‘What can I say, darling? Except that I’m sure he would’ve thought he was doing it for the best. He loved you, I know that; I knew he would take good care of you. Better than I could, the way I was.’ Suddenly James realised that Rose was close to tears. ‘And I had to be punished. Even
I
felt I had to be punished.’
‘Oh, Rose,’ cried James, stricken.
See: this is what happens when I push things!
‘Don’t feel like that! We can all go on from here, can’t we? The others’ll understand…’
‘But why
should
they? You’ve been so wonderful, James, to forgive me as you have. But the others…Why would they even believe I tried to stay in touch, if Alex won’t admit it?’
‘I don’t know. I think it must’ve been “won’t” with Dad for a long time,’ James said, his voice subdued. ‘He really did just shut down about you completely. But now, with this memory thing he’s got…’ He looked up at his mother, beseeching almost. ‘I really think it might be “
can’t”
. He’s repressed it all so long and now it’s… gone.’
‘Well, can’t or won’t, it’s too late now. Water long under the bridge,’ she said, sounding flat and drained. ‘At least he sent these photos.’
‘Yes. So you did know… something, at least, of what we were doing?’
‘Something, yes. Precisely this much, in fact.’ Rose drew her fingertips several times over her face. He could see she was trying to control
threatening tears. Push away the hurt. ‘Ah well,’ she said finally. Helplessly. ‘Ah well.’
She took the album from him and put it back in its place on the shelf.
James went up to London on the train to meet Silver, who’d been busy with her own family in Chicago again. She’d booked them into a new boutique hotel, a small, charming, exquisitely expensive place which boasted ‘a thousand ways to say very, very special’. James and Silver had become adept themselves, lately, at making each other feel like that.
Never, Silver thought, not even on their honeymoon, had they enjoyed this kind of romantic playfulness. And London seemed to share their mood: in its festive pre-Christmas gaiety, the city was more enchanting than she had ever known it. One evening, taking a breather betweens turns on the ice-skating rink in the courtyard of Somerset House, Silver leaned close to James and said, ‘My mom wanted to know how come I’m looking so, quote unquote,
gosh-darned gorgeous
. She says my Aunt Nancy wants the name of my plastic – sorry,
cosmetic
surgeon!’
James smiled. ‘Yeah? What’d you tell her?’
‘I told her I was having an affair,’ Silver said, grinning wickedly.
‘You
what
?’
‘Yep. She nearly had a heart attack! I told her I was having an affair. With my husband!’
‘Sil, you demon! Why’d you scare your mum like that? I really like your mum!’
‘I know, honey. I just couldn’t resist.’
‘I know the feeling,’ he said, sliding a hand stealthily inside her jacket and squeezing one of her breasts. Silver yelped, loud enough that several people turned and looked. ‘Oh,’ she murmured, butting his shoulder, ‘Just wait till I get you home!’
The next morning, damp and happy, they were in the bathroom together discussing Christmas gifts. Silver perched on the edge of the enormous bathtub, wrapped in a fluffy white hotel robe, and watched James in the mirror as he shaved. She loved observing this quintessentially masculine grooming ritual, and especially the dispassionate attention her husband paid to his own face as he performed it. He was wearing a pair of close-fitting boxer shorts in the softest white cotton, nothing else, and she thought the view was magnificently distracting. But she was trying to pay attention, because she could hear in his voice how excited James was at spending Christmas Day with his mother.
‘I was only seven the last time I gave her a Christmas present, isn’t that amazing? I never got to give her that last one, you know, the Christmas she left.’
‘So what will you give her this time?’ asked his wife.
Oh my, don’t he look goood!
She rolled the words around inside her mouth, her mind, like a piece of chocolate. There was a sensuous luxury to everything these days.
‘I’m giving her… two presents, actually,’ James answered. His sentences were oddly truncated as he attended to his shaving, turning his face this way and that and poking his tongue into a cheek. ‘Neither very grand though. One’s a little tiny… pair of scissors, you know, for snipping thread with…A German company makes them… Roland told me… she misplaced her last pair and she’s been making do with some others that aren’t as good.’ He rinsed the razor, tapping it against the side of the basin, and glanced at her sideways. ‘He knows I’m getting them, so there won’t be
two
new pairs the same!’
