The Woman Who Knew What She Wanted (10 page)

‘Why not?' I said. ‘I've never given it a go.'

McKenny bought more champagne and swapped seats with Roland so that he could sit next to Annette. He was trying to work his way into Oliver's conversation with Annette, but he was having no luck. Oliver still had no idea that he was sitting opposite a rock god. In Oliver's eyes, McKenny was just this lusty old goat.

I saw Cally leave the pub. In her hand, she had a packet of cigarettes and a silver lighter. Even though this was long before the smoking ban, Cally loved the tranquillity of smoking outside. As she walked out, she looked at me and raised one elliptical eyebrow, as if to say, ‘What on earth are you doing with Ed McKenny?'

I went to the lavatory. I pressed my forehead against the tiles above the urinal. I liked the coolness and the quiet after the madness of the dining room.

From outside the window came a slight squeal. The sound was muffled. I ignored it.

I washed my hands and looked at myself in the mirror. Not bad, but certainly not great either. Just indifferent.

Back at the table, Roland was holding the fort.

‘Where are the others?' I asked.

‘Annette and Ed went out for a cigarette a while ago. Oliver's just followed them.'

I went outside. I couldn't see any of them. The horse was still tethered.

I walked around the side of the pub. It was dark with only a little light beaming out from one of the upper windows. I rounded the corner and the first thing I saw was Oliver's feet. He was lying on the ground. It took me a second to understand what I was looking at. He was out cold. I stooped down. He'd been hit on the head.

A noise. The sound of ripped fabric. I peered into the darkness. Several yards off, I could see something dark against the white wall.

I walked over, treading on the balls of my feet. Whatever was over by the wall was moving. The black outline was now quite clear against the white, but I still did not know what I was looking at. There was a short feminine shriek, cut off instantly, and I realised that it was McKenny. He had Annette up against the wall.

‘Stop that!' I ordered. Nothing happened and I rushed towards McKenny. I grabbed him by the waist and dragged him sideways.
I glimpsed Annette. Her ripped skirt was riding high round her waist and her white shirt was torn at the front.

McKenny rolled with me on the ground. He bounced back onto his feet and while I was still on the ground, he gave me a thundering kick to the stomach. He took a step back and then kicked me again in the guts, and I've been in fights before but I have never been so comprehensively bested. Two kicks and I was finished. I could barely breathe. I lay curled up in a ball. I couldn't say a word. But even if I could have spoken, I would not have known what to say.

Annette made to move away, but McKenny caught her easily by the wrist and held her.

He looked at me, very cool, and shook his head. The old lion had seen off the young pretender. His belt was unbuckled and his fly buttons undone. He shook his head. ‘No hard feelings, kid?'

I still couldn't speak, but I did what I could and I gave him the finger. He laughed and turned to Annette.

McKenny had his arm round Annette's waist, and I don't know what he was planning to do next. Suddenly, there was a blur of movement. Against the whiteness of the wall there was something moving very fast. I saw a flash of lightness and then this soaring leap and McKenny's head was jerking to the side, as Cally delivered a flying kick to the side of his face. He toppled to the ground. Cally landed on her feet and stood over him, very light on her feet. She was ready for anything. But McKenny was out for the count. A trail of blood oozed from his lips, some of his teeth were broken.

Cally was helping Annette. She tugged Annette's skirt back down over her hips and helped do up her jacket. She gave Annette a hug. The girl was in tears. I got to my feet. My ribs were tender.

Cally turned and looked at me. ‘You'll live,' she said.

We had a last look at McKenny. He was still unconscious. ‘Useless piece of shit,' Cally said. ‘I've half a mind to geld him.'

‘Should we call the police?' I said. ‘Or an ambulance?'

We turned to Annette. A sudden look of alarm on her face. ‘But what about Oliver?' she said. She broke away and ran towards the front of the pub. We followed. We found Oliver still lying on the ground, but now with his head cradled on Annette's lap. He was conscious but bleary.

