by Freya North
‘Are you OK, darling?’ Gloria asked over breakfast the next morning.
‘Fine, thanks, Mum,’ Thea replied.
‘The fish-and-chip van goes to Wootton St Michael this evening,’ Gloria announced, ‘if you fancy it?’
‘Maybe,’ said Thea.
‘Gosh, I must crack on – another chock-a-block day! See you later, darling. I'll be popping back mid-afternoon, then back for G & T by six.’
‘Bye, Mum,’ said Thea. When her mother left, Thea wondered if she had the energy to drag herself from kitchen table to sofa for a dose of inane morning television. It appeared she didn't. She'd just have to stay put and concentrate on finding tessellations in the rattan table mats instead.
Gloria tootled along the lanes making a large effort to praise out loud the beauty of the day and the glorious land-scape. Off she went to the library, to pick up and then deliver books ordered by the ancient but still formidable Mrs Frederick. That done, she headed to her friend Elizabeth's for morning coffee.
‘Is your daughter all right?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘Poor duck.’
‘Oh, she's fine this morning,’ Gloria assured her. ‘A good night's sleep.’
Next, Gloria headed to Margaret's. They were to have a long-planned meeting about the hanging-basket design for the summer fair at the school where they were governors. She needed to collect Sylvia en route and fill up with petrol. Gloria was motoring along, humming to Classic FM, when she found herself pulling abruptly into a lay-by. It wasn't actually a lay-by at all, it was the pitted sweep before the rutted entrance to a farmer's gate. But it served the purpose for Gloria to swerve and stall her car while her mind racketed and Beethoven's Pastoral soared out. She didn't have to think long about what to do. She started her car and hared off the opposite way, without a backward glance in the direction of Sylvia's house, without a second thought for arrangements made and committed in black ink.
‘Thea?’ Gloria says, shutting the front door quietly. ‘Darling?’
Her daughter is still sitting at the kitchen table, pronging a fork into the spaces of the rattan table mat.
‘Thea?’ Gloria sits down and shuffles her chair close to her daughter. ‘Darling?’
She places her hand on her daughter's and just as Thea absent-mindedly wonders how many seconds it now takes for an age-revealing pinch of skin to flatten on the back of her mother's hand, she finds that tears are falling without warning.
‘Oh, poor darling,’ Gloria whispers, ‘you poor old thing.’
‘What am I going to do?’ Thea croaks.
‘I don't know,’ Gloria admits because she doesn't know what's been going on anyway.
‘Love isn't meant to go wrong,’ Thea objects, ‘not when it's true love.’
Gloria sighs. ‘That's what one would think,’ she says, ‘but believe me, however good we think we are at being in love, the rules are not of our making and are thus beyond our control.’
‘He was unfaithful to me,’ Thea whispers. ‘Saul.’
Gloria was immediately indignant that history should be repeating itself. ‘Oh, Thea, he left you for another woman? When you were on the point of setting up home together? That's beastly. Beastly.’
‘No!’ Thea objects. ‘I've left him. I don't want him now.’
Gloria paused. ‘But does he want you?’
Thea hasn't been asked that question before. She nods and shrugs.
‘But do you still love him?’
Again, Thea shrugs but finds she can neither shake her head nor nod.
‘But darling,’ Gloria objects as if this is all a regrettable storm in a teacup, ‘forgive him, have him back and forget it. For heaven's sake. Life's too short. Love's too precious. Goodness.’
‘No!’ Thea protests.
‘But he hasn't left you for someone else,’ Gloria states, ‘and he still loves you and wants to be with you!’
‘You don't understand,’ Thea counters.
‘Oh, yes, I do, my darling,’ Gloria says in a hollow voice. ‘Your father left me. He no longer loved me. He fell in love with someone else and nothing I could do could win him back. It was irrelevant how much love I still held for him – it was actually worth nothing. He didn't fool around and regret it, he wholeheartedly bestowed his love on another woman.’
