She tried a biography: nothing there except the more recent additions and the information that he was back in Australia. She found some photos, and her heart started thumping uncomfortably. Then she thought of his teaching work, and tried NIDA, and the universities which ran drama-related courses, and there he was, included on the staff listings of one of the universities, and with a departmental phone number and email. There might be someone on the end of it who was disposed to pass a message onto him. She logged out quickly before she did something stupid. Her heart by now was beating in her throat and threatening to jump out on the floor and run off and find him itself. Eventually, once she had caught her heart and returned it to her chest with a stern admonition to behave itself in future, the following email was forwarded onto Richard’s private email address by the Departmental Administrative Officer.
Subject: Just Hello to Richard MacLean
Thank you for forwarding this message.
Hi Richard
This is from Linda. You know, reddish hair, bad temper, arty? I hope the kind person forwarding this on doesn’t think I am a fan. Well, I am, but not that sort of fan.
I am writing this from Ulverstone. I’m having a two week break in Cumbria. I have recently returned from a six year stint in New York and I must say I’m strangely glad to be back with the grumbly old British.
I would love to know what you are up to, I won’t write any more now but if you want to email you have the address, and if you want to phone me here is the number.
Cheers Linda
Richard sat with the email for a while, and then quickly turned off the mail program. Then just as quickly he turned it on again and read the email again. Like Miss Elizabeth Bennett with her letter from Darcy, he had to keep reading it, over and over. He eventually started writing.
Dear Linda
It was great to hear from you. I don’t know what to write to you. I start typing stilted, formal phrases and thank god for the backspace key. Can you imagine writing letters with quill and parchment? The frustration of knowing you could have phrased it better but had run out of time, paper or ink.
You know I’m not into bullshit. And that I am, naturally, a bit of a drama queen. So I have questions for you.
1. Are you writing because you are married and bored? Because if so I have to tell you I’m still not so blasé about you that I want to buy into that.
2. Are you writing because you are single and lonely?
3. Or are you writing because you miss me, and us, and you find yourself wishing that we could start again, sedately, and see where it leads us this time?
Sorry to be so blunt, but I don’t feel I have the time to fart around, these days, hence I am coming to the point.
I’ve grown up a bit in the last few years. Eliza is now eighteen and spends her time playing fiddle in a band, Bluegrass and Irish, if you can believe it, and studying Psychology. Oh, and going out with young men. One begins to feel rather de trop. But Eliza has given me a bit of instruction in how to be a modern male. She says I’m still a bit MCP, and that women are not going to put up with that anymore. I could have told her that nine years ago once I had the leisure to think about my stupidity.
If you are writing because of Possibility Number Two, I would suggest you find yourself a new lover.
But if you are writing because of Number Three, I would feel like hopping on a plane and joining you in Cumbria. Or, at the very least, talking to you on the phone.
Richard
Linda opened her emails and read Richard’s, smiling at his familiar honesty. Her mouth twisted a little, and tears ran down her cheeks. Was this sentiment, or love? she wondered, and decided she didn’t really care which, so she wrote back immediately with what was in her heart. She confirmed that number three was her motivation, that going to the library to get her emails involved an unwelcome delay, and that she would be waiting for his call.
He called her at some ungodly hour London time, without reference to the World Clock, because he couldn’t wait, and she was awake and ready for his call, despite the hour, because she couldn’t sleep.
Chapter 6 ~ MacLeans in Love
In which Eliza finds a new love and Richard finds one he had mislaid.
Eliza, now eighteen, fended off the eager young med student at the door, telling him her father was extremely protective and would release the hounds at the slightest provocation.
“Come on, Eliza,” he begged, his speech only a little slurred. “He won’t know. Let me climb up the ivy, clamber in your window. Make mad passionate love to you.”
She became alarmingly Aspergery, having found many uses for this role over the years. The lads from her Tuesday lab class didn’t call her Hottie MacNerd for nothing. “No,” she said, in exasperation. “There is no ivy and your death or serious injury will result from any attempt to climb imaginary ivy. If the hounds don’t get you first. Now go home. I’ll see you soon.” The student went off grumbling, his hopes dashed.
How can I get to your father’s house, how can I get to your bed
Me father locks the door at night and the key’s lyin’ under his head
With my too-ri-ah fol-a-diddle-dah
My too-ri-ah ri-fol-a-diddle-dan-too-ni-doh
she sang to herself, a faint feeling of unease accompanying the words and the tune which had popped into her head. This young man was attractive, humorous, intelligent. But he didn’t hit the spot and she didn’t want him in her bed. In the last year, since Teague had departed from her life, she had tried out various males, had sex with some of them, discarded others. There had been a Ph.D. student, a lecturer in economics, a tradesman, a teacher, a musician. She could not fall in love at all. Teague was the last man she felt had ticked most of the boxes, although she never felt with him as she had with … with … no, she wasn’t going there.
Eliza went inside, patting the imaginary slavering hounds on the head as she closed the door. “Good Fang, excellent Tusk, worthy Jaws,” she praised them, for keeping her free of marauding males. Thinking, what happened to the libidinous little trollop that I know I am? The word trollop started the feeling of unease again, not shame or fear but a sort of sweet sting, like a scorpion bite laced with maple syrup. Quickly! she thought. To the violin, before I remember something I don’t want to think about. She ran upstairs and started to play something very fast, with her bag still hanging over her shoulder.
Richard walked to her door and took in the scene, shrewdly. He knew what this meant. Sawing away at her violin, home at eleven p.m., no whispers on the stairs or messages saying she wouldn’t be back till morning. “Hi,” he said, with his mouth turned down in imitation of her own.
Eliza jumped violently, as you do when somebody you weren’t expecting to be there whispers something quietly in your ear to avoid startling you. “Oh, hell. Sorry, I assumed you’d still be out. Hope I didn’t wake you up.”
“Didn’t go out. Something came up.” He seemed to be sparking with electricity, as though he had stuck his finger in a power socket. Richard was forty-six by this time. His hair had a few streaks of grey, the sort that is thought to be distinguished on a man and aging on a woman. He was able to comb it without undue anxiety, reassured by the knowledge that his maternal grandfather had a good head of hair well into his sixties. Right now his cheeks were flushed charmingly, his eyes were very blue and bright, and he looked about twenty-six in the artificial light. Eliza put the fiddle down and looked at him in mock accusation.
“You!” she said, assuming an expression of moral outrage. “You are in love, you