by Nick Louth
However, when she emerged Wyrecliffe knew it had been worthwhile.
‘How do I look?’ she asked.
‘Fabulous. Like an exotic princess,’ he said. She beamed.
‘Isn’t she just the most gorgeous creature, Sir?’ the assistant said. ‘Just the hair and make-up now. We’ve an in-house hairdresser ’
‘It starts in half an hour, and I’m supposed to be there already!’
‘Sorry,’ Cantara said. ‘I’m trying to be quick.’
He couldn’t be angry. It wasn’t her fault, she’d had almost no time. ‘Look,’ he said, shrugging the purchases in his arms. ‘I’ll settle the bill as is. Here’s a hundred in cash for the rest, the taxi and whatever. Ask for the Royal Opera House, don’t arrive more than thirty minutes late because we’ll be seated couple by couple.
‘Oh, how exciting,’ trilled the assistant, turning to Cantara after Wyrecliffe had gone. ‘My father never took me to anything so glamorous.’
‘Nor mine,’ she responded. ‘I grew up in a refugee camp in Lebanon!’
‘Oh my word,’ said the woman, covering both surprises well. ‘Well, Cinderella, you shall go to the ball!’
* * *
Cantara had never in her life seen anything like the gilded aristocrats who sailed serenely into the opera house from an endless fleet of taxis. She waited in an informal queue with bejewelled dowagers and leonine gentleman in evening jackets as a discreet security check was made. Her lack of an invitation card caused only a slight stir. Wyrecliffe was paged on the PA, and came to get her by the cloakroom, where she had followed the cue of others and deposited her new pashmina. He smiled and winked at her and told her how wonderful she looked. He looked slightly quizzically at the key, her grandfather’s key to his old house in Jaffa, that she wore around her neck on a string of beads she had made as a child. He looked into her face, saw her set jaw which expressed her determination to make this statement, and then smiled.
Almost immediately, and before they had a chance to exchange another word, she was caught up in a throng of Chris’s admirers, who clucked and cooed admiringly over the girl from the camps, and my, how well she had done. And what was this key? She had tried to catch Chris’s eye, but instead an elderly gent with a kind face and hands as white and crinkled as parchment introduced himself as Sir Neville something. He took her elbow and asked which was her favourite opera. Expressing mock horror that this heavenly medium was unknown to her, he proceeded to explain overtures, arias and the joy of Sutherland, Domingo and Callas.
She laughed gently at this dashing gent, while he deftly snagged a glass from the tray of a passing waiter and gallantly offered it to her. ‘Every pretty girl deserves champagne.’
Cantara took a sip of the enticing fizz, gasping at the bubbles which went up her nose and the astringent subtlety of its flavour. ‘Nice?’ said Sir Neville. ‘But don’t have too much.’ He looked over Cantara’s shoulder and announced ‘Ah, enemy vessel ahoy. Must be going. Have fun!’
A large matron with a vast shelf of wrinkled bosom steamed past, tucked Sir Neville closely under her fleshy arm and steered him efficiently away. He looked back at Cantara and gave a brief wave, which she laughingly returned. Soon, they were being ushered into the ballroom, under the soaring cantilevered roof decked with glittering chandeliers. The dozens of white-linened round tables were laid out with flowers and places for a dozen guests. Each place setting had six sets of cutlery and several glasses, winking motes of light reflected in all directions. Someone seemed to have topped up her champagne. She lifted the glass to her lips.
‘There’s a first time for everything then?’ Wyrecliffe said, his eyebrows raised as she sipped.
Cantara giggled. ‘It’s much nicer than I expected.’
‘Go easy on it. There’s wine at every course,’ he warned, as they sat down.
The waiter arrived with the first course, a huge white plate with a perfect pink shrimp in a splash of yellow sauce at its centre and some herb cuttings. ‘Look at this poor lonely thing,’ Cantara said.
‘Best put him out of his misery,’ Wyrecliffe said, popping his own into his mouth.
