‘I wouldn’t say that, exactly,’ I said, grinning.
‘Damn it, you know what I mean. You don’t mind me being brown.’
‘You’re brown and you’re beautiful. A shattering combination.’
‘You’re not being serious,’ she complained.
‘And you’re glossy to the bone.’
Her lips curved in amusement. ‘If you mean I’ve a hard core instead of a soft centre, then I expect you’re right.’
‘And one day you’ll part from me without a twinge.’
‘Will we part?’ No anxiety, no involvement.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think you wouldn’t leave your wife to live with me.’
Direct, no muddle, no fluffy wrappings.
‘Would you?’ she asked, when I didn’t quickly answer.
‘I’ll never leave her.’
‘That’s what I thought. I like to get things straight. Then I can enjoy what I have, and not expect more.’
‘Hedging your bets.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked.
‘Insuring against disappointment.’
‘When people desperately want what they can never have, they suffer. Real grinding misery. That’s not for me.’
‘You will be luckier than most,’ I said slowly, ‘if you can avoid it altogether.’
‘I’ll have a damned good try.’
One day uncontrollable emotion would smash up all that organised level-headedness. Not while I was around, if I could help it. I prized it too much. Needed her to stay like that. Only while she demanded so little could I go on seeing her, and since she clearly knew it, we had a good chance of staying safely on the tightrope for as long as we wanted.
With the coffee we talked, as before, about money. Gail complained that she never had enough.
‘Who has?’ I said sympathetically.
‘Your wife, for one.’ There was a faint asperity in her voice, which made me stifle my immediate impulse to deny it.
‘Sorry,’ she said almost at once. ‘Shouldn’t have said that. What your wife has is quite irrelevant. It’s what I haven’t got that we’re talking about. Such as a car of my own, a sports car, and not having to borrow Harry’s all the time. And a flat of my own, a sunny one overlooking a park. Never having to budget every penny. Buying lavish presents for people if I feel like it. Flying to Paris often for a few days, and having a holiday in Japan...’
‘Marry a millionaire,’ I suggested.
‘I intend to.’
We both laughed, but I thought she probably meant it. The man she finally didn’t part with would have to have troubles with his surtax. I wondered what she would do if she knew I could only afford that dinner and the hotel bill because Tally’s fee would be plugging for a while the worst holes in the Tyrone economy. What would she do if she knew that I had a penniless paralysed wife, not a rich one. On both counts, wave a rapid goodbye, probably. For as long as I could, I wasn’t going to give her the opportunity.
I missed the first Newcastle race altogether and only reached the press stand half way through the second. Delicate probes among colleagues revealed that nothing dramatic had happened in the hurdle race I had spent urging the taxi driver to rise above twenty. Luke-John would never know.
After the fourth race I telephoned through a report, and another after the fifth, in which one of the top northern jockeys broke his leg. Derry came on the line and asked me to go and find out from the trainer who would be riding his horse in the Lamplighter instead, and I did his errand thanking my stars I had had the sense actually to go to Newcastle, and hadn’t been tempted to watch the racing on television and phone through an ‘on-the-spot’ account from an armchair three hundred miles away, as one correspondent of my acquaintance had been known to do.
Just before the last race someone touched my arm. I turned. Collie Gibbons, the handicapper, looking harassed and annoyed.
‘Ty. Do me a favour.’
‘What?’
‘You came by train? First class?’
I nodded. The Blaze wasn’t mean about comfort.
‘Then swap return tickets with me.’ He held out a slim booklet which proved to be an air ticket, Newcastle to Heathrow.
‘There’s some damn meeting been arranged here which I shall have to go to after this race,’ he explained. ‘And I won’t be able to catch the plane. I’ve only just found out and... it’s most annoying. There’s a later train... I particularly want to get to London tonight.’
‘Done,’ I said. ‘Suits me fine.’
He smiled, still frowning simultaneously. ‘Thanks. And here are the keys to my car. It’s in the multi-storey park opposite the Europa building.’ He told me its number and position. ‘Drive yourself home.’
‘I’ll drive to your house and leave the car there,’ I said. ‘Easier than bringing it over tomorrow.’
‘If you’re sure...’ I nodded, giving him my train ticket.
‘A friend who lives up here was going to run me back to the airport,’ he said. ‘I’ll get him to take you instead.’
‘Have you heard from your wife?’ I asked.
‘That’s just it... she wrote to say we’d have a trial reconciliation and she’d be coming home today. If I stay away all night she’ll never believe I had a good reason... She’ll be gone again.’
‘Miss the meeting,’ I suggested.
‘It’s too important, especially now I’ve got your help. I suppose you couldn’t explain to her, if she’s there, that I’m on my way?’
‘Of course,’ I said.
So the friend whisked me off to the airport, and I flew to Heathrow, collected the car, drove to Hampstead, explained to Mrs Gibbons, who promised to wait, and arrived home two and a half hours early. Elizabeth was pleased, even if Mrs Woodward wasn’t.
Sunday morning. Elizabeth’s mother didn’t come.
Ten fifteen, ten thirty. Nothing. At eleven someone telephoned from the health farm and said they were so sorry, my mother-in-law was in bed with a virus infection, nothing serious, don’t worry, she would ring her daughter as soon as she was a little better.
I told Elizabeth. ‘Oh well,’ she said philosophically, ‘we’ll have a nice cosy day on our own.’
I smiled at her and kept the shocking disappointment out of my face.
‘Do you think Sue Davis would pop along for a moment while I get us some whisky?’ I asked.
‘She’d get it for us.’
‘I’d like to stretch my legs...’
She smiled understandingly and rang Sue, who came at twelve with flour down the sides of her jeans. I hurried round corners to the nearest phone box and gave the Huntersons’ number. The bell rang there again and again, but no one answered. Without much hope I got the number of Virginia Water station and rang there: no, they said, there was no young woman waiting outside in an estate car. They hadn’t seen one all morning. I asked for the Huntersons’ number again. Again, no reply.
Feeling flat I walked back to our local pub and bought the whisky, and tried yet again on the telephone too publicly installed in the passage there.
No answer. No Gail.
I went home.
Sue Davis had read out to Elizabeth my piece in the Blaze.
‘Straight between the eyeballs,’ she observed cheerfully. ‘I must say, Ty, no one would connect the punch you pack in that paper with the you we know.’
‘What’s wrong with the him you know?’ asked Elizabeth with real anxiety under the surface gaiety. She hated people to think me weak for staying at home with her. She never told any one how much nursing she needed from me: always pretended Mrs Woodward did everything. She seemed to think that what I did for her would appear unmanly to others; she wanted in public a masculine never-touch-the-dishes husband, and since it made her happy I played that role except when we were alone.