He called the following night when she was in the bath. It was half past nine. She had for the moment forgotten about the ad and the letter, and was thinking about the argument she had had with her parents when she had gone to their Bethnal Green flat for Sunday lunch, as she usually did. Her mother had loosed off one of her regular salvoes at her for being nearly twenty-six and not married, not even going out with anyone; for not having started to make babies.
Her father had been in one of his despairing moods
in which he shook his head at her and questioned her wisdom in choosing archaeology. He could not understand how his daughter could get into university then not go into industry or law, how she could be content to make do on a meagre salary and spend her time looking at what he called old stones and bones. Frannie had heard the same argument with weary monotony two or three times a year ever since she had first made the decision to study archaeology. During her university years her father had not been so forceful, wondering perhaps at the back of his mind whether she had a smart commercial motive he had not spotted. Now, when he was in a bad mood, he vented his anger at his own failure to prosper at Frannie’s betrayal, as he saw it, of all he had worked for. She had no ambition to be rich. He could not understand her. He and her mother had sacrificed everything to come to England to try to make money.
She had replied angrily that she could not understand how they had run a café for thirty years in London’s Square Mile and made no money. Lunch had ended in a shouting match, with her kid sister Maria-Angela taking her side and her brother Paolo taking her parents’ side. The row had eventually petered out, but the acrimony had not, and she had returned to Clapham on Sunday evening angry at herself for having erupted, angry at her parents, and with a sense of desolation about her life.
Her parents had worked hard, they had tried, they had given her the opportunities. Maybe they were right and she was letting them down. It was much easier for animals who left their families for ever the moment they could feed themselves, she thought. Then she remembered the numerous times she had gone back to her parents after she’d split up with boyfriends
or was just down in the dumps, and they’d sat with their arms around her and talked wisely, made jokes, made her feel strong again, and she felt lousy for having shouted at them.
She lay back in the bath in her rented flat, her knees drawn up. The bathroom was crummy: a tiny, cramped, windowless room with a mean, narrow bathtub that was too short to stretch out in and taps that had been loose ever since she had moved in three years ago. Despite her frequent calls to her landlord’s office, the wash-basin was still coming away from the wall and was so small it was almost impossible to get both hands in together.
The hallway by contrast was vast, larger than both her bedroom and the small sitting/dining-room. It was dark and dingy, with massive pipes that gurgled and vibrated alarmingly in winter when the central heating was on, serving as an echo chamber for the boiler that switched noisily on and off at irregular intervals. One day, she was convinced, it would explode and blow the entire terraced house above her down.
She sat up and began to soap her breasts. The first ring of the telephone startled her, and water slopped over the end of the bath as she stood up, the soap submarining down between her legs.
She knew instinctively that it was him, and as she scrambled out she tried to recall his face, tried to picture him, but all she could see was a little boy with ginger hair and freckles pointing at the double bass. She managed to conjure up a crumpled linen suit but the face above it eluded her.
Water streamed down her face and her neck. Her fingers slid without purchase on the door-handle and she wrapped an end of the towel around it to open it, then hurried out, straggles of wet hair draped down
the side of her face and the back of her neck, across the hall and the pea-green carpet of the sitting-room to the brown telephone which sat on a cheap, spindly table of its own.
‘Hello?’ she said, trying to sound nonchalant, but it came out as a strangled squawk.
‘Is that – er – Francesca Monsanto?’
She recognized the voice immediately. The hesitation, then the quiet authority.
‘Yes, speaking,’ she said. His voice clarified his image and a clear picture of him flashed in her mind.
‘It’s your railway porter here.’
The remark threw her for a moment, then she laughed. ‘Oh – right – hi – you got my letter?’ she said, aware too late of the dumbness of her reply.
‘This morning.’
Water ran down her cheek. There was an awkward silence. ‘I – er – posted it on Friday.’
‘How – ah – how was the concert?’ he said.
‘Concert?’ she said blankly.
‘In York?’
‘Concert? Oh –’ She gave a nervous laugh that sounded like she had swallowed a fish bone. ‘It wasn’t my double bass. I was taking it to York for a friend; it was being repaired in London.’
