My newly acquired cynicism obviously didn’t run terribly deeply yet, because I had to dab a sentimental tear or two from my eyes. When I looked up his face was unreadable but he said, lightly enough, ‘So you see, I know what it is to love and be loved. I don’t expect I will strike that lucky again, but it doesn’t stop me hoping.’
He sounded insouciant enough about it, but I did wonder if he was more involved with the beautiful, if seriously unfaithful Anji than he was making out.
I sighed. ‘Libby says I never fell in love with Ben properly: we were too young. I was only just thirteen when we met and he was a year older and—well, it was like meeting the other half of myself, somehow. I knew—we both knew—it would be for ever. Or I thought it would be for ever.’
‘If you’d been together ever since and he never had a chance to sow his wild oats, I suppose it does partly explain why he went off the rails when another woman showed an interest in him,’ Noah suggested.
‘Libby said that too, and that if I played my cards right I could get him back. Which I could, except that I don’t want him any more. I’ve done with love, and anyway, he wouldn’t be the Ben I thought he was, would he? He’s changed. And I haven’t changed, which might have been the problem. He seems to have told everyone I was emotionally needy, so that I’ve started to wonder if it is true!’
‘I don’t think you’re emotionally needy,’ Noah commented. ‘In fact, I thought at the wedding you were the most serene woman I’d ever met. Which is why, I suppose, I believed you weren’t motivated by being on the rebound when you lured me into your bed, you little siren.’
‘I did not lure you!’ I exclaimed indignantly.
‘OK, dragged me, not unwillingly, into bed. I was by no means as drunk as you were, even if the peapod stuff had gone to my brain a little. I just couldn’t resist you. You’re very beautiful, even if you don’t seem to know it.’
‘Me?’ I went red. ‘Rubbish! Libby’s the beautiful one.’
‘Libby’s pretty—but you, in your own, unusual way, are quite lovely. But then you go and hide it most of the time with ghastly clothes like the ones you’re wearing now,’ he added.
‘Pansy Grace knitted this jumper for me specially, and I love it!’ I said indignantly.
‘Did she have to put pom-poms on the hood and ties? You look like a mad elf.’
‘It doesn’t matter what you think. I’m not dressing to please you—’
‘Or anyone else,’ he interrupted.
‘There you are, then. It’s because I don’t want to attract any more men…though actually it doesn’t seem to have put Rob Rafferty off because—’ I stopped dead and blushed furiously again.
‘You’ve been out with Rob Rafferty since I saw you last?’ Noah asked incredulously.
‘Only once.’
‘Oh?’ He eyed me thoughtfully. ‘Maybe I got you wrong. I hope he was a cathartic experience too?’
‘It was nothing like that at all,’ I snapped. ‘Just a drink in a wine bar with the cast of Cotton Common. I told you, I’ve given up on men—and I never thought I’d ever end up discussing aspects of love with you, Noah Sephton!’
‘Why not? It’s what all my exhibitions are about, love in its various forms. My next one will be about weddings—the triumph of optimism over intelligence.’
‘But you said you still believe in true love, even if you don’t really expect to be struck by the same bolt of lightning twice yourself—while I’m not convinced it really exists at all any more.’
‘It’s true I don’t expect something that good to come round twice. So,’ he shrugged, ‘I take what I can get.’
‘I’m not going to be anyone’s second best—not Ben’s, or yours, or anyone else’s. I’ll just quietly live my life alone from now on.’
‘And lonely?’
‘Not at all. I have my uncle Harry, Libby and all my friends. And I might get a cavalier King Charles spaniel puppy one of these days, for company.’ Then somehow I found myself telling him about Freddie of the Ponderosa Kennels, and her doggy wedding arrangements. I knew he would appreciate it.
‘I don’t think a puppy is quite the same as a lover,’ Noah said finally, unconvinced by my arguments, ‘but since we both know where we stand now, could we be friends, do you think?’
‘Maybe,’ I agreed cautiously.
