Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [13]
‘Sweetheart!’
‘Don’t be nice to me, or I’ll cry on the street. Very embarrassing.’
‘I don’t give a damn about being embarrassing.’
‘That’s because you’re old,’ she said. He smiled at her. ‘Well, I do. Made a big enough fool of myself already, haven’t I?’
‘How? Unless you don’t want to talk about it…’
‘I probably should talk about it. No sense bottling it up, I suppose.’
‘Never is.’
Natalie squeezed her dad’s arm. He was so… so solid and reliable. She was suddenly glad that she’d come, glad to have it out in the open. She’d struggled, keeping it to herself last week at Christmas.
They’d come to the edge of the park near her parents’ house.
‘Fancy a sit-down? Not too cold.’ He gestured towards the bench.
They walked over to it and sat. A boy was throwing sticks for a Labrador, and a few children were playing on the swings and see-saws in the fenced area, tired-looking parents watching them.
‘So, what makes you think you’ve made a fool of yourself, my love?’
‘All the time he was getting ready to leave me, I thought he was getting ready to ask me to marry him. I was so sure he was. He’d been acting a bit shifty and I thought he was up to something. And that time, in November, when we came down for Mum’s birthday and he very specifically asked you to go to the pub with him for a drink – I thought he was asking you for permission. What an idiot!’
Nicholas couldn’t remember what the two of them had talked about that day. He remembered being relieved to get out of the house for a while, But he would never have enjoyed a drink in the pub with Simon. He was one of those young men who patronised with almost every word. He didn’t know what he would have said if Simon had asked for Natalie’s hand. He wouldn’t have wanted to say yes. Not that it really was about permission, these days, was it?
Nicholas really had had to ask Anna’s father. He’d just finished his national service. Got a job as a clerk in the local bank. Anna’s father had been a frightening, formidable man – huge, with a booming voice and a pipe. The women in his house were a little afraid of him, and, that day, Nicholas had been too.
‘What happened?’ he asked now.
‘Well, I’d been kind of waiting, I suppose. For a few weeks. I kept thinking, you know, when we met up for dinner, that tonight might be the night. Let’s face it, we’d been together long enough, and I’m not getting any younger. Maybe I started to smell of desperation or something… But no, actually, that’s not right. It was the next step. The next obvious step. He knew it was what I wanted – what I expected, I suppose. But he didn’t ask, and he didn’t ask. I started to think Christmas – that would be a nice time to get engaged. God – I sound stupid.’
‘You don’t sound stupid, love.’ Nicholas held her hand tightly.
‘And then he started talking about going diving. Some mate of his at the hospital had been with his girlfriend and said it was brilliant, and he gave him the brochures of where they’d stayed. Simon seemed really keen – said it had been too long since he’d had a proper holiday, and what did I think of it and things.’
Nicholas nodded.
‘I was so excited, Dad. I thought it was all going to happen. And I was so, so happy.’
‘And?’
‘And then he dumped me. Just like that. Came round to the flat, quite late one night, the week before Christmas, and said he wasn’t ready for commitment. Said it wasn’t fair to keep stringing me along, when he knew that was what I wanted, and he wasn’t in a position to offer it. He said he wouldn’t be being fair to himself – something about just emerging from all these years of study and dedication and concentrating on getting himself qualified, and that getting engaged and married and stuff would just be another pressure on him, and that what he wanted was to be free, have fun, enjoy himself a bit, before he would truly be ready for all of that.’ Natalie’s voice broke.
‘He said I could still go