Forbidden (6 page)

He had chosen to take over the family farm, to live in Easthampton where he was born. He had not married for passion or for love. Those were the things he had had with Amy, the things she had run away from. No, he had married on the rebound from those things and had settled for a beautiful, quiet woman who wanted the same things he did. He married the girl next door and they had a wonderful life together, raising their children and being a family of substance in a small, chic, Long Island town. They were the plain-folk friends of their more famed neighbours from New York City. Among those far more sophisticated and creative writers and artists, they functioned as sometime patrons and full-time examples of stability. Peter saw himself during Amy’s luncheon as not quite but almost a boring fellow in Amy Ross’s world.

But Peter Smith was truly a man content with the life he had made and with himself. And so he felt not insecure in the company he was keeping, just different from them. He didn’t mind being ordinary, it had always suited him. But being honourable and ordinary had also lost him Amy.

It was over coffee when he was standing next to the fire with her and they were talking about the tragedy of
the former Yugoslavia: the heartbreak that would never be mended, man’s inhumanity to man. There was something in her voice, a light in her eyes … He was amazed as it came to him like a bolt of lightning: he still loved her, still wanted an erotic life with her. Their differences were the same as they had always been, yet even after all these years they didn’t affect how he felt about her, not one bit.

Once that flash of awareness had struck him, Pete’s attention lapsed. The realisation truly stunned him. He was a man no longer looking for love. As for the erotic, an uncomplicated sex life was easy to achieve in Easthampton or New York City. He was, after all, a most eligible man.

His wife’s illness had been long and incredibly painful; years of nursing her, watching this woman who had never in her life harmed a living soul waste away, had taken a toll on him. He intended never to marry again. Until now, the moment when he gazed into Amy’s eyes and faced the truth: she had always been the woman he’d wanted to marry and build a life with. He had always wanted to love and care for her so that she could have everything she wanted in life. And, God help him, he still did. He only heard her words when she touched his arm and asked, ‘Peter, are you all right?’

It seemed to snap him back to reality. ‘Just a little too much wine, I think. I’ll step outside for a breath of fresh air. That will revive me.’

Amy watched him walk away from her. She didn’t much like that. She could not remember the last time she’d felt so good about a man. All through lunch she’d
stolen glances across the table at him. She wanted him, thought how nice it would feel to be wrapped in his arms, all the warmth and strength of character he possessed enfolding her. How safe she would be with him. He had been a formidable lover in their youth, would he be less than that in his middle age? A strange question for a woman content with celibacy, and who no longer had much interest in sex. She very nearly laughed but instead distracted herself from thoughts of him by paying attention to her other guests.

It didn’t work. He remained on her mind. Amy knew he was lying, it had not been the drink. She waited for several minutes before she followed him. He was standing by the river, pensively smoking a Havana cigar. She walked up behind him and slipped her arms round his waist. She would not embarrass him and force the issue. Instead she asked, ‘Feeling better?’

He sighed. The warmth of her body against his felt so right, so good. He clasped her hands in one of his and held them there. Without turning to face her, he told her, ‘It has really been wonderful, sheer magic, to see you again. A visit I will always remember.’

He was relegating her to the past, she could understand that. A chance meeting of two old lovers, she really didn’t expect more, and yet she was somehow sorry. Was he? Amy released herself and moved round to face him. She was smiling, and her smile brought one to his lips. ‘That’s good since the day isn’t even over. I’m going to take us all on a trip upriver to a place for tea. Would you like that?’

‘Very much. Does
Arcadia
sail as well as she looks?’

‘Better. Peter?’

‘Everyone else calls me Pete. I’d forgotten you never did like abbreviated names.’

She ignored that, and though she hadn’t intended to say anything, asked, ‘It wasn’t the wine, was it?’

He hesitated but then answered, ‘No.’

‘It was me.’

‘No, it was us. Will you settle for that?’

‘If you’ll answer one more thing. Us past or us now in the present?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘It could, and I think we both know that.’

He answered by placing an arm around her. They smiled at each other and Amy had her answer.

