Читать книгу Freya North 3-Book Collection: Secrets, Chances, Rumours - Freya North - Страница 26

The thing is about flirting, Tess thought to herself as she applied a coat of mould-resistant paint in the utility room, I'm not sure I've ever really been on the receiving end, nor have I been much good at it. She considered that she'd probably just been conditioned to an abbreviated form employed as a preliminary to sex.

She thought back to student days, when it had been both the trend and peer-group pressure to drink cheap wine and pair off with someone on a Friday night. The act of being bought the wine had been the apotheosis of seduction (not least because conversation was restricted anyway, on account of the decibel level at the various college dives). But all of this was less flirting, more it was bartering. I buy you wine all evening on my student grant; you take me back to your digs to do the deed. In retrospect, the cheap wine had such a swift inebriating effect on both parties that the deed was rarely accomplished but the hangover and bravado kept that quiet.

For the first time in years, she cast her mind back to the boyfriend she had all through the third year, but even at the time she knew he was less a soulmate and more a human radiator; someone who warmed her up in the freezing shared house. They also used each other to catch up on lecture notes so they could alternate on sleeping until noon. It certainly wasn't love, it wasn't really lust. There had been sex, quite a lot of it, but it was as if they kept at it to see if it could get any better. With or without wine or spliff. Then came their finals and it was only midway through the summer following graduation that they thought perhaps the relationship had ended. In retrospect, they had merely furnished each other's lives that last year in no greater way than the Jim Morrison posters and cheap scatter cushions had furnished their spartan rooms. A distraction from the unrelenting woodchip of student digs, relief from the boredom of course-work, succour from the sudden panic of final exams, a cheap form of student exercise. Nice enough, but about as symbolic as the lower second degree they both came away with.

Then came Tess's move to London and it seemed that for a long while, the furthest flirting went was the odd person smiling at her on the tube – odd being the operative word. Then came Dick. Tess thought about Dick as she dipped her roller and worked the paint to suitable tackiness. Dick hadn't really flirted with her at all – he'd spouted some cod-Shakespearean poetry at her instead. She couldn't remember it precisely – only that he'd actually used the word ‘maiden’ in all seriousness. He broke off, mid-riff, from some long instrumental number on his beat-up guitar, to gaze at her as if she was a gift from the gods. He'd pointed his plectrum at her and delivered his ‘maiden’ soliloquy. As a rambling preamble, it worked. Some more second-rate prose-poetry, a further few chords on his guitar and bed followed. And so he came. And then he went. And Em arrived. Em, usurping utterly the love anyone else could possibly give Tess or ever elicit from her. Emmeline, her everything.

And though Em has remained her everything, the love of her life and the light in it, Tess quietly wondered about the recent rushes of adrenalin. As much as the love she shared with Em was primal and vast and utterly sustaining, feelings of a different type and intensity were surfacing. As the utility room walls brightened with every run of the roller and the skirting in the lounge became smoother with each rub of sandpaper, Tess thought about these swells of adrenalin; how they crested each time Joe said something like, you've missed a bit, or, would Rembrandt care for a cuppa? And she thought how, when she'd been so engrossed glossing the window frame singing along to a Golden Oldies radio show, she hadn't noticed him leaving a Mars Bar and an apple on a plate by her side – and how she'd been too thrilled to eat them. She recalled how she felt when she was carefully cutting-in along the dado and he'd knocked on the door and said, I think I hear Em – I'll go to her if you like. These little surges of adrenalin, Tess conceded, were actually good old-fashioned butterflies. But her scant experience and battered self-esteem left her unsure whether fetching a baby, or leaving a Mars Bar or calling her Rembrandt or sharing a steak was flirting, or perhaps something more. Or there again, less – just friendship or simply social grace.

She wasn't to know that Joe had told the office he'd be in afternoons only – after lunch. Nor did she know that when he was in his study, rigorously calculating forces and stresses and the risks of compression and tension, torsion and resonance; the truer challenge taxing his mind was whether it was too soon since the last cup of tea to make Tess another. And when he heard her singing, he tried to work out various ways to watch her, unseen. And how he wished he could have witnessed her reaction when she found chocolate and an apple by the white spirit! Joe hadn't really ever had to do much flirting because women had generally fallen, legs akimbo, at his feet. Or fallen to their knees to unbutton his flies. Or simply fallen for him with all the sweet nothings that brought with it which, to Joe, was precisely that: sweet but nothing. There's Nathalie in France, Rachel in London, Eva in Brussels; there had been Giselle in Brazil and there would always be someone in Japan. They all come with the job. It's a perk that he's exploited – the cost of foregoing anything long-term and solid has not been a high price to pay. It's been preferable and it's been his choice. It's kept his life simple. He comes and he goes – to them and away from them and back to the sanity and sanctity and seclusion of his house.

