Chapter 6

What thou woudst highly, that thou wouldst holily.

Macbeth Act 1, Scene 5

The kiss was not the longest I have ever shared and very far from the deepest, but it had an intensity I have never before felt. I initiated it without conscious thought, without even the intention when I put my hands to Eric’s face. Ordinary time stopped as we put a lifetime into our lips. His very first reaction was to pull away but then he put his whole being into the contact. His passion flooded all my senses, and I returned emotion for emotion. If he had taken me to one of the hotel rooms, I would have given myself to him completely.

Towards the end, once the raw feelings had been shared, we settled to wordless promises exchanged and acknowledged. At least, that is how it felt at the time. When I was young and single, I was not promiscuous, but I did my share of kissing; nothing prepared me for these few seconds with Eric. He was as shaken as I was and for the rest of the journey, I knew that we were equal partners with a shared goal. The certainty did not, alas, survive.

After the initial euphoria, I settled myself to planning. Before the kiss I had been thinking mostly about the offer of the job as administrative officer in the hospice, but all considerations of that nature were banished. I became preoccupied with my personal future. I had put Geoff into a locked compartment at the back of my mind but now I would have to open it releasing all my hurt at his callousness along with my feelings of inadequacy as a wife and mother. I was astonished to discover that I was not devastated as I expected but simply disappointed.

My daughter insisted that I look back at the thirty good years I had with her father. She wanted me to treat the last six months as if a favourite vase had been dropped; I should weep a little as I swept up the pieces and then throw them out. Until the kiss, it was difficult for me to find an answer for Alice. Now, I was beginning to see the split-up in a different way. For thirty years I have put everything I have into my marriage and that has not been enough to stop Geoff walking away from me at the first major obstacle. He knew so little about me despite all our time together.

It was clear to me that there was no way of restoring the life we shared. I could not simply move the other ornaments around on the shelf to disguise the loss of the broken vase. If Geoff and I had a future together, it would have to be built afresh on the foundations we laid in our thirty years. The latest gossip from Sinead suggested that he had parted from Jen which would certainly have got him thinking of reconciliation. As a result of that thought, I decided to accept the job as manager of the hospice. If Geoff and I do move forward together, he will have to accept that my work is as important to me as his is to him.

He has been the main wage-earner in the past when either I stayed at home with the kids or earned pin-money. Going forward, he may still earn more than I do but he will have to acknowledge that my work is worth as much as his. He might be called on to sacrifice a day’s work to cover a family emergency and not expect me to take time off as had happened in the past. The memory of the kiss intruded at that point, forcing me to wonder whether there could be a place in my future for my husband even if he did accept my new job. Thrusting my heart away, I concluded that I must meet Geoff and settle our affairs without further delay. I will ask Quentin to set up a meeting. Just as I began listing the items I would insist were included in the agenda for the meeting, we pulled up at Mark’s door where Peggy was on the step waiting for us.

I hurriedly arranged to go with Eric later to see the hospice site, before I got out of his car to meet my friends. We managed a rather awkward kiss on the cheek, both of us uncertain in our new intimacy. Peggy hustled him away after minimal introductions, anxious as she was to find out what had been happening to me since we last met at Phoebe’s funeral. Rob had taken Mark to Rand Farm to pet the animals; this has become one of their favourite pastimes recently. She gave a despairing shake of her head over Mark’s condition but insisted that I talk to Connie about the medical details. It was clear that he had deteriorated more rapidly than expected.

We agreed to postpone most of the stories of my adventures on the cruise ship until Connie was with us. Peggy wanted to know whether the captain had attempted to seduce me. She is very sharp in her perceptions, detecting something in the way I laughed off her suggestions.

“Someone has stirred your heart!” she gasped, clutching my hands in hers. “Tell me every detail.”

“It was nothing more than a kiss,” I tried to minimise the issue, although my face must have revealed just how important that kiss was to me. “We were chatting away, getting to know one another, when I got the urge to take his face in my hands and kiss him.”

