Marina came in and cuddled my back. ‘It’s ready,’ she said. ‘I hope you like it. It doesn’t quite look like it does in my cook book.’
‘What is it?’ I replied.
‘Beef medallions with marsala and creme fraiche sauce, accompanied by a cheese souffle and avocado salad. I think the souffle was a mistake and it will be a complete disaster if you don’t come and eat it
We ate it on trays on our knees and it was delicious. Marina had prepared the medallions so that they were single-mouthful size and they were tender and juicy. I rarely ordered beef in a restaurant due to the inconvenience and embarrassment of having to ask someone to cut it up for me, so this was a real treat.
She kept apologising about the souffle which, in truth, was not quite cooked through and didn’t really go with the beef, but it didn’t matter. This was the first time she had cooked a ‘special’ meal here and it was, I hoped, a sort of ‘marking out of territory’. We finished the bottle of wine with a rich homemade chocolate mousse and coffee, and then went straight to bed.
Marina was poles apart from my ex-wife.
When I had first met Jenny, we had almost bounced around the room with happiness. Our courtship had been steamy and sensual with passion and laughter and fun. We had married quickly and without her father’s blessing. Charles had not attended the service. We hadn’t cared, we had each other and that was all we’d needed. We were so desperate to be together that I would travel halfway through the night to get back to her. I had once driven all the way home with a fractured ankle because I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in hospital without her.
It was difficult to say exactly when things had begun to go wrong. She hadn’t liked what I did for a living and the demands it made on my body but it was more than that. A long time after we were divorced, she had finally said some of the things that she had bottled up for so long.
I could still recall the words she had used, ‘selfishness’ and ‘pigheadedness’ were merely two. She’d said, ‘Girls want men who’ll come to them for comfort. Men who’d say, I need you, help me, comfort me, kiss away my troubles. You can’t do that. You’re so hard. Hard on yourself. Ruthless to yourself. You’ll do anything to win. I want someone who’s not afraid of emotion, someone uninhibited, someone weaker. I want… an ordinary man.’
To me, I
Love for Jenny had come quickly, with huge energy and passion. It had then, inexorably, drained away to nothing, at least on her part. Worse still, where no love remained, bitterness and hatred had made a home. Joy and laughter were just a memory and an uncomfortable one at that. More recently, the loathing and disgust had lessened and those, in time, might also fade away to nothing. We might then again be able to meet as normal human beings without the urge to damage and to hurt.
Was I older and wiser now? I like to think that I had changed but I probably hadn’t.
For a long time after Jenny, I had been afraid of starting any relationship. I feared that pain and despair would quickly follow the love and excitement. I’d enjoyed a few fleeting encounters but I had always been looking for the way out, a simple pain-free exit, a return to the solitary male condition I imagined was my lot. Forever the failed husband, fearful of making the same mistake again.
With Marina, it was very different.
Sure, I had fancied her at our first meeting, a dinner party at a mutual friend’s house. Who wouldn’t? She was tall, fair and beautiful. But my first attempts to ask her out had fallen on stony ground. She had confided in the friend that she wasn’t sure about going out with a man so much shorter than she, and with only one hand to boot.
Fortunately for me, the friend had batted on my team and had convinced Marina that a single date wasn’t going to be the end of the world so, reluctantly, she had agreed. I decided against an extravagant and expensive evening at the Opera and The Ivy, and had plumped for live jazz downstairs at Pizza on the Park.
‘I hate jazz,’ she had said as we arrived. Not a great start.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘You choose.’
She had opted for a quiet pizza and a bottle of wine upstairs. We had sat in increasingly warm companionship for three hours and a second bottle before she took a taxi home, alone.
I remembered walking back to Ebury Street that night, not disappointed that I was alone but elated that I hadn’t asked her to join me. I wasn’t sure why.
She telephoned me in the morning (at least I had given her my number) to thank me for dinner and we had chatted for an hour. Eventually she had asked if I would like to meet for lunch, ‘a lovely place’ she knew, ‘super food’, ‘wonderful ambiance’. Sure, I had said, why not.
She had arrived before me and was waiting on a bench outside the cafe in Regent’s Park. We had sampled the ‘super food’: I had chosen an over-cooked hamburger whilst she had selected a hot dog with congealed onions and a line of bright yellow mustard. But I had had to agree that the ambiance was wonderful. We had strolled through the park to the lake and had fed the last bit of our lunches to the ducks that had had the good sense to decline. By the time we had walked back to my car, we were holding hands and making plans for the evening.
It had been more than a month later that she had first come willingly and eagerly to my bed. We had both been slightly wary and fearful of the encounter. Not to disappoint, not to repel; worse, not to disgust.
Our fears were unfounded. We had slipped delightedly into each other’s arms between the sheets. Such a release of emotion. Such an understanding of love. Such joy. It had been an adventure, an expedition, a voyage of discovery and it had been hugely satisfying to both of us. We had drifted contentedly to sleep still entwined.
I had woken early as I always did, trained by a life of rising before dawn to ride. I had lain in the dark thinking not how I was to escape this encounter but how to make it permanent. Very scary.
And here we were, some eighteen months later. I loved her more and more each day, a situation that was wonderfully reciprocated. To love someone is a delight, to be loved back as well is a joy beyond measure.
I snuggled up to her back.
‘I love you,’ I whispered into her ear.
‘You’re only saying that because you want a bit of nookie,’ she replied.
‘No, I mean it.’
But we had a bit of nookie nevertheless.
CHAPTER 7
With Jonny Enstone’s reputation for promptness in mind, I arrived at the Peers’ Entrance at one o’clock exactly. ‘Peer’ is a strange title really for a member of the House of Lords since the dictionary definition of ‘peer’ is ‘a person of equal rank’ and the Peers with a capital P were clearly not. Even amongst themselves there were five levels with Duke at the top and Baron at the bottom.
The tones of Big Ben were still ringing in my ears as I stepped into the revolving door, a time-warp portal rotating me from the hustle and bustle of 21st-century London on the outside to the sedate world of 19th-century quiet and formality on the inside.
The staff still wore knee breeches and silk stockings, their tailcoats and starched collars looking somewhat incongruous next to machine-gun-toting police in flak jackets, such are the necessities in our fear-of-terrorist- atrocity society.
Lord Enstone was already there and I noticed him glance at his watch as I arrived. He seemed to nod with approval and came forward to shake my hand.
‘Sid, glad you could make it,’ he said.
Glad I could make it on time, I thought.
‘Let’s go and find ourselves a drink.’
He waited as I went to pass through the security checkpoint.
‘Anything metal in your pockets, sir?’
I obediently emptied keys and loose change into the plastic tray provided. What to do? Should I also remove the pound and a half of steel from the end of my left arm and put it in the tray? I had learnt from multiple
