Sally (23 page)

There was silence, stunned silence. Sally mulled over Richard's words and replayed them to herself. She acknowledged the solemnity of the occasion, she was struck by his courage and volition. There was still a part of her that wanted to run, but there was a stronger impulse now to stay and for the first time it neither scared nor repulsed her.

But it did tie her tongue. She wanted to say to him, ‘Yes, I feel it too.' She wanted to confirm that love was the last thing she had been looking for when she met him, that she had previously deemed love overrated, somewhat pointless and inherently dangerous. But Sally could not say a word, she certainly could not manage the ‘L' word though it no longer terrified her so. All she could do was to reach out a cold and fragile hand and place it against Richard's cheek. She turned it over and stroked his face with the back of her hand, then she switched it back and laid her palm still, her thumb just resting on the corner of his mouth, her fingertips touching his ear-lobe, his neck, and the start of his hair.

‘Quite frankly, Sal,' launched Richard in a businesslike and decided way but let her hand stay as it was, ‘I want to do something about it.' Sally took her hand away from him and waited, head cocked and eyes soft. Richard glanced at his cup and saw that it was empty though he could find no trace of Bailey's in his mouth or his memory. He asked Sally if she wanted another; her cup was practically full but she nodded anyway. Richard disappeared and left Sally wondering what his breath had been bated to say. She looked out across the river and thought how beautiful London looked for once. The lights from the Embankment fell into golden shards across the water and the buildings loomed elegant and proud behind. Staring at St Paul's, ghostly and emotive in the floodlit night, she was thinking about nothing in particular when Richard returned.

She greeted his approach with a soft little smile. But who is that walking beside him? Richard was accompanied by the crustiest, dirtiest person Sally had ever seen. ‘Godforsaken' was the word she thought of later that night. He was Richard's height but half his build and wore the filthiest clothes, baggy and torn, shiny in parts with grease, dull in others with grime. His hair was hacked to an uneven, precarious mohican, tinged in green and peroxide. Little of his face was visible under the scraggly beard and tattoos which webbed over his cheeks and throat. The earrings, of which there were many, were not confined to his ears but were in both nostrils, on his right eyebrow and on his lower lip. As Sally recoiled she chanced upon his hands.

He had the most beautiful hands, she noticed, as he placed them flat on a table near her. Very much like Richard's; long, shapely and manicured. She was transfixed. Intrigued by her captivation, Richard curled her fingers around the cup for her and sat down astride the bench, cowboy style, just like Sally. Was
it
, that person, upsetting her? Would she rather they move? No, not at all. She was compelled by the man. The figure was immediately pathetic, even menacing, and yet he exuded a composure and elegance which were mesmerizing. Richard could see that she was neither frightened nor repulsed so they sat and sipped and looked at each other while casting frequent furtive glances to their neighbour.

With a slug of Bailey's to bolster him, Richard decided to bite his bullet and drew a deep breath accordingly.

‘Sally,' he started, taking her hand and turning her face towards him. He cleared his throat but she kept her eyes trained on the other man. Richard took another deep breath but Sally pipped him to it with a whisper fringed with awe.

‘Look, Richie, look!' she implored. Richard followed her eyes and they sat and watched in amazement and pity the man with Richard's hands. From every pocket in his old combat trousers and jacket, he retrieved a seemingly unending supply of the little free cartons of UHT milk and coffee whitener. Food; free.

Methodically he placed them to form a line. And another. And still they came. Another line, and another. He paused and looked steadily at the four even rows in front of him. Sally scanned them, ten in each, forty altogether – a glass-worth?

With concentrated and pedantic dedication, he systematically peeled the lids back from each pot. Again he stopped still and just regarded.

Like a teacher
, thought Sally,
presiding over a class
.

Carefully he lifted each pot to his mouth and drank his way, daintily, scrupulously, up and down the rows. Sally saw his tongue dart to salvage every last smear. With maddening precision, each pot was conscientiously returned to its place in the row. Empty. Soon they were finished and the meal was over. He stood still a moment longer and then took his beautiful hands away from the table, out of Sally's sight, and buried them deep into his jacket. He rumbled off, oblivious to his audience. In silence, they hoped he had had enough, that he was satiated, that he might have a square meal tomorrow, though they doubted it.