There was something there for them both. Was it gratitude? The excitement of discovering each other again, and nothing more? Time. Each of them needed time to adjust to the possibility of love entering their lives, with each other or anyone else. For they might after all be nothing more than catalysts in each other’s lives.

For Amy the day seemed more special, more glorious. They boarded
Arcadia
and she busied herself making ready for their trip up the Thames. Pete watched with admiration as
Arcadia
began building up a head of steam.

Those were the last moments that Pete and Amy would have together that wonderful day because when Amy gave the three blasts of
Arcadia
’s horn that would
summon her other guests they came down the lawn with four of Pete’s children who had arrived several minutes before. It would be chillier on the river, though the sun was still high in the sky. Thanks to Tillie, the party arrived from the house with a variety of shawls, jackets, woolly jumpers, and hats together with the box of chocolates that Pete had brought, a bottle of Kirsch, and a basket of small-stemmed crystal glasses.

Pete’s children were enchanted by Amy’s house and lifestyle. Half an hour later, chugging along on the river, they were equally enchanted by Amy herself. The luncheon party seemed to shift immediately into a higher gear with the arrival of the Smith children. Handsome and beautiful young people, intelligent and with a zest for life, they donned some of the warm clothes as did Amy’s other guests. Everyone looked at everyone else, and under Amanda’s direction exchanged hats and shawls or jackets as if they were dressing for a play or a costume party. There was a great deal of laughter. The chocolates and the bottle of Kirsch were constantly passed round.

‘So, this is high jinks on the Thames,’ said Edward, enjoying himself enormously.

Several people walking their dogs along the river bank smiled and waved at
Arcadia
. ‘What a grand sight it must be, seeing this sixty-foot vintage boat and a jolly party like us in full steam going up the river,’ said Cosima.

Tom, Pete’s twenty-five-year-old son, said, ‘Why do I keep thinking of
Ship of Fools?
That assortment of
strangers on a boat sailing to their destinies. Or
Fitzcarraldo
. That wonderful boat plying the river or being pulled through the jungle to bring opera to the natives. Wonderful films.’

‘Tom’s a documentary film maker, but he’ll end up another Jean-Luc Godard. He has a flair for the dramatic and the fantastical,’ offered Pete.

‘We can’t all be farmers, Dad.’ And Tom punched him playfully on the arm, then placed his arm round his father’s shoulders. ‘Besides, look at us. Could we not be some comic opera of our time?
And
we have a genuine opera star with us.’

‘And a record producer,’ interjected Dick Whately.

At that moment Cosima stood up in the boat and began to sing a few lines of an aria from
The Flying Dutchman
. Her voice rose above the sound of the engine that somehow added drama to the aria and conjured up visions of the ghostly clipper ship: broken masts and sails shredded from the winds, sailing through a swirl of dense fog on a sea smooth and calm as a lake. For a moment as she sang, something mysterious from the netherworld settled over
Arcadia
and her passengers. Everyone on board was transfixed by Cosima’s glorious voice, the drama she evoked. She stopped singing as suddenly as she’d begun, and smiled at them. She tore the black, wide-brimmed felt hat with its clutch of white ostrich feathers attached to a crimson satin band from her head, and with a grand flourish made her bow and jumped down from the bench where she had been standing. There was applause, shrill whistles, and calls for more, more!

And there was more, but no more Wagner, and not just from Cosima. Dick told them briefly about the river and Jerome K. Jerome’s story of
Three Men in a Boat
. Edward hummed a duet with Amanda, the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Submarine’. Josh, Pete’s youngest child, gave his rendition of ‘Old Man River’, but was heckled after only several lines into silence and a sulk which vanished after he had been fed several chocolates by Cosima and Amanda. Fred, another son, who was the image of his father, and clearly as besotted by Amy as his brothers and sister, asked what the river had been like in Henry VIII’s time. She entertained them with a history of what life on this stretch of the Thames was like in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries until they pulled up to a dock to have a sumptuous hotel tea: bite-sized cucumber sandwiches that melted on the tongue, rich tea cakes, scones and clotted cream topped by dollops of strawberry preserve, and slices of chocolate mousse seven-layer cake were served at the small inn that had stood on the river for two hundred years.

