An Affair to Remember (2 page)

It’s stiflingly hot in St James’s Park tube station, the rush-hour crowd slowly building up on the platform into a dense, heaving mass. A Circle Line train crawls in at last and Beatrice manages to force herself into it as the doors are closing. Chest to chest with a man immersed in his
Evening Standard
, the voice in her head suddenly comes again, more urgent than ever: the name Brian repeated several times, followed by what seems gibberish. At least she hadn’t dreamed it! And the words must be in her head, not on the tape, so that was one thing solved.

She looks round nervously; surely someone else must have heard it too? But the faces round her are impassive, their owners, or so it seems, just so many bodies in the act of being transported from A to B. No help there. The train gives a sudden jerk and the man with the newspaper sways towards her. Beatrice closes her eyes.

In the year 1984 Beatrice Travers is just thirty-two years old. She is kind, intelligent and rather beautiful, or perhaps handsome would be a better word to describe the classic lines of her face and figure. Indeed an early admirer had once described her as a walking Venus de Milo; she had never been sure whether it was a compliment or not. She also possesses – and it’s something that somehow never quite seems to fit in with the rest of her – a rather wicked sense of humour. With these attributes, what more could she ask of life? Her reply, if such a question had been put to her, would be ‘quite a lot’. For the truth is that – like the man lost in the desert with only a tin of meat to assuage his hunger who forgets to bring a tin opener – the fairy godmother who attended Beatrice’s christening, having endowed her so lavishly with gifts, had capriciously denied her the vital knowledge of how to use them.

Reared in the home counties with a background of tolerable affluence, although possibly somewhat lacking in emotional warmth, the middle one of three, an elder sister and a younger brother, Beatrice’s childhood had been a not unhappy one. Her mother – attractive, neurotic, and frequently bloody minded, following the departure in 1958 of Beatrice’s father, a classical scholar of some repute with a penchant for young men – had married in quick succession a number of grossly unsuitable husbands. Only six years old when her father left the marital home, Beatrice barely remembered him, and didn’t see him again until she was grown up. After his departure, and a brief and not uncomfortable spell in prison, Marcus Travers had written a best-seller on his experiences there, and following a string of further best-sellers – mostly on the private life of the Romans, his main area of expertise – now lived in considerable comfort in the United States. He never appeared to take much interest in his children or had ever expressed any desire to see them, and Beatrice had visited him only once, when she was eighteen, just before she started art college. She’d found the trip interesting – with the royalties from his books, Mr Travers had built himself an exact replica of a Roman villa in the wilds of Connecticut, where he lived in some state with a shifting population of adoring pupils – but emotionally unsatisfactory; the expected catharsis on coming into contact with her real father, as opposed to the string of hopeless stepfathers she’d had to put up with, never taking place. Indeed, she had found it impossible to imagine how such a person as Marcus Travers could ever have sired herself or her siblings, let alone married her mother. The trip had not been a success, and was not repeated.

As to her siblings: her elder sister, Daphne, was a small, dark, irritable girl quite unlike Beatrice. She had married at twenty having finally chosen from amongst a horde of contenders – Daphne, despite having the very antithesis of her sister Beatrice’s golden good looks, was nevertheless extremely, if somewhat inexplicably, attractive to men – the suitor she and her mother considered most likely to succeed in life. They had, however, been mistaken in their choice. James, after a bright start, had proved to be a bit of a loser, and in 1975 had decided to drop out of the race altogether and sweep Daphne and their three children off to a commune. The commune was in a large, drafty Victorian house in the Midlands, in which its inmates lived in extreme squalor and discomfort, gritting their teeth and determinedly doing their own thing long after such concepts were fashionable. Under these unpropitious circumstances Daphne had become not only more irritable, but bitter with it.

Her brother, Horace, however, whose early career had been a disaster and of whom the stepfather current during his late teenage years had confidently, even hopefully, predicted an early demise from drugs, drink or both, had at the age of twenty-seven married a very rich girl called Lottie. Lottie’s father was on the board of a multi-national, Beatrice never could remember which one, but it was a big one and he was loaded. Lottie herself ran a successful advertising agency and Horace, much to the stupefaction of everyone, including himself, had managed to get elected as a Tory MP in the 1983 General Election: as a reward for this feat Lottie had persuaded her father to buy them the small Georgian manor house in Horace’s constituency, where, unlike his poor sister Daphne, they now lived in considerable comfort, not to say luxury.

