‘Is that why you got me down here?’
‘You make me feel safe. When we met up in Yorkshire I felt glad to see you and that was why. I am safe in your love. I wish we saw more of you. I don’t know why we drifted out of each other’s lives.’
‘I thought it was because of what Damian said.’
She shook her head. ‘I knew it was nonsense. I knew it straight away but even more as time went on. He was in pain, that’s all.’
‘So was I by the end of that dinner.’ For the first time in my life, I could envisage a day when I would find it funny.
She stroked my hair, or what was left of it. ‘You should have stayed. You both should have stayed on afterwards and laughed.’
‘I couldn’t.’ She did not argue, and together we let the bitter memory go and returned to the glorious present. Suddenly I felt the freedom to touch her surge through me, like a child who finally lets himself believe that it really is Christmas morning. I reached up and traced the outline of her lips with my finger.
She kissed it gently as I did so. ‘You may not know it, but you have seen me through some dark times and this is your reward.’ As she spoke she moved closer and brought her mouth to mine, and we began, as the phrase has it, to make love. And while many times in my life those words have not been an accurate description of the activity they refer to, on that occasion they were as true as the Gospel. What we were making in that bed on that blessed morn was love. Pure love. Nor was there the slightest diminution of passion because the woman in my arms was a matron in her fifties rather than the lissom girl I had hungered for so many years before. She was my Serena at last. I held her in my arms and, for this one time perhaps, I was hers. I had finally arrived at my yearned-for destination. And although I was so aroused by her presence that I thought I would explode at one more touch, still, when I entered her, the sensation that filled me with a hot glow like molten lava was not just sexual excitement but total happiness. It sounds sentimental, which I am not as a rule, but that moment of being inside Serena, of feeling myself held by her body, for the first and presumably the only time in my life, after waiting for forty years, was the single happiest moment I have ever known, the climax, the very peak of my existence, nor do I expect to equal it before the grave claims me.
I do not seek recognition as a skilful lover. I assume I am no better and no worse than most men, but if ever I knew what I was doing that was the day. I dare say I should have felt guilty, but I didn’t. Her husband had the gift of her whole, adult life and he would never know the value of it. I did, and I felt that I deserved my hour without enraging too many of the gods. I am glad and relieved to relate that my tired, fat, flabby body rose to the challenge of the chance of paradise and never have I been so entirely engrossed in the present to the exclusion of all else. For those minutes I had no future and no past, only her. We made love three times before she slipped away, and when I stared at the gathered silk canopy above my head I knew I was a different man from the one who had lain down to sleep. I had made love to a woman I was absolutely and entirely in love with. The woman who held my heart had opened her body to the rest of me. There is no greater joy allowed us. Not on earth. And, in echo of Candida, I knew, because of that single episode, because of this one hour in a life of many years, because I had known real, unconditional bliss I could never again be a sad man. I thought it then, I think it now, and I am grateful. If Damian’s search led me to this, then I was paid in full and far in excess of any mortal man’s deserts.
Portugal and After
FIFTEEN
As it happened, the fateful invitation to Portugal came right out of the blue. One day the telephone rang in my parents’ flat – where I was, on the principle of Hobson’s choice, still living – and when I picked it up a familiar voice asked for me by name. ‘Speaking,’ I said.
‘That was easy. I thought I was going to have to track you down through ten addresses. It’s Candida. Candida Finch.’
‘Hello.’ I could not keep the surprise out of my voice entirely, since we had never been all that friendly.
‘I know. Why am I ringing? Well, it’s an invitation, really. Is there any chance I could tempt you to join a gang of us in Estoril for a couple of weeks at the end of July? An old friend of mine has got a job in Lisbon, in some bank or other, and they’ve given him this huge villa and no one to put in it. He says if we can all just get ourselves out there, we can stay as long as we like for nothing. So I thought it might be fun to mount a sort of reunion of the Class of Sixty-eight, before we’ve all forgotten what we look like. What do you say?’ My surprise was not lessened by any of this, as I wasn’t aware that I’d ever been a favourite of hers while the Season was going on, let alone why I should be chosen for a special reunion.
I had not seen Candida Finch much after the whole thing came to an end and by the time of the call almost two years had passed since the events I have been revisiting. It was in the early summer of 1970, when my days as a dancing partner were long behind me. I had left Cambridge that June, with a perfectly respectable if not overwhelming degree, and the perilous career of a writer beckoned. Or at least it did not beckon, because I soon realised that I was trying to push through a solid, brick wall. My father was not hostile to my plan, once he had got over his disappointment that I wasn’t going to do anything sensible, but he declined to support me economically. ‘If it isn’t going to work, old boy,’ he said genially, ‘we’d better find out sooner rather than later,’ which was, of course, in its way, a direct challenge. Eventually I got a job as a kind of super office boy in a publishing group for children’s magazines, which would begin in the following September and for which I would be paid a handsome stipend that would have comfortably maintained a Yorkshire terrier. I did go on to do the job, for three years in fact, finally clambering up to some sort of junior editing post, and somehow I managed to make ends meet. My mother used to cheat, as mothers will; she would slip me notes and pay for clothes and pick up my bills for petrol and car repairs, but even she would not actually give me a regular allowance, as she would have felt disloyal to my father. Let us say that during this period of my time on earth I lived, I survived, but it was essentially a life without frills or extras. All of which harsh reality I knew would be my fate at the end of that summer and it made Candida’s suggestion seem rather inviting.
‘That’s incredibly kind of you. Who else is coming?’ Of course, I knew as I said this that I had to accept, because you can’t ask who is coming to some event and then refuse. Inevitably it sounds as if you might have accepted if the guest list had been of a higher standard.
Candida knew this. ‘I think we’ll have fun. We’ve got Dagmar and Lucy and the Tremayne brothers.’ I wasn’t mad about the Tremaynes, but I didn’t actually hate them, and I was actively fond of the other two, so the idea was growing on me. I knew there wasn’t the smallest chance I would otherwise have a proper holiday that year before I started what I liked to call my ‘career.’ ‘I’ve found a charter airline where they almost pay you, so the tickets will cost about sixpence. Can I definitely include you in?’
I am ashamed to say this settled it. I was confident I could get my dear mama to sub a cheap ticket, so all I
