Alphabet Weekends - Elizabeth Noble [6]
‘So you’re the one who wishes they were in the pub with my brother!’
‘No way. Although he said Natalie was down, didn’t he? I haven’t seen her since the Simon thing blew up. Still, maybe she’ll drop round before she goes back. And this is what we do, isn’t it? It’s tradition.’
‘Have we got traditions?’
‘Honey, we’ve got dozens. Hadn’t you noticed?’ Now she hugged him, and he smelt her perfume and her hair. He breathed deeply, and rested his chin on top of her head.
In a moment, though, she was back at the stove, stirring. ‘Can you believe this is our seventh New Year together?’ she said.
He smiled. ‘We didn’t get much peace that first night, either, did we?’ Bella had been teething. He’d greeted midnight pacing the bedroom floor with another man’s screaming child in his arms.
Lucy had said she would ask her mother to have her. She was embarrassed, Patrick thought, and it had made him sad. Will, her husband, had left her when Bella was three months old, and Patrick was the first man she had been with since. He’d wanted desperately to show her that Bella was okay with him, that her past could be part of his present and their future. He hadn’t necessarily expected to prove it so utterly on New Year’s Eve. It was the first time they’d made love. They were almost, but not quite, too tired by the time Bella had succumbed to a dose of Calpol, and it had been oh-so-quiet in order that they didn’t wake her, and he remembered her saying that she never wanted to start another year without him there, then looking mortified, as though she had said something so clingy and so needy that he would leave immediately. He had hated how grateful she was, how reticent about her body, with its four angry red stretchmarks and its huge milky nipples. He just loved her. He didn’t mind about all that. He had wanted to take care of her. He still did, all these years later. ‘What are we having?’
‘This,’ she gestured towards the salmon, ‘then king prawns in a tomato and champagne sauce – so I’ll need a dribble of that, but don’t worry, I stuck another bottle in the fridge – then strawberries.’ She slid her arm under his shirt, and ran it lightly across his skin. ‘Which you can eat out of a bowl or off me, whichever you prefer.’ She kissed him hungrily. ‘Mmm. It’s been a while. In case you hadn’t noticed.’
He had. It had been three weeks. Not since the day…
Anna and Nicholas
Nicholas took a handkerchief out of his pocket and rubbed it gently across the silver neck of the decanter. He had poured the red wine into it earlier this evening, through a muslin square, carefully and slowly, in the kitchen. He’d been in Anna’s way, of course, although he had chosen his corner carefully, hoping not to be; she had shouted at him. But these things had to be done properly.
The table was beautifully laid. They weren’t rich, but they were of a generation that took care of its possessions, and over the forty years of their marriage they had amassed some beautiful things. Full sets of crystal wine glasses – none chipped; a Royal Doulton dinner service; the beautiful white linen tablecloth with matching napkins. All bought by themselves. For twelve Christmases, back in the seventies and early eighties, they had given them to each other. Anna had bought him one red and one white wine glass, and he had bought her one place setting. You could mark out his career by how easy it had been to pay for it. In the early years it had been a lot of money. By the end, it was just one of the gifts they exchanged – Christmas had become a much more elaborate affair. But they still did it. The girls thought it was dull – Susannah was always trying to talk him into jewellery, Bridget favoured perfumes. But it was what they wanted, a ritual that mattered. Anna wouldn’t use any of them until they’d got six, and they hadn’t been able to have eight ‘smart’ guests for dinner until Charles and Diana had got married. They’d bought the cutlery, in its smart mahogany