Aunt Margaret's Lover Read Online Free PDF Page B

myself.
    'That's providing we get on,' she said.
    I had no doubt they would. For what father could resist the arrival in his life of a fully grown, beautiful, talented daughter who had nothing to ask but acceptance?' It was a hard notion to acknowledge but there was no point in being sour. Stopping this reunion would have been like trying to stop the sunrise. It was inevitable.
    At the end of our meal, I asked, carefully, quietly, my heart constricting, 'What do you feel about him?'
    'I feel,' she said, 'a blank page about him. Just that. After all, it's been seventeen years. People change. I wish he had not gone away, I suppose.'
    I checked myself from saying that it was the only thing I had to thank him for.
    She looked at mc strangely. 'And the rest of it is like a Grimm fairy-talc. Horrible but distant. Remote. In the past. I don't suppose he still drinks and drives wild cars. Do you?'
    I rubbed my fingertip over her knuckles. 'I hope not,' I said. And I had a sudden foolish premonition. 'Be careful.'
    She smiled and looked, for a moment, a great deal older than me. Til wear a seat-belt,' she said. 'Literally and metaphorically.'
    I changed the subject. We sipped sweet dessert wine while she spoke with wild enthusiasm about the thousand and one things she wanted to do over there, and as I watched her I thought how much a combination of her parentage she was. In her face was held the image of one I loved, and one I despised, and I wondered if it was that very duality which made it seem acceptable and right that she should go.
    Next to us a pair of lovers, not in the first flush of youth, paid their bill with words of regret that the evening was ended. While they waited for their change, he ran his fingers through her stylish grey hair and watched her with great tenderness while she quickly checked her lips in a pocket mirror. She smoothed her hair, smiling into the reflection like a Leonardo, and said, 'He wouldn't want to see me with it all mussed up. We must be careful . ..' Then they picked up their briefcases and, hand in hand, went out into the night. Sassy giggled. 'Hone stly ,' she said. 'At their age.'
    I felt a little affronted on their behalf. 'They're not exactl y over the hill,' I said crisply. 'And neither, for that matter, am I . ..'
    She looked at me and blinked. 'Oh,' she said in a mixture of astonishment and embarrassment. 'Oh.' And then I could see her rearrange her thoughts. 'But you've got Roger.'
    'Yes,' I said, signalling for the bill. 'I suppose I have.' I thought about them, sauntering out into the night holding hands, and was chilled by a definite streak of envy.
    Ten minutes later, walking home, also hand in hand, we passed a large red car parked beside Holland Park Underground, and I recognized the stylish grey hair of its occupant. She was sitting, alone, hands on the steering-wheel, staring into the entrance of the station with an expression of deep misery on her face. The chill of envy crept away, suitably ashamed. Who on earth would want that?
    Saskia said, 'What are you doing tomorrow? After you've seen me off? You should do something. 1
    'Celebrate, do you mean?'
    She laughed. 'Certainly not. Not celebrate my actual going - more celebrate the successful outcome of a job well done.' I looked at her. She was serious.
    'Sassy,' I said, 'I don't feel I'm signing off and joining the surrogate mothers' dole queue. This thing will, as they say, run and run.'
    'I know that,' she said, 'but the responsibility is over. Now it's just the relationship left. It's different.'
    'Really?' I said, thinking that youth is infuriatingly black and white.
    'Yes, really. You said that ages ago.' She was obliviously positive.
    'As a matter of fact,' I said. 'I am doing something tomorrow.' 'Oh? What?'
    'Well, first of all I'm going to the shop to open up ...' 'Boring.'
    'And then I am going to Mrs Mortimer's will reading. She's left me something and I don't know what.'
    That stopped her precocity in its tracks.