Only now, his space here has been halved and yet somehow broadened too, by the presence of Tess. And Joe can't deny the impact it's having but he's just not sure how to calculate it. It's growing, developing, taking form – yet without him having any control over the design. The details often surprise him. There's a solidity that unnerves him as much as a fragility too. Will it hold his weight?

For the duration of Joe's visit, Mars Bars, lunch and supper, and endless cups of tea, have punctuated the days. But after a week of this, he's off again tomorrow, a fact that has been hovering like a wasp inside a window. They haven't wanted to approach it, because of the sting, so they've tried to ignore it, to pretend they're not acutely aware of it. There's been an inordinate amount of tea-making today and it's only early afternoon. But she's still painting in the snug and he's shut himself away in his study. Em is having her nap. Wolf is convinced the garden is full of rabbits that can climb trees. Joe really can't drink a sip more tea and he has much to organize prior to his departure but it seems like a good enough time to tell Tess the plumber will be calling tomorrow about the downstairs loo.

‘He'll come in the morning – but take that with a pinch.’

And as Joe says it, he's looking down on Tess who is crouching in a corner working the sandpaper into some nook. And her jeans have ridden down just enough to reveal the top of her buttocks. She'll curse it as builder's bum but to Joe, it resembles the upper part of a heart shape. And he thinks, pinch. And he thinks, nook and then he thinks, cranny. And he has to turn around and tell himself to get a grip or fuck off back to his study. When he turns back, she's standing and he thinks, why the hell didn't I look for longer? And she's thinking, shit – these bloody jeans. There's an inordinate amount of eye contact and loitering for the simple information of a tradesman's impending visit.

‘The plumber?’ she repeats, as if the rasp of sandpaper had drowned his words.

‘Yes – tomorrow morning.’ He looks around the den. She's done two walls in a sludge-grey, a period colour that's perfect and, bizarrely, was the only one on offer at the small DIY shop in town. He nods his approval. He decides he'll be calling it the snug from now on, too.

‘I'm just sanding down the Polyfilla,’ she says. She's come over because she needs a new piece of sandpaper and it's on the table right by Joe. She has sludge-grey freckles over her cheek and a scab of Polyfilla on her chin. And Joe just can't help himself. He touches her cheek and he touches her chin and then his fingertips pause before he touches the tip of her nose. He used to have a den, out of bounds to previous house-sitters. Now he has a snug thanks to Tess.

‘You're covered,’ he says, ‘in stuff.’

And Tess can't speak because though she didn't know about the paint and the filler she's pretty sure there was nothing on her nose. It strikes her that he just might be touching her because he wants to. She is immobilized by the possibilities this could provide. But because she can't move, when he moves away she can't reach for his arm to stop him, to turn him back towards her, to raise her lips to his so that he can kiss her mucky face.

Once he's left the room, Tess chides herself. You idiot girl, he's not going to kiss you. He was just pointing out that your face is a mess.

She feels distraught and she starts sanding again, vigorously. Briefly, there are tears and when she wipes them away, she feels the sensation of salt water and sand mixed together – a combination she hates. It's not gentle on her skin and she is rough on herself.

I'm just his house-sitter, his odd-job girl, with my spattered face and ancient jeans and pasty bum. Who do I think I am that he would want to kiss me?

She has no way of knowing that Joe has been standing still in his bedroom, the feel of her cheek, her chin, her nose, imprinting into his fingertips. He's been standing there like a lemon for ten minutes or so, looking at an open drawer thinking, I don't want to pack, I want to stay.

It was time for another last supper and Joe had done the honours. It was impossible for roast chicken, potatoes, peas, carrots, broccoli and onion gravy not to make life seem OK again.

‘What time are you leaving tomorrow?’

‘After breakfast.’

‘What time will you arrive?’

‘Marseilles after lunch, on site near Roussillon a couple of hours later.’

‘How long?’

‘A week. Perhaps two.’

Tess played her fork over a pea before squeezing it down onto it, hard. ‘It'll be May by then.’