‘Sounds perfect. Very practical.’ Silver waited for James to go on, but he just kept shaving. After a little while she asked, ‘And the second one?’
‘Oh. Well, I’m picking that up today, actually, from the framer who does everything for Goldie’s gallery.’ His eyes met hers in the mirror. ‘It’s a drawing.’
‘One of yours?’
‘Yep,’ he nodded, and looked down, rinsing his razor again, unnecessarily. Still gazing at the foamy, stubble-flecked water in the basin he said, ‘It’s a drawing I did when I was nine; a self-portrait, actually.’ He glanced at her again. ‘I always wanted to give it to her; I used to imagine giving it to her. What she’d say.’
It was on the tip of Silver’s tongue to ask,
And what did you imagine she’d say?
, but she realised she didn’t need to ask. What could that little boy have wanted to hear but words of praise and love, of reassurance? She knew those words already.
‘You kept that drawing all this time?’
‘Yeah. What do you think, Sil? Is it too… I dunno… cute, or something? Big-eyed puppy thing?’
She rose, standing behind her husband to put her arms around him, resting the side of her face on the back of his neck.
‘No,’ she told him. ‘It’s not big-eyed puppy. It’s wonderful.’
‘Maybe. Yeah, I reckon Rose’ll like it.’
What if Deb knew?
he asked himself suddenly. It was a sobering thought.
She’d kill me!
As if she’d read his mind, Silver raised her head and looked at him in the mirror again. Her voice was serious. ‘Honey, you have
got
to tell Deborah. And the others. It’s getting to be almost… dangerous. They’ll feel like you’ve
cheated
on them, you know?’
James turned and put his arms around her, drawing her to him. Just at that moment, he didn’t want to meet her gaze. ‘It’s okay, sweetheart,’ he said with seeming confidence. ‘Really it is. I’ve talked to Rose about it. It’s better not to rush this. I’ll find the right time soon, don’t worry.’
Silver considered pulling back from his embrace and taking this further, maybe even getting him to make that call to Deborah now, today.
Once upon a time
, she thought,
once upon a time just a few months ago, I wouldn’t have let it get to this.
But now things had shifted. Silver let herself relax, her body responding to his caress. Even if this was a mistake… well, James could make mistakes, and she could let him,
because they were his own mistakes to make. And he was a person of enough substance to handle whatever happened. She rubbed her face like a cat does, satisfied, demanding, proprietorial, against his chest.
James felt his penis stir lazily, thickening against the gentle pressure of his underpants, pressing against Silver’s belly.
God, how did we live without this for so long?
He wrapped one finger in a lock of her shoulder-length hair and tugged softly, and she made a soft little growl low in her throat. But even as he started to drift into erotic absorption, James was sideswiped by another unwelcome thought:
You’re scared of telling the others: you’re scared of Deb. You’re a coward; you’ve always been a coward.
His mind flinched from this, just at the moment Silver tilted her face and touched her lips to his.
All these years, she had known they were compatible. But she had not thought James desired her, loved her for her self. Passionately. Now it was as though a door had opened and they’d walked through it, hand in hand, into this rich and wonderful realm.
How could I have believed that wanting sex would ruin it all!
She had thought that when he fell in love completely, it would be with someone else. And now he had chosen her. Finally, fully. He drew her plain happy face towards him, this beautiful husband of hers, and kissed her with a searching intensity, parting her lips.
This
, thought Silver,
is my own private miracle
.
When James gave Rose the drawing on Christmas morning, she burst into tears. Happy tears, but plenty of them.
‘Oh, James,’ she sobbed, ‘you have no idea! How much I
longed
to have one of your drawings!’
‘Well, now you’ve got one,’ he said, a bit embarrassed. Rose held the picture up and kissed the glass! He laughed, but it felt good to see this little drawing of his, in its innocence, lay a healing touch on the pain that had torn at them both, deep down, where the world couldn’t see.
Rose’s gift to Silver took everyone by surprise: a floor-length dress
with deep sleeves and a swooping neckline, featuring a pattern that was both organic and geometric, in warm earthy tones lifted with medallions of gold embroidery.
‘Wow!’ Silver exclaimed as she held it up.
‘Do you like it?’ Rose asked nervously, hands clasped tightly before her as she watched. Silver threw her an awed look.
