Питер Ловси - On the Edge

His eyes had a sceptical glint. He crossed the room to the sink and ran his forefinger around the inner side of the saucepan Rose had half-filled with water.

She moved fast. She reached out to him and grasped his sleeve. ‘Don’t!’

‘You don’t let me taste? Not even taste?’

She snatched up a teacloth and wiped his finger clean. ‘Not even taste.’

He laughed and took a grip on her hand through the towel and squeezed it. She had her back to the draining board so she couldn’t easily move.

‘You know what I think you are, Rosie — apart from Antonia’s best friend?’

Her neck and shoulders tensed. She was suddenly convinced that he’d misinterpreted her actions and was about to make a pass. She was in no state to deal with it. She swayed back and took a shallow, rasping breath.

His hand darted to her face and lightly pinched the point of her chin. ‘A fusspot. A proper little fusspot.’

It was embarrassing on both sides. Faced with her jittery reaction he’d fallen back on a fatuous gesture and the sort of silly, doting thing said by middle-aged men to their simpering wives. He must have felt it as acutely as she, because he backed off at once.

Rose turned to the sink and made a performance of wiping the saucepan clean as her mind raced. Perhaps she’d been mistaken. Perhaps he’d only meant to make light of the problem over the curry. He’d responded to her state of nerves by touching her. It was innocent, a spontaneous gesture.

When Hector’s voice came again it was from a safe distance. ‘I’ll make a bargain with you, Rosie. You cook me curry tomorrow. Tonight I will take you to Reggiori’s.’

She looked across the table at him. He was still wearing his camelhair overcoat and he’d picked up his porkpie hat. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘One little mistake in the cooking and you lose your confidence? This is not good, Rosie.’

‘I’ll make the curry. I said I would. What I mean is that I couldn’t under any circumstances go out to dinner with you.’ She turned to face him across the table. ‘It’s not the right way to behave, you see. I can’t be seen having dinner with someone else’s husband.’

‘You did the other night.’

‘Antonia was with us.’

‘So the people in Reggiori’s know it’s all right. Rosie is Antonia’s friend, not Hector’s lover.’

She felt the colour spread across her face. Mortifying. ‘Please allow me to cook you something else.’

‘Not possible.’ He was adamant, like a chess-player who knew he had mate in three. ‘I had no lunch today.’

‘No lunch. But why?’

‘Antonia told you. I never eat lunch. Only this meal. Now I need — how do you say? — a square meal. Not omelette.’

‘Anything else would take hours to prepare.’

‘Not at Reggiori’s.’

She couldn’t . What sort of woman would dine in public with a married man the week after she’d buried her husband? It would be deplorable. Yet she felt piercingly guilty for depriving Hector of the meal he’d looked forward to eating. The possibility had to be faced that she’d been mistaken about the poison and thrown away a perfectly good meal. And she knew Hector objected to going to restaurants alone; it wasn’t some stratagem he’d just thought up. It was her whole justification for being here.

He lifted her coat off the hook on the back of the door. ‘All right, Rosie. Please forget what I said. I will take you home now.’

She was caught off guard. ‘Where will you eat?’

He gave a shrug. ‘I don’t know. I don’t intend to starve. I will come home, look in the fridge, make myself a sandwich.’

From the fridge . ‘No.’

He arched his eyebrows.

She had a picture of him opening the fridge and finding the rest of the meat, or something else that Antonia had laced with poison. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

He thoughtfully suggested they sat at a table for four rather than one of the more intimate doubles. To anyone interested it must have seemed that they expected to be joined by the rest of their party later.

‘You look nervous, Rosie.’

‘I am, a little.’

‘You want some wine?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Not many people are here so early as you and me.’

‘No.’

‘That’s good?’

‘Yes.’

He made a noble effort to be entertaining, talking of the gadgets he’d seen at the exhibition and the way women’s lives would soon be transformed. For a man, he had some revolutionary ideas. Most women would have thought of them as mutinous. He talked about the drudgery of housework and rejected the idea that it was a proof of virtue. ‘All that scrubbing of doorsteps. What for? So that all the neighbours will say she’s a good woman like us, scrubs her step every day. Rosie, very soon all those good women will get red hands and lumpy knees. Don’t be like that.’

She smiled faintly. ‘What should I do, then — buy one of your machines? Do you supply a doorstep-scrubbing machine?’

‘No. There is no market for such a machine. Simply forget about your doorstep.’

‘And have all my neighbours think I’m a slut?’

‘The women maybe. Men think something else. What nice legs this lady has.’

She looked primly down at her plate. Being foreign, he may not have appreciated how personal some of his remarks appeared.

‘It’s true. You have legs like Betty Grable’s. Better.’

‘I’m sure you mean it kindly, but I wish you’d talk about something else.’

‘Not your legs?’

‘Not my legs.’

‘Your chest?’

Her arm jerked and she spilled some soup. She picked her napkin off her lap and rearranged it, trying frantically to think of something to divert him from this tack. ‘I wonder if Antonia will telephone you tonight.’

‘Excuse me, Rosie. My English. I don’t think you understand. I said “chest”. Is it more suitable to say “chests”?’

‘It’s unsuitable however you say it. Perhaps she telephoned you earlier? I dare say she would want you to know she’d arrived safely.’

‘I am so sorry. I think I embarrass you with my bad grammar.’

‘It’s not the grammar.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘It’s the personal things you mention.’

‘I understand. I think I mean bust. Can I say you have a pretty fine bust?’

Through iron persistence she succeeded at length in directing his thoughts to Antonia. It appeared that he didn’t expect a phone call. They didn’t phone each other unless it was necessary. They had nothing to say to each other. ‘Antonia, she doesn’t understand me.’

‘Oh, yes?’ Rose kept her response as bland as possible. Of all the come-ons men resorted to, that was the corniest.

He tried to do better. ‘She has a friend. A man friend. You know?’

‘It’s none of my business.’

‘This friend is off to America soon. Nice new job. Princeton University. Antonia wants to go with him.’

‘Mm?’

‘Yes. It’s true. You can ask her.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of asking her a thing like that.’

‘Antonia and me, we sleep single.’

Opportunely the arrival of the main course foreclosed discussion of the sleeping arrangements. Hector had ordered Dover sole in breadcrumbs, which he explained wouldn’t spoil his appetite for the curry Rose had promised for the next evening. She didn’t want to be reminded about tomorrow. Getting through the present evening without misunderstanding was as much as she could cope with.

He gave her the cue for a more congenial line of conversation. ‘So you were one of the WAAFs, like Antonia?’

‘Yes. At Kettlesham Heath. I expect she’s told you about it many times.’

‘But I would like to hear from you. What did you do?’