Читать книгу Garden of Stars: A gripping novel of hope, family and love across the ages - Rose Alexander - Страница 15

5

Portugal, 2010

Horror seared through Sarah’s body, momentarily freezing the blood in her veins. Surely it wasn’t Scott, surely the moment they met again after twenty years wasn’t going to be when she was soaking wet, hair bedraggled, wearing a tatty old swimming costume and no make-up?

But she knew that it was him. She would recognise that voice anywhere. And he clearly had not forgotten her.

She opened her eyes, blinking the water out of them. She was so embarrassed at the circumstances that she could hardly bear to look up, but when she did there he was, right in front of her, impossible to avoid.

“Scott! How amazing,” she stuttered, her teeth suddenly beginning to chatter violently.

Just act normal, she admonished herself. Just behave as if it’s an everyday occurrence to meet an ex-lover, the love of your life, when you’re in a swimming pool in Lisbon.

She pulled herself out of the water.

“I got your email – I was on my way back to my room and I was going to reply to you there. I just cannot believe it!” Scott’s incredulity was apparent in his voice and his delight-crinkled eyes.

Sarah was standing up now, acutely aware of her hair strewn everywhere, and of her faded, baggy swimsuit with the sagging elastic. If only she’d packed a decent one, she thought, before remembering that she didn’t have any other costume, it was so long since it had seemed to matter what she wore to go swimming.

She studied Scott’s face discreetly. There were the beginnings of slight bags under his eyes, and shallow lines across the brow that she remembered as flawless and smooth. He was fatter, but still looked fit, and his hair was the same honey brown and thick as it had ever been, his skin still the colour of a smooth hazelnut shell. His dull, charcoal grey business suit in no way masked the sex appeal he had always carried so easily. Above all, he was unmistakably Scott Calvin.

“Look at you. You look amazing.” His voice brimmed over with gladness and enthusiasm. “Absolutely amazing!”

The idea was so ridiculous that she couldn’t help but smile. He moved towards her, made a half-gesture to hug her, then faltered, registering the fact that she was soaking wet.

“Yes, I wouldn’t come too close,” she laughed, a high-pitched, nervous laugh. “You look far too smart in that suit, and I’m sure it’s dry clean only.”

His eyes danced in the old familiar way, and her stomach lurched. “So how come, Sarah? Why here? Why now?”

Bashfulness descended on her once again. “I…I’m… I’m writing an article for a newspaper,” she managed to stutter. She bit her lip, took a breath and started again. “It’s about cork. And yourself? You’re here for the conference, obviously.” She answered her own question without giving him a chance to.

“Yes that’s right. It’s an annual event, attendance compulsory…” His words tailed away as he looked at her again, his feigned grimace turning to a complicit grin that was so well known, so intimate that she was instantly nineteen again, utterly bewitched by a boyfriend more glamorous, attractive, desired and desirable than she had ever imagined possible.

“It didn’t go down too well at home – with Celina – but work is work.”

A sudden small, fizzing twist of pain knotted in her belly as he said his wife’s name.

There was an awkward pause, the conversation frozen mid-stream.

“I…”

“You…”

They both spoke, and stopped, simultaneously.

“It’s such a coincidence.” Scott’s voice was soft and low, almost as if he were talking to himself. “I could never have imagined it.”

Sarah felt droplets of pool water gathering on her forehead and wiped her hand across her face to dispel them.

“Well, you know what they say.” Her words were glib and meaningless, blurted out to cover her confusion. “It’s a small world.”

A breeze had come up now that the sun had disappeared behind the rooflines; it ruffled the surface of the pool, causing ripples to spread in ever widening circles.

“Yes.”

The breeze grew stronger. Sarah shuddered.

“Hey, you’re getting cold.” Scott hesitated, surveyed the loungers for a towel, saw one a few steps away and went to get it, clumsily tripping over the base of a table as he did so.

“Careful,” exclaimed Sarah, involuntarily, and then clamped her mouth shut, wishing she hadn’t drawn attention to his mishap.

He was smiling widely as he returned to her side with the neatly rolled towel. “My feet always were too big. Always getting in the way.”

Another wisp of wind brought a change of atmosphere that lingered in its wake. Scott unfurled the towel and shook it out. “Nothing’s changed.”

Oh, but it has, Scott, Sarah wanted to cry out. So much has changed, in ways we could never have imagined. Apart from anything else, we’ve both grown up – and not together, which is what I dreamt of, once.

