by J M Gregson
He selected the only alcove he could see and huddled himself like an inexperienced private detective at the end of it. He had agreed to bring with him a copy of The Times, wear a blue handkerchief with the corner displayed in the top pocket of his jacket, and to carry the cap he hadn’t worn for years. He felt not only an idiot but also a conspicuous idiot.
The worst element of all was that the embarrassment was of his own making. He’d been taken aback when the woman wouldn’t give him either her name or her address. This cloak and dagger stuff seemed a waste of time to him, but the patient female voice on the other end of the line had explained that it was standard practice. He’d had to confess he was new to all of this; that he’d had to have the mysteries of ‘voicebox’ explained to him by the newspaper; that he found the whole of this introductory process both bewildering and disconcerting.
He’d thought, during the prolonged clumsiness of these voicebox messages to each other, that such unfamiliarity with the mechanics of meeting would have left him impatiently dismissed. Instead, the as yet anonymous female who was initiating him into these arcane rights had seemed to think his inexperience quite a plus factor in the dossier of his qualities which she was apparently assembling.
For his part, he had found the friendly, incredulous laughter which greeted his naivety both refreshing and attractive. In his working life, Geoffrey Aspin was very sure of himself, very decisive. Now he found his first tentative steps towards a new relationship perplexing and alarming, but also rather exciting. His instructor had put him on the spot when she had said he must wear items which would clearly identify him. The handkerchief and the cap and The Times were all his ideas, culled he was sure from some cheap thriller he had read thirty years earlier and thought to have forgotten. It had seemed rather amusing at the time.
Now, in the harsh white lights of Starbucks, these trappings seemed an utter disaster. He hadn’t just quietly identified himself for the woman he was to meet, but had made himself stand out as a complete prat. Geoffrey felt like a fish floundering on a very public river bank, unable because of the assignment he had undertaken to flop himself back into the anonymity of the waters of swiftly moving humanity in the street outside.
The suit was a mistake, for a start. Everyone else in the coffee shop seemed to be casually dressed. The cap, which he had set like a badge of identification upon the table, seemed a garish red rather than the quiet russet he had remembered. And the flamboyant light blue silk handkerchief in the top pocket of his jacket was an even bigger mistake. It might match his tie, as he had planned, but it must make him look like an ageing homosexual in need of company, to judge by the curious looks he was getting as people passed the end of his alcove and decided to sit elsewhere. He sipped the froth on his cappuccino without enthusiasm, extracted his silver ballpoint pen from his inside pocket, and pretended an intense interest in the crossword he had never been able to master.
The whole thing was a mistake. He hadn’t arranged a date for himself for nearly forty years; in the days of his youth, he would never have dreamed of the elaborate efforts which had landed him here. The crushing loneliness which had made the nights so desolate in the years since Jill’s death had unhinged his judgement. He had never dreamed that he could be so inadequate, so bored with his own tedious company, so lacking in the interests which should fill his life without a close companion. Well, he had learnt his lesson now. He was sitting here in a place he didn’t want to be, drinking coffee he didn’t want to drink, waiting for a debacle which he could not avoid. This was one new experience he was certainly not going to—
‘You must be the man I’m looking for.’
A blonde woman with a becoming, pleasingly uncertain smile. Holding the brown leather handbag which she had suggested as her own mark of identification a little self-consciously in front of her. Looking taller than she was, because she stood close to him as he sat, shutting out some of the light, making the alcove seem suddenly a more intimate place, where they might conduct their negotiations with a degree of privacy. Running just a little to fat - no, he corrected that ungracious thought immediately: without the skinniness which would have made her look gaunt now that she was in her fifties. Buxom, that was the word. Somewhere from that distant past which he thought had gone for ever, the phrase ‘comely wench’ surfaced. He banished it; the expression was surely sexist, though Geoffrey had only the vaguest idea of what that dangerous modem word comprehended.
He shuffled awkwardly and he feared a little arthritically to his feet and held out his hand. ‘Geoffrey Aspin.’ She took his hand in her own much smaller one, widened her smile, set down the coffee she had brought from the counter on the table beside that ridiculous cap. 'I won’t give you my name yet. That’s the usual procedure, for a first meeting. We should both err on the side of caution, in case we wish to proceed no further.’
He nodded earnestly, feeling it odd to sit down with someone without even knowing her name, but grateful for any guidance he could get about the way this strange social ritual had to be conducted. He was surprised to find that he was sweating. He pulled the silk handkerchief from his top pocket, drew it quickly across his brow, and banished it thankfully from sight into the side pocket of his jacket. ‘Have you got a partner?’ she said.
It was the first time Geoffrey Aspin had ever heard himself associated with that word. He wasn’t sure whether he was pleased or irritated; his brain was racing too fast for him to be sure of anything. ‘No.’
‘You’re divorced?’
‘No. My wife died three years ago. Cancer.’ He was going to enlarge on that, but realized just in time that this wasn’t the moment to do it.
‘Family?’