‘Maybe sooner,’ Joe said.

‘Keep in touch?’

A pause. He glanced at her. She was squashing peas again.

‘OK,’ he said.

‘OK then.’

‘And don't worry about fifty pences in the telephone jar – if you need to speak to me, just phone.’ And he gamely stabbed his last floret of broccoli. ‘Is that Emmeline?’

Tess was already standing. ‘She never usually wakes at this time.’

‘Go and check – I'll see to the dishes.’

‘But you cooked – I should clear up. That's how it's been.’

‘It's fine, Tess. Go.’

As Joe cleared away the dinner, he listened. The child was audibly grouchy, the soft tones of a mother's singing and cooing having little effect.

Half an hour it lasted before he heard Tess descending the stairs. Coffee, he thought, or tea. Where are the biscuits? Let's stay as we were, here in the kitchen. But when the kitchen door opened, Tess had a hot and bothered Emmeline on her hip.

‘Is she OK?’

‘I think so,’ Tess said. ‘She's not hot – I think she's just out of sorts.’

‘Bottle?’

‘Please – there's one in the fridge.’

Joe boiled a kettle and sat the bottle in a bowl of hot water. They both thought quietly how he'd become a bit of a dab hand.

‘Thanks,’ Tess said, while Em grabbed it, gave a few fractious gulps before dropping it. Tess tisked. Joe said, don't worry. Em started grizzling again. Wolf woke up and whined. Joe looked at them.

‘I think I might just have a magic cure,’ he said. ‘It works for me when I'm fractious. Come on. Grab coats.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Wait and see.’

‘My grandmother used to say that. She used to say, “Wait and see with salt on.” I think it was an extreme version of yours.’

‘Save the family anecdotes, Tess – and get your coat, woman.’

‘What's the rush?’

‘Where are your car keys?’

‘But I have hardly any petrol.’

‘Keys, Tess – now!’

‘But –’

‘We're taking my car – I just need your child seat. Give me the bloody keys!’

He wasn't being rude; well, he was, but Tess didn't need to jump to the defensive because Joe was grinning his exasperation at her. There wasn't any genuine urgency, but there was a sense of excitement. Tess had no idea where they were going or what the big secret was. Five minutes into the journey Emmeline was sound asleep, rendering the excursion obsolete. But neither Tess nor Joe was going to say, well, we might as well turn back then.

They drove through Redcar and he told her how the steel industry once had its zenith here; Europe's largest single-blast furnace. He pointed out the remaining vast rolling sheds, super-stretched structures, though many were now empty.

‘We used to come at night when we were kids – the sparks and the heat coming from those sheds. Molten steel, pet – as exciting as any fireworks display.’

Another industry in decline, he said solemnly. But then brightened and told her that the beach here had masqueraded as Dunkirk for a recent Hollywood blockbuster much to the amusement of the locals.

‘Atonement!’ Tess had seen it. Joe too.

Then she said, tell me where we're going!

But he just said, patience, woman.

She looked at the road signs for clues.

Middlesbrough?

She had assumed she could ably stay in Saltburn without ever having recourse to visit the city whose slightly grimy, down-at-heel reputation rather preceded it. They were driving through a strange industrial hinterland of yards and depots and storage tanks. Chemicals, Joe explained. Charming, Tess thought. It was all rather dark and desolate.

‘There!’ Joe swung the car to a stop, switched, off the engine and clapped his hands against the steering wheel. ‘What do you think of that, then?’

From the drop of Tess's jaw and from her stunned silence, her face pressed at the windscreen, Joe deduced her reaction as precisely what he'd hoped for.

‘What is it?’

‘You don't know whether it's monstrous or beautiful, do you?’

‘It's monstrously beautiful – but what is it?’

‘Will Emmeline be OK in the car? If we just step outside for a few minutes?’

‘Where are we going? I'm not going up.’

‘Stop faffing and trust me, will you?’

She looked at him and he raised an eyebrow. She unclicked her seatbelt, glanced over her shoulder to her daughter.

‘You're OK about Emmeline?’

‘She'll be fine – and I will be too, as long as I'm in earshot.’

‘Come on, Tess. We're the only ones here.’

Floodlit, the blue paint made the vast steel web-like structure appear luminous and contradictorily weightless.

‘What is it, Joe? What's it called?’

‘This, Miss Tess, is the Transporter Bridge,’ Joe said. ‘Tell me you have at least heard of the Transporter?’

