Elegance and Innocence: 2-Book Collection

But it wouldn’t go away; it was like a third person on the bench between us.

‘I’m only saying, I mean, as a reflection of your true self …’ I persisted.

He opened his eyes. ‘There is no “true self”. I am who I make myself to be. It was a normal friendship.’

‘But you had to break up with him. When we met, you broke up with him. Friends are pleased when you meet someone. They stick around, get to know them. You don’t meet them in the park one wet Wednesday afternoon and quietly inform them that “things have changed”. They don’t disappear – not when they’ve been calling you every day for years …’

He grabbed my wrist. ‘What do you want from me? What is it that you actually want? Do you want me to pretend it never happened? Is that it?’

‘No, but don’t you understand? How do I know it won’t happen again?’ I tried to pull away, but he held on tightly.

‘Because I won’t let it. I just won’t let it.’ His voice was defiant but his eyes looked exhausted, lost. ‘I promise you, Louise, I promise I won’t let you down.’

He let go and my arm dropped limply by my side. I stared at the sandy walkway. Everything inside me was telling me to leave, to walk away.

We’re in Paris. It’s romantic. A French family walks by, complete with small children and grandparents, as if they’d been cued in by an unseen director.

I say it quietly, but I say it. ‘What if that’s your true nature. You cannot, no matter how hard you try, deny your true nature.’

He rises slowly and holds out his hand. ‘I’m not going to have this conversation again. Either you accept me the way I am or not. It’s up to you.’

I get up. I tell myself I’m crazy, stupid. He loves me, doesn’t he? He says the words, doesn’t he? I have a cold; I’m being dramatic.

And I don’t want to be alone.

We walk. We stumble on, into the heat. It never becomes more comfortable.

The next night he proposes to me in the middle of Le Pont Des Arts and I accept.

I close the book and look again at my husband. He’s completing the crossword, methodically crossing out each clue as he goes, writing the answers in pen.

He has kept his promise; he has not let me down.

1. We’ve always lived comfortably, in the best neighbourhoods, often within walking distance of the West End.

2. He has never been rude to me in public or, to the best of my knowledge, unfaithful.

3. He has looked after me, managing the household finances, taking care of me when I’ve been ill, and constantly seeking to improve our home.

4. He does the laundry. I regularly come home to find my clothes neatly folded and stacked on the bed.

5. When he’s working in the West End, he picks up the Sunday papers outside Charing Cross on his way home on Saturday night so that we can stay up late and read them together.

6. We often go for long walks together late at night, all over London, when the city is transformed by stillness.

7. He is a good companion.

8. And he has brought me the perfect cup of tea every morning in bed for the past five years.

Who am I to say this isn’t love?

The first time I saw him, it was at the opening night party of The Fourth of July. It was my first big professional role and I was ecstatic with the feeling that I’d made it; I’d arrived. The audience had given us a standing ovation and everyone was certain the play would transfer into the West End. I was wearing my favourite red dress, a long swirling concoction of silk crêpe that flowed and clung to the body. The lilting, pulsating rhythms of Latin music filled the house in Ladbroke Grove where we were celebrating and some of the guys were mixing pitchers of margaritas in the kitchen. The rest of us were dancing on the patio, swaying and turning with our arms outstretched, laughing too loudly in the cool, early autumn air.

When he appeared, a gatecrasher from another theatre, tall and slender, with light hair and pale blue eyes, I barely noticed him. He wasn’t my type. He was in a new play at the Albery and doing well for himself. But I had other plans. My live-in boyfriend had cheated on me a few months earlier. I ignored it at the time, but tonight, wearing my red dress and drinking too many margaritas, I was determined to pull.

I don’t know how or why I came to be kissing him. But the next morning, nursing a violent hangover and lying very, very still on the cold, flat futon in the bed-sitting studio I shared with my cheating boyfriend, I realized I’d made a mistake.

I called to let him know I’d fucked up, that it was just something stupid and to laugh it off but instead he must’ve heard the confusion and fear in my voice. ‘Let’s meet for a coffee,’ he said. ‘Tell me what’s really bothering you. Maybe I can help.’

