‘Eva.’ He says my name as if he’s just learning it, and looks up into my eyes; his own are flecked with gold in the lamplight. ‘You were lovely.’
I smile at him, a big, wide smile, my whole body still humming. ‘You too.’ Privately I’m saying thanks to the storm that stranded us here, that’s still howling outside.
Soon we make love again, this time a much longer affair, until finally we lie back, exhausted. Despite that, it seems impossible that I will sleep, what with the wind screaming like a banshee, and exhilaration pounding in my head.
But I do. A deep, dreamless sleep.
Kathleen
1964
We went on like that for weeks, me and Rick. I never knew when the next date would be. I tried so hard to be the sort of person I thought he would like, although the gaps in my knowledge were sometimes excruciating, like when he asked if I liked avocado, and I said what you mean the colour, and he said no, the pear. I looked at him gone out and he just shook with laughter. Then there was the time he said he’d got two tickets for the Rep to see a production of Look Back in Anger. He said something about the playwright being an angry young man and I said, how do you know? This time he shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘Don’t you know anything?’ he asked. I was so hurt I stalked off down the corridor. Much to my relief he called me back, said sorry, and promised I’d like the play. The only thing I was ever sure of was that Rick fancied me like mad. The second time we went out, he pulled me into a shop doorway on the way home, and we had a long, hot kissing session. By the time we’d finished my neck was aching from being pressed up against the corner of the doorway, but it was something I was prepared to put up with for the lovely, warm ache between my thighs. Rick didn’t touch me there, not that night, but I thought that I’d like it if he did; all my fears about ‘doing it’ with a boy were dissolving. Of course, I’m not going to go that far, I said to myself, but I was relieved to find I might want to. After that we always found a dark corner somewhere on the way home. I could see now that Rick had a winning combination. He’d keep me in suspense for days, not knowing when we might go out again, and then get me all worked up in the quiet dark of the doorway. I still thought of myself as a ‘nice girl’, but I let Rick’s hands rove until I was squirming and ready to explode, sighing when he stopped. He would laugh then, and give me a small, soft kiss. He knew what he was doing.
One night, when I was getting really steamed up, and I could feel him hard against me, he nibbled my ear and said, ‘We can’t go on like this, can we?’
‘What do you mean?’ I said.
His hand was up my skirt, fingers slipping inside my knickers. ‘You know what I mean.’
I saw my chance, and moved his hand away. ‘Not while it’s like this,’ I said. ‘Not when no one even knows we go out together.’ Rick had only been to my house once, calling for me one night when I’d insisted that my parents wanted to meet him, and getting away as quickly as possible before they had a chance to ask anything much. I’d never been to his. ‘Anyone would think you were ashamed of me.’
In the dark I sensed him thinking, weighing up what I’d said. I started to panic then, that he’d just turn and walk. But at last he said,
‘We’ll put that right then, shall we? Why don’t you come round on Saturday, meet my folks?’
‘Are you serious?’ I said.
‘Of course. Come for tea. Six o’clock all right?’
I just nodded, sure that if I spoke it would come out as a squeak. He told me the address and what bus to get. We fixed a time, then he gave me a long, hard kiss.
‘See you Saturday,’ he grinned, as he left.
Well, I walked home on air.
I got myself ready so carefully that day. Hair, make-up, new dress that I’d just hemmed up the day before, ladder-less stockings… all perfect. The last thing was to dab on some cologne, and then I ran downstairs, flung a cardigan round my shoulders, and shouted goodbye as I rushed off.
‘Make sure he walks you to the bus stop, later,’ my mother called, before I slammed the door. ‘And mind your Ps and Qs.’ She hadn’t said that to me since I was about twelve, but she knew where Rick lived, she’d got the measure of his family.
It was April, a mild, breezy sort of day. I caught the number twenty-one bus from the bottom of my road, and I sat up on the top deck, feeling slightly queasy. I was so nervous, it wasn’t like butterflies in my stomach, more like a bag of cats, all squirming around. I kept finding myself sucking in air and then having to let it out in a long, slow breath. I needed this evening to go right; I needed to not show myself up in front of his parents, not to say the wrong thing or show my ignorance. By now I had an image in my head of two rather grand people who lived in style, who bought brand-new cars and ate out at the drop of a hat. I was petrified of being somehow less than what was required.
‘Don’t be silly,’ I told myself. ‘He wouldn’t have asked you if he thought you’d let him down.’
Rick met me off the bus, as planned.
‘You look nice,’ he said, and put his arm around my waist. I thought then I was going to die and go to Heaven, walking along with my boyfriend, on my way to meet his parents. This was surely going to be the seal on our relationship.
We turned a corner onto Highbury Avenue, where every house was different – mock-tudor, red-brick, whitewashed, pebble-dashed – each one about three times the size of mine, and all of them nestling in their own grounds. It was so quiet; there was just the sound of a wood-pigeon cooing above us in one of the large conifers that stretched up to the sky everywhere you looked. I thought of Rick in our dolls-house terrace, with its handkerchief of grass at the front.
‘Here we are.’
He stopped, pointed. At the end of the drive stood a large house with latticed windows and gable ends, looking like something out of a movie – a Hollywood version of England. The sun reflected off the windows as we walked towards it, and gravel crunched beneath our feet. Rick unlocked the door and held it open.
‘Come on then, come in.’
The entrance hall was about as big as our front room. I stepped inside, onto polished floorboards and soft rugs. Rick took me into what he called the sitting room, a wood-panelled room with two sofas and a creamy, deep-pile carpet. It looked out over a garden whose end was hidden, but obviously some way off. By this point, before I’d even seen the leather three-piece suite in the lounge, the modern fitted kitchen, and the downstairs toilet with its quiet flush, I had gone very quiet. All my preparations for this evening seemed totally inadequate, because now I knew I couldn’t possibly live up to anyone who lived here.
Of course up to then I’d never been in such a spacious house, and maybe it wasn’t quite as large as I’m painting it. And the difference between us, me and Rick, I know now it wasn’t such a gulf as it seemed. But back then… I stood at that window in a state of awe.
‘Are you all right?’ Rick asked. ‘You’ve gone quiet. Do you want a drink?’
He walked over to a corner cabinet and began pulling bottles out. ‘Sherry? Vermouth? Whisky? What do you fancy?’
It wasn’t just me that was quiet. The house was too. It breathed silence.
‘Where is everyone?’
‘Oh, I forgot to tell you. My parents have gone to a charity ball. I’d forgotten when I asked you over. Sorry, but you won’t get to meet them tonight, they’ll be back late. You’ll have to come another time.’
My insides unknotted, very slightly. At least I wouldn’t have to make polite conversation now, and I wasn’t going to be judged today. ‘So there’s no one around?’
I