City Girl in Training

by Liz Fielding

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I see.’ As if I’d just unlocked the secret to my deepest thought processes. Completely betrayed myself. Maybe I had.

  ‘They’ve got a baby Austin on show there. Like the one Don’s restoring. He asked me to go and have a look at it. Send him a picture postcard.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That I sent him a postcard?’

  ‘That you felt guilty.’

  ‘Why? It’s not your fault.’ He had nothing to reproach himself for. Well, maybe he had, but any guilty feelings I might have had weren’t his responsibility. They were one hundred per cent my own. ‘And to be honest I don’t know what I felt.’ Okay, so I was stretching the truth a little, but in a good cause. ‘Confused, mostly.’

  ‘Everything all right, sir?’ The young waiter whisked away our plates, having ascertained that we’d finished. Neither of us had exactly wiped our plates clean.

  ‘Fine,’ Cal said. ‘Thank you.’ There was a lull while the second course was served, our glasses were filled. I regarded the wine with suspicion. Cal saw my look and said, ‘It’s white.’

  ‘Lovely.’ Having insisted on a cocktail, I could hardly remind him that I was sticking to water. But I’d have to be careful. This conversation was going a lot faster than anything I was used to. And I had no experience of dissembling, playing games, sexual teasing. I was conscious of laying myself bare. Exposing myself to the intensity of Cal’s gaze in a way that was far more complex, more revealing than the mere unzipping of a dress. ‘Can I open this now?’ I asked, taking advantage of the break in conversation to pick up the gift he’d bought me.

  He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he let it go. ‘It’s yours,’ he said. ‘Do what you like with it.’

  I tore off the paper, but kept the ribbon safe. I already knew that I’d keep that bow, tucked away somewhere, for the rest of my life. Inside the wrapping was a small flat box that contained a keyring. Hanging from the keyring was a miniature, state-of-the-art attack alarm.

  Not a fun thing like the one my mother had bought, but a serious piece of kit made from the kind of dull black metal that no shoe, even a Callum-McBride-sized shoe, could dent, let alone destroy.

  ‘It’s to replace the one I flattened with my size elevens,’ he said, his thoughts evidently running along the same lines as my own.

  ‘Elevens?’ I lifted my eyebrows. I was getting this whole tiger thing down to a fine art, but it was more than that. I knew I mustn’t let him see how much his gesture meant to me. Or he’d be the one racked with the guilt. ‘I’d have said…bigger.’

  And even in that softly lit, discreet little restaurant I could have sworn that his cheekbones were stained with a darker red. It made me feel powerful and strong and suddenly very much in control.

  ‘Do you think I’m safe with this in an enclosed space?’ I asked as I laid the little keyring beside my plate, my thumb brushing gently over the alarm.

  ‘If you feel threatened, just press the button.’

  I laughed. ‘You like to live dangerously, don’t you?’

  ‘It beats the alternative.’

  ‘How would you know?’ I asked. ‘You’ve been living dangerously ever since you used one of your mother’s best sheets to make a hide and escape your architectural destiny.’

  ‘Unlike you with your safe job, safe boyfriend, safe life?’ He shook his head. ‘Forget I said that. If that’s what you want, who am I to criticise?’

  Did I? Want it?

  ‘I’ve left home, got a terrifying new job, and a pile of smart new clothes to go with it, thank you very much.’ Okay, so the boyfriend needed work, but I thought I was doing pretty well for a little over twenty-four hours into a new life.

  ‘You’re in a flat your mother found for you and you were, by your own admission, seconded to Bartlett’s kicking and screaming. I hate to break it to you, darling, but it takes more than one ruined sheet to escape your destiny.’

  ‘That’s out of the Cal McBride book of homespun philosophy, is it? Very profound.’

  ‘I’m merely making the point that it’s easier to stay with what you have, what you know, than take a leap into the dark.’

  ‘You didn’t. Take the safe option.’

  ‘I came close,’ he admitted. ‘I sold my soul for my cameras, the light meters, lenses, tripod that I begged as birthday and Christmas presents. Sold it with assurances that it was just a hobby. It wouldn’t affect my school work. Easy promises that I’d go to university, qualify as an architect. Join the family firm.’

