He woke at once and moved on top of her in the darkness, kissing her face and neck and breasts with gentle sleepy tenderness. ‘OK,’ he said agreeably.
‘I didn’t mean …’ Louise started.
‘I love you,’ he said, and slid inside her. ‘You are absolutely the most perfect woman in the world and I love you.’
Friday
LOUISE WOKE AT DAWN to kisses and more loving. Somewhere in the back of her mind she remembered telling Miriam that lovemaking four times in twenty-four hours was a ridiculous Lawrentian fiction. She giggled at the thought and Andrew Miles, always responsive to her desires, obligingly tickled her. The subsequent play – as wanton as kittens and as hysterical as schoolchildren – left them amorously entwined on the floor amid Andrew’s clothes and Louise’s supper tray.
Finally they separated. ‘I have to go to the farm,’ Andrew said. ‘Pigs want feeding. Shall I bring back anything for breakfast?’
Louise blinked at his assumption that he would be returning for breakfast. ‘I was going to work this morning,’ she said firmly.
‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But I suppose we’ll have breakfast.’
Louise opened her mouth to argue and then checked herself. He wanted to come back for breakfast, and she wanted him in her house. For the first time in nine years she glimpsed the possibility of a life with a man who spent his time with her, who was not always obliged to be elsewhere, whose primary loyalty was not always to another woman.
‘What do you eat for breakfast?’ she asked cautiously. It was like a whole new world slowly extending before her. She had a feeling that croissants and coffee were not enough for a man who made love all night and then got up at six to feed pigs.
‘Bacon,’ he said. ‘Eggs, toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread. Cereal to start and toast and marmalade to finish. Lots and lots of tea. Nothing special.’
‘I haven’t got anything like that,’ Louise confessed, rather dashed. ‘I have a baguette in my freezer.’
Andrew, pulling on baggy corduroy trousers, chuckled. ‘It sounds positively obscene. Come up to the farm with me, and let’s eat.’
Louise suddenly found that she was hugely hungry. ‘I’ll have a shower and come up,’ she said. ‘Don’t wait for me. I’ll be up in half an hour.’
Andrew, shrugging himself into a tartan shirt which woefully clashed with the trousers, shook his head. ‘No. I want you with me. I’m sick of you being here and me being up the hill. I want you with me all day and I want you in my bed tonight.’
Louise held the bedcovers up to her naked shoulders. ‘I have things to do,’ she said. ‘I have a book to review and essays to mark. Just because we … just because you … just because … doesn’t mean that we have to make any big commitment to each other. It doesn’t mean anything.’
‘God in heaven!’ Andrew swore, abruptly sitting down on the corner of the bed. ‘What do I have to do to stop you tarting around? I love you, I want to make love with you, probably as soon as I have had some breakfast. Moreover I want you to cook my breakfast while I feed the pigs. And then I want us to have dinner together. I want us to have tea together. I want to go down to the Holly Bush and get drunk together. And then tonight,’ he raised his voice and brought his fist down on to the bed with each word as a hammering emphasis, ‘tonight I want you in my bed!’
Louise paused for no more than a moment. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said with what she feared was a simper. ‘All right by me.’
A broad grin spread across Andrew’s face and he gathered her naked warmth into his arms and dragged her out of bed and on to his lap.
‘What about the pigs?’ Louise asked as they rolled lazily back into the shambles of the duvet and the pillows.
‘They’ll understand,’ Andrew said.
Louise sat in the warmth of the Land-Rover while Andrew picked up pieces of broken hurdle and fence post and stacked them tidily against the orchard fence. The grass in the orchard was starry with dew, each blade of grass drenched in a string of droplets. Andrew lifted a pile of small pieces of wood and trudged with them down through the orchard to Rose’s van and threw them down at her doorstep. His big boots left bold dark tracks through the luminous grass. Louise found herself watching him in a way she had never watched any other man, appraising the broadness of his back and the strength of his shoulders; looking at him not only as a lover, but also as a potential husband who would care for her, a man who would father her children.
