The Queen's Margarine (16 page)

So she had better make a tour of the whole concourse, searching every part of it – and start here, with the Reef Café, which, annoyingly, was up a flight of stairs. More punishment for her feet. Still, the terrace on the upper floor afforded a good view and, as she gazed down at the people below, she could see every shape and size and age and type – except the one she sought. Limping down the stairs again, she ventured into the Marks & Spencer food store. He might be buying her a present: truffles or champagne. For all his faults, Carl never failed to bring her lavish gifts. No sign of him, but she proceeded down the escalator to Starbucks, for no other reason than the fact it was American-owned. She found Starbucks and MacDonald's side by side, but no Carl among their customers. Returning to the concourse, she tried the Wellesley pub next – a basement joint, which meant more stairs. Venturing down, she was assailed by rackety music and flashing slot-machines, and stood recoiling from the smell of smoke, which, despite the recent smoking-ban, lingered stale and cloying in the air.

Still no Carl and, having hobbled up to ground-level once more, she saw she had reached the far end of the station. Crossing over to the other side, she started checking all the stalls and kiosks located between the platforms, most of which sold food. The Krispy Kreme doughnuts looked especially tempting: a luscious choice of maple-iced, strawberry-filled, sugar-coated, chocolate-topped. And
the hot croissants on the patisserie stall lured her with their buttery smell. She was so hungry she could wolf the lot.

Trudging on past
Délice de France
and Upper Crust, she was reminded of New York, in that almost every stall was staffed by foreigners. At home, she barely saw a black or Asian face, or met anyone who wasn't smugly middle-class and white. But her two years in Manhattan had shown her a much wider world, in which every different race and nationality seemed to be flung into a gigantic potpourri. She had listened on street corners to esoteric languages; sampled ethnic foods (everything from sushi and sashimi to fried plantains, hot pastrami, polenta and pupusas); toured Chinatown and Harlem and Little Italy, intrigued by the exotic sights and sounds. And Carl himself was something of a United Nations, with his German first name, his Italian surname and his mixed Jewish and Sicilian blood. What had bowled her over initially was the intense darkness of his eyes: a potent, gleaming black, like strong espresso coffee. And his hair was equally dark: thick, rebellious, raven hair that had made her own mousy crop seem timid and half-hearted.

She was suddenly struck by an appalling thought: he'd be
grey
by now, not dark. In fact, would she even recognize a Carl of
sixty-five
? She should be looking for a pensioner, someone bowed and bent and slow; not the upright, agile hunk who had whisked her from her home and country into a totally new life. Absurd as it might sound, it hadn't really dawned on her till now that two decades would have aged him to a quite noticeable degree. Rather, she had clung to her belief that a man like Carl, so powerful and controlling in every other matter, would have overmastered change and time in his usual dominant fashion. But sixty-five was old by any standards – indeed, the same age as her father, who was arthritic, paunchy and very nearly bald. And what about sex, for heaven's sake? Would a guy so ancient be able to perform still, or would his former passion have petered limply out? Playing bowls or bridge was perhaps more his kind of thing now than playing skilled seducer.

The prospect of encountering a hairless, sexless, doddery, old Carl made her feel so desolate, she strode up to the counter of Pie Kitchen and ordered the largest pie on display: a crumbly beef and
mushroom affair, which left her little change from a fiver. But she needed fuel – and comfort – something to plug her increasing sense of loss. For an entire two decades, Carl had remained her touchstone of male physical perfection. His character might be wanting, his virtues thin on the ground, but when it came to sheer good looks, he left most men at the starting gate. But even an Adonis could wither and decay.

Miserably, she bit into her pie, cursing as the filling spurted out and dribbled down her coat in a greasy brownish gunge. She tried to rub the stains off with a tissue, but only made them worse. Well, if Carl found her gravy-bespattered, with crumbs all round her mouth, he would only have himself to blame.

She continued munching defiantly as she approached the clock once more, now looking for a different Carl – older, greyer, wrinkled. But no Carl at all was there. Might he have come and gone while she had made her tour of the station, assuming she had given up in despair and set off home?