“You attacked him!” It was true: I had taken the initiative. It had never happened like that before; when I was single, I often wanted a man to kiss me, but not once did I consider kissing him first. What had I done? Eric must think I am a loose woman. It did not help that Peggy saw the whole thing as a romance novel with me as the heroine. My boldness encouraged her to tell me that Connie and Iain had moved in together.

They had vaguely known each other in the hospital where they both worked as colleagues, but it was my discussion with Faisal at the funeral that got them talking together as friends for the first time. In the following days, Iain began to detour through the cancer unit on his way to and from lunch, just happening to bump into Connie from time to time. Soon they were sharing a table, usually in the company of others, before they had a dinner date in the town. Peggy insisted that neither of them was looking for romance so love surprisingly overwhelmed them, but I think that says more about her romantic nature than about her friends. She has never wanted anyone but Rob, satisfying any other needs in romantic dreams.

I, on the other hand, remembered Iain’s readiness to court me after Geoff dumped me on our reconciliation cruise. It seems to me that he had accepted then that his marriage was over and that he should lose no more time in finding a better woman to share his life. Then I remembered Connie’s admission that she found the separation from her husband frustrating. It may not be a match made in heaven, but it certainly provided a practical solution for two lovely people badly treated by life.

Throughout my life, I seem to make plans that are overtaken by events before I have completed them. For a woman with children to care for and a home to run, that is a perfectly normal state of affairs, but you must remember that I was married to Geoff who had a set of rules chiseled on a tablet of stone. Without conscious thought, I developed an overall plan that I adapted minute by minute to deal with emergencies both large and small. It was this ability that enabled me to take on so much of Mark’s work; it is certainly the attribute that makes me modestly certain that I will succeed as chief administrator.

The one thing I have not mastered is the control of time. The week after Eric brought me back to Lincoln, I achieved a great deal but my memory of the sequence of events is rather hazy – at least until the Friday evening when my world fell apart. I believed that I was making progress on all fronts. My most pressing need was to resolve matters with my husband. I clearly recognised the need to talk to him, but I was not prepared to let him tell me yet again that his behaviour was justified because he suspected me of having an affair; I had told him that he was mistaken, and I expected him to take my word without question.

I spent an evening with Sinead and Quentin arguing the best way forward from a legal perspective. Geoff and I should try to reach a voluntary agreement but to do that we had to talk face to face. Quentin finally convinced me to meet with my husband and his solicitor. He promised to step in if Geoff brought up the subject of my supposed affair. I was implacably opposed to reconciliation, but I was still undecided about the possibility of rebuilding a relationship. Apart from the kiss and some indications of interest, I had no way of knowing if Eric would become a permanent feature of my life. Quentin advised that I needed at least a legal separation to protect my financial interests.

He set up the meeting for the morning of Thursday in the offices of Geoff’s solicitor, Cyril Lawrence. I almost cancelled the meeting when I discovered that my husband was still using him for his legal affairs. Some years ago, Cyril made a serious pass when we were at a ball. He attempted to go beyond any reasonable boundaries, but I was prepared to dismiss his advances as alcohol fuelled. Three days later he telephoned me at home asking me for lunch to cement our new relationship. At that point, I reported the whole sorry story to my husband. For Geoff to continue using Lawrence as his lawyer felt like an insult.

Quentin calmed me down, so I sat with him on one side of a conference table opposite Geoff and a leering Cyril. Quentin opened the proceedings by offering a draft instrument of separation, which was swiftly agreed in principle. Then Geoff offered an apology; sadly, he offered it to the table in front of me, never once raising his head enough to look me in the eye.

“It was very wrong of me to reveal my marital difficulties in the manner I chose. I should certainly have picked a less public venue, and I should have given you an opportunity to respond. I recognised that almost as soon as I had spoken but your subsequent actions made it impossible for me to retract.”