‘Are you saying that's worse than Saul fucking women behind my back?’ Thea bites back from adding ‘and he pays for it’ because she deems that far more offensive than having uttered ‘fucking’ out loud in front of her mother. The truth is that Thea feels deep shame at Saul's transgression. Alice can be the only person she'll ever tell – and even then, she's left some details undisclosed. Why couldn't Saul just have had a simple affair? Such a crime was far more normal, far easier to deal with, surely?
Her mother, it appears, vehemently disagrees. ‘I am saying precisely that. Men can do that whole physical sex thing – you have to realize that. You are still loved,’ she declares in an uncompromising tone, warning Thea not to controvert the luck and fortune and love she was denied. ‘Goodness, it wasn't so long ago that women knew to allow their men-folk visits to prostitutes!’ Thea looks up sharply. Gloria brushes at the air dismissively. ‘In France, those French men all have mistresses. And I really needn't comment on our Royal Family. Think about those colourful tribes in Africa – or those Mormen in America – they all have umpteen wives. Under the same roof!’
Suddenly, Thea loves her mother and her logical pluralization of Mormon. And she really doesn't want to tell her all of it. Not just because she's ashamed of the raw truth; she also does not want to distress her mother unduly. If Gloria didn't need to know, then Thea didn't need to say it all out loud again.
‘Darling,’ Gloria butts in, ‘if Saul was a stupid man but begs your forgiveness and lays his love, his apology, his commitment at your feet, please don't stamp on him or, worse, step over him. If what he did has absolutely no bearing on how he feels about you, I implore you to be philosophical about it all. It's such a waste otherwise.’
‘But I can't forget,’ Thea says.
‘You can, with time – it's worth it,’ Gloria insists. ‘Do you not realize that you can't make someone love you? Do you not appreciate, therefore, how you are truly blessed? I loved your father but he didn't love me. It's far harder for me to cope with the knowledge that his heart, his soul, his intrinsic emotional pull, was to a woman other than me. How I wish he'd just had lots of silly sex elsewhere but come home to me with his emotional loyalty intact. Instead, the man I assumed I'd spend the rest of my life with, the father of my children, left me because he fell out of love with me and in love with someone else.’
‘But my trust is gone,’ Thea says, ‘and so is my dream.’
‘Well, if there's one person who can help you find them again,’ Gloria says empathically, ‘it's the man who loves you. You should not compromise your future happiness because of some sanctimonious adherence to unrealistic expectations of Romantic Love,’ Gloria all but chides. ‘Crikey, you're so vehemently moralistic you're almost a prude, darling.’
‘But you don't understand,’ Thea pleads.
‘Oh, but I do,’ her mother claims impatiently, while taking a Biro and scribbling fractiously through the failed arrangements so clearly written on her calendar. ‘It's you who doesn't understand. How I wish your father had merely done a Saul. I wouldn't have been on my own for almost twenty bloody years.’
Gloria wasn't sure about going away that weekend but the trip to Bournemouth had been planned for months. It was only for two nights and Thea had mentioned Alice might come to stay. So Gloria left her daughter in charge of the Micra and the hanging baskets and set off with Lorna and Marion.
Though Alice was half expecting Thea to call and cancel the arrangement, she was pleasantly surprised, as she stepped into a cab for Paddington station, that she hadn't heard from her. However, her phone rang as the taxi lurched along the speed bumps in Maida Vale. It was Thea. Christ. Give her the benefit of the doubt.
‘Are you going to blow me out, Miss Luckmore?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thea, I'm in the bloody cab! I bought first-class tickets.’
‘I'll pay you back.’
‘It's not the point, silly. Why are you cancelling? It's not good to spend so much time on your own being maudlin. You promised your mum – you promised me.’
‘I – it's just. Actually, if you want to know, I've phoned Saul. Alice? Hullo? Why? Because I need to see him. So he's coming.’
‘Thea, hang on – excuse me, can you stop the cab please – Thea? Talk to me. What are you going to do? When did this all come about? Are you sure?’
‘No, I'm not sure. But I need to see him.’
‘Look, you phone me, OK? If it all goes pear-shaped. First-class rail tickets have no restrictions.’
‘OK. I'm sorry, Alice, for being so flaky. I'm sorry about the taxi. It just suddenly seemed the right thing to do.’
