‘Please. Right. Like my boots?’ She did this, switching from the seriously cerebral to frivolous within the same second.
Eliza looked at her boots: they were softest white kid, with a wide cuff.
‘They’re beautiful,’ she said truthfully, ‘they look like Courrèges.’
‘They are Courrèges,’ said Annunciata.
She was clearly extremely rich as well as extremely clever.
Eliza went back to her office and pulled a sheet of paper towards her. There must be lots of people. Maddy. Esmond. Jerome Blake. She managed ten, then realised they were all in fashion and she wanted to impress Annunciata by being more than a fashion bird-brain. She thought for a bit, then rang Charles, asked if he knew anyone; he said he didn’t think so, there wasn’t much working-class talent on the stock exchange. Then he said, ‘Tell you what, though, Matt Shaw might be an idea. He’s a real working-class hero.’
She remembered dancing with Matt at the party that night and smiled. She liked Matt; he was very sweet. Well, maybe sweet was the wrong word. Bit too stroppy and pleased with himself to be sweet. But – quite sexy. Well actually, very sexy. He was certainly an amazing dancer. Anyway, he’d probably be really chuffed. Free publicity. Yes, it was a great idea. She’d call him.
‘I love you so much.’
‘Do you really?’
He looked hurt. ‘Yes, of course I do. Don’t you believe me?’
‘I – yes, I suppose so.’
‘Is there – is there something the matter? Because you’ve been – not quite yourself, not quite my lovely laughing girl for some little time now. Just tell me what it is, I’ll put it right, I swear. I can’t bear to think you’re not happy.’
As if he could. As if she could tell him. It was too complicated, too difficult. And too dangerous.
To say, ‘I was pregnant with your child. And I got rid of it. Just had it – flushed it away.’
That was one of the worst things; wondering what they had done with it, her baby. That minute, more-than-half-formed human being. She had found an article, complete with very beautiful and graphic photographs, about the development of the embryo in an old issue of
Life
magazine, had tried not to even look at it, had found herself studying it compulsively, over and over again. At eight weeks, the age of her baby when she had had the abortion, it had had a completely recognisable human face, jointed limbs, even tiny fingers. Its heart, liver, lungs and sex organs were formed; it had been a very-much-alive human being. And what had she done, as it nestled within her, growing, sweetly safe, towards its birth? Killed it. Had it ripped out of her. Just wrenched away. And …
‘No, honestly, David, I’m fine. Just a bit – a bit tired.’
She managed to smile at him, thinking what would he have said, or done, if he’d known, and that she’d had no right to take the decision on her own, without discussing it, that it had not been just her baby, to do what she liked with, it had been his baby. He had put it there, within her, they had created it together. He might be terribly angry: which she could have dealt with. Or terribly hurt: which she couldn’t.
‘Well, I think we can do something about that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. I think we can go on a little vacation. Just the two of us. For a few days, a week, maybe. To Venice, or Florence, somewhere really romantic. How would you like that?’
‘I – well I – well it would be wonderful of course. But—’
‘But what?’
How could she explain the but? That she was finding it so difficult to cope with everything at the moment, that she woke up most days feeling completely shattered, that she often cried herself to sleep at night – she could hide that for a day or two, while he visited London, but not for a longer time, not day after day. No, it would have to be postponed – while she pulled herself together, got her emotions under control, learnt to cope with what she had done: which had been the sensible, indeed the responsible thing.
‘But what?’ he asked again.
‘Oh – it’s just that my schedule is all done for the next month or so.’
‘Can’t you change any of it?’
‘Not really, David. And then I’m going on a course. I’m hoping to move to BOAC, I told you, and—’
‘Oh well,’ he said, ‘it was just an idea. A little later in the year, maybe.’ He looked hurt; he could see she wasn’t really very keen on the idea. Poor David. And she did truly love him; she hated to hurt him. But – it would be worse to hurt him more.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, putting her arms round him, giving him a kiss. ‘So sorry. And yes – later in the year would be lovely.’
