Encounters

by Barbara Erskine

  ‘You’d best think about it, Betty. Don’t say anything to the man, till you’ve made up your mind properly.’

  It was four days later that Aggie, weeding by feel among the last blooms on the rose bushes by the garden gate, heard the deep cheery voice of Roddy Mackay above her.

  ‘You’re doing a fine job there, Mistress Cameron. I haven’t seen such a garden in ages.’ She heard her gate click and his step on the gravel path.

  ‘May I have a word with you,’ she heard him go on, his voice suddenly confidential close to her ear.

  ‘Of course you may.’ Aggie turned to him, wiping her earthy fingers on her apron. ‘There’s nothing wrong I hope, Mr Mackay?’

  ‘Nothing indeed, Mistres Cameron, it’s just that I have a wee bit of a problem and I’m no very sure how to solve it.’

  There was a moment of silence. In the warm autumn sunshine, Aggie could hear the wistful song of her robin. He was waiting for the stranger to leave so that he could hop back to the newly turned earth at her feet.

  ‘The thing is, I think I’ve offended Betty Anderson. I’ve been going to see her fairly often, two or three times a week and then last time I went over there I must have said something to upset her. She’s not said a word to me since. When I called yesterday and the day before, she didn’t open the door to me, though I’ve an idea she was in.’ Aggie could hear an aggrieved note slipping into the voice.

  ‘That’s strange,’ she replied very cautiously. ‘I know for a fact she has a great regard for you, Mr Mackay. Can you not think what it is you might have said?’

  He kicked the gravel on her path and she heard him scratch his head noisily. ‘I cannot and that’s a fact. I mentioned to her that maybe her garden could do with a bit of a dig. That could have been it, I suppose. She said she wasn’t strong enough to do it herself now she hadn’t a man to help her. Well, I said, perhaps we could come to an arrangement. It doesn’t do not to have a man to take care of your garden.’ He paused.

  Aggie smiled. ‘There’s no man to take care of mine either.’

  ‘Och woman, but you do fine. You’ve no need of anyone. Betty now, she’s not got the fingers for gardening. Such a fine patch it is, but her flowers are thin and poor and they’re in all the wrong places and she hasn’t a vegetable in the place.’

  Aggie had always suspected as much. ‘I know how you must miss gardening, Mr Mackay, living on that rocky hill yourself. I wonder, did you suggest some kind of permanent arrangement to look after her garden for her?’

  ‘Well, I did and I didn’t.’ He shuffled his feet again. ‘To tell you the truth I told her that I’d be happy to take care of the matter for her, if she’d allow me. Then she went all foolish and giggly and said she’d have to think about it. Silly woman. I know she’s enough money and I’d not charge her over much.’

  Poor Betty. So it was as a gardener he had offered his services, nothing more. In spite of herself Aggie could not hold back a sad little smile.

  ‘Did you mention money, Roddy Mackay?’ she enquired innocently.

  ‘I did not. I thought it should come from her.’

  ‘Do you not think that maybe that’s what embarrassed her?’

  Again he scratched his head. ‘Has she no money then?’

  Aggie saw her chance. ‘Aye, she’s got money. She’s got a fair bit tucked away and of course there’s the house that’s worth a lot too, with that good land. But can you no see man, it’s an insult for a bonnie woman like Betty Anderson to have to pay a man to work in her garden. There are many as would do it for nothing.’ She paused, waiting for a reaction.

  ‘Are there so?’ He was pondering.

  ‘There are indeed. I know for a fact she would rather you were the one to help her and she knows how you love the garden but there she is, widowed, healthy, lonely.’ Aggie emphasized each word carefully. ‘It’s my opinion she needs a man to look after her, Roddy Mackay. The garden is only one of the things that need taking care of.’

  She broke off a stray tendril of weed and twiddled it between her fingers.

  ‘She’s wealthy, you say?’

  ‘Aye, she is that.’

  ‘And there are men, shall we say, courting her?

  ‘There are a few more than a wee bit interested.’ Aggie smiled to herself.