Scott wrapped the towel around her shoulders, deftly and surely, and as he did so, his face passed close to hers and briefly, their eyes met. Sarah had a sudden, ridiculous urge to grab him, hug him, kiss him. To feel his lips on hers, to taste him. As if in some unconscious attempt to stop herself, she stepped backwards, nearly falling into the pool as she did so. His arm went out, instinctively, to save her. His touch on her wrist was firm, his support solid.

Just as it had been on the night they first met, at one of those African dance and music clubs where the uneven floors were sticky with spilt drinks and covert drug deals took place in darkened corners. Raw energy mingled with undercurrents of tension between the people of many cultures who gathered there, not just Portuguese but Angolan, Brazilian, Goanese. Some came from places that Sarah had never heard of before; Soviet sponsored students from Guinea-Bissau with tins of caviar in their plastic holdalls, young men from São Tomé with glassy dark skin and smiles so wide it seemed their faces might split apart.

She had spotted Scott early on that Friday night. Their first glance was fleeting, rippling like electricity along the zinc bar, cutting through the crowd and going straight to its target. But in just that split second, she had known. They both had.

“Watch out!” His voice, so familiar, a voice from her past that was suddenly, unbelievably, also in her present. “You don’t want to go for another dip.”

The memories faded away.

“No, no I don’t,” she agreed, and giggled unnecessarily. There was a pause. “Still, you’re a qualified lifeguard aren’t you?” ventured Sarah, to break the silence. “I’d be in good hands if I needed rescuing.”

“You’re right.” Scott shrugged dismissively. “But I haven’t practised those particular skills for a long time.”

“Oh well. Concentrating on other talents, I suppose…” Sarah’s attempts to deal with this bizarre situation seemed, horrifyingly, to have led her now to flirt, despite being aware that she must look ridiculous; dripping wet, shivering, shabby old swimsuit doing its best to follow gravity downwards, towel drooping around her.

She attempted to pull herself together. “I need to… I mean, I ought to…get dressed. You know. Have a shower and sort myself out.”

The wind died down and everything lay still. Their eyes met again. Instantaneously, Sarah flicked hers away.

“So um, er, bye then…” she stuttered. To bring the encounter to an end suddenly seemed imperative, urgent.

“I’ll probably…”

“I wondered if you wanted to…”

They were talking over each other again, their words flying out in all directions…. Sarah stopped. And Scott began again, and was asking her to meet in the bar for a drink a bit later, if she had the time, which of course she might not…but just on the off-chance.

“That would be lovely,” she replied, cutting across him, speaking too quickly and too loudly. “I…”

“Great,” he said, interrupting her in turn. “A quick one in about half an hour or so?”

Sarah laughed, slightly hysterically. “Oh yes, and the drink.” Then immediately stopped, once again cursing herself for her propensity to speak before thinking. She tweaked the ends of the towel closer around her body as a distraction.

Then looked up and saw that he was grinning, a broad, delighted, encouraging grin which turned into an enveloping bellow of laughter.

“The old ones are always the best.” Sarah gurned at him wickedly, before turning away, trying to look nonchalant. The whole situation was too absurd to be taken seriously.

“Eight o’clock, then,” Scott called after her. “Don’t be late!”

“I won’t,” she called back over her shoulder, sensing his eyes still upon her. And then rounded a corner and ran, as fast as the too-large hotel slippers would let her, tearing through the immaculate gardens on winding paths, racing along the corridors to her room, flinging the door open and finally falling onto her bed and burying her face in the pillow, not sure whether to laugh or cry or both.

Scott Calvin was here. They had not met for twenty years and now they were meeting for a casual drink in less than an hour. What on earth was going on?

She ran the hottest bath she could get into, took more wine from the mini bar and lay back to soak. He had been thinking of her. What did that mean?

Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just what people say. He’s just being polite. It doesn’t mean anything.

She let herself slowly sink under the water until she was fully immersed, only her knees breaking the surface. But she couldn’t wash away the thoughts of him, the vision of him standing by the poolside, offering her the towel with his large, capable hands. Couldn’t stop herself remembering how strong those hands were, how deft and dextrous. How good it felt to be held by them, touched by them.

She stayed in the bath until long after the steam had ceased to rise and the bubbles had settled to a thin film on the water’s surface. When she got out, she realised that she had left her bath sheet outside and come back with the much smaller pool towel. The one that he had got for her, had wrapped her in, so gently. She held it up to her nostrils and inhaled, wondering if on it she would find the distinctive smell of him that had lived for so long in her memory.

