I watched her fingers moving, not wanting the sensation to ever end. “I’m extremely flat –”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re flattered,” she said, her eyes flashing. “If you want to tell me you don’t share my feelings, then tell me straight. Don’t pussyfoot around with gentle let-downs. I like my directness to be met with directness.”
“I wasn’t attempting to pussyfoot around,” I said slowly. “It’s not a question of whether I share your feelings or not, it’s whether I ought to feel the way I do.” I looked at my drink, moving the glass slowly, the amber liquid swirled round the inside of the glass. “Whether you want me to say it or not, I am flattered but … but perhaps privileged would be a better word. You are a beautiful woman and I’m sure if I were to get to know you better, what I don’t know about you would be equally attractive.”
“There’s a ‘but’ coming.”
I looked at her and nodded. “There has to be a ‘but’, Sophie.” I wanted to tell her that I was still mourning my loss. I wanted to tell her that in a year’s time, two years’, five years’ even ten years’ time, I would still be in mourning. Although other men might find it difficult to believe – I said it to myself often enough – since the day I fell in love with Belinda I hadn’t looked at, nor imagined that there would ever be another woman in my life. She meant everything to me and was everything for me. There was never any deception, nor the need for lies. We often lay awake at night after making love and marvelled at how lucky we were. If anything, I was the only one who had introduced the circumstances that could have caused friction. My absences were necessary for the job I was in, but not essential. I could have just as easily got a job in England and even within commuting distance of Blue-Ridge. However, without my job with Astek we wouldn’t have been living in Blue-Ridge.
Did that matter? It mattered to me … at the time.
I sometimes thought that Elizabeth’s feelings towards me came about partially because she saw how devoted Belinda and I were to each other. I suppose every parent wants to see his or her offspring happy, but Belinda and I had been more than happy, our relationship was blissful, utterly idyllic. We didn’t need anybody else and perhaps that is what had showed and was translated in Elizabeth’s mind as a threat. Belinda and I had discussed my unsupported beliefs, but although she agreed that what we had was fantastic, her mother would never be resentful.
“What is the ‘but’?” Sophie asked, breaking into my thoughts.
I shook my head. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
“Belinda?”
“Of course, and I promise you there is n o other reason.”
“I wouldn’t have expected anything else, and by saying that I’m not being deliberately patronising.” Sophie took her hand from mine and picked up her glass. “Richard, I’m not asking for a commitment, but from my point of view the situation is quite simple. I have fallen in love with you and I needed to tell you how I felt.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“That’s a strange thing to say.” Her eyes sparkled as she added impishly, “and what would you say if I suggest we finish our drinks and go back to the house?”
“I thought maybe we could get something to eat here or maybe pop into town,” I suggested.
“It’s a bit early,” she pointed out, looking at her watch, “and I don’t want to be within listening distance of anybody else. This is too important. Have you got anything in we could have to eat?”
“There’s some fresh pasta and a Caesar salad in the fridge.”
“Perfect,” she said. “And, Richard, I do understand.”
We walked most of the way back to Blue-Ridge in silence. Having accepted that I wanted and needed to be with Sophie was one thing, my conscience and the guilt that went with it, was another.
Two months was too short a period to come to terms with losing Belinda. Right up to an hour before she died, she had a smile for me, it was a weak smile but it was still there. Holding her when she had so little time to live was awful: she felt warm, her head rested against my shoulder, everything should have been normal. It is only now that I will admit to myself, but never to anybody else, that I had helped her die. The morphine drip muted the pain, and the nurse who showed me how to operate it and change the bottles, also told me that I could increase the dose if Belinda became too uncomfortable. Although she didn’t say so in as many words, she was telling me what to do when Belinda told me it was time.
Belinda and I understood.
I had been to have a shower and had brought Belinda a cup of warm sweet tea when the look in her eyes told me ‘it was time’. I will never forget the way her tearful eyes pleaded with me to understand, the weak smile telling me she would always be there for me.
I sat on the side of the bed and she took my right hand in hers. “Kiss me,’ she said, her voice very weak. The lips I kissed were the same lips I had kissed so many times over the previous twenty years, but knowing this would be the last time was too much.
“I can’t do it,” I whispered. “I just can’t do it.” My own tears were streaming down my face.
“It … it will happen very soon anyway, please let me die free of pain, Richard. Please help me.”
Her eyes were still pleading with me, but I could see the pain was already there. Without taking my eyes from hers, I reached for and touched the button to increase the dose. I pressed the button four more times.
“Thank you,” Belinda said, “and thank you for a wonderful life and two marvellous children. Please hold me; we mustn’t say goodbye because I will always be there with you and when you talk to me I will answer you. I love you, Richard.”
I went round to my side of the bed and got in next to Belinda. She snuggled up to me as she always did and I told her that I loved her, and she was right, she would always be with me.
There were thirty people standing at the graveside but I felt very alone. Standing there, holding hands with the twins, and with Elizabeth and Charles only feet away, everything became a blur.
