Chapter 22

Their food arrived and conversation moved to other things: the forthcoming LPO programme, Nick's wish to hear her play the violin for him, weekend visits to the Lake District and Snowdonia and even work.

Before they left Nick went to the Gents. The Durex machine caught his eye. If Sally was going to sleep with him he had better play safe. He had never used one of these machines before and laughed at himself for feeling embarrassed. Nevertheless he bought a packet of condoms.

They did not galumph home but, on full stomachs, walked sedately, hand in hand all the same. After an hour and a half of only holding hands they needed a good hug.

"Do you know, Nick, I'm whacked?"

"I'm not entirely surprised. I wouldn't say I was bursting with energy myself. Reaction setting in I suppose."

"Would you mind if I went and had forty winks?"

"Not a bit. I think I'll join you."

She grinned and wagged a finger. "No hanky-panky!"

He grabbed her hand and smilingly kissed her finger. "Very well, Little Tiger."

They went upstairs together and both stripped to their underwear. Sally wore a straightforward utility bra and knickers but Nick was still filled with admiration for her lithe petite figure and her smooth skin.

Nick lay on his back. A hand snaked across his chest and found his hand and pulled.

"No hanky-panky doesn't mean no cuddling," Sally said softly.

Nick rolled on his side and took her in his arms.

"Mmm," Sally murmured snuggling up to him. They lay like that for ten minutes or so both glorying in their closeness.

"I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep like this. Keep still, Nick love."

She wriggled round in his arms and then backed up against him.

"Yeah, that's better. Sleep tight, my one."

They both went out like lights and it was half past four before Nick woke. Luckily, he came to slowly and smiled happily as he realised it was Sally in his arms. Now that he had thrown aside his inhibitions and acknowledged his love for her to himself he was very happy. He was even happier to have discovered that she loved him too. Subconsciously almost he tightened his hold of her very slightly and heard a happy little hum. He gently kissed the top of her head. There was another hum.

"Don't go away, Nick darling," she murmured. "I'm in Heaven."

"Me too," he whispered. "I love you."

She mewed and then her body began to shake. "Every ... t-time ... you s-say that ... I just want to ... c-cry with happiness. Oh, Ni-i-ick my love!"

She squirmed around, thrust an arm under his neck and the other round his back. "Oh Nick! Oh, Nick." She clung to him. He held her equally strongly, nuzzling the top of her head and whispering his love.

At length the storm passed.

"I must go to the loo," he whispered, "then I'm going to make us some tea. Sound good?"

She nodded against his chest.

With one final kiss to the top of her head he prised himself away from her, slipped on his own dressing gown and went via the bathroom downstairs. He put the kettle on and looked in the larder. There, wrapped up in tinfoil, was some ginger cake from last weekend. It seemed all right so he cut four slices and put them on a plate. He smiled to himself. Living on his own he would never have used a plate. The smile became a wry grin. He would have cut himself a slice at a time and munched it without a plate subsequently sweeping the crumbs off the table into his hand. He got out two more plates and put them on the kitchen table.

Sally came in still wearing her hospital dressing gown. "Sorry," she said, "I don't actually own a dressing gown. I haven't needed one on my own."

"Don't you like sometimes to sit down and read a book with some nice music in the background without getting dressed?"

She nodded a little shamefacedly. "I use my duvet."

Nick smiled. "Very snug," he said but his heart ached. He knew she was reasonably paid and guessed that she was slipping money to her mother.

"I thought," he said, "that we'd have a cuppa here and then go through to the sitting room and I'd tell you about my blockage: because I'd like to get it out of the way before we go any further."

His tummy lurched though at the thought that having heard about his love for Veronica she might leave him.

"OK. Sounds like a plan."

She saw the anxiety in his eyes and smiled. "It's going to have to be pretty horrendous to turn me off," she said gently. "Anyway," she added pushing her plate and mug across the table towards his, "I'm going to sit on your knee to have my tea."

She did so and, with more laughter about her having to become left-handed, they fed each other.

She watched him without comment as he rinsed everything afterwards and put it in the dishwasher. It never crossed his mind that she might not have one.

