As soon as the front door was shut, Nancy and Jim moved into each other’s arms and stayed that way for a very long time.
“Hello,” he muttered into her hair.
“Missed you,” she answered, giddy with his proximity.
They didn’t bother with supper, just sat on the sofa with a bottle of wine and a bowl of crisps, Jim’s arm round her shoulders, and talked, a flow of chatter, although they’d spoken on the phone during the week. It was as if lock-gates had been opened, equilibrium restored.
“Play for me,” Jim said suddenly, hauling Nancy up from the sofa. “I’ve asked you a million times and you always refuse. Not fair, when I’ve played for you so much.”
She pulled a face. “I will one day, promise.” Christopher had always made her feel so self-conscious about her ability. She didn’t want Jim to be disappointed.
“No,” Jim said. “Now . . . please, Nancy.”
The wine must have lowered her resistance because, reluctantly, she allowed him to lead her to the piano room, still clasping her hand. She sat down on the stool, adjusted the position.
“What shall I play?”
She thought for a moment, and, not bothering with the music, laid her fingers on the keys and began to play Liszt’s famous “Liebestraum.” At first she was nervous, then forgot Jim was standing there, eyes fixed on her as she played, and got caught up in the lyrical love song. She fluffed the first fast cadenza—she hadn’t practiced it for a while now, and it needed a huge amount of practice—but by the second she was getting into her stride and made a better job of it. At the end of the five or so minutes, she stopped.
“Wow,” he said, his blue eyes misting. “Wow, Nancy. That was so beautiful.”
Embarrassed, she said, “It’s Liszt, a love song.”
He nodded. “Your playing is sensational.”
“Steady on. I’m not that good. Not anymore. I don’t practice enough.”
Jim frowned. “Which just shows how brilliant you are.”
His approbation made her heart sing.
For a while Nancy played for him. He wouldn’t let her stop. In the end she got tired of her solo performance and tried to persuade him to do a duet with her.
“Nope,” he said immediately.
“But you play the piano too.”
“Not like that. It would be like comparing a tin mug to Dresden china.”
“I love tin mugs.”
“Me too, but they aren’t in the same league.”
That night, after they had made love, he hummed the melody of “Liebestraum” to her in his husky baritone as they fell asleep.
*
“You don’t have to go to Mal’s, you know, you could come here while you wait.” It was early morning, but Nancy had been awake for a while, thinking.
There was silence from the other side of the bed, but she knew he wasn’t asleep.
“No . . . no, I couldn’t do that, Nancy.”
She thought Jim’s voice sounded almost harsh in his refusal. “Why not?” It was the first time she’d suggested it to him, but it wasn’t a new thought. She’d been steeling herself to ask him ever since he’d told her about staying with his friends. But she knew the proposition held a significance deeper than the simple offer of a bed for three weeks.
“Because . . . because it would mean I was living here,” he said.
She turned over to look at him. “And that wouldn’t be good?”
He smiled. “It would be great, Nancy. But what would your daughter think? And your mum? Won’t they say we’re jumping the gun, rushing into things?”
“It’s what we say that matters, isn’t it?” She waited to hear his response. The thought of him actually living with her was frightening, she admitted that, but he was spending most nights with her anyway, so would it make much difference?
Jim had rolled on his side, propping his head on his hand. “Not sure. I don’t want Louise kicking off, making me feel like some no-good gigolo.”
“Look, it’s only until your new flat comes free. We spent most of the last week together.”
“Yes, but Louise wasn’t around, and you always knew I had a home to go to. This’d be different, a real commitment. Three weeks is a long time.”
She laughed. “Well, up to you. I’d love you to be here . . . but if you think it’s too soon, I get it.”
Jim reached over and laid his hand gently against her face, his thumb tracing a pattern on her cheek. His gray hair had come loose from its ponytail during the night and it softened his face, made him look more vulnerable somehow. “I love you, Nancy.”
Her eyes filled with tears at the unexpectedness of his words. He had never actually said it before. “I love you too.” She felt the truth brush her heart, like a mother stroking her child.
They lay in silence for a while, holding hands, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Will you talk to your daughter, check out the lie of the land before we make a decision?”
“I will, but we both know she’s not going to be keen. My feeling is that if she sees you about, gets to know you a bit, she’ll relax, come round.”
“Okay . . .” Jim still sounded doubtful and she understood his circumspection. “What about your mum? She might need to come back. And if I’m here . . .”
“Mum seems surprisingly all right at the moment. I saw her earlier and she was telling me about going to bridge again. Not sure what’s happened, whether she’s putting on a brave face so I won’t nag her about the endoscopy, but I don’t think that’ll be a problem in the next few weeks.”
Jim fell silent again. Then, “Umm, Nancy . . . are we jumping the gun, spending so much time together?”
“It doesn’t feel that way to me,” she said slowly.
“It doesn’t to me, either. But . . .”
“But you’re worried we’ll ruin what we have if we push it into different territory.”
He neither nodded nor shook his head, just waited.
“We’re not spring chickens. We don’t have the luxury of years of courting.” She paused. “If it falls apart, it falls apart.” Her mind skittered away from the thought, but she knew what she was saying was true. No amount of cautious dating would make their relationship any more robust. It wasn’t as if they were planning a family, starting a dynasty. At their age, they had only their own happiness to consider.