At that moment, I knew I had to get away, to be on my own. I didn’t think I would ever come to terms with losing Belinda but I needed the solitude to allow my mind to put the future in perspective with the past. I had to be there for the twins and for Elizabeth and Charles.
When I was a few days into my isolation, I decided I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that there would never be anybody else for me, but time was a factor that had to be considered. Time, and the right amount of it, would add decency to and belief in a new relationship. I imagined what people would say if I got it wrong. “He didn’t waste any time, did he? Do you think anything was going on before Belinda died, poor girl?” and then maybe if I got it right, “We see Richard has found someone to love, poor dear. He deserved to find love again, he has mourned Belinda for too long.”
Who these people were I had no idea. I suppose they were people who really mattered to me: Isabelle, David, Elizabeth and Charles. The twins would resent me finding somebody else because I was trying to replace their mummy; Elizabeth, but maybe not Charles, would think I was replacing their daughter.
If time and what other people thought mattered, why was I walking up the hill towards my house with Sophie? Why was I contemplating an evening … a night … with somebody I hardly knew? Did I feel that I was under some form of obligation because she had told me she was in love with me? I shrugged and hoped that Sophie hadn’t noticed. She was walking silently beside me, her hand resting on my arm. The shrug had been deliberate but the shudder was involuntary.
After everything that had occurred and in such a short space of time, and with some of my promises already broken, my only immediate concern was that it was too soon for me to be considering a relationship with another woman. The twins were due home in a matter of days for their summer holidays. Charles and Elizabeth had seen me with Sophie and no doubt were discussing what their scoundrel of a son-in-law was up to so soon after burying their daughter.
&n
bsp; All of their feelings needed due consideration. It wasn’t only me who would be affected by my decision.
The click of her shoes on the road, her hand resting in the crook of my arm, her hip every few steps brushing against me, her silence: they all added up to a need that I wouldn’t admit to myself was there. She would know what I was thinking, the way my mind was going round in circles.
We both knew that by the time we reached Blue-Ridge I would have to make a decision.
It wasn’t a case of offering her somewhere to sleep. She wasn’t a friend who had come to stay for a few days. If I invited her in for more than a drink before she drove back to wherever she had driven from – I assumed it was London – then I would have made a commitment. Sophie had said that she didn’t want a commitment from me, but my definition of a commitment differed from hers. For me, by accepting that I needed her, I was making a commitment and breaking a promise.
We turned the last corner before Blue-Ridge and I hesitated. It was where Belinda and I had stopped so often to admire the house, and then look over our shoulders at the view towards the village and the valley. It was our view: it had been one moment of many moments that were extremely personal.
I had made my decision.
Sophie took her hand from my arm, and crossing the road she was the one now looking at our view. For a few seconds I didn’t see Sophie, I saw Belinda before she turned with that smile on her face that told me why I was blissfully happy.
I joined Sophie at the fence.
“I know I’m stalling, Sophie,” I said, “but unless I get this right it could finish up as a rather embarrassing mess. I have got others to consider, not only myself.”
She didn’t look at me as she spoke. “I hope you are including me when thinking of other people. You haven’t said anything since we left the pub, your silence could mean anything.”
“I think you know where I’m coming from.”
“Do I? I know that we are two adults who are free and find each other more than just attractive. I know our backgrounds are different. I’m the product of an unpleasant divorce and you lost your wife, to whom you were obviously devoted, under the most tragic of circumstances.” She placed her hands on the top of the fence in front of her but still she didn’t look at me. “I didn’t set out to fall in love with you, or anybody else. In fact, it was the last thing I was looking for, but it happened. I’m here because I want to be near you, I want to be with you. I have never wanted to be this close to anybody before but if you would prefer that I wasn’t then all you have to do is say exactly that.”
“It’s not that –”
“Richard, we’re not heading back towards the flattered bit again are we, because if we are, I would prefer to be told to go.”
I took her hands from the fence and gave her little choice but to look at me.
“Sophie, my mind is still in a complete muddle. It’s not you I am fighting against, it is my conscience and at the moment it is stricken with guilt. A little more than ten weeks ago it was Belinda here with me, she wanted to look at this view one last time. I had to carry her because she didn’t have the strength to support her own weight – which by then was less than five stone.”
“Richard, I –”
“No, Sophie, let me finish. We stood here and cried together, and for me it will always be yesterday.” I took a deep breath. “If you can put up with knowing how I felt about Belinda, and that as we pass this spot and many others, I will be thinking about her, then … then … Look, if I let you walk away now, I doubt if I will ever see you again. If we had met in six months’ or a year’s time I hope there would have been no hesitation on either of our parts. We can’t control how we feel about someone, and as you feel about me, I feel the same about you, and have done since … before Cave beach.”
Sophie face broke into a smile. “Are you telling me in a roundabout way that that you are in love with me?”
“Yes, Sophie, I am in love with you and have been since you walked out of the bathroom in the hotel after we’d been to Mama Wong’s.”