‘Two daughters. They live in this area, but they’re both married. They—’
‘It’s best we don’t give each other too many details at the moment. All that can follow later, if we decide to proceed.’ It sounded very clinical, but he supposed that was the way these things had to be conducted. He didn’t know what he should ask her. He said rather woodenly, ‘You’ve obviously done this before. I’m sorry, but it’s my first time.’
‘Don’t apologize. You’re not shop-soiled, like some of us. It’s an advantage being new to this.’
‘It didn’t feel it, while I was waiting for you. I’m sorry for suggesting these trimmings, by the way.’ He gestured at his suit, the newspaper and the pocket which held the handkerchief. ‘I suppose I wanted to pose as some kind of ageing matinee idol - though I’m not sure the cap fits in with that.’ She grinned, her first natural, spontaneous smile. ‘I think I pictured someone out of a spy thriller. But at least you didn’t come up with the carnation which most men seem to suggest; that makes you look as if you’ve slipped out of a wedding reception. Anyway, I’ve nothing against matinee idols. They always seemed impossibly out of reach when I was a girl.’
He smiled back. ‘They’re just as out of reach now. I’m afraid. I’m more your nuts and bolts than your morning or evening suit man. It was just a disguise.’
‘I think morning dress might stand out a bit in Brunton. Especially in Starbucks.’
They had their first little giggle together on that thought. He removed his cap from the table and made it invisible on the seat beside him. Then, as he wondered what to say, he was grateful to see her retreating into sips of her drink to punctuate her statements. ‘Another coffee?’
She smiled again, and he realized, as he shuffled to his feet, how she understood the release that physical movement provided for him. She said, ‘We should really go Dutch in our first meetings, so that there are no obligations on either side. I sound as though I’ve been round the block a few times, don’t I? I haven’t, actually, but I had one bad experience and been given a lot of advice. Yes, another coffee would be most welcome, thank you. I scarcely noticed the first one in my anxiety.’
As he went to the counter, he was filled with an absurd elation that she should have confessed to some of the nervousness which had alm
ost made him bolt from the place. They chatted, guardedly but happily enough, for another twenty minutes, feeling increasingly relaxed in each other’s company. For the first time since he had placed his advert in the DATING POINT section of the newspaper, Geoffrey Aspin felt glad that he had done so.
‘You can call me Pam,’ she said eventually, and he felt that she had made a great concession to him. ‘I still won’t give you my telephone number or my address yet, though. We can pick up anything we have to say to each other through the voicebox system. I think it’s best to observe the protocol in these things.’
He nodded almost eagerly, anxious to show her that he was not offended by her caution. He wondered about her bad experience.
‘You already know my name, though, because I didn’t know the rules. Would you like my phone number?’
‘That’s up to you, Geoff. I’ve already forgotten your second name, by the way. Maybe that was Freudian - or more likely I didn’t register it in the initial embarrassment of meeting.’
They had a final rueful grimace together at the futility of human aspirations, and then he said, ‘I’d like to give my phone number to you. I don’t feel threatened, you see.’ Rather than feeling resentful because she had denied him her own particulars, he was grateful when she did not rebuff his offer to confide more of himself.
‘I’ll ring you then, if I want to have any further contact. Let’s say within three days, so that we both know where we are. Don’t be offended if you don’t hear from me. And please don’t feel you have to be polite to me, if you don’t want to take this any further. It’s much less messy to knock these things on the head at the beginning than later on, believe me!’
He almost forgot to pick up his cap, then folded it firmly in his left hand rather than put it upon his head. They went out to one of those cheerless days of low grey cloud which showed the battered old cotton town at its worst. Yet to Geoffrey Aspin the world now seemed a brighter place. They turned away from each other and walked briskly in opposite directions down the busy street. Neither of them looked back.
Geoffrey thought he would remember nothing of this strange meeting by that evening. After all, he had been more nervous than he could remember being for at least forty years. But he found that he could easily picture the fullness of the woman’s lips and her humorous blue eyes and the way she held her head a little on one side as she looked at him, as though assessing him and approving what she saw. She hadn’t worn much make-up, he thought, but perhaps she was just very skilful; the mystique of the female toilet was an area which had never excited his curiosity. Her neatly cut dark blonde hair had been quite beautiful, and he was sure owed nothing to artifice.
For all his experience of life, Geoffrey Aspin was still an innocent in some aspects of it.
He remembered also, with a quite disturbing vividness, the appealing curve of her breast beneath the soft wool of her sweater, the well-turned calves above the expensive leather shoes, which had heels which were high but not too high. It would be a pity if he never saw her again; the woman who he was surprised to find seemed to have made quite an impression upon him.
Nevertheless, he must prepare himself for disappointment. He had lived life long enough to know that it held far more disappointments than delights. If Pam didn’t want to see him again, it was far better to know it at this stage, as she had so sensibly told him. He passed two rather bleak evenings telling himself this, and was unwontedly tetchy with his staff at the works during the days.
