MARKET DAY. THE stall-holders and the market traders are busy setting out their wares, awnings and canvases flap and flutter in the warm breeze; a pretty girl pushes a wooden barrow laden with vases and jugs full of bunches of fresh flowers to her pitch beside a pillar at the market’s edge. Across the street a busker is playing the Spanish guitar. As Kat wanders between the stalls, stopping to look, to chat, she listens to the Latin American music and wants to dance. The shoppers, locals and holiday-makers fill the square with bustle and noise, and she breathes in the scents of old books, Indian cotton, flowers and cheese.
Glancing idly across the high street she sees them: Jerry and Sandra standing together. He looks down at her as she talks, pretty in her summer clothes, bursting suddenly into laughter and clutching at his arm as if she might fall over with mirth. He doesn’t make any effort to remove her hand and Kat watches them, trying to analyse her reactions: jealousy, irritation, amusement? Oddly, she feels a sense of anxiety. She’s met plenty of Sandras: passive-aggressives, wearing their victims down by a relentless tide of good humour, determination, a quiet sense of grievance and the assurance that they know best. Jerry is no match for her.
Kat wonders if she should stake her claim: cross the road and take his other arm, kiss him. She can see a way forward with Jerry, a sharing of their lives together even if she goes to London. He was at ease with her friends at Bristol: his drama training stood him in good stead with these people of the stage. She can imagine him visiting London, spending time with her, having fun; and she will want to come back to see her family and be with him here. It could work, she is certain of it. He brings a kind of stability, calmness, which she values.
Even as she wonders what to do there is a little stir at the edge of the pavement. A pair of holiday-makers put down their shopping bags, walk into the road and, in perfect time with the guitarist, perform an Argentinian tango. Briefly Kat sees Sandra clutch Jerry even tighter, her mouth rounded into a rather shocked, surprised ‘O’ as if she slightly disapproves, and then all Kat’s attention is taken by the dance. In their shorts and sandals it should be incongruous, but it is not. They move beautifully together and with the music; there is dignity, even passion and drama. Nobody takes much notice; a car drives carefully around them, shoppers pass to and fro. When the music finishes the couple simply step back on to the pavement, pick up their bags and disappear into the crowds.
Kat steps forward and begins to clap, others follow suit, even the guitarist is smiling. Now Jerry has seen her. He looks uneasy, as if he has been caught out, but he is clapping too, now, so that Sandra’s hand has been dislodged. Kat laughs and waves to him, signalling her delight in the performance, and his anxious expression widens into a smile. Her heart gives a little tick and a jump: how dear he is to her. She crosses the street, still smiling.
‘Wasn’t that wonderful?’ she cries, including Sandra in her delight. ‘I could hardly believe it. Only in Totnes. Nobody turned a hair, did they?’
Sandra is looking at her warily: chin drawn in, eyes narrowed.
‘Rather dangerous,’ she says reprovingly, ‘dancing in the road. Not a very good example to the children.’
Kat stares at her with surprised amusement, wondering if she can be serious. ‘I don’t think it was too anarchic, was it?’
Sandra looks to Jerry for support. ‘You’re a teacher,’ she says brightly. ‘What do you think?’
Kat meets his eyes. She wants to burst out laughing but she sees that he is discomfited, pulled two ways at once, and she feels sad, irritated, and sorry for him all at the same time. She touches him lightly on the arm and turns away.
‘See you later, Jerry,’ she calls over her shoulder. ‘And remember, no dancing in the street!’
Jerry watches her go. He wants to run after her, to explain to her and make her understand how he feels: how impossible it is for him to hold a balance between her and Sandra. But something prevents him, some deep-down, ingrained desire to be conciliatory, reinforced by forty years of marriage, that makes it impossible for him to act outside of his conventional, well-mannered upbringing.
‘What an extraordinary thing to say.’ Sandra stares after Kat with an expression of disbelief on her face. ‘What a very odd woman she is. And are you,’ she adds almost carelessly, ‘seeing her later?’
‘Yes,’ he answers wretchedly, cursing himself for not having the courage to tell her to mind her own business. ‘Actually . . . yes, yes I am. And so what are your plans now?’
He can see that she’s wrestling with indecision: to question him further about Kat or seize the opportunity to make the most of her chance with him.
‘Well, I think it’s coffee time, don’t you?’
She smiles at him and she looks so arch, so hopeful, that he hasn’t the heart to refuse the implied offer – especially as he’s longing for refreshment.
‘I think it might be,’ he says. ‘Shall we sit outside in the sunshine?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she answers at once. ‘It gets so hot and I’m no good in the glare of the sun. It’s because I’m so fair-skinned. Not like your Russian friend,’ she adds.
He begins to say that Kat isn’t Russian but decides against it. It will simply lead them deeper into the morass. They pass along the busy pavement, now jostled together, now separated, and he thinks of Kat and the way she looked at him, eyes brimming with mirth, inviting him to share the joke. And once again he wants to turn round and run after her, to see her face and to hold her tall, dancer’s body close against him.
‘This is nice, Jeremy,’ says Sandra, leading him into shadowy coolness and settling at a table. ‘So much better out of the sun. Now, what shall we have?’