In a Good Light (3 page)

Elaine finds my lack of ambition hard to understand. It's another area of my life she'd be keen to tackle if I let her. A fortnight ago she brought in one of those career profiling questionnaires designed for school-leavers. She had come out as an ideal headmistress or prison officer, so I couldn't fault its acuity. I filled it in later when she'd gone and it turned out I was a born librarian, which depressed me. I must have overplayed the stuff about working on my own and liking peace and quiet. Another complaint Elaine levels against my choice of job is that it gives me no time for a social life. This is unfair: Rowena's
is
my social life. Without it I wouldn't have one at all. There's Rowena herself, the chefs – who are generally young and male and never last more than six months – and the other waitresses, mainly students of nineteen or twenty, for whom the six to twelve shift is just a warm-up to a night of drinking and clubbing and shagging, if their conversation is to be believed. I'm occasionally invited on these raids, but never go. They are desperate to show me a good time. Poor Esther, stuck at home with her crippled brother, they think, when
I cry off, yet again. All this pity and sympathy are entirely undeserved. There's no need for me to hurry back to Christian, who is well looked after. And if I want a date the restaurant is as good a place as any to meet men: people who are out for a meal are usually relaxed, in a good mood and ready to have fun, and the atmosphere at Rowena's seems to be conducive to flirtation. It's very different from the Grill Rooms, where the pounding rock music, and the whoops from the Tequila Slammer girl, not to mention my earplugs, made conversation all but impossible. I've met a few blokes that way, in the line of duty, though I never took any back home. Then for the last four years there's been Geoff.

Again, it's not a conventional arrangement, but it suits us remarkably well. Round about my thirtieth birthday I went through a low period. I couldn't seem to work up much enthusiasm for anything; I was trying a new style of painting and it wasn't going well; I found myself crying a lot for no particular reason. There was a bleakness about everything. Eventually I went to my GP but she was off on maternity leave so I saw the male doctor instead. Geoff. He was sympathetic and reassuring and let me ramble on for ages, well beyond my allotted time, so that every other appointment that day would be late. He looked about fifty, slightly overweight and absolutely not what you'd call good looking, but with a nice, interesting face. I noticed the pictures on his desk: a wedding photo, and a boy and a girl in their early teens, their smiles glittering with heavy-duty orthodontics. Anyway, at the end of our chat he prescribed me some mild anti-depressants and told me to come back two weeks later, or sooner if I felt bad.

It's annoyingly hackneyed, but I started to entertain
fantasies about him from that point. Not desperately ambitious ones: more romantic than erotic. He seemed so kind, so capable. I often find myself attracted to people who come to my aid in however humble a capacity: plumbers, AA men, the bloke from Dyno-rod. Perhaps gratitude is an aphrodisiac.

I went back to see him as arranged and we talked some more. He was interested to hear about my illustrating work, and my set-up with Christian, and wondered if my role as carer might be putting me under strain, so I was able to set him straight on that score. He offered to put me in touch with the community psychiatric nurse for a spot of counselling, but I didn't feel my case warranted it. I said just talking to him had made me feel better, and I would persevere with the tablets.

A few weeks after my last appointment, he came into the restaurant with another bloke. When I went to take his order he gave me a discreet nod of recognition, but I made the mistake of greeting him openly with a cheerful hello, just to let him know that I was in good spirits, which I was, now that I'd seen him. His friend immediately pounced on this. He was a coarse, boozy type, as unlike Geoff as could be imagined. ‘She one of your patients?' he said as I walked away. ‘Wouldn't mind getting her on the couch, heh heh.' I was suddenly conscious that in my black mini skirt and tight T-shirt I probably looked cheap and trashy, and cursed myself for having acknowledged him.

When I brought their food Geoff looked absolutely mortified and kept his eyes on his plate. His friend said, ‘Thanks, darling,' and made an infuriating clicking noise with his tongue, as though urging on a horse. I felt like clubbing
him over the head with the pepper grinder, but I just gave him a chilly glare instead.