Beatrice stayed with them from time to time, but had lately discovered that at the end of a weekend spent at Frogton Manor, the recipient of her brother and his wife’s caring, sensible advice, sampling the delights of their superlative guest bathroom, eating their perfectly cooked and nutritious food and meeting their clever, interesting and supremely energetic friends, she would find herself overwhelmed by a deep depression accompanied by the feeling, no doubt totally unjustified, that her brother and his wife were, metaphorically speaking, rubbing her nose in their success, and a strong desire never to visit them again.

As far as her career was concerned, all Beatrice could say of it was that it had been mundane, but respectable. A few excitements along the way, but nothing that had any lasting effect on her life, and in her own somewhat pessimistic view she had reached the age of thirty-two with little in the way of life enhancing experience to show for it. On leaving school (a clutch of O levels and two As) she’d done a year at a local art school, where she’d fallen painfully in love with an elderly and somewhat randy lecturer. He’d relieved her of her virginity (apparently surprised she still had it) and they had gone away together for a couple of weekends. The weekends, although in themselves not wholly successful – it had rained both times and the lecturer, with a wife and family to feed, chose only two star hotels – had served to make her more in love with him than ever. At the beginning of the summer term she discovered she was pregnant, and with a confidence born of extreme innocence, in the starry eyed conviction that on receipt of her news he would instantly divorce his wife and forthwith marry her, she had informed him of her condition. The lecturer’s expression of horror tinged with annoyance at her news had taught Beatrice a lesson she would not forget, and he had not even offered to help pay for the subsequent abortion. This episode marked the end of her career in art: she took a secretarial course, passed her exams with flying colours and came to live in London.

Since then she had had a number of jobs: she was intelligent, good looking, and if, as one of her bosses put it, her personality was a bit on the ‘offbeat’ side, her work was always efficient. And as she slowly climbed the secretarial ladder the years – bedsitters, flat sharing, holidays abroad, mostly with girlfriends; the odd affair, mostly with married men and never, seemingly, coming to anything – had somehow slipped away. And here she was, she told herself, a tear dripping down her nose and a lump in her throat, as she stepped out of the stifling train on to the slightly less stifling platform at Kensington High Street, at the age of thirty-two, the archetypal ‘Other Woman’ with nothing to show for the years that had gone but a room in a friend’s flat, and the ability to be a glorified nursery maid to conceited arseholes of the likes of Mr Taylor. Beatrice, though seldom using bad language in public, or only when she was very angry, liked to use it to herself in private; somehow it gave her a sense of release, as if in a curious fashion by using it (the coarser the better) she was tapping into the real her.

She’d made a few friends of course, over the years. The difficulty was so many of her girlfriends had either married or for various reasons moved away from London, and somehow as one got older it seemed more difficult to make new ones, proper ones, anyway. At least, she thinks, as she crosses Ken High Street practically under the wheels of a 73 bus (who cares?), she had her current flat mate, Sylvia.

Sylvia Cambell and her large, rambling mansion flat on the borders of Kensington and Earls Court, is definitely a plus in Beatrice’s life. They have known each other for around three years now. An aged aunt of Sylvia’s had bequeathed her the flat in her Will at the end of the 1970s – a true gift from the gods coming just as the price of property was beginning to rocket upwards. Too big for one, having two quite large bedrooms, she’d advertised for someone to share it. Beatrice’s was the first reply; they’d taken to each other on sight, and she’d lived there ever since. Her bedroom was a large, sunny room overlooking a quiet square, and they shared the sitting room, kitchen and bathroom.

Sylvia, several years Beatrice’s senior, had married briefly and unsuccessfully, and although possessing a large and shifting population of male friends, had vowed never to marry again. She seemed to Beatrice, whose calm and self-possessed exterior masked a frightened and self-doubting interior, to be totally self-sufficient, her life organised, her course set. Possessing a small private income – the aged aunt again – which she supplemented by publishing the odd short story and dabbling in journalism, the rest of her time was largely spent involving herself in politics. She was a member of The Fabian Society and organisations of the likes of CND, Oxfam and War on Want. Beatrice loved her and not infrequently thanked the gods, if gods there were, for arranging their meeting.