They didn't speak, but just gazed at each other. She stroked his hair and then, very gently, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. It wasn't quite love at first sight, but it was pretty close. Oliver had done his best to be Annette's knight in shining armour, and though he had failed miserably, he was about to receive his reward.

We went back to Cally's house, McKenny abandoned in the pub's garden.

Oliver was still woozy. We helped him onto Cally's horse, and there he sat, clinging on tightly to the horse's mane as Annette took the horse's reins and led the way down the road. The horse's hooves clip-clopped on the tarmac. Occasionally Annette would look up and smile at Oliver. Nothing was said between the pair of them. There was nothing that needed to be said.

Cally and I followed a few yards behind.

‘You better come back for a drink,' she said. ‘Where did he get you?'

‘In the ribs,' I said.

‘I should have known it would happen,' she said. ‘McKenny is a monster. Charming some of the time. But underneath, he's always a monster.'

‘How do you know that?'

‘I just do.' She shrugged and sniffed. I wondered if Cally and McKenny had had some history together, but I never asked and Cally certainly never told. Best not to go there.

Cally's house was a mile from the pub at the bottom of a cul-de-sac. There was a turning circle outside the house, and as you went up to the front door, the place seemed old and ramshackle, with moss on the tiles and ivy growing up the walls. But inside, it was quite different – warm and airy; it was only when you were halfway through the house that you realised it was much bigger than you'd expected, and that you were walking through to a large spacious room, with rugs and sofas and floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out to the sea.

‘Kim, can you sort out the drinks?' said Cally. ‘I'll just see to Dapple-Down.' She smiled as I looked at her blankly. ‘My horse.'

I found a bottle of cognac in the drinks cupboard and poured out four triples. She had lovely cut-crystal glasses. I flicked one with my nail. It had pinged like a bell.

Oliver and Annette had slumped onto the sofa. They were holding hands and were staring out into the darkness. There was a light out towards the sea, though I was so disorientated that I could not tell if it was a ship or a plane or even a house.

I looked at the pictures on the walls. Birds cartwheeling in the air; horses stampeding; seals on rocks and hares boxing: all was action. Not that I have any eye for pictures, but they were very good. I could see that they would sell well and sell for a lot of money.

Cally came into the room. She had taken off her jacket and there was a wisp of straw in that lovely chestnut hair of hers. We chinked and she sipped and savoured. ‘Brandy,' she said. ‘I don't drink nearly enough of it. So how are you all? Anything terminal?'

Annette shook her head and smiled. She looked very happy as she sat there on the sofa holding Oliver's hand. ‘I'm fine,' she said.

‘And you?' Cally said, nodding to Oliver.

He touched his scalp, winced, and then looked down and realised all over again that he was holding Annette's hand. ‘I am happy,' he said.

‘What about you, then, Kim?' said Cally. ‘How's your chest?' She stood by the window smiling at me – competent and confident. It was the first time that I had ever really realised that I was staring at a very sexy woman. Not that anything could come of it, but I could see that Cally had really got it. She oozed it.

I fingered my chest. ‘I don't know,' I said. ‘He got me in the ribs.'

‘Let's have a look,' she said. ‘They might be cracked. There's not much I can do. It might help if I bind them.' She looked over at Annette and Oliver. Neither of them had even touched their brandies.

Cally led me upstairs to her bathroom. It was handsome, with another floor-to-ceiling window. Right in the centre was one of the largest claw-foot baths that I had ever seen. Two people could lie in it in comfort, fully outstretched. The floor was carpeted in inch-thick oatmeal pile and in the corner was a power shower that sparkled silver. Next to the bath there was a reading light and an armchair in purple velvet. It was opulent. Adult. The bathroom of a woman with taste and style – not to mention money.

Cally pulled a first aid box out from the cupboard underneath the sink. ‘Take off your top and sit on the ottoman,' she said.

I winced as I unbuttoned my tunic. It was even more painful peeling off my T-shirt. I sat on the ottoman by the window.

Cally had a roll of cotton bandage in her hand. ‘Let me see,' she said.

With light fingertips, she started to feel my chest.