He got progressively drunker and more lecherous as the evening progressed, and every time I approached the table he would come out with some innuendo while Geoff shifted about on his seat in agonies of embarrassment. It was hard to ignore now, as there were only a few remaining diners, and my relief when they finally paid (leaving a tip of exactly ten per cent) and left was immense.

Another twenty minutes had passed by the time I had finished clearing up and wiping down the tables, so when Rowena let me out of the now-locked front door I was completely taken aback and a little alarmed to see Geoff loitering in the shadows like an assassin. He was carrying a rolled golf umbrella, which he made no move to put up, even though a light drizzle was falling.

‘Esther!' he said, hurrying over, and I was flattered that he'd remembered, until it occurred to me that I'd been wearing my name-tag all evening. ‘I'm sorry about earlier.'

I glanced around in case his friend might still be lurking. ‘I've put him in a taxi,' he added, guessing my concern.

‘It's all right,' I said, congratulating myself on this unexpected reversal. I now had the power to reassure him.

‘It must have sounded as though we were discussing you. I promise that wasn't the case.'

‘I know.'

‘Everything that takes place in the consulting room is completely confidential. I'd be struck off if I . . .'

‘Don't worry. I shouldn't have said hello. It put you in an awkward position.'

‘It's not your fault at all. My friend is a male chauvinist
pig, especially when he's had a few.' The rain started to come down more heavily now, and he remembered the umbrella, which sprang open at the touch of a button. He held it over me so I was forced to take a step towards him to spare him an unnecessary drenching, and we stood, in awkward and unfamiliar proximity, blocking the narrow pavement so that passers-by were forced to step around us into the gutter. I glanced at my watch, a gesture that seemed to bring him up short.

‘I'm sorry,' he said. ‘It's late and I've made you even later. Can I give you a lift anywhere? I'm parked round the corner.'

I couldn't help laughing at such a recklessly unprovisional offer. ‘No. I live miles away. In Caterham. Near the surgery.' What I didn't say was that my own car was parked, like his, around the corner. Normally I would have considered this sort of feminine scheming to be beneath me, but I was intrigued to see just how far out of his way he would be prepared to go. It would give me an index of his concern.

‘Of course,' he nodded. ‘Obvious really.' And he started to walk in the direction of his car, so that I was obliged to do the same, drawn along by the overarching embrace of the umbrella. ‘It's not far from me,' he said. ‘Warlingham.' Even without a map I could work out that Caterham would represent a detour and I felt a quite immoderate surge of happiness, so that I had to bite my cheeks to suppress a smile.

His car, parked an immaculate three inches from the kerb, was a newish Rover saloon, smart but not flashy; the car of a professional man who isn't interested in cars and has nothing to prove. He opened my door first, a gesture
which made me think of my father, who always had perfect manners. The interior was clean, but not fanatically so, and equipped with sensible things like a fire extinguisher, blanket, ice scraper and another small umbrella with a Liberty print.

On the journey we talked about impersonal things: the health service, the election, but without committing ourselves to a particular political allegiance. At one point he said, ‘How would you have got home if I hadn't offered? Public transport's hopeless down this way,' and I wondered if he'd twigged.

I didn't want to compound my deceit with an outright lie, so I said, ‘Oh, I'd have managed.'

There was a tape protruding from the jaws of the cassette player, and I was dying to see what it was. I would have put money on it being Neil Diamond, or someone similar. It was all I could do to stop myself having a look, but presently Geoff said, ‘Do you want some music on?' and snapped the tape into place, filling the car with the unmistakable snare-and-treble sound of Oasis. Before I could register my surprise and approval he had shuddered and hit the eject button. ‘My son's,' he said by way of apology and went on to tune the radio until he hit on a wailing soprano, which was obviously more to his taste. ‘Do you know
Der Rosenkavalier
?' he asked, and I was forced to confess my brutish ignorance of opera and all other branches of classical music.

‘I never go myself any more,' he admitted. ‘I just sit slumped in front of the TV like everyone else.'