He was generous, she thought. He was thoughtful. He did not have to carry the kindling to Rose’s door, he could have left it stacked in the orchard and Rose would have helped herself. Louise put her head on one side and watched Andrew make a second trip with another armful of wood. He was a good man, kindly. He would make a good husband, she thought. If he was so considerate of the comfort of an old lady he would be a pleasant man to live with. He would be patient with small children, he would make a good father.
Louise checked her own thoughts with a guilty start. Liberated feminist women do not assess men as husbands, they do not plan marriage the moment they climb out of bed. But then she shrugged. She had never felt like this about any man before. She had seen Toby through a haze of envy when she wished he had chosen her instead of Miriam. She had never analysed his behaviour and wondered if he were indeed the most desirable man she knew. She had accepted her old judgement, the judgement of a girl of twenty, that he was the man she wanted. She knew now, at twenty-nine, that he was not.
She looked at Andrew Miles with a clearer vision, thinking of her needs, of her future, and whether they could indeed make a relationship which would last for them both. She thought of the little Elizabethan manor farm and the fields around it, and the common stretching away from it and thought she would like to live there, as Rose had suggested, in the big farm bed with a baby on the way.
He came to the Land-Rover and opened the door. ‘What are you thinking?’ he asked as he started the engine and backed the vehicle carefully into the lane away from the wreckage of Louise’s fence.
‘I was thinking that you would make a nice husband,’ Louise said with rare honesty, breaking every rule of appropriate social behaviour between new lovers, and every rule of politically correct behaviour for liberated women.
He turned his head and gave her a swift happy grin. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I would. I will. I will make a wonderful husband to you. Let’s get married at once.’
‘I didn’t mean that!’ Louise protested immediately. ‘I was thinking theoretically.’
‘Oh, bollocks,’ he said. ‘Of course we should get married.’
Louise said nothing for a moment as he drove carefully up the lane and then turned in the gateway to his farm. He stopped the Land-Rover, switched off the engine and turned to look at her, resting his hand gently on her shoulder and then turning her face towards him. ‘I’m not joking,’ he said. ‘And I’m not theorising. I want to marry you and bring you here as my wife. I want children in the farmhouse again and a girl or a boy to have the farm when I’m dead. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted and I want you very much. Will you marry me, Louise?’
‘It’s so quick …’
‘I’ve known you and I’ve been caring for you for nearly a year,’ he said. ‘Anything that’s ever been a problem for you and I’ve been there. Septic tank, snow, gutters, chimneys. I’ve never stopped thinking about you and doing things for you. For nearly a year, Louise. That’s long enough.’
‘But I always paid you!’ Louise exclaimed.
‘Well, go on paying me!’ he said irritably. ‘But for God’s sake let’s get married and live in my house. You can pay me all you like.’
Louise giggled irresistibly and Andrew pulled her gently into his arms. ‘Say yes,’ he whispered into her hair.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Louise had thought that Andrew had been joking about spending the entire day with her but she found that he meant precisely and simply what he said. She therefore spent the morning
with him beating the bounds of his fields, checking sheep, moving his small herd of cream-coloured Charolais cows from one field to another, fixing the stop cock in a water trough, and starting to clear out a barn for the next instalment of the hay crop.
At noon they went into the house for dinner. Mrs Shaw had left a huge pan of home-made tomato soup, and there was home-baked bread in the bin and a substantial cheese board. They ate with fervent hunger in companionable silence, listening to the detailed weather forecast and the ‘World at One’ and then ‘The Archers’, from which Andrew extracted a high degree of scandalised enjoyment.
‘What do we do now?’ Louise asked as he switched off the radio. She felt wonderfully tired after a night of constant lovemaking and the long morning in the open air.
Andrew smiled. ‘I think we should have a little lie down.’
He led the way up the winding wooden stairs to the bedroom. It faced south over the Wistley common. Diamonds of golden sunshine filtered through the leaded windows and spread like an aureate counterpane on the big brass bed. Andrew shucked off his breeches, socks, and pants, and hopped between the sheets, patting the pillows welcomingly. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘I won’t bite.’