But the towel released only the faintly clinical aroma of the industrial laundry, mingled with a hint of chlorine.

The hotel’s really nice! she typed in a text to Hugo. I’m fine but tired. Amazing coincidence – I’ve met someone here I know! Scott Calvin! I’m sure I’ve mentioned him before. I’m going to have a quick drink with him, for old time’s sake. I’ll give you an update later! xxx

She sent the message. Then she read it again and cringed at the amount of exclamation marks. Just one brief encounter and she had lost the ability to write coherently. But surely, errant punctuation or no, it was better to be open and upfront about this chance reunion from the off, otherwise it might look as if she had something to hide.

Which she didn’t. Obviously.

Approaching the lounge where the elegant and understated bar was located, Sarah found her terror had somewhat abated, and been replaced by a mild dose of butterflies.

You’re just having a drink with an acquaintance. Someone you used to know. Relax. Enjoy it.

She spotted him straightaway. He wasn’t reading a magazine or playing with his phone, trying to look cool, as if their meeting were nothing out of the ordinary. He was staring at the door, watching, waiting, whilst a pianist tinkled away at a grand piano in the corner and waitresses passed silkily by bearing trays of drinks and welcoming smiles. She stopped, momentarily concealed from view by a marble statuette of a flute-playing cherub. A wave of emotion assaulted her. She pretended to be looking in her bag, checking she had not forgotten her purse, just in case he saw her and wondered what on earth she was doing. It took a few moments for her to compose herself, to fight back the urge to cut and run.

But then the time for second thoughts had passed, as he had seen her and leapt to his feet with a cry of “Sarah!” He wove a tricky path between the occasional tables, armchairs and eighteenth-century love seats that littered the room and, finally arriving by her side, swept her up into a huge hug.

Letting her go, they stood for a brief second, both seeming at a loss for words. He led her back to where he had been sitting and gestured to the sofa. “Have a seat.”

She sat.

“You look great,” he said, as he placed himself beside her. He had shaved and he smelt discreetly of expensive aftershave, spicy and fresh. Laughter lines showed more clearly around his mouth, and now that she looked more closely, she could spot a hint of grey at his temples. These faint signs of maturity seemed more to increase his attractiveness than to lessen it.

“Thank you,” Sarah replied, still feeling childishly tongue-tied.

“What would you like to drink?” he asked. “I can recommend a really great white port they have here. Or perhaps you’d prefer wine, or a G&T?”

Sarah concentrated hard on making her voice sound nonchalant and calm. “I’ll have the white port, please. You were the one who introduced me to it and I still love it.”

She faltered, wondering if she had said too much, reached back too far into a past that was probably of such insignificance to him that he must surely have long forgotten the details. But somehow she was unable to stop. “Do you remember when you took me to the Port Wine Institute for the first time?”

The Institute had seemed to Sarah like a gentlemen’s club might have been in the 1920s; all wood-panelling, discreet hush and austere waiters. The names of the different ports sounded like types of cat – tawny, ruby, vintage, white – and the alcohol burnt down her throat, making her feel fuzzy and odd. When they left, exiting the huge wooden doors into the golden lamp-lit city, she had stumbled slightly on the uneven steps and clutched onto him to stop herself from falling. She had wanted to hold onto him forever.

“Sure I do.” Scott gestured to the waitress as he spoke. “I loved taking you to all those places. You appreciated everything so much.” He rearranged the coasters on the walnut table in front of them. “Easily impressed, weren’t you?”

Sarah frowned. Then the frown turned to a smile as she realised that he was teasing her. “I was.” She smirked bashfully. “And so in awe of you.”

They both laughed.

“So,” said Sarah, breezily. “Joking aside, where do we start? It’s been – what, twenty years? – after all.” She wasn’t sure why she felt it necessary to pretend that she couldn’t remember the exact length of time that had passed since they last saw each other. “You better tell me what you’ve been up to.”

The waitress was beside them, and Scott gave her their order. She went back to the bar and Sarah saw the barman selecting the bottle, uncorking it and pouring the delicate, yellow port into a pair of crystal glasses.

Scott ran his hand through his thick, unruly hair as he answered. “OK, condensed version, Scott Calvin’s life story. As you know, I went back to Vancouver…not long after….” He stopped abruptly, as if unsure how to continue, then seemed to collect himself.