Her brow furrowed. “That will take some explaining,” she said.
Smiling, I said, “And I will.”
“Richard, I respect everything you have said about Belinda, and I love you even more for saying it.” She paused. “Can you now tell me what should happen next?’
“I suggest we go back to the house and you unpack the weekend case I guess you have with you, and well …” I said.
Her eyes widened in mock disbelief. “Are you suggesting, Mr Blythe, that I should not only stay in your house tonight but also share your bed?” She fluttered her eyelids.
“Yes, I think I probably am,” I replied.
Perhaps I already believed there was a strong possibility that I would regret my decision but Sophie didn’t strike me as the sort of person who would go into hibernation until I was ready for her. Rightly or wrongly, she had forced me into a corner and only I could decide which way I wanted to leave it.
I started to turn away but Sophie held onto my hands.
“I didn’t resign from my job because of you. That was a decision I took some time ago. I suppose I needed a helping hand. I have no regrets about coming to Medbourne to find you because one of us had to take the initiative. If I had left it to you, maybe you would never have found me. I knew where you lived, don’t forget. You wouldn’t have known where to start with me.” She smiled. “Before we walk through those gates,” she added, indicating the entrance to Blue-Ridge, “I want you to know that I will stay for as long as you want me to, but I will also walk away if … I am not, and will never be, a substitute for Belinda. I can see she was her own person, but so am I.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The next twenty-four hours didn’t go the way I anticipated. Once through the front door of Blue-Ridge, we both seemed to abandon all sensibility and the strong feelings of guilt miraculously disappeared.
Sitting in the conservatory with a drink, or making small talk anywhere else in the house, would have been an unnecessary diversion from what we both knew was going to happen.
I followed Sophie up the stairs carrying the over-night bag she had retrieved from her car, and opened the door to the main bedroom. She looked round the room and headed straight for the bathroom, emerging a few minutes later dressed in nothing but a man’s shirt.
She stopped just inside the room and looked at me. “I feel a little embarrassed,” she said softly, “and you look as though you’re still going to play a round of golf.”
The only words I can use to describe what happened next are total abandonment of responsibilities, consciences and thoughts for other people. It certainly wasn’t what I expected. We were like two animals – apart for too long, and when eventually we were put into the same cage, nothing and nobody acted as inhibitors.
I have no idea how long it was before we mutually agreed that we needed a rest but, as we lay on the bed, Sophie’s head resting on my shoulder and one leg draped across mine, I could not believe the way she had made me feel.
The faint pink lines on her thighs were a reminder of our pasts. There were other lines running below her navel and hips. Letting the tips of my fingers move lightly down the blemishes, I said, “I’m not sure I know what to say.”
“Is there any need to say anything?” Her breath was warm against my shoulder, her hair soft against my face.
“I suppose not but we can’t lie here in silence.”
“I’m warm, satisfied and happy,” she said. “I feel like falling asleep.”
Moreover, that’s exactly what she did. Her breathing became slower and within minutes, she was fast asleep. I looked around the room expecting suddenly to be overcome with remorse but it didn’t happen. There were photographs of Belinda, the twins and me on everywhere, but I simply looked at them and smiled. The way other items in the room were arranged hadn’t been changed: I had left them exactly as Belinda liked them to be. Some of her everyday necklaces and bracelets w
ere hanging from the mirror support on her dressing table above the bottles of lotions and potions. I looked at them and smiled again. One of the wardrobe doors was slightly open and I could see some of Belinda’s dresses and tops.
I looked at them and smiled.
I didn’t know what magic the woman lying next to me possessed but whatever it was it had worked. She had been gentle, caring and persuasive. She had guided my hands and fingers to areas that she particularly liked to be touched, while at the same time ensuring that she gave more than she received. It hadn’t been simply two frustrated people using the other for satisfaction: there was a chemistry that I never thought would exist with another woman.
When the phone rang Sophie was still asleep. I checked my watch as I reached for the receiver. It was seven o’clock in the evening. Sophie gave no sign that the phone had disturbed her, and leaving one arm round her shoulders, I balanced the receiver next to my right ear.
“Hello,” I said in almost a whisper.
“Daddy,” shrilled Isabelle at the other end. “Is it really nearly the holidays?”
“In less than a week,” I told her, trying to keep my voice low. “You don’t normally ring at this time.”
“I know but I’m getting excited … I thought I would ring to make sure all was okay.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I was aware that I probably didn’t sound that receptive. With Isabelle talking in one ear, and a naked female resting her head against my other shoulder, I felt a little uncomfortable.
“No reason,” she replied. “Are we going away?”
“You mean have I booked anywhere yet?”
“Well, yes. I thought we’d agreed that we would go somewhere.” It hadn’t slipped my mind but the opportunity hadn’t really arisen. We had talked about taking a villa on one of the Balearic Islands but as it was only late June I was sure we would find something still available.
Pooh Bridge: conscience stricken Page 30
