Dick Francis - Straight

“Has it... struck you?”

“Not since I was seventeen and fell like a ton of bricks for a trainer’s daughter.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much. We laughed a lot. Slept together, a bit clumsily at first. She married an old man of twenty-eight. I went to college.”

“I met Henry when I was eighteen. He fell in love with me... pursued me... I was flattered... and he was so very good looking... and kind.”

“He still is,” I said.

“He’d already inherited his title. My mother was ecstatic... she said the age difference didn’t matter... so I married him.” She paused. “We had a son and a daughter, both grown up now. It hasn’t been a bad life, but before Greville, incomplete.”

“A better life than most,” I said, aiming to comfort.

“You’re very like Greville,” she said unexpectedly. “You look at things straight, in the same way. You’ve his sense of proportion.”

“We had realistic parents.”

“He didn’t speak about them much, only that he became interested in gemstones because of the museums his mother took him to. But he lived in the present and he looked outward, not inward, and I loved him to distraction and in a way I didn’t know him...” She stopped and swallowed and seemed determined not to let emotion intrude further.

“He was like that with me too,” I said. “With everyone, I think. It didn’t occur to him to give running commentaries on his actions and feelings. He found everything else more interesting.”

“I do miss him,” she said.

“What will you eat?” I asked.

She gave me a flick of a look and read the menu without seeing it for quite a long time. In the end she said with a sigh, “You decide.”

“Did Greville?”

“Yes.”

“If I order fried zucchini as a starter, then fillet steak in pepper sauce with linguine tossed in olive oil with garlic, will that do?”

“I don’t like garlic. I like everything else. Unusual. Nice.”

“OK. No garlic.”

We transferred to the dining room before seven-thirty and ate the proposed program, and I asked if she were returning to York that night: if she had a train to catch, if that was why we were eating early.

“No, I’m down here for two nights. Tomorrow I’m going to an old friend’s wedding, then back to York on Thursday morning.” She concentrated on twirling linguine onto her fork. “When Henry and I come to London together we always stay at the Selfridge Hotel, and when I come alone I stay there also. They know us well there. When I’m there alone they don’t present me with an account, they send it to Henry.” She ate the forkful of linguine. “I tell him I go to the cinema and eat in snack bars... and he knows I’m always back in the hotel before midnight.”

There was a good long stretch of time between this dinner and midnight.

I said, “Every five weeks or so, when you came down to London alone, Greville met you at King’s Cross, isn’t that right, and took you to lunch?”

She said in surprise, “Did he tell you?”

“Not face to face. Did you ever see that gadget of his, the Wizard?”

“Yes, but...” She was horrified. “He surely didn’t put me in it?”

“Not by name, and only under a secret password. You’re quite safe.”

She twiddled some more with the pasta, her eyes down, her thoughts somewhere else.

“After lunch,” she said, with pauses, “if I had appointments, I’d keep them, or do some shopping... something to take home. I’d register at the hotel and change, and go to Greville’s house. He used to have the flat, of course, but the house was much better. When he came, we’d have drinks... talk... maybe make love. We’d go to dinner early, then back to his house.” Her voice stopped. She still didn’t look up.

I said, “Do you want to go to his house now, before midnight?”

After a while she said, “I don’t know.”

“Well... would you like coffee?”

She nodded, still not meeting my eyes, and pushed the linguine away. We sat in silence while waiters took away the plates and poured into cups, and if she couldn’t make up her mind, nor could I.

In the end I said, “If you like, come to Greville’s house now. I’m sleeping there tonight, but that’s not a factor. Come if you like, just to be near him, to be with him as much as you can for maybe the last time. Lie on his bed. Weep for him. I’ll wait for you downstairs... and take you safely to your hotel before the fairy coach changes back to a pumpkin.”

“Oh!” She turned what was going to be a sob into almost a laugh. “Can I really?”

“Whenever you like.”

“Thank you, then. Yes.”

“I’d better warn you,” I said, “it’s not exactly tidy.” I told her what she would find, but she was inconsolable at the sight of the reality.

“He would have hated this,” she said. “I’m so glad he didn’t see it.”

We were in the small sitting room, and she went round picking up the pink and brown stone bears, restoring them to their tray.

“I gave him these,” she said. “He loved them. They’re rhodonite, he said.”

“Take them to remember him by. And there’s a gold watch you gave him, if you’d like that too.”

She paused with the last bear in her hand and said, “You’re very kind to me.”

“It’s not difficult. And he’d have been furious with me if I weren’t.”

“I’d love the bears. You’d better keep the watch, because of the engraving.”

“OK,” I said.

“I think,” she said with diffidence, “I’ll go upstairs now.”

I nodded.

“Come with me,” she said.

I looked at her. Her eyes were wide and troubled, but not committed, not hungry. Undecided. Like myself.

“All right,” I said.

“Is there chaos up there too?”

“I picked some of it up.”

She went up the stairs ahead of me at about four times my speed, and I heard her small moan of distress at the desecration of the bedroom. When I joined her, she was standing forlornly looking around, and with naturalness she turned to me and put her arms loosely round my waist, laying her head on my shoulder. I shed the confounded crutches and hugged her tight in grief for her and for Greville and we stood there for a long minute in mutual and much-needed comfort.

She let her arms fall away and went over to sit on the bed, smoothing a hand over the black and white checkerboard bedspread.

“He was going to change this room,” she said. “All this drama...” She waved a hand at the white furniture, the black carpet, one black wall. “It came with the house. He wanted me to choose something softer, that I would like. But this is how I’ll always remember it.”

She lay down flat, her head on the pillows, her legs toward the foot of the bed, ankles crossed. I half-hopped, half-limped across the room and sat on the edge beside her.

She watched me with big eyes. I put my hand flat on her stomach and felt the sharp internal contraction of muscles.

“Should we do this?” she said.

“I’m not Greville.”

“No... Would he mind?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” I moved my hand, rubbing a little. “Do you want to go on?”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” I said.

She sat up fast and put her arms round my neck in a sort of released compulsion.

“I do want this,” she said. “I’ve wanted it all day. I’ve been pretending to myself, telling myself I shouldn’t, but yes, I do want this passionately, and I know you’re not Greville, I know it will be different, but this is the only way I can love him... and can you bear it, can you understand it, if it’s him I love?”

I understood it well, and I minded not at all.

I said, smiling, “Just don’t call me Greville. It would be the turn-off of the century.”