Regret can hurt.
She was sorry now that she hadn’t told him from the very beginning. Standing at her apartment window, drinking her umpteenth bacardi and coke of the evening, Hilary watched a group of young girls, obviously a hen party, but all too scantily clad for a cold night like this, tumble out from the hotel across the street below, and gather in noisy, but shivering groups, to await the arrival of whatever transport home they had arranged.
‘Do they,’ she wondered, ‘Have things they regret not having said?’
She wanted desperately to turn back the clock, make things clear from the beginning; from that first night when he approached her after her talk to the Rotary Club.
“ Inter-personal relations in business,” she snorted into the half empty glass in her hand. “What the hell right have I to be lecturing anyone on inter personal relations,… either in business. or life for that matter?”
Two months ago it had been. Two months during which she’d not only begun to feel more alive than she could ever remember feeling, but two months during which for the first time in her forty one years, she’d learned both the joy and the pain of sharing who she was with another person; and rendered herself vulnerable by admitting him into her carefully guarded privacy, and space. Yet still she hadn’t told him what he had the right to know. So now it was her feeling of regret that was impelling her to drink, and to drink like this alone, perched in her fourth floor luxury apartment overlooking tottering young revellers below.
“I really enjoyed your talk,” he’d said placing himself, as if deliberately, between herself and Jason. “ You made your points very well. I’m sure everyone has learned a lot this evening.”
She’d thanked him, and taken his hand into her own, but found herself fascinated, even held, by his smiling blue eyes. In his early fifties he was well built but without any evidence of fat or middle age slouch. His hair was greying slightly at the temples, but not receding, and his impact was immediate.
‘Oh my god,’ she’d thought, ‘ Whatever charisma is, you have it in spades! You certainly didn’t need my talk tonight….”
“How many of your suggestions will be acted on of course,” he was saying, “ Isn’t for me to judge, but there were a couple of your answers at the end of the talk which left me with even more questions of my own. I’d appreciate the opportunity to explore them further with you over dinner sometime….unless you think I’m being too forward? My name’s David by the way, David Harrison. I attended a talk you gave a few months ago, and it was I who proposed you as tonight’s speaker.”
He was still holding her right hand, but then pointed towards her ringless left hand. “ I had noticed that you aren’t married.”
She remembered glancing quickly past his shoulder to where Jason was lifting the overhead projector she’d been using from the table. He was already frowning and seemed ready to say something.
“ I should have told him then,” she murmured into the almost empty glass. “Got it into the open then….”
Instead she’d enthused like a love struck adolescent how much she would enjoy answering his questions over dinner… how he wasn’t being at all forward, and then… retrieving her hand from his, had rooted feverishly into the folder under her arm for a business card.
“Ring me,” she’d said, “We’ll arrange something.”
Then, as he walked away, shed reflected that those old chestnuts about ‘ heartbeat racing,’ and ‘knees turning to water,’ were apparently true!
They had arranged something, and in no time at all it seemed their dates and arrangements became the single focal points of her everyday existence. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this way about any man before, and she had always intended to tell him the truth… but never ‘right now’. Always she’d waited, just wanting one more time when only she and him in the present moment mattered. As those times became a week, then a month, her fear of what he might do when she did tell him, made the telling more difficult. Turned an uncertain prospect into a possible crisis to be postponed for as long as possible; and now, it seemed, she was forever recalling that awful evening when further procrastination became impossible.
************************************
She’d realised as soon as he told her that he’d booked their table at the Royal George that he intended the evening to be one neither of them would ever forget; so she made a special effort to look her most beautiful. She’d even taken the afternoon off, and gone up to town to have her hair done, and buy a new outfit.
He’d picked her up in the new car he’d just bought, and if he was uncharacteristically subdued during the drive to the hotel, she’d put it down to nerves he might be feeling about the night ahead. It was when he seated her at the table that she noticed how his features in the candlelight betrayed a harshness she’d never seen before. Despite the restaurants soothing ambience and background music she’d become suddenly fearful.
Apart from giving their order to the hovering waiter he’d barely spoken until the main course was on the table. She for her part, had chattered incessantly; silly. stupid things she knew in her heart he’d no interest in.
Finally he’d glared across the table and interrupted her with a curt, “ I had a telephone call today from somebody called Jason. I believe you know him?”
She’d nodded and tried to gather her racing thoughts into a manageable sequence.
David was doing the talking now, but in slow deliberate words as if he’d rehearsed them all in his head beforehand. No racing unmanageable sequence there!
