Dreams of another day, p.37
Dreams of Another Day, page 37
As soon as Flixe and her elder daughter had cleared the pudding plates, Julia got up.
‘It’s agony leaving you all,’ she said, ‘but I have to go.’
Ming got up at once and walked round the table to stand in front of her.
‘It’s no time for speeches, Julia,’ she said, ‘and my brain feels like scrambled eggs in any case. But even in this state it knows how much we all owe you. Thank you.’
She leaned forward to kiss Julia’s cheek and Flixe was delighted to see that Julia actually put a hand on Ming’s shoulder. There was obviously no need to tell Julia that David had actually summoned Mark to Ming’s side.
‘It was a pleasure to defend you,’ Julia said sincerely. She was in such a hurry to get back to her work that she did not see the affectionate, approving smile that Tibor sent her or the pleasure on Flixe’s face.
Ming herself was the next to go, wanting plenty of time to have her hair done and wash the smells of the court off her skin before her meeting with Mark.
As she lay in her long bath, letting both the hot water and the knowledge of her new freedom lull her into peace, she kept thinking of Mark and wondering whether they would ever be able to build for each other the security that she had hardly even let herself dream about. For the first time in her life it seemed to be within her reach and completely desirable.
At exactly half-past seven she paid off her taxi outside the restaurant and went in to find him.
He was waiting for her in the bar and stood up as soon as he saw her.
‘You look lovely,’ he said as he took in the richness of her sapphire brocade dress. ‘And older too.’
As he spoke Mark realised that he had chosen his words badly, but he was too experienced to try to mend matters by taking back what he had said.
‘That was clumsy,’ he said. ‘Do you mind?’
Another wonderful smile lit Ming’s eyes and her lips curled as she shook her head.
‘That I no longer look like a terrified schoolgirl?’ she said. ‘I’m delighted – and glad that the change shows; it’s real enough.’
‘That’s all right then,’ said Mark with an indescribable satisfaction in his voice. ‘Come and have a drink?’
‘Thank you.’
He took her into the cosy, wine-dark bar and ordered martinis for them both. Then, sitting beside her on the luxuriously cushioned velvet bench, he seemed lost for words. After a while he said:
‘Were you very frightened?’
‘In general or of the trial?’
‘I meant the trial.’
‘Yes,’ said Ming, looking a little bleak. ‘Terrified of the obvious things: being found guilty; being fined more than I could afford to pay; having to sell the flat and beg a room somewhere; having to go back to a dead-end job I hated; perhaps even being shut up in a cell in Holloway.’
The barman brought their martinis. Mark picked his up and drank. Ming picked the olive out of hers and ate it. She looked round, but the only other people in the bar seemed to be completely absorbed in their own affairs.
‘And the less obvious things?’
‘What?’ said Ming, having forgotten what she had said. ‘Oh, I see. All sorts of things.’
She turned her martini glass round and round on the table in front of her. Mark waited. After a while she looked frankly at him.
‘There were times when I woke at four in the morning and I couldn’t get to sleep again when I thought that the trial was the price I was paying for having been such a coward for so long.’
‘You’ve never been a coward.’ Mark’s instinctive protest told Ming a great deal about his feelings. If they had been alone she would have hugged him.
‘Oh, yes, I have. I’ve stopped myself doing and saying innumerable things because I thought they might make people angry. I’ve been afraid of other people’s anger for years and years. It seemed somehow inevitable that I would be punished when I eventually did break silence.’
Ming picked up her own drink and sipped it, shuddering slightly as the barely diluted spirit hit her palate.
‘But the nightmare’s over now,’ said Mark, gripping her free hand as it lay on the velvet bench. ‘I’m beginning to think that all our nightmares might be over.’
Ming turned her blonde head so that she could look at him properly. The lighting was so discreet that his face was shadowed, but she could see the gleam of his eyes and the confidence of his smile. Smiling herself she asked:
‘What was yours, Mark?’
‘That you might be kind to me.’
Of all the things Ming had thought he might say that was the last she would have expected. She peered at him in the romantic gloom, her head on one side.
‘I don’t understand. When were you afraid of that? And why?’
‘Your table is ready, sir.’
‘What?’ Mark looked towards the voice that had interrupted them, saw the waiter’s white coat and dropped Ming’s hand at once.
‘Thank you,’ he said. He stood up. ‘Ming?’
She got up off the purple velvet banquette and preceded him into the dining room, wincing a little as the brighter light hit her eyes. Almost every table seemed to be filled and as she stood there, she felt as though all the other diners broke off their conversation and looked at her.
The waiter led them to a table against the mirrored wall about half-way down the restaurant. As they sat down, another waiter brought their first course of hot crab soufflé and then reached for the bottle that had been chilling in an ice-bucket and poured them each a glass of wine.
‘I ordered for us both,’ said Mark, watching her. ‘It seemed easier. Do you mind?’
Ming shook her head. Laying down the knife and fork she had just picked up, she said abruptly:
‘Why, Mark?’
