The Dog House (Harding's World of Romance) (24 page)

Whereas she was a wreck and her exile wasn’t over. Nor was she over Colin at all. She had been so angry at her eviction that she hadn’t expected to miss him or to think about him with the longing and sadness that she now felt, leaving her not only miserable but also frustrated with herself for feeling that way.

She only had to think about the icy tones of the eviction letter to feel her blood begin to boil, making it easy to tell herself that this was the proof of the man, not the charming, easy-going nice act that he put on for her sake. And yet she couldn’t quite believe it. The fun days they had spent together weren’t all an act and she was sure that their feelings for each other had been real. Unable to reconcile the two aspects of the man, she found herself thinking in circles.
 

The reader finished his verse and the audience clapped. Fiona joined in guiltily, having not heard much of what was said. Her friends nudged her gently.
“Go on up, Fi.”

But she shook her head, suddenly not believing in the words she had written. It was angry poetry, which had been her forte when she was more of an activist in her student days, but this time the diatribe was really against Colin, disguised in more general terms. Still she was rational enough to know that he didn’t represent the entire divide between rich and poor and that there was a danger in trying to turn personal crisis into political attitudes.

This was being brought home to her now that she was back in Leith, staying with her family while she figured out her next step. Her father, who came and went with the seasons, was back on unemployment, claiming that enough Scots had died for the English to make him entitled to getting a bit back. The flaws in his logic irked Fiona as much as the victimisation, but also made her aware of the tendency to put all of the blame on the enemy, rather than owning mistakes.

Well, she was at fault here as well, she acknowledged. She had been immature and irresponsible when it came to making amends for Livingstone’s behaviour and she knew that she would have acted differently if the damages hadn’t been to a rich English family but to a more modest, local
family. It had been too easy to bend her usual moral code and to justify it because the Parkers were rich and could afford it. And later, because she was falling in love with Colin.

In the end, it all came down to that simple truth. He wasn’t some big hero or a cutting-edge thinker, but he was a lovely, genuine man who was fun to be with, charming and sexy and good-natured, and she missed her time with him and the way he made her feel. If she ignored his side in the dog issue, or at least admitted that her behaviour in that affair was also far from honourable, he remained the man who had become closest to her and somebody she wanted to keep in her life.

The modest applause brought her back to her senses as she realised that she had sat through another performance without hearing a word. Her friends were jostling her again.

“Everyone wants to hear from you, Fi,” her friend Craig whispered. “It’s been a while, give them something.”

Reluctantly Fiona approached the podium, pulling her scribbled sheet from Campbell’s notebook, staring at it and then bunching it into a ball and throwing it in the waste-paper basket.

“I don’t have anything of mine worth sharing today,” she began, smiling apologetically at the little group. “Instead I thought I’d give you a treat, a sneak reading of one of Robert Campbell’s recently discovered poems
, which haven’t been published yet. This one he called “Potential Spring” and seems to have been written on a walk in the Fort William area one late spring. Of course it will sound measured and dated after the modern verse we’ve been hearing today, but just listen to the underlying optimism despite his own personal disasters at the time.”

She began to read, letting herself be carried back to the high stretches of open heather where she had walked so often with Livingstone, the wild emptiness and rolling hills reaching out on every side.
She forgot about her audience until she reached the final stanza, when the back door was opened and a man stepped inside, breaking her concentration. She looked up distractedly and then found her spot on the page and continued to read.

“
Heather burns and fades but roots remain

Anchored in imperfect soils but ever strong

Just waiting for the faintest warming rays

To push their hardy way through melting snows

And carpet hills again in purple bloom…”

She glanced up again, aware that the late-comer wasn’t slipping discretely into a vacant chair at the back but seemed to be approaching the podium. In the glare of the spotlight it was hard to make out more than the silhouettes in the darkened room, but something about the easy stride of the approaching man was familiar enough to make her voice trail away on the last line as her heart caught in her throat.

“That’s it for today, folks,” she ended hurriedly, stepping away from the microphone.

“Excuse me for interrupting, everybody,” came the unmistakeable accent and amused tones of Colin Parker.
“I know it’s terribly gauche, but something urgent has come up and I have to escort this young woman away. Nice poem, though.”

There was a smattering of bemused clapping and Fiona felt curious eyes following her as she walked down the aisle toward Colin. Her heart was now hammering wildly and she had no idea what to think except that she was somehow glad to see him. At the same time, she was wary enough of their situation not to want to jump into his arms and be swept away in a Hollywood ending. Her life wasn’
t exactly following a film script.

She stopped a few steps away from him and looked up questioningly to find his eyes watching hers fondly. At once she felt her old misgivings return, her fear that absolutely everything was a joke to him and that none of what had passed between them had left any serious impression. But he took her hands in his and pulled slightly, a new touch of earnest appeal in his eyes.

“Can we step outside and talk?” he asked quietly. “I don’t want to embarrass you in front of your peers. Or myself, if it comes to that.”

She nodded dumbly, also not wanting their confusion to be public domain. It also gave her a moment to recover from her shock while she followed him out of the room, stopping just to pick up her handbag and nod goodbye to her friends at the table.

He said nothing as they crossed the main lobby and walked out into the cold street. They were on a cobbled pedestrian street filled with pubs, cafes and little boutique shops, but nowhere private to have a conversation.

“Should we go for a walk in the park?” Colin suggested doubtfully, looking up at the grey skies. “Unless you have somewhere else in mind where we could speak freely.
Preferably not in front of your family.”

