1973 – aged 17 #3
‘Oh, sweet one.’ He came close to her now and ran his fingers over her cheek. ‘It is in these lovely words, repeated so faithfully from such a trusted source, where my point is entirely made.’
Lilly didn’t fully understand what he meant but felt her resolve and petty frustration melt away under the heat of his touch and the prospect of what lay ahead.
‘Why winter?’ It had bothered her; she asked with her eyes closed.
‘A cold, bleak blanket of darkness that covers all things bright and colourful . . .’ He spoke in a low voice of doom that made her laugh. He was not and never could be winter, not to her.
‘What would you like to do today? Is there anywhere you need to be? Do you have plans?’ Doing her best to sound indifferent, not wanting to appear too keen or overbearing, her heart lifted as he reached out and took her hand into his fingers.
‘Yes, I plan on taking you back to bed. Lovely as the view is . . .’
Lilly laughed out loud again, delighted, excited and eager to get back to the task of learning every inch of his body.
The weekend passed too quickly, and when her dad arrived home on Sunday afternoon, the first thing he did was put a record on and let the joyful hopping notes of Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’, part of the Four Seasons suite, fill their space.
The connection wasn’t lost on her, a sign from the universe, no doubt, it had to be a sign!
It took all of her concentration to remember not to blurt out, I am so happy, because I’ve spent the most glorious hours in my bed with a man called Wilkie Jones who thinks that if I were a season, I would be spring!
‘The place looks nice. Did you have to clear up after a party?’ he asked affectionately as he filled the kettle and reached for a mug. His humour telling, confident that she would never have a party, never disrespect their home, and to his knowledge did not have enough friends to invite to a party.
‘Hardly!’ She smiled at him from the table, where she was attempting to write part of her essay on the importance of texture and contrast in collage. ‘How was your concert?’
‘Good, good! Yes, we got a lovely reception, and it was nice to get some sea air. Not that there was much sea to see. The tide goes out for miles at Weston, more mud than water, but still lovely. And we had a decent fry-up at the boarding house this morning, full works: bacon, sausage, egg, beans, fried bread, the lot.’
‘And you do love a good breakfast!’
‘I do indeed.’ Her dad stared at her, and she looked away, wondering if he could tell, just by looking, that she was quite altered since he saw her last.
‘You seem . . . happy?’ he asked with the crease of confusion at the top of his nose, and she understood that since his wife had gone, happy was for him always a little out of reach.
Yet how she wished it for him! It was hard not to let his lack of it bleed into her veins, which were bursting with the stuff.
‘I am.’ She blinked and bit her bottom lip; it was impossible not to think about Wilkie kissing her mouth until it felt a little bruised, a little pulled about. Her whole body, in fact, ached in a glorious and exhausted way that she knew she would never tire of.
‘How was the exhibition opening? Was Bertie pleased?’ he asked as he took the lid off the biscuit barrel with his thumbs and delved inside, pulling out three flaky Lemon Puffs that were his treat.
‘He was. A great success, actually.’ She did this, sanitised some aspects of Bertie’s life that she felt might be a little too hard for her dad to fathom.
He was of a different generation, from a different era.
A man who had fought a world war so that she could enjoy all of her freedoms. He didn’t need to know that Bertie had been at the centre of a scuffle, something and nothing really, over a mohair suit that got splashed with red wine, but had left at the end of the night beaming, as he and Beautiful Jack had traipsed off with their eclectic crowd to go dancing in an underground Soho club.
‘Good. We have a proper treat for supper later; I stopped by Brodin’s on the way home.
’ The Brodin brothers ran a fish stall on the banks of the river, near Westminster Bridge, famed for its seafood fetched fresh daily from the trawlers of West Mersea.
Her mouth watered in anticipation. ‘Skate wings and a large pot of whelks!’
‘Oh, lovely!’ Her stomach rumbled, ravenous at the thought of supper.
She remembered then her call to her mum and felt the shawl of disloyalty about her shoulders.
The inescapable fact was, in a perfect world, her mum would be sat on the other side of the table with her own cup of tea and a biscuit, and they’d no doubt be sharing surreptitious looks.
The two, like sisters, conspiratorial and friendly, sharing this huge life-changing thing that had thrown a rock into her world, the ripples of which Lilly hoped she would feel for ever.
It was a whole new way in which to miss her mum, and it hurt.
‘I love you, Dad.’
He paused and beamed at her, as if lit from within. ‘And how very lucky that makes me!’ He smiled, licking off the syrup that the Lemon Puffs were coated with, leaving fingers sticky with their residue.