‘Nasty bruise,' she said, as her fingers worked her way down my ribs. I flinched. It was not erotic, but I did like having her fingers on my skin. There is something quite relaxing about being pampered after you have done yourself an injury. It is that contented glow that comes from a total surrender of control. ‘Must be two or three broken. I'll bind them.'

She wrapped the bandage tight around my chest, starting just underneath my armpits and working her way down. And as she wrapped me, she talked; but it was almost as if I was not there.

‘It's been a long time since I've touched a young man like this,' she said. ‘So trim. Not an ounce of fat on him. Very different from any other chest that I have touched in the last decade.' She gave my shoulder an affectionate stroke and laughed to herself. ‘Listen to me! I'm thinking I'm a twenty-year-old again, when in fact, I must be twenty years older than him!'

She stopped in front of me and smiled. ‘Sorry if I carry on,' she said. ‘I am marvelling at your chest – sinewy and lean and with just the perfect amount of chest hair. You don't mind, do you?'

‘I don't mind at all.'

‘Good.' She plucked up a couple of safety pins and secured the bandage.

I stood up. ‘Thank you.'

‘You're very welcome.' We were so close that I could feel her hair touch my chest. She smiled up at me. As I held her gaze, a dart of light seemed to pass between us. It was more than just a connection; it was the recognition that there was an affinity between us. I had an urge to kiss her, but I stamped it down. The moment passed. Cally turned to pack up the bandages and scissors in her first-aid box.

She drove us back to the Knoll House in her Mercedes. I sat next to her, while Annette and Oliver sat in silence in the back, still holding tight onto each other's hands.

She dropped us off and waved out of the window as she thundered off into the night and the three of us tramped back to our little concrete cells, each hurting in our own way, and yet also awed by the evening's revelations.

For myself, that night was the first time that I had ever really considered the possibility of dating a much older woman. Over the years, I had of course fancied many women who were older than me: superstar women in pop and showbiz; the mothers of friends and the friends of my stepmother. But I had always perceived these women as untouchables. I knew my place. I understood that this attraction was a one-way street and that it could never be mutual. I could look and I could admire, but under no circumstances would I be allowed to touch or kiss.

But with that one single look between us it was as if the door had opened, and I could glimpse a glimmer of burning light in the room beyond. All this from looking into her eyes. Some friends, when I've told them this, have thought it ridiculous. But others have got it. They've understood that looking into someone's eyes can, on occasion, be every bit as charged as a kiss; it can speak volumes.

As I tramped back to my room, part of me was green with envy that my awkward, clumsy German friend had managed to pull the most beautiful woman on the entire staff. I hid it well and after a while, I was delighted for them. How could I not be?

Oliver bided his time. He wooed her with hand-picked posies and they would go for long walks in the afternoon, holding hands every step of the way. A week later, on his first night off, Oliver took her out for dinner in Swanage. They took a taxi there, waving as they went just for the sheer pleasure of being in each other's company. That night, they kissed for the first time. I had never seen a couple quite so inseparable. If they were both off work at the same time, then they would be with each other – simple as that.

Occasionally, Oliver and I would go alone for a manly drink in the pub, but more often than not Annette would accompany us. She was lovely. If she was beautiful when she started working at the hotel, after she started dating Oliver, she took on a glow of pure love.

After that extraordinary night at the pub with Annette and Oliver and McKenny, I did not see Cally again for at least a week; and I did not see McKenny again either, come to that. He skulked from the hotel early the next morning. A few days later, Oliver showed me one of the tabloids. There was a half-page picture of McKenny, along with a quote from his spokesman saying that McKenny had slipped over while he was running. He looked awful. He had lost some front teeth, and the side of his face was this swollen, livid bruise, the colours mixing from black and brown all the way through to aubergine and lime green.

‘Certainly gave him something to remember us by,' I said.

‘I will not be forgetting it either,' Oliver said. I called him a lucky dog and he told me that it was about time I acquired myself a girlfriend. It was.