  ‘Is that so?’ Roddy Mackay’s voice was thoughtful again. ‘Well, I’m glad I had this wee chat with you, Mistress Cameron. Will you mind and not say a word to Betty about this please?’ The gate clicked open. ‘I’ll come and have another word with her this evening.’

  Aggie stood and listened to his footsteps as he walked purposefully down the lane. Then she bent once more to her roses.

  The next morning Betty Anderson knocked on her door as Aggie was washing up her egg cup and plate.

  ‘You know what I told you the other day, hen, about Roddy Mackay asking me to marry him? She was breathless with excitement.

  Aggie nodded quietly and began to dry a knife.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t sure what to do and so after I talked to you I thought I’d follow your advice and do nothing, to give myself the chance to decide, you understand and I avoided him, and I even hid behind the curtain when he knocked on the door.’ She giggled excitedly. ‘Well, last night he came over again. Straight in he came, without knocking even, with a great box of chocolates. He fair swept me off my feet. He said he thought I’d probably misunderstood his intentions, and that I should know he meant to make an honourable proposal. Oh, Aggie, he declared himself really well.’ She stopped and waited expectantly.

  ‘And what did you say, Betty?’

  ‘Oh, I said yes. Och, Aggie, he’s a really fine man!’

  Aggie nodded thoughtfully and put away the last of her china. ‘So will you be going to live up at Craigbeg now?’

  ‘No, he says he’d like us to go on living here. He likes the garden, you know. It’s always been his great weakness, gardening and there’s no land worth the name at Craigbeg, he says.’

  Aggie took down her tea caddy. ‘Will you take a cup now you’re here, Betty, to celebrate? When will the great day be?’

  ‘Oh, soon, soon.’ Betty was ecstatic. ‘He said he’d bring down his gardening things in the van this week. He’s no real use for them up there and he can make a start on the beds, he said.’ She giggled coyly.

  That evening Aggie sat down at her telephone and carefully dialled her niece’s number.

  ‘Is that you, Alison? Now listen. The cottage you liked so much at Craigbeg, I happen to know that it’s coming on the market fairly soon. You’d be wise to make an offer at once.’

  ‘But he said he’d never shift.’ Alison’s voice on the phone was indignantly puzzled.

  ‘Well, something’s happened to change his mind,’ said her aunt quietly. ‘He decided he couldn’t live without a garden.’ Smiling to herself contentedly, she hung up.

  Spaces

  The front door clicked behind her and she was outside in the quiet street. Above her the stars were crackling with frost as she walked resolutely into the darkness.

  ‘You won’t be too late, Faye?’ Marta had said anxiously as Faye shrugged on her coat and Faye had turned to look at her, her eyes vague as she frowned, trying to listen.

  ‘Don’t wait up. I’ve got a key,’ she managed to say as she groped for the door handle.

  Outside she paused. Those were more or less the very words that Paul had used. She had not waited up but he had not used his key; not until three days later when he returned, collected a suitcase and packed nearly all his things.

  ‘It’s not working, Faye,’ he said gently as she watched, too frozen to protest or to cry out. ‘Better this way. We both need space to think.’

  Space: the enormous, echoing emptiness which was the flat; the cold silence inside her heart; the beating of her quiet pillow against her ear drums.

  In the end she had gone to Marta who knew the whole story and only then did she cry. At home she had not dared. Marta, always uneasy
with emotion, resorted to practicality and made hot whisky and lemon and looked for her aspirin. Love at its nadir is a lot like flu. One aches; one cannot bear to be touched; one shivers and longs for death.

  ‘But it will pass, you know it will,’ Marta whispered kindly as she tucked her into the spare bed and Faye wondered briefly if her friend was after all a little glad it had happened.

  But now time had passed and she had thrown off the initial fever of misery. Her need was to be alone with the dull ache which had stayed with her.

  In front of her the road led curving up the hill, the pale street lights flickering in the sharpness of the air. There were fewer of them now. Soon there would be none. She walked steadily, listening to the echo of her own footsteps and, in her head, to the echo of her life with Paul.