Cantara watched others, and saw how they started eating using the outermost utensils. In the camps, she hadn’t really used cutlery except for cooking. Bread was there for soaking up juices, for wrapping around meat and vegetables, and there were always fingers. All this carefully choreographed etiquette was absurd and fussy, though the flavours of the food were amazing. When the second dish arrived, a small fish in a cunningly constructed basket made of parsnip shavings, she had to fight the desire to pick it up with her fingers, just to see the reaction. Someone had topped up a large glass in front of her with white wine, even though she still had champagne left.
She watched Chris, unbearably handsome with his neat beard framing his smile, a crisp white shirt and sleek jacket. He winked at her and brought his lips deliciously close to her ear. ‘Just sip it,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t try to drink it all. You’ll be on the floor before dessert. I’ll get them to bring you some water.’
‘I feel fine,’ Cantara declared, rather louder than she expected.
‘You do now,’ he muttered. ‘You might not later. Trust me on this.’
Two beautiful sisters took to the stage, and sang an impossibly moving duet, though Cantara couldn’t follow a single word. But her heart pulsed with the trilling voices, and the singers’ graceful arm movements. She thought that she hadn’t ever been so happy. Tears started to slide down her face, and she looked admiringly at Chris, who was caught up in a whispered conversation with an elderly lady on his right. Opposite her an extraordinarily graceful dame with a long neck and sloping shoulders smiled at her in sympathy. The woman was wearing a sparkling tiara, which made her look like a queen, and had the palest skin she had ever seen, even amongst the English. She nodded at Cantara, and mimed the dabbing of eyes, subtly indicating that a handkerchief might perhaps be found in a sleeve or handbag.
More food came, more music and more wine. Cantara now had five half-filled glasses in front of her: a champagne flute, red wine, white wine, fizzy water, and some water ice which had been described by Chris as a ‘palate cleanser’ between courses. On her left, three guests, a voluble blonde woman and the men to either side, were engaged in a sharp debate about Palestine. Part of her wanted to intervene, but something about the academic tone of the debate fascinated her, and she didn’t want to fracture it. As she listened it was clear that they all seemed to have read so much, and were bristling with facts. They knew the populations of the refugee camps, and what the UNHCR had said in its latest report, and they each had opinions of the political stance of the United States, the Israeli cabinet, and various Lebanese factions. Yet it was equally clear that none of them had ever lived even for a day, even for an hour, as a refugee. Without that sense of loss, of a real home and a real homeland nowhere but in your memories and in your dreams, you couldn’t begin to really understand what being a refugee meant.
The discussion was interrupted by a speech. A white-haired man exuding bonhomie and wit introduced the next music, a solo cello sonata by Bach, and led the applause as a tiny Chinese lady in a floaty dress tottered onto the stage in high heels. She sat and with some rather jerky and nervous movements manipulated the heavy wooden instrument until it rested between her knees. She then closed her eyes, not even looking at the music stand. From the very first majestic drawing of the bow, a deep, sonorous and plaintive cry sobbed from the cello. No words, but every expression, every human sadness and hope were lovingly enfolded in those tremulous sounds. Cantara’s heart was in her throat. All the loss and the pain she had ever felt floated up with the sounds high up into the hall.
‘Are you alright?’ Chris whispered to her, pressing a clean cotton handkerchief to her hand. In reaching for it, she knocked a glass of red wine, but Chris deftly caught it, and only a small maroon splash sullied the tablecloth.
‘Oh. I’m so sorry.’
&nb
sp; ‘Hush,’ he said, pressing a warm, comforting arm around her chilled shoulders. She felt a frisson of loss as after only a few brief seconds it was withdrawn. Cantara didn’t recollect when the music had stopped. She was offered coffee laced with cream, and gulped it down after having watched the delicate cubes of brown sugar dissolve gently into it. Around her, people were now standing, conversing and laughing. Fragments of conversation whirled and she had some difficulty separating them into meaningful strands. At least one person, the royal-looking lady who had sat opposite,was leaning down talking to her, and offering to guide her somewhere. Cantara smiled, that being all she felt she knew how to do. With Chris’s gentle hands, she stood to what seemed a rather dangerous height. The lady clutched her elbow and propelled her gently away and into the largest and most sumptuous bathroom she had ever seen. A row of chattering women, in silk and organza, all palely radiant, were checking their make-up along the length of a huge gilded mirror.
