Daisy, too, was suffering a similar mood of disgruntlement. Now that she was back in Bath, the steadily growing determination to accept Mim’s offer was already being undermined by the heart-fluttering anticipation of meeting Paul. Here in the flat, in the town, an awareness of his presence informed all her actions and thoughts. This was Paul territory now; the streets and restaurants were overlaid with memories and she was very quickly reduced to a state of nervous hypertension, wondering if she might bump into him or hear his footsteps on the stairs. Mim was quite right to point out that she couldn’t think straight because of him: ‘We want to cook them delicious food and have their babies. Clever old Mother Nature has got us well under her thumb . . .’
Surprising herself, Daisy snorted aloud with wry amusement as she suddenly recalled Mim’s tale of her marriage. It was quite impossible to imagine Mim being married yet it was clear that she had once been a victim of this terrible malaise.
‘It’s only terrible,’ Daisy reminded herself, ‘because it’s not reciprocated. If Paul loved me I’d be dancing on cloud nine. Well, perhaps not dancing . . .’
This brought her back to Mim’s suggestion: to work with Mim, to teach the children and to choreograph something for the Charity Matinée. It was a fantastic offer, and it was simply stupid of her to hesitate even for a moment; after all, what else was she to do? Her savings were dwindling and soon the old pattern of trying to find temporary work would begin to repeat itself: working as a receptionist for a dance establishment or a dance shop, or as an usher in a theatre. This time there was a difference, however. In the past these jobs would have been merely a filling-in post until a dancing job turned up; now she wasn’t certain if she would ever be able to dance properly again.
Down in Cornwall, talking to Mim and Roly, she’d experienced a sense of growing excitement at Mim’s plan. Encouraged and enabled by their enthusiasm, with her passion for Paul weakened by distance, this new exhilaration fanned the flame of her real, true love of the dance, of music, of drama and colour. Yet now, back in Bath, her emotional antennae were attuned to him again: she longed to see him so much that the fervour of her new resolution was beginning to dwindle and die down, smothered by the anxious awareness of his proximity.
She wondered if, during the last week, he had missed her.
Perhaps, when she saw him again, there might be a difference in his attitude towards her. Watching from the window she tried to imagine her reaction if he were to greet her with real love: which then would she choose? Supposing she were to tell him about Mim’s offer; it might open his eyes to the possibility of her moving away. On the other hand, he might encourage her to go, and then what? She shivered a little, imagining how cheerfully brutal he might be, and decided that she wouldn’t tell him her news too early. She would play it cool, give herself time to assess his reactions when they met again.
His car sped up Henrietta Street and pulled in beside the kerb. Instinctively Daisy drew back, unwilling to be seen as if she were spying on him. She heard the car door slam and, a few moments later, his front door closed. Waiting, wondering if he would come upstairs to see her, Daisy suddenly remembered Mim’s words: ‘There is one who kisses and one who extends the cheek.’ Galvanized by a quick hot spasm of angry shame, giving herself no chance to recover from it, she picked up her bag and went swiftly out and down the stairs.
It was some minutes before Paul answered the door. He was pulling on his cotton jacket, looking rather preoccupied, and he seemed almost surprised to see her.
‘Hello!’ he said jovially. ‘I thought I heard a knock and wondered if it was Andrew coming to collect me. How are you? How was the holiday, and Mim and Roly and all the dogs?’
All the time he was speaking he was shrugging himself into the jacket, patting the pockets to check for keys, and she was mesmerized, as usual, by his vitality and by the energy that flowed from him. She felt wrong-footed, embarrassed and awkward.
‘Are you going out?’ she asked foolishly. Once again he’d taken control. Going into his flat clearly wasn’t to be an option, and she struggled to hold on to her composure. ‘I was going to suggest we had a drink or some supper. Catch up a bit.’
‘I’ve got this meeting on at school.’ He made a rueful face. ‘I have to say that it’s going to be a great deal easier when I’m living on site. Look,’ he glanced at his watch, making up his mind, ‘I was going to snatch a sandwich on the way. I only arrived back from holiday last night and when I got home from school I remembered that I haven’t done any shopping yet. I’ve decided to grab something en route and go to the supermarket later. Since Andrew hasn’t turned up we could have a quick bite together, if you like.’
She briefly considered rejecting his offer with a cheerfully unresentful remark – ‘No, you get on. We’ll meet up later when you’re not so rushed’ – but she was already as helpless as if she had moved within the range of some powerful force of gravity: she wanted to be with him, sharing in the warm radiance of his personality, keeping close to him.
‘I could make us something: an omelette.’ She chuckled, making light of it. ‘To tell you the truth I can’t afford to eat out. I’ve got to start earning some money pretty soon.’
‘Poor you.’ He slammed the door behind him, looking at her sympathetically. ‘Is that going to be easy under the circumstances?’
‘It depends. I’ve had an offer of something.’ Reluctantly she made her move simply to hold his interest, to keep him there beside her for a few moments more. ‘I thought it might help to talk it through with someone. I miss having Suzy and Jill to help clear my head.’ She saw him glance instinctively at his watch and she writhed inwardly from humiliation. ‘Look, don’t bother. You’re clearly in a hurry.’