Tess shook her head.

‘Did you see Billy Elliot? Or Auf Weidersehen, Pet? It had a starring role in both – I have the DVDs at home.’

She shook her head again.

They looked up at the bridge as Joe spoke. ‘Built 1911. Supreme cantilever construction with three main bridge spans. 851 feet long, 160 feet high, rising to 225 feet at the top of the two towers. 2,600 tons of steel. Two almost independent structures constructed on opposite banks of the Tees, joined at the centre over the river.’

‘It's – mad! It looks so modern – but it also looks like, I don't know, like two fossilized pterodactyls!’

‘It's bloody marvellous. In 1880, an iron-ore seam was found in the Eston Hills just near here and Middlesbrough turned from a small coal-exporting town with fledgling iron works into a major iron-producing area. Of course, then steel. Chemicals too. Anyway, the banks either side of the river are low, so conventional bridge design was not practical. To build at this great height allowed for the passage of large shipping traffic without inconveniencing the regular river traffic with a traditional swing-bridge.’

‘But?’ Tess stopped to puzzle it. ‘If it's so high up, how does it work as a bridge? How do you get all the way up there in the first place to cross the river?’

‘This bridge reconciled the need to cross the Tees, with the need to sail boats up it.’ Joe turned the angle of Tess's shoulders. ‘See there? Coming back across the river towards us? The gondola travelling above the water, suspended from those thirty wire ropes? Follow them up. The cables run on a wheel-and-rail system all the way up – there. Think of it as an aerial ferry.’

‘Oh yes! There's a van on it – and a car.’

‘Since 1911, it has crossed the Tees between Middlesbrough and Port Clarence, in two minutes, every fifteen minutes, up to eighteen hours a day. We're lucky – soon it'll be running on a new, shorter timetable. As a bridge builder myself, over and above the fact that the Transporter provided a solution to a problem, this bridge is also a marvellous virtuoso feat of turn-of-the-century engineering. They built it – because they could. There were fewer than twenty transporter bridges built worldwide and all were between 1893 and 1916. Only eleven still exist and few of those are in regular use. The longest was over the Mersey – but it's no longer there. The Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge is the largest operational one in the world. It is now Grade II listed.’

‘Yet it's still a working bridge. A living bridge.’

‘I like it – a living bridge. Yes, a living, moving structure,’ Joe said. ‘And I love it.’

Tess knew it was a bit daft to smile at a bridge but she did so, looking up and across, up and across. Simultaneously elegant and yet somehow crude, the bridge seemed to exude a personality – like a tall, elderly well-to-do aunt with a mouth like a drain.

‘In 1916, a bomb was dropped from a Zeppelin – but it fell right through the latticework and straight into the Tees. In 1940, a bomb went through the bridge's span and exploded onto the gondola – but the bridge closed for only three days. In the late 1950s, the mechanism broke down just near the shore and the passengers had to walk the plank to the bank – then the rush-hour crowds had to walk all the way up and over the top.’

‘Up there? You'd never get me doing that!’

Joe looked at her askance but she was engrossed watching the gondola approaching with its load.

‘Can we – I mean. Would it be much of a detour to – It's just that it's arriving back now. Is it expensive to cross?’

He laughed. ‘Be my guest.’

Joe's car was the only vehicle and they were the only foot passengers in the cradle as it skimmed over the inky Tees with a clunk and a whirr.

‘The synergy that I love most is that when they were planning it, they brought in a Frenchman, Ferdinand Arnodin – the pioneer of transporter bridge engineering. And of course here's me, a smoggie, now involved with the French on their bridges. And the guy who ran the Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company who designed the Transporter, was one William E. Pease.’

‘Why do I know that name?’

‘Because when I showed you where the Halfpenny Bridge used to be, I told you all about Henry Pease, who founded Saltburn and whose white firebricks partly constructed the town.’

‘This bridge is kind of your bridge too then, isn't it,’ Tess said.

‘I like to think so,’ Joe said. ‘I'm proud to be part of Middlesbrough's bridge-building heritage. The bridge over the Tyne – that's ours, also the Geordies’ King Edward VII Bridge. The Sydney Harbour Bridge – that's us too. And the Menai Straits Suspension Bridge. The Severn Bridge – the first use of an aerodynamic deck. The Forth Road Bridge – at the time, the world's two longest spans. The Newport Lifting Bridge just down there. The Victoria Falls Bridge over the Zambesi. The Tsing Ma Bridge in Hong Kong. The New Lambeth Bridge in London, the Jiangyin Yangstze River Bridge in China. Then there's the Strotstrom Bridge in Denmark, the Limpopo Bridge in South Africa, the Bosporus Bridge in Turkey linking Europe and Asia – bloody brilliant bridge builders, us smoggies.’