It was on Sylvia’s advice that after an evening spent feeling particularly low, she had decided to advertise herself in the Find a Friend columns of the magazine
Where to Go
. ‘
Lady
,’ – there’d been a certain amount of discussion as to whether to describe herself as ‘lady’ or ‘young woman’, lady had won – ‘
Lady
,
thirties
,
interested in theatre
,
reading
,
holidays abroad
,
wishes to meet gentleman of similar tastes
–’ (‘tastes’, wasn’t ‘tastes’ a bit iffy? Oh never mind) ‘–
similar tastes
,
with a view to friendship
.’ To date she’d received around half a dozen replies, but out of these – one of which had been quite frankly pornographic – only the man she was supposed to be meeting tonight, Wain Steerforth, seemed remotely suitable.

The voice came again as, hands sticky with sweat, she fumbles for her front door key, and in spite of the heat she shivers. Was this the start of schizophrenia?

“Syl, I think I must be going round the bend, I keep hearing these voices. Perhaps it would be better if I didn’t meet this jerk tonight after all.”

Sylvia looks up from the pile of jumble she’s sorting: “Don’t be daft. There’s nothing wrong with you. And anyway, how do you know he’s a jerk; he may be the very one, the man of your dreams…” She holds up a bedraggled jumpsuit of a particularly sick-making shade of green, “I know it’s unchristian to say so, but honestly, people must really be scraping the barrel, did you ever see such a load of junk?”

“But Syl, this voice in my head keeps calling for someone called Brian, it’s really odd. She sounds desperate, it’s a woman’s voice and –”

“Oh go on with you and have a bath, just to look at you makes me sweat.” Syl chucks the jumpsuit into a waiting rubbish sack and picks up an outsize orange sweater full of holes and only one arm. “And by the way, mind the Ascot, the damned thing’s on the blink again. If I’ve phoned that bloody man once I’ve phoned him a hundred times, but all I ever get’s his answer-phone, honestly, I beginning to wonder if he’s done a runner…”

“Quite frankly,” Beatrice makes for the door, “I don’t care if the bloody thing explodes. At least it might provide a spot of excitement.”

“Toad!” Sylvia grins and adds the jersey to the growing pile of rubbish. “Now where do I know of a one-armed woman with a preference for orange?”

Marginally refreshed after her bath, but not much – the Ascot made some rather sinister noises, but failed to explode – Beatrice, trying to be objective, takes stock of herself in the mirror, and has to cautiously admit she doesn’t look too bad; the green linen sheath dress she bought at C & As, even though it was in the sale, really does suit her. I look like one of Father’s Roman goddesses, she thinks, smiling at her mirror image – even a bit sexy. Perhaps too sexy. Oh God! We don’t want to give this Wain Steerforth too much of a fright – or do we? For a fleeting moment another Beatrice looks out from the mirror: a knowing, definitely sexy, possibly even wicked Beatrice, to be replaced, however, almost immediately by the old, familiar, hiding-her-light-under-a-bushel Beatrice, who, hastily turning away from such a subversive image, drapes a black and rather tatty cardigan over her shoulders in a misguided effort to cover her all too obvious cleavage, picks up her shoulder bag and makes for the door. Mustn’t keep the bastard waiting.

And Wain Steerforth, at the sight of her, does indeed look terrified, or if not terrified, distinctly nervous, even slightly disapproving. As expected he fails to live up to his noble name, but is small and bald, with pebble glasses. His reply to her ad had stated he was in his forties, but his skin has that curious embalmed look, possibly a little slimy to the touch; he could be any age. When Beatrice first sees him, leaning against a pillar in the foyer at the Barbican being jostled by impatient theatre goers, pretending to read the
Guardian
– it had been arranged between then they should each carry a copy of the
Guardian
newspaper for the purpose of identification – she prays without hope that it won’t be him. It is of course him, as she knew it would be. Come on Travers, don’t be an arsehole, says the other Beatrice mockingly, you can deal with this. But can she? She bloody hopes so. If not… Taking a deep breath, she pulls the black cardigan more tightly across her bosom, and with a smile – probably more of a grimace than a smile – she walks towards him: “Mr Steerforth? Hi, I’m Beatrice Travers.”