The Editor's Wife (36 page)

As I reached the end of the drive the front door opened and Diana emerged with an armful of old newspapers and flyers, which she flung into the recycling box on the porch. Then she straightened up and started violently as she saw me. Her expression was one of pure surprise, and for a moment or two it was hard to read whether the surprise was a pleasant one or not, but then she smiled and I was no longer in any doubt.

‘Chris!'

‘Hello.'

‘What are you doing here? I thought you were in Yorkshire. I called on you this morning to drop off your phone.'

‘I know.' I produced it from my pocket in evidence. ‘I
couldn't believe I'd just missed you. I practically threw a tantrum.'

‘You never said you were coming to London. I could have given you a lift.'

‘I didn't know I was. It was a spur of the moment decision. I just had to see you. Oh, and give you this.' I passed her the green box, which bore the name of a Hatton Garden jewellers. ‘It's a Christmas present,' I added.

Diana looked at me, mystified. ‘You've driven all this way to give me a Christmas present?'

‘More or less.'

‘But it's February.'

‘Christmas 1985,' I said. ‘I didn't get a chance to give it to you before . . .'
Before you died
, I was going to say.

‘Are you serious?'

‘Absolutely.'

There is something uncomfortable about unwrapping a gift in the presence of the giver, so I looked away to spare Diana any self-consciousness as she opened the box. ‘This is lovely,' I heard her say. ‘Did you really buy this in 1985?'

‘Yes.'

She held it up by the chain, so that the cut face of the aquamarine caught the afternoon light. ‘And you've kept it all this time?'

I nodded.

‘You could have given it to someone else.'

‘I couldn't bring myself to do that. It was bought for you.'

‘Lucky me,' said Diana.

‘There's no such thing as luck,' I said, quoting Patty.

‘I meant it was a good choice,' said Diana. ‘Not every gift would have lasted so well. Perfume for instance.'

‘Or chocolates.'

‘No. Keeping a necklace for twenty years is romantic, but keeping a box of chocolates twenty years would be just plain morbid.'

We both laughed at that. ‘Anyway,' said Diana, sobering up, ‘I don't know why we're having this conversation on the doorstep. Why don't you come in? You must be gasping for a drink after that drive. I certainly am.' She pushed the door open and I followed her into a wide, high-ceilinged hallway, with a turned staircase and galleried landing. There was a painting on the wall which looked familiar, but before I could identify it my attention was claimed by the suitcase and leather holdall parked at the bottom of the stairs in readiness.

‘I don't want to hold you up,' I said. ‘I could give you a lift to the airport if it would help.'

Diana looked puzzled. ‘Airport?'

I indicated the luggage. ‘Lapland?' I hazarded. ‘Northern Lights?'

‘Ah . . .' She shook her head at her failure to catch on. ‘Those are the bags I took with me to Alex's. I've just got them out of the car. No, I'm not going to Lapland after all.'

‘Oh. I'm sorry,' I said – a piece of conventional politeness with no truth in it.

‘I cancelled last night.'

‘Why? Are you a nervous traveller?'

‘No. Not at all. It wasn't the travelling bit that bothered me.' There was a pause. ‘The trip was a surprise present from a friend of mine – a man friend, I mean. We go out to the theatre or for a meal now and then – not often, maybe once a month – which worked fine, I thought. But a weekend away would have put the relationship on a different footing, if you see what I mean.'

‘Mmm.'

‘And I didn't really want to go with him on that basis.'

‘Ah.'

‘So I rang him last night and pulled out.'

‘Oh dear.'

‘Yes. He was a bit miffed. Understandably. So I may well have stymied the theatre trips.'

‘The male ego is very fragile.'

‘Apparently. Perhaps I was a bit mean. But he'd booked a double room without any
consultation
, which I thought was a bit presumptuous.'

‘Not sure how he could have phrased that “consultation”,' I mused. ‘But I agree it's a bit high-handed.'

We had advanced as far as the kitchen now, and Diana had put the kettle on and shaken some coffee beans into a grinder. ‘Maybe I'm being old-fashioned. Does a man who treats a woman friend to a weekend away automatically expect sex as part of the deal?'

‘I can't speak for all men,' I said, over the scream and rattle of the grinder. ‘The gentlemanly thing would be to
book two double rooms and hope for the woman to give encouraging signals. One room might end up being wasted, but the man would probably consider it money well spent. Not that I'm an expert in these matters,' I added.