They moved to the sofa in the sitting room.

"Oh!" she exclaimed. "You've got a piano. I didn't know you played."

"I don't much. It was my grandmother's and my mother's got her own so it came to me."

"What do you mean you don't much? I'm going to want to hear you play."

"Yes, Miss Gardner."

She giggled and pulled up her legs sitting at one end of the sofa with them tucked under her. He sat at the other end.

"I may not tell this very well," he said.

She smiled at him. "Just do the best you can."

Starting hesitantly but gaining in fluency he told the story of Veronica. There was silence at the end. Sally's face was etched with sadness and sympathy.

"My poor darling," she whispered. "You poor, poor man. I'm sorry, Nick my sweet, but you never deserved that. She treated you really badly and bloody selfishly."

Nick shrugged. "That's what Catriona said but I don't know."

"Yes, you damn well do. You've admitted that last Christmas you actually felt angry about it: about bloody time too.

"Oh, Nick," she went on. "You are a very, very special person if you can give unconditional love like that."

Nick shook his head. "No, Sally, it was selfish love that turned to self-pity."

"Balls! You loved her and trusted her. She let you down and you went on loving her. That, Nick, is selfless not, not, not selfish. That you then erected a barrier was not self-pity. It was self-preservation because you knew your heart would never be able to cope with something like that again."

Nick gazed at her. That was a totally new slant on things, one that his beloved Catriona and his parents had been unable to come up with.

Sally's eyes had been sparkling with indignation. Now they softened with love and tenderness.

"Oh God!" thought Nick. "Those eyes are the reflection of her soul. I've never noticed except when she was cross about something."

"Nick, my love, I promise I will never treat you as she did. If we ever part, which God forbid, we will both understand why and do so without remorse, sadness yes but not remorse."

"Are you saying you'll marry me?"

"No, not until you've heard my background and understand the way I behave." She smiled sadly and again it showed in her eyes. "It may put you off me for ever."

Nick already knew better than to argue. "Go on then," he said.

"My family's Liverpool Irish. My father's a docker and so was my mother's father. So, we're Roman Catholics. Pretty nominal but we are and that may put you off a bit."

Nick shook his head. "I'm nominally Church of England but I don't hold with sectarianism even though I think that the Vatican is being pig-headed about contraception. That's nothing to do with basic faith though. Sorry, my little one, go on."

"My mother nearly lost me and could never have more children. My father wanted a boy. If they could have tried again and succeeded he'd probably have accepted me. They couldn't so I had to become the boy they couldn't have. Fat chance of that being a little tiddler anyway. That didn't matter to him. I had to play football. That wasn't too bad and I quite enjoyed it because I'm quite nimble. But he wanted me to box too. I was the only girl and all the boys were bigger than me. That stopped when I was ten because the trainer at the gymn refused to take me any longer."

"Bloody right!" interjected Nick forcefully and in disgust.

Sally shrugged. "So then I was to become brilliant scholastically. To what end he hadn't a clue being thick as two short planks himself. If I didn't get full or top marks I got the belt not just six strokes or something but a thrashing. Once I was unable to go to school for two days."

"Oh God!" Nick groaned. "Didn't your mother do something about it?"

Sally smiled mirthlessly. "She'd put cream on my back when it was over; if she had any but she would never argue with him because he'd beat her up if she did."

"Oh shit!"

Sally shrugged. "She'd been brought up that her husband's word was law. She had one argument with him early on which she won. That was about money and it was only when she had no food for the bastard that she persuaded him that he had to give her most of his pay before he spent the rest on booze. She'd go and wait for him outside the dockyard gate on pay day and take it from him before he went off to the pub and spent it all."

"That took guts."

Sally shook her head. "Nearly all the wives did the same. But that didn't stop him from knocking her about just for the hell of it or me for that matter. Anyway, I enjoyed school and would probably have done just as well without the belt so I stayed on to eighteen and won a scholarship to Liverpool University. I think it was the cranes at the docks that got me interested in engineering."

"I'd have thought you'd have tried to escape sooner."

"I thought about it often but if there's one thing my father did for me it was to make me tough and, as I became a young woman, he did treat me a bit better."