‘You might,’ Louise said, stripping off her own clothes with equal shamelessness.
‘Not very hard,’ he said.
Louise slid into bed beside him and felt at once a rush of what must be joy, absolute joy, at the firm smooth warmth of him, at the confident touch of his hands on her body as he drew her to him, at the clear windblown sunned smell of him, and at the easy unbidden rising of her desire.
‘What about the pigs?’ she asked as Andrew turned her firmly on her side and caressed her long slim back, and her shoulders, and traced her vertebrae with his tongue.
‘Pigs?’
‘You’re always saying, “pigs want feeding”. But I’ve not seen your pigs. I’ve seen everything but pigs; and we’ve not fed them this morning.’
He gave a guilty little chuckle and buried his head against the smooth skin of her back, and nibbled at her neck. ‘I’ve not got any pigs,’ he confessed. ‘But it’s the sort of thing that you can say when you want to get out of something or leave somewhere. I didn’t realise I said it so often as to be noticeable. I don’t have pigs – or only as a manner of speech. I have metaphorical pigs. I have theoretical pigs.’
Louise giggled and turned around in his arms and pulled his smiling face down to her own. ‘You absurd man!’ she said lovingly. ‘Metaphors are my department. Theoretical pigs are certainly my department.’
They slept until half past two and then Andrew crept downstairs and made a pot of strong lapsang souchong tea with slabs of rich fruit cake. ‘Wakey wakey,’ he called to Louise, putting the tray on the bed. ‘I want to turn some hay. You can come and learn how to drive a tractor.’
‘I’ve got to go home sometime,’ Louise said. ‘I need my night things and I should check my ansaphone. I’ve got to shop for tomorrow. Miriam’s coming to stay with me tomorrow night.’
‘She can stay here,’ Andrew said. ‘We’ll go and fetch your things on the way to the Bush if you like this evening. Phone her and tell her to come here.’
‘She might not want to stay with you,’ Louise pointed out, assuming a voice of chilly reproof. ‘She was looking forward to staying with me in a caring and secure women-only environment.’
He looked thoughtful for a moment; but then – ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Better food here. Better company, nicer house, cosier rooms, an all-night rave and theoretical pigs! What more could a woman ask?’
‘I’ll phone her,’ Louise said.
He passed her the telephone from the bedside table, and went across the landing to the bathroom. Louise could hear him singing as he splashed the water into the basin and she realised that she had made him happy, and that this was connubial happiness, as she, full of sceptical disbelief, had read of only in novels. She was making him happy, and his happiness made her happy, which in turn … she shook her head in a state of mild wonderment. All these years of waiting and longing for Toby and she had never had any idea that loving a man could be so easy.
She dialled the number of the women’s refuge but the line bleeped and did not ring. So she telephoned Miriam at home, ready to put down the receiver if Toby answered.
‘Hello?’ Miriam said in her most pessimistic voice.
‘It’s Louise,’ Louise said.
‘Oh, hi.’
‘Are you still coming over tomorrow?’
‘Could I come tonight?’ Miriam asked. ‘The shit has really hit the fan here. I’m leaving Toby. The refuge has been bankrupted and closed. I’m out of a job, I’m out of my marriage. I’ve finished here.’
‘Oh God,’ Louise said. ‘What’s happened between you and Toby?’
‘He’s been seeing another woman,’ Miriam said bitterly. ‘For nine years. Nearly all of our married life. He’s never been completely committed to me.’
‘How d’you know?’ Louise whispered. Guilt invaded her and drowned her new joy.
‘He told me,’ Miriam said blankly. ‘The silly bastard told me this morning. I’d always known he had the occasional fling. And I did too. It was something which we knew about, but something we never discussed. We’re adults, Louise, I don’t need to know every damn thing he does. But suddenly he spills the whole can of worms at my feet.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he took it into his stupid head that you were going to tell me that he is a transvestite. He wanted me to know that he’s not a transvestite – which he’d be really ashamed of. So he tells me he is a liar and a committed adulterer. He seemed to think that being a cheat for all of his married life was better than wanting to dress up in frocks.’