The lady, who introduced herself as Madeleine, a long-time friend of Chris’s, steered Cantara to the head of an informal queue for cubicles with a whispered ‘overdid the shampers,’ to the woman next in line. She gently but efficiently manipulated Cantara onto the toilet and said: ‘I’ll just be out here. You don’t feel sick do you?’ Cantara shook her head, and Madeleine seemed hugely relieved.
Some minutes later, while sitting in the cubicle, she heard another woman talking to Madeleine. ‘Who’s that exotic creature, Maddy?’
‘She’s a refugee girl, from the Lebanese camps. Came with Chris Wyrecliffe.’
‘I bet she did,’ the woman tittered.
‘Now, now.’
‘Still, they do say he’s a bit of a lothario.’
Cantara angrily flushed the toilet and strode out, letting the door bang. ‘He’s not like that, you know.’
‘Are you alright now, dear?’ said the woman, a striking fortysomething, with startling blue eyes, who was brushing her luxuriant dark hair. ‘We thought you’d fallen asleep in there.’
Madeleine silenced her friend with a haughty look and glided over to Cantara. ‘Your charming escort will be worried about you. Let’s get you back shall we?’
Cantara felt a lot steadier now. Perhaps her anger had punctured the champagne bubble she had been floating in. The dancing was due to start, but Wyrecliffe asked her if she wanted to go home, and she said yes. He reminded her to retrieve her pashmina, and after his seemingly endless goodbyes with friends and admirers, steered her through the throng and out into the cool night air. Lines of black cabs were already waiting, their engines rattling. He led her to one and they climbed in safe and alone together for the first time that night. Cantara felt for Chris’s hand and squeezed it. As the taxi pulled away and headed out along Bow Street towards the Aldwych, she turned to him. He was looking out at the bright lights, pointing out the Savoy Hotel on the Strand and recounting some anecdote about a press conference there. She leaned over, and put her head against his shoulder. He turned to her, and she lifted her head and looked directly into his eyes.
‘Will you kiss me?’ she said.
He looked momentarily surprised, then planted his lips lightly on her cheek. She turned her head so their lips brushed, wetly. She lingered, despite his prickly beard and enjoyed his breath on her, the softness of his lips and the enfolding warmth of his arms.
It was her first kiss. She’d waited nineteen years for it. Waited nineteen years for the man she loved.
* * *
After dropping her off home and evading the invitation for coffee, Wyrecliffe sat back in the cab and ruefully took in his predicament. Her tentative pass at him in the cab had shocked him, because he had been so very careful in not trying to encourage any feelings. Still, she had looked absolutely amazing in the dress. New contact lenses showed her expressive eyes, and her hair cascaded in ringlets. He couldn’t avoid the sly male pride that comes when any attractive women makes her interest obvious, especially one so young. Even before his cab had left her street, she had texted him, thanking him for the evening. The aphrodisiac of power and influence, he decided, was not stopped by a thirty-year age gap.
Cantara represented a responsibility, not only the culmination of the work he did for the foundation, but a secret promise that he owed her long-dead father. Fouad Adwan’s slow and gory death in his employ still brought Wyrecliffe feelings of guilt. Cantara was Fouad’s only surviving child. She was still twenty-two, the same age as Wyrecliffe’s own daughter. For men, however worldly, that age barrier was a sexual rubicon crossed only by the scoundrel. He had been unfaithful, too many times, but consenting and experienced adults know the score. The more he got to know Cantara, the more he realised that beneath the tough and embittered experience of a refugee, lay a complete innocence as a woman. Hurting her, in any way, was the last thing he could countenance. But now she had somehow fallen for him, one way or another, hurt looked likely to happen.
What he needed was a strategy, an exciting diversion, something to build her some emotional independence so that she could ease her way into other relationships. He had a few ideas. He would get to work on them tomorrow. Yes, there were already a few contacts, those that owed him favours. Perhaps he could slot her into the BBC somewhere.