Well, she
would
go home. It was now a minute past eleven, which meant she had waited one-and-a-quarter hours. Aged nineteen, she would have waited half the day, of course; willing to indulge his foibles and overlook his faults, but she had changed since then, and was less patient altogether. She was particularly annoyed today to have taken time off work, only to waste it on this fruitless expedition. However, if she went back right away, at least she could retrieve the afternoon; catch up with her emails, and tackle the pile of washing-up she'd been ignoring for a fortnight. In fact, the Honiton train was due in just four minutes, she remembered from the timetable.

With a last desperate look in all directions, she finally cut her losses and ran full-pelt to platform 7, click-clacking on her silly heels, and arriving in the nick of time. She found a corner seat, kicked off her shoes and opened her book with a flourish. On the journey home, she would concentrate, read a dozen chapters; refuse to waste another minute regretting the aborted rendezvous. If truth be told, she had probably saved herself a load of trouble. Life with Carl might have been exciting, but it had invariably left her exhausted and in turmoil.

‘Welcome aboard this 11.05 South West train service to Exeter St
Davids, calling at Basingstoke, Salisbury, Sherbourne, Yeovil Junction….'

Just as the doors were closing, she leapt to her feet, grabbed her shoes and bag, and sprang from the train in her stockinged feet, leaving her book behind in her haste. Why rush straight home and engage in tedious chores, just because some louse had stood her up? Having spent so much time and money coming up to London, she should surely make the most of the place. As an emancipated woman, she could treat
herself
to lunch, instead of waiting for a man to foot the bill. And afterwards, she could go to a museum or take in an exhibition, soak up a little culture, for a change. And if she bought a brolly and a pair of cheapo trainers, she could stride around, unhampered, and without getting wet
en route.

Ramming on her shoes again, she tottered back along the platform, taking a final look at the station clock. No Carl, of course. That settled it. If he ever got in touch again, she'd simply bang the phone down. It wasn't a matter of mere unpunctuality. During her two years with him, she had lost her whole identity: her home, her job, her way of life. If she had displayed the slightest sign of independence, he had immediately cracked down on it. She mustn't work – it might make her unavailable – but be at his beck and call. Oh, he was generous, yes, indulgent, yes, but what she had put up with as a penniless
ingénue
, she refused to stomach now. Her present self-sufficient life was too valuable to risk.

Before leaving the station, she popped into the Ladies room, to sponge her coat and wash her greasy hands. Glancing in the mirror, she wondered just how different she might have looked to Carl, after the twenty-year hiatus. She had certainly plumped out a bit since her skinny, coltish teens, but, on the whole, she had worn surprisingly well – no grey hairs, no wrinkles. What she didn't like was the make-up. She had overdone the blusher and even the eye-gloss looked, frankly, vulgar in the cold stare of the fluorescent light. Scrabbling in her handbag, she whipped out her pack of tissues and started scrubbing off her war-paint. At home, she never wore it, and she detested this false self, which had tarted itself up to please a man who wasn't worth the effort. She would enjoy her day in London naked-faced and sensibly shod, and consign inconsiderate Carl to the dustbin of her past.

Emerging from the Ladies, she paused a moment, deciding where to go: the National Gallery, perhaps, or the Egyptian rooms in the British Museum, which she still remembered from school. Or maybe …

‘Rowena! Rowena!'

Startled, she looked up, jolted by the American voice – that voice she knew so well, with its unique blend of steel and velvet; its deep, authoritative tone. Someone was striding towards her from the direction of the clock: a tall, athletic, agile man – elegant, impeccably dressed, black-eyed, silver-haired. He was carrying a huge bouquet of lilies, which he let fall dramatically (like mere impedimenta), so that he could sweep her into his arms. She struggled to resist; tried to tell him she was furious and demanded an explanation, but his kiss had lit some touch-paper deep within her body, so that she was smouldering, exploding, sending up great rocket-showers of heat and light and colour. Whatever her head might want to say, their joined lips and tongues were speaking a quite different language; renewing the acquaintance in the most outrageously sensuous fashion. She had no option but to surrender, as the whole busy, bustling station became nothing but a backdrop for the longest kiss in the history of the world.

