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‘Can I try and find you a glass of something else?’
She stood up and put the tumbler down carefully on the mantelpiece. Staring straight into Edward’s eyes, she answered, ‘I don’t think there is anything …’
‘In that case,’ he said decisively, ‘I shall have to take you away from here.’ He took her hand and guided her across the room. Bell heard the stream of anxious talk from the armchair stop in mid-sentence.
‘Bell? You’re not going, are you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, not loudly enough for even Edward to hear. ‘I think I am going.’
Out on the shabby landing they stood side by side, staring into the kitchen where a beer barrel was dripping on to a carpet of newspapers. An array of green and brown wine bottles stood in a litter of French bread and cheese. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other.
‘Have you got a coat?’
‘On the bed, in there.’
The bedroom door was locked now and he retrieved it from the pile that had been flung out on to the landing floor. They picked their way down the stairs, past the girl in the long skirt, and out into the street. To Edward, for the very first time, the thick London air smelt clean and invigorating.
He took Bell out to dinner and then back to the door of her flat.
He saw her every day for a week before he kissed her, and it was a month before he felt he was even beginning to know her. Every time he saw her he was surprised by the way her beauty unfolded. At first he had seen her simply as an attractive girl with unusual eyes, but gradually he noticed the luxuriance of her dark hair, the fragility of her long neck and the bloom of her skin, and the vulnerability of her mouth.
Her face kept changing.
For Bell they were weeks of enlightenment. Slowly she discovered that Edward could be trusted not to disappoint her. He was never dull, never at a loss. To her delight she found that if he wasn’t beside her he was a step ahead, waiting for her to catch up. She found that she could be herself with him, as with no one else. She began to show him aspects of herself that she had buried deeply years ago, when she was a little girl convinced that her mother had been taken away from her to punish her own wickedness. Not even her closest friends knew about her spurts of temper, or her bleak fits of pessimism. Bell stopped hiding them from Edward, and her feelings for him quickened when she saw that he accepted her faults as gratefully as her merits.
The habits of years fell away as she accepted the rhythm of life with him. She began to think in the plural after what felt like a lifetime of solitude.
One evening, Edward brought her home as he always did. They had been to see a film, and then for a meal at the tiny restaurant around the corner. Bell had watched the candlelight making black shadows in the hollows of his face as he talked and she had realized, with a little shock, that she knew the contours of it as well as she knew her own face. She was faintly surprised when she remembered that she was still keeping part of herself from someone so well-loved.
In the deserted flat Edward took Bell in his arms to kiss her goodnight.
‘Don’t go,’ she had said, in a small clear voice. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but I’m ready now.’
There was no need to say any more. Edward put his hand on the catch of her bedroom door and it swung open. They stepped into the dim warmth of her room. With infinite tenderness he took off her clothes and knelt beside her.
‘Are you quite sure?’
Her eyes were luminous as she answered, ‘Quite sure. I love you, Edward.’
He had been astounded by the depth of her passion. It was as if she had flung herself blindly into an uncharted sea, and found that she could swim like a fish.
They had been very happy, Bell recalled. Until their need for each other had become claustrophobic to her, threatening rather than secure. Until she had begun to have dreams about being trapped underwater, or about failing to rescue him from burning tenements. Or about jilting him. She remembered her early-morning dream, the feel of her billowing wedding dress gathered up in her fists to leave her free to run, and her mouth went dry.
It had been painful, and it still was, but she had done the right thing. She wished that there had never been any nagging sense of something missing, so that she could have been happy with Edward for ever. But it was not to be, and now even in her loneliest moments she delighted in her freedom. It had been hard to win, this independence, and now she had it it felt like a prize.
Suddenly she felt a suffocating wave of affectionate tenderness for him. She bent forward and wrapped her arms around his hunched shoulders, rubbing her cheek against his hair.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s helped, sitting here remembering all the good things. It seems less of a … waste. And it’s made the bad bits easier to contemplate.’ Edward stood up and pulled Bell to her feet. The wine bottle was empty, and she knew that it was time to go and meet their friends. He raised his eyebrows and she nodded, half smiling.
