‘You’re remarkable,’ he says. ‘Brave.’
‘Not really. What can happen? A drink and a bite with no doubt
the perfect gentleman in a busy country pub. With my knight in
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shining armour waiting outside gripping his mobile phone. What
can possibly happen?’
He smiles and turns off the motorway on to the slip road.
4
‘Estelle,’ she says, extending her hand, and her eyes twinkle as she smiles.
‘Brian,’ he replies. ‘Delighted.’
She has found him. An appropriate ten minutes after the
appointed time, owing to some judicious circling of the neighbour-
hood by Stephen, accompanied by glances at the building, newly
constructed to look old, lit brightly in the March midday gloom.
To Roy, she is instantly recognizable. Of medium height, slight,
young for her age, something of the gamine about her, an amused,
delighted expression and those engaging eyes. Lovely hair. A stun-
ning dress that shows off her figure. A real head- turner in her time no doubt. The photograph on the website did not lie. His slight
annoyance that she was not there before him evaporates. He
approves. Oh yes. Very much so.
‘Now, what can I get you to drink?’ he asks.
‘I’d love a . . . vodka martini,’ she says.
She does not know why; the notion has just slipped into her head.
Such impetuousness will not do for the next hour or two. Control
and discipline.
‘Shaken or stirred?’ he says with a smile and a raise of the eye-
brow. Rather different from the customary sad small sherry, he
thinks.
‘Ha ha,’ she says.
He orders her drink, suggests they sit and carries their glasses to table number 16.
‘How did you recognize me?’ he asks.
‘I came in, looked around and there you were, standing at the
bar. Tall, distinguished, smart, just as you described. Your photo-
graph is very much like you.’
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This is not so very far from the truth, she reasons. In fact in a sea of – seemingly – sixteen- year- old thrusting sales executives he was not difficult to pick out.
‘Wizzywig,’ he says.
‘Pardon?’
‘What you see is what you get. I do exactly what it says on the tin.’
‘Oh,’ she says, ‘how very disappointing.’ She smiles as if to
reassure him that she is flirting.
‘Ho ho ho,’ he booms after a short pause, his shoulders heaving.
‘Very good. I can see you’re trouble. We’re going to get on fam-
ously.’ He appraises her frankly. ‘Oh yes.’
They order their food, she a vegetarian pasta, he steak, egg and
chips. Between mouthfuls of plastic conchigliette smeared with
processed baby- food vegetables and a stringy cheese sauce she considers him more fully. He is indeed tall and broad- shouldered, with a shock of white hair swept back from a florid face on which the
tributaries of blood vessels map a complex topography. The hair is
tamed with hair cream and plastered down neatly behind the ears.
His eyes are striking, alarming almost, the light blue of the irises set in their ovoid milky frames against the sea of reddening skin, watch-ful, darting even as they focus on her face. Were it not for the watery, diluted quality of age she might be afraid of him; indeed she is a
little afraid.
At one point he was a commanding presence, she thinks: tall and
authoritative. He still holds himself that way, but at the same time there is an undisguisable physical slump. The shoulders are rounded and the eyes contain a recognition that he cannot, after all, deny
mortality. The evidence is now all too compelling and carries
disappointment as the decay of physical and mental function accel-
erates. She knows something of how he must feel, though she
has never been imposing: vivacious perhaps, but not infused with
that peculiarly masculine vanity whose futility is cruelly exposed
in the inevitable waning of virile power. She feels sorry for him, in a way.
The conversation flows easily.
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‘This is nice,’ she says untruthfully, looking up from the mess on
her plate.
‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘You can rely on them here.’
‘How is your steak?’
‘Splendid. Another drink?’
‘Why, yes, Brian. I won’t say no.’
‘Not driving then?’
‘No. My grandson drove me here.’
‘Your grandson?’
‘Yes. Stephen. He’s waiting outside in the car. Immersed in a
book no doubt.’
‘Close to family, then?’
‘Yes,’ she says decisively. ‘There aren’t many of us. But we’re very close.’
‘Tell me about them.’
This is one of the obvious topics of conversation and she is pre-
pared for it. Her son, Michael, the pharma executive who lives near Manchester, and his wife, Anne. Their son, Stephen, a historian
working at Bristol University. Their daughter, Emma, studying Eng-
lish at Edinburgh. She briefly mentions Alasdair, her late husband, but she knows that now is not the time to visit the private sadnesses that have, in part, brought them to this table.
It is Brian’s turn. His son, it seems, designs kitchens in Sydney
and their contact is infrequent and casual if amicable. No, he has no grandchildren. It is evident that Brian is not at ease discussing his son. Brian himself was the eldest brother of three and his siblings have passed away. And then of course there was his wife, Mary.
Poor, poor Mary. He looks down and Betty suspects a tear might be
forming.
‘You know,’ he says, looking up, re- energized, ‘one of the things I dislike intensely is dishonesty.’ He looks at her and she returns his gaze evenly. ‘It seems no one today feels a bit of shame about lying.
When they’re caught, of course, oh yes. But it seems dishonesty is
all right if you can get away with it. I deplore that. Do you understand me?’
She looks at him and smiles, saying, ‘Yes. I think so.’
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‘So I have to confess to you an act of deception on my part. In
meeting you.’ He pauses and adopts a solemn expression. ‘I’m afraid my name is in fact not Brian. It’s Roy. Roy Courtnay. Brian was a
kind of nom de plume for this meeting. If you see what I mean.
One feels so exposed.’
Nom de guerre, she thinks, mildly irritated.
‘Oh, that,’ she says with cheerful dismissiveness. ‘I’ve never done this before but I more or less assumed it’s par for the course. Natural self- protection. I suppose now’s the moment where I confess
that my name’s not Estelle. I’m Betty.’