*
Lindy’s eyes widened. “Whoa! Moved in?”
“Only till his flat comes free . . . a month, tops.”
Nancy was at her friend’s house with Hope, Jazzy and Toby.
The children, in their swimming costumes, were jumping and shrieking on the safety-netted trampoline in Lindy’s back garden, their faces flushed and sweaty in the August sun, a blow-up pool full of water—now tepid, the surface covered with bits of grass, twigs and the odd fly—standing by for when it all got too much.
Lindy and Nancy were propped up on two padded calico loungers, mugs of tea in hand, watching the kids.
“God . . .” Nancy covered her eyes as Toby and Jazzy crashed into each other and fell in a laughing heap on the rubber matting. “Is it safe, them all jumping at the same time?”
“Probably not,” Lindy said, “but nothing any of us does these days is considered ‘safe,’ is it? There’s got to be compromise.”
Nancy wasn’t sure Louise would see a broken limb or concussion in such a sanguine light, so she called, “Don’t jump so close together—you’ll hurt yourselves.” Which warning went totally unheeded by the three children.
“What’s it like, having him there all the time?” Lindy was asking.
“Okay so far . . .” she grinned, “but he only arrived two nights ago.”
Lindy nodded, but Nancy saw a frown forming on her friend’s brow.
“So you’re not actually going to live together yet?”
“He’ll have his own flat. It’s just it doesn’t come free for a few weeks.”
“Right.” Lindy pursed her lips. “Is he buying or renting?”
“Renting.”
“Hmm . . .”
Nancy glanced sideways at her. “What?”
“It’s just renting’s not so permanent, is it? Suppose this flat falls through . . .”
“Why would a rented flat be more likely to fall through than a bought one?”
Lindy stretched out her tanned legs in their turquoise pedal-pushers, her immaculately groomed feet with their plum-polished toes glinting in the sunshine. “I suppose it wouldn’t . . .” She gazed at the kids as she spoke, as if she didn’t want to confront Nancy.
“What are you saying, Lindy?”
Lindy expelled a breath sharply, swung her legs off the lounger and faced Nancy, propping her elbows on her knees, hands clasped, bending her head closer to her friend.
“You know I love Jim, darling, but all that stuff with his wife . . . I’m just wondering how well you know him. I mean, it’s going to be quite hard to get rid of him if things don’t work out and he’s got nowhere to go . . .”
Nancy felt a hard stone of irritation forming in her gut, which she made a determined effort to breathe through, as her old yoga teacher in Suffolk used to instruct: “Breathe the anger out,” she’d said to the class. “Surround it with a gentle breath, then breathe it away. No force, no strength. Whooo, just let it go.”
“I’m sure we’ll work it out.”
Lindy laid a hand on her arm. “Don’t be cross, Nance. I just always like to have an exit strategy in life. And I know you’re pretty gone on Jim so you may not be thinking particularly straight.”
“Are you suggesting he’s taking advantage of me?”
Lindy laughed. “Such an old-fashioned expression! But, yes, maybe I am. Not that I think he’s the type to hang on anyone’s coattails, but men aren’t good at being on their own. So it’ll be great for Jim. He’ll be snug as a bug with you looking after him. But once the sex thing wears off, are you really going to want him hanging around all day, strumming on that guitar of his, leaving the loo seat up, waiting for you to wash his underpants and getting under your feet?”
Nancy couldn’t help laughing. “God, Lindy, you paint a bleak picture. But you could be right. We might drive each other nuts. And if we do, it’ll have to be Plan B.”
Lindy banged her palms on her thighs. “Good. Well, I’ve had my say. And if things get ugly, just call me and I’ll be round in a jiffy with my shotgun, see him and his guitar off the premises before the poor guy knows what’s hit him.”
“You’ve got a shotgun?”
“Sure. It was Ronnie’s, but he forgot to take it when we got divorced and he’s never asked for it.”
Nancy chuckled. “Do you know how to use it?”
“Of course I do. My dad was a poacher when he wasn’t digging people’s flowerbeds. I knew how to shoot before I was eight . . . He only poached rabbits and pheasant for the family to eat, though, not like the lamping that goes on these days—armed hoodlums in four-by-fours blasting anything that moves.”
A scream from the pool put an end to their conversation. Toby, it seemed, had picked up a dead wasp from the water by its wings and was waving it in Jazzy’s face, rendering the child rigid with terror. Both women leaped to the rescue, but it was a while before the mayhem subsided, Lindy taking a dim view of her grandson’s behavior, Jazzy refusing to stop sobbing, Hope shivering in her swimsuit, grinning because she liked a good show, Toby stomping off inside, wet footprints trailing across the kitchen floor.
Nancy was relieved to be diverted. All the things Lindy had said she had also considered, of course, but she concluded that she and her friend had quite different philosophies when it came to men. Lindy wanted a lover round the corner, someone who wouldn’t interfere with her life but would do as he was told, pitch up when required, push off when not. An arrangement that Nancy could never imagine for herself.
Now, as she leaned against the worktop, watching Lindy break spaghetti into boiling water for the children’s tea, she was looking forward to getting home and finding Jim there, looking forward to sitting at the kitchen table having supper together, looking forward to sharing some wine and the sausages he’d bought, relating the wasp incident and listening to whatever he had to tell her about his day. In fact, she was longing for it.