in need of a handkerchief. Please take mine and I promise not to notice.’
Something was placed in my lap and my fingers encountered a square of cotton, so soft it must have been washed a hundred times. It felt so civilized, so clean and domestic. I grabbed it. By the time the aircraft rolled out of its berth, it too was sodden.
We had been airborne for half an hour or so when, eventually, I was sufficiently in control to thank my rescuer. He was a little older than I, and neatly turned out in a linen shirt and pressed trousers, but painfully sunburnt on his neck and hands. He had a briefcase, supple and beautifully sewn, which looked expensive. He was reading a paperback with careful attention. I knew this was intended to reassure me that he would not force his company on me.
‘You have been very kind,’ I said.
He glanced down at the wet ball in my hand. ‘Please keep the handkerchief.’
‘I’m so sorry I’ve disturbed you.’
His smile almost suggested that he welcomed the idea of a female weeping over him. I noticed, too, that he smiled properly, with his eyes as well as his lips. ‘If it’s any comfort, I’ve encountered far worse. So carry on, if you want to.’
I took him at his word, and continued to cry sporadically for most of the flight while he read his book on South American politics, scribbled in the margins then ate his meal and mine.
After the trays had been cleared away, he asked, ‘Would you like my shoulder sleep on?’
Feeling rather foolish, but too exhausted to argue, I accepted and soon slipped out of my anguish. When I woke, we had flown into the night and my companion was asleep too, his shoulder still supporting me.
As the aircraft began its descent into Heathrow, the shockingly dull brown and green patchwork of Middlesex framed itself in the plane window. He adjusted his seat into the upright position. ‘It is, of course, perfectly possible that you’re upset over the state of South American politics – don’t look so surprised, some people are. I am, and I would be happy to tell you about it sometime. Or, having murdered a tax inspector, you’re going home to face prison. Or perhaps you have had to say goodbye to a member of the family and you will never see them again, but I think it’s more likely that it has something to do with a love affair.’ I said nothing. ‘He must be a rat,’ he remarked. ‘I’d never give up a woman with hair like yours.’ There was nothing to be said to that either.
The runway roared up beneath us, and the plane touched down, bounced, and taxied towards the terminal. ‘Would you like to share a taxi with me into London?’ he asked. ‘Don’t worry about the cost, I’m on expenses.’
Too tired to care about anything, I accepted. ‘I’ll try not to cry’ I looked out at a grey, sodden sky. ‘Do you always deface your books?’
‘Only if the contents aren’t up to it.’
‘Poor book.’ It was how I felt too. Failure tasted and felt terrible.
‘My name is Nathan Lloyd.’ He held out his hand. ‘What’s yours?’
I told him.
At seven thirty we were woken by the phone. Nathan groaned and reached out. ‘Yes,’ he said blearily, then snapped to attention. ‘OK, Peter.’
I slid out of bed. I knew the form. There was a crisis and Nathan was required in the office. War had been declared, a royal had misbehaved, a libel writ had been slapped on his desk. We had lived through them all several times. The curious thing about human behaviour was that it went on happening, despite everyone knowing better.
I pulled on my dressing-gown and padded down the stairs to the kitchen, stopping on the landing to take a look in the mirror that hung there and smooth my hair behind my ears. I remembered the cartoon joke where the woman looks into a mirror and exclaims, ‘
The years had nibbled away the clear-cut contours and it was a high-risk strategy to get straight out of bed and count on looking fine. No, more than that: it was impossible. Although I liked faces that were blurring into softness in exchange for the willow sheen of youth – Ianthe, for example, was much more interesting to look at now than she had been at forty – it took a bit of getting used to. I had not reckoned on being more self-conscious at forty- seven than I had been twenty years earlier: I had always imagined that in that respect being older was liberating. But it was not, and it went without saying that it was not a subject I discussed with Nathan.
In the kitchen, I snapped up the blinds, and the room was swathed in a weak sunlight. I drew a deep breath. It was going to be a day of pottering in the shed, getting through tasks that never got done if the weather was too cold.
I set a couple of rashers of bacon in a pan to fry, laid the table, squeezed fresh orange juice and made the coffee. I loved my kitchen. It was my locus in which I took endless pleasure, and I filled it with cream and white objects, jugs, bowls, china, which I had chosen carefully over the years. My dressing-gown flapped against my legs as I moved around tidying, putting dirty mugs into the dishwasher, folding unironed laundry into a pile.
When the bacon was crisp, I heated milk in a saucepan, catching up the skin in a spoon, then called Nathan. He came winging into the kitchen in his dress-down office trousers and jacket. Already his mind was fixed on business. The transition of Nathan, the junior political correspondent whom I had met on the plane, to deputy editor, had been hard-fought. Once, when I asked him if he minded that he no longer foraged for stories in the field, no longer wrote the articles, he replied that as he could not remember what it had been like he could not miss it. That had made sense.
I poured him coffee and sat down opposite him. ‘Wish you didn’t have to go.’
He shrugged. ‘We all know the form. Shouldn’t take all day, but I’ll let you know’ There was a pause. ‘Where will you be?’
I glanced up at the window. ‘I’ll do some chores, then if the weather holds I’ll be in the garden.’ The garden was mine, and I spent any spare time in it. Nathan hated anything to do with soil: his role was to sit in a deckchair and make comments.
He finished his bacon and reached for the toast. ‘The garden will bankrupt us,’ he said.
‘It’s going to be wonderful this year. You wait. I’ve done marvels.’
‘That’s what you always say.’
‘And it’s true.’
A faint early-morning smile crossed his face. ‘Yes, it is.’
Nathan and I rowed over me tramping through the house with bags of mushroom compost and manure – and yes, I did make a mess. We rowed over the money I spent on plants, and we rowed because I refused to take a holiday when the
He did not like it when I read gardening books into the night, keeping him awake, and he complained bitterly when I ordered a tiny fountain to be constructed in the garden. That had been a Pyrrhic victory, for the fountain was a source of endless trouble, requiring regular maintenance and cleaning.
Yet they were good rows, the kind that people who live together should share. They raised the whirlwind, shook the furniture and vanished, leaving calm. Nathan and I were happy to occupy opposite sides of the garden fence over which we could shout at each other.
The hot milk had grown a second skin so I fetched the strainer then refilled Nathan’s cup. ‘Have you phoned Poppy yet?’
In May she would take her finals at Nottingham University, and neither of us was convinced that she was doing any work. Nathan had resolved to give her a lecture, although I had argued that, at twenty-two, Poppy was free to choose what she did with her life, and Nathan had argued back that, in that case, she choose between my position and his.
‘I haven’t but I will,’ he said irritably. ‘This evening. Don’t go on about it.’
‘I’m not going on about it. I’m just reminding you.’
I poured myself some coffee and Nathan went upstairs to do his teeth. A little later he came clattering downstairs, shouted goodbye and the front door closed.
Another Saturday.
I looked at my coffee. Flat platelets of skin were floating on its surface, leaving a trail of fatty bubbles in a grey liquid. I threw it away.
