Katherine Bucknell - What You Will

In the end, it was the usual thing, the waiter with the bill. Bewildered at the thought of Heathrow, the long, lonely taxi ride, Hilary insisted on paying.

‘But I ordered the champagne,’ Paul objected.

‘You can pay next time –’ she began.

‘Next time?’ He put one hand on her hand with her credit card in it, pushing her card away, and slipped his other hand inside his jacket, feeling for his wallet.

Hilary was liquid with warmth, ‘Well, sometime … ?’ She dropped the credit card on to the little tray just as the waiter snatched it from somewhere above them.

Paul helped her out to the pavement with her bags. ‘It’s been grand, hasn’t it?’ he said. ‘I’ve adored getting to know you.’

‘Yes.’ Even the single syllable of American sounded yokelish, she thought. She wouldn’t risk more. But her feelings were in spate, a running torrent. He might easily have carried her off if he had tried. He merely kissed her on one cheek, holding her arm just above the elbow as he leaned down to her, a whisper of flesh, soft and dry, halfway between her mouth and her ear.

Still, it heated her to nearly a sizzle and she added, ‘I’ve adored –’ stumbled, blushed ‘– you.’

Then she found herself in tears. ‘I’m sorry – I can’t help it. I’m going to miss you. I have to say it.’

‘I shall – miss you, too –’ Paul stood up straight, took a half-step backwards, sliding his hands into his trouser pockets. ‘Naturally.’

She wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’

‘Well, don’t be. I mean – poor you. I had – no idea.’

‘It’s my fault. I should have said something. I wish we’d gone out, maybe, or –’

‘How sweet you are,’ Paul said. ‘I’m terribly flattered.’ With a glance up and down New Bond Street, he took his hands from his pockets and awkwardly wrapped his long arms around her, rattled her sportily in his embrace, then released her, stooped a little, peered into her face, stroked her unruly hair. ‘But you’ve got to make that plane, haven’t you? Come on, you can do it.’ His voice was tender and encouraging. Now he pulled her against him with his left arm around her shoulders, raising his right in the air to hail a black cab.

Hilary let herself be held, melted against his willowy frame. It felt like heaven to her, this instant of contact, a brief crisis of bliss, as the taxi squealed to a stop, purred at them.

‘Heathrow,’ Paul barked at the driver, bullish, familiar. He lifted Hilary’s two big black suitcases inside with his long right arm, letting go of her shoulders, taking her hand and holding it in his left as he reached through the yawning black door and she stood on the pavement beside him.

The driver poked at his computer, waiting. Hilary’s mind went blank; time seemed suspended; she was in Paul’s care; she felt she had admitted everything to him, everything that mattered.

‘There,’ Paul announced as he swung back towards her. ‘You’re all set. This chappie’s been there a thousand times.’

And she nodded, accepting it. She felt entirely passive, a sleepwalker, partly because of the champagne.

Paul bundled her into the cab, one arm under her elbow, the other around her shoulder. ‘Don’t forget your seat belt; you have to, you know.’

She nodded, the tears welling as she slid back on the seat.

‘You mustn’t go all to pieces,’ he clucked at her, leaning in one last time. ‘There’s so much traffic, is the thing. Better get going.’ And he stretched his face towards her, creaking with effort, planted another, longer kiss on her cheek.

‘Come to the airport with me?’ Hilary was surprised at her own boldness. And she could tell that Paul was more than surprised. Shocked almost.

‘I – I don’t think I can. I mean – I don’t think I should,’ he sputtered. And then after a ponderous silence, a horn sounding behind them, he said with evident discomfort, ‘After all, you’re engaged to be married. I believe you must have mentioned it every day. So – hadn’t we better leave it here? Mutual adoration and no bruises?’

It was a blow, but he said it so definitely that Hilary couldn’t demur. And she felt she had no right to, since the impediment was on her side.

When she tried to speak, her lips shook; she was forced to wipe at her nose with a bare knuckle. Engaged to be married. She felt a surge of shame at her behaviour. So undignified, she reprimanded herself. What was she doing? Who was she, in fact? She sat up very straight, dry-eyed, suddenly self-possessed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said solemnly. ‘Please forgive me. Please.’

Paul was silent, opened his face to her. At least that was how Hilary thought of it afterwards, and that’s what she was trying to explain now to Gwen.

CHAPTER 2

‘There he was putting me into the cab, practically strapping me to the seat to stop me throwing myself at him, while I was blubbing my eyes out and trying to apologise, and the expression on his face was so – well, I don’t know what it was. It was like he opened his face, made it – whatever I needed it to be. Made it an acceptance, or a forgiveness. A non-judgement. Without any sign that I could really make sense of.’

‘You mean – blank?’ Gwen asked. She had switched on the kettle, stood rummaging in the cupboards for mugs, tea bags.

‘Maybe that’s all it was. Just a blank. A make-of-me-what-you-will. And so I – I said goodbye, and the taxi pulled away and it seemed that anything was possible. That he had handed the situation over to me. That he would wait to see what I did next.’

‘And what you did next was break off your engagement.’

Hilary pressed her lips together hard, looked feisty. ‘God, you make it sound so cut and dried. Where the hell is that whiskey?’ she demanded.

Gwen laughed and chucked the boxes of tea back into the cupboard just as the kettle began to spout steam into the air. She moved off towards the Welsh dresser by the floppy green sofa in the window alcove, bent to the screeching doors, the clinking bottles, and brandished a bottle aloft as she recrossed the room. She sloshed whiskey into the pair of mugs. Then she sat down at the kitchen table opposite Hilary.

The first sip made Hilary’s voice deeper, huskier. ‘Oh God, the lustre was off Mark completely. I so did not want to see him – like a kind of sudden revulsion. It blows my mind how fast everything came clear. I just wanted the plane to turn around and fly the other way. I got this terrible headache, and I kept thinking that if I ordered more champagne, I’d get rid of the headache and I could lie back and daydream about Paul. There were bubbles inside me, you know, this sensation of something fizzing, exhilarating – how I felt about Paul and that now he knew it. But I couldn’t let the bubbles rise.

‘It was weird when we landed. The wheels hit with that hard bounce, and it was like – the knock of reality. There was that smell you get of burning, the reek of the brakes in your nose, really hurting. Utter destruction. All those years with Mark, some kind of lie I’d told to both of us. I was stale and sweaty and gross, but I was glad about it, because it proved how hard I’d been working – an alibi. I was the sexless professional again, the same work jock I’d been when I left town. And I was thinking how free it felt, and how I should just do what I wanted to do, and how being alone was fine. Strong. Kind of thrilling, in fact.’

Gwen basked in it, Hilary alone.

‘I was completely businesslike with Mark. Starting with, From three thousand miles away, I realised I didn’t really want to be married … But I couldn’t quite look him in the eye. Somehow you think the person’s going to hit you or something. I mean, you feel you need to be ready to run. What is that? Some primitive thing. Your gut tells you that, basically, breaking up is a fight.’