  ‘Did you mean to keep them?’

  ‘Architecture, especially as the partner of a major firm, is a lot more lucrative than filming pigeons. I knew that. I thought I could live with it, be content making small films in my spare time. I thought I could have it all and for two years I applied myself to becoming the son my parents wanted me to be.’

  ‘What changed?’

  ‘Someone I met at university…’ he looked at me then, as if weighing his words, as if it was important that I understood ‘…someone clever, lovely, talented, was killed in a stupid accident. She slipped on icy steps and broke her neck racing to get to a lecture she didn’t even want to go to. One minute she was full of life, warmth. The next she was dead.’

  ‘I’m so sorry, Cal—’ I wanted to reach out for him, comfort him, but I felt it would have been intrusive. That I didn’t know him well enough for that.

  ‘She was twenty-one—not even your age, Philly—and studying mathematics instead of music to please her father. He’d insisted she shouldn’t waste her fine brain on something as pointless as singing.’ He shook his head. ‘She had a voice that could make you want to laugh, or weep. The world is full of mathematicians…’

  ‘You loved her.’

  He stirred. ‘Perhaps. In that careless way of the young who believe themselves to be immortal. My grief, I suspect, was as much for the loss of that innocence as for her death.’

  He shrugged, but I thought he was playing down his own hurt.

  ‘All I know is that she wasted her gift to fit someone else’s vision of her life and as I stood by her graveside I made her a promise that I wouldn’t do the same.’

  And he reached out and took my hand then, as if he needed me to understand, and I turned it in his, grasping his fingers in mine so that he would know that I did. And, intuitively, I realised something else.

  ‘That’s it, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Your deep secret. The one thing you’ve never told anyone else?’

  ‘Smart, aren’t you?’

  ‘As paint,’ I assured him. Then, because I wasn’t ready to tell him mine, because frankly I didn’t think he’d believe me if I did, especially not after this evening, I said, ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I left university.’

  ‘And no one said a word? You suggested that your mother wasn’t exactly overwhelmed by your career choice and when your sister asked you if you’d seen your family…’ I left it there.

  ‘Okay. There was a major row. My mother suggested I take a year out. Give myself time to get it out of my system. She thought a year as an assistant cameraman on a film crew, out in all weathers, working for someone else instead of pleasing myself, would be enough to dampen my enthusiasm. My father knew better. He knew that if I left university, I’d never go back.’

  ‘He tried to hold you to your promise?’

  ‘He was cleverer than that. He offered me my flat as a gift, just to complete my degree. He asked nothing more than that. Just take my degree, then we’d talk again.’

  ‘Your flat? You mean number seventy-two?’

  ‘He designed the apartment complex.’

  ‘It’s beautiful, Cal.’

  ‘He won an award for it. We McBrides are high achievers.’ He grinned. ‘Of course, being talented helps, and he’s not just talented, he’s clever. The developer got into trouble and Dad bailed him out in return for a share of the real estate. They use the penthouse when they’re in London. Tessa was gi
ven the smaller flat on the floor below us as a wedding present. She and her husband use it as a pied-à-terre when they come down from his estate in Yorkshire. And I was offered number seventy-two in return for giving up all this airy-fairy filming nonsense.’

  Now I was confused. ‘But if you turned him down—’

  ‘I bought it myself when it came on the market a couple of years ago. A declaration that I’d made it in my own way, on my own two feet.’

  I sucked air through my teeth.

  ‘Bad move, you think?’

  ‘Well, you tell me. Did your father knock on your door, shake your hand and say “Well done, son…”?’

  He acknowledged my understanding with the slightest movement of his head. ‘If he did, I must have been out. Clever, talented and stubborn as hell.’

  ‘And you don’t take after him, I suppose?’

  ‘What, me?’ His laughter, I thought, seemed a little forced.

  ‘Don’t let it fester, Cal.’