‘With the proviso that if you ever feel the need of another cathartic moment, I’m your man for the job?’ That teasing glint was back in his grey eyes.
He stood up, his dark head not quite brushing the wooden rack overhead. Ben was forever knocking into it…had been forever knocking into it.
‘Take some of those mince pies back for Libby. If she intends getting pregnant one day, she’ll find it easier if she isn’t practically anorexic,’ I said absently, thinking that Noah’s handsomeness lay not so much in any one individual feature, but deep in the fine bones of his beautifully shaped head…
‘Is Libby trying to get pregnant?’
‘What?’ Then, guiltily, I realised what I’d just said. ‘Forget that. It just popped out,’ I urged him. ‘I hope she doesn’t try for ages yet. She and Tim should have a bit of time together first.’
And I should really do something about contacting Gloria and putting my mind at rest before it got that far, stupid though I knew my suspicions were. In fact, I wouldn’t put it off till after Christmas; I’d do it tomorrow, if I could catch Gloria instead of Daisy.
‘I’d love her to have children eventually, of course, so I can be a pretend auntie again. I’m Pia’s godmother, you know. I can’t have children myself, you see. It’s another thing that really hurt about Ben—that Olivia should be the one to get pregnant.’
‘I’m sorry. I regret not having them too,’ Noah said sympathetically, and I smiled at him.
‘You know, you’re the strangest man! Not a bit the way I imagined you were. Well, actually I suppose you are, really, only your motivation is different.’
‘So is yours, and I warn you that I’m still no angel—but then, even angels want to singe their wings occasionally, don’t they, Josie?’
I turned away, on the pretext of finding a tin for the mince pies. ‘I thought we weren’t going to mention that night again?’
‘Yes, but it’s a bit irresistible teasing you sometimes, darling. But if you like, I promise I’ll only do it when we’re alone.’
‘After Christmas, that will probably be never.’
‘Never say never again,’ he replied. ‘Look, I’d better go. Gina’s whipping up some special pasta dish for dinner that she’s convinced is my favourite, though anything she cooks is fine by me.’
I handed him the mince pies and saw him out, and if his parting kiss landed right on my lips in a more than friendly way, I didn’t fend him off. I didn’t encourage him either.
‘Ciao!’ he said, and sauntered off, the big, battered red cake tin rather spoiling the soigné effect.
I stared absently after his elegant back as he passed beyond the streetlights and vanished up the lane towards the gatehouse, then was just about to go in again when a familiar figure the approximate size of a grizzly bear moved from the darkness at the side of the house.
‘Ben?’ I called. ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes.’ He walked slowly into the circle of light cast by the lamp over the door, and I could see he was in one of his rare fits of rage by the way he was clenching and unclenching his hands.
‘Russell rang me up to say he’d called in to see you on the way somewhere or other, and caught you with another man, and I didn’t believe him. But it’s true, Josie, isn’t it?’ He laughed shortly. ‘All that about how betrayed and hurt you were, when in reality I was hardly gone five minutes before someone else had taken my place.’
I opened my mouth to rebut the allegation, then realised that actually that was exactly what I had done!
‘You’re not denying it, I notice,’ he said, moving meancingly closer, and I edged back, ready to whisk inside a
nd slam the door.
I found my voice. ‘Is there any point in my telling you that Russell is the one who thought I would welcome him into my bed if he turned up here?’
‘No,’ he said uncompromisingly. ‘Russell said it was Noah Sephton he caught you with, of all people—and I saw him kiss you myself, so I know he was telling the truth.’
‘It was just a friendly kiss. He’s a friend of Libby’s and I like him.’
‘Yes, bloody friendly!’
‘Look, he only dropped in for a chat and a cup of tea, not anything else—and it was lucky he did, because he was just in time to rescue me from Russell.’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ he bellowed, grabbing my shoulders and giving me a shake, his fingers digging in, painfully.
‘Why not? Isn’t that what you’ve been doing to me for months!’ I yelled back. ‘And whatever I choose to do now is none of your business, so let me go!’
