Julius sits on the sofa next to Shelley Swift’s giant cat. Paperback novels are piled on the coffee table. “Did you know,” she says as she brings in two cups of coffee and a glass of water on a little tray, “there’s one of those old phone boxes on Cutter Hill full of books? Loads of thrillers. Not as easy as reading on my Kindle, but they’re free.”
“I like real books too,” Julius says because he wants to agree with her.
“Yeah?” she says. “What are you reading at the moment?” She nudges the cat off the sofa and sits beside Julius. He leans over to kiss her without answering because he has no answer, but she shoves him gently away.
“I’m too hot for all that stuff,” she says, and picks up a folded newspaper from the floor and flaps it in front of her. Her laughter creases her eyes into slits and makes him want to kiss her even more. She takes off her jumper and her scent wafts out, lemon soap and brick dust. Underneath, she’s wearing the silky blouse she had on that afternoon in the woods. She plucks at its front. “I think I must be having a hot flush.” Her throat and cheeks are red, and he can’t stop looking at her. Women’s bodies are complicated, they do things Julius doesn’t want to understand although he’s lived with two of them for fifty-one years. But everything Shelley Swift’s body does intrigues and delights him. She puts the newspaper down, picks up the glass of water, and holds it to her neck, tilting it against one side and then the other. “Is it warm in here or is it just me?”
“I love you, Shelley Swift,” he says, and he can feel it in his body like an ache.
She laughs again. “Don’t be silly, Julius Seeder.”
He puts an arm around her, making her tip her glass, spilling some water on the sofa.
“Watch it,” she says, pulling away and standing. She puts the glass down, and in between the coffee table and the gas fire, she twirls in front of him, arms raised.
“Will you marry me?” The words are out before he even thinks them. He has a fleeting image of Jeanie in the caravan, alone, and then it’s gone.
“Marry you!” Shelley Swift continues to turn and laugh. “You are joking, aren’t you?”
He can imagine her shrieking the words down her phone to one of her friends or typing them into her mobile in capital letters. “What’s so funny?” he says. “I’ve got a wedding ring.”
She comes to a stop. “You’ve got what?”
“A ring. Not on me, but I’ve got one.” He can’t exactly remember where he put his mother’s wedding ring. Perhaps in the bedside drawer before they had to leave the cottage. What happened to it after that? The bedside table was out on the lane with everything else, and then it was taken.
Shelley Swift flops back beside him onto the sofa. “Oh, Julius,” she says softly. There are dark stains under her arms, and he loves these too. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You’re such a sweet man. So old-fashioned, with your funny fiddle music. But I can’t marry you. I’ve known you all of five minutes.”
“Give it ten, then.” He smiles.
“I don’t want to marry anyone.”
For an instant he thinks it’s another joke, that in a second she’ll start laughing and say yes, but she only stares at him and then seems to decide that he needs an explanation. “I’ve got this place and my job,” she says. “I can take early retirement in a few years. Why would I want to get married?”
For love, he wants to say, so that we can be together, but he lets her carry on. She is almost talking to herself.
“I’m fifty-two. Too old for all that settling-down stuff. I’m not the marrying sort. You know me.” She looks at him sadly. He thinks that he doesn’t know her. But he would like to.
“We can live together, then.” He knows he sounds desperate.
She puts a hand on his knee. “I’m not that sort either. I have Pixie, she’s enough. You must be able to see it wouldn’t work. You’re a lovely man, Julius. A good man.”
Good. It’s the word everyone used about his mother. The horror of it must show on his face because she gives his knee a squeeze and says, “We can still have a bit of fun though, can’t we?” She moves her hand higher up his leg.
He stands. He wants to be out of there, he wants never to have asked her. “I should go.” He picks up his damp coat and gets one arm in while the other flails around for the corresponding hole.
“Don’t be like that. Come on.” She pats the sofa. “Sit down.”
His arm finds the place it’s supposed to go.
“Last night was wonderful,” she says. “We don’t need to make any plans for the future to do that again, do we?”
Pixie, who is under the coffee table, comes out and, with ease, jumps up to the seat Julius has vacated, settling herself there in a circular motion. He doesn’t know how to tell Shelley Swift that he won’t be able to see her again, can’t ever come back after this. Still sitting on the sofa, she reaches up and takes his hand, and he looks at her freckled fingers, feels her soft skin. And then he pulls his hand out from hers.
28
Back in the caravan, Jeanie strips off her wet clothes and puts on dry ones. The pain in her chest has gone so completely it might never have existed, and she thinks perhaps it was only indigestion—isn’t that meant