It was a huge effort to refrain from sounding hurt, to keep smiling brightly as she turned away, but he caught her by the arm in his familiar, easy manner.
‘Oh, come on. My treat. Let’s have something delicious in Bar Chocolat.’
At the touch of his warm hand her resistance melted and he gave her arm a little friendly squeeze within his own as if to reassure her. She went with him, out into the street, struggling to regain her poise in an effort to match his own sang-froid.
‘Tell me about your holiday,’ he was saying – and she marvelled that he should recall the tiny details she’d told him about the Carradines and their menagerie of dogs.
As they turned into Argyle Street on their way to the Bar Chocolat she remembered how he’d once met her, further along on the opposite side of the street, standing on the kerb with her arms full of purple tulips.
‘I think we should go to Bar Chocolat and have something delicious,’ he’d said. ‘Your flowers will match their décor so perfectly’ – and she’d been unable to refuse him.
Today, written on the board outside were the words: ‘I can resist everything but temptation.’
They ordered truffle torte and mugs of hot chocolate, topped with marshmallows, and admired the chocolate-shaped contents of the glass display cabinet: dogs named ‘Jess’ and ‘Shep’, boxes of tiny rabbits with pink ears, and the cleverly crafted fish.
As they ate their torte and watched the marshmallows melting into the hot chocolate, Daisy told him why it was that she was running out of funds: explaining that because dancers are always so desperate for work, and the competition is so fierce, they are exploited by the smaller dance companies.
‘We’re so grateful to get a job that the contract is never our prime concern and we’re unlikely to contest the fact that there is no safety net when we suffer injuries. Some companies pay a certain amount for the rehearsal period and then you receive a further fee for each performance. But the bottom line is simple: no performance, no fee. Weeks of sweat and toil all finished in one careless moment by a painful tearing of tissue.’
He was fascinated, asking intelligent questions, completely focused. Under the searchlight of his interest she blossomed and expanded, making him laugh and recoil equally with stories of courage and agony; showing the contradictions of the highly disciplined, finely honed dancers who nevertheless chain-smoke and require regular shots of caffeine: telling amusing tales of petty jealousies and childish bickering and then describing the misery of pulled muscles, bleeding feet and the relentless wear and tear on vulnerable human bodies.
This time, when very reluctantly he glanced at his watch, she felt a triumphant satisfaction. She’d absorbed his attention so totally that he’d forgotten everything else for that short space of time: her pride was restored.
It was only after he’d gone and she was walking home that she realized that she hadn’t told him about Mim’s offer.
Paul arrived home very late. He’d spent part of the evening with the widow of his predecessor who, to his great relief, was preparing to vacate the house at last. She’d made arrangements to move nearer to her daughter and family in Gloucestershire, she told him, and the house would be available for him by the end of the following week. Paul had already been shown over the house when he’d applied for the post but, so soon after her husband’s unexpected death, he hadn’t felt able to ask questions or inspect the place too closely. Now, she seemed almost relieved to be going, encouraging him to look about at leisure and explaining the secrets of the rather antiquated central heating.
She’d made coffee and taken it into the garden that looked across the playing fields towards Larkhall village.
‘Such a good garden for small children,’ she’d said rather wistfully. ‘You have two, I think you said? Will they be able to join you now? I’ve felt rather guilty to be holding you up from moving in but it’s taken a little while to find the right house.
My daughter wanted me to stay with her in the interim but I was hoping not to have to put my things into store, you see.’
He’d reassured her that she hadn’t inconvenienced him, that Ellie hadn’t been able to leave her job at short notice and that he was hoping that his family would join him sometime in the summer holidays.
Well, that was true enough: it was exactly what he was hoping. As he unpacked his shopping he was filled with relief at the prospect of the move. Things were becoming so difficult here with Daisy in such close proximity and he was unwilling to hurt her.
Earlier, when he’d heard the knock at the door, his instinct had been to get out of the flat: this was still neutral ground between the terraced house in Clapham and the school house at Beechcroft. In keeping the flat private it was as if his marriage remained intact within it, in limbo but safe, until he made the final move. He knew that as regards to Daisy he was behaving speciously: that sooner or later he must tell her the truth. Each time he left her he vowed to himself that he would be honest with her on the very next occasion they were together.
It wasn’t just that he was being a coward, he told himself, or that he was hedging his bets in case Ellie really pulled the plug on their marriage: it was because he guessed that Daisy was in a vulnerable state, both mentally and physically, and he hesitated to deal her a further blow. The move out to Beechcroft would take the pressure off them both.
He closed the refrigerator door and looked at the clock. He hadn’t heard from Ellie apart from a text message yesterday, to say that they were all safely home in London, and he’d texted back telling her the news about the house. As he thought about the holiday, he remembered how Daisy had thanked him earlier for the postcard and he felt a twinge of guilt. Daisy had no idea that Ellie and the children had been at the cottage in Salcombe with him. It wasn’t that he wanted to deceive Daisy; it was just that it was simply impossible to discuss his marriage with her. He was very attracted to her and, if Ellie refused to join him in Bath and the marriage ended, he knew that Daisy would become very important to him. He simply wasn’t ready, however, to enter into that kind of conversation with her about his private life.
He cursed at the complications of relationships, especially with women, thinking again about the holiday; recalling Ellie’s reaction to the postcard.