  ‘I’ve tried—’

  ‘No, you haven’t. You’ve waved your success in his face like a red flag at a bull. You’ve effectively said “See? Here I am and I did it all by myself. I don’t need you.” A little humility would go a long way, don’t you think? Some acknowledgement that you’re the man you are because that’s how he made you. Clever, talented and stubborn as hell.’

  ‘Please, don’t mince your words, Philly. If you think I made a mistake, just say so.’

  ‘You don’t need me to tell you what you’ve done. Just imagine standing by his graveside ten, twenty years from now,’ I said, taking him back to his own moment of truth. ‘Imagine how you’d feel, knowing you could have healed the breach but chose to wrap yourself in pride. That should do it.’ He flinched and I squeezed his hand to let him know I understood that it wasn’t easy. ‘It’ll be Christmas soon,’ I said. ‘It’s a time for big gestures.’

  ‘What are you suggesting? That I have myself gift-wrapped and delivered?’

  I thought I’d said more than enough. Blamed the Woo Woo and a glass of wine. ‘I’d say if you’ve got any ideas along those lines, you should have yourself delivered to me. Unfortunately I’ll be sharing a turkey drumstick with my Great-Aunt Alice this year and I doubt her heart would stand the excitement.’

  My own would be put to the test.

  Then, because I was in grave danger of dying of embarrassment all over again, because I had to say something to fill the apparently endless silence that followed this stupid remark, I retrieved my fingers on the pretext of tucking away a stray curl and said, ‘Lecture over. So, tell me, Cal, who, exactly, is Gorgeous George? And if Jay isn’t your “partner”…’ and I did those quote marks with my fingers ‘…why did he do his best to kill me with a single look?’

  And, having thoroughly changed the subject, I picked up my fork, making a determined assault on my supper and, after a moment, Cal followed suit.

  ‘I leased the flat to George Mathieson while I was in Africa,’ he said. ‘He moved out last week. I imagine he’s your man.’

  ‘Well,’ I persisted, ‘he’s George. But is he gorgeous?’

  ‘He was a terrific tenant.’ I just looked at him. ‘Okay, he’s an actor-stroke-male-model, six foot two, with eyes so blue that contact lenses had to have been involved and cheekbones you could chisel marble with.’

  ‘A simple “yes” would have done.’

  He grinned. ‘You don’t have to worry, Philly. He’s really not my type.’

  ‘No?’ I resisted the urge to ask him to describe his “type” and laughed obediently. ‘And Jay?’

  ‘I really couldn’t speak for Jay. Maybe you should ask his wife.’

  ‘Wife? You mean he’s married?’

  ‘You seem surprised.’

  He was teasing. I was catching on fast. ‘So,’ I said, ‘if he wasn’t jealous, what was his problem this morning?’

  ‘He wanted me to come and take a look at his first cut of the film. I told him I had a previous commitment. One I wasn’t prepared to break.’

  ‘It had nothing to do with the umbrella?’

  ‘He never even mentioned it,’ Cal admitted. ‘I gave him the one you bought this morning and he didn’t notice the difference.’

  ‘But why was he so…’ I dredged my brain for a word that would cover his attitude towards me ‘…tetchy? If he wasn’t being possessive he was being downright rude.’

  ‘It wasn’t personal, Philly. He’s obsessive about his work. He’d been working half the night and he was seriously irritated that I put you before the opportunity to tell him how brilliant he is.’

  I allowed myself a momentary mental whoop at that, then said, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t get it. Why did you go to all that bother choosing a replacement this morning?’

  ‘Well, I had to buy him a new one. The longer I took over choosing it, the longer I could enjoy your company. Putting you in that taxi and letting you go was the hardest thing I’ve done in a long time.’

  I forced myself to concentrate on eating in order to keep the whoops under control.

  ‘Jay distracted me for a moment after your taxi pulled away, banging on his window, furious because I was late, and when I turned back you and your taxi had disappeared. It was as if you’d stepped out of my life and for a moment my heart just stopped—’

  He came abruptly to a halt as if aware he’d betrayed more of his feelings than he’d intended, but the warm glow that spread through me made the restaurant’s heating redundant. I could have walked along the riverside frontage of the apartment without my coat, just as long as Cal was there with his arm in mine.

