Page 33 of Old Girls Go Greek
I looked at him through my lashes.
‘Ah, but you don’t know me very well,’ I said, with the astonishing feeling that I was actually flirting with him. It had been years since I had done that. I didn’t think I still could.
‘Not yet,’ he said, taking a sip of his Metaxa. ‘Let’s wait and see what happens tomorrow morning when you are late for the bus, which, by the way, leaves at nine o’clock.’
‘As long as Costas hasn’t got a darts match this evening.’
‘Good point.’
We finished our drinks and coffee and after a polite wrangle about who was going to pay, Will settled the bill.
‘This was my idea. You can pay next time if it worries you that much,’ he said.
I sat and thought about this, hoping I wasn’t blushing. The next time. So, there was going to be a next time? Goodness me.
‘That was really delicious,’ I said as we finally escaped from the gravelled area and back onto more solid ground. ‘A lovely way to spend the evening.’
I had to stop for a moment, leaning against a fence to take off my shoes and shake out the accumulated dust and grit. Will waited patiently, looking out to sea at the lights of a boat, and didn’t mention my humiliating accident of earlier, for which I was grateful, and in a way, it made me like him more.
If it had been Malcolm, he would undoubtedly never let me forgethisembarrassment, and eventually it would be turned into a story where my clumsiness and wine consumption would be exaggerated into his usual brand of gaslighting humour. I could almost imagine his ghastly ex-work colleagues from the bank, braying with laughter at my expense at the annual Christmas get-together.
As we walked back through the little town, the streets were busier. We had obviously beaten the rush, such as it was. At last, we turned into one of the little back alleyways which would lead us to the hotel.
‘Thank you so much,’ I said.
He gave a funny little bow in my direction. ‘No, thank you.’
At this point I almost saidthank you for thanking me, as a sort of joke, but mercifully I didn’t.
I knew we were nearly back because I could see the lights from the Hotel Costas roof terrace ahead of us, and there was still a pile of moped parts on one side of the pavement, so evidently the man who had been working on it the previous day still had work to do.
I knew that once the others saw I was back, they would want to know chapter and verse about our evening. About him, what he had said, what I had said; it would be worse than being back at school. And I realised that despite our non-stop chatter, I still knew hardly anything about him apart from the facts that he was retired, lived alone and shared a cat with his neighbour.
I raked my memory for details. He obviously liked travel, seafood and white wine, and he was quietly elegant and had well cut hair. What else had he said? That he had once worked in London and had lived for a few years in Oxford where the traffic was terrible and parking spaces at a premium.
I had asked why he hadn’t moved somewhere more rural with views over a lake and perhaps room for some hens. I had told him about my house, and he had made approving comments. And then we had talked about chickens and tried to think up funny names for them. Starting with fairly predictable ones like Henny-Penny, Chicken Little and Hen Solo and eventually deciding on Cluck Norris, Mother Clucker and Hennifer Lopez.
Then we discussed what would happen to them when he went off on holiday, and he picked up his phone and googled hen-boarding facilities, which I refused to accept even existed, and found Henidorm, What the Cluck and The Clucktastic Hotel within twenty miles of his house. By the time we finished I was almost weeping with laughter, and his face had lost a lot of the tension which had become so familiar. I could almost see the man he must have been when he was younger, and strangely enough he was even more memorable.
But apart from that? I went back through our conversation of that evening, looking for nuggets of information that the others would find titillating.
He let slip that he’d been briefly married in his thirties, a relationship which had ended after a few years. He had enjoyed sailing when he was younger, had once owned a boat, which I had found impressive until he told me about all the ropes and knots and having to pretend something akin to standing in the rain tearing up twenty-pound notes was fun.
‘And how do you spend your time now?’ I’d asked. ‘What do you like to do with your retirement?’
‘Dull things,’ he’d said. ‘Weeding my garden, reading old books, watching boxsets on television. Occasionally I cook. And as a side line I invested in a couple of properties years ago which I renovated and sold. I’ve just bought another one. That keeps me busy. I’m very keen on a spreadsheet, which is what I was doing the other day.’
‘None of those things are dull, unless you think I am dull too,’ I’d said.
‘No, you’re not,’ he’d replied. ‘I told you, I think you’re fun. What else do you do?’
‘Drink tea, sometimes coffee, eat biscuits, do the ironing.’
He’d pulled a face. ‘Ironing? No one enjoys that.’
‘I do. I love taking a basket full of crumpled things and creating order. And I can watch television at the same time. So that passes for multi-tasking I think.’
‘Impressive. I like to clear my worktops in the kitchen?—’