‘I wouldn’t have said anything,’ Louise protested weakly.
‘I wouldn’t have cared if you had!’ Miriam exclaimed. ‘Bloody hell, Louise, I see worse than that daily. We could have coped with that. He could have borrowed my Laura Ashleys – why should I worry? But what I can’t stand is the thought of him lying and lying for all those years, and then telling me, with that soppy little-boy-naughty face of his as if he was proud of himself.’
‘Come out now,’ Louise said, summoning a desperate courage. ‘I have to talk to you.’
‘I’ll come as soon as I can. I’ve been packing all morning. I’ve got another hour’s work and then I’ll come. I’ll be out with you at about nine.’
‘I’m not at my cottage,’ Louise said cautiously. ‘I’m up at the farm.’
There was a brief silence as Miriam gathered information, collated it, and came up with an accurate analysis. ‘You lucky beggar. You’ve scored with the sexy farmer.’
Louise giggled a rich sensual chuckle. ‘More or less,’ she said. ‘Will you come and stay here?’
‘Won’t I be dreadfully in the way?’
‘No,’ Louise said. ‘Something like a thousand dope-heads and a hundred weekend ravers are arriving tomorrow morning. The neighbourhood watch will be here at any moment. And we’re surrounded by animals. It’s not as if we’re romantically alone together for the weekend.’
‘I’m on my way,’ Miriam said. ‘See you at nine.’
Louise and Andrew drove down to her cottage as the light faded from the sky and a small sliver of moon rose and hung like an elegant minimalist lantern over the common. Louise went into the cottage and threw a couple of pairs of jeans, some underwear, a couple of sweatshirts, and – after a moment’s thought – her silk pyjamas and silk dressing gown into a small suitcase and carried it down to the Land-Rover. There was a brief altercation as Andrew demanded that she bring all her clothes, all her books, all her work papers and indeed her word processor, ansaphone, and printer. Louise refused to bring more than she needed for the weekend. ‘Then we’ll see,’ she said.
Andrew, with a stubborn look which she was beginning to recognise, pointed out that if there was any nonsense on Monday morning he would be within his rights as Ro
se’s heir to move into his half of the cottage, and that he would not hesitate to do so.
‘I am not accustomed to being blackmailed,’ Louise said sharply.
He scowled at her. ‘And I’m not accustomed to being fannied about. I don’t like this will-you won’t-you stuff, Lou. You said you’d come for the weekend and I want you there with me. I don’t want you sloping off every five minutes to come down here.’
Louise felt her temper flare in a way she had not permitted since adolescence. ‘I do not slope off,’ she insisted. ‘I will not be arrested and imprisoned by you. We’re having a love-affair, a relationship between free and equal adults. We’re not going to tie each other down.’
‘Of course we’re going to tie each other down!’ Andrew roared. ‘We’re in love! We’re lovers! Of course we’re not free. We’re responsible for each other’s happiness. What d’you want? To live alone and I come by at the weekend and screw you when my wife isn’t watching?’
‘Don’t shout at me!’ Louise shouted.
‘Why not?’ he demanded, volume undiminished. ‘You make me angry!’
‘Well, you make me angry!’ Louise bellowed back. To her surprise she found she was squared up to him, her fists clenched at her sides, her voice at full pitch. And she was not afraid of him, she was enjoying herself hugely.
‘Thank God for that,’ he said, his temper deserting him in a moment. ‘At least it’s not one of these cold-fish reasonable relationships where we each do anything and nobody really cares.’
Louise breathed deeply and felt the wave of adrenaline dying pleasantly away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously not one of them.’
She looked into his face. He was smiling at her, his face filled with intense affection.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Did we reach an agreement?’
‘I don’t want to work this weekend anyway,’ Louise decided, casting her mind back to the cause of the quarrel. ‘I’ll just bring the essays that need marking at once and a book I have to review. Will they serve as sufficient commitment for now?’
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