‘Ah – I see – I – I thought you were a musician.’
‘No – I’m – not terribly musical at all.’
There was another awkward silence. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t introduce myself – I’m Oliver Halkin.’
‘Hello,’ she said, the formality of her tone striking her as absurd.
‘Are you any connection with the company?’
‘Company?’
‘Monsanto – it’s rather famous in textiles.’
‘No – I don’t think so.’ Without meaning to, she
found herself noting the people who were walking down the street. Above the parapet she saw trousers, then a woman’s legs. Water trickled down the small of her back into the towel.
‘I’m really pleased you saw the ad,’ he said.
‘It was pretty amazing seeing it!’ She relaxed a little. ‘I never thought – I – I don’t read
Private Eye
. I saw it by accident.’
‘You were awfully decent to write.’
‘I – I didn’t really believe it was for me, you know? I thought it must be for someone else. Except for the Eboracum bit, that was clever.’
‘Could we – er – meet up? Perhaps I could – er – could buy you some lunch?’
Lunch. She liked the idea of lunch. Daytime. There was an almost disappointing innocence about it. Lunch wasn’t easy for her, it was meant to be an hour; not that anyone kept a stopwatch on it, but she felt guilty about abusing it. She remembered Carol Bolton’s caution, and Debbie’s. Lunch would be safer, although she did not believe he could be a threat to her. And she could compensate by working late. ‘Great! Thank you.’
‘Do you work in London?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you anywhere near the City?’
‘In Bloomsbury.’
‘Right. Is next Tuesday any good for you?’
‘Next Tuesday? I’ll just check.’ She clamped the receiver against her towelled thigh, her brain racing. Tuesday. Nothing. Her diary was through in her bedroom, but she knew she was free. ‘Tuesday would be fine.’
‘I’m trying to think of somewhere that’s easy for you. Do you know Greville Street?’
‘Off Gray’s Inn Road?’
‘Yes. There’s a wine bar in a little alley called Bleeding Heart Yard. We can sit outside if it’s nice.’
‘Great. I’ll find it.’
‘One o’clock OK for you?’
‘Yes, fine,’ she said. ‘See you then.’
Frannie found the Bleeding Heart wine bar more quickly than she had expected and was ten minutes early. She had dressed in the only really smart summer outfit she had, a navy two-piece, a white open-neck blouse and her one pair of decent navy shoes, and she had felt good when she had left the Museum twenty minutes ago. Now she was a bag of nerves.
She walked on past the courtyard and crossed over to the cool of the shaded side of the street, out of the cloying lunch-time heat, wondering if there was some subtle humour in his choice of venue that was eluding her.
She checked her reflection in a shop window, making sure her face and nose had not gone shiny, then ambled on edgily, unable to stand still, glancing at other windows but barely registering what was in them. Instead she was thinking about him. Oliver Halkin. All worked up, she thought, for someone I met at a railway station and will probably never see again after today. Someone whose face I can’t even remember clearly without his voice to prompt me. She even wondered whether she would recognize him instantly or not.
At five to one she made her way back up the street and into the pretty, cobbled courtyard with tables outside laid for lunch, several of which were already occupied. A waitress asked if she had a reservation and she told her there might be one in the name of Oliver Halkin.
The girl disappeared inside, then came back out a moment later. ‘He’s not here yet.’ She led Frannie to a table in the sun, saying ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘I’ll wait for a few minutes,’ Frannie said.
She sat, glancing around. There were three women at the next table, smartly dressed and chattering. Two men sat at the table in front of her, one having soup, the other pulling an artichoke apart. A blond man in a brightly checked jacket walked arm in arm with a smartly dressed woman across the cobbles, and into the interior. She heard the faint clatter of cutlery, the clink of glasses around her, and smelled the aroma of grilled fish.
A tall brown-haired man hurried in from the street; he was the right age and build and she wondered, just for an instant, whether it could possibly be Oliver Halkin. He caught her glance and hesitated, looking at her expectantly but equally without recognition, then walked past her and inside.
