she said.

  ‘Nice chap. I haven’t seen him for years. We had time for a quick drink and he mentioned he’d seen you.’

  ‘Yes?’ Her bleak answer was too quick; too casual.

  He had been in London and he had not told her.

  Ted was preoccupied with the arrival of their order and had not noticed her silence as she watched the waiter shuffling dishes onto the table.

  Taking a deep steadying breath she said, ‘What was he doing at Heathrow then?’

  The plate of crudités gave her something to concentrate on so he could not see her face.

  ‘He was off to some conference, I gather, on the west coast of America. High powered stuff. He won an award three months back for his research. Did you know?’

  No, she didn’t know. How could she? He hadn’t told her.

  The vegetables tasted like wet cardboard in her mouth, but she forced herself to swallow. It wasn’t fair to Ted to spoil their reunion by crying. That she managed to contain in a short interlude in the Ladies’ Room, dabbing her cheeks hard with her handkerchief and wishing it were still the fashion to wear thick concealing face powder. Ted did not look up when she returned. Instead he busied himself with the menu. When he spoke it was so casually she hardly for a moment heard his words.

  ‘I rather gathered he felt he had messed things up with you,’ he said quietly. ‘A pity that. He’s a good bloke, Andy.’

  She found she could not speak.

  He glanced up for a second and seeing her expression, hastily turned back to the menu.

  ‘We all knew he’d made a mistake when he and Katya married. They were much too young. It only lasted about eighteen months, you know.’

  She nodded, conscious that she couldn’t hold the tears back much longer and that she was going to make a fool of herself in public. ‘I didn’t care about her, Ted. I don’t care now.’

  ‘What then?’ This time when he looked up he held her gaze, forcing her to answer.

  She shrugged helplessly. ‘It’s lots of things.’

  ‘You never told him how you felt about the sea?’

  She shook her head. ‘The opportunity never came,’ she whispered.

  Ted frowned. ‘Do you still get the nightmares?’

  ‘No. Not for ages.’ Her knuckles were white around the spoon she held. ‘Anyway, it didn’t matter. I’d have followed him across the Atlantic in a small boat if he’d asked me, Ted. But he never did. I told him I loved him. It was he who went away.’

  ‘I told him about your dreams.’

  She stared. ‘You had no right!’

  ‘I think I did, if your silly phobia came between you. But he said it hadn’t. He said he knew there was something, but you had never talked about yourself. He assumed it was a man.’

  ‘Oh.’ Dully she slumped back in her chair. ‘Is that why he never came back?’

  Ted’s eyes narrowed. ‘He didn’t say. It seems to me you never had a chance, him in Scotland, you in London. Why don’t you go up to see him when he gets back?’

  When he gets back? But how would she know?

  She didn’t want to phone Jerry, it seemed unfair. But he had said ‘call me’ and she was so lonely. He took her to the Chelsea Kitchen and was kinder than she had dared to hope he would be, listening to a story which she knew must hurt him if he still cared for her, yet unable to stop herself once she had started talking.

  “How long is he away for?’ he asked at last, picking unerringly on the most salient question.

  She shook her head helplessly. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Not even a post card?’

  ‘No, nothing. Nothing for months.’

  ‘But it’s still on as far as you’re concerned?’

  She shrugged. ‘How can it be? When he’s so far away.’

  Jerry couldn’t help of course. All he could do was listen and buy another carafe of wine and offer comfort in his own way, taking her in his arms at her front door and kissing her gently on top of the head. ‘Can I come in, Jill?” he asked.

  She shook her head, but the knowledge that he still cared comforted her.

  Later she crossed to her mirror and sat down staring at her face. How was it possible for her to love anyone so much? What strange chemistry had made her yearn for someone like Andrew when Jerry, sweet, kind Jerry who understood her, was there, loving her, waiting in the wings for a word?

  ‘Stupid!’ She said out loud to her reflection. She meant herself; her love; the whole world.