We'd just finished serving lunch at the hotel and so I went for a walk along the coast. When the Studland beach runs out, you hit the white cliffs of the Jurassic Coast, packed with chalk and fossils and all things ancient. The cliffs are high and the drop is lethal and as I have vertigo, I kept well clear from the edge. Even if I'm flat out on my belly, it still makes me giddy to peer over the edge of a cliff. I stare into the abyss and feel this primordial tug willing me to jump. So instead of walking by the cliffs, I stuck to the path on the rolling grassland high over the sea.

The cliffs are famous not just for their fossils but also for their smugglers' dens. As the wind flapped and the waves roared, I only had to close my eyes to imagine the smugglers shipping in to some quiet cove and hauling their booty up to the Dancing Ledges and all the other hidden crags along the coast.

The cliffs rise gently from Studland until at their peak, you reach Old Harry, a massive chalk archway carved out by the sea. I had seen pictures of these age-old clumps and pinnacles that had been chiselled from the cliffs, but this was the first time that I had ever seen them for real. Old Harry was much bigger than I'd expected, bigger and higher and absolutely petrifying. I did not go near the edge. There was another chalk pinnacle that was nearby to Old Harry. It was on a thin peninsular, a white spike that was connected to the cliff face by a very narrow path. In fact, it was so narrow that it didn't really qualify as a path at all: it stretched for perhaps eight or nine yards, and in places was not even a foot across. On each side of the path there was a sheer precipice that dropped fifty, sixty yards to the rocky beach below. I stayed a good distance from the cliff edge; just looking at the path made me feel queasy.

I looked out towards the sea. The top of the pinnacle was covered in lush grass. It was home to hundreds of seabirds. I watched them gliding through the air before they corkscrewed into the sea.

I almost completely missed her. I was about to continue my walk when I saw that that there was someone sitting on the edge of the rock. Her painting stool was perched just three inches from the cliff edge.

Even though she was quite a long way off, she instantly knew I was there. She looked over her shoulder and when she saw me, she waved. She left her easel and paints and came over. I watched as she walked right next to the cliff; a single slip and she'd have been over the edge. She was sauntering along as easily as if she'd been striding down Oxford Street. When she came to the foot-wide strip of path, she just walked straight over. She never once looked down. It was not in her nature to look down to the jags and snags that might yet finish her; instead, she always had her gaze level and looked dead ahead.

Cally came towards me with her hands outstretched. She placed a hand on my hip and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Hello Kim,' she said. ‘How are the ribs?'

‘Fine,' I said. She was in her painting gear, daubed jeans and a flecked fleece and she smelled of paint and turpentine. ‘Are you really painting out there?'

‘It's magical,' she said. ‘No one ever goes there.'

‘I can believe it.'

‘Come on,' she said, tugging at my elbow. ‘Come join me.'

‘No,' I said. ‘I'm terrible with heights.'

‘Come on,' she said. ‘You'll like it.'

‘No, seriously.'

She pulled at me again. I had never experienced this sort of womanly persistence before.

‘I'll make it worth your while.'

‘How?' She looked lovely. There was quite a gale and her hair was blowing out almost horizontally to the side.

‘Come over and you'll see.'

‘I've told you, I hate heights.'

‘You're too young to be saying “No”,' she said. ‘Come on. I'll look after you.'

‘This is a really bad idea.'

‘Hold onto my hands,' she said. ‘I'll lead you.'

Cally took my hands. My fingers were in her palms. ‘Look only into my eyes.' She briefly looked behind her and then started walking backwards. I followed, my feet shuffling forward little by little. I gazed fixedly into her eyes, though all about me I could sense the hostile elements as they tried to drag me off the cliff, the wind buffeting at my side and the waves thundering in beneath me.

She paused momentarily. ‘I'm enjoying this,' she said.

I didn't smile, I didn't say a word. My life, my world, revolved around her gaze, every sense and sensation focused on Cally's bewitching eyes. We were standing toe to toe, our faces just a foot apart. I could feel the connection forged between us, thin threads of silk that looped through our eyes and plucked at our hearts. I had never before realised how a woman's eyes are the very window to her soul or that if a man would woo her, there is no call for words and no need for smiles.