Liz Fielding: City Girl in Training

‘London?’ he said, with that sweet, puzzled expression that made him look as innocent as a baby. Okay, he was innocent. And sweet. If he’d been anything else, I’d have been beating off other girls since he was old enough to shave. But he’d only ever had eyes for me. He pushed back his floppy blond fringe, leaving a smear of grease on his forehead, to look at me with concern. ‘What on earth will you do in London?’

No, no, no!

He was supposed to leap to his feet, wrap me in his arms and tell me that I wasn’t going anywhere without him.

‘Going for the promotion that’s due to me,’ I said, irrationally irritable. ‘Seeing the sights. Having some fun,’ I added, hoping to provoke a little possessiveness.

Why would he be possessive when I’d only ever had eyes for him?

Don frowned but not, apparently, at the thought of me having fun. ‘You mean you’re going for good?’ For one heart-stopping moment I thought I’d got through to him. That he’d finally realised that, unless he did something about it, I wouldn’t be around to read his mind and put the right spanner in his hand whenever he needed it.

My imagination ran momentarily wild with anticipation that he’d leap to his feet, wrap me…etc., etc.

‘Yes,’ I said. That wasn’t quite true, but if I were promoted I would have to move to a larger branch somewhere else. I should have done it a long time ago, but I was comfortable in my rut. Unlike my siblings, I didn’t have an adventurous bone in my body. I’d flown once and I’d been so frightened I’d been sick. Nothing would induce me to repeat the experience. Besides, I liked living at home. Next door to the boy next door.

‘But you’ve been working there since you left college,’ Don said.

His concern about me moving on from my present job was wearing a bit thin. He was supposed to be shocked that I was leaving him.

‘Maybe it’s time to move on,’ I said. And waited for him to do something to change my mind. Exclamations of heartbreak would be a start. Followed by a suggestion that we catch the next plane to Bali and get married right away. On a beach. In the moonlight.

Bali? What was I thinking of? I didn’t want to go to Bali. That would mean getting on a plane. Two planes if I wanted to come home.

All this talk of travelling must have gone to my head.

I needn’t have worried, however, because he did none of the above. Just did that thing with his fringe again, looking adorably helpless, so that I wanted to kiss him and tell him that I didn’t mean it. That I wasn’t going anywhere. I just about managed to restrain myself. ‘Oh, well, I suppose I should say congratulations.’ Then, ‘I’ll really miss you.’ That was marginally better, but my smile was a fraction too fast. ‘I’ll have more time to work on the car, though.’

Er, when? He already spent every spare moment cherishing tender loving care on its engine, bodywork, upholstery, when it was my bodywork that was crying out for a little of that TLC.

‘Great,’ I said. But through gritted teeth.

‘London?’ He repeated the word as if it were a strange and mythical place instead of a sprawling city a scant hour from Maybridge by train. ‘I’m sure you’ll have a terrific time.’

BUT I DON’T WANT TO GO!

My scream of frustration was silent, however. A girl had her pride.

But why couldn’t he see that I wasn’t looking for a terrific time? That what I wanted was for him to tell me to forget all about London, suggest I move in with him and his widowed mother while we looked for a flat we could share…

I didn’t bother to ask any of these questions out loud. I already knew the answer.

Mrs Cooper, a vapid hypochondriac who’d never recovered from the fact that her husband had decamped with his secretary, was always very sweet to my face. I had a strong suspicion, however, that beneath the saccharine exterior she hated me playing with Don just as much now as when he’d been a clever twelve-year-old and I’d distracted him from his homework. There was no way she’d want me so dangerously close to her precious son.

I was seriously tempted to strip off and seduce him, right there and then in the garage, just to spite her. But the floor was bare concrete, the temperature freezing and Don’s hands were covered with motor oil. Only an idiot—or a desperate woman—would remove her thermals under such unpromising circumstances. Okay, so I was desperate, but, short of experience as I was, I suspected that, shivering and blue with cold, I wasn’t going to light anyone’s fire.

‘I do rather envy you, to be honest,’ Don said, distracting me with an odd hint of longing in his voice. ‘All those museums…’

Museums? That was his idea of a terrific time? Sweet, trusting soul that he was, I could have hugged him. But his overalls were covered in oil, too. Of course if I’d been wearing that fluffy sweater I’d have made the sacrifice.

‘Actually,’ he said, with more animation than he’d shown all evening, ‘when you go to the Science Museum you might take a look at…’

The Science Museum? He thought my idea of a fantastic time was an afternoon at the Science Museum? I might take a turn around the V&A to look at the jewellery and fashions but…

‘Promise?’ he said.

Promise? Promise what? Oh, heck, I should have been listening. ‘Why don’t you come up and spend the weekend with me?’ I suggested, suddenly seeing the possibilities… ‘We could go together.’

He looked slightly uncomfortable and, concentrating on wiping his hands on a rag, he said, ‘I don’t think I could leave Mother on her own overnight. She suffers so with her nerves.’

So she did.

She managed to get through the day well enough, while he was at work. She saved up her attacks to coincide with any plans I had for Don. Which was why, on Friday, having waved my parents off on their great adventure, I had to haul my own case aboard the London train. He’d taken the afternoon off to drive me to the station, but his mother had had one of her ‘little turns’ just before we’d been due to leave.

I’d considered having a turn of my own. Flinging myself on the floor and drumming my heels on the hall carpet. But Don had looked so miserable that I’d told him to go back to his mother and wait for the doctor, while I called a taxi and put myself on the train.

As Maybridge disappeared into the icy rain of a November afternoon I settled down with a cheese and pickle sandwich and a comfortingly large hot chocolate drink and, since I had an hour to fill, I took out the magazine.

‘Are You a Tiger or a Kitten?’ screamed at me from a cover flash. I didn’t need a quiz to answer that one. I was nearly twenty-three years old, I had a mother who was still treating me like a child and a boyfriend who’d apparently mislaid his libido.

I was a kitten, right?

Wrong.

Having worked my way through the multiple-choice questions, I discovered that I’d been wildly optimistic.

I was a mouse. Or maybe an ostrich.

That, according to the quiz, was why I was sitting on a train for London when I wanted to stay in Maybridge.

That was why my boyfriend put his mother first. (And because he was sweet and kind and she was a manipulative old witch.) Why I was going to spend Christmas pulling crackers with Great-Aunt Alice instead of getting pulled by Don.

I was too easygoing. Too undemanding. My expectations were so low, they barely registered. I picked up my cheese sandwich and then put it down again quickly. Cheese. A mouse would choose a cheese sandwich.

I should have chosen the fashionable roast vegetables in sun dried tomato bread. But, mouse that I was, I loved cheese.

I should be wearing designer label jeans with high heels, instead of an old pair that had once belonged to the last of my brothers to leave home—shortened to fit my pathetically short legs—with a pair of cheap trainers I’d bought from the market. (I was saving up to get married, okay?)