“You went by the flat?” Fiona asked uncomfortably as they set off toward Princess Street and the castle park. “How did they treat you?”

He shrugged in his nonchalant way. “Better than my friends treated you,” he said lightly. “One of your brothers seemed to like the idea of my living in a castle. Certainly a more welcoming reception than if my parents had found you soaking wet in your pajamas by the lake.”

Fiona watched him out of the corner of her eye, wondering if he was just going to laugh this all off and feeling her heart sink. But suddenly he took her hands again and dragged her against the lee of a wall to speak more seriously.

“Listen, Fiona,” he began awkwardly. “I know I’m not good at this sort of thing, but I need to apologise about the eviction. I tend to let other people deal with the situations I don’t like, just sort of washing my hands of them without really thinking about the consequences. Obviously I had no idea that it was you, but I’m sure that doesn’t matter in your judgement of me. All I can say is that this had made me think hard about taking my own responsibilities more seriously and that sort of thing won’t happen again under my watch.”

“Under your watch,” Fiona laughed softly, repeating his words. “Just listen to you, the guard still protecting the castle.”

“How about the feudal lord being humbled by the spirited peasant girl?” he replied. “Being shown the error of his ways and being changed to a better person.”

“You don’t want to be changed,” Fiona pointed out guardedly, as memories came back of their heated conversation after dinner in the castle. “You accused me of that.”

“I don’t mind becoming a better person in the way I live my life,” he said patiently. “I was thinking of a much more basic change, more trivial I suppose, but I just didn’t want you waiting for me to become somebody solemn and serious all the time. I’m afraid that flippancy is part of my nature and I can’t help seeing the humour in most things, and I don’t want that to change. Life has got to be more fun when you laugh more, doesn’t it? But I never saw that as mutually exclusive of being passionate about things.”

“You just never had the time to try?” Fiona asked sarcastically, still feeling somehow defensive.

“Maybe you don’t try for passion,” Colin suggested. “Maybe you either have it or you don’t. Or one day you meet somebody and she reminds you what it is.”

Fiona felt her anger softening as she began to feel hope that he was finally going to say what she needed to hear. “I’m sorry too,” she blurted out before her walls came up again. “About Livingstone and me and the damages we caused. It was cowardly and wrong of me not to come forward and confess, and I promise you that I’
m normally not like that.”

Her words sounded feeble, even to her own ears, but she didn’t know how to explain her lapse of character. He seemed to understand.

“It felt different because it was against the invading English,” he supplied dryly, not sounding in the least offended. “And you think we deserve a scratch of reality on the leather seats of our lifestyles.”

“You want to get up there and recite poetry by any chance?” Fiona asked teasingly, wondering why it was so hard to remain angry for very long with Colin.

“And get a haggis thrown in my face for my butchering of your art form and for my posh accent?” he asked with a violent shake of his head. “I already feel like I’m risking my life by facing you, after some of the righteous rage I’ve seen in you.”

Fiona opened her mouth to try to explain her outbursts, but suddenly found her thoughts and words a jumbled mess. The fact that he had come down to Edinburgh to find her meant something and she didn’t want to chase him away before he had tried to express what she was hoping he would say.

“Passion,” she said simply.  “It can make a person explode at times.”

“It also exists in people who don’t wear their heart on their sleeves,” he said gently, cautiously moving his hands from her wrists to place them on her shoulders and draw her closer to him. “We
aren’t all experts at expressing our passion in words, but there are other ways to show it.”

He leaned down to kiss her and she felt again the magnetic draw of the man in front of her, but she forced herself to push him back.

“I can’t tell if that’s passion or just hormones,” she said gently, regretfully. “
You probably think I’m being too square because I need definitions, but that’s how I am. I’m a word person in the end, Colin, much as I’ve enjoyed the physical passion. But I can’t just be somebody you sleep with. I want more.”

He continued to lean over her as if he knew the power of temptation at that distance. Then he sighed and stood straight again.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he said, squaring his shoulders resolutely. “Which is why I thought I’d try to speak to you in your language. Not in your accent, don’t worry about that. I know that poetry is what speaks to you the best, so I thought I’d write you an ode.”

“Oh no,” said Fiona.

“Just you wait,” he said undaunted as he fished in his jacket pocket for a slip of paper. “I’m no Campbell or Tennyson, but a Parker always rises to a challenge. I did shy away from a sonnet, though.”

Fiona covered her face with her hands, listening to the soun
d of paper being unfolded with embarrassment, dread and delight.

“I may have paraphrased a bit,” he admitted before clearing his throat theatrically and launching into verse.

“Fiona, Fiona, and something furry, by the night shores of Loch Murray

Soaked and swearing but still sweet
in wet pajamas and bare feet,

My heart still harbours words you spoke
, like “Go to hell, you spoilt rich bloke.”

You lured me in with history talk
and forced me on that culture walk

It took two bottles to convince you
just to let me briefly kiss you

And what but your delightful lips
could make me yearn for fish ‘n chips?

Your beauty brought me to my knees
, quite literally beneath the trees,

Before that
day of country-clubbing when you gave my friends a drubbing.

I knew I’d never be the same
when I laughed as you destroyed the game

And made me miss the cocktail
jammin’ and a chance for Cook’s exquisite salmon

To drag me home despite my wishes
to make me cook and wash the dishes.

I’d do it all again with conviction
if you’d forgive that silly eviction