‘This sort of thing ought to get easier in your fifties,' she sighed.

‘But all those feelings are still the same at fifty as they are at fifteen, or twenty-five, aren't they?'

‘Yes,' said Diana, looking at me with her clear, intelligent eyes. ‘All still the same.'

We drank our coffee in the Victorian conservatory, overlooking the garden, and then Diana gave me a leisurely tour of the house, ending with the large front parlour which she used as her office. It was a curious mixture of ancient and modern, with pieces of antique furniture that I recognised from Aysgarth Terrace alongside hi-tech office equipment. Above the fireplace hung a Stanley Spencer.

‘Herman Kenway left me that in his will,' Diana explained, catching me staring. ‘And the Sidney Nolan in the hall. So I know I'll never starve.'

‘He wasn't such an old skinflint after all then,' I said.

‘Posthumously, no.'

Outside the darkness was pressing in, and Diana announced that she was hungry. I realised I hadn't eaten since that sandwich at Peterborough, and before that,
lunch at Alex's. Diana's fridge, emptied of food before she went up north, contained nothing but bottles of white wine. We walked into the town and found a Turkish restaurant which had an empty table. At some point, without my noticing, Diana had put on the aquamarine pendant, and it lay like a teardrop against her creamy skin. When the wine waiter came to take our order, I murmured something ambiguous about drinking and driving.

Diana gave me a pitying look. ‘As if you're going to be driving anywhere.'

‘I didn't want to be
presumptuous
,' I said. ‘There has to be proper
consultation
, followed by encouraging signals.'

Diana turned to the waiter. ‘Make that two bottles.'

As we left the restaurant, I put my arm round her shoulders and she lifted her face up to be kissed. For a while we caused something of an obstruction, there on the pavement: people will step in the gutter rather than interrupt a kiss. Then we walked along, sides pressed together, towards the waiting house through the crowds of Friday-night drinkers. They seemed to fall aside to let us pass as though our happiness, so long postponed, had acquired an energy that could move obstacles.

‘
DID YOU EVER
give me a thought, over the years?' I asked Diana, as she sat at her dressing table, drying her hair. It was a few nights later and I was lying on the bed, trying to mend a link in one of her gold bracelets with a pair of tweezers. Each morning, after breakfast, I would say, ‘I ought to go back home today,' and Diana would say, ‘Why?' and since I couldn't come up with a reason that felt anything like as urgent as the need to stay, I stayed.

‘Didn't you ever wonder if I was all right? For all you knew I could have gone the same way as Lawrence Canning.'

She had her head between her knees, like someone recovering from a faint. Having given the nape of her neck a few more blasts with the dryer she sat up, and raked her fingers through her hair.

‘I knew you were all right,' she said. ‘That's when I stopped wondering.'

‘How did you know?'

‘About four years after Owen died, I met Gerald outside Waterloo station.'

‘You met
Gerald
?' I fumbled the tweezers and the link dropped somewhere into the folds of the bedclothes.

‘Not by arrangement. I mean I ran into him. He was sitting by the entrance on his rucksack. I thought he was a beggar. I was just about to give him some change when I recognised him, so I stopped and said hello.'

‘Oh my God.'

‘We had a little chat, in fact we went to the station café and I bought him a cup of tea. I asked after you and he said you weren't in contact that often any more, but that you were happily married and living in York.'

‘Oh my God.'

‘He didn't seem to have heard about Owen.'

‘No,' I said dully. ‘That was my fault. I never told him. I never told him anything about us. We didn't have that sort of relationship.'
Oh Gerald, Gerald.
The idea that for all those years I had been as close as a brother to the knowledge that Diana was alive was too awful to contemplate.

I would think about it later. But for now there she was: the reality of her, putting on her earrings, blotting her lipstick and checking her appearance in the mirror with a little frown of disapproval, just like any ordinary woman.

‘I'm ready,' she said, turning to me.

I laid the gold bracelet on the dressing table, unrepaired: a job like that would take steadier hands than mine.

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Epub ISBN: 9781409064107

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Published by Arrow Books 2008

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Copyright © Clare Chambers 2007

Clare Chambers has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in Great Britain in 2007 by

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ISBN 9780099469322