He opened his hands and I fell back against the doorframe. ‘I loved you,’ he said flatly. ‘You were always my girl. You never even looked at anyone else.’
‘I looked at Rufus Sewell quite a bit on the TV,’ I said, with a mistimed attempt to lighten things, but it didn’t seem to register.
‘Tell me truthfully, Josie, did you sleep with him?’
I’ve never been great at lying. My throat closed up and I froze to the spot, just looking at him. After a moment he pushed his fists down into his jacket pockets, as though afraid he might hit me, and strode off.
To add that final wonderful touch to the day, Mary called me, quite hysterical, and demanded to know if Russell was there with me. I was happy to assure her he wasn’t, but I’m not sure she believed me.
She hadn’t known about all the late night phone calls until she saw the phone bill and put two and two together and now accused me of encouraging him to call me and trying to entice her husband away. There was no reasoning with her and I thought Russell deserved everything he would get when he finally arrived home.
I was totally drained after this, absolutely reeling. I certainly didn’t need alcohol or anything else to send me to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-three
The Family Way
My friend has decked her new home with swags and swathes of greenery from the grounds and installed a huge, colour coordinated tree, like something out of Ideal Home magazine.
Decorating the tree is another thing I have left to the last minute this year, and in any case, my approach is slightly different. I have inherited an ancient artificial tree, made of twisted wire and shiny, thin green paper that has gold cord from long-eaten chocolates still tangled among the fronds. The decorations are equally old and several have been carefully repaired, while some of the tinsel strands are bald in places—but no matter, once the tree is finished it always looks beautiful.
‘Cakes and Ale’
The days when I opened my eyes on a new dawn with the optimistic expectation of a busy and happy day before me seemed long gone, but next morning was worse than usual.
I suppose that was hardly surprising, given the events of the previous evening. And perhaps some part of me had secretly been nurturing a tiny flame of hope that I would one day awake to find everything suddenly switched back to how it used to be, with Ben shaking me and saying, ‘Wake up, darling—you’re having a nightmare!’
He certainly shook me the previous night, just not in a good way. And now he knew that I’d been unfaithful too…though can you be unfaithful if you’re not any longer with your partner? I mean, there was a slight difference between what he did and my actions, wasn’t there?
Things didn’t get any better when Harry came in with Mac, and confessed that he’d had an argument with Ben the previous night too! Ben had gone to the Griffin, got drunk and then started calling me a tart (a case of the pot calling the kettle black) until Harry offered to fight him. When you consider that he’s half Ben’s size and in his eighties, that was brave but a little rash, though of course I knew that however drunk he was, Ben would never hurt Harry.
Mind you, I never thought he’d hurt me either, but he’d come perilously close to it the previous night.
Harry had sprung to my defence, though I was, if not a tart, then certainly guilty of a bit of drunken wantonness, and the ready tears sprang to my eyes. ‘Thanks, Harry—but I’m really not worth fighting over.’
‘Nay, lass, don’t cry—of course you are. I can’t think what got into him.’
So then I had to explain about Russell turning up on the doorstep with a lot of misguided assumptions, and Noah calling in, perfectly innocently, in the nick of time to save me from a serious affront to my dignity, if nothing worse.
‘I was trying to bang some sense into Russell’s head with a baking tray at the time, so I was pleased to see him. But then Russell leaped to some ridiculous idea that Noah and I were having an affair, and he rang Ben’s mobile and told him.’
‘Russell mustn’t have known he was up here staying with your friends, Josie. He wouldn’t have tried it on, otherwise.’
‘No, but he managed to make his visit sound innocent and Noah’s not, which was the opposite to how it really was, and so Ben rushed down just in time to see Noah kiss me goodbye on the doorstep—you know what Londoners are, forever kissing each other.’
Harry nodded. ‘They’re getting worse than the French for that. A lot of sloppy ducks, they are.’
‘So when Ben saw that, he thought Russell was right and got mad.’
‘He should have known you better than to think that of you—and there was no call to go badmouthing you in the Griffin either.’
