Twelve Red Herrings (36 page)

The rest you
already know.” I waited to see how she would react.

She didn’t speak
for some time. “I’m flattered,” she eventually said, and touched my hand. “I
didn’t realise there were any oldfashioned romantics left in the world.” She
squeezed my fingers and looked me in the eyes. “Am I allowed to ask what you
have planned for the rest of the evening?”

“Nothing has
been planned so far,” I admitted. “Which is why it’s all been so refreshing.”

“You make me
sound like an After Eight mint,” said Anna with a laugh.

“I can think of
at least three replies to that,” I told her as Mario reappeared, looking a
little disappointed at the sight of the half-empty plates.

“Was everything
all right, sir?” he asked, sounding anxious.

“Couldn’t have
been better,” said Anna, who hadn’t stopped looking at me.

“Would you like
some coffee?” I asked.

“Yes,” said
Anna. “But perhaps we could have it somewhere a little less crowded.” I was so
taken by surprise that it was several moments before I recovered. I was
beginning to feel that I was no longer in control.

Anna rose from
her place and said, “Shall we go?” I nodded to Mario, who just smiled.

Once we were
back out on the street, she linked her arm with mine as we retraced our steps
along the Aldwych and past the theatre.

“It’s been a
wonderful evening,” she was saying as we reached the spot where I had left my
car. “Until you arrived on the scene it had been a rather dull day, but you’ve
changed all that.”

“It hasn’t
actually been the best of days for me either,” I admitted. “But I’ve rarely
enjoyed an evening more. Where would you like to have coffee?

Annabels? Or why
don’t we try the new Dorchester
Club ?”

“If
you don’t have a wife, your place.
If you do...”

“I don’t,” I
told her simply.

“Then that’s
settled,” she said as I opened the door of my BMW for her. Once she was safely
in I walked round to take my seat behind the wheel, and discovered that I had
left my sidelights on and the keys in the ignition.

I turned the
key, and the engine immediately purred into life.

“This has to be
my day,” I said to myself.

“Sorry?” Anna
said, turning in my direction.

“We were lucky
to miss the rain,” I replied, as a few drops landed on the windscreen. I
flicked on the wipers.

On our way to
Pimlico, Anna told me about her childhood in the south of France, where her
father had taught English at a boys’ school.

Her account of
being the only girl among a couple of hundred teenage French boys made me laugh
again and again.

I found myself
becoming more and more enchanted with her company.

“Whatever made
you come back to England?” I asked.

“An
English mother who divorced my French father, and the chance to study medicine
at St Thomas’s.”

“But don’t you
miss the south of France, especially on nights like this?” I asked as a clap of
thunder crackled above us.

“Oh, I don’t know,”
she said. I was about to respond when she added, “In any case, now the English
have learnt how to cook, the place has become almost civilised.” I smiled to
myself, wondering if she was teasing me again.

I found out
immediately. “By the way,” she said, “I assume that was one of your restaurants
we had dinner at.”

“Yes, it was,” I
said sheepishly.

“That explains
how you got a table so easily when it was packed out, why the waiter knew it was
a Barolo you wanted without your having to ask, and how you could leave without
paying the bill.” I was beginning to wonder if I would always be a yard behind
her.

“Was it the
missing waiter, the four-and-a-half-fingered chef, or the crooked bartender?”

“The crooked
bartender,” I replied, laughing.

“But I sacked
him this afternoon, and I’m afraid his deputy didn’t look as if he was coping
all that well,” I explained as I turned right off Millbank, and began to search
for a parking space.

“And I thought you
only had eyes for me,” sighed Anna, ‘when all the time you were looking over my
shoulder and checking on what the deputy harman was up to.”

“Not all the
time,” I said as I manoeuvred the car into the only space left in the mews
where I lived. I got out of the car and walked round to Anna’s side, opened the
door and guided her to the house.

As I closed the
door behind us, Anna put her arms around my neck and looked up into my eyes. I
leaned down and kissed her for the first time. When she broke away, all she
said
was,
“Don’t let’s bother with coffee, Michael.” I
slipped off my jacket, and led her upstairs and into my bedroom, praying that
it hadn’t been the housekeeper’s day off.

When I opened
the door I was relieved to find that the bed had been made and the room was
tidy.

“I’ll just be a
moment,” I said, and disappeared into the bathroom. As I cleaned my teeth, I
began to wonder if it was all a dream. When I returned to the bedroom, would I
discover she didn’t exist? I dropped the toothbrush into its mug and went back
to the bedroom. Where was she? My eyes followed a trail of discarded clothes
that led all the way to the bed. Her head was propped up on the pillow. Only a
sheet covered her body.

I quickly took
off my clothes, dropping them where they fell, and switched off the main
lights, so that only the one by the bed remained aglow. I slid under the sheets
to join her. I looked at her for several seconds before I took her in my arms.
I slowly explored every part of her body, as she began to kiss me again.

I couldn’t
believe that anyone could be that exciting, and at the same time so tender.
When we finally made love, I knew I never wanted this woman to leave me.

She lay in my
arms for some time before either of us spoke.

Then I began
talking about anything that came into my head. I confided my hopes, my dreams,
even my worst anxieties, with a freedom I had never experienced with anyone
before. I wanted to share everything with her.

And then she
leaned across and began kissing me once again, first on the lips, then the neck
and chest, and as she slowly continued down my body I thought I would explode.
The last thing I remember was turning off the light by my bed as the clock on
the hall table chimed one.