What I think you might describe as a technical apology. The unstated message was that his decision to throw me out was correct, but he had presented the idea clumsily. Divorce was looking like the most likely option. There was silence for several seconds and then he cast a rapid glance upwards to look at my face before he stumbled on, addressing the table.

“I may have been hasty, but I had every reason to believe that my wife of thirty years had been unfaithful to me.” I was out of my seat before he had completed the sentence. Quentin pulled me down, giving me a warning glance before he turned to my husband.

“You have made this accusation of infidelity before, but you have offered no proof. My client has assured you that there was no affair and yet you persist in making the accusation. Unless you now offer compelling proof of an affair, I will advise my client to sue you for defamation of character.”

Geoff looked stunned and Cyril began gobbling like a demented turkey. At that moment, my mobile phone rang since I had stupidly forgotten to turn it off. It was Eric and that put me in a quandary: should I refuse to take the call, risking hurting my new friend or should I risk upsetting Quentin and the others by answering. In the end, I answered as briefly as possible, telling Eric that I would call him back very soon. He only wanted to talk about the hospice, so I knew it was not urgent.

The meeting ended shortly afterwards, leaving nothing resolved. We were meeting Sinead for lunch, so Quentin and I had only a few moments to agree that all we had gained was agreement that legal separation was essential. I think he was more sympathetic after listening to Geoff, but I was depressed: it seemed that my husband could not accept that I had been faithful. Sinead decided that I needed some retail therapy, so we spent the afternoon shopping. I was too distracted to remember to return Eric’s call.

It had only been to inform me that I had been the sensation of a meeting of the hospice board the previous day. As I told him when he interrupted the meeting in Cyril’s office, he was about the tenth person to give me the news. After the kiss, I agreed to let Eric give me the grand tour of the hospice buildings. He brought a picnic basket with him so we could have lunch together. It was a sweet idea but would make our budding relationship rather more public than I had been anticipating. Unlike him, I regarded the workmen on the site as a potential source of gossip. Professional men too often think that their behaviour is ignored or simply unnoticed just because working men are invisible to their eyes. I knew better.

My foresight proved its worth as soon as we drove up. Before Eric had lifted out the picnic basket we were greeted by Archie Paterson, the architect. On hearing that I was the administrator elect, he undertook to show me the site. The main building is hexagonal with a balcony all round. Beds can be wheeled onto the covered balcony from the adjoining rooms. Vehicle entry is by a passage into the interior of the hexagon which also houses the common services and offices.

None of the guest rooms overlook this area which, sadly, incorporated a mortuary: you can never forget that people will be coming here to die. Archie called over to Henry, the site manager, who agreed to have my office ready for occupation by the beginning of next week. Archie is probably ten years older than me and Henry perhaps ten years younger. They were both courteous to begin with but by the time we sat down to lunch they were competing to flirt with me. The rest of the workers joined us, leaving Eric rather isolated and looking glum. I thought that it was a good thing for him to learn that he could not take me for granted.

Once everyone had gone back to work after lunch, I took Eric down into the little wooded glade beyond the lawn, taking his arm while I explained the need to keep him at arm’s length in the presence of others. He appeared to be quite reconciled by the time we returned to his car and drove away. I did think he was rather childish about Archie’s attentions to me, and I may not have completely hidden my opinion.

My discussions with Archie and Henry centred on the stretch of grass below the balcony. It seemed to me that picnic tables and a barbeque pit could be placed so that guests, even those confined to bed, could share meals with visitors. There was one area where I suggested they put in a children’s playground where guests could watch visiting youngsters enjoying themselves. Tragically, some of our guests will be parents of small children. The two men were most enthusiastic about my ideas. Over lunch, the other workmen tossed a few ideas of their own into the pot.