‘Don't worry about it,’ Alice said, wondering if she should take the train anyway, hide around the corner in case she was needed.
Saul couldn't focus on anything; not his newspaper, the view from the window, his fellow passengers, his revolting coffee nor the myriad thoughts thundering around his head. It seemed adrenalin had replaced blood in his veins and it surged through his body causing him to feel unnervingly light-headed and hollow. All moisture was being rapidly perspired leaving him dehydrated and nauseous but too agitated to drink. He hadn't known where she was, this last week or so. He'd stopped texting. He'd relinquished hope and taken his flat off the market. When a call came through that morning showing a provincial number, he'd assumed it to be a freelancer.
‘Saul Mundy speaking.’
‘It's Thea.’
‘Thea? Christ!’
‘Saul, might we talk? Could you come to Avon?’
‘Avon?’
‘I've been at my mum's.’
‘Your mum's?’
‘She's away for the weekend.’
A weekend with Thea?
Saul wasn't sure whether he felt optimistic and excited, or apprehensive and pessimistic. He'd already been dumped so she could hardly be summonsing him to dump him again. Though he felt that it had to be positive that she was asking to see him, he didn't dare take it as given. He packed slowly, aiming for an early-evening train, to avoid the aggravation of rushing, the hassles of rush hour, the frustration of a full-price ticket. Perhaps she'd had enough space and thinking time to come to terms with everything. It might not be too late to resuscitate the purchase of the apartment. Justifying it as a purely practical measure, Saul packed the estate agent's particulars just before he left. He was looking forward to seeing Thea, just to look at her, to be with her; whatever the outcome.
When he reached Paddington and found himself a seat on the seven-fifteen train, he couldn't stop his heart from speeding up, though his head warned him to slow down. However, the further the train took him from London, the more apprehensive he became; stabs of caution and surges of pessimism mingling acidly with the adrenalin. Just let her talk. Just don't let her go a second time. Don't tell her you know she knows. Just head for the future and bypass the past. Powers of persuasion, the power of love. What on earth would he feel when he saw her? What would she say? What could he say? What was she expecting him to say?
When it came to it and they met outside Chippenham station, Saul could not take his eyes off Thea and Thea couldn't look at him at all. It was as if he wanted to soak up all the glorious details he'd been denied recently yet she could only flinch away from the personification of heartache that was staring her in the face. On the drive back to her mother's house, Saul didn't know whether to take Thea's lead and speak when spoken to, whether to fill the silences with ingenuous chatter, or try to thaw the situation with a preemptive outright declaration of love. However, it appeared not possible to be simply himself in such an unexpected, portentous situation. He found himself wittering at length about minutiae of articles he'd written and articles he'd read. He sounded like a bore and in spite of his jolly countenance, he felt depressed. He didn't know Avon. He'd only visited Thea's mother a couple of times. He could sense Fate lurking just out of view. From Thea's lack of expression, Saul had no idea whether his future was about to be blessed or cursed. It wasn't in his hands, that was for sure. He felt nervous – it was an emotion he was not familiar with.
‘I've put you in here,’ Thea said politely, showing him the spare room; guest towels folded neatly on the edge of the bed.
‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I'll just sort my stuff out then.’
‘Would you like some supper?’
‘It's a bit late,’ Saul said. ‘I haven't an appetite anyway.’
‘A cup of tea?’
‘Sure.’ What was this? A B&B?
They drank their tea and avoided eye contact. They watched the ten o'clock news and didn't comment. They took undue interest in the weather forecast.
‘Thea—’
‘Saul, I'm tired. Let's just get some sleep tonight.’
‘Sure. I understand.’
‘Have you everything you need?’
What a fantastically loaded question but Saul knew Thea was too tired and wary for him to comment. ‘I'm fine,’ he said, ‘see you in the morning. Sweet dreams, hey.’ They went to their separate beds and slept fitfully. The tangibility of their physical proximity was exasperating – how easy would it be to creep from one room to the other, from solitariness to togetherness? How tragic that, currently, the chasm between them meant that such a passage was impassable.