But she couldn’t go on like this, crying all the time, not sleeping. Diana, who had been watching her worriedly for weeks, suggested she ask the doctor for some sleeping pills.
‘You look terrible, Scarlett, completely exhausted. What you really need is a holiday.’
‘I don’t want a holiday. Who do you suggest I go with? My mother?’
‘Of course not but—’
‘Look, Diana, just leave me alone. I’ll be all right.’
Diana looked hurt.
‘I’m sorry. I just feel so – so despairing.’
‘I know. It’s all right, I understand. But please talk to the doctor. I’m sure he could help.’
Scarlett was sure he couldn’t, but she was wrong; he prescribed her a month’s worth of sleeping pills. Within a week she felt a little better, less exhausted at least, and less tearful. And, even, less angry.
But she still felt physically frail and in need of a holiday.
She checked out some destinations and settled on a tiny Greek island called Trisos, small and peaceful with its one hotel and a tiny harbour.
And it was absolutely – well, words failed Scarlett. Perfect was underrating it. After a long journey – a flight to Athens and then a long boat trip from Piraeus, she had arrived in a deep grey dusk, was led up to her hotel by the ferryman, fell onto a comfortable if rather hard bed in a small, almost cell-like room – and woke in the morning to a world of dazzling light. She had never seen or imagined anything like that light; it was positively celestial – shining, white, that shamed full noon English sunshine into shadow. Her hotel, little more than a taverna, was one of a cluster of white-domed houses, carved out of the brilliant blue sky; she leaned out of the window and felt the sun not just on her but in her, beating down to her bones, and smiled to greet it. It might only be spring in England and a rainy one at that, but summer had certainly come to Greece.
She sat on the small terrace, framed with trailing begonias, and ate figs and yogurt and honey and drank orange juice and then strong sweet coffee while lizards sunbathed beside her and seagulls whirled and called above her head, and felt she might actually have landed in paradise. Her hosts, Demetrios and Larissa, were charming, with the Greek gift of warmth and ease; she had one of only six rooms, and her fellow guests – all clearly younger and less exhausted than she – were already gone for the day.
They directed her to the beach, only about two hundred yards away, by way of a tiny meandering path; she wandered down, settled under a straw umbrella and gave herself up to pleasure.
Five honeyed days later, she felt mended again; restored to herself, the feeble, fretful Scarlett gone, she truly felt, for good. She had done very little: swum when she got too hot to sunbathe, sunbathed when she wanted a return to the golden warmth. Somewhere halfway through the day she would wander through the tiny village, with its narrow, white streets, and buy herself fruit, bread, feta cheese and huge, misshapen tomatoes and make herself a picnic, which she ate either on the beach or the small terrace of the hotel. Then – a sleep, on her bed, its muslin drapes saving her from one of the few perils of the place, mosquitoes, and when she woke, another swim, a walk and then the first glass of ouzo at some small taverna or another, and later, dinner which she ate against a background of a million crickets chattering, or so it sounded, and a sliver of moon carving itself out of the dark, still-just-blue sky.
She was enchanted by what passed for a menu: a visit to the kitchen, to see the food on offer and then to choose, from moussaka, wonderful baked vegetables, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes, and then huge omelettes, and of course fish, wonderful fish, fresh from the sea, brought in that very evening.
One day she hired a boat, a small fishing vessel with a noisy, rather smelly outboard and a tiny sail. Its owner looked about sixty and was, Larissa told her, little more than forty, bark-brown and half toothless. He took her on an enchanted journey to adjoining coves, to tiny islands little more than large rocks, even taught her the rudiments of sailing when a breeze sprang most obligingly up.
Another day she hired a motor scooter and took herself on a journey a little way into the hills – surprisingly green for Greece, ‘Trisos is green,’ Demetrios told her, ‘we, like Mykonos, have much rain in the winter’ – and to other small, white villages, slumbering in the heat.