Archie rushed off after lunch to contact manufacturers of play equipment. He was most complimentary about me. He was particularly attracted by my insistence that the people we cared for should be called guests. He took the point that there are negative connotations to the term ‘patients’, implying something of an inferior, dependent nature. By the end of lunch, the whole crew was using the term guests.

Archie’s enthusiasm continued the following morning when there was a meeting of the full board of management of the hospice project. He had already been promised swings and a slide as a donation from a local business and he had found time to sketch plans for the garden area closest to the balcony. One of my future duties would be to assign rooms so that these additional facilities would benefit our guests. The committee were concerned about the extra cost but allowed themselves to be reassured. The remaining question came from a local factory owner who had supported the project from its conception: he questioned Archie’s use of the word ‘guest’. It was Faisal, chairing the meeting, who replied.

“Our new administrator came up with the word. She pointed out that our purpose is to make the last few days or weeks of life as comfortable and rewarding as possible. This is much more the function of a hotel than a hospital where the emphasis must be on treatment leading to recovery. Archie spoke to me last evening and I later called the specialist team on End-of-Life care in Nottingham. From now on ‘guest’ will be used in all their teaching and in the facilities they manage.

“Our new administrator has already exceeded the high expectations we had of her.”

Archie called me before he left the meeting to tell me that I had been a hit with the committee. Faisal called soon afterwards, and I had calls from others including Connie, Iain and Phillip, my old boss when I worked for Mark. The last of the calls came the following morning from Eric just at the worst possible moment in my meeting with Geoff and the lawyers. I was a little hurt that it took him so long to congratulate me and that may have contributed to my forgetting to call him back after I left Cyril’s office.

The remainder of Thursday, into the early hours of Friday, was spent with Peggy and Rob discussing Mark’s future. His condition has deteriorated rapidly since Phoebe’s death. He can no longer play golf and has lost interest in sports programmes on television. He spends long periods sitting silently, responding only when directly addressed. The only person he recognises unfailingly is Rob, although Peg thinks that he is choosing to ignore her. The speed of his descent is puzzling the specialists who have assessed his condition. One theory is that he is willing himself to forget memories too painful to keep.

By midnight we had agreed that the medical situation was beyond our understanding, so we turned our attention to his future care. Once again, we were quickly faced with our own inadequacies. Peggy and her husband were living in Mark’s house and caring for him under an agreement reached with his late wife. His legal team approved the arrangement but there was no indication of what would happen if Mark had to be permanently moved to a medical facility. By two in the morning, we had concluded that our legal knowledge was as sparse as our understanding of his medical condition.

I was in my dressing gown letting a cup of black coffee dispel the vapours of sleep still clouding my brain, when Connie burst in. She had spent the week in Nottingham completing a course on care for the terminally ill. She talked to Peggy about Mark while I showered and dressed, although she had no more idea what to suggest than we had. Back in the kitchen, Peggy left to shop for the week while Connie and I settled in for a lengthy chat. She refused to discuss her romance with Iain until I told her about the new man in my life; apparently, Peggy had noticed more than I imagined when Eric brought me home from Reading. I opened my heart to her.

She listened to the whole story from my reaction at my very first meeting in Eric’s office when he chased me across the city to invite me to lunch. Her face showed her growing delight as I described him coming to Reading to clear up a misunderstanding because we had argued on the telephone the night before. She was almost as excited as I was when I reached the kiss. Her face changed, however, when I described how I ignored him at the picnic.

“Are you really saying that you flirted with two other men and ignored Eric completely?”

“I had to do it, you must see that. I don’t want anyone knowing about us at the moment.”

“That may mean you shouldn’t treat him better than the others, but he must have been hurt to be ignored altogether.”

Connie had a point, I suppose, but Eric and I walked in the little wood afterwards where I explained to him about being discreet. I took his arm and gave him a kiss on the cheek. I did not do that to Archie or Henry. Then I felt a cold shiver run up my spine: since the picnic, our only contact was that phone call when I was at the meeting with Geoff. I had promised to call Eric back to explain why I could not talk, and it had slipped my mind.