When I woke the
following morning, the first rays of sunlight were already shining through the
lace curtains, and the glorious memory of the night before was instantly
revived. I turned lazily to take her in my arms, but she was no longer there.

“Anna?” I cried
out, sitting bolt upright. There was no reply.

I flicked on the
light by the side of the bed, and glanced across at the bedside clock. It was
7-29. I was about to jump out of bed and go in search of her when I noticed a
scribbled note wedged under a corner of the clock.

I picked it up,
read it slowly, and smiled.

“So will
I
,” I said, and lay back on the pillow, thinking about what
I should do next. I decided to send her a dozen roses later that morning,
eleven white and one red. Then I would have a red one delivered to her on the
hour, every hour, until I saw her again.

After I had
showered and dressed, I roamed aimlessly around the house. I wondered how
quickly I could persuade Anna to move in, and what changes she would want to
make. Heaven knows, I thought as I walked through to the kitchen, clutching her
note, the place could do with a woman’s touch.

As I ate
breakfast I looked up her number in the telephone directory, instead of reading
the morning paper. There it was, just as she had said. Dr Townsend, listing a
surgery number in Parsons Green Lane where she could be contacted between nine
and six. There was a second number, but deep black lettering requested that it
should only be used in case of emergencies.

Although I
considered my state of health to be an emergency, I dialled the first number,
and waited impatiently. All I wanted to say was, “Good morning, darling. I got
your note, and can we make last night the first of many?” A matronly voice
answered the phone.
“Dr Townsend’s surgery.”

“Dr Townsend,
please,” I said.

“Which one?” she
asked. “There are three Dr Townsends in the practice – Dr Jonathan, Dr Anna and
Dr Elizabeth.”

“Dr Anna,” I replied.

“Oh, Mrs.
Townsend,” she said. “I’m sorry, but she’s not available at the moment. She’s
just taken the children off to school, and after that she has to go to the
airport to pick up her husband, Dr Jonathan, who’s returning this morning from
a medical conference in Minneapolis.

I’m not
expecting her back for at least a couple of hours. Would you like to leave a
message ?”
There was a long silence before the matronly
voice asked, “Are you still there?” I placed the receiver back on the hook
without replying, and looked sadly down at the hand-written note by the side of
the phone.

Dear Michael, I
will remember tonight for the rest of my life.

Thank you.

Anna Burnt THANK
YOU, MICHAEL. I’D LIKE THAT.” I smiled, unable to mask my delight.

“Hi,
Anna.
I thought I might have missed you.” I turned and stared at a tall man with a
mop of fair hair,
who
seemed unaffected by the steady
flow of people trying to pass him on either side.

Anna gave him a
smile that I hadn’t seen until that moment.

“Hello,
darling,” she said. “This is Michael Whitaker. You’re lucky – he bought your
ticket, and if you hadn’t turned up I was just about to accept his kind
invitation to dinner. Michael, this is my husband, Jonathan – the one who was
held up at the hospital. As you can see, he’s now escaped.” I couldn’t think of
a suitable reply.

Jonathan shook
me warmly by the hand. “Thank you for keeping my wife company,” he said. “Won’t
you join us for dinner?”

“That’s very
kind of you,” I replied, ‘but I’ve just remembered that I’m meant to be
somewhere else right now. I’d better run.”

“That’s a pity,”
said Anna.

“I was rather
looking forward to finding out all about the restaurant business. Perhaps we’ll
meet again sometime, whenever my husband next leaves me in the lurch. Goodbye,
Michael.”

“Goodbye, Anna.”
I watched them climb into the back of a taxi together, and wished Jonathan
would drop dead in front of me. He didn’t, so I began to retrace my steps back
to the spot where I had abandoned my car.

“You’re a lucky
man, Jonathan Townsend,” was the only observation I made. But no one was
listening.

The next word
that came to my lips was “
Damn !”
1 repeated it
several times, as there was a distressingly large space where I was certain I’d
left my car.

I walked up and
down the street in case I’d forgotten where I’d parked it, cursed again,
then
marched off in search of a phone box, unsure if my car
had been stolen or towed away. There was a pay phone just around the corner in
Kingsway. I picked up the handset and jabbed three nines into it.

“Which service
do you require? Fire, Police or Ambulance,” a voice asked.

“Police,” I
said, and was immediately put through to another voice.

“Charing
Cross Police Station.
What is the nature of your
enquiry
?”

“I think my car
has been stolen.”

“Can you tell me
the make, colour and registration number please, sir.”

“It’s a red Ford
Fiesta, registration H107 SHV.” There was a long pause, during which I could
hear other voices talking in the background.

“No, it hasn’t
been stolen, sir,” said the officer when he came back on the line. “The car was
illegally parked on a double yellow line. It’s been removed and taken to the
Vauxhall Bridge Pound.”

“Can I pick it
up now?” I asked sulkily.

“Certainly,
sir.
How will you be getting there?”

“I’ll take a
taxi.”

“Then just ask
the driver for the Vauxhall Bridge Pound. Once you get there, you’ll need some
form of identification, and a cheque for 205 with a banker’s card – that is if
you don’t have the full amount in cash.”
‘205 ?”
I
repeated in disbelief.

“That’s correct,
sir.” I slammed the phone down just as it started to rain. I scurried back to
the corner of the Aldwych in search of a taxi, only to find that they were all
being commandeered by the hordes of people still hanging around outside the
theatre.

I put my collar
up and nipped across the road, dodging between the slow-moving traffic. Once I
had reached the far side, I continued running until I found an overhanging
ledge broad enough to shield me from the blustery rain.