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.‘I brought a few refreshments,’ he said, shepherding her onto the back seat and then proceeding to lay out an elaborate picnic which had clearly been bought for two.Even then, her overriding reaction was one of amusement, especially when he unwrapped two wine glasses from a wad of the previous day’s Guardian.‘You’d have had a lot of eating and drinking to do if I’d said no, wouldn’t you?’ she teased, ‘there’s enough here to feed a small army.’‘I eat a lot,’ he confessed, tearing off a hunk of bread and passing it to her together with a large stainless steel knife.‘No butter I’m afraid.Just pâté and hummus and a few other things which I thought looked interesting.Especially that.’ He pointed to a Styrofoam pot of pasta squirls and black olives.They were sitting on either side of the picnic, their wine glasses balanced on the bridge between the two seats.‘We’re going to muck up your car,’ said Frances, her mouth full.‘It’s mucked up already.It’s a tip, I like it that way.Do you want some of this?’ He held out the pot with the pasta and a teaspoon.Frances took a mouthful and chewed thoughtfully.‘Delicious.Try it.’ Through the misting window next to her she could see a small minibus of new arrivals, several in wheelchairs, others leaning on helpers for support.‘Your label’s sticking out,’ he said.Disconcerted, she bent forwards, fumbling for the neck of her jumper.They had taken their coats off and folded them on the front seat.‘Here, let me do it.’If there was a moment it was then.But upon them so quickly that there was no time to assess it or wonder about it or even savour it.All Frances could remember was that in tucking away the offending label some part of his hand touched the skin on her neck and the effect of it was to make her go quite still.For several moments neither of them moved.Then slowly she became aware of his palm pressing gently against the nape of her neck, while his fingers pushed up through the lowest strands of her hair.She stared ahead, until the smooth brown leather of the front passenger seat blurred to a muddy brown and she was aware of nothing but the sensations seeping through her like the spread of warmth.‘No,’ she said, her throat dry.But Daniel had somehow reached across to place his mouth where his hand had been.He murmured her name, burying his lips in her neck, behind her ears, against her hair.‘The food, mind the food,’ she whispered.‘If you want me to stop, I’ll need a better reason than that,’ he muttered, using one hand to turn her face towards his.Frances caught hold of his wrist.‘Please, you mustn’t.’‘Why?’ His eyes were so close to hers that she could see flecks of black in the brown.‘A thousand reasons.’‘There’s only one reason that matters.’‘And that is?’‘That you don’t want to.’Frances felt the blood rush to her cheeks.Whether she wanted to kiss Daniel Groves was not in contention.In another, impossible life she would already have returned his caresses with an energy that he might even have found alarming.‘I am a forty-three-year-old widow,’ she said quietly.‘I have two grown-up children…;‘I know.’ He ran his index finger round the outline of her lips.‘I have stretch marks and broken veins.I have scores of grey hairs…’‘Where?’ He feigned deep concern, slipping the hand on her cheek up through her hair.‘Here?’ He ran his fingers through several strands, pulling them out and letting them drop back to her shoulder.‘Here?’Frances closed her eyes, as if by blocking out the sight of him she might will strength from some invisible source inside herself.‘You are twenty years younger than me—’‘Fifteen, a measly fifteen.And what has that got to do with anything?’‘Everything.It has everything to do with everything.In addition to which you are now sitting on the hummus.’‘Fuck, and I thought I was being so smooth and careful.’ He laughed, reluctantly pulling away.Frances couldn’t help laughing too at the state of his jeans.‘Where’s the knife? I can use it to scrape the worst off.’ It was a relief to have broken the moment, to have something to do other than resist him.Deftly, she worked the blade under the blobs of mess on his trousers, wiping each smear onto an old bit of newspaper.She kept her head down, pretending to be absorbed in the task, pretending that the long tight curve of his front thigh muscle, faintly visible through the faded denim, meant nothing to her.Daniel meanwhile began hastily returning their half-eaten picnic to the rucksack.The moment Frances had finished he snatched the knife from her hands and picked up both glasses of wine.‘Now, where were we?’‘We were nowhere.’‘If these windows steam up any more we’ll be arrested on suspicion of indecent behaviour anyway.Might as well justify it in some way.’‘Don’t be silly.’ Frances sipped her wine in an attempt to bury her smile.‘It’s time to go.’‘One kiss.Just to see how it feels.What harm could that do? Unless…’ he was suddenly serious for a moment, ‘Frances, if it is simply too soon, if it is because of Paul of course – I mean you have only to say—’‘No, it’s not that.’ She watched him take her empty glass from her hands, her fingers lingering for a moment on the stem as if offering some pitiful final attempt at resistance.Outside, the handicapped group, defeated by the obstacle course of a tour round the ruins, were already slamming doors and stowing away equipment, too wrapped up in their own world to spare any curiosity for the blurred silhouettes in the mud-spattered grey car parked alongside.Chapter Twenty-OneJoseph walked quickly, occasionally patting the breast pocket of his jacket to check the letter was safely stowed inside.March was still weeks away, he reassured himself, plenty of time for an appeal or refusal, or whatever one did in such circumstances.The letter had arrived in the second post.Not one of their interim declarations about proceedings and rights this time, but an official notification, with the date for his removal heavily underlined in black.It had taken several minutes to absorb the contents, feeling as he did so all the blind panic of a child.The letter contained two mistakes, a missing ‘r’ from February in the date and the omission of the word you in the second line.Further to our conversation last week I am writing to inform that a one-bedroomed flat in Falcon Crescent has become available…To Joseph’s troubled mind, the errors, as well as being somehow insulting, confirmed the presence of a malignant intention behind the veneer of polite formality.While aware that there existed systems for resisting such cruelty, he felt incapable of assessing them on his own.The mere thought of even researching how to embark on such a process filled him with dread and despair.With each of the council’s recent lumbering machinations on the subject of evicting him from the cottage, Joseph had clung to the logic that by remaining silent and uncomplaining he might eradicate the need for the issue to be pursued.It had never been of any consequence, either to him or his mother, that their surroundings constituted a serious health hazard; if the lights fused there were candles; buckets resided permanently under the worst of the roof leaks; and all the really bad patches of damp were behind the sofa and in the top bedroom, which only got used as a dumping ground anyway.The sight of Frances’s garden enjoying a healthy burst of spring growth, thanks to his own handiwork earlier in the year, was comforting.Although his refusal of money over Christmas had been genuinely uncalculating, the reminder of the favour now provided a welcome bolster to Joseph’s courage.Since the death of his mother, nothing had been the same [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]