‘I’ll go and get my things.’
Edward watched her go. In an automatic gesture she stretched out her fingers as she passed to feel the dampness of the earth in the potted palm. Instantly the memory came back to him. He smelt the dust and her perfume, saw himself lying in her arms and felt the drooping palm fronds brushing his skin. Suddenly he longed to take hold of her again, to feel the softness of her against him one more time. She was standing in the doorway again, turning up the collar of her jacket.
‘Let’s go and eat,’ he said, in a voice made rough with desire. She heard it at once, and her eyes jumped to the palm. How well we know each other, he thought.
‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I think we should.’ She took his arm and the door closed behind them with a neat click.
Every table in Les Amoureuses was taken, and the bar and dance floor were packed. Edward and Bell peered through the smoky atmosphere, trying to see some faces in the crowd.
‘Table in the corner,’ Edward mouthed at her and they squirmed past the crammed tables. Three people looked up as they arrived, large blonde Mary and little dark Elspeth with half-moon glasses, and Marcus who was Edward’s best friend. He had straw-coloured hair and a rubbery, mobile face.
‘Oh good, the fun people. Bell, darling, how chic you look. Now, press yourselves in where you can and I’ll see if I can conjure up some glasses.’
Edward kissed the two girls and they sat down. It was, thought Bell, going to be an evening exactly like hundreds of others.
Odd that life was such a combination of the frightening and the absolutely, routinely predictable.
‘… going well in the world of high finance?’ asked Mary.
‘Oh, just the same as always,’ Edward answered, evasively. He worked, very successfully, in a City merchant bank, but considered it something to be hushed up as far as possible.
‘Bell’s the only one who ever does anything interesting. You should see her diary. Bordeaux tomorrow, next week California.’
‘California?’ Mary and Elspeth looked at her with such open envy that Bell felt herself blushing.
‘All thanks to Marcus,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m going to stay with a friend of his, researching a series for the paper on West Coast life. Wine, food, people. I suggested it ages ago to Stobbs and he liked the idea, then came up with a budget that would have kept me alive in San Francisco for about twenty-five minutes. So Marcus suggested his rich friend who lives in the Napa Valley. He responded with true Californian hospitality, and I can afford to go after all. I’ve never been to the West Coast, and I’m longing to see it. It’ll be hard work, too,’ she finished defensively.
‘Work?’ Mary was derisive. ‘Who is this friend, Marcus? Got any others to spare?’
Marcus finished his mouthful deliberately and then flattened his features to produce a wide, toothy American smile.
‘He’s always glad to offer a bed to an English chick. Specially one with an ass like yours, Mare.’
Bell said, ‘Marcus, you didn’t tell me that.’
Marcus winked at her. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll like him. He’s larger than life in every respect. Maverick, almost certainly a con-man. You could fill all your articles with him alone.’
‘Anyway, Bell,’ Mary put in, ‘who could be better equipped to deal with someone like that than you? Just give him your ice-maiden act.’
Into the little silence that fell around the table, Edward said, ‘Shall we have a dance, Bell? I think there’s a spare foot of space on the floor.’
‘And pardon me, too,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m going to the boys’ room.’
The two women were left alone at the table. Mary lit one of Marcus’s cigarettes and blew the smoke out on a long breath. She was watching Edward and Bell dancing, forced close together by the press of other dancers.
‘I think she’ll regret it in the end,’ she said.
‘What?’ Elspeth sounded resigned.
‘Edward, of course. He’s still in love with her, poor sap. And Bell Farrer is going the right way to end up with nobody. One of those lonely, successful women with nothing to talk about but her work. Why does she bother? Edward’s going to be very rich one of these days.’
‘Mary,’ Elspeth protested, ‘Bell wouldn’t have cared about the money. She’s just not like that. Don’t you think it’s possible that she just couldn’t love him as much as he needed? Whereas you could, of course.’