  They had met in the dark; in a garden, escaping the heat of a noisy party where the disco threatened to bring down the walls and the smell of the wine cup and the cigarettes and the reefers sent waves of nausea across her shoulder blades.

  ‘Too much for you?’ the voice had said softly as she leaned against the moss-covered wall and breathed the scented silence.

  He had materialized out of the shadows, a tall thin silhouette, slightly stooped at the shoulders and he stood several feet from her. There had been a long relaxed silence before they felt the need to speak.

  She had not asked his name and only later, separated by a surge of dancers who spilled out of the french windows to the terrace and across the grass in a flood tide, did she realize she had not even really seen his face and she knew herself bereft.

  It did not matter. He found her once more with calm certainty, took her hand and guided her over the gravel drive, through the parked cars, to her own which was up on the grass. Only in the pale interior lights as they opened the door did she at last see his face.

  Weeks passed. At first he would not move in. ‘You must be sure,’ he said quietly. But the touch of his hands on hers and the touch of his lips left no possibility of doubt. She had fallen headlong through love to infatuation and worship.

  It worried Paul. ‘No one should love another person like this,’ he said, holding her face between cupped hands, looking at her as if he wanted to memorize every detail. ‘It is not right; the gods will become jealous as they did in stories.’

  She did not believe him. She had laughed at first, secure in her shield of certainty and at last so was he, taking her in his arms and burying his face in her hair.

  It was not as though she were a starry-eyed teenager. She held a responsible job; people relied on her judgement and skill. She had to be strong. But how, when her heart began to pound uncomfortably and her mouth went dry the moment he entered the room and all she wanted was to go down on her knees and serve him? Watching herself, her joy turned to apprehension and a strange amorphous dread.

  She told Marta in despair and Marta stared at her.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Faye! You are the one who went to the Equal Rights Commission to win your promotion! You can’t let yourself down like this. You can’t let us down.’ She brought their coffee and sat opposite Faye, her pale face earnest and affectionate. ‘You know as well as I do that it’s only chemistry! Rationalize things. It’s the urge to procreate and that’s the last thing you want to do, for God’s sake.’

  She looked hard at Faye for a moment then passed her a cup. ‘I bet his work isn’t suffering,’ she said softly.

  Faye coloured in indignation. ‘My work isn’t suffering!’

  ‘Not yet. But you are. You are being torn in two. And why? You’ve got him. You’re not fighting a jealous rival, are you? He loves you from what I gather. Why the hassle? You were so happy at the beginning.’ She shook two sweeteners into the palm of her hand and glared at them before tossing them into her cup.

  Faye lay back in her chair and closed her eyes.

  ‘But he won’t marry me.’

  ‘Oh Faye, come on. Since when did you want to marry?’ Marta slid forward to kneel on the floor and put her hand on Faye’s knee. ‘What has happened to independent womanhood? Independent equals un-dependent, remember?’

  Faye gave a small shrug. ‘That was before.’

  ‘You really are in a bad way!’ Almost admiringly Marta folded her arms and stared. ‘There’s no point in chaining yourself to the railings outside your front door and picketing him then?’

  Faye laughed. ‘No point at all. I’m a lost cause!’

  ‘But you’re frightened of him!’

  There was a long pause. Then at last Faye raised her eyes and looked at her directly. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘I’m frightened of myself.’

  The gods were jealous of course and one by one they began to load the dice. Little things at first, like working overtime – first Paul, then Faye. They tried not to mind.

  ‘We both need an evening to wash our hair,’ he said, teasing. But she knew his assistant was eager and beautiful and she sat watching the hands of the clock tick round till midnight, eaten up with anguish, unable to understand her own reactions. What had she to be afraid of? He had eyes, she knew, for no one else. Never before had she felt like this; she was vulnerable and scared; a little girl lost in the dark, groping for the hand which had been holding hers until it was wrenched away.

  When her night to work late at the office came she sat at her desk, her eyes on the dark rain-streaked windows and thought of him at home, bored and lonely, and she had to stay an hour longer than she intended, just to correct what her straying thoughts had set wrong.

