Читать книгу A Pure Clear Light - Madeleine John St. - Страница 22

‘Could I just ring for a cab?’ said Gillian.

‘Oh, look,’ said Simon, ‘I can give you a lift. Where do you live?’

‘Oh, that would be awfully good of you,’ she replied. ‘Bayswater, actually. But look, not if it’s out of your way, really.’

‘No,’ said Simon, ‘not a bit. Not at all. Truly.’

‘It isn’t,’ said Sarah. ‘Simon lives in Hammersmith.’

‘Oh, I see,’ said Gillian. ‘Well, in that case –’

So here they were, getting into the tiny car. ‘My other car’s a Volvo,’ said Simon. ‘Estate.’

‘Naturally,’ said Gillian Selkirk lightly.

They drove in silence all the way to Bayswater, through the streaming Friday night traffic: Simon did not dare to speak, and she seemed not to wish, or to need to. She was painfully close: he could have reached out and put a hand on her knee so easily that it was extremely difficult not to. As they approached Queensway she gave him some directions and after following them he found himself outside a block of mansion flats. ‘Here we are,’ she said. ‘Home sweet home.’ There was something ironical in her tone. Did anyone else live there? Was she expected – with anxiety, with longing? ‘My cat will be starving,’ she said.

‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Poor puss.’

She unfastened her seat belt. ‘Well, thanks so much,’ she said.

‘My pleasure,’ said Simon. Dear God, was this absolutely all? Suddenly she leaned over and – just perceptibly – kissed his cheek.

‘Why don’t you give me a ring sometime?’ she said.

Simon was stunned. Had this really happened? He sat there like an idiot watching her cross the pavement and put the key in the lock. As she unfastened it she turned slightly and briefly waved to him and then she pushed open the door and vanished. Simon still sat, staring at the closing door, the empty pavement, the rearing red-brick façade of the mansion block. Beyond the awful desire he felt for this woman – this unlikely, unforeseen, almost frightening woman – there seemed to yawn a black abyss: but why this should be so he could not begin to understand. But these things happen, he told himself; it’s not as if she’s the first woman I’ve fancied, since I became a married man. There must have been countless others. And I can’t now remember even one of them.