My guilt must have shown on my face since Connie sternly demanded that I tell her what I had done wrong.

“So, let me see if I have this right. You meet a man who might be your future partner. You initiate a kiss that blows his socks off; then you ignore him while you flirt with the distinguished older man and the younger hunk; and finally, you’re rude to him on the telephone.”

“Oh God, Connie! I’ve lost him, haven’t I?”

“Perhaps not,” she mused, after a significant silence between us. “He must be really smitten to have put up with your nonsense so far. You say he hasn’t dated since his wife died, so he must see you as somebody special. If you’re prepared to do some groveling, I’ve an idea that might give you another chance.”

I gave her his office telephone number which she dialed. For the first time, I witnessed my friend in her full charge-nurse persona. She made short work of the first people she spoke to, presumably a receptionist and a private secretary and was talking to Eric within a minute of lifting the receiver. I could only hear her side of the conversation, of course, but it was clear that his defences quickly collapsed. He accepted an invitation to dinner at half past six that evening. Her argument was that he would be working closely with her and me so he should behave like a gentleman. She hinted at cowardice at one point and unprofessional behaviour at another, never actually accusing him of anything. I remember using similar tactics on the children when they had to take foul tasting medicine, although I must admit that Connie was more ruthless than I ever attained.

After the call, she turned her attention to me. She would prepare the meal, but she would leave with Iain as soon as Eric arrived. I would wear an apron over my best frock, letting him infer that I had cooked the meal. We should eat in the kitchen to establish the idea of a relaxed relationship before adjourning to the family room which would be softly lighted and only the two-seater couch would be clear of clutter. Connie had every detail worked out and she even gave me coaching on suitable topics of conversation at table and when we moved to the family room.

I spent the rest of the day preparing myself while Connie did everything else to set the scene. My planning, such as it was, concentrated on the early part of the evening: I was pretty sure that everything would work out once I had manoeuvered Eric into a position where I could give him a repeat of the kiss. Peggy and I argued over my choice of dress, but I eventually settled on a bit of cleavage on a dress reaching my knees.

“It’s a bit of a compromise,” Peggy assured me, “But you won’t have to spend the whole time tugging your hem down to preserve your modesty – if you actually have any!”

Emotionally, I was a wreck before I arrived at Connie’s house, although I will admit that I looked pretty good for fifty-five years of age. The kitchen was too hot, and I could feel myself starting to sweat. I was worrying about my face becoming a shiny beacon when the house door opened, and I heard Iain greeting Eric. Connie introduced herself as the men entered the kitchen, excusing her and Iain in the next breath.

“My daughter is having a panic attack about one of my grandkids,” she explained. “Iain and I are going over there for an hour or so to calm her down. It’s Beth’s dinner anyway so you just sit at the table and enjoy.” She was still removing her apron when she and Iain scuttled out the front door leaving Eric open mouthed in the overheated kitchen with me. I asked my date to get the lasagna from the oven which helped to ease the tension in the room.

What followed was painful. I had decided that any serious discussion should take place while we were sitting side by side on the couch in the family room. Instead of mentioning my wishes, I interrupted Eric every time he said something that could lead to a forbidden topic. Such conversation as there was, was stilted. He played the game at first but after exhausting his compliments on my cooking and the weather, I shot him down when he tried to talk about the hospice. It did not help that I was finding it difficult to look him in the eye.

Perhaps it was my failure to read his expression or simply my own nervousness, but I did not realise that he was angry until we had finished eating; he was helping me to clear the table and load the dishwasher when I recognised that his body was rigid with tension.

While he fiddled with the controls of the dishwasher, I prepared a tray with cups, waiting for the coffee to percolate. It was the excuse we both needed to end the sham conversations for a time. Our only other meal together, the lunch on our drive back from Reading, had been so completely different. There was tension there as well, but it was the promising tension between two people recognising that they were at the start of a new and exciting relationship. The tension this evening was between two strangers with nothing to share, simply waiting for the first opportunity to part for ever.