‘How did you sleep?’ Thea asked, feeling a little shy of Saul the next morning.
‘Not well,’ Saul admitted wearily, half tempted to cut straight to the point and prevent this ambivalence being prolonged. He wasn't good at waiting, at feeling nervous, at not having control.
‘Shall we go for a walk, then?’ Thea said. ‘We can go along the Ridgeway.’
‘Sure,’ said Saul, ‘whatever.’
Thea wanted Saul to take the initiative and hold her hand. But today he seemed more distant, somewhat guarded, so she contrived to bump into him once or twice, to have her arm brush his accidentally-on-purpose, to position her hand enticingly close. Though Saul of course wanted to hold Thea's hand, he'd rather it wasn't snatched away so it seemed safer not to in the first place. It was down to Thea but she couldn't quite do it either.
‘Hear that?’ Saul asked, suddenly animated.
‘What?’
‘Listen – there. That mew! mew! Plaintive calling. Where is it? There, Thea – look! Buzzard.’ With Saul's arm out-stretched over her shoulder and alongside her cheek to provide a direct angle of view, Thea saw the buzzard circling, now so close that the calligraphy of dark markings and fawny dapples on the underside of its wings were clearly visible. Are there any buzzards on Hampstead Heath, Saul, any in Richmond Park – is this our only chance to see one? Unable to resist, Thea gently cocked her head so she could rest her cheek against Saul's arm as she observed the bird. She could sense him gazing at her. If she didn't know what she knew, if she hadn't seen what she'd seen, this would all feel so perfect. Just then, she found she could pretend that it was; she found she could forget what had been. Lightly, Saul kissed her temple and she turned towards him, sinking fast into his enveloping embrace. She clung to him, her eyes closed, her face pressed into his chest. If she didn't pull away now, she knew she would never be able to. She needed to try to pull away without actually pushing him away. When she did, she saw the buzzard perched on a fence stake amazingly close. Look, Saul, look.
‘My heart in hiding/ Stirred for a bird,’ he said to her, ‘the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!’
‘Don't tell me – you dug it off the Internet?’ Thea found she could tease him.
‘Gerard Manley Hopkins,’ Saul objected. ‘Funny what you remember from A-level English.’
They walked on, in awkward silence. Thea quietly engr
ossed in trying to recall quotes from her English A level. Saul wondering whether he was correctly reading her signals to hold her hand. He tried it. Initially, she didn't resist.
‘Let's go to the Polly Tea Rooms in Marlborough,’ Thea announced, now finding an itch on her shoulder which required both her hands, ‘though it may be full of tourists.’
‘We'll put on our best American accents then,’ Saul said, taking her hand again as they walked back to the car.
When they arrived in Marlborough, they did just that. They passed the infernal wait for a table by saying things like ‘Gee, honey, I sure am hungry’ and ‘How damn cute is this li'l ol' town?’ Thea only just managed to keep giggles at bay. Saul was bolstered. It simultaneously heartened but alarmed Thea how easily, how quickly, she could merge back into the familiar and effortless dynamic with this man.
How Saul wanted to rush back to the house and take Thea to bed. He wasn't particularly horny – the oversized scones and gluts of clotted cream hampered that – rather he was flooded by a desire to display the veracity of his love through quiet intimacy. He just wanted to lie with her, allow his touch and his gaze to say it all. However, Thea's hands were beyond reach, fixed as they were at ten-to-two on her mother's steering wheel. Thea in the driving seat. Thea stalling. Thea putting the brakes on. It was only when they arrived back at Wootton Bourne that Saul realized that actually, he held the key.
‘I think I'll just tidy up, do some hoovering.’
‘The house is immaculate, Thea.’
‘I must water Mum's hanging baskets.’
‘Not in direct sunlight – you'll scorch the plants.’
‘Well, in that case, I think I'll just have a quiet hour or so with the papers until the sun goes in.’
‘No, Thea, talk to me. Talk.’
Thea frowned and flinched and shook her head. She felt trapped. Tidy. Hoover. Water the garden. Read the papers. Quiet hour. Be quiet. She glanced at Saul, who was holding his hand out to her. She spun from him.