On the way downriver towards home they stopped off at the Whatelys’ because everyone was having too good a time to stop partying. Edward vanished with Dick and Amy for a tour of the Bacon paintings and was quite overwhelmed by the collection and that Dick had bought his first five direct from the artist for a thousand pounds and a case of champagne each, his last painting from a dealer for nine hundred and fifty thousand pounds and no champagne, merely a night on the tiles with Francis in celebration. The Whatelys had a collection of enormous
importance and value, Bacons of extraordinary quality that Dick intended to keep as private as possible and at home. A frustrated Edward, who had hoped to get him to lend some of the paintings to a travelling exhibition of Bacon’s work which he was organising, was silenced once and for all when Dick told him, ‘I don’t give a flying fuck about their value! I bought them because I like them, enjoy every minute of them. I feel about them the same way my mother feels about the antimacassars on her chairs. It wouldn’t be home without them.’ Amy could barely hide the smile on her lips. Edward had been told. Dick had been warned of Edward’s intentions and was playing with him adroitly.

Dick walked away from Edward, himself barely able to keep the smile off his face. He did so like playing the Geordie boy made good! ‘Have a look at this, Cosima, and then we’ll have a sing-song. I have a couple of friends with voices who are neighbours. I’ll give them a call, and how about you all staying on for dinner?’

Dick tossed her a score, Leonard Bernstein’s
West Side Story
, and added, ‘There should be one or two things in there that would suit your voice.’

It was gone two o’clock in the morning when the lanterns were lit on
Arcadia
, and Edward, the Smith clan and Amy pushed off and down the river towards home. The lantern on her dock was twinkling in the night, cold now but with a sky bright with stars and a harvest moon, only a hint of a mist on the water. They steamed towards it, a happy band of revellers.

Once in the house and warmed by the fire, the party
was quite suddenly over. It was time for sleep and the new day that was fast coming upon them. Amy offered to put them all up for the night in one fashion or another, Edward offered a ride to London if they could all squash into his BMW. Finally they decided they would all go to London, Amy driving and taking with her Pete and two of the boys, Edward the others.

Once Amy reversed the Lagonda Rapide out of the garage and tied the white scarf over her hair, she had to laugh. The Smith clan were all standing there, silent and agape. It was the final straw. She had won them over hands down. Only her laughter broke the spell the sight of the car cast upon them. What seemed like a hundred questions about the Lagonda later, they were all settled and on their way. It was a short and easy run to London at that hour.

Standing under the canopy of Claridge’s, surrounded by the Smiths, being hugged and kissed and begged by each of them in turn to come to Easthampton for a visit, only then did Amy think, They might have been
our
children. I might have lived a whole lifetime in the bosom of this family instead of one night. It was a quick glimpse of what might have been, no more. It hurt for only a second then the pain was gone. Amy Ross did not believe in what might have been.

It was Cosima Smith, Pete’s lovely daughter, who, when she kissed Amy on the cheek, whispered, ‘You’ve made Pa really happy. We’ve never seen him like he was today. Thanks.’

They were all there when it was time for Amy to say
goodbye to Peter. She took him by the hands and told him, ‘You have a wonderful family, it’s been a privilege to meet them.’

‘I’m a lucky man.’

‘Yes, you are.’

‘It’s been a memorable day, one I’m sure we’ll all be talking about for a long time.’

‘And for me. I’m so pleased you remembered my laugh and came to say hello.’

‘Then let’s not say goodbye.’ He could say no more. His children were watching, the timing was wrong.

With that he walked Amy to her car and helped her in. She started the engine. One last look at Pete. She half expected him to say something, she wanted him to, something intimate, something with hope in it. He said nothing. Instead, he placed his large strong hand over hers now clasping the steering wheel and squeezed it, and she knew why he was saying nothing.

‘It’s up to me, isn’t it?’

She smiled at him and he smiled back and removed his hand. He stood away from the car.