‘But is this your favourite bridge?’

‘No – my favourite bridge would be the Milau Viaduct. Norman Foster truly achieved sculpture in the landscape and the most profound dialogue between nature and the man-made with that bridge. But the Tranny is the bridge I love most.’

The river was crossed.

‘What do we do now?’

‘We could go via the Newport Bridge – that's some structure too.’

‘We could,’ said Tess, ‘or we could just stay as we are and cross back over again. I wish Em was awake.’

‘Bring her back in daylight,’ Joe said. ‘In fact, you have to see it for yourself in daylight. Actually, when I'm back next time, I'll see if I can take you across.’

‘Across?’

‘Up there.’ Joe pointed and Tess looked up almost fifty metres.

‘I'm not going up there!’

‘Trust me. It's an awesome experience.’

‘I don't do heights.’

‘Heights and beaches?’ He looked at her and then, as he looked away, across to the other side he slipped his arm around her shoulder. And after a loaded pause, he turned his head towards hers, leaning in closer. Their eyes locked. And Tess wondered and wondered. And wondered if she should be doing – something – too. And then he stopped and instead, he turned his gaze out to the river and he cleared his throat.

‘I'd hold your hand,’ he said.

It was as if a kiss hung in the air, floating above the water, left suspended like the cradle of the Transporter Bridge was suspended over the River Tees. And Joe and Tess had to climb back into the car and drive off the cradle and onto firm ground and head back home. At that time of night, it was only fifteen minutes back to Saltburn. As they turned into the drive, Tess thought back to the Transporter, calculating that the bridge would be cranking into action again one last time that night, transporting dreams across the water.

She carries Em to her cot and the baby doesn't wake. And she stands, in the soft glow of the night-light, wondering what she's meant to do now. Did he really mean to kiss her? Or was he coming in close so the sounds of the bridge and the wind wouldn't take his words away? But there was his arm around her shoulder too. It might not have been a kiss in the conventional sense but it had equal impact. And he said, trust me. And how she hopes she can.

Go down, Tess! He's going tomorrow; grab him with both hands like an opportunity you have to prevent slipping away to France. Tell him you hate heights and beaches because they both terrify you. Ask him to hold your hand as you tell him the reasons why.

‘Tess?’

Tell him.

‘Yes?’

‘Fancy a nightcap?’

She peers over the banister and he's looking up from the hallway.

‘Cup of tea?’ he suggests instead because the notion of a nightcap should never necessitate such a pause.

‘OK,’ she says. But when it's brewed she doesn't go downstairs and he waits awhile before bringing it up, halfway. They stand there, awkwardly.

‘Thanks,’ she says, ‘for the tea and the Transporter.’

‘I wish I could show you the Milau,’ Joe says.

‘Maybe when you're back,’ Tess says.

He laughs. ‘It's in France.’

Tess feels embarrassed. ‘Oh.’

France. France tomorrow. Tonight I almost kissed her.

‘Anyway –’

‘– anyway.’

And he knows he could take a step up towards her. He could kiss her then. Or he could reach up for her hand from where he's standing now. But there's a mug of hot tea between them and, over and above that, there's the look of startled faun about her now. The moment has passed. There's a flatness – just as her hair is now lank against her head, curtaining her expression, whereas on the bridge, it was buffeted away from her face revealing the dark sparkle in her eyes.

‘Well – night, then, Tess,’

‘Goodnight Joe.’

‘Thanks for –’

‘Thanks for finding a miracle cure for Em.’

He'd gone before she was up. Crept out earlier than he needed to. He'd slept badly; fretful dreams vexing him. He woke deciding it was crazy to have feelings for Tess. Absolute madness. For a start, he didn't know when he'd be back, when he'd have to go again. And anyway, he didn't know how long she'd stay either. And though she'd arrived with hardly anything visible to her name, he sensed she brought a lot of hidden baggage with her. And if she added hers to all of his, there wouldn't be room enough in the house for much else.

Gone to France. Will call. Take care. Joe