On her last but one day, a man arrived: tall, dark, English, quite young, around thirty she would have said, single – or at least alone. He was rather good-looking, with floppy dark hair and grey eyes fringed with almost girlishly long lashes, and he wore steel-rimmed spectacles. She had tried to be friendly, had smiled at him and asked if he was having a good time as they passed on the terrace before dinner, and he smiled almost anxiously, shook her hand and said he was finding the island delightful, ‘as I am sure you are too’, but he was clearly phobically private, buried himself rather ostentatiously in his book while eating his dinner and then disappeared upstairs. She supposed he must be taking, like her, a restoratively cheap holiday; it was only when she was leaving, paying her bill, that she learnt from Larissa that he was looking for somewhere to build a house for himself. His name, she discovered, through peering surreptitiously through the hotel visitors’ book, was Mark Frost. Very appropriate. She hoped – rather meanly, for what could it matter to her? – that he would not settle on Trisos. He wasn’t worthy of it.
Had anyone told her she would be happy to holiday alone, with no entertainment or company whatsoever on offer, she would not have believed them; nor that she would not think of and pine for David constantly, but he scarcely entered her consciousness, and then only as a distant happy presence, no longer a source of bitterness. She felt indeed the opposite of lonely there, surrounded as she was by smiling and friendliness, and her own thoughts and growing happiness; she read a great deal, and wrote a few postcards, but for most of the time she just reflected, and most happily, on the lovely place she was in and what it was giving her. And when her five days came to an end, she felt only a sweet sadness to be leaving; and waved goodbye to the island through smiling, grateful tears.
Eliza was sitting in the Markham pub, in the King’s Road, waiting for Matt. She was early; she had arranged to meet him at six, but she had finished scouting round the wonderful stalls of Antiquarius – the magazine was doing a spread on vintage jewellery – and didn’t really want to hang around the shops any longer. One of the few disadvantages of working in fashion was that shopping as an activity rather lost its charm. She ordered herself a gin and tonic and was flipping through the pages of the new
Vogue
, when she saw him coming in, looking slightly nervous.
She called to him. ‘Matt! Over here.’
‘Hello, Eliza. Sorry I’m late.’
He was dressed in a rather sharp suit, and a blue-and-white shirt with a white collar and cuffs. He looked very – well, very cool. And sexy. He was very sexy, she decided. She’d always vaguely been aware of it, from that very first time on Waterloo station – but ever since the party, and The Dance in capital letters as she thought of it, she’d realised he had whatever it was in very large quantities.
And – what was it exactly? She’d often tried to define it and failed. You knew it when you saw it, that was for sure; the physical unsettling of yourself, the need to acknowledge it, a sudden change in atmosphere from social to sexual. It wasn’t looks and it wasn’t charm, although it could accompany both those things; it certainly wasn’t ease or comfort, indeed it induced a rather raw intensity into a situation … anyway, it was standing in front of her right now. She smiled, stood up and on an impulse leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. And felt him flinch just slightly and wondered if that was shyness or shock – or simply that he didn’t find her sexy back. Probably the latter.
She smiled at him, suddenly nervous, and sat down abruptly. ‘Hello, Matt. You look very smart. Like the suit.’
‘Oh – thanks.’ He smiled back at her just slightly uncertainly.
‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Oh – no—’ this clearly threw him, ‘I can’t have you buying me a drink.’
‘Yes, you can. It’s on expenses.’
‘Oh – OK then.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’ll have a beer please. Well, a – a lager, you know.’
‘Course.’
She fetched it and a gin and tonic for herself, and two packets of crisps, settled back in her chair.
‘So – how’s things?’
‘Oh – pretty good. Yes. We’ve expanded quite a lot, taken on three staff. So there’s six of us altogether now.’
‘Really? That’s very exciting. You’ve done so well, Matt.’
‘Oh,’ he said, offering her a cigarette, ‘this is only the beginning. I’ve got bigger plans than this, believe you me.’