‘I thought that was what your Christmas letter meant,’ he said with a small shrug. ‘It sounded as though you were offering to do whatever I wanted simply out of kindness. The thought was unendurable.’
‘Oh, dear. Yes, I do see. Mark … I …’
‘Don’t worry about it now, but tell me something.’
‘Can I ask you something first?’
Surprised and a little worried, Mark nodded.
‘Why did you resign?’ asked Ming, sounding breathless.
‘I’m surprised that you of all people need to ask that.’
Ming’s legs started to tingle and the olive and the martini she had just swallowed felt like a cold curdled mess in the pit of her stomach. All the delight and certainty that she had felt since he had stroked her cheek drained out of her.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said and put a hand up to cover her eyes.
She felt Mark’s hand on her wrist, pulling her arm down to the table again with urgent strength.
‘Ming, what is it? What have I said?’
She looked at him with huge, dark eyes. There was no light in them at all and her lips quivered slightly.
‘I never meant to damage you, Mark,’ she said slowly. Her tongue felt thick and clumsy, and it made the words difficult to articulate. ‘I do seem to cause dreadful trouble. Whoever it is, is right about that at least.’
‘What on earth are you talking about? You haven’t damaged me. Ming, don’t look so tragic. I just thought that you’d understand. After all, you put it so neatly in your article. I agreed with everything you wrote about Suez. And feeling like that, I decided that I had to resign. That’s all. There’s nothing to frighten yoa about that.’
Relief made Ming feel almost as sick as she had before his explanation.
‘I thought it was because of me,’ she said after she had drunk some wine. ‘I thought they’d sacked you because of what I’d written. It was all part of the same nightmare … all my old terrors of making people angry translated into adult punishments. And although they should have been mine, both punishments were visited on other people.’
The waiter came back, saw that both of them had hardly touched the food on their plates and backed away.
‘We’d better eat,’ said Ming, noticing his unspoken reprimand.
Mark looked into the mirror behind her and saw what she had seen. He picked up his fork.
‘Oh, Ming,’ he said before he ate anything. ‘I seem to have made you dreadfully unhappy this past year. I’m sorry.’
Her eyes did lighten then and she smiled at him.
‘That makes two of us. It was David Wallington who showed me how bloody I’ve been to you. It wasn’t deliberate cruelty, Mark. None of it was. It was only because …’ She broke off, noticing that several of their neighbours were listening avidly.
‘I never thought it was deliberate. But you are right. We’d better eat.’ He, too, saw the interested faces all around them.
When they had finished their first course, the waiter substituted plates of veal cooked in marsala, and handed them their vegetables.
‘I do like your magazine, you know,’ said Mark in a more conversational tone of voice.
‘Really?’ Pleasure showed in Ming’s smile. ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was exactly your thing.’
‘Perhaps not. And perhaps before Suez I didn’t sympathise quite so much with your desire to explain and reveal things to the powerless.’
‘But now?’
‘Now I’ve begun to think that secrets may be over-rated – and power too.’
‘You’re surely not saying that governments should not have any secrets from their own citizens?’ said Ming, thoroughly interested. ‘That’s hardly practical in a world where we still have plenty of enemies.’
‘No, it’s not practical. And the government must be allowed to govern. I suppose it’s a bit like your statement about pornography at the trial.’
Ming nodded. ‘We all know exactly where we would draw the line between the acceptable and the unbearable, but everyone’s line is different.’
‘Tricky, isn’t it?’ said Mark, swallowing the last of his veal. ‘That’s why I got out. Pudding?’
‘No, thank you. That was wonderful.’ She thought of suggesting that they went back to her flat for coffee, but just as she was about to speak she caught the eye of a woman sitting at the next table and raised her eyebrows. The woman flushed and looked away.
‘I think I’d better get the bill.’ Mark’s voice was full of amusement and she knew that he had understood both her intention and its frustration.
Ming’s own smile widened and she bent her head in the familiar gesture of graceful acquiescence. It was not until they were sitting side by side in a taxi that she asked:
‘Will you come in for a moment when we get there?’
Mark took her hand in the darkness and did not speak for a moment. At last he said with some difficulty:
‘I suppose that the thought of your being kind to me still fills me with a kind of horror.’
‘It need not. I can promise you no kindness at all.’
He looked down at her.
‘Then I’d like to come in very much,’ he said.
As she opened the door and stood aside he stepped across the threshhold.
‘Coffee?’
‘Thank you.’
She made it and carried it to the drawing room, where he stood looking at the painting of the cool, empty northern seascape.
‘It’s beautiful, but awfully lonely.’
‘I know,’ she said as she put down the tray and waited for him to take her in his arms. But he did not. After a while she poured their coffee and began to understand that he was not going to make any move at all. He was leaving her absolutely free to decide what she wanted. He had told her everything about his love for her without asking for anything in return.
Here, she realised, was a man who was not demanding that she yield to him in any way at all. When she had tried to do that physically he had rejected her. What he was asking was much more difficult than a surrender: he wanted a treaty with an equal.
