Alison Giles - Meadowland

I knew I was distracting myself from my own interrogation. Why this hotel? Why here? Why not Carlisle or Aberdeen or Norwich? Reluctantly, I confronted myself.

‘So it’s Flora country. Give or take. So what?’ I sank deeper into the water until my chin rested on its surface, the hair at the nape of my neck instantly saturated. It wasn’t as though I had any intention of going anywhere near her again. Maybe I was just taking the opportunity to prove the point – by ignoring, as I would, the turn-off to Cotterly on my return journey this afternoon. That was it.

Or was it? Just as clearly as I visualised myself driving straight back to London, I saw myself detouring at least as far as the hilltop above the village. Unable to dissolve either image, I hoisted myself impatiently up through the vapour and towelled vigorously.

It was a relief to descend to breakfast and concentrate on the details I needed to note for my report.

I attempted to write it in the garden, settled on a slatted bench with the file on my knee and the sun on my back, out of sight of the wide sweep of the tarmacked entrance. A faint burr of voices and the slam of car doors mingled with intermittent chatter of small birds and the hum of a foraging bee. I did my best to focus on the task in hand, but my mind refused to co-operate. I stared at the tip of a church spire, visible above rhododendrons which formed an effective hedge between me and the long stretches of countryside beyond.

I don’t know why I thought of Mark. Churches? Marriage? A starling flying towards its nest with a full beak? Had I missed the only boat, I wondered. Did I care?

I’d been right to finish the relationship, of course. Mother had been devastated. ‘But he’s so nice. And stockbrokers don’t come two a penny, you know. You’d have been very comfortable.’

‘He never actually asked me to marry him,’ I said.

‘He’d have got round to it … He adored you …’

I couldn’t tell her what had sparked our break-up.

We’d been lazing in bed – his bed – one Sunday morning, debating how to spend the day.

‘Let’s go and visit your parents,’ he’d suggested. ‘Wouldn’t mind doing justice to a traditional Sunday lunch.’

I hesitated. I’d taken him home several times during the fifteen months I’d known him, usually choosing a weekday evening when the Market was quiet and he could get away promptly. We’d reach the Surrey dormitory town at about a quarter to eight, earlier if the A3 traffic was light, and drive back, fortified by my mother’s cooking, in time to fall into bed at around midnight. ‘It suits my parents better,’ I’d explained. ‘They tend to be busy at weekends.’ I’d elaborated this excuse to explain my father’s absence on the one or two occasions I hadn’t been able to avoid our calling in on a Saturday or Sunday.

I stroked the soft hair on Mark’s forearm as he put it round my bare shoulders and pulled me towards him. ‘Or, of course,’ he teased my ear with a flick of his tongue, ‘we could just stay here …’

I snuggled up to him. Then I pulled away.

He reached out for me again. I resisted. ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

He grinned up at me.

‘Seriously. It’s about my father,’ I said. ‘And my mother too, I suppose. And –’ I took a breath – ‘someone called Flora.’

I expanded, Mark prompting me with the occasional question; when I’d said as much as there was to say, I drew up my knees and rested my chin on them. ‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ I said.

In the silence, I could hear two people calling to each other in the street below. Suddenly Mark flung back the sheet and leapt out of bed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. I turned my head; and giggled. Standing there stark naked, he looked, I decided, like some indignant Greek god straight out of a Renaissance painting.

I waited for the declamation.

It came. But not in the form I was expecting. ‘Why the hell didn’t your mother let him have a divorce?’

I sagged, staring at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What sort of bitch is it that …’

‘You’ve got it all wrong.’

‘The hell I have.’

‘But …’ I felt my tongue on my lips. My mouth was dry as ice. I got up, enfolded myself in a dressing gown and tied the belt. In the kitchen I automatically flicked the switch on the kettle. ‘Coffee?’

‘No! Well, yes. Please.’

He followed me and put his arms round my waist as I reached up into the cupboard. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘Milk?’

He loosed his hold and fetched the bottle from the fridge.

We carried the coffee through to the sitting room. I took the big easy chair while Mark fetched a towel and wrapped it round himself, sarong-style. He perched on the edge of the sofa, leaning towards me, his broad bare feet planted squarely on the thick-pile rug.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘So that’s not how you see it?’

‘Of course not!’

He raised his arms in mock surrender. ‘All right. All right. Have it your own way.’

‘I should never have told you.’

‘Whyever not! It explains a lot. I mean, why your parents are so … polite with each other.’ He hesitated. ‘Some of your attitudes too, perhaps?’

‘My attitudes! What are you talking about?’

‘Forget it.’

But I wouldn’t. I made him spell it out. Challenged him. Provoked him. I was aware of what I was doing but unable to stop myself. It was a blazing row, with no holds barred on my part. Every last thing I could find to throw at him, real or imaginary, I flung in an oral stream of rage that seemed unstemmable.

On a tide of exultation, I stormed through to the bedroom, threw on my clothes and, gathering up what possessions of mine I could carry, swept out, crashing the door behind me.

Frigid, he’d called me. Distrustful of men. Well – I waved away a fly that had settled on my notepad – I supposed he was right. About being distrustful anyway.

Clare, good old Clare, robust as ever, had scorned the accusation of frigidity when I confided a vetted version to her. ‘That’s what all men say when they can’t have things their own way.’ It made me feel better – a bit. But there was a nasty, logical little corner of my mind whispering that if you don’t trust someone entirely, then maybe you do hold back. And that – I swiped angrily at the fly again – was no doubt what I’d been doing ever since. Attempts to patch things up with Mark hadn’t worked; nor had any relationship since then progressed beyond the first few dates.

And I’d never again risked telling anyone, not even Clare, about Flora. With a sudden start it dawned on me that it wasn’t just men I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust anyone. Not even my mother? I certainly didn’t trust her to understand about my visit to Cotterly. A wave of loneliness engulfed me.

‘Shit!’ I said it aloud, but there was no-one to hear.

I stood up and, grasping my briefcase, marched back into the hotel.

I dreaded the moment when I would be faced with the decision whether to head straight back to London or to turn off and take the valley road.

As I drove, I resorted to a game of counting red cars – why red ones? – as they passed me heading back the way I’d come, like plucking petals from a daisy: I will turn off, I won’t turn off, I will … In the event, it was a grubby blue Volkswagen trundling along at a steady thirty that fate commissioned. Several times I prepared to overtake, only to drop back hastily as a van or lorry appeared over the brow of a hill or round a corner. Distracted by the frustration, I lost track of my counting game, relaxing my consciousness of precisely where I was even. As I flicked my indicator yet again, the junction sign loomed at the roadside. I glanced in my mirror at the line of vehicles holding back behind, anticipating my pulling out. The indicator ticked remorselessly … and obediently I allowed the Astra to follow the grid markings on to the centre of the road. On the passenger side, the queue ground past as, committed, I waited to cross the oncoming traffic.