‘No,’ I said a bit guiltily. ‘I expect it will be all over the village now.’
‘No one will believe it,’ Harry assured me. ‘They’ll see it was all jealousy and he was roaring drunk. The landlord threw him out and I saw that Mark and Stella come in a Land Rover and drive him away.’
I hoped he was right about no one believing it, but that didn’t stop me feeling I had a big H for Harlot written across my forehead when I took Mac out for a walk later, especially when I bumped into Mrs Talkalot from the post office, and she asked me some probing questions about an intriguing rumour that had reached her ears of Rob Rafferty being seen on my doorstep…
I’d put it off until the last moment, but I was just climbing down from the loft with the box containing the Christmas tree and decorations, when the phone rang, so I was a bit breathless by the time I’d galloped downstairs.
‘Josie?’ Olivia’s brittle voice held an ominous note of triumph. ‘I just wanted to thank you for turning out to be such a slut that Ben came straight back here and proposed! Now we’re getting married in early January and his parents are delighted! And aren’t you the dark horse—Noah Sephton, of all people! Of course, it won’t last, I can’t imagine what—’
I slammed down the phone before she could add anything else. I thought they deserved each other! I didn’t suppose Olivia had quite grasped yet what it was like to live full time with an artist like Ben, who always thought of his work and himself in relation to it, before anything or anyone else. Far from sustaining an ideal environment for him to create in, like I had done, she probably expected him to fit in with her London life.
But somehow this wasn’t much consolation and I felt so full of furious energy that I decided I might as well burn it off in a useful manner by chopping more logs, though I put my gloves on this time. I still had blisters from the last session.
It was very therapeutic, though I was tiring by the time Noah suddenly leaned over the gate behind me and volunteered to carry on.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked doubtfully, because I didn’t think he would make much of a go of it. ‘It’s pretty hard on the hands if you’re not used to it.’
Actually, it’s pretty hard on everything if you’re not used to it!
‘I’ve got gloves in my pocket,’ he said, giving me my empty red cake tin, which I supposed was the reason why he’d come. He hung his pa
dded down jacket on the corner of the wood shed and at least he was wearing jeans and sweatshirt this time, even if he did still manage to look elegant in them.
I watched him critically and discovered to my surprise that while he might be a slightly built townie, he did seem to know what to do with a wood axe. It’s all in the rhythm…and he has lots of that. I sat on a big log and watched, and so did Aggie, who had escaped yet again and was peeping round the corner.
I’d obviously got him on his mettle, because it was ages before he stopped for a breather and to drink the mug of tea I’d made him.
While I was crumbling bits of ginger biscuit for Aggie, he said he’d remembered my description of Freddie’s wedding tomorrow and wangled an invitation, and he offered to drive me there.
‘How did you manage that?’ I demanded, amazed.
‘Dorrie knows her, so I rang up and told her I was a photographer and offered to take some pictures for free, if she agreed to let me use some for my next exhibition. You said it was a low-key wedding, so I thought she might not have a professional wedding photographer booked.’
‘No, I’m sure she said one of the kennel maids was going to take pictures. I don’t think either she or the bridegroom has a lot of spare cash.’
‘So, since we’re both going, I might as well pick you up about ten,’ he suggested, and I agreed. You mightn’t think I’d be in the mood for a wedding after Olivia’s little bombshell, but I did want to see the spaniel guard of honour and what everyone thought of my cake. And the idea of a wedding still, somehow, cheered me up, and probably always would, however illogical that was. I hoped Freddie and her colonel hadn’t economised on bells…
Harry came out after a while and, after peering shortsightedly at Aggie, scooped her up under his arm.
Noah paused again, to mop his face and be introduced.
‘How do?’ Harry said, favouring him with a rheumy, thoughtful gaze from under his hat brim, so I expect he remembered that Noah was the subject of Ben’s jealous rage. ‘Saw you at Libby’s wedding, didn’t I?’
Wedding Tiers Page 26