At nine o’clock on the third evening, his phone bleeped only twice before he reached it. ‘Geoff, it’s Pam. I would like to see you again. How do you feel about that?’
Two
Things moved quickly for Geoffrey Aspin, more swiftly than he had imagined was possible when he had placed his tentative toe into the swirling waters of DATING POINT.
He suggested a theatre excursion to Manchester as their first outing together, and Pam accepted, with due caution but without any argument. If she noted that Manchester was thirty miles from Brunton and therefore offered a degree of anonymity to their enterprise, she did not comment. Perhaps anonymity suited her too. Perhaps she wanted to be sure that if this adventure led nowhere, she could terminate it without anyone else knowing that it had even been undertaken.
He picked her up where she suggested, on the road behind the bus station. She had probably arranged that so that she could get the bus into town, he thought. He knew it was pointless, but he could not help speculating about which bus she had used to get there, which part of the town or its suburbs or the country around it she had come from. She knew his name and his phone number; probably by now she had checked his address. He understood perfectly why there was this imbalance of information between them: she had explained the rules of this strange new game to him at their initial meeting in Starbucks, and it was he who had thrust his unasked for phone number upon her. But he found as he drove the Jaguar into the centre of the town that he resented the wall of silence which she had seemed so concerned to erect around herself.
She was waiting for him, as he had hoped she would be, an umbrella held at an angle to hide her head from the March air, which was cold but scarcely damp. It was more a concealment than a protection, he felt. She slid swiftly into the car, gave him a quick smile of recognition and appreciation, and they were away. For a few minutes, he was self-conscious about his driving, as he had not been for years. Should he show her how eminently safe he was, or should he be a little more flamboyant, as a young man anxious to impress on his first date might have been? Then, on the open road over the moors towards Bolton, the familiar thrust of the big engine seemed to take over, and they surged swiftly towards the city without the need for such consideration.
The tickets he had booked were for a routine thriller. He had considered that a neutral choice, not too demanding and not entirely banal - he had no idea yet what her tastes were. It was a production on its way to London, well directed and well acted, and not overburdened with philosophical discourse, as he had foreseen. It held their attention, or at least as much of their attention as either of them wanted to give to it.
Geoffrey was intensely conscious of the woman beside him. Her attention was apparently unswervingly upon the brightly lit stage, yet he was sure she was conscious of the male presence at her side. He could feel the warmth of her, smell her perfume, catch the glint of her hair as the stage lights rose and fell, sense the soft curve of her breast only inches from his arm.
Geoffrey Aspin thought inevitably of his dead wife and of times long ago. Jill had always insisted during her last illness that she did not expect him to become a monk when she was gone, that he would need the close company of women to carry on his life. Women, she had said: not a particular woman. But he did not feel guilty, did not feel any presence overseeing him from beyond the grave. His mind raced through a turmoil of widely differing emotions.
He could not remember when he had last been in a theatre. At the interval, he rose awkwardly to his feet, realizing that they were going to be at the back of the queue for the dress-circle bar. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Quite honestly, I think I’d prefer an ice cream, if that’s not too juvenile for you, Geoff. But you get what you want for yourself.’
‘You shall have the best ice cream that money can buy! I might even forsake the alcohol and join you, Pam.’ It was the first time he had used the name she had given to him, and he felt the blood rising to his face: surely you couldn’t blush when you were approaching sixty?
He was curiously pleased that she wasn’t much of a drinker. He decided that he must be a very old-fashioned man. His children had always told him that he was, but didn’t all children say that about their parents? The pair stood rather self-consciously with their tubs of ice cream in the corridor outside the bar, studying photographs of famous former productions, feeling their way into a relationship, experiencing the paradox of working hard to be relaxed with each other.
After th
e performance, they applauded enthusiastically, trying to pretend that their attention was entirely on the stage and not on the profile and reactions of the person beside them. They discussed the play and the performers on the way back to the car, each learning all the time small facts about the other from the desultory, apparently irrelevant comments. The Jaguar ate up the miles of the largely deserted motorway swiftly at that hour of the night, so that they were back in Brunton surprisingly quickly.
‘You can drop me by the bus station,’ she said determinedly.
‘Your last bus will have gone.’
‘I don’t think so. If it has, I’ll get a taxi.’
He glanced sideways, then directed his gaze back to the road. After the warmth he had felt growing between them over the last four hours, her face had set into an unrevealing mask. For an instant he wondered whether he should risk offending her.
Then he said, ‘This is silly. I don’t want to know where you live until you choose to tell me. But let me at least drop you at the end of your road.’
She moved into the explanation she had been planning for the last twenty minutes, but dropped it before it was properly under way. ‘All right. You can drop me at the end of my road. I’ll be quite safe from there.’
She gave him directions, and he drove out to the west of the town as she told him, stopping as she directed at the end of a well-lit road. She sat for a moment after he’d braked the Jaguar, then said, ‘I’ve enjoyed tonight. Really. I’m not just being polite when I say that.’
