Celebration

‘Can I try and find you a glass of something else?’

She stood up and put the tumbler down carefully on the mantelpiece. Staring straight into Edward’s eyes, she answered, ‘I don’t think there is anything …’

‘In that case,’ he said decisively, ‘I shall have to take you away from here.’ He took her hand and guided her across the room. Bell heard the stream of anxious talk from the armchair stop in mid-sentence.

‘Bell? You’re not going, are you?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, not loudly enough for even Edward to hear. ‘I think I am going.’

Out on the shabby landing they stood side by side, staring into the kitchen where a beer barrel was dripping on to a carpet of newspapers. An array of green and brown wine bottles stood in a litter of French bread and cheese. Their eyes met, and they smiled at each other.

‘Have you got a coat?’

‘On the bed, in there.’

The bedroom door was locked now and he retrieved it from the pile that had been flung out on to the landing floor. They picked their way down the stairs, past the girl in the long skirt, and out into the street. To Edward, for the very first time, the thick London air smelt clean and invigorating.

He took Bell out to dinner and then back to the door of her flat.

He saw her every day for a week before he kissed her, and it was a month before he felt he was even beginning to know her. Every time he saw her he was surprised by the way her beauty unfolded. At first he had seen her simply as an attractive girl with unusual eyes, but gradually he noticed the luxuriance of her dark hair, the fragility of her long neck and the bloom of her skin, and the vulnerability of her mouth.

Her face kept changing.

For Bell they were weeks of enlightenment. Slowly she discovered that Edward could be trusted not to disappoint her. He was never dull, never at a loss. To her delight she found that if he wasn’t beside her he was a step ahead, waiting for her to catch up. She found that she could be herself with him, as with no one else. She began to show him aspects of herself that she had buried deeply years ago, when she was a little girl convinced that her mother had been taken away from her to punish her own wickedness. Not even her closest friends knew about her spurts of temper, or her bleak fits of pessimism. Bell stopped hiding them from Edward, and her feelings for him quickened when she saw that he accepted her faults as gratefully as her merits.

The habits of years fell away as she accepted the rhythm of life with him. She began to think in the plural after what felt like a lifetime of solitude.

One evening, Edward brought her home as he always did. They had been to see a film, and then for a meal at the tiny restaurant around the corner. Bell had watched the candlelight making black shadows in the hollows of his face as he talked and she had realized, with a little shock, that she knew the contours of it as well as she knew her own face. She was faintly surprised when she remembered that she was still keeping part of herself from someone so well-loved.

In the deserted flat Edward took Bell in his arms to kiss her goodnight.

‘Don’t go,’ she had said, in a small clear voice. ‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long, but I’m ready now.’

There was no need to say any more. Edward put his hand on the catch of her bedroom door and it swung open. They stepped into the dim warmth of her room. With infinite tenderness he took off her clothes and knelt beside her.

‘Are you quite sure?’

Her eyes were luminous as she answered, ‘Quite sure. I love you, Edward.’

He had been astounded by the depth of her passion. It was as if she had flung herself blindly into an uncharted sea, and found that she could swim like a fish.

They had been very happy, Bell recalled. Until their need for each other had become claustrophobic to her, threatening rather than secure. Until she had begun to have dreams about being trapped underwater, or about failing to rescue him from burning tenements. Or about jilting him. She remembered her early-morning dream, the feel of her billowing wedding dress gathered up in her fists to leave her free to run, and her mouth went dry.

It had been painful, and it still was, but she had done the right thing. She wished that there had never been any nagging sense of something missing, so that she could have been happy with Edward for ever. But it was not to be, and now even in her loneliest moments she delighted in her freedom. It had been hard to win, this independence, and now she had it it felt like a prize.

Suddenly she felt a suffocating wave of affectionate tenderness for him. She bent forward and wrapped her arms around his hunched shoulders, rubbing her cheek against his hair.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s helped, sitting here remembering all the good things. It seems less of a … waste. And it’s made the bad bits easier to contemplate.’ Edward stood up and pulled Bell to her feet. The wine bottle was empty, and she knew that it was time to go and meet their friends. He raised his eyebrows and she nodded, half smiling.

‘I’ll go and get my things.’

Edward watched her go. In an automatic gesture she stretched out her fingers as she passed to feel the dampness of the earth in the potted palm. Instantly the memory came back to him. He smelt the dust and her perfume, saw himself lying in her arms and felt the drooping palm fronds brushing his skin. Suddenly he longed to take hold of her again, to feel the softness of her against him one more time. She was standing in the doorway again, turning up the collar of her jacket.

‘Let’s go and eat,’ he said, in a voice made rough with desire. She heard it at once, and her eyes jumped to the palm. How well we know each other, he thought.

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘I think we should.’ She took his arm and the door closed behind them with a neat click.

Every table in Les Amoureuses was taken, and the bar and dance floor were packed. Edward and Bell peered through the smoky atmosphere, trying to see some faces in the crowd.

‘Table in the corner,’ Edward mouthed at her and they squirmed past the crammed tables. Three people looked up as they arrived, large blonde Mary and little dark Elspeth with half-moon glasses, and Marcus who was Edward’s best friend. He had straw-coloured hair and a rubbery, mobile face.

‘Oh good, the fun people. Bell, darling, how chic you look. Now, press yourselves in where you can and I’ll see if I can conjure up some glasses.’

Edward kissed the two girls and they sat down. It was, thought Bell, going to be an evening exactly like hundreds of others.

Odd that life was such a combination of the frightening and the absolutely, routinely predictable.

‘… going well in the world of high finance?’ asked Mary.

‘Oh, just the same as always,’ Edward answered, evasively. He worked, very successfully, in a City merchant bank, but considered it something to be hushed up as far as possible.

‘Bell’s the only one who ever does anything interesting. You should see her diary. Bordeaux tomorrow, next week California.’

‘California?’ Mary and Elspeth looked at her with such open envy that Bell felt herself blushing.

‘All thanks to Marcus,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m going to stay with a friend of his, researching a series for the paper on West Coast life. Wine, food, people. I suggested it ages ago to Stobbs and he liked the idea, then came up with a budget that would have kept me alive in San Francisco for about twenty-five minutes. So Marcus suggested his rich friend who lives in the Napa Valley. He responded with true Californian hospitality, and I can afford to go after all. I’ve never been to the West Coast, and I’m longing to see it. It’ll be hard work, too,’ she finished defensively.

‘Work?’ Mary was derisive. ‘Who is this friend, Marcus? Got any others to spare?’

Marcus finished his mouthful deliberately and then flattened his features to produce a wide, toothy American smile.

‘He’s always glad to offer a bed to an English chick. Specially one with an ass like yours, Mare.’

Bell said, ‘Marcus, you didn’t tell me that.’

Marcus winked at her. ‘Don’t worry, you’ll like him. He’s larger than life in every respect. Maverick, almost certainly a con-man. You could fill all your articles with him alone.’

‘Anyway, Bell,’ Mary put in, ‘who could be better equipped to deal with someone like that than you? Just give him your ice-maiden act.’

Into the little silence that fell around the table, Edward said, ‘Shall we have a dance, Bell? I think there’s a spare foot of space on the floor.’

‘And pardon me, too,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m going to the boys’ room.’

The two women were left alone at the table. Mary lit one of Marcus’s cigarettes and blew the smoke out on a long breath. She was watching Edward and Bell dancing, forced close together by the press of other dancers.

‘I think she’ll regret it in the end,’ she said.

‘What?’ Elspeth sounded resigned.