“The twins were born in Canada; Celina wanted that.”

The pianist in the corner, who Sarah had almost forgotten was there, was playing more loudly now, crashing at the keys as the volume surged upwards, forcing Scott to raise his voice in competition. He glanced fleetingly in the piano’s direction and then resumed.

“Fast forward a year or two, we came back to Portugal, but not to Lisbon. Celina had had enough of city life so we found a place about thirty minutes’ drive away.” He paused, looking at Sarah to gauge her reaction. “Had enough yet?” he asked.

“Not at all,” replied Sarah. “I want a complete update, nothing left out!” It was true, almost.

The waitress returned with the drinks, nuts and olives. She placed the glasses carefully on the table, and the room was there before them, perfectly reflected in the clear, pale liquid. Sarah could see herself, and Scott, amongst the opulent velvet cushions and damask chair coverings.

“Well, I’ve more or less got to the end now. These days, I’m doing a lot of travelling, but from now on I’ll be based in Canada. Celina and the kids have moved back already to prepare for their freshman year. Katie – that’s my daughter – will be crossing the border soon, heading for Harvard. My son Louis has a place at the university in Montreal. That’s it. That’s what’s happened since you’ve been gone.”

The adagio reached its crescendo, and ended, the last chords humming gradually into silence.

“Wow,” Sarah said, instantly aware of how banal she must sound. There was too much information in what Scott had said, about his wife and family, about their return, on what seemed to be a permanent basis, to Vancouver. Let alone his final comment: since you’ve been gone.

“Saúde.” Scott chinked his glass on hers, seemingly unconcerned by her linguistic vapidity.

The pianist began to play again, a different piece. Sarah recognised the theme tune from Dr Zhivago. She picked up her glass and swirled it around, letting the port coat the inside of the glass and then slide slowly downwards. She raised it to her lips and drank, a healthy slug. It helped to dispel the lump that was forming in her throat.

“So,” she said, injecting her voice with a forced lightness. “You are the original cosmopolitan family, não é? Canada, Portugal, the States…”

“That’s one word for it. Rootless could be another!”

“I think it sounds great,” she responded, thoughtfully. “I never anticipated settling in my home country. After living here, I thought I’d be far more adventurous than that, imagined I’d find some far-flung corner of the globe to call my own. I can’t believe I’ve been so ordinary, so predictable.” She sighed. “Funny how things turn out, isn’t it?”

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Sarah wondered if Scott was thinking what she was thinking.

He cast a glance at the clock on the wall. “Sarah, I’m so sorry, I want to hear all about you, too.” His voice seemed very loud as it broke their silence. “But it might have to wait for a bit.”

She nodded, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture that indicated it was really of no consequence.

“I’ve got to meet some colleagues in the restaurant for dinner; it was too short notice to cancel,” he went on. There was the tiniest hesitation and then he said, “You’ll come, won’t you?”

The invitation took Sarah by surprise. But Scott was already standing, his expectant expression exhorting her to join him. Surely no harm could come of a dinner with plenty of chaperones?

As they left the bar, Sarah recollected why the piece the pianist was now playing was so familiar. It was the sound of the ice-cream van that used to wait outside her primary school, selling bubble gum lollies that made your tongue turn blue and synthetic white ice cream with or without a flake. The theme tune of Dr Zhivago rattling out endlessly from the van’s ancient speakers, day after day, too slowly and out of key, symbolised summer. Inês, who often picked her up from school to help her mother out, had always let Sarah choose a treat. Over thirty years later, Sarah could suddenly taste the intense sugar-sweetness that, as a child, had brought her such pleasure.

The music faded gradually away as Scott took her towards a side door in the main atrium that she had not noticed before. It led into a corridor with plain white walls and well-worn stone slabs underfoot, brightly lit by bare bulbs. He grinned at her as they entered.

“Shortcut to the dining room. Bit cheeky…I think it’s probably supposed to be a service passage just for the staff. But nobody’s ever told me not to use it, and,” he shrugged in a way that seemed suddenly so familiar to Sarah that she shivered, involuntarily, “when it’s the quickest way to food – what’s a man to do?”

She sniggered and looked guiltily around her, enjoying this minute disobedience. Scott had always liked to break the rules. The eyes of the diners already enjoying their meals turned towards them as they entered. Towards Scott, and Sarah, who felt herself walk taller and more confidently at his side. Together, they had always seemed more than the sum of their parts.

It was amazing how little difference twenty years could make.