And so we met in a little Polish tearoom off the Finchley Road, where they served lemon tea in glasses and the air was thick with the fug of goulash soup. It rained and we sat at a tiny corner table and he listened while I told him the whole, sordid tale of my unfaithful boyfriend. I apologized for ‘behaving badly’ and he nodded his head and said it was all understandable under the circumstances. And then we walked, very slowly and for a long time through the quiet streets of West Hampstead. He told me he’d ring me again, to see how I was doing.

The next day we met in the outdoor café in Regent’s Park. It was too cold to sit outside, but we did anyway. Moving indoors required more commitment than we were prepared to make, so we perched gingerly on the edge of the wooden benches, shivering. And again, I told him things I hadn’t intended telling anyone and he listened. All the feelings that had been bottled up for the past six months came crashing forward and I didn’t think I’d be able to bear it.

The day after that we met on the other side of Regent’s Park and walked until we came to a street in Fitzrovia. He stopped and said, ‘This is where my flat is.’ I followed him up the winding stairs and we sat on a sofa in the front room. It was a tiny flat but everything was immaculate, spotless. It was so different from the bed-sitting room I shared with my boyfriend, crammed full of books, papers and clothes. There was space to breathe here; everything was visible. We talked and I cried and told him I didn’t know what to do. He held me, and I stayed curled up in his arms for a very long time.

Then we went into his bedroom.

The bed was made so tightly, so perfectly, that there were no creases anywhere. The books on the shelf were in alphabetical order. Everything was white – the bedclothes, the carpet, the bookshelf, the desk. He took out a volume of poems. We sat on the bed and he read to me ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’. And when he finished, there were tears on his cheeks.

And there, in the clean, white, untouched room, we tore at each other’s clothes, grabbing and pulling, twisting the perfect sheets, shattering the silence.

When it was over, we dressed again, quickly, without looking at one another, and walked back into the safe neutrality of the park.

And, there, under the sheltering boughs of a chestnut tree, an hour after we made love, he told me that he had been thinking … that when he had broken up with his previous girlfriend, it was because he suspected … that he was afraid he might be … well, that there might be something wrong with him.

We didn’t speak for weeks after that. The play transferred into the West End. I left my boyfriend and slept on the sofa in a girlfriend’s flat. But every day I thought of him, of how he’d listened to me and held me and how peaceful and serene the cool white world was where he lived.

And then he rang.

We met in the same outdoor café, only this time we moved inside where it was warm. After an embarrassed silence, I started to say, fumbling for words, how I thought we could probably still be friends, when he reached across the table and took hold of my hands.

His eyes were feverish and the words came spilling out on top of one another, in a disjointed torrent I struggled to keep up with. Never before had he been so animated, so passionate, or alive. He had just been afraid, he said, he could see that now. For so long – too long – he’d been on his own in the apartment; day after day, just waiting for something to happen, for some sign. He’d been overwhelmed by depression, suicidal even and hadn’t known what to do. Which way to go. The men … he’d tried, but it had repulsed him. He’d been disgusted. Ashamed. But it had all been just a red herring, nothing more than a phantom. The truth, the real truth, was that he had just been afraid to love anyone.

But that was over.

Now he loved me.

He held my hands tighter. He’d tried to forget me, but he couldn’t. I haunted him, whispered to him, thoughts of me swam around in his head day and night.

He pulled me closer and looked into my eyes. I’d never know how desperate, how lonely, how hopeless it had all been. Or how I’d changed him. Changed him to the very core.

Laughing, suddenly euphoric, he showered my face with kisses and told me how he knew, as soon as he saw me in my bright red dress, that I was the one for him. And how all he wanted to do was to help me, take care of me, look after me.

‘Please, Louise! Rumple the bed sheets! Pile the sink high with dirty dishes! Hang your red dress from the centre of the ceiling in my cold, empty bedroom! But most of all stay.’

I smiled, leant forward and kissed him.

He seemed the kindest, most gentle person I had ever known.