‘I’m beginning to think,’ Ming said slowly as she watched his serious face, ‘that you are the first person I have ever known who has treated me as an adult.’
Mark’s face creased into a smile. He drained his cup and held it out for her to take.
As their hands briefly touched Ming felt a tremendous pull towards him. She wanted him to hold on to her, to touch her, to make love to her and to answer the questions she longed to ask and could not: do you love me best of all? Will you forgive me whatever I do? Will you swear never to leave me? Will you make me safe for ever? She knew that if she had not let herself love him the questions need never have been asked, just as she knew that, loving him, she could never expect him to answer them.
Peter Suvarov’s words came back to her: ‘Being prepared for really swingeing hurt.’
She put down her own cup on the tray with Mark’s and went to stand in front of him, putting her hands on his arms. He bent his head and she felt the soft resilience of his lips on hers and the strength of his hands on her back. Her breathing quickened and she could feel his heart slamming against his ribs. Her lips opened and she let herself lean against him. Mark’s arms tightened. At last he lifted his head.
‘This is different from the last time, isn’t it?’
‘Quite, quite different,’ said Ming. ‘Then I was trying to pay a debt.’
‘And now?’
‘Now, I only want to love you.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
They woke early next morning, soon after six, and lay side by side in an ecstasy of freedom. For the first time since Mark had asked Ming to marry him more than a year earlier they were able to be completely honest with each other. Because they had shared them, their feelings were no longer the stuff of nightmares.
At one moment, Ming leaned sideways to kiss Mark as he lay with his eyes closed. She thought that he looked wonderful propped up against the banked-up pillows with his splendid shoulders rising above the bedclothes. All the strength that he usually disguised was plain to see, even though he was quite relaxed. There was stubble on his chin and grey-brown arcs were smudged under his eyes, but he seemed desperately attractive, very male, and utterly familiar. The misery they had caused each other in that room could be forgotten at last.
He slid an arm under her back and held her close. The curtains had not been properly shut the night before and the pale, early sun poured through on to the foot of the bed, lighting the crumpled white linen bedspread and the pale green blankets. Their clothes were hanging over the back of a damask-covered elbow chair but the rest of the room was impeccably tidy and very pretty.
Ming had cut down some of his roses and arranged them in a pair of silver vases on her dressing table, where they were reflected endlessly in the triple glass. Their dark red seemed oddly strong against the pale greens, creams and delicate pinks of the room, but their scent was heady and sweet.
‘Mark,’ said Ming, taking courage from the feeling of his shoulder under her cheek.
‘Mm?’ He sounded lazily happy and half-asleep, but Ming was determined to tell him everything.
‘Yesterday you talked about your fears of what I might do, and I let you do it, which I think was rather unfair,’ she said, waking him fully. Before he could protest, she went on: ‘Most of what went wrong with us was my fault, not yours.’
‘I don’t think fault comes into it,’ he said, stroking her warm cheek with his right hand. Her fine hair was tousled, which he liked better than the ordered waves of the previous evening.
‘Perhaps not. But I was muddled too. Can I tell you about it?’
‘If you want to. But there’s no need, Ming. We’re here with each other again. Isn’t that enough?’
‘I’d like you to know,’ she said carefully. ‘You see, I used to tell myself sometimes that the reason I could never love anyone was because of what happened to me in the war. I knew that it had left me with a terror of being in anyone else’s control, but …’
‘What happened?’
Mark’s voice sounded rough. A little surprised, Ming pulled away to look at him and then relaxed again as she saw his eyes. For a long time he had hidden all but the most manageable emotions. His new readiness to reveal them moved her. As she watched the strength in his face yielding to anxiety, she could think of nothing except how much he mattered to her.
‘Ming?’
‘It’s shamingly trivial compared with most people’s stories,’ she said when she could speak again. ‘You know I went over to France? Well, on the way back to London I was picked up by some people who were working for … against us.’
Mark’s hand gripped hers suddenly, but he did not speak.
‘All that happened was that my hair was pulled, my face slapped a bit and my arms twisted,’ she said quickly to comfort him. ‘But it was vile. For a long time I … But there’s no point talking about it now.’
He moved closer to her so that their shoulders touched again.
‘Ming, I wish I’d been able to …’ He broke off shaking his head. ‘I wish that I could take away everything that has ever hurt you, but that’s childish. We are what we are because of what has happened to us.’
‘I know that now,’ said Ming. ‘Besides, I’ve learned rather painfully and unforgivably slowly that it wasn’t what happened then that stopped me from understanding how much I loved you.’
‘No?’ Despite the brevity of his intervention, his voice was full of compassion. ‘You don’t have to tell me anything, Ming.’
‘It was my terror of what would happen to me if I let myself love you and then you stopped wanting me, if I lost you as I always seemed to lose the people I loved.’
The difficulty of her confession almost broke Ming’s self-control, but her need to make him understand at last forced her through it. He put both arms around her and cradled her head against his shoulder. She felt his chin on her head, comfortingly solid.
‘Barring accidents, you’re not going to lose me without a great deal of trouble. I’m a dogged sort of chap, you know.’