  Three times she started to write letters to Andrew. Three times she tore them into little pieces and threw them out. What anyway was the point? She did not know where he was. His hut by the ocean was, she supposed, empty; perhaps abandoned for ever. She did not even know his parents’ address.

  Her only hope was the inn in the Downs and the anniversary of their first visit a year ago. She clutched at the hope, writing to book the room because she did not have the face to phone with the lie that he would be with her.

  A week before the date the snow began, falling overnight in a blanket on an unresponsive London, muffling the tyres, drifting for a few hours of beauty across the filthy pavements. The news carried hourly reports of the chaos in the country; the smothering and then the blocking of the roads and she knew she had the perfect excuse not to go. She listened to the weather forecasts, half willing the weather to grow worse to make the decision for her, knowing she would not have the resolution not to go.

  She went.

  The countryside was breathtakingly beautiful, the trees bowed down beneath their veil of white, the inn with a wraith of smoke from its chimney scenting the clear blue sky as it nestled into its fold of the Downs.

  She was the only guest to arrive. ‘I’ve put you in your usual room, dear,’ the landlady said comfortably. ‘Your husband coming separately, is he?’ They had signed the register in their two separate names the first time. The next it had been easier just to use Andrew’s.

  The woman’s face was kind and she produced tea and oven-warm scones and slid a hot water bottle into the huge double bed.

  Jill forced herself to smile. ‘I only hope he’s coming,’ she said. ‘He’s flying back from the States and with the weather as it is …’r />
  At least the snow would cover her shame when he did not come.

  She ate in their private parlour by the roaring fire and knew they were trying to cheer her with television and mulled wine while outside the icicles were daggers against the moon. She dreaded going upstairs alone.

  Crawling back at last into the huge lonely bed she hugged the almost cold hot water bottle to her miserably, drawing her chilled feet up till she lay in a tight knot and finally allowed her tears to fell. He wouldn’t come. She had known it all along. Their whole affair had been in her imagination, for him just an interlude to be ended as soon as he had realized she was serious, an encounter in the street that had led to a year of fun; for her a love which would stay with her for the rest of her life.

  The cold dawn was filtering in at the window before she drifted off into an uneasy sleep listening to the sharp cry of an owl hunting over the snow-covered moonlit fields.

  She was awakened by the landlady shaking her shoulders. ‘It’s your husband, my dear. Quickly! He’s come through on our private phone. From America!’

  The fire was out in the parlour and the room looked cold as she picked up the receiver with a shaking hand, her bare feet icy beneath her blue dressing gown. ‘Andrew?’

  ‘Jill. You are there. How are you, darling?’

  Suddenly she couldn’t speak. His voice from so far away sounded as though it were in the next room. ‘I never let myself believe you’d be there,’ he was saying. ‘I told myself to forget you, but I couldn’t. I decided a week ago to phone the inn. If you were there, I’d know you still loved me, if you weren’t …’ He left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘I still love you, Andrew,’ she managed to say at last. ‘I had to come here …’

  ‘Jill? Jill, love, don’t cry. Oh God, I wish I were with you. Listen darling, listen …’

  She could hear his voice repeating her name. Desperately she tried to pull herself together.

  ‘Andrew, about the sea. It’s only a dream I get. It doesn’t matter. I’ll learn to live near it – on it, if you want, I promise …’

  ‘But Jill, that is what I keep trying to tell you!’ There was a crackle on the line and she heard his exclamation of annoyance. ‘Ted told me about your dreams. I’ve had time to think. I’ve been a fool. And, oh so much has happened. Listen, darling, when it comes to it I can’t live without you. I’ve been lost these last few months not knowing where you were or what was happening, not planning another meeting … Listen, Jill. I’ve been offered a research fellowship here in the States. I know we never discussed it, but would you be prepared to live over here –’ his voice faded for a moment and distractedly she held the receiver away from her and shook it.