Ellie's Return (19 page)

Thirty-Three

“Why this place, have you been here
before?” asked Tom.

The Maîtres’d certainly seemed to know
her, he was very attentive and all the waiters seemed more concerned with
watching her than doing what they were supposed to be doing. She was more
modestly attired tonight, but if anything she was more beautiful. Where before
she had been radiant, now she also radiated all the happiness that had been
missing.

“Just once, I was here last week.”

They sat down. The waiter handed a menu to
Ellie, then looked nervously at Tom and handed him a menu too. The Maîtres’d looked
approvingly at Tom, as though this was more like it. Tom had been out to buy a
shirt and jacket more befitting the climate, so he no longer looked like the
strange man. While he had been doing that, Ellie had taken Mara out for lunch
and filled her in on the events of the last week. Mara had listened and loved every
moment of it; there was no fretting about the disastrous parts of the story
because she could see that it had all ended well and that her friend was happy
and when Tom came back without his overcoat he did not look so strange, so it
seemed he was a good thing after all.

 
 
Tom and Ellie were starting again too.
They were starting over together and hoping to make up for lost time, or to make
the most of the time ahead of them. Neither one knew much about what the other
had been up to for the last three years, so there was all that, listening to
everything you did not know about a person you know so well, and the way they
get everything you were afraid nobody else would ever get. Neither one had
hoped or wished for anything more perfect to come back to them than what had
already been.

Ellie had assumed that Tom had lost
everything when she saw him. He had said he needed more time to salvage what he
could and she had insisted that he cut his losses. When he told her that his
fathers company had purchased the good properties and that eventually they
would pass to him or they would sell everything and invest in something else,
she could understand what he would have lost, and why he needed more time. Tom
knew that if Ellie had not come back when she did, if she had not both inspired
and forced him to act when he did, everything would have been lost anyway. He
was so far down a spiral that misery had become his daily habit, and she had
reminded him of what had been, of what could and should be. She had saved him
by making him realise that noble suffering was not enough, that you have to do
something to get to where you want to be, and here they were now, in a
beautiful restaurant in Venice, ordering the best champagne to toast their
future together. The waiter had looked nervous when Tom had ordered the
champagne, perhaps he thought they could not afford the best, but Tom was not
worried about money, he had secured his income for life and now he could focus
on Ellie and their future together. They were young enough to start again.

Ellie asked him if he had any regrets.

He did not. He had seen the ugliness of
Lola’s soul, her complete lack of desire to do anything right for anybody.
There was no kind word, or thought or action for anybody that was not driven by
a selfish and greedy motive, so there was no instinctive kindness at all. She
had tricked her way into his confidence, and tricked Ellie out of his life. She
would get back on top, he did not doubt that, but she was gone from their
lives; it was all they needed to know. How could he explain it?

“You know, when somebody has treated you
badly and you want to move on and get past that in your life but you don’t want
to be burdened with wishing you had said or done something, and you don’t want
to feel that you had been their victim at the end?”

The waiter was standing by with the
champagne, looking nervously at Tom. Ellie understood. She was watching the
waiter, watching Tom. She was not expecting that just as the cork popped Tom
would exclaim the word “Now!” in isolation. The waiter had already worked
himself into a state of anticipation about what might happen this time when
Ellie ordered champagne so he was already quite shaken, and when Tom exclaimed
he nearly fell forward, dropping and clutching the bottle. He seemed relived
when he looked up and Tom was looking amused at him, wondering why he was so tense.
He had reached out for Ellie’s glass as though it was about to fall over. The
waiter had looked down at the glass and smiled knowingly at Tom and filled the
glasses, and then made off, trying to make it look as though nothing had
happened.

“He’s a nervous chap,” said Tom. “Now
then, you ran off rather quickly in the hotel. I was hoping we would have
longer to talk. There is still a lot to decide. Where will we live, what will
we do? I have my own ideas of course but …”

“I know,” interrupted Ellie. “Small steps,
right?”

“Of course not, look where small steps
have got us. It will be dirty great steps from now on, with the occasional
backward lurch if we really mess up, but we will be together. That’s the first
big step”.

He lifted his glass to her, and she lifted
hers. There was something in the glass.

“Where did that come from?” she asked
incredulously.

“I went out the other morning, looking for
something to buy you. I couldn’t think of anything you might like, other than
an engagement ring.’

‘But the ring, in the champagne glass, in
the restaurant, it’s so…”

“Corny, I know. You dropped so many hints
in the past about that being the worst way to propose.”

“I always thought it would be nice to have
a story!”

“We most definitely have a story. This way
I will know if you really want me, too.”

“You know I want you, Tom Tatton,”said
Ellie.