A century must have passed before he finally let her go, and, when he did, she simply stood and stared at him. The shining silver hair (still thick and lush and vigorous) only served to emphasize the intense darkness of his eyes, while the deep-etched lines around his mouth lent him a new gravitas. All the recriminations were dying on her lips. How could she have remembered all his bad points – his rudeness, lateness, selfishness – yet blanked out the most vital thing about him: his expertise as lover?

Retrieving the lilies, he thrust them into her arms. ‘For you,' he whispered. ‘With all my love.'

Their swoony scent seemed to knock her even further off her guard. She should be insisting on an apology, not allowing him to purchase her submission with yet another gift.

‘Where
were
you, Carl?' she stammered out, at last.

‘St Pancras Station.'

‘St Pancras?' she replied, confused. ‘Was I meant to meet you
there
?'

‘No, my gorgeous girl, you were meant to meet me here.'

‘I did,' she retorted. ‘I was under that clock on the dot of 9.45, and I've been searching for you ever since. In fact, I'd just given you up and was going off on my own,'

‘Well, you'd better not do that, because I've got a surprise for you, sweetheart.'

‘Surprise?'

‘Yes, lunch in Paris, instead of lunch in London.'

‘Paris?' she repeated, incapable of anything beyond parroting his words. The ‘gorgeous girl', the ‘sweetheart' were fatally distracting. Such endearments had been depressingly rare in the recent man-less years.

‘Yes, by Eurostar. I just hope you've brought your passport, like I asked?'

So
that
was the reason for his peculiar request. Still flurried by the fact they were actually speaking on the phone, after twenty years of silence, she had assumed he must be harbouring some crazy plan to whisk her back to the States with him – a replay of 1986.

‘Of course not,' he had laughed, his voice still faint and fuzzy, as if he were ringing from another planet, instead of from Manhattan. ‘I just want to see your passport photo and remember how you looked when we first met.'

‘Carl,' she had pointed out acerbically, ‘I renewed my passport four years ago, so you'll see a woman of thirty-five, not a girl still in her teens.'

‘Never mind – bring it anyway.'

‘But why my passport, Carl, instead of an ordinary photograph? I mean, it's not even flattering.'

Just as he was about to answer, an urgent call came through, and he'd had to ring off almost instantly, with only time to tell her he adored her. Mystified, and still shaken to her very roots, she had complied with his demand. Carl expected orders to be obeyed.

‘Well, did you bring it?' he repeated, his tall figure dwarfing hers. That distinctive height was just another aspect of his dominance; his natural superiority compared with lesser men. And it was hard to tell untruths to such a man – pretend she had forgotten all about the passport, or mislaid it altogether. Yet,
despite his romantic gesture in arranging a trip to Paris, one part of her resented it. Couldn't he have asked her first, instead of simply assuming (as he always had) that she would fit in with his plans? ‘Carl,' she said, at last, ‘I've just
been
on a train for the last three-and-a-quarter hours. I'm not sure I want to—'

‘This is another thing entirely, Rowena – in a different league. It's the first commercial Eurostar service leaving from St Pancras, rather than from here at Waterloo. I first read about the change-over in a feature in the
New York Times
, a week or two ago, and realized that it coincided with my business trip to London. And I decided there and then that you and I should go together, but I wanted to surprise you. I tried to book seats right away, only to be told there wasn't a hope. Those tickets are like gold-dust. People had written in six
years
ago, in the hope of reserving seats – train-buffs who travelled on the first Eurostar from this station, and wanted to repeat the experience from the big new terminal.'

She suppressed an impatient sigh. Why were they standing around on a cold and draughty station, discussing train-buffs, of all things, when they could be in bed together, trying out variations on that first sensational kiss? ‘So if you couldn't get them, Carl, why—?'

‘No, wait – let me tell you the best bit! I was watching the News in my hotel room this morning, and they were showing the whole St Pancras thing – crowds of people milling around the station, and all kinds of celebrations in full swing. And a guy came on who said they'd spent literally billions renovating the place, and how it's an architectural wonder, and that the new trains themselves are the fastest on record and go at nearly two hundred miles an hour – which means London to Paris takes a whole hour less than your trip here from Honiton! They're calling the new line High Speed 1, and …'