‘It’s
amazing
,’ James said. ‘Did you make this? When?’
‘1973,’ his mother answered promptly. ‘Alhambra. That’s what we called that range. I always loved this one.’
‘But I’ve
seen
this dress,’ said Silver, whose visual memory was almost as acute as James’s. ‘Or one incredibly like it. At MoMA in New York, in that big exhibition of contemporary fashion a couple of years ago.’
‘Yes, I saw the catalogue. And you’re right, they had this piece in it,’ said Rose, very pleased. ‘In the seventies it would’ve been called a caftan, but caftans tended to be cut a little meanly for my taste. I felt a robe like this should have fullness and sweep.’
‘My mother,’ said James, ‘has been shown at MoMA.’ He gazed at her with a cow-eyed expression of adoration, and Rose giggled.
‘You designed this here, in England?’ Silver asked. ‘Were you working in London then?’
‘Yes,’ James put in, ‘tell us what you did after you got here.’
The missing years
.
‘Oh, where to begin?’ Rose said. ‘Well: jobs weren’t hard to come by, that’s for sure: there were new boutiques opening every day. I talked my way into one called “Empress”, which was
the
shop at the time, and from sales I moved into the design and management side. After a couple of years I was Erica Lambden’s right-hand girl. Lord, I worked hard though!’
‘Was she your, you know, mentor?’ James asked.
‘Erica? Heavens, no! Erica was a spoilt bitch, frankly, and mean as cat’s pee. Once cocaine came in she became completely impossible!’ Rose laughed, shaking her head as she remembered. ‘But I shouldn’t
speak too badly of her, she did give me a free rein with design – as long as she could take the credit. And she introduced me to Rachel Isaacs. Now Rachel,
she
was my mentor.’
‘She was a designer, too?’ asked Silver.
‘Oh, Rachel’s family had been in the rag trade for generations. In Europe. We met when Erica and I went to Spain: Erica was there for
inspiration
, I was there to run around after her. But that was how the Alhambra range happened.’
‘Ibiza,’ said Roland, who had been listening while his big hands quickly and delicately shelled an enormous quantity of fresh peas.
‘Yes,’ Rose agreed. ‘Rachel poached me from the Empress Erica and set me up with a fabulous boutique in Ibiza. She had the idea of using antique lingerie to make new things. Sounds almost passé now but she was the first. And she knew Ibiza in the seventies was the perfect place for it.’
‘I’ll bet Erica was sorry to lose you, once she knew you were leaving,’ Silver said.
Rose snorted. ‘Hah! Erica didn’t have a clue! Rachel came to London for the Alhambra launch and stole me right out from under Erica Lambden’s coked-up little nose! I walked away that night, without a backward glance.’
Something happened: a subtle change in James’s expression, a slight shift in Silver’s body language. Rose caught it, and thought,
What’s that?
‘So-o,’ James said, stretching, getting up from his chair. ‘Can I give you a hand with anything, Roland? When does Jacinta arrive?’
It wasn’t only the beautiful fifteen-year-old Jacinta who joined them for Christmas dinner but Jacinta’s mother, a good-humoured music teacher named Molly, and Molly’s partner, and their five-year-old son. Plus Jacinta’s riding instructor and her elderly father. Ten of them around the big table, with a whole roast goose and all the trimmings, and plenty of mulled wine. The gathering got noisier as the afternoon went on till by the time the Christmas pudding was
brought flaming to the table, the din was enormous. James didn’t hear his mobile ringing, but he felt the vibration in his pocket and hauled it out.
‘Hello!’ he shouted into it. ‘Merry Christmas!’
‘Merry Christmas, Jaffa,’ said Deborah’s voice.
He stiffened as though someone had grabbed him by the back of the neck.
‘You sound like you’re having a good time. Where are you?’
James thrust his chair aside and stumbled to the door. ‘I – I,’ he said, and then he was in the relative quiet of the living room, the door firmly closed behind him. ‘I’m just at some friends’. In the country.’
‘Silver’s there?’
‘Yeah, of course,’ he said. ‘I guess you’ve done Christmas, right? What time is it there?’
‘About three a-bloody-m. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d give you a bell.’
‘Great, ta,’ James said. He was talking on auto-pilot. ‘So, how was yours?’