It didn’t much matter that she would never be able to introduce him to her father, as he wove with aggressive skill through traffic up Charing Cross Road. She caught looks of curiosity and admiration from other motorists, and glares of vile envy from one or two pedestrians. Her father would probably have been among the latter, but she didn’t care what he would think of Bert, and would do as she liked, which was what living in London was all about.
My lovely popsy girl, he laughed, shooting the amber towards Camden Town, is enjoying her spin with Champagne Bertie, and I’m wallowing in being with her. Like an air stewardess in the telly ad she lit a pair of cigarettes and put one between his lips. Life was on the mend, though he supposed Archie in his place would have preferred her to be married, peril being pornography to him. Herbert took a hand away to up the gear. ‘You are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met, seen, or even dreamed about, and I love you. I know you don’t believe me, but I can’t help that.’
He was lying, of course. The first words of any man who wanted to be intimate with you was to say he loved you. And the first move of a woman who wanted the man to make love to her was to light a cigarette and put it between his lips. Her laugh at his declaration carried them much of the way up Haverstock Hill.
She lived on the third floor of a large old house, which allowed him to park his precious motor off the road — and close the top to stop pigeons making a mess of the upholstery. There were trees along the drive, but the garden had degenerated into a jungle.
‘That’s my Mini over there,’ she nodded. ‘I don’t drive it to work, though it’s good to rattle around in at weekends, or go to see my parents in Woking now and again.’
A curvaceous bottle of old Cliquot was lifted from behind the seat of his Healey. ‘Smart little buggy, the Mini. Do you have a room, or a flat?’ Meaning that if she’s sharing maybe I’ll have a go at the other girl as well.
She drew him into the hall. ‘A flat, and I don’t have to share.’ Rising damp, woodworm and deathwatch beetle, with a dash of Colorado thrown in, it stank like his old school, tingled at the nostrils as they went up creaking stairs. She leaned on the banister. ‘Daddy bought me a ten-year lease.’
He wondered if the building would last that long. ‘What does he do, your old man?’
‘He was a barrister, but retired early.’
How a barrister’s daughter levelled with the son of a brigadier general he neither knew nor cared, all such stuff left behind decades ago, at least on his part. Maybe everyone would start to think the same, though he doubted that anything could fundamentally change in such a country. Even if her father was a docker he wouldn’t have minded.
He followed her into a large sitting room, with bedroom, kitchen-diner, and bathroom attached. ‘Quite a nice pied-à-terre, duck.’
‘It used to belong to Dominic, till he got a place in Chelsea.’
‘That fat worm.’
‘He’s a good editor. And it was kind of him to tell me the flat would be falling vacant. I’d always wanted to live in Hampstead, instead of the bedsit in Fulham. Oh, by the way’ — she took a letter from her handbag — ‘Dominic asked me to give you this. It came via the office.’
Postmarked Nottingham, he was glad to note, for it might help to establish his authenticity in Dominic’s oyster eyes. He put it into his pocket, and looked around the room. She certainly did live here, everything neat and shipshape. ‘A very cushy billet.’ He took off his jacket only after she had shed her coat. ‘Where are the napkins?’
‘In the kitchen drawer. Glasses top left in the cupboard.’ Like all the men she had been used to he was curt, but basically courteous, so why should she think him any better or worse? He came in with two glasses: the cork hit the ceiling. ‘After we’ve polished this off we can go out to eat. I’m clambed to death.’
She would have preferred dry sherry, but maybe he had seen an old Charles Boyer film. ‘I’m fairly hungry, as well.’
He stood by the bay window looking into the half-leaved branches, mouth down and brown eyes sharp but, she thought, seeing only himself, different now to the mad but gallant boyo who had driven her from the office. His saturnine aspect showed character, too broody perhaps at times, as if he was having a struggle coming to terms with himself — with his so-called success, probably — since whether he admitted it or not, it must be something of a shock, though so far she had to admit he was carrying it off with panache, unless he was a consummate actor.
Everything about him puzzled her, even so, because she had seen no supposed workman on the street with anything like the quality of his looks at certain moments. Perhaps experience in the matter was lacking, not having been further north than Whipsnade Zoo, and then only for a few hours, and gazing at faces not at all likely to help her speculations. It could be that there were many specimens like himself in the great unknown North, and that if she were to see him in overalls and cloth cap, with a spanner in one hand and a hammer in the other, and a cigarette between his lips as he puzzled out some difficult job or other, she would have no trouble in identifying him as a run-of-the-mill workman.
Another explanation — though this was really fanciful, as if out of a Victorian novel — was that he had been snatched from his cradle by some villainous woman who had, for the price of a bottle of beer, palmed him off to a family as low down in the social scale as his had been above it. Anyhow, what had changed him from one person to the other she couldn’t know about, but she was more than half in love with the result, and felt like getting into bed with him this minute, whether or not it was because of the champagne, but didn’t want him to think her cheap or easy to get in case he lost all respect for her, as her mother had said men would if she let them get that far, and in fact as one or two had already done.
He swung away, and set down his empty glass, deciding it wasn’t the time to tell her who he was. It was necessary to avoid possible recrimination, or at best a long explanation as to why he’d got into the Bert guise at all, if he wasn’t to forfeit his chance of seducing her. A confession had been urgent from the beginning, and though there would never be an ideal moment, it would certainly be stupid to make one now.
So after rehearsing the suitably crass lingo of his next announcement, he said: ‘Come on, love, let’s finish this bottle of bubbly, then we can go out and find one o’ them posh troughs to scoff at. Maybe they’ll light us a couple of orange candles, and somebody’ll scrape out a tune on a fiddle when we spoon into each other’s eyes.’
She broke away from his kisses and sat on the bed. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
What a question! — needing only a look for an answer.
Knowing there to be no option because of the way she felt, she began to undo her blouse, her eyes willing him to undress as well, though he wanted no telling.
Why and when she had decided to be intimate with him he couldn’t say, but if it didn’t happen now it never would, so he was more than ready.
She felt unsteady, after his topping up of her glass in the restaurant, and fumbled at her skirt, though it soon dropped. She nudged her shoes off.