Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: Strangers, Bad Girls Good Women, A Woman of Our Times, All My Sins Remembered
‘Oh, yes. I’ll make you a wedding dress such as has never been made before. Annie, this is Matthew.’
He was sitting on the floor with his back against Louise’s sofa and his legs stretched out in jeans with frayed bottoms. He had fair, almost colourless hair cut too short for his thin face, grey eyes, and his bare chest showed under his half-open shirt. He was in his early twenties, two or three years younger than Annie was.
He looked up at her and the first thing he said to her was ‘Don’t marry him, whoever he is. Marry me.’
Annie laughed, slotting him into her category automatically flirtatious, but Matthew hadn’t even smiled. He had just looked at her, and Louise stood awkwardly behind them with the carrier bag dangling in her hand. They didn’t talk about the dress that day. They had tea instead, sitting in a sunlit circle on Louise’s rug.
Matthew had been living in Mexico for a year, working as a labourer on a peasant farm in exchange for his food and a bed in a lean-to shack. He told them about the long days monotonously working the thin soil, the efforts at summer irrigation using water brought on the backs of donkeys from the trickling river.
‘Why were you there?’ Annie asked. The self-conscious hippiedom would have irritated her in anyone else, but Matthew was perfectly matter-of-fact.
‘I was thinking. I’m very bad at it. Can’t do it when there are any distractions.’
‘And why did you come home?’
He grinned at her. ‘I’d finished thinking.’
They went on talking while the sun moved across the rug. Annie realized that it was herself and Matthew talking. Louise was sitting in silence, watching them. At six o’clock Annie stood up to go. Matthew stood up too, and she saw that he was tall and very thin.
‘I’ll come a little way with you,’ he said.
‘I …’
‘I would like to.’
Annie left her bag of wedding dress material on Louise’s floor. When she was standing with Matthew on the pavement outside she remembered that she hadn’t even arranged to come back and look at Louise’s design sketches. She hesitated, wondering whether she should go back upstairs, but a taxi came rumbling down the street and Matthew flagged it down. He opened the door for her and they sat side by side on the slippery seat, looking out at the rush-hour traffic idling in the sun.
‘Where are we going?’
‘To St James’s Park,’ Matthew said. She discovered later that he used his last two pound notes to pay the driver.
It was May, the first day of summer’s warm weather. The grass was dotted with abandoned deckchairs, in secretive pairs and in sociable groups of three or four.
The setting sun slanted obliquely through patterns of curled leaves and glittered on the water. They walked under the trees, talking. It seemed to Annie that this hollow-cheeked boy had simply side-stepped the rituals of acquaintanceship and friendship, and had made her a lover without ever having touched her.
They stopped on the bridge to look down at the ducks drawing fans of ripples in their wake, and their shadows fell superimposed on the water.
Looking at the shape they made, Matthew said, ‘You see? We belong together.’
‘No. I’m going to marry Martin. We’ve known each other for seven years.’
‘That’s no reason for marrying him. Any more than you can dismiss me because you’ve known me for less than seven hours.’
She turned to look at him then, suddenly sombre. He had come to block the wide, smooth road she was walking down and he was pointing his finger down narrow lanes that turned sharply, enticing her. She felt angry with him, and at the same time she wanted to step forward so that their faces could touch.
‘I meant what I said, you know.’ Matthew met her stare. He put his hand out and stroked her hair, their first contact.
‘Do you ask everyone you meet to marry you? Did you ask Louise when she offered to let you sleep on her sofa till you found somewhere else?’
He laughed at her. ‘I’ve never said it before in my life. But when you came into the room, I knew you, Annie. I knew your face, and your walk, and your voice, and I knew what you were going to say.’
She couldn’t contradict him, because she knew it was the truth. Matthew didn’t invent or exaggerate.
‘I don’t know you,’ she said defiantly. ‘I don’t know anything about you.’
He took her arm, drawing it through his and settling it so that her head was against his shoulder. They began to walk again with their backs to the sunset and their shadows pointing ahead of them.
‘I’ll tell you,’ he offered. ‘I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. There isn’t much, so it won’t take too long.’
Matthew was the only son of an industrialist, a self-made tycoon with a newspaper name. The family assumption had always been that Matthew would emulate his dynamic father. But from the day he was old enough to begin to assert himself, Matthew had refused to conform to his father’s requirements. His only interest at school had been woodwork, until he became really good at it – at which point he gave it up for ever. When his school contemporaries were heading for Oxford, Matthew turned his back on them and set out on the hippie trail to Afghanistan. He had supported his travels ever since with menial jobs, working in exchange for food, somewhere to sleep, for enough money to carry him on to the next place.
‘What were you thinking about in Mexico?’ Annie asked him.
‘I was thinking about what I should do. And then I felt the pull to come home, so I came. And here you are.’
‘Don’t you think,’ Annie said, ‘that you might have seized upon me because you think you ought to? That you’re trying to make me someone I’m not, to fill a need in yourself?’
He didn’t hesitate for a second. ‘No. You are the woman I want. You just are. I always knew I would recognize you, and I have. It’s the truth, Annie. You know it too. Admit it.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that we’ve been lovers in some previous life.’
Matthew dropped her arm and stared at her. ‘Certainly not. What d’you think I am? I don’t believe in all that mystical muck.’
They laughed until Annie wiped the tears out of her eyes and rested her forehead against his shoulder, and Matthew put his arms around her, still smiling. It was almost dark, and the cars swished rhythmically along the Mall under the thin glare of the street lights. She waited for him to kiss her. Matthew’s mouth moved against her hair.
‘I’m hungry,’ he said.
So he wasn’t going to kiss her. That made it easier, perhaps.
‘Let’s go and have something to eat.’ Annie moved away a little, regretting the warmth of his arm. ‘There’s a little Italian place in Victoria.’
‘I haven’t got any money,’ Matthew said.
‘My treat,’ she answered lightly.
They began to walk again and he caught her hand. Her ring scraped his fingers and he lifted their clasped hands to peer at it. The stones glinted coldly.
‘Oh dear, diamonds,’ he murmured. ‘I can’t give you any. Will you mind that? Will Martin want this one back?’
She was angry again then, her anger fuelled by a surge of guilt. She pulled her hand out of his and stuffed her clenched fists into the pockets of her jacket.
‘I’m going to marry Martin,’ she repeated. ‘Eight weeks from today. With a ring that matches this one.’
‘Very nice,’ Matthew said icily. They walked over the grass together, silent, both of them angry. But