  Then they were both at home again and it was daylight and as the sun shone she felt happy and reassured. The shadows belonged only to the lonely darkness, she thought.

  It was her own mother who brought that darkness back, arriving with her matching Gucci suitcases and her aura of Givenchy to spend the weekend.

  ‘Good heavens, but it’s Paul Sandford!’ she said. ‘I remember you from when you were so high! But surely, you were married to Josephine Stapleton?’

  ‘It didn’t matter any more. That is why I didn’t tell you,’ he kept repeating, later. ‘It is as though it had never been. We’ve been divorced for five years, Faye. She is of so little importance I had all but forgotten her. Besides, I didn’t know you’d care.’

  And she had thought they could read each other’s souls!

  They made it up of course, but the scar tissue was tender. The slightest touch was going to leave it raw and bleeding.

  Spring turned to summer. As her nerves drew taut her body became thin and circles of exhaustion appeared beneath her eyes.

  Paul traced them with a gentle finger. ‘You’re wearing yourself out,’ he said. ‘I can’t let it go on. For both our sakes.’

  But he did. No more than she could he tear himself from her. They clung to one another, fending off the intrusions of the world which seemed to have become hostile and intent on hurting them. Once or twice at a weekend he pulled the curtains and drew her back into bed, knowing the front door was bolted and they would lie there tensely in each other’s arms listening to the knocking of their friends.

  The first autumn gales sent leaves cartwheeling down the gutters and they went away together for a week. By the sea, with its relentless grey pounding, like the beating of a heart, Faye felt a little reassured, as she did in the almost empty guesthouse where the landlady hid her curiosity beneath a layer of professional uninterest. Paul had agreed to call her his wife for that week only; for the sake of the good lady’s susceptibilities and Faye clung to the pretence, letting it salve her wounds and gently fingertip soothe away the circles beneath her eyes.

  The shingle beach tired their legs and the wind whipped colour into their cheeks and they both began to eat again, slowly savouring the food.

  ‘I wish we could stay here for ever,’ she whispered, her head on his chest as they listened in the dark to the metronome sea through the open window. ‘Those gods of yours couldn’t reach us here.’

  His arms tightened momentarily as h
e stared up at the ceiling. The tiny pattern on the wallpaper had faded to a dusky shadow crossed by the black framework of the beams. It hung over them like a trap about to fall.

  He could feel the prickle of icy perspiration in the small of his back suddenly; the terror as he counted the days they had left.

  ‘What is it, Paul?’ she had raised her head and was looking at him, though she couldn’t see him clearly. He clung to her, drawing her head down so she couldn’t guess at his tears.

  ‘Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing,’ he murmured.

  It had come between them for so long he had thought he could live with it for ever. Knowing that it was too late to speak he had kept silent. He had thought their love strong enough to smother his pain. But the unspoken truth inside him had grown and festered and had bred this claustrophobia which surrounded them. This was the cause of Faye’s apprehension, though she could not know it and for Faye’s sake it could not continue. The barrier between them had grown too high.

  He told her when their train reached London, in the railway café over cups of grey coffee.

  ‘When I divorced Josephine it wasn’t just that it had never worked; it was so I could marry again. Her name was Clare. I thought I loved her, but I never really knew what love was, Faye, till I met you. You must believe me. She left me after a few months when we both realized what a mistake I’d made and I never saw her from that day on. I kept it from you because I thought I’d lose you. Because I lied to you … Because I love you …’

  He did not look at her; did not watch as she stood up and walked numbly through the swing door and out onto the teeming concourse of the station.

  When she got back to the flat at last it was after eleven. He was there, sitting in the darkness, his head cradled in his arms on the edge of the sofa. She turned on the light and stood looking down at him.

  It had taken so long to find out what was wrong between them that for a while she had not realized that at last the problem was lying there in the open, naked, like the canker in a split apple. There had been no trust between them. Ever. He had not trusted her with the truth. She perhaps sensing it had not trusted him at all.