Chapter Ten
York
September 2009
Michaela Wyrecliffe, in her second year at York University’s Alcuin College, had been persuaded to act as a student host at fresher’s week. She and her best friend Katherine Quinlan, both studying archaeology, had agreed to come back a week early on the basis there might just be some male talent among the fresh-faced eighteen-year olds. That, as they soon realised, was a triumph of hope over experience.
‘I don’t reckon much to it so far,’ said Kat, fingering her mass of copper-coloured curls in a frequent but pointless attempt to straighten them out. She nodded her head at the whey-faced juveniles loading up on subsidised lunchtime beer in the student union bar. ‘A bunch of fecking trainspotters with Sellotaped spectacles,’ she giggled, in her Irish brogue, as someone whacked up the jukebox volume again.
Michaela nodded, and finished her pint of cider. ‘Same again, Kat?’
‘Why not? Look what they’ve got set up for us tomorrow. “Ten o’clock until noon, campus tour with dullarse Dr Geraghty. Noon till one. Junior Common Room Q&A, everything you need to know from cake to condoms. All afternoon, Open Zone in the JCR, followed by a beach-themed bar crawl organised by the Student Union”. Jeez, why did we get involved?’
Michaela stood to walk to the bar, stepping over the recumbent form of a youth whose York University T shirt already looked stained with vomit. ‘I told Ned I wasn’t wearing a bikini,’ Michaela said. ‘I’ll wear shorts, T shirt and sandals, weather permitting and that’s it. I can’t have them leering all over me.’
When Michaela returned, she saw that Kat was in conversation with a tall dark haired man wearing a suit, tie, Burberry raincoat, leather gloves and an expensive-looking shoulder bag. In the student union bar, where even middle-aged professors wore ripped jeans and T- shirt, he stood out like the proverbial pork chop at a Jewish wedding.
‘Micky, this is Rifat,’ Kat said. ‘He’s thinking of taking a master’s degree here next year, and wanted a look around.’
Michaela in an instant assessed the bitter-chocolate eyes, coffee-coloured skin and luxuriant eyelashes. Nice, she thought. Best I’ve seen today. ‘Good to meet you. Can I get you a drink?’
‘Oh no, thank you,’ he said, looking around with barely disguised horror at the bacchanalian scene of drunkenness. Rifat unslung his bag, took off his coat and slung them carefully over a chair. ‘So are you the daughter of the famous BBC journalist?’
Michaela stopped in her tracks. ‘Pardon?’
‘Your name is Michaela Wyrecliffe, yes?’ He pointed to a fresher’s schedule he had in his still-gloved hands.
‘How do you know?’ she asked.
‘His picture is on your Facebook page. Besides, I li
sten to Radio 4 every day, and the BBC World Service,’ Rifat said, staring into her eyes.
‘Yes, Chris is my dad,’ Michaela said flatly.
‘He’s a great bloke,’ Kat offered. ‘Not a typical stuck-up media type.’
‘It must be very exciting to have such a famous father,’ Rifat continued.
‘He’s actually not that famous, thank God,’ Michaela said. She enjoyed her father’s sporadic visits, his sense of fun and endless generosity, and wished she got to see him more often away from Mum. She shrugged, unwilling to divulge the depressing round of parental arguments that had soured the last few years at home.
Rifat asked if they were enjoying freshers’ week, and listened patiently while they explained to him the events, bands and talks. They spent most time convincing him that a pub crawl really was an official event endorsed, even if not organised, by the university itself. Finally, he asked what they had planned for the afternoon. Kat said that apart from the talk by the Provost at six, to which they both mimed yawns, there wasn’t anything they were really forced to attend.
‘I’m staying at the Royal York Hotel,’ he said. ‘I could buy you both lunch there, if you like. I expect you both like wine?’
‘Well…’ Michaela caught Kat’s slightly raised eyebrow, and twitch of a smile which said: I saw him first, so paws off. ‘We’d both love to go.’ The Royal York was one of the most exclusive hotels in the city. The man must be loaded, she thought. Saudi Arabia equals oil. It would certainly knock spots off playing nursemaid to a bunch of drunken teenagers.