Mary chose to ignore the stab.
‘Entirely possible. I don’t think Bell is capable of loving anyone except herself. She couldn’t possibly be so cool and efficient and successful if she didn’t devote all her attention to number one.’
Elspeth laughed. ‘I know what you mean, but I think you’re being a bit hard on her. Everyone likes her, after all, except perhaps you.’
‘Oh, I like her too. I just don’t believe in her. She’s too good to be true, that’s all.’
‘You’re jealous.’
The other girl stubbed out her cigarette and turned to stare at her friend. ‘Of course I’m jealous. That’s just the point. However likeable she may be, if everyone she knows is jealous of her she’ll end up alone and unhappy. You have to be vulnerable to get human sympathy, and do you think Bell is vulnerable?’ There was no answer, and they both looked across at the knot of dancers. Neither of them had ever seen Bell crying, or ill, or apparently unsure of herself. No one had, for years, except Edward.
And now she didn’t have Edward any more.
Bell would have laughed, unbelieving, if she could have heard their conversation. She let herself lean against Edward, feeling the familiar contours of their bodies fitting together. It felt very secure. Temptingly secure.
Yet tomorrow she had to go to France and face up to the intimidating French baron, alone. Not only face up to him, but impress him enough to make him talk about his Château as he’d never talked to any other journalist. She didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t stay where she was either.
Bell knew that she was in a mess. It would have amused her if she could have known that anyone envied her at that moment.
The evening came to an end at last. They all stood outside the door of the club, hugging each other affectionately. The two women and Marcus wished her bon voyage.
‘If we don’t see you before, send us a postcard from San Francisco,’ said Elspeth. ‘Have a wonderful time.’
‘Give my love to Valentine,’ Marcus called. ‘’Byeeee.’
Edward slammed the door of his battered car and reversed recklessly down the street before glancing at Bell.
‘Cheer up,’ he advised her. ‘You are quite lucky, you know.’ She bit her lip. Guilty of self-pity, as well.
He left her at the door of her flat and drove away with a cheerful wave and his habitual three toots on the horn.
Bell let herself in and wandered into her bedroom. Her packing was done, and she wasn’t sleepy yet. A nightcap, perhaps. She sloshed a measure of brandy into Edward’s empty wine glass that was still standing on the coffee table, then went over to her dressing-table to look at the open diary.
The square for the next day read ‘10 a.m. Wigmore & Welch. Plane 12.30’. That meant a wine-tasting first at an old-established firm of merchants, always worth a visit, and straight from there to the airport. The next three days were crossed through with neat diagonals and the words ‘Ch. Reynard’. The second of those days was to be her twenty-eighth birthday.
The realization made Bell smile ruefully and she sat down to examine her face in the mirror. Not too many lines, yet, and the ones that she could see were all laughter lines. Automatically she picked up her hairbrush and began to stroke rhythmically at her hair. The one hundred nightly strokes was a habit left over from childhood and she clung to it obstinately, as a link with her dead mother.
In one of Bell’s last memories of her she was standing at her side with the identical blue-green eyes fixed on her own in the mirror.
‘A hundred times, Bell,’ she was saying, ‘and your hair will shine like silk.’
That was it, of course.
The thing she was really frightened of, and the thing she wouldn’t let herself think about. Except at times like now, when she was alone with a brandy glass in her hand and the memories were too vivid to suppress. She had seen it all through the agonizingly clear eyes of childhood. Her mother had died, and she had watched her father disintegrate. Day after day, year after year, defencelessly turning into a wreck of what he had once been.
Bell didn’t think she was remembering her very early years with any particular romantic distortion. Her parents had very obviously been deeply in love. They had been quite satisfied with their single child. Bell had the impression that her father didn’t want her mother to share out her love any further. He wanted the lion’s share of it for himself.
Selfish of him, probably, but he had suffered enough for that.