  ‘It was stupid, I know, but when you didn’t answer my messages I began to imagine every conceivable catastrophe. In the end I cut short the editing session—’

  ‘Oh, thanks. Now Jay really will hate me.’

  ‘No. He’s obsessive, not inhuman. He could see my mind was somewhere else. He told me to go away and sort my life out while he got on with the important stuff.’ I suddenly felt very warm towards the man. ‘I just wanted to see you, reassure myself that you were safe.’

  ‘I’m not a complete idiot, Cal. I can get from point A to point B without someone to hold my hand.’ It was more fun that way, though.

  He lifted his hands in a gesture that looked very much like surrender. ‘I guess I’m the idiot. The truth is I just wanted to see you. Look at you, even though I knew I mustn’t touch.’

  I hadn’t been aware of any reluctance to touch. Or maybe I was just suddenly conscious of how rarely Don touched me. Just reached out to touch my hand, or my face, or my hair…

  ‘Then the lift doors opened and I saw you looking like something out of my wildest dreams, but not for me, not even for your terminally careless boy next door, but just for a night out clubbing with Sophie Harrington and her friends, and I lost my head. That’s why I kissed you. If you were available I wanted you for myself.’

  ‘You could have had me, Cal,’ I pointed out gently.

  ‘And afterwards? You felt guilty about a little flirting. If I’d taken advantage of your…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I was going to say innocence.’ He let the word hang between us for a moment and I thought he’d guessed my secret and I held my breath, afraid that the wrong word or movement would betray me. Then he shook his head. ‘I guess I mean vulnerability.’ Then he lifted his shoulders as if that wasn’t quite right either. ‘You’d have hated me for that, Philly. But nowhere near as much as I’d have hated myself.’

  ‘You asked me why I didn’t return your messages.’ He’d just bared his soul and I could do no less, but it was hard, like stripping myself naked in public. ‘You put me in that cab, then you kissed my cheek.’ I touched the place, still feeling the slight roughness of his chin against my skin. The mingled scent of soap and leather and fresh air. ‘I thought for a moment you were going to stay. That you were going to say to hell with Jay, get in the cab beside me and take things a whole lot further. I
t was madness, I knew it was madness, but I wanted you so much that it was an ache.’

  ‘I wanted to—’

  ‘But you didn’t. You stepped back and turned away even before the cab pulled away from the kerb. And when I turned to look back out of the cab window you were looking up at Jay, hand raised to him, and I felt as if you’d forgotten I existed the minute you shut the door.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘I felt so…jealous. I knew I had no right to feel that way, but I couldn’t help it.’

  I’d been twisting a strand of hair round and round my finger and he caught my hand, stopped me, unravelled the curl. Kept my hand in his.

  ‘So I went to the Science Museum and sat there for a while, looking at the baby Austin and remembered all the evenings, weekends, I’d spent in a cold garage watching Don working on his restoration project. All the evenings and weekends through the years as he’d played with broken-down machines, bringing them back to life.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’ I looked up. ‘Not the museum. The years.’

  ‘Because at ten years old I hero-worshipped him. Because at thirteen I was infatuated with this blond giant. Because he never told me to go away and stop bothering him the way my brothers did. Never tormented me with spiders. Was always kind. Because we were friends. Best friends. Because…’

  I looked into the void. It was a dark and dangerous place with no guarantees. And I stepped into it.

  ‘Because having declared to the entire world at the age of ten that I was going to marry him, it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t.’

  ‘He should never have let you out of his sight.’

  I was beginning to wonder if he’d notice that I’d gone. He might miss the flasks of hot coffee I made for him, the fact that he didn’t have to make any effort to get a life. All he had to do was tag along with me and it happened. And sometimes even that had seemed like an effort when some flange sprocket had needed his attention.

  I’d been spared the tempestuous tears of my sister’s, my friends’, heartbreak dramas, smugly avoiding the relationship lows, safe in my own little make-believe world. But I was only just beginning to discover how much I’d missed out on the highs, too.