“I remember him of course from the evening you gave the talk at the Rotary Club. I’d assumed, because he resembled you so much, that he was your younger brother. But then he started asking me…. No, not just asking, … demanding, as if by right to know what were my intentions towards you? It was almost Victorian!”
She’d thought, for a moment, that humour might help, and tried to smile.
“Well yes… Jason does tend to be a little possessive of me….”
“Possessive is putting it mildly. Fixated would be a better word.”
Her smile had wilted. “Did you ask him why?” she’d enquired.
“I did not. I was so astonished I simply told him to mind his own bloody business, and put the phone down on him. I don’t care if he is your brother… or even one of your former boyfriends. Anyone talking to me like that… I put the phone down on them!”
He spiked a piece of beef onto his fork, and raised it towards his mouth.
She remembered now that he never swallowed it as she finally did what she should have done from the very beginning. Even the white tablecloth seemed to be glaring up at her reproachfully as she whispered,
“Jason’s neither my brother, nor a former boy friend…. He’s my son.”
She could recall clearly the way his expression changed from one of anger to one of pain… even betrayal. She’d wanted to reach for his hand, explain that it had all been a terrible mistake. Not the fact of Jason’s existence, but the circumstances surrounding his creation. That it had been a one night stand… she’d drunk far too much…. she’d been taken advantage of…
“And the father?” David had asked replacing his fork onto his plate. She couldn’t meet his eye. That had been the worst part, the part that, in her heart, she’d always dreaded telling him.
“ I can’t even remember who he was, “ she’d murmured. “ I was drunk… and later on, when I realised I was pregnant… Well I didn’t want to know who he was.”
She remembered how, at that point, she had felt a sudden surge of maternal defiance, and been able to raise her head, look at him directly.
“ But I did want the baby. I know I’d been very stupid, even irresponsible in not taking proper precautions, but I wouldn‘t… no I couldn’t deny Jason his life…. And I’ve never regretted having him… not once. I know sometimes he can be difficult, and overreach himself particularly with men he thinks I’m involved with. He hasn’t had the advantage of growing up sharing me with another man; but I wont regret having him…. not now… not ever… not even for your sake!”
She’d stopped; hoping, that her words might prompt him to understand and forgive her, but suddenly he’d stood up.
“ I have to go,” he’d stated, and put enough cash onto the table to settle not only the bill, but her taxi fare home as well. “ I need time to think…. You should have told me sooner…”
Well, now, she’d given him the time… two awful weeks of it!
For the first few days she’d been sick with confusion. On the one hand she’d wanted to telephone him, tell him how sorry she was, and plead with him not to end their relationship. But, equally, she was afraid that he’d simply put the phone down the way he had with Jason, or even worse, tell her bluntly not to contact him again. Then, when he didn’t telephone or make contact with her, her confusion had turned into anger. Clearly he wasn’t even prepared to let her explain further, so she rehearsed what she would say when he finally did contact her… as he surely would, wouldn’t he?
When, after two weeks, he’d still neither rung nor turned up at her apartment, she went into a downward spiral of self recrimination, self pity, and endless bacardi and coke’s which should have alleviated her pain, but only made it worse.
‘And now,’ she thought, ‘ Here I am at the window hallucinating that his car’s among the revellers transport in the car park below!’ She turned back into the empty room. ‘I really must stop drinking like this… I must put something solid into my stomach, …. get my life back again!’
On impulse she decided to get changed, telephone Jason and offer to buy him a late supper … at the Royal George!
“ I’ll wait until the food’s served before I tell him what I think of him interfering in my life, it has to stop. I’m his mother not his senile grandmother in need of protection from unscrupulous suitors!”
As she went towards the bathroom her mobile on the coffee table rang. The screen flashed ‘David’, and her heart rose.
“ Oh god David,” she gasped into it, “ Oh I’m so glad… I mean I’m so sorry… I should have told you everything at the very beginning…. Please forgive me… let me make it up….”
The silence on the line was deafening, and her heart sank. What was he doing playing with her feelings like this?
“David,” she demanded fiercely, “ Are you still with me?”
She registered the irony of her words and her feelings went into free fall. She wanted to lie down; but then his voice, strong and full of tenderness, penetrated her mental fog. She closed her eyes, and could almost feel his arms closing around her, and his lips press close into her ear.
“ Hilary… where else would I ever want to be?”
Suddenly, an exhilarating realisation prompted her to rush across the room. It had been his car in the car park….. and it was then that her doorbell rang!
The End.
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