Page 6 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
She smiled. ‘You want the short version?’
‘God, no. I want the exact shade of the paint in the downstairs loo, if you don’t mind.’
Laughing, Peggy took a moment to gather her thoughts, aware that she was expected to perform on some level for Quentin and happy to do so. ‘Okay, so I was on Hampstead Heath one evening– it was grim weather, but I’d had along, sad day at work. I used to teach English at the hospital school at Great Ormond Street and a child I’d been teaching for months died suddenly. I needed fresh air to clear my head.’ She stopped to take a sip of coffee, noting that Quentin had settled into the story like a child at bedtime, his craggy face expectant and focused. ‘Anyway, I was plodding along, hood pulled over my eyes against the damp, when I saw this man, dressed in running gear, sitting on the wet grass looking dejected.’ She shook her head. ‘You’ll know, if you’ve ever lived in London, to approach people with caution if they’re behaving in any way strangely. Especially as a woman. And he did look odd, just sitting there, doing nothing, in the rain and cold.’
‘Goodness,’ Quentin interjected, his face lighting up with alarm. ‘He could have been conning you, waiting till you got close enough so he could grab you and rob you… or do something much, much worse.’
‘Well, maybe,’ Peggy conceded, beginning to understand Rory’s assessment of Quentin as a catastrophizer. ‘But he didn’t look particularly mad or dangerous. Just bedraggled. “I fell down a rabbit hole,” he explained as I approached, “and jiggered my ankle. Would you be kind enough to help me up, please?” Still wary– although he was so polite– I hauled him to his feet, which wasn’t that easy. He isn’t a small man, obviously, and he was clearly in a lot of pain. We hobbled back to the road in silence– he said he’d get a taxi home from there. It seemed to take for ever. He was leaning on me heavily and it was getting darker and darker, wetter and wetter. We were both drenched. But I managed to flag down a taxi on Swains Lane– nothing short of a miracle on a wet Friday night. He said, as I hauled himinto the cab, “I’ll be fine now.” But I wasn’t sure he would be. He didn’t seem able to support himself on that ankle.’
‘So you took him home?’ Her new friend was leaning forward, clearly relishing her tale.
‘It wasn’t far, thank goodness, and I felt so sorry for him.’
Quentin gave a wry smile. ‘Poor Ted. Know how that feels, needing someone to lean on.’
Peggy nodded. ‘So when he was settled on his sofa and I’d made him a cuppa, given him a couple of paracetamol and checked his foot was still pretty much attached, I said I was off. He couldn’t have been more grateful.’
‘And, of course, offered to buy you a stonkingly expensive dinner, possibly a Maserati to boot.’
Grinning, she replied, ‘Nope. I didn’t want anything except a hot bath and huge quantities of wine at that stage– although I’d never say no to a Maserati… I hoped he was going to be all right on his own. I assumed he lived alone, as he hadn’t phoned anyone to rescue him– although there were loads of photos around the room of this beautiful red-haired woman and a young girl.’
Quentin’s face fell. ‘So no dinner. Can’t argue with a wife.’ He gave a puzzled frown. ‘But where was she when he was languishing, wounded, on the Heath?’
‘Wait, we’re coming to that. Can’t hurry the story,’ Peggy teased. ‘So a week later, there he was when I got back from work, complete with ankle brace and walking poles, lurking outside my block of flats. I’d mentioned it was round the corner from him when he told the taxi driver his address, although he didn’t know the number. He’d been there for hours, he told me later. And he only knew my first name,so he couldn’t even look on the bell labels.’ She paused for effect. ‘Andthenhe said, “Would you consider having dinner with a man stupid enough to fall down a rabbit hole?”
‘Remembering the photos, I hesitated. There was no sign he’d hunted me down for any other reason than to say thank you, but it did seem a little odd that he’d gone to all that trouble.’ She lifted her hands, palms up, in a gesture of the inevitable. ‘Anyway, I said yes.’
‘And the flame-haired wife?’ Quentin queried, a little impatiently.
Peggy hesitated. ‘Dead, I’m afraid. Her name was Maria.’
Quentin’s expression fell. ‘Goodness, I didn’t know that about Ted. How very sad.’
‘He briefly mentioned Maria that first dinner,’ Peggy went on. ‘She died of sepsis apparently. But it was clear he wasn’t comfortable talking about her.’Still isn’t, she thought wistfully, although she’d often tried, gently, to get Ted to open up about his past.
‘So you were his knight in shining armour. You rescued him both from the Heath and from being on his own in life. Lovely,’ Quentin said, with a satisfied sigh.
‘Anyway, that was coming up five years ago. We never looked back.’
That evening with Ted induced a little tug at Peggy’s heart now. It had only been when they were sitting across from each other in the buzzing new brasserie on Highgate Hill, a cold glass of champagne in her hand, that she realized just how attractive the man from the rabbit hole was.
Ted had piled in, once they’d ordered, with questions about Peggy and her life, her boys. He’d seemed fascinatedby her replies, which, in turn, led to myriad other topics to chat about. The dinner flew by– Peggy quite taken aback at how easy he was to talk to. The very few dates she’d been on since she and Max had parted– set up mostly by Annie and her other close friends, Marianne, Jamie and his Venezuelan partner, Fernando– had been sticky conversationally. Peggy had ended up listening to the men banging on, at length, about themselves. But Ted, despite being the owner and chief of a retail company, did not appear like a ‘suit’, all smooth and corporate and full of himself. She found him relaxed and funny, really genuine. And her heart– so unused to romance after years of neglect– jumped astonishingly into gear, as if falling in love was as normal as making her morning coffee. She seemed to have no control over it. She was soon to discover Ted felt exactly the same way.
‘I’m flat out, selling the company, at the moment,’ he’d told her. ‘You wouldn’t believe how many tons of paperwork and meetings and back and forth there has to be before the deal is done. It’s taken months and every ounce of my energy.’ He’d met her eye with a deliberate gaze. ‘But I sensed it was important to meet you again, sooner rather than later.’
Peggy felt her heart lurch.How am I to take this?It seemed such a bold declaration of intent when they’d only just met. She’d felt her cheeks colour, although she couldn’t break the intense gaze between them… and found she had no desire to do so.
‘I fancy Ted like mad, of course,’ Quentin was saying, a wicked glint in his eye. ‘Rory gets satisfyingly jealous.’
She smiled. Jamie had said the same thing when she’dfirst introduced them.All things to all men… and women,she thought, with an inward smile. ‘You and me both.’
‘Those green eyes,’ Quentin went on as if she hadn’t spoken, his tone dreamy. ‘Or are they grey… gold? I mean, the colour changes with the tide. It’s quite unreasonable. And those muscles, of course.’ He sighed dramatically. ‘I thought I’d hate you, darling,’ he said, with a grin. ‘But I love you to bits! You spin a good yarn.’
At that moment, Ted emerged from round the corner of the castle ruin– where there was a bench looking out over the sea: Peggy and Ted sometimes sat there in the evening, enjoying the beautiful sunset. He crossed the road and strode up the bank to the car park, dumping two takeaway coffee cups in the recycling bin. Following him at a short distance, she noticed Lindy McDonald.
When Ted saw Peggy and Quentin, he waved and grinned, coming straight over to clap her new friend on the back and bend to kiss Peggy’s cheek. ‘Great to see you two have become acquainted.’ He pointed to the remains of Peggy’s tart, which she’d been too busy talking to finish. ‘Good brew?’
‘Delicious, as usual.’