They look at each other seriously for a moment before laughing
in unison.
‘I can promise that was the last time I will lie to you, Betty. Everything I say to you from now on will be the truth. Total honesty I can promise you, Betty. Total honesty.’ He grins broadly.
Steady on, she thinks, but returns his smile with neither reserve
nor equivocation. She says, ‘I’m glad to hear it.’
They have crossed a line, each feels privately, and they relax. They chat, talking about young people. It is safe territory and in plati-tudes they can share bemusement at life these days.
‘They’re so brave,’ she says. ‘I’d never have dared do some of the
things they get up to.’
‘But so casual,’ he replies, ‘everything’s so easy for them. No
perseverance.’
‘I know. They haven’t a care in the world. Not like us. I’m glad
they’re like that.’
Betty supposes this must be a necessary part of the process, a
step on the path to greater intimacy. She believes little of what she is saying; she is making it up as she goes.
She tells Roy that Stephen doesn’t even have a telephone in his
flat; his mobile smart thingummy is all he seems to require. He carries his life in his back pocket. When they were young, they agree, the ultimate status symbol was a telephone in the house. Now it’s a social faux pas. Her son owns three cars. And there are only two
people in the household now both of the children are away. Or
rather he doesn’t own them but pays an extortionate amount each
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month to a finance company and simply cashes each in for another
at the end of three years, an abstruse arrangement he has patiently explained a number of times but which she fails to ‘get’, as he puts it. No one would dream of actually saving up to buy something
these days. Her granddaughter is twenty years old and has visited
more countries than Betty has in her lifetime. She is burbling, rushing headlong, she realizes, but it doesn’t matter. It is all right.
Stephen is duly summoned and approved of. ‘A fine young man,’
says Roy while said young man is visiting the lavatory. ‘A tribute to you, Betty. A fine young man.’
Telephone numbers are exchanged as well as genuine expres-
sions of intent to meet again, very shortly. They offer Roy a lift to the station but he declines. ‘Not quite decrepit yet,’ he says. ‘It’s only a short walk.’ He stands as they leave and kisses Betty on the cheek. She reciprocates, squeezes his arm and pulls him slightly
closer, though not yet to the intimacy of an embrace. Then she
extends her arms, holds him there and looks into his eyes.
‘Until next time, then,’ she says.
‘Au revoir, Betty,’ he says.
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1
Here they come. The innocents abroad, toddling down the street.
The sun has got his hat on and all is well with the world.
They tumble and rush shrilly over the cobbles, ties askew, satch-
els flying, shirts out of trousers, hair tousled. School shoes clatter on ancient stone as they find their way down cut- throughs from the school towards the pedestrian shopping zone, flowing like liquid,
and young voices clamour and vie in excitement.
The girls come more slowly, and more neatly. Well, girls always
are better- behaved, more circumspect. Except for the naughty ones.
And they can be very naughty. Oh yes.
The Green is bathed in placid sunlight, with its refuges of shade
under the venerable trees. This is how it has been for centuries:
young people flooding out of the cathedral school with not a
thought, brimming with life, eager to resume their dodges and
weaves, while old men regard them with ill- disguised envy from
their mews cottages and contemplate bitterly their own youth.
With interest but no compassion, he watches them from his chair
in the corner of the living room. The girls are particularly fascinating. Boys of secondary school age are mere blustering rhinos,
carried on a wave of hormonal surges of which they are the helpless victims and to which they are utterly oblivious. Their female peers have gained an awareness. And with awareness comes uncertainty,
expressed in various ways. The plain and studious invest their faith that diligence and intelligence may help them to navigate the horrors, away from loneliness and failure. The fresh- faced, pretty girls of the class – pretty vacuous too, most of them – sense inchoately 11
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that their attractiveness may be ephemeral and dependent on the
vagaries of their coming physical development. And the little tarts, who aren’t especially clever but are smart enough to know that they aren’t bright or in the first ranks of prettiness, use cunning, hitching up their skirts as soon as they leave the house, teasing the males.
They know that thing called sex lurks somewhere close by; and they
quickly learn their power. Oh yes.
Now the older ones. Pimply youths with lank long hair and dole-
ful expressions dance attendance on unattainable girls. Roy likes the girls’ disdain, though his scorn for the hopeless male specimens
exceeds even the girls’. With flashed mascara glances between
them – they tend to walk in pairs – and grins that are intended to appear shy but which Roy knows to be smirks, the girls disguise
their feelings.
He cannot see himself in the boys. You fools, he thinks; you
fools. I was not one of you. I was bold and handsome. I did not falter or trip.
He is no longer fifteen. Or fifty, or eighty for that matter. But your instincts never change. Once a charmer, ineffably attractive to the opposite sex, always a charmer. He could not help it even if he
wanted to.
There she is. The one he has selected for singular attention. Regu-
lation short black skirt and black tights encasing slender womanly
legs. The tights are at odds with the school uniform, yet, he thinks knowingly, perfectly congruent given context. Perhaps fifteen,
maybe as young as a well- developed thirteen; they grow so quickly these days. Petite anyway, with that wild blonde- streaked Medusa
hair that seems never to go out of fashion. Eyeshadow daubed inex-
pertly but to good effect from where he is sitting. She thinks she is a rebel, an individual, but she is simply treading a familiar path to eventual conformity. If only he were younger he could teach her a
thing or two. She might feign haughtiness and indifference, a lan-
guorous pretence of experience. She might be enthusiastic as she
ventured on the path of discovery, but eventually she would show
fear. Roy can deal with fear. Oh yes.
*
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