A striking-looking woman in her early thirties, in a white trouser suit and jangling gold chains, strutted past, heels clicking on the cobbles. Her wake of perfume drifted over Frannie. A siren wailed a few blocks away. Then Oliver Halkin came in.
She stood up as he ambled towards her with a shy smile on his face, everything else in the courtyard dissolving into the background. He stopped in front of her, seemed to pluck up courage and held out his arm, stiffly, giving her hand a firm, curiously formal shake. ‘Francesca. Sorry I’m late – the traffic –’ He raised his arms then let them drop to his side by way of apology. ‘You haven’t been waiting long?’
‘Just a couple of minutes. I was a little early.’
He was taller and more powerfully built than she remembered, and in the bright sunlight she could see
he was closer to forty than thirty-five. He was dressed similarly to before, although he looked smarter and fresher in a well-pressed linen suit, a blue-and-white striped shirt and a tie which had what looked like hippopotamuses on it. He was as good-looking as she had remembered. Even more so.
They studied each other for a moment, as if each was uncertain of their memory and was seeking reassurance, then he leaned forward and lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘You know, you look much better without your double bass.’
‘You don’t get to meet such nice strangers without it.’ She smiled, surprised by the flirtatiousness of her reply. Now that he was here, her nervousness had gone almost completely, and she was feeling the same immediate attraction to him that she had before.
He sat down opposite her and the waitress came over with two menus. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she said.
Frannie opted for a spritzer and Oliver joined her. He glanced down towards his lap, then up, touched the edge of the table as if he was going to adjust it, then seemed to have difficulty in deciding what to do with his arms. He folded them, unfolded them, then rested his hands on the edge of the table. They were large, strong-looking hands with slender, elegant fingers and rather bluntly clipped nails, which he examined for a moment before looking directly back at her. She noticed the signet ring on his wedding finger.
‘So, tell me about Francesca Monsanto.’
She interlocked her fingers in her lap, amazed how relaxed she still felt. ‘You tell me about Oliver Halkin first.’
‘There’s nothing very exciting to tell.’ Oliver tapped his menu as she grinned at him disbelievingly. ‘I’m a
widower with a son of eight, Edward, whom you’ve met. I have a farm which my brother runs – I help him out at weekends. And I’m a mathematician at a bank in the week.’
‘Oh?’ She tilted her head inquiringly.
‘Yes; mathematics and flying have always been my two big loves. But I can’t afford to fly much these days.’
‘Do you have a plane?’
‘I have an ancient Tiger Moth I’ve been restoring. But she’s not airworthy yet.’ When her eyes widened, he said, ‘Your turn! Tell me about Francesca now.’
‘Right, well …’ She pursed her lips and smiled, infected by his own expectant air. ‘She’s an archaeologist.’ She paused to take in his reaction, which seemed to be of approval. ‘She has graduated in Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of London. She’s a Libra.’ She thought for a moment, swinging her tongue inside her mouth. ‘Her lucky number is four and her favourite colour is blue. She’s quite superstitious. She has two brothers and one sister.’
The waitress arrived with their drinks and as Oliver leaned back a little Frannie noticed his broad shoulders. She brought to mind an expression about the boy being father of the man. In Oliver Halkin she could see both. There was a boyishness about his features, his hair, about the faint trace of sadness in his eyes, and yet a manliness in his physique, in the lines of his face, the crow’s-feet, in the confidence with which he carried himself, the assurance with which he sat here like a lion in its own habitat.
‘What do they do?’ he asked. ‘Your brothers and sister?’
‘My little sister Maria-Angela’s at catering college.
My eldest brother, Vittorio, is a doctor – he’s a houseman in Durham, and my younger brother, Paolo, is a lorry driver.’
‘Quite a mixture, your family.’ He held his glass forward. ‘Cheers.’
‘Cheers,’ Frannie said.
He clinked his glass against hers and there was a rich chime. Their eyes met and Frannie felt a beat of excitement as she drank. He lifted his menu. ‘Shall we order? Get these out the way.’
They studied the menus in silence for a few moments. Frannie ordered melon followed by turbot, and Oliver Halkin ordered pâté and the turbot.
She wondered how his wife had died but did not like to ask. ‘Which bank are you with?’ she said.