There had been very good times, early on. Her father was a successful stockbroker in those days, comfortably off. There had been a pretty house in Sussex, French holidays, birthday parties for Bell and the company of her witty, beautiful mother.
Joy Farrer had probably never been very strong. Bell remembered the thinness of her arms when they hugged her, and the bony ridges of her chest when she laid her head against it. Sometimes she had been mysteriously ill, but Bell remembered those days only as brief shadows.
Then, with brutal suddenness, she was gone.
One night when Bell went to bed she was there, reminding her not to skimp on the one hundred strokes with the hairbrush. In the morning she had disappeared. The house was full of whispers and strange, serious faces. Her father’s study door was locked.
It was several days before they told her she was dead, but she had really known it from the moment when she woke up on the first morning. The house had smelled dead. Something in it had shrivelled up and vanished overnight. A housekeeper arrived, but Bell did her crying alone. The sense of loss suffocated her, and at night she would try to stifle herself with her pillow to shut out the misery. She was convinced, in her logical, childish mind, that her mother’s death was her own, Bell’s, fault.
She had rarely seen her father in those first months. She learned from an aunt, years later, that he had taken to going out all night and driving his car round the Sussex lanes. Round and round, going nowhere. With a bottle of whisky on the seat beside him. By the time he was convicted of drunken driving Bell was away at boarding school and knew nothing about it. He simply stopped coming to pick her up from school at half-terms and holidays, and she travelled on the little local train instead. All she did know was that he was getting thinner, and an unfamiliar smell emanated from the well-cut grey suits that were now too large, creased, and slightly stained.
Her once-handsome, assured father was turning into a grey-haired stranger who behaved peculiarly.
It was in the middle of the summer holidays when she was fourteen that Bell realized that her father was an alcoholic. She found the plastic sack of empty whisky bottles in the garage when she was looking for the turpentine. She had been trying to brighten up the dingy kitchen with a coat of white paint.
That was the day Bell grew up.
She understood, in a single flash, how badly he had crumbled after the death of his wife. At the same moment she accepted another weight on to her burden of guilt. If only she could have compensated him in some way. If only she had been older, or more interesting to him. If only her mother and father hadn’t loved each other quite so much, and she herself had been more lovable. If only.
Her father had died when she was seventeen. Cirrhosis of the liver, of course. Bell looked down at her empty glass. It was ironic that she should be making her living now by writing about drink. She toyed with the idea of pouring herself another brandy, but it was easy to decide not to do it. No. Whatever else might happen to her, she didn’t think that was going to be her particular problem. It was enough to have watched it happen to her father.
‘Well now.’ Bell looked at her white face in the mirror. ‘While you are thinking about this, why not try to be totally honest?
‘Is it that you are scared of Edward being hurt like that one day if you disappear? You’re trying to protect him, in your heavy-handed way?
‘Well, yes …
‘Or are you really much more frightened of it happening to you? No commitment, therefore no risk?
‘Yes.’
Bell folded her arms on the dressing-table in front of her, laid her head on them and cried.
If someone else had told her her own story she would have dismissed it as too neat and pat. Incapable of loving, of marrying, because of her parents’ tragedy? Cool and collected outside in self-protection, but a guilty mess inside? Surely human beings were more complex than that?
‘This one isn’t,’ said Bell, through the sobs.
At last the storm subsided. She snatched up a handful of tissues from the box in front of her and blew her nose. A red-eyed spectre confronted her in the mirror.
‘What you really need,’ she addressed herself again, ‘is to look a complete fright tomorrow. That will give just the important, extra edge of confidence. Come on, Bell. What’s past is past, and the only thing that you can do now is carry on. At least you seem to understand yourself quite well.’
She put her tongue out at herself and caught the answering grin. That’s better.
She leant over and stuffed her passport and tickets into one of the pockets of her squashy leather handbag. Then she zipped and buckled the canvas holdall and stood the two bags side by side next to the door.