When we got close to home I asked him to drop me at the corner. Ours is a private road and it wasn't worth unlocking the gate for the sake of an extra fifty yards. As the rain
was still scything down he insisted I take his umbrella. I noticed he didn't offer me the ladies' one.

‘Well, thank you . . . Doctor,' I said, as I didn't know his first name at this stage, and he gave me an oblique smile and raised his eyebrows.

‘My pleasure,' he said. And although there hadn't been the shadow of any flirtation between us, I
knew
.

The next day at the restaurant there was a bouquet of yellow roses waiting for me. There was no card, so I was able to answer Rowena's inquisitive stare with unfeigned ignorance. The flowers lasted a week, but much longer as fuel for my daydreams. I still had the umbrella too. I'd kept hold of it deliberately to maintain that slender thread of connection between us: every time it rained he would think of me – though possibly with diminishing affection.

Then about a month after the flowers an envelope arrived for me at the restaurant. It contained one ticket to the Coliseum for a performance of
Der Rosenkavalier
, and no accompanying note, but its provenance was perfectly obvious.

He'd even gone to the trouble of discreetly obscuring the ticket price, an act of exorbitant courtesy, which again reminded me of Dad. Now and then I would take it out of my purse and be assailed by anxiety. Would he be waiting for me in the adjoining seat, or was it just a quirky gift from an opera-lover bent on converting the heathen? Was he, in fact, demented?

Right up until the very last moment I entertained the possibility that I might not go: after all I would have to change shifts with one of the other waitresses, and find something respectable to wear (but what?). Curiosity won of course, as I had always known it would, and the appointed
evening found me perfumed and painted, in a smart dress and uncomfortable shoes, standing in the bar, toying with a glass of orange juice that I was too sick with nerves to drink.

There was no sign of him there or in the foyer, so I went to my seat, which was in the dress circle, one in from the aisle, and made an attempt at reading the programme notes, losing the plot in about the second paragraph. I couldn't shake off the feeling that I was about to be exposed as an impostor and thrown out, that people could tell just from looking at me that I'd thought there was no Strauss but Johann.

I'd bought a big bag of wine gums at the station, in case he didn't turn up and the performance was boring, but I felt too inhibited to take them out of my handbag. All around me the auditorium was filling up, but the aisle seat remained unoccupied – oppressively so, it began to seem to me. Then the house lights dimmed and the orchestra began tuning up, and just as the first notes of the overture rose like balloons from the pit, he came down the steps, with silent, hasty tread, and slipped into the seat beside me, flinging his coat across his knees, and there was no chance to do more than exchange a quick nod until the end of the first act.

‘Aren't you taking a bit of a risk?' I said, as we fought our way back to the bar at the interval.

‘I suppose I am,' he replied. ‘It's completely out of character.' He had gone to the trouble of pre-ordering drinks to avoid the crush – it was what had made him fractionally late – and it took him a while to track them down: one red wine, one white.

‘You choose: I didn't know which you'd prefer.'

‘I can't drink alcohol at the moment,' I replied, and I
could see the light dawning even before I added, ‘not while I'm taking the tablets you prescribed.'

He looked appalled at his error. ‘I'm so sorry,' he said. ‘I wasn't thinking of you as a patient.'

‘Good,' I said. ‘Perhaps if I knew your name I could stop thinking of you as a doctor.'

That was how it began, with a curious mixture of impulsiveness and calculation. For an extra-marital affair it was incongruously restrained. It was weeks, for example, before we got around to making love, and even after that it was something that could only be infrequently achieved. Opportunity and location did not often present themselves. His house was out of the question. I wasn't completely comfortable with the idea of bringing him home for sex-in-the-afternoons with Christian in the next room. Although I had done the ethical thing and registered at a new practice, Geoff was still Christian's GP and I couldn't help feeling there was something questionable in the arrangement. Since Geoff's free time was mostly incompatible with mine the relationship had to be conducted to a large extent by telephone. Every fortnight he would make some work-related excuse for not being at home on a Wednesday night – my weeknight off – and we would meet up for a drink.