My plan to wait until we were seated together had to be modified. As I picked up the tray, I explained that his telephone call had caught me at a critical moment in negotiations with my husband. Eric turned from the dishwasher and looked at me, waiting for me to go on, so I told him that we had agreed to a legal separation.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

I had a flash of anger. Why was Eric refusing to meet me half-way on this? I had made a mistake in not returning his call but surely he should have been ready to forgive me now that I had explained. “You’re the lawyer. You must know what a legal separation is.”

“I know the meaning of the legal expression. What I am asking is what it means to you.”

I walked down the passage towards the front door turning into the family room on the right. He was still standing in the kitchen door watching me when I looked back from the threshold. “I need to protect my reputation, Eric. There must be rules that you will have to obey.”

There were tears welling in my eyes as I walked on into the room, placing the tray on a table in front of the couch. I intended to wait for him, but my knees felt shaky, so I flopped into the seat. When I looked round, he was standing in the doorway. “Your rules?” he asked, standing looking down at me. His voice was gentle now, unlike the rather harsh questions he had posed in the kitchen. “Rules that include ignoring me while you flirt with others.

“Archie is mocking me, telling me that he has caught your eye while you clearly despise me. He even asked if I thought he should begin your seduction with lunch or go straight for dinner and bed. Henry was rather kinder but even he wanted to know what I had done to annoy you since you were so friendly to everyone else.”

“Oh! do come in and sit down. You’re making this sound more serious than it is. I think you’ll find my rules will be to your advantage.”

“But they will be your rules, won’t they?”

“As Archie says: My way or the highway.”

I knew that I had blundered before the words were out of my mouth. I was only trying to lighten the atmosphere a little so that Eric would come into the room and sit beside me. I knew that if he did that, we would soon forget our differences. I remembered the passion in that brief kiss and knew that the same emotions were close to the surface in both of us. What I did not anticipate was his reaction.

“I’ll take the highway,” he muttered, barely audibly, and the next thing I heard was the front door closing behind him. I tried to get up and run after him, but my legs refused to support me. I was stunned.

I have no clear idea how long I lay slumped on that couch swamped by my emotions. At one moment I was blaming everything on my own actions, my failure to communicate with him. Then I became angry with him for his lack of understanding; if he cared for me, he would have made the effort to listen to what I was trying to say. There were fewer tears than I would have expected. The whole mess was too important for weeping.

When my phone rang, I leaped to answer it without looking at the identification of the caller. I blurted out his name and how sorry I was before the cool voice of Connie interrupted. “I called to tell you that I put clean sheets on the bed in the guest room, but I guess you won’t need them. What did you do this time?”

I began to tell her, but she cut me off saying it was too important for a telephone call. She and Iain arrived practically at once. Connie took me in her arms and that was when the tears came, hers falling as freely as mine. Iain took the tray of cold coffee away and returned later with a fresh brew. He sat quietly while I recounted my disastrous evening. Connie was sympathetic to me and positively vitriolic towards Eric. I had calmed down when Iain made his first comment.

“Did you apologise for ignoring him at the picnic and failing to return his call?”

“She explained it to him. It’s not Beth’s fault if he’s too insensitive to understand.”

“Beth is the first woman he has shown an interest in since his wife died ten years ago. That is a massive emotional investment. Beth encourages him with the famous kiss, then she shames him in front of other men and finally forgets to call him back. He must feel about an inch tall at this moment.”

“And I quoted Archie just after he told me that the old goat had designs on me. What have I done?”

“Nothing!” Connie was adamant. “He’s a grown man. If he can’t take little hiccups in his stride, he’s hardly worth bothering with. Perhaps you should have a fling with Henry, the site manager. I quite fancy him myself!”