Richard looked at Sally and saw how her eyes were smarting with tears. With his fingertips he gently eased her face away from the pregnant space left in front of the empty cartons. He felt no need to draw a brave breath.

‘Sally.'

She looked at him. She was open and there, ready and committed to listen.

‘I can't be bothered with game-playing and acting and waiting. I propose that we move in together. I want to live with you, I want to have you beside me every morning and night. Quite frankly, I can't be having the two or three times a week. I think we should move in together. Soon. Now. With a view to the Big “M”. We have enormous potential. I've never wanted anything more and I don't want to settle for anything less.'

Like an eavesdropper, Richard clearly heard the words as they were uttered. Premeditated and planned for days and weeks, they had been proclaimed previously in the safety of his head, during the privacy of a run, in a lunchtime daydream, in late-night, sleep-greeting sanctuary. And yet he took himself by surprise as the words tumbled away, out into the open unchecked by any better judgment. He recognized the sound of his own voice and heard the words he was saying; they were familiar, he knew them well, yet they induced a surge of adrenalin to course through his body and reach his stomach in a wave of nausea that was at once awful and pleasant. Though his head was high, his heart was full, his eyes were alight and his body trembled, Richard was racked with anxiety at the portent of his words. The very meaning of them engulfed him, the consequences they would have on his life, the effect they would have on Sally.

The very effect they will have on Sally is something Richard cannot foresee. Why should his words, spoken after all with honesty and great depth of emotion possibly bring her anything but great happiness and security? Why indeed? Because, poor man, they are the wrong words for someone who is only just feeling comfortable with the trimmings, trappings and whole idea of being in love.

The ensuing silence was unbearable. Richard was perturbed by the absence of the smile he was so desperate to see. Sally gulped, both with her eyes and her throat. Fear flickered across her face; it was manifest in the twitching and creasing of her brow, the purse and pucker of her lips.

‘Talk to me,' Richard demanded, his voice breaking. Sally didn't trust her voice at all but the tears that she was desperate to vanquish threatened to choke her instead. Richard cradled her head in his hands, wove his fingers through her hair, pressed her face against his chest where she could feel his heart pounding and it frightened her.

‘Talk to me, talk to me, talk to me,' he murmured over and over again, rocking her in rhythm to his words. Sally's mind raced and ran so fast that it was impossible to pin down her thoughts, to analyze her churning emotions, to organize them into sentences coherent enough to be said out loud. Richard was patient, his soliloquy had now a soothing effect on him, he felt light; a weight had been shifted.

Little did he realize how it had fallen twice as heavy on to Sally's half as broad shoulders.

‘Sal?' he implored after what he considered to be a reasonable length of loaded time. She raised her face and slowly shook her head. Richard looked unbearably sad and Sally was surprised at how swiftly his pain restored her voice.

‘Don't know, Richie, just don't know. Too soon, perhaps, I think.'

For some reason, she found it impossible to form a grammatically correct sentence. ‘Can't think just right now. Can I think, go away and have time to think?' Her eyes were wide. ‘Richard? Can I? Seems too big, scary and I don't know. Too much, don't know. Frightened. Need time and space. Can't answer you, it's too big. Richie?'

Richard looked at her and decided that he would grant her all the time in the world in the hope that she would find her answer quickly. As long as it was the answer he wanted to hear. He nodded at her and was rewarded with her smile. Sally's smile said ‘thank you'. It said something else too, Richard could see it quite clearly but refused to believe it until she said it.

But Sally did not, she just could not quite say it to him that night.

In bed, warm and alone two hours later, she said ‘I love you, Richard' out loud. She spoke the four words with conviction, a veritable proclamation. She heard her voice, she knew it was hers. She heard the words and knew they came from her head as much as from her heart.

As Richard and Sally had strolled across Waterloo bridge, they had passed the balloon boy. Minus his balloon.

‘Where's your balloon gone?' Sally asked.

‘It just flew away, I let it go – just to see – and it just flew up and away. It went over there somewhere.'

‘That's a pity. But I think there are plenty more back inside. I'm sure they wouldn't mind you taking another.'

He smiled at Sally and she saw how young he was, his dirty face fresh and just pubescent. He looked a little like Marcus. ‘There are plenty more,' she reiterated.

‘No,' he said wisely, ‘I don't want another one. I would just want to let that one go too.'

I
t is a quiet, fresh Saturday morning. Sally has woken, thankfully alone, and is staring at nothing in particular through the gap in the curtains. Feeling small, tearful and sorry for herself, she is reluctant to rise and wants to start the day with a good old cry in the comfort of her little bed (a double bed, in fact, but so cosy and safe that Sally always thinks of it as her little bed). We'll leave her be awhile and travel southwestwards to Notting Hill where Catherine has just popped by, accidentally on purpose, to see how her husband's (soon to be father of her first child) best friend is faring today.

‘Hey, Catherine!'

Richard, resplendent in grey marl jogging bottoms and a dark red sweatshirt, greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks. ‘I was just off out for a run but it can wait. Come in, come in! Coffee? Tea? Juice? Juice coming up! Grapefruit? Orange? Both freshly squeezed in the groovy juicer-whatsit. What a great Christmas present. I did thank you, didn't I? Profusely, I seem to remember.'

Catherine was swept through into Richard's sitting-room, borne along on the stream of his cheerful bearing.

I have before me a happy boy. Thank goodness!
she thought.
Come on Richie-ard, tell me do! Reveal to me the provenance of your smile, the reason for the spring in your step, the song in your voice!

Richard, however, was whistling too sonorously to tune into Catherine's attempted telepathy.

She slid into his leather recliner and wriggled off her shoes. Daffodils caught her eye. Wherever she turned, their golden fanfare greeted her. The flowers were shoved into vases, crammed into jugs; haphazard and glorious.

Much much better than those
de rigueur
hothouse tulips
, she thought, and smiled. With relief, she saw that Bach came before Bizet and, on the shelf below, Hendrix came after Genesis. Through the archway, she could see Richard slicing the grapefruit with fell swoops, nonchalantly tossing the halves into the juicer gadget. Watching him from behind, seeing his broad shoulders, tapered waist and neat bottom, she was happily transported back to memories of college days. Those evenings, what fun! Food and wine, on a budget but heavenly, lounging around, smoking joints and travelling to the dark side of the moon and back with Pink Floyd. Bob and Richard; fit as fiddles, keen chefs and devoted flatmates. Catherine had felt special to ‘the boys', madly and deeply in love with Bob but treasuring too the platonic closeness and openness of her friendship with Richard. She had loved to watch dinner for four, a familiar occurrence, take shape. She enjoyed seeing Bob and Richard vie for space in their small, cramped but outrageously well-equipped kitchenette. She thrilled to their fondness for each other, manifest in every half-finished but intuitively understood silence, in their easy laughter, their incessant teasing, in their generous pats, slaps and nudges. She remembered how she would marvel at the flexing in Bob's forearms as he whizzed his knife through an innocent cucumber, how he would look up, hold her gaze and smile his dashing, winning smile, before setting to work on the carrots. Always Bob-and-Richard-and-Catherine. And X.

X was invariably long-legged and luscious but on the scene for so short a time that her name was a foregone forgotten inevitability.

Bob had proposed to Catherine a year or so later in a kitchen, a different kitchen but a kitchen all the same. He had cut his finger, she had laughed at his ever-so-injured face and had kissed the droplet of blood away. As she wrapped a wadge of paper towel tenderly around his finger (having caused him to squeal at the undiluted disinfectant) Bob had asked her to marry him nevertheless. Dumbstruck, she could only squeeze his wounded digit so hard in acceptance that he very nearly reneged his proposal. Here she was, a decade later, the very Mrs Woods, watching Richard, the self-same Richard, still King of the Kitchen.